Book Review - Light Horse: A History of Australia’s Mounted Arm
Light Horse: A History of Australia’s Mounted Arm
Written by: Jean Bou,
Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2009,
ISBN: 9780521197083, 360pp.
Reviewed by: John Donovan
Jean Bou has written a useful institutional history, which focuses on the roles, development and eventual decline of the Australian mounted arm from colonial times until the last horsed regiment was disbanded. Descriptions of battles are used to illustrate points in the discussion, not as the principal focus of the narrative.
Dr Bou explores why the Australian colonies were increasingly willing to maintain forces beyond a particular crisis after the Sudan expedition. Support for mounted militia forces was strengthened by Canadian-based theorist George Denison, whose writings influenced Edward Hutton. Hutton commanded the New South Wales military forces, and then a mounted infantry brigade during the Boer War. After Federation, he commanded the Commonwealth forces. Hutton’s pivotal role in the development of the light horse is a major element of the book. He wanted a focus on dismounted action, and generally got his way.
Many books on Australian military history criticise the concept of the ‘natural Australian soldier’. Dr Bou puts this criticism into a broader context, recording that this belief was held both by political/journalistic elements (as could be expected) and by experienced British regular officers like Hutton. He notes that, ‘like all good myths, [it] had some basis in fact’, and that in South Africa ‘the supposed strength of Australia’s mounted men ... was [not] completely mythological’, but lack of training remained a limitation. Most contingents took about a year to ‘become genuinely efficient’.
Dr Bou records that this mythology was maintained alongside a strong emphasis on training, suggesting that, regardless of public pronouncements, those responsible for developing the Australian forces recognised that training was necessary to build on a good foundation. He notes that the mythology of the frontiersman as natural soldier also existed in other English speaking nations. One wonders whether this was a recruiting device to appeal to the self-image of citizens in nations with voluntary military service!
The belief in the potential effectiveness of part-time militias also focused on ‘irregular’ warfare, or theatres where defences were less developed. Indeed, the battlefield success of mounted forces during the First World War was principally in secondary theatres, where the development of defensive systems was less extensive than on the Western Front.
Dr Bou discusses in detail the role of the light horse, concluding that for much of its existence it operated as mounted rifles, but that there was a change to an emphasis on the cavalry role from about the time of Beersheba. His differentiation between the mounted infantry and mounted rifles roles, however, sometimes involves hair splitting on functions like outpost duties and skirmishing.
Dr Bou sees mounted infantry as a mobile form of traditional infantry, with its principal role as dismounted attack and defence while sometimes also undertaking outpost and reconnaissance duties. Mounted rifles undertook the duties of cavalry but using a firearm. Hutton, however, wanted his mounted rifles to be ‘capable of dealing in dismounted action with an enemy’s infantry’, which is a broader mandate, more appropriate to Dr Bou’s definition of mounted infantry. The difference seems to pivot on the capability to attack or defend dismounted, largely a function of dismounted strength (a dismounted light horse brigade was ‘barely equivalent in strength to an infantry battalion’).
The difference became a problem in the Sinai and Gaza operations, when limited dismounted numbers and firepower reduced the effectiveness of the light horse. The mounted rifles concept seemed to fit more into irregular warfare, and was not as effective as was hoped. Some arme blanche or ‘cavalry spirit’ mythology seems to creep into the book, and the examples of successful mounted charges often stand out as opportunistic occasions providing the exceptions that prove a rule. However, when the militia light horse regiments were reorganised after the war to continue the traditions of the wartime units and reflect wartime experience, all were ‘trained as cavalry’.
Dr Bou follows the decline of the light horse, which started in the home-based militia regiments during the First World War. Financial reality in the 1920s cut training time, and reduced numbers of suitable horses. This ultimately finished the mounted troops. Unfortunately, the Army neglected mechanisation during the 1930s. Raising two armoured car regiments, incorporating light car elements in selected regiments, and converting six light horse regiments to machine gun units were the principal efforts made to mechanise the light horse during the 1930s. Dr Bou concludes that the military authorities between the wars ‘abrogated their responsibilities in regard to the development of the mounted arm.
By 1939 the importance of mounted units had waned. The remaining mounted units were intended to operate as irregulars in country not suitable for mechanised operations. Their final days were spent patrolling.
Dr Bou, in an appendix, analyses a photograph claimed to be of the charge at Beersheba. The evidence is summarised well, and he is probably right that the photograph was not taken there. Whatever photograph Eric Elliott took that day, it does not seem to have been this one.
It would have been useful had this book included lists of light horse units at selected times to enable the reader to follow organisational changes and changes in numbering systems. It is, however, overall a valuable book.
