Brave Bess and the ANZAC Horses Page 2

  Between gun practice and long, tiring marches were quieter, more peaceful times. On moonlit nights, some of the men rode their horses to the Pyramids and raced around the ancient tombs. The first time Bess saw the huge Sphinx lying with its lion’s paws outstretched and its oddly human face gazing forward, she shied until her master showed her that it was only a stone statue.

  On sticky, hot afternoons, the horses and riders trekked past yellow mud-brick houses and groves of date palms down to the Nile River for a swim. Bess loved washing off the desert dust and frolicking with her friends. She relaxed in the shade of the palms fringing the Nile as the feluccas sailed by. She watched the Egyptian women in their flowing black robes glide past, balancing urns of water on their heads. She listened to the haunting sound of the muezzins’ calls to prayer echoing across the still water from the nearby minarets.

  During these moments, Bess sensed that her master was restless. He spent hours grooming her until her black coat shone and rippled like crushed velvet. But his mind was elsewhere. The other troopers were impatient and edgy, too. They huddled among the horses, grumbling to one another: ‘How long do we have to play silly war games, while all the action’s over there?’

  One day her master stroked her gleaming neck before whispering in her ear, ‘Goodbye, my fine Bess. I’m sorry you can’t come, but I promise I’ll be back soon.’ And then he was gone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Skirmishes in the Sinai

  Many New Zealanders were killed or wounded in the tragic Gallipoli campaign. The men of the Mounted Rifles returned to their horses on Boxing Day 1915, their numbers at half strength. Reinforcements brought the brigade back up to full strength again.

  In April 1916, most of the New Zealand soldiers left for the battlefields of Europe. Only the men of the Mounted Rifles remained behind in Egypt with their horses. They joined with the Australian Light Horse Brigades to form the Anzac Mounted Division.

  Their mission was to defend the vital Suez Canal from Turkish attack, and to drive the Turks and their German allies from the Sinai and Palestine. In early 1916, they rode into the Sinai Desert to face the Turks. From the very beginning, the men and horses suffered terribly in the hostile desert. In August 1916, the Turks launched their first major attack at Romani.

  Nearly nine months passed before Bess saw her master again. She was well cared for by the reinforcements, but she missed his gentle touch. When he finally returned, she hardly recognized him. His face was gaunt and his eyes jaded. They lit up when he saw her, though. ‘My Bess, they’ve looked after you well,’ he said, resting his head against her own. Jack’s master was different, too. His once steady hands now shook as he patted Jack’s neck.

  Flame’s master did not return. She looked out for him, but he never again walked along the line-up of horses with her saddle slung over his shoulder.

  Eventually Flame received a new rider from the reinforcements. He was a fresh-faced lad straight from home. When he first hopped on Flame, she bucked him off. This amused the hardened troopers watching. By now, the En Zeds, as the New Zealanders were called, and their mates, the Aussies, had earned a reputation as rugged soldiers and excellent horsemen. Their horses, too, were known to be sturdy and as hard as nails. The Aussie troopers called them Walers, after the tough horses bred in New South Wales.

  Flame continued to give her new rider a hard time. But the young man refused to give up, no matter how many times she tossed him off into the sand. Like all the troopers, he fed and watered her before he ate and drank himself. He groomed her before he washed off the desert dust coating his own body. He spent hours just talking to her about his home and family as if she could understand. One morning, she no longer tried to buck him off when he mounted her. The troopers clapped and cheered.

  On a cool, clear dawn when the stars were still high and bright in the sky, Bess woke to a bustling camp. Thousands of men were packing up their gear and loading up the horses, mules and camels. They’d received their orders. They were marching to the Sinai Desert to guard the all-important Suez Canal from attack by the Turks.

  The camp buzzed with mounting excitement, mainly among the reinforcements who’d not yet seen action. Bess and Jack waited patiently while their more sombre masters loaded up their kits. Flame fidgeted on her lead rope, angry at being disturbed so early in the morning, and even angrier still at having a heavy pack dumped on her back.

