The Unknown Warrior (25 page)

The 1879 campaign is frequently depicted as one of the greatest clashes of military styles – of highly disciplined, well-armed, well-drilled, well-supplied troops up against a ‘savage' spear-wielding opponent. This is as erroneous as it would be to depict the defeat of Custer at the Little Bighorn as being by ‘savages' armed with bows and arrows. Indeed, from Doug Owsley's studies it appears that Custer's foes were, in fact, armed with more modern, efficient weapons than were the Seventh Cavalry (Scott
et al.
, 1989).

For years, collectors were able to retrieve artefacts from the battlefields of the Zulu War with the majority being taken from Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift, the two best-known engagements of the campaign. This highlights one of the problems for archaeologists intent on discerning much about individual engagements through artefact studies. The rebuilding of the mission station at Rorke's Drift in 1882 and the use of a bulldozer in 1979 to organise the site for the centenary celebrations have severely altered the potential for spatial analysis – in much the same manner as the Waterloo monument.

Those who were not killed at this place formed again in a solid square in the neck of Isandhlwana. They were completely surrounded on all sides, and stood back to back, and surrounding some men who were in the centre. Their ammunition was now done, except that they had revolvers which they fired at us at close quarters. We were quite unable to break their square until we had killed a great many of them, by throwing our assegais at short distances. We eventually overcame them in this way. (Uguku of the UmCijo ibutho [regiment], in Emery, 1977: 87)

One of the great legends of the disastrous (for the British) battle of Isandlwana on 22 January 1879 was that the British position was taken by the Zulus as a result of the infantry running out of ammunition for their Martini–Henry rifles, because the men found it extremely difficult to open the ammunition boxes in the battle. Studies by Tony Pollard, Neil Oliver, Ian Knight and Len Van Schalkwyk on this battlefield are perhaps changing this hypothesis.

According to historian Ian Knight, the survey team on the battlefield found spent cartridges – some further forward than the British front line had been thought to be – strapping from ammunition boxes and camp debris (Knight, pers. comm.). Other finds of foil handles and possible foil from the tops of the ammunition boxes right up at the front line were made, as were the nails and hinges of an ammunition box (Andrew Greaves, 2000). Supplying the front line with ammunition was not the problem – it was much more likely that the British were simply outnumbered, out-generalled and outfought on the day. Some evidence for last, desperate and futile stands made by British infantrymen is also inferred from distinct clusters of Martini–Henry cases. One such grouping, in this case of five cartridges behind a large rock, was thought perhaps to be a last shelter for a British soldier, who used the boulder as cover for sniping at the Zulus until he, too, was probably killed (
ibid.
: 5).

Further items pertaining to weaponry have been recovered from excavations on combat sites of the Anglo-Zulu War. It was already known that the Zulu army was not simply armed with stabbing spear (assegai) and club (knobkerry); a large number also had firearms, admittedly generally obsolete, with weapons such as the muzzle-loading Tower Musket and percussion Enfield. As is confirmed by Laband (1987: 23), writing on the aftermath of the Battle of Khambula on 29 March 1879 and the capture of weaponry, ‘of the 325 taken, only 15 were breach-loaders. One of these was a Snider Carbine marked as belonging to the Royal Artillery, and the other 14 had belonged either to the 24th or 80th Regiments, showing that they had been captured wither at Isandlwana or Ntombe Drift on the 12 March'.

Excavations took place during 1983–93 at Rorke's Drift, where a handful of British troops held off a series of attacks by Zulus who were largely the reserve of the force that had overwhelmed the camp at Isandlwana. Though much artefact collection has gone on here – from 1879 onwards – there is still enough material to offer clues to what the fighting was like, particularly for the infantryman.

One major reason for the British success in holding the mission station was the fact that the Zulus were unable to get the better of the British infantry in the firearms stand-off. Although the Zulus were generally armed with inferior weaponry, it is the topic of current debate as to whether several Martini–Henry rifles from those fleeing the carnage of Isandlwana were picked up by the Zulus and used against the British here (Adrian Greaves, 2002: 414–15). The Zulus were firing from caves on the slopes above the mission station, known as the Oskarsberg (Shiyane). Greaves (
ibid.
: 341) wrote: ‘At least three slugs of a .577 calibre were recovered from a cave overlooking the battlefield. Furthermore, during construction of a car park in front of the battlefield, similar wax-moulded, fired slugs were recovered. These discoveries suggested that the team were recovering bullets that had been used during the battle of 1879. The fact that many of these slugs were recovered from the car park area (to the north of the battlefield) confirms reports that the Zulus were overshooting their targets.'

