Below is part of an interesting email conversation we have had with Rob Thomas from Australia regarding the account given in the 'Role of Horse Beersheba 1917'

In the account Trooper Edmondson says "A magnificent achievement, but what a price. The plain was covered with dead horses. On the trenches friend and foe lay intermingled, all killed by bomb & bayonet."

However Rob informs us "You will have great difficulty putting together numbers for the casualties at Beersheba from HS Gullet's official history it doesn't give a breakdown.

I have copies of 11th Light Horse Regiment and 4th Light Horse Regiment  and both concur on the losses in the charge where
36 horses from 600 odd isn't a bad percentage especially when you look at the photos of the 11th's charge at Semakh in September 1918. Dead horses all over the place. Only one squadron charged and they were chewed up pretty badly, most of them were in support to the 4th and 12th on the 31/10/17".

We do welcome comments like this as accurate information is important to us. This discussion also gives us a chance to explain my reasoning for publishing 1st hand articles. Trooper Edmondson's 'first hand' account is taken from a British magazine published in 1930 found amongst my Grandfathers papers.

We publish this information as printed because Trooper Edmondson was there and we were not & we do not feel unqualified to correct his account.

However when reading any of the accounts in the Role of Horse, the accounts were written either during or within a few years after the war. We are sure a degree of propaganda may well exist in the text.

Thankfully the Despatches section does give us the chance to correct information without changing the authors text.