Brave Bess and the ANZAC Horses
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They found their troopers high on the top of the ridge, gazing down at the destruction before them. ‘All of this for a mound of sand,’ Bess’s master said sadly. But they’d won their first major battle and successfully protected the Suez Canal from attack.
The Turkish forces slowly retreated from the desert after Romani, stopping to fight fierce rearguard actions against the Anzacs along the way. Many nightmare days and nights followed for Bess and the Anzacs as the weary horses and men chased the Turks across the sands. They fought bitter battles in palm-fringed oases, near brackish wells, and alongside dried-up wadi beds. Bess got used to the pounding and smashing of guns and the whizz and ping of bullets past her ears.
On a stinking-hot day near an ancient watering well called Bir el Abd, Bess saw the artillery horses in action close-up for the first time. As the Anzac troopers advanced on foot along an exposed ridge, Turkish machine-gun fire and cannon shelling pinned them down. The troopers had to retreat to save themselves, but they couldn’t withdraw safely without becoming easy targets for the Turkish gunners.
Bess watched from the horse lines as the big artillery horses lumbered forward and were harnessed up to the eighteen-pounder guns. Teams of eight heavy draught horses pulled masses of steel weighing over a ton and a half. The wheels of the gun carriages were fitted with wide wooden blocks to help the horses haul them through the sands. But Bess could still hear the big horses groaning terribly as they strained to drag the massive guns forward. The machine-gunners and their horses carrying the machine guns and ammunition galloped ahead to set up their guns.
Together the heavy artillery and machine-gun fire provided cover for the retreating troopers as they slowly inched back across the deadly open ground. The horse-holders then grabbed Bess, Jack, Flame and the other mounts. They raced up to meet the troopers and carry them to safety.
During these bitter battles in the desert, Bess and the Anzacs fought alongside the Imperial Camel Corps. The corps included troopers from New Zealand and Australia. The men were called cameliers. They rode the camels to the battlefields and then dismounted to fight on foot as did the horsemen. Their camels weren’t like Stinker and the other heavy draught camels which carried the ammunition and supplies. They were sleeker, finer and faster. But they had the same bad tempers.
Once Bess saw a big bull camel break free from the camel line and chase his handler right across camp, scattering bivvies and men in his raging path. The brute lurched forward with his long neck outstretched, monstrous yellow teeth bared and tongue lolling. He grabbed the handler by his shirt and lifted him clear off the ground. The other troopers had to lash ropes around his knobbly legs and haul him to the sand before he’d let go.
The cameliers mounted the lofty camels as they knelt on the ground. On the order ‘Get ready to mount’, the rider pulled the camel’s head around until it faced to the back, placed his left foot on the bend of the camel’s neck, grabbed the big wooden saddle horn and swung into the saddle. He sat cross-legged in the saddle with his feet resting on the camel’s shoulders. He then released the halter rope and the camel rose awkwardly to its feet, throwing the rider forward in the saddle. As the camel stood up, it grunted like a weightlifter lifting heavy weights. When a whole battalion of camels got ready to move out, they filled the desert air with their roaring complaints.
Despite their grumpiness, out in the desert the camels were king. They could go without water for up to ten days and exist on the roughest and smallest amount of food. Their padded feet spread out as they walked, stopping them from sinking in the soft sand. Their shaggy coats protected them from the fierce sun, and their long legs kept them further from the hot ground. Even their long eyelashes shielded their eyes from the sun and sand. They became the cameliers’ best mates, bad-tempered or not.
Many of the desert battles were won with the help of the camels. At Magdhaba, where an attack was nearly called off because the horses were desperate for water, Bess and her master watched as a camel brigade rolled down from the hills. They lurched across the plain in a cloud of dust and delivered their cameliers into the fray. Shortly afterwards, the camel transports rode up with the much-needed fanatis of water for the thirsty horses and men.
