Frontier Partisans
Nov 1, 2017 0:23:36 GMT -5
Post by deuce on Nov 1, 2017 0:23:36 GMT -5
Our own Keith Taylor reminded me of an outstanding moment in frontier partisan history that occurred 100 years ago on October 31, 1917. Here's his retelling of the event:
"Since this is Halloween, it's suitable, I think, to remember an event that took place on the afternoon of the 31st October in 1917, in the Middle East. It's an event that the legendary El Borak was certain to have heard about. During the summer of 1917 ("Son of the White Wolf") T.E. Lawrence had been leading his Arabs northwards to Damascus, and El Borak had been with him. Lawrence, though, had left Damascus by the 4th of October, and Gordon had been occupied in destroying the would-be empire builder Osman Pasha, and avenging some of his slaughtered victims.
Where Gordon was by Halloween, REH has never told us. But doubtless he was doing something desperate.
So were the men of the Australian Light Horse, 4th and 12th Regiments. They were making the last great cavalry charge in the history of war, taking the wells at Beersheba, in Palestine. They charged against entrenched Turkish positions and machine guns, across four miles of open ground, swinging two-foot sword bayonets. The Turks holding Beersheba knew the Light Horse were mounted infantry, not old-fashioned pure cavalry, and they expected them to dismount and move forward on foot. They were puzzled, at first, when the Australians just kept charging at a full-out gallop, and then they realized these nut jobs weren't going to stop. Nor did they. Reaching the Turkish trenches through a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, they leaped their horses over barbed wire entanglements and trenches filled with foes, and then, finally, sprang down from the saddle and went to work like William Wallace in a raging fury. They took the town and the crucially important water supply.
Halloween, October 31st, 1917.
I like to think that when Francis X. Gordon heard about it, he perhaps said with a sardonic laugh, 'Those men are insane. Here's to them.' "
Here's the climactic scene of The Lighthorsemen (1987). Those crazy bastards made the Turks eat cold steel.
"Since this is Halloween, it's suitable, I think, to remember an event that took place on the afternoon of the 31st October in 1917, in the Middle East. It's an event that the legendary El Borak was certain to have heard about. During the summer of 1917 ("Son of the White Wolf") T.E. Lawrence had been leading his Arabs northwards to Damascus, and El Borak had been with him. Lawrence, though, had left Damascus by the 4th of October, and Gordon had been occupied in destroying the would-be empire builder Osman Pasha, and avenging some of his slaughtered victims.
Where Gordon was by Halloween, REH has never told us. But doubtless he was doing something desperate.
So were the men of the Australian Light Horse, 4th and 12th Regiments. They were making the last great cavalry charge in the history of war, taking the wells at Beersheba, in Palestine. They charged against entrenched Turkish positions and machine guns, across four miles of open ground, swinging two-foot sword bayonets. The Turks holding Beersheba knew the Light Horse were mounted infantry, not old-fashioned pure cavalry, and they expected them to dismount and move forward on foot. They were puzzled, at first, when the Australians just kept charging at a full-out gallop, and then they realized these nut jobs weren't going to stop. Nor did they. Reaching the Turkish trenches through a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, they leaped their horses over barbed wire entanglements and trenches filled with foes, and then, finally, sprang down from the saddle and went to work like William Wallace in a raging fury. They took the town and the crucially important water supply.
Halloween, October 31st, 1917.
I like to think that when Francis X. Gordon heard about it, he perhaps said with a sardonic laugh, 'Those men are insane. Here's to them.' "
Here's the climactic scene of The Lighthorsemen (1987). Those crazy bastards made the Turks eat cold steel.
/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/b7/d8/b7d8bcef-32c8-4839-a742-c24b07ea5204/billythekid.jpg)
