Light Horse.

This is coolbert:

With regard to the Battle of Megiddo, the breakthrough offensive and the pursuit of the Turk, those of you interested will want to download this pdf document from the Internet and save, reading at your leisure.

Thanks in all cases to Jill, the Duchess of Hamilton!

"First to Damascus"

"The Story of the Australian Light Horse and Lawrence of Arabia"

As authored by Jill, Duchess of Hamilton

From the dedication by the Duchess:

"My father owned a horse in Egypt. It carried him from the shadow of the Pyramids, across the deserts to Palestine and to the fringes of one of the last great cavalry feats in the history of warfare. This book is dedicated to that horse – and to the50,000 horses shipped from the Australian bush to Egypt, Palestine and Syria in the First World War, under the care of Banjo Paterson, never to return"

Banjo Patterson of course the great poet of Australian fame, "The Man From Snowy Mountain", etc.

Extolling the life of the stock man and those living rough in the bush, the hard life of the horseman, the breaker, etc. Patterson too during both the Boer War and the Great War mustering horses for the Australian military, an expert of repute was Banjo!

This too from the book, that Waler horse as ridden by the Australian mounted troop during that pursuit of the Turk:

"Most of the horses were ‘Walers’ – tough Arab crosses, with strong necks, short backs and the small hooves of desert-bred horses. A little bigger than Arab horses, they stood about fifteen to sixteen hands. Originally they were sired by an English thoroughbred from breeding mares, and were said to be part draughthorse. They had a well-deserved reputation for having similar endurance to the legendary Cossack ponies, and tens of thousands had been exported to India since the 1830s. Favoured as stock horses and cavalry remounts, they were named after the state in which they were originally sired and raised, New South Wales."

The Duchess no stranger either to war, having been a correspondent covering the Vietnam War, intimate with the military and military operations so it seems!

coolbert.