A Natal Family Looks Back by H.C. Lugg
Signed by the Author H.C. Lugg on the Title page.
A Natal Family Looks Back by H.C. Lugg
Anglo-Zulu War: Looking back on Lugg in Natal
Hardcover
Publisher: TW Griggs & Co., Durban, 1970 first edition.
Condition: Very Good. This book is in an excellent condition. The DJ has some very slight signs of wear and fading on the edges and the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains perfect. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Previous owner name neatly inscribed on first page. The book is protected with a Cellophane cover.
Anglo-Zulu War: Looking back on LUGG in Natal
Turn of the century southern Natal reminiscences by judge and Chief Native Commissioner of Natal. Much of historical interest of the Zulus with whom he came into contact.
Trooper Henry Lugg of the Natal Mounted Police was only 19 years old when he carried dispatches from Helpmekaar to Pietermaritzburg, shortly after the attack on Chief Sirayo's stronghold. In the aftermath of this the first battle of the war of 1879, the country was swarming with Zulus but Lugg covered the distance of 113 miles in 11 hours, riding ten horses in relays. After a brief respite he made the return journey, re-crossing the Buffalo River where his horse had a fall, crushing its rider's knee against a rock. This chance accident had remarkable repercussions: it led to Trooper Lugg's temporary disablement, his enforced stay at the only hospital in the vicinity i.e. at Rorke's Drift, and an unexpected role in the heroic Defence of this post against a large Zulu force, thereby earning himself a permanent place in the history books.
Lugg was one of three Natal Policemen present at this action and the only one of those three to survive. (The others, Green and Hunter, fell beneath the assegais.) His eye-witness account of the battle, originally written as a personal letter to his fiancée Mary Camp, was published in the Bristol Observer and still never fails to impress, its unemotional style throwing into sharp relief its riveting content.
Hampered by his swollen knee and armed with a small hunting-knife and a Swinburn Henri carbine, the bent stock of which was hastily tied up with a piece of rein, Lugg remained calm and resolute in the face of the overwhelming odds and reported that after 'seeing the first I fired at roll over at 350 ... my nerves were as steady as a rock.' He was even able to comment that 'There was some of the best shooting at 450 yards I have ever seen.'
In the book A Natal Family Looks Back, Trooper Lugg's son H.C. Lugg (Harry Camp Lugg) tells us that 'The firing was so fast and furious that rifle barrels got red hot, and in proof of this, the forepiece of the carbine, still in my possession (1970), will be found to have been badly scorched, so badly in fact that a couple of inches at the end had to be cut off to prevent it splintering.' [A Natal Family Looks Back by H.C. Lugg: T.W. Griggs & Co. (Pty) Ltd. Durban 1970]