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THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN
By the same Author
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NEIGHBOURS OF OURS: Scenes of
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GENERAL SIR IAN H AM 1 LTON . GC.B.D.S O.
FROM A PORTRAIT BY JOHN S- SARGENT. RA
THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN
BY
HENRY W. NEVINSON
Xon&on NISBET & GO. LTD.
22 BERNERS STREET W.
First Published in igi8
h
iH-1
DEDICATED TO
THOSE WHO FELL ON THE
GALLIPOLI PENINSULA
Oi S' avTOv Trept rei^o^ OrJKas 'lAiaSos yas
Beside the ruins of Troy they lie buried, those men so beautiful ; there they have their burial-place, hidden in an enemy's land.
T^e Agamemnon, 453-455.
'AvSpwj/ eTTK^avwv Tracra yrj rdcfios, koI ov (TTrjXuiv fiovov iv rfj oiKua. (ny/xatvet iTnypa(f>y], aXXa KOI iv rfj fir] rrpoa-rjKOva-r] aypa<^os fxvrjfJi-q Trap cKao-Tw ti}s yvw/^T^S p.a.X\.ov yj tov epyov evStatTarat.
Of conspicuous men the whole world is the tomb, and it is not only inscriptions on tablets in their own country which chronicle their fame, but rather, even in distant lands, unwritten memorials living for ever, not upon visible monuments, but in the hearts of mankind.
Pericles' Funeral Speech ;
Thucydides, ii. 43.
PREFACE
FROM the outset the Dardanelles Campaign attracted me with peculiar interest. The shores of the Straits were the scene of the Trojan epics and dramas. They were explored and partly inhabited by a race whose legends and history had been more familiar to me from boy- hood than my own country's, and more inspiring. They belonged to that beautiful part of the world with which I had become personally intimate during the wars, rebellions, and other disturbances of the previous twenty years. But, above all, I was attracted to the Campaign because I regarded it as a strategic conception surpassing others in promise. My reasons are referred to in various chapters of this book, and indeed they were obvious. The occupation of Constantinople would have paralysed Turkey as an ally of the Central Powers ; it would have blocked their path to the Middle East, and averted danger from Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and India ; it would have released the Russian forces in the Caucasus for action elsewhere ; it would have
viii PREFACE
secured the neutrality, if not the active co-operation, of the Balkan States, and especially of Bulgaria, not only the most resolute and effective of them, but a State well disposed to ourselves and the Russian people by history and sentiment ; by secur- ing Bulgaria's friendship, it would have delivered Serbia from fear of attack upon her eastern frontier, and have relieved Roumania from similar appre- hensions along the Danube and in the Dobrudja ; it would have confirmed the influence of Venizelos in Greece, and saved King Constantine from military, financial, and domestic temptations to Germanise ; above all, it would thus have secured Russia's left flank, so enabling her to concentrate her entire forces upon the Lithuanian, Polish, and Galician frontiers from the Memel to the Dniester.
The worst apprehensions of the Central Powers would then have been fulfilled. Blockaded by the Allied fleets in the Adriatic, and by the British fleet in the Channel and the North Sea, they would have found themselves indeed surrounded by an iron ring, and, so far as prophecy was possible, it seemed likely that the terms which our Alliance openly professed as our objects in the war might have been obtained in the spring of 191 6. The subsidiary and more immediate consequences of success in the Dardanelles, such as the supply of munitions to Russia, and of Ukrainian wheat to our Alliance, were also to be considered. The saying of Napoleon,
PREFACE ix
in May, 1808, still held good: "At bottom the great question is — Who shall have Constantinople ? "
Under the prevailing influence of "Westerners" upon French and British strategy, these probable advantages were either disregarded or dismissed, and to dwell upon them now is a useless speculation. The hopes suggested by the conception in 1915 have faded like a dream. The dominant minds in our Alliance either failed to imagine their siofnificance, or were incapable of supplying the power required for their realisation while at the same time pressing forward the proposed offensive in France. The international situation of Europe, and indeed of the world, is now changed, and the strategic map has been completely altered. Early belligerents have disappeared from the field, and new belligerents have entered the shifting scene. Already, in 19 18, the Dardanelles Expedition has passed into history, and may be counted among the ghosts which history tries in vain to summon up. It is as an episode of a vanished past that I have attempted to represent it — a tragic episode enacted in the space of eleven months, but marked by every attribute of noble tragedy, whether we consider the grandeur of theme and personality, or the sympathy aroused by the spectacle of heroic figures struggling against the unconscious adversity of fate and the malign in- fluences of hostile or deceptive power.
In treatment, I have made no attempt to rival
X PREFACE
my friend John Masefield's GalHpoli — that excellent piece of work, at once so accurate and so brilliantly illuminated by poetic vision. Mine has been the humbler task of simply recording the events as they occurred, with such detail as seemed essential to complete the history, or was accessible to myself. In this endeavour, I have trusted partly to the books and documents mentioned below, partly to information generously supplied to me by many of the principal actors upon the scene ; also to my own notes, writings, and memory, especially with regard to the nature of the country and the events of which I was a witness. Accuracy and justice have been my only aims, but in a work involving so much detail and so many controverted questions mistakes in accuracy and justice are scarcely to be avoided. I know the confusion of mind and the distorted vision so frequent in all great crises of war, and I know from long experience how ignorant may be the criticism applied to any soldier from the Commander-in-Chief down to the private with a rifle.
The mention of the private with a rifle suggests my chief regret. The method I have followed, in treating divisions or brigades or, at the lowest, battalions as the units of action, almost obliterates the individual soldier from consideration. Divisions, brigades, and battalions are moved like pieces on a board, and Commanding Officers must regard
PREFACE xi
each of them only as a certain quantity of force acting under the laws of time and space. Yet each of the so-called units is made up of living men — men of distinctive personality and incalculably varying nature. Men are the actual units in war as in the State, and I do not forget the "common soldiers." I do not overlook either their natural failures or their astonishing performance. In various campaigns and in many countries I have shared their apprehensions, their hardships, their brief intervals of respite, and their laborious triumphs. They, like the rest of mankind, have always filled me with surprised admiration or poignant sympathy. Among the soldiers of many races, but especially among the natives of these islands, whom I could best understand, I have always found the fine qualities which distinguish the majority of hard- working people, all of whom live perpetually in perilous hardship. I have found a freedom from rhetoric and vanity, a simple-hearted acceptance of hfe " in the first intention," taking life and death without much criticism as they come, and concealing kindliness and the longing for happiness under a veil of silence or protective irony. But a book of this kind has little place for the mention of them, and that is my regret. Like a general, I have been obliged to consider forces mainly in the mass, and must leave to readers the duty of remembering, as I never cease to remember, that all divisions
xii PREFACE
and all platoons upon the Peninsula were composed of ordinary men like ourselves — individual per- sonalities subject to the common sufferings of hunger, thirst, sickness, and pain ; filled also with the common delight in life, the common horror of death, and the desire for peace and home. As in the case of general mankind, it was their endurance, their courage, self-sacrifice, and all that is implied in the ancient meanings of "virtue," which excited my wonder.
Among those who have given me very kind assistance either on the Dardanelles Peninsula or in London, I may mention with gratitude General Sir Ian Hamilton, G.C.B., etc. ; General Sir William R. Birdwood, K.C.B., K.C.S.I., etc. ; Major-General Sir Alexander Godley, K.C.B., etc. ; Major-General Sir A. H. Russell, K.C.M.G., etc. ; the late Lieut- General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, K.C.B. ; Major-General Sir W. R. Marshall, K.C.B. ; Major- General H. B. Walker, C.B. ; Major-General Sir William Douglas, K.C.M.G. ; Major-General F. H. Sykes, C.M.G. ; Major-General Sir D. Mercer, K.C. B. ; Brigadier-General Freyberg, V.C. ; Colonel Leslie Wilson, D.S.O., M.P. ; and Lieut. Douglas Jerrold, R.N.V.D. ; Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, K.C.B., etc.; Rear- Admiral Heathcote Grant, C.B., etc.; Captain A. P. Davidson, R.N. ; Captain the Hon. Algernon Boyle, R.N. ; Staff-Surgeon Levick, R.N. ; and the Rev. C. J. C. Peshall, R.N. It would indeed
PREFACE xiii
be difficult to draw up a complete list of the Naval and Military officers to whom I owe my thanks.
Having taken many photographs on the Peninsula, I posted them, as I was directed, to the War Office, and never saw them again. I can only hope that any one into whose possession they may happen to have come upon the route, may find them as useful as I should have found them in illustrating this book. My friend. Captain C. E. W. Bean, has generously supplied me with some of his own photographs in their place. For the rest I am permitted to use official pictures, taken by my friend, Mr. Brooks. They are of course far superior to any I could have taken, but some are already familiar.
The maps are for the most part constructed from the Staff Maps (nominally Turkish, but mainly Austrian I believe) used by the G.H.Q. upon the Peninsula. Some also are derived from drawings by Generals and Staff Officers. For the larger maps of Anzac and Suvla I am indebted to the assist- ance of Captain Treloar and the Australian Staff in London, with permission of Sir Alexander Godley, and Brigadier-General Richardson (formerly of the Royal Naval Division).
The following is a list of the chief books and documents which I have found useful : —
Sir Ian Hamilton's Dispatches.
Sir Charles Monro's Dispatch on the Evacuation.
The Dardanelles Commission Report, Part I.
xiv PREFACE
With the Twenty-ninth Division in Gallipoli,
by the Rev. O. Creighton, Chaplain to the
86th Brigade (killed in France, April 1918). The Tenth [Irish) Division in Gallipoliy by
Major Bryan Cooper, 5th Connaught Rangers. With the Zionists in Gallipoli, by Lieut. -Colonel
J. S. Patterson. The Immortal Gamble, by A. J. Stewart, Acting
Commander, R.N., and the Rev. C. J. E.
Peshall, Chaplain, R.N. Uncensored Letters from the Dardanelles, by a
French Medical Officer. Australia in Arms, by Phillip F. E. Schuler. The Story of the Anzacs. (Messrs. Ingram &
Sons, Melbourne.) Mr. Ashmead Bartlett's Dispatches from the
Dardanelles. What of the Dardanelles ? by Granville Fortescue. Two Years in Constantinople, by Dr. Harry
Stiirmer. Inside Constantinople, by Lewis Einstein. Nelsons History of the War, by Colonel John
Buchan. The " Times'' History of the War. The ''Manchester Guardian'' History of the
War.
H. W. N.
London, 1918.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN
PAGE
Naval Bombardment, November 1914— Causes of German-Turkish Alliance — Germany's Eastern aims — Mistakes of British diplomacy— The Goeben and Breslan — The position of Greece — Turkey declares war i
CHAPTER n THE INCEPTION
Mr. Churchill first suggests attack on Gallipoli — Russia's appeal for aid — A demonstration decided upon— The War Council — Lord Kitchener — Mr. Asquith — Mr. Churchill— Objects of his scheme— Lord Kitchener's objections — Admirals Fisher and Arthur Wilson — — Their duty as advisers — Lord Fisher's opinion — Admiral Jackson's view— Admiral Garden on the scheme — War Council orders a naval attack — Lord Fisher's opposition — He gives reluctant assent — Decision for a solely naval expedition . . . .12
CHAPTER HI
THE NAVAL ATTACKS
Council's hesitation renewed — A military force prepared — The 29th Division detained — Description of the Dardanelles — Mudros and the islands — Formation of the fleet— Bombardment of February 19 — Renewed on February 25 — Further attacks in early March — Effect on Balkan States— Mr. Churchill urges greater vigour— Admiral de Robeck succeeds to command— The naval attack of March 18 — Losses and comparative failure — Purely naval attacks abandoned . . 40
CHAPTER IV
THE PREPARATION
Sir Ian Hamilton's appointment— His qualifications— Misfortune of delay — Transports returned for reloading— Sir Ian in Egypt— The forces there— The '* Anzacs"— Possible lines of attack considered— The selected scheme— Chief members of Sir lan's staff— Available forces —Sir lan's address— Rupert Brooke's death . , .64
xvi CONTENTS
CHAPTER V THE LANDINGS
PAGE
The Start from Mudros— Landing at De Tott's Battery— Seddel Bahr and V Beach— The River C/j/^^— Landing at V Beach— Night there— W Beach or Lancashire Landing— Landing at X Beach— Y2 and Y Beaches— Landing at Y Beach— Its failure— Landing at Anzac— The positions won there— Feint off Bulair— Captain Freyberg's exploit — French feint at Kum Kali . . . . .88
CHAPTER VI
THE TEN DAYS AFTER
Sir lan's decision to hold Anzac — Advance from V Beach — Death of Doughty-Wylie— The French at V Beach— Position of Krithia— Advance of April 28— Turkish attack of May i— Reinforcements arrive — Position at Anzac — Casualties — Underestimate of wounded — Unhappy results . . . . • • .123
CHAPTER Vn
THE BATTLES OF MAY
State of Constantinople — Our submarines — Sir fan's reduced forces — The guns — May 6 at Helles — May 7— May 8 — The Australian charge— The 29th Division — Trench warfare — Death of General Bridges at Anzac — May 19 at Anzac — Armistice at Anzac — Loss |by hostile submarines — G.H.Q. at Imbros — Hope of Russian aid abandoned — Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher resign . . . -144
CHAPTER VIH
THE BATTLES OF JUNE
Situation on Peninsula — ^June 4 at Helles — French Colonial troops — Arrival of General De Lisle — ^June 6 to 8 at Helles — Losses — Want of guns — ^June 28 at Helles — The Gully Ravine — Turkish proclama- tions— Position at Anzac — June 29 at Anzac — Discouragement — General Gouraud wounded — The war in Poland and^Italy . • 171
CHAPTER IX THE PAUSE IN JULY
Local Turkish attacks — Turkish reinforcements — Our attacks of July 12 and 13 at Helles — General Hunter- Weston invalided — General Stopford's arrival — Description of Helles — Rations — Description of Anzac — The Aragon at Mudros — Arrival of General Altham — The Saturnia — Arrival of Colonel Hankey — The 'monitors, "blister- ships," and "beetles" — The loth, nth, and 13th Divisions — The 53rd and S4th Divisions — Total forces in August — New scheme of attack considered . . . . . , .19'
CONTENTS xvii
CHAPTER X THE VINEYARD, LONE PINE, AND THE NEK
PAGE
Feints and arrangement of forces — August 6 at Helles — August 7 to 13 — Fight for the Vineyard — Leane's trenches at Anzac — Lone Pine — Assault of August 6— Continuous fighting till August 12 — Assault on German officers' trenches — Assault on the Nek, August 7 . 224
CHAPTER XI
SARI BAIR
Description of the range — Nature of the approaches — General Godley's force — His dispositions— Evening August 6 to evening August 7 — Capture of Old No. 3 Post — Capture of Big Table Top — Capture of Bauchop's Hill — Ascent of Rhododendron Ridge — General Monash on Aghyl Dere — Evening August 7 to evening August 8 — Fresh dispositions — Summit of Chunuk Ridge reached — Death of Colonel Malone — Attempt at Abdel Rahman — Evening August 8 to evening August 9 — Error of Baldwin's column — Major Allanson on Hill Q — View of the Dardanelles — Party driven off by shells — Turks regain the summit — Baldwin at the Farm — Party on Chunuk Ridge relieved — Evening August 9 to evening August 10 — Fresh party on Chunuk Ridge destroyed — Turks swarm over summit — Fighting at the Farm — Death of General Baldwin — Turks driven back to summit — Causes of comparative failure ..... 247
CHAPTER Xn SUVLA BAY
Description of the bay and surrounding country — General Stopford and IXth Corps — Divisional Generals — Evening August 6 to evening August 7 — The embarkation — Work of the Navy — The landing beaches — Capture of Lala Baba — Ill-luck of 34th Brigade — Delay and con- fusion of Brigades and Divisions — Hill's Brigade (31st) — Its advance round Salt Lake— Capture of Chocolate Hill — General Mahon on Kiretch Tepe Sirt — Evening August 7 to evening August 8 — — Silence at Suvla — Failure of water distribution — Sir Ian visits Suvla — His orders to General Hammersley — Scimitar Hill aban- doned by mistake — Evening August 8 to evening August 9 — Turks reinforced return to positions — Failure of our attack on Scimitar Hill — Sir Ian proposes occupation of Kavak and Tekke Tepes — He sends his last reserve to Suvla — Evening August 9 to evening August 10 — Renewed attack on Scimitar Hill — Its failure — General Stopford ordered to consolidate line — Evening August 10 to evening August II — Landing of 54th Division — Confusion of front Hnes — Battalions reorganised — Evening August 11 to evening August 12 — Sir Ian again urges occupation of Kavak and Tekke Tepes — Disappearance
b
xviii CONTENTS
PAGE
of 5th Norfolks— General Stopford's objections— The loth Division on Kiretch Tepe Sirt (August 15) — Faihire to maintain advance — General De Lisle succeeds General Stopford temporarily in com- mand of IXth Corps — Other changes in command . . . 286
CHAPTER XIII
THE LAST EFFORTS
Causes of the failure in August— Advantages gained— Approximate losses — Adequate reinforcements refused — Arrival of Peyton's mounted Division— Renewed attempt against Scimitar Hill (August 21)— Mistakes in the advance on right — The 29th Division in centre- Advance of the Yeomanry — Failure to occupy the hill — Attack on Hill 60 from Anzac— Kabak Kuyu (August 21)— Connaught Rangers — Slov/ progress of attack— Second attack (August 27)— Third attack (August 29) — Last battle on the Peninsula . . . 333
CHAPTER XIV
SIR lAN'S RECALL
Sickness increases during September — Monotonous food — Regret for dead and wounded— New drafts — Fears of winter — Sir Julian Byng com- mands IXth Corps — Events in France, Poland, and the Balkans — Attitude of Bulgaria and Greece — The loth Division and one French sent to Salonika — Bulgaria declares war — Venizelos resigns — Serbia invaded — Salonika expedition too late, but destroys hope of Dardanelles — Lord Kitchener inquires about evacuation — Sir lan's reply — He is recalled ...... 35^
CHAPTER XV
THE FIFTH ACT
Sir Charles Monro arrives — His report — The advocates of evacuation — Lord Kitchener visits the Peninsula — General Birdwood appointed to command — Storm and blizzard of November — General Birdwood ordered to evacuate Suvla and Anzac — Estimate of Turkish forces — Our ruses — Arrangements at Suvla — Risks of the final nights — Embarkation at Suvla — Problem at Anzac — Final arrangements — Evacuation of Anzac — Uncertainty about Helles — Evacuation ordered— Turkish attacks— Final withdrawal (January 8, 19 16) — Recapitulation of causes of failure — Concluding observations — The end .......•■ 374
INDEX ......... 413
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
General Sir Ian Hamilton
From a portrait by John S. Sargent, R.A.
Fro7itispiece
Service on Board the Queen Elizabeth .
General Sir William Birdwood
The R/yEJi Clyde, "V" Beach, and Seddel Bahr
LiEUT.-CoL. C. H. H. Doughty-Wylie .
Anzac Cove .......
French Dug-out at Helles ....
General Gouraud standing with General Bailloud
Water-Carriers at Anzac
A " Beetle " .
General Sir Ian Hamilton (igiS)
Monash Gully ....
Major-General Sir Alexander Godley Big Table Top ....
Ocean Beach ....
Anzac in Snow ....
Scene on Suvla Point .
FACING PAGE . 24
44
94
128
138 174 194 206 214 228 244 256 260 284 384 394
XX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS
Helles and the Straits. Positions at Anzac SuvLA Landing 32ND Brigade, August 8 iith Division, August 21
FACING PAGE 78
112 286 316
At End of Book
1. The Peninsula, the Straits, and Constantinople.
2. British and French Trenches at Helles.
3. Positions at Anzac (end of August).
4. Positions at Suvla (end of August).
As this Book is in g^rcat demand, it
is respectfully requested that it may be
^ returned to the Library as soon as read
in oi'dcr to facilitate other Subscribers
getting it without undue delay.
THE ORIGIN
N November 3, 19 14, the silence of the Dardanelles was suddenly broken by an Anglo-French naval squadron, which opened I fire upon the forts at the entrance of that historic strait. The bombardment lasted only ten minutes, its object being merely to test the range of the Turkish guns, and no damage seems to have been inflicted on either side. The ships belonged to the Eastern Mediterranean Allied Squadrons, commanded by Vice- Admiral Sackville Garden, and the order to bombard was given by the Admiralty, Mr. Winston Ghurchill being First Lord. The War Council was not consulted, and Admiral Sir Henry Jackson, Gommander-in-Ghief in the Mediterranean, in his evidence before the Dardanelles Commission described the bombardment as a mistake, because it was likely to put the Turks on the alert. Commodore de Bartolom^, Naval Secretary to the First Lord, also said he considered it unfortunate, presumably for the same reason.^ Even Turks, unaided by Germans,
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 46.
2 THE ORIGIN
might have foreseen the ultimate necessity of strengthening the fortification of the Straits, but at the beginning they would naturally trust to the long- recognised difficulty of forcing a passage up the swift and devious channel which protects the entrance to the Imperial City more securely than a mountain pass.
War between the Allies and Turkey became certain only three days before (October 31), but from the first the temptation of the Turkish Government to throw in their lot with " Central Europe " was powerful. It is true that, during three or four decades of last century, Turkey counted upon England for protection, and that by the Crimean War and the Treaty of Berlin England had pro- tected her, with interested generosity, as a serviceable though frail barrier against Russian designs. But the British occupation of Egypt, the British inter- vention in Crete and Macedonia, and perhaps also the knowledge that a body of Englishmen fought for Greece in her disastrous campaign of 1897, shook Turkish confidence in the supposed protection ; while, on the other hand, Abdul Hamid's atrocious persecution of his subject races proved to the British middle classes that, though the Turk was described as "the gentleman of the Near East," he still possessed qualities undesirable in an ally of pro- fessing Christians. Besides, within the last eight years (since 1906), the understanding between England and Russia had continually grown more definite, until it resulted in open alliance at the out- break of the war ; and Russia had long been Turkey's relentless and insatiable foe. For she had her mind
HOW GERMANY WON TURKEY 3
steadily set upon Constantinople, partly because, by a convenient and semi-religious myth, the Tsars re- garded themselves as the natural heirs of the Byzan- tine Emperors, and partly in the knowledge that the possession of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles was essential for the development of Russia's naval power.
