Harry Hook was probably the most colourful character at Rorke's Drift. He was intelligent and articulate, and wrote a very readable account of the siege which was published in The Royal Magazine. He was born in Churcham Gloucestershire
on 6th Aug 1850, and died there on 12th March 1905. He at first served in the Monmouth Militia 
but enlisted in the 2nd Battalion 24th in 1877. At Rorke's Drift he helped save most of the patients from the hospital which was being taken over by the Zulus. 
on 6th Aug 1850, and died there on 12th March 1905. He at first served in the Monmouth Militia but enlisted in the 2nd Battalion 24th in 1877. At Rorke's Drift he helped save most of the patients from the hospital which was being taken over by the Zulus.
John Williams hacked a hole in the wall and he and Hook managed to pull the patients through to relative safety. The hospital roof was on fire by this time and Hook wrote that: "Blood and fire and sickness and suffering were everywhere around." 
He was wounded on the top of his head by an assegai and this caused him problems in later life. After the battle B Company remained in Rorke's Drift,
and Hook was appointed batman to Major Wilsone Black who later commanded the 1st Battalion.Hook received his Victoria Cross from Garnet Wolseley on 3rd Aug 1879 and was discharged in 1880. He lived at Sydenham Hill 
and worked at the British Museum. He also enlisted in the 1st VB Royal Fusiliers in which he served for 20 years, reaching the rank of sergeant. He retired in 1904 and returned to
Gloucestershire. His first wife thought he had died in South Africa and took up with another man, but he remarried in 1897. His life in Churcham did not last long as he died of TB in
March 1905 ,he was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross for his actions at the Battle of Rorke's Drift, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces
Previously serving in the 9th Xhosa War in 1877The Xhosa Wars (also known as the Cape Frontier Wars or "Africa's 100 Years War"), were a series of nine wars or flare-ups (from 1779 to 1879) between the Xhosa tribes and European settlers, in what is now the Eastern Cape
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the South Wales Borderers Museum,
Though Zulu stages the battle pretty accurately, it invents most of the story's dramatic details. Memorable moments like the Zulu wedding dance, the battlefield "singing contest," and the final Zulu "salute" are pure fiction. So are the characterizations.
The most controversial invention is "Hookie," the interpretation of Private Alfred Henry Hook as played by James Booth in the film's most thoroughly-developed subplot. A Cockney thief sentenced to military service, who retaliates by malingering and insubordination, Hookie is the film's one rebellious character--an explosive bundle of earthy humor, cynical intelligence, and rage. He fights only reluctantly, but bravely enough to win Britain's highest military decoration, making him the quintessential James Booth character: a heroic antihero and “charming rogue” par excellence.
Michael Caine has described in his autobiography the experience of arriving to audition for the part of Hookie, only to be told that James Booth had already been cast because "We figured he looked more Cockney than you do." Caine writes, "I knew Jimmy Booth, who was a very good actor and I had to agree, he did look more Cockney than me--very tough indeed."
The role of Bromhead was offered to Caine almost as an afterthought. However these casting decisions were made, the outcome is perfect. Caine's gorgeous, snotty Bromhead made him a star, while James Booth--dark, rugged, oozing with masculinity and dangerousness--was obviously born to play the physically demanding part of Hookie.
Booth seems strong and fit here and a little more muscular than usual. The uniform in all its manifestations emphasizes his broad shoulders, flat stomach, and long legs. The tufted sideburns, cowlick, and neck scarf flatter his face, as do the dark shadows around his eyes and the deep lines in his brow. No effort is made to pretty him up. He looks fabulous.
In contrast to the film's larger framing story, which takes place in the dazzling, majestic outdoors, the Hookie subplot unfolds inside the cramped, gloomy hospital. We first see Hookie lounging prone in his bunk, playing a shell game with someone and chatting sardonically with someone else. The man in the bunk below Hook's is delirious with fever and begins raving. Hookie shouts, "shut up, you cripple!" and hits the man in the face with a utility belt.
Later, in furious exasperation, Hookie shakes the sick man until someone intervenes. When accused of not caring whether the man lives or dies, Hookie callously agrees. Despite this repulsive behavior, Hookie's spirited personality and humorous intelligence give him a strange glamour.
