High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Battle of Beersheba took place on 31 October 1917, as part of the Sinai and Palestine campaign during World War I. The highlight of the battle was the now famous charge of the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade, which covered some six kilometres to overrun and capture the last remaining Turkish trenches, and secure the surviving wells at Beersheba. The battle of Beersheba was one critical element of a wider British offensive, known as the Third Battle of Gaza, aimed at breaking the Turkish defensive line that stretched from Gaza on the Mediterranean shore to Beersheba, an important regional centre some 50 kilometres inland. Earlier in 1917, two previous attempts to breach this line had failed. After the Second Battle of Gaza ended in complete failure, General Archibald Murray, the commander in chief of the British forces in Egypt and Palestine, was replaced by the distinguished cavalry commander, General Edmund Allenby, formerly the commander of the British Third Army on the Western Front.