Like Wolves on the Fold - Hardcover

Lieutenant Colonel Mike Snook

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848326025 ISBN 13: 9781848326026

Publisher: Pen & Sword Books, 2006

Synopsis

Like Wolves On The Fold

About this title

About the Author

Born in Monmouthshire, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Snook is a lifelong professional soldier. After graduating successively from Leicester University and Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Wales in 1984. Since then he has served all around the world, including active service in regimental and staff appointments in Afghanistan, Bosnia, South Armagh and Belfast. In recent years he has worked as a British military adviser in South Africa and as the Chief Instructor of the Tactical Intelligence Branch at the Defence College of Intelligence. Presently on the HQ staff at the Defence Academy, he is utilizing his spare time to read for a PhD.

From Publishers Weekly

A lieutenant colonel in the Royal Regiment of Wales, Snook offers a blow-by-blow account of the heroic defense of Rorke's Drift during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, made famous by the 1964 British movie classic Zulu. Rorke's Drift was an "isolated, lightly held, and completely unfortified" garrison on the edge of Zululand and served as a depot for the advancing British army. On January 22, 1879—"one of the most calamitous... and one of the most renowned days" in the history of the British Empire—a British column was decimated by a Zulu army at the Battle of Isandlwana, the subject of Snook's earlier volume How Can Man Die Better. Late that afternoon, a force of some 4,500 Zulus who had missed the earlier action descended on the garrison at Rorke's Drift—finding it "too tempting a target to resist." The 150 men at the garrison held their ground against wave after wave of frontal attacks—the fighting often hand-to-hand. The battle raged into the night before the Zulus finally withdrew. Seventeen defenders lost their lives, while 13 received the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest honor for valor. The story of Rorke's Drift is well documenented, and Snook adds primarily "a soldier's perspective," recreating the battle in scrupulous detail and high drama. The climax comes early, however, and much of the final third of the book—such as an extended analysis regarding responsibility for the disaster at Isandlwana—feels extraneous. (Apr.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848326025
• ISBN 13: 9781848326026
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320