He begins to seem more vulnerable and sympathetic in his next scene. This starts with a wonderful bit of physical business, the clownish parody of a salute with which he greets Surgeon Reynolds, who replies, in dry dismay, "Hook, not you again." Hookie complains of "pretty terrible pain" in his arm. Reynolds demands to examine him at once. Taken aback, but with a great show of suffering, Hookie lifts his undershirt and exposes his back to the surgeon, who says the problem is a boil. Reynolds chatters away about boils but Hookie isn't really listening until Reynolds shows him a scalpel. Chastened and smiling nervously, Hookie asks for some medicinal brandy instead. "Brandy's for heroes, Mr. Hook," the surgeon hisses fiercely, trilling his r's and shoving Hookie back into position against the bunk. "The rest of you will have to make do with boils in your skin, flies in your meat, and dysentery in your bellies. Now...this is going to hurt you a lot more than it will me, I'm happy to say." As he listens to this sadistic little speech Hookie's face darkens with dread. Then Reynolds applies the scalpel, and the scene ends with Hookie wincing and sniveling in pain.
Hookie's third scene is long and informative, key to the subplot and a nonstop tour de force of physical acting on the part of James Booth. It starts with him bursting noisily into the ward while pulling up his pants (with a clear implication of returning from the latrine). When he sees the prudish Miss Witt and realizes he has flashed her, he ostentatiously turns away to fasten his fly, and then creeps up on her in mod-predatory fashion, to greet her gallantly and show off the arc of his chest. Half-jokingly, half-threateningly, he promises to "look after" Maxfield. Miss Witt announces that the patients will all be evacuated soon in the wagons. She's talking to everybody but hardly takes her eyes off Hook. Picking unselfconsciously at a huge hole in his sock, he asks her the crucial question-- "Who says?"--and sneeringly dismisses the whole thing when he finds out the source is her father. It's obvious Margareta wanted to impress Hookie and feels chastened and belittled instead.
At this point another soldier, 612 Williams, arrives in combat gear. He gives Hookie a rifle and tells him they have orders to defend the room together. Hookie objects because he is "sick" and thus "excused duty." (The vitality of his movements at that moment provides a droll irony.) He announces his intention to leave and starts putting on a shirt.
This leads to an intense confrontation with the formerly delirious Sgt. Maxfield, whose tightly-wound, monomaniacal personality emerges for the first time. Hookie responds to Maxfield's abusive, domineering behavior with a mixture of contemptuous hostility and studied indifference. It's clear the two have issues that go back into the past, though these remain unspecified. In any case, Maxfield struggles out of his sickbed, throws the rifle in Hookie's face, and orders him to stay and help Williams, vowing "I'll make a soldier of you yet." Slowly, grudgingly, Hookie returns to his post. Whipping the bayonet out of its scabbard and leaning saucily against his bunk, one arm akimbo, he delivers those memorable lines, "What for? Did I ever see a Zulu walk down the city road? No! So what am I doin' here?" And he tosses the bayonet back onto his bed in disgust.
That's when we learn about Hookie's reputation for theft, and the twenty-eight days of field punishment that Maxfield arranged for him in Brecon. (Field Punishment, also known as crucifixion, is a form ofoutdoor bondage in which the miscreant is tied to a cross by means of ropes about the forearms and ankles, for two or three hours a day.) Hookie seems to feel that Maxfield is persecuting him, but, with an air of humoring Maxfield, Hookie does what he's told ...until Maxfield, ever dissatisfied, bellows, "And put your tunic on!" Hookie turns round to face him with a look that could peel paint, and at that moment Maxfield faints dead away on the floor.
Bayonet still in hand, Hookie walks over to where Maxfield fell and stands astride his prostrate body. Miss Witt has been watching the confrontation, and now gazes imploringly at Hookie with a look that is half "No! No! No!" and half "Yes! Yes! Yes!"--which brings a hint of a smile to his lips. He puts down the bayonet, hauls the inert Maxfield up from the floor, and looks into his face for a moment...a long, silent moment.
Then he hoists Maxfield over his shoulder and tells Miss Witt a key detail in the story of their feud: during the twenty-eight unpaid days of Hookie's field punishment, Maxfield sent money to Hookie's wife. "What'd you do that for?" Hookie snarls, swatting the unconscious Maxfield on the rump and and carrying him back to bed. The unspoken answer, of course, is that beneath his gruff exterior Maxfield loves Hookie. Miss Witt grasps this immediately. Following Hookie through the room she asks, incredulously, "You hate him for it?" "What do you want me to do?" Hookie replies. "Cry me heart out? Give him a big kiss?" As he talks, Hookie puts Maxfield into bed, kisses him, and grins up at Miss Witt with maddening flippancy. Offended by Hookie's pride and bluff cynicism, confused by his mixed signals, and now ashamed of her own feelings, Miss Witt walks out in a huff, pausing just long enough to reply, "I thought you might pray for him." She shuts the door behind her and Hookie chuckles, "Ah, she's a dry one. Very cool. " Then, giving his bayonet blade a lewd fondle, he adds, "Know what she needs." Miss Witt, eavesdropping outside the door, hears this remark and someone's reply: "Play your cards right, Hookie, it could be you." The men all laugh. Looking ruffled but not really displeased, Miss Witt runs her hand down the doorjamb and walks away.
