Grado, a fishing town of about 5,000 inhabitants, but important on

account of its strategic situation, was occupied by the Italians with

no great difficulty. Grado lies at the head of the Adriatic, and is

twelve miles from Trieste and sixty from Pola. The waters of the

lagoons in this neighborhood were valuable to the Italians as a safe

shelter for submarines and other small war-craft, and as a base for a

prospective attack later upon Pola itself. The inhabitants, most of

whom preserved their Italian traits and sympathies, although the town

had been under Austrian rule since 1809, hailed the conquerors

enthusiastically. Cannon and military carriages were decorated with

flowers. Thousands of Italian flags appeared as if by magic. The

entering troops were greeted with shouts of "All our lives we have

been waiting for this moment when we can cry 'Viva Italia!'" The

possession of Grado gave the Third Army virtual control of the mouth

of the Isonzo, but the main Austrian position of defense at Gorizia

remained apparently unweakened.

Scenes like those at Grado were witnessed at Ala, the first Austrian

town of any size and the first railroad center captured by the

Italians in the Trentino. Ala was occupied May 27, 1915. Three days

before this the Italian light infantry had massed behind the boundary

line, and when they began their advance along the main highway their

first act was to pull down the yellow and black pole that marked the

frontier.

The next day, May 28, 1915, the commanding general with his chief of

staff and two guards motored to the spot, cut a passage-way through

the barricade, and, encountering no opposition, kept on until they

reached Ala, seven miles beyond.

The Italian troops were ordered to advance next day, May 29, 1915, and

as they marched into the town, officers shouted: "Open your windows.

Long live Italy!" The Mayor of Ala called out his townsmen and set

them at work removing the barricades on the main road.

In the midst of these rejoicings the sharp rattle of musketry was

heard, and the Italians rushed to cover. A reconnoitering party

reported that the Austrians were intrenched in a large villa beyond a

stream outside the town. The Italian troops began an attack upon this

position, and a skirmish party sought to take a position in a house on

a near-by hill commanding the villa held by the enemy. Although the

way to this house was exposed to the Austrian fire, the Italian

officer decided to risk an attempt to reach it. But as he raised his

sword to signal an advance, a young girl ran to his side and told him

of a path sheltered from the Austrian fire. This girl, Signorina

Abriani, whose name will go down in Italian history as one of the

first heroines of the war, guided the detachment safely. The Austrians

holding the villa were strongly intrenched, and they held out against

superior forces until late in the afternoon, when four shells crashed

into the building, bringing it down about their ears. The Italians had

brought up a battery on the opposite side of the Adige River and

opened fire at long range. The Austrians made good their retreat,

leaving all their ammunition and three dead. Later fifty-seven

Austrians were taken prisoners.

That night the Italian general took the precautions, usual on entering

a newly occupied town, of ordering that all the windows in town be

kept open and illuminated, and kept patrols about the town. The mayor

was reconfirmed, and his first act was to announce to the citizens

that "the royal military authorities, knowing the needs of the

inhabitants, have with affectionate solicitude and great generosity

placed 5,000 rations of bread and 2,000 of rice at the disposal of the

poor." Thus Ala became Italian.

The incidents of these first advances into Austrian territory were

reported in detail in Italy, and are set down here as typical of

events that accompanied the irruption of Italian troops over the

border into the country which once had been Italian and where, despite

more than a century of Austrian occupation, a large proportion of the

inhabitants in spirit was Italian still. Such reports spread through

Italy naturally increased enthusiasm for the restoration of the

"unredeemed" provinces.

Although, as a rule, the Austrians retired before the first Italian

advance into Trentino, they did not depart until they had left every

possible obstacle. Roads were barricaded, bridges destroyed, and mines

were laid, cleverly concealed on hillsides where it was intended their

explosion would overwhelm the Italians under masses of rock and earth.

But this was just what the Alpini and Bersaglieri had been trained to

anticipate. According to the official Italian accounts, their scouting

was so excellent that the wires connecting these mines with Austrian

hiding places were discovered and cut, and hardly a mine was exploded.

All this took place while the Austrians were drawing in their outposts

and consolidating their forces in the great strongholds where later

they held the Italians in absolute check. The Italians advanced

cautiously in small groups, and the Austrians abandoned the frontier

villages soon enough to avoid serious encounters, but not a minute

sooner.

In the Alps in these days of May, 1915, the Great War was fought much

as wars have been fought in times we are accustomed to regard as the

age of true romance. The Italian King visited the Alpine troops and

surprised his men and redoubled their devotion by showing his skill as

a mountain climber. "You forget," he told an officer who remonstrated

with him as he was about to scale a particularly difficult position to

examine a gun "chamois hunting is my favorite sport."

If certain portions of the Italian population seemed lukewarm toward

the war during the period of diplomatic negotiations, there was no

doubt of the temper of the nation after hostilities actually began.

The chord of national feeling was struck by King Victor Emmanuel in an

order issued upon taking supreme command of the army and navy.

"Soldiers on land and sea," said the order, "the solemn hour of the

nation's claims has struck. Following the example of my grandfather, I

take to-day supreme command of Italy's forces on land and sea, with

the assurance of victory which your bravery, self-abnegation, and

discipline will obtain.

"The enemy you are preparing to fight is hardened to war and worthy of

you. Favored by the nature of the ground and skillful works, he will

resist tenaciously, but your unsubdued ardor will surely vanquish him.

"Soldiers, to you has come the glory of unfurling Italy's colors on

the sacred lands which nature has given as the frontiers of our

country. To you has come the glory of finally accomplishing the work

undertaken with so much heroism by our fathers."

The stormy scenes which followed the resignation of the Salandra

cabinet gave way to a confident calm. From his seclusion in the

Vatican the pope addressed a letter to Cardinal Vannutelli, breathing

a spirit of resignation and faith, but carefully refraining from any

expression of partisanship in the great struggle.

"The hour which we are traversing is painful," he said, "but our

prayers will go out more frequently and more fervently than ever to

those who have in their hands the fate of nations." The pope recalled

that in his first Encyclical issued at the beginning of the war he

exhorted the belligerent nations to make peace, but his voice was

unheeded and the war continued "until the terrible conflagration has

extended to our beloved Italy. While our hearts bleed at the sight of

so much misery," he wrote, "we have not neglected to continue our work

for relief and the diminution of the deplorable consequences of war. I

wish that the echo of our voice might reach to all our children

affected by the great scourge of war, and persuade all of them of our

participation in their troubles and sorrows. There is little of the

grief of the child that is not reflected in the soul of the father."

The greatest enthusiasm, naturally, was manifested in the cities of

the north nearest the scene of war. The Master Workers' Guild of Milan

voted unanimously to give up one day's pay each month to be devoted to

the relief of the families of men at the front. Many business houses

carried soldiers' names on their payrolls and remitted their wages to

their families.

In all cities within range of the enemy's aircraft precautions were

taken to guard public buildings, and especially the famous objects

which for centuries had made Italy the Mecca of lovers of art. In

Venice the bronze horses of St. Mark's were taken down from their

pedestals and hidden in the subterranean caverns of the cathedral. The

gilded statue of the Virgin surmounting the celebrated white marble

cathedral at Milan was covered with cloth, so that it might not serve

as a guide to Austrian raiders. The stained glass windows of the

edifice were removed as a precaution against possible bombardment.

After the first Austrian sea and air raid along the Adriatic coast

orders were issued that lights should be darkened in all Adriatic

ports. This order was extended also to certain inland cities, such as

Milan, Bologna, Verona, Brescia, and Udine. A special watch for

aeroplanes was kept at Bologna on account of the location there of an

important factory for the manufacture of explosives. Watches were set

on the crests of the Appenines ready to notify Rome of approaching

danger from the air.

The attitude of Germany toward Italy at this period of the war is best

indicated by the speech delivered at the session of the Reichstag by

Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Imperial Chancellor. He imputed the

Italian declaration of war to a combination of mob dictation, bad

faith on the part of the cabinet of Premier Salandra, and, to a

certain degree, to the money of the powers of the Entente. The greater

part of the Italian people, the chancellor asserted, and a majority in

the Italian Parliament had not wanted war, and were even kept in

ignorance of the extent of the concessions which Austria-Hungary was

willing to make for the sake of peace. The Salandra cabinet, he

declared, long before the Triple Alliance had ceased to exist,

aligned itself with the Triple Entente and "unchained the mob spirit

and intimidated the advocates of peace."

On the eve of leaving Rome, Prince von Buelow gave out a statement in

which he declared that Italy was led into the war by a "noisy

minority," and that even if in the end she obtained what she asked she

would not get much more than what Austria already had offered. "It

should be understood," he explained, "that it was impossible to

deprive the central empires of Trieste, their only outlet to the

Adriatic in the Mediterranean."

Turkey regarded the entrance of Italy into the war on the side of the

Entente with apparent equanimity. "We will not declare war on Italy,"

announced Talaat Bey, the Turkish Minister of the Interior. "We can

wait. What can Italy do to us?"

CHAPTER LXVI

FIGHTING IN THE MOUNTAINS

While the world hears little about strategic plans that fail to work

out, it is believed that the Austrians in May, 1915, had in mind to

let the enemy obtain a good start in his advance against Trieste.

Then, when the Italian operations were well under way, and the two

railroads from Venice were choked with their supplies, the Austrians

probably intended to launch a swift attack upon Verona and the rich

cities of Lombardy, thus cutting off the chief centers of Italian

industry. At the same time, they undoubtedly meant to send an invading

army through the passes of the Carnic and Julian Alps from their base

at Tarvis, and by a sudden swoop southward take the Italian forces on

the Isonzo in the flank. At least this is what the Italian staff

believed was their plan, and they arranged their own forces

accordingly.

This was the reason for the extensive Italian drive during the third

week of May, 1915, at all the mountain passes of the long frontier.

For almost any of these passes might prove to be the gateway of

invasion, whereas, once captured, they could be held by a few

battalions. But behind each force that occupied the passes won in the

first Italian dash was a large reserve ready to lend support wherever

the enemy tried to break through. The Italians were not kept long in

suspense as to where this thrust from the north first would come.

On May 29, 1915, under cover of a heavy fog, the Austrians

concentrated a strong force from Villach, brought them to Mauthen, and

from that point launched five successive attacks in an effort to win

back the pass of Monte Croce in the Carnic Alps. The Alpini met the

attacks with musketry and machine-gun fire, then, after the last

attempt had failed, leaped from their trenches and drove the Austrians

down the valley.

Thus began the battle of Monte Croce, an engagement described in the

official bulletins of both countries in a way that gave the world its

first intimation of the peculiar features of this mountain warfare.

Each side had large reserves, and the struggle for the pass continued

day and night, the Italians pushing over the neighboring passes and

gathering their strength for a counterattack when the Austrians were

exhausted.

On June 8, 1915, the Italians stormed Freikofel, a height commanding

the Plocken Plateau, and took the Pass of Valentina and the Pass of

Oregione, 7,500 feet high, and overlooking the wooded valley of Gail.

The Alpini won Oregione by climbing through ice and snow over Paralba

Mountain and fighting their way downward. Undaunted, General Dankl

called up a fresh corps.

On the night of June 14, 1915, the Austrians made a supreme effort to

break through the Italian line and put into effect his plan of pouring

an army through the Carnic Alps to attack the flank of the main

Italian army. Although 100,000 men were engaged in this battle, the

ground permitted no massed movements. For miles the saddle of

Oregione, the snow-clad sides of Paralba, and every smaller peak and

ravine extending to Monte Croce and Freikofel were speckled with

fighting men. After the two sides came to grips, the big guns held

their fire, and it was man to man and bayonet against bayonet. At one

point only did the Austrian thrust reach Italian soil. For a short

time the Austrians were on Paralba at an elevation of 8,840 feet, but

threatened both in the flank and in the rear they were forced to

retreat and take refuge in their prepared positions on Steinwand, a

huge limestone mountain overlooking the Gail Valley.

