The Photograph of the Charge at Beersheba

On November 2 the Australian carried a report by Patrick Walters headlined “War Memorial photograph not of Light Horse charge”. It was based on a paper by Australian War Memorial historian Dr Jean Bou that was a reply to a double-page spread in the second edition of Ian Jones’s highly regarded A Thousand Miles of Battles: The Saga of the Australian Light Horse in WWI (2007), in which the photograph is treated as genuine. This was not mentioned by Walters, although he does mention Jones, who he describes as a writer and a film producer. Walters omits the fact that among the films Jones wrote and produced is The Lighthorsemen (1986) and that he has a considerable reputation as a historian, not only of the Light Horse but also as Ned Kelly’s biographer. His Ned Kelly: A Short Life, republished this year, is regarded as the definitive portrayal of the famous outlaw. A feature of Jones’s work has been his use of visual material—photographs, movies—as historical sources in marked contrast to those historians who treat illustrations as wallpaper.

The charge in the headline is of course the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba on October 31, 1917, commemorated last year on the ninetieth anniversary. If, as Jones insists, the photograph is genuine then it is unique. There is virtually no actuality footage or stills of men in action in the First World War. Shots of men going over the top or sequences of soldiers advancing are invariably re-enactments.

Certainly there are splendid sequences showing the aftermath and conditions in the front line, but none of the action itself except for the inevitable shots of guns firing. There are some extreme long shots, taken from well back, of men advancing. Some of these were shown most recently in Chris Masters’ Four Corners report on the history wars over the battles on the Western Front, but that is it—except for the still of the charge! If it is authentic, how was it taken?

Although it was against regulations, many of the Light Horsemen carried box or folding cameras in their haversacks. These did not achieve the clarity or the depth of field of the full- and half-plate cameras used by the official photographers, but they still took excellent pictures. What’s more, the officers tolerated this minor breach of regulations and as a result we have an archive of shots taken by participants including, if Jones is correct, the extraordinary image of the famous charge. According to a statement Rex Elliott wrote in 1971 for Ian Jones, which was a slight condensation of an earlier account sent to the Memorial in 1967:

“I was a range finder at the time, and the Brigade was resting in reserve in a depression between two sand ridges about four miles east of Beersheba. At approx 1400hrs I was sent out with a party to take range onto objects in the town & prepare range charts, each officer gave me targets to range onto which I did and reported to them verbally at the time noting the ranges for my range charts.

“The officers then moved back to the Brigade area, and left me to prepare my range charts, I was about half way through this job which took me approximately one hour when I happened to look back in the direction of the Brigade area, to my surprise I saw dust rising indicating there was some movement taking place, I hastened to complete my task under the impression this is what my charts were required for, however when next I looked I saw horsemen in extended order coming over the ridge, as I was in the line of these troops and the town, I packed my kit and rode out to a flank, then the second line of troops came over the crest of the ridge, by this time the first line were at the trot, then the third line appeared, bewildered for the time at what I was witnessing I just sat on my horse and watched, as the first line drew nearer I observed they had their bayonets drawn and were now at a hard gallop.

“Having a camera in my haversack I got it out and took a shot of the action, got on my horse and rode further out to a flank and back to Brigade where I learned my charts were not required that all plans had been changed and that an attempt was being made by the 4th and 12th A.L.H. Regts to take the town of Beersheba by a Cavalry Charge.

“A couple of months later I met a fellow of the 4th Regt. who was going home on 1914 leave [leave granted to soldiers whose enlistment dated back to 1914], I gave him the spool and my parents address and asked him to have the film developed and prints taken, and if he wanted them to take those he desired and send the remainder to my parents.

“On my return to Australia in Feb 1919 I got this print and had several enlargements made and gave them to some of my mates.”

Shortly after the statement was made, the AWM was provided with a copy. The War Memorial’s print of the photograph is from a glass plate negative made from a print loaned to the Memorial by A. Johnston in the 1920s. At about this time the image was seen by Brigadier William Grant, who ordered the charge, and he pronounced it genuine. Moreover, Elliott’s account is consistent with what is known about Grant and Sir Harry Chauvel’s decision to order the attack. It was a change of plan.