Although the rifle butt could also be used in an offensive role for hand-to-hand engagements, at close quarters ‘cold steel' would still be the weapon of choice. The bayonet would have been a feared weapon and, in close square formation, would have been enough to deter or defeat cavalry actions superseding the role of the pike. Scabbard tips for bayonets have been recovered from places such as the battlefield of Antietam in the American Civil War, 17 September 1862 (Potter and Owsley, 2003). The bayonet had to be used to force home an action when powder became wet, as at the Battle of Ox Hill. However, this most visceral of combat forms probably resulted in relatively few casualties when compared with the destructive capabilities of artillery and massed firearm use. Indeed, Martin Howard, when writing on the subject of Wellington's doctors from the early nineteenth century, stated: ‘The cold steel of the bayonet may have had a psychological effect, but actual bayonet wounds were rare. In a French study of the casualties of a hand-to-hand mêlée between French and Austrian troops, the musket ball wounds outnumbered the bayonet wounds by more than twenty to one' (Howard, 2002: 127).

Archaeological discoveries of weapon parts (especially munitions) can therefore help to determine the presence (or otherwise) of the infantryman in certain locations, and sometimes even of individual units. They can help to dispel myths put forward to explain particularly damaging defeats and can illustrate exactly what types of weapon were available to the soldier in particular battles. Clearly, the nineteenth century was one of huge change for the footsoldier as the efficacy of his firearms increased considerably.

ARMOUR AND COSTUME

The place is completely strewed with broken shells, breastplates, pouches, scabbards and caps, both of French and English.

(On the aftermath of battle in the Napoleonic period; Wheeler, 1999: 80)

By the seventeenth century armour was going out of favour with the infantry and by the nineteenth century it had all but disappeared. Breastplates were still being used by the cavalry during the Napoleonic period, though even this branch of the armed forces had no real use for such protection as the twentieth century dawned, firearms having rendered it useless. Armoured covering would only again be widely seen with the advent of the tank in the First World War, with the exception of snipers who would sometimes make use of armoured protection.

After major engagements in the nineteenth century, the battlefield was often littered with artefacts associated with infantry costume. Buttons, hats, boots and other such items would be scattered across the area of conflict either still attached to the dead, or torn off as a result of explosion, looting or the agonised death-throws of the vanquished. As archaeologists, we can benefit from these traces by being able to denote the presence of particular units or to see the types of costume worn into battle. Indeed, the nineteenth century was a period of great change; not only was armour abandoned, by the close the British had even swapped their famous red coats for a camouflage-friendly ‘khaki'. ‘Khaki (from the Persian for dust-coloured) made its appearance in the Mutiny [the Indian Mutiny, 1857], when white uniforms were dyed locally with materials that included coffee, curry powder and mulberry juice: the 32nd cooped up in Lucknow, even used the office ink' (Holmes, 2001: 191). British troops would still wear their famous red coats in the Zulu Wars of 1879, but the need for camouflage was evident during setbacks in the Boer War. This was a harsh lesson to be learned and something that the French ‘Poilu' would get to understand in the First World War, as their red trousers were highly visible to the enemy. ‘It had been the fate of many hundreds, when they had sat down because of weakness or necessity, that their clothing had been brutally torn from them and, where they could not defend themselves, they froze to death naked' (Walter, 1991: 90).

At the site of the burial pit of many of Napoleon's ill-fated forces of 1812 in Vilnius, much by way of costume has been found. An officer's hat and military boots are included in this inventory. The skeletons found were not simply of males; the army would have included many women – wives, cooks, tradeswomen, washerwomen or suchlike. The remains of at least twenty-seven women have been positively identified here, one of which was wearing a jacket of the 61st Line Infantry Regiment – perhaps taken in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat ‘General Winter' (Jankauskas, pers. comm.). Jankauskas also attributes the cutting marks on the left shin of one individual as perhaps being the marks left when somebody tried to remove the shoes from a frozen body.

