I’ve started and restarted this article, pondered how to avoid hurting anyone’s sensitivities, and in the end have decided to accept Admiral Farragut’s advice at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864: Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead!
I have an intellectual and emotional stake in this matter of the Charge of Beersheba (Be’er-Sheva). My maternal grandfather, 2788 Trooper John Joseph McGrath, was a horse breaker who served in the 2nd Remount Unit for more than three years under Major A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson in Egypt and Palestine. My father, QX 17611 S/Sgt James Hammill served in the 2/ 14th LHR between the wars, then in Tobruk and the Middle East, including Palestine, with the 2/9 Bn. The subject of the Charge of Beersheba was not an infrequent topic at home and in places that I visited.
Let no one claim that this controversy is an open-and-shut case, and I say that with all due respect to the Australian War Memorial, which maintains the controversial photo was taken at a re-enactment of the charge in February 1918, but that we may never know who took it.
They claim it was someone other than the sole claimant to the photo. Those are the very reasons this search should continue, and I maintain there is compelling evidence waiting to be uncovered. The case is still wide open.
This photograph has been described as being of the charge of the 4th Light Horse Brigade at Beersheba on the 31st October 1917, but is now believed to have been taken by photographer Frank Hurley in February 1918. CREDIT:AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL
It’s a mystery worthy of a top detective novel. according to It’s a whodunnit and it represents one of the greatest, if not the greatest mystery in Australian military history. It’s a battle over a single photo, with one person outrightly claiming ownership, and another using it but never claiming to have taken it. Is it the real thing, or was it simply taken at a re-enactment not long after the actual event?
The only identified protagonists are 4th Light Horse rangefinder Rex Elliott, and official war photographer Frank Hurley, and the subject of thedisputed photo is the Charge of Beersheba on 31 October 1917, undertaken by around 800 men of the 4th and 12th Light Horse regiments. Are 31 men here about to die, or are they simply going through a drill? Is it too good to be true? I believe the answers are out there. My main concerns are the lack of a thorough forensic analysis of the photograph, and the possibility that the testimony of eyewitnesses is being ignored in favour of that of ‘experts’.
There is enough doubt to warrant further research.
Very opposing views are held on the authenticity of the photo, with several sources, including the AWM, ( Australian War Memorial ) asserting that the photo is actually of a re-enactment of the charge which took place at the Light Horse rest and training camp at Belah (Deir el-Balah) near the Mediterranean Sea on the Gaza Strip on 7 February 1918.
I believe that the photo is genuine.
If proof can be provided for either case, that is a win for Australian military history and for everyone caught up in this thorny problem. One of the men supporting the authenticity of the photo is the late Ian Jones, who knew many of the 4LHR men, and who published ‘A Thousand Miles of Battles’ (1987 and 2007).
No comprehensive forensic investigation into the photo to my knowledge has ever been undertaken by anyone including the AWM. This would necessarily include a study of the background hills in the photo, the misty meteorological phenomenon at the base of the hills, and a study of the area of the Light Horse camp at Belah. I believe the location of this shot can certainly be determined if there is the will to find it. That location will be either at Beersheba or Belah, and if determined, a pile of ‘evidence’ can then either be confirmed or junked.
If this photo proves to be genuine, we may then honour the men involved, 31 of whom are about to die.
If that research had been done, I believe we would no longer be in limbo regarding the origin of this photo.
Frank Hurley, an official war photographer, had a copy of this photo in his possession, and exhibited it in late 1918. He had a passion for adding drama to the photos he took, effectively creating false imagery, and this rightly got him into trouble with Chauvel and Grant, who wanted an accurate documentary of the war. He would, for example, to men climbing out of a trench, add aerial warfare with planes battling it out overhead. To the Beersheba photo he added black shrapnel puffs, and from memory a huge enlargement of this doctored photo can be viewed at the Anzac Memorial Centre in Beersheba.
But Hurley never claimed to have taken the photo.
Frank Hurley had visited the Belah camp of the 4th Light Horse Brigade where the men were conducting bayonet attack training from 2-10 February 1918. His purpose on 7 February was to make a re-enactment movie and to view a re-enactment of the charge.
He wrote ‘..the charge was directed against the position which I occupied’.
Did Hurley or somebody else take a picture of the practice charge? Nothing is mentioned of such an event. Hurley made his movie of which only one frame is known, with the Light Horse troopers resentfully following his truck like cattle as he filmed from the back using a tripod. This frame, and the alleged photo of the charge, taken at eye level, are poles apart in every respect. Perhaps the re-enactment photo is the photo that never was?
Following are the points I view as supporting the authenticity of the photo.
1) At first sight, this is forbidding desert country (Beersheba is in the Negev Desert) as there is not a tree to be seen. Belah on the Gaza Strip is near the sea, and the Light Horsemen jokingly called it ‘St James’ Park’ for its greenery after the deserts they had crossed. Google Earth shows masses of greenery around Belah. But what researcher has ever checked Belah out and compared the ground with the photo in question?