Germany was not slow in taking up the part of Turkey's friend as bit by bit it fell from England's hand. If, in Lord Salisbury's phrase, England found in the 'nineties that at the time of the Crimean War she had put her money on the wrong horse, Germany continued to back the weak-kneed and discarded out- sider. Germany's voice was never heard in the wide- spread outcry against "the Red Sultan." German diplomacy regarded all Balkan races and Armenians with indifferent scorn. It called them " sheepstealers " [Hammeldiebe), and if Abdul Hamid chose to stamp upon troublesome subjects, that was his own affair. With that keen eye to his country's material interest which, before the war, made him the most enterprise ing and successful of commercial travellers, Kaiser Wilhelm 11., repeating the earlier visit of 1889, visited the Sultan in state at the height of his unpopularity (1898), commemorated the favour by the gift of a deplorable fountain to the city, and proceeded upon a speculative pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which holy city German or Turkish antiquarians patched with the lath and plaster restorations befitting so curious an occasion.
The prolonged negotiations over the concession of the Bagdad railway ensued, the interests of Turkey and Germany alike being repeatedly thwarted by England's opposition, up to the very eve of the
4 THE ORIGIN
present war, when Sir Edward Grey withdrew our objection, providing only for our interests on the section between Bagdad and the Persian Gulf/ During the Young Turk revolution of 1908- 1909, English Liberal opinion was enthusiastic in support of the movement and in the expectation of reform. But our diplomacy, always irritated at new situations and suspicious of extended liberties, eyed the change with a chilling scepticism which threw all the advan- tage into the hands of Baron Marschall von Biberstein, the German Ambassador in Constantinople. His natural politeness and open-hearted industry con- trasted favourably with the habitual aloofness or leisured indifference of British Embassies ; and so it came about that Enver Pasha, the military leader of Young Turkey, was welcomed indeed by the oppo- nents of Abdul Hamid's tyranny at a public dinner in London, but went to reside in Berlin as military attachd
Germany's object in this astute benevolence was not concealed. With her rapidly increasing popula- tion, laborious, enterprising, and better trained than other races for the pursuit of commerce and technical industries, she naturally sought outlets to vast spaces of the world, such as Great Britain, France, and Russia had already absorbed. The immense growth of her wealth, combined with formidable naval and military power, encouraged the belief that such expan- sion was as practicable as necessary. But the best places in the sun were now occupied. She had secured pretty
* Speech in Foreign Office Debate. July lo, 1914. The whole ques- tion of Germany's relations to Turkey is discussed with his usual ktiowledge by Mr. H. N. Brailsford in A League of Nations, chap, v.
GERMANY'S EASTERN AIMS 5
fair portions in Africa, but France, England, and Belgium had better. Brazil was tempting, but the United States proclaimed the Monroe doctrine as a bar to the New World. Portugal might sell Angola under paternal compulsion, but its provinces were rotten with slavery, and its climate poisonous. Looking round the world, Germany found in the Turkish Empire alone a sufficiently salubrious and comparatively vacant sphere for her development ; and it is difficult to say what more suitable sphere we could have chosen to allot for her satisfaction, without encroaching upon our own preserves. Even the patch remaining to Turkey in Europe is a fine market-place ; with industry and capital most of Asia Minor would again flourish as "the bright cities of Asia " have flourished before ; there is no reason but the Ottoman curse why the sites of Nineveh and Babylon should remain uninhabited, or the Garden of Eden lie desolate as a wilderness of alternate dust and quagmire.
But to reach this land of hope and commerce the route by sea was long, and exposed to naval attack throughout its length till the Dardanelles were reached. The overland route must, therefore, be kept open, and three points of difficulty intervened, even if the alliance with Austria- Hungary perma- nently held good. The overland route passed through Serbia (by the so-called "corridor"), and behind Serbia stood the jealous and watchful power of the Tsars ; it passed through Bulgaria, which would have to be persuaded by solid argu- ments on which side her material interests lay ; and it passed through Constantinople, ultimately destined to
6 THE ORIGIN
become the bridgehead of the Bagdad railway — the point from which trains might cross a Bosphorus suspension bridge without unloading. There the German enterprise came clashing up against Russia's naval ambition and Russia's rooted sentiment. There the Kaiser, imitating the well-known epigram of Charles v., might have said : " My cousin the Tsar and I desire the same object — namely, Constanti- nople." There lay the explanation of Professor Mitrofanoff's terrible sentence in the Preussische Jahrbiicher of June 1914 : " Russians now see plainly that the road to Constantinople lies through Berlin." The Serajevo murders on the 28th of the same month were but the occasion of the Great War. The corridor through Serbia, and the bridgehead of the Bosphorus, ranked among the ultimate causes.
The appearance of a German General, Liman von Sanders, in Constantinople shortly after the second Balkan War in 19 13, if it did not make the Great War inevitable, drove the Turkish alliance in case of war inevitably to the German side. He succeeded to more than the position of General Colman von der Goltz, appointed to reorganise the Turkish army in 1882. Accompanied by a German staff, the Kaiser's delegate began at once to act as a kind of Inspector- General of the Turkish forces, and when war broke out they fell naturally under his control or command. The Turkish Government appeared to hesitate nearly three months before definitely adopting a side. The uneasy Sultan, decrepit with forty years of palatial imprisonment under a brother who, upon those terms only, had borne his existence near the throne, still re- tained the Turk's traditional respect for England and
ENGLAND'S ATTITUDE TO TURKEY 7
France. So did his Grand Vizier, Said Halim, So did a large number of his subjects, among whom tradition dies slowly. With tact and a reasonable expenditure of financial persuasion, the ancient sym- pathy might have been revived when all had given it over ; and such a revival would have saved us millions of money and thousands of young and noble lives, beyond all calculation of value.
But, most disastrously for our cause, the tact and financial persuasion were all on the other side. The Allies, it is true, gave the Porte "definite assurances that, if Turkey remained neutral, her independence and integrity would be respected during the war and in the terms of peace." ^ But similar and stronger assurances had been given both at the Treaty of Berlin and at the outbreak of the first Balkan War in 191 2. Unfortunately for our peace, Turkey had dis- covered that at the Powers' perjuries Time laughs, nor had Time long to wait for laughter. Following upon successive jiltings, protestations of future affec- tion are cautiously regarded unless backed by solid evidences of good faith ; but the Allies, having pre- viously refused loans which Berlin hastened to advance, had further revealed the frivolity of their intentions the very day before war with Germany was declared, by seizing the two Dreadnought battleships. Sultan Os7nan and Reskadie, then building for the Turkish service in British dockyards. Upon these
^ Sir Edward Grey, in the House of Commons, October 14, 191 5 ; Foreign Office Statement, November i, 1914. On the authority of the Kaiser, in conversation with M. Theotokis, Greek Minister in Berlin, it now appears that Germany had already concluded an alliance with Turkey on August 4, 191 4. (See Greek White Book, published August 24, 1917.)
8 THE ORIGIN
two battleships the Turks had set high, perhaps exaggerated, hopes, and Turkish peasants had con- tributed to their purchase ; for they regarded them as insurance against further Greek aggression among the islands of the Asiatic coast. Coming on the top of the Egyptian occupation, the philanthropic inter- ference with sovereign atrocity, the Russian alliance, and the refusal of loans, their seizure overthrew the shaken credit of England's honesty, and one might almost say that for a couple of Dreadnoughts we lost Constantinople and the Straits/
With lightning rapidity, Germany seized the advantage of our blunder. At the declaration of war, the Goeben, one of her finest battle-cruisers, a ship of 22,625 tons, capable of 28 knots, and armed with ten 1 1 -inch guns, twelve 5*9-inch, and twelve lesser guns, was stationed off Algeria, accompanied by the fast light cruiser Breslau (4478 tons, twelve 4*1 -inch guns), which had formed part of the international force at Durazzo during the farcical rule of Prince von Wied in Albania. After bombarding two Algerian towns, they coaled at Messina, and, escaping thence with melodramatic success, eluded the Allied Mediter- ranean command, and reached Constantinople through the Dardanelles, though suffering slight damage from the light cruiser Gloucester (August 8 or 9). When Sir Louis Mallet and the other Allied Ambassadors demanded their dismantlement, the Kaiser, with con- strained but calculated charity, nominally sold or presented them to Turkey as a gift, crews, guns, and all. Here, then, were two fine ships, not merely
^ See Turkey, Greece, and the Great Poiuers, by G. F. Abbott (191 7), pp. 167-200.
GERMANY TAKES HER ADVANTAGE 9
building, but solidly afloat and ready to hand. The gift was worth an overwhelming victory to the fore- seeing donor. ^
Germany's representatives pressed this enormous advantage by inducing the Turkish Government to appoint General Liman Commander-in-Chief, and to abrogate the Capitulations. They advanced fresh loans, and fomented the Pan-Islamic movement in Asia Minor, Egypt, Persia, and perhaps in Northern India. They even disseminated the peculiar rumour that the Kaiser, in addition to his material activities, had adopted the Moslem faith. The dangerous tendency was so obvious that, after three weeks' war, Mr. Winston Churchill concluded that Turkey might join the Central Powers and declare war at any moment. On September i he wrote privately to General Douglas, Chief of the Imperial General Staff:
" I arranged with Lord Kitchener yesterday that two officers from the Admiralty should meet two officers from the D.M.O.'s (Director of Military Operations) Department of the War Office to-day to examine and work out a plan for the seizure, by means of a Greek army of adequate strength, of the Gallipoli Peninsula, with a view to admitting a British Fleet to the Sea of Marmora."
Two days later. General Callwell, the D.M.O.,
^ Changing their religion with their sky, the Goeben and Breslau became the Jawuz Sultan Selim and the Midilli in the Turkish Navy. See Two War Years in Constantinople, by Dr. Harry Stiirmer, p. 113. In an action at the entrance to the Dardanelles, January 20, 1918, the Breslau was sunk, and the Goeben had to be beached at Nagara Point. We lost the monitor Lord Raglan.
lo THE ORIGIN
wrote a memorandum upon the subject, in which he said :
"It ought to be clearly understood that an attack upon the Gallipoli Peninsula from the sea side (outside the Straits) is likely to prove an extremely difficult operation of war."
He added that it would not be justifiable to under- take this operation with an army of less than 60,000 men.-^
Here, then, we have the first mention of the Dardanelles Expedition. It will be noticed that the idea was Mr. Churchill's, that he depended upon a Greek army to carry it out, and that General Callwell, the official adviser upon such subjects, considered it extremely difficult, and not to be attempted with a landing force of less than 60,000 men.
In mentioning a Greek army, Mr. Churchill justly relied upon M. Venizelos, at that time by far the ablest personality in the Near East, entirely friendly to ourselves, and Premier of Greece, which he had saved from chaos and greatly extended in territory by his policy of the preceding five or six years. But Mr. Churchill forgot to take account of two important factors. After the Balkan Wars of 191 2 and 191 3, King Constantine's imaginative but unwarlike people had acclaimed him both as the Napoleon of the Near East and as the " Bulgar-slayer," a title borrowed from Byzantine history. Priding himself upon these insignia of a military fame little justified by his mili- tary achievements from 1897 onward, the King of Greece posed as the plain, straightforward soldier,
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 45 (omitted in first publication, but inserted shortly afterwards).
TURKEY DECLARES WAR ii
and, perhaps to his credit, from the first refused approval of a Dardanelles campaign, though he pro- fessed himself willing to lead his whole army along the coast through Thrace to the City. The profession was made the more easily through his consciousness that the offer would not be accepted/ For the other factor forgotten by Mr. Churchill was the certain refusal of the Tsar to allow a single Greek soldier to advance a yard towards the long-cherished prize of Constantinople and the Straits.
Turkish hesitation continued up to the end of October, when the war party under Enver Pasha, Minister of War, gained a dubious predominance by sending out the Turkish fleet, which rapidly returned, asserting that the ships had been fired upon by Russians (Oct. 28) — an assertion believed by few. On the 29th, Turkish torpedo boats (at first reported as the Goeben and Breslau) bombarded Odessa and Theodosia, and a swarm of Bedouins invaded the Sinai Peninsula. Turkey declared war on the 31st. Sir Louis Mallet left Constantinople on November i, and on the 5th England formally declared war upon Turkey.
^ The subject was fully discussed with the present writer by M. Skouloudis, at that time Premier in Athens (November 9, 191 5). That veteran statesman was apparently honest in his belief both in the King's military genius and in the King's good faith towards the Allies — a belief unfounded in both cases.
T
CHAPTER II THE INCEPTION
"^HE break with Turkey, so pregnant with evil destiny, did not attract much attention in England at the moment. All thoughts were then fixed upon the struggle of our thin and almost exhausted line to hold Ypres and check the enemy's straining endeavour to command the Channel coast by occupying Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne. The Turk's military reputation had fallen low in the Balkan War of 191 2, and few realised how greatly his power had been re-established under Enver and the German military mission. Egypt was the only obvious point of danger, and the desert of Sinai ap- peared a sufficient protection against an unscientific and poverty-stricken foe ; or, if the desert were pene- trated, the Canal, though itself the point to be pro- tected, was trusted to protect itself. On November 8, however, some troops from India seized Fao, at the mouth of the Tigris- Euphrates, and, with reinforce- ments, occupied Basrah on the 23rd, thus inaugurat- ing that Mesopotamian expedition which, after terrible vicissitudes, reached Bagdad early in March 1917.
These measures, however, did not satisfy Mr. Churchill. At a meeting of the War Council on November 25, he returned to his idea of striking at the Gallipoli Peninsula, if only as a feint. Lord
THE CAMPAIGN SUGGESTED 13
Kitchener considered the moment had not yet arrived, and regarded a suggestion to collect transport in Egypt for 40,000 men as unnecessary at present. In his own words, Mr. Churchill ** put the project on one side, and thought no more of it for the time," although horse-boats continued to be sent to Alexandria "in case the War Office should, at a later stage, wish to undertake a joint naval and military operation in the Eastern Mediterranean." ^
On January 2, 191 5, a telegram from our Ambas- sador at Petrograd completely altered the situation. Russia, hard pressed in the Caucasus, called for a demonstration against the Turks in some other quarter. Certainly, at that moment, Russia had little margin of force. She was gasping from the effort to resist Hindenburg's frontal attack upon Warsaw across the Bzura, and the contest had barely turned in her favour during Christmas week. In the Caucasus the situation had become serious, since Enver, by clever strategy, attempted to strike at Kars round the rear of a Russian army which was crossing the frontier in the direction of Erzeroum. On the day upon which the telegram was sent, the worst danger had already been averted, for in the neigh- bourhood of Sarikamish the Russians had destroyed Enver's 9th Corps, and seriously defeated the loth and nth. But this fortunate and unexpected result was probably still unknown in Petrograd when our Ambassador telegraphed his appeal.
On the following day (January 3, 19 15) an answer, drafted in the War Office, but sent through the Foreign Office, was returned, promising a demon-
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, pars. 47,' 48,
14 THE INCEPTION
stration against the Turks, but fearing that it would be unlikely to effect any serious withdrawal of Turkish troops in the Caucasus. Sir Edward Grey considered that "when our Ally appealed for assist- ance we were bound to do what we could." But Lord Kitchener was far from hopeful. He informed Mr. Churchill that the only place where a demonstra- tion might have some effect in stopping reinforce- ments going East would be the Dardanelles. But he thought we could not do much to help the Russians in the Caucasus ; "we had no troops to land any- where" ; "we should not be ready for anything big for some months."^
So, by January 3, we were bound to some sort of a demonstration in the Dardanelles, but Lord Kitchener regarded it as a mere feint in the hope of withholding or recalling Turkish troops from the Caucasus, and he evidently contemplated a purely or mainly naval demonstration which we could easily withdraw without landing troops, and without loss of prestige. In sending this answer to Petrograd, he does not appear to have consulted the War Council as a whole. His decision, though not very enthusi- astic, was sufficient ; for in the conduct of the war he dominated the War Council, as he dominated the country.
The War Council had taken the place of the old Committee of Imperial Defence (instituted in 1901, and reconstructed in 1904). The change was made towards the end of November 19 14, but, except in one important particular, it was little more than a change in name. Like the old Committee, the
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, pars. 50-52,
THE WAR COUNCIL 15
Council were merely a Committee of the Cabinet, with naval and military experts added to give advice. The main difference was that the War Council, in- stead of laying its decisions before the Cabinet for approval or discussion, gave effect even to the most vital of them upon its own responsibility, and thus Sfathered into its own hands all deliberative and exe- cutive powers regarding military and naval move- ments. Sir Edward Grey, as Foreign Secretary, Mr. Lloyd George, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord Crewe, as Secretary for India, occasionally attended the meetings, and Mr. Balfour was invited to attend. But the real power remained with Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, Lord Kitchener, the Secretary for War, and Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty. In Mr. Asquith's own words : "The daily conduct of the operations of the war was in the hands of the Ministers responsible for the Army and Navy in constant consultation with the Prime Minister."^
This inner trinity of Ministers was dominated, as we said, by Lord Kitchener's massive personality. In his evidence before the Dardanelles Comm^ission, Mr. Churchill thus described the effect of that re- markable man upon the other members :
" Lord Kitchener's personal qualities and position played at this time a very great part in the decision of events. His prestige and authority were immense. He was the sole mouthpiece of War Office opinion in the War Council. Every one had the greatest ad- miration for his character, and every one felt fortified,
^ Speech in the House of Commons upon the Dardanelles Commis- sion s First Report, March 20, 1917 (Hansard, 1743).
1 6 THE INCEPTION
amid the terrible and incalculable events of the open- ing months of the war, by his commanding presence. When he gave a decision, it was invariably ac- cepted as final. He was never, to my belief, over- ruled by the War Council or the Cabinet in any military matter, great or small. No single unit was ever sent or withheld contrary, not merely to his agreement, but to his advice. Scarcely any one ever ventured to argue with him in Council. Respect for the man, sympathy for him in his immense labours, confidence in his professional judgment, and the belief that he had plans deeper and wider than any we could see, silenced misgivings and disputes, whether in the Council or at the War Of^ce. All-powerful, im- perturbable, reserved, he dominated absolutely our counsels at this time." ^
These sentences accurately express the ideal of Lord Kitchener as conceived by the public mind. His large but still active frame, his striking appear- ance, and his reputation for powerful reserve, in them- selves inspired confidence. His patient and ultimately successful services in Egypt, the Soudan, South Africa, and India were famed throughout the country, which discovered in him the very embodiment of the silent strength and tenacity, piously believed to distin- guish the British nature. Shortly before the outbreak of war, Mr. Asquith as Prime Minister had taken the charge of the War Of^ce upon himself, owing to Presbyterian Ulster's threat of civil war, and the possibility of mutiny among the British garrison in Ireland, if commanded to proceed against that rather self-righteous population. When war with Germany was declared, it so happened that Lord Kitchener was in England, on the point of returning to Egypt,
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. q.
LORD KITCHENER'S POWER l^
and Mr. Asquith handed over to him his own office as Secretary for War. The Cabinet, and especially Lord Haldane (then Lord Chancellor, but Minister of War from 1905 to 191 2), the most able of army organisers, urged him to this step. But he needed no persuasion. He never thought of any other successor as possible. As he has said himself:
" Lord Kitchener's appointment was received with universal acclamation, so much so indeed that it was represented as having been forced upon a reluctant Cabinet by the overwhelming pressure of an intelligent and prescient Press." ^
By the consent of all. Lord Kitchener was the one man capable of conducting the war, and by the con- sent of most he remained the one man, though he conducted it. Yet it might well be argued that the public mind, incapable of perceiving complexity, accepted a simple ideal of their hero which he himself had deliberately created. A hint of the mistake may be found in Mr. Asquith's speech.^ He admitted that Lord Kitchener was a masterful man ; that he had been endowed with a formidable personality, and was by nature rather disposed to keep his own counsel. But he maintained that he " was by no means the solitary and taciturn autocrat in the way he had been depicted." One may describe him as shy rather than aggressive, genial rather than relent- less, a reasonable peacemaker rather than a man of iron. Under that unbending manner, he studiously concealed a love of beauty, both human and artistic. Under a rapt appearance of far-reaching designs, his
^ Speech in the House of Commons, March 20, 1917 (Hansard, 1746). 2 Ibid.
2
1 8 THE INCEPTION
mind was much occupied with inappropriate detail, and could relax into trivialities. He was distin- guished rather for sudden flashes of intuition than for reasoned and elaborated plans. During the first year of the war, his natural temptation to occupy himself in matters better delegated to subordinates was in- creased by the absence in France of experienced officers whom he could have trusted for staff work. He became his own Chief of Staff,^ and diverted much of his energy to minor services. At the War Council he acted as his own expert, and Sir James Murray, who always attended the meetings as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was never even asked to express an opinion. The labours thus thrown upon Lord Kitchener, or mistakenly assumed, when he was engaged upon the task of creating new armies out of volunteers, and organising an unmilitary nation for war while the war thundered across the Channel, were too vast and multifarious for a single brain, however resolute. It is possible also that the course of years had slightly softened the personal will which had withstood Lord Milner in carrying through the peace negotiations at Pretoria, and Lord Curzon in reforming the Viceroy's Council at Simla. Never- theless, when all is said, all-powerful, imperturbable, reserved. Lord Kitchener dominated absolutely the counsels of the war's first year, and his service to the country was beyond all estimate. It raises his memory far above the reach of the malignant detrac- tion attempted after his death by certain organs of
^ Mr. Asquith, Speech in the House of Commons, March 20, 1917. Cf. Sir James Wolfe Murray : " Lord Kitchener acted very much as his own Chief of the Staff." Dardanelles Commission j First Report, par. 18.
