Transcriber's Note.
Apparent typographical errors have been corrected. The use of hyphens
and of accents has been rationalised.
Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Small capitals have been
replaced by full capitals. "oe" ligatures have been removed.
Superscripted characters have been replaced by ordinary font and
preceded by an apostrophe.
Section headings in chapter II, which are in italics, are preceded by
two blank lines. Elsewhere two blank lines between paragraphs indicate
that they were widely separated in the original text.
GALLIPOLI
[Illustration: Publisher's Mark]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
GALLIPOLI
BY
JOHN MASEFIELD
Author of "The Everlasting Mercy," "The
Story of a Round House," etc.
_ILLUSTRATED_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1916,
BY JOHN MASEFIELD
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1916.
Reprinted November, twice, December, 1916.
DEDICATED
WITH DEEP RESPECT AND ADMIRATION TO
_General Sir Ian Hamilton, G.C.B., D.S.O._
AND
_The Officers and Men under his Command_,
March to October, 1915.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
Map No. 1 4
Map No. 2 38
A view showing Morte Bay, De Tott's Battery,
and the Asiatic Coast 46
A remarkable view of V Beach 48
The S.S. _River Clyde_ 52
Some of the barbed wire entanglements near Sedd-el-Bahr 56
Exercising mules 92
Anzac from the Sea 116
View of Anzac, looking towards Suvla 134
Map No. 3 136
A "long focus" view taken over the top of our trenches at Anzac 144
Australians at work at Anzac two days before the
evacuation took place 146
A boatload of British troops leaving the S.S. _Nile_
for one of the landing beaches 148
Inside an Australian trench 162
An Australian bringing in a wounded comrade to
hospital 224
GALLIPOLI
I
Oliver said ... "I have seen the Saracens: the valley and the mountains
are covered with them; and the lowlands and all the plains; great are
the hosts of that strange people; we have here a very little company."
Roland answered ... "My heart is the bigger for that. Please God and His
holiest angels, France shall never lose her name through me."
_The Song of Roland._
A little while ago, during a short visit to America, I was often
questioned about the Dardanelles Campaign. People asked me why that
attempt had been made, why it had been made in that particular manner,
why other courses had not been taken, why this had been done and that
either neglected or forgotten, and whether a little more persistence,
here or there, would not have given us the victory.
These questions were often followed by criticism of various kinds, some
of it plainly suggested by our enemies, some of it shrewd, and some the
honest opinion of men and women happily ignorant of modern war. I
answered questions and criticism as best I could, but in the next town
they were repeated to me, and in the town beyond reiterated, until I
felt the need of a leaflet printed for distribution, giving my views of
the matter.
Later, when there was leisure, I began to consider the Dardanelles
Campaign, not as a tragedy, nor as a mistake, but as a great human
effort, which came, more than once, very near to triumph, achieved the
impossible many times, and failed, in the end, as many great deeds of
arms have failed, from something which had nothing to do with arms nor
with the men who bore them. That the effort failed is not against it;
much that is most splendid in military history failed, many great things
and noble men have failed. To myself, this failure is the second grand
event of the war; the first was Belgium's answer to the German ultimatum.
[Illustration: Map No. 1
_Stanford's Geog'l Estab't London._]
The Peninsula of Gallipoli, or Thracian Chersonese, from its beginning
in the Gulf of Xeros to its extremity at Cape Helles, is a tongue of
hilly land about fifty-three miles long, between the Ægean Sea and the
Straits of the Dardanelles. At its northeastern, Gulf of Xeros or
European end it is four or five miles broad, then a little to the south
of the town of Bulair, it narrows to three miles, in a contraction or
neck which was fortified during the Crimean War by French and English
soldiers. This fortification is known as the Lines of Bulair. Beyond
these lines, to the southwest, the peninsula broadens in a westward
direction, and attains its maximum breadth, of about twelve miles, some
twenty-four miles from Bulair, between the two points of Cape Suvla, on
the sea, and Cape Uzun, within the Straits. Beyond this broad part is a
second contraction or neck, less than five miles across, and beyond
this, pointing roughly west-southwesterly, is the final tongue or finger
of the Peninsula, an isosceles triangle of land with a base of some
seven miles, and two sides of thirteen miles each, converging in the
blunt tip (perhaps a mile and a half across) between Cape Helles and
Cape Tekke. There is no railway within the peninsula, but bad roads,
possible for wheeled traffic, wind in the valleys, skirting the hills
and linking up the principal villages. Most of the travelling and
commerce of the peninsula is done by boat, along the Straits, between
the little port of Maidos, near the Narrows, and the town of Gallipoli
(the chief town) near the Sea of Marmora. From Gallipoli there is a fair
road to Bulair and beyond. Some twenty other small towns or hamlets are
scattered here and there in the well-watered valleys in the central
broad portion of the Peninsula. The inhabitants are mostly small
cultivators with olive and currant orchards, a few vineyards and patches
of beans and grains; but not a hundredth part of the land is under
cultivation.
