BILL THE BASTARD
The horse’s name was Bill. In performance and character, he stood above all the other 200,000 Australian Walers sent to the Middle East in the Great War.
He was massive. He had power, intelligence and unmatched courage. There was only one problem with Bill… no one in the entire Australian Light Horse and British cavalry could ride him.
Every single would-be horse-breaker was thrown off when Bill decided it. He would even step up to the fallen rider and curl his lip. Some of the fallen, nursing hurt bones and even more hurt pride, reckoned it was a sneer. Big country lads who broke horses for a living; sleek Aborigines who could ride any stallion bare-back; stiff-backed British cavalrymen who boasted of their dominance over all things equine; none of them could ride Bill. He did not so much as buck riders off; he tried to send them into orbit. Often they returned to earth so hard that broken bones were common. Consequently, he became known as Bill the Bastard.
If no one could ride him, he was of limited use to the Light Horse or cavalry who wanted obedient mounts that did as they were told in charges, long rides in the desert cauldrons or the heat of vicious battle. For this reason, Bill seemed likely to be relegated to being just a super-strong pack-horse, destined to carry back-breaking loads on the fringes of the battles in the Middle East against the Turks.
That was until Major Michael Shanahan of the Light Horse watched Bill make Gallipoli’s dangerous ‘Anzac Run.’
This was to deliver the mail and despatches from Suvla Bay to Anzac Cove. It was a seven kilometre beach ride under fire from the Turks who did their best, and often succeeded in felling either rider or horse or both.
In a macabre ritual, the Anzacs and Turks would bet on whether the horse would reach Anzac Cove.
The day Shanahan watched Bill, the horse took two bullets and bucked his rider off. But in an act of supreme guts, he got the mail through.
From that moment, Shanahan, who had a special way with horses long before the term horse whisperer was coined, made it his quiet mission to make the unridable Bill the Bastard his own mount. When others intimidated their steeds and whipped and spurred them into submission, Shanahan cajoled, wheedled, and bent his charges to his will, slowly, with purpose and extreme patience.
‘Horses have a natural rhythm in them,’ he said, ‘you must find it and dance with them. You must gain their respect, be firm and always fair. If you do that and reach a rapport, you will have a noble friend for life.’
Bill the Bastard is a story of relationships: between Shanahan and the sensual, coquettish Kath Phelan, a war vet, who had a crush on him when they both lived in Roma Queensland; and between Shanahan and his future English wife, the compassionate Charlotte who has an unrequited love for another.
Primarily Bill the Bastard is the remarkable tale of a bond between a determined trooper and his mount. They fought together. They went on gruelling rides in the desert-ovens of Arabia. They depended on each other for their survival.
On three occasions, Bill’s exceptional instinct or intelligence, his sheer strength, and unbreakable will saved Shanahan’s life. In the most notable and heroic single action by any horse in the Great War, Bill saved the lives of five men, who clamoured on him to escape Turkish fire in the middle of the intense and crucial Battle of Romani in Egypt’s Sinai Desert.
Shanahan received the Distinguished Service Order for this action, which was considered one rank below the Victoria Cross. The other four troopers whom Bill saved believed both Shanahan and the horse should have received the VC.
After that telling incident, Shanahan and Bill returned to the fray. Shanahan was shot in the thigh, but instead of retiring from the field he fought on, saving more troopers and killing more of the enemy. After an hour he collapsed while in the saddle.
Bill galloped back to base, saving Shanahan’s life.
But because Shanahan fought on and was injured again, his leg later had to be amputated. This ended his war. But Bill carried on. He could not be ridden except in a limited, unreliable way by Jackie Mullagh, an Aborigine tutored by Shanahan, who could stay on Bill for just a few minutes at a time.
Bill played a part in the historic Light Horse attack on Beersheba. He also featured in a ruse to fool the Turks, in which a three mile race---The Jericho Cup---was staged. Bill was the 50 to 1 outsider in a competition that pitted him against three of the finest stallions in Arabia. The race and the sizeable audience made the enemy believe that the entire Anzac Light Horse force was on ‘holiday’ at this sporting event. The Turks thought that if there were an attack against them, it would be from Jericho in a thrust east, not from Jaffa in the west moving north on the Mediterranean coast. The ruse worked. The Turks were surprised by the Light Horse at Jaffa and soon defeated.
By September 1918, Bill the Bastard was so named, not for his cussedness towards riders, but as a term of endearment from the entire Light Horse. He had become a legend, not as myth but in fact; a symbol of the invincibility of the Anzac Mounted Force which strove for revenge against the Turks after its drubbing on Gallipoli without its horses.
The eccentric Perth dentist, Captain Arthur Olden of the 10th Light Horse regiment, was chosen by the Commander-in-Chief General Sir Harry Chauvel to attack and take the Syrian capital of Damascus. It was a singular honour in memory of the troopers cut-down by the Turks at the Nek on Gallipoli. In turn, Olden selected Bill to ride with him at the head of the column of 400 horsemen.
Bill was riderless with stirrups reversed as a mark of respect for all fallen troopers.
At the Middle East War’s end on 31 October 1918, the British Government decreed that no Australian horse would be allowed to return home. They were to be either sold to the Indian Army or destroyed.
Jackie Mullagh refused to let Bill be executed. This meant he would have to do it himself. Mullagh took his rifle and the horse on a lonely trek into the desert, facing what he believed would be the worst moment imaginable.
But was it?
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