I'd never heard of the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba.
It was three decades ago. I was a novice reporter at a throwaway newspaper in the outer western Melbourne suburbs. The editor – a cranky old bastard who I nonetheless respected, not least because he'd worked at the long dead Argus newspaper with the great journalist cum novelist George Johnston – ordered me to nearby Bacchus Marsh to interview another old bloke about his part in the “last great successful cavalry charge”.
Beersheba, Light Horse, charge?
I knew about the Australian involvement in the invasion and retreat at Gallipoli of course; most of my generation studied it in secondary school history and Peter Weir's movie of the same name had just seared it into my consciousness. I also knew something of Australia's experience of tragedy, mud and slaughter on the European western front.
