Gallipoli (87 page)

‘A third alternative, to putting the troops in Salonica, or leaving them in Gallipoli,' posits Lord Curzon, ‘would be to come to terms with the Turks?' How the mighty have fallen. Less than a year after the British gave the Turks a bloody nose through the might of the Imperial Fleet, the unthinkable is now a possibility. ‘It is now unavoidable,' Lord Curzon persists, ‘that we should endeavour to make some arrangement with the Turks.'
⁷⁵

Well, they never. Of course, for the moment, Lord Curzon is shouted down, but, whatever else, it is indicative of the paralysis that these leaders of British military policy feel when it comes to knowing what to do about the Dardanelles and Salonica. In the end, it is an emasculated Winston Churchill who tries to boil it all down, putting before the Committee three basic options. (And certainly –
sniff
– ‘making some arrangement with the Turks' is not one of them.) They are:

‘1. Whether to send an army to Salonica to help the Serbians.

‘2. To send a force to Gallipoli.

‘3. Whether to abandon the whole proposition in Gallipoli.'

Prime Minister?

Asquith says he has an open mind, before saying it is ‘out of the question' to abandon Gallipoli and to throw troops into Serbia.
⁷⁶

In the end, they decide they must send one of their most eminent soldiers – perhaps Lord Kitchener himself – to make a personal inspection of the Dardanelles and Salonica, and ‘to consider and report as to which particular sphere and with what particular objective, we should direct our attention'.
⁷⁷

In the meantime, they will send ‘an adequate substantial force', to be held for the moment in Egypt.
⁷⁸

The meeting breaks up amid some acrimonious feeling. Privately, Lloyd George remains furious with Churchill, who, he feels, ‘will not acknowledge the futility of the Dardanelles campaign'.
⁷⁹
His strong view is that Winston ‘prevents the Prime Minister from facing the facts, by reminding him that he, too, is implicated in the campaign, and tells him that if the thing is acknowledged to be a failure, he as well as Churchill will be blamed'.
⁸⁰
And when it comes to Kitchener, don't get him started! The Secretary for War is so wedded to the Dardanelles he has circulated a memorandum to the Dardanelles Committee advocating sending another 150,000 troops to Gallipoli. And all this while Serbia is suddenly being overrun by the Austro-Hungarians, Germans and Bulgarians for want of sufficient Allied troops at Salonica to stop them.

And yet, in the wake of such serious discussions, Lord Kitchener, for once, decides he really may need more information from his man on the ground, and cables General Hamilton in the Dardanelles accordingly:

On its receipt, General Hamilton is stunned. ‘If they do this they make the Dardanelles into the bloodiest tragedy of the world!' he notes in his diary. ‘I won't touch it.'
⁸²
And even to Kitchener, he is unaccustomedly blunt:

Fifty per cent! Kitchener is more implacably opposed than ever.

Matters become even more tense when, on 14 October, exactly as has been feared, Bulgaria joins the Central Powers – meaning that the supply chain between Germany and Turkey is now complete.

Greece? Nowhere to be seen. Despite its own treaty with Serbia, it fails to honour its obligations, fearing that to do so would see it invaded.

And yet, though the Dardanelles Committee meets again on the afternoon of the same day that Bulgaria declares war, still they are unsure what to do about Gallipoli – whether to stay or go.

But one thing is clear. The statement of Prime Minister Asquith that Sir Ian Hamilton ‘had had very great chances, but had been uniformly unsuccessful, and had lost the confidence of the troops under him' is broadly agreed with by all present.
⁸⁴
Consequently, they ask Lord Kitchener to do the honours, without delay …

NIGHT, 15 OCTOBER 1915, IMBROS, DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

One cannot knock on a tent, no matter how grandiose it is, and so the only thing the messenger can do is call softly in the night, until General Hamilton responds – which does not take long, as he has only just turned in.

A cable for you, Sir …

By the light of the lantern that the messenger offers, the General sees that the cable is from Lord Kitchener, marked Secret and Personal. Suspecting all too well what it is going to say and that, far from secret, it will more than likely be in the headlines back home, Hamilton tells the young fellow that he will read it the following morning.

Sure enough, the cable from Kitchener is as he expected:

Kitchener goes on to explain that his position will be taken by the former Commander of the Third Army in France, General Sir Charles Monro, currently serving on the Western Front.

Hamilton has a miserable breakfast, and then returns to read Kitchener's cable again. Is the fact that he has been replaced by Monro – a noted ‘Westerner', always eager to pour resources into killing Germans in France and Belgium, rather than Turks in the Dardanelles – a sign of Kitchener's waning influence in the realms of real power? Probably.