MR. ASQUITH AS PRIME MINISTER 19
that " intelligent and prescient Press " which had shrieked for his appointment.^
Second in authority upon the War Council and with the nation, but only second, stood Mr. Asquith. For six years he had been Prime Minister — years marked by the restlessness and turbulence of expand- ing liberty at home, and abroad by ever-increasing apprehension. Yet his authority was derived less from his office than from personal qualities which, as in Lord Kitchener's case, the English people like to believe peculiarly their own. He was incorruptible, above suspicion. His mind appeared to move in a cold but pellucid atmosphere, free alike from the generous enthusiasm and the falsehood of extremes. Sprung from the intellectual middle-class, he conciliated by his origin, and encouraged by his eminence. His eloquence was unsurpassed in the power of simple statement, in a lucidity more than legal, and, above all, in brevity. The absence of emotional appeal, and, even more, the absence of humour, promoted con- fidence, while it disappointed. Here, people thought, was a personality rather wooden and unimaginative, but trustworthy as one who is not passion's slave. No one, except rivals or journalistic wreckers, ever
^ " I suppose that upon no man in our history has a heavier burden fallen than fell upon him, and nothing in connection with this Report — it may be no imputation upon anybody connected with the Report itself — has filled me with more indignation and disgust than that the pub- lication of the criticisms made in it of Lord Kitchener's conduct and capacity should have been taken advantage of by those who only two years ago were in a posture of almost slavish adulation to belittle his character, and, so far as they can, to defile his memory. Lord Kitchener's memory is in no danger. It lives, and will live, in the gratitude and admiration of the British people and of the whole Empire." — Mr. Asquith, Speech in the House of Commons, March 20, 1917 (Hansard, 1748).
20 THE INCEPTION
questioned his devotion to the country's highest interests as he conceived them, and, as statesmen go, he appeared almost uninfluenced by vanity.
Balliol and the Law had rendered him too fastidi- ous and precise for exuberant popularity, but under an apparent immobility and educated restraint he concealed, like Lord Kitchener, qualities more attrac- tive and humane. Although conspicuous for cautious moderation, he was not obdurate against reason, but could sing a palinode upon changed convictions.^ Unwavering fidelity to his colleagues, and a mag- nanimity like Caesar's in combating the assaults of political opponents, and disregarding the treachery of most intimate enemies, surrounded him with a personal affection which surprised external observers ; while his restrained and unexpressive demeanour covered an unsuspected kindliness of heart. In spite of his lapses into fashionable reaction, most supporters of the Gladstonian tradition still looked to him for guidance along the lines of peaceful and gradual reform, when suddenly the war-cloud burst, obliterating in one deluge all the outlines of peace and progress and law. The Tsar who, with assumed philanthropy, had proposed the Peace Conferences at The Hague ; the ruler to whom the ambition of retaining the title of " Friedens- kaiser " was, perhaps honestly, attributed ; the Presi- dent who had known how passionately France clung to peace ; the Belgian King who foresaw the devasta- tion of his wealthy country ; the stricken Emperor who, through long years of disaster following disaster, had hoped his distracted heritage might somehow
^ See his speech in the House of Commons on Woman Sufifrage, March 28, 191 7.
MR. CHURCHILL'S IDEA 21
hang together still — all must have suffered a torture of anxiety and indecision during those fateful days of July and August 19 14. But upon none can the decision have inflicted deeper suffering than upon a Prime Minister naturally peaceful, naturally kindly, naturally indisposed to haste, plagued with the scholar's and the barrister's torturing ability to per- ceive many sides to every question, and hoping to crown a laborious life by the accomplishment of political and domestic projects which, at the first breath of war, must wither away. Yet he decided.
Third in influence upon the War Council (that is to say, upon the direction of all naval and military affairs) stood Mr. Winston Churchill. In his evidence before the Commission, Mr. Churchill stated :
** I was on a rather different plane. I had not the same weight or authority as those two Ministers, nor the same power, and if they said. This is to be done or not to be done, that settled it."^
The Commissioners add in comment that Mr. Churchill here " probably assigned to himself a more unobtrusive part than that which he actually played." The comment is justified in relation to the Dardan- elles, not merely because it is difficult to imagine Mr. Churchill playing an unobtrusive part upon any occasion, but because, as we have seen, the idea of a Dardanelles Expedition was specially his own. It was one of those ideas for which we are sometimes indebted to the inspired amateur. For the amateur, untrammelled by habitual routine, and not easily appalled by obstacles which he cannot realise, allows
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 16.
22 THE INCEPTION
his imagination the freer scope, and contemplates his own particular vision under a light that never was in office or in training-school. In Mr. Churchill's case, the vision of the Dardanelles was, in truth, beatific. His strategic conception, if carried out, would have implied, not merely victory, but peace. Success would at once have secured the defence of Egypt, but far more besides. It would have opened a high road, winter and summer, for the supply of munitions and equipment to Russia, and a high road for returning ships laden with the harvests of the Black Earth. It would have severed the German communication with the Middle East, and rendered our Mesopotamian campaign either unnecessary or far more speedily fortunate. On the political side, it would have held Bulgaria steady in neutrality or brought her into our alliance. It might have saved Serbia without even an effort at Salonika, and certainly it would have averted all the subsequent entanglements with Greece. Throughout the whole Balkans, the Allies would at once have obtained the position which the enemy afterwards held, and have surrounded the Central Powers with an iron circle complete at every point except upon the Baltic coast, the frontiers of Den- mark, Holland, and Switzerland, and a strip of the Adriatic. Under those conditions, it is hardly pos- sible that the war could have continued after 19 16. In a speech made during the summer of the year before that (after his resignation as First Lord), Mr. Churchill was justified in saying :
** The struggle will be heavy, the risks numerous, the losses cruel ; but victory, when it comes, will make amends for all. There never was a great subsidiary
V-
LORD KITCHENER'S EARLY OBJECTION 23
operation of war in which a more complete harmony of strategic, political, and economic advantages has combined, or which stood in truer relation to the main decision which is in the central theatre. Through the Narrows of the Dardanelles and across the ridges of the Gallipoli Peninsula lie some of the shortest paths to a triumphant peace." ^
The strategic design, though not above criticism (for many critics advised leaving the Near East alone, and concentrating all our force upon the Western front) — the design in itself was brilliant. All de- pended upon success, and success depended upon the method of execution. Like every sane man, pro- fessional or lay, Mr. Churchill favoured a joint naval and military attack. The trouble — the fatal trouble — was that in January 19 15 Lord Kitchener could not spare the men. He was anxious about home defence, anxious about Egypt (always his special care), and most anxious not to diminish the fighting strength in France, where the army was concentrat- ing for an offensive which was subsequently aban- doned, except for the attack at Neuve Chapelle (in March). He estimated the troops required for a Dardanelles landing at 150,000, and at this time he appears hardly to have considered the suggested scheme except as a demonstration from which the navy could easily withdraw.
Mr. Churchill's object was already far more exten- sive. Like the rest of the world, he had marvelled at the power of the German big guns — guns of unsus- pected calibre — in destroying the forts of Lidge and Namur. In his quixotic attempt to save Antwerp
^ Speech at Dundee, June 5, 191 5.
24 THE INCEPTION
(an attempt justly conceived but revealing the amateur in execution) by stiffening the Belgian troops with a detachment of British marines and the unorganised and ill-equipped Royal Naval Division under General Paris, he had himself witnessed another proof of such power. For he was present in the doomed city from October 4 to 7, two days before it fell. Misled by a false analogy between land and sea warfare, he asked himself why the guns of super- Dreadnoughts like the Queen Elizabeth should not have a similarly overwhelming effect upon the Turkish forts in the Dardanelles ; especially since, under the new conditions of war, their fire could be directed and controlled by aeroplane obser- vation, while the ships themselves remained out of sight upon the sea side of the Peninsula. It was this argument which ultimately induced Lord Kitchener to assent, though reluctantly, to a purely naval at- tempt to force the Straits, for he admitted that "as to the power of the Queen Elizabeth he had no means of judging."^
But, for the moment, Mr. Churchill contented himself with telegraphing to Vice-Admiral Garden (January 3) :
" Do you think that it is a practicable operation to force the Dardanelles by the use of ships alone ? . . . The importance of the results would justify severe loss."
At the same time he stated that it was assumed that " older battleships " would be employed, furnished with mine-sweepers, and preceded by colliers or other
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 53.
'14-^.M : ^
THE ADMIRALS IN AUTHORITY 25
merchant vessels as sweepers and bumpers. On January 5 Garden replied :
" I do not think that the Dardanelles can be rushed, but they might be forced by extended opera- tions with a large number of ships."
Next day Mr. Churchill telegraphed : " High authorities here concur in your opinion." He further asked for detailed particulars showing what force would be required for extended operations.^
Among the "high authorities," Garden naturally supposed that one or more of the naval experts who attended the War Gouncil were included. These naval experts were, in the first place, Lord Fisher (First Sea Lord) and Sir Arthur Wilson, Admirals of long and distinguished service. Both were over seventy years of age, and both were regarded by the navy and the whole country with the highest respect, though for distinct and even opposite qualities. Lord Fisher had been exposed to the criticism merited by all reformers, or bestowed upon them. Especially it was argued that his insistence upon the Dreadnought type, by rendering the former fleet ob- solete, had given our hostile rival upon the seas the opportunity of starting a new naval construction on almost equal terms with our own. But, none the less, Lord Fisher was recognised as the man to command the fleet by the right of genius, and his authority at sea was hardly surpassed by Lord Kitchener's on land. The causes of the confidence and respect in- spired by Sir Arthur Wilson are sufficiently suggested by his invariable nickname of "Tug." Both Ad-
^ Ibid.^ pars. 54, 55.
26 THE INCEPTION
mirals were members of the War Staff Group, in- stituted by Prince Louis of Battenberg in the previous November/ and both attended the War Council as the principal naval experts. Admiral Sir Henry Jackson and Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Oliver (Chief of the Staff) were also present on occasion.
The expert's duty in such a position has been much disputed. The question, in brief, is whether he acts as adviser to his Minister only (in this case, Mr. Churchill), or to the Council as a whole. Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson, supported by Sir James Wolfe Murray, Chief of the Imperial General Staff under Lord Kitchener (who was always his own expert), maintained they were right in acting solely as Mr. Churchill's advisers. Though they sat at the same table, they did not consider themselves members of the War Council. It was not for them to speak, unless spoken to. They were to be seen and not heard. The object of their presence was to help the First Lord, if their help was asked, as it never was. In case of disagreement with their chief, there could be "no altercation." They must be silent or resign. Their office doomed them, as they considered, to the old Persian's deplorable fate of having many thoughts,
^ This War Staff Group took the place of the Board of Admiralty in strategical matters, the Second, Third, and Fourth Sea Lords being thus released for their special functions of manning, shipbuilding, and transport. Its other members were the First Lord, the Chief of the Staff (Sir Henry Oliver), the Secretary of the Board (Sir Graham Greene), and the Naval Secretary (Commodore de Bartolome).— See "The Dardanelles Report," by Mr. Archibald Hurd {Fortnightly Review^ April 191 7), where the whole subject is discussed with the writer's well-known knowledge of naval affairs.
THEIR DUTY AS ADVISERS 27
but no power/ In this view of their duties, they were strongly supported among the Dardanelles Commissioners by Mr. Andrew Fisher (representing Australia) and Sir Thomas Mackenzie (representing New Zealand). Following official etiquette, they were, it seems, justified in holding themselves bound by official rules to acquiesce in anything short of certain disaster rather than serve the country by an undisciplined word.^
If this attitude was technically correct, it is the more unfortunate that the Ministers most directly concerned, as being members of the War Council, should have taken exactly the opposite view, though masters of parliamentary technique. In his evidence before the Commission, Mr. Churchill, the man most closely concerned, protested :
" Whenever I went to the War Council I always insisted on being accompanied by the First Sea Lord and Sir Arthur Wilson, and when, at the War Council, I spoke in the name of the Admiralty, I was not expressing simply my own views, but I was ex- pressing to the best of my ability the opinions we had agreed upon at our daily group meetings ; and I was expressing these opinions in the presence of two naval colleagues and friends who had the right, the knowledge, and the power at any moment to correct me or dissent from what I said, and who were fully cognizant of their rights."^
Mr. Asquith said "he should have expected any
ExoiaTT) Se 68vvr] earl rav iv avOpairoicri avrt], TroXKa (ppoveovra ^ri8fv6s Kpareeiv. — HerodotUS, ix. l6.
2 Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, pars. 19, 87 ; minutes i and 2.
^ 3icl., par. 20.
28 THE INCEPTION
of the experts there, if they entertained a strong personal view on their own expert authority, to ex- press it."^ Lord Grey, Lord Haldane, Lord Crewe, Mr. Lloyd George, and Colonel Maurice Hankey, the very able Secretary to the War Council, gave similar evidence. Mr. Balfour said : " I do not be- lieve it is any use having in experts unless you try and get at their inner thoughts on the technical questions before the Council."^ In the House of Commons, at a later date, Mr. Asquith maintained :
"They (the experts) were there — that was the reason, and the only reason, for their being there — to give the lay members the benefit of their advice. . . . To suppose that these experts were tongue-tied or paralysed by a nervous regard for the possible opinion of their political superiors is to suppose that they had really abdicated the functions which they were in- tended to discharge."^
These views appear so reasonable that we might suppose them unofficial, had not the speakers occu- pied the highest official positions themselves. The result of this difference of opinion regarding the duty of expert advisers was disastrous. The War Council assumed the silence of the experts to imply acquies- cence, whereas it sprang from obedience to etiquette. Before the Commission, Lord Fisher stated that from the first he was "instinctively against it" {i.e. against Admiral Garden's plan) ;^ that he " was dead against the naval operation alone because he knew it must be a failure " ; and he added, "I must reiterate that as
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 26. ^ /^/^.^ par. 22.
^ Speech of March 20, 1917 (Hansard, 1744).
* Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 16.
MR. CHURCHILL'S OBJECTS 29
a purely naval operation I think it was doomed to failure."^ It may be supposed that these statements were prophecies after the event, and the Commis- sioners observe that Lord Fisher did not at the time record any such strongly adverse opinions. Never- theless, on the very day when a demonstration was first discussed, he wrote privately to Mr. Churchill :
" I consider the attack on Turkey holds the field, but only if it is immediate ; however, it won't be. We shall decide on a futile bombardment of the Dar- danelles, which wears out the invaluable guns of the Indefatigable^ which probably will require replacement. What good resulted from the last bombardment ? Did it move a single Turk from the Caucasus ? " ^
Two days later he sent Mr. Churchill a formal minute, saying that our policy must not jeopardise our naval superiority, but the advantages of possess- ing Constantinople and getting wheat through the Black Sea were so overwhelming that he considered Colonel Hankey's plans for Turkish operations vital and imperative, and very pressing. The object of these plans (circulated to the Wq,r Council on December 28, 19 14) was to strike at Germany through her allies, particularly by weaving a web around Turkey ; and for this purpose Lord Fisher sketched a much wider policy requiring the co-opera- tion of Roumania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia.^ The scheme was not identical with another design of naval strategy which was already occupying Lord
^ Ibid.^ Majority Report, par. 68.
^ Ibid.., Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 11. The reference is to the brief bombardment of November 3. ^ Ibid.., pars. 7-12.
30 THE INCEPTION
Fisher's mind, and the frustration of which by the Dardanelles Expedition ultimately caused his resigna- tion (in May). But the evidence here quoted shows that Lord Fisher could not be included among the "high authorities" referred to by Mr. Churchill as concurring with Admiral Garden's opinion. Mr. Churchill said in his evidence that he did not wish to include either Lord Fisher or Sir Arthur Wilson (who throughout agreed with Lord Fisher in the main). He was thinking of Admirals Jackson and Oliver. Yet to Admiral Garden's mind Lord Fisher would naturally be suggested as one of the high authorities ; and was suggested.^
So soon as a demonstration of some sort was decided upon, Mr. Churchill asked Admiral Jackson to prepare a memorandum, which the Admiral de- scribed as a " Note on forcing the passages of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus by the Allied fleets in order to destroy the Turko-German squadron and threaten Constantinople without military co-opera- tion," The last three words are important, for it is evident that, though Admiral Jackson expressed no resolute opposition at the time, he was strongly opposed to the idea of a merely naval attack. In this memorandum he pointed out facts which even a layman might have discerned : that the ships, even if they destroyed the enemy squadron, would be ex- posed to torpedo at night, to say nothing of field-guns and rifles in the Straits, and would hold no line of retreat unless the shore batteries had been destroyed ; that, though they might dominate the city, their posi- tion would not be enviable without a large military ^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 56.
ADMIRAL JACKSON'S OPINION 31
force to occupy it ; that the bombardment alone would not be worth the considerable loss involved ; that the city could not be occupied without troops, and there was a risk of indiscriminate massacre.^
The dangers of an unsupported naval attack were so obvious that Admiral Jackson can have needed no further authority in urging them. Yet he may have recalled a memorandum drawn up by the General Staff (December 19, 1906), stating that "military opinion, looking at the question from the point of view of coast defence, would be in entire agreement with the naval view that unaided action by the Fleet, bearing in mind the risks involved, was much to be deprecated,"^
Admiral Jackson's discouraging memorandum of January 5 was not shown to the War Council. Yet it was of vital importance. In his evidence, Admiral Jackson insisted that he had always stuck to this memorandum :
** It would be a very mad thing," he said, "to try and get into the Sea of Marmora without having the Gallipoli Peninsula held by our own troops or every gun on both sides of the Straits destroyed. He had never changed that opinion, and he had never given any one any reason to think he had."
Long afterwards, Mr. Churchill suggested that
^ Ibid., Majority Report, par. 57 ; Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 14. Admiral Jackson's view as to the unenviable position of a fleet bottled up off Constantinople without commanding the line of retreat was prob- ably influenced by the record of Admiral Duckworth's risk when in a similar position (1807), and Admiral Hornby's hesitation about entering the Straits in 1877. — See Nelson's History of the IVar, by John Buchan, vol. vi. pp. 130-36.
2 Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 43.
32 THE INCEPTION
what Admiral Jackson meant by a mad thing was an attempt to rush the Straits without having strong landing-parties available, and transports ready to enter when the batteries were seen to be silent.^ It is just possible to put that interpretation on the words, but both they and the memorandum itself appear naturally to imply a far larger military force than landing-parties as essential.
On January ii Vice-Admiral Garden telegraphed a detailed scheme for gradually forcing the Dar- danelles by four successive stages, the operations to cover about a month. The plan was considered by the War Staff Group at the Admiralty, and in sub- sequent evidence all agreed that they were very dubious, if not hostile. Lord Fisher said he was instinctively against it. Sir Arthur Wilson said he never recommended it. Admiral Oliver and Gom- modore Bartolome said they were definitely opposed to a purely naval attempt. But all agreed that the operations could not lead to disaster, as they might be broken off at any moment.^ Admiral Jackson (not a member of the Group) also drew up a detailed memorandum upon all stages of the plan, " concurring generally," and suggesting that the first stage should be approved at once, as the experience gained might be useful. He insisted in evidence that he recommended only an attack on the outer forts. He accepted the policy of a purely naval attack solely on the ground that it was not for him to decide. His responsibility was limited to his staff work, which he performed.^
^ Speech in House of Commons, March 20, 1917 (Hansard, 1780). " Dardanelles Commission ; Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 16. 2 Ibid.^ par. 20 ; Majority Report, pars. 60-62.
THE WAR COUNCIL'S FIRST DECISION 33
The two decisive meetings of the War Council on January 13 and January 28 followed. At the former meeting Mr. Churchill explained the details of Admiral Carden's plan, adding that, besides certain older ships, two new battle-cruisers, one being the Queen Elizabeth, could be employed.^ He thus re- vived his Antwerp experience of big-gun power against fortresses. When the exposition of the whole design was completed. Lord Kitchener gave it as his opinion that "the plan was worth trying. We could leave off the bombardment if it did not prove effec- tive." In this delusive belief the War Council arrived at the momentous decision :
" The Admiralty should prepare for a naval ex- pedition in February to bombard and take the Galli- poli Peninsula, with Constantinople as its objective."^
Although the word " take " is used, the Council had no intention at this time of employing a military force. It was assumed that none was available. The same meeting sanctioned Sir John French's plan for an offensive in France (the offensive which degenerated into the attack on Neuve Chapelle in March). In case of a naval failure, the ships could be withdrawn ; in case of success, there was talk of a revolution in Constantinople, and upon that hope the Council gambled.^
During this meeting Lord Fisher, together with Admiral Wilson and Sir James Murray, sat dumb as
^ Lord Fisher had himself suggested the use of the Queen Elizabeth to Admiral Oliver the day before. Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 17. 2 Majority Report, par. 69. Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 18. ^ Majority Report, par. 94. 3
34 THE INCEPTION
usual, and his silence was as usual taken for assent. When the Council had arrived at their resolution, he considered his sole duty was to assist in carrying it out. The very next day he signed a memorandum from Mr. Churchill strongly advising that we should devote ourselves to " the methodical forcing of the Dardanelles,"^ and he added the two powerful battle- ships Lord Nelson and Agamemnon to the fleet allotted for this operation. But his underlying difference of opinion became steadily stronger. In evidence, Mr. Churchill said he " could see that Lord Fisher was increasinelv worried about the Dardanelles situation. He reproached himself for having agreed to begin the operation. ... His great wish was to put a stop to the whole thing. ... I knew he wanted to break off the whole operation and come away."^ On January 25 Lord Fisher took the unusual course of writing to Mr. Asquith and stating his objections. He considered the Dardanelles would divert from another large plan of naval policy which he had in mind ; further, that it was calculated to dissipate our naval strength, and to risk the older ships (besides the invaluable men) which formed our only reserve behind the Grand Fleet.^
Mr. Churchill replied in a similar memorandum to the Prime Minister, defending his Dardanelles plan on the plea of its value, even at a cost which, after all, would be relatively small. In hope of obtaining some agreement, Mr. Asquith invited Lord Fisher and Mr. Churchill to his room just before the meeting of the War Council on January 28 — the
1 Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 68.
