Photo By Sgt. Maj. Rich Greene | Australian Lt. Col. Peter Curran, from Sydney, speaks to American personnel at a...... read more read more
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Sgt. 1st Class Paul C. Tuttle
CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait – It's not unusual for Soldiers to tell war stories, no matter where they are from, but when Soldier talk centers on a cavalry charge in a war where trenches, machine guns and barbed wire made the conventional use of mounted troops obsolete, the talk becomes unusual.
The unusual came about at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, Oct. 31, when Australian Lt. Col. Peter Curran and U.S. Army Lt. Col. Randolph Duke hosted a lecture/dinner for more than two dozen U.S. Soldiers on the 90th anniversary of the Battle for Beersheba during World War I.
"Here at ARCENT (U.S. Army Central), there are a number of officers who knew about the Battle of Beersheba," Curran said. "I was surprised at the level of knowledge of the battle among the staff."
Curran said he felt it would be remiss not to commemorate the 90th anniversary of a battle that was fought in the same region in which he now served, and noted the ties between Australian and U.S. forces.
"America and Australia have been coalition partners in many conflicts over many, many years," the Sidney native said. "A joint activity would be indicative of the close-level cooperation we've had."
Duke agreed. "Lt. Col. Curran contacted me a couple of weeks before and said, 'We have the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Beersheba coming up.' I said, 'that was the charge of the Light Horsemen.'"
Duke said that Curran was surprised he knew of the battle, and they began planning an officer professional development lecture/dinner for Oct. 31 based upon the 1917 battle.
"The event took the form of a screening of the 1985 film called 'The Light Horsemen,' which was based on the actual charge in 1917," Curran said. "Instead of just showing the film itself, Randy Duke gave a very good description of the strategic, operational and technical background of the battle. Then we showed an edited version of the film."
Curran said he managed to find Australian meat pies in Kuwait City to give an Australian flavor to the night, washed down with near beer (alcohol is not allowed in ARCENT's area of operations).
U.S. Army Col. Kenneth McMillin felt it was an evening well spent. He was impressed with the Australian tactics.
"This was a victory," he said. "It proved that speed and audacity tends to prevail."
Those two elements of attack were the decisive factors for the British and Australians.
The Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade and 12th Light Horse Regiment, commanded by Australian Brig. William Grant, carried out a last-minute charge against entrenched Turkish infantry and artillery defending the town of Beersheba at dusk.
The British had staged two earlier, unsuccessful attacks over a period of seven months against the fortified city of Gaza which anchored the western edge of the Turkish line of defense that stretched 30 miles inland to the east, to Beersheba.
British forces had been realigned because of the failure to secure Gaza, and the new commander, Gen. Edmund Allenby, found his contingent augmented by the newly formed Desert Mounted Corps, commanded by Gen. Henry Chauvel, the first Australian general to command an army corps.
Turkish forces depended upon the lack of water in the Gaza-Beersheba line to limit British maneuvers. But former British commander, Gen. Philip Chetwode, thought the shortage of water would be easier to overcome rather than the fortifications at Gaza, and planned an attack on Beersheba. Allenby agreed and decided to implement that plan when he took command from Chetwode.
Beersheba had a reliable source of water in several wells, but the British had to take them quickly before they were destroyed by the Turks.
Although subterfuge and an infantry attack played a part in the plan to take Beersheba, it was the audacious charge of the 4th and 12th late in the day that decided the fate of the wells.
The attack began shortly after sunrise, with British artillery shelling the trenches and firing counter-battery against Austrian batteries of guns defending the Turks.
Infantry captured some Turkish out-posts, and the main body – four infantry brigades – began their advance shortly after noon. The plan was to have them meet the mounted troops for the final assault with a dismounted attack, but time ran out.
The alternative was to use regular cavalry, the British 5th Mounted Brigade, or the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade, commanded by Grant. Chauvel chose the 4th because they were closer.
Regular cavalry used sabers and usually drove into the attack. Light Horse traditionally rode to contact, then dismounted and fought as infantry.
The latter tactic was what the Turks had seen before and had expected when they saw the massed mounted troops. They shelled the charging 4th, but their artillery was ineffective against the widely spaced troops and the horses soon outran it.
The Turks waited for them to dismount so that they could use their machine guns against the men on foot, but that was not the case this time. They did not account for the speed of the horses and didn't readjust the sights on their rifles in time to be effective, most likely shooting over the advancing troops.
The Aussies unsheathed their 18 inch bayonets – they didn't have cavalry sabers – and pushed straight into the Turkish defenses, leaping the trenches or flanking them where there was no barbed wire, and attacked them from behind. The demoralized Turks panicked and retreated through the town and attempted to blow up the wells.
At the end of the day, only two of 17 wells were destroyed, but over 700 Turks were taken capture. The Australians suffered 31 killed and 36 wounded in the fray, remarkably light losses considering the nature of the battle, according to Duke.
Australian Maj. Gen. Mark Kelly, the current commander of land forces in Australia, marks the beginning of Australia's modern military history from their experiences in The Great War, and cites this battle as a decisive one.
Because they captured the wells, he said, the British and Australian forces were able to push through what is now Israel to capture Jerusalem and ultimately Damascus in Syria to break the back of Axis resistance in the Middle East. Exactly one year after the battle, Turkey sued for peace.
"These guys were mounted infantry," said Kelly. "They rode horses, but dismounted to fight. But they effectively, in military history terms, mounted the last great cavalry charge."
Kelly, present at Beersheba in Israel during the 90th anniversary of the battle, pointed out that World War I produced changes in the way war is now fought. "The few cavalry charges that occurred early in the European war on the western front resulted in such carnage ... hence the evolution of the tank," he said.
Kelly, who shares his birthday with the day of the battle, noted the presence of several dignitaries there.
"The Australian ambassador to Israel, the New Zealand ambassador to Israel, the British ambassador to Israel, indeed, the Turkish ambassador to Israel were all there as friends with the Israeli officials, the mayor of Beersheba and other community leaders," he said.
Kelly said, today, the people of Beersheba hold the battle in high esteem. "They saw that as a great day in the history of Israel," he said. "It was the first setback to the occupation of over 400 years by the Ottoman Empire. It was seen as the door opening to what became Palestine, the Balfour Declaration and subsequently the State of Israel."
While Kelly was in Beersheba, Curran and Duke kicked off the commemoration at Camp Arifjan. "We started just about the time it occurred 90 years before, at the time of the attack," Duke said. "This was just neat to be in the same region of the world, at the same time as a 90 year-old battle that was so special and to share it with the Australians ... That's a nice thing."
| Date Taken: | 11.08.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 11.13.2007 09:37 |
| Story ID: | 13867 |
| Location: | CAMP ARIFJAN, KW |
| Web Views: | 235 |
| Downloads: | 97 |
This work, Aussies and Americans remember Beersheba, by MSG Paul Tuttle, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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