Gallipoli (26 page)

It is obvious that the magazine needs to be flooded to douse the flames that threaten to detonate all the shells at once, and yet he does not have authority to do that.

And yet, it is obvious they will explode.

And yet, if he floods the magazines, all the injured men still in there, incapable of leaving, will drown.

And yet, if he doesn't do it, everyone will die anyway!

…

…

There
is
no answer to the last.

He smashes the glass cover over the relevant sea valve with his fist, turns the mechanism that opens it and, with blood pouring from his hand, races up the ladder and closes the watertight trapdoor behind him. Devastated by what he has done, and still unsure, he runs through the smoke and finally finds his superior officer, Commander Petit-Thouars. ‘I hope I haven't overreached myself,' he yells over the tumult of battle, ‘but seeing that the
Suffren
was in grave danger of explosion I've just flooded the magazine without orders.'
¹⁹

(He hasn't overreached. French Rear-Admiral Émile Guépratte hails him a great hero, and subsequently Lannuzel is decorated with the
Croix de Guerre
and
La Médaille du combattant
.)

Suffren
can fight on!

The choking, dusty air in the Turkish forts is filled with the screams of dying men, mixed with the low rumble of prayers to Allah. Nearly all is carnage and chaos, a blizzard of blood in most of the gun pits, human gore splattered on the walls. And even those few guns that are still firing are starting to run dangerously low on ammunition.

In Rumeli Mecidiye Fort, still subject to heavy shelling, several men are dead and over a dozen wounded. Those who can carry on do so. For half an hour, the battery officer has been incapable of commanding after a large stone dislodged by an exploding shell hit him in the back, but again he has taken the reins – only for a piece of shrapnel to destroy his megaphone and two of his teeth, and tear off a piece off his tongue. And
still
he keeps going.

Corporal Seyit is huddled with a comrade next to his gun. It is technically inoperable, the auto-loading gear damaged. But through it all, they continue to heed the orders of their commander: ‘
Ateş! – Fire!
'

Some two and a half hours after the battle has begun, just after 1.30 pm, it appears that the naval force has tamed the Turkish forts. The roar of fire has become a meek, spasmodic trickle. Seeking to capitalise on the enemy's weakness, Admiral de Robeck gives the order for the French wave to retire from the second line so that the third wave of British ships, Line C, can come into play. At 1.43 he calls forward the minesweepers, and these worthy vessels with their courageous crews begin trawling back and forth, operating in pairs, dragging 500 yards of heavy, serrated cutting wire between them. If all goes well, the tandem trawlers will catch the mooring cables and sever them, sending the mines to the surface.

Meanwhile, the French ships
Suffren
and
Bouvet
begin a slow turn
à tribord
, to starboard, making use of precisely that small indent in the Asian shore that is Erenkeui Bay to allow themselves good space.
Charlemagne
and the ailing
Gaulois
turn to port and make their way back down the European shore.

Suffren
has successfully turned without incident, despite the damage, and
Bouvet
follows fast in its magnificent, frothy wake. Having just passed the British line,
Bouvet
suddenly shakes like a shot dog, an instant before a huge volume of billowing, reddish-black smoke shoots up from under her, now pouring forth from the starboard for'ard bow. And she is
listing.

Before the shocked eyes of all observers, the French ship keeps keeling over ever further until she is more than 90 degrees from perpendicular and her masts go into the water.

Less than two minutes after one of the
Bouvet
's magazines has exploded deep within its bowels, Captain Rageot shouts out to his crew, ‘
Sauvezvous, mes enfants!
'
²⁰

Tragically, only 66 of his men are able to heed his command before, just a few seconds later, the ship ‘slithers down like a saucer slithers down in a bath',
²¹
taking Captain Rageot and over 600 of his brave sailors to a watery grave some 30 fathoms below.

It is just after 2 pm. Suddenly the sea is filled with drowning sailors. On the European shore, Captain Hilmi believes it is the shells fired by his own men that have struck the mortal blow on the
Bouvet.
He immediately gives the order: ‘
Ateşı kes!
– Cease firing!'

The same command is clearly given by other battery and fort commanders, for as French ships race in to pick up what
Bouvet
survivors they can, no shells are fired on them until the men are safely aboard.

They have done it! They have actually
sunk
one of the enemy's big ships!

The battle rages on.

Just on 4 pm, a new ship enters the Dardanelles. It is
Phaeton
, bearing General Hamilton, who that morning aboard the vessel had completed his reconnaissance of the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Now, of course, General Hamilton wishes to have his first close-up look at what he would later recall as ‘the dream of my life – a naval battle! Nor did the reality pan out short of my hopes. Here it was; we had only to keep on at thirty knots; in one minute we should be in the thick of it; and who would be brave enough to cry halt! The world had gone mad; common sense was only moonshine after all; the elephant and the whale of Bismarckian parable were at it tooth and nail! Shells of all sizes flew hissing through the skies.'
²²
Hamilton watches closely as
Queen Elizabeth
moves slowly backward and forward up in the neck of the Narrows, firing all the while, as her attendant ‘men-o'-war [were] spitting tons of hot metal at the Turks'.
²³

As far as he can see and hear, the forts are silent in reply, and yet behind them the concealed batteries continue to pour in their defiance. The minesweepers are steaming back and forth, specks in the vastness, dwarfed by the towering spouts of water and spray that rise up all around from falling shells, and here now is the
Inflexible
, some 250 yards away and heading out of the Straits. Hamilton observes closely ‘her wireless cut away and a number of shrapnel holes through her tops and crow's nest'
²⁴
– and then it happens.

Inflexible
is hit! It shudders and shakes, and as the shocked Hamilton watches on, it quickly begins to list.

‘My blood ran cold. For sheer deliberate awfulness this beat everything. We gazed spellbound: no one knew what moment the great ship might not dive into the depths. The pumps were going hard. We fixed our eyes on marks about the water line to see if the sea was gaining upon them or not.'
²⁵

Again, one of Lieutenant-Colonel Geehl's expertly laid mines has done its deadly work – all within some 50 yards of where
Bouvet
had disappeared – and the first explosion kills 29 sailors.

Still,
Inflexible
manages to stay afloat, though clearly lying heavily in the bows and listing to starboard. With just enough thrust from her engines, she is able to get away and head back towards Tenedos. The
Phaeton
and other cruisers attend her closely.

Just three minutes after
Inflexible
takes her near-mortal blow,
Irresistible
also hits a mine, killing 18 men, and her crew is quickly ordered to abandon ship.

The remaining ships continue to pour fire onto the forts and, sure enough, Rumeli Mecidiye Fort suffers a direct hit.

Several minutes after the shell lands on Rumeli Mecidiye – causing shrapnel, flying shards of rock and screams – Corporal Seyit sits up from where he has passed out. All around him, through the smoke and dust, strewn around their damaged gun, he sees the dismembered bodies of his friends and remembers his commander's words from that morning: ‘No one will bother with the dead and wounded.'
²⁶

At that instant he looks hard through the haze in front of him and sees his slender comrade, Ali.

‘We have 14 martyrs and 24 wounded,' Ali yells to him. ‘It is just you and I left standing.'
²⁷

Seyit stumbles to his battery's rampart and looks over it. The infidel ships are still there,
still
firing on their land. And now he notices something else. One of the artillery shells remains intact.

‘Come, Ali,' he says. ‘Help me get this shell loaded onto my back.'

Ali, knowing that the shell is some 300 pounds, looks at him in complete disbelief – it will take at least
four
men to lift it.

‘You can't, Seyit,' he says flatly.