How do I love this scene? Let me count the ways. I love the comical grossness of the latrine and sock motifs. I love the reference to Hookie's enviable "missus" and the understated but unmistakable signs that Miss Witt is attracted to Hook. And I really love the relationship between Hookie and Maxfield, with its subtle but kinky homoeroticism. I love--make that madly adore--Hookie's jaunty insouciance. Most of all I love James Booth's marvelous physical acting, which does so much to create these effects, to carry the scene and produce its central irony. Though Hook's superiors consider him a coward and scoundrel, he's obviously fearless and much more good than evil. The most satisfying surprise, writes Anna Thomas, is the one that seems inevitable. * Hookie’s spectacular display of heroism, when it finally arrives, feels believable and right precisely because it doesn't come out of the blue, but rather is the fulfillment of our half-conscious expectations.
Hookie initially allows himself to be drawn into the fighting when Williams, who has no authority over Hookie, appeals for his help man-to-man. Hookie responds instantly to this plea after resisting every previous attempt to motivate him. He saves Williams's life with a timely rifle blast and, considering his duty done, decides to abandon his post in the hospital, which soon catches fire. On his way to the exit he sees the outer door giving way under the Zulu assault. He hurries back into the ward, shuts the door behind him, and braces it with a bunk bed and his own body, while directing some other men to dig a hole through the wall to the next room. Hookie holds off the Zulus till the room has been evacuated. He then backs out through the hole in the wall, while Zulus pour into the room after him. He continues to fight while the others escape, and he's about to make his own escape when Maxfield, immobile on the floor, screams for his help. Hookie just sneers at him and keeps going. “I know you,” Maxfield whispers huskily. It's what he said earlier, when he accused Hookie of being "no good." But here it's both an appeal to Hookie's better nature and a remainder of their mysterious prior intimacy. Hookie wavers and again reproaches Maxfield. "What about the money you sent my old woman?" he barks with a scowl. Maxfield just screams “Hook!” And that does it. In one of the more moving moments in the film, Hookie re-enters the burning room.
More Zulus pour in and beset him, but Hookie is an aggressive fighter, always on the offensive. Throughout the defense of the hospital, and especially as he fights his way to Maxfield's side, he seems to have the lethal power of several men. In this Zulu does no more than justice to the historical Hook, who is widely considered the überhero of Rorke's Drift, conspicuously brave even by the high standards of that battle. To underscore his special status, Zulu makes Hookie's combat moves the most picturesque and ferociously driven in the film. His explosive energy, hitherto only hinted at, here achieves frenzied, dionysian release. Booth gives the scene everything he's got and makes Hookie an exhilarating vision of in-the-Zone empowerment and near-invincibility.
Hookie has lost his gun and is starting to weaken in a struggle over a spear when Williams arrives and saves his life. This would be a great time to get out, but Hookie recovers the spear and continues killing Zulus as if it were an end in itself. He tells Maxfield to stay put and then loses track of him in the melee . Maxfield is still on the floor, in as much danger as ever, chortling away over having finally made a soldier of Hookie, whom he calls “my lad.” He’s happy because Hookie cares enough to save him or die trying . Eventually Williams seizes Hookie by the scruff and drags him toward the exit hole just in time to miss the collapse of the burning roof, which separates Hookie from Maxfield by a wall of flames. Hookie approaches the flames as if to walk through them to rescue Maxfield but the heat is too intense and forces him to back away. He crouches down behind the fire till he disappears, and although he is just crawling through the exit hole, he gives some first-time viewers the disturbing impression that he is being burned alive.
The climax of the Hookie subplot occurs during the celebrated brandy-drinking scene. Though Hookie is amusingly funky earlier (boil, latrine, sock), here he is freighted with extravagant spiritual meaning and glorified almost to apotheosis. Like some pissed-off phoenix reborn from the flames, he’s running for his life through the burning hospital when he passes the cabinet containing the medicinal brandy he wanted earlier--the brandy the surgeon said was "for heroes." He smashes the glass door and takes the bottle. Williams returns and warns him, "That's a flogging offense! Get out for God's sake, man!" Suddenly Hookie turns all sublime and Promethean. Surrounded by leaping flames, his grime-streaked face blazing with power and defiance, his torn red tunic glowing in the firelight, he smashes the bottle open with one blow and very deliberately raises the jagged opening to his lips for a deep, ecstatic draught that leaves him shuddering.
