The 100th Anniversary of the Charge of Beersheba

by Kathleen Curnow

Introduction

This Anthology entry complements an article written by my father (Kenneth Rupert Murray Curnow) that documented our 2007 trip to Turkey and Israel to both remember and better understand the experiences and sacrifice of those who fought in the Great War there, as well as recount our experiences of how it is today.

Together, we were curious to visit places where his father, my grandfather, Rupert Colman Curnow, had been as part of the Australian 8th Light Horse Regiment. The many places we went to in Israel were mostly previously only known to my father and I from the Bible – places such as Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee. Before that trip, I was fascinated to hear that my grandfather had ridden his horse into Jerusalem via the Damascus gate, and later into Damascus, and ultimately went as far North as Homs. Since 2007, the latter two places have featured greatly in the news due to the war in Syria.

Our articles reflect some of our experiences of the camaraderie associated with meeting people whose ancestors were caught up in the same historical events. For me, the trips gave me a strong connection to the roots of the ANZAC legend, showed me that the larrikinism often referred to remains an inherent part of our culture, and gave me a wonderful opportunity to connect more strongly with my father and our family history.

This time (in 2017) I did not participate in the lead up “tour” of Egypt, Jordan and Israel before the Beersheba Charge reenactment. However, I did continue a holiday in Jordan with my partner to visit Es Salt and the Jordan Valley where my grandfather spent a large part of his time over the summer of 1918. Based on the stories of others there, it is likely that my grandfather’s long term breathing difficulties were triggered or severely exacerbated by inhaling the white dust that blew up every morning in that area, while the daily temperatures reached over 50 C. He came back with several health problems and died at the age of 52, before I was born.

My article is less of a “diary” than my father’s, and more of a collection of experiences and learnings that left an impression on me.

Background Information about the 8th Light Horse Regiment

Being a research scientist, the first thing I did before the 2007 trip was to search the internet with my grandfather’s name. Amazingly I discovered that the Australian War Memorial (AWM) site, www.awm.gov.au, held a photo of his reinforcement troop, and the National Archives of Australia (NAA) site () held scans of his military records. From these it was evident that my great-grandfather had specified that my grandfather not leave Australia for the war until he was 19 years old, and that my grandfather boarded a ship to sail to the Middle East 3 days after his 19th birthday….and 2 days after the Charge of Beersheba! At the time I searched for a map or clear documentation showing where the 8th Regiment went in Palestine, but ended up mostly relying on the snippets of stories from my father, and a bit more from my grandfather’s health records on the NAA site.

While on the 2017 ride I introduced myself to a woman wearing the 8th Light Horse Regiment colours – Ruth Lawrence. It turned out that Ruth had done a huge research into her great uncle’s experience to document his life, principally because she wanted to better archive photos he had taken during his wartime service from 1914-1919. Her Biography of Vernon John Dorman included this map of the movements of the 8th Light Horse Regiment from 1916-1918:

Before the initial trip I learned that the 4th and the 12th Light Horse Regiments were the ones that did the actual Charge into Beersheba, but it seemed that most Regiments had a role to play. For various accounts, this web site is very illuminating: http://alh-research.tripod.com/Light_Horse/index.blog?topic_id=1105077. To read all this history I found I had to understand what is meant by a Regiment vs a Brigade, eg http://www.lighthorse.org.au/famous-battles/world-war-one/famous-battles-the-battle-at-beersheba. I have therefore taken the documentation below from Ruth’s biography of her great uncle to illustrate the structure of the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) from 1914-1918. This shows that the 8th Light Horse Regiment was in the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, in the 1st Division of the 1st AIF. My grandfather was in the “30th” reinforcement, 8th Light Horse Regiment.

