Hero of Rorke’s Drift medal on sale for £40,000
News Reporter
THE “HOLY Grail” of medals given to one of the heroes of Rorke’s Drift is being sold for £40,000.
Private John Waters was part of the British garrison that defied all odds to defend the mission station in South Africa from 4,000 Zulus in 1879.
The action was immortalised in the epic 1964 film Zulu, starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker.
Pte Waters, who was born in Lichfield, Staffs, was part of the defence of the station hospital.
With Zulus trying to force their way in, he helped Victoria Cross winner Henry Hook rescue more than a dozen wounded men.
Barricaded
He then barricaded himself in a store cupboard and killed many of the enemy. He was himself shot in the shoulder and knee.
When the Zulus torched the hospital he was forced out of the building. He was stabbed in the arm before flinging himself in a ditch where he played dead.
Pte Waters later said: “The Zulus must have thought I was one of their dead comrades.
“I got up at daybreak, having expected every minute my life
Holy Grail…Private John Waters’s medal
would be taken. I then saw my comrades on top of the mealie sacks and said, ‘Thank God I have got my life’.”
Pte Waters’s South Africa 1877-79 medal is being sold by a private collector with London-based Dix Noonan Webb.
Nimrod Dix, deputy chairman of the auctioneers, said: “The Holy Grail for any Zulu War collector must be a medal to a participant at the defence of Rorke’s Drift.
“Amongst that company of 150 defenders, the most desirable medal has to be one that was awarded to a sick or wounded patient in the field hospital.”
The sale takes place on May 21.
Henry Hook, left, was among 150 defenders at the battle of Rorke’s Drift, above