Our exhibition catalogue has now sold out. You can, however, now download a pdf file of the catalogue and get this printed yourself.

I realise this is short notice, but we just filmed a short segment on the charge at Beersheba (31 October 1917) in the exhibition this afternoon. It should run on SBS World News Australia, from 6.30 to 7.30 pm. It is being run in conjunction with a story about the dedication of the new Australian Light Horse Memorial at Beersheba by the Israeli President Shimon Peres and the Australian Governor-General Major General Michael Jeffery in Israel on 28 April 2008.

You can read further reports here and here.

My colleague Robyn Van Dyk and I have probably taken well over 1,200 people on guided tours of the Memorial’s current special exhibition Lawrence of Arabia and the Light Horse. As ANZAC Day 2008 approaches it is interesting to reflect on which Light Horse images have  resonated most profoundly with our visitors. This week, I also took some veterans from the Vietnam War through the exhibition. They had served in the battle for Fire Support Patrol Base Coral in May 1968 and I asked them which images had a special meaning for them.

So, I’d like to draw attention to several images, each of which has something to reveal about the ANZACs involved in the campaign from the defence of the Sinai in 1916 through to their great ride to Damascus in late 1918. (This will probably take at least two posts.)

Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel of the Light Horse

In 1916, after the Gallipoli campaign, the Australian Light Horse brigades remained in Egypt and, with the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, were formed into the ANZAC Mounted Division under the command of Major General Harry Chauvel. Light Horsemen were hardy, self-reliant and independent minded. They could shoot straight and ride well. Harry Chauvel was no exception and his soldiers knew it.

He emerged from the First World War as one of Australia’s most effective and widely respected generals. It was Chauvel who issued the order to charge at Beersheba in the third and successful attack on the Gaza defensive line of the Turks. His able and dynamic command spearheaded the British advance through Palestine in 1917 and 1918, and projected it through Damascus to the northern Syrian border and the final capitulation of the Turkish forces.

James McBey, a British official war artist, has captured this very candid image of Chauvel as the commander of the Desert Mounted Corps in Homs at the end of the campaign in mid-October 1918. He is shown proudly wearing his slouch hat and the emu plumes worn by many Light Horse regiments. Chauvel looks older than his 53 years, but appears very much to be a man in the moment. By this stage he was responsible for thousands of Turkish prisoners, hospitals over-flowing with wounded soldiers and others struck by serious diseases including typhoid and malaria, and for restoring order in the large cities like Damascus that were suffering from the chaos that followed the Turkish withdrawal. Chauvel was shocked by this portrait:  I think he probably hadn’t realised how much the war had aged him. He wrote to his wife in London that the painting was drying in his hotel room and he expected that it would give him night mares. read on

These tours are advertised elsewhere on our website, but just in case you’ve not seen them, either Robyn or myself are running tours of the exhibition at 10.45 am on the following dates:

14, 21, 24 and 27 February

5, 10, 12, 19 and 26 March

2, 9, 16, 23, 24* and 30 April

7, 14, 21, and 24 May

They usually last around an hour, unless we get carried away. Of course you can always download the audio tour and bring it with you on an MP3 player.

* Please note: the tour scheduled for 24 April has now been delayed by 30 mins and will now commence at 11.15 am. Mal

Local historian and biographer Jennifer Horsfield will talk about Rania MacPhillamy, who served as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) in Egypt and Palestine during the First World War. MacPhillamy helped Alice Chisholm to set up canteens in Port Said, Kantara, Jerusalem, and Rafa, and was awarded an OBE for her work. She was remembered with great affection and admiration by the men of the Australian Light Horse.

Sunday, March 23, 2008 at 2:00 pm
For information and bookings, phone (02) 6243 4473
Location: Research Centre

You can read an article by Jenny Horsfield about this extraordinary woman and her work in the Desert Campaign on this blog: Here

Ian Jones’ revised edition of “A Thousand Miles of Battles” is now available from our shop (here). It was first published in 1987, but last year a new revised edition was released by ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee (Queensland) Inc.

Ian wrote and co-produced the film The Lighthorsemen and there is an excellent action shot included in the book (p.115) from the film’s scene covering the charge at Beersheba. The book also uses many of the same images we have highlighted in our exhibition and many others I’d like to have used if we had more space. These include AWM B00277 and AWM P03631.087 (see below).

If you want a well produced and written illustrated contemporary history of the Light Horse then it is currently very hard to go past this book.

I received an email today from Charles Kenny of Essex in the UK. He has given me permission to post it here and I’ve put in some relevant links where I could.

Reading about your exhibition, I thought you might be interested in a little known connection.

The Bartlett brothers, Stephen and Alfred S., both pearlers of Broome (W.A.), enlisted together in the 10th Light Horse Regiment in May 1915, and embarked from Freemantle on HMAT Anchises in September. They saw plenty of action. Alfred was recommended for a bravery award at Rafa in January 1917 but sadly died of wounds that April and is buried in Gaza. Steve soldiered on in the great ride to Damascus, and then to patrolling the Delta. After the war he settled in England and became an author, writing under the name of Gurney Slade. read on

I now have a better set of images of the exhibition taken by one of our professional photographers, Kerry Alchin. I had thought that I might just replace some of my terribly dark and grainy images, but after talking to our web team, we thought we might upload this new set as a slide show.

You can stop the slideshow (by double clicking an image) to view more information or you can look at the previous posts, or even post a question in a comment. Here we go, mind the step … read on

This post is a further comment regarding Emily Robertson’s post on the Shellal Mosaic. When researching for the exhibition I came across some references to the mosaic in the collection of papers of General Sir Henry George Chauvel. In a letter to his wife on 3 May 1917 he mentions some damage done to the mosaic by Turkish forces and that he had contacted the Director of Antiquities to remove it. The letter was transcribed into Lady Chauvel’s scrapbook which she compiled after the war. The page of the scrap book displayed here also includes three photographs of the mosaic before it was removed.

read on

 

Beth McGeachy-Blay and her events team made sure that the launch of our exhibition on 6 December 2007 was over the top. She is shown above (third from the right) with members of her team and the two camel mascots she managed to “borrow” from the Australian Army’s 26 Transport Squadron in Puckapunyal, with their handlers Privates Arron Daniel (far left) and Michael Francis (far right).

 

   

read on