Waler Horse Owners and Breeders Association Australia Inc

THE WELLS OF BEERSHEBA
An epic of the Australian Light Horse - by Frank Dalby Davison

Of the horses that bore the burden of this campaign only one was brought home to its native pastures. The aged and battleworn were destroyed and the remainder sold to the local population.

They are all Australian bred - bone of her-bone.
They are the troop horses.

The grey with the neat forehand was foaled where Illawarra's hillsides tumble down to the sea. The bay mare with the white off hind ran beside her dam where Jimbour Plains sweep unbroken from sky to sky. She was five-off before she felt girth around her.

The bay gelding is from the Flinders grass country, out Barcaldine way. The other bay mare - the one with the white fleck on her muzzle - was accustomed to drink from a stream chilled by Kosciusko's snows.. These round, high-walled hooves and short pasterns were shaped for running on steep and rocky pastures.

The brown horse with a bailey face was with a drover's outfit once. He was foaled in the far Kimberleys, beside a lost lagoon peopled with wildfowl. The bay with a white star on his forehead knows the marches of the painted inland.

He was got when a blood stallion covered a brumby mare. His home lies fenceless below the Flinders Range.

The brown gelding with high withers and long sloping shoulders bears the brand of astation west of the Darling. He knows the red-soil country and the sight of sheepbrowsing through the salt-bush. The stocky round-barrelled bay was bred on a farm inthe Burragorang galley - a little place, bounded on one side by native oaks, leaningabove a bend in the Wollondilli. They didn't want to part with him, for he was quietand easy to catch; but the old man sold him to the Army. They often think of himback home by the Wollondilly. The girls - they had no brother - think of him as themember of the family who went to war; and they sometimes wonder where he is.

The bright chestnut was bred on Riverina's tawny plains. He ran with twenty other long-maned coils and fillies in a ten-mile paddock. At sight of a man they wouldstand with heads thrown up and eyes wide with pretended wonder, before, with much snorting and high-spirited heel-flinging, they wheeled and galloped away. There was another just like him in colour; but he was brought down by a burst of enemy rifle-fire at Magdhaba. They shot the rider while he was trying to get his leg out from under the horse; and they shot the man who galloped back and dismounted to help him.

The dark-brown gelding - the one that runs to a sort of tan colour at elbow andstifle- was foaled in emerald pastures where Yarra Yarra dreams beneath the range at Launching Place. The roan with dark points was first handled by an Aboriginal stockman, in the Gulf country.

The bony, dark chestnut, standing with his lower lip hanging, comes from Guyra,where the lucerne paddocks lie all velvety green. The breedy-looking brown - nearly black - is from the Maranoa. In the days before he wore an army head-stall he was thought a master at turning a scrubber in the fringe of the brigalow. The taffy with the game-looking head - he is hardly more than a pony - comes from where the tall trunks of dead trees stand grey-pencilled against the green of Gippsland hills.

Do they remember? Well, they are only horses! The troopship and Egypt's sands lie between them and the paddocks they once knew. Perhaps when they stand dozing with slack head-ropes, vagrant pictures flit through their minds. Who can tell?

These are the veterans.

When the Turk, grown bold with his success on Gallipolli, came down through Palestine and Sinai to reconquer Egypt, they carried their riders out to give him battle at Romani. They endured their share of that fierce struggle in the desert.

It was not until the beginning of the third day, when Romani was ours, that they were ridden to drink.
Frantic from their long thirst, they fought their riders to get at the water.

Parched and weary they carried their men through the charge and the bitter rearguard fight among the palms of Bir Katai. When the brigades were patrolling the desert, screening the army and driving in the enemy's out-posts, they almost lived under the saddle. They plodded across the heavy sands betwen desert mounds by day; and at night, held by the horseholders in the drifts between the dunes, they waited, sadly patient, while the rifles lay watchful among the bushes.

Victory is by endurance; and throughout the hard-worn advance across Sinai's dry and wrinkled waste, the burden of it was laid upon these. The fight was from bir to bir - from water to water. Did racial experience live again in that? They drank from desert springs and were ridden out to seek the enemy where he lay embattled before the water, farther on. They drank again when he had been routed from his stronghold. Failing, they were ridden back when their tortured bodies could endure no more. There are many who are not here. There were those whose hearts broke within bodies taxed beyond their power to suffer. There were those who fell in battle-the bursting shell and the whining bullet knew no difference between horse and rider.

The desert which the army has won - returned again to its immemorial silences - is littered with the shrunken frames of those who died. They lie half-buried in the sands that have drifted against them.

There are those who had not the strength and courage to suffer to the limit of endurance. They wasted under hardship, and found their way to the sick-lines.

These are the old campaigners, whom Fate has spared and Time has tried. They are leaner than one would wish-worn with hard riding. A twelve-stone trooper, and half his weight again in arms and accoutrements, is a heavy burden to carry when the marches are long.

For months there has been nothing at the end of the march but a picket rope, bare to the blaze of the sun and the whip of the wind - that and a careful measure of corn.

These are they who will carry the battle into the plain of Palestine against the stubborn and still unbeaten enemy.
These are the great-hearted ones....

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