William Allen (VC 1879) (later The South Wales Borderers), British Army during the Zulu War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC. On 22 and 23 January 1879 at Rorke's Drift, Natal, South Africa, Corporal Allan and another man (Frederick Hitch) kept communication with the hospital open, despite being severely wounded. Their determined conduct enabled the patients to be withdrawn from the hospital, and when incapacitated by their wounds from fighting, they continued, as soon as their wounds were dressed, to serve out ammunition to their comrades during the night. He later achieved the rank of sergeant for
Ndwandwe–Zulu War was killed, and most of the Ndwandwe abandoned their lands and migrated north establishing Zulu-like (named Ngoni after the ethno-linguistic name "Nguni") kingdoms in Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. This was the final phase of the Mfecane, a catastrophic, bloody civil war and eventual migration of many different tribes in the area, initially (ca. 1802) caused by famine but ultimately as a result of escaping from the Zulus. The Ngoni groups caused their own havoc by using Zulu tactics in war. They established stronger political units in other countries and thus posed a threat to European colonisation, for example during