Eyewitness in Zululand: The Campaign Reminiscences of Colonel W.A. Dunne, CB, South Africa, 1877-1881

The reminiscences of Colonel Walter Dunne were discovered after lying hidden in the archives of the Royal Corps of Transport for nearly a century. Written for the first issues of the Army Service Corps Journal in 1891, they provide a rare insight into some seldom recorded aspects of the campaigns in South Africa between 1877 and 1881. Dunne's narrative contains some fascinating and sensitive descriptions of contemporary colonial life, the country and its people, Boer and Bantu. There are his eyewitness accounts of the many actions at which he was present: Perie Bush, Rorke's Drift, Ulundi, the storming of Sekukuni's town and Potchefstroom. He witnessed the arrival of Ceteswayo into captivity and saw the wizened old Chief Sekukuni after his defeat. Following the privations suffered at Potchefstroom, Dunne was nursed back to health at Pietermaritzburg by the family of John Bird, the prominent Natal official and historian, whose daughter he then met and subsequently married in 1885.