From Murrumburrah muster to Beersheba charge

When Captain Kenneth Mackay set out to raise a mounted regiment in 1897, he believed the best horsemen in the country came from the country districts of NSW. In late August 1897, the first muster and enrolments for the 1st Australian (Volunteer) Horse took place at the Harden-Murrumburrah racecourse. Recruits had to be competent riders and supply their own horses. The muster has given Murrumburrah its claim as the birthplace of the Australian Light Horse. Mackay, born on Wallendbeen station near Murrumburrah in 1859, was a pastoralist, writer and politician. When he raised the regiment he was also the member for Boorowa in the NSW Legislative Assembly, a seat he held from 1895 to 1899. The 1st Australian Horse served in the Boer War, with contingents in South Africa from late 1899 until 1901, and became part of the Australian Light Horse after Federation in 1903. Mackay rose to the rank of Major-General, and a life-size bronze statue of him stands in Albury Street, near the town’s Light Horse Memorial. Seventeen years after the first muster, the district answered the call again. In late August 1914, a procession filled the street as men of the Murrumburrah Light Horse made their way to the railway station to enlist. They were led by 2nd Lieutenant Albert David Reid, a 28-year-old local farmer who had been born in Murrumburrah on 25 July 1886. Reid took nine men with him. Two of the Murrumburrah men, John Pope and Russel Gibson, were later killed at Gallipoli. By 1917, Reid was a lieutenant leading B Squadron of the 4th Light Horse Regiment in the Sinai and Palestine campaign. Late on the afternoon of Wednesday 31 October 1917, the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments of the 4th Light Horse Brigade charged across about three kilometres of open ground towards the Turkish trenches at Beersheba. The charge took the town and its wells, which were vital to the advancing forces, and more than 700 prisoners. Thirty-one light horsemen were killed and 36 were wounded. Reid led his squadron against the Turkish trenches and was awarded the Military Cross for “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty”. He was promoted to Major and was later mentioned in despatches when he led his squadron in a charge against a German-held position. After the war Reid farmed at Crowther. He served again during World War II, from 1941 to 1943, and was a Country Party senator for NSW from 1950 until his death at Concord on 22 May 1962. Beersheba is often described as the last great cavalry charge, and the Light Horse Memorial in Murrumburrah includes a diorama of it, along with bronze sculptures by Carl Valerius. The district’s link to Beersheba extends to Boorowa, where the World War I nominal roll, Boorowa Remembers, lists about 20 men who served in Light Horse units. Three of them are listed with the 12th Light Horse Regiment, which charged alongside the 4th: Raymond Dean Morgan, a Boorowa-born bank clerk who survived Gallipoli and typhoid, was discharged as medically unfit, then re-enlisted 11 weeks later. His service record shows he joined the 12th Light Horse in mid-October 1917 and was serving with the regiment when it charged at Beersheba. Private Ernest Reed Elms. Lieutenant Edgar Alison Robb, who returned to Australia after the war. Other Boorowa men served in the 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th Light Horse Regiments, which also took part in the wider battle for Beersheba.