Ter Borch would know him, this latter-day companion
          of the cavalryman bowed on his mount,
shoulders and haunches sapped with exhaustion: and Sherman,
          bright-eyed, red-handed, a hellion to order:
and the mailed believers of Krak.

They’re less to him than the chevrons, the emu cockade,
          the sweat-filled shirt itself. Beersheba,
of Abraham’s well and soon the flailing bayonets,
          is merely a line in the sand. He is thinking,
                    tree by apple tree,

of the orchard at home, and hoping his Irish mother
          was right to claim the crunched fruit
would come again. In the brutal heat, the big hat
          is off as if in a last salute;
                    it might be for himself.

(after George Lambert, ‘A Sergeant of the Light Horse in Palestine’)