Gallipoli (12 page)

No, His Majesty's Fleet cannot go up the Dardanelles, but it can hover just off the entrance, and it does so … with a vigilance never far from violence. For what is this, now? On this sultry early afternoon, a tiny, one-funnel Turkish torpedo boat has no sooner emerged at the mouth of the Dardanelles, about to enter the Aegean Sea, than it is chased by the British destroyers HMS
Rattlesnake
and HMS
Savage
. Once boarded, it is discovered that it bears German soldiers, at which point the British summarily order the Turkish captain to take them and his vessel back whence they have come.
⁵⁷

A Turkish torpedo boat, in its own
Turkish waters
! How can this happen?

It is an informed decision taken by the man who has just been appointed as Commander of British Naval Forces in the Mediterranean, Vice-Admiral Sackville Carden, and it has been approved by Admiralty. For although Great Britain is not at war with Turkey – yet – the Admiralty reasons that, as the Turks have made it clear that Germany has control of their fleet, the consequent risk to the British Fleet is too great … and their action is justified.

To Turkish eyes, it is very close to piracy on the high seas. Turkey and Great Britain are not at war, so
by what right
do British captains tell a Turkish captain to do
anything
?

As to the Germans, they, too, take a grim view, and none more so than German Army engineer Oberst Erich Paul Weber – one of the 500-man German contingent that Vice-Admiral von Usedom had rushed to the Dardanelles to shore up the coastal defences – who, as part of the secret treaty signed between Turkey and Germany on 2 August, has military control of the fortifications that defend the Dardanelles. No sooner has he heard of the outrage than he gives the order to close the Dardanelles to all bar Turkish traffic.

Within hours of the Turkish torpedo boat's interception, an additional string of mines closes off the navigation channel, to go with the three lines first laid on 4 August. This fourth string of mines crosses the Dardanelles at its narrowest point, while large signs are put up at the Straits' northern and southern entrances advising what has been done. The lighthouses are switched off. The Dardanelles are closed for business until further notice. Yes, it has been ordered by a German, but in Turkey's name.

As Carden reports to Admiralty on the morning of 27 September:

Strategically, it has been a brilliant move for Germany, as noted by Ambassador Morgenthau. Driving the crucial wedge between Russia and her western associates has simply required ‘ignoring the nominal rulers and closing a little strip of water about twenty miles long and two or three wide! It did not cost a single human life or the firing of a single gun, yet, in a twinkling, Germany accomplished what probably three million men, opposed to a well-equipped Russian force, could not have brought to pass. It was one of the most dramatic military triumphs of the war, and it was all the work of German propaganda, German penetration, and German diplomacy.'
⁵⁹

In the days following this bottling up of the Black Sea, the Bosphorus begins to look like a harbour suddenly stricken with the plague. Hundreds of ships arrive from Russia, Rumania and Bulgaria, loaded with grain, lumber and other products, only to discover that they can go no further. There are not docks enough to accommodate them, and they have to swing out into the stream, drop anchor and await developments. The waters quickly become such a cluster of crowded vessels – all with masts and smokestacks – that a motorboat must pick its way through the tangled forest. Initially there is hope that the Turks might reopen the waterway, and for this reason these vessels, constantly increasing in number, wait patiently. Then, one by one, they turn around, point their noses towards the Black Sea and lugubriously start back for their home ports. The Bosphorus and adjoining waters become a desolate waste. What for years had been one of the most animated shipping ports in the world is ruffled only by an occasional launch, or a tiny Turkish caique, or now and then a little sailing vessel.

Most outraged of all is Russia – its major export–import route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean has been destroyed in one fell swoop. As Russia's north-western ports are frozen over in winter and the Kaiser's fleet is blockading the Baltic, Russia is effectively isolated from major trade. Not surprisingly, that nation's long-held desire to own Constantinople and control the Dardanelles strengthens.