The sea shore, like the Straits shore, is mainly steep-to, with abrupt
sandy cliffs rising from the sea to a height of from one hundred to
three hundred feet. At irregular and rare intervals these cliffs are
broken by the ravines or gullies down which the autumnal and winter
rains escape; at the sea mouth of these gullies are sometimes narrow
strips of stony or sandy beach.
Viewed from the sea, the Peninsula is singularly beautiful. It rises and
falls in gentle and stately hills between four hundred and eleven
hundred feet high, the highest being at about the centre. In its colour
(after the brief spring) in its gentle beauty, and the grace and
austerity of its line, it resembles those parts of Cornwall to the north
of Padstow from which one can see Brown Willie. Some Irish hills recall
it. I know no American landscape like it.
In the brief spring the open ground is covered with flowers, but there
is not much open ground; in the Cape Helles district it is mainly poor
land growing heather and thyme; further north there is abundant scrub,
low shrubs and brushwood, from two to four feet high, frequently very
thick. The trees are mostly stunted firs, and very numerous in the
south, where the fighting was, but more frequently north of Suvla. In
one or two of the villages there are fruit trees; on some of the hills
there are small clumps of pine. Viewed from the sea the Peninsula looks
waterless and sun-smitten; the few water-courses are deep ravines
showing no water. Outwardly, from a distance, it is a stately land of
beautiful graceful hills rolling in suave yet austere lines and covered
with a fleece of brushwood. In reality the suave and graceful hills are
exceedingly steep, much broken and roughly indented with gullies, clefts
and narrow irregular valleys. The soil is something between a sand and a
marl, loose and apt to blow about in dry weather when not bound down by
the roots of brushwood, but sticky when wet.
Those who look at the southwestern end of the Peninsula, between Cape
Suvla and Cape Helles, will see three heights greater than the rolling
wold or downland around them. Seven miles southeast from Cape Suvla is
the great and beautiful peaked hill of Sari Bair, 970 feet high, very
steep on its sea side and thickly fleeced with scrub. This hill commands
the landing place at Suvla. Seven miles south from Sari Bair is the long
dominating plateau of Kilid Bahr, which runs inland from the Straits, at
heights varying between five and seven hundred feet, to within two miles
of the sea. This plateau commands the Narrows of the Hellespont. Five
miles further to the southwest and less than six miles from Cape Helles
is the bare and lonely lump of Achi Baba, 590 feet high. This hill
commands the landing place at Cape Helles. These hills and the ground
commanded by them were the scenes of some of the noblest heroism which
ever went far to atone for the infamy of war. Here the efforts of our
men were made.
Those who wish to imagine the scenes must think of twenty miles of any
rough and steep sea coast known to them, picturing it as roadless,
waterless, much broken with gullies, covered with scrub, sandy, loose
and difficult to walk on, and without more than two miles of accessible
landing throughout its length. Let them picture this familiar twenty
miles as dominated at intervals by three hills bigger than the hills
about them, the north hill a peak, the centre a ridge or plateau, and
the south hill a lump. Then let them imagine the hills entrenched, the
landing mined, the beaches tangled with barbed wire, ranged by howitzers
and swept by machine guns, and themselves three thousand miles from
home, going out before dawn, with rifles, packs, and water bottles, to
pass the mines under shell fire, cut through the wire under machine gun
fire, clamber up the hills under the fire of all arms, by the glare of
shell-bursts in the withering and crashing tumult of modern war, and
then to dig themselves in in a waterless and burning hill while a more
numerous enemy charge them with the bayonet. And let them imagine
themselves enduring this night after night, day after day, without rest
or solace, nor respite from the peril of death, seeing their friends
killed, and their position imperilled, getting their food, their
munitions, even their drink, from the jaws of death, and their breath
from the taint of death, and their brief sleep upon the dust of death.
Let them imagine themselves driven mad by heat and toil and thirst by
day, shaken by frost at midnight, weakened by disease and broken by
pestilence, yet rising on the word with a shout and going forward to die
in exultation in a cause foredoomed and almost hopeless. Only then will
they begin, even dimly, to understand what our seizing and holding of
the landings meant.
All down the southeastern coast of this Peninsula or outlier from Europe
is a channel of sea, known, anciently, as the Hellespont, but in modern
times more generally as the Dardanelles, from old fortifications of that
name near the southwestern end of the Strait. This channel, two or three
miles across at its southwestern end, broadens rapidly to four or five,
then narrows to two, then, for a short reach, to one mile or less, after
which (with one more contraction) it maintains a steady breadth of two
or three miles till it opens into the great salt lake of the Sea of
Marmora, and thence by another narrow reach into the Black Sea, or
Euxine.
It is a deep water channel, with from 25 to 50 fathoms of water in it
throughout its length. The Gallipoli, or European, shore is steep-to,
with a couple of fathoms of water close inshore, save in one or two
beaches, where it shoals. On the Asian shore, where the ground is lower
and the coast more shelving, the water is shallower. A swift current of
from two to three knots an hour runs always down the channel from the
Sea of Marmora; and this with a southwesterly gale against it makes a
nasty sea.
