Gallipoli (7 page)

The streets of Melbourne abound with the sound of many proud voices singing ‘Rule, Britannia!':

And yet, among the cognoscenti, there really is a fear of what might come. One thought is from the well-known journalist for
The Sydney Morning Herald
, the Bathurst-born but Blighty-bred Oxford graduate Charles Bean. In the wee hours of the following morning, walking home down Sydney's Macquarie Street, the tall and finely featured, bespectacled redhead pauses for an instant, his attention suddenly caught by the formation of the clouds in the moonlight: ‘Piled high in the four quarters of the dark sky above, [they] seemed to him like the pillared structure of the world's civilisation, of which some shock had broken the keystones. The wide gap overhead seemed to show where one great pillar after another had crashed as the mutual support had failed; and, as the sky peered through, the last masses seemed to sway above the abyss. The stable world of the nineteenth century was coming down in chaos: security was gone.'
³⁹

Ah, but for the moment such fears really do remain only in the tiny minority, as recruits continue to flood into the enrolment centres and sign up, most particularly when the papers print the happy news:

Organisation of the troops now proceeds at pace. Beyond the main body of Australian infantry, there will also be at least a 2200-strong brigade of the Light Horse – highly prestigious mounted soldiers just like the ones who had performed so admirably in South Africa during the Boer War – together with Field Artillery, a probable complement of Army Service Corps and Army Medical Corps. The details are still being worked out, most particularly by Major-General William Throsby Bridges, who has been charged with organising and taking the expeditionary force to England.

It is an astute choice. The 53-year-old had been born in Scotland, educated in England and sent to the Royal Military College of Canada before coming to Australia. He had served the British Army with distinction in the Boer War, and in 1909 had become the Australian Army's first Chief of the General Staff. The rigidity in him courses up from his British bootstraps, runs through his ramrod-straight backbone and into his collar before coming to an uneasy halt on an upper lip so stiff that it is the perfect resting spot for his immaculately trimmed moustaches. As the first Commandant of the Royal Military College at Duntroon in June 1911, it is he who has set the tone for the rising officer class of the Australian Army, he who has trained many of them.

From the beginning, Bridges is heavily assisted in the execution of his task by his highly competent Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Brudenell White, a man so intelligent and organised that no sooner had the war burst upon them than he had taken from his desk drawer mobilisation plans for a hypothetical expeditionary force he had previously drawn up.

Together, the vision of Bridges and Brudenell White is that, while the force they create will be at the service of the British Empire, it is not to be mere support troops from different states, to be sent piecemeal into British Army units, as had happened in the Boer War. Rather, the force will be self-sustaining and remain intact as one fighting body – composed of men from all states,
Australians
all – under his own
Australian
command.

What name can best encompass these two central ideas of a fighting force that is
from
Australia but
for
the Empire?

Why not the ‘Australian Imperial Expeditionary Force'?

No, too much of a mouthful.

The ‘Australian Imperial Force', then?

Done. And the ‘AIF' for short.

Oh, and we'll pay them well.

Though in person the ‘grim, reserved'
⁴¹
Bridges comes across as being as cold and mean as a night without a shirt atop Kosciusko,
⁴²
on this issue he is generous, and he decides to make the salary an exceedingly handsome six bob a day – better than any other soldiers in the war, and
six
times what the British privates are getting.

The 1st Division of the AIF will consist of three brigades,
⁴³
to be led by the three Macs. The 1st Brigade goes to 35-year-old barrister Colonel Henry Norman MacLaurin, son of the University of Sydney Chancellor (after whom he has been named) and brother of pioneering surgeon Charles. The 2nd Brigade is put under the command of a 47-year-old martinet, Colonel James Whiteside McCay. Most significantly, in charge of the 3rd Brigade, Bridges places Colonel Ewen MacLagan, a fellow Scot and career army officer who had married an Australian woman and settled at Duntroon, to be the director of drill and discipline. As MacLagan has already demonstrated a capacity to take the raw material of a mass of men and turn them into a disciplined fighting force upon which victory lies, he is the first man picked for the role.

And so Colonel MacLagan, too, sets to, from a couple of back rooms at Melbourne's Victoria Barracks, putting his forceful personality and tireless work ethic into the enormous task of creating a brigade from troops drawn from five states.

Further north,
The Sydney Morning Herald
sets the tone. Beneath the banner headline ‘WAR DECLARED', the paper's editorial is nothing less than exuberant:

Similar passion is evinced in New Zealand, where, at 3 pm, the Governor, Sir Arthur William de Brito Savile Foljambe, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, stands on the steps of the old parliament buildings and – flanked by Prime Minister William Massey – clears his throat to address a crowd now 12,000 strong, who have gathered in great anticipation. After reading out an exchange of cables he has had with His Majesty the King, whereby His Gracious Majesty expresses his appreciation for New Zealand's affirmation of loyalty, he gets to the point.

‘Fellow subjects: War has broken out with Germany.' The cheering from the crowd is thunderous, and then even more so when the Prime Minister calls for three cheers for the King, which leads to a spontaneous rendition of ‘God Save the King', followed by ‘Rule Britannia'.