A short time later, in Constantinople, the American Ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, requests and is granted an audience with the Grand Vizier – who leaves a Turkish Cabinet meeting at his call – only to find him a shaking wreck, barely able to get a sentence out, so terrified is he of the whole situation and what is now likely to occur.

Morgenthau's words do not soothe him. ‘You know this means war,' says the Ambassador.
⁶⁰

The Grand Vizier does not faint outright, but it is likely a close-run thing.

Shortly afterwards, Cavid, the one-time financier from Salonica and now the Minister for Finance, emerges, and his first words to the American Ambassador would stay with the New York man ever after: ‘It's all a surprise to us …'
⁶¹

It is extraordinary! This most important strip of water in all of Turkey, the key to the defence of the nation, the thing most likely to bring them into the war, and the Cabinet hasn't made the decision to close it!

‘I certainly had a graphic picture,' Morgenthau would record, ‘of the extremities to which Teutonic bullying had reduced the present rulers of the Turkish Empire. And at the same moment before my mind rose the figure of the Sultan, whose signature was essential to close legally these waters, quietly dozing at his palace, entirely oblivious of the whole transaction.'
⁶²

27 SEPTEMBER 1914, AND THE WINNER IS …

It is one of those things.

While it is the nature of journalism to always try for professional detachment – to coolly observe and not become emotionally involved, even when covering hugely important things such as Federal elections – such detachment proves impossible when an exceedingly smaller election sees the journalists themselves as the key candidates in question.

Such is the case in these last days of September, when the Executive Committee of the Australian Journalists' Association announces who it has elected to become Australia's official war correspondent, to accompany the Australian Imperial Force when it shortly sets sail for Europe. (This is a new concept, born of what has just happened in Belgium, where a single journalist in the thick of the action, Henry Hamilton Fyfe, writing for the
Daily Mail
, has managed to inspire a nation with his tales of British derring-do. Perhaps, instead of chasing journalists away, the answer is to put them cheek by jowl by trowel with the soldiers.)
⁶³

From a field of 20 applicants, including Oliver Hogue, the final ballot has come down to just two men, both of whom want it very, very badly. One is Melbourne's Keith Murdoch, a highly regarded Federal parliamentary correspondent who had left
The Age
in 1912 to work for the Melbourne
Herald
and Sydney
Sun
, and who is a close friend of the newly installed Prime Minister Andrew Fisher. Yes, the 29-year-old son of a clergyman still has something of a stutter, which he has worked hard to overcome, and truth be told he is not a brilliant writer, but he is accomplished, hard-working and well connected, particularly with the Labor Party, which is where his sympathies lie. And the other candidate is the more bookish-looking fellow, the bespectacled Charles E. W. Bean, the esteemed senior correspondent of
The Sydney Morning Herald
.

Both men realise the obvious: that the war is the story of the day, of the era, the story that most Australians will want to read about, and there is little doubt the position of official war correspondent will be the making of either man.

And the winner is … by just a vote or two … Charles Bean.

As announced by the Minister for Defence, Senator Sir George Pearce, Bean will be inducted into the Australian Army, given a rank of Captain and paid £560 per annum, together with a corresponding field allowance.
⁶⁴
The 35-year-old Bean is thrilled; his eyes glisten through his spectacles, belying his otherwise humble demeanour. Murdoch, though, who tends to wear his heart a little more on his sleeve, is devastated, but at least he has the good grace to warmly congratulate Bean.

For all that, official war correspondents such as Bean have a problematic role. They have actually been given a rank in the army, so where do their loyalties lie? To their many readers, who are depending on accurate accounts of what is going on? Or to the armed forces they now veritably belong to? If generals make terrible errors, is it permissible to report that fact? Not according to the army, for it insists that all its official correspondents make a legal commitment to abide by strict censorship rules, which means that not a single word may be published without the army signing it off.