A few days after the successful capture of Magdhaba, the Anzacs celebrated Christmas Day 1916. For the exhausted men and their horses, though, there was little festivity. It had been less than four months since their defeat of the Turks at Romani, but to the troopers and their horses it felt more like four years. The Turks were stubborn and determined fighters, and, even though the Anzacs now had them on the back foot, the Turks still took them on at every chance.
The desert sands revealed to the troopers just how determined the Turks had been to get their heavy gun carriages across the desert. In many places, they’d made temporary roads by digging tracks where the wheels were to run, and filling them in with brush to stop the wheels sinking in the soft sand. In other places, they’d laid down strong wooden planks carried up on camel back. As the guns passed over the planks, the men kept picking them up and laying them ahead of the wheels again. It must have been tedious and backbreaking work.
Bess and the Anzacs had only a short rest over Christmas. Bess spent most of that time snoozing on the horse lines next to her weary mates, Jack and Flame. The highlight was the carrots their masters smuggled to them from their Christmas rations. Hawker, the little red-and-white dog, pestered the troopers for scraps of their dried turkey. Even Stinker’s handler gave him a slice of stale plum pudding, although the ungrateful Stinker nearly took the handler’s hand off as well. Soon they were on the move again. The Turkish forces had retreated to regroup at their fortifications near Rafah, on the border between Egypt and Palestine. The Anzacs chased them.
At dusk on a dark, moonless evening, the Anzac Mounteds set off on a night march for the fort town of Rafah. Over the swelling sandhills, the long lines of horses marched. The desert was silent and still as the ghostly army passed by. The only sounds were the snorts of the horses blowing dust from their nostrils, and the clink of their stirrup irons and bits. Behind them, snaking into the darkness, padded the creeping columns of camels. The convoy trekked for miles through the night, the tiredness gnawing at their bones. Bess’s master fell asleep as he rode, clutching onto her mane and swaying in the saddle. Bess plodded on, her head bowed.
At dawn, the Anzacs passed by the ancient stone pillars of Rafah which marked the border between Sinai and Palestine. They’d entered the holy lands of the Bible, and the cradle of three great religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. As the sun rose in a cloudless sky, they could clearly see the enemy position.
The Turks had garrisoned themselves on the top of a large hill rising high above the plain. Along the hillside they’d dug out mounds of earth and lines of trenches to protect their well-placed machine-gunners. The gunners had a clear view right across the treeless plain. The horse and camel brigades separated and encircled the hill. The troopers waited anxiously on their tired mounts. The order to attack rang out across the plain.
Almost as one, Bess and the horses plunged into a headlong gallop towards the hill. Bess’s master no longer needed to spur her on. She felt the now-familiar grasp of his thighs and the pulsing of his blood and she hurtled forward. The horses had to get as close as possible before shelling and machine-gun fire forced the troopers to dismount and continue their attack on foot.
Bess galloped alongside Jack at breakneck speed. Suddenly a deep trench opened up in front of them. Bess leapt it in one massive stride, her master clinging on. Jack and his master did the same as a horrible screech split the air. A Turkish gunner lunged from the trench, stabbing Jack’s master in the leg. He yanked him off Jack’s back and snatched at the reins, slashing at him with his bayonet. Jack whinnied fiercely and tugged free from the Turk. He reared and crashed his huge hooves down on the ground right beside the Turk’s head. The Turkish gunner scrambled to safety just as Bess’s master spun her back to the trench.
‘Take Bess and ride back to safety. I’m going on,’ Bess’s master yelled. He leapt off Bess and rushed forward with the other men, his pistol cocked and glinting. Ahead of him, enemy machine-gunners lay waiting in their trenches, fingers on their triggers. Covered by the fire of his comrades, Bess’s master scrambled across the ground, shooting all the time. All around him, other desperate men were doing the same. They yelled crazily as they ran and fired, their steel bayonets fixed and gleaming. Charge by charge, dash by dash, they pushed on towards the hill.
