What happened at the Battle of Beersheba on October 31, 1917?

On October 31, 1917, about eight hundred Australian mounted infantry charged Ottoman trenches to capture the desert town of Beersheba before sunset. Riding without swords, they wielded bayonets in their hands at a full gallop. They broke through the defenses, secured fifteen working water wells, took nearly two thousand prisoners, and shattered the Ottoman defensive line.

Why was capturing Beersheba so critical for the British forces?

Beersheba possessed seventeen deep water wells needed to sustain the mounted corps, which consumed over four hundred thousand gallons of water daily. Having twice failed to breach Gaza's fortifications, British forces aimed to turn the desert flank. Failing to take Beersheba by nightfall would have forced a retreat across the desert, ending the entire military campaign.

Why did the Light Horse charge with bayonets instead of cavalry swords?

The fourth and twelfth Australian Light Horse regiments were mounted infantry rather than traditional cavalry, meaning they carried rifles and bayonets instead of sabres. Facing a rapid five o'clock sunset, Brigadier General William Grant ordered his men to hold their seventeen-inch bayonets in their fists like swords to save crucial time instead of dismounting before the attack.

How did the charging horses survive the Ottoman machine gun fire?

The horses galloped at thirty to thirty-five miles per hour, closing the distance too fast for the Ottoman defenders to adjust their weapons. The gunners had set their sights for long range and could not wind them down in time. Consequently, thousands of machine gun rounds whistled harmlessly overhead as the Australian horsemen sped beneath their line of fire.

The Battle of Beersheba cavalry charge on October 31, 1917

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The Ridge at Point 1280

4:30 pm, 31 October 1917

Horses unwatered for up to 48 hours

Beersheba and its wells six kilometres off

Ada: It's half past four in the afternoon, the last day of October, nineteen seventeen, and about eight hundred men are sitting on their horses behind a low ridge in the Negev desert, roughly six kilometres from a dusty town called Beersheba.¹

Theo: And I'm guessing those horses are not in great shape.

Ada: Some of them haven't had water in thirty hours. A few are close to forty-eight. The men have been told something simple, that the only water for miles is in the town ahead of them, and the sun goes down at about five.¹

Theo: So it's water or nothing, before dark.

Ada: Water or a long retreat across the desert that ends the whole campaign. And what those eight hundred men do in the next forty-five minutes cracks open the Ottoman front and puts Jerusalem on the road to falling by Christmas.¹

Theo: I'm Theo.

Ada: And I'm Ada. Welcome to Historai. Let's go back to how they ended up thirsty on that ridge.

The Weak Hinge of a Long Line

Two bloody British defeats at Gaza, spring 1917

Allenby ordered: Jerusalem by Christmas

43-km Ottoman line; Beersheba the desert end

Ada: Earlier that spring, the British had thrown themselves at Gaza twice, straight up the coast, and been beaten badly both times. So in June they sacked their commander and brought in General Sir Edmund Allenby from the Western Front.¹

Theo: And didn't Lloyd George hand him a deadline? Something about a present.

Ada: Exactly that. The Prime Minister wanted Jerusalem by Christmas, to give the home front something to cheer about after a grim year.¹

Theo: No pressure. And the Ottomans are dug in along this whole line?

Ada: Forty-three kilometres of it, from Gaza on the sea inland to Beersheba in the desert. Gaza was wired and trenched to the teeth. But the far desert end, at Beersheba, was the weak hinge.¹

Theo: And the catch is the one thing deserts don't have.

Ada: The mounted corps needed over four hundred thousand gallons of water a day, for men and horses. Beersheba had seventeen deep wells. Take the town and you take the water. Fail, and you die of thirst in front of it.¹

Twelve Hours Before the Gallop

Chetwode's flank plan and a deception campaign

100-gun bombardment at 5:55 am

Tel el Saba taken by bayonet, c. 3:15 pm

Ada: The plan to swing round and hit the desert flank came from Lieutenant General Chetwode. And to sell it, the British ran an elaborate deception, false radio traffic, a fake camp near Gaza, and that famous dropped haversack full of forged plans.¹

Theo: The Meinertzhagen haversack. Though I've read the real story is messier than his memoirs made it.

Ada: It is. Ottoman records show their command actually expected trouble at Beersheba. They just didn't have the motorised reserves to cover both ends of the line at once.¹

Theo: So the charge everyone remembers wasn't the whole battle.

Ada: Not even close. It started at five fifty-five that morning with a hundred guns. British infantry carried the southwest redoubts by early afternoon. And out east stood Tel el Saba, a thousand-foot hill bristling with machine guns.¹

Theo: That had to come down first.