EARLY OCTOBER 1914, BROADMEADOWS, BUT NOT ON A SUNLIT UPLAND

It is a devastating dynamic of human history: while large groups of men without women have an inclination to behave badly, that tendency can be overwhelming when the men are in their early adulthood, when their period of isolation is extended … and when they might suddenly come into contact with women once more, after the sun has gone down and they have been drinking. A lot.

By now, as their departure for England seems eternally delayed, the inevitable happens, and more and more reports come in of drunken soldiers on leave of an evening running riot on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne.

As later noted by Charles Bean, ‘the delay put a heavy strain upon discipline. Broadmeadows Camp was 10 miles from Melbourne, and officially every soldier was supposed to be in his blankets by 9.30 pm. As a matter of fact, every night both men and officers thronged the streets and cafes in Melbourne until the small hours of the morning. In Sydney, the blueblood Commander of the 1st Infantry Brigade, Colonel Henry MacLaurin, whose discipline was sterner than that of other brigadiers, arranged a “drive” of some of the streets and secured a large haul of absentees.'
⁶⁵

The ‘six bob a day tourists', as some members of the civilian population derisively refer to them – in reference to their pay, which is higher than the average working man's – are seen to start fights, fall down drunk and worse. And in the Broadmeadows Camp in these dreary days of early October, things start to come to a head …

Now, quite what happens to the ‘rather good-looking and well-proportioned girl named Hettie Bellingham' inside one of the camp's tents will always be a subject of great contention, but the rumours that swirl initially are devastating enough for what happened ‘to be classed as anything from a saturnalia of salacity to an almost inconceivably diabolical outrage'.
⁶⁶

All that truly seems to count for many of the soldiers of Broadmeadows is that the BLOODY DISGRACEFUL
Truth
newspaper has gone so big on the whole story, putting it in the public domain for the first time. It also prints ‘the super-sensational rumor that A GIRL OF 16 had been plied with liquor and then outraged by about thirty soldiers'
⁶⁷
and gives the young woman's side of the episode, whereby she asserts that, after going into a tent with a soldier, ‘When we had been talking a little while, he went and got me a cup of tea, and after I drank some I DON'T REMEMBER anything more.'
⁶⁸

The upshot is that mere ‘outrage' does not cover the reaction of the soldiers of the Broadmeadows Camp. There are nigh on 10,000 under canvas here, with precious few officers, and because maybe a few blokes had their way with a willing girl, the whole lot of them have to have their good name slurred? Not without a hard response they won't!

So it is that, on that day, hundreds of them converge on Melbourne proper, whereupon many of them begin to tear down the
Truth
placards promoting the stories. For good measure, they also take the disgraceful rag from the paperboys and start tearing bundles of them to pieces, while the paperboys are threatened not to keep calling out their scurrilous lies about a scandal at Broadmeadow, on pain of a cuff on the ear! Of course, the police are called, and, of course, the soldiers don't back down.

What makes matters worse is that, as crowds form on Swanston and Bourke Streets, which is where most of the action takes place, the broad mass takes the side of the soldiers and urges them to belt the coppers!

Which the soldiers do …

Soon enough, a full-blown riot is underway, involving what
The Argus
estimates at ‘over 20,000 people'.
⁶⁹
It is a problem well beyond the capacity of the dozen constables there to do anything about, and reinforcements are urgently called for. In the end, no fewer than 200 police – on foot and mounted – are assembled to confront the crowd, which they do by striking at them ‘wildly with their truncheons and handcuffs'.
⁷⁰

At the height of the melee, many of the soldiers announce their intent to go to the offices of
The Truth
at La Trobe Street and ‘destroy the bloody joint'.
⁷¹

As the crowd surges in that direction, the police on horseback, quickly followed by their colleagues on foot, race to the
Truth
offices and ‘form up a cordon in front of the lane leading to the building to defend it, and in this they were assisted by many soldiers who had previously remonstrated with their reckless colleagues'.
⁷²
(But
not
assisted by many of the crowd, who climb up on verandah posts and the like and roar at the soldiers to, ‘Give it to the police!')
⁷³