INNOCENCE LOST

 

I would have been on pins and needles after the decision had been made. It took an never ending 90 minutes to gather all the men and horses back into formation. They had been scattered because of the threat of an air attack.  But eventually they were formed up, again. And only then did the Aussies and their horses make the historic charge.

When  the Australian Fourth Light Horse Brigade advanced at the gallop they were not waving sabers but bayonets. Still it may have been one of the most successful cavalry charges in military history. It is also usually credited with being the very last. 

It was 31 October , 1917 – Halloween - when the British Army made a third attempt to break the Turkish line anchored on Gaza. They had a new General, 56 year old Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 

and a new plan. Instead of again attacking the barbed wire and trenches close to Gaza,  Allenby decided to try the other end of the Turkish defenses, at Beersheba. It was a similar choice to the sweeping left hook sent against Iraq forces in 1991: then, fast armored columns were supported by fleets of fuel trucks. But the limiting factor in 1917 was not gasoline but water. 

There have been wells at Beersheba as far back as the biblical Abraham. In 1917 there were 17 wells producing dependable potable water.  It was the wells which made the capture of the village vital for any army coming out of the Negev desert, because the weapon of maneuver in 1917 was not the tank but the horse.

It is simply astonishing that a prey animal, a grass eater, could be so powerful a weapon of war. Since 4000 B.C. humans have trained horses to assist in killing other humans and other horses. We have ridden their backs into close combat where Equus caballus was shot with arrows, pierced with spears and slashed with swords. 

And beginning in the 17th century, horses were then cut by shrapnel and surrounded by deafening gunfire and explosions. And what is most astonishing is that for a horse, such combat is much more frightening than for a human.

Horses have the largest eyes per body size of any land animal. The construction of those lovely huge eyes also gives them a field of vision of 350 degrees, far wider than a humans’. 

Humans hear in the range of 30 to 19,000 hertz. Horses, with their 180 degree rotating ears, giving them the equivalent of sound depth perception, hear 55 to 33,500 hertz.  In short, hoses can see and hear much more of the horrors on a battlefield more accurately than a human can.

And the sound of a rifle or pistol in their own riders’ hands is more frightening because it is closer. So given this higher level of horror why have horses joined us in war?

It has been pointed out that war horses actually lived much more happy lives than their pampered domesticated stabled pets of today because a war horse is constantly surrounded with other horses – a herd. 

An army is a strict hierarchical social structure that mimics the herd. Every combat maneuver used by cavalry is based on herd behavior. A column of horses willing follows the horse in front rather than run for safety alone, and a horse in a charge will run because all the other horses are running as well.

But the actual charge of Napoleonic cavalry (and the Australian Light Horsemen of 1917) was a good deal slower than the paintings might suggest. Sabers might be wildly waving and lances glinting in the sunlight, but charging horses do not slam into enemy troops at the end of a charge. 

The “shock” effect of a cavalry charge was more about human psychology then physical. No horse will 

ride onto spikes or spears, or even willingly ride down a human. Horses have no country, no national pride. They will defend young  members of their own herd, but not to the death.  They are aggressive only when they cannot escape. Running is freedom. Running is life. To a horse the very idea that "Into the valley of death rode the 600" is insanity, illogical and inconceivable. 

The 800 mounted men of the 11th and 12th regiments formed up to the east of Beersheba, behind a ridge. 

Their commander was Lieutenant Colonel William James Bourchier (above)  and he had trained his men to fight as mounted infantry.  

But this afternoon with their rifles slung across their backs and their bayonets gripped tightly in their right hands, they were pure cavalry, straight from the ancient steppes of Eastern Europe and the rolling fields of Belgium. They crossed the ridge line at 4:30pm,  in three waves at a trot, moving at about 8 miles an hour, with five meters between each horse.

The three lines advanced across the open desert toward the Turkish infantry trenches four miles away.  After a mile a battery of Austrian-Hungarian artillery (above) began to bark at them. Shells exploded just behind them as the Axis gunners tried in vain to adjust their range to match the horsemen’s advance.  About two miles out they broke into a canter, advancing now at about 15 miles an hour. 

The Turkish machine guns began to pepper the advancing cavalry. But most of the Turkish infantry were holding their fire, waiting for the horsemen to dismount and attack on foot. 

Instead, a half mile from the trenches, they broke into a gallop, and fell upon the stunned Turkish soldiers at 30 miles an hour.

Trooper Eric Elliot remembered, “It was the bravest, most awe inspiring sight I’ve ever witnessed ...the boys were wild-eyed and yelling their heads off.” And Trooper Vic Smith would write years later, “Of course we were scared, wishing to hell we weren’t there…But you couldn’t drop out and leave your mates to it; you had to keep going on.”  And the horses must have mimicked that same feeling.

In fact the Turkish infantry were so stunned by the cavalry’s audacity that they failed to adjust their sights and most of the Turkish rifle fire that finally began, went sailing over the horsemen’s heads. As the cavalry drew nearer their formation dissolved, which made it harder for the gunners to pick a target, 

And suddenly it seemed to the Turkish soldiers’ that their gun sights were filled with the barrel chests of charging horses, each carrying a screaming mad man directly at each Turkish private and corporal.

The Australian horses leapt across the first trench line. And many of the Turkish soldiers, brave men and determined, well led and well disciplined, threw down their rifles and ran away. To the horses, they were not charging into danger, but trying to escape it. And once over the first trench line, in fact they had. 

The Australian regiments carried the trench and the vital wells and the village beyond. The attack captured 38 officers, 700 men, 9 field guns and 3 machine guns and killed perhaps 500 Turkish soldiers. Many more Turkish soldiers, having run into the desert, came back to the wells over the next few days and surrendered. The cost for this triumph was 31 Australians troopers killed and 36 wounded, almost all of them in the fight for the trenches. 

By five-thirty the battle was over. The Turkish Gaza line had been turned. But so surprised and stunned were the victors themselves that it was almost another hour before anyone thought to send word back General Allenby at headquarters. Instead they took the time to enjoy the cool waters from the Wells of Beersheba. 

It is estimated that 70 horses died in the battle. And afterward an Australian trooper noted, “It was the horses that did it; those marvelous bloody horses.”

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