Each Regiment is made up of 3 Squadrons of 160 troops each, and it turns out that Ruth’s Great Uncle served in both Squadron C (starting as a Private, fighting in Gallipoli, then moving up to Senior Quarter Master before my grandfather arrived) and Squadron A (becoming a 2nd Lieutenant by April 1919). I am not sure if he would have known my grandfather as he was in Squadron B (ultimately a Lance Corporal). From what I saw on the trip we did, my grandfather would have spent most of his time with his “section” of 4 horsemen, and working/sleeping with his Squadron. Still I wonder, especially given they sailed home on the same ship in July 1919 – the H.T. “Malta” – that left Kantara Egypt on Jul 3, 1919 and arrived in Melbourne on Aug 7, 1919. It is interesting to note that while the war ended in the Middle East on Oct 31, 1918 (11 days before the armistice on the Western Front), the Australian Light Horse was kept on for 9 months after that in what is now regarded as the first ever Australian peace-keeping force.

Setting off on the 2017 Ride – Organisational Challenges with 100 Riders

I flew in to Israel on Oct 26th and was expecting to find everyone who had already been touring together for 1-2 weeks at Eshkol Park at noon on Oct 27th. On the previous tour, everyone always arrived before time. That was when I learned that the military was all about “hurry up and wait”! The fact that the buses with the “troops” did not arrive until 3 pm was the first warning that things were not as organized as the first trip with 50 riders. Happily, an advance group of 3 leaders was there to meet the horse owners and all the horses had been tied up along a long fence from noon.

For the 2017 ride there were approx. 100 riders with another 150 or so family members/non-riders, rather than 50 riders and 30 family/non-riders, as per 2007. Instead of the riders already knowing each other, they had been travelling on 3 different buses. This appeared to have resulted in a lot of fragmented communication and augmented the level of logistical difficulty by more than 3-fold. There also seemed to be a lot of Chiefs. In addition to the colour party of about 10 (carrying flags), there were leads of each troop in charge of something like 20 riders. It was soon apparent that the colour party were more important than the rest of us as they placed their camp on top of the hill in the shade and overlooking the horses and campground, and instructed the troop leads to organise their troops to set up their tents on the hot, sunny open area below.

I was allocated into troop 3, which only had 13 people. I then learned there had been a lot of people very sick during the lead up trip and that somehow the attrition had been greatest for troop 3. When it came to being allocated horses, our troop was mostly allocated to horses from the same farm/stud as troops 1 and 2, but 4 of us were seconded by another horse owner to be given horses from their farm/stud. We took these horses to do drills with troop 3 later in the afternoon, but it quickly became apparent that they would not behave with the horses they did not know, and we were moved to Troop 5 who had horses from the same farm. We still remained with troop 3 for all ground activities, eg briefings and setting up camp. It was nice to meet one group of people during the day, and another in the evening. It also gave us the chance to get a bit more information about what was planned than each single troop seemed to receive.

As the first afternoon wore on it became ever more apparent that our troop leaders were not really in charge and we were really under the management of the horse owners. Things became more disjointed as the different horse owners seemingly had different ideas about where we were going and when. One thing in common was that we had to use their gear, so we had Western Saddles, local bridles with coloured tags identifying the horse they belonged to, and all of us wore a colour coded paper bangle to indicate what horse owner our horse and gear belonged to. Sadly this meant we did not look as polished or authentic as we did 10 years before, where we had brought replica WW1 saddles and bridles and polished them all with great care.

Something that bothered my partner trying to photograph the ride over the next days was that the horse owners did not ride out away from us as they did in 2007, but were now intermixed with the riders. Our formations were quite messy due to this, as well as due to there being many people who had no horse or pony club or ALHA background. None of our troop leaders seemed to know at what time we were riding, or where we were going, or for how long, and my partner ended up figuring out that the “horse owner with the gun” was the one who seemed to be the most knowledgeable. Even then it was difficult, as he could not read the English names on our maps! Our troop leaders seemed to know even less than my partner. They told us that they were not in charge and had to await directions from the horse owners or simply follow them.

When the horses were being allocated, I volunteered to take a difficult horse (subsequently referred to as an alpha mare) and ended up with a beautiful bay that I later learned was an ex Olympic showjumper! She was gorgeous to ride for the first 1.5 days, but at the first parade with a band playing, she would not stand in line and I was given a replacement that reminded me of the famous “Bill the Bastard”!

