Officer Commanding Dardanelles Army I explained the course which I
thought we should adopt to again deceive the Turks as to our intentions.
The situation on the Peninsula had not materially changed owing to our
withdrawal from Suvla and Anzac, except that there was a marked
increased activity in aerial reconnoissance over our positions, and the
islands of Mudros and Imbros, and that hostile patrolling of our
trenches was more frequent and daring. The most apparent factor was that
the number of heavy guns on the European and Asiatic shores had been
considerably augmented, and that these guns were more liberally supplied
with German ammunition, the result of which was that our beaches were
continuously shelled, especially from the Asiatic shore. I gave it as my
opinion that in my judgment I did not regard a feint as an operation
offering any prospect of success; and it was decided the navy should do
their utmost to pursue a course of retaliation against the Turkish
batteries, but to refrain from any unusually aggressive attitude should
the Turkish guns remain quiescent.
[Sidenote: General Birdwood's comprehensive plans.]
General Sir W. Birdwood had, in anticipation of being ordered to
evacuate Helles, made such complete and far-seeing arrangements that he
was able to proceed without delay to the issue of the comprehensive
orders which the consummation of such a delicate operation in war
requires.
[Sidenote: French infantry embarked.]
The evacuation, following the same system as was practiced at Suvla and
Anzac, proceeded without delay. The French infantry remaining on the
Peninsula were relieved on the night of January 1-2, 1916, and were
embarked by the French navy on the following nights. Progress, however,
was slower than had been hoped, owing to delays caused by accident and
the weather. One of our largest horse ships was sunk by a French
battleship, whereby the withdrawal was considerably retarded, and at the
same time strong winds sprang up which interfered materially with work
on the beaches. The character of the weather now setting in offered so
little hope of a calm period of any duration that General Sir W.
Birdwood arranged with Admiral Sir J. de Robeck for the assistance of
some destroyers in order to accelerate the progress of re-embarkation.
[Sidenote: Turks shell trenches and beaches.]
Meanwhile the Eighth Corps had maintained the offensive spirit in
bombing and minor operations with which they had established the moral
superiority they enjoyed over the enemy. On December 29, 1915 the
Fifty-second Division completed the excellent work which they had been
carrying out for so long by capturing a considerable portion of the
Turkish trenches, and by successfully holding these in the face of
repeated counter-attacks. The shelling of our trenches and beaches,
however, increased in frequency and intensity, and the average daily
casualties continued to increase.
On January 7, 1916, the enemy developed heavy artillery fire on the
trenches held by the Thirteenth Division, while the Asiatic guns shelled
those occupied by the Royal Naval Division. The bombardment, which was
reported to be the heaviest experienced since we landed in April, lasted
from noon until 5 P. M., and was intensive between 3 and 3:30 P. M.
January 8, 1916 was a bright, calm day, with a light breeze from the
south. There was every indication of the continuance of favorable
conditions, and, in the opinion of the meteorological officer, no
important change was to be expected for at least twenty-four hours. The
Turkish artillery was unusually inactive. All preparations for the
execution of the final stage were complete.
[Sidenote: Unfavorable weather.]
[Sidenote: Hostile submarine near by.]
About 7 P. M. the breeze freshened considerably from the southwest, the
most unfavorable quarter, but the first trip, timed for 8 P. M., was
dispatched without difficulty. The wind, however, continued to rise
until, by 11 P. M., the connecting pier between the hulks and the shore
at "W" Beach was washed away by heavy seas, and further embarkation into
destroyers from these hulks became impracticable. In spite of these
difficulties the second trips, which commenced at 11:30 P. M., were
carried out well up to time, and the embarkation of guns continued
uninterruptedly. Early in the evening reports had been received from the
right flank that a hostile submarine was believed to be moving down the
strait, and about midnight H. M. S. _Prince George_, which had embarked
2,000 men, and was sailing for Mudros, reported she was struck by a
torpedo which failed to explode. The indications of the presence of a
submarine added considerably to the anxiety for the safety of the troop
carriers, and made it necessary for the Vice Admiral to modify the
arrangements made for the subsequent bombardment of the evacuated
positions.
[Sidenote: Gully Beach embarkation completed.]
