Great War Horses

Separated from their mounts, men from the Light Horse

are slaughtered on the killing fields of Gallipoli.

Forced to charge on foot into Turkish machine guns.

Reunited with their beloved horses,

the survivors will try to avenge their comrades

and bring down an empire.

Together they will create the legend but bear the tragedy of the Waler,

Australia's great war horse.

One of the great symbols of our soldiers is our light horseman.

The slouch hat with emu plumes.

Riding Walers and coming home victorious.

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 is the beginning

of an historic partnership between man and beast.

The men are from Australia's vast outback.

The Australian light horsemen,

they were just blokes who could ride a horse and shoot a gun.

Take six bullets into the desert and you get six kills.

Their horses are Walers, a ragged Australian mixed breed

with a bloodline stretching back to convict times.

It was a hard country, and you had to be tough to survive,

the horses had to be tough to survive.

The Waler just evolved as a very, very tough stock horse.

They are part of our history, the Waler,

part of the development of Australia.

My pick of a horse,

and they have been ever since I was a little bloke.

Goes back to where he was bred, in the bush.

Any foals that couldn't keep up, they were left behind.

The strongest survive, you know, and that's what they were looking for,

because when they got over there, they had tough horses.

To fight the war, the Australian Government calls for volunteers,

and begins building an army.

The raising of the Australian Imperial Force

really was a demonstration of massive national patriotism.

We expected to be able to raise an expeditionary force

of 20,000 soldiers. We did that in the first few days.

These were mates, they were men who'd grown up together,

they'd been to school together, they'd worked together,

they enlisted together.

And particularly every light horse regiment.

There were certainly plenty of examples of men

who rode their own horses into the recruiting depot.

One is Guy Haden, born on the same stud in New South Wales

as his trusted Waler, Midnight.

Midnight was born here at Bloomfield.

She was out of a mare called Moonlight

and she was born at midnight.

Guy was probably about 16 when she was born

and he had this great bonding with her, you know, from day one.

He would have done a lot of stock work on her, marshalling the cattle.

The bonds between the men and the horse was just amazing.

Guy's younger brother, Barney, is also determined to join up.

Barney took a horse called Polo.

And both the brothers, they enlisted in 1915 down at Liverpool in Sydney.

I'm sure they had no idea of the horrors that were ahead of them.

They are trained at massive training camps around Australia.

Blackboy Hill in Western Australia, Holsworthy in New South Wales,

Broadmeadows in Victoria.

There were a lot of city slickers who wanted to join

the Light Horse, as it turned out.

And so they were trialled in the depots around the cities

and if they could ride, they'd normally got a run.

A lot of them couldn't, and tried out, and failed.

Those who don't bring their own horses

are meeting their charges for the first time.

This man and horse team develops in training camps.

This is where the bond begins,

because they're going to war as a unit.

The basic building block was a four-man section.

Three would dismount to fight and a fourth man was the horse holder.

Light horsemen were not born, they were created

by the army in which they served in.

Australia convinced many of the local steamers

to do troop transports.

The plan is to go to Britain to fight the war in Europe.

Each soldier was responsible for his horse

and it became a source of pride for a regiment to make sure

that these horses were groomed every day,

and often by the soldiers who were going to ride them.

"When the bugle blows for watering and feeding horses,

"it is simply astonishing how it's recognised by them.

"A pawing and neighing goes on.

"There was a dreadful noise over the whole ship until they are fed.

"They have almost become like human beings."

Trooper Roland, 4th Light Horse.

The bond between man and horse can only get stronger as these men

and their animals are going off to the great adventure together.

But as the convoy sails north, the health of the horses deteriorates.

The horses went through the hottest part of the year.

It was a constant, constant, gruelling grind every day

and not every digger was used to that.

The average horse loss across the convoy was 12%, which is quite high.

Influenza was an enormous cause of loss.

Unfortunately, not every horse made it.

Then comes a sudden change of plan.

The convoy and its 30,000 men and nearly 15,000 horses

is redirected to Egypt.

They genuinely believed that they were off to fight the Germans

on the Western Front.

