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Making of Zulu Dawn
Stephen Coan


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 40
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Greetings

If you go to the Witness site www.witness.co.za hit the search facility in the left hand column and then enter Zulu Dawn in the search field you'll find an article on the making of Zulu Dawn with particular reference to the scenes shot in Pietermaritzburg.

Best wishes to all
Stephen
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Alan
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005
Posts: 1530
Location: Wales
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Zulu Dawn and the documentary The Real Zulu Dawn are on National Geographic TV channel tonight at 9pm and 11.30pm.

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Alan

I wonder if I'll watch them ? Confused

I'll not only watch, but I'll record and get someone else to do the same at their house for me. Laughing

No. I don't like the film....much ! Wink

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PS. I can still see it for what it could have been Rolling Eyes
Alan
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005
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Coll,
if you watch the documentary again, look at the ammunition box opening scene again. I think Ian's reputation is secure in any event.
Note the screw is on the short side of the sliding wedge, close to the blow as opposed to the longer side.
The wood is brittle pine. Perhaps you can tell me if the sliding lid was tongue and grooved. Overall, not convincing and certainly no contribution to the discussion of ammunition supply.
As to finding various items at a distance, I'm sure that over a hundred and twenty years kids would have played there and taken, thrown or dropped loads of things which were found in other places.

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Alan
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Blimey! They're both on again this afternoon at 3pm and 5.30pm.

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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 1797
Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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Yes, Ian Knight displayed "a safe pair of hands" when interviewed during various parts of the programme and he is not likely to say anything too radical anyway, nor - with his long experience of these things - did he slip into the error of saying too much which could be twisted or edited in order to put a slant on his opinions. Just as well, as the clips of him were cleverly (or craftily, I'd say) juxtaposed alongside the fanciful claims of the narrator in order to give the impression that Ian was supporting, or giving credence to, whichever claim was being made at the time.

He did, as you say, in contributing to the demolition of the ammunition supply shortage theory, knock that box to bits a bit too easily, as has been mentioned on this forum before (was it the same programme under a different name, by the way, as although I had not seen its previous outings, I thought it had appeared under a different title?) Ron & Peter have suggested more than once that the poor softwood used to make the box in the programme proved nothing, which is fair comment.

The programme wasn't of a very high quality, was it? I think any discerning viewer with a reasonable knowledge of Isandlwana would have been highly disappointed with the quality of the various arguments. In fact I think it rather ambitious to decorate it with the description "documentary." As you say, Alan, the ignoring of 120 years of busy human activity on the site, as if it has existed in a vacuum ever since 22 Jan 1879, led to ridiculous claims that bullets and boxes must have been fired or carried to certain places on that very day, but couldn't possibly have been moved by anyone in the 120 years since - despite the fact that the bullet was found in the direction of the mission, where generations of kids would have played with them, thrown them around and offered to flog them to visitors, and that the box was found on the route the Zulus took when relieving the camp of a large number of the same!

The morbid and pointless mucking about with bones found during the "dig", led - as far as I could see - to no more dramatic a conclusion than that a blow from a spear or a knobkerry would make a mess of anyone's head. And every few minutes the narrator, constantly trying to convince the viewer (who is credited with very little intelligence) that "for years and years, all historians have been competely baffled as to how the Zulus could possibly have defeated the British force here in such a way" moves on to yet another far-fetched theory, interspersed with scenes of nocturnal jumping around of people dressed up as Zulu warriors.

Ideas soon became "facts", and if long drawn out pap such as this passes for the description "documentary" these days, then we're much further down the "dumbing down" of history road than I thought! The content wouldn't have filled more than a couple of pages of a book,which would then have been slated by any decent reviewer. Sorry to be so negative today (I know these criticism of theprogramme have appeared on the forum before) but I'd sat through ZD itself beforehand and by the time that comedy had tried my patience, I was fairly tired & hoping for something just a little less insubstantial.

Peter
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Alan

Yes....and I watched them again !

Peter

As Oddball from 'Kelly's Heroes' would say -

" All these negative waves, man. " Wink

In the film Zulu Dawn, Chelmsford says to Harford about Hamilton-Browne -

" Learn nothing from that Irishman, Harford. Except how not to behave. "

The same could almost be said about Zulu Dawn and the documentary (?) (oops, sorry Peter ! Smile ) which would be -

" Learn nothing from these programmes. Except how they are not to be made. " Rolling Eyes

Personally, I still enjoyed them. As I mentioned previously elsewhere - they will do until something better comes along.....hopefully !

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Edward


Joined: 27 Jan 2006
Posts: 32
Location: Glendora, California
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Not long ago I was watch a program on Unsolved History about recent excavations at Little Big Horn and purportedly presented new evidence showing that no heroic last stand took place. If there was ever a case of personal bias driving research this was it.

The program showed how artifacts have been recovered from the areas around the skirmish lines which support the establishment of the lines during the early stages of the battle but how very few if any artifacts have been found on Last Stand Hill. The researcher - Richard Fox, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Dakota - used this fact to state rather bluntly that this indicates that no �Last Stand� actually took place and that members of Custer�s command who reached the hill were for all intents simply butchered by the Sioux without putting up much of a fight at all.

I wanted to scream at the television monitor!

Both the narrator and researcher failed to note that Last Stand Hill is and always has been the most archaeologically disturbed area of the battlefield. To assume that one should be finding nice little piles of spent cartridge cases there is beyond belief. In relation to Zulu War battles one has to ask what is the most commonly encountered artifacts from those battles that one sees on the market? Cartridge cases.