The strategic idea of General Cadorna is more easily understood when

one studies the railway map of the Austrian territory north of the

Carnic border. Here their railway line through the Drave Valley passed

closer to the boundary line than did the Italian system on the south,

and they could bring up fresh troops with more speed. In the Gail

Valley they had a wide region in which they could mass hidden from the

enemy, and they had a good road up the mountains from Mauthen, while

the Italians had to depend upon rough tracks through the valley.

Although Cadorna had the hard task of keeping the doorway to Venice

closed while he attacked the enemy on both flanks, he accomplished his

purpose.

The Italian army operating in the province of Cadore won its next

success in an attack upon the village of Cortina, situated in a

salient of the frontier, 4,000 feet high, amid some of the most

beautiful scenery in the world. Cortina was taken on May 30. The

Austrians had barricaded the famous road winding up through the

Dolomites, and dug elaborate trenches; but the Italians, by superhuman

efforts, moved up their mountain guns, while the Alpini scrambled over

the mountains by the glaciers of Serapis and the tarns of Croda da

Lago, and descended into Cortina on either side. Then, holding the

enemy on the east, they advanced into the Tyrol westward to Falzarego.

In this region they had an experience which illustrated the foresight

of the Austrians in preparing for the attack they believed would come.

Some years before an Austrian had built a hotel in a deep ravine shut

in by walls of limestone and very difficult of approach. Tourists had

commented upon the lack of practicability of the man who placed a

hostelry in so inaccessible a spot. But when the war came it developed

that the hotel builder probably had a subsidy from the Government. For

sandbags, machine guns, and quick-firers quickly converted the hotel

into an excellent fort, which dominated the famous ravine. Thanks to

the hardiness and ingenuity of their picked Alpine troops, the

Italians, after a week of hard fighting, cleared the mountains above

the ravine and dropped upon the hotel fort.

By June 9, 1915, the Italians had won the Falzarego Pass. At times the

fighting raged on summits 10,000 feet high, where the thin air

exhausted the combatants far quicker than their physical exertions. In

the last battle of this engagement the Italians obtained a footing

upon a point of great strategical importance three miles beyond the

pass on the Sasso d'Istria, close to where the Dolomite road bends

southward through the ravine and penetrated the mountains in two

tunnels.

This victory gave the Austrians cause for anxiety regarding the

western defenses of Tyrol, for by a double flanking movement along the

Cordevole River and the Dolomite road the Italians in Cadore had

extended like two arms around one of the principal systems of defense.

General Dankl hurried reenforcements to the Cadore front to check the

thrust up the Cordevole Valley. At the end of this valley was the

focal point of the system of railways that carried food and munitions

to both the Trentino forces and those in southern Tyrol. If the

Italians had succeeded in cutting the railway at this point the enemy

would have had great difficulty in maintaining his armies on the

Trentino and Tyrol fronts. The Italian effort was not pushed to

success; but it at least had the effect of discouraging any plans

General Dankl might have formed of invading the plains of northern

Italy at the foot of the frontier mountains.

Only twenty miles south of the Austrian outposts was the important

city of Verona, famed for its memories of Romeo and Juliet. Nearer

still was Brescia with the fertile lands of Lombardy surrounding it.

But by his maneuvers at the opening of the war, General Cadorna

effectively protected Italian territory and forced the enemy to devote

all his attention to resisting the attacks of active light infantry

and mountain artillery. The great 12-inch Skoda howitzers, upon which

Austria depended to batter down the defenses of these Italian cities,

were needed elsewhere, behind the Julian and Carnic Alps, and

especially in the corner of the frontier near Predil Pass, by which

Napoleon invaded Italy, and on the Isonzo front between Tolmino and

the Adriatic.

Thus with his infantry, Cadorna overcame the artillery handicap under

which Italy labored during all the first months of the war. The Skoda

gun was reputed to be the best in the world. It had proved its worth

in Belgium and Russia, and the fact that the Austrians were able to

lend guns to their ally proved their wealth of big-gun power. Now,

even after ten months of war, when thousands of the great howitzers

were busy in Galicia and along the Danube, the Skoda works could still

produce an armament superior to that of Italy. Much of the

effectiveness of the Skoda gun lay in the fact that it could be

separated into two parts for easier transportation. In addition to

these 12-inch mortars, Austria had a 6-inch steel Skoda, designed in

the summer of 1914, for use in the Carpathians and well adapted to

fighting in the Alps. Due in part to their realization of this

superiority of Austria in big guns, the Italians remained neutral for

ten months, but meanwhile they had created a new armament for their

own armies at full speed. For the attack on the Austrian infantry in

the field they adapted the French 75-millimeter quick-firer, and for

siege work they manufactured 6-and 12-inch howitzers. But it takes

time to build heavy artillery, and at this time every armament firm in

the world was pushed to its full capacity, while the Italians, being

without coal fields, were handicapped in the development of armament

resources at home. For political reasons also General Cadorna would

not risk sacrificing his men to overcome this artillery handicap. His

problem was to conserve his forces as much as possible in readiness

for a defensive campaign against combined Teutonic armies, winning

what small victories he could, and meanwhile keeping down his casualty

lists, while fighting heavy howitzers with light mountain guns and

3-inch quick-firers.

After the Italians had established their hold upon the frontier points

there was an apparent relaxation of effort while the infantry of the

line waited for the heavy siege artillery to issue from the armament

factories and come into action. This movement of artillery was slow,

especially on the Isonzo front where engineering operations were

delayed by the summer floods caused by the melting snows from the

mountain tops. To transport heavy pieces of ordnance across the floods

the Italian engineers had to build strong bridges, often under heavy

fire from the enemy, who, even after their retirement from the east

bank of the river, continually harassed the Italian advance guard

holding the bridgeheads. The Austrians aided the work of the mountain

floods by breaking down the high embankment used to carry off the snow

water, and thereby inundated the plain. Working under a plunging fire

from the enemy's batteries on the foothills, the Italian sappers built

light pontoon bridges over the floods upon which the first Italian

contingent crossed at night and occupied the first line of Austrian

trenches near the river.

This much the Italians accomplished by the first week in June, 1915;

but there they were forced to pause for the reasons already described.

Active hostilities during the first part of June on the Isonzo front

centered around Monfalcone, a seaport just below the dominating Carso

headlands. Taken from Venice by the Austrians during the Napoleonic

era, Monfalcone had become the third most important port in the

empire. In its yards warships were being constructed.

On June 9, 1915, the Italians made their swift stroke in a

southwesterly direction from their Isonzo line. The port was bombarded

on June 7, 1915, by a light Italian cruiser squadron, and the Castle

of Duino, standing at the sea edge near Trieste and defended by three

artillery batteries, was shattered and set afire apparently to prepare

for the operations against Monfalcone from the southwestern side of

the Gulf of Panzano. Archduke Eugene hastily collected a strong force

above Duino ready to resist an attempt by the Italians to land, but

the attempt never was made. It developed that the bombardment of Duino

was a feint.

The real movement against Monfalcone was launched from another quarter

straight across the Isonzo. The Bersaglieri cyclist corps and

grenadiers broke through the Austrian line at the river, and since the

Austrians had neglected to prepare a reserve line, the Italians

advanced by a swift, running fight through the villages around the

Isonzo delta. Near the historic town of Aquileia, now a mere hamlet,

the Italians forced a passage of the river at the point of the bayonet

and flowed in two streams around the enemy's positions, depending for

their rapid movements upon their cyclists with machine guns and their

fast-marching light infantry. The Austrians set fire to the pine-clad

mountain slopes, but were unable to stem the rush of the Italians who,

under the flare of the forest fires, broke into the open town of

Monfalcone after storming the promontory of Rocca.

Here, however, the Italian advance guard was in a dangerous position,

for the Austrian batteries posted on the limestone bluffs rising 1,000

feet on the northern side of the town still dominated the streets

occupied by the Italians near the water's edge. The situation was

critical, not only because the troops in the lower town were in danger

of annihilation if they held their ground, but because the Italians

were anxious to save the town from bombardment, and preserve the

warships under construction in the shipyards. So a brigade of light

troops scaled the limestone cliffs dragging their mobile 3-inch guns,

and forced the Austrians to retire, taking their heavy howitzers with

them. Monfalcone now rested securely in Italian possession. The

Italians in all this engagement lost only about 100 killed and

wounded, while the enemy's casualties were estimated at 2,000. The

loss stung the Austro-Hungarian Government deeply.

CHAPTER LXVII

ATTACKS IN GORIZIA

After the Italian success in June, 1915, certain readjustments were

manifest in the Austrian forces in the Italian theatre. Although there

was no declaration of war between Italy and Germany, it was reported

that German officers were sent to aid the Austrians, and that the

forces of Archduke Eugene were progressively strengthened from this

time on. German soldiers who joined the Austrian detachments were

supposed to have volunteered in an irregular individual manner. In

this manner Germany preserved the appearance of neutrality.

The latter part of June, 1915, found Austria occupied with the siege

of Lemberg, and the archduke, apparently, was content to hold his own

on the Italian front until a decision had been obtained in the more

important operations against the Russians. Satisfied with their

initial successes, General Cadorna on land and the Duke of Abruzzi at

sea settled down to a slow, patient chess play, not unlike that worked

out by General Joffre in France. Cadorna issued a statement to the

Italian people in which he warned them that the preliminary successes

which, he said, had made good the strategical defects of their

frontier, would be followed by a long stage of gradual approaches

against the enemy's second line.

The attrition of the Austro-Hungarian forces would be carried on by

long-range artillery and sappers and local trench warfare with hand

grenades. The Italian commander in chief resolutely refused to divert

any part of his forces to the Dardanelles. Possible danger to Italian

dominion in Tripoli, pointed out by the leaders of the Entente Powers,

did not change his purpose to maintain a single concentrated front and

not diffuse his efforts. The war with Austria, he believed, would be

won or lost on the Italian frontier. His theory as to the best way to

meet advances by the Teutonic allies in new fields was to increase

pressure on their home frontiers where their interests were most

vital. The Italian army in the field was increased to a million men,

and, after the fall of Lemberg, Austria gradually moved more and more

troops to the Alpine passes and the Isonzo, until by August she had

600,000 men facing the Italians, double the number arrayed on this

front when Italy declared war. Had the Russians been able to hold out

longer in Galicia, there is little doubt that Cadorna would have had

something to show for the month of July besides a few local victories

which did not vitally affect the main campaign.

[Illustration: Italian Attack on Austria.]

On June 9, 1915, the capture of Gradisca completed the Italian control

of the lower Isonzo, and Cadorna prepared for a general attack on

all the strongholds guarding Trieste. Of these the most important were

the Carso tableland on the south, Gorizia barring the river-valley of

the Vipacco between the Carso and the foothills of the Julian Alps,

the fortified system of heights north of Gorizia surrounding the town

of Tolmino, and the great intrenched camp of Tarvis above Tolmino

extending to Malborghetto and the other Alps of Carinthia. These

fortified points had to be attacked generally or not at all. Any

attempt to mass an army against any one of them would have spelled

disaster, for the Italians would have been flanked by Austrian forces

from the north or south. A properly defined advance against Trieste

called for a simultaneous thrust at Tolmino and the Tarvis fortress

commanding the road to Vienna. The Austrians had been strengthening

Tarvis ever since 1859, after Napoleon III overthrew the Austrians in

the battles that freed Lombardy. The Austrian fortresses were again

strengthened after the siege of Port Arthur had demonstrated the power

of high-explosive shells, and again in 1910 when the Teutonic allies

made their great discovery that their new giant howitzers laughed at

modern defense works of steel and concrete. In remodeling her Alpine

strongholds Austria selected positions on the plateau for systems of

earthworks containing mobile siege guns.