The attacking force was running out of water and needed to capture the town and its wells by nightfall. Many of the Light Horse’s walers had not drunk for nearly thirty-two hours; some had been without water for forty-five hours. Unless they could get to the wells, the Desert Mounted Corps faced a twelve-hour march back to Khalasa or beyond.

The attack was an old-fashioned cavalry charge, a tactic some of the Light Horse had learnt in training before it had been discarded as suicidal. (The Light Horse were mounted infantry who typically rode into position, dismounted, then opened fire.) It was the “suicidal” charge that proved to be the key to the Australians’ victory. The Turkish guns were set to open fire when the Light Horsemen dismounted. By the time the Turks realised the Australians were charging they couldn’t wind their guns down fast enough to follow the line of horsemen galloping at them. Then the Australians were under the guns and within minutes they had reached the Turkish trenches.

Elliott would appear to have captured the moment when the Light Horse began to charge. So why has the AWM clung to the idea that the shot was not authentic and came from a re-enactment staged for official photographer Frank Hurley at Gaza?

At first it could have been the idea that the charge had been a headlong gallop by “a howling mob of happy madmen”, as war artist George Lambert put it before going on to portray it that way in a brilliant painting, inaccurate in just about every detail. This was also how the battle was described by Henry Gullett in the Official History; and of course Charles Chauvel’s Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940) has a headlong gallop over sand dunes combined with some distinctly ragged formations on level ground, even though as Sir Harry’s nephew Chauvel had better opportunities than most to make an accurate version.

Fascinatingly, Ian Jones uncovered a 1930s film that did recreate the Light Horse’s tactics at Beersheba. It was The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936). Starring Errol Flynn and directed by Michael Curtiz, the film did not even attempt to portray the actual participants in the Battle of Balaclava. The charge in the movie was nothing like the real charge of the Light Brigade. Instead the tactics shown were virtually the same as those employed at Beersheba. Almost certainly this was no coincidence, as the technical adviser on military drills and tactics was Major Sam Harris, formerly of the Australian Light Horse. It was not until Jones wrote and produced The Lighthorsemen that we saw an accurate recreation of the charge. As the survivors told Ian at the premiere, “That’s the way it was.”

At the AWM military history conference of 1983, Ian Jones gave a paper revising much of Gullett’s account in the Official History, and in a subsequent article for the AWM journal he argued persuasively that the photograph was authentic; and from 1983 to 1994 it was described as such by the AWM. Ian also wrote his history of the Light Horse for Time-Life and made The Lighthorsemen.

Then in 1994 Jacqui Lobach, a work experience student at the AWM, and Matthew Woodhead, an assistant curator, wrote a paper that concluded that the photograph was not taken at the charge but was of the Gaza re-enactment. Ian demanded a right of reply, and in April 1994 at a staff seminar at the AWM gave a two-hour audio-visual presentation that many present, including the director of the Memorial, Brendon Kelson, believed refuted Lobach and Woodhead’s arguments. There was no debate with the researchers—Jacqui Lobach did not attend and Matthew Woodhead left after the first hour.

Then in 1997 the first issue of Wartime—the Memorial’s new magazine—had as its featured article a piece by Woodhead and Lobach. It repeated their original argument and failed to reply to the evidence Ian had presented at the seminar, even though Woodhead had taped the proceedings. A statement that the Memorial supported the theory that the photograph was of a re-enactment was made to the media by Ian Kelly, the Memorial’s Manager of Marketing and Public Affairs, although just what his qualifications were for making such a pronouncement remains obscure.

Ian waited until the second edition of his Light Horse history to respond publicly. As well as the two-page spread, the photograph is on the dustjacket. Then the November story in the Australian appeared repeating the familiar arguments. This time Jones did not wait. The day after the article appeared he replied in a letter to the editor. It was not printed.

So why do the Memorial historians believe Rex Elliott’s photograph is a fake? According to Dr Bou,

“the terrain certainly doesn’t match; the horsemen are in fact charging uphill. Contemporary maps make it certain that minor undulations aside the entire charge took place down a long shallow slope and the photo clearly shows horsemen galloping uphill out of a considerable depression.”