  But Flame’s anger was sweet compared with the crankiness of the camels. Bess and the horses were used to their ornery ways and bad smell by now, but the men were still learning how to deal with their cantankerous new allies. As they loaded up the camels with all the extra equipment, food, water and supplies, the camels kicked and spat at the men.

  ‘They may be called the ships of the desert, but I can think of other words I’d like to call them,’ Jack’s master muttered.

  ‘Most of what this army needs has to go on their backs,’ Bess’s master said. ‘Where we’re heading there are no roads, and wheels get bogged down in the soft sand.’

  One camel in particular was especially foul-tempered. The troopers nicknamed him Stinker. They spent over an hour loading him while he squatted on the ground trying to take chunks out of their hands. When they were finished, he heaved himself upright, shook himself vigorously, and the whole load slipped under his belly and fell off into the sand. He opened his jaws wide in a yellow-toothed grin, then spat at them.

  Finally, the Mounteds were packed and ready, the horses champing at their bits to be off. They rode out of Zietoun Camp, leaving the Pyramids and minarets of Cairo far behind them. After a seven-day, 140-kilometre trek across Egypt, they arrived at Serapeum on the banks of the Suez Canal.

  The Suez Canal is man-made and deep and narrow, slicing through the sands like a flat-bladed knife. It connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and is a vital transport route between Europe and Asia. Without it, goods would have to be hauled overland or ships travel all the way around Africa. Bess and her master watched, spellbound, as huge ships appeared to glide past them through the sands. Across the other side of the canal, the Sinai Desert, an endless sea of sand, shifted far out to the horizon.

  At Serapeum, the Anzacs set up camp and began training again in earnest. To Bess’s dismay there was even more rifle shooting and machine-gun practice. The staccato noise of the machine-gun fire filled her with dread. The men practised dismounting quickly and handing their horses over to the horse-holders. They then dashed forward, grunting and thrusting their bayonets at invisible enemies in the sand.

  Just as the troopers began to get bored fighting phantom armies, they were ordered to cross the Suez Canal and enter the Sinai Desert. Here they were to set up and guard defences in the sand, and patrol the desert on the lookout for Turks. They soon discovered their main enemy was not the Turks, but the desert itself.

  In every direction as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but shimmering sand. Every day the sun flamed orange from a blazing sky.

  The troopers worked hard in the scorching sun trying to build trenches. As fast as they shovelled the soft sand from the bottom of the trenches, it fell in again. They had to build walls of sandbags or sacking nailed to wooden struts to stop the trenches from collapsing. But when the fierce desert khamsin winds blew, it simply filled the trenches in again and they had to start digging all over again.

  The horses and troopers spent days out on long patrols across the bleached desert. Great sandhills soared high and rolled away forever. The khamsin winds pelted their faces and blinded their eyes with swirling sand. There were no trees to shade them from the scalding sun, and temperatures soared to 49°C. The horses trudged up to sixty kilometres a day through the roasting sands, lugging their riders and the backbreaking gear. Sunstroke struck down some of the men, and they fell like stones from their horses’ backs. During brief halts, Bess was so tired she’d flop to the ground with all her gear on. Her weary master lay against her in the welcome shade cast by her body.r />
  Lack of water was a constant problem out on these long patrols. If the horses were lucky, the men found ancient wells and waterholes and filled their canvas troughs with the foul-tasting, brackish water. But often there wasn’t enough water for horses or men. Convoys of camels delivered water and supplies to the troops whenever possible. Bess and the other horses could smell the water coming in the fanatis, or containers, carried on the camels’ backs. They’d go mad with thirst and rush the convoy, trying to catch the splashes from the buckets. They fought to lick up the spilled water from the damp sand, crazy-eyed and swollen-tongued. Water, food, everything, was full of grit and sand.

  Both the horses and men imagined mirages in the desert. Once Bess was certain she could see a tree-lined lake twinkling in the distance and tugged on her reins, snorting excitedly. ‘What is it, my girl?’ her master said glumly. ‘There’s nothing there but sand.’ Bess huffed at him through her nostrils.

