"zulu war lost graves of survivors of rorkes drift" Topic
6 Posts
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| steve dubgworth | 17 Feb 2023 12:25 p.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. |
 ColCampbell  | 17 Feb 2023 12:35 p.m. PST |
It's good that the RBL and the Royal Welsh will be recognizing this soldier's service. Jim |
| Shagnasty | 17 Feb 2023 1:10 p.m. PST |
A good deed. Sadly, modern mental diagnoses were, in Victorian times, called "melancholia" and "hysteria" and other dismissive terms. |
| DisasterWargamer | 17 Feb 2023 1:23 p.m. PST |
Nice to see that recognition |
| robert piepenbrink | 17 Feb 2023 2:01 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. |
| advocate | 17 Feb 2023 4:24 p.m. PST |
Wise words as ever, Robert. |
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gets his hands on some fields and fences.