Suddenly, they find themselves being off-loaded for training,

for acclimatisation, for making sure they were able to maintain

the health of their horses and of the men.

So in many cases, the horses go into rest camps.

Meanwhile, the guys are excited.

They want to go sightseeing.

They're going down to Cairo, they want to check out the pyramids,

they want to look at this amazing city.

They're on the world's greatest adventure,

and somebody else is picking up the bill.

But the Australians have arrived in a volatile part of the world.

The war is now spreading into the Middle East

and the Turkish dominions.

For 100 years, the Ottoman Empire had been referred to

by the Western powers as "the sick man of Europe".

The Empire is huge, it extends from Asia to southern Europe.

And it's, on its fringes, a seething bed of dissent.

And so, the Ottomans have a whole range of problems

before they even decide to buy into the great argument in Europe.

The fact that they do, on the side of the Central Powers,

means that they are creating a huge threat in the eastern Mediterranean.

In March 1915, Britain and France struck

at the heart of the Ottoman Empire,

attempting a naval siege of its capital, Constantinople.

Their fleet was trapped in the narrow straits of the Dardanelles

and crippled by land-based bombardment and floating mines.

In response, the Allies land troops

to attack the fortified Turkish defences.

Australians and New Zealanders are sent to a tiny cove

on the Gallipoli peninsula.

After months of stalemate and over 50,000 Allied deaths,

the British high command concedes the battle is lost.

After it was obvious that they weren't going to get off the beaches

at Anzac and the decision was made to evacuate the peninsula

in December 1915, all of the troops were withdrawn

and returned to Egypt.

How heartbreaking, the scenes of return,

where the survivors are being reunited with their horses,

they're also seeing the horses of the blokes who are still buried

on the peninsula.

They have to rebuild the spirit that is lying in largely unmarked graves.

But this turned out to be an important moment,

because all those men wanted revenge, in a broad sense.

And they were then told, right,

it's going to be a different playing field here,

the Turks are going to come at us, but we'll have our horses.

In a perverse way,

the horses benefit quite a lot from the men going to Gallipoli,

because it means that while the men are fighting and dying in Gallipoli,

the horses are actually being very well taken care of

and getting used to their environment.

But military bureaucracy can be cruel.

Some men, traumatised by battle,

are denied a reunion with their original horses.

Including brothers Guy and Barney Haden.

They reallocated horses and, of course,

there are so many horses there, Guy, he got given another horse.

These are special horses and the thought of someone else riding them,

I think, would have been devastating.

For days, Guy searches desperately for Midnight.

Finding one horse amongst thousands is all but impossible.

Then, a single letter from home makes the difference.

He spread the world around and this guy came sidling up to him one day

and he said, "Hey, I've found your mare, got your brand on it."

He then was reunited with her and that was just amazing

that Guy could get her.

He managed to get Barney his horse back, he got him back Polo.

It was a major part of their campaign that they got reunited

with their actual correct horses.

Suddenly, it is apparent to this generation

who'd thought that the war was going to be over by Christmas...

..well, it isn't.

These amateur and enthusiastic armies

have got to become professional.

They realise they've got to establish strong links

with home, because they need a constant supply of men,

but they need a very constant supply of horses.

The horses have to be rounded up and have a degree of training,

or at least breaking in.

Well, what does that mean?

In some cases, there are accounts of stations in far north Queensland

where some poor aboriginal kid has been stuck on a horse

for a matter of seconds, thrown around a yard,

so that some inspector can say, yes, I saw somebody ride this horse.

And so the Australian Imperial Force developed these remount units.

One is led by celebrated bush poet Major Banjo Paterson.

"Australia had been scoured to find a couple of hundred rough riders,

"possibly the best lot of men that were ever got together

"to deal with rough horses. They decided to give the war a fly."

Banjo Paterson, Major, 2nd Remount.

Great horsemen, do a remarkable job in getting hardly broken horses

trained and combat ready in a matter of months.

One of them was called Bill.

And he was a bastard of a horse.

He used to pig-root, he used to buck people off, just impossible to ride.

He was 17.1 hands, that's five foot nine, at the shoulder.