The key to this immensely strong Austrian line of defense was the

railway town of Plava on the eastern bank of the Isonzo under the

wooded heights of the Ternovane Forest. Plava was in a salient

occupying about the middle of the Austrian line.

Here, on the night of June 17, 1915, the Italians began their general

offensive by an attack from Mount Korada on the opposite side of the

river. Under cover of darkness the Italian sappers built a pontoon

bridge, and the Bersaglieri crossed and carried the town and the

surrounding heights at the point of the bayonet. The Austrians

realized the importance of the position and quickly returned to a

violent counterattack. The Italians threw all their available men into

the gap, and a great battle raged on the edge of the highlands east of

the river. The Austrians had the advantage of position, for their

forces could be massed in the woodland out of sight of the Italian

aviators. But, on the other hand, the Italian batteries on Mount

Korada were able to pour a plunging fire into the lower tableland; and

due mainly to the aid of their artillery the Italian troops drove back

the enemy and maintained the ground won by the first dash.

General Cadorna was now in a position to begin a direct attack upon

Gorizia. He assailed the Hill of Podgora, forming the barbican of the

city's system of defenses and advanced a reconnoitering force toward

Mount Fortin. Meanwhile he massed 500 pieces of artillery on the

heights commanding the city. But the defenses of Gorizia had been well

planned, and they proved their completeness by a long resistance

covering a period that brought successive reports that the fortress

had fallen. All these reports proved false. South of the city the

Austrian intrenchments covered a front of more than ten miles, from

the Mount of San Gabriele below Plava to Mount San Michele on the

Carso tableland. The trenches were built in the most modern style, of

concrete more than a yard thick covered with steel armor, against

which ordinary shrapnel had no more effect than so much hail, and even

high-explosive shells of medium power did little damage. The Italian

weapons of attack were hand grenades and short knives, in the use of

which the infantry were expert. Four army corps operating under the

Duke of Aosta between Gorizia and the sea were beaten back by the

Austrians with heavy losses. This victory so encouraged the archduke

and chief lieutenant, General Boroevics, that they decided upon a

counteroffensive in force. Therefore, as soon as the Italian attack

slackened, the main Austrian army advanced across the Carso Plateau.

The series of battles that now followed were the first engagements of

any size between the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians in the open

field. They began June 22, 1915, and lasted until the close of July,

with a short let-up at the end of the first week in July. The theatre

included the whole Carso front, the Vipacco Valley, and the southern

part of the Ternovane Forest. After his first repulse General

Boroevics brought up fresh corps and renewed the attack, but in the

end he was driven back to his main line with shattered forces.

In the Carso tableland the Austrians had as nearly perfect a position

of natural defense as a general could choose. On the east of the

Isonzo plain the broken, rocky wall rises in places to 1,000 feet,

seamed with gullies and ravines, and bristling with forest growth

which afforded ideal cover. The action of the rain has pitted the

limestone with funnel-shaped holes which form natural redoubts for

machine guns; and there are larger depressions and caves where heavier

pieces of artillery may be placed in excellent shelter.

But while the Italians were unable to capture this position, when

General Boroevics took his troops out of their defenses and sent them

charging across the open ground, he found that the enemy had made good

use of his precarious hold on the edges of the tableland. Although

they occupied barely more than the rim of the plateau, with the

flooded Isonzo a third of a mile broad beneath them, the Italians had

strengthened their positions with sandbag intrenchments and hauled up

a few pieces of light artillery.

The chief support of the infantry holding these sandbag defenses was

the heavy guns across the river, which searched out the Austrian

columns whenever they left cover. In weight of artillery the Italians

had the advantage, for most of the Austrian 12-inch howitzers were

busy in the Alps, and they had to depend mainly upon 6-inch pieces.

By the second week in July, 1915, the Austrians relaxed their efforts,

and the Italians began a slow advance, working up the hills

overlooking Gorizia by a variety of methods. In the places,

comparatively few, where there was cultivated ground, they practiced

the siege method of sapping forward, but generally their advance was

over bare rock, where trenches could be excavated only by the use of

dynamite, and when a charge was made the troops had to carry sandbags

to build temporary cover from machine-gun fire. This method of

warfare, in fact, was general throughout the whole mountain front,

where the hard rock carried a mere veneer of earth, and sandbags had

to serve for defense until the engineers could blast trenches and

galleries in the flintlike face of the slopes.

The repulse of the Austrian counterattack in the middle of July, 1915,

ended the first phase of the battle of Gorizia. On July 18th, 19th and

20th, General Cadorna delivered a fierce assault aided by knowledge

gained in the first stage of the battle, which, for the Italians, was

little more than a reconnaissance in force. For three days and nights

he drove the troops of his combined Second and Third Armies against

the enemy's lines all along the Isonzo. His system was to attack by

day and then at night resist the enemy's counterassaults on his newly

won positions. The Italians retained all the ground they won during

these days of terrific fighting, and captured 3,500 prisoners.

By the 20th of July their confidence had increased to such an extent

that they determined upon a night assault. But next morning Cadorna

received word from his aeroplane scouts and his spies that the enemy

was massing for a supreme effort. The Italian advance was stayed and

every man was set at work helping the engineers strengthen the

trenches.

On July 21, 1915, there came a complete lull. The next day the

Austrians opened their attack with a concentrated bombardment. During

the period of Italian advance the railways had been piling up the

Austrian shells and German gunners had been sent by the Crown Prince

of Bavaria to help serve the heavy howitzers rushed to the Carso from

the Julian Alps and the Tyrol and Trentino salients. With the design

to cut the Italian line of communication, the main Austrian infantry

attack was delivered toward Gradisca where the Italians had

constructed their principal bridges across the Isonzo. The infantry

massed behind the neighboring hills and under cover of a tremendous

artillery bombardment advanced in close formation. The first line of

Italian troops seemed about to be swept away when the gunners on the

heights across the river got the range and poured into the advancing

Austrians a massed fire from all their 500 pieces. General Boroevics's

advance was pounded to pieces; the Italians brought up reenforcements

and charged and captured the lines from which the Austrians had

delivered their assault, taking 2,000 prisoners.

[Illustration: A cloud of poisonous gas released by Italian troops

from tanks concealed in the thicket.]

On July 23, 1915, the archduke ordered another attack upon the Italian

positions near the sea on the edge of the Carso tableland. This was

really an effort to recapture Monfalcone; but it failed, although the

Italians did not dare risk pursuit over the rough ground. Later two

Austrian divisions, advancing from San Michele and San Martino against

Sagrado were repulsed with heavy losses.

By July 25, 1915, the Italians were able to attack and capture some of

the intrenchments on the slopes of San Martino and to storm Sei Busi.

This hill of Sei Busi witnessed some of the most sanguinary fighting

of the whole series of engagements. On a single day it was won, lost

and won again by the Italians, both sides bringing up strong

reenforcements and concentrating against the summit all the artillery

within range. Over the crest of San Michele which dominated a large

part of the tableland the battle surged for many days.

On July 27, 1915, the Italians, attacking with bombs and bayonets were

able to occupy the summit, but could not establish themselves there in

the face of the enemy's bombardment. The lower slopes they were able

to hold behind their sandbag intrenchments, but the crest, swept by

the enemy's heavy artillery and offering no shelter, was absolutely

untenable. In all this fighting artillery played the major role. The

Italians charged that Archduke Eugene, realizing that any infantry

advance against this terrific gunfire was a certain sacrifice of men,

placed in his van regiments of men from the Italian-speaking provinces

and from Old Serbia and Croatia. In this position these troops were

exposed to fire from their own batteries with the knowledge that any

attempt at treachery meant annihilation by their own guns in the rear.

No figures as to the number of men from the "unredeemed" provinces

forced to fight against their kinsmen on the frontier are obtainable.

Italian writers, however, maintain that during the first months of the

war Austrian infantrymen of Latin and Slav origin were sacrificed by

the hundred thousand around Gorizia and Trento.

Like other great drives of the Allies on the French front, the Italian

offensive on the chain of forts guarding Gorizia failed to break the

enemy's resistance. The fighting, however, seasoned the untried troops

of General Cadorna and won them praise even from the veterans of

General Boroevics and from Boroevics himself. "I cannot refrain from

saying," declared the Austrian General in an interview published in a

Hungarian newspaper, "that the bravery of the Italian regiments was

almost incredible, for even if certain regiments lost all their

officers, this did not deter them from advancing with the greatest

contempt for death."

CHAPTER LXVIII

FIGHTING IN THE ALPS--ITALIAN SUCCESSES

Leaving the situation on the Isonzo where it rested at the close of

July, 1915, in a condition virtually of stalemate, we return to the

still more picturesque struggle in the Alps. While the Italian Third

Army in massed assault was making its unsuccessful fight for

possession of Gorizia with Trieste as its ultimate objective, warfare

was in progress in a hundred places in the Julian, Carnic, Dolomite,

Trentino and Tyrolean mountains. Although along this part of the

frontier the Italians inflicted no vital harm upon the enemy during

the first two months of the war, they were successful in a multitude

of minor enterprises, each of which furnishes its stirring tale of

hand-to-hand fighting, individual heroism and novel expedients in a

country singularly adapted to some of the methods of primeval warfare.

Being on the defensive, the Austrians frequently made use of the

primitive ambush of mountain tribes. Loose, heavy bowlders were lashed

to the edge of a precipice and masked with pine branches. Then when

the enemy passed along the mountain path beneath, the wires holding

the rocks in place were cut, releasing a deadly avalanche upon the

advancing foe.

Any description of the fighting on this Alpine front becomes by

necessity a catalogue of apparently isolated operations, for the

nature of the ground negatived any great battle in force such as that

along the Isonzo River. In the Julian Alps the Italian mountaineers

gained a lucky success early in June. General Rohr, the Austrian

commander, had set two companies to guard a rampart of rock between

Tolmino and Monte Nero. The position was so strong that a few hundred

men with Maxims and quick-firers could have held it against an army

corps. Its strength, in fact, was so apparent that the Austrians took

their duties too lightly. Leaving only a few sentries on watch, both

companies enjoyed plenty of sleep at night. But one night the Italian

Alpinists climbed silently over the mountain, killed the enemy's

sentries with knives before they could make an outcry and coming upon

the two companies from the rear captured them with scarcely a

struggle.

The peak of Monte Nero, a stump-shaped mountain 7,370 feet high at the

headwaters of the Isonzo, proved important to the Italians, for it

gave them a fire-control station from which 12-inch shells were

dropped into the forts of Tolmino and the southern forts of Tarvis.

North of Monte Nero, where the boundary turns to the west, is the

important pass of Predil, the gateway to Tarvis, guarded on the

southeast by the fortress of Flitsch and on the west by Malborghetto.

These two positions were the strongest points in a great ring of

fortified heights protecting the pass and the highway and railroad

running through an angle of the Julian Alps into the heart of Austria.

The forts of Malborghetto projected into Italian territory and its

chief works, Fort Hensel, a great white oblong of armored concrete,

was visible miles away in the Italian mountains. Against this system

of fortifications the Italians brought their heaviest howitzers and

demonstrated, as satisfactorily as the Germans had shown months

earlier at Liege, that the strongest forts were no match for modern

artillery. Fort Hensel and the other permanent forts were shattered

and the ground around them was pitted with great craters from

explosions of the 12-inch shells.

The final ruin of Fort Hensel was accomplished by a shell which

penetrated through the thickest of its steel and concrete layers and

exploded in its ammunition magazine. This bombardment of Malborghetto

necessitated firing mortar shells at a high angle completely over

mountains which hid the target from the Italian gunners. The work of

destruction was slow owing to the fact that mists often curtained the

mountain tops and forced the gunners to cease operations, because to

fire while the observers were unable to watch every shot and telephone

the results would have been only a waste of ammunition.