Troop 5 was led by a good natured American with a very loud voice, and I believe with some “cavalry” experience. However, his lack of knowledge of how to manage troop formations as per the Light Horse (or pony club which uses much of the same structure and movements) and his use of vocabulary that was foreign to Australians, left us in disarray on many occasions…including during the set-up of the charge! Those of us who knew what he was trying to achieve would try to help, but we were a mix of people ranging from some who had only just learnt to ride horses (including some Aborigines from central Australia whose ancestors fought in WW1), to some who had been involved with the Light Horse for many years and participated in the 2007 and 2012 Beersheba Charge reenactments as well.

For me it was nice to discover that a few from the 2007 trip were in troop 5 – Rob Unicomb, Bazza, and Bruce. Bruce was originally in the colour party, but somehow ended up with a horse from the same horse owner as those of us originally from Troop 3. He thus became the flag bearer for Troop 5.

The 4 of us from Troop 3 started out in Troop 5 as a “section”, but with the mixed instructions from our troop leader, the lack of interest in discipline or drill skills amongst others in troop 5, and some people simply wanting to talk with a variety of others, there was a lot of mixing around on the first full day of the ride. Finally, when I got my substitute horse – which was a grey, it worked out best that I joined up with 3 other greys. This meant a more stable section for the latter half of the ride – where I was with the son of Barry Rodgers (I see Barry as our equivalent of General Allenby), a woman from Geraldton WA and Rob Unicomb. Ultimately in the Charge, Barry’s son and Rob Unicomb were in the middle row and we girls in the back row.

Our first night at Eshkol Park was somehow similar to that 10 years prior in that Barry Rogers and the ALHA had organised a Dead Sea Dance group to give us a wonderful performance. In addition, we were also treated to a West Australian band playing and singing songs about the Light Horse, and poetry by Geoffrey Graham that was very moving ( On top of that, a group of local artists unveiled a mosaic that they were recreating that faithfully replicates the original one found at Shellal by the Australian troops and which is now in the Australian War Memorial.

The Ride: October 28th to 30th, 2017

The ride still took the route of the Light Horse troops involved in and supporting the Beersheba Charge (shown above right). However, we were not able to ride for approx. 20 km per day as we did on the 2007 trip, due to ongoing development of the area.

On Oct 28th, we rode from Eshkol Park (near Shellal) to Esani, but could not continue to Asluj as in 2007 as that part of the wadi was now closed off. Hence, we were bussed (horses trucked) to Asluj, where I was disappointed to learn that the wonderful thermal springs pool complex that had been there 10 years before was closed! Happily, Barry Rodgers had organized for us to do camel rides instead, which were fun. After that we visited the remnants of a train line support structure that had been blown up south of Asluj by the grandfather/great grandfather of 3 women on the trip. They were wearing wombat fur hat bands which is where I learned that the 6th Light Horse Regiment was unique in wearing these, rather than sporting emu feathers in their slouch hats! As in 2007, we had a good dinner with the Bedouin tribe at Asluj (no belly dancer this time), and slept in their large Bedouin tent.

On Oct 29th, there was an unexpected salutation of a Guidon party during the middle of the day. Sadly I did not learn of the significance of this event, ie that a Guidon is a regimental flag that never normally leaves its country of origin without its troops, not to mention that it was highly unusual to have two together – here for the 4th and 12th regiments. Furthermore, they were carried by “top brass” from Australia who would be present at the Commonwealth Graves Memorial Ceremony on Oct 31. On top of this, I did not really “see” the Guidons or their carriers that day as protocol meant I had to look straight ahead as we rode past them, due to my position in our section of 4 riders. The other 3 faced the Guidon party. Now I know more about the Guidons, I will need to visit the war memorial to see them one day. We did a full 20 km ride on this day, but I was shocked to see on arrival that there was now a busy freeway running past the area where we had set up and christened the “wadi bar” 10 years before! During the dinner, a few of us decided to “guard” the camp site given the horse owners were guarding their horses. There was a Bedouin camp on the other side of the freeway and shortly after dark fell, a few Bedouins were spotted ‘sneaking around’ by the horse owners. The police arrived before dinner was over and everyone subsequently made sure any precious belongings were moved into their tents rather than leaving them hanging in the trees where they had been left before dinner! The evening finished with further wonderful poems being recited by Geoffrey Graham.