I mean, he's like a tall rhinoceros.

And he behaved like one.

Grandfather heard about him.

Being what we call these days a horse whisperer, I guess,

he went down and he used to go up and talk to the horse,

he used to run his hands over it and used to bag him,

and he'd do this every time he got a spare moment and eventually,

Bill allowed him to get up on him, he pig-rooted, he bucked a bit,

and Grandad stayed with him and from then on, that was his horse.

Reinforcing men and horses has become a race against time.

The aspirations of the Ottoman leadership are changing.

Turks were hugely confident

they were going to wipe out the British force and take Egypt.

And they've got these combat experienced soldiers

released from Gallipoli.

They can threaten the vital British supply line at Suez.

The Suez Canal's important because you've got every bit of shipping

going down through to India, and everywhere up to Europe,

cargoes, men, everything.

So if you control the canal, you control Egypt, essentially.

And Romani, where they were going to hit and take, was the key point.

Once they took Romani, it's 70 miles from the canal,

it is all over, red rover - they take Egypt.

The British was very frightened, because the Ottomans knew

the terrain better than the British.

Some of the Egyptian decided to change sides,

so the British got into a panic.

They thought that, OK, a nightmare scenario's happening.

The Turks are advancing on the canal.

There's almost 20,000 Turkish infantry moving across the desert.

It was very quickly decided that the best defence

was a more active offence.

The major force that was going to stand in the way

was 1,700 light horsemen under Harry Chauvel.

Brigadier General Harry Chauvel leads the Anzac Mounted Division.

A fine horseman and brilliant tactician,

Chauvel can finally use his men the way they have been trained.

Harry Chauvel said, we are going to have them come onto us,

you will fight them and you will withdraw slowly

towards the town of Romani in the hope that you'll wear them out

during the night.

In fact, Harry Chauvel said,

"This battle will be about the water bottle."

Just after midnight,

the main Turkish column collides with the Australian Light Horse.

It's a very, very intense, savage battlefield.

They were actually digging trenches as they were pulling back, you know,

in the sand and they'd get off their horses and fire their weapons.

And the horse holders have got to know where their mates are,

so they can ride in quickly and remount and relocate.

But they've also got to protect those horses

from Turkish long-range artillery.

As the fighting continues through the night,

the Australians suffer heavy losses.

The Turkish Army advances to within a kilometre of Romani.

Then, with the battle in the balance,

an Australian legend is born.

In the middle of the Battle of Romani was Bill the Bastard.

Even with Grandad on, he'd give a bit of a shy and a buck

before they went into battle.

And here was Shanahan, under orders, going up and down the lines,

keeping his men in it. Now, to get the idea of the energy, the drive,

the power of this horse,

he went five or six hours running,

and other horses were lasting 30 minutes.

As the fighting withdrawals continue,

four men find themselves stranded, with their horses dead.

That horse, Bill, and my grandfather, they were one,

they didn't have time to think about fear, or how tough the job was.

He'd only need to put his hand on the horse's neck

and that horse knew exactly what to do.

Bill's ears lay back and he'd charge in.

Shanahan said, "Get up on Bill.

"Get up. One on each stirrup, two on the back, we'll get out."

Bill, this horse that no-one could ride three months earlier,

took the five men out,

and they got out and back to Romani.

Shanahan went back into battle for another hour and a half,

and that's when Shanahan was badly wounded, in that case.

Unfortunately, somewhere in the melee, he was shot in the left leg.

Went on fighting, collapsed on the horse,

and Bill did an amazing thing.

Bill very gently got back to the base.

Now, had Bill been a frightened horse,

he might have galloped, and he would have been thrown off.

But he was definitely saving his life by taking him back.

It was really a duality, they were a team.

This is why there was a terrific affinity

between the horses and the troopers.

In some way, their lives were saved

by the horse at some point.

By dawn, Romani is saved.

A few thousand Australian light horsemen fight themselves

to absolute exhaustion. But they stop a Turkish army

many times their number.

If you can stop an army in the desert, he's got to go home,

he can't carry enough water to stay in place.

Over 200 Allied soldiers die at Romani

and almost 1,000 are wounded, including Major Shanahan.

