rorkesdriftvc.com :: View topic

Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 10:46 pm

Donald Morris states in his book, 'The Washing of the Spears', in the 'Unpublished sources and private information' section, that a soldier R.Head, was the true name of a private at Rorke's Drift, and that his enlistment name was unknown. Are there any candidates for the true identity of this man.

Tony Jones.

Posted: Mon Jun 19, 2006 7:22 pm

Isn't this the Private Robert Head that paid a shilling for a scrap of scorched paper to write a letter home. Apparently the letter survives (Where I don't know). The feeling is that Robert Head was the real name of the soldier. I've never come across a mention of the alias used by the soldier.

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 8:52 am

The original is at Brecon. Morris acknowledges the museum and I remember checking with Martin a few years ago that it was still there after I had come across a duplicate - badly charred in exactly the same way as that described in TWOTS!

I seem to recall some considerable work has been done by others in attempting to establish Head's identity and that at least one hypothesis emerged some years ago & may have been mentioned on the old forum. I remember being less than 100% convinced at the time but am not really in a position to gainsay it as I have done no research on him myself, although was once tempted to have a crack via genealogical avenues from the meagre clues available. I think one of the Welsh lads was claimed to be the answer when it came up on this site a year or so back.

Lee? Julian? Martin?

Peter

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 9:23 am

Alan Baynham Jones and Lee Stevenson (Rorke's Drift By Those Who Were There, p. 122) note that the letter was published in The Irish Times, 26th November 1932, and attributed to John Williams VC.

Peter

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:30 am

Thanks for that, Peter - I've also just found the discussion (mentioned above) on the old forum, which was begun on 3rd April 2004 under the thread: "Bob S. Head - who was he?" It appears to provide a fair summary of the various opinions up until then but I wonder if anything has been accomplished since.

Peter

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 12:56 pm

If it turns out that it WAS John Williams Fielding will they have to rename a pub near to me? The John Williams Fielding Head is a heck of a name to fit on a pub sign though isn't it?

Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2006 10:33 pm

Dear all,
thanks for the replies, even though this topic has took a while to generate any responses I'm rather relieved,as my mates have been pulling my 'novice legs' in suggesting that the name referred to some other 'R.Head' whose name possess a somewhat suggestive and humerous connotation. In my rather serious tones, i defended myself and Mr Morris by assuring my jibing mates that a researcher and author of such standing and precision would not 'fall for that one'. In addition,in Sheldon Hall's excellent book, Zulu-With Some Guts behind It, i notice on page 17, in the original John Prebble article, that a reference is given to a number of candidates, which includes Joneses, Williams and Roberts as having aliases, much in the same way that Donald Morris refers to this in his book The Washing of The Spears. During the period that these men enlisted, what documentation would they have had to provide to gain entry into the British Army. Cheers.

Tony.

Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 8:14 am

I doubt if they were too fussy in who they took. In 1870 you had to be 5 feet 7 inches tall to enlist. By 1873 it was five foot 4 and a half.By 1881 it had fallen to 5 foot. There was always a problem with recruitment keeping up with wastage.

Lord Chelmsford had written to the Duke of Cambridge in 1878, informing him that over 60 per cent of the recruits from the 2nd Battalion had less than 4 months service, had never attended a musketry course, and had not even completed their basic drill instruction.

Of any 1000 recruits over six years, 123 would be lost to the service within one year, a further 246 within two years, and a further 290 within three. Hence, in the infantry alone, less than one quarter of the recruits completed three years� service. The main categories of wastage were death, desertion, imprisonment, and purchase of discharge.

I don't think that this would lead to the army turning many away. I know for a fact that as late as 1914 the South Wales Borderers accepted my own Great Grandfather under an alias.

Jon

Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 8:59 am

Tony

Documentation? None, I should think!

The answers to the questions put to the recruit upon attestation were clearly taken on trust. What documentation could a recruit possibly produce anyway? If born after July 1837 (as AZW soldiers would have been) he might know the whereabouts of his birth certificate, although almost certainly only the short-form version, which would tell the Army nothing which the recruit couldn't tell him. With non-registration of births before the 1870s quite high (several per cent) there is a chance he never even had a birth cert. The palaver of obtaining a baptism certificate is an even more far-fetched thought.

The need to recruit fit and willing young men was clearly far more important than worrying about who they were or where they came from, even though the routine question of whether the recruit had ever been convicted by the military or civil powers was put to him, as well as the question on previous military service in the regular forces or the militia.

It is not at all impossible that Robert Head used an alias because he had served previously, although this may well have been more common after Cardwell's short service reforms. Kipling's wonderful Back to the Army Again explains a lot about the problems caused by the new "7 & 5" or "6 & 6" attestations.

Peter

Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2006 10:57 pm

Dear Peter,
thanks for the information about the Kipling reference. It seems that at the point of joining the army, many men would have used this occasion as the ideal time to 'change their name', around the AZW period. In the case of the French Foreign Legion, i saw a programme on BBC2 (some years ago) where the assumption of an alias was normal practice, with no questions asked. Cheers.

Tony.

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2006 11:39 am

I have several books on Welsh coal mine casualties and you would be surprised at just how many men used an alias.

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2006 6:53 am

My researches suggest about 5% of soldiers served under an assumed name and this continued until WW1. Sometimes they reverted back to their real name during their service which complicated matters. It seemed to be an accepted practice in Victorian times.

Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 11:23 pm

Dear Martin,
5% use of alias names represents a rather interesting quota.At what stage did the British Army decide to clamp down on this practice.I know for example,that my grandfather,enlisted underage for the later stages of WW1 to enable him to take part in the hostilities,despite the fact that his elder brothers,William and Joseph Jones,were casualities at Arras,so that he could carry on the tradition of all Jones males serving for The British Army.Thanks.

Tony.

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 9:35 am

Just a reminder that Toby Giese's book on Rorke's Drift claimed to have identified Bob Head and also to pick him out in the B coy photograph on the basis that a smudge near a man's mouth might be a pipe and Bob Head records difficulty in getting tobacco, ergo the man with the might-be pipe MUST be Head. A more tenuous, contrived 'proof', I've yet to come across.