  Sometimes they came upon hods, or small hollows between the hills, where date palms straggled from the sand and ponds of stale water lay. A medical officer would test the water and place a placard declaring ‘drinking water’, ‘horse water’, or ‘not fit for horse or man’. Often the troopers and horses were so desperate for a drink that they ignored the signs.

  The scattered hods offered the only sanctuary from the fierce heat of the desert. The patrols would stop to rest in the dappled shade of the date palms. It was during these halts that they first met the Bedouin, the nomadic people who called the desert home. The Bedouin scratched a poor living from harvesting dates and raising ragged goats and sheep.

  Bess was intrigued with their scraggy, long-eared donkeys, who wore bells around their necks in case they roamed.

  When the Bedouin families moved from hod to hod, they loaded up these hardy little donkeys with all the family’s possessions. Bess could barely see the poor plodding creatures beneath the piles of goatskin tents, blankets, earthenware pots and water gourds.

  Troops of potbellied dogs followed the Bedouin, scrounging for scraps of food. One day, while Bess’s squadron rested briefly in the shade of some palms, an elderly man and two wide-eyed, mop-haired boys approached Jack’s master. He was about to open up a tin of bully beef. The old man held up a wriggly puppy, then pointed at the tin of beef in Jack’s master’s hand.

  ‘You want to trade that mutt for this?’ Jack’s master asked incredulously. He looked at the mangy pup in the elderly man’s skinny arms, then at the hungry children by his side. ‘Fair trade, I guess,’ he said. ‘It’s about time this squadron got itself a mascot.’

  That’s how Hawker, a red-and-white pup with a stubby tail and a laugh in his eyes, joined Bess and the squadron. From that moment on, he travelled on the back of Jack’s pack, balancing like a seasoned horseman. At first, Flame tried to kick the little dog whenever she saw him skulking around their picket line. But eventually even she got used to him and didn’t mind him stealing titbits from her dinner at ‘feed up’ time.

  The order to ‘feed up’ was the best sound of all at the end of the long, blistering days. The riders slid from their exhausted horses, grabbed the picket ropes from around the horses’ necks, and joined the ropes up into one long line. They set to work with shovels, bayonets and sandbags to stretch out and anchor down the picket lines in the sand. They then tied the horses to the line, took off their saddles, and groomed, fed and watered them.

  The men sometimes had to haul up water from the bowels of ancient wells using long ropes and canvas buckets. It could take hours to feed and water all the horses. Bess and the others always greeted the order to ‘feed up’ with hungry, happy whinnies.

  Only after the men had cared for their horses did they rig up their own bivvies or tents made from blankets stretched across sticks driven into the ground. They crawled under them for shelter from the scorching sun and sand, but there was no escaping the flies.

  The flies clustered in black clouds over everything. The horses stood in their lines swishing their tails and stamping their feet against the vicious swarms. As they ate, the flies clambered in and out of their mouths. Each horse wore a cord fly-fringe on the brow bands of their halters, the swaying cords helping to keep the flies at bay. Still Bess had sores in the corners of her eyes and mouth from fly bites.

  Even worse were the ticks. They crawled up her legs and fastened onto her belly. Her master had to burn them off with the lit end of a cigarette.

  When the patrols were close to the enemy, the horses remained saddled throughout the night, ready to gallop off at a moment’s notice. Horse and rider spent long nights together out on patrol. The horse became the rider’s eyes and ears on these pitch-black nights. One late evening, Bess and her master were patrolling the camp perimeter when she sensed something ahead in the darkness. She nosed the air, tense and alert, then swerved and leapt aside as a spurt of gunfire stabbed the night and a sniper’s bullet whizzed harmlessly past.

  Short of water and short of sleep, their bodies smeared with dust and sweat, the horses and their riders trudged on through the desert furnace. Often they followed the path of the Darb el Sultani, or the Road of Kings, the oldest road in the world connecting Africa with Asia. Of course it was not a road at all, but little more than an ancient caravan track through the sands. Over the centuries, some of the most famous conquerors of old had crossed it, from the Romans and the Crusaders to Napoleon. They’d left their calling cards along the way, in the form of Roman ruins and crumbling Crusader castles.

