Forty Thousand Horsemen and Us- part 2

This is the continuation of Forty Thousand Horsemen and Us- part 1

The Battle of Beersheba
Australian soldiers played a decisive role in the conquest of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, most tellingly so, in the Battle of Beersheba. That victory at the end of October 1917 was the key to the campaign and opened the gate to Jerusalem.
Bir Shiba or Beersheba was the terminus of the railway north to Damascus, home to the headquarters of the Ottoman army in the Middle East. And Beersheba sat at the eastern end of the Gaza defence line, some 30 miles inland from the coastal garrison. But Beersheba was not as strongly fortified as Gaza, guarding the classic coastal route to the Fertile Crescent. The Turks expected that lack of water would limit British operations at Beersheba to mounted raids. The Ottoman logic was that the elements, in other words the desert conditions, were a formidable enough foe for any prospective attackers, because enemy soldiers and their livestock, in particular horses would be in dire trouble without a good water source in the desert, and any resistance keeping the wells of Beersheba out of enemy hands for longer than a day would have the enemy retreating quickly to find water elsewhere in the Sinai or Egypt. (And with that in mind it’s not surprising that more than 90% of British casualties over the whole Middle Eastern campaign fell to disease and heat rather than in battle.)The British understood this point well enough too, so it was imperative to capture Beersheba and its wells by first nightfall.
The British opened attack on 30th October 1917 with artillery fire and the taking of some outlying positions which progressed quite satisfactorily. But the taking of the strategically important and elevated Tel el Saba took much longer than expected. So once that stage had been reached it was well into the afternoon, time and daylight were running out. The mounted divisions who’d fought at the tel couldn’t be in position in time to participate in the battle plan.
General Henry Chauvel, the first Australian to receive command of an army corps, (and if his name sounds familiar it’s because his nephew Charles Chauvel directed that Chips Rafferty classic- Forty Thousand Horsemen) had planned to make a dismounted attack on Beersheba, but now he was out of time. The alternative was to make a cavalry charge. He had two brigades in reserve to the south-west of the town, the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade and the British 5th Mounted Brigade. The British brigade was a proper cavalry brigade, armed with swords; however the light horse brigade was closer to the town. With time running out Chauvel chose the Australian 4th Light Horse.
This charge is disputably considered the last successful cavalry charge in history.
But the Australian light horsemen weren’t actually cavalry but rather infantry soldiers who primarily fought dismounted and used their Waler horses to carry their arms and supplies to the battle front or to make a quick retreat. Not surprisingly they were superb riders and were quickly rounded up and organised to make a charge that would turn the tide of history in the Middle East.
Two regiments commenced the charge at 4.30pm, the 12th on the left and the 4th on the right. They moved off at the trot, gradually fanning out until there was five yards between each horseman.
Trooper Elliot acting as range-finder for artillery had crept to a hillock within two miles of Beersheba. “It was the bravest, most awe inspiring sight I've ever witnessed, and they were. . . yelling, swearing and shouting. There were more than 500 Aussie horsemen . . . As they thundered past my hair stood on end. The boys were wild-eyed and yelling their heads off”.
Speed and surprise were their one chance, and almost at once the pace was quickened to a gallop. Four miles ahead lay Turkish trenches, many cleverly concealed even from aircraft reconnaissance and surrounded on nearby hills by machine gun and artillery positions.
The Turkish defenders opened fire with shrapnel from long range but it was ineffective against the widely spaced horsemen. All this intensifying enemy fire only sped up the gallop. Years later Trooper Vic Smith remembered, “Of course we were scared, wishing to hell we weren't there, but out of it. But you couldn't drop out and leave your mates to it; you had to keep going on.”
When the line of horsemen got within range of the Turkish riflemen in the trenches, they started to take casualties but the speed of the light horsemen’s approach was so surprising that once they were within half a mile of the trenches the defenders failed to allow for their speed, so the Turks' bullets started passing overhead as they forgot to adjust their sights. Or maybe it was the dust thrown up by the thundering hooves?
About half-a-mile from the town, the Brigade began to overrun fugitive troops and guns. Some surrendered but others elected to fight and Light Horsemen here and there dismounted to capture them by rifle and bayonet. Led by two ground scouts about 80 yards ahead, the charge swept on. The light horsemen jumped the front trenches and dismounted behind the line where they fixed bayonets and engaged the Turks who were in many cases so demoralised that they quickly surrendered.
The later waves continued through the town which the Turks were abandoning in a panic. Isolated resistance in the town continued for a little while but by nightfall, the remainder of the garrison had been captured.
So eight hundred Aussie light horsemen had achieved what 50,000 British troops could not do, what even Napoleon could not do. They had opened the doorway to Jerusalem.

