Gallipoli (55 page)

But who is to tell Lord Kitchener?

Churchill and Fisher decide to do it gently. The following evening at the Admiralty, Winston Churchill sits at one of the octagonal conference tables, with Lord Kitchener on his right, Sir John Fisher on his left, and many other senior officers filling up the rest of the table …

It's about
Queen Elizabeth
…

The news does not go down well.

‘[Kitchener's] habitual composure in trying ordeals left him,' Churchill would later delicately recount, ‘and he protested vehemently against what he considered the desertion of the army at its most critical moment.'
⁵⁵

In response, however, Sir John Fisher – who has never seen a tantrum he does not want to throw – works himself to an even greater fury. ‘The
Queen Elizabeth
will come home,' he says with great force, ‘and it will come home tonight, or I will walk out of the Admiralty here and now.'
⁵⁶

But Kitchener does not appear to care what Fisher thinks, as his own fury flares.

Ultimately the decision on
Queen Elizabeth
does not rest with either Kitchener or Fisher but with Churchill. It is soon clear that this pride of the fleet will indeed be coming home, and it is Kitchener who walks out in high dudgeon and heads back to the living quarters he shares with his Aide-de-Camp, Captain Oswald FitzGerald, who can hopefully help to calm him. (And he can do that. Sir George Arthur would write in his memoirs that ‘Ossy' FitzGerald ‘had rooted himself deeper than anyone else in K's affections, [a man] to whom K opened all his heart and from whom no secret, official or private, was at any time hid'.)
⁵⁷

14 MAY 1915, LONDON, EGGS THROWN AT KITCHENER OVER SHELL SHORTAGE

This is not just another meeting of the War Council. This is a meeting – the first formal meeting of this body since 19 March despite all the momentous happenings on the war front – where there is to be a reckoning of accounts. Yes, back in January, this same gathering had, in the main, been more than merely enthusiastic at Churchill's championed plan to outflank the enemy by sending the fleet up the Dardanelles, but now things are different.

While success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, catastrophic failure can be an absolute
bastard
… and the entirely isolated Churchill is made to feel like one. Still, his humour on this morning may be said to be marginally better than that of Kitchener, who had realised he was under heavy attack from Northcliffe's principal, if not principled, newspaper,
The Times
. It takes direct aim at all those responsible for the organisation of this war, and no one answers more to that description than he does, the Secretary for War:

 

NEED FOR SHELLS

BRITISH ATTACKS CHECKED

LIMITED SUPPLY THE CAUSE

A LESSON FROM FRANCE

On page eight of the newspaper, Military Correspondent Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington makes clear to the
Times
' well-heeled readers that there exists a ‘shell crisis'. And the editorial on page nine leaves no doubt as to where the blame lies:

And you wished to say, in our meeting of the War Council, Lord Kitchener?

The Secretary for War's eyes glitter as he loads. Churchill will later note to Asquith he has never seen him ‘in a queerer mood – or more unreasonable'.
⁶⁰

Kitchener fires. He wishes to begin his remarks to the War Council by savaging Churchill for the fact that he has acquiesced in the disgraceful request by Admiral de Robeck on 12 May to withdraw
Queen Elizabeth
because of fears that it would be torpedoed by the Germans. This has left his army without its most crucial support. ‘When the Admiralty proposed to force the passage of the Dardanelles by means of the fleet alone,' he thunders, ‘I doubted whether the attempt would succeed, but was led to believe it possible by the First Lord's statements of the power of the
Queen Elizabeth
…

‘Although I doubt whether the fleet alone could force the passage, I never for a moment thought it possible that, if the army were employed on the Gallipoli Peninsula to help them, the Admiralty would withdraw the principal naval unit on which they and we relied …

‘I do not know what the proposed replacement of the
Queen Elizabeth
by monitors a month hence may enable our forces to achieve, but I greatly doubt whether they will be even as successful as the
Queen Elizabeth
was.'
⁶¹

His fury, in short, has not remotely abated overnight, nor has it improved since reading
The Times
, and he doesn't mind who knows it. He is still Lord Kitchener, and he is deeply aggrieved. And nor does he want to hear Churchill's brilliant, blathering blandishments now, about how, in fact, the fleet on the Dardanelles would be bigger than ever.

