The Battle of Rorke's Drift

On 22 January 1879, hours after the British disaster at Isandlwana, a detached Zulu force of roughly 4,000 warriors swept toward a small supply depot at a Swedish mission station called Rorke’s Drift, on the Buffalo River in Natal.

The post was held by little more than 150 men, many of them from the 2nd/24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot, under Lieutenants John Chard and Gonville Bromhead. With no time to retreat, the defenders threw up barricades from mealie bags and biscuit boxes and fought through the night, falling back to a final redoubt as the perimeter shrank.

After more than ten hours of fighting, the exhausted Zulu force withdrew at dawn.

The stand cost the garrison around fifteen dead, while several hundred Zulu lay outside the walls. The action became one of the most celebrated in British military history, earning eleven Victoria Crosses and five Distinguished Conduct Medals, the most VCs ever awarded for a single engagement.