Wow! That scene is so fantastically beautiful it gives me chills to this day. It reminds me of Gericault or Beethoven, with overtones of Nietzsche, Blake, and 19th Century romanticism generally. It suggests that Hookie recognizes the supreme event in his predominantly loser's life, and it also somehow makes him seem magnificently free on the inside, noble and exemplary.
Just in case anybody still doesn't get it, Zulu gives us a couple of glimpses of Hookie standing at the rampart in the darkness, with Williams beside him, watching the hospital burn. "Look at that," Hookie says bleakly. "Do you think he wanted it that way?" He's talking about Maxfield. In other words, way back in the first scene, when he said he wouldn't care if Maxfield were dead, he didn't really mean it. He cares and he feels bad.
But don't break out the violins. Immediately after the battle, Hookie resumes his malingering. He's last seen carving his name in a church pillar and spitting on the floor.
* * * * *
I saw Zulu for the first time in the summer of 1964 at a drive-in. I was eleven. Coming as it did on the eve of my adolescence, the experience changed my life. I was enthralled by the film as a whole and electrified by Hookie, who to me embodied a state of grace and the ultimate in manliness. About halfway through the movie I started shaking, and I couldn't stop. I rode home in the back of the family station wagon trembling with arousal and exaltation. I felt that Zulu wasn't just a great work of art, but something special, something sacred. I stayed awake all night for the first time in my life, drinking vile black coffee and thinking about what I had seen. When dawn broke I went out onto the dewy lawn to look at the sky and became aware of a curious new sensation and the bodily process that caused it. My initiation into womanhood was all mixed up with images of masculine blood, red coats, and the thrusting of bayonets and spears.
* * * * * *
The Battle of Rorke's Drift has been captivating people ever since it occurred. Deemed "immortal" by Queen Victoria, commemorated and celebrated out of all proportion to its negligible geopolitical impact, it seems to stir the imagination and inspire strong emotional reactions.
Zulu was an instant smash hit (in Britain, not America) and has become a television perennial and the chief portal through which people now get sucked into the cult of Rorke's Drift. In fact, the battle and the film are worshipped more or less in tandem. Go to the Internet and try searching on "Rorke's Drift" or Zulu. The links go on forever. a surprising number of specialized goods and services are aimed at
and Hook was appointed batman to Major Wilsone Black who later commanded the 1st Battalion.Hook received his Victoria Cross from Garnet Wolseley on 3rd Aug 1879 and was discharged in 1880. He lived at Sydenham Hill and worked at the British Museum. He also enlisted in the 1st VB Royal Fusiliers in which he served for 20 years, reaching the rank of sergeant. He retired in 1904 and returned to Gloucestershire. His first wife thought he had died in South Africa and took up with another man, but he remarried in 1897. His life in Churcham did not last long as he died of TB in March 1905 ,he was an English recipient of the Victoria Cross for his actions at the Battle of Rorke's Drift, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces
Previously serving in the 9th Xhosa War in 1877The Xhosa Wars (also known as the Cape Frontier Wars or "Africa's 100 Years War"), were a series of nine wars or flare-ups (from 1779 to 1879) between the Xhosa tribes and European settlers, in what is now the Eastern Cape
in South Africa. These events were the longest-running military action in African colonialism history. The reality of the conflicts between the Europeans and Xhosa involves a balance of tension. At times, tensions existed between the various Europeans in the Cape region, tensions between Empire administration and colonial governments, and tensions and alliances of the Xhosa tribes. Alliances with Europeans introduced to the Xhosa tribes the use of firearms; even so, the Xhosa lost most of their territory and were incorporated into the British Empire. The Xhosa include some groups that have adopted the Xhosa language and several groups that are now classed as being Xhosa, such as the Mfengu nation
, that had an alliance with the Cape Colony.