Unfortunately, by the time they got him

to any sort of medical attention, gangrene had set in,

so they had to chop his leg off.

And then they sent him back to England to convalesce.

These are the medals that Grandfather won

in the First World War, the Battle of Romani.

In particular, this is the DSO, the Distinguished Service Order,

which he won when he brought the four lads out on his horse,

Bill the Bastard.

Bill, once a delinquent, is the toast of the Australian Light Horse.

He will never again be sent into battle.

The Suez Canal is saved.

But this victory is far from decisive.

The Ottomans aren't going to be pushed around.

Australians have tried to push forward very quickly,

run into very heavy Ottoman artillery and rifle fire.

The Ottomans retreated in quite good orders.

They just returned back to their old lines

without suffering major casualties.

To consolidate their victory, the Allies need to go on the offensive.

Now it will be the Australians' turn to cross the desert.

British imperial thinking starts to chip in.

It's not just about defending the Suez Canal,

it might be an opportunity to start expanding British influence

and power in the Middle East at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.

The desert campaign tests everybody and everything to the limit.

Nobody's going to beat the desert -

just being able to survive is a victory.

It was a terrible journey.

The heat was horrific.

They had to cope with lice and fleas, scorpions.

But worst of all, horses were just covered in flies, so were the men.

If a horse went down through lack of water, then the horse was left.

Throughout the campaign, this was a constant nightmare.

The rider begins to appreciate how absolutely critical it was for him

to take personal responsibility for his horse.

No horse, no ride.

No going home.

Over the next five months,

thousands of horsemen try to cross the formidable Sinai,

skirmishing all the way the rear-guard of the Ottoman Army.

As the Australians scout deeper and deeper into the desert,

dehydration becomes the greatest enemy of all.

In the end, it is the men's unique background

that helps keep them alive.

Time in the Australian outback is going to equip you

for managing that desert environment.

So they find dry watercourses, they find oases that have dried up

and they can use the sort of technology that you would have used

on the Canning stock route, on the Murranji,

in the Northern Territory, and they are able to source water.

And it is their horses' rugged breeding that carries them on.

This is an account from an English cavalryman.

"Indeed, the hardships endured by these horses was almost incredible.

"They carried the soldier, the saddle, ammunition,

"sword, rifle, clothes,

"on half rations and only one drink in every 36 hours.

"It is no doubt these Australian horses make the finest

"cavalry mounts in the world."

By the end of the year, they are on the frontier of the Ottoman Empire,

they are ready for an offensive war

and they come against probably the greatest defensive line

the Turks have been able to create,

beginning with Gaza on the coast and stretching inland

almost as far as the water wells of Beersheba.

Gaza was the big block -

if you didn't take Gaza, the war's in stalemate.

Even though you've cleared them out of the Sinai,

you're not going to take Palestine if you haven't got Gaza.

In March and April of 1917, British and Imperial forces,

including the Australian Light Horse,

make two full-scale assaults on the fortified town.

Using head-on tactics more at home on the Western front,

the results are disastrous.

The British had a marvellous opportunity to overpass

the Ottoman defences and be able to reach Palestine

or inside Syria easily.

But at the time, the British military command in Egypt

did not understand the potential of this mobile forces.

So that was the reason why they try the Western Front approach

during the first and second battles of Gaza.

So, this is a letter that Guy wrote home to his parents

here at Bloomfield. It was about the Gaza offensive.

"The fire was terrible.

"Rifle, machinegun and shrapnel swept the ground

"and it was so dusty that at times, one could only see about 20 yards.

"There we lay with our noses glued to the ground

"and the shrapnel ripping all amongst us.

"How the devil any of us got out of there alive, the Lord only knows.

"The old hands say that is the heaviest scrapping we had had.

"Worse than the landing on Gallipoli and even worse than in France."

So the Battle of Gaza is very costly for the Australian Light Horse.

It's the loss of those soldiers and the stalemate

that develops along those lines that the British

are very concerned about, because it looks like the war

in the Mediterranean may end up bogging down,

like the war on the Western Front was at this time.

