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"zulu war lost graves of survivors of rorkes drift" Topic


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1,210 hits since 17 Feb 2023
©1994-2025 Bill Armintrout
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steve dubgworth17 Feb 2023 11:25 a.m. PST

an interesting news article in my local paper "Ashby Times"in Ashby de la Zouch in Leicestershire.
The local Royal British Legion have found the grave of Private John Smith who received an assegai wound at Rorkes Drift.

After he left the army he lived with his wife Margaret in Derby Road Ashby and was a pedlar – an itinerant trader/seller of goods.

Sadly his mental health suffered (PTSD?) and in 1899 he tried to kill himself by cutting his throat but failed to succeed, sadly a few weeks later he did succeed by lying down on the rail line between Shackerstone and Heather stations,

He was buried in Ashby Cemetary but his grave ws unmarked presumably due to his suicide.

It intended to have a memorial service by the RBL and The Royal Welsh Regiment in the near future.

Personal logo ColCampbell Supporting Member of TMP17 Feb 2023 11:35 a.m. PST

It's good that the RBL and the Royal Welsh will be recognizing this soldier's service.

Jim

Shagnasty Supporting Member of TMP17 Feb 2023 12:10 p.m. PST

A good deed. Sadly, modern mental diagnoses were, in Victorian times, called "melancholia" and "hysteria" and other dismissive terms.

DisasterWargamer Supporting Member of TMP17 Feb 2023 12:23 p.m. PST

Nice to see that recognition

robert piepenbrink Supporting Member of TMP17 Feb 2023 1:01 p.m. PST

Shagnasty, I think you wrong the Victorians. "Melancholia" and "hysteria" like "shell shock" were diagnoses. Because we don't use them any more is no reason to call them "dismissive." Army medics don't refer to "camp fever" or "the bloody flux" any more, but that doesn't mean the doctors who did were dismissive of sickness. It means that now we have microscopes.

The Victorians were a sterner lot than we are, certainly. Would you like me to lecture on our present "no one's responsible for anything" mode? But re-read some of your Kipling--or your Arthur Conan Doyle. The authors of A Study in Scarlet, "The Janeites" and "A Madonna of the Trenches"--not to mention "The Hymn of Breaking Strain" certainly understood that men had breaking points. But now we have MRI scans.

If we don't keep changing the vocabulary, how will people know we attended the right schools and read the right books? But actual progress is trickier.

advocate17 Feb 2023 3:24 p.m. PST

Wise words as ever, Robert.

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