Ada: Six hours of New Zealanders and Australians crawling up the slopes in the heat. They finally took it with a bayonet rush around three fifteen. Eight dead, twenty-six wounded. That opened the eastern door, but the whole day was nearly gone.¹

Four Words

Chauvel: 'Put Grant straight at it'

Light Horse were mounted infantry, no sabres

Grant: 'Use your bayonets as swords'

Ada: By half past three, Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel does the arithmetic. Dismounted infantry tactics would take hours, and sunset's at five. He turns to his division commander and commits his reserve, Brigadier General William Grant's fourth Light Horse Brigade.¹

Theo: And there's that line, isn't there.

Ada: The order Chauvel gave was four words. Put Grant straight at it.¹

Theo: Now here's what gets me. These Australians weren't even cavalry, were they?

Ada: They were mounted infantry. They rode to a fight, got off, and shot. They carried no sabres, only Lee-Enfield rifles and seventeen-inch bayonets.¹

Theo: So what do you charge with when you've got no swords?

Ada: You draw the bayonet and hold it in your fist like one. Grant rode down the line and told them, you're fighting for water, there's none between here and Esani, use your bayonets as swords.¹

Theo: And the British yeomanry nearby actually had real swords and wanted the job.¹

Ada: They argued for it. But Grant's men were sitting right where the blow needed to land. Geography decided it.¹

The Charge

Two regiments, three waves, ~800 men

Walers at 30–35 mph outran the gun sights

Through both lines into the town in ~45 minutes

Ada: At half past four they step off at a walk behind the ridge, two regiments, the fourth from Victoria and the twelfth from New South Wales. Three waves, five yards between each horseman.¹

Theo: And the second they clear the crest, they're in the open.

Ada: Trot, then a full gallop. Austrian and Ottoman batteries open with shrapnel, but the horses are moving at thirty to thirty-five miles an hour and tear through the beaten zones before the shells can catch them.¹

Theo: What about the machine guns? That's what should have shredded them.

Ada: Here's the cruel mathematics that saved them. The Ottoman gunners had their sights set for long range. The horses closed so fast the defenders couldn't wind the sights down in time, and thousands of rounds went whistling clean overhead.¹

Theo: The speed was the armour.

Ada: Bourchier said as much, that the pace left the enemy no time to work their guns and broke their fire discipline. Trooper James Ryan called it a mad two-mile gallop, with trenches jumped or dodged.¹²

Theo: And then they hit the trenches.

Ada: The fourth dismounted and fought hand to hand in the redoubts. The twelfth jumped their horses clean over the trenches and galloped straight down the road into the streets and the railway station.¹

Water, Jerusalem, and a Myth

Fifteen of seventeen wells saved; two blown

Gaza evacuated a week later; Jerusalem fell 11 Dec 1917

Charge entered Australian legend beside Gallipoli

Ada: The garrison panicked. Ottoman engineers were laying charges to blow the wells, but the horsemen arrived too fast. Of seventeen wells, fifteen were found working. Only two were blown.¹

Theo: The popular version says every single one was saved, right?

Ada: It does, and the engineer reports say otherwise. Two destroyed, and several more needed hours of clearing before anyone could pump water. But it was enough. The captured horses were led to the stone troughs and drank through the night.¹

Theo: And the cost of the charge itself?

Ada: Remarkably light. Thirty-one men killed, thirty-six wounded, over seventy horses dead. The Ottomans lost about a thousand and nearly two thousand taken prisoner. Colonel Ismet Bey, who'd be a future president of Turkey, barely escaped into the hills.¹

Theo: And this is where the generals start pointing fingers at each other.

Ada: Immediately. Kressenstein blamed Ismet for scattering his reserves. Ismet's staff blamed Kressenstein for betting everything on Gaza. Both a little right.¹

Theo: And the myth, the last great cavalry charge in history.

Ada: Historians push back on that, gently. Large charges still happened later, at Megiddo the next year, and even in the Second World War. Even that iconic photograph of the charge was probably staged soon after.¹

Theo: So strip the legend away and what's left?

Ada: A day-long combined operation, infantry, artillery, New Zealanders bleeding up a hill for six hours, and then eight hundred thirsty men who gambled that speed would beat bullets. Beersheba unhinged the line, Gaza was abandoned a week later, and Allenby walked through Jerusalem's Jaffa Gate on foot on the eleventh of December.¹

Theo: Two weeks early.

Ada: And in Australia the charge took its place next to Gallipoli, the bushmen on their Walers. The real story is bigger than the legend, which is usually the way of it. And if a name or a number here makes you want to stop and ask us, you can interrupt any episode and do exactly that.¹

Theo: This was Historai, where history answers back.