The Beersheba Photograph

Dr Bou’s reply (Quadrant, March 2009) to my discussion in the December issue of Rex Elliott’s photograph depicting the moment when the Australian Light Horse started to charge at Beersheba does not begin to address the issues. Ian Jones, author of A Thousand Miles of Battles: The Saga of the Australian Light Horse in World War I and writer-producer of the feature film The Lighthorsemen, and I responded to a report in the Weekend Australian of a paper by Bou in which he attempted to refute Ian’s insistence that the image was an authentic record of the actual charge. We were both aware that the statements quoted in the Weekend Australian were from a longer unpublished paper which is why, after concluding that “on the evidence so far … these War Memorial historians have not even attempted to debate the issue”, I then added that “if Dr Bou has any further evidence I am assured by our editor the letters page is always available”. In fact the reply appeared as an article, with support provided by a brief comment by Murray Mitchell.

Having provided Dr Bou with the opportunity to virtually publish the rest of his paper I was disappointed to find that his response has been so mean-spirited. It is far from “dubious history” to state that some of the Light Horse had earlier “abandoned charging as suicidal”. The first commander of the 4th Light Horse, Lieutenant-Colonel J.K. Forsythe, drilled his men in the old-fashioned charges during Egyptian training in 1915 only to find that when they staged such a charge during a mock battle the referees pronounced there had been 90 per cent casualties. There were mounted advances or “rushes” and “dashes” in 1916, but only once was there a formal charge in cavalry formation. This was at Magdhaba. But after the Light Horse moved from trot to canter then to gallop it was abandoned after a minute to avoid heavy casualties.

There was no cavalry charge at Rafa as Dr Bou alleges. Rather there were dismounted advances up coverless slopes plus some deadly bayonet charges. As official historian Henry Gullet observed, “heavy casualties among the horsemen could not be afforded”. Bou’s account of a cavalry charge at Rafa is not even “dubious history”, it is pure fiction.

It was of course the Light Horse’s use of the charge at Beersheba as a surprise tactic that was the key to their success; which was the point I was trying to make in the first article. It was still “a near run thing”. Had the Turks been able to wind down their field guns fast enough to keep up with the pace of the charge, the Australians would have been cut to pieces (all of which is brilliantly portrayed in Ian’s film). But had the Light Horse employed the tactic as frequently as Dr Bou claims, they would have forfeited the element of surprise and the sudden charge at Beersheba could easily have failed.

Equally ill-considered is Bou’s misreading of my allusion to the involvement of a Light Horse officer, Major Sam Harris, as adviser, for the The Charge of the Light Brigade (Warner Brothers, 1936). I was not suggesting that this had anything to do with the Elliott photograph as Bou states. Rather I was highlighting the irony that a film about the Battle of Balaclava included a reasonably accurate recreation of the Beersheba charge (and not the actual charge of the Light Brigade), while Forty Thousand Horsemen’s staging of the Beersheba battle was almost entirely fictitious. Of course, as Dr Bou writes, it is likely Major Harris consulted the military textbooks he mentions and probably many others (Harris was credited as “adviser on military drill and tactics”); but to suggest that any senior Light Horse officer in 1935–36 would not have the Beersheba charge in mind when advising on a cavalry film is patently absurd.

So what about the photograph itself? Dr Bou claims the charge took place at dusk so the Elliott photograph can’t be genuine, as the cameras of the period were unable to capture such an image in near darkness. As evidence he cites a number of “the light is going” reports plus the fact that the gunners supporting the charge were firing over open sights instead of using optical range finders. But the artillerymen were aiming directly into the setting sun, so range finders would have been useless. For similar reasons the officer in a wadi that Bou describes as sending out messages would not have been able to signal his squadrons deployed in the beds of the neighbouring wadis by heliograph, which depended on reflecting sunlight from a visible point. In addition there are reports by participants that specifically mention the light. Trooper Ion Idriess, who observed the charge from the east, wrote of “the dying sun glinting on bayonet points”. Trooper “Chook” Fowler of the 12th Light Horse recalled the sun behind the minaret of the mosque at Beersheba as one of his most vivid memories.

But the most telling evidence against the dusk argument is provided by the curator of astronomy at the Melbourne Science Museum, Dr Robin Hirst. He established that at Beersheba on the day of the charge, October 31, 1917, the sun set at 4.52. The charge was launched soon after 4.30. Therefore the sun was above the horizon throughout the action and did not set until the first horsemen entered Beersheba. According to Dr Hirst the sun set 16 degrees south of west. The Light Horse were heading east-north-east veering north-east with the sun setting 60 degrees to their left, precisely as seen in the Elliott photograph. The light in the photograph is a perfect match for the conditions at Beersheba when the charge increased pace to the gallop. You can see the low sun shining under hat brims, illuminating the men’s faces and throwing landform shadows across the background from the high ground to the west. Also the light silhouettes men and horses who are slightly behind a horse and rider to their left; all of which indicates the sun is less than ten degrees above the horizon. This matches perfectly conditions at Beersheba when the Light Horsemen began to gallop. (I can’t guarantee that all these details will be apparent in our reproduction of the image but they can be seen in an enlargement). There is, moreover, other photographic evidence. One long shot held by the Australian War Memorial (J05966) taken after the charge was launched shows the Light Horse illuminated by the low sun. Consequently neither the increased aperture nor the increased exposure available on more sophisticated cameras was needed to capture the image in these conditions.

