Allan Wilson (1856 – 4 December 1893) was an officer in the Victoria Volunteers. He is best known for his leadership of the

Shangani Patrol The Shangani Patrol (or Wilson's Patrol) was a 34-soldier unit of the British South Africa Company that in 1893 was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors in pre-Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), during the First Matab ...

in the

First Matabele War The First Matabele War was fought between 1893 and 1894 in modern-day Zimbabwe. It pitted the British South Africa Company against the Ndebele (Matabele) Kingdom. Lobengula, king of the Ndebele, had tried to avoid outright war with the compa ...

. His death fighting overwhelming odds made him a national hero in Britain and Rhodesia.

Early life

Wilson was born in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

. Upon completion of his apprenticeship at a

Fochabers Fochabers (; gd, Fachabair or Fothabair) is a village in the Parish of Bellie, in Moray, Scotland, east of the cathedral city of Elgin and located on the east bank of the River Spey. 1,728 people live in the village, which enjoys a rich musi ...

bank, he went to the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony ( nl, Kaapkolonie), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope, which existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with t ...

and joined the Cape Mounted Rifles. Wilson served as a Trooper in the Frontier Armed & Mounted Police during the Gaika-Galeka Campaign from 1877 to 1878 and in the Morosi Campaign of 1879. He was awarded the South Africa Medal with clasps 1877-8-9. He transferred to the Cape Mounted Rifles and was promoted to Sergeant. After taking his discharge he became a trader and gold prospector, and he earned a commission in the Basuto Police. Later he joined the Bechuanaland Exploration Company as Chief Inspector and was sent as their representative to Fort Victoria (now

Masvingo Masvingo is a city in south-eastern Zimbabwe and the capital of Masvingo Province. The city is situated close to Great Zimbabwe, the national monument from which the country takes its name and close to Lake Mutirikwi, its recreational park, ...

) in

Matabeleland Matabeleland is a region located in southwestern Zimbabwe that is divided into three provinces: Matabeleland North, Bulawayo, and Matabeleland South. These provinces are in the west and south-west of Zimbabwe, between the Limpopo and Zambezi ...

, serving as the senior officer in the Victoria Volunteers, reaching the rank of major.

Shangani Patrol

When the

broke out, Wilson was given command of the Victoria Column and appointed the rank of major. He led the

in search of King Lobengula and, on 4 December 1893, he and 33 of his men were cut off from the main column and killed by the

Ndebele Ndebele may refer to: *Southern Ndebele people, located in South Africa *Northern Ndebele people, located in Zimbabwe and Botswana Languages * Southern Ndebele language, the language of the South Ndebele *Northern Ndebele language Northern ...

warriors. In desperation and only hours before his defeat, Wilson sent

Frederick Russell Burnham Frederick Russell Burnham DSO (May 11, 1861 – September 1, 1947) was an American scout and world-traveling adventurer. He is known for his service to the British South Africa Company and to the British Army in colonial Africa, and for teach ...

and two other scouts to seek reinforcements from the main column commanded by Major Patrick Forbes. The battle raging there was just as intense and there was no hope of anyone reaching Wilson in time. The incident achieved a lasting, prominent place in Rhodesian colonial history and is considered to be roughly the British equivalent to

Custer's Last Stand The Battle of the Little Bighorn, known to the Lakota and other Plains Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and also commonly referred to as Custer's Last Stand, was an armed engagement between combined forces of the Lakota Sioux, Nor ...

.Gann, Lewis H (1965). ''A history of Southern Rhodesia; early days to 1934'' (First ed.). London: Chatto & Windus, p.118. Wilson is buried, along with most of his patrol and with Cecil Rhodes, in Matabo Hills,

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

. He was considered a national hero and one of the founding fathers of Rhodesia. The date of his death was a Rhodesian national holiday.

''Wilson's Last Stand''

A patriotic play by

Augustus Harris Sir Augustus Henry Glossop Harris (18 March 1852 – 22 June 1896) was a British actor, impresario, and dramatist, a dominant figure in the West End theatre, West End theatre of the 1880s and 1890s. Born into a theatrical family, Harris briefl ...

called ''Cheer, Boys, Cheer!'' was performed in London's Drury Lane theatre in 1895, running for 177 performances.Freeman, Nicholas, ''1895: Drama, Disaster and Disgrace in Late Victorian Britain'', Edinburgh University Press, 2011, p.185. Its climax was "Wilson's Last Stand", a reenactment of Wilson's death. In the play, based on some embellished facts, it is said that in the killing of Wilson and his thirty-one men, Lobengula lost 80 of his royal guard and another 500 Ndebele warriors. Wilson was the last to fall and the wounded men of the Shangani Patrol loaded rifles and passed them to him during the final stages of the defence. When their ammunition ran out, the remaining men of the Patrol are said to have risen and sung "

God Save the Queen "God Save the King" is the national and/or royal anthem of the United Kingdom, most of the Commonwealth realms, their territories, and the British Crown Dependencies. The author of the tune is unknown and it may originate in plainchant, bu ...

". Once both of Wilson’s arms were broken and he could no longer shoot, he stepped from behind a barricade of dead horses, walked toward the Ndebele, and was stabbed with a spear by a young warrior. A rescue party, led by "a plucky girl", arrived just too late. The Last Stand was reenacted once more at the 1899 Greater Britain Exhibition in London, which featured a play called ''Savage South Africa'', described as "A Vivid, Realistic and Picturesque Representation of Life in the Wilds of Africa", in which scenes from the Matabele wars were re-created. A film called '' Major Wilson’s Last Stand'', based on the play, was produced in 1899.

Robert Baden-Powell Lieutenant-General Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, ( ; (Commonly pronounced by others as ) 22 February 1857 – 8 January 1941) was a British Army officer, writer, founder and first Chief Scout of the wor ...

in his '' Scouting for Boys'' advised scoutmasters to put on patriotic plays, giving "Wilson's Last Stand" as one of the suitable subjects.Robert H. MacDonald, The Language of Empire: Myths and Metaphors of Popular Imperialism, 1880-1918, Manchester University Press, 1994, p.92. A docudrama by David Millin, ''

'', was released in 1970. The film was based on the book ''A Time To Die'' (1968) by Robert Cary, and was made on location by RPM Film Studios. It stars Brian O'Shaughnessy as Major Allan Wilson and co-stars

Will Hutchins Will Hutchins (born Marshall Lowell Hutchason; May 5, 1930) is an American actor most noted for playing the lead role of the young lawyer Tom Brewster, in the Western television series ''Sugarfoot'', which aired on ABC from 1957 to 1961 for ...

as Fred Burnham.

References

Literature

*''History of Rhodesia'', by Howard Hensman (1900) -- the full-text of the book can be found online for fre
PDF
*''Scouting on Two Continents,'' by Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D.S.O., Autobiography. LC call number: DT775 .B8 1926. (1926) {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilson, Allan Members of the Pioneer Column 1856 births 1893 deaths British colonial army officers British colonial police officers British military personnel killed in action British military personnel of the First Boer War British people of the Anglo-Zulu War People from Ross and Cromarty People of the First Matabele War