  Towards the beginning of August, an army of more than 18,000 Turks swept over the sandhills and delivered a surprise attack on Anzac outposts near Romani. Bess and the others could hear the rolling rifle fire and booming guns echoing across the desert like distant thunder. Although vastly outnumbered, the Anzac troopers fought back in fierce charges across the searing hills.

  A few days later, it was Bess and her regiment’s turn to fight their first battle at Romani. They were ordered to storm a ridge held by the Turks. The horses and their riders lined up along the flat ground in the simmering heat at the base of the hill. The troopers were tense with excitement and apprehension as they waited for the command to attack. The horses sensed the tension and began to fidget and strain at their bits. Finally the order ‘Advance!’ rippled down the line.

  Bess’s master urged her into a brisk trot as the squadrons surged towards the ridge. The long line of horses trotted side by side at first, so close that the knees of their riders rubbed. Bess could feel their massed heat as they chucked their heads and yanked against their reins. Suddenly Flame reared high and squealed, and all the horses broke into a wild gallop. Bess joined them, her master’s legs gripping her surging sides.

  Machine-gun fire cracked over their heads and bullets thudded into the sand. The order ‘Dismount!’ hollered down the line, and the troopers hauled their panting horses to a stop. The riders quickly leapt off and passed the horses’ reins to their holders. Flame’s young rider grabbed Bess, Jack and another horse’s reins. Bess’s master charged up the sandy slope with the troopers, his pistol in his hand, their bayonets fixed to their rifles.

  Flame’s young rider led the horses to safety, finding cover with another group of horses and their holders over the brow of a hill. He tied them to the line and paced anxiously, listening to the bursts of gunfire from the battlefield. Bess tumbled to her knees and laid her weary head on the sand. In the distance, she could hear the thudding guns and the yells of the men. But there was another noise she’d not heard before. It was a constant drone, like the sound of mosquitoes on a warm night.

  Next to her, Flame grew uneasy as well. The noise swelled. Bess and Flame staggered to their feet. The whole line of horses began to tug at their lead ropes. Flame’s rider tried to calm them, but Flame only tossed her head higher. ‘Hey, it’s OK,’ her young trooper soothed. He looked around, straining to hear or see what was upsetting them. ‘Something’s worrying the horses,’ he said to another holder.

  ‘
It’s only the gunfire,’ the holder said. ‘They’ll get used to it.’

  Flame broke free from the picket line and trotted back and forth in front of the men, still tossing her head. The noise was getting louder.

  ‘No, they’re trying to tell us something,’ Flame’s trooper said. ‘We gotta go!’ He grabbed Flame, leapt into her saddle and cantered away, leading Bess, Jack and the other horse. Suddenly a roar erupted over the hill and a silver bird swooped down along the horse line. The line-up of tied horses was an easy target for the diving, screeching aeroplane. It dropped its bombs and roared off, leaving behind a tangled mass of dead and dying horses.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Rout at Rafah

  The Anzac Mounteds gradually drove the Turks out of the Sinai Desert. They fought many battles over and near wells and water, the precious lifeblood of the desert. The last major battle for the desert took place on the border between Egypt and Palestine at the fort town of Rafah in January 1917.

  The Anzacs had nearly lost the fight when the New Zealand troopers made a final desperate bayonet charge and seized the fort. The battle was described as New Zealand’s Day. The gateway to Palestine, the Holy Land, now lay open.

  Bess and the other horses raced on until the droning of the enemy aeroplane faded into the distance. They returned when the skies were clear, to search for their masters on the blood-soaked sands of the battlefield. The medics worked among the wounded, loading them onto wooden stretchers called cacolets, lashed to the camels’ backs. The rolling motion of the camels jolted the wounded troopers from side to side in agony, but it was the fastest way to get them to the field hospitals through the deep sand. Bess looked at the pain-filled faces of the wounded men as they passed by. There was no sign of her master.