So, using as lances their rifles with bayonets fixed, the whole brigade--and any one else with a horse and rifle and bayonet--charged yelling upon the town. Over trenches, rifle-pits and obstacles of all sorts they leapt and burst into Beersheba like a tornado. The Turks were literally paralysed by the audacity of the effort and made a mere travesty of resistance, in comparison with their stubbornness during the day. It was all over in a very short time and Beersheba was ours. The Yeomanry, astonished to find so little resistance, came in at the death in time to help round up the large numbers of prisoners captured by the Australians. Speaking without the book I should say that this mounted bayonet charge is without parallel in military history. It was at any rate worthy of the best traditions of Australian resourcefulness. Their motto seemed always to be: "If you haven't the right tools for a job, do it with anything that's handy and trust to the luck of the British army to pull you through." A very sound maxim, on the whole, if their headstrong adherence to it did sometimes land them in a tight corner. It was difficult to realise in the midst of a jostling crowd of soldiers, with guns and all the impedimenta of war in the background, that once on a time old Father Abraham had lived at Beersheba with his family and developed the water-supply for his flocks. Impossible, too, to visualise the past splendours of Beersheba, as became the city on the southern border of Palestine, on the main caravan-route through the Land of Goshen, across the Sinai desert into Egypt, and through which on account of its wells, travellers for countless ages had passed on their leisurely journey south. Nowadays, it is but a collection of exaggerated mud-huts of the usual native type, with the addition of a few modern works and the railway. Though I saw it frequently enough later on the sight of a railway-station in or near a native village always seemed strangely incongruous. Do not for a moment imagine that by railway-station I mean anything so elaborate as the merest village station at home; except at Kantara even the best and largest of ours did not rise to such heights. The platform, if there was one, was of sleepers piled almost haphazard one upon another with sand shovelled into the interstices and spread over the top. Occasionally cinders were used to form an extra hard surface; but this was a luxury. Unless a stationary train marked its presence the station was very difficult to find at all, for one bit of the railway looks very much like another at a distance. I remember a party of us trying for a long time to find one of these elusive places. We found the railway all right but the only sign of human habitation was a tiny wooden hut, almost invisible against the background of sand, towards which we made our way. A lance-corporal in the R.E. was the sole inmate. "Where's the station, chum?" he was asked. He looked at us suspiciously for a moment.