, he received a scalp injury during the battle of Rorke's Drift, and retired from the regular army 17 months later in June 1880, but later served 20 years in 1st Volunteer Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, reaching the rank of Sergeant-Instructor. He received his VC from Sir Garnet Wolseley
, GOC South Africa at Rorke's Drift on 3 August 1879. After his 1880 discharge he was found the position of Inside Duster at the British Museum thanks to the intervention of Gonville Bromhead, Lord Chelmsford and the Prince of Wales. He was subsequently promoted to take charge of readers umbrellas, before resigning due to ill health in 1904.During this period he lived at Sydenham Hill. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 12 March 1905 at Osborne Villas, Roseberry Avenue, Gloucester and is buried in St Andrew's churchyard, Churcham.
Alfred Henry Hook was 28 years old, and a private in B Company of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot (later The South Wales Borderers), British Army during the Anglo-Zulu War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC. Hook and five other privates were ordered on the afternoon of 22 January 1879 to protect approximately 30 patients unable to be moved from the temporary hospital at Rorke's Drift station.
On 22/23 January 1879 at Rorke's Drift, Natal
, South Africa, a distant room of the hospital had been held for more than an hour by three privates, and when finally they had no ammunition left the Zulus burst in, and killed one of the men and two patients. One of the privates (John Williams) however, succeeded in knocking a hole in the partition and taking the last two patients through into the next ward, where he found Private Hook. "These two men then worked together - one holding the enemy at bayonet point while the other broke through three more partitions - and they were then able to bring eight patients into the inner line of defence".
, South Africa, a distant room of the hospital had been held for more than an hour by three privates, and when finally they had no ammunition left the Zulus burst in, and killed one of the men and two patients. One of the privates (John Williams) however, succeeded in knocking a hole in the partition and taking the last two patients through into the next ward, where he found Private Hook. "These two men then worked together - one holding the enemy at bayonet point while the other broke through three more partitions - and they were then able to bring eight patients into the inner line of defence".
The 1881 census shows Henry Hook V.C. as a servant in the household of George Owen Willis, a doctor in Monmouth, Monmouthshire
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the South Wales Borderers Museum,
Brecon, Powys, WalesIn the film Zulu, Hook is depicted as an insubordinate malingerer placed under arrest in the hospital, only to come good during the battle. However, Saul David writes in his book, Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879, that he was there as the hospital cook, subsequently as part of a small guard detail assigned to protect the patients. Saul David continues that far from the miscreant portrayed, Hook was actually a teetotaler and model soldier.Further to this, he had been awarded Good Conduct pay shortly before the battle He was portrayed by English actor James Booth.The Gloucestershire-born soldier was also depicted as a Cockney. His family was devastated by his portrayal as a lazy soldier and his elderly daughter, Letitia Bunting, walked out of the film's premiere in disgust at her father's treatment.In fact, according to reports her father was a model soldier. He received a scalp injury during the battle, on January 22-23, 1879, and a year later discharged himself from the Army.Private Hook spent several decades after the war working at the British Museum. He was married twice and had two sons and four daughters.
More than 50,000 lined the streets in Churcham as his coffin was escorted four miles to the churchyard.
Martin Everett, curator of the South Wales Borderers Museum in Brecon where Private Hook's VC is on display, said. 'It's refreshing to hear his final resting place has been put back in good order.
'There was no basis to the way he was portrayed at all. It was done just to make a good feature film. He was a good solid soldier.
'Private Hook was a Methodist lay preacher - a God-fearing person. He wasn't a drunkard.
Private Hook's great-grandson, Cyril Bunting, 53, said: 'I'm glad his story is being publicised in a positive rather than a negative light this time.
'My grandmother was so upset when she saw the film and the way he had been portrayed. That was not how she remembered him.'
In his autobiography, pop singer Mark E. Smith claimed that Hook was an ancestor of his father, which led to the Smith family being invited as guests of honour to the Whitefield showing of Zulu.[
Filmed on location in Natal in wide-screen Technicolor, it delights the eye with adroit camera work, gorgeous costumes, breathtaking scenery, and perfectly-composed tableaux of battlefield action. The pounding orchestral score by John Barry conveys a sense of struggle and valor. A strong script and brilliant performances all around make us believe in and care about the characters.Though Zulu stages the battle pretty accurately, it invents most of the story's dramatic details. Memorable moments like the Zulu wedding dance, the battlefield "singing contest," and the final Zulu "salute" are pure fiction. So are the characterizations.
The most controversial invention is "Hookie," the interpretation of Private Alfred Henry Hook as played by James Booth in the film's most thoroughly-developed subplot. A Cockney thief sentenced to military service, who retaliates by malingering and insubordination, Hookie is the film's one rebellious character--an explosive bundle of earthy humor, cynical intelligence, and rage. He fights only reluctantly, but bravely enough to win Britain's highest military decoration, making him the quintessential James Booth character: a heroic antihero and “charming rogue” par excellence.