But the Austrians already knew that their forts were no match for

12-inch howitzers, once these great guns could get into position, and

they had prepared another method of defense which they put into use as

soon as the forts were destroyed. Batteries of Skodas, hidden in a

stretch of pasture land below the summit of the mountain, were brought

up and placed in pits concealed by tufts of grass and brush from

reconnoitering airmen, while at a safe distance dummy guns were

displayed to draw the Italians' fire. Thus one of the greatest

artillery duels of the whole front continued day after day, neither

side being able to see the enemy and relying for information upon

observers posted on mountain tops and in aeroplanes. These 12-inch

guns were not intended for such work. They had been laboriously hauled

to their lofty emplacements five and six thousand feet above sea level

to destroy 6-inch batteries, as these 6-inch guns had been brought up

to overpower the lighter 3-inch mountain guns, some of which the

Italians worked from peaks as high as 10,000 feet. When both sides got

these monster howitzers into position the natural sequence was a

deadlock. The most the infantry could do was to drive the enemy's

troops from summits valuable as observation points in the service of

the heavy artillery.

Thus the official reports issued by the Austrian and Italian staff

headquarters reiterated the names of peaks hitherto unknown to the

traveler and tourist mountaineer, peaks which became of immense

importance now, not so much on account of their height as because they

commanded the best views of the surrounding territory. One of these

was Freikofel. The Alpini captured it early in the war with scarcely a

struggle and then for weeks the Austrians sacrificed regiments and

even brigades in vain attempts to recover it.

The loss of Freikofel by the Austrians was followed, on June 24, 1915,

by the loss of Cresta Verde, and then in the first week of July the

Italians captured the important observation peak of Zellenkofel. This

mountain was held by the Austrians with a force of only forty men, but

in view of its extraordinary position this squad was considered

sufficient. The slopes below them were swept by a battery of their

mountain guns, in telephonic communication with the more distant

howitzer battery upon which it could call for assistance if necessity

arose, and a large infantry reserve was stationed in the wooded valley

below. But one night twenty-nine Alpini crept up the almost sheer

precipice a thousand feet high that separated them from the Austrian

defenders. They carried ropes and a machine gun and just as the moon

rose they attained the summit, set up their Maxim and opened fire.

Every man in the observation station was shot down.

Then followed a desperate fight with the Austrian mountain battery on

the reverse slope. But thanks to their machine gun the Italians were

able to break up the enemy's charge and as day broke they captured the

Austrians' guns and drove the men who served them down the mountain.

When the Austrian reserves arrived the Italians had intrenched

themselves on the southern slope and were able to make use of the

captured guns. The attacks of the reserves were repulsed and the

Italians held the mountain.

CHAPTER LXIX

MORE MOUNTAIN FIGHTING--RESULTS OF FIRST CAMPAIGN

At the western end of the rugged battle front, the Italian mountain

troops, after the first advance, were less successful than the troops

of Cadorna in the Carnic and Julian Alps. Here the fighting

mountaineers of Tyrol redeemed their reputation by a daring stroke.

The scene of this brilliant operation was close above the Tonale Pass,

the site of one of the greatest glaciers in Europe. From Presanella to

Care the ice extends in a gleaming crescent for more than twenty

miles. Its broadest part stretches for six miles to Monte Adamello,

11,640 feet high. The paths over or by these glaciers had been seized

and fortified by the Italians and their line along this front lay

mostly within Italian territory. In mid-July a force of Tyroleans

found a new track through the ice and before the Italians, engrossed

with operations elsewhere, knew what they were doing they had

penetrated several miles into Italian lands. The Italians met the

invaders at the famous Garibaldi Hut owned by the Italian Alpine Club

just beneath Mount Adamello and checked the advance, although the

Austrians retained some of the peaks commanding the Hut.

Just north of the Adamello group of peaks in the upper part of the

Giudicari Valley extending to Lake Garda the Italians took one of the

northern passes by surprise and advanced toward the forts defending

Riva and Arco. Eventually they won all the country south of the Ledro

Valley with a series of fierce artillery duels. A similar advance was

made east of Lake Garda and down the Lagarina Valley. The forward

movement was signalized by engineering feats comparable, in their

mastery of the human hand over the forces of nature, only to the

building of the Pyramids. The great siege guns weighing many tons were

hoisted to the top of cloud-piercing summits solely by man power.

Every bit of ammunition and supplies had to be brought up by the same

laborious method. At Col di Lana the Austrians had an intricate series

of works excavated deep in the solid rock. High explosive shells and

hand bombs were useless against this defense, but Colonel Garibaldi, a

grandson of the great Italian Liberator, found a way to drive the

Austrians out of their position. He mustered a corps of engineers who

had helped drill the great railway tunnels on the Swiss frontier and

under his direction they tunneled right through the mountain into the

Austrian galleries on the reverse slope. When the fumes of the last

charge of blasting dynamite cleared away a detachment of bomb

carriers leaped through the jagged hole, drove the enemy from their

galleries, and, constantly fed by supporting troops, cleared their way

up and down the mountain.

The first of August, 1915, found the Italians holding the Austrian

outpost positions they had taken during June and July; but the

Austrian main defenses from one end of the frontier to the other, a

distance of more than 300 miles, were virtually intact. It must be

borne in mind, however, that the Italian General Staff at this period

of the war never contemplated any general offensive except on the

Isonzo River. Although their attack along the Isonzo did not attain

its object of reducing the main defenses of Trieste and Gorizia,

proved too hard a nut to crack, the Italians here won a series of

minor victories against great odds and, to the Italian mind at least,

demonstrated the valor of the army and the effectiveness of the new

artillery which boded well for the future.

It has been pointed out that in these operations General Cadorna had

to consider other things besides the immediate problems facing his

troops. The Italo-Austrian warfare was but a small factor in the great

plan of the Entente allies, who as the war progressed, realized more

and more the importance of cooperative action. All that happened in

Galicia, Poland, Lithuania and Courland had a direct influence upon

Cadorna's plans. Russian reverses and the failure of all attempts by

the French and British to break the German line in France and Belgium

made the Italian commander cautious. The series of Teutonic victories

made it possible that at any time he might have to face an

overwhelming host of Austrians and Germans equipped with artillery

which he could not hope to equal and backed by an apparently limitless

supply of ammunition. For political reasons, also, he could not risk,

even in the hope of reaching Trieste, sacrificing his men in an

offensive costing anything like the quantities of human material being

used up each day in other theatres. His preponderance of troops at the

opening of operations in May was gradually reduced. But the enemy's

positions and his superior artillery offset the Italian's greater

numbers. On the whole it may be said that the Italians accomplished

quite as much as any of their allies. They penetrated farther into the

Alps and the rugged tableland west of Trieste than the British and

French with their colonials did into the hills of Gallipoli or into

the ridge of the Lille region, and the length of their thrusts was

greater than the French advances in Artois and Champagne.

The Italians were more successful in concealing the extent of their

losses than most of the other belligerents. A conservative estimate

places their total casualty list between the last week in May and the

first of August, 1915, at 25,000. The Austrians in the same period on

the same front lost about 15,000 dead, 50,000 wounded and 15,000

prisoners. The slight Italian losses compared with their enemy's is

remarkable in view of the fact that they were almost constantly on the

offensive. By far the greater portion of the casualties were suffered

in the east, during the two assaults on the defenses of Gorizia.

Measuring the territory gained during these two months and comparing

it with the concessions offered by Austria as the price of Italy's

neutrality--on this basis the Italians had no cause to regret their

decision. On the Venetian Plain by the lower Isonzo a few thousand men

in two days with comparatively small loss conquered all the territory

which the Italian nation had been offered for keeping out of war. This

conquered territory, however, was far less than the prize the Italian

King and his Cabinet set before the eyes of the people when they

declared war.

PART X--THE DARDANELLES AND TURKEY

CHAPTER LXX

BEGINNING OF OPERATIONS

During the month of January, 1915, the British and French naval

authorities came to a decision to attempt a naval attack upon the

Dardanelles. It was decided, too, to lose no time in the matter, but

to push the campaign with all speed. Undoubtedly, behind this decision

there were many political factors of a grave kind because, on the face

of it, there were many reasons why the attack should have been delayed

until fine weather. Once having come to a decision, no time was lost.

The Island of Tenedos was seized, and under an agreement with

Venizelos, the Greek Premier, the island of Lemnos was occupied. In

the latter the large harbor of Mudros offered an ideal naval and

military base for operations against the Dardanelles, overcoming one

of the chief original handicaps of the allied command, distance of

base from scene of operations. Lemnos was less than fifty miles from

the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, while Tenedos was but twenty-two

miles away, lying close to the Turkish coast. At these two depots a

considerable Anglo-French naval squadron was rapidly collected. They

came from all parts of the world.

The elimination of the German commerce raiders from the high seas, and

the obvious intentions of the main German and Austrian fleets to avoid

a general action against overwhelming odds, freed a large number of

allied, and especially British, warships of secondary fighting value.

By the middle of February, 1915, the rendezvous was complete. Besides

the ships belonging to the British and French Mediterranean fleets,

there had arrived, fresh from the battle of the Falkland Islands, the

_Inflexible_, a dreadnought battle cruiser. The _Queen Elizabeth_,

too, arrived, the newest and strongest of the ships of the whole

British navy. It is evident that great reliance had been placed on the

enormous gun power of this vessel, it being hoped that her great

15-inch pieces would blow the Dardanelles defenses to pieces, somewhat

in the way the gigantic German land guns had blown the Belgian forts

into fragments. In no other way is it possible to explain the risking

of this capital ship in the highly dangerous operations in the AEgean

sea.

In addition to the _Queen Elizabeth_ and the _Inflexible_, the British

force included the _Agamemnon_, the _Irresistible_, the _Vengeance_,

the _Triumph_, the _Albion_, the _Lord Nelson_, the _Ocean_ and the

_Majestic_. The French ships numbered the _Charlemagne_, the

_Gaulois_, the _Suffern_, and the _Bouvet_.

Early in the morning of February 19, 1915, these vessels, under the

supreme command of Vice Admiral Sackville Carden, and with Rear

Admiral Guepratte in command of the French division, arrived off the

Gallipoli Peninsula. At 8 a. m. they opened an intense bombardment of

the several forts. At first they battered away at the Turks at long

range but finally, about the middle of the afternoon, the _Vengeance_,

_Cornwallis_ and _Triumph_ of the British forces, and the _Suffern_,

_Gaulois_ and _Bouvet_ of the French fleet, closed in upon the Turkish

forts which were still replying. It was not until darkness that all

the land batteries had been apparently silenced.

At this time, and throughout the various attempts to reduce the

Dardanelles forts by naval bombardment, there was considerable

difficulty in making the demolition permanent. On the following

morning a detachment of the Naval Flying Corps made a reconnaissance

and discovered that the damage was not as great as had been hoped.

Accordingly, preparations were made to give the Turks another dose of

the 12-inch guns. Before this could be done bad weather intervened.

On February 25, 1915, there was a further bombardment and by five

o'clock in the evening all the forts again had been silenced. Mine

sweeping operations were then begun. For this work English-Scotch

trawlers from the North Sea had been brought down and the crews of

these little unprotected boats added many pages of heroism to the book

of great deeds of the Dardanelles operations.

The following day a division of the battleship fleet entered the

straits for a distance of four miles, the mine sweepers having cleared

the channel for that distance. The _Albion_, _Vengeance_ and

_Majestic_ opened fire with their 12-inch guns on Fort Dardanos, a

battery mounting nothing but 5.9-inch guns, situated on the Asiatic

shore some distance below the Narrows. Fort Dardanos bravely replied,

however, until put out of action, as did several concealed batteries,

the presence of which the British and French had not suspected.

With the completion of this operation the allied command believed they

had not only permanently silenced the forts guarding the entrance to

the Dardanelles but had, as well, made both sides of the straits then

too warm for the Turkish troops. Accordingly forces of marines were

landed to complete the work of demolition. They were successful except

at Kum Kale where the Turks proved to have maintained a large force.