So concerned are the British high command,

they dismiss General Archibald Murray

as the leader of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.

His replacement is General Edmund Allenby,

an ex-cavalry commander and veteran of the war in Europe.

Allenby comes up with the proposal to get around

the Gaza defensive line -

a huge flanking march to find the end of the line

and attack the fortifications at Beersheba.

It's essential that he takes Beersheba, because it's got water.

He is a gambler, and he's got the men and horses to do it with.

But he knows that he's got to do it in a short amount of time,

otherwise man and beast will die in the desert.

A massive column of men and horses now march inland.

After three days, they near the town of Beersheba.

But the desert has done its damage.

The horses hadn't had water, some up to 72 hours.

They were practically dying on their feet.

They were at the limit, the absolute limit of their endurance.

On the morning of the 31st October 1917, the assault begins,

with British infantry doing most of the fighting.

By late afternoon, the town is close to falling,

but there is a new problem.

They realise that the German technicians that are part

of the Ottoman garrison have mined the water wells.

It's all going to be empty

if they don't capture those water wells intact.

The commander on the ground, Harry Chauvel,

realises that he needs dash,

and so he just takes the great gamble of the entire battle

and he finds his spare light horse brigade,

the 4th and 12th from Victoria and New South Wales.

Their commander is Brigadier Grant and Chauvel turns to his staff

and says, "Put Grant straight at it."

One thing when you do ride a horse

is you've got to have a little bit of belief

that I'm going to go in and I'm going to do that job,

and your horse becomes focused then.

They begin in very, very strict lines over open ground.

They knew that they faced terrible death, but they took it on.

A horse mounted attack is a very scary thing to behold

if you're on the receiving end.

The Turks were very nervous because they saw this mounted force

getting ready to come at them from several miles.

The German officers, who were sitting behind the Turkish officers,

said, don't worry, we can see the emu plumes.

They're Australian Light Horse, they will not go right through.

They move from the walk, to the trot, to a canter.

They can see Turkish field artillery,

they can see Turkish machine guns and there are at least two aircraft

flying out of Beersheba, dropping bombs in their path.

It is an impossible gamble.

Amongst the 800 men are Guy Hayden and Midnight.

As soon as they fired, we started to gallop.

And you've never heard such war yells as our boys let out.

They never hesitated or faltered for a moment.

Suddenly, they can hear thousands of hoof beats getting faster

and more rapid.

The ground beneath them would've been shaking as the Australians got

closer, and then it's just a flat-out charge across open ground.

It's insanely heroic.

The sheer impetus of this heaving, charging,

galloping mass on a terrified enemy took over

and it had its own momentum.

You have a large number of men galloping down at you very quickly.

You're firing back, but you're not necessarily seeing much result

of that fire, and that is one of the reasons cavalry charges

are called shock action.

Riding hard, Guy and Midnight reach the Turkish line.

At that critical moment when he actually jumped the trench,

a Turkish soldier shot a bullet.

And it went up through Midnight's stomach, it went through the saddle,

it went through the bed roll and lodged in Guy's back.

"A bullet hit me high in the left buttock, just under the belt,

"lifting me clear off my horse

"and dropping me sprawling on a heap of dirt."

Childhood companions Guy and Midnight lie wounded,

struck by the same bullet,

while their comrades sweep forward to victory.

And that's where Beersheba enters Australian legend

and they capture the wells intact and the town falls.

The casualties are not light.

The horses must have sensed fear and noise and confusion,

but they had faith in the men that were on their backs

and they rode across that beaten ground and they took that position.

They've got to perform under fire, don't they?

And the courage was there. They are in a unique horse.

Put your life on them.

They'll get you home.

It was an extraordinary feat of arms.

I believe that it's one of the great cavalry charges of all time.

The Beersheba battle was incredibly important

and it had other ramifications,

in that there was the so-called Balfour Declaration.

British Foreign Minister Lord Balfour put out a letter saying

that the Jews were allowed to come into Palestine.

The diaspora of Jews, the migration, could build up under our control.

So this is fundamental, this is the beginning of the Jewish state,

and that was that Battle of Beersheba.

