The WWI Charge of a Light Brigade

The last light brigade charge in World War I  happened on October 31, 1917.

Undertaken by the 4th and 12th Australian Light Horse brigades the soldiers performed an astonishing feat at the Battle of Beersheba.

The results eventually led to the end of the war in the Middle East.

Desert Mounted Corps

The Australian Light Horse and New Zealand Mounted Rifles spent nearly two years out in the Sinai Desert.

Renamed the Desert Mounted Corps, they trained their horses and men to endure long periods of time without water.

Hard-riding, hard-living men lived with few comforts in the boiling sun.

Often, the only shade was found under their standing horses.

They were often augmented by various versions of the Imperial Camel Corps, usually supplying much-needed water.

What’s a light brigade?

Infantrymen with rifles form a group of four. They ride toward a battle line, dismount and begin firing their rifles.

Only three men shoot and fight. The fourth soldier grabs the horse reins and takes them to a safe place until after the battle. They carry only rifles and an 18-inch bayonet.

(See the movie The Lighthorseman for a fairly accurate account of their lives and the Battle of Beersheba).

The horsemen do not charge on their horses. They alight from their mounts, about 800 yards out from battle lines, and fight from the ground like infantrymen.

Early in the war, the EEF stationed many Desert Mounted Troops at Heliopolis and Zeitoun, Egypt, north of Cairo.

Some, including Australian Peter Kay, visited the YMCA camp at Zeitoun, where Oswald Chambers worked.

Difficulties in the Desert Campaign

Water is always an issue in the desert.

The Sinai and southern Judean desert consisted of empty stretches of sand (think the movie Lawrence of Arabia), inhabited by nomads and Bedouins.

Oases and deep wells were the only sources of water.

The Via Maris, the road leading from Egypt along the Palestinian coast up to Asia Minor, was not a well-constructed road, and no railroad existed.

Starting in 1915, the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces (EEF) spent two years constructing both railheads to move stores and a lengthy water pipe.

In early 1917, they went into battle in an attempt to take Gaza, a German stronghold.

They failed twice, and the British War Department replaced General Archibald Murray with General Edwin Allenby, who was fresh from France.

At Gaza and Beersheba

By the fall of 1917, Allenby put new plans into effect that involved fooling the Germans and Turks.

His officers prepared plans to sweep through the desert and attack the town of Gaza from the east.

It meant harrowing conditions for the soldiers, but the element of surprise necessary to take an entrenched town near the ocean.

The new plans centered on the sleepy town of Beersheba–where wells ran deep.

Heroics and determination made the difference for the EEF’s Desert Mounted Corps and some 50,000 allied troops.

Allenby ordered the navy to bombard Gaza to distract the Ottoman and Turkish high commands in late October.

EEF air squadrons assumed control of the skies to limit enemy intelligence.

Meanwhile, traveling only at night against a full moon, the massive EEF forces set out toward Beersheba.

According to Cameliers in Palestine:

“Transport columns established dumps of all kinds in advanced positions, and the whole country, after dark, appeared like a gigantic ant colony on the move. The transport column of Desert Mounted Corps alone, on the night of October 28, was fully six miles long.”

The two mounted divisions of the Desert Mounted Corps had to ride nearly 35 miles one night to reach their appointed spot.

On October 31, the EEF attacked Beersheba.

The battle raged all day against superior, well-dug-in Turkish forces. German officers assisted the local commandants. Despite the best efforts, as the day drew long, the EEF had not overpowered the Turks.

The high command knew the Germans would blow up the wells if the EEF took the town.

Enter the horses

By late afternoon, the Desert Mounted Corps, held in reserve, had gone 48 hours without watering their mounts.

Their commander, Colonel Harry Chauvel, knew the horses would die if the EEF did not take Beersheba and get water.

With only an hour left until sundown, he suggested an audacious attack.

He’d send the 4th and 12th Australian Light Brigade on a two-mile charge over open fields to Beersheba.

The Turks had machine guns at the ready.

But Chauvel ordered the men not to stop and dismount.

They rode with their rifles on their backs, their 18-inch bayonets in hand.

His orders? Charge the line.

Obeying silent hand signals, the men rode off into the Turkish guns.

Charging. Or not?

Perhaps the horses smelled the water, but they raced across an open field for two miles toward the Turkish machine guns.

The Turkish commander held his men in check, waiting for the horsemen to dismount, and then poured the bullets into them.

He told them to adjust the range on the machine guns to 800 yards–which is where light brigades dismounted.

Except, when the horses reached 800 yards, they did not stop.

They kept coming.

And the bullets passed over their heads.

According to history.net:

“Unnerved at the screaming apparitions galloping out of the red dust and coming dark, many of the Turkish riflemen had failed to adjust their sights and fired high, unwittingly saving countless Australian lives.

“In his after-action report Brig. Gen. William Grant, commanding the 4th Light Horse, wrote, “The rapidity of the attack seemed to demoralize the Turks, as they mostly fired high, and it was afterward found that the sights of their rifles were never lowered below 800 meters.”

At Beersheba

The first line of charging horses jumped the trenches and went into the town proper.

The objective? To capture the wells.

The second line jumped the trenches over the machine guns and soldiers, and the infantrymen dismounted and began using their bayonets.

The Desert Mounted Brigade won the battle and took the town in less than an hour.

It was the final successful charge of a cavalry brigade in history.

Once the town was secured, the horses were the first to get a drink of water.

2024 Update: My husband spoke to a New Zealander whose ancestor participated in the charge. The family history reported members of “The 800,” saw angels and visions of God on the Beersheba battlefield.

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