On Oct 30th, we had to be bussed to the start of our ride as the wadi we had previously ridden along had now become a creek of sewerage and effluent from a new town. Our route also changed. Interestingly we rode to and partly up the hill – Tel el Saba – overlooking the plain where the famous Charge took place. This gave us a real understanding of the difficulty and sacrifice of the Kiwis (New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade) that took that hill during the day of Oct 31, 1917. Overall we only covered approx. 10 km which meant it was an easy ride …..except for a moment when we were cantering up a small rise out of a creek bed and my bandolier got caught in the pommel of the Western saddle! My horse started pigrooting as I tried to get untangled, much to Bazza’s amusement behind, but happily I did not fall and disgrace (or hurt) myself! We finished up at Beit Eschel Park, but did not sleep there as we did 10 years before. The park is now transformed as a lovely recreation area: No need to spend the afternoon clearing up trash, metal and glass from the “hallowed” ground as in 2007! Instead we practiced the charge at a trot, which demonstrated we could not stay in line, and so practiced twice again at the walk. Then we retired to our hotels to polish our leather and prepare for a 3 am start.

100th Anniversary: October 31st, 2017

For the day of the anniversary of the Charge, Oct 31st, we started out on the horses at 5.30 am to ride approx. 3 km into Beersheba before peak hour traffic (which is significant considering the population is now over 200,000). We then tied the horses up in a park near the Commonwealth Graves Cemetery and waited. As for everything done with the military, it was the classic case of “hurry up and wait”.

When we walked to the cemetery at around 7.30 am, we discovered that a major security check was required for all the 1000 or so people coming to the 9 am service. Given anything with metal had to be removed, we ended up taking off hats, bandoliers, jackets, suspenders, belts, leather leggings and boots and one of our crew decided why not strip down to his underwear since he had to basically get the whole kit back on again on the other side! While we were redressing on the other side, we saw Bryan Brown pass by, so we were clearly in good company!

The reason for the security soon became apparent. The commemoration service was being led by the President of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, and the Governor General of New Zealand. The Guidon party was there too. No “Dad’s army” version of the Catafalque party drawn from the Light Horse troops this time, as in 2007! No fainting episodes either! This time there was a large stage with overhead cover, as well as covered stands built along one side of the cemetery for us and the “crowd” to sit on.

President Netanyahu spoke eloquently about how the Charge of Beersheba paved the way for the modern state of Israel. Prime Minister Turnbull acknowledged the importance of having troops on horseback and related stories about Bill the Bastard, as well as of the sadness of the troops that the horses could not return to Australia with them when the war was over. After several more speeches and the wreath laying, we went back to the horses, waited for some time, and then quickly set off for the start of the parade down the main street of Beersheba. Then we endured another long wait, with horses standing on a slippery asphalt road and us in 35 C heat in full uniform from about 12.30 until the parade started around 1.30.

There were at least 3000 locals of all ages lining the 1 km parade route, all waving Israeli, Australian and NZ flags and cheering. It seemed to us that no-one was at work or school in that area of Beersheba that afternoon. Then we rode back to the Beit Eshel Park with sharp shooters visible all along the outside of the area reserved for the Charge. A grandstand that could hold 1000 had been built at the end of an approx. 800 metre stretch of dirt over which we would “Charge”.

We had a break for lunch, then mounted at 3.30 pm. Finally we were set for the charge, waiting in 3 lines for 4.30 pm: The colour party of approx. 10 in front, then two rows of approx. 45 horses. It gave me a strange feeling when the lead of the whole operation came past to check our dressing and announced that it would be exactly 100 years to the time when we started the charge. The sun was setting behind us, so those in the stand would have realized the difficulties for the Turks to see what was happening back in 1917. We set off at the walk, the dust billowing (particularly uncomfortable for those of us in the 3rd row), and those watching must have seen quite a spectacle, especially as we came over a small rise midway through.