This water of the Hellespont is the most important channel of water in
the world. It is the one entrance and exit to the Black Sea, the mouths
of the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper and Don and the great ports of
Constantinople, Odessa and Sebastopol. He who controls the channel
controls those ports, with their wealth and their power to affect great
conflicts. The most famous war of all times was fought not for any human
Helen but to control that channel. Our Dardanelles campaign was
undertaken to win through it a free passage for the ships of the Allied
Powers.
While the war was still young it became necessary to attempt this
passage for five reasons: 1. To break the link by which Turkey keeps her
hold as a European Power. 2. To divert a large part of the Turkish army
from operations against our Russian Allies in the Caucasus and
elsewhere. 3. To pass into Russia, at a time when her northern ports
were closed by ice, the rifles and munitions of war of which her armies
were in need. 4. To bring out of Southern Russia the great stores of
wheat lying there waiting shipment. 5. If possible, to prevent, by a
successful deed of arms in the Near East, any new alliance against us
among the Balkan peoples.
In its simplest form the problem was to force a passage through the
defended channel of the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmora, to attack
the capital of Turkey in Europe, to win through the Bosphorus into the
Black Sea, securing each step in the advance against reconquest by the
Turks, so that ships might pass from the Ægean to the Russian ports in
the Black Sea, bringing to the Russians arms for their unequipped troops
and taking from them the corn of the harvests of Southern Russia. The
main problem was to force a passage through the defended channel of the
Hellespont.
This passage had been forced in the past by a British naval squadron. In
February, 1807, Sir John Duckworth sailed through with seven ships of
the line and some smaller vessels, silenced the forts at Sestos and
Abydos and destroyed some Turkish ships; and then, fearing that the
Turks, helped by French engineers, would so improve the fortifications
that he would never be able to get back, he returned. On his return, one
of his ships, the _Endymion_ frigate, 40 guns, received in her hull two
stone shot each 26 inches in diameter.
The permanent fortifications guarding the Channel were added to and
improved during the nineteenth century. At the outbreak of the war with
Italy, four years ago, they were equipped (perhaps by German officers)
with modern weapons. An attempt made by Italian torpedo boats to rush
the Straits by night was discovered by searchlights and checked by a
heavy fire from quick-firing and other guns. All the torpedo boats
engaged in the operations were hit and compelled to return.
When Turkey entered the war against the Allied Powers, her officers had
every reason to expect that the British or French fleets would attempt
to force the Channel. The military prize, Constantinople and the control
of the Black Sea (whether for peace or for offence), was too great a
temptation to be resisted. Helped by their German allies they prepared
for this attack with skill, knowledge and imagination. The Turks had no
effective battle fleet, as in the sixteenth century, when they sought
their enemies upon their own coasts; and had they had one they could not
have passed the British fleet blockading the Dardanelles; but they
prepared the channel and its shores so that no enemy ship might pass to
seek them.
More than the two great wars, in South Africa and Manchuria, the present
war has shown:
(a) that in modern war, defence is easier and less costly in men and
munitions, however much less decisive, than attack;
(b) that the ancient type of permanent fortress, built of steel,
concrete and heavy masonry is much less easy to defend against the
fire of heavy modern howitzers and high explosives than temporary
field works, dug into the earth and protected by earth and sandbags;
(c) that the fire of modern long range guns is wasteful and ineffective
unless the object fired at can be accurately ranged, and the fire
controlled by officers who can watch the bursting of the shells on
or near the target;
(d) that in restricted waters the fixed or floating mine, filled with
high explosive, is a sure defence against enemy ships.
Beginning with proposition (a), the Turks argued that (unlike most
defences) a defence of the passage of the Dardanelles against naval
attack might well be decisive (i.e., that it might well cause the attack
to be abandoned or even destroy the attacking ships) since ships engaged
in the attack would be under every disadvantage, since:
(b) Their guns, however heavy, would not be overwhelmingly successful
against temporary field works and gun emplacements.
(c) Their officers, unable in the first place to locate the guns hidden
on the shore, would be unable to observe the effect of their fire, and
therefore unable to direct it, and this disadvantage would become
greater as the ships advanced within the channel and became shut in by
the banks.
(d) They would be unable to enter the channel until the waters had been
dragged for mines by mine sweepers. The batteries of field guns hidden
on the coast would perhaps be sufficient to stop the progress of the
mine sweepers. If not, floating mines, alongshore torpedo tubes, and the
accurately ranged and directed fire of heavy howitzers would perhaps
sink the ships of war as they advanced.
(e) A ship, if damaged, would be five hundred miles from any friendly
dock and seven hundred miles from any friendly arsenal. Replenishments
of ammunition, fuel, food and water would have to be brought to the
attacking fleet across these distances of sea, past many islands and
through one or two channels well suited to be the lurking grounds for
enemy submarines.