2) Rex Elliott, a 4 LHR rangefinder, states in his 1967 letter that he was out front in a depression between two ridges preparing range charts of buildings in the town, saw a dust cloud well behind him, removed his camera from his haversack, took a quick photo, then rode to safety behind his lines. He gave the spool to a ‘1914’man going on leave back to Australia (1917), asked him to develop the film, take as many prints as he wanted for himself and his mates, and leave the film with Rex’s folks. The photo and film were waiting for Rex when he returned home in February 1919. He made some enlargements which he gave to some of his mates. To me the story has the ring of truth about it, and given Hurley‘s interest, could a print not have been given to him by one of the men in 1918?
3) In 1920 Brig-Gen William Grant and some of his ex-staff studied a huge enlargement of this photo for a full afternoon at the War Photos exhibition assembled by Captain William Joynt VC in Melbourne. They were stunned by what they saw.
Trooper Lindsay Taylor pointed out 2nd Lt Frank Burton, in the lead and claimed to be the first man killed in the charge. A group of men on the right are clustered like bodyguards (as occurred) around the man believed to be Lt-Col Bourchier who led the charge. Grant was shocked by what he saw. Remember that these officers were at both Beersheba and Belah in 1917 and 1918. Grant , who directed the charge, said:
‘We definitely cannot deny its authenticity. Everything appears to be right - the formation and the character of the country over which the charge was made’. He and his men rejected the suggestion that the photo shows the 1918 re-enactment because ‘Where that charge took place..the country was entirely different from that opposite Beersheba’.
They accepted the exhibition’s claim that it was ‘a photograph of the actual charge’.
Strangely, the AWM claims that Elliott’s memory would have been unreliable after nearly 50 years, yet it makes absolutely no comment on the memories and conclusions of Grant and his staff who had been at both Beersheba and Belah less than three years previously.
And isn’t it vital for an officer to know the ground on which he fights? I find this a grave omission. Personally, if I had been involved in such a dramatic situation as that alleged by Elliott, I’d remember the main details till the day I died.
Some memories are indelible. The gravity of these officers’ claims is such that further research is deemed necessary.
4) The photo in question shows cropped vegetation. The Bedouins grew wheat around Beersheba and in mid-autumn (October) the harvest would have been completed. There is a black and white photo on the net of Bedouin women grinding wheat at Beersheeba. The crop would have been watered from the famous wells of Beersheba. This would also explain why the ground isn’t so shingly as it is closer to the town; it would have been cleared for planting the crop.
5) “The entire charge at Beersheba took place down a long, very slight slope” (Bou2009, 275) The charge in the main photo is in its early stage and taking place on a slight uphill slope, but look at the photo of the dead horses with that magnificent beast in the foreground.
If I’m not mistaken, they’re lying on upwardly-sloping ground with the hills behind them ie they’re heading for Beersheba. Not only that, this is an independent photo taken by a light horseman, and the ground shows cropped vegetation remarkably similar to that in the main photo. So are we supposed to conclude that the ground near Beersheba in the Negev Desert and the ground at Belah on the coast were extremely similar?
6) The first impression for me is that these men are in extremis and are not re-enacting anything. Two things strike me in particular: one is the cluster on the right, and it has been placed on record that some 4th LHR troopers formed a bodyguard around their commander Lt-Col Bouchier early in the charge. The second thing is the trooper in the centre of the front line who appears to be hugging his horse’s neck. Would you really need to do that, even in a re-enactment? One trooper wrote how he endeavoured to shield himself behind his horse’s neck but was frustrated because the horse itself kept his head low! Or has rider or horse or both just been hit? That horse’s body seems to me to be in an unnatural stance with possibly both rear legs off the ground. I believe we are witnessing a life and death struggle.
7) If this is a photo of the re-enactment, why is it that not one man of the 4th or 12th to my knowledge gone on record to blow the whistle? Ian Jones was made an honorary member of the 4th Light Horse Association in 1972. He knew many of the men involved in the charge and clearly their opinion was that the photo was authentic. An AMH member has stated that her grandfather used to point out his and his brother’s position in the line (his brother was killed shortly afterwards). Did they all have bad memories? Nor have any of them claimed that these men were not kitted out correctly.
8) There are bystanders observing the charge near the second line? Grant and some of his staff led the men out and then retired to watch. Are these figures actually the men in question?
9) I could get into a debate about shutter speeds, fading light, ghosting, dust and so on, but if I haven’t yet made a case for a forensic study I never will. I suggest that some photos be taken about two miles down the W-Road from Beersheba to see if the contours in the hills in the photo can be matched, and if necessary do a study of the Belah area. I’d also like to know what those mysterious meteorological phenomena near the hills are as I don’t believe they’re dust.
In medical terms, to date we have a diagnosis of exclusion, not a positive diagnosis.
In conclusion, I maintain that this case, comprised of highly contradictory evidence CAN be solved if appropriate measures are undertaken. Proof positive either way is a win for everyone, and so I look forward to further research being undertaken.
What do YOU think?
Further reading:
https://patriotrealm.com/index.php/2436-beersheba-the-charge-of-the-light-horse-lest-we-forget
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