Hamilton's answer is for Kitchener to come out to the Dardanelles and run the campaign himself, and the dismissed General fully intends to try to convince him to do exactly that. With the sort of pull that Kitchener would have on munitions and reinforcements, he could finally make the whole thing happen and could ‘bring off the coup right away'.
⁴
With Kitchener in command, Hamilton has no doubt: ‘In one month from to-day, our warships will have Constantinople under their guns.'
⁵

At tea that afternoon with Braithwaite – who has also been recalled – and others who appear equally depressed, Hamilton tries to cheer them up. ‘My credit with Government is exhausted; clearly I can't screw men or munitions out of them. The new Commander will start fresh with a good balance of faith, hope and charity lodged in the Bank of England. He comes with a splendid reputation, and if he is big enough to draw boldly on this deposit, the Army will march; the Fleet will steam ahead; what has been done will bear fruit, and all our past struggles and sacrifices will live.'
⁶

As to his own fate, the old soldier is sanguine, and realistic: ‘[The fact is] I have not succeeded and there is nothing more to be said.'
⁷

The following day, 17 October, Hamilton leaves Gallipoli forever, close to a broken man. He has done his best and been found wanting. Bean, who remains an admirer of Sir Ian Hamilton as a man if not as a General, is there at the melancholy adieu. To him, Hamilton looks ‘very haggard – almost broken up'.
⁸

The ghastly weather, a cold drizzle that chills everyone on the Peninsula to the marrow of their bones, matches Hamilton's mood, and, after this long day of emotional farewells, he boards HMS
Chatham
and immediately heads below, even as he can hear the anchor chains grinding and the screws beginning to turn, and feels the small shudder a ship gives just before it gets underway.

General Hamilton is just settling down when a message comes from the skipper, asking would he please come topside once more, as Admiral de Robeck begs the pleasure of his company on the quarterdeck. Reluctantly, General Hamilton agrees, and he arrives in time to look out and see
Chatham
steering a corkscrew course – threading in and out among the warships at anchor. As they pass each one, the decks are crowded, and as Hamilton would record, ‘[we were] sent … on our way with the cheers of brave men …'
⁹

22 OCTOBER 1915, CHURCHILL'S LAST HURRAH AT CHARING CROSS

All aboooooooard! Just after 6 am, the steam train bearing General Sir Charles Monro and his senior staff on the first leg of their journey towards the Dardanelles lurches forward the first inch of its trip to the Channel, where a fast ship awaits.

Truthfully, Monro is feeling more than a little under the weather after a big farewell the night before, and things are not improved by ‘the appalling smell of beer exhaled by our servants who had spent the night “celebrating”'.
¹⁰

Worse still? Suddenly there is a commotion, a flurry of activity bursting forth along the platform, scattering people and porters like chickens before a fox. One does not tarry before a ‘Gentleman' on a mission, and least of all when the said gentleman with the bow tie and bowler hat is Winston Churchill.

For it is he, and, huffing and puffing like the steam train itself, he throws a sheaf of papers through the window at Monro, and shouts, ‘Don't forget, if you evacuate it will be the biggest disaster since Corunna!'
¹¹

LATE OCTOBER 1915, GALLIPOLI, HUNKERING DOWN

After his victory for the ages atop Chunuk Bair back in August, Colonel Mustafa Kemal has remained at the front, though tensions between him and the leadership – particularly the German leadership of Liman von Sanders – are worse than ever.

What's more, on 20 September, Kemal had fallen ill, with what the doctor thought was malaria. It appears that his endless months at the front are beginning to wear him down at last, draining the vigour out of his watery blue eyes and crumpling his once handsome posture, much to the frustration of his ever-active mind. For the first time, he starts to think seriously of returning to Constantinople …

30 OCTOBER 1915, A WHIRLWIND HITS THE PENINSULA

It is typical of General Sir Charles Monro. No nonsense, straight to the point, get the job done, what!

Another man taking over such a command might ease his way into the job and bit by bit come to understand its contours. But not this 55-year-old graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, a professional soldier all his life, eager to get to the task that has been set for him by the Dardanelles Committee, to determine the advisability of evacuation – not that he tells anyone that.

Only 36 hours after arriving at Imbros, Monro boards a destroyer and visits, in just the one day – in fact, in no more than six hours – all of Cape Helles, Anzac Cove and Suvla Bay, firing off questions to the cabal of senior officers in each spot, who are of course on hand to greet him. True, the angle of his questioning seems more aligned with that of a man seeking answers that will buttress his already strong opinions on the matter, rather than seeking to shed light – but questions they are.

He seeks to know the attacking ability, if any, that remains in the men in charge, the security of their supply lines and the state of their stores, their ability to withstand the winter, the state of their troops, and their estimation of the state of the enemy troops – their capability and intentions.