The British landing party was driven back to its boats in a hurry

after suffering a score of casualties.

The apparent success of these naval operations raised high hopes in

Great Britain and in the other allied countries. The British

Government, which had established a censorship for all news that might

tend to depress the British public, saw no reason for interfering to

prevent the publication of news that might tend unduly in the other

direction. The newspapers and the so-called military experts gave the

public what they evidently wanted. The attack upon the Dardanelles,

according to the majority of these, was practically over. A few voices

of warning were raised, but they were immediately silenced as

"croakers" and "pessimists" and even "pro-Germans." Absurd reports of

consternation and panic in Constantinople were sent broadcast

throughout Great Britain, and thence to the whole world. Thousands of

Turks, in abject fear, were pictured as spending most of their days

and nights on the housetops of the sacred city, anxiously awaiting the

first glimpse of the victorious allied fleet sailing up the Golden

Horn. Hundreds of thousands were said to be fleeing into Asia Minor

and preparations were being made by the sultan and his government to

follow suit.

Meanwhile, nothing of the kind was happening, either in Gallipoli or

in Constantinople. The German and Turkish authorities, confident in

their ability to hold the straits against all the forces that could be

brought against it, were quietly perfecting their plans. Bad weather

again interrupted the Allies' operations, and it was not until March

1, 1915, that the _Triumph_, _Ocean_ and _Albion_ again entered the

straits, and bombarded Fort Dardanos (once more active), and the

concealed shore batteries. The same night the mine sweepers, under the

protection of destroyers, cleared an additional five miles of the

channel, and the waters were safe up to within a mile and a half of

the entrance to the Narrows.

About the same time the two French squadrons bombarded the Bulair

lines, where the Gallipoli Peninsula connects with the mainland, in an

attempt to interrupt the Turks' supply of troops and ammunition.

On the following day, March 2, 1915, the _Canopus_, _Swiftsure_ and

_Cornwallis_ drew close into Fort Dardanos and opened fire. By so

doing they got within range of the Turkish batteries in the pine woods

just below the Kilid Bahr plateau and all three boats were hit.

For the next few days the bombardment of various Turkish positions and

batteries was continued. On the afternoon of March 4, 1915, a large

landing party was put ashore at Kum Kale and Sedd-el-Bahr to complete

the demolition of the works. That on the Asiatic shore again had a

hard time and was driven off by a Turkish force after doing only small

damage. The force on the European side also found that the Turks had

quickly returned to the tip of the peninsula as soon as the fire of

the warships had ceased.

On the following day there occurred at Smyrna an incident that is hard

to explain. Even British experts have not made any attempt to solve

the puzzle. Vice Admiral Peirse with a British and French fleet,

appeared off the city and opened a bombardment. The Turkish command

did not reply and, after doing considerable damage, Peirse and his

ships sailed away. He made no attempt to land, indeed he is not

believed to have had a force for that purpose with him. The only

reasonable explanation of the bombardment is that it was in the nature

of a diversion intended to keep as many troops as possible from

Gallipoli.

In the Dardanelles the operations were rapidly coming to a head. The

Anglo-French command believed the time had now arrived for an attack

in force upon the forts at the Narrows, the real defenses of the

straits. Accordingly, on March 6, 1915, the _Albion_, _Prince George_,

the _Vengeance_, the _Majestic_ and the _Suffern_ steamed well up the

straits and opened a direct fire on the big forts. It was not upon the

work of these ships, however, that great hopes rested. A new

experiment was being tried from the Gulf of Saros on the other side of

the Peninsula of Gallipoli, at the same time. With their long range

guns the _Queen Elizabeth_, the _Agamemnon_, and the _Ocean_ stood

well out and, by indirect fire, threw shell after shell over the

heights of the peninsula into the land works. All the while circling

aeroplanes, under the constant fire of the Turkish antiaircraft guns,

watched and corrected the firing, while a captive balloon, sent up

from the _Agamemnon_, did additional and valuable service in this

respect.

It was found that, because of the angle of fire of the big naval guns,

it was not possible to score any hits from the Gulf of Saros on the

Turkish forts on the European side of the straits and the attempt was

soon abandoned. Modern big gun ammunition was too expensive to be

lightly thrown away. Furthermore, the life of one of the big guns of

these battleships is strictly limited, especially if full charges are

being used. Ultimately, the three battleships in the Gulf shifted

their fire to the forts near Chanak, on the Asiatic side, where the

works were on low ground, almost at sea level.

It was confidently hoped that, by means of this indirect fire, it

would be possible to put the 14-inch guns of these forts out of

action, without giving them a chance to reply. The idea of trying to

force a way past these great guns, exposing the relatively frail sides

of precious battleships to their direct fire, was not relished by the

allied command.

But if the Turks could not reply to the fire of the three battleships

in the Gulf of Saros with their 14-inch guns, they could and did do

effective work with smaller guns concealed on the heights of the

peninsula overlooking the gulf, and the _Queen Elizabeth_ was hit

three times.

On the following day, March 7, the attack was renewed. The four French

battleships, the _Charlemagne_, _Gaulois_, the _Bouvet_ and the

_Suffern_ took the post of greatest danger inside the straits and

finally again silenced the Dardanos fort. The _Agamemnon_ and the

_Lord Nelson_, behind them, made a long range attack upon the forts

fringing the Narrows. Three of the allied battleships, the _Gaulois_,

the _Agamemnon_ and the _Lord Nelson_ were hit by Turkish shells but,

as an offset, it was believed that the great forts at Chanak, as well

as the works at Dardanos, had been permanently silenced.

This confidence, as we shall see later on, was not justified. Inside

the great forts, it is true, the Turks and their German officers were

suffering terribly from the bombardment. That they stood it in some

cases for periods of seven hours at a stretch, and continued firing

effectively for the whole of that time, is testimony to their courage

and devotion to duty. As the great shells of the _Queen Elizabeth_

landed in the forts they did frightful havoc. The shrapnel shells

contained something like 12,000 separate bullets and it is on record

that one of these shells wounded or killed no less than 250 Turkish

soldiers. As the high explosive shells struck the works and exploded

they threw up tons of earth and cement a hundred feet in the air,

plainly visible to the allied observers on the warships in the

straits.

But this was not the worst that the defenders had to endure. The

exploding shells gave off poisonous gases that filled the underground

passages of the redoubts. The heroic Turks worked under such

conditions as long as it was humanly possible, but eventually their

German officers were compelled to withdraw their men from each fort in

turn to allow the gases to clear away. These circumstances undoubtedly

account for the fact that almost every one of the forts was reported

permanently silenced, only to resume action a few days later, much to

the surprise and consternation of the allied command.

Furthermore, there is abundant evidence that the Turks were

economizing ammunition, especially big gun shells. They had made up

their minds that there would be a direct naval attack upon the forts

sooner or later, and their instructions were to reserve their fire

"until they saw the whites of the enemy's eyes," so to speak.

From March 6 to March 18, 1915, there was a lull in activity at the

straits. Momentous events were transpiring in London and at the island

of Lemnos, and upon the outcome of these events depended the future

course of the operations at the Dardanelles. While the individual

ships of his fleet conducted minor bombardments intended to harass the

Turks, Vice Admiral Carden, pleading ill health, had been allowed to

relinquish the command of the allied fleet, and Vice Admiral John de

Robeck, newly promoted to his rank, succeeded him. Almost immediately

the latter steamed away to Mudros to engage in a fateful conference.

CHAPTER LXXI

PREPARATIONS FOR LANDING--COMPOSITION OF FORCES

It had evidently been the intention of the Allies to force the Narrows

by naval power, and then follow up the success by an occupation of

Gallipoli by a land force. For this purpose the troops solicited of

Venizelos, the Greek Premier, were undoubtedly to be used, but sole

reliance was not to be placed upon them. For one thing, the Allies

had no intention of allowing Greece to assume too great an importance

in the campaign against Constantinople, well knowing that the Greek

people had large ambitions in that part of the world--ambitions that

clashed with those of more important powers.

In early March, 1915, the French were busy concentrating an

expeditionary force in North Africa, under the command of General

d'Amade. By March 15 the French force had been gathered together at

Bizerta, in the AEgean Sea. At the same time the British Government had

been undertaking a similar concentration, and by the third week in

March a force estimated at about 120,000 men had arrived in transports

at Mudros in the island of Lemnos. This English force consisted of the

Twenty-ninth Division, the Royal Naval Division, a special force

formed by Winston Churchill, British Secretary to the Admiralty, and

used in the attempt to relieve Antwerp, the Australian and New Zealand

divisions originally brought to Egypt, a Territorial division, and

some Indian forces.

These troops, with the comparatively small French force under General

d'Amade, were placed under the command of one of the most popular of

British officers--General Sir Ian Hamilton.

Sir Ian Hamilton and his staff were hurried from London by special

trains and a fast cruiser steaming upward of 30 knots an hour. By the

time he reached Mudros the French troops had also arrived from

Bizerta.

The island of Lemnos presented a strange and picturesque spectacle

when all these troops, drawn from so many distant parts of the world,

were gathered in the sheltering bay. The blue and red of the

Frenchmen's uniforms, the khaki of the British, the native costumes of

the Indian and North African troops contrasted strangely. Mixing

freely with them and driving hard bargains, were the native Greek

tradesmen. All over the little town thousands of temporary huts and

shops and tents sprang up for the supply of the needs of the troops.

Out in the harbor hundreds of ships of every description were moored.

There were battleships, cruisers, torpedo boats, submarines,

transports, supply boats, barges, picket boats, and dozens of Greek

trading vessels. Into all this mess and chaos came the British

commander.

Then followed a long conference with General d'Amade, Admiral de

Robeck, and Admiral Guepratte. There does not seem to be any reason

for doubting that the plan was to launch a land attack upon the

Gallipoli defenses immediately. But General Hamilton demurred. He

inspected the loading of the transports, and refused to give the order

for an attack until grave defects had been remedied. Of this period he

wrote subsequently:

"I knew that nothing but a thorough and systematic scheme for flinging

the whole of the troops under my command very rapidly ashore could be

expected to meet with success."

The slightest delay in landing, Sir Ian Hamilton realized, would prove

terribly costly, if not absolutely fatal. He and his troops were

embarking on a campaign opening with a feat of arms for which there

was no precedent in history. He did not intend that there should be

the slightest chance of failure if forethought and intelligent

preparation could prevent it.

The prime obstacle to an immediate descent of the allied land forces

upon Gallipoli Sir Ian Hamilton found to be the manner in which the

British transports had been loaded. The only consideration that seems

to have been present in the minds of the military authorities who

superintended the work was the question of getting the material and

men aboard the ships. The supplies, artillery, and ammunitions had all

been loaded without any consideration as to which was to come off the

boats first. Material absolutely necessary for the protection of the

troops once they had landed on hostile shores, and vital in any

attempt to press home the advantage thus gained, was buried under

tents, hut parts, cooking material, etc.

"I cannot go ahead with a transport fleet in this condition," said

General Hamilton in substance to his French and English colleagues.

"The whole fleet must return to Egypt and be reloaded."

"But time," urged Admiral de Robeck. "It will take weeks of valuable

time."

"Better lose time than run straight to certain disaster," declared

General Hamilton.

And back to Alexandria went the whole fleet of transports, with the

exception of a few vessels carrying the Australian Infantry Brigade,

which, by some miracle, had been properly loaded.

When General Hamilton and his soldiers sailed out of Mudros Harbor,

bound for Alexandria, Admiral de Robeck came to a momentous and

historic decision. Acting either on his own responsibility or under

orders or advice of some superior authority, he decided not to wait

for the troops, but to make a determined attack upon the Narrows with

his whole fleet. By sheer weight of guns he would try to run past the

great forts that lined the 1,500-yard channel, pounding his way

through on the theory that "what will not bend must break."