The fact that clothing was taken from the bodies of the dead by the barely living in the terrible struggle against the cold is born out by a German infantryman Jakob Walter, who wrote in some detail on the subject of the 1812 retreat: ‘It was not possible to recognise one another except by voice. Everyone was disguised in furs, rags, and pieces of cloth; they wore round hats and peasant caps on their heads, and many had priests' robes from the churches. It was like a world turned upside down' (Walter, 1991: 71).

Walter was one of many non-French troops serving among the ranks of the Grand Armée – the Lithuanian excavations have shown this in great detail. Certainly the 123rd Infantry Regiment was at Vilnius – a fact revealed by the presence of buttons from this unit in the death pit. In addition, buttons of the 21st and 29th Infantry Regiments have been recovered.

Excavations at castle, barrack and prison sites also indicate that the presence of particular units and buttons, as we have seen, is an excellent indicator. Archaeological fieldwork at Portchester Castle, Hampshire, has yielded evidence for both prisoner and guard regiments. The French buttons from this site, dating to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, included the 4th, 14th and 16th Infantry and also the 65th, 66th and 82nd Regiments. In addition, other buttons were of the Garde de Paris First and Second Battalions. Going on the button evidence, the British regiments used to guard the prisoners included the Shropshire Militia and the 12th (East Suffolk) Regiment of Foot (Cunliffe and Garratt, 1994: 108). Shoe buckles were also recovered from the gravel surface of the airing yard, and, as this surface was not laid until 1810, this shows that shoe buckles were still used in the early nineteenth century (
ibid.
: 89).

Brixham Heritage Museum has been excavating a series of Napoleonic forts guarding the approaches to Torbay in Devon, and the work has revealed much information relating to British soldiers of the period. The buttons from this site included examples of the 3rd (East Kent), 62nd (Wiltshire) and 51st (2nd Yorkshire) Regiments of Foot stationed here from 1808 to 1810, while one from the 28th (North Gloucestershire) Regiment was found, once having belonged to a soldier who was here on recruiting duties and stationed in the fort between 1811 and 1813 (see Berry Head Archaeology, 2000; Armitage and Rouse, 2003). Intriguingly, a button of the 37th Line Regiment (France) was also found (Armitage and Rouse, 2003: 31).

Buttons had other uses for unscrupulous members of the infantry, as Rifleman Harris of the 95th Regiment recounted when referring to a stern speech on the subject by Marshall Beresford: ‘I can tell you, it was a discourse which our men (some of them) much needed; for they had been in the habit of tearing off the buttons from their coats, and after hammering them flat, passing them as English coin, in exchange for the good wines of Spain' (Hibbert, 2000: 68).

Work on sites of the Zulu Wars adds colour to our picture of the action. At both Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana it is well known that the 24th (Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot provided the major portion of the British forces involved in both engagements. Excavations at Rorke's Drift yielded one of the distinctive sphinx badges of the 24th Regiment (Adrian Greaves, 2002: 340).

Perhaps more interesting were the finds associated with the defeated British forces at Isandlwana including a 1st Battalion 24th Regiment belt buckle on land known as Black's Koppie – possibly representing retreating British troops (Andrew Greaves, 2000: 4) – from a site designated as Area 3 of the battlefield by recent fieldwork. Here seven 1st Battalion 24th Regiment buttons were found in a row, around 8cm apart. This was presumed by the author to represent a British tunic that had been looted by the victorious Zulu army from one of the bodies of the British infantrymen and subsequently discarded on the eastern slopes of Isandlwana (
ibid.
: 3).

Buttons and elements of costume have been recovered from many of the fields of conflict of the American Civil War, and, as we shall see later, some of these are in direct association with the remains of those who paid the ultimate price of service as an infantryman in a combat force. The buttons from the archaeological investigations at Kenmore (close to the action of Fredericksburg in December 1862) were found in the formal gardens and outbuildings by a house. These reveal information on the contrasting sides of the war. The Confederates fighting here were largely composed of the Virginia militia and the buttons had the state motto
Sic Semper Tyrannis
under and image of Victus standing over defeated tyranny, and thirteen stars representing the states in the Confederacy with an initial eleven and possibly Missouri and Kentucky. The Union troops, on the other hand, had some rubber buttons as it was hoped that these would be non-reflective (George Washington's Fredericksburg Foundation, 2005).