A company of 88 British paratroopers and Irish infantry, outnumbered six to one, hold out for two months without reinforcements…
And their near miraculous survival has been described as a latter day Rorke’s Drift, evocative of the 1879 siege in which 140 British soldiers held off a Zulu force of 3,000, later immortalised in the blockbuster film starring Michael Caine.
For 56 days in the autumn of 2006, the men at Musa Qala faced constant fire from fixed machine gun posts and mortars.
Hungry and frequently at the point of exhaustion, they were forced to somehow fend off 360-degree attacks from the Taliban, with little protection beyond a series of low mud walls.
They used up a quarter of all the British Army’s Afghan ammunition for that entire year.
…and are barred from talking about it for ten years.
Yet while Rorke’s Drift has been immortalised in film and resulted in 11 Victoria Crosses, Musa Qala has been reduced to a controversial footnote in the history of the Afghan conflict.
It does not serve Whitehall well for details of such a poorly resourced mission to be revealed.
Steve Humphries, the award-winning producer who has painstakingly put the jigsaw of pieces together for broadcast a decade later, says: ‘It’s a shocking account of what was supposed to be a peaceful mission to help bring security and stability to the region.
The whole thing is worth a read – and I may see if the BBC streams it next week.
Like Rorke’s Drift, that’s an inspiring story for the fighting man. Whitehall’s performance, however, is more like “Khartoum” and the fate of Gen. Charles Gordon.
I twice taught a class for teen males, based on movies that demonstrated positive “male” virtues and characters that had character. “Zulu” (battle of Rorke’s Drift) was the second film in the series both times. In the second class I added “The WInd and the Lion” and “Khartoum” to the list, both to support the objectives of the class and to provide insight into the history of the Middle East; there’s no hope of understanding the situation today if you don’t understand the situation 100 years ago.
“Khartoum” is especially compelling, as well as being an excellent illumination of moral courage and political fecklessness. It also features some high-powered acting from Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson. My favorite quote from the movie, from Charles Gordon (Heston): “Every man has a final weapon: his own life. If he’s afraid to lose it he throws the weapon away.” My review of the film and its teaching purpose is at the link.
http://thenightwriterblog.com/2008/06/04/fundamentals-in-film-khartoum/
It’s a case of the classic heroism of Rorke’s Drift meeting the modern British military’s management of Gallipoli. It speaks well of the warriors and ill of the officer corps and government ministers.