2 Ibid.^ par. 83. ^ Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 22.
MR. CHURCHILL'S INSISTENCE 35
second decisive meeting. After discussion, the Prime Minister expressed his satisfaction with Mr. Church- ill's view, and all three proceeded to the Council. It was a fairly full meeting, Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Balfour being present, besides the three dominat- ing members and the experts. Mr. Churchill pressed his plan with eloquent enthusiasm. "He was very keen on his own views," said Sir Arthur Wilson in evidence ; "he kept on saying he could do it without the army ; he only wanted the army to come in and reap the fruits . . . and I think he generally mini- mised the risks from mobile guns, and treated it as if the armoured ships were immune altogether from injury." ^ Mr. Churchill re-stated the political and strategic advantages of success. He said that the Grand Duke Nicholas had replied with enthusiasm, and that the French Admiralty had promised co- operation.^ He said the Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean believed it could be done in three weeks or a month. The necessary ships were already on their way.
All the members of the War Council were won by these persuasive arguments. They needed little persuasion, and no persuasion is so strong as an enterprise begun. But Lord Fisher for once broke silence. He said he had not supposed the matter would be raised that day, and that the Prime Minister was well aware of his views. When he found that a final decision was to be taken, he got up to leave the
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 88.
2 M. Augagneur, Minister of Marine, had visited London after the decision of January 13. He approved the subsequent plan, pronouncing it "prudent et prevoyant." Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 29.
36 THE INCEPTION
room, intending to resign. But Lord Kitchener intercepted him, and taking him to the window strongly urged him to remain, pointing out that he was the only dissentient and it was his duty to carry on the work of his office as First Sea Lord. Where- upon Lord Fisher reluctantly yielded to the entreaty and returned to his seat.^
It is remarkable that at a meeting of such decisive moment no mention was made of Lord Fisher's memorandum, nor of Mr. Churchill's reply, nor of their conference with the Prime Minister an hour before. None the less, not only Mr. Asquith and Mr. Churchill knew of Lord Fisher's opposition. Lord Kitchener knew of it ; so did Sir Edward Grey. Yet the opinion of the chief naval authority in Eng- land was overruled. Mr. Asquith subsequently stated that "the whole naval expert opinion available to us (the War Council), whether our own or the French, was unanimously and consentiently in favour of this as a practical naval operation. There was not one dissentient voice." As to Lord Fisher, he continued, it was quite true that he expressed on the morning of that day an adverse, or at least an unfavourable opinion, but not upon the ground of its merits or demerits from a technical naval point of view :
" Lord Fisher's opinion and advice were not founded upon the naval technical merits or demerits of this operation, but upon his avowed preference for a wholly different objective in a totally different sphere."
No doubt Lord Fisher insisted mainly upon that different objective as being the more important cause
^ Majority Report, pars. 86, 87 ; Mr. Roch's Minute, pars. 25, 26.
LORD FISHER'S RELUCTANT ASSENT 37
of his opposition. But it seems evident that from the first he was also opposed to a merely naval attack and bombardment. His letter to Mr. Churchill on January 2 (quoted above) proves this. And so does the following clause in his memorandum to the Prime Minister on January 25 :
"The sole justification of coastal bombardments and attacks by the fleet on fortified places, such as the contemplated prolonged bombardment of the Dar- danelles forts by our fleet, is to force a decision at sea, and so far and no further can they be justified."^
Yet, in this case, there was no suggestion or possibility of forcing a decision at sea.
In the afternoon of the same day (January 28) Mr. Churchill had a private interview with Lord Fisher, and " strongly urged him to undertake the operation." Lord Fisher definitely consented. Mr. Churchill says that if he had failed to persuade him, there would have been no need to altercate, or to resign, or even to argue. He would have gone back to the War Council and told them they must either appoint a new Board of Admiralty or abandon the project. " For the First Sea Lord has to order the fleets to steam and the guns to fire."^ Lord Fisher, on the other hand, insisted in evidence that he had taken every step, short of resignation, to show his dislike of the proposed operations ; that the chief technical advisers of the Government ought not to resign because their advice is not accepted, unless they think the operations proposed must lead to
^ Mr. Roch's Minute, pars. 11 and 22.
2 Speech in House of Commons, March 20, 1917 (Hansard, 1783, 1784).
38 THE INCEPTION
disastrous results ; and that the attempt to force the Dardanelles as a purely naval operation would not have been disastrous so long as the ships employed could be withdrawn at any moment, and only such vessels were employed as could be spared without detriment to the general service of the fleet.^
The divergence of opinion here is not so complete as it seems ; for by admitting that the War Council could have appointed a new Board of Admiralty if Lord Fisher had refused to carry out their decision, Mr. Churchill showed that, though the First Sea Lord could order the fleets to steam and the guns to fire, the ultimate control did not lie with him. The ultimate control lay with the Government (in this case the War Council), and Lord Fisher was un- doubtedly right in thinking his constitutional duty consisted in carrying out the Council's decisions or resigning his office. He did not resign at this time, because he thought the naval attack did not necessarily imply disaster. He agreed to undertake the charge. He considered it his duty simply to carry out the Council's decision as best he could. With Mr. Churchill he attended another Council meeting later in the afternoon, and there the fateful, if not fatal, step was taken. It was decided that an attack should be made by the fleet alone, with Constantinople as its objective.^
Though Lord Fisher agreed to do his best, and though the members of the War Council accepted the plan with more or less enthusiasm, the ultimate decision was arrived at owing to Mr. Churchill's
^ Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 28.
2 Majority Report, pars. 89-93 ; Mr. Roch's Minute, pars. 28, 29.
A NAVAL EXPEDITION DECREED 39
insistence upon his own brilliant idea, and his resolve to attempt it even without military aid. The Com- missioners remark that in this resolve he was carried away by his sanguine temperament and his firm belief in the success of the undertaking which he advocated/ They were probably right. But as evidence of the complexity in all natures — even in a character apparently so self-confident, impetuous, and sanguine — we may recall the passage in Mr. Churchill's speech upon these events, where, after referrino- to "the doubts and the misg-ivings which arise in every breast when these great hazards of war are decided," he went on to say :
" No one who has not had to take these decisions can know how serious and painful are the stresses which search every man's heart when he knows that an order is going to be given as a result of which great ships may be lost, great interests may be permanently ruined, and hundreds or even thousands of men may be sent to their last account."^
If ever the heart of man was searched by serious and painful stress, it may well have been in that Council chamber of January 28, 191 5. For then a decision was taken, and an order given, as a result of which great ships were lost, great interests permanently ruined, and thousands of men sent to their last account.
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 92. ^ Speech in the House of Commons, March 20, 1917.
A
CHAPTER III
THE NAVAL ATTACKS
T the War Council meetings of January 28 a demonstration extending to the possible capture of Constantinople was thus decided upon, and the demonstration was to be purely naval. All the members of the Council would have agreed that a joint naval and military (or "amphibious") attack would have made success surer ; but Lord Kitchener declared the necessary troops could not be supplied, and his decision was accepted without question. The evidence shows that when first Admiral Carden was commanded to attack, no hint of military support was given him. He was expected to depend entirely upon small landing-parties of his own marines to demolish the forts/ Mr. Churchill has himself told us that, if an amphibious attack had then been thought essential or seriously con- templated, nothing at all would have been done. Nothing less than 100,000 or 150,000 men could have been asked for, together with large supplies of high explosives and artillery. Whereupon, "all the military experts " {i.e. Lord Kitchener, with the
1 Mr. Archibald Hurd ("The Dardanelles Report," 7^<7r/«z^/^//)//?e- vtew, April 1917, pp. 587, 591) considers that a military force "was apparently a part of the original scheme." But the whole evidence of the Report and of Mr. Churchill's speech of March 20, 1917, appears to be against him.
HESITATION RENEWED 41
possible addition of Lord French) " unanimously would have said that the men were not available, and the ammunition could not be spared from the French front." ^ Whether it would not have been well, even at this last moment, to abandon the whole scheme rather than act contrary to the best judgment of experts and laymen alike, has now, unfortunately, become a matter of vain speculation.
Hardly had the naval orders been given, and the ships dispatched, when the Council began to waver. It is impossible to fix a day for this change, for the change itself wavered. In his evidence, General Callwell (the D.M.O.) said: "We drifted into the big military attack " ; ^ and " drift " is the precise word for the Council's uncertain course. By the middle of February the feeling had evidently set towards an amphibious movement ; but up to the middle of March they hoped that the need of landing troops upon a large scale might be avoided by purely naval success. It appears that early in February Lord Kitchener began to yield. Probably his former decision was shaken by the abandonment of a large- scale offensive in France, and by the failure of the Turkish attack upon the Suez Canal (February 3 and 4). Though the Turkish force was allowed to retreat without the destruction which greater energy in the Egyptian Command might have brought upon it, the troops then in Egypt had proved more than sufficient for defence ; and Egypt, as we have noticed, was always Lord Kitchener's peculiar care. On
^ Speech in House of Commons, March 20, 1917 (Hansard, 1789). Cf. Majority Report, par. 94, and Mr. Roch's Minute, pars . 29, 32. 2 Majority Report, par. 95.
42 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
February 9 he remarked in the War Council that "if the Navy required the assistance of the land forces at a later stage, that assistance would be forthcoming."
But, by the majority of the Council, the claim for assistance was not postponed to a later stage. On February 15 Sir Henry Jackson sent a long memorandum of "suggestions" to Admiral Carden in regard to the approaching naval attack. Not only did this memorandum speak of strong military landing-parties with strong covering forces as neces- sary, but it added that "full advantage of the undertaking would only be obtained by the occupation of the Peninsula by a military force acting in con- junction with the naval operations." The very next day (February 16) the War Council decided to send the 29th Division (hitherto destined for France) at the earliest possible date to Lemnos ; to arrange for a force from Egypt, if required ; and to order the Admiralty to prepare transport for the conveyance and landing of 50,000 men.^ The navy and army were thus at last committed to an am- phibious enterprise ; but nineteen days had been lost. What was worse : the 29th Division was to have started on February 22, but on the 20th Lord Kitchener, on his own initiative, without consulting the First Lord or the Admirals, told the Director of Naval Transport to stop the preparation of transport, as the Division was not to go. In spite of Mr, Churchill's vehement protests (for even his confidence in a purely naval attack was now shaking), Lord Kitchener stood by his decision till March 10,
^ Majority Report, par. 96 ; Mr. Roch's Minute, pars. 32, 33.
THE 29th division DETAINED 43
and the Division did not begin to start till March 16. Twenty-two more days lost ! Add the nineteen of the Council's hesitation, and forty-one days were lost in all. Forty-one days in an enterprise which depended upon speed and secrecy !
Undoubtedly Lord Kitchener had sufficient reason for delay. The Russian armies were hard pressed on their right or northern flank, and in the centre Hindenburg was pushing his third attempt upon Warsaw. If the Germans were successful at either point, it was probable that they would transfer laree forces to their Western front, with which the French were then heavily engaged in Champagne and between the Moselle and Meuse, while the British were preparing and executing the assault at Neuve Chapelle (March 10 to 14).^ There may have been other reasons, but those were enough to justify caution in allowing a splendid Regular Division like the 29th to be diverted from the critical strategic lines in France. Its retention, without due notice to the War Council, was sudden and arbitrary. That was Lord Kitchener's way, and no more could be said. Perhaps the Division should not have been offered, and the Secretary for War, who also held supreme military command, could not be blamed for retaining it under his hand. Nevertheless, its retention stands high among the causes of ultimate disaster.
By the middle of February the War Council had tacitly abandoned the idea of a mere demonstration from which the ships could be at any moment with-
^ Mr. Asquith in the House of Commons, March 20, 191 7 (Hansard,
1752).
44 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
drawn. But both Lord Kitchener and Mr. Churchill still thought that troops, if used at all, would be wanted only for "minor operations," such as the final destruction of batteries, and both clung to this idea for about four weeks longer. Yet, in the first week of March, General Birdwood, who had been sent from Egypt to report upon this very question, tele- graphed to Lord Kitchener that he was doubtful if the navy could force a passage unassisted, and that Admiral Garden's forecast was too sanguine.^
By that time General Birdwood had definite experience to guide him ; for, in obedience to Mr. Churchill's orders, Admiral Garden had on February 19 begun to execute his detailed plan for forcing the Straits by naval power alone. The scene of our narrative accordingly shifts from the Council Chambers of Whitehall to that famous channel which, like a broad, deep river, divides the European from the Asiatic coast. Celebrated beyond all other waters of the world by legend and history, and by one of mankind's noblest poems, it is haunted by almost overwhelming memories, to which the great tragedy here described has added new. At the very entrance, where the passage is three miles broad, you see upon your right hand the Hat and gently curving beach upon which Agamemnon tied his ships for the prolonged siege of a low hill, formed even in his time of ruined and piled-up cities. It rises, still quite visible from the opposite shore, above the marshes where Simois and Scamander unite their small and immortal streams.
Steering north-east, a vessel beats up against the
^ Majority Report, pars. 100-103 ; Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 38.
GENERAL SIR WILLIAM BIRDWOOD
THE DARDANELLES 45
swirling eddies of a tideless current, always pouring down against her bows, with a force that varies from three knots to four, and even to five in the centre when the wind drives it on. Sailors have told me that they believe an undercurrent passes the water back ; else, they think, it could not perpetually run so strong. What was the experience of sub- marine officers like Lieutenant Holbrook, who, on December 13, 19 14, groped his way below the surface and through the mines till he emerged near the entrance to the Sea of Marmora, and destroyed the Turkish warship Messoudiek, I do not know. But it seems probable that enough water is poured into the Black Sea by the Dnieper, Dniester, and Don, rivers of the Steppes, to account for a rapid current, not to speak of the glacier streams issuing from the snows of the Caucasus beyond the magic Phasis. All the more likely is the current to be swift since the waters from the shores of Azoff, the Euxine, and Marmora are discharged down a con- stricted funnel, which at the narrowest point, between Chanak and Kilid Bahr, is hardly more than three- quarters of a mile across. At Chanak, as a ship makes its way against the stream, the strait turns north from north-east for about four miles, and at the point of Nagara (the old Abydos) the channel becomes again almost as narrow as at Chanak. That part of the strait between Chanak and Nagara (both on the Asiatic side) is called especially "The Narrows," and it forms, as it were, "The Gut " of the whole salt river. Here Xerxes stretched his bridge of boats, having chained and flogged the turbulent waters. Here Alexander crossed upon
46 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
his way to India. Seven hundred years later the Goths crossed here, and the Turks here entered Europe, a century before they stormed the city of Constantine, which still retained the traditions of the classic world. Beyond the Narrows the strait runs north-east again with a channel about two miles broad for some twenty miles, until between Gallipoli and Chardak it begins to widen gradually into the Sea of Marmora. The total length of the strait from Cape Helles to Gallipoli is between thirty- five and forty miles. The Asiatic side is the coast of the ancient Troad, rising to high hills when the plain of Troy is passed. On the European side the long promontory or peninsula of Gallipoli precludes the channel from issuing into the Gulf of Xeros at the neck of Bulair, or lower down into the ^gean Sea. It is the south-western third of that peninsula which is the scene of the present tragic episode in history. There is no railway on either side of the strait. A coast road is marked from Kum Kali (at the entrance on the Asiatic side) up to Chanak ; but it is probably of the usual Turkish quality, as were all roads upon the peninsula. Along both coasts the inhabitants in peace - time communicate chiefly by water, in spite of the current.
The small island of Tenedos lies about fifteen miles south-west from Kum Kali, and the domed hill at the farther end of the island stands up like a large haycock, visible not only from the Trojan plain, but from all the surrounding seas and islands. The town is a pleasant and well-built place, serviceable to the French for the purchase of extra luxuries in the months following ; and as Turkey had refused
THE ISLAND OF LEMNOS 47
to yield the island to Greece at the end of the Balkan Wars of 19 1 2-1 913, it had been seized by the Allies as a station for watching the mouth of the strait. From epic times, however, it was known as an untrustworthy anchorage, and for a naval base the Allies occupied the great harbour of Mudros upon the island of Lemnos, sixty miles from the scene of action. The greater part of this island is bare of trees, and barren but for patches of cultivation around the scattered villages. In summer the low hills are scorched to a pale brown, and, for an JEgean island, the country possesses little beauty or interest apart from the hot springs for which it was consecrated to the god of fire.^ But into the centre of the southern coast runs a deep and broad inlet, protected at its entrance by two small islands, and affording space and anchorage enough for a vast navy. Its size is indeed excessive ; for when the wind sweeps down from the north-east across the dismal and dusty town of Mudros, it can raise such a storm in the harbour that pinnaces and smaller boats have trouble in lying alongside the ships, and in loading up or unloading. There are, of course, no docks or wharves, though our sailors subsequently constructed a few small piers and landing-stages.
^ " Nor was his name unheard or unadored In ancient Greece ; and in Ausonian land Men call'd him Mulciber ; and how he fell From heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements : from morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day ; and with the setting sun Dropt from the zenith like a falling star, On Lemnos, the ^gean isle."
Paradise Lost, Book I.
48 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
All supplies, including most of the water, had to be brought from the remote base at Alexandria; but the harbour became, none the less, invaluable as a secure port for our navy and transports, a forwarding station for supply and ammunition, the headquarters of the Communication and Transport departments, and an advanced hospital base. The use of it was granted by the Greek Government under Venizelos ; for the island had fallen into Greek possession in consequence of the Balkan Wars ; and King Con- stantine appears to have acquiesced graciously in a concession which could not be refused.
In this vast harbour, and upon the open road- stead of Tenedos, Admiral Garden had gathered a large fleet by the middle of February. Ships were collected from various parts of the world (the Triumph had lately come from Ghina) ; ^ but Gibraltar, Malta, and Egypt supplied most of them. At Lord Fisher's own suggestion the super- Dreadnought Queen Elizabeth had been added to the pre-Dreadnought ships upon which Mr. Churchill had originally depended. The Inflexible was also a " Dreadnought " battle - cruiser (she had shared in the Falkland Islands battle of December 8, 19 14), and the sister ships Agamemnon and Lord Nelson, which Lord Fisher also added a little later than the rest of the fleet, were generally regarded as fit to fight in line with " Dreadnoughts." The French Admiralty, at our request, also supplied a few ships, though of old types, which have an overhampered and top-heavy appearance. The most
1 With the Fleet in the Dardanelles, by William Harold Price, sometime Chaplain of the Triumph.
SHIPS OF THE FLEET
49
important units in the fleet as concentrated at that time may be tabulated thus :
British.
|
Com- pleted. |
Tons. |
Guns. |
|||
|
Queen Elizabeth |
1915 |
27,500 |
8 15-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Ififlexible |
1908 |
17,250 |
8 i2-in. |
16 4-in |
|
|
Agamemnon . |
1908 |
16,500 |
4 i2-in. |
10 9'2-in. |
|
|
Lord Nelson . |
1908 |
16,500 |
4 i2-in. |
10 9-2-in. |
|
|
Irresistible |
1 901 |
1 5,000 |
4 i2-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Majestic . |
1895 |
14,900 |
4 i2-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Prince George |
1896 |
14,900 |
4 i2-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Cornmallis |
1904 |
14,900 |
4 i2-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Vengeance |
1 901 |
12,950 |
4 i2-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Albion . |
1902 |
12,950 |
4 l2-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Ocean |
1900 |
12,950 |
4 i2-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Canopus . |
1899 |
12,950 |
4 i2-in. |
12 6-in. |
|
|
Triujnph |
1904 |
11,800 |
4 lo-in. |
14 7-5-in. |
|
|
Swiftsure |
1904 |
11,800 |
4 10- in. |
14 7-5-m. |
|
|
Fren |
2H. |
||||
|
Sujff^ren .... |
1903 |
12,520 |
4 i2-in. |
10 6'4-in. |
|
|
Botivet .... |
1898 |
12,007 |
2 i2-in. |
(2 io8-in. \8 5-5-in. |
|
|
Gaulois .... |
1899 |
11,080 |
4 i2-in. |
10 5'5-in. |
|
|
Charlemagne . |
1898 |
11,000 |
4 i2-in. |
10 5 5-in.i |
To these main fighting ships were added four light cruisers (the Amethyst, Sapphh^e, Dublin^ and Doris), two destroyer depots, sixteen destroyers, six submarines, twenty-one mine-sweeping trawlers, and a seaplane ship (the Ark Royal) accommodating six seaplanes ; besides from the French navy six torpedo- boats and fourteen mine-sweepers.
Out of this fleet, Admiral Garden selected the British ships Inflexible, Agamemnon, Cornwallis, Triumph, and Vengeance, together with the French
^ ^'■Manchester Guardian'''' History of the War. 4
50 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
ships (under Admiral Guepratte) Sitffren, Bouvet, and Gaulois, covered by a large number of destroyers, for the first attack upon the outer forts. Orders for washing and clean clothes (to avoid septic wounds) were issued on February i8, and next morning, in clear and calm weather, "General Quarters" was sounded. The firing began at eight, and the first scene in the drama of the Dardanelles Expedition was enacted.^
The main forts to be destroyed were four in number ; two on either side the entrance. One stood on the cliff of Cape Helles, just to the left or south-west of the shelving amphitheatre afterwards celebrated as V Beach. Another lay low down, on the right of the same beach, close in front of the medieval castle of Seddel Bahr, where still one sees lying in heaps or scattered over the ground huge cannon-balls of stone, such as were hurled at Duck- worth's fleet more than a century before. Upon the Asiatic side stood the fort of Kum Kali, at the very mouth of the strait, not far from the cliff village of Yenishehr, and separated from the plain of Troy by the river Mendere, near neighbour to the Simois and Scamander conjoined. About a mile down the coast, close beside Yenishehr village, is the remaining fort of Orkhanieh. None of these forts was heavily armed. The largest guns appear to have been io'2 inch (six on Seddel Bahr, and four on Kum Kali), and when our squadron drew their fire, as before narrated, on November 3, 19 14, their extreme range was found to be 12,500 yards.
