(Cost Report #15, 18 October 1963). This would have placed the near-final negative cost at £618,876 (approximately $1,600,000). Historical accuracy The basic premises of the film are true and largely accurate, but is not a historical re-enactment of real events. The heavily outnumbered British successfully defended Rorke's Drift more or less as portrayed in the film. Writer Cy Endfield even consulted a Zulu tribal historian for information from Zulu oral tradition about the attack. There are, however, a number of historical inaccuracies in the film. The regiment The script presents the 24th Regiment of Foot as a predominantly Welsh regiment, which was not the case in 1879. Of the soldiers present at Rorke's Drift, 49 were English, 32 Welsh, 16 Irish and 22 others of indeterminate ethnicity. While the regiment had been based at Brecon in South Wales for several years, its full name at the time was 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot. (In 1881, the regiment assumed its later name of South Wales Borderers.) The song "Men of Harlech" features prominently as the regimental song; it did not become so until later. At the time of the battle, the regimental song was "The Warwickshire Lad". There was no "battlefield singing contest" between the British and the Zulus. The Witts There are several inconsistencies with the historical record concerning the Swedish missionaries, the Witts. In the film, Witt is depicted as a middle-aged widower, a pacifist and drunkard, who has an adult daughter called Margareta. In reality, Otto Witt was aged 30 and had a wife, Elin, and two infant children. Witt's family were away at the time of the battle. On the morning of the battle, Otto Witt, with the chaplain, George Smith and Surgeon-Major James Henry Reynolds had ascended Shiyane (Oscarberg), the large hill near the station, and noticed the approach of the Zulu force across the Buffalo River. Far from being a pacifist, Witt had co-operated closely with the army and negotiated a lease to put Rorke's Drift at Lord Chelmsford's disposal. Witt made it clear that he did not oppose British intervention against Cetshwayo. He had stayed at Rorke's Drift because he wished "to take part in the defence of my own house and at the same time in the defence of an important place for the whole colony, yet my thoughts went to my wife and to my children, who were at a short