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You guys will see the re-enactment before i do but it looks amazing!

For those who dont know it ....it was insane! It was mad!....and it worked!

Basically the Australian lighthorse charged on horseback across the desert and captured Jeruselum ( not many people can say that)

Anyway they were swordless, carried their bayonets in their hands as their only weapons. Instead of charging to a trench dismounting and fighting as an infantryman like most of the lighthorse did during we1 they charged through enemy lines turned around an attacked from behind.

Then they had to shoot their own horses afterward.

Google it. Its quite extraordinary

Oh and how they earned their emu feathers in their slouch hats is also fantastic

magentaflame;1513848 wrote: You guys will see the re-enactment before i do but it looks amazing!

For those who dont know it ....it was insane! It was mad!....and it worked!

Basically the Australian lighthorse charged on horseback across the desert and captured Jeruselum ( not many people can say that)

Anyway they were swordless, carried their bayonets in their hands as their only weapons. Instead of charging to a trench dismounting and fighting as an infantryman like most of the lighthorse did during we1 they charged through enemy lines turned around an attacked from behind.

Then they had to shoot their own horses afterward.

Google it. Its quite extraordinary

Oh and how they earned their emu feathers in their slouch hats is also fantastic


Amazing - and the thanks some of them got for it? :-



The capture of Beersheba by the 12th Light Horse Regiment has been largely written out of history. "The honor and the glory of securing the town went to the 4th Australian Light Horse in a cavalry charge that in notoriety ranks with the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava in 1854."[190] Allenby overlooks the 12th Light Horse Regiment's capture of Beersheba in his report to Wigram intended for the King. According to him, only the 4th Light Horse Regiment, charged and captured the town.

Ummm...thats a shame youve neen taught that. Maybe you should look up the Australian lighthorse website. They mention everyone in the battle including royal mounted and Yeolantry brigade. Where they were positioned, times, maps..etc. They mention the 4th because of the lead up and their roll in the battle which was basically suicidal.

I was always taught it was the lighthorse fullstop.

The last ever calvary charge in battle.

magentaflame;1513858 wrote: The last ever calvary charge in battle.I think the Poles claim that. From Wikipedia:A popular myth is that Polish cavalry armed with lances charged (and were annihilated by) German tanks during the September 1939 campaign. This arose from the misreporting (both intentional and unintentional) of the Charge at Krojanty on 1 September, when two squadrons of the Polish 18th Lancers armed with sabres scattered German infantry before being caught in the open by German armoured cars.

The whole campaign out in the ME in WW1 was a bit like that - it was much more what people at the time expected war to be like, not the trenches of the Western Front. Still horrible of course - those truly brave Aussies killed a lot of very decent young Turks and the effects of the war in Turkey itself were horrendous (famine, starvation, genocide). Allenby was also one of the better generals of the War.

The Aussies were without doubt some of the best fighting troops of the 1st WW. Produced an excellent General in Monash, too: He was the first to successfully implement a tactical system on the battlefield that truly integrated all arms working together. It worked and was then issued to the whole Imperial Army and used to drive the Germans back and force the Armistice. (That's a bit of a simplification - it was the principles that were important - the exact tactics varied according to circumstance)

edit: And I'm pretty sure the Russians were using horsed cavalry in WW2 for a lot of it if not all of it.

Clodhopper;1513915 wrote: The whole campaign out in the ME in WW1 was a bit like that - it was much more what people at the time expected war to be like, not the trenches of the Western Front. Still horrible of course - those truly brave Aussies killed a lot of very decent young Turks and the effects of the war in Turkey itself were horrendous (famine, starvation, genocide). Allenby was also one of the better generals of the War.

The Aussies were without doubt some of the best fighting troops of the 1st WW. Produced an excellent General in Monash, too: He was the first to successfully implement a tactical system on the battlefield that truly integrated all arms working together. It worked and was then issued to the whole Imperial Army and used to drive the Germans back and force the Armistice. (That's a bit of a simplification - it was the principles that were important - the exact tactics varied according to circumstance)

edit: And I'm pretty sure the Russians were using horsed cavalry in WW2 for a lot of it if not all of it.


I am pretty sure that by 1941, they had eaten most of their horses.

LarsMac;1513922 wrote: I am pretty sure that by 1941, they had eaten most of their horses.


Yeah, that's where my "pretty sure" comes from. But on the other hand as someone who lives on an island I tend to underestimate the consequences of the sheer size of Continental Powers and how far did the Western war affect Siberia? How far did the Atlantic War affect Alaska? They had a depth of strategic power that means they could - at least theoretically, I think - have produced the numbers needed.

edit: nb that the USSR unlike the UK or US fought a single front War.

You left out Germany.

chuckle. Yes, completely. The only "German" units I am aware of that were at least partially horsed were Russian defectors who ended up in the Vlasov Brigade or possibly "Cossack" units. Either way Russian in origin. The Wehrmacht depended on horses for logistics, especially in the USSR where the railway gauge was different to Western Europe.

edit: That looked awfully certain. Please let me emphasise that I know I don't know everything or in most cases, much.

They fought on quite a few fronts at the same time, too.

Oh, yes .

Thankfully. It's probably the only reason the Allies won, and very much down to Churchill.

We'd not be Brexiting if they'd won, we'd still be in the European Union.

A very different sort of EU. There are prices too high and that's one. Mind you, none of us would be around to see it:

Speech by SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Richard Darre – 1940

Richard Darre’s infamous speech made in 1940, detailed the fate of the British people, and makes chilling reading.

