‘Bloody Bull!’ Paterson said, screwing up a letter and throwing it at a bin. ‘The bastard!’
Sutherland was in the office going through files.
‘What’s wrong, Major?’
‘Allenby has made it official. No horses will be allowed back to Australia at the end of service.’
‘Why?’
‘Aw, bullshit about the mares not being able to breed on returning home in case they had disease. What disease? Arrant nonsense! There’s other mumbo-jumbo from the “Horse Demobilisation Committee” in the damned London War Office. How would those bloody grey pommie bureaucrats understand anything about the bonds between the troopers and their mounts?’
Sutherland retrieved the screwed-up paper near the bin and read it. ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed. ‘They want to sell them to the British or Indian army.’ He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t be letting the lads know this. They’ll go on strike.’
‘Read the last paragraph. It’s fucking “Top Secret!”’
‘You know what it means?’ Sutherland remarked after scanning the one-page letter. ‘The troopers won’t give them up. They will shoot them rather than hand them in. Besides, we know that the older neddies will be sold for meat in Cairo.’
Paterson sat at his desk. He frowned, thought for a minute and then asked: ‘Do we know where Allenby is now?’
‘Camped at Jericho. We had a cable last night. His staff wants a suitable horse—one that is “placid yet big and stately”—they said.’
‘What for?’
‘He’s going to give out medals to the Anzac Mounted Division. Doesn’t want to drive up in his Rolls. Wrong image to present to our troopers. He wants to ride up to them.’
‘It’s a wonder he didn’t ask for my Khartoum or one of the other thoroughbreds.’
‘I think the “big and stately” suggests that.’
‘Who’s running the remount at Jericho?’ Paterson said, reaching for the phone.
The heat was oven-like at the Jordan River in May 1918. There was a lull in the fighting before Chauvel’s mighty force would again pick up the pursuit of the Turks after pushing one enemy army north beyond Jaffa in Palestine and another east to the Jordan. Allenby was surprised at the position the Light Horse had put him in after taking Jerusalem. When he was dumped from the Western Front, British Prime Minister Lloyd George had put great store in him ‘taking back Palestine, and in particular the Holy City of Jerusalem’ from the Turks. George was then a new prime minister looking to do things differently in an attempt to take the British public’s mind off the tremendous carnage on the Western Front. He foresaw a psychological boost for the British in securing Jerusalem, never mind that it was a trifling military acquisition when compared to the struggle for even yards on the Somme in France. Christians and Jews were thrilled at the snatching of the Holy City from the Muslim Turks. It was not billed as a holy war but that was the underlying theme in George’s emphasis on the sideshow in the Middle East.
After those early months of anger from Allenby, the success against the Turks since Beersheba had the big man less hostile and more amenable. He let Chauvel run the campaign in the field and only issued broad directives to him. He indulged the enigmatic T E Lawrence in his messianic support for the Arab cause. He gave him guns and gold, as requested, to bribe the various tribes into supporting a roughly unified Arab force that ran terror tactics against the Turkish army garrisoned in forts right along the Hejaz railway. The effect, as Lawrence had promised, was to keep that army in the forts and to disavow them the chance to move into Palestine to help the other two armies.
Chauvel and Lawrence kept the faith yet Allenby remained impatient, constantly asking Chauvel to get up to strength with men and horses in readiness for a two-pronged thrust to smash those three Turkish armies. But the commander-in-chief was aware that a previously unlikely success was now more than likely. He took time to hand out decorations for actions in the field. He knew that the Anzacs thrived on victory. They needed incentives and inspiration. With this in mind he had 5000 Australian troopers lined up on their mounts at a parade area near a road five kilometres from Jericho. The same number of infantry in lines together was something to behold, but 5000 horsemen, all wearing their slouch hats with the striking insignia of emu feathers, approaching from three metres above the ground was awe-inspiring.
Chauvel, Allenby and English Brigadier-General Trew were chauffeured to the division’s HQ just out of view of the waiting mounted troopers. Allenby was strangely nervous. His staff sensed this, as did Chauvel. He knew he was the figurehead of the British armed forces in the Middle East. He would never be loved or adored by the troopers, yet his size, demeanour and aggressive nature were a contrast to his indecisive predecessors, who were rarely seen at the front. And when they did turn up, they were treated with barely restrained disrespect. Allenby projected a warrior-leader image and it was appreciated by all who wanted to fight and win. For these reasons, he was especially self-conscious on this occasion, the first time he had been in front of such a big number of the troopers, and the first where he would give out medals to them.
‘What horse have you got for me, Harry?’ he said as he alighted from his Rolls. Chauvel motioned to three troopers who clip-clopped across the road with three riderless, saddled mounts. The one designated for Allenby was the biggest. Allenby examined it.
‘Deep, tight girth,’ he said, pushing his finger under the leather belt round the horse’s body which secured the saddle. ‘Long rein. In fact, unusually long rein. Hmm. Haven’t seen such an expensive bridle … Rolled leather and brass buckles no less! Reminds me of those used at my polo club.’ He looked around at the trooper who had brought him the horse. ‘Did you saddle him, trooper?’
‘No, sa! Remount people did it, sa!’
Allenby ran his hands over the horse’s left hind leg.
‘Knees and hocks could be lower,’ he mumbled, almost to himself. ‘Not a bad animal. Huge barrel, good head.’ He stood back. ‘Damned big! Eighteen hands, I’d say.’ He stepped closer to the horse. ‘Hmm. Very good head indeed!’
