being a part of a concerted scheme, was to be the only attack upon the
Turks in that quarter, and that he would have to withstand the greater
part of the Turkish army. This did not mean that the Turks could mass an
overwhelming strength against any part of his positions, since in the
narrow Peninsula there is not room for great numbers to manoeuvre; but
it meant that the Turks would have always within easy distance great
reserves of fresh men to take the place of those exhausted, and that
without a correspondingly great reserve we had little chance of decisive
success.
This change in the strategical scheme was made after we were committed
to the venture: it made a profound difference to our position.
Unfortunately we were so deeply engaged in other theatres that it was
impossible to change our plans as swiftly and as profoundly as our
chances. The great reserve could not be sent when it became necessary,
early in May, nor for more than two months. Until it came, it happened,
time after time, that even when we fought and beat back the Turks they
could be reinforced before we could. All through the campaign we fought
them and beat them back, but always, on the day after the battle, they
had a division of fresh men to put in to the defence, while we, who had
suffered more, being the attackers, had but a handful with which to
follow up the success.
People have said, "But you could have kept fresh divisions in reserve as
easily as the Turks. Why did you not send more men, so as to have them
ready to follow up a success?" I could never answer this question. It is
the vital question. The cry for "fifty thousand more men and plenty of
high explosive" went up daily from every trench in Gallipoli, and we
lost the campaign through not sending them in time. On the spot of
course our generals knew that war (like life) consists of a struggle
with disadvantages, and their struggle with these was a memorable one.
Only, when all was done, their situation remained that of the Frank
rearguard in the Song of Roland. In that poem the Franks could and did
beat the Saracens, but the Saracens brought up another army before the
Franks were reinforced. The Franks could and did beat that army, too,
but the Saracens brought up another army before the Franks were
reinforced. The Franks could and did beat that army, too, but then they
were spent and Roland had to sound his horn and Charlemagne would not
come to the summons of the horn, and the heroes were abandoned in the
dolorous pass.
Summer came upon Gallipoli with a blinding heat only comparable to New
York in July. The flowers which had been so gay with beauty in the
Helles fields in April soon wilted to stalks. The great slope of Cape
Helles took on a savage and African look of desolation. The air quivered
over the cracking land. In the blueness of the heat haze the graceful
terrible hills looked even more gentle and beautiful than before; and
one who was there said that "there were little birds that droned, rather
like the English yellow-hammers." With the heat, which was a new
experience to all the young English soldiers there, came a plague of
flies beyond all record and belief. Men ate and drank flies, the filthy
insects were everywhere. The ground in places was so dark with them,
that one could not be sure whether the patches were ground or flies. Our
camps and trenches were kept clean; they were well scavenged daily; but
only a few yards away were the Turk trenches, which were invariably
filthy: there the flies bred undisturbed, perhaps encouraged. There is a
fine modern poem which speaks of the Indian sun in summer as "the
blazing death-star." Men in Gallipoli in the summer of 1915 learned to
curse the sun as an enemy more cruel than the Turk. With the sun and the
plague of flies came the torment of thirst, one of the greatest torments
which life has the power to inflict.
At Cape Helles, in the summer, there was a shortage but no great
scarcity of water, for the Turk wells supplied more than half the army
and less than half the water needed had to be brought from abroad. At
Anzac however there was always a scarcity, for even in the spring not
more than a third of the water needed could be drawn from wells. At
first, water could be found by digging shallow pans in the beach, but
this method failed when the heats began. Two-thirds (or more) of the
water needed at Anzac had always to be brought from abroad, and to bring
this two-thirds regularly and to land it and store it under shell fire
was a difficult task. "When operations were on," as in the August
battle, the difficulty of distribution was added to the other
difficulties, and then indeed want of water brought our troops to
death's door. At Anzac "when operations were on" even in the intensest
heat the average ration of water for all purposes was, perhaps, at most,
a pint and a half, sometimes only a pint. And though this extremity was
as a rule only reached "when operations were on," when there was heavy
fighting, it was then that the need was greatest.
