John Dartnell
[2] Dartnell exchanged from the 16th to the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot in 1862[2] with which he took part in the Bhutan War (1865) and as the Aide-de-camp to Major General Sir Henry Tombs was present at the capture of Dewangiri.
He retired from the Army in 1869 by sale of his commission[2] and he and his family moved to Natal in South Africa where his younger children were born.
[8] Dartnell would later claim his recruits were the: ...flotsam and jetsam of the colony, and a very rough lot they proved to be, being principally old soldiers and sailors, transport riders, and social failures from home, etc.
[6] In 1879 during the Zulu War the Natal Mounted Police were attached to the British Army in the Central Column under the command of Lord Chelmsford.
The NMP formed part of the mounted column under the command of Major Russell of the 12th Lancers, while Dartnell was attached to Chelmsford's Staff.
The men of the NMP were not happy at the prospect of not being commanded in the field by their old chief and refused to cross the border into the Zululand unless he was reinstated, at the same time threatening to resign.
Once in Zululand early on the morning of 21 January 1879 one detachment of 97 men of the NMP led by Dartnell was sent by Chelmsford to find the location of the Zulu army of Cetshwayo kaMpande.
He sent two troopers back to Isandlwana to report to Lord Chelmsford regarding what he had seen and let him know that he and his men would spend the night at Hlazakazi Hill in order to continue to watch the Zulus.
[12][13] The first detachment of the NMP under Dartnell returned to Isandlwana on the evening of the battle where they spent the night among the ruins of the camp and the bodies of their colleagues before accompanying Lord Chelmsford's relief column on its advance to Rorke's Drift early the next morning.
When after these Rebellions normal policing duties were resumed men of the NMP provided an escort for the Empress Eugénie in 1880 when she came to Natal to see where her son, Napoléon the Prince Imperial, had been killed the previous year during the Zulu War.
Once it had proved its worth by leading to more arrests and crime-solving finger-printing became part of normal police procedure in Natal.
At the start of the Boer War (1899–1902) Dartnell was placed on the Staff of Major-General Sir William Penn Symons KCB (1843–1899) at Dundee.
The Imperial Light Horse and Natal Carbineers with a team from the Royal Engineers caught the Boers off-guard and forced them to withdraw and abandon their guns.
Being on the other side of a hill the Natal Police did not hear the bugle call "retire" and were late returning to Ladysmith.
Early next morning the Boers shot the horses of the NP forcing them to make their own way back by foot at the same time enduring withering rifle fire.
He served under General Sir Redvers Buller VC in 1900, and commanded the Imperial Light Horse Brigade in Orange River Colony from August 1901 and which fought in various actions.
His advice was of much assistance in the earliest actions of the war, afterwards during the siege of Ladysmith, and finally in the general advance through the Biggarsberg to Laing's Nek, when Natal was cleared of the enemies of the Queen.
