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The Lighthorse were made up of seasoned Bushman, and as far as I know, the Lighthorse were the only cavalry units anywhere in the world before or since that could and did maneuver in formation at night, such was their expertise.
I still remember as a little kid on ANZAC day seeing the last four or five Lighthorsemen in their uniforms mounted and leading the parade to the Shrine of Remembrance.
Lest we forget. Buy a poppy for Armistice day (11/11)
One of the great myths of Beersheba is that the Light Horse had never charged like that before.
On reading the diaries of a number of ighthorsemen, most notably Ion Idress' "The Desert Column", the technique of charging into assault had been carried out by the Aussies quite a number of times before Beersheeba and that by the time of Beersheba they knew that Johnny Turk forgot to lower his sights as the horsemen came in.
<a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=LHg5xNCFDGsC&pg=RA1-PA268&lpg=RA1-PA26…; rel="nofollow">The Desert Mounted Corps: An Account of the Cavalry Operations in Palestine</a>
Perhaps the great successful cavalry charge ? The battle of Kaukub must be a forgotten memory? ... My great grandfather fought with the 11th Lighthorse, which was part of the 4th Lighthorse and according to his diaries, Grant had a hand in the planning but it was Lt Col. Murray Bourchier from Victoria who was the officer that led the attack on the wells at Beersheeba, one more forgotten note is that in Sept. 1918 he did the same with the 4th and 11th lighthorse at Kaukab which was held by 2000 or more turks.
He says that this opened up the road to Damascus for the advance forwards and those two Australian Divisions were the first to enter the city, sad that this has been forgotten with the passing of time but at least i have the photographs and the diaries to leave to my kids or the AWM
The <a href="http://blog.awm.gov.au/lawrence/?p=189" rel="nofollow nofollow">Light Horse</a> <i>were equipped with rifles and held their bayonets as swords, which would have been more suited to a cavalry style charge. . . . Grant made the decision to order his light horsemen to charge cavalry-style, when they would normally have ridden close to an objective then dismounted to fight.</i>