Guy slowly recovers from his wounds, but his faithful mare does not.

This is the bullet that was taken from Guy's back.

Midnight saved his life because she took the brunt of it

as it went through.

It was only just a hair's width from his spine,

so Guy was very, very lucky.

Another fraction and he wouldn't have made it.

The Light Horse has pulled off

one of the last great cavalry charges in history.

Now outflanked, the Turks are routed from Gaza

and soon give up control of Jerusalem without a serious fight.

From a dramatic, political, psychological point of view,

to take Jerusalem back from the Muslim power

was incredibly important.

No-one was going to fight in the Holy City,

but all the battles went around that particular city and slowly,

relentlessly, the infantry and the Light Horse began to clear them.

The Australians now find themselves in the Holy Land.

Suddenly, these young men from the other side of the world,

with their horses,

are visiting places that are in the Bibles that their parents have

sent them from Australia with a gum leaf folded between the covers.

They are riding through the locations in the Old Testament,

the stories that they've grown up with.

But the war is far from over.

The Turks and Germans build a new defensive line to the north.

It stretches from the Mediterranean

through the Jordan Valley and beyond, into the Syrian desert.

The Jordan Valley campaign was a nightmare.

The Turks didn't want to give ground.

Indeed, many of the Turkish units would be recruited

from the local area, so they are fighting on their home soil.

They are fighting with a will as intense

as they demonstrated at Gallipoli.

The horses do have a fairly hard time in the advance

from Beersheba northwards into central Palestine.

The horses no longer have a ready supply of fodder coming forward,

they have to graze.

Horses grazing on campaign means they are generally

not getting enough sustenance.

Water is hard to come by.

The men are living off bully beef, iron rations,

which are essentially emergency rations that they carried.

They were surrounded by high cliffs,

it was boiling hot and the horses and the men were exhausted.

We've moved away from the soft sands of Sinai to rocky ground.

This creates problems for horses' feet, for shoeing.

All of those sorts of issues which really could make an inroad

into the effectiveness of a fighting unit.

Short advances, desperate battles and then another short advance.

And then they encounter the disease.

Men and horses are dying.

You've got malarial swamps.

Diseases that herd animals are carrying.

Poorer food, they're trying to live off the land a lot more.

They claw their way through Palestine.

General Allenby is also fighting a battle with his superiors in London.

He needs more soldiers and supplies, but they are slow to arrive,

as the Western Front continues to devour a whole generation of men.

It takes time to build the force he needs.

Ten and a half months after the breach of the Gaza-Beersheba line,

Allenby is within striking distance of Damascus.

The road to Damascus has been the goal since biblical times.

Allenby was confident that if he could take Damascus,

there would be a military and strategic victory,

but there would also be an enormous morale and propaganda victory.

By now, the Ottomans have amassed three entire armies

stretching across a final defensive line.

It is the last stand of one of the greatest empires in history.

So, you're dealing with 100,000 soldiers on the enemy side,

then you've got to really be tactically brilliant to win this.

What he wanted to do is to swing from the Jordan Valley

back to the coast, across the plains of Chevron

and advance through Megiddo,

across the biblical battlefield of Armageddon,

and draw down on Damascus.

Prophesized as the place where man's final battle will erupt

on the Day of Judgment,

General Allenby concentrates his forces

near the ancient fort of Megiddo.

It is a path taken by the great invading armies of yesteryear.

The plan was to pound a hole in the Turkish line,

then exploit it with what has become the British Empire's secret weapon,

men on horseback.

Australian airmen and British airmen knock out the lines of communication

behind the Turkish lines.

The British launch an infantry breakthrough,

driving one Turkish army back along the coast

while leaving the others in situation.

A gap occurs between these two Turkish armies

and his mounted soldiers ride through that gap.

Harry Chauvel is able to unleash two of his cavalry divisions -

the British and Indian 4th and 5th Cavalry divisions

ride through the gap.

The leftmost division is literally riding up the beach.

The Australia Mounted Division

aim to get right behind the Ottoman Army,

push all the way across to the Jordan River

and cut off its withdrawal routes with a view

to destroying those armies piecemeal.