He is appalled, though not particularly surprised, by the answers. Everyone is exhausted, morale is low, sickness is endemic – 500 evacuations a day over the last month – supplies are spasmodic and both sides appear to be essentially spent in terms of mounting the force necessary to strike a serious blow on their enemy.

Surely, nowhere can things be grimmer than here at Anzac Cove? One glance shows an entire army clinging to the cliffs for dear life, and a pall of exhaustion, desiccation and devastation hanging over the entire place. ‘Like Alice in Wonderland,' Monro comments to Aspinall beside him. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.'
¹²

Cognisant of his instructions to check the dugouts and trenches for how well they would stand up to the German modern armaments (including howitzers and heavy shells) now believed to be on their way to Turkey, he is blunt, telling Birdwood that, on the Western Front, ‘nothing less than from twelve to sixteen feet of head-cover was considered sufficient; and for safety every deep shelter must have several exits'.
¹³
Anzac would never withstand serious German shelling.

But then he sees Suvla Bay and the whole setup is even worse. At least at Anzac, there is a sense of aggression against the Turks. Though there have been no major actions since the battle of Hill 60, small-scale trench warfare has continued, and Birdwood has particularly pushed the tunnelling to undermine the enemy at Posts including Pope's, Quinn's and Courtney's. The most ambitious of all is a 60-foot tunnel to be dug beneath the Nek, large enough to accommodate troops two abreast that would emerge behind the enemy's trenches. Mining and counter-mining, explosion and counter-explosion of tunnel galleries has become the order of the day. That notwithstanding, the general feeling is one of exhaustion and ennui.

And there are people in London, who haven't seen this, who think it is feasible that an army clearly so exhausted can hang on through winter? That they can maybe even break out and make their way to Constantinople after everything they've been through? Not even the Generals on site appear to believe that, having given Monro a formal paper on his arrival advising that it would take no fewer than 400,000 men to get through to the Narrows, and that no attack could begin until the spring.

Yes,
400,000
men! Men who should be in France killing Germans, not here in the Dardanelles wasting their time and losing their lives uselessly. It is not only a nonsense, but an obvious nonsense.

Lord Kitchener receives Monro's report the following day at the War Office:

As simple as that. Perhaps the Anzacs might be able to hold on over the winter, but that is it. Much better to acknowledge the reality that they are wasting their time here. Far better to get them back to Egypt – at least, as many as can be safely evacuated – and have them recuperate so they can live to fight another day.

And yet, if Kitchener is astounded to receive such a clear-cut call for evacuation, it is as nothing to his reaction a short time later, when, in a follow-up cable, Monro gives his estimate as to how many men might be lost in evacuating: between 30 and 40 per cent. Yes, that is a little better than the forecast by Hamilton, but that had been a man arguing the virtues of the status quo and trying to hold onto his job. This estimate, presumably, is a cold-eyed calculation: 40,000 men, or thereabouts, consigned to their death or capture if they pull out.

Kitchener is implacably opposed and sends a cable to Birdwood:

But for most members of the Cabinet, Monro's views carry weight. He is an officer of undoubted military expertise, with no investment in staying, because he had no part in the decision to go in the first place. He has looked, he has calculated, and he has … decided. (By any estimation, the embittered Winston Churchill's summation that ‘he came, he saw, he capitulated' is grossly unfair.)
¹⁶

So, from this point, the decision to evacuate should be straightforward – particularly when Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, now returned to London, starts giving lectures, covered by the newspapers, where he talks openly about the Dardanelles disaster. ‘In his opinion,' notes
The Times
, ‘it would have been much wiser never to have landed at Anzac … and [he] pointed out what we should have to face if we were obliged to stay on the Peninsula during the winter.'
¹⁷

But, in fact, despite the formal advice to get out of the Dardanelles, and the growing outcry at what is happening there, the resistance to leaving remains formidable. For look there!

Even all these months on, the idea of storming the Dardanelles with the Fleet, supported by the army,
still
has not died. And the man promoting it door to door in London is none other than Commodore Roger Keyes. A devotee, back in March, to the idea that forcing the Dardanelles was sound – it was just that the execution lacked vigour – he feels the same now, though with even more passion. On his side, Keyes has the strong support of Admiral Wemyss, and the two push hard on the plan they have worked out together: just like March, but more so!

What they must do, you see, is attack at the darkest hour just before a dawn, further clouded by the smokescreen they will lay down, and then simply charge at the minefields and the Narrows – minesweepers and destroyers to the fore. Yes, in this way they will lose some vessels, maybe many, but the point is that some are bound to get through! And, once through, all the old rules would apply. Wave one Union Jack in the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish war would be over!

Excellent.

Kitchener loves this revisitation of the old plan from the first, embracing it in the way a drowning man embraces a lifebuoy when his ship is sinking.