At 1:50 A. M., Gully Beach reported that the embarkation at that beach
was complete, and that the lighters were about to push off, but at 2:10
A. M. a telephone message was received that one of the lighters was
aground and could not be refloated. The N. T. O. at once took all
possible steps to have another lighter sent in to Gully Beach, and this
was, as a matter of fact, done within an hour, but in the meantime, at
2:30 A. M. it was decided to move the 160 men who had been relanded
from the grounded lighter to "W" Beach and embark them there.
[Sidenote: Conflagrations show Turks the allies have withdrawn.]
At 3:30 A. M. the evacuation was complete, and abandoned heaps of stores
and supplies were successfully set on fire by time fuses after the last
man had embarked. Two magazines of ammunition and explosives were also
successfully blown up at 4 A. M. These conflagrations were apparently
the first intimation received by the Turks that we had withdrawn. Red
lights were immediately discharged from the enemy's trenches, and heavy
artillery fire opened on our trenches and beaches. This shelling was
maintained until about 6:30 A. M.
[Sidenote: Good luck and skilled organization forthcoming.]
Apart from four unserviceable fifteen-pounders which had been destroyed
earlier in the month, ten worn-out fifteen-pounders, one six-inch Mark
VII gun, and six old heavy French guns, all of which were previously
blown up, were left on the Peninsula. In addition to the above, 508
animals, most of which were destroyed, and a number of vehicles and
considerable quantities of stores, material, and supplies, all of which
were destroyed by burning, had to be abandoned.
[Sidenote: Competent officers in charge.]
The entire evacuation of the Peninsula had now been completed. It
demanded for its successful realization two important military
essentials, viz., good luck and skilled disciplined organization, and
they were both forthcoming to a marked degree at the hour needed. Our
luck was in the ascendant by the marvelous spell of calm weather which
prevailed. But we were able to turn to the fullest advantage these
accidents of fortune.
Lieutenant General Sir W. Birdwood and his corps commanders elaborated
and prepared the orders in reference to the evacuation with a skill,
competence, and courage which could not have been surpassed, and we had
a further stroke of good fortune in being associated with Vice Admiral
Sir J. de Robeck, K. C. B., Vice Admiral Wemyss, and a body of naval
officers whose work remained throughout this anxious period at that
standard of accuracy and professional ability which is beyond the power
of criticism or cavil.
* * * * *
The form of "frightfulness" in which the Germans placed the greatest
faith was the terrorizing of the inhabitants of unprotected enemy cities
by bombs from Zeppelins and aeroplanes. While the objects for which
these atrocities were perpetrated were not attained, hundreds of
innocent men, women, and children were murdered. The following narrative
describes one of these German air raids.
THE DEATH-SHIP IN THE SKY
PERRITON MAXWELL
Copyright Forum, August, 1916.
[Sidenote: The switchman at Walthamstow.]
For twenty-six years old Tom Cumbers had held his job as switchman at
the Walthamstow railroad junction where the London-bound trains come up
from Southend to the great city. It was an important post and old Tom
filled it with stolid British efficiency. A kindly man who felt himself
an integral part of the giant railroad system that employed him, old Tom
had few interests beyond his work, his white-haired wife, his reeking
pipe and the little four-room tenement in Walthamstow which he called
home. The latter was one of the thousands of two-storied rabbit-hatches
of sooty, yellow brick, all alike and all incredibly ugly, which
stretch, mile upon mile, from Walthamstow toward London's tumultuous
heart.
[Sidenote: The workshops near Epping Forest.]
[Sidenote: An appalling tragedy of the war.]
Within a radius of four dun miles, just on the nearer edge of Epping
Forest--the scene in a forgotten day of Robin Hood's adventurings--a
section of these huddling homes of the submerged, together with a street
of trams and some pathetic shops, constitute this town of Walthamstow.
It is a sordid, unlovely place, but for some ten thousand
wage-strugglers it is all of England. There are workshops hereabout in
which one may mingle one's copious sweat with the grime of machinery and
have fourteen shillings a week into the bargain--if one is properly
skilled and muscular and bovinely plodding. Walthamstow is not the place
where one would deliberately choose to live if bread could be earned
elsewhere with equal certainty. But for all its dirt and dullness it has
a spot on the map and a meaning in the dull souls of its inhabitants,
and here, within half an hour's train travel of the Lord Mayor's Mansion
and the golden vaults of the Bank of England, transpired on the
sweltering night of which I write, one of the most witless and appalling
tragedies of the present war. Forever memorable in the hitherto
colorless calendar of Walthamstow will be this tragedy in the second
year of Armageddon.