Michael Caine has described in his autobiography the experience of arriving to audition for the part of Hookie, only to be told that James Booth had already been cast because "We figured he looked more Cockney than you do." Caine writes, "I knew Jimmy Booth, who was a very good actor and I had to agree, he did look more Cockney than me--very tough indeed."
The role of Bromhead was offered to Caine almost as an afterthought. However these casting decisions were made, the outcome is perfect. Caine's gorgeous, snotty Bromhead made him a star, while James Booth--dark, rugged, oozing with masculinity and dangerousness--was obviously born to play the physically demanding part of Hookie.
Booth seems strong and fit here and a little more muscular than usual. The uniform in all its manifestations emphasizes his broad shoulders, flat stomach, and long legs. The tufted sideburns, cowlick, and neck scarf flatter his face, as do the dark shadows around his eyes and the deep lines in his brow. No effort is made to pretty him up. He looks fabulous.
In contrast to the film's larger framing story, which takes place in the dazzling, majestic outdoors, the Hookie subplot unfolds inside the cramped, gloomy hospital. We first see Hookie lounging prone in his bunk, playing a shell game with someone and chatting sardonically with someone else. The man in the bunk below Hook's is delirious with fever and begins raving. Hookie shouts, "shut up, you cripple!" and hits the man in the face with a utility belt.
Later, in furious exasperation, Hookie shakes the sick man until someone intervenes. When accused of not caring whether the man lives or dies, Hookie callously agrees. Despite this repulsive behavior, Hookie's spirited personality and humorous intelligence give him a strange glamour.
He begins to seem more vulnerable and sympathetic in his next scene. This starts with a wonderful bit of physical business, the clownish parody of a salute with which he greets Surgeon Reynolds, who replies, in dry dismay, "Hook, not you again." Hookie complains of "pretty terrible pain" in his arm. Reynolds demands to examine him at once. Taken aback, but with a great show of suffering, Hookie lifts his undershirt and exposes his back to the surgeon, who says the problem is a boil. Reynolds chatters away about boils but Hookie isn't really listening until Reynolds shows him a scalpel. Chastened and smiling nervously, Hookie asks for some medicinal brandy instead. "Brandy's for heroes, Mr. Hook," the surgeon hisses fiercely, trilling his r's and shoving Hookie back into position against the bunk. "The rest of you will have to make do with boils in your skin, flies in your meat, and dysentery in your bellies. Now...this is going to hurt you a lot more than it will me, I'm happy to say." As he listens to this sadistic little speech Hookie's face darkens with dread. Then Reynolds applies the scalpel, and the scene ends with Hookie wincing and sniveling in pain.
Hookie's third scene is long and informative, key to the subplot and a nonstop tour de force of physical acting on the part of James Booth. It starts with him bursting noisily into the ward while pulling up his pants (with a clear implication of returning from the latrine). When he sees the prudish Miss Witt and realizes he has flashed her, he ostentatiously turns away to fasten his fly, and then creeps up on her in mod-predatory fashion, to greet her gallantly and show off the arc of his chest. Half-jokingly, half-threateningly, he promises to "look after" Maxfield. Miss Witt announces that the patients will all be evacuated soon in the wagons. She's talking to everybody but hardly takes her eyes off Hook. Picking unselfconsciously at a huge hole in his sock, he asks her the crucial question-- "Who says?"--and sneeringly dismisses the whole thing when he finds out the source is her father. It's obvious Margareta wanted to impress Hookie and feels chastened and belittled instead.
At this point another soldier, 612 Williams, arrives in combat gear. He gives Hookie a rifle and tells him they have orders to defend the room together. Hookie objects because he is "sick" and thus "excused duty." (The vitality of his movements at that moment provides a droll irony.) He announces his intention to leave and starts putting on a shirt.
This leads to an intense confrontation with the formerly delirious Sgt. Maxfield, whose tightly-wound, monomaniacal personality emerges for the first time. Hookie responds to Maxfield's abusive, domineering behavior with a mixture of contemptuous hostility and studied indifference. It's clear the two have issues that go back into the past, though these remain unspecified. In any case, Maxfield struggles out of his sickbed, throws the rifle in Hookie's face, and orders him to stay and help Williams, vowing "I'll make a soldier of you yet." Slowly, grudgingly, Hookie returns to his post. Whipping the bayonet out of its scabbard and leaning saucily against his bunk, one arm akimbo, he delivers those memorable lines, "What for? Did I ever see a Zulu walk down the city road? No! So what am I doin' here?" And he tosses the bayonet back onto his bed in disgust.