The road to Damascus
That’s how the Gaza defensive line was broken on 31st October 1917. By December 1917 the Australian Light Horsemen rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, far from home, their emu feathers proudly fluttering in the breeze, to be greeted by cheering crowds of Jews and Christians. Centuries of Moslem rule was over. It was a far cry from the scenario of bloodthirsty Crusaders who had entered the city in 1099.
When the British launched their attack on Beersheba, the Turks had been caught by surprise. A key feature to the British attack was to convince the Turks that once again, Gaza was to be attacked, like the previous two attempts. This deception campaign was extremely thorough and convincing. But the victory did not end the campaign because the Turks redeployed some forces and largely held their position. On the 6th of November the second garrison in the Ottoman defensive line at Tal Esh Sheria was taken and the next day Gaza, the Ottoman forces retreating for fear of being cut off. This meant that the Ottoman defence was now shattered. Allenby’s forces went after the retreating Turks in hot pursuit confronting defensive positions a few times but by December 9th 1917 Jerusalem was captured.
And Jerusalem’s capture was very significant politically. This was one of the few real successes the British government could lay claim to after 3 years of war. As the triumphant General Allenby entered the city through the Jaffa gate, his honour guard was made up of slouch hatted Aussies. Opposite him as he stood on the steps of the Citadel of David he was encircled by another honour guard of proud Australian Light Horsemen.
But the immediate continuation of the British campaign into Syria was delayed, due to the German’s Spring Offensive on the Western Front in Europe. Much of Allenby’s army was deployed there too. Meanwhile Allenby received new divisions from India and new planes giving the British complete aerial superiority. On the other hand the Turks siphoned off their best troops in favour of the formation of another army leaving behind poor quality and dispirited troops in the Middle East. It was at this time that T.E. Lawrence and his Arab force rose to significance, with hit and run attacks on Turkish positions.
On September 19th 1918 Allenby launched his long delayed attack at the Battle of Megiddo surprising the Turks again and sending them into full scale retreat. Within a week this Turkish army was a spent force.
On 30th September 1918 Australian Light Horse troops marched unopposed into Damascus. Contrary to the way history was rewritten, and one can imagine, serving imperial interests, it was only on the next day that T.E. Lawrence and his Arab troops entered Damascus to receive an "Official" surrender.

The Beersheba Cemetery
In the capture of Beersheba, the 4th Light Horse Brigade took 38 officers and 700 other ranks prisoner as well as four field guns. In the two regiments, the 4th and the 12th, only 31 men were killed (including two officers) and only 36 men wounded.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains the cemeteries of British and Commonwealth countries around the world. There are several such cemeteries in Israel. One is the WWI cemetery on the edge of Beersheba’s old city. The cemetery lies within sight of where the famous battle took place. It contains about 1200 graves, with most of the deaths having occurred on the last day of October 1917 or the first week of November.
I think that we Aussies living in Israel should be a lot more aware and proud of the fact that without the efforts of these mostly forgotten young men, buried in a Beersheba cemetery, so far from home ... there very likely would not be a modern State of Israel.