^ The Immortal Gamble, by A. T. Stewart and C. J. E. Peshall of the Cornwallis, p. 10.
FIRST NAVAL ACTION 51
Throughout the morning Admiral Garden con- centrated his bombardment upon these forts at long range, and they made no reply. Hoping that he had silenced or utterly destroyed them, he advanced six ships to closer range in the afternoon, and then the reply came in earnest, though the shooting was poor. At sunset he withdrew the ships, though Kum Kali was still firing. In evidence, he admitted that " the result of the day's action showed apparently that the effect of long range bombardment by direct fire on modern earthwork forts is slight."^ It was a lesson repeated time after time throughout the cam- paign. The big naval shells threw up stones and earth as from volcanoes, and caused great alarm. But the alarm was temporary, and the effect, whether on earthworks or trenches, usually disappointing. For naval guns, constructed to strike visible objects at long range with marvellous accuracy, have too flat a trajectory for the plunging fire (as of howitzers) which devastates earthworks and trenches. It was with heavy howitzers that the Germans destroyed the forts of Li^ge,Namur, and Antwerp, and, owing to this obvious difference in the weapons employed, Mr. Churchill's expectation of crushing the Dardanelles defences by the big guns of the Queen Elizabeth and the Inflexible was frustrated.^
Nevertheless, after a few days of driving rain and heavy sea (a common event at this season, which might have been anticipated), Admiral Garden re- newed the bombardment on February 25, employing the Queen Elizabeth, Irresistible, Agamemnon, and
^ Dardanelles Commission ; Majority Report, par. 97. ' Ibid.^ pars. 78-82.
52 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
Gaulois. The Queen Elizabeth, firing beyond the enemy's range, assisted in silencing the powerful batteries on Cape Helles, and though the Agamemnon was severely struck at about ii,ooo yards range, the subsidiary ships Coi^nwallis, Vengeance, Triumph, Albion, Suffren, and Charlemagne stood in closer, and by the evening compelled all the outer forts to cease fire. Next day landing-parties of marines were put ashore to complete their destruction ; which they did, though at Kum Kali they were driven back to their boats with some loss. The story that marines had tea at Krithia and climbed Achi Baba for the view- — places soon to acquire such ill-omened fame — is mythical. But certainly they met with no opposition on the Peninsula, and if a large military force had then been available, the gallant but appal- ling events of the landing two months later would never have occurred. Had not the War Council persisted in the design of a solely naval attack, even after their resolve had begun to waver, a large military force might have been available, either then, or to co-operate with a similar naval movement only a week or two later.
Stormy weather delayed further attack till March 4, when a squadron, including the Triumph, Albion, Lord Nelson, and Ocean, passed up the strait to a position beyond the village of Erenkeui, conspicuous upon a mountain-side of the Asiatic coast, and bom- barded Fort Dardanus. The fort stands upon Kephez Point, which projects as though to defend the very entrance of the Narrows. Over the top of the promontory the houses and mosques of Chanak and Kilid Bahr could be plainly seen, where those
SUBSEQUENT NAVAL ACTIONS 53
towns face each other across the narrowest part of the passage. Of the eight hnes of mine-field drawn across the strait, five lay between Kephez Point and Chanak. Day and night our mine-sweeping trawlers were engaged upon them, and considerable praise must be given to the courage and endurance of their crews, who for the most part had been North Sea fishermen before the expedition. Their service throughout, whether for mine-sweeping or transport, was of very high value. It almost justified the remark made to me by a skipper whom I had met before on the Dogger Bank : "If the Kayser had knowed as we'd got trawlers, he would never have declared war ! "
A similar advance to engage the forts at Dardanus, and, after those were thought to be silenced, the forts at Chanak and Kilid Bahr, was made next day, and again, in stronger force, on March 6} The Prince Geo7^ge, Albion, Vengeance, Majestic, and Suffj'en were employed, and suffered damage, though without loss of life. At the same time, on the 6th, the Queen Elizabeth, stationed off Gaba Tepe on the outer coast, flung her vast shells clear over the Peninsula into the Chanak forts, her fire being directed by aeroplanes. She was supported by the Agamemnon and Ocean, and there were high hopes of thus crushing out the big guns defending the Narrows, some of which were believed to be 14-inch. Nevertheless, when the four French battleships advanced up the strait on the following day (March 7), supported at long range by the Agamemnon and her sister ship Lord Nelson, the Chanak forts replied with an
^ With the Fleet in the Dardanelles, pp. 38-40.
54 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
effective and damaging fire. It was impossible to say when a fort was really out of action. After long silence, the Turkish and German gunners frequently returned and reopened fire, as though nothing had happened. In his evidence, Admiral Garden stated that when the demolition parties landed after the bombardment of the outer forts, they found 70 per cent, of the guns apparently intact upon their mount- ings, although their magazines were blown up and their electrical or other communications destroyed.^ Still worse than these disappointing results was the opportunity left to the enemy of moving, not only bodies of men, but field-guns and heavy howitzers from one point of the Peninsula and Asiatic coast to another, and opening fire upon the ships from concealed and unexpected positions. Our landing- parties of marines also suffered considerably from the advantage thus given to the enemy, as happened to a body which landed at Kum Kali for the second time on March 4. All such dangers and hindrances would have been removed if the navy had been supported by sufficient military force to occupy the ground behind the ships as they advanced.
A bombardment of the Smyrna forts farther down the coast of Asia was carried out on March 5 and 7 by a detachment under Vice- Admiral Peirse. It was hoped that the Vali of Smyrna might come over to us, and that in any case the attack would detain a Turkish force there by means of a rather obvious feint.^ Nothing of vital importance was as yet
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, par. 97. ^ With the Fleet in the Dardanelles, p. 66 ; the Triumph was one of the ships detailed for this operation.
EFFECT ON BALKAN STATES 55
accomplished there or in the Straits, but up to about March 10 the Admiralty at home remained sanguine, in spite of General Birdwood's rather discouraging telegram of March 5, mentioned above. They had a right to consider that the attack upon the Dar- danelles had produced a stirring effect in the Near East. The Turks withdrew large forces from the Caucasus, greatly easing the situation for the Russian Grand Duke. They concentrated more troops round Adrianople, fearing that Bulgaria might clutch this opportunity for retrieving her loss of that city in 19 13. Bitter as was the Bulgarian hatred of Serbia and Greece for their reversal of the Balkan League policy in that year, and for their breach of treaties and territorial arrangements, it now seemed certain that if Bulgaria departed from neutrality at all, she would stand among our Allies. Only a few days later (March 17) General Paget, then engaged on a special mission to the Balkans, telegraphed to Lord Kitchener :
" The operations in the Dardanelles have made a deep impression ; all possibility of Bulgaria attacking any Balkan State that might side with the Entente is now over, and there is some reason to think that shortly the Bulgarian army will move against Turkey to co-operate in the Dardanelles operations." ^
That was a high hope, for the attitude of Bulgaria was then, as it became still more definitely later on, the key of the Near Eastern situation. But for the moment, the effect upon Greece appeared even more propitious. M. Venizelos had in the previous month refused to allow Greece to be drawn into a war for
' Dardanelles Commission ; Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 43.
56 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
the defence of Serbia, though England and France promised a Division each at Salonika, and it was believed that this strategy was specially favoured by Mr. Lloyd George. Now, however (March i), he voluntarily offered our Minister in Athens three Greek Divisions for Gallipoli on condition that Greece received the vilayet of Smyrna ; and next day our Minister telegraphed that the King had been sounded and "wanted war."^ The proposal was abruptly checked by the jealousy of the Tsar's Government, which refused to allow a Greek soldier to approach the long-desired prize of Constantinople. But to make Constantine "want war" must have required a miraculous interposition, and the effect of three Divisions — even Greek Divisions — landing upon the Peninsula at that moment might have been more miraculous still. ^ Of even greater ultimate importance was the influence upon Italy ; for it was now that, under the guidance of Baron Sonnino, and the strong encouragement of Mr. Asquith, she entered upon the devious negotiations which led to her declaration of war against Austria on May 23.
But valuable as were these political results, the naval attack itself was going slow, and Mr. Churchill read the daily telegrams with increasing impatience. The fact was that the enemy, having the free run of
^ It appears to have been on this occasion that the King, yielding to the representations of M. Venizelos in favour of actively sharing in the Dardanelles enterprise, exclaimed, " So be it then, for the love of God ! " See M. Venizelos' speech to the Chamber in Athens, August 26, 1917 {The Times, August 31).
^ Mr. Roch's Minute, par. 43 ; Mr. Churchill's speech on March 20, 191 7 (Hansard, 1793). Unhappily, M. Venizelos resigned on March 6, 191 5, owing to Constantine's renewed opposition to a combination with the Allies.
MR. CHURCHILL URGES GREATER VIGOUR 57
the Peninsula as well as of the Asiatic coast, could plant and conceal his movable howitzers and other armaments where he pleased, and it was becoming increasingly evident that, unless the Peninsula was occupied by our military forces, the passage of the Narrows would mean extreme risk for our ships, and, even if they got through, the channel would not be cleared for transports following them. Now was the moment when a permanent landing would be of the highest service, and on March 10 Mr. Churchill evidently realised the need of troops acutely. But it was only on that very day that Lord Kitchener finally decided to allow the 29th Division to start from England, and they did not leave port till the 1 6th. Regarding the other detailed troops as less trained and experienced than they really were, Lord Kitchener refused to allow a landing till the Regular Division arrived. And, indeed, he still clung to the idea that no landing would be necessary.
Accordingly, Mr. Churchill, though striving to restrain his impatience, strongly urged Admiral Carden to press forward the naval attack with the utmost vigour. In a telegram of March 11 he wrote :
" If success cannot be obtained without loss of ships and men, results to be gained are important enough to justify such a loss. The whole operation may be decided, and consequences of a decisive character upon the war may be produced by the turn- ing of the corner Chanak. . . . We have no wish to hurry you or urge you beyond your judgment, but we recognise clearly that at a certain period in your opera- tions you will have to press hard for a decision ; and we desire to know whether, in your opinion, that
58 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
period has now arrived. Every well-conceived action for forcing a decision, even should regrettable losses be entailed, will receive our support,"
To this Admiral Garden replied that he considered the stage for vigorous action had now been reached, but that, when the fleet entered the Sea of Marmora, military operations on a large scale should be opened at once, so as to secure communications. On March 15 Mr. Churchill, still anxious not to allow his im- patience to drive him into rashness, telegraphed again that, though no time was to be lost, there should be no undue haste. An attempt to rush the passage without having cleared a channel through the mines and destroyed the primary armament of the forts was not contemplated. The close co-operation of army and navy must be carefully studied, and it might be found that a naval rush would be costly without military occupation of the Kilid Bahr plateau. On these points the Admiral was to consult with the General who was being sent out to take command of the troops. To all of this Admiral Garden agreed. He proposed to begin vigorous operations on March 1 7, but did not intend to rush the passage before a channel was cleared. This answer was telegraphed on March 16. But on the same day the Admiral resigned his command owing to serious ill-health.^
Rear-Admiral Sir John de Robeck, second in command, was next day appointed his successor. He was five years younger, was, of course, fully cognizant of the plans, and expressed his entire approval of them. Yet it appears from his evidence that though strongly urged by Mr. Ghurchill to act on " his in-
^ Dardanelles Commission ; Majority Report, par. 109.
DE ROBECK SUCCEEDS GARDEN 59
dependent and separate judgment," and not to hesitate to state objections, his real motive in carrying on the pre-arranged scheme was not so much his con- fidence in success as his fear lest a withdrawal might injure our prestige in the Near East ; and, secondly, his desire to make the best he could of an idea which he regarded as an order. " The order was to carry out a certain operation," he said, " or try to do it, and we had to do the best we could." If the ships got through, he, like many others, expected a revolution or other political change in Turkey. Otherwise, he saw that transports could not come up, and that the ships could not remain in the Sea of Marmora for more than a fortnight or three weeks, but would have to run the gauntlet coming down again, just as Admiral Duckworth did in 1807.^ In his telegram accepting the command, however, he made no mention of these considerations, but only said that success depended upon clearing the mine-fields after silencing the forts. Indeed, he had small time for any considerations. For on the very first day after receiving his command (March 18) he undertook the main attempt to force the Narrows. The weather was favourable — no mist and little wind. The scheme was to attack in three squadrons successively. The first blow was given by the four most powerful ships — Queen Elizabeth, Inflexible, Lord Nelson, and Agamemnon — which poured heavy shell at long range into the forts at Chanak and Kilid Bahr, while the Triumph and Prince George bombarded Fort Dardanus on the Asiatic coast, and Fort Soghandere, opposite to it upon the Peninsula. This bombardment lasted from
^ Dardanelles Commission ; Majority Report, par. iii.
6o THE NAVAL ATTACKS
about II a.m. till 12.30 p.m., and all six ships found themselves exposed to heavy fire from the forts, and from hidden howitzers and field-guns in varied positions upon both shores. At about 12.30 the second squadron, consisting of the four French ships, came up into action, advancing beyond the former line in the direction of Kephez Point. Though suffering considerably (chiefly owing to their inability to manoeuvre in such narrow waters, thus presenting very visible and almost fixed targets to the enemy's guns), the ten ships maintained the bombardment for about an hour (till nearly 1.30). The enemy's forts then fell silent, and it was hoped that many of them, at all events, had been destroyed.
Accordingly, the third squadron, consisting of six British ships {^Irresistible, Vengeance, Ocean, Swift- sure, Majestic, and Albion), were brought up, with the design of advancing first through the Narrows, so as to ensure a clear passage for the greater ships which made the first attack. At the same time the four French ships, together with the Triumph and Prince George, were ordered to withdraw, so as to leave more room for the rest. During this manoeuvre, all or nearly all the guns in the forts opened fire again, their silence having been due, not to destruc- tion, but to the absence of the gunners, driven away by the gases or terror of our shells. Most of the ships suffered, and as the Bouvet moved down channel with her companion ships, she was struck by three big shells in quick succession. The blows were immediately followed by a vast explosion. It is disputed whether this was due to a shell bursting in her magazine, or to a torpedo fired from the
THE MAIN NAVAL ACTION 6i
Asiatic coast, or, as the Admiralty report said, to a mine drifting down the current. In two or three minutes she sank in deep water just north of Erenkeui, carrying nearly the whole of her crew to the bottom. The cries of the men dragged down with her, or struggling in the water as they were swept down- stream, sounded over the strait.
At 2,30 the bombardment of all the forts was renewed, but they were not silenced. At 4 o'clock the Irresistible drew away with a heavy list. Ap- parently she also was struck by a mine adrift ; but she remained afloat for nearly two hours, and nearly all her crew were saved by destroyers, which swarmed round her at great risk to themselves, since they offered a crowded target. A quarter of an hour after she sank, the Ocean was struck in a similar manner (6.5 p.m.) and sank with great rapidity. Most of her crew, however, were also saved by destroyers near at hand. Many of the other ships were struck by shell. The InHexible and Gaulois suffered especially, and only just crawled back to be beached, the one at Tenedos, the other at Rabbit Island. At sunset the fleet was withdrawn. It had been proved once more that, in an attack upon land forts, ships lie at a great disadvantage. In this case the dis- advantage was much increased by the narrowness of the waters, which brought the ships within range of howitzer and other batteries hidden upon both shores, and also gave special opportunity for the use of mines drifting on the rapid current, or anchored right across the channel in successive rows. The mines of the second row were opposite the intervals in the first, and so on, until the passage was covered
62 THE NAVAL ATTACKS
as with a net, each row containing twenty-six mines. Whether shore-torpedoes were also used is still un- certain. But, without them, the fleet suffered under sufficient disadvantages to explain the failure. The first serious attempt to force the Straits was the last.^ Mr. Churchill wished to renew the attempt at once. Perhaps he thought that English people are given to exaggerate the loss of a battleship. After all, the loss of even three battleships is far surpassed by the loss of lives and calculable wealth in one day's ordinary fighting in France, and the objective in the Dardanelles was at least as vital. ^ Lord Fisher and Sir Arthur Wilson agreed that the action should be continued, and the London and Prince of Wales, in addition to the Queen and Implacable, were actually sent to reinforce. The French also sent an old battleship (the Henri IV.^ to replace the Bouvet. At first Admiral de Robeck shared this view. It was suspected at the Admiralty that the ammunition in the forts was running short, and, at a much later date, Enver Pasha is reported to have said :
** If the English had only had the courage to rush more ships through the Dardanelles, they could have got to Constantinople ; but their delay enabled us thoroughly to fortify the Peninsula, and in six weeks' time we had taken down there over 200 Austrian Skoda guns."^
^ In What of the Dardanelles? Mr, Martin Fortescue, an American correspondent, gives a brief but interesting criticism of this unfortunate action from the Turkish-German point of view (pp. 27-47). As seen from the Cornwallis the action is described in The Immortal Gamble^
PP- 45-53-
^ The total British casualties during the whole naval enterprise were 350 ; on March 18 they were 61.
^Dardanelles Commission; First Report, par. 119. Speaking o
PURELY NAVAL ACTION ABANDONED 63
That delay of six weeks was fatal, but the navy- was not to blame. On March 22 Admiral de Robeck and Admiral Wemyss consulted with Sir Ian Hamilton (who on the very day before the engagement had arrived at Tenedos to take command of the land forces) and with General Birdwood ; and as their decision to await the concentration of the army was accepted by Lord Fisher and the other Admiralty advisers, Mr. Churchill reluctantly yielded. General Birdwood, it is true, wished to land at once, even with such troops as were at hand. Sir Ian " thought there was a good deal to be said for it," and as to the fleet, he urged the Admiral to keep on hammer- ing the forts. But his orders from Lord Kitchener were "not to land if he could avoid it," and in any case to await the arrival of the 29th Division.^
And where was the 29th Division ? On March 23 its first transport was just reaching Malta, where nearly all the officers attended a special performance of Faust}
this naval attack, Dr. Stiirmer writes : " To their great astonishment the gallant defenders of the coast forts found that the attack had suddenly ceased. Dozens of the German naval gunners who were manning the batteries of Chanak on that memorable day told me later that they had quite made up their minds the fleet would ultimately win, and that they themselves could not have held out much longer." — Two War Years in Constantinople, p. 84.
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, pars. 115, 119.
^ With the Twenty-ninth Division in Gallipoli, by Chaplain D. Creighton, p. 23.
A
CHAPTER IV
THE PREPARATION
S was mentioned, Sir Ian Hamilton reached Tenedos on March 17, the day before the naval engagement. The appointment to command the military forces had come to him un- expectedly but five days earlier, and on March 13 he started from London. He had received only slight and vague instructions from Lord Kitchener, but on certain limitations the Secretary for War insisted, and all of them strongly influenced Sir lan's subsequent action. If possible a landing was to be avoided ; none was to be attempted until the fleet had made every effort to penetrate the Straits and had failed ; if a landing became unavoidable, none should be made until the full force available had assembled ; and no adventurous operations were to be undertaken on the Asiatic side. All these instructions were followed.^
But they revealed the hesitating reluctance with which the Dardanelles campaign was regarded, not only by Lord Kitchener himself, but by his sub- ordinate generals at home and in France. The " Westerners " were, naturally, in the ascendant. The danger to the Allied cause lay close at hand. It had only recently been averted from the Channel
^ Dardanelles Commission ; First Report, pars. 107, 108. 64
SIR lAN'S APPOINTMENT 65
and from Paris. The British Staff, equally with the French, represented that not a man could be spared from France, and that the only assured road to victory lay straight through the German lines. The opposition to any " side-show," especially if it diverted a Regular Division such as the 29th, was expressed with the emphasis of jealous alarm.
Even the appointment of Sir Ian Hamilton to the distant enterprise was likely to be received with mingled sentiments. He counted forty-two years of service in the army. Since the days of the Afghan War and Majuba Hill (where his left hand was shattered), he had risen step by step to all but the highest commands. The Nile, Burma, Chitral, and Tirah had known him. He commanded the infantry in the rapid but vital engagement at Elandslaagte, and during the siege of Ladysmith had charge of the extensive and dangerous sector known as Csesar's Camp and Wagon Hill. In the final months of the Boer War he was Lord Kitchener's Chief of Staff, and commanded mobile columns in the Western Transvaal, greatly contributing to the conclusion of the war. Since then he had served at home as Quartermaster-General, as G.O.C. -in-Chief of the Southern Command, and as Adjutant - General. Abroad he had served as Military Representative of India with the Japanese army in Manchuria (1904- 1905, when, in A Staff Officer s Sa^ap-Book, he fore- told the disappearance of cavalry and the preval- ence of the trench in future warfare), as General Officer-Commanding-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, and Inspector-General of the Overseas Forces (1910-1915). Except that he had never yet held 5
66 THE PREPARATION
supreme command in any considerable campaign, his experience in military affairs and in almost every phase of our army's activity was hardly to be surpassed.