On the other hand, there was the possibility that the heavy naval guns
would make the field works untenable, that observers in aeroplanes and
seaplanes would locate, range and observe the fire upon the hidden
batteries, that thus the mine sweepers would be able to clear a passage
up the Straits without undue interruption, and complete the task
demanded of them without military assistance.
Before operations could be begun by the Allied fleets it was necessary
to secure some harbour, as close as possible to the Straits, to serve as
what is called an advanced or subsidiary base, where large stores of
necessaries, such as fuel and munitions, could be accumulated for future
use by the ships engaged.
The port of Mudros, in Lemnos, was selected as this subsidiary base.
This great natural harbour, measuring some two by three miles across,
provides good holding ground in from five to seven fathoms of water for
half the ships in the world. Two islands in the fairway divide the
entrance into three passages, and make it more easy for the naval
officers to defend the approaches. It is a safe harbour for ocean-going
ships in all weathers, but with northerly or southerly gales, such as
spring up very rapidly there in the changeable seasons of the year and
blow with great violence for some hours at a time, the port is much
wind-swept and the sea makes it dangerous for boats to lie alongside
ships. Mudros itself, the town from which the port is named, is a small
collection of wretched houses inhabited by Levantines, who live by
fishery, petty commerce, and a few olive gardens and vineyards. It has a
cathedral or largish church, and a small wooden pier, without
appliances, for the use of the native boatmen. The town lies to the east
of the harbour, on some rising ground or sand which stands up a little
higher than the surrounding country. Behind it, rather more than a mile
away, are barren hills of some 800 or 900 feet. The port is ringed in
with these hills; it looks like a great extinct crater flooded by the
sea. Over the hills in fair weather the peaks of Samothrace can be seen.
When the spring flowers have withered the island is of the colour of a
lion's skin. Its only beauty then is that of changing light.
Mudros in itself offered nothing to the Allied fleets but a safe
anchorage. It could not even supply the ships with fresh water, let
alone meat, bread and vegetables. The island produces little for its few
inhabitants; its wealth of a few goats, fish, olives and currants could
be bought up in a week by the crew of one battleship. Everything
necessary for the operations had therefore to be brought by sea and
stored in Mudros till wanted. When this is grasped, the difficulties of
the undertaking will be understood. There was no dock, wharf nor crane
in Mudros, nor any place in the harbour where a dock or wharf could be
built without an immense labour of dredging. Ships could not be repaired
nor dry-docked there, nor could they discharge and receive heavy stores
save by their own winches and derricks. Throughout the operations, ships
had to serve as wharves, and ships' derricks as cranes, and goods were
shipped, re-shipped and trans-shipped by that incessant manual labour
which is the larger half of war.
On the 18th February and following days, the Allied Fleets attacked the
forts at the entrance to the Straits and soon silenced them. These were
old-fashioned stone structures of great strength, they were knocked
about and made untenable by the fire from the ships, but not destroyed.
After this first easy success came delay, for the real obstacles lay
within the Straits, between Cape Helles and the Narrows. Here, at
intervals, very skilfully laid, commanded by many guns, ranged to the
inch, were eight big mine fields, stretching almost across the navigable
channel in different directions. No ships could pass this part of the
Straits until the mines had been groped for and removed. In thick and
violent weather, under heavy fire, and troubled by the strong current,
the mine-sweepers began to remove them, helped by the guns of the fleet.
But the fleet's fire could not destroy the mobile field guns and
howitzers hidden in the gullies and nullahs (invisible from the ships)
on the Asian shore and to the east of Achi Baba. The Boers, and later,
the Japanese, had shown how difficult it is to locate well-concealed
guns. Even when sea- and aero-planes had seen and signalled the
whereabouts of the hidden guns, the ships could only fire at the flashes
and at most hit some of the gunners; if their fire became too accurate
the gunners would retire to their shelters, or withdraw their guns to
new hidden emplacements. These hidden guns, firing continually upon the
mine-sweepers, made the clearing of the mine fields towards the Narrows
a slow and bloody task.
On the 18th March, the ships developed a fierce fire upon the shore
defences, and in the midst of the engagement the Turks floated some
large mines upon the attacking ships and by these means sank three
battleships, one French, two English, the French ship with all her crew.
Heavy and unsettled weather which made mine-sweeping impossible broke
off serious operations for some days. During these days it was decided,
though with grave misgivings among the counsellors, that an army should
be landed on the Peninsula to second the next naval attack.
It was now a month since the operations had begun, and the original
decision, to leave the issue solely to the ships, had delayed the
concentration of the troops needed for the task. The army, under the
supreme command of General Sir Ian Hamilton, was assembling, but not yet
concentrated nor on the scene. Some of it was in Egypt, some in
transports at sea. When it was decided to use the army in the venture,
much necessary work had still to be done. The Turks had now been given
so much time to defend the landing places that to get our troops ashore
at all called for the most elaborate preparation and the working out of
careful schemes with the naval officers. The Germans boasted that our
troops would never be able to land; possibly at first thought, many
soldiers would have agreed with them, but English soldiers and sailors
are not Germans; they are, as Carlyle says, "far other"; our Admirals
and General felt that with courage and a brave face our troops could
land. It was true that the well-armed Turks were amply ready and could
easily concentrate against any army which we could land and supply, a
far larger force, more easily supplied and supported. But in the narrow
Peninsula they could not move their larger forces so as to out-flank us.