In peace, in comfortable homes, in cool weather, civilised people need
or consume a little less than three pints of liquid in each day. In hot
weather and when doing severe bodily labour they need more; perhaps half
a gallon in the day. Thirst, which most of us know solely as a pleasant
zest to drinking, soon becomes a hardship, then, in an hour, an
obsession, and by high noon a madness, to those who toil in the sun with
nothing to drink. Possibly to most of the many thousands who were in the
Peninsula last summer, the real enemies were not the Turks, but the sun
in Heaven, shaking "the pestilence of his light," and thirst that
withered the heart and cracked the tongue.
Some have said to me, "Yes, but the Turks must have suffered, too, just
as much, in that waterless ground." It is not so. The Turks at Cape
Helles held the wells at Krithia; inland from Anzac they held the wells
near Lonesome Pine and Koja Dere. They had other wells at Maidos, and
Gallipoli. They had always more water than we, and (what is more) the
certainty of it. Most of them came from lands with little water and
great heat, ten (or more) degrees further to the south than any part of
England. Heat and thirst were old enemies to them, they were tempered to
them. Our men had to serve an apprenticeship to them, and pay for what
they learned in bodily hardship. Not that our men minded hardship; they
did not; they were volunteers who had chosen their fate and were there
of their own choice, and no army in the world has ever faced suffering
more cheerily. But this hardship of thirst was a weight upon them,
throughout the summer; like malaria it did not kill, but it lowered all
vitality. It halved the possible effort of men always too few for the
work in hand. Let it now double the honour paid to them.
In the sandy soil of the Peninsula were many minute amoebæ, which played
their part in the summer suffering. In the winds of the great droughts
of July and August the dust blew about our positions like smoke from
burning hills. It fell into food and water and was eaten and drunk (like
the flies) at each meal. Within the human body the amoebæ of the sand
set up symptoms like those of dysentery, as a rule slightly less severe
than the true dysentery of camps. After July, nearly every man in our
army in Gallipoli, suffered from this evil. Like the thirst, it lowered
more vitality than it destroyed; many died, it is true, but then nearly
all were ill: it was the universal sickness not the occasional death
that mattered.
Pass now to the position of affairs at the end of June. We were left to
our own strength in this struggle, the Turks were shaken: it was vital
to our chances to attack again before they recovered. We had not the men
to attack again, but they were coming and were due in a few weeks' time.
While they were on their way, the question, how to use them, was
considered.
As the army's task was to help the fleet through the Narrows it had to
operate in the southwestern portion of the Peninsula. Further progress
against Achi Baba in the Helles sector was hardly possible; for the
Turks had added too greatly to their trenches there since the attacks of
April and May. Operations on the Asian coast were hardly possible
without a second army; operations against Bulair were not likely to help
the fleet. Operations in the Anzac sector offered better chances of
success. It was hoped that a thrust southeastward from Anzac might bring
our men across to the Narrows or to the top of the ridges which command
the road to Constantinople. It was reasonable to think that such a
thrust, backed up by a new landing in force to the north, in Suvla Bay,
might turn the Turkish right and destroy it. If the men at Helles
attacked, to contain the Turks in the south, and the men on the right of
Anzac attacked, to hold the Turks at Anzac, it was possible that men on
the left of Anzac, backed up by a new force marching from Suvla, might
give a decisive blow. The Turk position on the Peninsula roughly formed
a letter L. The plan (as it shaped) was to attack the horizontal line at
Cape Helles, press the centre of the vertical line at Anzac, and bend
back, crumple and break the top of the vertical line between the Anzac
position and Suvla. At the same time, Suvla Bay was to be seized and
prepared as a harbour at which supplies might be landed, even in the
stormy season.
[Illustration: View of Anzac, looking towards Suvla]
Some soldier has said, that "the simple thing is the difficult thing."
The idea seems simple to us, because the difficulty has been cleared
away for us by another person's hard thought. Such a scheme of battle,
difficult to think out in the strain of holding on and under the
temptation to go slowly, improving what was held, was also difficult to
execute. Very few of the great battles of history, not even those in
Russia, in Manchuria, and in the Virginian Wilderness have been fought
on such difficult ground, under such difficult conditions.
