PREFACE
At a mile distant their thousand hooves were stuttering thunder, coming at a rate that frightened a man — they were an awe inspiring sight, galloping through the red haze — knee to knee and horse to horse — the dying sun glinting on bayonet points …
This book is the third in a World War I centennial trilogy covering all three major theatres of war in which Australians fought between 1914 and 1918. It follows on from Gallipoli Diaries: the Anzacs’ own story day by day (Scribe, 2014) and Western Front Diaries: the Anzacs’ own story battle by battle (Scribe, 2015), which told the story of the battles through the words of those frontline soldiers who were there, on the spot.
Now, Palestine Diaries: the Light Horsemen’s own story battle by battle tells the story through the diaries and letters of eyewitnesses who served in this third important theatre, Palestine. In fact, this book has been published to commemorate the centenary of the most important battle of all — the glorious cavalry charge at Beersheba, history’s last successful cavalry charge, which took place on 31 October 1917.
The 100th anniversary of that great charge provides Australians with an opportunity to replace the tired old cornerstone of our national identity — Gallipoli — with a new foundation stone for our identity — Beersheba, the peak moment of the breathtaking achievements of the Australian Light Horse in World War I. Instead of basing our identity on a failed campaign in which the British sent 8,709 Australians to their unnecessary deaths, we should use the 100th anniversary to replace that tragic base with the stunningly successful series of Australian-led victories in the Middle East, culminating with Beersheba.
Nothing could be more Australian than young country bushmen riding Australian-bred stock horses (Walers) to defeat an enemy; it should appeal much more to Australians than honouring the deaths of our foot soldiers trapped in the trenches of Gallipoli. When World War One Prime Minister Billy Hughes claimed, ‘Australia was born on the shores of Gallipoli’, he was praising the bravery and sacrifice of that disastrous 1915 campaign. When he told Parliament, in 1919, ‘In the history of the world, there never was a greater victory than that which was achieved in Palestine, and in it (also as in France) the soldiers of Australia played a great part’, he was talking about horsemanship, intelligent and skilled military tactics, and fierce fighting. It is time, 100 years later, to hold our national head up proudly, knowing our identity can be based on success instead of failure. From 2018 onwards, to mark the anniversary of the end of the war these Light Horsemen helped win, the Australian government should organise a new annual commemoration day, like Anzac Day, but on 31st October, to be called Beersheba Day, to build up the importance of this new foundation stone for our national identity.
As many of the troopers had worked on their horses together back in Australia, they shared a camaraderie that helped them become a formidable fighting force.
The words those brave troopers wrote after charging Beersheba — and after all the other battles threaded through the narrative — collectively tell the story of all the main battles fought by the Australian Light Horse serving with Britain’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force as it drove the Turks out of Palestine and dismantled the centuries-old Ottoman Empire. These diaries and letters were kindly provided by generous descendants of those gallant Light Horsemen, who fought so hard to help win those battles. Many diaries also came from the Australian War Memorial.
Other writers have produced many books on the Australian Light Horse. I particularly like Light Horse: the story of Australia’s mounted troops by my late friend and great horsewoman Elyne Mitchell of Towong Station, Victoria — the daughter of Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Chauvel, who commanded the Australian Light Horse and the charge at Beersheba. Other Australians have also produced films on the Light Horse, starting with the 1940 classic Forty Thousand Horsemen, which was directed by Charles Chauvel, the nephew of Sir Harry Chauvel.
This book attempts to tell the story mainly through the words of the ordinary Light Horsemen who were there — those troopers who found time to write up their diaries or pen letters home. Their writing is littered with mistakes — of fact, grammar, and spelling — and may seem politically incorrect and also racist to the modern reader, but they were writing more than 100 years ago, when people had different attitudes. The book tries to give as many of them as possible a platform — a testament to life in and around the battlefields. I often quote from the greatest Light Horse scribe of all, the late Ion ‘Jack’ Idriess from the 5th Light Horse Regiment, who wrote thousands of words in his diaries, brimming with colour, enthusiasm, excitement, and love for his fellow troopers — and it is to him that this book is gratefully dedicated.