On the other hand, he was sixty-two ; and, though he was a year younger than Lord French, and retained a slim and active figure such as enabled Lord Roberts to take command in South Africa at seventy, sixty-two was regarded as a full age for any officer in so difficult a campaign upon a desert promontory. From a mingled Highland and Irish descent he had inherited the so-called Celtic qualities which are regarded by thorough Englishmen with varying admiration and dislike. His blood gave him so conspicuous a physical courage that, after the battles of Caesar's Camp and Diamond Hill, the present writer, who knew him there, regarded him as an example of the rare type which not merely conceals fear with success, but does not feel it. Undoubtedly he was deeply tinged with the " Celtic charm" — that glamour of mind and courtesy of behaviour which create suspicion among people endowed with neither. Through his nature ran a strain of the idealistic spirit which some despise as quixotic, and others salute as chivalrous, while, with cautious solicitude, they avoid it in themselves. It was known also that Sir Ian was susceptible to the influence of beauty in other forms than those usually conceded to military men. He was an acknowledged master of English prose, and though our people read more in quantity than any other nation, the literary gift is regarded among us as a sign of incapacity, and is not, as in France and ancient Greece, accepted as assurance of far-reaching
SIR lAN'S QUALIFICATIONS 67
powers. What was worse, he was known to have written poetry.
Before the war, his opposition to the introduction of conscription in the United Kingdom had roused the animosity of all who aimed at establishing militar- ism as a permanent system in this country. Thus political animosity was added to the official prejudice against a buoyant and liberal temperament, conjoined with a politeness and an open-hearted manner start- lingly at variance with official usage. One must acknowledge that, in choosing the man for command, Lord Kitchener hardly took sufficient account of qualities likely to arouse antipathy among certain influential classes and the newspapers which represent their opinions. But careless of such prudent con- siderations, as his manner was, he allowed his decision to be guided by the General's long experience of war- fare, and designedly selected an eager temperament, liable to incautious impetuosity, but suited, as might be supposed, to an undertaking which demanded impetuous action. It was, however, probably in fear lest natural impulse should be given too loose a rein that the instructions mentioned above impressed only caution upon the appointed commander. In view of the strong opposition to the whole enterprise, it was also assumed that no reinforcements could be promised, and none should be asked for. Even the allotted Divisions were not allowed the ten per cent, extra men usually granted to fill up the gaps of immediate loss.
After that conference in the Queen Elizabeth on March 22 (when Sir Ian left the final decision to the naval authorities), it was evident that a military
68 THE PREPARATION
landing could not be avoided, unless the whole expedi- tion were abandoned. It is easy now for belated prudence to maintain that Sir Ian should then have abandoned it, secured (if he could) the acquiescence of the navy in defeat, counter-ordered the assembling troops, and returned to London. Prudence could have said much for such a retirement. Small pre- paration had been made ; the strongest part of the striking force was still distant ; the number of the enemy (though roughly estimated at 40,000 on the Peninsula, and 30,000 in reserve beyond Bulair) was quite unknown ; ever since the appearance of our fleet, Turks had been digging like beavers every night at most of the possible points of our offence ; and it had been proved that the cross-fire of naval guns could not dislodge them even from the toe of the Peninsula, where, for about five miles up to the rising ground in front of Achi Baba, the surface appeared comparatively level. All these objections could have been urged, and, indeed, were urged at the time by Generals to whom, as to the German commanders of the Turkish defence, a landing appeared impossible. But if any one believes that a high-spirited and opti- mistic officer was likely to consider a retirement to be his duty just when he had received a command which he regarded as the surest means of terminating the war, he errs like a German psychologist in his judg- ment of mankind.
So, in the face of all objections, the preparations for an assault upon the Peninsula began. The imme- diate difficulty was a question of transport. Besides 5000 Australians from Egypt, the Royal Naval Division (less three battalions) had already arrived at
DELAY OF RELOADING TRANSPORTS 69
Mudros, and their twelve transports were anchored in the great harbour. But it was found that the ships were indeed well enough packed for peace conditions, but the freight had not been arranged with a view to launching separate units complete upon the field of action. Men were divided from their ammunition, guns from their carriages, carts from their horses. Perhaps, for a long voyage, it is impossible to load transports so as to make each unit self-supporting. At all events, it was not done, and on the desert shores of the Mudros inlet it was impossible to unload and sort out and repack. Unless incalculable time was to be lost, such a confused piece of work could not be undertaken apart from wharves and cranes and docks. Wharves and cranes and docks were to be found at Alexandria, but no nearer ; and to Alexandria the transports were ordered to return. That historic city thus became the main base — Mudros harbour, which had previously been selected, now serving as intermediate or advanced base.^ Lord Kitchener approved the return and repacking of the transports, and certain advantages in the matter of drill and organisation were gained by the delay, to say nothing of the inestimable advantage of more settled weather. But the enemy also gained advantages, and in the extra month allowed them they increased their defensive works with laborious anxiety.
On March 25 (a calendar month before the great landing) Sir Ian Hamilton followed the transports to Egypt and remained there till April 7. While he was there his Administrative Staff arrived (April i).
^ See Sir Ian Hamilton's first dispatch.
70 THE PREPARATION
It had been appointed after he left England, and until its arrival the administrative work had been, with much extra exertion, carried on by his Chief of Staff, General Braithwaite, and the rest of the General Staff. Sir Ian took the opportunity of his presence in Egypt to inspect the 29th Division (under Major-General Hunter-Weston), which began to arrive in Alexandria on March 28 and was encamped at Mex outside the city while its transports were being reloaded for the landing. He also inspected the Royal Naval Division (under Major-General Paris) at Port Said, and the French Division (under General d'Amade) near Alexandria, where their transports also were being reloaded. At least equally significant, when viewed from what was then the future, was his inspection of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, or " Anzacs," as they came to be called. The corps was commanded by Lieut. -General Sir W. R. Bird wood : the Australian Division under Major-General W. T. Bridges, the mixed New Zealand and Australian Division under Major-General Sir Alexander Godley. The Australian Division was encamped at Mena, near the Pyramids ; the mixed Division at Heliopolis on the other side of Cairo. Sir Ian also inspected the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division (under Major - General W. Douglas, the first Territorials to volunteer for foreign service), although they were not as yet part of his own force, but stood under command of Major-General Sir John Maxwell for the defence of Egypt. Beside these fighting Divisions, since so renowned, there remained the Assyrian Jewish Refugee Mule Corps (better known as "the Zionists "),
THE FORCES IN EGYPT 71
organised only a few days before out of Jewish refugees from Syria and Palestine, chiefly Russian subjects, who had sought safety in Egypt. Colonel J. H. Patterson had been commissioned to select a body of about 500, with 750 transport mules. Orders were given in Hebrew and partly in English ; the men were armed with rifles taken from the Turks in the battle of the Canal ; and the regimental badge was the Shield of David. Probably this was the first purely Jewish fighting corps that went into action since Jerusalem fell to the Roman armies under Titus.^
The fortunate presence of the " Anzacs " in Egypt was due to Lord Kitchener's constant apprehension of a Turkish attack upon the Suez Canal and the main country, in which it was natural to suppose that a nationalist and religious feeling would rally a large part of the inhabitants to the enemy's side. At the outbreak of war with Germany thousands of the youth in Australia and New Zealand (including large numbers of Maoris) had eagerly volunteered, moved by love of adventure and a racial affection for the mother-country. After nearly three months' prepara- tion— a difficult task, persistently effected in Australia by Major-General Bridges, who for three years had been commandant of Duntroon Military College — the whole force assembled at King George Sound on October 31, 19 14, and set sail next day (the day of Turkey's entrance into the war as the Central Powers' Ally). Thirty-eight transports carried the army corps, and they were convoyed by cruisers, one of which
1 The formation and subsequent exploits of this peculiar body are described by Colonel Patterson himself in With the Zionists in Gallipoli.
72 THE PREPARATION
(the Sydney, under Captain Glossop) gained the distinction upon the route of destroying the active raider Emden at Cocos Island, and taking her gallant and resourceful captain, Karl von Miiller, prisoner (November 9). Having reached Egypt on December 3, the " Anzacs " went into camps at points near Cairo for further training, and some selected battalions took part in the repulse of Djemal Pasha's attack upon the Canal near Ismailia in the first week of February 19 15. A finer set of men than the "Anzacs" after their three months' training upon the desert sands could hardly be found in any country. With the aid of open-air life, sufficient food, and freedom from grinding poverty, Australia and New Zealand had bred them as though to display the physical excellence of which the British type is capable when released from manufacturing squalor or agricultural subjection. Equally distinguished in feature and in figure — the eyes rather deep-set and looking level to the front, the nose straight and rather prominent, shoulders loose and broad, moving easily above the slim waist and lengthy thighs, the chest, it is true, rather broad than deep, owing to Australia's clear and sunny air — they walked the earth with careless and dare-devil self- confidence. Gifted with the intellig-ence that comes of freedom and healthy physique, they were educated rather to resourceful energy in the face of nature than to scientific knowledge and the arts. Since they sprang from every Colonial class, and had grown up accustomed to natural equality, military discipline at first appeared to them an irritating and absurd superfluity, and they could be counted upon to face death but hardly to salute an officer. Indeed, their
THE ANZACS IN EGYPT 73
general conception of discipline was rather reasonable than regular, and their language, habitually violent, continued unrestrained in the presence of superiors ; so to the natural irony of our race was added a Colonial independence.
Except in action, the control of such men was inevitably difficult. Released from a long voyage, exposed to the unnatural conditions of warfare, and beguiled by the curious amenities of an Oriental city, now for the first time experienced, many availed themselves of Cairo's opportunity for enjoyment beyond the strict limit of regulations. The most demure of English tourists upon the Continent, having escaped from the trammels of identity, have been known in former times to behave as they would not behave in their own provincial towns ; much more might unrestrained behaviour be expected in men whose sense of personal responsibility in a foreign city had been further reduced by uniform, and who were encouraged to excess by the easy standard of military tradition, and by the foreknowledge that, to get beforehand with death, the interval for pleasure might be short. It was no wonder, therefore, that, while twenty per cent, of the Colonial forces (later ten per cent.) poured into Cairo daily upon any animal or conveyance which could move, the beautiful city became a scene of frequent turmoil.^
^ For the history of the Austrahans in Egypt and Gallipoli, see Australia in Arms, by Phillip Schuler, the fine young correspondent of The Age, Melbourne. To the deep regret of all who knew him, he was afterwards killed by a chance shell while teaching cookery to some men in France. Everything written by Captain Bean and Mr. Malcolm Ross, the authorised correspondents for Australia and New Zealand respectively, is also invaluable for history.
74 THE PREPARATION
Upon his journey back to the advanced base, there were many thoughts to divide and even oppress the mind of the most sanguine Commander-in-Chief. The fateful decision had now to be made — a decision upon which the future destiny of the war, and, indeed, of his country, so largely depended. The burden of responsibility lay upon his head alone. To his single judgment were entrusted, not only the lives of many thousand devoted men, but the highest interests of an Alliance in the justice of whose cause he whole- heartedly believed. As the inevitable hour approached, the difficulties of the appointed task were recognised as greater even than foreseen. The strongest nerve might well hesitate to confront them. Even at this crisis of decision, the chief among his commanding Generals were inclined to turn aside from the Peninsula as from impossibility. One advocated an attack upon Asia Minor, with a view to diverting the enemy's main force, and so clearing a passage for the fleet. Another favoured further delay and continuous training, in hope of some more propitious opportunity. A third, while offering no alternative, considered the attempt too desperate to be tried. Upon a sensitive and imaginative nature the risk, the sacrifice of lives, the difficulties of a small force too rapidly organised, insufficiently equipped with modern ammunition, and unsupported by reinforcements, weighed heavily. To these were added the discouraging representations of friendly, trusted, and experienced officers, upon whose diligent co-operation the success of the whole design entirely depended. In such hours as those, deep searchings of mind and heart are the unenviable lot of the man whose word decides.
ATTACK THROUGH BULAIR CONSIDERED 75
But Sir lan's decision was already taken, and subsequent conference witli the Admirals de Robeck and Wemyss only confirmed it. On their arrival at Mudros, his Generals also agreed, and the General whose objections to landing on any condition had been the most serious, became enthusiastic for the scheme, if landing was attempted. Various lines of attack were possible, and each was carefully con- sidered. To the lay mind, an assault upon the neck of the Peninsula at Bulair appeared so obvious that, from the very outset of operations, Sir Ian was blamed for not attempting it. The neck is narrow — not more than three miles across. If it were cut, the enemy on the main Peninsula might be expected to surrender for want of supplies ; the Straits would then be free from obstacle on the European side, and the Asiatic side could be commanded by big guns on Achi Baba and the Kilid Bahr plateau opposite Chanak. The main objection to this obvious strategy was the dis- concerting truth that the enemy's chief line of com- munication did not run through Bulair, but across the strait itself, chiefly from the Asiatic coast to the town of Gallipoli, and even if Bulair were occupied, the supply of the Turkish army on the Peninsula could be maintained ; while an Allied force advancing from Bulair towards the Narrows (which was the objective of the whole expedition) would be perpetually threatened from the rear, Bulair itself was also a formidable obstacle. The famous lines, originally fortified by the Allies in the Crimean War, and re- newed to resist Russian, Bulgarian, and Greek attacks from the north, had been incalculably strengthened in the preceding weeks under German direction. On
76 THE PREPARATION
his first survey (March i8) Sir Ian had observed the labyrinth of white Hnes marking the newly-con- structed trenches upon which thousands of Turks had already been long at work. The gleam of wire was apparent around the only two possible points of land- ing, both difficult, and unsuited for naval co-operation. An assault upon Bulair would have involved immense losses, and, even if successful, could not have ad- vanced the solution of the problem — the problem of the Narrows — without further dubious and specula- tive fighting, front and rear.
Another proposal, which found favour with some, was a landing at Enos, on the mouth of the Thracian river Maritza (the ancient Hebrus). Except that the actual landing upon the level coast might have been easier, the same objections held, but in exaggerated form. The distance from the Narrows was more than twice as long. An army on the march round the head of the Gulf of Xeros would have had its left flank exposed the whole way to the large Turkish reserves known to be stationed at Rodosto and Adrianople. The two main roads from those import- ant towns meet at Keshan, about fifteen miles from the Xeros coast, and from that base fairly good roads extend to Enos on the one side, and to Kavak, at the head of the Bulair neck, on the other. The Turkish armies could thus concentrate as at the handle of a fan, ready to strike at any point along the edge where the British were moving within reach of the coast. Nor could the navy have afforded much protection to our troops upon the march, the head-waters of the gulf being shallow far out from shore. Had Sir Ian attempted, as others have suggested, to turn inland
OTHER POSSIBLE LINES OF ATTACK y^
and fight his way towards Constantinople, disregard- ing his appointed task at the Straits, he would, of course, have lost the assistance of the navy alto- gether, except as defence to his precarious base and lines of communication along the bit of coast ; and, apart from the navy, he had no transport available for a long march.
Between Bulair and the sharp northern point of Suvla Bay, steep cliffs and the absence of beach, except in tiny inlets, prevent the possibility of land- ing. But inland from Suvla Bay itself there is open ground, and a practicable beach extends south as far as the cliff promontory of Gaba Tepe, although the main m.ass of the Sari Bair mountain rises close behind the southern part of the beach in a series of broken precipices and ravines. From Suvla Point to Gaba Tepe it would certainly have been possible to put the whole united force ashore, and, to judge from subsequent events, this might have been the wisest course. On the other hand, Suvla is far removed from the Narrows ; a straight line thence to Maidos measures nearly fifteen miles ; it passes over the top of Sari Bair, a formidable barrier ; while, upon the long and devious route alone possible for a movement of troops, the army would have had both flanks ex- posed, on the right to the strong Turkish position of Kilid Bahr plateau, and on the left to large forces available to the enemy from Rodosto and Gallipoli. It is probable that Sir Ian s troops were not then numerous enough to hold so long a line of com- munications and at the same time resist flank attacks, especially the strong attack to be anticipated from the left.
78 THE PREPARATION
A landing at Gaba Tepe itself, where north and south the ground is open, and a fairly level gap between the Sari Bair range and the Kilid Bahr plateau allows the long and wandering road from Krithia to cross the Peninsula to Maidos, would have exposed the army to similar flank attacks ; but the distance is short (not much over five miles), and in all probability a landing in full force might have been attempted here had not the fortification and armament on the promontory itself, and on the gradually slop- ing land upon both sides of it, appeared too powerful for assault. The barbed-wire entanglements ex- tended into the sea, and the country formed the most dangerous of all approaches — a glacis with no dead ground and little cover. South of this position the cliffs rise abruptly again, and along all the coast round Cape Helles to Morto Bay (which was com- manded by guns from the Asiatic side) a survey showed no beach or opening, except at a few small gaps and gullies, so soon to be celebrated.
As he rejected the coast between Suvla and Gaba Tepe, Sir Ian was compelled to disregard Napoleon's maxim of war and divide his forces. His object was to shake the enemy's moral, and puzzle the command by several simultaneous attacks, threatening front and rear, and keeping the Turkish Staff in flustered uncertainty where the main defence should be con- centrated. Accordingly, a few of those small but practicable landing-places round the extremity of the Peninsula were selected. Here the assault upon the Turkish defences was to be made chiefly by units of the 29th Division. The chosen points were S Beach, or De Tott's Battery, on the farther side of Morto
^ yyuUs
HELLES AND THE STRAITS
To face /. 78
W - i
THE SELECTED LANDING-PLACES 79
Bay, where only a small force was to attempt holding on so as to protect our right flank ; V Beach, just below the larg-e villaafe and ancient castle of Seddel Bahr, where a main attack was to be made and the ground permanently occupied ; W Beach, where a similar force was to land, and link up with V Beach, having the same object in view ; X Beach (round the point of Cape Tekke, looking out towards the Gulf of Xeros), where a force was to work up the face of a cliff and attempt to join hands with W Beach ; and Y Beach, about three and a half miles north along the cliffs, where a small body was to scramble up a pre- cipitous ravine and make a feint upon Krithia. Both flanks of the main attack were further protected by the sea and the naval guns.
Such was the task of the 29th Division, their general objective being the low but formidable posi- tion of Achi Baba, a hill sitting asquat almost across the Peninsula about five miles from Cape Helles, and rising by gradual and bare slopes to a truncated pyramid, some 600 to 700 feet high. About nine miles along the coast beyond Y Beach, between a point north of Gaba Tepe and a slight projection then called Fisherman's Hut, three miles farther up the coast from Gaba Tepe, the Anzacs were to land on Z Beach, and work their way into the defiles and up the heights of Sari Bair. Their main purpose was to distract the enemy forces south of Achi Baba by threatening their rear and communications. With a similar object the greater part of the Royal Naval Division, which had no guns, and for which no small boats could be supplied, was to make a feint near the Bulair lines at the head of the Gulf. Further to dis-
8o THE PREPARATION
tract the enemy's attention, one infantry regiment and one battery from the French mixed Division were instructed to land on the Asiatic shore near Kum Kali ; but not to remain there, nor advance beyond the river Mendere. Such, in brief, was the general design for attacking the Peninsula position, con- fidently described by German authorities as im- pregnable.
By the middle of April the force appointed to ac- complish this overwhelming task had assembled in the Mudros harbour or loch. Large as that inlet is, the surface was so crowded with ships that the naval authorities, among whom Commodore Roger Keyes was Chief of Staff to Admiral de Robeck, had difficulty in finding anchorage for all. Beside the ships of war, places had to be fixed for io8 transports and other vessels. The 29th Division had arrived in twenty transports ; ^ the Anzacs in forty ; the Royal Naval Division in twelve ; the French Division in twenty-three ; the Supply and Store Ships numbered twelve, and the Arcadian was detailed for General Headquarters.
The names of the officers appointed to the most important positions upon Sir lan's Staff may here be mentioned, his personal Aides being
^ One of these transports, the Manito7(, had a narrow escape upon the voyage from Egypt. She was attacked by a Turkish destroyer, whose captain courteously gave an opportunity for removing the men in their boats. In the hurry two of the boats were overturned and fifty-one men drowned. The enemy destroyer, apprehending the approach of British ships, then drew in close, and fired three torpedoes, all of which passed under the transport, the range being too short to allow a torpedo to rise after its plunge. The destroyer was afterwards driven ashore in Asia by two of our destroyers and broken up.^ — See The Immortal Gamble, p. 67.
PRINCIPAL STAFF OFFICERS 8 1
Captain S. H. Pollen and Lieutenant G. St. John Brodrick :
Chief of the General Staff, Major-General W. F. Braithwaite ; other members of the General Staff, Lieut.-Colonel M. C. P. Ward, R.A. ; Lieut.-Colonel Doughty-Wylie (Royal Welsh Fusiliers) ; Captain C. F. Aspinall (Royal Munster Fusiliers) ; Captain G. P. Dawnay (Reserve of Ofificers) ; Captain W. H. Deedes (King's Royal Rifles).
Deputy Adjutant-General, Brigadier-General E. M. Woodward.
Deputy Quartermaster-General, Brigadier-General S. H. Winter.
Liaison Officers, with the British, Commandant de Cavalerie Brevete Berthier de Sauvigny, Lieut. Pelliot, and Lieut, de Laborde.
With the French, Lieut.-Colonel H. D. Farquharson, and Captain C. de Putron.
Camp Commandant, Major J. S. S. Churchill (Oxfordshire Fusiliers).
Censor, Captain William Maxwell (the well-known war corre- spondent in former campaigns).
Principal Chaplain, The Rev. A. C. Hordern.
Headquarters of Base. Base Commattdant, Brigadier-General C. R. M'Grigor, C.B. General Staff Officer, Major E. A. Plunkett (Lincolnshire Regiment). Assistaftt Quartermaster-General, Lieut.-Colonel P. C. J. Scott
(A.S.C.). Assistant Director of Medical Services, Major M. J. Sexton
(R.A.M.C.).
Headquarters of Administrative Services.
Director of Army Signals, Lieut.-Colonel M. G. E. Bowman- Manifold (R.E.).
Director of Supplies and Transport, Colonel F. W. B. Koe, C.B.
Assistant Director of Transport, Major O. Striedinger (A.S.C.).
Director of Ordnance Services, Colonel R. W. M. Jackson, C.B., C.M.G.
Director of Works, Brigadier-General G. S. M'D. EUiot.
Director of Medical Services, Surgeon-General W. E. Birrell.
