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The light-horseman at war
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
The light-horseman of the AIF is a figure to which a long-established set of written and visual images has been attached. Henry Gullett wrote a chapter in his official history of the AIF in Sinai and Palestine on the men and their horses that has done much to set the precedent. To him the light-horsemen was ‘in body and spirit the true product of the wide Australian countryside’; ‘the very flower of their race’; 97 ‘out of every hundred came from pure British stock’; all were ‘men of resource, initiative and resolution’; and all were ‘horsemen of various degrees of excellence’. From the bush, fighting ‘under conditions closely resembling those to which he had been accustomed to all his life’, they found ‘rigid discipline irksome’, but applied ‘strong common sense’ to their war and fought it ‘with all [their] will as a task which interested [them] or which had to be done’, and when they went on leave engaged in nothing more than a whole-hearted ‘joyous demonstration’. Reflecting some of the same thinking, the Kia Ora Coo-ee had provided a similar sketch in June 1918:
Tall, brown, broad shouldered, deep-chested, clean shaven, with a lazy slouching gait like that of a sleepy tiger, and calculating eyes; there is the Light Horseman as I know him. Easy going mostly he is full of surprises when aroused…The daily patrols that leave in the old grey dawn to probe the enemy's line are part of the Light Horsemen's life…he sallies forth to joust with ‘Jacko's’ outposts. His sense of direction is true…he sees all tracks, spots any movement and knows how to bluff when in a tight corner. His training in scouting he does not need to remember; it is all second nature with him now. He could not give you the reasons, but he seldom fails to do anything but the right thing when carrying out his private daily fight of his own…he obeys orders without question, and when no orders are forthcoming, he acts instinctively. With bayonet fixed, and galvanized into a rushing charge he is invincible.
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