Dr. E.R. Mansell was one of approximately 50 Civil Surgeons employed in South Africa for the operations of 1877-79 and was latterly attached to Pearson's Column. In an interview given to a number of reporters on his return to London in the Edinburgh Castle at the end of hostilities, he recalled that at the action at Inyezane he had been impressed by the marksmanship of one or two of the enemy, seeing 'two soldiers fall, shot through the forehead by the same Zulu. Fortunately, the mass of the enemy fired too high' (The Red Soldier, by Frank Emery refers).