Our flanks could be protected always by the fleet. And besides, in war,
fortune plays a large part, and skill, courage and resolution, and that
fine blending of all three in the uncommon sense called genius, have
often triumphed even where common sense has failed. It was necessary
that we should divert large armies of Turks from our Russian Allies in
the Caucasus; it was desirable to strike the imaginations of the Balkan
States by some daring feat of arms close to them; it was vital to our
enterprise in Mesopotamia and to the safety of Egypt that we should
alarm the Turks for their capital and make them withdraw their armies
from their frontiers. This operation, striking at the heart of the
Turkish Empire, was the readiest way to do all these things.
The army designated for this honourable and dangerous task consisted of
the following:
A division of French soldiers, the Corps Expeditionnaire de l'Orient,
under M. le General d'Amade. This division was made up of French
Territorial soldiers and Senegalese.
The 29th Division of British regular troops.
The Royal Naval Division.
The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
The French Division and the 29th Division of British Regular soldiers
were men who had been fully trained in time of peace, but the Australian
and New Zealand Army Corps and the Royal Naval Division, who together
made up more than half the army, were almost all men who had enlisted
since the declaration of war, and had had not more than six months'
active training. They were, however, the finest body of young men ever
brought together in modern times. For physical beauty and nobility of
bearing they surpassed any men I have ever seen; they walked and looked
like the kings in old poems, and reminded me of the line in Shakespeare:
"Baited like eagles having lately bathed."
As their officers put it, "they were in the pink of condition and didn't
care a damn for anybody." Most of these new and irregular formations
were going into action for the first time, to receive their baptism of
fire in "a feat of arms only possible to the flower of a very fine army."
Having decided to use the army, the question how to use it was left to
the Commanding General, whose task was to help the British fleet through
the Narrows. Those who have criticised the operations to me, even those
who know, or pretended to know the country and military matters (but who
were, for the most part, the gulls or agents of German propaganda)
raised, nearly always, one or both of the following alternatives to the
attack used by Sir Ian Hamilton. They have asked:
(1) Why did he not attack at or to the north of Bulair in the Gulf of
Xeros, or
(2) Why did he not attack along the Asiatic coast, instead of where he
did, at Cape Helles and Anzac?
Those who have asked these questions have always insisted to me that had
he chosen either alternative his efforts must have been successful. It
may be well to set down here the final and sufficient reasons against
either folly.
Firstly, then, the reasons against landing the army at or to the north
of Bulair in the Gulf of Xeros.
1. The task demanded of the army was, to second the naval attack in the
Straits, i.e., by seizing and occupying, if possible, the high ground in
the Peninsula from which the Turkish guns molested the mine-sweepers. As
this high ground commanded the Asiatic shore, its occupation by the
British troops would have made possible the passage of the Straits. This
and this alone was the task demanded of the army, no adventure upon
Constantinople was designed or possible with the numbers of men
available. How the army could have seconded the naval attack by landing
three or four days' march from the Narrows within easy reach of the
large Turkish armies in European Turkey is not clear.
Nevertheless, our task was to land the army and all landing places had
to be examined. Pass now to:
(a) Bulair was carefully reconnoitred and found to be a natural
stronghold, so fortified with earthworks that there was no chance of
taking it. Ten thousand Turks had been digging there for a month, and
had made it impregnable. There are only two landing places near Bulair,
one (a very bad one) in a swamp or salt-marsh to the east, the other in
a kind of death-trap ravine to the west, both dominated by high ground
in front, and one (the eastward) commanded also from the rear. Had the
army, or any large part of it, landed at either beach, it would have
been decimated in the act and then held up by the fortress.
(b) Had the army landed to the north of Bulair on the coast of European
Turkey it would have been in grave danger of destruction. Large Turkish
armies could have marched upon its left and front from Adrianople and
Rodosto, while, as it advanced, the large army in Gallipoli, reinforced
from Asia across the Straits, could have marched from Bulair and fallen
upon its right flank and rear.
(c) But even had it beaten these armies, some four times its own
strength, it would none the less have perished, through failure of
supplies, since no European army could hope to live upon a Turkish
province in the spring, and European supplies could have been brought to
it only with the utmost difficulty and danger. There is no port upon
that part of the Turkish coast; no shelter from the violent southerly
gales, and no depth of water near the shore. In consequence, no
transports of any size could approach within some miles of the coast to
land either troops or stores. Even had there been depth of water for
them, transports could not have discharged upon the coast because of the
danger from submarines. They would have been compelled to discharge in
the safe harbour of the subsidiary base at Mudros in Lemnos, and (as
happened with the fighting where it was) their freight, whether men or
stores, re-shipped into small ships of too light draught to be in danger
from submarines, and by them conveyed to the landing places. But this
system, which never quite failed at Anzac and Cape Helles, would have
failed on the Xeros coast. Anzac is some forty miles from Mudros, the
Xeros coast is eighty, or twice the distance. Had the army landed at
Xeros, it would have been upon an unproductive enemy territory in an
unsettled season of the year, from eighty to twenty hours' steam from
their own safe subsidiary base. A stormy week might have cut them off at
any time from all possibility of obtaining a man, a biscuit, a cartridge
or even a drink of water, and this upon ground where they could with
little trouble be outnumbered by armies four times their strength with
sound communications.