The chosen battlefield (the southwestern end of the Peninsula) has
already been described; the greater part of it consists of the Cape
Helles and Anzac positions, but the vital or decisive point, where, if
all went well, the Turk right was to be bent back, broken and routed,
lies to the north of Anzac on the spurs and outlying bastions of Sari
Bair.
Suvla Bay, where the new landing was to take place, lies three miles to
the north of Anzac. It is a broad, rather shallow semicircular bay (open
to the west and southwest) with a partly practicable beach, some of it
(the southern part) fairly flat and sandy, the rest steepish and rocky
though broken by creeks. Above it, one on the north, one on the south
horn of the bay, rise two small low knolls or hillocks known as Ghazi
Baba and Lala Baba, the latter a clearly marked tactical feature. To the
north, beyond the horn of the bay, the coast is high, steep-to sandy
cliff, broken with gullies and washed by deep water, but to the south,
all the way to Anzac the coast is a flat, narrow, almost straight sweep
of sandy shore shutting a salt marsh and a couple of miles of lowland
from the sea; it is a lagoon beach of the common type, with the usual
feature of shallow water in the sea that washes it. The northern half of
this beach is known as Beach C, the southern as Beach B.
[Illustration: Map No. 3
_Stanford's Geog'l Estb't London._]
Viewed from the sea, the coast chosen for the new landing seems
comparatively flat and gentle, seemingly, though not really, easy to
land upon, but with no good military position near it. It looks as
though once, long ago, the sea had thrust far inland there, in a big bay
or harbour stretching from the high ground to the north of Suvla to the
left of the Anzac position. This bay, if it ever existed, must have been
four miles long and four miles across, a very noble space of water,
ringed by big, broken, precipitous hills, into which it thrust in
innumerable creeks and combes. Then (possibly) in the course of ages,
silt brought down by the torrents choked the bay, and pushed the sea
further and further back, till nothing remained of the harbour but the
existing Suvla Bay and the salt marsh (dry in summer). The hills ringing
Suvla Bay and this flat or slightly rising expanse which may once have
been a part of it, stand (to the fancy) like a rank that has beaten back
an attack. They are high and proud to the north, they stand in groups in
the centre, but to the south, where they link on to the broken cliffs of
the Anzac position, they are heaped in tumbling precipitous disordered
bulges of hill, cut by every kind of cleft and crumpled into every kind
of fold, as though the dry land had there been put to it to keep out the
sea. These hills are the scene of the bitterest fighting of the battle.
Although these hills in the Suvla district stand in a rank, yet in the
centre of the rank there are two gaps where the ancient harbour of our
fancy thrust creeks far inland. These gaps or creeks open a little to
the south of the north and south limits of Suvla Bay. They are watered,
cultivated valleys with roads or tracks in them. In the northern valley
is a village of some sixty houses called Anafarta Sagir, or Little
Anafarta. In the southern valley is a rather larger village of some
ninety houses called Biyuk Anafarta, or Great Anafarta. The valleys are
called after these villages.
Between these valleys is a big blunt-headed jut or promontory of higher
ground, which thrusts out towards the bay. At the Suvla end of this jut,
about 1,000 yards from the bight of the Salt Marsh, it shoots up in
three peaks or top knots two of them united in the lump called Chocolate
Hill, the other known as Scimitar Hill or Hill 70; all, roughly, 150
feet high. About a mile directly inland from Chocolate Hill is a peak of
about twice the height, called Ismail Oglu Tepe, an abrupt and savage
heap of cliff, dented with chasms, harshly scarped at the top, and
covered with dense thorn scrub. This hill is the southernmost feature in
the northern half of the battlefield. The valley of Great Anafarta,
which runs east and west below it, cuts the battlefield in two.