‘The effect of the withdrawal of the
Queen Elizabeth
on the Near East,' the good Lord says, stabbing his finger in a manner that is uncharacteristic for the fact that usually just a quiet word from him on anything is enough to settle the matter, ‘will be very bad. It will be taken as the first sign of the abandonment of the enterprise, and as the first of many withdrawals. I fear it might even involve the risk of a rising in Egypt … I would like to withdraw from the Dardanelles if it were practicable, but unfortunately we cannot afford to do this.'
⁶²

Perish the thought.

‘We have lost over 15,000 men,' Churchill points out, ‘and the French over 13,000. If the operation is not carried through, it could be said that a disaster has happened to this country.'

And yet, while Churchill might have expected some support from First Sea Lord Sir John Fisher, who has helped to bring this crisis to a head, it is not to be. No matter that he is not a member of the War Council but only there as an adviser, Fisher feels no compunction in rounding on his nominal master, after at least noting that while the Dardanelles had been conceived first as a naval campaign, then a combined campaign, it is now mostly a military campaign, so it is right to withdraw
Queen Elizabeth
. Clearly, however, what Sir John Fisher really wants to say is this: ‘I have been against the Dardanelles operations from the beginning, and the Prime Minister and Lord Kitchener know this fact.'
⁶³
He clearly wishes to note to the entire gathering that he has always predicted it to be a disaster, and now, here you have it, it
is.

‘This remarkable interruption,' Churchill would note, ‘was received in silence.'
⁶⁴

The mood is, in Churchill's words, ‘sulphurous', and the gravity of the situation escapes no one. Should they pull out? Should they simply acknowledge the truth of it: that the Turks have put up a fight far greater than the Allies had ever imagined; that the soldiers of the British Empire are being slaughtered and the whole plan was wrong-headed from the beginning?

This is the tacit view of Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, and the basis of the rather more outspoken demands of Lloyd George, but here Churchill is on stronger ground in vociferously arguing against that course of action. Having lost so many men already, to pull out now would make the country feel that a complete disaster had taken place, rather than embrace the current feeling, that though there have been many sacrifices, it might still be worth it. This view receives support.

Perhaps most cogently, to evacuate just three weeks after having landed 75,000 men would be an acknowledgement that the War Council had got the plan tragically wrong, and the enemy had got it right. And any such evacuation might see the Balkan nations turning to the newly powerful Germans as their true friends. Far better for the War Council to stand its ground and send reinforcements to replace those who had been lost – around 5000 men have been killed in this first three weeks, and 12,000 wounded – and even send in more troops to achieve a critical mass to crack the nut.

For the moment, no firm decision is taken, but that fact alone means that whatever small chance there is of evacuation is put back indefinitely. In the meantime, it is decided that what is most urgent is to get more information from their key man on the ground, General Ian Hamilton, and it is with this in mind that, after the War Council meeting is over, Kitchener cables Hamilton:

Upon receiving the cable, Hamilton is very quietly underwhelmed, as he would confide to his diary. For nothing in the problem he is now asked to solve has anything to do with the problem he was sent out to solve: ‘At first the Fleet was to force its way through; we were to look on; next, the Fleet and the Army were to go for the Straits side by side; today, the whole problem may fairly be restated on a clean sheet of paper, so different is it from the problem originally put to me by K. when it was understood I would put him in an impossible position if I pressed for reinforcements.'
⁶⁶

 

His response, nevertheless, is as clear as mud:

To make matters worse, the troops on the Peninsula are quickly being stripped of more of their key naval support, as Admiral de Robeck continues to heed the sinking of the
Goliath
and the German sub heading east as portents of an attack. To escape this likelihood, he orders half of the fleet's battleships to go back to Lemnos and Tenedos.