Pay master-in- Chief, Lieut.-Colonel J. C. Armstrong (A.P.D.).
The total number of the Staff at the beginning of the great enterprise was eighty-four. Brigadier- General Woodward and Surgeon-General Birrell did not arrive till April 19, having remained in Egypt 6
82 THE PREPARATION
under orders to organise the hospitals. In their absence the general scheme for the evacuation of the wounded was drawn up by Lieut. -Colonel A. E. C. Keble, R.A.M.C.
The military force under Sir Jan's command at the beginning of the campaign was composed as follows :
The 29TH Division. Commander, Major-General A. G. Hunter- Weston, C.B., D.S.O. Divisional Artillery Commander, Brigadier-General R. W. Breeks. Division Engineers Commander, Lieut. -Colonel C. B. Kingston (R.E.).
86//i! Infantry Brigade.
Cotnmander, Brigadier-General S. W. Hare. (i) 2nd Royal Fusiliers.
(2) I St Lancashire Fusiliers.
(3) 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers.
(4) 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
87//? Infantry Brigade.
Comma7ider, Brigadier-General W. R. Marshall. (i) 2nd South Wales Borderers.
(2) 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers.
(3) 1st Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
(4) 1st Border Regiment.
88/-^ Infantry Brigade.
Commander, Brigadier-General H. E. Napier. (i) 4th Worcester Regiment.
(2) 2nd Hampshire Regiment.
(3) 1st Essex Regiment.
(4) 5th Royal Scots (Territorials).
The Anzac Army Corps. General Officer Conunanding, Lieut.-General Sir W. R. Birdwood,
K.C.S.L, C.B., CLE., D.S.O. Brigadier-General, General Staff, Brigadier-General H. B. Walker,
D.S.O. General Staff Officer, Lieut.-Colonel A. Skeen (24th Punjabis). Deputy Adjutant and Quartermaster-General, Brigadier-General
R. A. Carruthers, C.B. Medical Officer, Colonel C. S. Ryan, V.D. (A.A.M.C). Attached as Specialist on Water Supply, Lieut.-Colonel A. C. Joly
de Lotbini^re, C.S.I., CLE.
AVAILABLE FORCES 83
Australian Division. Commander^ Major-General W. T. Bridges, C.M.G. General Sta^ff Officer, Lieut.-Colonel C. B. B. White (R.A.A.). Commanding Divisional Artillery, Colonel J. J. T. Hobbs, V.D. Commanding Divisional Engineers, Lieut.-Colonel G. C. E. Elliott (R.E.).
1st {New South Wales) Infantry Brigade.
Commander, Colonel H. N. M'Laurin. (ist, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Battalions, New South Wales.)
ind ( Victoria) Infantry Brigade.
Commander, Colonel the Hon. J. W. M'Cay, V.D. (5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th BattaHons, Victoria.)
"^rd {Australia) Infantry Brigade.
Commander, Colonel E. G. Sinclair Maclagan, D.S.O. (York- shire Regiment). (9th Queensland, loth South Australian, nth West Australian, 12th South Australian, West Australian, and Tasmania.)
Divisional. 4th (Victoria) Light Horse.
New Zealand and Australian Division. General Officer Cofumanding, Major-General Sir A. J. Godley,
K.C.M.G., C.B. Chief Staff Officer, Lieut.-Colonel W. G. Braithwaite, D.S.O.
(Royal Welsh Fusiliers). Commanding Divisional Artillery, Lieut.-Colonel G. N. Johnston
(R.A.). Commanding Divisional Engineers, Lieut.-Colonel G. R. Pridham
(R.E.).
New Zealand Moutited Rifle Brigade.
Commander, Brigadier-General A. H. Russell, A.D.C. (Auck- land, Canterbury, and Wellington Mounted Rifles.)
\st Australian Light Horse Brigade.
Commander, Colonel H. G. Chauvel, C.M.G. (ist New South Wales, 2nd Queensland, 3rd South Australian, and Tasmania Regiments.)
New Zealand Infantry Brigade.
Commander, Colonel F. C. Johnston (North Staffordshire Regiment). (Auckland, Canterbury, Otago, and Wellington Battalions.) 4/A Australian Infantry Brigade.
Commander, Colonel J. Monash. (13th New South Wales, 14th Victoria, isth Queensland and Tasmania, and i6th South and West Australia Battalions.)
Divisional. Otago Mounted Rifles.
84 THE PREPARATION
Corps Troops. ind Australian Light Horse Brigade. (5tli, 6th, and 7th Regiments.) Commander, Colonel G. de L. Ryrie.
^rd Australian Light Horse Brigade. (8th, 9th, and lolh Regiments.) Commander, Colonel F. G. Hughes, V.D.
The Mounted Units had left their horses behind them in Egypt, and the popular pictures represent- ing cavalry charging over broken ground upon the Peninsula are imaginative.
Royal Naval Division. General Officer Commanding, Major-General A. Paris, C.B. General Staff Officer, Lieut.-Colonel A. H. Ollivant (R.A.).
(The Division had no guns.) Commanding Divisional Engineers, Lieut.-Colonel A. B, Carey
(R.E.).
First Naval Brigade.
Commander, Brigadier-General D. Mercer (R.M.L. I.). (Drake, Nelson, Hawke, and CoUingwood Battalions.)
Second Naval Brigade.
Commander, Commodore O. Backhouse (R.N.). (Howe, Hood, Anson, and Benbow Battalions.)
Third Naval Brigade. (Marine.)
Co!n7?iander, Brigadier-General C. N. Trotman (R.M.L.I.). (Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Deal Battalions.)
French Expeditionary Force. GdnSral Commandant le Corps Expeditiofinaire Franqais d'' Orient,
General de Division d'Amade. Chef d'Etat- Major, Lieut.-Colonel Descoins. Commandant d'Armes de la Base, General Baumann.
Division. Ghiiral Comma7idant, General Masnou. Chef d^Etat-Major, Commandant Romieux. Colonel Commandant VArtillerie, Lieut.-Colonel Branet. Commandant du Genie, Capitaine Bouyssou.
\lre Brigade Metropolitaine.
General de Brigade, General Vandenberg. Comprising i75^me Regiment d'Infanterie Metropolitaine (Lieut.-Colonel Philippe), and a Regiment de marche d'Afrique (Lieut.- Colonel Desruelles), mixed Zouaves and Foreign Legion.
SIR lAN'S ADDRESS 85
Brigade Coloniale.
General de Brigade^ Colonel Ruef. Comprising 4eme Regi- ment mixte Colonial (Lieut.-Colonel Vacher), and 6^me Regiment mixte Colonial (Lieut-Colonel Nogu^s). The Division had six batteries of "75's," and three of "65" mountain guns ; four guns to each battery.
Most unfortunately, the Indian Brigade, under General Cox, was for the present left in Egypt, though its service there was no longer required, and Sir Ian had appealed to Lord Kitchener for it. Ultimately it arrived, just too late, on May I.
The total number of the force was under 70,000 ; of these certainly not more than 60,000 could be used for action, even including the necessary reserves.
Landing was intended on April 23, but on the 20th a heavy wind arose, and blew for forty-eight hours, rendering the movement of small boats difficult even in Mudros harbour. On the 21st the Com- mander-in-Chief issued the following address to his forces :
'* Soldiers of France and of the King :
" Before us lies an adventure unprecedented in modern war. Together with our comrades of the Fleet, we are about to force a landing upon an open beach in face of positions which have been vaunted by our enemies as impregnable.
" The landing will be made good, by the help of God and the Navy ; the positions will be stormed, and the War brought one step nearer to a glorious close.
" ' Remember,' said Lord Kitchener, when bidding adieu to your Commander, ' Remember, once you set foot upon the Gallipoli Peninsula, you must fight the thing through to a finish.'
86 THE PREPARATION
" The whole world will be watching your progress. Let us prove ourselves worthy of the great feat of arms entrusted to us.
" Ian Hamilton, General^
A few further points remain to be mentioned. On April 17, one of our submarines, E15, ran aground off Kephez Point, and by a very gallant action was destroyed by the two picket-boats of the Triumph and Majestic (ships afterwards sent to the bottom by submarines). Lieut. -Commander Eric Robinson was in command, and, though coming under heavy fire, he succeeded in torpedoing the submarine and rendering it useless to the enemy.
On the 23rd, just after the transports had started, news came from the rugged island of Skyros, eighty miles south-west of Lemnos, that Rupert Brooke, the poet, had died there of blood-poisoning that evening. During his visit to the Royal Naval Division at Port Said, Sir Ian had seen him in his tent upon the sand, prostrate with fever, and had offered him a place on his Staff. With fine resolution, and a modesty equally characteristic, Brooke refused, being determined to abide by the Royal Naval Division, which he had joined before the quixotic fiasco at Antwerp. On April 20 he took part in a field-day on Skyros, and in an olive grove there, high up on the mountain Pephko, looking over Trebaki Bay, he was buried at midnight of the 23rd, his own petty officers carrying his body over the rocks and prickly bushes. A wooden cross, surrounded by lumps of marble, marks the spot. His colonel in the Hood Battalion, Arnold Quilter, Grenadier Guards, who was killed
CONTEMPORARY EVENTS 87
a fortnight later, wrote to his mother : "His men were devoted to him, and he had all the makings of a first- rate officer." Alas ! his friends know that he had all the makings of so much beside, and for them the world was darkened by the loss of so singularly beautiful a character, a personality so fine and full of the noblest promise/
Upon other fronts of the war, the chief events of the weeks following the costly and inconclusive move- ment at Neuve Chapelle (March 10) were the capture of Przemysl by the Russians (March 22), followed by heavy fighting in the Carpathian passes, and the second battle of Ypres, inaugurated (April 22) on the German side by the earliest use of poison gas.
1 See also Charles Lister^ by Lord Ribblesdale, p. 164. Charles Lister himself was one of the young men of brilliant promise whose death was due to the Gallipoli campaign. After gallant service in the Hood Battalion of the Royal Naval Division at Helles, he died of his third wound, August 28, 191 5.
CHAPTER V THE LANDINGS
THE wind, which had continued to blow hard on April 22, abated next day, and in the afternoon the transports bearing the cover- ing force of the 29th Division began very slowly to move out from Mudros harbour. In that land-locked inlet, the water was now still, and singularly blue. "The black ships," as the navy called the transports owing to their fresh coat of black paint, wound their way in and out among others still lying at anchor. They passed the battleships and cruisers of our own fleet ; they passed the Anzac transports, which were to follow them next day ; they passed the battleships and transports of the French contingents, and the five-funnelled Russian cruiser Askold, lying nearer the little islands which protect the entrance of the far- extended haven ; and as they passed, the pellucid air which still illuminates the realms of ancient Greece rang with the cheers of races whose habitation the Greeks had not imagined. Perhaps it is in Greek history that we find the nearest parallel to such a scene of heroic joy, the preface to heroic disaster. For when the bright troops of Athenians started for the conquest of Sicily, we read that nearly the whole population of the city accompanied their five-mile march down the Pirceus ; that there, in sacred
THE FORCE LEAVING MUDROS 89
silence, libation to the gods was made ; and issuing in line ahead from the harbour, the transport galleys raced, in pure exhilaration of heart, to the pointed island of ^gina, fifteen miles away, while far in the air bystanders heard the cries of invisible spirits, like the wailings of women upon the Phoenician shore lamenting the beauty of Adonis yearly wounded/
The British covering force consisted mainly of the 86th Brigade (29th Division), under Brigadier- General S. W. Hare, but two battalions of the 87th Brigade and half a battalion of the 88th were attached to it, beside the Plymouth Battalion of the Royal Naval Division, as the General's own reserve, and the Anson Battalion, detailed for beach duties. Their three transports were escorted by the Euryalus (flagship of Admiral Wemyss, commanding the first and fourth of the seven squadrons into which the fleet was divided), the hnplacable, and the Coi^nwallis, and their station was Tenedos. The next afternoon (Saturday, April 24) they were followed from Mudros harbour by the Queen Elizabeth (flagship of Admiral de Robeck), with Sir Ian Hamilton and the General Headquarter Staff on board, leading the other battleships in line ahead. After them went the Anzac covering force, consisting of the 3rd Brigade under Colonel Sinclair Maclagan (the Queensland, South Australian, West Australian, and a mixed Australian and Tasmanian battalion). The re- mainder of the Anzac army corps followed, escorted
1 Thucydides, vi. 32 ; Diodorus, xiii. 3. From Athens herself only about 3000 of the troops for the Sicilian expedition started. It is curious to remember that Plato was a boy in yEgina at the time, and probably watched the race.
90 THE LANDINGS
by the Queen (flagship of Admiral Thursby, com- manding the second squadron), the London, and the Prince of Wales. Their destination was a point off Imbros, near Cape Kephalos, where they were to wait during the night till the moon went dow^n. The covering force occupied four transports, beside the 1500 men of the brigade placed upon the Queen. General Birdwood's headquarters were on the Minnewaska, and about thirty transports carried the remainder of his corps. As they passed out of harbour, leaving the Lemnian shore with which many, by practised landings, had become familiar, they too were greeted with tumultuous cheering by the ships which had not started yet, and tumultuously they replied. Moved onward irresistibly into immi- nent death, knowing that by the morrow's afternoon at least one in ten of their numbers would have fallen in all the splendour of youthful vitality, still they cheered like schoolboys bound for a football match or a holiday by the sea. Excitement, comradeship, the infectious joy of confronting a dangerous enterprise side by side, made them cheer. Never before had those men known what battle means, but the sinking dread of the unknown, which all men feel as the shadow of extreme peril approaches, was allayed by the renunciation of self, and the clear belief that, whoever else was wrong in the world, it was not they.
The night was very still. The three-quarter moon set soon after 3 a.m., and there was total darkness over sea and mountains until a cold and windless dawn gradually appeared. The water was smooth as a mirror, and a thin veil of mist covered
LANDING AT DE TOTl^'S 91
the shore. Just before the sun rose in a blaze of gold, four of the battleships and four cruisers opened fire upon the defences at the main landing-places round Cape Helles, and continued a heavy bombard- ment. At the same time, the landing of the covering parties at the five selected points around the end of the Peninsula began, and account of them may here be given in succession from the extreme right flank at S to the extreme left at Y.
On the evening of the 24th, about 750 of the 2nd South Wales Borderers under Colonel Casson had come on board the Cornwallis in four trawlers from their transport. Just before sunrise they put off in the trawlers again, each trawler towing six boats, and proceeded up the strait for about 2\ miles to the point called Eski Hissarlik or De Tott's Battery, on the north-east end of Morto Bay. The Cornwallis followed, with the Lord Nelson as covering ship, but, being delayed by the Agamemnon and some French mine-sweepers coming across her course, she did not reach the point till the men had approached the shore, rowing the boats as best they could, though unaccustomed to the water, and encumbered with their packs, rifles, and trenching tools. Almost before the boats grounded, they leapt into the sea, and struggled to shore, under a heavy rifle fire which immediately opened from the Turkish trenches.
In perfect order, but at great speed, these veteran troops made for the height, some scrambling up the cliff, some approaching by a gradual slope on the west side. They were already nearing the summit when a mixed naval party of about 100 marines and sailors put to shore, and were of great assistance
92 THE LANDINGS
in taking two lines of trenches and working side by side with the South Wales Borderers, who were already driving the Turks down the farther slope of the ridge. Guns from the Asiatic side opened fire upon the beach, but most of the shells, striking the mud at the water's edge, did not burst, and the Comwallis, firing by signal from shore, silenced the battery about lo a.m. Being urgently summoned from W Beach, and seeing that the soldiers now held the position firmly, Captain Davidson then withdrew the naval party, and steamed to his second position down the strait.^ Colonel Casson's battalion clung to the point they had gained for the critical forty-eight hours of the landing, thus preventing Turkish reinforcements from coming down to Seddel Bahr, and protecting the right flank of our possible advance. The post was then taken over by the French, who held it throughout the campaign, though much exposed to the Asiatic guns. This successful enterprise cost about sixty casualties, including Major Margesson, who was killed.
Walking along the coast south-west from De Tott's Battery, one rounds the two-mile arc of Morto Bay, near the middle of which the combined " Deres " or watercourses of the Krithia region run out into the strait. Across the valley, nearly a mile inland, a few lofty piles of an ancient, perhaps Byzantine, aqueduct then stood, probably at one time carrying water to a more ancient town than Seddel Bahr. Later in the campaign they were destroyed, but for some months they formed a conspicuous landmark.
^ The Iimnortal Gamble, pp. 72-82 and 98-104 (account by Captain Davidson, who went ashore himself).
SEDDEL JBAHR 93
Along the rest of the bay the land slopes gently- down to the beach, and had been laid out in gardens cypress-fringed, such as Islam loves. The gardens were now entrenched and thickly netted with barbed wire ; but the bay would have afforded the finest landing-place upon the southern Peninsula, had it not been fully commanded by guns across the strait. Upon the south-west point of the bay, the old Turkish castle and fortress of Seddel Bahr, pro- jecting boldly into the sea, guards the entrance to the strait, and, as already described, at the foot of its towers and curtain-walls are still heaped the huge round stones which the Turks once deemed sufficient to hurl at intruders beating up against the current. Behind the castle was huddled a grey stone village or small town, of the usual Turkish character, with narrow and winding alleys between secretive houses, and just beyond the point there projected a low reef of rocks round which the deep-blue water, hurrying out to the open sea, perpetually eddied.
From the Seddel Bahr point the coast falls back a little into the shallow arc of a bay barely over a quarter of a mile long if one follows the sandy beach. Around the curve, the ground rises rather steeply, almost exactly in the form of a classic theatre, to which the beach would serve as orchestra and the sea as stage. This little bay, to be renowned as V Beach, ends on the western side in precipitous cliff's, round the foot of which it is possible to clamber over masses of fallen rocks, but no path leads. On the top of the cliff stood one of the most powerful of the entrance forts destroyed by the naval attack on February 19. The beach itself is narrow — about
94 THE LANDINGS
lo yards across — and was edged by a small but perpendicular bank, not over 4 or 5 feet in height. The slopes of the theatre were at that time covered with grass, to be changed later on for dust and heavy sand. The slope measures about 200 yards from beach to summit. Along the edge of the beach ran an entanglement of the peculiarly strong barbed wire used by the Turks ; a second entanglement ran round the curving slope two-thirds of the way up, and a third joined the two at right angles at the eastern end of the bay. The upper part of the semicircle was strongly entrenched and armed with pom-poms, while in the ruins of the old fortress, in the village, and in a shattered barrack on the top of the western summit, machine-guns and a multitude of snipers were concealed. Nature and man's invention had converted the little bay into a defensive engine of manifold destruction.
At daybreak the Albion opened a heavy bombard- ment. There was no answer. The little semicircle remained still as an empty theatre, and sanguine spirits hoped that defence had been abandoned. Transhipping rapidly from a fleet-sweeper, three companies of the ist Dublin Fusiliers and a party of the Anson Battalion, Royal Naval Division, arranged themselves in six tows, each made up of a pinnace and four cutters, and carrying 125 men apiece. In line abreast the tows started for the shore over the glassy water, pale with morning. Except for the continuous crash of our bursting shells, not a sound came from the shore. On the right of the main party of tows loomed a large collier, called the River Clyde, but known to the classical as the
THE RIVER CLYDE AT V BEACH 95
"Trojan Horse," and to the unlearned as the "Dun Cow." She carried the ist Munster FusiHers, half the 2nd Hampshire Regiment, one company of the Dublin Fusiliers, and details of sappers, signallers, field ambulance, and an Anson beach-party. Com- mander Edward Unwin, R.N., was in charge of her, a man of eagle features and impetuous but noble personality, inclined to pour imprecations upon "the Army" while he assisted them with untiring ingenuity and a courage conspicuous even on that heroic day. His orders were to run his ship hard aground after the tows had landed their first party. A hopper alongside the collier was then to proceed under her own steam and momentum, towing a string of lighters so as to form a pontoon for the troops, who were to issue from square iron doors opening close up to the ship's bow on the port and starboard sides. Either the tows were delayed, or, with characteristic enthusiasm, Commander Unwin drove the collier too fast. For the tows and the ship touched ground almost at the same moment. The hopper ran forward with the lighters, which were secured after a short delay. The gangways dropped. Shoving each other eagerly forward, the Munster Fusiliers rushed from the opened ports.
Hardly had the first man set foot on the gang- ways, when the invisible enemy broke the silence with an overwhelming outburst of rifle fire, pom-poms, and machine-guns. The Munster Fusiliers of the first company fell so thick that many were suffocated or crushed by the sheer weight of the dead dropping upon them. Few if any of those eager Irishmen struggled across the lighters to the beach unwounded.
96 THE LANDINGS
In the tows, the boats were riddled with holes, and the greater number destroyed. The Dublin Fusiliers and the crews supplied by the navy were shot down either in the boats or as they leapt into the shallow water and attempted to rush across the narrow beach. A few succeeded in reaching the low and perpen- dicular bank of sand, and lay under its uncertain cover, unable to show a head above the top without death. The Turks had carefully marked the ranges of every point along the shore with stakes, and they fired in security from dug-outs and deep trenches, against which no naval bombardment availed.