The southern side of the Great Anafarta valley is just that
disarrangement of precipitous bulged hill which rises and falls in
crags, peaks and gulleys all the way from the valley to Anzac. Few parts
of the earth can be more broken and disjointed than this mass of
precipice, combes and ravines. A savage climate has dealt with it since
the beginning of time, with great heats, frosts and torrents. It is not
so much a ridge or chain of hills as the manifold outlying bastions and
buttresses of Sari Bair, from which they are built out in craggy bulges
parted by ravines. It may be said that Sari Bair begins at Gaba Tepe (to
the south of the Anzac position) and stretches thence northeasterly
towards Great Anafarta in a rolling and confused five miles of hill that
has all the features of a mountain. It is not high. Its peaks range from
about 250 to 600 feet; its chief peak (Koja Chemen Tepe) is a little
more than 900 feet. Nearly all of it is trackless, waterless and
confused, densely covered with scrub (sometimes with forest) littered
with rocks, an untamed savage country. The southwestern half of it made
the Anzac position, the northeastern and higher half was the prize to be
fought for.
It is the watershed of that part of the Peninsula. The gulleys on its
south side drain down to the Hellespont; those upon its north side drain
to the flat land which may once have been submerged as a part of Suvla
Bay. These northern gulleys are great savage irregular gashes or glens
running westerly or northwesterly from the hill bastions. Three of them,
the three nearest to the northern end of the Anzac position, may be
mentioned by name: Sazli Beit Dere, Chailak Dere, and Aghyl Dere. The
word Dere means watercourse; but all three were bone dry in August when
the battle was fought. It must be remembered that in the trackless
Peninsula a watercourse of this kind is the nearest approach to a road,
and (to a military force) the nearest approach to a covered way. All
these three Deres lead up the heart of the hills to those highlands of
Sari Bair where we wished to plant ourselves. From the top of Sari Bair
one can look down on the whole Turkish position facing Anzac, and see
that position not only dominated but turned and taken in reverse. One
can see (only three miles away) the only road to Constantinople, and
(five miles away) the little port of Maidos near the Narrows. To us the
taking of Sari Bair meant the closing of that road to the passing of
Turk reinforcements, and the opening of the Narrows to the fleet. It
meant victory, and the beginning of the end of this great war, with home
and leisure for life again, and all that peace means. Knowing this, our
soldiers made a great struggle for Sari Bair, but Fate turned the lot
against them. Sari was not to be an English hill, though the flowers on
her sides will grow out of English dust forever. Those who lie there
thought, as they fell, that over their bodies our race would pass to
victory. It may be that their spirits linger there at this moment,
waiting for the English bugles and the English singing, and the sound of
the English ships passing up the Hellespont.
Among her tumble of hills, from the Anzac position to Great Anafarta,
Sari Bair thrusts out several knolls, peaks and commanding heights.
Within the Anzac position, is the little plateau of Lone or Lonesome
Pine to be described later. Further to the northeast are the heights
known as Baby 700 and Battleship Hill, and beyond these, still further
to the northeast, the steep peak of Chunuk Bair. All of these before
this battle were held by the Turks, whose trenches defended them. Lone
Pine is about 400 feet high, the others rather more, slowly rising, as
they go northeast, but keeping to about the height of the English
Chilterns. Chunuk Bair, the highest of these, is about 750 feet. Beyond
Chunuk, half-a-mile further to the northeast, is Hill Q, and beyond Hill
Q a very steep deep gulley, above which rises the beautiful peak, the
summit of Sari, known as Koja Chemen Tepe. One or two Irish hills in the
wilder parts of Antrim are like this peak, though less fleeced with
brush. In height, as I have said, it is a little more than 900 feet, or
about the height of our Bredon Hill. One point about it may be noted. It
thrusts out a great spur or claw for rather more than a mile due north;
this spur, which is much gullied, is called Abd-el-Rahman Bair.
For the moment, Chunuk Bair is the most important point to remember,
because--
(a) It was the extreme right of the prepared Turk position.
(b) The three Deres mentioned a couple of pages back have their sources
at its foot and start there, like three roads starting from the walls of
a city on their way to the sea. They lead past the hills known as Table
Top and Rhododendron Spur. Close to their beginnings at the foot of
Chunuk is a building known as The Farm, round which the fighting was
very fierce.
The "idea" or purpose of the battle was "to endeavour to seize a
position across the Gallipoli Peninsular from Gaba Tep to Maidos, with a
protected line of supply from Suvla Bay."