A swing around behind the Turkish troops

that are still in contact, cutting off a massive number

of Turkish soldiers.

I've seen the German cables, they'd say,

"The Anzacs will go where no man or horse should go, they are madmen."

The Australians and the British mounted soldiers

are advancing faster than the enemy can retreat.

The Turkish coordination starts to fall apart.

The Megiddo offensive is a truly remarkable military feat,

an astounding victory.

It destroys three Ottoman armies

and ultimately it results in exploitation that pushes well beyond

what anyone had ever hoped.

So they can actually push the Turks out of the region for the first time

in 400 years of control of the Arabs in that region.

Within a week of the Battle of Megiddo,

Allenby's army is on the outskirts of Damascus.

Harry Chauvel chose the 10th Light Horse for Damascus

and he said categorically,

it's because of what happened at the neck.

You deserve the honour of taking the town of Damascus.

As the 10th readies itself, chaos erupts inside the city.

The Turkish forces are in disarray.

They knew that the British were coming.

That's those inside Damascus.

So the Turks and the Germans were going to get out.

To the west of Damascus is the Barada Gorge,

one of the main routes out of the city.

So they were taking trains, they were taking any vehicle they could,

horses and everything, through that gorge.

The Light Horse have this covered from on high.

Remember, these are blokes six bullets, six kills.

All can shoot.

And the Turks were going to surrender - smartly, I thought -

but the German command said, no, you fight to the last man.

Every living thing was slaughtered in that gorge that night.

Next morning, the 10th begins its advance on Damascus.

But first, they pass through the carnage,

an echo of their own experiences at Gallipoli.

Is this slaughter a sign of what lies ahead?

Will entering Damascus become the bloodiest battle of them all?

Before the Australians can enter the city,

colonial politics intervened

in the form of one of the British Empire's greatest heroes.

Allenby's been told to secure Damascus

but make sure that the city falls to Faisal's army

and Lawrence of Arabia.

Lieutenant Colonel TE Lawrence has been helping King Faisal

and his Arab army fight the Turks through the eastern deserts.

However, he is still some distance from Damascus.

The authorities in the town are watching one of the oldest cities

on Earth tear itself to pieces.

People are rioting in the streets, fires are breaking out, it's chaos.

Allenby sends in the Australian Light Horse to skirt around

the town to make sure the Turks have gone and to make sure

that there's some order, so that the Arab Army

can successfully consolidate the city.

It is led by a major named Olden.

He was a very keen horseman.

My mum and my dad, they had a horse that they named Pie,

in memory of Grandfather's horse that went into Damascus that day.

And he's weaving his way, with the soldiers behind him,

through these chaotic, tiny little streets.

But they keep bumping into these slums

and these tiny little blind alleys,

not the sort of place you can take men and horses,

and so he gets edged closer to the centre of town,

he knows he's not supposed to get there but he can't find another way

through the city, and suddenly, there he and his men are,

formed up on the square in front of the great Soraya,

the great town hall and meeting place

in the centre of the oldest city on Earth.

He is covered in dust, he's got his revolver in one hand.

He is not sure what he's supposed to.

He's not supposed to have an official function.

This is supposed to be Faisal and Lawrence of Arabia.

Well, this is my grandfather's book.

"The officers advanced and halted in the centre of the room

"and called for the Governor to approach.

"Olden asked, 'Does the city surrender?'

" 'Yes, there will be no further opposition in the city.' "

He gets the surrender in writing.

He holds up the piece of paper to his men,

they can all hear him, and he says,

"I'm in the line of Ramesses II of Egypt,

"Alexander the Great of Greece and Napoleon of France

"in the surrender of Damascus."

He was taking the mickey, of course.

And there's a huge roar from the men because they know Olden,

he's a bit of an eccentric, but he knows his history.

And it's interesting that he got them to write out the surrender

so he'd have it for ever, to say, well, we were first in,

not Lawrence and the Arabs, and here it is, here's the piece of paper.

So, this is the original document,

surrendering the city of Damascus to Olden.

And it reads, "I have the greatest honour in meeting

"Major Arthur Olden, who was the first British officer

"to enter Damascus in the bravest manner known of the Saxon race.