Secondly, for the reasons against attacking along the Asiatic coast:
(a) The coast is commanded from the Gallipoli coast and therefore less
important to those trying to second a naval attack upon the Narrows.
(b) An army advancing from Kum Kale along the Asiatic shore would be
forced to draw its supplies from overseas. As it advanced, its
communications could be cut with great ease at any point by the hordes
of armed Turks in Asia Minor.
(c) The Turkish armies in Asia Minor would have attacked it in the right
and rear, those from Bulair and Rodosto would have ferried over and
attacked it in front, the guns in Gallipoli would have shelled its left,
and the task made impracticable.
Some of those who raised these alternatives raised a third; when the
first two had been disposed of, they asked, "Even if the army could not
have landed at Bulair or on the Asian coast, why did it land where it
did land, on those suicidal beaches?" The answer to this criticism is as
follows: It landed on those beaches because there were no others on the
Peninsula, because the only landing places at which troops could be got
ashore with any prospect of success however slight were just those three
or four small beaches near Cape Helles, at the southwest end of the
Peninsula, and the one rather longer beach to the north of Gaba or Kaba
Tepe. All these beaches were seen to be strongly defended, with barbed
wire entanglements on the shore and under the water, with sea and land
mines, with strongly entrenched riflemen, many machine guns, and an
ample artillery. In addition, the beaches close to Cape Helles were
within range of big guns mounted near Troy on the Asian shore, and the
beach near Gaba Tepe was ranged by the guns in the olive groves to the
south and on the hills to the north of it. A strong Turkish army held
the Peninsula, and very powerful reserves were at Bulair, all well
supplied (chiefly by boat from the Asian shore) with food and munitions.
German officers had organised the defence of the Peninsula with great
professional skill. They had made it a fortress of great strength,
differing from all other fortresses in this, that besides being almost
impregnable it was almost unapproachable. But our army had its task to
do, there was no other means of doing it, and our men had to do what
they could. Any one trying to land, to besiege that fortress, had to do
so by boat or lighter under every gun in the Turkish army. The Turks and
the Germans knew, better than we, what few and narrow landing places
were possible to our men, they had more than two months of time in which
to make those landing places fatal to any enemy within a mile of them,
yet our men came from three thousand miles away, passed that mile of
massacre, landed and held on with all their guns, stores, animals and
appliances, in spite of the Turk and his ally, who outnumbered them at
every point.
No army in history has made a more heroic attack; no army in history has
been set such a task. No other body of men in any modern war has been
called upon to land over mined and wired waters under the cross fire of
machine guns. The Japanese at Chinampo and Chemulpho were not opposed,
the Russians at Pitezwo were not prepared, the Spaniards at Daiquiri
made no fight. Our men achieved a feat without parallel in war and no
other troops in the world (not even Japanese or Gurkhas or Ghazis in the
hope of heaven) would have made good those beaches on the 25th of April.
II
Then said Roland: "Oliver, companion, brother ... we shall have a strong
and tough battle, such as man never saw fought. But I shall strike with
my sword, and you, comrade, will strike with yours; we have borne our
swords in so many lands, we have ended so many battles with them, that
no evil song shall be sung of them." ... At these words the Franks went
forward gladly.
_The Song of Roland._
Let the reader now try to imagine the nature of the landing. In order to
puzzle the Turkish commander, to make him hesitate and divide his
forces, it was necessary to land or pretend to land, in some force,
simultaneously at various places. A feint of landing was to be made near
Bulair, the French Corps Expeditionnaire was to land at Kum Kale, to
attack and silence the Asiatic fortifications and batteries, the
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps was to land at or near Gaba Tepe,
while men of the 29th and Royal Naval Divisions landed at or near Cape
Helles, some towards Krithia on the north, others nearer Sedd-el-Bahr on
the southwest and south. The main attacks were to be those near Gaba
Tepe and Cape Helles.
[Illustration: Map No. 2
_Stanford's Geog'l Estab't London._]
At Cape Helles three principal landings were to be made at the following
places:
1. At Beach V, a small semi-circular sandy bay, 300 yards across, just
west of the ruins of Sedd-el-Bahr castle. The ground rises steeply round
the half circle of the bay exactly as the seats rise in an amphitheatre.
Modern defence could not ask for a more perfect site.
2. At Beach W (to the west of V), where a small sandy bay under Cape
Tekke offered a landing upon a strip of sand about the size of Beach V.