That's when we learn about Hookie's reputation for theft, and the twenty-eight days of field punishment that Maxfield arranged for him in Brecon. (Field Punishment, also known as crucifixion, is a form ofoutdoor bondage in which the miscreant is tied to a cross by means of ropes about the forearms and ankles, for two or three hours a day.) Hookie seems to feel that Maxfield is persecuting him, but, with an air of humoring Maxfield, Hookie does what he's told ...until Maxfield, ever dissatisfied, bellows, "And put your tunic on!" Hookie turns round to face him with a look that could peel paint, and at that moment Maxfield faints dead away on the floor.
Bayonet still in hand, Hookie walks over to where Maxfield fell and stands astride his prostrate body. Miss Witt has been watching the confrontation, and now gazes imploringly at Hookie with a look that is half "No! No! No!" and half "Yes! Yes! Yes!"--which brings a hint of a smile to his lips. He puts down the bayonet, hauls the inert Maxfield up from the floor, and looks into his face for a moment...a long, silent moment.
Then he hoists Maxfield over his shoulder and tells Miss Witt a key detail in the story of their feud: during the twenty-eight unpaid days of Hookie's field punishment, Maxfield sent money to Hookie's wife. "What'd you do that for?" Hookie snarls, swatting the unconscious Maxfield on the rump and and carrying him back to bed. The unspoken answer, of course, is that beneath his gruff exterior Maxfield loves Hookie. Miss Witt grasps this immediately. Following Hookie through the room she asks, incredulously, "You hate him for it?" "What do you want me to do?" Hookie replies. "Cry me heart out? Give him a big kiss?" As he talks, Hookie puts Maxfield into bed, kisses him, and grins up at Miss Witt with maddening flippancy. Offended by Hookie's pride and bluff cynicism, confused by his mixed signals, and now ashamed of her own feelings, Miss Witt walks out in a huff, pausing just long enough to reply, "I thought you might pray for him." She shuts the door behind her and Hookie chuckles, "Ah, she's a dry one. Very cool. " Then, giving his bayonet blade a lewd fondle, he adds, "Know what she needs." Miss Witt, eavesdropping outside the door, hears this remark and someone's reply: "Play your cards right, Hookie, it could be you." The men all laugh. Looking ruffled but not really displeased, Miss Witt runs her hand down the doorjamb and walks away.
How do I love this scene? Let me count the ways. I love the comical grossness of the latrine and sock motifs. I love the reference to Hookie's enviable "missus" and the understated but unmistakable signs that Miss Witt is attracted to Hook. And I really love the relationship between Hookie and Maxfield, with its subtle but kinky homoeroticism. I love--make that madly adore--Hookie's jaunty insouciance. Most of all I love James Booth's marvelous physical acting, which does so much to create these effects, to carry the scene and produce its central irony. Though Hook's superiors consider him a coward and scoundrel, he's obviously fearless and much more good than evil. The most satisfying surprise, writes Anna Thomas, is the one that seems inevitable. * Hookie’s spectacular display of heroism, when it finally arrives, feels believable and right precisely because it doesn't come out of the blue, but rather is the fulfillment of our half-conscious expectations.
Hookie initially allows himself to be drawn into the fighting when Williams, who has no authority over Hookie, appeals for his help man-to-man. Hookie responds instantly to this plea after resisting every previous attempt to motivate him. He saves Williams's life with a timely rifle blast and, considering his duty done, decides to abandon his post in the hospital, which soon catches fire. On his way to the exit he sees the outer door giving way under the Zulu assault. He hurries back into the ward, shuts the door behind him, and braces it with a bunk bed and his own body, while directing some other men to dig a hole through the wall to the next room. Hookie holds off the Zulus till the room has been evacuated. He then backs out through the hole in the wall, while Zulus pour into the room after him. He continues to fight while the others escape, and he's about to make his own escape when Maxfield, immobile on the floor, screams for his help. Hookie just sneers at him and keeps going. “I know you,” Maxfield whispers huskily. It's what he said earlier, when he accused Hookie of being "no good." But here it's both an appeal to Hookie's better nature and a remainder of their mysterious prior intimacy. Hookie wavers and again reproaches Maxfield. "What about the money you sent my old woman?" he barks with a scowl. Maxfield just screams “Hook!” And that does it. In one of the more moving moments in the film, Hookie re-enters the burning room.