March 18, 1915, was an ideal day for such an heroic attempt. The

sailors of the allied fleet were called to quarters as the morning

sun, in a perfect sky, arose over the towering hills that lined the

straits. Briefly the officers addressed the men, told them of the work

ahead, spoke of the glory that awaited them if successful, and ordered

each man to his post.

The reader, in order to gain some definite idea of the defenses that

were to be attacked, should take up a map showing the Dardanelles. He

will find, about ten miles from the entrance, a narrow channel where

the shores of Asia and Europe almost touch. There, at the narrowest

point of the channel, the Turks had built their chief defenses. On the

south slope of the Kalid Bahr were three powerful works. The Rumeli

Medjidieh Battery mounted two 11-inch, four 9.4-inch, and five

3.4-inch guns. The Hamidieh II Battery had two 14-inch, while the

Namazieh Battery had one 11-inch, one 10.2-inch, eleven 9.4-inch,

three 8.2-inch, and three 5.9-inch guns.

On the Asiatic side of the Narrows, near Chanak, was a system of

redoubts of equal strength. The Hamidieh I Battery, south of Chanak,

consisted of two 14-inch and seven 9.4-inch guns, while the Hamidieh

III Battery possessed two 14-inch, one 9.4-inch, one 8.2-inch, and

four 5.9-inch guns.

Besides all these formidable defenses there were many minor positions

on the very edge of the Narrows. In fact the whole channel, and the

way of the allied fleet to the Sea of Marmora, lay through rows upon

rows of high-power guns.

The disastrous naval attack upon the big forts at the Narrows,

resulting, as it did, in the loss of three battleships and the

disabling of others, convinced the British and French naval

authorities that it was hopeless to expect success along that line,

except at a price that they could ill afford to pay, and that would

have a terribly depressing effect upon public opinion at home.

Admiral de Robeck and his British "bulldogs" were called off to await

the coming of Sir Ian Hamilton and his mixed expeditionary force. This

force, while the 12-and 15-inch guns of the Anglo-French fleet had

been vainly battering the Dardanelles forts, had returned to

Alexandria, and, under the careful supervision of Sir Ian Hamilton and

General d'Amade, had been reshipped aboard the great transport fleet.

At this point there appears to have arisen a serious misunderstanding

between Great Britain and France as to the exact number of troops to

be supplied by each. Although the true facts have not yet come to

light, it is believed that General Joffre emphatically refused to

detach any of the French troops from the western front. The force that

France eventually contributed to the allied army at the Dardanelles

consisted of units not at that time in view for service in northern

France. These numbered a small detachment of Fusiliers Marines, a

section of the Armee Coloniale, and the Foreign Legion, a force made

up of volunteers from all over the world, enlisted for service

anywhere, and generally assigned to a post of unusual danger.

Great Britain was, therefore, under the necessity of providing the

bulk of the troops.

The British authorities did not make the mistake of throwing raw

troops into the initial struggle at the Dardanelles. The backbone of

the force supplied to General Sir Ian Hamilton was the Twenty-ninth

Division of Regulars, made up largely of the hardiest of England's

youth--the north countrymen. It comprised the Eighty-sixth Brigade of

Infantry--Second Royal Fusiliers, First Lancashire Fusiliers, First

Royal Munster Fusiliers, and the First Royal Dublin Fusiliers; the

Eighty-seventh Brigade--Second South Wales Borderers, First King's Own

Scottish Borderers, First Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and First

Border Regiment; the Eighty-eighth Brigade--Second Hampshires, Fourth

Worcesters, First Essex, and the Fifth Royal Scots, the latter a

Territorial battalion. Attached to this force of infantry was a

squadron of the Surrey Yeomanry and two batteries of the Fourth

Mountain Brigade, a Highland artillery unit.

To the command of these regular troops, Major General Hunter-Weston

was appointed. This officer had been through much of the early

fighting in the western theatre, originally commanding the Eleventh

Brigade of the Third Corps of General French's army. His appointment

to the Dardanelles was in the nature of a promotion, it being

recognized that his dash and energy would be useful in the style of

warfare that would govern the battle for the straits.

In addition to the regular troops brought out from England, there was

the Naval Division. This force had seen a bit of action in the attempt

to save Antwerp. It consisted of two Naval Brigades and a Royal Marine

Brigade.

Also there was a Territorial Division, known as the East Lancashires,

under the command of Major General Douglas. Immediately upon the

outbreak of war this division had volunteered for foreign service and

had been shipped to Egypt, where it had had six months' training. It

comprised the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Lancashire Fusiliers,

the Fourth and Fifth East Lancashires, the Ninth and Tenth

Manchesters, the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Manchesters.

These troops, with the inclusion of the Australian and New Zealand

forces brought to Egypt at the beginning of the war, under the command

of Lieutenant General Birdwood, and a considerable number of Indian

troops, made up the force at the disposal of Sir Ian Hamilton. They

numbered in all, with the French troops, about 120,000 men.

What had the Turkish authorities to set against this army, supported

by the great fleet of battleships and unlimited number of transports

and subsidiary vessels? Estimates of the potential strength of the

Turkish army available for service in and about the Gallipoli

Peninsula at this time vary widely. There were those, for instance,

who claimed that, if necessary, the Turks could command at least

600,000 troops for the defense of the straits, and that any attempt to

capture the positions with the force supplied to Sir Ian Hamilton was

doomed to failure. On the other hand were those who claimed that the

Turks were short of equipment and ammunition, and had no means of

replenishment; that they had no heart in the fight; that they were

already in revolt against their German taskmasters; that the Suez and

Caucasus defeats had undermined their morale and depleted their

numbers, and that the Turkish high command had decided that it was

useless to attempt to defend the position. Fortunately, between these

two extremists there was a happy mean, and the best evidence points to

the conclusion that, for the defense of the Dardanelles, from first to

last, the Turks depended upon about 200,000 men with reenforcements

brought up from time to time to refill the ranks. Probably when the

great landing took place only a small proportion of the Turkish troops

were in Gallipoli.

These troops were under the command of the German General Liman von

Sanders, although, from time to time in the operations, the

picturesque figure of Enver Pasha appeared. Admiral Usedom, a high

German naval expert, was placed in command of the purely naval

defenses of the straits.

Unfortunately for the allied force the attack upon the Dardanelles

lacked the important--and perhaps indispensable--element of surprise.

By their early naval attack upon the outer fort, by the gathering of

the army at Mudros and its subsequent return to Alexandria, and,

finally, by the ill-fated naval attack upon the Narrows' defenses, the

Allies had given the Turks ample warning of their intentions. During

the many weeks that intervened between the first naval attack upon the

outer forts and the approach of Sir Ian Hamilton's army, the Turks,

under the supervision of their German mentors, and borrowing largely

of the lessons of the trench campaign in Flanders and France, made of

the Peninsula of Gallipoli a network of positions which it proved

possible, to borrow an expression used of the German concrete trenches

in France, "for a caretaker and his wife to hold." This elaborate

system of trenches and redoubts was dominated by the three great

heights. Every foot of the sides of these major positions had been

prepared with barbed wire, monster pits, mines, concealed machine-gun

batteries, and the almost endless variety of traps evolved out of six

months' experience with the new style of warfare.

Along the many miles of coast of the Peninsula of Gallipoli there were

but few places where, even under the most advantageous of conditions,

it was possible to effect a landing in the face of a strongly

intrenched enemy. The steep slopes of the hills rose from the very

water's edge. Even in cases where there was a low, sandy beach, the

nature of the country in the immediate vicinity made it impossible to

deploy and maneuver any considerable number of troops.

Furthermore the Turks, well aware of the limited possibilities at the

disposal of the allied force, had made terrifically strong defensive

positions of the few beaches where successful landings were at all

possible. Row upon row of barbed wire had been run along the shores

and even out into the sea. Mines had been constructed that could be

depended upon to blow the intrepid first landing parties to pieces.

The ground had been thoroughly studied and machine-gun batteries

placed so that every inch of the beaches could be raked with a

devastating fire. And finally the ranges for all the great guns in the

hills beyond had been accurately measured so that the ships and the

troops would be literally buried under an avalanche of shells.

CHAPTER LXXII

PLANS OF SIR IAN HAMILTON--FIRST LANDING MADE

The broad outlines of the problem that faced Sir Ian Hamilton and his

force were comparatively simple. The assault upon the Gallipoli

Peninsula resolved itself into rush attacks upon two major heights,

leading up to a grand assault upon the key position to the Narrows.

These three positions formed an irregular triangle. The first was Achi

Baba, situated within three and a half miles of the tip of the

peninsula. The second was Sari Bair, about eight miles due north of

the Narrows. By either taking or isolating these two positions the

Allies would be in a position for a grand attack upon the third and

most important height, the plateau of Kilid Bahr, or Pasha Dagh. This

position not only commanded the Narrows and the adjacent channel but

it contained two of the great forts that successfully withstood the

grand fleet attack. It was, in the minds of the allied command, the

key to the whole situation. With Kilid Bahr in their hands, they

believed the way to Constantinople would be open and the elimination

of the Turk as a factor in the war and the settlement of the Balkan

question or questions in a manner favorable to the allied powers would

necessarily follow.

The operations as planned by Sir Ian Hamilton, then, consisted of a

number of landings--as many as possible so as to conceal the real

objectives of the allied troops and to disperse the Turkish force--and

an attempt to rush the position of Achi Baba, and to isolate the

position of Sari Bair by advancing through the low country that lay

between that position and Kilid Bahr.

On April 7, 1915, Sir Ian Hamilton, with his staff, returned to Mudros

and held a conference with the naval commands. By the 20th his plans

had been perfected and the great landing was fixed to take place on

Sunday, April 25, 1915. During the previous week the Allies had been

making feints along the shore of the Gulf of Saros in an attempt to

give an element of surprise to the real attack.

As Sir Ian Hamilton subsequently wrote, the question of weather was

one of vital importance to the success of the landing. If, after a

number of the troops had been thrown upon the beaches, bad weather had

intervened, prevented further landings and perhaps driven the fleet

and auxiliary vessels to Mudros Harbor, the unfortunate troops ashore

would have been wiped out.

Sunday, April 25, 1915, however, was a perfect day. The low mist of

the early morning hid the great fleet until it was close to the shore

of the peninsula. As the day progressed the mist disappeared, the blue

sky presented an unbroken expanse, while no wind disturbed the placid

sea. In a setting such as this was enacted one of the greatest battles

of all history.

At the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula were five small beaches. They

were subsequently named by the Allies, for identification purposes,

Beaches S, V, W, X, and Y. Against these points was to be flung the

Twenty-ninth Division, supported by some of the naval division. These

troops, once having gained the shore and held it against the enemy

counterattacks, were to push on in all haste by the road that led to

the village of Krithia, northwest of Achi Baba, turn east before

reaching that place, and carry Achi Baba with a rush.

At the same time the Australian and New Zealand troops were to effect

a landing at Gaba Tepe, about twelve miles up the AEgean coast of the

peninsula and about three and a half miles south of Sari Bair. Running

southeast from near Gaba Tepe was a good road connecting with the town

of Maidos, on the Dardanelles, above the Narrows. The whole way lay

through low country and, once in command of this road, the allied

troops would not only sever direct communications between Sari Bair

and Kilid Bahr but would be in a position to attack the defenses of

the latter on the flank.

[Illustration: Pictorial Map of the Dardanelles, Showing Where the

Allies Landed.]

Meantime the French were to make a landing at Kum Kale on the Asiatic

side of the straits. There is some doubt as to the real purpose of

this landing. After the French had reembarked--"driven off with

terrible losses," according to the Turkish official account--it was

claimed that the landing was merely a diversion. Certainly nothing

more than that could be claimed for a feint made by a portion of the

Naval Division farther up the Gulf of Saros.

