Daley is not a professional historian: he is a journalist. Let it be said at once that this is no disqualification for writing history. Some of the most eminent works in the Australian military history canon have been written by journalists. One has only to mention Charles Bean, Alan Moorehead and Chester Wilmot to know that this is so. I would argue that Wilmot, in The Struggle for Europe (1952), produced the finest military writing of any author, academic or not, in our history. This tradition is not dead – some works by journalists in recent years have rightly won acclaim. However, it also has to be said that lately we have been swamped by journalistic attempts that have added nothing but cliché to the literature or have merely been bowdlerised versions of academic history.

Why do I think this book falls into both of these categories? Firstly, although Daley would claim he has carried out extensive research for his book, in truth he has not. A glance at his footnotes indicates that he has relied extensively on the official history of the campaign (a creditable work by H.S. Gullett, but written seventy years ago), a few interviews with people who knew people who were in some way involved with Beersheba, and a scattering of personal experience memoirs from the Australian War Memorial. What is missing from this list is any mention of the military records of the period (also in the Australian War Memorial, and therefore hardly inaccessible) or any British military material, remembering that the Light Horse was a contingent of the British army in the Middle East. What these omissions mean is that the most immediate records about Beersheba, and any notion of the context of the wider war in which it took place, are entirely absent.

Does this matter? Yes it does, considering the large claims made for the action at Beersheba in the book. The charge, by some 800 men, is said to have ended the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. This statement is ludicrous, for two reasons. First, the idea that such a small body of men could cause the collapse of an empire is inherently implausible. Second, the lack of knowledge about what the British were doing along the Palestinian coast makes Daley’s proposition ridiculous. As it happened, it was General Allenby, backed by seven British infantry divisions (about 100,000 men) and massive artillery support, who destroyed the Turkish army in Palestine. This is not to say that the charge at Beersheba was not useful, that the men who took part in it were not brave or that the whole concept was not daring. All of those things are true. It is just that, without any context, Daley’s claims made for the Light Horse are wildly exaggerated.

Moreover, a lack of familiarity with military sources leads the author to make many statements that lack precision. For example, he states that ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of Turkish soldiers were killed at Beersheba and that ‘countless’ more were injured. This is vague to the point of desperation. How many were killed? How many wounded? Are there no sources that would permit more accurate estimates? Of course there are, but the author has not gone looking for them.

Regrettably, these are not the only flaws in Beersheba. As it unfolds, it is clear that the book is not merely about the charge at Beersheba. Part of it is about the author’s travels over the ground in the Middle East – a sort of travel story. Other parts consist of the author in conversation with various authorities on Middle Eastern history in Israel and elsewhere – talk-show interludes about the impact of the war on the region. In between these excursions, Beersheba keeps bobbing up, often at disconcerting moments. The result is a book that lacks any coherent structure at all.

What of the author’s sensational discovery of the massacre of the inhabitants of the village of Surafed by (mainly) New Zealand troops? Two things need to be said about this. The first is that this is not a new discovery. It has been on the public record since 1918. The second is that, despite the prominence the author gives to the massacre, the Anzac legend in the form of gallant troops, performing superhuman tasks, remains intact. This should give some comfort to those who hold the view that any negative depiction of Anzacs is tantamount to treason, but it lies uneasily with a book that makes so much of a massacre.

Finally, a word about the publisher. This compilation was not published by some obscure, provincial house but by Melbourne University Press – one of the more prestigious publishers in the country. All that can be said is that MUP will not maintain its prestige for long if it continues to publish works such as this. Are there not worthwhile, soundly based studies of war (or indeed other topics) it could find? Surely there are, but the suspicion is that it couldn’t be bothered looking. MUP needs to lift its game and to do it quickly.