More Zulus pour in and beset him, but Hookie is an aggressive fighter, always on the offensive. Throughout the defense of the hospital, and especially as he fights his way to Maxfield's side, he seems to have the lethal power of several men. In this Zulu does no more than justice to the historical Hook, who is widely considered the überhero of Rorke's Drift, conspicuously brave even by the high standards of that battle. To underscore his special status, Zulu makes Hookie's combat moves the most picturesque and ferociously driven in the film. His explosive energy, hitherto only hinted at, here achieves frenzied, dionysian release. Booth gives the scene everything he's got and makes Hookie an exhilarating vision of in-the-Zone empowerment and near-invincibility.
Hookie has lost his gun and is starting to weaken in a struggle over a spear when Williams arrives and saves his life. This would be a great time to get out, but Hookie recovers the spear and continues killing Zulus as if it were an end in itself. He tells Maxfield to stay put and then loses track of him in the melee . Maxfield is still on the floor, in as much danger as ever, chortling away over having finally made a soldier of Hookie, whom he calls “my lad.” He’s happy because Hookie cares enough to save him or die trying . Eventually Williams seizes Hookie by the scruff and drags him toward the exit hole just in time to miss the collapse of the burning roof, which separates Hookie from Maxfield by a wall of flames. Hookie approaches the flames as if to walk through them to rescue Maxfield but the heat is too intense and forces him to back away. He crouches down behind the fire till he disappears, and although he is just crawling through the exit hole, he gives some first-time viewers the disturbing impression that he is being burned alive.
The climax of the Hookie subplot occurs during the celebrated brandy-drinking scene. Though Hookie is amusingly funky earlier (boil, latrine, sock), here he is freighted with extravagant spiritual meaning and glorified almost to apotheosis. Like some pissed-off phoenix reborn from the flames, he’s running for his life through the burning hospital when he passes the cabinet containing the medicinal brandy he wanted earlier--the brandy the surgeon said was "for heroes." He smashes the glass door and takes the bottle. Williams returns and warns him, "That's a flogging offense! Get out for God's sake, man!" Suddenly Hookie turns all sublime and Promethean. Surrounded by leaping flames, his grime-streaked face blazing with power and defiance, his torn red tunic glowing in the firelight, he smashes the bottle open with one blow and very deliberately raises the jagged opening to his lips for a deep, ecstatic draught that leaves him shuddering.
Wow! That scene is so fantastically beautiful it gives me chills to this day. It reminds me of Gericault or Beethoven, with overtones of Nietzsche, Blake, and 19th Century romanticism generally. It suggests that Hookie recognizes the supreme event in his predominantly loser's life, and it also somehow makes him seem magnificently free on the inside, noble and exemplary.
Just in case anybody still doesn't get it, Zulu gives us a couple of glimpses of Hookie standing at the rampart in the darkness, with Williams beside him, watching the hospital burn. "Look at that," Hookie says bleakly. "Do you think he wanted it that way?" He's talking about Maxfield. In other words, way back in the first scene, when he said he wouldn't care if Maxfield were dead, he didn't really mean it. He cares and he feels bad.
But don't break out the violins. Immediately after the battle, Hookie resumes his malingering. He's last seen carving his name in a church pillar and spitting on the floor.
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I saw Zulu for the first time in the summer of 1964 at a drive-in. I was eleven. Coming as it did on the eve of my adolescence, the experience changed my life. I was enthralled by the film as a whole and electrified by Hookie, who to me embodied a state of grace and the ultimate in manliness. About halfway through the movie I started shaking, and I couldn't stop. I rode home in the back of the family station wagon trembling with arousal and exaltation. I felt that Zulu wasn't just a great work of art, but something special, something sacred. I stayed awake all night for the first time in my life, drinking vile black coffee and thinking about what I had seen. When dawn broke I went out onto the dewy lawn to look at the sky and became aware of a curious new sensation and the bodily process that caused it. My initiation into womanhood was all mixed up with images of masculine blood, red coats, and the thrusting of bayonets and spears.
* * * * * *
The Battle of Rorke's Drift has been captivating people ever since it occurred. Deemed "immortal" by Queen Victoria, commemorated and celebrated out of all proportion to its negligible geopolitical impact, it seems to stir the imagination and inspire strong emotional reactions.
Zulu was an instant smash hit (in Britain, not America) and has become a television perennial and the chief portal through which people now get sucked into the cult of Rorke's Drift. In fact, the battle and the film are worshipped more or less in tandem. Go to the Internet and try searching on "Rorke's Drift" or Zulu. The links go on forever. a surprising number of specialized goods and services are aimed at
