Arthur John 'Jack' Cox cheated death so many times that his son John wrote a book about him entitled "The Miraculous Lives of a Man Called Jack".

After surviving a shipwreck as a 14-year-old cabin boy, dodging bullets on the battlefields of South Africa in the Boer War, then Gallipoli and the Middle East in the First World War, the devout Christian must have felt someone was watching over him.

At the ripe old age of 80, the decorated soldier and Beersheba hero reckoned he'd used up his quota of luck.

After a lifetime of avoiding death, Jack, then ailing and bed-ridden after a debilitating stroke, prayed that God would take him.

Graeme Cox was too young to remember his grandfather before he died in 1959, but is immensely proud of the man awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) for his bravery at the legendary charge of Beersheba in World War 1.

Like his three siblings, most of what he knows of his grandfather he learnt from the book his father wrote. He is now the keeper of an old suitcase full of his grandfather's memorabilia.

On Sunday, Graeme, his twin brother John, sisters Meg and Heather and Meg's husband Scott will invoke the spirit of Jack Cox and the Light Horsemen when they attend Warrnambool's fourth annual running of the Jericho Cup.

It will be a proud moment for the family when Graeme presents the winner's trophy for the 1000-metre Charge of Beersheba Sprint, this year named in Jack's memory.

"We think it's a great honour," says Graeme, who will travel from Sydney with his siblings for the meeting, his first horse race.

"We're very pleased to be invited. It's a small way of remembering him (Jack) and all the others at the charge."

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The six-kilometre Beersheba charge by 800 troops of the Australian Light Horse across open ground on October 31, 1917 is regarded as the greatest charge by mounted men in modern warfare.

It was key to the Allies' campaign to secure the Sinai Peninsula and ensure the Suez Canal remained open to Britain and its allies.

Beersheba was at the end of the Turkish defensive line and with its 17 wells, also held a vital water supply which the Allies were desperate to secure for their parched troops and their mounts.

Following a day of fighting by the 40,000-strong Desert Mounted Corps, nightfall was looming, the horses had been without water for up to 40 hours and the goal of Beersheba was yet to be taken.

In a last roll of the dice, Australia's Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel gave the order for a frontal cavalry assault on the Turkish line by the Australian Light Horse.

After waiting in reserve throughout the day, the 4th and 12th regiments were drawn up in three lines, bayonets at the ready.

As acting regimental sergeant major for the 4th, Jack Cox was on the far right of the front line when the order to charge was given.

It started off at a trot, but once the horses sniffed the scent of water in the Beersheba wells, there was no holding them back, Jack later recalled.

Taken by surprise, the Turks were overrun and in chaos, surrendering in defeat. The scene was set for their eventual capitulation in Palestine a year later.

During the charge, to his right Jack spotted the enemy offloading a machine gun. Before it could be brought into action, he charged at the crew, waving his revolver, bluffing them into surrender and capturing 40 prisoners.

Without his actions, the Beersheba success could well have had a different outcome for the Allies.

For his bravery, Jack was recommended for the highest military award, the Victory Cross (VC).

But a few weeks later and without explanation, the award was contentiously amended to the lesser Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM).

Although Jack accepted the change with good grace, his son John later lobbied unsuccessfully for a posthumous VC for his father.

"It would be marvellous for the original Light Horsemen, the 4th Light Horse Regiment and for his family to have his award of a VC reinstated posthumously," John wrote.

"There is no doubt his action saved countless lives and perhaps even a battle."

John Cox, now 93, penned his father's story 20 years ago at the urging of his children who were keen to have a lasting record of their grandfather's heroic life.

Born in Gosport, England in 1879 with a twin brother Herbert, Jack had already survived numerous close shaves by the time he arrived in Australia in 1912.

His real name was Arthur John-Cox, but a mistake in a military enlistment form went uncorrected and for the rest of his life he was known as John 'Jack' Cox.

At just 14, the twins were sent off to sea by their father to 'toughen them up'. Jack nearly drowned and was left with a lifelong fear of the sea when his ship came to grief in a horrendous storm rounding Cape Horn.

At 21, he was devastated by the loss of his twin as they fought side by side for Britain against the Boers in South Africa. The taller Herbert was shot to the head, a fate spared Jack who stood just over five feet six inches.

At war's end, Jack found work in the Kimberly gold and diamond mines, but remained a keen member of the militia, serving against the second Zulu uprising in 1906. For another three years he guarded against poachers in what is now the Krueger National Park. His replacement was taken by a lion.

Jack's immigration to New Zealand was short-lived after a minor earthquake convinced him Australia was a safer option.

Six days after war was declared in August, 1914, Jack turned up at 4am at the recruiting office in Bendigo to volunteer for his adopted country. He'd hoped to be the first in line, but had to settle for number 85.

Just two hours before he boarded the ship that would take him away to war for more than four years, Jack wed his sweetheart Agnes McKibbin in a Sydney registry office.

By May of 1915, Jack and his comrades of the 4th Light Horse Regiment found themselves at Gallipoli where they were sent as infantry reinforcements, leaving their horses behind in Egypt.

That he survived until the Allies' withdrawal from Gallipoli seven months later was a miracle.

At one point he awoke in the trenches to find 12 sticks of dynamite lobbed by the Turks against his head, burnt to within two centimetres of igniting.

On another occasion a shell exploded as he passed between two soldiers coming from the opposite direction. Jack lost a piece of his boot heel to shrapnel. The two soldiers either side of him were killed.

In the infamous charge at The Nek, Jack was waiting in the third wave, resigned to certain death, after the dreadful massacre of the first two waves of men. Against all expectations, the action was called off at the last minute.

Jack's luck held through the Middle East and the remainder of the war before returning home to Agnes and making a life as dairy farmers on a New South Wales north coast soldier settlement block.

With their six children they moved back to Sydney in about 1935 during the Depression with Jack taking a job as a night watchman at the Cockatoo Island naval shipyard.

But Jack's hankering for the soldier's life never waned. At the age of 63 he failed a medical trying to pass himself off as 45 while attempting to enlist for the Second World War.

Now the family tradition of service lives on with Jack's great-granddaughter Angela serving as a medic in the Navy.

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