[Sidenote: An ordinary hot night.]
[Sidenote: News of the war.]
Beyond the stenchful heat-stress of it, there was nothing up to
half-past eleven to mark this night as different from its fellows of the
past. From eight o'clock till ten the small activities of the town
centered chiefly about its tramway terminus, its smudgy station, its
three or four moving-picture theatres, and its fetid pubs. On the
pavements, in the roadways and at every crossing, corduroyed men yawned
and spat, and slatternly women, most of them with whimpering infants in
their arms, talked of shop or household cares and the frailties of their
neighbors. Some, more alive to the big events of a clashing world,
repeated the meagre news of the ha'penny press and dwelt with prideful
fervor on the latest bit of heroism reported from the front. Now and
again an outburst of raucous humor echoed above the babble of cockney
tongues. The maudlin clamor of "a pore lone lidy 'oos 'subing 'ad
desarted 'er" failed to arouse anyone's curiosity. Ladies in their cups
are not a rarity in Walthamstow. In side streets, lads in khaki, many of
them fresh from fields of slaughter "somewhere in Flanders," sported
boisterously with their factory-girl sweethearts or spooned in the
shadows. Everywhere grubby children in scant clothing shrilled and
scampered and got in the way. Humidity enveloped the town like a sodden
cloak and its humanity stewed in moist and smelly discomfort.
[Sidenote: Street lamps out.]
But shortly after eleven o'clock the whole place became suddenly and
majestically still and black. People who go to their work at sunrise
cannot afford the extravagance of midnight revelry, and there are few
street-lamps alight after ten o'clock in any London suburb in these
times of martial law. Walthamstow slept in heated but profound oblivion
of its mean existence. Beyond the town lay, like a prostrate giant
camel, the heat-blurred silhouette of the classic forest. Low over
Walthamstow hung the festoons of flat, humid clouds, menacing storm, but
motionless.
[Sidenote: The rhythm of the Zeppelin.]
[Sidenote: The train to serve as pilot to London.]
[Sidenote: The Zeppelin forced to travel low.]
If there was no disturbance in the clouds themselves there was among
them something very active, something that drilled its way through them
with a muffled whirring, something that was oblong and lean and light of
texture, that was ominous and menacing for all its buoyancy. The sound
it made was too high up, too thickly shrouded by clouds, to determine
its precise position. It gave forth a breathing of persistent, definite
rhythm. This was plainly not the wing-stroke of a nocturnal bird; for no
bird, big or little, could advertise its flight in such perfect
pulsation. And yet it was a bird, a Gargantuan, man-made bird with
murder in its talons and hatred in its heart. From its steel nest in
Germanized Belgium this whirring monster had soared eight thousand feet
and crossed the Channel with little fear of discovery. It had penetrated
the English Coast somewhere down Sheerness way and over Southend and
then, dropping lower, had sought and found through the haze the tiny
train whose locomotive had just fluted its brief salutation to
Walthamstow. To the close-cropped men on the Zeppelin, the string of
cars far down under their feet, with its side-flare from lighted
windows, its engine's headlamp and its sparks, had proved a providential
pilotage. They knew that this train was on the main line, and that it
would lead them straight to the great Liverpool Street Station, and that
was London, and it was London wharfs and ammunition works along the
Thames that they had planned to obliterate with their cylinders of
mechanical doom. But the moist clouds which aided so materially in
hiding the Zeppelin's presence from below also worked for its defeat, in
so far as its ultimate objective was concerned, for to keep the guiding
train in view it was compelled to travel lower and yet lower--so low,
indeed, as to make it a target for Kitchener's sentinels.
[Sidenote: The switchman signals "danger."]
[Sidenote: The train stops at Walthamstow.]