After the fighting was over the Sioux and their allies scavenged the site. Then the Army burial parties dug up the site to lay to rest the dead. Then bodies where disinterred for removal to family plots elsewhere. Then a very large masonry monument was constructed on the site and marble makers placed where each man fell. A wrought iron fence was also installed around the hill. During all this time I am sure that all the burial details, construction crews and thousands of visitors of every ilk kicked at the dirt and took away more artifacts than can be imagined. This has been going on for over 130 years and seemingly no consideration of these facts were made in the final summation. A summation that ended up saying that Custer's men died as an unorganized and frightend mob.

I many ways it parallels the whole ammo box controversy at Isandlwana. I quite familiar with the belief that the twisted copper bands of the British Ammunition boxes as evidence that the British soldiers desperation in trying to get to the cartridges inside. Unless every British soldier was a complete idiot they would have without thinking just smashed in to box lids with the butt of their Martini-Henry.

I think it more likely that those copper bands were bent and twisted by Zulus who tried to remove them from the empty boxes with anything they found at hand including discarded British bayonets. They may have seen the bands as a free source of a valuable metal.

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mike snook 2


Joined: 04 Jan 2006
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Edward

I quite agree with your comments on LBH. I have been there several times, on all but one occasion taking with me a party of British young officers to study the battle. I have also seen the TV programme to which you refer. It beats me how anybody can argue that no last stand took place when the tightly clustered grave markers on 'Last Stand Hill' are there for all to see - including the very one marking the place where Custer fell. When you consider the juxtaposition between the hill, and the fords over the river, Medicine Tail Coulee for Gall and the one at the far end of the encampments for Crazy Horse (I believe is the received wisdom), it is blindingly obvious that Last Stand Hill is precisely where troops retiring under pressure would rally in order to make a cogent attempt to fight back. I think from memory there are 40 odd markers around the Custer marker - showing that the US troopers did precisely what British soldiers of this era were trained to do which, in a crisis, was to rally on the nearest officer. Company officers in their turn would try to rally on the senior officer. As further evidence of a stand, (I would struggle to immediately cite a source without the benefit of an hour or two delving into my library), there is witness testimony that indicates the presence of a ring of dead horses on that part of the field. Horses of course don't die in rings unless their owners shoot them to fall that way and so form a breastwork.

Now whilst the resistance on Last Stand Hill may not have been protracted, it is clear from the plains tribes' mode of fighting that it could not have been snuffed out in the blink of an eye. I have little doubt that the US soldiers who fell there died bravely and were fighting for their lives at the time. That native-American casualties were so low was no more than a function of how difficult it must have been to hit a jinking target with a Springfield when the weight of covering fire would have forced one not to stand up like Errol Flynn, but to fire with one's nose resting above the saddlery of a dead horse - imagine how limited the visibility/ field of fire must have been.

That Zulu casualties were infinitely heavier at Isandlwana was a function of their mode of fighting. I have little doubt that the majority of them occurred after the amabutho broke out of the cover of the Nyogane Donga (and other places of cover), when they became over-animated and sought to kill with the iklwa, thus presenting nice big full length targets, exposed en masse in the open, at very short range. The extent of the Zulu loss, and the difficulty of hitting targets in cover, even at 300 yards, are a critical enabler to understanding the fight at Isandlwana - and is one of the reasons why my reconstruction ended up where it did.

In this country we have had to endure a similar attempt by knockers out to make their name at the expense of better men than them who, lest we forget, lost their lives fighting for their country. I refer to some of the foolish and ill-informed remarks made by some writers about Melvill VC and Coghill VC. I am pleased to see that in America military historians and enthusiasts are similarly fighting back against the iconoclasts and revisionists. There was a Last Stand on Last Stand Hill - I have seen it with my own eyes. If you are a decent military historian and have a day to walk over a battlefield you don't need a time machine to see a battle unfolding before your eyes.

I'm with you Edward. Well said.

Regards

Mike
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diagralex


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 208
Location: Broomfield, Essex
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Edward

I agree with you entirely about the many movement of artifacts, especially cartridge cases. When I visited the Reno and Custer battle sites, I know that I spent a lot of the time looking in the dust for the chance to discover a catridge case (never did find one though !)
If this sort of thing has been happening over the last century and a half, it is suprising that the amount of artifacts discovered when the bush fire swept the site was as high as it was.
Mike is correct about the ground forming a good position for a last stand. It has a commanding position, looking all the way down to the Indian camp. The only blind spot is just over the crest of the hill behind it. The troopers may not have lasted long, but you can guarantee that they did not sell their lives cheaply.

Graham
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Rich
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I was aware of the controversial suppositions made by Fox at LBH. Well as we should know it is only one approach to the study of the battle where we actually have no survivors to tell a tale. I don't know. Fox's theory using an archaelogical underpinning I think is just as a valid as others promulgated in understanding of what happened to Custer's command and why it was destroyed. Let's say it's an additon to the puzzle. And just as an aside there's some background from Indian accounts to support Fox's contention that there was tactical disintegration of the command..yes every man for himself. And of course those accounts have been disputed by many since one has to be careful of Indian "eyewitness" and after-action reports as well as some made many years after the battle. (Rain Cloud in 1909 said that "the soldiers in RUNNING AWAY would fire their guns in the air making them easy victims"). A conundrum to say the least. Mike..your next book????.....I'll meet you out there in Montana to go over the lie of the land and we'll see what clues the "greasy grass" holds in the wind....Wink....
Making of Zulu Dawn
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