“As soon as we beat England we shall make an end of you Englishmen once and for all. Able- bodied men and women between the ages of 16 and 45 will be exported as slaves to the Continent. The old and weak will be exterminated.

All men remaining in Britain as slaves will be sterilised; a million or two of the young women of the Nordic type will be segregated in a number of stud farms where, with the assistance of picked German sires, during a period of 10 or 12 years, they will produce annually a series of Nordic infants to be brought up in every way as Germans.

These infants will form the future population of Britain. They will be partially educated in Germany and only those who fully satisfy the Nazi’s requirements will be allowed to return to Britain and take up permanent residence. The rest will be sterilised and sent to join slave gangs in Germany.

Thus, in a generation or two, the British will disappear.

(Quoted from Battle of Britain Monument website Nazi Plans - Battle of Britain Monument

That is, I think, quoted originally in "Life", December 1940, pp.41-42, which you can read in full at https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QUo ... &q&f=false

To be quite honest I think it's a propagandist invention of the time, but I'll defer to anyone who knows better. The Life article preamble says, in effect, that it may or may not be from a genuine speech but even if it's not it's what he would have said if he'd said it. There's no indication in that origin-piece of where it was said, to whom it was said or the date it was supposedly delivered other than "May". That degree of vagueness generally indicates something that's been made up.

Well, I read the article in Life and couldn't find the above quotation. It did say this (article p43)

After the complete defeat and humiliation of the western continental powers it will be an easy thing to crush contemptible England, isolated and in our power. England must be destroyed as once Carthage was destroyed: the centres of this perfidious plutocracy must be turned into ruins so that this punishment will stand as a warning to all who will attack our nation (cut warning to America)...Thousands of our planes will fly over proud Albion and the thunder of bombs and fire will shake to the very foundations this accursed island that has for so long hindered our development. Our SS battalions with the rest of the army will finish the work of destruction without any sentimentality - destructions of the domains of babbling Churchills, senile Chamberlains and idiotic Edens and Attlees.

That's it - as far as I could see.

The quotation I give is in the spirit of the Life article but has far more in the way of specific detail. I'm not sure that either proves or disproves the validity of the other. I've had a dig around on this issue before without luck. It was a while ago - I'll have another dig.

Apologies to Magentaflame: This has gone a long way from the Battle of Beersheba. Should it perhaps be made into its own thread?

And the credibility of my original quotation IS starting to look a bit underwhelming. Nothing definite yet, just a lack of ability to source it.

There are signs of einsatzgruppen being posted to the major populations centres under a bloke called Six and the "Black Book" of individuals to be handed to the Gestapo is certainly real - and bad enough - but nothing organised on the scale attributed to Darre. Still, I've emailed the Battle of Britain site to ask them for details and pointers so we'll see what comes back.

Clodhopper;1513941 wrote: Apologies to Magentaflame: This has gone a long way from the Battle of Beersheba. Should it perhaps be made into its own thread?


Lol i dont have a problem. Im learning stuff here. Plus those in glass houses. I do it all the time.

I guess the point of the legendary charge is the feat of getting there (3days on horseback just getting there) then what they did and the insane decsion to engage in it. (800 horses at full gallop in formation) the noise of horses and screaming men of that would have been as terrifying as a zulu charge).... and then, out of 800 men 37 dead and 39 injured....thats incredible in a full on charge

magentaflame;1513957 wrote: Lol i dont have a problem. Im learning stuff here. Plus those in glass houses. I do it all the time.

I guess the point of the legendary charge is the feat of getting there (3days on horseback just getting there) then what they did and the insane decsion to engage in it. (800 horses at full gallop in formation) the noise of horses and screaming men of that would have been as terrifying as a zulu charge).... and then, out of 800 men 37 dead and 39 injured....thats incredible in a full on charge


Yes, it is. Perhaps it gives some insight into why people in the 1920s and 30s still thought horsed cavalry had a role in modern warfare, as well.

This is what I've got back so far from the BoBM site:



Thank you for getting in touch.

Its difficult to find genuinely authoratitive sites but I believe this fits the bill, it in turn also references LIFE

magazine though:

R, Walther Darre "Blut & Boden" www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

The original speech would have been in German of course, I will ask a German-speaking friend to research

some more.

The speech, if it happened, certainly fits in with his ethos of Nordic supremacy.


We'll see what the German speaking friend comes back with. The other thing that strikes me is that everyone is saying that the quotation is from this Life issue - but it isn't. There's no way the excerpt I quote from the Life magazine article could be translated as the more extreme version - it's fundamentally different. So where DID it come from?

Incidentally, I'm just as interested whether the quotation is real or allied propaganda - if it's real because of what it says about extreme racist and nationalist movements and what is acceptable to them and because if it's propaganda it's been incredibly effective to have survived this long!

I can think of two other related sorts of thing: The first is Cat's Eyes Cunningham. He was a successful night fighter pilot in WW2 making use of an ultra top secret weapon - radar that fit in a plane. They didn't want to admit they were using radar so they put out the story that he ate a diet rich in carrots because carotene improved his night vision. Pure invention to hide radar, but the idea that carrots improve your night sight is still around .

The other is why Tanks are called Tanks, when they were originally called Landships. Apparently what happened is they need a cover story for what these - again - ultra top secret weapons being transported across countries on trains actually were. The story they came up with is that they were mobile water tanks...