Gallipoli (86 page)

‘Never,' one German regimental history would rather blithely comment, ‘had machine-guns such straightforward work to do, nor done it so effectively.'
⁶⁰

In Great Britain, there is a growing sense that there is extreme ineptitude in the highest reaches of the British military, and it is in this environment that Murdoch is circulating, confirming news that an even greater catastrophe waits for them unless they do something. Prime Minister Asquith, for one, wants Kitchener gone, and he would soon be saying out loud what many had thought for a long time, that Kitchener is ‘an impossible colleague', whose ‘veracity left much to be desired'.
⁶¹
Even Churchill has so lost faith that he is close to writing a letter to Asquith threatening his resignation if Kitchener is not removed from the War Office.

And Asquith wants to remove him, but the real question remains: how to do it? Despite everything, Kitchener remains so popular with the public it would be political suicide to simply dismiss him. For the moment, they must simply try to limit the damage he does.

MORNING, 26 SEPTEMBER 1915, ALEXANDRIA, A LOVELY SURPRISE

Captain Carter, please report to the office. There, at the military hospital by the harbour – almost a halfway house for those heading back to Gallipoli – Gordon Carter responds immediately, wrapping an overcoat around his pyjamas.

And suddenly, there she is. Nurse King. Come to see him. Her ship has come in. And it feels as if his has too. And, whatever else, his previous worry about having ‘a mental deafness …' where ‘my brain seems dull to all sentiment …' starts to dissipate. For in her presence, he feels a great deal indeed.

The two start to talk …

In fact, he takes her out to lunch, and, after one thing leads to another, he doesn't get back to his hospital until well after midnight, which is strictly against regulations. ‘Nobody appeared to spot me but you can never tell …'
⁶²

Still. They can punish him if they like. He has seen Nurse King, and they have talked.

Soon, he must head back to Anzac.

28 SEPTEMBER 1915, IMBROS, THE AXE FALLS

A little odd?

On this morning, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett is asked to go to see General Walter Braithwaite in his tent … only to find Braithwaite in the company of his son and another officer.

‘Sit down,' Braithwaite commands, rather peremptorily.

This looks like it is going to be interesting.

‘When I had a talk with you in June last,' Braithwaite begins, ‘you promised not to criticise the leaders of the Army, the conduct of the campaign, or to break the regulations again.'

‘I consented to certain things,' the English journalist allows, ‘and as far as I knew I had kept my agreement.'

Braithwaite insists to differ. ‘On September 8th you sent off an uncensored letter by Murdoch, who was leaving, addressed to Mr Asquith.'

‘I did, and I considered I had a perfect right to address the Prime Minister direct.'

‘You know you had not, and your letter has got Murdoch into serious trouble.'

‘How did you find out I had sent this letter?'

Braithwaite declines to answer, only informing the veteran correspondent that the letter had been seized from Murdoch when he landed in Marseilles.

‘Has it been passed on to the Prime Minister?' the journalist asks sharply.

Taken aback and suddenly uncertain, because Ashmead-Bartlett is not reacting in the shamefaced manner he had expected, Braithwaite can only get out ‘I don't know …' before gathering himself once more, to say the thing he has called the correspondent to hear. ‘As you have broken the rules of censorship, you will no longer be allowed to stay with the Army, and must sever your connection with it at once and return home.'

There. It is said. Ashmead-Bartlett has been kicked out. But again, the journalist surprises him. For, instead of vociferously arguing against any such drastic action, the younger man seems almost delighted. Leaping to his feet, he bursts out, ‘May I leave at once? I have long been anxious to be relieved of my post, and have in fact applied … to be allowed to return.'
⁶³

What can Braithwaite say? Having kicked him out, the army can hardly hold the journalist at their leisure, and so Hamilton's Chief of Staff says yes, he may leave as soon as he can go.

Within hours, after saying goodbye to the few friends Ashmead-Bartlett can find, he takes his leave of GHQ ‘without a single regret'. ‘Never have I known,' as he would later recount his feelings at the time of departure, ‘such a collection of unsuitable people to whom to entrust a great campaign, the lives of their countrymen, and the safety of the Empire.'
⁶⁴

London
, ahead.

One who is appalled by what has happened to Ashmead-Bartlett is Charles Bean, now back at Imbros for some recuperative time. ‘The little worm of a Press Officer who I think keeps a spy in our camp in the shape of one of the servants,' he records in his diary, ‘seems to have found out that Murdoch was carrying the letter. A wire was sent home and M. was either searched or forced to give the letter up.'
⁶⁵

And yet neither Hamilton nor any of his staff will make any apology for it, with Hamilton's Chief of Intelligence even telling the Australian war correspondent that the days of his profession are coming to an end, as it is the role of the army itself to tell the public what is going on: ‘In a properly organised nation the government does not need war correspondents – it simply tells the people what it thinks will conduce to winning the war. If truth is good for the winning of the war, it tells them the truth; if a lie is likely to win the war it tells them lies.'
⁶⁶

6–11 OCTOBER 1915, LONDON, NOT A MEETING OF MINDS

In London, however, the truth – at least after a fashion – is on the march, and gathering fresh adherents as it goes along.

