The Bellinger River RSL sub-branch will be holding a commemorative service to mark the centenary of the Battle of Beersheba on Tuesday October 31.
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In what has been called ‘the last successful cavalry charge in British military history’, the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade made a final assault on Beersheba late in the afternoon of October 31, 1917, in a bid to take the Palestinian town and secure water supplies.
The volumes of dust, the poor light, the rapidity of the attack and the misdirected fire of the Turkish, who had been expecting the Lighthorsemen to dismount and fight as they usually did (they were actually mounted infantry rather than cavalry) meant that the brigade captured 1100 prisoners for a cost of 32 men killed and 36 injured.
By December the Allied forces had taken Jerusalem and a year later the campaign in the Middle East ended when the Ottoman Empire signed an armistice.
The informal group portrait of young men from the Bellingen area who enlisted in mid-1917 (shown above) was probably taken in the Middle East in 1918.
Charlie Fowler; Edwin Rose, Bob McFadyen, Harry (W.H.) Bailey and Keith Campbell enlisted between the 9 June 1917 and 30 July 1917.
Four attested at Bellingen Police Station and Bob McFadyen attested at Victoria Barracks, Sydney.
All were allocated to the Australian Army Medical Corps and trained at Liverpool NSW.
They embarked on HMAT Port Darwin for the Middle East in April 1918 and served in the 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance. They all survived the war and returned to Australia.
The Bellingen commemoration will be held at the Lone Pine Memorial in Piggott Park, corner of Robert and Lovell Streets (adjacent to Bellingen Public School), commencing at 11am.
Students and staff from Bellingen Public School will be present and the service will include a short performance by the school's string ensemble.
Kevin Franklin, a local Light Horseman and military historian, will be mounted at the Beersheba service, along with other members of the local Light Horse chapter.
The usual Remembrance Day service will be held at the same location (Lone Pine Memorial) on Saturday November 11. As it will be the 10th anniversary of the death of SGT Matthew Locke, MG in Afghanistan, the Reverend Zoe Everingham will be performing a dedication of a plaque for Matthew during the Remembrance Day service.
