Under the bright midday sun, the impis of the Zulu king 
Cetshwayo prepared for battle in their favoured formation - a buffalo chest and horns. There were perhaps twenty thousand warriors.
The British soldiers were perspiring in their heavy red uniforms and wondering what they were doing in this wild and barren place. They were not prepared for an attack, but neatly billeted, rows of tents in front of the massive rock outcrop that was named Isandlwana. It was a rout. Briefly the soldiers held out against the head, then the horns encircled them. The hillside was now a scene of horror, over one thousand British soldiers dead and two thousand Zulus. Cetshwayo's victorious warriors, though exausted, cut open every body to release the spirit.
Today the hillside is desolate and haunting. Piles of sun-bleached rocks, carved by the wind into pitted stone skulls, mark the graves of the fallen. No glory in these rocks, just more memorials to wasted lives and pointless deaths.