“The soldiers and civilians back at the camp were massacred. Only 50 escaped. The bodies of the dead were ripped open in a Zulu ritual to free the spirit of the dead and to stop the body swelling up. The cadavers were stabbed many times in the ‘washing of the spears’, where every warrior was obligated to have stabbed an enemy, even after death.
“I was one of the few survivors. They questioned me afterward, but the shock had been so great I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t say a word. The doctor called it ‘soldier"s heart’ or ‘nostalgia’. I can remember still being in that detachment, that serenity. I was detached; it was as if I stayed in that tree for a year, looking down on life around me. I felt disconnected from the real world.
“There was another reason why I didn’t talk. I blamed myself