Inspired by a courage which baffles reason with amazement (for what reasonable motive had these men — these Irishmen — to spring into the face of instant death?), the second company of Munster Fusiliers crowded upon the gangway, and rushed along- the lighters over the dead bodies of their friends. As they ran, the end of the pontoon nearest the shore was torn loose by the rip of the current, and drifted off into deep water. The men fell in masses, and many, either to escape the torrent of bullets or in passionate eagerness to reach the shore, attempted to swim to land, but were dragged down by the weight of their equipment, and lay visible upon the sand below. With unwavering decision, the sailors laboured to restore the pontoon. Commander Unwin ran down the gangway and, plunging into the sea, worked beside the men. Midshipman Malleson and Midshipman Drewry (in honour of whom the French afterwards named the jetty which they built on the spot) swam out, carrying ropes to and from the drifting lighters under the
THE V BEACH LANDING 97
ceaseless splash of bullets and shells. The names of all these have become celebrated, and they won the most envied of all our country's distinctions, but it is almost invidious to select even such names as theirs among the men and boys of every rank, and of both services, whose self-devotion made that day and place so memorable.^
By such devoted efforts, a reserve lighter was brought into position, and the pontoon again completed. A third company of the Munster Fusiliers dashed along it, with similar heroism, towards the shore, suffering terrible loss from accurate and low- firing shrapnel, now added to the other missiles of death. The survivors joined the survivors under shelter of the low bank of sand. There was a brief pause in the attempt to land, but when it began again, the pontoon was again carried adrift by the current, bearing upon it a number of Hampshire men, together with Brigadier-General Napier, commanding the 88th Brigade, and his Brigade-Major, Captain Costeker. They lay down fiat upon the lighters, but nearly all were killed as they lay, including these two officers of distinguished military name. Connection with the shore was thus severed. Nearly all the boats in the tows had been destroyed, and some were idly drifting, manned only by the dead. The dead lay upon the lighters, and below the water, and awash upon the edge of the beach. The ripple of the tormented sea broke red against the sand.
^ Besides the names here mentioned, Vice-Admiral de Robeck in his dispatch especially noticed Able Seaman William Williams (killed), Seaman George M'Kenzie Samson (dangerously wounded), Lieutenant John A. V. Morse, R.N., and Surgeon P. B. Kelly, R.N., as rendering great and perilous service at this landing. 7
98 THE LANDINGS
One of the tows had taken half a company of the DubHn Fusiliers to a point called the " Camber Beach," just north-east of the Seddel Bahr castle. Perhaps they were intended to threaten the enemy's position from his left flank by creeping round the castle and attacking the village streets. This they proceeded to do, and, as the Turks had not entrenched this position, the Irishmen with great skill crawled from cover to cover till they reached the village windmills and the entrance to the houses. There they were overwhelmed by the crowd of snipers. Many were killed, some cut off, only twenty-five returned. The wounded had to be left. It is said that they were slaughtered with great atrocity and the dead mutilated by order of the Germans. Throughout the whole of this campaign, few such charges were brought against the Turks themselves.^
Before noon, any further attempt to effect a landing was abandoned, and the main body of troops which was to have followed close upon the covering party was diverted to W Beach. The mixed survivors of Dublin and Munster Fusiliers, and of the Hampshire companies, remained crouching behind the low parapet of the bank, with no food or water beyond such small quantities as they had brought with them. There they lay, exposed to the full blaze of sun, and only just sheltered from the incessant rain of bullets and shells. But for some machine-guns mounted on the bows of the River Clyde and protected by sandbags, the Turks would have found
^ For this incident and others at V Beach, see The Immortal Gainble, pp. 81-92, besides Sir Ian Hamilton's and Admiral de Robeck's dispatches,
THE NIGHT ON V BEACH 99
little difficulty in exterminating their whole number. With them were two officers of the General Staff — Colonel Doughty-Wylie, our humane and gallant military consul at Konia during the Adana massacres in 1909, and Colonel W. de L. Williams (Hampshire Regiment), who did their utmost to hearten the men during the remaining hours of that terrible day and through the night. As the Turks had no big guns on the spot, and the fire of the Asiatic guns was to some extent checked by the fleet, the remainder of the party on board the River Clyde were comparatively secure. The heavy loss in officers included the General of the 88th Brigade, as we have seen, and Colonel Carrington Smith, commanding that brigade's Hampshire Regiment, both killed. During the afternoon and evening the naval boats were constantly engaged in removing the wounded from the River Clyde and other points where they could be reached. In this duty Commander Unwin again distinguished himself, going along the shore in a lifeboat and rescuing the wounded lying in shallow water, under persistent fire from the semicircular heights. Throughout the day and far into the moonlit night the Qtieen Elizabeth, Cornwallis, and Albion and other ships maintained a heavy bombard- ment, which restrained the furious Turkish attempts at counter-attack, and assisted the remainder of the covering party in landing from the River Clyde under the comparative darkness. But later in the night the noise of battle was renewed. The rattle of machine-guns and rifies spitting out flashes of fire, the vibrating boom of enormous guns, the whirling roar of shells, like trains rushing headlong down a
lOO THE I>ANDINGS
tunnel to the crash of collision, allowed no rest to the wearied men.
At V Beach, in spite of the incalculable courage and skill of the Irish Regulars and the sailors com- bined, the landing on the 25th had failed. At W Beach, not much more than half a mile north- west, over the cliff of Cape Helles where the light- house and Fort I had stood, the English covering party displayed equal heroism and gained greater success. W Beach is a shallower but lono^er arc of sandy shore, curving between Cape Helles and Cape Tekke, the two extreme points of the Peninsula. Between the two inaccessible cliffs and the fallen rocks which the sea washes, a gully has been cut by a short watercourse, draining the extremity of the high and slightly undulating plateau in which the Peninsula ends. Except after heavy rains, the gully is dry, but its occasional stream, working upon the sandstone formation, and aided by the north-east wind blowing dust over the plateau's surface, has piled up low heaps of sand dune, at that time covered with bent-grass, spring flowers, and the aromatic herbs which flourish upon the dry seacoasts of the Near East. Along its gentle curve the actual beach is rather more than a quarter of a mile in length, and its broadest part, where the gully runs out, is some 40 yards across. Hidden in the shallows a strong wire entanglement had been laid, and another protected the whole length of the beach from end to end at the water's edge. To check communication with V Beach, two redoubts had been constructed upon the plateau south-east, and from them thick entanglements ran down to the cliffs edge at Cape
W BEACH LANDING loi
Helles. Other entanglements on the north-west cut off communication with the more distant X Beach. The top rows, as it were, of the theatre, broken near the centre of the gully, were strongly entrenched ; machine-guns, commanding the beach by converging fire, were lodged in caves upon the cliffs on both sides ; and the land and sea were planted with mines. In his dispatch, Sir Ian Hamilton justly says :
" So strong, in fact, were the defences of W Beach that the Turks may well have considered them impregnable, and it is my firm conviction that no finer feat of arms has ever been achieved by the British soldier — or any other soldier — than the storming of these trenches from open boats." ^
These unsurpassed soldiers were men of the ist Lancashire Fusiliers (86th Brigade), and, in their honour, W Beach was afterwards generally known as " Lancashire Landing." The Euryalus was the guardian ship of this covering party, and after half an hour's naval bombardment, to which no answer came, eight picket boats in line abreast, towing four cutters apiece, steamed toward the shore till they reached the shallows, and the tows were cast off to row to land. As at V Beach, the Turks maintained their silence till the boats grated. Then, in an in- stant, a storm of lead and iron swept down upon the Lancashire men. Some leapt into the water, and were caught by the hidden entanglement there. The foremost hurled themselves ashore, and struggled with the terrible wire, compared with which our British barbed wire is as cotton to rope. In vain the first line hacked and tore. Machines and rifles
^ Sir Ian Hamilton's first dispatch, "The Gallipoli Landing."
102 THE LANDINGS
mowed them flat as with a scythe. Witnesses eagerly watching from the distant ships asked each other, " What are they resting for ? " But they were dead.
Fortunately two of the tows, carrying a company, with which was General S. W. Hare, CO. of this 86th Brigade, put to shore a little to the left of the central beach, and found shelter under a ledge of rock at the foot of Cape Tekke cliff. Here they escaped the cross-fire, and were able partly to en- filade the enemy's trenches. The Brigadier-General was severely wounded, either at this time or a little later, but part of the company succeeded in scrambling up the rocks in front of them to the summit, and a party from three tows to the right of the beach were equally successful upon the Cape Helles side.^ Meanwhile the covering warships had moved close in to bombard the trenches along the edge of the summit, and the beach entanglements were at last broken. The companies, re-formed under cover of the cliffs on both sides of the beach, chiefly to the left, and supported by the arrival of further tows, began the assault on the highest point of the plateau above the bay (known as Hill 138, about the spot where the military cemetery was after- wards laid out). In the centre the assault was made with bayonets only, the rifles being clogged with sand. By 11.30 three trenches had been taken — in spite of the explosion of many land mines — the point was occupied, and communication established
^ See Mr. Ashmead Bartlett's dispatches, " Seddel Balir Landing," p. 92. Mr. Bartlett was not present, being at the Anzac landing, and Sir lan's dispatch mentions only the company at the foot of Cape Tekke on the left.
THE LANDING EFFECTED 103
with the landing-party at X Beach, to be afterwards described/
Similarly, a small party of Lancashire Fusiliers succeeded in scrambling to the summit on the right (Hill 141), above Cape Helles, but were there held up by the redoubts and entanglements, and there they lost Major Frankland, Brigade-Major of the 86th. No further advance could be made till 2 p.m., when, owing to the positions held by the companies on the left, the landing had become fairly secure. Colonel Woolly-Dod, of the Divisional General Staff, then took the place of General Hare in command, and the Worcester and Essex Regi-
^ Excellent personal accounts of W Beach landing by three ist Lancashire officers are given in With the Twenty-ninth Division, pp. 57-63. It is hard to choose between the three ; but I give some sentences from Major Adams, who had been twenty-five years in the regiment, and was killed a few days later, as were the other two : " As the boats touched the shore a very heavy and brisk fire was poured into us, several officers and men being killed and wounded in the entanglements, through which we were trying to cut a way. Several of my company were with me under the wire, one of my subalterns was killed next to me, and also the wire-cutter who was lying the other side of me. I seized his cutter and cut a small lane myself, through which a few of us broke and lined up under the only available cover pro- curable— a small sand ridge covered with bluffs of grass. I then ordered fire to be opened on the crests ; but owing to submersion in the water and dragging rifles through the sand, the breech mechanism was clogged, thereby rendering the rifles ineffective. The only thing left to do was to fix bayonets and charge up the crests, which was done in a very gallant manner, though we suffered greatly in doing so. However, this had the effect of driving the enemy from his trenches, which we immediately occupied. ... In my company alone I had 95 casualties out of 205 men."
A still more detailed account of the Lancashire landing, specially describing the services of Major Frankland (killed while trying to take assistance to V Beach about 8.30 a.m.) and of Captains Willis, Shaw, Cunliffe, and Haworth, is given in an additional chapter by Major Farmar (Lancashire Fusiliers) at the end of the same book, pp. 175-191.
I04 THE LANDINGS
ments (88th Brigade) were sent to reinforce the covering party. Following a heavy naval bombard- ment the Worcesters advanced, cut passages through the entanglements, and after two hours' contest captured the redoubt, though with heavy loss.
An attempt was then made to relieve the terrible situation at V Beach by advancing along the top of the headland north-east. Lancashire and Royal Fusiliers from W and X Beaches came over in small parties to assist the Worcesters. The dis- tance to V Beach was not great — barely half a mile — and if it could have been covered, the enemy must have abandoned their V Beach trenches. Wire- cutters fearlessly advanced. From headquarters on the Queen Elizabeth they could be watched, clipping the powerful entanglements as though pruning a garden at home. But the rows of wire were too thick, the fire from the ruins of No. i Fort too deadly. Exhausted by a sleepless night and the hot day's fighting, these bravest of men abandoned the attempt, and sought rest in the trenches along the summit of the cliffs now deserted by the enemy. Violent counter-attacks were repeated through the night. Except the Anson Battalion beach-party and a company of sappers, there were no available reserves. But the lines defendingr W Beach were held, and the landing of stores, rations, and water in kerosine tins (for the Divisional supply of which General Hunter- Weston's Staff had provided) began without interruption. Part of the remainder of the division also disembarked, and the sappers set to work at constructing the road which afterwards wound up the dusty ascent from the beach to the plateau.
LANDING AT X BEACH 105
If one could scramble round the foot of Cape Tekke till the face of the cliff looking westward towards the ^gean and Gulf of Xeros was reached, rather over half a mile along the sea-washed rocks, one would come to a narrow strip of sand about 200 yards long. The cliff above it is lower and less steep, the surface soft and crumbling. This is X Beach, to be known afterwards as " Implacable Landing," owing to the fine service of the guardian battleship Implacable (15,000 tons, 1901 ; Captain Lockyer). Here half the battalion of the 2nd Royal Fusiliers was disembarked from the Implacable in four tows of six boats each, the battleship advancing in the centre of them with anchor hanging over the bows to six fathoms, when it dragged. Captain Lockyer opened fire upon the slope and summit of the cliffs at very short range with every available gun, and under this protection the half-battalion landed with small loss. Using the same tows as they returned empty, the second half-battalion followed from two mine-sweepers. But the advanced party were already swarming up the face of the cliffs under Lieut.-Colonel Newenham (CO. 2nd Royal Fusiliers). At the summit the fire from rifies, machine-guns, and shrapnel was very heavy. Se- curing his left with one company, and the front with part of another, and leaving one company to bring up ammunition and water. Colonel Newenham pro- ceeded to effect communication with the Lancashire Fusiliers on W Beach. This was accomplished by a violent bayonet attack up the height on the top of Cape Tekke (Hill 114). In this attack the re- mainder of the battalion was engaged, encouraged
io6 THE LANDINGS
by cheers from the Implacable^ so close to shore had the ship put in. After heavy loss, the summit was taken about noon, and Royal Fusiliers shared with the W Beach troops in the endeavour to relieve \' Beach. But meantime the centre above X Beach was severely threatened ; Colonel Xewenham was wounded : and the situation was onh* saved by the arrival of the ist Borderers and the ist Inniskilling Fusiliers of the 8 7th Brigade, whose Brigadier, General Marshall, had also been w^ounded.^
Rather less than a mile farther up the coast from X Beach one comes to a wide opening in the cliffs, known at that time as Y2, and later as Gully Beach. Along the shore it could be reached by climbing over rocks, but there was then no path. Along the summit it was easily reached by the usual Turkish tracks from the high ground at Cape Helles and Cape Tekke. but these tracks, like the rest of the Peninsula inland, were hidden from the sea by the slope of the ground from the edge towards the centre. The opening is caused partly by a short gully running from the summit almost at right angles to the beach, but especially by a long, deep gully, or "canon," coming down from the Krithia direction, and running for about three miles almost parallel with the sea. from which its existence is entirely concealed. In dry weather it shows a trickle of .water in some places ; after rain it becomes the bed of a torrent or a channel of liquid mud. Owing to our want of trustworthy maps, its course was at that time un- known, but it came to be called the Gully Ravine, or
* Beside Sir lan's dispatch, see Colonel Nevrenham's own account in With tJu Twenty-ninth Division^ pp. 55-57.
Y2 AND Y BEACHES 107
the Gully simply (in Turkish, Saghir Dere). Its depth might conceal an army in ambush, and its issue upon the shore forms a broad, fiat beach, commanded by heights in a semicircle fronting the sea. Here the Turks had massed large forces of infantry, deeply entrenched, and supported by machine and Hotchkiss guns. Formidable as the position was, it could hardly have been stronger than V or W Beach, and one may conclude it was refused by the General in command mainly for want of men to storm another point at which the enemy would naturally expect attack. Perhaps also he considered the position not far enough removed from Helles to turn the defences there and threaten the line of retreat.
About two miles farther up the coast there is another beach known to the end of the campaign as Y. The navy put it at 7000 yards from Cape Tekke. So small is it, and the cleft or dry waterfall which forms it so steep and narrow, that the Turks had neglected the position as unassailable. Nevertheless, lying south-west from Krithia village, and about four miles from Cape Helles, it was chosen as a protection to our left flank and a threat to the enemy's line of communication, or of retreat in the event of his withdrawal from the end of the Peninsula. It was intended to serve the same purpose as De Tott's Battery (Eski Hissarlik) upon our extreme right, and, if it were securely held, its value was obvious.
The 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers and one company of the South Wales Borderers had been detailed for this service, but the Commander-in-Chief added the Plymouth (Marine) Battalion, R.N.D., on account of the importance of the position, or because
io8 THE LANDINGS
the landing-party was beyond reach of reinforcement. The Goliath^ Sapphire, and Amethyst were the con- ducting ships, and at the first Hght the troops were put ashore by trawlers with four tows. They had to leap out into deep water owing to reefs, but reached the shore without opposition, and at once climbed the precipitous watercourse and cliffs on each side. The battleship Goliath shelled the summit, perhaps un- fortunately, for the party's presence was thus disclosed. Turkish snipers immediately set to work, and the fire became more and more searching as the day went on. Still there was no organised attack, and the men dug shallow and far-extended trenches along the summit on both sides of the deep ravine, the Marine Battalion on the left, the K.O.S.B. in the centre, the S.W. Borderers on the right. Colonel Matthews of the Plymouth Battalion was in command throughout, but his second in command. Colonel Koe (K.O.S.B.), was mortally wounded early in the day. It was impossible to fulfil Staff orders by gaining touch with X Beach, because communication was shut off by the powerful Turkish force at Y2 — a misfortune which might have been foreseen. During the afternoon, the sniping developed into assault. Turks were seen swarming out from Krithia, and others probably came up from Y2 along the Gully Ravine (Saghir Dere), which at this point is only a short distance away, and was hitherto unknown to our men.
At twilight the repeated assaults increased in violence. Under the rising moon, line after line of Turks advanced, at some points reaching the trenches before they were cut down. Sir Ian mentions a pony led right through the trenches with a
THE FAILURE AT Y BEACH 109
machine-gun on his back, and an eye-witness saw a German officer killed by a blow from a shovel as, with grenade in hand, he called upon a trench to surrender. All night the savage conflict continued, the Turks charging with religious courage, our men driving them back with the bayonet when the rifles became foul and choked with dirt. But just before daylight the shrapnel terrifically increased, the Turks swarmed round in irresistible crowds, the centre of the K.O.S.B. trenches was rushed, and the men driven headlong down the gorge. Only those who know the nature of the ground, the cliffs some 200 feet high, and the depth of the ravine, half hidden by thick and prickly scrub, can realise the horror of that scene, or the superb devotion of those who still remained to hold the summit while the wounded were being carried on waterproof sheets (without stretchers) down to the beach. More than half the officers and nearly half the men were killed or wounded. By morning it had become impossible to cling any longer to the position. Protected by a small and heroic rearguard, and by the heavy fire of the ships Goliath, Talbot, Dublin, Sapphire, and Amethyst, the wounded, the stores, and the survivors of the two battalions and the S.W. Borderers ; company were taken off by the boats and returned in the early afternoon on the war- ships to the southern end of the Peninsula. In spite of the heroism displayed, and in spite of the service in holding up a large Turkish force for the critical twenty-four hours, the effort at Y Beach failed, and the failure was serious.
About nine miles from Y Beach farther north along the coast, the snub-nosed promontory of Gaba
no THE LANDINGS
Tepe suddenly projects. It is of no great height — just under loo feet — but deep water washes the foot of the steep and rugged cliffs, its caves and artificial tunnels concealed guns which no shell could touch, and from those caves and tunnels nearly the whole coast north and south could be enfiladed. North, the coast falls into an open, gently sloping shore of quiet meadows and scattered olive groves, crossed by a track to the Old Village (Eski Keui) in the centre of the Peninsula, and so to Maidos on the strait. Next to Bulair, this is the shortest way over, for it measures less than five miles in a straight line. But on the right stands the threatening plateau of Kilid Bahr, strongly held, and forming a central base for the enemy's army, and on the left rise the heights of Sari Bair, intersected by inextricable entanglements of gully and ravine. At the northern end of that gentle slope, rising like the fields around a Lowland loch, just where the cliffs begin again, the main land- ing of the Anzac corps was intended. Remembering the V and W Beaches, no one can call any position impregnable to such men as ours ; but the spot was thickly wired from the water's edge ; it was fully exposed to the guns hidden on Gaba Tepe, in an olive grove farther inland, and on Kilid Bahr plateau itself; to advance over the gradual slope would have meant advancing up an unsheltered glacis crossed by almost impenetrable obstacles, in the face of entrenched and invisible machine-guns and rifles. It was fortunate that man's proposals here went astray.
The object of the Anzac landing was to detain the Turkish forces on Kilid Bahr plateau, to check the reinforcement of the southern Peninsula by them or
THE ANZAC ORDERS iii
by other troops from the Bulair district, and to threaten the Turkish Hne of retreat. The enemy's forces in these central regions were vaguely estimated at about 20,000 ; but reconnaissance had been impossible, the country was unknown, except in so far as it can be surveyed from the sea, and hitherto the Staff had no maps even fairly trustworthy, as the maps after- wards found on the bodies of Turkish officers were. The landing was officially called Z Beach, but was always known as " Anzac," and so history will know it. As already stated, the covering force consisted of the 3rd Australian Brig-ade under Colonel Sinclair Maclaoran. It was conveyed in four transports, but the first landing-party (about 1500 men) had been transferred at Mudros to the warships Q^ieen (Admiral Thursby's flagship), the London, and the Prince of Wales. Twelve tows were provided, each consisting of a steam pinnace and a trail of four cutters or "life- boats," and carrying about 125 men,^ As soon as the first party had started in the tows, the remainder of the covering party was to tranship from the trans- ports into eight destroyers, and to follow slowly towards shore until taken off by the returning tows, three tows being allotted to each pair of destroyers. When the coverings brig"ade had made sure of the landing, the transports of the whole army corps were to close in to shore and disembark. The Triumph, the Majestic, and the cruiser Bacchante were to cover the landing by gun-fire. As throughout the expedition, the entire organisation on the water was directed by the navy, and the boats were commanded by boy
^ Authorities differ widely as to the number of boats to each tow, but four appears to be right, though six was more usual.
112 THE LANDINGS
midshipmen, whose imperturbable calm in moments of extreme peril was, from beginning to end, and at every crisis, only rivalled by the dogged heroism of their crews.
The whole force assembled at a point about half- way between Imbros and the intended landing. It was 1.30 a.m. of the 25th. The smoke rising against the westering moon probably betrayed their presence, but