In addition, Bou argues, the photo shows no evidence of the blinding dust that veterans of the Light Horse recalled at the time. Moreover, technical analysis indicates that the photo must have been taken by a camera with a high shutter speed and using a narrow aperture that required good light and “we know the charge took place at dusk and several sources indicate the light was not good”.

Bou believes the shot was probably taken at a re-enactment Frank Hurley filmed at Belah in Febuary 1918; alternatively it could depict the Mounted Division at tactical training early in 1918.

I put all these arguments to Ian Jones. He was scornful about the suggestion that Hurley might have taken the photo: “Hurley was never one to hide his light under a bushel. If he had taken that shot he would have claimed it.” Jones pointed out that, according to participants he interviewed in the 1970s, Hurley filmed the re-enactment from the back of a lorry and packed the lines of Light Horsemen together. This is nothing like the angle from which the photograph was taken. In addition, Hurley was filming at about midday, while Elliott claimed to have taken the shot just before sunset. Moreover, the picture didn’t reach the AWM the way a photograph by an official photographer would have.

Jones believes he has located at least one shot from the Hurley re-enactment. It is in Forty Thousand Horsemen. About halfway through the charge sequence there is a frontal shot from a slightly elevated angle showing three closely packed lines of troopers “at a half-hearted gallop”. I have checked the film myself and agree with Ian. The shot does not conform to the other footage. It seems to have been filmed at silent speed with the movement slightly jerky; the angle is the same as described by participants in the re-enactment with the sun at forty-one degrees, as you would expect for late morning. Hurley was director of photography for the Chauvel film and was known to keep personal copies of his official films and could easily have made the shot available, Jones argues.

Jones is equally scathing about Bou’s assertion that the terrain in the photograph does not match the countryside around Beersheba. In 1979 he and his late wife Bronwyn Binns walked out from Beersheba along the line of the charge. They took photographs of the horizon ahead of them. “They matched those in Rex’s photo.” As for the clouds of dust, they are there, Jones insists, only it appears as a haze on the film because in the photograph the sun is shining from the side towards the horsemen.

At the 1994 seminar Jones screened an excerpt from his film, photographed on locations in central Australia that were nearly identical to those at Beersheba. The shot panned with a line of light horsemen through 180 degrees,

“showing that with the sun behind the camera almost no dust was visible even in colour; as the camera panned with the horsemen towards a low sun, they were completely obliterated by dust. This duplicated the effect recorded at Beersheba—observers behind the charge describing heavy dust, Elliott’s photo showing very little dust.”

During their 1979 walk from Beersheba, Ian and Bronwyn found major undulations along the charge course. “The photo does not show the Light Horse charging uphill as Bou states,” Ian told me. “It shows them coming out of a major wadi. What’s more the wadi is mentioned by ‘Scotty’ Bolton in his diary.” Bolton was the trooper who stopped the Germans from blowing up the wells. He is played in The Lighthorsemen by Jon Blake.

Dr Bou’s “technical analysis”—showing that the shot had to be taken with a camera with a high shutter speed using a narrow aperture that required good light whereas the charge took place at dusk—is, Jones believes, “simply untrue. In desert conditions on a sunny day high light levels are maintained right up to sunset and even immediately afterwards.”

Ian Jones is one of the last researchers to have conducted interviews with participants in the charge. In the 1960s and 1970s he interviewed thirteen of them. All believed Elliott’s photograph was genuine. Ian even met Elliott himself:

“He impressed me as a reliable witness. Bou, Lobach, Woodhead and the Memorial are in effect calling Rex Elliott, a modest and honourable man who avoided publicity all his life, a liar. This is the saddest thing of all.”

So far I have been reporting on the controversy drawing on not just my recent interview with Jones but over twenty-five years of discussions with him in his home and at seminars with my students at Mitchell CAE, and I have yet to read Dr Bou’s original paper. But on the evidence so far the only conclusion has to be that these War Memorial historians have not even attempted to debate the issues. They have substituted dogmatic assertion and re-assertion plus their association with the Memorial for valid argument. If Dr Bou has any further evidence I am assured by our editor that the letters pages of Quadrant are, of course, always available.

Neil McDonald has been Quadrant’s film columnist since March 1999. He will continue his film reviews in the January-February issue.