At the Dardanelles Committee Meeting on 6 October, Murdoch's letter – now an official state document printed on that same duck-egg-blue stationery used for all documents of the Committee of Imperial Defence – is extensively discussed. Though Prime Minister Asquith is starting to have some doubts as to its veracity, noting it to be ‘a rather bitter document, conspicuous for the omission of any praise for anyone or anything at the Dardanelles',
⁶⁷
while Colonel Hankey has told him it is ‘full of serious misstatements of fact', there is no getting around the point – as Bonar Law and Lloyd George point out – that its thrust is correct. In fact, as Lloyd George emphasises, ‘stripped of all its journalism, it would be found to correspond fairly closely with Colonel Hankey's report'.
⁶⁸

What is also bringing matters to a head is the growing likelihood that Germany and Austria-Hungary will launch a full-blown invasion of Serbia from the north, while the pro-German Bulgarians declare war and attack from the east.

If Serbia falls, a direct overland train line between Germany and Turkey will effectively open, allowing the Ottomans to be suddenly flooded with first-class armaments and munitions. The French – who, it must be said, are losing interest in the Dardanelles – are convinced that French and British Divisions must be sent to Salonica, the longtime Ottoman port where the Young Turks Revolution began in 1908, and now a Greek port where the Allies already have a secure base. So insistent have the French been that the 10th Irish Division has already left Suvla Bay, following the French 2nd Division from Cape Helles on 28 September. So supportive is Lloyd George that he has been all for completely closing down at least the Suvla operation and sending 45,000 troops to Salonica.

The obvious complication, alas, is that if divisions are withdrawn from the Dardanelles and sent to Salonica, and the Dardanelles campaign fails, the Turkish troops would then be free to attack Greece from the east, as Germany attacked from the north, and Bulgaria from the north-east.

Salonica, 1915, by Jane Macaulay

Greece's pro-Entente Prime Minister Venizelos has just resigned – after being pushed to do so by Greece's pro-Central Powers King Constantine (his wife, Sophie of Prussia, is Kaiser Wilhelm's sister) – so there is a real risk that Greece will declare itself for Germany. Britain must prepare coercive measures, possibly including flooding Salonica with over 100,000 troops, in an attempt to encourage Greece to give up her neutrality, honour her pledge to help Serbia, and join the Entente along with her 600,000 troops.

Yes, it is as complicated as Chinese calculus …

‘We are face to face with a most important decision,' says Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. ‘We must act on the presumption that Germany will open the road south to Constantinople within four weeks, and we must hear the naval and military opinion as to what is the proper strategical policy. Should it be (1) to force through the Gallipoli Peninsula; (2) to abandon Gallipoli, with, perhaps, an attack on Alexandretta or (3) go to the assistance of Serbia?'
⁶⁹

For the first time, thus, at a formal meeting to discuss the policy of war, the possibility of abandoning Gallipoli is seriously discussed.

Abandon
the Dardanelles?

Are you mad?

Churchill and Kitchener lead the outcry against it. It is their firm view that, with just a
few more divisions
, the Dardanelles can be won, and all the sacrifices already made will prove worth it.

And there are many practical matters to consider. Is evacuation even a realistic option? For, as Maurice Hankey had highlighted in his memo to the Dardanelles Committee, there are actually two issues at hand.

‘Is it tactically possible?'

And …

‘Is it politically possible, having regard to the place that prestige occupies in our system of Imperial Defence?'
⁷⁰

Just what loss of prestige would there be in the entire Muslim world of the Middle East having seen the mighty British Empire arrive in the Dardanelles with all guns blazing only now to be leaving behind its dead and its dignity to the ‘unspeakable Turks', of all peoples.

It is almost unimaginable.

The argument becomes very heated, and, trying to re-impose control, Asquith decides – in a classic political move – to set up a weekend joint naval–military committee to ‘examine the merits of the western and Gallipoli fronts'.
⁷¹
Even as that committee meets, however, the troops of Germany and Austria-Hungary do indeed attack, to be quickly ensconced in the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

It is time for bitter recriminations, and the meeting of the Dardanelles Committee at 10 Downing Street on 11 October is just the place to have them. For the situation is now as critical in the Balkans as it is in the Dardanelles, and whatever decision they make is going to alter the fate of nations.

The tone is set by a Cabinet paper that Lloyd George, furious about the fate of Serbia, circulates to his colleagues, for discussion on this day:

Meanwhile, with winter now approaching, and no progress on the Peninsula, a decision has to be made. Do they stay or do they go? If they stay, they are going to need reinforcements to get through the season. If they are going to go, the organisation for that evacuation will have to begin immediately.

For those who wish them to stay, a fiery Sir Edward Carson, the Chair of the Dardanelles Committee, has a rather pertinent question as to what the forces are supposed to
do
at Gallipoli: ‘Is it to hold and to prepare to resist the Bulgarians, Germans and Turks?'
⁷³

For his part, Sir Edward Grey is firm that whatever happens from here, Gallipoli
must
be evacuated. ‘One way,' he says, ‘is to advance and carry the Peninsula, and
then
leave, having saved our prestige, whatever the cost.'

Standing aghast at the notion of evacuation of any kind is, of course, Lord Kitchener. ‘Abandonment,' he says, ‘would be the most disastrous in the history of the Empire. We should lose about 25,000 men and many guns. Egypt will not stand for long. The troops along the canal would not be able to hold on.'

Equally typically, Kitchener's view outrages Lloyd George. ‘If we abandon Serbia,' the Welshman thunders, ‘the whole of the East will point to the way Britain abandons her friend and conclude that Germany is the country to be followed.'
⁷⁴