The slope upward from this beach is more gentle than at V, through a
succession of sand dunes, above which the ground was strongly
entrenched. The cliffs north and south are precipitous, and make the
beach a kind of gully or ravine. The Turks had placed machine guns in
holes in the cliff, had wired and mined both beach and bay, and thrown
up strong redoubts to flank them. Beach W was a death trap.
3. At Beach X (north of W, on the other or northern side of Cape Tekke),
a narrow strip of sand, 200 yards long, at the foot of a low cliff.
This, though too small to serve for the quick passage ashore of many men
at a time, was a slightly easier landing place than the other two, owing
to the lie of the ground.
Besides these main landings, two minor landings were to be made as
follows:
4. At Beach S, a small beach, within the Straits, beyond Sedd-el-Bahr.
5. At Beach Y (on the Ægean, to the west of Krithia), a strip of sand
below a precipitous cliff, gashed with steep, crumbling, and
scrub-covered gullies.
These two minor landings were to protect the flanks of the main landing
parties, "to disseminate the forces of the enemy and to interrupt the
arrival of his reinforcements." They were to take place at dawn (at
about 5 A.M. or half an hour before the main attacks), without any
preliminary bombardment from the fleet upon the landing places.
Near Gaba Tepe only one landing was to be made, upon a small beach, 200
yards across, a mile to the north of Gaba Tepe promontory. The ground
beyond this beach is abrupt sandy cliff, covered with scrub, flanked by
Gaba Tepe, and commanded by the land to shoreward.
For some days before the landing, the Army lay at Mudros, in Lemnos,
aboard its transports, or engaged in tactical exercises ashore and in
the harbour. Much bitter and ignorant criticism has been passed upon
this delay, which was, unfortunately, very necessary. The month of
April, 1915, in the Ægean, was a month of unusually unsettled weather;
it was quite impossible to attempt the landing without calm water and
the likelihood of fine weather for some days. In rough weather it would
have been impossible to land laden soldiers with their stores through
the surf of open beaches, under heavy fire, and those who maintain, that
"other soldiers" (i.e. themselves) would have made the attempt, can have
no knowledge of what wading ashore from a boat, in bad weather, in the
Ægean or any other sea, even without a pack and with no enemy ahead, is
like. But in unsettled weather the Gallipoli coast is not only difficult
but exceedingly dangerous for small vessels. The currents are fierce,
and a short and ugly sea gets up quickly and makes towing hazardous. Had
the attempt been made in foul weather a great many men would have been
drowned, some few would have reached the shore, and then the ships would
have been forced off the coast. The few men left on the shore would have
had to fight there with neither supplies nor supports till the enemy
overwhelmed them.
Another reason for delay was the need for the most minute preparation.
Many armies have been landed from boats from the time of Pharaoh's
invasion of Punt until the present, but no men, not even Cæsar's army of
invasion in Britain, have had to land in an enemy's country with such a
prospect of difficulty before them. They were going to land on a
foodless cliff, five hundred miles from a store, in a place and at a
season in which the sea's rising might cut them from supply. They had to
take with them all things, munitions, guns, entrenching tools, sandbags,
provisions, clothing, medical stores, hospital equipment, mules, horses,
fodder, even water to drink, for the land produced not even that. These
military supplies had to be arranged in boats and lighters in such a way
that they might be thrust ashore with many thousands of men in all haste
but without confusion. All this world of preparation, which made each
unit landed a self-supporting army, took time and labour, how much can
only be judged by those who have done similar work.
On Friday, the 23rd of April, the weather cleared so that the work could
be begun. In fine weather in Mudros a haze of beauty comes upon the
hills and water till their loveliness is unearthly it is so rare. Then
the bay is like a blue jewel, and the hills lose their savagery, and
glow, and are gentle, and the sun comes up from Troy, and the peaks of
Samothrace change colour, and all the marvellous ships in the harbour
are transfigured. The land of Lemnos was beautiful with flowers at that
season, in the brief Ægean spring, and to seawards always, in the bay,
were the ships, more ships, perhaps, than any port of modern times has
known; they seemed like half the ships of the world. In this crowd of
shipping, strange beautiful Greek vessels passed, under rigs of old
time, with sheep and goats and fish, for sale, and the tugs of the
Thames and Mersey met again the ships they had towed of old, bearing a
new freight, of human courage. The transports (all painted black) lay in
tiers, well within the harbour, the men of war nearer Mudros and the
entrance. Now in all that city of ships, so busy with passing
picket-boats, and noisy with the labour of men, the getting of the
anchors began. Ship after ship, crammed with soldiers, moved slowly out
of harbour, in the lovely day, and felt again the heave of the sea. No
such gathering of fine ships has ever been seen upon this earth, and the
beauty and the exaltation of the youth upon them made them like sacred
things as they moved away. All the thousands of men aboard them,
gathered on deck to see, till each rail was thronged. These men had come
from all parts of the British world, from Africa, Australia, Canada,
India, the Mother Country, New Zealand and remote islands in the sea.
