Forty Thousand Horsemen and Us-part 1

I have an indelible memory of an Anzac Day Mike Walsh interview with an incredible old digger, giving a gob smacking explanation of how he’d volunteered to go and fight for King and Empire in 1914. It had just been the right thing to do.
I got my education from watching The Mike Walsh Show. And being a product of the 60’s, I know a bit about Richard Neville, Clive James and cultural cringe and the Vietnam moratorium too. So what was even more mind-boggling about that old digger was that in retrospect he said that he’d go and do the whole thing all over again. That stopped everyone in their tracks.
But then again many of my old friends don’t understand what I’m doing in Israel either. Neither do Israelis. “What’s the lucky country and this hole got in common?” they ask. So what I want to do is to relate if not an untold story, then one that it’s certainly about time to drag out from under the bushel. There’s a proud connection between the lucky country and Israel that history has preferred to sweep under the carpet. Because it was diggers like the old bloke on The Mike Walsh Show, those Albert Facey types, maybe “Banjo Paterson” and “Dad and Dave” caricatures, who changed the face of history in the Middle East, with repercussions round world ever since. The fact of the matter is that if it wasn’t for the Australian Light Horsemen winning the famous Battle of Beersheba and taking the brunt of the fighting all the way from the Suez Canal to their triumphant entry into Ottoman Damascus there would in all probability be no Israel.
Dare I say it, but do any of us ex pat Australians really know what we’re doing here, coping with war, language, culture, temperament, smothered financially, and being taken for Americans or even worse for second rate Poms? So sit up and pay attention, it was Australian Light Horse diggers conquering Palestine some 90 years ago who put us on the map; not Laurence of Arabia, not Churchill, nor any of those supercilious Beckys who try so incessantly to deny us our dignity. Not only would there probably be no Israel but there wouldn’t be any Jordan either, nor Lebanon and with that no Syria.

Forming the AIF
As you probably know once mother England declared war on the Huns the Australian government was quick to follow step, in fact the next day. The Australian Imperial Force was formed and rather promptly far more recruits had volunteered than what the government originally thought was called for. On the one hand, that sort of enthusiasm isn’t surprising in retrospect, and on the other hand in hindsight, knowing the cost, it is pretty much unfathomable. Of the 32,000 original soldiers of the AIF only 7,000 would survive to the end of the war. The AIF departed in a single convoy from Albany W.A. in November 1914. As Albert Facey wrote the first port of call for the Australian force was Egypt. From there Australian and New Zealand infantry soldiers were formed into the famed ANZAC and were shipped out to Gallipoli. During the 8 month Battle of Gallipoli there were 28,150 Australian casualties with 8,709 fatalities and 19,441 wounded. No Australian government ever repatriated fallen diggers to be buried at home, nor subsidised visits for their broken families to their far off gravesites. That’s the flip side of the tyranny of distance for you.

The Middle Eastern theatre of war
In 1916 the Australian Infantry Divisions began to move to France while the cavalry units stayed in the Suez area and combated Turkish troops.
The Middle Eastern theatre of war hotted up in February 1915 when the Turks sent the Ottoman Suez Expeditionary Force to try and shut down the Suez Canal, a British possession of major strategic importance to the masters of the 7 seas. The British foiled the attack, but afterwards were slow to go on the offensive. In the winter of 1916-17 some British offensives were made, with major Australian input, taking certain nearby Turkish garrisons like Romani and El Arish, but the new Lloyd George government in London wanted more.
Its been argued that the Australians’ aggressiveness early on, showing that it was possible to take Romani and El Arish seems to have made the British realize they could change from a defensive strategy, and go on the offensive, placing their sights on Damascus for the first time. Otherwise, argues one Peter Hogan, they may well have just done a deal with the Turks something the British apparently showed a willingness to do on several notable occasions throughout the Middle East campaign. Particularly, as the Allied focus and resources were committed to the more important Western Front in France. If that’s so where would we and the State of Israel have been today if not for the Australians?
To be contd.