"I have written these words as remembrance

"of this glorious meeting.

"Signed by Amir Mohammed Sayed, son of Amir Ali,

"son of Amir Abdul Kadir."

It must have been a remarkable scene for these men on horses

that had been on campaign for years,

being presented with the keys to the oldest city,

and of course, it's indicative of what a citizens' army the AIF is.

Olden is a dentist from Narrogin in Western Australia.

Two hours later, Lawrence arrives in a Rolls-Royce to officially accept

the surrender of Damascus, for the record books.

By now, the Australians have raced forward on their great ride,

sweeping their enemy north and driving home

the long campaign's most important victory.

The greatest cavalry feat in British history,

the great drive that went so far, so fast and was so devastating

to the enemy, was the crowning achievement.

Then on the 11th of November 1918, the Armistice is announced.

The war in Europe and in the Middle East is over.

The Australians have forced the Turkish Army back

to less than 50 kilometres from their homeland.

The Ottoman Empire is in ruins.

Forged under fire,

the incredible partnership between the men and the horses

of the Australian Mounted Division has achieved greatness.

With open lands, desert, classical history,

stories popping up from the Bible,

Australia had the potential to show the capacity of their bushmen,

their love of their horses, their sturdiness.

It's the perfect story.

The horses were paramount in winning the desert war,

and if they came out with glory, it was because of the horses.

Now, with the years of conflict finally over,

that bond faces a new challenge.

They often said, my best mate was the horse.

And they all dreamt of going back to their towns

and riding down the main street, victorious.

Hard economics will soon shatter that dream.

At the end of the war,

the equipment needed to be either recycled or destroyed.

And the horses fell into that equation.

It's a sad thing, but the war's not only a war,

it's probably a business as well at the end of the day.

They'd done their job and they left them there.

Although the price of going to war had never mattered,

the cost of coming home now does.

The emotional investment between a man and horse,

years of campaigning together, is suddenly going to end?

All the horses are classified.

The fit and young will be sold to the British and Indian armies.

But soldiers fear some may be sold on.

They did not want to see proud Australian war horses being treated

the way that farm animals were in the Middle East.

It was very tragic after what these horses had meant to these soldiers

to think that the Government would not help them out

and bring these horses home.

I think they felt very let down, yes, at the end of the war, by that.

In some cases, they took the law into their own hands.

Peter Hayden's other great-uncle, Barney,

has survived with his horse, Polo, to the very end.

He now faces a terrible decision.

Along with others, he chooses to take one last unofficial ride.

Barney, he would have ridden out on his horse, Polo, a very upsetting,

you know, a very emotional time, no doubt.

They just return with their saddle and their bridle

and hand that back in,

and there's no way they were going to hand their horse back in.

They had nightmares for the rest of their life of that moment

when they shot the horse, it hit the sand

and the relationship was broken.

To this day, it is unclear just how many men make this choice.

I've found very few instances where diggers just took neddy

over the sand dune

and put a bullet through the poor steed's head.

For many, there is no point to intervening in this way.

Classed as too old or unfit for sale,

the fate of their horses is already sealed.

"The melancholy information came to hand that the time is drawing near

"when we were to be finally separated from our beloved horses.

"We were now to experience the heart-rending business of hearing

"the death sentence pronounced by the veterinary officers

"upon so many noble animals which had,

"through the trials and triumphs of the long campaign,

"grown to be part and parcel of our very lives."

It was a highly organised event.

It was done en masse by units.

After the horses were classified by the veterinary officers

to be destroyed, the horses were taken away from the camps,

their manes and tails were shorn, because that was horsehair,

and horsehair was a commodity, you could get money for it.

The horses were then shot under the supervision of a veterinary officer

by the working parties working for them.

The horses were skinned, because the skin was also a commodity.

And the carcasses were left where they were in the desert,

to be picked over by scavengers.

"To me, the most cruel part

"was having to lead them through the dead to be shot themselves.

"Don't tell me the horses didn't know

"what was going to happen to them."

Trooper Bostock, 10th Light Horse.