‘We have no time for speeches,' the Governor concludes. ‘I will send [to Britain] the following message: “The Empire will stand united, calm, resolute, trusting in God.”'
⁴⁵

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

There are just a few in the crowd, however, who evince a different emotion and, as
The New Zealand Herald
would report, are ‘visibly affected by the gravity of the announcement. A few people, some old men, including one seasoned veteran, were seen with tears trickling down their cheeks, whilst several women had handkerchiefs applied to their weeping eyes.'
⁴⁶

Down at the Wairoa, as
The Nelson Evening Mail
would report, ‘natives assembled at the Land Court called on Judge Jones to explain the European crisis. They thereupon passed a resolution offering their services to the Government for the defence of the Empire.'
⁴⁷

And then something more. After hearing the explanation, this fine body of Maori men conducted a
haka
, a war cry from the ages, for the ages.

If there is to be a world battle, then New Zealand will be there with the best of them.

New Zealand's offer is contingent on its soldiers serving in a combined force with the Australians – something that has been under discussion in case of war since 1912 – but that is no problem, as both Australia and Great Britain quickly agree to it.

6 AUGUST 1914, LONDON, FISHER FIZZES

When the news breaks of
Goeben
's escape from the clutches of Admiral Milne's British Mediterranean Fleet, no one is more outraged than the irascible Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord. A curmudgeonly 73-year-old, around so long that the first Royal Navy ship he'd joined had been wooden and powered by sail – now brought back from retirement to help young Winston Churchill with the Admiralty – he floats the idea that Admiral Milne should be shot. (Shades of Voltaire's famous observation of the English: ‘
Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres
. – In this country, it is good, from time to time, to kill one admiral in order to encourage the others.')
⁴⁸

Milne, and the Commander of the Fleet's Mediterranean Cruiser Squadron, Rear-Admiral Troubridge, have made a right cock up of things. This is the Admiral who had once infamously declared, ‘They pay me to be an Admiral; they don't pay me to think,'
⁴⁹
and he has now proved the point.
Goeben
and its little sister ship
Breslau
had been heading back east, having completed token sorties against the Algerian coastal towns of Philippeville and Bona, when vessels under Troubridge's command encountered them. War having yet to be declared between Britain and Germany, all Milne could do was to order the tracking of these soon-to-be enemy ships, which somehow managed to give their pursuers the slip before re-coaling in the Strait of Messina.

In the interim, now on a war footing, one First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, would have thought it a simple matter of tightly patrolling either end of the Strait and trapping
Goeben
and
Breslau
like ships in a bottle. For reasons best left for Troubridge to explain at his court martial, as a result of a series of miscommunications, poor decisions and pea-heartedness,
Goeben
and
Breslau
had made good their escape, last seen heading east …

7 AUGUST 1914, THE WAR CLOUDS DARKEN OVER CONSTANTINOPLE

Over the past week, the people of the Ottoman Empire have greeted each new morning with prayers, followed by the latest news of the war from Europe. For readers of the popular
Ikdam
newspaper, their first intimation of war had been on 29 July, with the headline:

On 3 August, even more unsettling news:

And so each day brings more news of escalating conflict. Chatter outside the mosques, in the barber shops, the bookshops and cafes, on fishing boats, rooftops and street corners is dominated by the rising tensions in Europe … as they all speculate on the real question: what is to be the Ottoman Empire's place in all of this?

As news of war slowly trickles east, from the Empire's ancient cosmopolitan centres along rickety, rocky roads leading to the villages of Anatolia and beyond, the tales grow twisted and colourful, and a heightened sense of patriotism begins to mount.

But who, exactly, is our enemy in this chaos? Russia, as always. The Greeks, no doubt. Bulgaria, for sure. But England is our friend in the sea, is she not? And Germany our friend on land, helping our army to reorganise. The French have surely been a help to us too. Can we, a Muslim people, trust a Christian state?

Lively and loud debates rage, fuelled by what little information the people have at hand.

On 4 August, the Minister of War, General Enver, had announced, ‘All men between twenty and forty years old: To Arms!'
⁵²
And he did mean all men. Conscription is the order of the day. Men born in 1891, 1892 and 1893 are already under arms. To bolster their numbers, all men born in the years 1875 to 1890 are being drafted as the active reserve. And those born from 1868 to 1874 are drafted as the territorial reserve. In order to bring the army to full wartime readiness, the General Staff estimates it needs some 460,000 drafted men and 14,500 officers, as well as a pool of about one million men available for recruitment should the need arise.

The question of adequate supply of
everything
is fraught. And so, the initial mobilisation order requires that ‘when departing for his military service, each conscript needed to bring staples such as bread, dried food stuff and sugar, sufficient to feed himself for five days'.
⁵³

Through all this, though, the Ottoman leadership officially maintains ‘neutrality'.

A neutral call to arms?

An ‘armed neutrality', yes.

The men joke about it over coffee and backgammon. The women matter-of-factly maintain that the will of Allah will dictate what is best for the fatherland, and what is best for them. They busy themselves with their children, chores and prayers. ‘
Allah selamet versin
. – May Allah bring Peace,' they mutter to themselves in the morning as they roll up the family mattresses, sweep the floor, soak the beans, tend the garden, leave the dough to prove and think of their young sons going off to do their rightful duty all too soon.