Fortunately, over my life I have gained enough useful experience to help me to write this book. I was lucky enough to interview one of the last surviving Light Horsemen just before he died: the heroic trooper Len Hall, from Western Australia, who served mainly as a Gunner with the 10th Light Horse Regiment and who featured in my Foxtel History Channel documentaries: Gallipoli: untold stories (2005); Winning World War I (2008); Gallipoli: last Anzacs tell all (2015), which was also shown at the Centennial Anzac Day Service at Gallipoli as part of the pre-dawn Reflective Program, and Palestine: last Lighthorsemen tell all (2017). Hall had landed at Gallipoli, been involved in the bloody Battle of The Nek, served throughout the Palestine campaign where he met Lawrence of Arabia, and then ridden with the Light Horse into battles like Beersheba; he died in February 1999, but is remembered each year in the Len Hall Tribute Game, an Anzac Day AFL football match played by the Fremantle Dockers against various other clubs.
Gunner John King Lethbridge of Tregeare, St Marys, a descendant of NSW Governor Philip Gidley King, was one of the author’s ancestors who served in Palestine.
I also interviewed the last Light Horseman to die, Albert Whitmore, who passed away in Barmera, South Australia, on 29 July 2002 at the age of 102. I wrote his obituary for The Australian newspaper. He was Australia’s last living link with the Light Horsemen, that legendary mounted force that had captured Beersheba in 1917. He was lucky to survive, let alone live to 102, as he caught malaria during a record-breaking heat wave in Jordan: ‘When one of my fellow troopers saw me lying on the ground sick as a dog he said, “We’ll never see old Whit again”; but they carted me off to hospital and I pulled through’, he said. Such was the resilience of the Light Horsemen.
I also grew up riding horses: first, on family sheep properties in Victoria, and then as a mounted jackaroo and stockman in the early 1960s, for the New Zealand and Australian Land Company in New South Wales on ‘Bundure’ Station, ‘New Camp’ near Jerilderie, and ‘Wingadee’ between Walgett and Coonamble. I also have family roots in Tamworth, where many of the troopers’ horses came from — the home of the famous Walers — because my ancestor, the Hon. Philip Gidley King II, helped found the town in the 1850s as the head of the Australian Agricultural Company (AA Co), managing nearby ‘Gunoo Gunoo’ sheep station. My parents, R. John Essington King and Zelma King, (nee Sprague), were also born and bred in Tamworth; and I, with my wife, Jane, also live in the former AA Co homestead in Stroud, New South Wales, where in the 1840s, my ancestor Admiral Phillip Parker King (AA Co director) lived, as did his son, the above mentioned Hon. Philip Gidley King II (who was Superintendent of Flocks).
But my interest in the Australian Light Horse was really aroused by Lieutenant-General Harry Chauvel’s daughter, Elyne Mitchell, who had me to stay at her homestead in 1995 at Towong Hill, near Corryong, while I was directing the centennial celebrations for an event I conceived to celebrate great Australian horsemen — Banjo Paterson’s ‘Man From Snowy River’. The popularity of this fabulous ballad (which is printed on the $10 note with Paterson’s portrait and a picture of the Man From Snowy River) confirms the importance of horse riding in our culture. Elyne proudly showed me her father’s memorabilia from World War I and gave me a copy of the book she wrote based on her father’s letters to her mother about his campaigns, Light Horse: the story of Australia’s mounted troops. After I appointed her Patron of the 1995 Man From Snowy River Centennial Celebrations, she wrote an introduction to our brochure that recalled the days of Banjo Paterson and also the Light Horse: ‘Those were the days of great horses and great horsemen. Everyone rode a horse: the cantering rhythm of a horse was the rhythm to which Australia moved. This was the rhythm which Banjo caught’.
Major Paterson, Commander of the Remount Squadron, a great horseman himself, also took that rhythm with him as the officer in charge of the horses in Palestine; where for some years I also led historical tours through the Middle East, guiding tourists through many of the towns mentioned in this book, towns that the brave troopers of the Light Horse captured — as we will now see.
The author, who travelled through Palestine to research this book, saw the same monasteries — like Beit Sahour, north of Jerusalem — that the Light Horse troopers visited.