What should have been the final confirmation of the Elliott photograph’s authenticity came in 1920 when Major Donovan Joynt VC nationally toured an exhibition of war photographs that included the Elliott shot. At Joynt’s invitation Brigadier-General Grant, who had directed the charge, and some of his Beersheba officers, spent an afternoon examining a huge enlargement of the photograph. They all stated that every detail of the charge and its setting matched the photograph and that they were “of the opinion that we definitely cannot deny its authenticity”. The syntax may be a little convoluted but the meaning couldn’t be plainer. Years later the image was re-authenticated for Ian Jones by thirteen men who rode in the charge. The aim was not to establish whether Elliott took the shot, just whether it was genuine. They all agreed the photograph was authentic, but some did recall hearing as early as 1919 that Elliott had taken the shot.

Dr Bou’s disparagement of these recollections as forty-year-old memories does him little credit. Those of us who have worked with veterans of both world wars know they are more often than not completely reliable with vivid recollections that enrich and amplify the documentary record. Some such as Ray Parkins become distinguished historians in their own right. And just about all of us owe considerable debts to the veterans who compiled their unit histories.

One final puzzle remains. Does the photograph show the horsemen riding uphill? Jones now believes this impression came about when the original print was copied. This together with the haze of dust created an effect similar to that of a modern telephoto lens slightly altering the perspectives to seemingly indicate an uphill movement. In addition the photograph was taken looking diagonally across a very slight undulating valley; a valley that contrary to Dr Bou’s assertion is shown on the 1:125,000 army maps used by Grant and Murray (“Swagman Bill”) Bourchier who led the charge. The front line of the charge in the foreground is on the near slope of the valley. The other two lines are on the far slope; all creating the illusion that the foreground horsemen are higher than those in the background.

The other major issue that bedevils this discussion is Official Photographer Frank Hurley’s re-enactment of the charge. Repeatedly, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Elliott’s photo has been misidentified as coming from that specially staged re-enactment near Gaza in February 1918. According to the Weekend Australian, that was Dr Bou’s opinion last year and the photograph is identified as such on the AWM website. But now Dr Bou states, “There is no doubt that the idea Frank Hurley took it in 1918 should be treated warily as the evidence is sketchy.” In one of the notes Ian Jones supplied for this article he summarised Bou’s intricate sword dance: “The photo in question may or may not have been taken by official cameraman and photographer Captain Frank Hurley, or perhaps by someone else on some unspecified location at some unspecified time.” Problematics may be fashionable in academe at present but this is ridiculous!

Jones believes he has located one shot from the Hurley re-enactment in Charles Chauvel’s Forty Thousand Horsemen. Ian checked his findings with me in the 1980s (I agreed with him) and presented his evidence in seminars for my students at Mitchell CAE. (Much of this evidence is summarised in my December 2008 article.) In addition my own research into the making of the Chauvel film confirmed Jones’s conclusions. Ian did not sit on this information until the publication of A Thousand Miles of Battles, as Bou states. The shot was first identified by Jones in an article for the Journal of the Australian War Memorial in October 1983.

Murray Mitchell believes the photograph is not authentic because when he examined it under a magnifying glass “there were no rifles slung across their shoulders, which was … practised under such circumstances rather than letting the SMLEs rattle around in the bucket slung alongside”. In fact in enlargements of the photo many of the rifles are visible slung across the men’s backs. Rifle buckets were not issued until August 1918—almost ten months after the charge.

Mitchell argues that if the picture was genuine the horses must have galloped two miles by the time the photo was taken. In fact Elliott captures the moment when the men and horses had begun to charge. The front line has just broken into a gallop. Some of the men have drawn their bayonets. The second and third lines are still at the canter. As for the Turkish defenders being “few or already withdrawing”, certainly gun teams did withdraw when they could not wind their guns down fast enough to keep pace with the charge, but nearly a thousand eastern flank defenders met the charge and waged a bitter and uncharacteristically “dirty” fight. This was when most of the Light Horse fatalities occurred.

Clearly neither Dr Bou nor his new ally has come close to disproving the authenticity of the famous photograph. Just why the Australian War Memorial and its historians persist in describing one of their greatest treasures as virtually a fake remains a mystery. But it is now certain beyond any reasonable doubt that the image is of the actual charge at Beersheba and that the photograph was taken by Rex Elliott ALH.

Neil McDonald writes: The foregoing is based on research and notes by Ian Jones.