These, then, were the plans of Sir Ian Hamilton: four landing

operations in widely separated points, two of serious importance and

the other two, probably, intended only to draw the troops and energy

of the defenders. How they prospered, what measure of success they

obtained, how the Turks, fighting with the valor which has made them

famous through ages, how the British Colonial and French troops

accomplished almost unbelievable deeds of heroism and skill, make one

of the most fascinating stories in the annals of warfare.

While these operations were timed to occur simultaneously, they will

appear more clear to the reader if they are taken separately and each

followed to its conclusion from the opening day. In this way we will

tell the story, first, of the Australian-New Zealand landing northeast

of Gaba Tepe; then of the landings on the five beaches at the tip of

the peninsula; and, finally, of the French landing on the Asiatic

shore and the naval brigade demonstration at Bulair.

By one o'clock on the morning of Sunday, April 25, 1915, the allied

expeditionary force had arrived within five miles of the Gallipoli

shore. Under cover of darkness the final dispositions were made and

the ships maneuvered so that the timing of the several landings would

be accurately synchronized. Shortly after one o'clock the landing

boats were lowered from the transports.

Strung in lines of four and five the boats were slowly towed toward

shore by steam pinnaces. Not a sound was heard but the panting of the

engines of the little boats. The speed was accurately calculated to

bring the parties close in shore with the first break of the dawn.

Accompanying the Australian and New Zealand troops, were a number of

destroyers. Just as they reached the shallow water in front of the

cliffs of Gaba Tepe, a Turkish lookout spied them in the hazy light of

the morning. Instantly he gave the alarm and a flaring searchlight

flashed its rays on the little flotilla.

The need for silence had disappeared. With a cheer the British troops

leaped from their boats into the shoal water and splashed their way

ashore. While many of them were still in their boats, however, the

Turks opened fired. The whole ground had been carefully prepared and

from every cover on the shore and the cliffs beyond a deadly fire was

poured upon the Colonial troops.

Without faltering, however, the Australian and New Zealand troops,

supported by a squadron of battleships and destroyers, came on

straight at the strongly intrenched Turks. The first of the

Australians to reach the shore were the Third Brigade under Colonel

Sinclair Maglagan. With a rush they charged the first Turkish lines,

bayoneted the defenders, and scrambled up the steep cliffs that rise a

hundred feet in the air.

Fortunately for the British troops, as these and subsequent events

proved, there had been a slight miscalculation in the landing, and the

men had actually gone ashore a mile and a half northeast of Gaba Tepe,

instead of at that point. Gaba Tepe is so rugged and uninviting that

it was believed that the Turks would not trouble to intrench it.

Actually the Turks appeared to have intrenched and prepared every inch

of the coast. But at Sari Bair, where the Australian and New Zealand

troops actually landed, the character of the ground, although not so

advantageous at first, afforded much more protection once the men were

ashore. Sir Ian Hamilton, in his graphic account of the operations,

subsequently said:

"Owing to the tows having failed to maintain their exact direction,

the actual point of disembarkation was rather more than a mile north

of that which I had selected, and was more closely overhung by steeper

cliffs. Although this accident increased the initial difficulty of

driving the enemy off the heights inland, it has since proved itself

to have been a blessing in disguise, inasmuch as the actual base of

the force of occupation had been much better defiladed from shell

fire.

"The beach on which the landing was actually effected is a very narrow

strip of sand about 1,000 yards in length, bounded on the north and

the south by two small promontories. At its southern extremity, a

deep ravine with exceedingly deep, scrub-clad sides, runs inland in a

northeasterly direction. Near the northern end of the beach a small

but steep gully runs up into the hills at right angles to the shore.

Between the ravine and the gully the whole of the beach is baked by

the seaward face of the spur which forms the northwestern side of the

ravine. From the top of the spur the ground falls almost sheer, except

near the southern limit of the beach where gentler slopes give access

to the mouth of the ravine behind. Farther inland lie in a tangled

knot the under-features of Sari Bair separated by deep ravines which

take a most confusing diversity of direction. Sharp spurs, covered

with dense scrub and falling away in many places in precipitous sandy

cliffs, radiate from the principal mass of the mountain, from which

they run northwest, west, southwest and south to the coast."

As fresh British troops came ashore they cast aside their heavy packs

and followed their comrades across the forty feet of open beach and

into the scrub that covered the side of the cliffs. Halfway up the

Turks had prepared a second position. Attacking it in open formation

the Third Brigade succeeded in clearing it within fifteen minutes of

the time they came ashore, despite the desperate and brave defense of

the Turks.

Meanwhile some of the landing boats, subjected to the terrible fire of

the Turkish guns, were having a bad time. The towing ropes of three of

them were cut by the fire and the boats drifted helplessly about under

the withering rain of bullets that rapidly wiped out their cargoes of

men. But despite these mishaps the First and Second Brigades were

hurried ashore to support the Third. Soon, in the face of terrible

difficulties including the narrowness of the beach, there were between

3,000 and 4,000 allied troops ashore.

By this time the Turks, by means of the mobile carriages prepared for

them by the Germans, had maneuvered some heavy artillery into position

on the heights inland. Also some of their warships, moored in the

Narrows, began throwing heavy shells across the peninsula into the

allied fleet standing close inshore. So dangerous and accurate became

this fire that the transports had to be ordered out to sea and this

delayed the operations seriously.

At Gaba Tepe and on the heights to the north of the beach the Turks

posted guns and enfiladed the Narrows beach. Thus the troops, as they

landed, had to make their way through a rain of shrapnel, machine gun

and rifle fire that wiped out hundreds. Despite the success of the

Australian Brigades in clearing the beach and the face of the cliff,

the Turkish fire never seemed to slacken.

Because of the nature of the country there could be no central control

over the advance fighting and no continued communications between the

several forces making their way to the top of the cliffs. The battle

resolved itself into a series of fights between small parties, or even

individual soldiers, whose one object was to kill as many of the enemy

as possible and make their way as far inland as possible in the first

rush.

By two o'clock about twelve British regiments had been landed and the

ground gained consolidated and prepared against counterattack.

Thousands of Turkish troops were by this time pouring along the road

from Maidos and by the middle of the afternoon it was calculated that

there were fully 20,000 of them before the Australian and New Zealand

troops. The latter, in the meantime, had been further reenforced by

two batteries of Indian Mountain Artillery. The pressure of the

constantly increasing Turkish force compelled General Birdwood, who

came ashore about this time, to contract his lines and to reach a

decision that, at that time at least and until the arrival of more

troops, no further advance could be made. The Gaba Tepe landing had

not been the surprise that was expected and the Turks had proved to be

in unexpected strength.

About three o'clock the Turkish counterattacks began. Absolutely

regardless of human life, they threw themselves in dense masses

against the Second and Third Brigades. The British battleships, the

_Queen_, the _London_, the _Prince of Wales_, the _Triumph_ and the

_Majestic_, posted close inshore, poured a devastating fire on the

advancing Turkish troops as they came into the open.

About five o'clock the Turks, after repeated assaults upon the British

lines, massed for a final attempt to drive the invaders into the sea.

On and on they came, concentrating on the hard-pressed Third Brigade

as the weak spot in the British defense. Fighting gamely against heavy

odds, this Australian Brigade which had borne the brunt of the landing

attack and which had been almost continually counterattacked all

afternoon, gave way slowly, selling every inch of ground dearly.

Hundreds of the brave Turkish troops were mown down by the machine

guns which the Australians had by this time brought ashore. At

nightfall, however, General Birdwood, as a consequence of the

persistence of the enemy, had to contract his lines further.

As night settled on the battle field on the ridge above Gaba Tepe and

Sari Bair, and the two forces rested from sheer exhaustion, the

British troops, who once were well inland toward Maidos, their

objective, were barely hanging onto the ridge overlooking the shore of

the Gulf of Saros. All their water and food and munitions and

reenforcements had to be brought ashore across the exposed beach,

while the landing of the necessary artillery in the face of the

Turkish fire was a feat to appal the bravest. But though their hold on

their position was precarious it was tenacious and, in the end,

effective. If they had not won all they expected to win they had at

least won a foothold in the face of terrific difficulties.

While the Australians and New Zealanders were fighting desperately

beyond Gaba Tepe, the other forces of the allied army were

accomplishing similar deeds of heroism at the tip of the peninsula.

Coming down the coast of the peninsula from Gaba Tepe, about three

miles from the extreme southwestern tip, was what was known as Beach

Y. It was almost due west of the important town of Krithia, and the

landing was intended primarily to protect the left flank of the

British landing forces from attack by the considerable forces believed

to be concentrated there.

The actual landing seems to have been somewhat of a surprise to the

Turks. Indeed, subsequent events showed that they were correct in

their estimate that a landing at the so-called Beach Y would be a

mistake. A narrow strip of sandy beach led to the cliffs, two hundred

feet high, that were believed to be almost unscalable. It is easy to

be wise after the event, but military writers subsequently declared

that if the Turks had been prepared to defend the position, the force

that landed at Beach Y would have been wiped out in the preliminary

attempt to establish a footing.

The force assigned to this point of attack consisted of the First

King's Own Scottish Borderers, and the Plymouth Battalion of the Royal

Naval Division, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Koe. The

latter was under orders, if the landing proved successful, to work his

way south to effect a junction with the force landing at Beach X, some

two miles away.

About five o'clock, Koe's force appeared off Beach Y, on the

transports _Braemar Castle_ and _Southland_, and escorted by the

battleship _Goliath_, and the cruisers _Amethyst_ and _Sapphire_. The

Turks had posted a large force at Beach Y 2, between Beach Y and Beach

X, but half of the Scottish Borderers were ashore before the Turkish

command had realized what was happening. As a result Colonel Koe's

force was partly established on the cliffs before the Turks had begun

to arrive.

But if the initial stages were unexpectedly easy for this force,

difficulties soon developed. Once on the heights, Colonel Koe ordered

an advance to link up with the force at Beach X. The British troops

had not gone far when they ran into the Turkish troops from Beach Y.

So large was this force and so determined an opposition did it offer

to the British troops that Colonel Koe soon decided it would be

impossible, with the two battalions at his disposal, to accomplish the

task assigned him.

Early in the afternoon the little British force was dismayed by the

approach on its left flank of a large force of Turks from Krithia,

which threatened to cut it off from the landing beach. Reluctantly

Colonel Koe, just before he received a fatal wound, gave the order to

intrench.

CHAPTER LXXIII

THE BRITISH IN DANGER--BITTER FIGHTING

The British troops were now in a critical position. There was a

peculiar spoonlike formation of the ground at the end of the Gallipoli

Peninsula. From the high cliffs along the shore the ground fell away.

Thus it was impossible for the supporting warships lying offshore to

give any effective aid to the little British force once it had left

the shore and the edge of the heights. The Turks realized to the full

their advantage and attacked the Borderers and the marines with fury.

Frequent attacks were launched against the dwindling line of the

British force. Guns of large caliber were rapidly brought up from

Krithia, while the Turks showed extraordinary daring and cleverness in

bomb attacks upon the hastily dug trenches of the enemy.

All night long the Turks attacked. By morning the remnants of the

British force were in desperate straits. Sir Ian Hamilton subsequently

declared that the losses at this time had been "deplorable." Many of

the officers, in addition to Lieutenant Colonel Koe, had been killed

or wounded, while 50 per cent of the Borderers had been put out of

action. They were no longer able to defend properly their trenches.

Food, water, and ammunition were running short. A consultation of the

remaining officers was held. The question of trying to hold out until

reenforcements arrived was considered, but ultimately it was decided

to retreat to the shore and to reembark.