Somehow, by sight or intuition or the instant commingling of the two,
old Tom Cumbers became aware of the danger above him; for he sprang to
his switch, shut off all the cheery blue and white lights along "the
line" and swung on with a mighty jerk the ruby signal of danger. The
engineer in the on-rushing train jammed down his brakes and brought up
his locomotive with a complaining, grinding moan, a hundred yards beyond
Walthamstow station. Tom Cumbers had done a greater thing than any other
in all his existence.
[Sidenote: The German revenge.]
That by his act the Germans in their speeding sky-craft were baffled
there is no doubt. They had lost their trail of fire; their involuntary
guide had disappeared in the gloom. The airmen's long journey had
suddenly become fruitless; their peril from hidden British guns and
flying scouts was increased tenfold. The heat of the night was as
nothing to the hot surge of disappointment that must have swept the
brains of the Zeppelin crew. Their commander, too, must have lost his
judgment utterly, forgotten his sense of military effectiveness.
Whatever happened, he sacrificed his soul when he turned his cloud-ship
aside from the railway line, steered over the shabby roofs of
Walthamstow and, at less than two thousand feet, unloosed his iron dogs
of destruction.
[Sidenote: Bombing tenements of a defenseless town.]
I have it on the authority of experienced aviators that it is not
impossible on a dark night to distinguish buildings of importance like
St. Paul's or the Houses of Parliament or a great gun factory or a river
as broad as the Thames with its uprearing and frequent bridges. The
crowding tenements of Walthamstow could have had no semblance to any of
these, at any height. It would seem a cheap and worthless revenge, then,
to wreck an unimportant and defenceless town, having failed to wreck the
military nerve-center of the world's metropolis. But this is what one of
Count Zeppelin's soaring dreadnoughts did in this night, in this
blood-drenched year.
[Sidenote: When a bomb explodes.]
Like the mirage of a tropical island the dirigible hung motionless in
space for a breathless minute. There was a wavering pin-prick of light
in the carriage suspended from the leviathan's belly--a light that
fluttered fore and aft as of a man with a fairy lantern running to and
fro giving orders or taking them. Then faintly discernible against the
sky, like a rope hung down for anchorage, came a thin, gray streak--the
tail of a bomb with all hell in its wake. From somewhere near the town's
centre the earth split and roared apart. The world reeled and a
brain-shattering crash compounded of all the elements of pain and hurled
from the shoulders of a thousand thunderclaps smote the senses. It was a
blast of sickening and malignant fury. It did not so much stun as it
stopped one--stopped the breath and the heart's beat, suspending
thought, halting life itself for a fraction of time. One was, somehow,
aware of existence but without sensation. And then came reaction and
the realization of what was really taking place. The German's bomb
landed fully ten blocks away, but you would have taken oath in court
that it had fallen at your feet, behind you, above you and into your
very brain.
[Sidenote: Terror of the people.]
[Sidenote: A broken gas main.]
An air raid on Walthamstow, which drab town can boast neither ammunition
works nor the ownership of war material of any description, could not be
at once realized. But here was the cyclonic fact, hideously real,
appallingly actual; and there in the heavens was the buoyant Zeppelin
maneuvering for further mischief. The reverberation of the first
explosion was still grumbling back in Epping Forest when all
Walthamstow, rubbing its eyes, tumbled out into the black streets. Men,
women, children, all ludicrously clotheless, swarmed aimlessly like bees
in an overturned hive. Stark terror gripped them. It distorted their
faces and set their legs quivering. The dullest among these toil-dulled
people knew what that explosion meant, knew that it was part of the
punishment promised by the German foe. "Gott strafe England" had come to
pass. But they could not understand why the enemy had singled them out
for such drastic distinction. The more alert and cool-headed of the men
battled with their fellows and shouted instructions to get the women
folks and the kiddies back indoors and down into their cellars. The
night-gowned and pajamaed throng could not be persuaded that safety lay
not in sight of the Zeppelin but away from it. The hypnotism of horror
lured them on to where twelve houses lay spread about in smoking chaos,
a plateau of blazing and noisome havoc. Somewhere a gas-main burst with
a roar and drove the crowd back with its choking fumes as no human hands
could have done. Women frankly hysterical or swooning were roughly
thrust aside. Children shrieking in uncomprehending panic were swept
along with the crowd or trodden upon. Lumbering men ran and shouted and
cursed and shook hairy fists at the long blot on the clouds. Some of the
men leaped over iron palings like startled rabbits and flung themselves
in the grass, face downward and quaking. And yet, I dare say that most
of these would have walked straight into a familiar danger without the
waver of an eyelash; it was the unknown peril, the doubt as to how and
whence this hurtling death might spring upon them out of the night, that
unhinged their manhood. And while Walthamstow's walls went down and
great flame-tongues spouted where homes had stood, while the thick, hot
air was tortured with agonized and inhuman cries, the enemy up above let
loose another bolt.
