[PW] zulus (was etapes)

[burchell at telusplanet.net]

Hi!
Anyone that can run 50 miles and still do battle, I definitely do not want
to mess with!
Cheers!
Jim
Quoting Graeme Rymill <grymill at library.uwa.edu.au>:

> >The Zulus, and others, could RUN 50 miles and THEN do battle.
>  
> This claim is a very similar to a line from the film Zulu. See:
> http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zulu
> This is the quote:
> Schiess: What do you know about Zulus?
> Jones-716: Bunch of savages, isn't it?
> Schiess: All right, how far can you rednecks march in a day?
> Jones-716: Oh, fifteen, twenty miles, is it?
> Schiess: A Zulu regiment can run - RUN - fifty miles, and fight a battle at
> the end of it!
> Jones-593: Well, it's daft that is, then! I don't see no sense in running to
> fight a battle.
>  
> [Schiess is a Swiss born corporal in the Natal Native Contingent whilst
> Jones-716 and Jones-593 are two Welsh privates in the British Army. The
> numbers after their surnames are to distinguish them from all the other Jones
> in their Regiment.]
>  
> I wonder if there is any evidence that the Zulus ever did run fifty miles and
> then fight a battle? The Zulu's tactics revolved around close combat with a
> short stabbing spear. Running fifty miles immediately before battle seems a
> dubious way of ensuring you are able to succesfully conduct an exhausting
> hand to hand fight with your enemies. In Donald R. Morris' book "The Washing
> of the Spears" the author comments that "Zulus, already hardy from a life in
> the open, were pushed and prodded until the regiments could travel fifty
> miles in a single day". No mention though of conducting a battle straight
> afterward. The same book describes the Zulu advance to repel the British
> invasion in 1879. "The [Zulu] army was to march slowly, so as not to tire
> itself." And to reinforce this point the book goes on to say: "The impi
> covered a leisurely nine miles on the eighteenth and a similar distance on
> the nineteenth."
>  
> Incidentally according to this document:
>  
> 
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/history/marshall/military/mil_hist_inst/m/ma
rch2.asc
>   "In 1809, foot soldiers of the British Light Brigade
> campaigning in Spain marched to the relief of the future Duke of Wellington.
> They covered 42 miles in 26 hours." This was during the Battle of Talavera in
> the Peninsula War. The Light Brigade (not to be confused with the famous
> cavalry Brigade of the same name in the Crimean War) arrived the day after
> the battle and so didn't participate in the fighting.
>  
> Graeme Rymill
> University of Western Australia Library
> 
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