Beersheva charge redux

FIVE years short of a century since the thunder of horses’ hooves across the desert near Beersheva helped change the face of the Middle East, the famous Australian Light Horse charge has been re-enacted.

Last week’s redux, in the dunes near the southern Israeli city, commemorated a bold military foray during World War I that wrested control of Beersheva from the Ottoman Turks and delivered it to Great Britain.

History was re-enacted on October 31 – 95 years to the day after the original charge. The re-enactment began when Ezra Pimental, deputy chair of the Society for the Heritage of World War I in Israel, called: “Charge!” and 21 Australian Light Horse riders in authentic battle attire began their ride.

The battle was notable for being the last recorded calvary charge with bayonets and swords in the history of warfare. The charge covered some three kilometres, overrunning and capturing the last remaining Ottoman trenches, and securing the surviving wells at Beersheva.

The historic charge and subsequent battle for the town of Beersheva was portrayed in the films Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940) and The Lighthorsemen (1987). Courageous Diggers overwhelmed Turkish defences, who held the Anzacs directly in their line of fire but were unprepared for their ferocity.

The charge by more than 800 cavalry of the 4th Light Horse Brigade of the Australian Mounted Division was re-enacted by the Australian Light Horse Association. Many Australian Light Horse Association members are descendants of the Anzacs who took part in the 1917 battle.

Last week’s ceremony took place before an audience of local residents and Australian tourists who listened attentively as Pimental recounted the narrative of the charge.

Historians have noted that Beersheva, with its 17 wells, was a strategically critical objective for battling cavalries that relied on water for their horses. Only weeks after the battle for Beersheva, British forces occupied Jerusalem and set the stage for the post-World War I British Mandate, from which the independent Jewish State emerged in 1948.

Two days after the fall of Beersheva came the Balfour Declaration. British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour’s milestone document was widely seen as Britain’s commitment to a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

On December 9, Jerusalem surrendered to the British Third Army under General Edmund Allenby, and a new era had dawned.

The light-horse charge was last commemorated on its 90th anniversary in 2007, when it coincided with the opening of Beersheva’s Park of the Australian Soldier, with funding from the Pratt Foundation and Beersheva Foundation.

The park’s focal point is a bronze statue of a mounted light horseman hurdling sandbags. The statue, created by Melbourne sculptor Peter Corlett, features a Magen David in its design.

PETER KOHN