[Sidenote: The second bomb as the town blazes.]
[Sidenote: Effects of the explosion.]
More terrible than the first explosion was, or seemed, this second one.
It mowed down half a hundred shrieking souls. And it was curious to note
the lateral action of the blast when it hit a resisting surface.
Dynamite explodes with a downward or upward force, lyddite and
nitro-glycerine and what not other devil's own powers act more or less
in the same set manner. But the furious ingredients of these bombs
hurled on Walthamstow contained stuff that released a discharge which
swept all things from it horizontally, in a quarter-mile, lightning
sweep, like a scythe of flame. A solid block of shabby villas was laid
out as flat as your palm by the explosion of this second bomb. Scarcely
a brick was left standing upright. What houses escaped demolition around
the edge of the convulsion had their doors and windows splintered into
rubbish. The concussion of this chemical frenzy was felt, like an
earthquake, in a ten-mile circle. Wherever the scorching breath of the
bombs breathed on stone or metal it left a sulphurous, yellow-white
veneer, acrid in odor and smooth to the touch. Whole street-lengths of
twisted iron railings were coated with this murderous white-wash.
[Sidenote: More bombs as the Zeppelin rises.]
[Sidenote: Freaks of the explosion.]
Having made sure of its mark, the ravaging Zeppelin rose higher on the
discharge of its first bomb and still higher after firing the second. At
the safe distance of four thousand feet it dropped three more shells
recklessly, haphazard. One of these bored cleanly through a slate-tiled
roof, through furniture and two floorings and burrowed ten feet into the
ground without exploding. This intact shell has since been carefully
analyzed by the experts of the Board of Explosions at the British War
Office. Another bomb detonated on the steel rails of the Walthamstow
tram-line and sent them curling skyward from their rivetted foundations
like serpentine wisps of paper. Great cobblestones were heaved through
shop windows and partitions and out into the flower-beds of rear
gardens; some of the cobbles were flung through solid attic blinds and
others were catapulted through brick walls a foot in thickness. A hole
as big as a moving-van burned into the road at one place. In a side
street an impromptu fountain squirted playfully into the dust-burdened
air, the result of a central water-pipe punctured by a slug from one of
the bomb's iron entrails. But these things were not noted until dawn and
comparative peace had returned to Walthamstow and men could count with
some degree the cost of the reckless invasion.
[Sidenote: British aeroplanes pursue.]
Before the clouds had swallowed up the hateful visitant the noise of its
attack had aroused the military guards across Epping Forest, in
Chingford village, and, aided by a search-light, the anti-aircraft-gun
opened its unavailing fire on the Zeppelin--ineffective, except that its
returning shrapnel smashed up several roofs and battered some innocent
heads. The Germans had gauged their skyward path to London along which,
apparently, they felt reasonably safe from gun-reach. But they had
barely headed homeward before a flock of army aeroplanes, rising from
all points of the compass, were in hot pursuit. One of the Britishers
was shot down by the men aboard the Zeppelin. Neither speed nor daring
counts for much in an encounter between flying-machines and swift
dirigibles of the latest types. The advantage lies solely with the one
that can overfly his adversary. This can be achieved by a biplane or
monoplane pilot only if he has a long start from the ground and time
enough to surmount his opponent. This is difficult even in daylight with
a cloudless sky. Given darkness and clouds, the chances for success are
tremendously against the smaller craft.
[Sidenote: The old switchman a victim.]
Eight bombs in all were launched on Walthamstow--two of them
ineffectual. The sixth bomb fell into a field close beside the railway
line and worked a hideous wonder. It blew into never-to-be-gathered
fragments all that was mortal of old Tom Cumbers, the signalman. They
found only his left hand plastered gruesomely against the grassy bank of
the railway cut--not a hair nor button else.
* * * * *