While it was disappointing to not do the Charge at the canter, like 10 years before when we had a smaller group of able horsemen (people), it was fantastic to experience the extremely drawn out slow motion version too.

After arriving at the grandstand, there were approx. 10 mins of speeches and awards. One went to a kiwi from troop 3. On our first night, this man had cut a length of unnecessary leather off my bandolier and helped me with my “pup” tent….so he was already a great man for me. We then moved off and lined up along the road that President Netanyahu and Prime Minister Turnbull were to be driven along on leaving. Sadly we did not see them because they kept their blackened car windows up, presumably for security reasons. Meanwhile the colour party did a real charge at the canter for those in the grandstand. This left a bad taste in the mouths of all those who could really ride and would have loved to do a “real charge”.

For me that division of hierarchy that resulted in some people having a “better” experience of the Charge than others felt very non-egalitarian and “un-Australian”. There was a group amongst us that were tempted to just break ranks and join the colour party as a second row, but we didn’t because we did not want to “spoil” the pageantry of the colour charge. I wonder what would have happened if we had. Why not be more like the Australians of 100 years before who did not especially behave in the orderly way the British commanders required? One part of the legend of the ANZACs is that they were irreverent in the face of authority, naturally egalitarian and disdainful of British class differences and I was experiencing some of those same feelings! Their other qualities have been documented elsewhere [1], such as their fitness, endurance, courage, ingenuity, good humour, larrikinism, laconic style, stoicism and mateship. Regarding the latter, when I rode back from the “Charge” with the Aboriginal woman who called me “sister”, I felt good again.

Despite the difficulties with co-ordination throughout, the whole ride was an important experience! I got to know the stories of the ancestors of many of the riders, as well as their current day stories.

After the Charge

After the Charge we went back to a hotel I had booked in the centre of Beersheba.

That evening we met a couple there who had followed the ANZAC trail for several days on bikes. This looks like something worth doing for a future trip.

They had just returned from a party put on by the Australian Government for those who participated in all the commemorations during the day. It was frustrating to learn that we could have gone to this event after the fact, but I was somehow happy that my last memory of the trip was the slow motion dusty Charge, setting off as the sun was setting exactly 100 years after the original event.

In our subsequent time in Jordan and Israel, several things happened which added additional context for me to the whole experience:

At a convenience store in Eilat, a young man at the cash register was very excited when he learned my grandfather had been part of the force that pushed back the Ottoman Empire in WW1 and he shook my hand thanking me for everything my ancestor had done

We saw how difficult it must have been to stay in the Jordan Valley for a summer, where the troops suffered severely from the heat, the dust and the mosquitos, and many contracted malaria.

We met someone from Amman who said his grandfather was a Palestinian who lived in Jerusalem when the British Army took it over. He now considered himself a Jordanian. He considered his grandfather a Palestinian. His grandfather called himself an Ottoman. It was strange to meet a descendant of someone who had been in Jerusalem when my Grandfather had come through.

His Jordanian friends discussed how difficult their history is, believing reconciliation amongst all the groups in the Middle East being impossible due to how everyone has been affected. They are upset that Israeli is changing the name of the occupied Palestinian territories on the West Bank (of the Jordan River) to Judea and Sumaria, to remove any association with Jordan.

We met a German who showed us that on the German map that the area we call the “West Bank” is still depicted as “West Jordanland”. It was Jordan before the 1967 war.

These discussions and others made me realise that Jordan is the home of many displaced Palestinians

We visited Jesus’s baptismal site at a different part of the Jordan River to that where we had been in 2007 (!), making me realise it’s not exactly clear where Jesus was baptized.

We went to Es Salt, a city of beautiful Ottoman architecture, and walked up to the Turkish Memorial at 6.30 am, expecting to visit it on our own. We were nicely surprised to be welcomed by the person managing the cemetery and it turned out he had also helped organize the visit there by the whole pre-tour group 3 weeks before. He relayed that before their visit, there had not been any previous official visits to the Turkish memorial by Australians!

The Es Salt Turkish Memorial has a small yet beautiful museum showing their side of the story, including a short film. Through that we learned how difficult it had been for the Turks to defend Es Salt, especially to convince the Germans that they needed more forces to hold the city.

