A RARE eyewitness account by one of the British heroes of the Battle of Rorke's Drift is to go under the hammer more than 100 years later.

Walter Dunne's letter dated January 24, 1879, describes how he and a vastly outnumbered group of soldiers successfully defended the outpost in South Africa against 4,000 Zulu warriors.

The heroic stand, immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu, starring Michael Caine and Stanley Baker, saw 11 VCs awarded.