Mounting up to honour those who fought and died
Ed O’Loughlin, Jerusalem
The Age (Melbourne) October 27, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/mounting-up-to-honour-those-who-fought-and-died/2007/10/26/1192941340587.html
FIFTY Australian riders in First World War kit and uniform will take to the saddle in southern Israel today to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Light Horsemen’s charge at Beersheba.
Their trek across the stony Negev Desert will end on Wednesday with a scaled-down re-enactment of the famous battle, in which an Anzac mounted infantry corps seized the ancient Bedouin town from the Turks with one of the last successful horse-borne charges in Western warfare.
The tour was organised on behalf of the Australian Light Horse Association, whose members parade in authentic uniform on traditional Waler horses to commemorate the mounted infantry units that fought for the British Empire in the Boer War and World War I.
The Australian party arrived in Israel this week from Gallipoli, and have spent the past few days retracing the original Light Horse units’ advance from Egypt to Damascus.
Among those taking part in this week’s celebrations are several descendants of the original combatants at Beersheba, including Deryn Binnie, a granddaughter of the Australian commander, General Henry Chauvel.
“We started in Gallipoli, which was pretty emotional,” she said. “A lot of the crowd had grandfathers who fought there. We’re a little disjointed in Israel because we had to start in the north and head south, whereas during the war it was the other way around. From the Golan Heights we could look out over Damascus, and I stood at Megiddo, right on the mound, knowing my grandfather had stood there and watched the battle (in which Turkish resistance in Palestine collapsed).”
The tour’s organiser, ALHA’s Barry Rodgers, said it was intended as a “ride for peace”, organised with the help of an Israeli historical society and with period weapons supplied by the Israeli army.
“We are not here to celebrate any great conquest, but to celebrate the memory of those who have fallen,” he said. “It’s a solemn march in memory of what was achieved.
“We’ve been very warmly received. We’ve found that the contribution of our troops in both world wars has made a very important contribution to the creation of the modern state of Israel.”
On the 90th anniversary of the battle on Wednesday the riders will parade through the streets of Beersheba, now an Israeli city and capital of the Negev Desert region.
They will also visit the site of a new “Park of the Australian Soldier” being created on land donated by the city, with involvement from the Commonwealth War Graves Committee, the Australian and Israeli governments and Melbourne’s Pratt Foundation, a charitable organisation active in Australia and Israel.
The park is due to open close to Anzac Day next year and will feature a bronze statue of a mounted soldier cast by Melbourne commemorative artist Peter Corlett. It will pay tribute to all Australian soldiers who fought in the Middle East — in the two World Wars and in the current US-led occupation of Iraq.
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Diggers’ descendants ride long trail to war’s great charge
Ed O’Loughlin, Wadi Besor
The Age (Melbourne) October 30, 2007
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/diggers-descendants-ride-long-trail-to-wars-great-charge/2007/10/29/1193618797643.html
AT DUSK on October 30, 1917, hundreds of troopers from the Australian Light Horse regiments stole away from the British railhead at Gaza to outflank the vital Turkish defences at Beersheba. After a 50-kilometre desert night-march they were in position at dawn.
Ninety years later their successors, 50 mounted men and women from the Australian Light Horse Association, are beginning to have a notion of what the troopers must have gone through even before the first shot was fired.
Halfway through the first of three days of 16-kilometre stages, the heat and dust were making themselves felt.
“I think we’ve realised the huge amount of stuff they carried,” said Deryn Binnie, granddaughter of General Henry Chauvel, the commander of the mainly Australian mounted corps that captured Beersheba.
Mounted on horses and ponies from Israeli riding stables, the latter-day light horsemen are wearing First World War-style twill uniforms, complete with slouch hats and leather ammunition bandoliers, and are seated on replica military saddles.
Yet their forebears — many are descended from Light Horse veterans — also carried service rifles, ammunition, grenades and other weapons, as well as a day’s water, three days’ fighting rations and nearly 10 kilograms of fodder for their mounts.
“I don’t know how they did it,” confided Mrs Binnie. “We’ve got some serious horsemen on this trip, but there’s only one or two of us who are still carrying all the kit they started with.”
If you closed one eye to block out the Israeli military radar installations on the horizon, or the tower blocks of troubled Gaza to the rear, this could be Wadi Besor of 90 years ago.
Kathleen Margaret Curnow, 48, a molecular biologist from Balmain in Sydney, is making the trip with her father Ken, 75, owner of a pony club in Wirlinga, NSW. Ken’s father, Rupert, joined the 8th Australian Light Horse shortly after the Battle of Beersheba and was wounded during the drive to Damascus.
“It’s been incredible,” she said. “We are a group of people who wouldn’t normally get together, but we’ve got this common interest. The idea of being able to do it together with my father was amazing.”
Bill Hyman, 47, formerly of NSW but now living in England, is the grandson of Major Eric Hyman, who won the Distinguished Service Order for commanding the 12th Light Horse from the Hunter Valley when it lunged, along with the 4th Light Horse from Victoria, to seize the vital wells at Beersheba.
The Australians plan to re-enact the charge — one of the last successful mounted charges in Western military history — over the same ground on its 90th anniversary tomorrow.
“To be doing this here, sometimes I have to hold back the tears, it’s so emotional, to be here and wondering what was going through his mind at the time,” said Mr Hyman, himself an ex-serviceman in the Territorial Army.
“I was two when my grandfather died. I have memories that have been told to me and through photographs.
“The one memory I do have is picking strawberries with him in his front garden.”
And at that point, overcome by his emotions, he stopped talking for a while.