Jack’s master cantered back, leading Bess, his injured leg hanging uselessly against Jack’s shuddering sides. Riderless horses galloped past them, blood streaming from their wounds. Bess’s nostrils stung with the stench of burning metal and fresh blood.
It wasn’t until they reached the safety of the horse lines that Jack’s master noticed the horrible gash in Jack’s side. A shell fragment had hit him as he’d waited steadily for his master to mount. His master called a veterinary officer before he’d allow the medics to look at his own leg. The vet treated Jack and led him limping away to the sick lines. Little Hawker trotted dejectedly after them.
The desperate fighting went on all day while Bess and the other horses stood on the lines, ears twitching to the burst of shells, waiting to gallop back for their riders.
Late that evening Bess’s master returned, covered in sweat and grime. He stroked her velvet muzzle, filled her trough with stale water, and set down her measly ration of tibbin. She was so tired she couldn’t eat. He rolled her food up into balls and fed her by hand.
The rest of the troopers straggled in, tired and drawn. Flame’s young rider found her in the lineup and rushed over to Bess’s master. ‘The order to withdraw had been given when we made that final bayonet charge and took the fort,’ he said, his face streaked with dried blood and dust. ‘Our boys saved the day.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Battle of Beersheba
In early 1917, the Anzac Mounteds finally left the sands of Sinai far behind them and entered the plains of Palestine. More British and Allied troops joined them to form a mighty army to force the Turks out of Palestine.
At first, they faced bitter fighting and heavy losses against the well-positioned Turks on the Gaza–Beersheba line. But then success came at the Battle of Beersheba in October. Here, the Australian Light Horse made a daring full -frontal charge on horseback. It is often called the last successful cavalry charge in history.
After the battle at Rafah, the troopers and their horses had a well-earned rest camping near the Mediterranean Sea. Bess, Jack and Flame’s masters rode them down to the beach each day to bathe in the cool, turquoise water. Bess splashed in the waves and rolled her aching body in the damp, sweet sand. Jack and his master bathed their wounds in the salt water until Jack could once again bear the weight of his saddle and his master could ride.
Sometimes the cameliers rode their knobbly-kneed mounts down to the beach to swim. The camels had never seen so much water, and they were reluctant to go in at first. When they finally did, they seemed to enjoy soaking in the sea. It was a strange sight seeing them in the deep water right up to their humps.
‘They look like a herd of Loch Ness Monsters,’ Jack’s master said, shaking his head in wonder. Stinker waded out so far that his handler had to swim out and drag him, protesting loudly, back to shore.
Before long the brigade was off again, marching, marching, marching.
The horses nickered excitedly the first day they stepped onto firm ground after many months of sinking in soft sand. They broke their well-ordered lines and jerked their muzzles to the ground to eat. ‘Grass!’ the troopers cried joyfully.
In the next valley, a carpet of green rolled out to the horizon, and wild flowers in splashes of scarlet and blue bobbed in the breeze. They passed mud-brick houses with grapevines clambering up the sod walls and flocks of sheep grazing behind walled courtyards. In the fields, Arab farmers in white robes ploughed fields of barley with wooden ploughs pulled by oxen.
On the plains of Palestine, the Anzac and Allied forces gradually grew into a great army. The Allied leaders planned to break the Turks and their German allies once and for all. The Turkish defences stretched across Palestine from the coast at Gaza to the town of Beersheba fifty kilometres inland. Tiers of Turkish trenches protected the hills and valleys in between. It was the Allies’ goal to smash this defensive line, starting with Gaza, one of the oldest fortress cities in the world.
On a foggy, grey morning, the Anzacs and the Allies began their assault on Gaza. Bess and her brigade slipped through thick fog to their vantage point high on a hill. As the fog rolled away, they looked down into the town, its slender, white minarets peeking through the trees. Gaza lay among orchards bordered on all sides by tall cactus hedges. They could see their soldiers advancing among the trees and waited impatiently for the order to support the attack. Finally, the order sounded and the horses and camels swept down from the hills.