The plan of the attack was, that a strong force in Anzac should
endeavour to throw back the right wing of the Turks, drive them south
towards Kilid Bahr and thus secure a position commanding the narrow part
of the Peninsula.
Meanwhile a large body of troops should secure Suvla, and another large
body, landing at Suvla, should clear away any Turkish forces on the
hills between the Anafarta valleys, and then help the attacking force
from Anzac by storming Sari Bair from the north and west.
The 6th of August was fixed for the first day of the attack from Anzac;
the landing at Suvla was to take place during the dark hours of the
night of the 6th-7th. "The 6th was both the earliest and the latest date
possible for the battle, the earliest, because it was the first by which
the main part of the reinforcements would be ready, the latest, because
of the moon." Both in the preparation and the surprise of this attack
dark nights were essential.
[Illustration: A "long focus" view taken over the top of our trenches
at Anzac]
Sir Ian Hamilton's Despatch (reprinted from the London _Gazette_ of
Tuesday, the 4th January, 1916) shows that this battle of the 6th-10th
August was perhaps the strangest and most difficult battle ever planned
by mortal general. It was to be a triple battle, fought by three
separated armies, not in direct communication with each other. There was
no place from which the battle, as a whole, could be controlled, nearer
than the island of Imbros, (fourteen miles from any part of the
Peninsula) to which telegraphic cables led from Anzac and Cape Helles.
The left wing of our army, designed for the landing at Suvla, was not
only not landed, when the battle began, but not concentrated. There was
no adjacent subsidiary base big enough (or nearly big enough) to hold
it. "On the day before the battle, part were at Imbros, part at Mudros,
and part at Mitylene ... separated respectively by 14, 60, and 120 miles
of sea from the arena into which they were simultaneously to appear."
The vital part of the fight was to be fought by troops from Anzac. The
Anzac position was an open book to every Turk aeroplane and every
observer on Sari Bair. The reinforcements for this part of the battle
had to be landed in the dark, some days before the battle, and kept
hidden underground, during daylight, so that the Turks should not see
them and suspect what was being planned.
In all wars, but especially in modern wars, great tactical combinations
have been betrayed by very little things. In war, as in life, the
unusual thing, however little, betrays the unusual thing, however great.
An odd bit of paper round some cigars betrayed the hopes of the American
Secession, some litter in the sea told Nelson where the French fleet
was, one man rising up in the grass by a roadside saved the wealth of
Peru from the hands of Drake. The Turks were always expecting an attack
from Anzac. It is not too much to say that they searched the Anzac
position hourly for the certain signs of an attack, reinforcements and
supplies. They had not even to search the whole position for these
signs, since there was only one place (towards Fisherman's Hut) where
they could be put. If they had suspected that men and stores were being
landed, they would have guessed at once, that a thrust was to be made,
and our attacks upon their flanks would have met with a prepared defence.
[Illustration: Australians at work at Anzac two days before the
evacuation took place]
It was vital to our chance of success that nothing unusual, however
little, should be visible in Anzac from the Turk positions during the
days before the battle. One man staring up at an aeroplane would have
been evidence enough to a quick observer that there was a new-comer on
the scene. One new water tank, one new gun, one mule not yet quiet from
the shock of landing, might have betrayed all the adventure. Very nearly
thirty thousand men, one whole Division and one Brigade of English
soldiers, and a Brigade of Gurkhas, with their guns and stores, had to
be landed unobserved and hidden.
There was only one place in which they could be hidden, and that was
under the ground. The Australians had to dig hiding places for them
before they came.
In this war of digging, the daily life in the trenches gives digging
enough to every soldier. Men dig daily even if they do not fight. At
Anzac in July the Australians had a double share of digging, their daily
share in the front lines, and, when that was finished, their nightly
share, preparing cover for the new troops. During the nights of the
latter half of July the Australians at Anzac dug, roofed and covered not
less than twenty miles of dugouts. All of this work was done in their
sleep time, after the normal day's work of fighting, digging and
carrying up stores. Besides digging these hiding places they carried up,
fixed, hid, and filled the water tanks which were to supply the
newcomers.
[Illustration: A boatload of British troops leaving the S.S. _Nile_ for
one of the landing beaches]