The Frontier Wars
Between 1806 and 1879 nine wars took place between British forces and
the Xhosa people of South Africa after they began taking over Boer
settlements. The 73rd Regiment took part in these between 1848 and 1853.
The Xhosa regularly attacked British military villages along the frontier, which the 73rd were subsequently ordered to protect. They chaperoned supply wagons, took the enemy’s cattle and resisted guerrilla style attacks from the mountains. For soldiers of the 73rd Regiment, life during the campaign consisted of long marches and poor conditions. In his diary, Captain Knox complained of marching for 16 hours without food and Private John Rich recorded that he had marched for 34 days without changing his clothes. Private Rich also complained that the rations he received would not have been sufficient even for a child. “How”, he asked in his diary, “have our rations been invented to subsist a soldier on the frontier of South Africa, in wartime, when I have been marching for sixteen and eighteen hours out of twenty-four?” The Regimental History states that “Men and officers were exposed to wet and sultry weather and performed many long and harassing marches.” A new low occurred in 1852 when the Birkenhead, carrying troops to the Frontier Wars, sank, resulting in the deaths of 438 soldiers, including 56 from the 73rd Regiment.
Not everything in South Africa was bad. When they were not fighting soldiers played sports and drank wine and port, though drunkeness was severly punished; Private Rich narrowly escaped a flogging for intoxication. In 1851 Captain Knox wrote that he had “a hell of a dinner, singing songs and playing the fiddle all evening” and on another occasion he said that he had gotten "rather tight.”
Image: A shako worn by officers in the 73rd Regiment from 1844 until 1855.
Between 1806 and 1879 nine wars took place between British forces and the Xhosa people of South Africa after they began taking over Boer settlements. The 73