They had said good-bye to home that they might offer their lives in the
cause we stand for. In a few hours at most, as they well knew, perhaps a
tenth of them would have looked their last on the sun, and be a part of
foreign earth or dumb things that the tides push. Many of them would
have disappeared forever from the knowledge of man, blotted from the
book of life none would know how, by a fall or chance shot in the
darkness, in the blast of a shell, or alone, like a hurt beast, in some
scrub or gully, far from comrades and the English speech and the English
singing. And perhaps a third of them would be mangled, blinded or
broken, lamed, made imbecile or disfigured, with the colour and the
taste of life taken from them, so that they would never more move with
comrades nor exult in the sun. And those not taken thus would be under
the ground, sweating in the trench, carrying sandbags up the sap,
dodging death and danger, without rest or food or drink, in the blazing
sun or the frost of the Gallipoli night, till death seemed relaxation
and a wound a luxury. But as they moved out these things were but the
end they asked, the reward they had come for, the unseen cross upon the
breast. All that they felt was a gladness of exultation that their young
courage was to be used. They went like kings in a pageant to the
imminent death.
As they passed from moorings to the man-of-war anchorage on their way to
the sea, their feeling that they had done with life and were going out
to something new, welled up in those battalions; they cheered and
cheered till the harbour rang with cheering. As each ship crammed with
soldiers drew near the battleships, the men swung their caps and cheered
again, and the sailors answered, and the noise of cheering swelled, and
the men in the ships not yet moving joined in, and the men ashore, till
all the life in the harbour was giving thanks that it could go to death
rejoicing. All was beautiful in that gladness of men about to die, but
the most moving thing was the greatness of their generous hearts. As
they passed the French ships, the memory of old quarrels healed, and the
sense of what sacred France has done and endured, in this great war, and
the pride of having such men as the French for comrades, rose up in
their warm souls, and they cheered the French ships more, even, than
their own.
They left the harbour very, very slowly; this tumult of cheering lasted
a long time; no one who heard it will ever forget it, or think of it
unshaken. It broke the hearts of all there with pity and pride: it went
beyond the guard of the English heart. Presently all were out, and the
fleet stood across for Tenedos, and the sun went down with marvellous
colour, lighting island after island and the Asian peaks, and those left
behind in Mudros trimmed their lamps knowing that they had been for a
little brought near to the heart of things.
The next day, the 24th April, the troops of the landing parties went on
board the warships and mine-sweepers which were to take them ashore. At
midnight the fleet got under way from Tenedos and stood out for the
Peninsula. Dawn was to be at five, the landings on the flanks were to
take place then, the others at half-past five, after the fleet had
bombarded the beaches. Very few of the soldiers of the landing parties
slept that night; the excitement of the morrow kept them awake, as
happened to Nelson's sailors before Trafalgar. It was a very still fine
night, slightly hazy, with a sea so still that the ships had no trouble
with their long tows of boats and launches. As it began to grow light
the men went down into the boats, and the two flanking parties started
for the outer beaches S and Y. The guns of the fleet now opened a heavy
fire upon the Turkish positions and the big guns on the Asian shore sent
over a few shell in answer; but the Turks near the landing places
reserved their fire. During the intense bombardment by the fleet, when
the ships were trembling like animals with the blasts of the explosions,
the picket-boats towing the lighters went ahead and the tow-loads of
crowded men started for the main landings on beaches V, W and X.
[Illustration: A view showing Morto Bay, De Lott's Battery and the
Asiatic Coast]
It was now light, and the haze on Sedd-el-Bahr was clearing away so that
those in charge of the boats could see what they were doing. Had they
attempted an attack in the dark on those unsurveyed beaches among the
fierce and dangerous tide rips the loss of life would have been very
great. As it was, the exceeding fierceness of the currents added much to
the difficulty and danger of the task. We will take the landings in
succession.
_The Landing at V Beach, near Sedd-el-Bahr._
The men told off for this landing were: The Dublin Fusiliers, the
Munster Fusiliers, half a battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, and the
West Riding Field Company.
Three companies of the Dublin Fusiliers were to land from towed
lighters, the rest of the party from a tramp steamer, the collier _River
Clyde_. This ship, a conspicuous sea mark at Cape Helles throughout the
rest of the campaign, had been altered to carry and land troops. Great
gangways or entry ports had been cut in her sides on the level of her
between decks, and platforms had been built out upon her sides below
these, so that men might run from her in a hurry. The plan was to beach
her as near the shore as possible, and then drag or sweep the lighters,
which she towed, into position between her and the shore, so as to make
a kind of boat bridge from her to the beach. When the lighters were so
moored as to make this bridge, the entry ports were to be opened, the
waiting troops were to rush out on to the external platforms, run from
them on to the lighters and so to the shore. The ship's upper deck and
bridge were protected with boiler plate and sandbags, and a casement for
machine guns was built upon her fo'c'sle, so that she might reply to the
enemy's fire.
[Illustration: A remarkable view of V Beach, taken from S.S. _River
Clyde_]