Battle of Romani, 4 August 1916

A desert landscape with light horsemen dismounting and preparing for battle. Two soldiers place a stretcher into an ambulance wagon (in the centre right of the image). A dead white horse lies in the foreground. There is yellow sand with a palm hod in the centre and a sandhill, Mount Royston, in the background. Romani, in the Sinai desert, was the scene of a Turkish attack in August 1916. For a night and a morning the light horsemen fought a gradual withdrawal. When the Australians and New Zealanders counter-attacked the following morning the Turks turned and fled. In the five days of fighting the Turks lost half their force. It was one of the decisive battles of the war. Reid wrote: 'The battle of Romani ... was instrumental in saving the Suez Canal for the British. Lambert saw it in his usual romantic way ... His dismounted troopers are just as defiant in their rearguard action'. Reid, 1997.