In our East Jerusalem hotel at the end of the trip, I read a book which was a compilation of diaries of Palestinian children aged 8-14 who were living in the occupied territories during the second Intifida, mostly from Bethlehem and Ramallah. They felt it unfair that they did not have the right to go to school during the random curfews, or travel freely to see family and friends, and questioned why they were treated as second class citizens. Their teachers had proposed the diaries because writing things down can help children understand their issues, plus avoid severe depression through facilitating self-reflection as well as group discussion on how others are dealing with similar issues. Again I felt very fortunate to have grown up in an environment free of war and oppression.

I learned from a youtube video by a Palestinian woman living in the US, that the word “Intifida” really refers to the feeling you have when you are being constantly bothered, eg by a mosquito buzzing around you at night while you are trying to sleep and preventing you from sleeping in peace. The Palestinian Intifidas occur when the Israeli’s keep bothering the Palestinians so much that they cannot live in peace and feel they have to respond.

The wall that we had seen being built in Jerusalem 10 years ago, to prevent people in the occupied territories bringing bombs into Israel, is now visible for much of the drive from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. It does not exactly follow the 1949 Jordanian – Israeli Armistice line. Notably East Jerusalem is now west of it, perhaps reflecting its capture by Israel in the 1967 war.

The Palestinians in Gaza routinely send rockets into Israel, but their direction control is poor. In contrast, Israeli tracking systems are very good. The Israeli’s don’t intercept if the Palestinian rockets are not going to hit a populated place, as the cost of an interception, which is highly accurate, is 50,000 USD.

According to one Israeli, the Palestinians recently fired 800 rockets at Israel before Israel retaliated with one rocket, but the newspapers in the West only reported on the Israeli “attack” and not the continuous Palestinian bombardment that had eventually elicited their response.

Final Reflections

I am grateful to Barry Rodgers for his highly appreciated leadership in organizing these tours for both riders and non-riders. Not only has he been the inspiration behind them, he worked untiringly in providing additional relevance to them by employing historians to travel with us, varying the pre-ride tours so as to visit many different places our ancestors went, driving funding support and partnerships with the Jewish National Fund to rehabilitate key places of historical significance, and orchestrating the co-ordination of these amazing re-enactment activities through the ALHA, diplomats in multiple embassies and through convincing several horse farm/stud owners to work with us. On tour he was there for everyone and cared about everyone. Personally I appreciated how, during the 2007 trip, he would organize for times of reflection that brought out incredible stories from different people that would never otherwise have been shared across the whole group. For the 2017 trip I was happy to see so many of his own family travelling with him and glad that he seemed to have handed over a good deal of the management to others so he could spend time with his family during the ride. He probably has many legacies, but organizing these Beersheba trips in 2007, 2012 and 2017 led to many people better understanding their history and ways of being, as well as better appreciating the hardship and sacrifice of the young men whose lives were robbed or changed forever, on both sides of the battle.

I now ponder less about what my grandfather experienced. Much of it one should never even try to imagine. I gather that he chose to work on an outback station (the Overflow station made famous by a Banjo Patterson poem) for some time after the war to help himself get past what he experienced. Personally I believe the world would be a far better place if we could resolve to not fight about resources on this planet and work together to protect them. Still, while money, power, and religious righteousness make humankind unable to focus on fairness, justice, inclusion and solutions, I fear we are doomed to continue with wars and unfairness, and potentially even destroy the earth as we know it.

I especially admire my grandfather for the work he did to help with the repatriation of many soldiers over the years following the war, as well as for his contributions to building Australia through politics. See: https://chauvelfoundation.org/home/anthology/contents/lighthorsemen-supporters/rupert-curnow/. My father carried a similar commitment to the communities he has lived in and won an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for services to the community. These are big legacies to follow.

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Footnote

[1] For a contemporary account, see Gullet’s (1923). The Official History of the War of 1914-1918 (Volume VII, Sinai and Palestine), pp. 29-36. More recently, other, newer sources like Wikipedia have included accounts of the characteristics of the Light Horsemen in their body of work.