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Time Machine - Isandlwana Or Rorke's Drift ?
Coll
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Rather than a fun quiz, etc., this is something that has been mentioned previously in topics, but never pursued as a discussion.

Recently, I found a book advertised called -

Andy And Mark And The Time Machine: Custer's Last Stand.

The story goes that 3 people travel back in time, but are parted from each other during the process, however, meeting up near Little Bighorn 1876, meeting Custer, etc., and witnessing events.

Question - if this happened to you, instead turning up near Isandlwana or Rorke's Drift, would you -

A. Flee as fast as you can knowing what is going to happen ?

B. Try to warn of the coming events ?

C. Curiosity making you deliberately join the forces at Isandlwana or Rorke's Drift, to partake in the battle itself, even though there was a prospect of being killed, in order to witness the situation firsthand.

D. Curiosity, making you go to Isandlwana or Rorke's Drift to see/meet, the famous figures from history, but leave before the engagement.

E. Any other decision.

Note - for simplicity sake, you are not seen as an outsider, spy, stranger, but are assimilated into the scenario, as in accepted.

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Sawubona


Joined: 09 Nov 2005
Posts: 1179
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Sounds just a bit like the Twilight Zone episode where a tank (I want to say it's a Grant, but I'm not sure) and it's crew "warp" back to The Greasy Grass. "The Seventh is Made Up of Phantoms" was the name of the episode.

Me? I'd try to convince Pulleine that extended order might not be the best way to deal with what's about to appear over that ridge.

It hasn't been called "Custer's Last Stand" over here for several decades, Coll. Like Isandlwana, The Battle of the Little Bighorn isn't now thought of as a defeat for the "good guys" nor a victory for the "bad guys". The national park is simply (and politically correctly) "The Little Bighorn Battlefield" and the battle itself as "the Battle of the Little Bighorn".
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Re: Time Machine - Isandlwana Or Rorke's Drift ?
Kiwi Sapper


Joined: 05 Mar 2009
Posts: 125
Location: Middle Earth & Home of Narnia; (Auckland, New Zealand)
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Coll wrote:
.............
Question - if this happened to you, instead turning up near Isandlwana or Rorke's Drift, would you - ............ Coll


Being aware of the fact that if I changed history because of this opportunity, neither I, nor many others now alive may now exist, let alone events happen, countries continue, , governments govern, etc. I would ...........

"A. Flee as fast as you can knowing what is going to happen ?"

but reassuring myself "on route" that I was saving the world as we know it.

_________________
It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.
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The Scorer


Joined: 27 Nov 2006
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Location: Newport
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I think I'd be tempted to be at Rorke's Drift.

I'd just be an observer, though, although I'd like to be able to tell Ivor Emmanuel to "sing something they like"! (If you don't understand this, sorry; it's a Max Boyce joke!)

Smile
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Personally, I'd probably appear to them as a newspaper reporter, walking round taking numerous notes of the more vaguer aspects of Isandlwana.

Hopefully, in the last stages of the battle, I can get back to present day.

If I can't get back, I'll be likely to go the same route as the other reporter Mark Kellogg at LBH, but instead I would have wrote - 'I go with Durnford and will be with him at the death'

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Julian whybra


Joined: 03 Sep 2005
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Look at the name tag in my tunic and make sure it said 'Essex'.
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Julian

Not bad. Not bad at all. Laughing

There's so much I would want to see at the Isandlwana camp, I'd have to make sure I had a weatherproof container with me from the future, that'd last for more than a century for all my notes and quick sketches, to be buried in a location agreed with anyone in the present day, for them to find intact.

So, in the event I do go back in time to then, is there anything you'd want me to find out/look for/sketch, to assist you today in your research ? Wink

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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 1797
Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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I would be rushing around trying to see exactly what happened to the cricket gear and exactly how it was lost and why a single stump and a batting pad were separated from the rest. If one of the camp's defenders, or more than one, had fallen while bravely defending this vital equipment, then I would doff my cap to them. As there is no record of the bulk of the gear surviving the looting of the camp (although I wouldn't be aware of that at the time) I would follow the victorious army to their renewed bivouac on the Ngwebini stream, where many appear to have had second thoughts about carting their loot all the way home, as much detritus was discarded in this area. I would dally here, because I would particularly want to know: did the Zulu, indeed, drag it all the way home (perhaps on the King's precise instructions) or did they leave it there? Did the gear become separated and dispersed or did it survive undamaged in a club bag? If they persevered with this heavy cargo, when did they discover they were a stump and a pad missing, and how did they compensate for this serious omission? Did the King punish them for their carelessness?

At stake here is the last great secret of Isandlwana - and surely the most vital one.

Peter
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Peter

Of all the fascinating possibilities you could have mentioned, you choose cricket equipment Rolling Eyes

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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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More than just "fascinating", Coll. Vital!!! Crucial!!! And after all these years and all those books on the battle, still unsolved ...

P
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Coll
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Peter

Mischief history, put there to confuse us.

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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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Mischief history? What's that?

Confused? Of course we are. One day it was all there, ready for immediate action. Then it was gone. That night a solitary pad was found and a few weeks later, a single stump. That's all. The rest has never surfaced to my knowledge. Burnt in the camp? A possibility of course. But all of it? Doubt it. Pinched by the Zulu? Possibly. But kept together and used, or separated and/or discarded? Put to another practical use? Possibly. But surely a trace would have emerged at some stage. Artillery, rifles, colour staffs, ammo, uniforms, boots, swords and all sorts of stuff is recorded as having been recovered from the Zulu afterwards, often in their homesteads, sometimes many years after the war.

But no trace of the cricket gear. No mention of it by the various journalists, artists or burial parties of the next few years. Why? Doesn't make sense, Coll. It certainly is a historic mystery. Conspiracy? Who knows? If all these modern scientific projects on the battlefield itself still can't find it, nor any historian of the battle (to my knowledge) can pinpoint a single bit of the missing gear apart from the discovered pad and recovered stump, then which mystery relating to the battle remains more enticing or fascinating? I can't think of one. There must be an answer, Coll, but I don't know it. Hence my post of 7.38 pm.

P.
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Sawubona


Joined: 09 Nov 2005
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I have an vision of the wisest of the Zulu wisemen sitting about a snapping fire later that night, passing the cricket gear around the circle and perplexedly wondering what muti is this. Perhaps their befuddlement is not unlike that of the best and brightest of wise Yanks.
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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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I can picture the same scene, Saw! On the other hand, they may have known exactly what to do. A good number of Zulu, including some leading men, would have witnessed the cricket match which took place not far from Ulundi in August 1873, involving officers of the Karkloof Volunteers, including Potterill, who lost his life a few months later up on the Berg during the Bushman's River Pass expedition. I suspect this was the first game ever played in the country, although two of Cetshwayo's brothers had been playing cricket for years by that time, but not in Zululand.

The King had access to the sports pages of the British & colonial press - he would also have been made aware of the game going on just "down the road" in Aug '73. I wonder if, perhaps brought to him, the gear was stored in his European dwelling and destroyed in the fire of 4 July 1879?

Or perhaps discovery still awaits it?

Peter
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Robin


Joined: 16 Jan 2007
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Join Pearson's column at Nyezane, preferably behind the Gatling Gun
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Time Machine - Isandlwana Or Rorke's Drift ?
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