Allenby turned to Chauvel. ‘Waler, is it?’
‘It came from our remount depot so it must be, Edmund,’ Chauvel replied, preoccupied with examining his own mount before lifting himself onto it.
‘Never seen one quite as big as this,’ Allenby observed as he walked around the horse. ‘Got a name, has it?’
Allenby looked to the troopers who had brought them the horses.
‘Ah, he’s called William, sa!’ one of them said.
‘William?’ Allenby repeated.
‘Yes, sa!’
‘Not King William, just plain William, eh?’
‘He is a Waler, sa!’
‘Ah yes. You Australians do have a penchant for simplicity.’
Allenby hoisted his big frame into the saddle. The horse did not move a muscle.
‘Not much life in ’im,’ Allenby mumbled as he adjusted his derriere in the saddle. ‘C’mon then, William, you sleepy old thing. Let’s get going!’
The horse stood stock still. Allenby was sweating in the heat. He twisted in the saddle and belted the horse on the rump. He swung his stirrups hard into the animal’s flanks. It put its head down and its tail stiffly out and charged straight off the road.
A small section in the right-hand corner of the lined-up mounted troopers could see a disturbance near HQ. One witness saw a horse ‘head down, tail straight back, pig-root for the bush in a ball of dust’.
Allenby had lost control and was just hanging on. Chauvel took off after him, praying the chief would not be bucked off. In a sudden flash Chauvel recognised the horse by its ferocious charge. It was Bill the Bastard. Chauvel had last seen him from a distance on the despatch run at Gallipoli. Bill wheeled in a semicircle back up to the road and down the other side, allowing Chauvel and his speedy mare to cut across close to him. Chauvel reached for Bill’s rein and held on. Bill slowed to a disgruntled trot, then a walk. A shaken Allenby took the moment to slip off and step away as Bill kicked back. The Rolls motored to them. Allenby was sweating profusely, his heart racing. Shaken, he slipped into the back seat of the vehicle, trying to regain some composure and dignity. None of his staff was brave enough to say a word.
Meanwhile Brigadier-General Trew’s horse had been spooked by the incident. Chauvel let go of Bill’s reins and galloped after Trew, who had also lost control. Chauvel soon settled Trew’s Waler and trotted them back to HQ. They passed Bill, who was standing quietly by the side of the road chewing on some low scrub as if he was an innocent bystander. Chauvel had a quick consultation with his staff.
‘Find a rider who can take that mad horse back to the depot at Jericho!’ he said, fuming. ‘I don’t want to see it again.’
‘Only one bloke can ride him, General,’ a staffer said. ‘He’s a blackfella, sir, with the troopers: Jackie Mullagh.’
‘Pull him out of the parade, give his horse to the commander-in-chief and tell him to get “William” out of sight, otherwise the horse may be shot!’
After a further twenty-minute delay Allenby—settled on Mullagh’s mare—Chauvel and Trew trotted onto the parade ground. A cheer went up from the troopers.
Allenby, happy with his replacement horse, leant across to Chauvel. ‘Is that a reception of derision, Harry, or are they just happy to see us?’
‘Don’t believe it’s necessarily insincere, Edmund,’ Chauvel said. ‘I think they are like us. They don’t like being kept waiting half an hour in 100 degree heat.’
‘Quite,’ Allenby said as the cheering died down.
Chauvel wished to know how Bill the Bastard could have been selected for the most important rider in the entire British army on the Eastern Front. The troopers who delivered the mount said they had just picked up the horses selected by the depot officer in charge. The depot officer said it had been a simple error. A trainer in the Jericho depot had followed instructions from Moascar to find a ‘big, stately, placid Waler’ for Allenby. The trainer said that the second biggest Waler in the depot was a very quiet pack mare named ‘William’. She was a chestnut, like Bill, who some knew by reputation to be something other than placid.
‘Why is a mare called “William”?’ Chauvel wanted to know.
‘She is very big and strong for a mare,’ the depot officer replied, ‘but you’d have to ask Moascar because she came to us months ago. She was always called William.’
‘Who ordered the horse for General Allenby?’
‘I didn’t take the call, General, the trainer did.’
The officer said Bill was a much-respected ‘power’ packhorse of remarkable strength who, by order of Major Paterson at Moascar, was not allowed to be mounted. By chance, the depot officer explained, the trainer mistakenly saddled up Bill, not William. As it was only the commander-in-chief’s pride that had been hurt and nothing else, the trainer was fired from the Jericho depot and sent back to Moascar for disciplinary action there.
‘You’ve made a terrible mistake, Private Hickey,’ Paterson said, his face expressionless, when the wiry, redheaded trainer, accompanied by Sutherland, entered his office at Moascar. ‘There could have been an awful accident, with Bloody Bull!’
‘But there wasn’t, Major,’ Hickey remarked. ‘General Chauvel saved the day.’
‘Hmm. But Bloody Bull was badly shaken, I hear?’
‘I wasn’t there but, yes, I heard he was all shook up, sir.’
‘I must discipline you, Private,’ Paterson said. ‘You must take a week off in Cairo. You’ll need a depot car.’
‘Will my pay be docked, Major?’
‘Don’t think that will be necessary, but you will need expenses. Cairo’s best hotels and whorehouses are costly these days.’