Beersheba: we must keep an eye on how the story is told and interpreted
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Version 0 of 1. It’s 99 years today since soldiers of the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade took part in what is generally regarded as the last “great” successful cavalry charge. So in a year we can expect the Australian – and Israeli – governments to go overboard on commemorating an event that has never received the considered national attention it warrants. The story of what happened at Beersheba in Palestine (today’s rather inhospitable Israeli city of Be’er Sheva) has long been eclipsed by the intensive commemoration, since the 1980s, of other Australian military events – most notably the failed invasion at Gallipoli in 1915 and dramatic, later, Australian casualties on the European western front. But the federal government is now cashed up (with some $600m at last count) to spend on commemoration until the end of 2018. And, so, Beersheba will get its moment. It will pay to listen closely and to be wary about what you might hear from the Australian and Israeli governments. Israel? It didn’t exist, of course, at the time of the charge, which took place in what was then Ottoman Palestine. But Israel has gone to some lengths to claim what happened as something of a formative step in its establishment. After more than a year of desert deadlock, the 800 Australians of the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade (including at least three Indigenous men) broke the Turkish hold on Beersheba at dusk on 31 October 1917 by charging the Turkish trenches on horseback. They were actually mounted infantry, accustomed to dismounting and attacking on foot. But on that evening they stayed on the horses and, with bayonets drawn, rode into the sun, guided by the glowing minaret of the local mosque, to attack the Turks who, expecting them to dismount, fired over their heads. Hundreds of Turks died in what was some of nastiest, most visceral, hand-to-hand fighting of the first world war. Just 31 Australians were killed in the charge. The all important Beersheba-Gaza line broke, opening the way for the capture of Jerusalem and the later British sweep through the Jordan valley, the Golan heights and beyond in a series of mounted battles that led to what became known as “the Great Ride” across the plains of Nazareth and beyond to Damascus, Beirut and Tripoli. Places that are in the Bible – Nazareth, Gaza, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jericho and Armageddon – staged the battles that led to final Turkish defeat at Damascus (the Australians entered the city before TE Lawrence “of Arabia”; another story) in late 1918. I’ve spent too long in and around Beersheba. It’s not a particularly friendly place. The rockets buzz in from Gaza occasionally and much of the archaeology of the first world war has been replaced with urban concrete. But if you know where to look you’ll find dozens of intact Turkish trenches, replete with human bones and tons of shrapnel – especially on the edge of the city where the British infantry did the most intense fighting on the morning of the 31st, paving the way for the coup de grace that was the charge. The signature landmarks – the old station, decrepit and crumbling, the mosque and the railway bridge – that featured in the charge, are all still there if you know where to find them. It’s possible, with the right guide, good maps and plenty of persistence, to get a strong sense of what happened in Beersheba 99 years ago. When you stand atop a mound due south of Beersheba and look through the mire of dust and pollution, you’ll see the 6km expanse over which Brigadier General William Grant’s horsemen charged. It is where Harry Chauvel, the Australian cavalryman and commander of the Desert Mounted Corps (the biggest mounted column since Alexander the Great to traverse the Middle East) is said to have supposedly made a split-second “neck-or-nothing” decision to “put Grant straight at it” instead of deploying the traditional British yeomanry, more readily equipped, with their sabres, for a traditional charge. This moment, as with so much else about the charge, seems steeped in myth. A few years ago, after the publication of my book Beersheba (which looks at the appropriation of the Beersheba story by Zionists and Christians, and some of the less noble acts committed by the light horsemen in Palestine) a relative of Grant’s contacted me. Facts: so often the enemy of a damn fine war story He made it plain that the rather imperious Chauvel had made no such impulsive decision to launch the 4th at the town – that, in fact, the decision had been made by mid-afternoon and the events on what became known as “Chauvel’s Hill” might have been something of a pantomime for the benefit of the British high command. Grant’s relative produced an article, penned by his antecedent, for the January 1936 edition of the Cavalry Journal (not really a mainstream publication and, so, overlooked by many historians). Grant recalled how he’d been watching the battle from a rise when Major General Henry Hodgson, his immediate superior, summoned him to Chauvel’s Hill. Hodgson, according to Grant, said: “It is your turn to go in Grant. Come and see the Corps Commander.” But Henry Gullett, official historian of Australians in the Palestine campaign, described a “tense” meeting between Chauvel, Grant and the yeomanry commander, Brigadier General Percy FitzGerald, in which Grant “pleaded for the honour” of the galloping attack. If so, this was a charade; the fix was already in, the deal done hours before Chauvel’s dramatic, legendary, “put Grant straight at it” moment. Facts: so often the enemy of a damn fine war story. So next year keep an eye on how the story of the charge of Beersheba is told and interpreted. During the weeks and months I spent walking the Beersheba charge site and travelling from Gaza to Jordan, Damascus and Lebanon, tracing the mounted Australian battles, I realised how readily certain groups – not least Zionists, Christian Zionists and evangelicals, were appropriating the stories of the Australian Light Horse. I negotiated my share of eccentrics, including those dressed as light horsemen who insisted that the Australians were consciously doing God’s work in wresting Palestine from the infidel Turks so that a Jewish homeland might re-establish itself there. That the charge coincided with the British war cabinet’s formulation of the Balfour declaration – in support of a Jewish state in Palestine – is grist to the (Christian/Zionist) mythology. The path from Beersheba to Damascus is replete with Australian military connections. While some of the light horsemen did refer to the biblical names they passed through as they fought, few saw themselves as being guided by the hand of God, let alone working towards the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland. A small prelude to what we might expect next year came in 2013 with the joint release by Australia Post and Israel Post of stamps commemorating Beersheba. “The capture of Beersheba allowed British empire forces to break the Ottoman line near Gaza and then advance into Palestine, a chain of events which eventually culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948,” Australia Post said at the time. The then communications minister, Stephen Conroy, said: “It’s a wonderful tribute to the 4th Light Horse Brigade and recognises a chain of events that eventually culminated in the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.” Some historians of the Middle East and Palestinian groups were, rightly, angry at the conflation. Beersheba, you can be certain, will be evoked next year as testimony to the “special” Israel/Australia relationship – just as Gallipoli (and the mythical words of Ataturk about the “Johnnies and Mehmets”) has been to the Australia/Turkey bond. Well, they ain’t seen nothing yet, I fear. There are stories within myths within legends about Beersheba, not least about sourcing water before and after the town fell, the deceptions leading up to the battle and, indeed, the veracity of the famous charge photograph (a subject that has captivated golf club bores, military historians and the armchair generals of the world wide web for decades). I’ll be writing a lot more here about Australians in the Middle East during world war one – including Beersheba – over the coming year. The good, the bad and the downright ugly. |