Bess’s brigade galloped in among the trees and straight towards a massive cactus hedge wall over three metres high. Bess’s master reined her in before the cactus wall and jumped off. Jack’s master did the same, raising his bayonet ready to slash through the wall’s thick cactus spines. Without warning, machine-gun fire spurted at them through holes in the prickly hedge.
‘Back on your horses, quick!’ Bess’s master shouted. They vaulted into the saddles and the horses bounded away, their riders gripping on. Bess leapt down the nearest bank to escape the flying bullets. She stumbled and fell down the hill, tossing her master clear.
Bess floundered for a foothold at the bottom of the hill, scrabbling wildly, the bullets hissing over her head. Her master rushed to her side, grabbed her reins and pinned her head to the ground. ‘Steady, girl,’ he whispered in her ear, the bullets screaming overhead. She calmed at the sound of his voice and stopped her struggling. Her master waited for a break in the firing and swung into the saddle as she lay. “Now, my beauty, now!’ he urged. She scrambled to her feet, pulling him up with her. They galloped off to safety through a hail of bullets.
The attack on Gaza was abandoned before Bess’s master could return to the battle. The men complained that their leaders had blundered. They should have attacked sooner under the cover of the fog rather than waiting so long. But for Bess and the horses, far worse was to come at the second battle of Gaza less than a month later.
Over three dreadful days, the horses carried their troopers and dragged the heavy guns back and forth to the battlefront. They then retreated into the plains with their horse-holders. Enemy planes were busy in the skies, and the groups of led horses on the open plains made easy targets. Bombs and shells fell among them, killing many.
At one stage, Flame and Bess heard the drone of a plane and alerted Flame’s young trooper with their urgent squeals. It was too late to run this time, so he led them to shelter beneath a scrap of trees. He held them tightly under the meagre cover, a warning hand on Flame’s quivering neck. Although every instinct told the horses to flee from the terrifying noise, even Flame listened to her master and stood deadly still and quiet. The plane screeched harmlessly overhead and away.
After the second failed attempt to capture Gaza, the Anzacs and Allies dug in and prepared for their next attack. Their ranks swelled until they were a vast army made up of three corps: two infantry and one cavalry. More heavy guns arrived, and so did a variety of motor transport now that they were on hard ground. The ‘ships of the desert’ lumbered alongside armoured cars fitted with machine-gun turrets.
A few army tanks, called ‘land battleships,’ even joined them. Bess and the other hor
ses hated the graunching, clanking iron monsters which soon proved themselves too clumsy and slow in battle. The troopers were especially excited about the delivery of some new and faster aeroplanes. Enemy planes had killed and injured many of their horses, and the Anzac airmen had struggled to take them on in their own outdated planes. Now at last the tables would be turned.
Over the next six months, the Anzacs’ main job was patrolling, reconnoitering and harassing the enemy line stretching across the Palestinian plain. While out on patrol, they discovered the work the Turks had put into defending their trench lines from charges on horseback. They’d dug double rows of pits in front of their trenches, each pit about two metres deep. The pits tapered to the bottom where they’d set sharpened stakes. It would have been impossible for the horses to jump over the double lines of pits. They’d have met a ghastly death on the stakes at the bottom.
Small patrols went out in the dark of night constantly to check and test the Turkish line. Often a thick fog cloaked and hid the patrols from the Turks, but also made it difficult for them to find their way.
One night, the fog was so dense that Bess felt like she was stumbling through a long, white tunnel. The horses slithered down steep slopes, and all Bess could see was Flame’s rump disappearing ahead of her. Her master had to lean back in the saddle and simply cling on, trusting her to find the way. Abruptly the line of horses came to a dead stop. Jack had sensed something up ahead in the whiteness. Bess, too, felt uneasy, and she refused to budge even when her master urged her on. The riders dismounted, inched forward, and found themselves on the edge of a sheer cliff that dropped away into the Wadi Ghazze.