At seven o'clock on Monday morning the order was given. The attending

fleet had been strengthened by the arrival of the cruisers _Talbot_

and _Dublin_, and, supported by the _Goliath_, the _Amethyst_, and the

_Sapphire_, they began a terrific bombardment of the tops of the

cliffs. Protected by this screen of fire, the few remaining British

troops were able to get away in their boats without molestation save

for a long distance bombardment by the Turkish artillery.

The landing at Beach X was more successful. The Eighty-seventh

Brigade, under the command of Brigadier General Marshall, was assigned

to this part of the field. It was to work its way as far as possible

inland and link up with the troops coming ashore at Beach W. At Beach

X the Turks were well prepared. They had constructed bomb-proof

shelters and trenches on the heights and were well led by German

officers.

Before the actual landing the supporting battleships, led by the

_Swiftsure_ and the _Implacable_, bombarded the Turkish positions for

almost an hour with their heaviest guns. The ground was thoroughly

swept by the great 12-inch and smaller guns of the warships. Finally,

just before the actual landing, the _Implacable_ steamed within 500

yards of the shore, dropped her anchor and smothered the near cliffs

and the foreshore with her fire.

Subsequent investigation proved that in this affair of Gallipoli, as

in Flanders and elsewhere, the British suffered from their lack of

foresight in the provision of proper shells. The battleships used

shrapnel, which, it was afterward discovered, did little damage to the

deep, protected trenches prepared by the Turks under the supervision

of the German officers. If the British had had instead the

high-explosive shells that were necessary for the work, the story of

the Gallipoli landings under the wing of the great fleet of

battleships might have made different reading.

After about a quarter of an hour's final bombardment by the

_Implacable_, two companies and a machine-gun section of the First

Royal Fusiliers were thrown ashore at Beach X. Under cover of the

battleships, the landing was safely accomplished and the Fusiliers

advanced almost 1,000 yards without much opposition. Hill 114 on their

right, where the Turks proved to be firmly intrenched, then proved a

serious obstacle to the advance. While the Royal Fusiliers were

considering the best method of attacking this position, a Turkish

battery, in position near the town of Krithia, opened fire and tore

holes in the left wing of the British force. At the same time they

were heavily counterattacked by a Turkish force coming from the east.

Gradually the Royal Fusiliers were compelled to give ground. Two

battalions of the Eighty-seventh Division were sent ashore and with

these reenforcements the British again advanced, this time clearing

Hill 114 of the enemy. There they joined hands with the First

Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and although all day long the

Turks tried to break the union of the two forces, they did not succeed

in doing so.

However, General Marshall's force was hard pressed. Once more the

unceasing Turkish counterattacks drove them back to the very edge of

the heights overlooking Beach X, where only the intense bombardment of

the protecting warships saved them. General Marshall was wounded, but

refused to relinquish his command, and a very large proportion of the

total force was either killed or wounded in the day's fighting. When

night fell the British troops held only half a mile of territory

around their original landing place, with their right wing resting on

Hill 114, linked up with the force from Beach W.

Here at Beach W, a mile and a half down the coast, midway between

Tekke Burna and Hellas Burna, was being enacted a feat of arms which,

in the opinion of competent military men, is fit to rank with the

great military accomplishments of all time. In speaking of it

subsequently Sir Ian Hamilton made use of the following terms:

"So strong, in fact, were the defenses of Beach W that the Turks may

well have considered them impregnable, and it is my firm conviction

that no finer feat of arms has ever been achieved by the British

soldier--or any other soldier--than the storming of these trenches

from open boats on the morning of April 25."

At Beach W the Turks, fully foreseeing a landing, had prepared as at

no other point. The beach is in a wide bay and leads into a gully

flanked on one side by the hills extending to Cape Tekke and, on the

other side by the steep cliffs extending to Cape Hellas.

Every inch of the ground had been prepared against attack. Sea and

land mines had been profusely laid, wire entanglements had been placed

along the shore and stretching out into the water. Deep trenches had

been dug on the heights and on the sides of the slopes while strong

redoubts had been built at two dominating positions. Every bush and

cover contained a sniper while larger covers concealed machine guns

trained to sweep the beach and the slopes leading to the Turkish

trenches.

As a defensive position Beach W was almost ideal. It had two weak

points, however, which in the end turned the scales and made success

possible for the attacking force. At either end of the bay were small

rock positions from which it was possible to enfilade the elaborate

system of defenses.

The landing party at Beach W consisted of the First Battalion

Lancashire Fusiliers, under command of Major Bishop. "It was," wrote

Sir Ian Hamilton, "to the complete lack of the sense of danger or of

fear of this daring battalion that we owed our astonishing success."

After a preliminary bombardment by the supporting warships the men of

the First Battalion, in thirty-two cutters drawn by eight picket

boats, approached the shore. The Turks made no move until the men were

in shallow water and were leaping out of the boats. Then they opened

fire with a murderous torrent from artillery, machine guns, and

rifles. The first line of the First Battalion went down to a man. The

second never faltered, but came on bravely into the fire, striving

desperately to cut the wire entanglements. So quickly did they fall

that observers on the warships wondered why they were "resting" on the

bullet swept shore instead of running to cover.

Rapidly the men from Lancashire worked. Finally a remnant of the

battalion forced its way through the last line of wire and ran for

shelter on the bush covered slopes. Almost at the same moment,

detachments that had landed on the rocks at Cape Tekke and under Cape

Hellas began to have an important effect upon the struggle. At the

latter point, the Eighty-eighth Brigade, under Brigadier General Hare,

clambered up the steep side of the cliffs, searched out the machine

gun positions of the enemy and swept the ground clear with the

bayonet. This and the work of the force at Cape Tekke eased the

Turkish fire on the beach and, on the slopes of the Cape Tekke side of

the ravine, the few remaining officers of the First Battalion were

able to re-form the remnants of their force and advance upon Hill 114.

About nine o'clock reenforcements were landed, this time not on the

exposed beach but under Cape Tekke, the heights of which were by now

largely in the hands of the British troops. With the help of these

fresh troops, three lines of Turkish trenches were carried. Brigadier

General Hare was seriously wounded and his place was filled by Colonel

Wolley-Dod, who was sent ashore with orders to organize a further

advance at all speed. At this point the attacking force ran up against

the Turkish redoubt at Hill 138.

The afternoon opened with an intense naval bombardment of the ground

around Hill 138 and of that redoubt itself. At two o'clock the Fourth

Battalion of the Worcesters was ordered to take the position by

assault. Under Lieutenant Colonel D. E. Cayley, they advanced a

considerable distance under rifle fire and charged up the heights with

a cheer. The Turks fought bravely against a stronger force, but by

four o'clock Hill 138 was in the hands of the Worcesters.

Less than a mile down the coast, almost to the old fort and village of

Sedd-el-Bahr, was what was known as V Beach. There a landing in great

force was attempted. Largely because of the scale of the operations,

but also because of the difficulties and the accidents of warfare,

this landing was made with great losses.

The beach and the shore in the immediate vicinity form a most regular

amphitheatre of a radius of about 400 feet. The beach is about 10

yards wide and 350 to 400 feet long and it runs into a slightly

concaved, grassy slope that rises gently to a height of a hundred

feet. Little or no real cover was to be found on this slope and the

defenders were able to sweep it from all angles with a devastating

rain of all kinds of shells. Just at the edge of the strip of sand,

however, was a continuous escarpment about four feet high, which

afforded a cover in which troops once ashore might be re-formed. As a

result of the early naval bombardment of the tip of the peninsula,

much of the village of Sedd-el-Bahr and the fort and the barracks had

been reduced to ruins. The ruins afforded, however, excellent cover

for the Turkish troops and proved a serious obstacle to the advance of

the British when they reached the shore.

In addition to the natural disadvantages under which the attacking

party had to work, the Turks had constructed two lines of barbed wire

obstacles--one at the edge of the beach and the second two-thirds of

the way up to the top of the ridge. These two lines of barbed wire

were more stoutly constructed than were any others with which the

British had to contend. Just beyond the second obstacle the Turks had

built their first line of trenches and beyond the ground was scored

with innumerable covers for the defenders.

The force assigned to the attack upon V Beach was composed of the

Dublin Fusiliers, the Munster Fusiliers, half a battalion of the

Hampshire Regiment, the West Riding Field Company and a few minor

units. The action opened with a short range bombardment of the enemy's

trenches and such parts of the fort, the village and the barracks as

were still standing and believed to be affording cover for riflemen

and machine-gun batteries. Then three companies of the Dublin

Fusiliers were towed ashore. At this point one of the great

experiments of the Gallipoli landings was put to the test, and,

despite the cleverness of its conception, it did not meet with great

success.

A large transport vessel, the _River Clyde_, had been loaded with

about 2,000 troops. She had been reconstructed inside and great doors

had been cut in one of her sides. The troops were ready on long

platforms for instant disembarkation. The ships were to be run ashore,

as close as possible to the beach, lighters were to be floated in

between her and the shore, the side doors were to be flung open, and

the troops were to rush ashore and carry the slopes by sheer momentum.

In the front of the vessel, protected by sandbags, was a battery of

machine guns which, it was hoped, would be especially effective in

protecting the landing force from counterattacks.

As at the other landings, the Turks gave no sign of life until the

collier had been beached and the other landing force had almost

reached the shore in its tows. Indeed, so long did they hesitate in

opening fire that at one time the watchers on the warships thought the

landing was going to be unopposed. They were soon disabused of such an

idea, however, as the first of the towboats grounded on the sandy

beach, the Turks opened fire from a dozen different positions. Many of

the Dublin Fusiliers were killed before they were able to get out of

their boats. A few scrambled ashore and reached the shelter of the

escarpment that rimmed the beach. The Turks concentrated their fire on

the boats and their crews. None of them were able to get away, and

almost instantly their crews were killed and the boats wrecked.

Meantime the _River Clyde_, had been run ashore. Unfortunately, the

operation was not carried out as expeditiously as it was hoped it

would be, and the Turks soon became aware of the intentions of the

British. They poured a punishing fire on the naval party attempting to

get the lighters into position between the ship and the shore. The

heavy tide that at this point sweeps around the point of land also

seriously interfered with the work. Finally however, by deeds of

heroism that received subsequent official acknowledgment, the lighters

were got into position and the doors of the _River Clyde_ flung open.

At a trot a company of the Munster Fusiliers led the way. It was

almost impossible to live for even a short time in the fire that the

Turks concentrated upon the lighters, and hardly a man reached the

shore. Nothing daunted, a second company of the same battalion

followed. As they dropped in scores the lighters began to drift and

dozens of the men, in attempting to swim ashore in their heavy kits,

were drowned.

Despite the storm of fire, volunteers once more swung the lighters

into position. The third company of the Munsters were ordered to

attempt to reach the beach. By this time the Turks had been able to

concentrate shrapnel fire on the _River Clyde_ and her human freight,

and the third company suffered even more casualties than had the first

two.

There is a limit to human sacrifice, and Brigadier General Napier, in

command of the troops, called a halt in the attempt to land. A little

later, it was resumed, with General Napier and Captain Costeker and a

detachment of the Hampshire Regiment heroically leading the way. When

they had reached the lighters the moorings again gave way and they

drifted into deep water. In the torrent of bullets that was being

poured down upon them by the Turks it was impossible to do anything

but lie flat on the exposed decks and wait for the lighters to be

swung into position again. Scores of them were killed, including both

Brigadier General Napier and Captain Costeker.

With this major disaster, all attempts to make further landings were

abandoned for the day. A few hundred British troops had succeeded in

reaching the escarpment on the shore and there they huddled, not

daring to lift their heads above the four-foot natural cover.

Fortunately for them, the machine-gun battery on the _River Clyde_

raked the slope, kept the fire of the Turkish defenders down and

prevented any counterattacks, which might have ended disastrously for

the British troops. The troops still on board the _River Clyde_,

numbering about 1,000 were effectively protected from the fire of the

Turks, suffering few casualties, although shrapnel tore four great

holes in the side of the collier.