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Rusteze
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Called "Flavours of South Africa". Episode on Kwazulu Natal showing again on Tuesday 14 February at 02.30.
Steve |
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_________________ Rusteze |
Sawubona
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Occasionally we Yanks dream of how different things might be were it not for the likes of Saratoga and Yorktown-either we'd be watching documentaries like this one or you'd be watching "Jersey Girls" on the telly. Another one I'm sorry to have missed.
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Paul Bryant-Quinn
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This post has nothing whatsoever to do with the thread, so do please shoot me for going off-topic, but It's interesting to note that the soldiers serving in Zululand were reading accounts of the war in the newspapers they were being sent by their families. One of of the men I have been researching comments on seeing his letters home published in a newspaper. I've often wondered what was the men's reaction to what they were reading, and to the coverage of the AZW.
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Mark Hobson
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An interesting point. I'd suspect they'd have felt quite a lot of pride that they had not been forgotten mixed with anguish at reading of lost colleagues. Reading of events as they were viewed back in Britain might have increased their homesickness and a wish for a home posting! Especially with all the night scares after Isandlwana.
Of course the reality they were experiencing first-hand would have been somewhat different to the sanitized version in the papers. |
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Peter Ewart
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Paul
The interesting thing is that in many cases - or most cases, I'd think - the serving officer or soldier had no idea their letters would appear in the press, as their families generally forwarded them to the local paper without referring to the writer (as happened in later wars, too). In fact I'd be interested to learn whether, in your newspaper research, you have come across any cases in which the writer suggests his letter should be forwarded to the press? (But if this is covered in your NAM offering, I'm happy to wait!) So not only might they have been surprised to see their letters published in papers they eventually had access to themselves, but there would have been plenty of scope for embarrassment or even unpleasantness, whenever a comrade disagreed with, or objected to, something said. One can imagine the reaction, whether officer of ranker: "Don't blame me - I never dreamed my good lady/the missus would send the thing to the papers, and anyway that's not at all what I wrote or how I worded it." Offhand, I can think of a couple of instances where the repurcussions were very unpleasant. I think it was Curling (but correct me if I've mis-remembered) who was furious at his family for sending his letter to the press, so that he was highly embarrassed at the result. And, of course, Snook's effort caused a bombshell in the press, Parliament and the upper echelons in Zululand, with his claims about the Khambula aftermath. Only sleight of hand by Wood (again!) appears to have got him out of that tight corner. Peter P.S. Why not a separate thread for your post? |
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Paul Bryant-Quinn
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Good morning Peter,
Not sure if my little aside deserves a thread of its own, but as you know, families sent out newspapers to the men serving in Zululand on a regular basis, and their letters home comment on how glad they are to receive them. Which is why, as the war progressed to its later stages, the men would have been reading not only the sometimes garbled accounts in the British press of what was going on in the war, but also other soldiers' letters. I take your point about the officers, but among the OR I sometimes wonder if this pastime didn't acquire a certain momentum of its own: 1933 Pte 'Charles Roberts', 2/4th, for example, commented with amusement on reading one of his letters in the local paper which his father had sent him, and then proceeded to fire off at least a further six (we know of eight of his letters), all of which were published. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of this activity got a little competitive, with details becoming (how shall we put it?) embellished, or rumour being reported as fact. Letter writing itself, of course, was something of a minor industry during the AZW - as it probably is in any war, come to that - but while not all of the men either could or did write, the extent of the documentation which has not survived can be guessed at from an aside in a letter Owen Ellis wrote to his father in Caernarfon on New Year's Eve 1878:
If that is in any way indicative of the letter-writing activities of even some of the literate soldiers during the AZW, then a substantial amount of primary source material is either out there in private hands, or has simply not survived. Of course, not everything that was penned by these men is going to revolutionise our view of the AZW. Many of them wrote missives along the lines of:
One could sometimes wish that they had used their time to give us something a little more substantial; but then again, of course, our interests and concerns were not theirs. |
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Galloglas
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Tells us a lot about human optimism; the hope of still being alive by the time that a long haul postage chain actually delivered the required socks.
I'm sometimes left wondering how authentic these things are. Many soldiers could knit and darn, and, Natal was hardly a world without socks. Unless, of course, it was passing through a hitherto undocumented pre-sock era. G |
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Paul Bryant-Quinn
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I think I was being a little tongue in cheek about the socks, G ...
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Galloglas
Guest
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Thank heaven for that, I thought it was just me doing it.
G |
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Hidden Gem |
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