Roland Perry is the master of writing popular military history, achieving the difficult bond between readability and well researched military history. This makes him one of my favourite authors.
Bill the Bastard is one of those true war stories that sounds too big to be real until you remember that the First World War produced characters like this everywhere. Roland Perry leans hard into the legend, but in this case the legend earns it.
At the centre of the book is Bill, a massive, half-wild Whaler horse considered unmanageable, dangerous, and basically useless for polite military purposes. He bites, kicks, refuses to cooperate, and terrifies anyone who gets too close. Naturally, he ends up with the Australian Light Horse. The match is perfect. What the regular army sees as a problem animal, the Light Horsemen recognise as raw toughness.
The book follows Bill and his rider, Major Michael Shanahan, through training and then into the Sinai and Palestine campaign. Perry writes the desert war well — heat, flies, long patrols, bad water, and the constant grind on men and animals alike. Horses weren’t background equipment in that theatre; they were everything. Without them there was no mobility, no shock action, no campaign. Perry makes that clear without turning the book into a lecture.
Where the story really takes off is in combat. Bill becomes a battlefield monster in the best possible sense — carrying wounded, charging when others baulk, surviving things that should kill a horse several times over. The famous episode where he carries multiple wounded men to safety under fire is told with plenty of pace and a fair bit of pride. Perry is not shy about celebrating Australian grit and improvisation, but he mostly keeps it readable rather than overblown.
The tone is straightforward and very accessible. This isn’t a dense academic history. It sits somewhere between popular history and campfire storytelling. Perry likes a good anecdote and he tells them well. At times he leans into the myth-making — Bill becomes almost super-equine — but given the way soldiers talked about their mounts, that feels appropriate rather than excessive. Light Horse memoirs are full of this kind of affection and exaggeration.
One of the strengths of the book is how it treats the bond between rider and horse. Perry keeps bringing the story back to the practical realities: feeding, watering, grooming, calming a frightened animal in the dark, trusting it in a charge. The relationship isn’t sentimental fluff. It’s survival. When Bill behaves badly, it’s because he’s built to survive. When he saves lives, it’s because that same stubbornness refuses to quit.
If there’s a weakness, it’s that the book occasionally repeats itself and sometimes drifts into general background that slows the pace. Perry also writes with a strong admiration for his subject and for the Light Horse in general, so readers looking for critical distance won’t really find it here. But that’s not the point of the book. It’s meant to celebrate a remarkable animal and the men who rode with him, and it does that very effectively.
Overall, it’s a solid, enjoyable piece of popular military history. Easy to read, full of character, and a good reminder that war stories aren’t always about generals and plans. Sometimes they’re about a difficult horse who turned out to be tougher than anyone expected and ended up carrying a small legend on his back.
I reaaly enjoyed this great read.