A BATTLE PANORAMA OF GALLIPOLI
This narrative is devoted to the deeds of the Australians, but on that
account it must not be judged that the scanty reference to the part
played by the British troops indicates that part was but of secondary
importance to the Dardanelles operations and the Gallipoli campaign.
On the contrary, the position may be best summed up by the words of
General Sir Ian Hamilton, who said to me on Imbros one day: "We [the
British] have occupied the end of the peninsula, while the Australians
are a thorn in the side of the Turks. When the time comes we will press
that thorn a little deeper."
Yes, the British had occupied about 4 miles of the toe of the peninsula
in those early days, and were slowly pushing the Turkish line back into
the Krithia village and on to the great Achi Baba Hill; but to do so
the aid of the French had to be called up and the Asia Minor campaign
had to be abandoned.
Now, I was fortunate to have been near enough to watch the French and
British warships bombarding the Turkish position on Sunday morning,
25th April, on either side of the Straits, and to have seen the hosts
of transports creeping from round the shores of the islands. It was
only a little Greek trading steamer that I was on, and it impudently
pushed its nose into the heart of these stupendous operations. I was on
her by design; she was there by accident. The whole of the fleet had
lain for days at their anchorage behind Tenedos. I had seen them there,
their anchors down, on the very ocean bed where the Greek anchors had
rested when they planned their descent on Troy to rescue the beautiful
Helen. It was one of those radiant mornings that are so typical of the
spring months of the Levant. The sea was almost without a ripple on
it. A haze hid the distant headlands as in a shroud and cast a soft,
flimsy mantle round the ships. The smoke of battle hung on the shores
and round the battle-cruisers. Along the Asiatic coast, opposite the
island of Tenedos, was steaming slowly a huge six-funnelled battleship
of the French, its guns darting tongues of flame, three or four or
six every minute. On shore the French troops were fighting their way
inland and pushing back the Turkish field batteries that were answering
the warships and shelling the invaders. Then we went on up towards
the entrance to the Straits amongst the great liners, on which was
more than one high General directing the landing of the finest British
troops that the Homeland had ever produced, the 29th Division. They
had been the last regular Division available, and General Hamilton had
in them the mainstay of his army, the tested stuff, for that difficult
landing on four beaches at the Dardanelles entrance. I watched the
cruisers come steaming by, and then, signalling, steer for the shore
and commence the hurling of shells on the edge of the cliffs and
farther inland, where the Turks were still clinging to the battlements
round the shores of their peninsula. By dawn the British, as well as
the Australian, landing had been effected--at fearful cost certainly,
but nevertheless accomplished--and Fusilier regiments had pushed
inshore and died on the beach in lines. Their comrades had scaled the
cliffs, while the Turks inch by inch, one can write, were driven from
their forts, their guns broken by the weeks of bombardment.
Round the toe of the peninsula the troops landed. All day the desperate
fighters of the 29th Division clung to their terrible task, completing
it under cover of darkness on the Sunday evening. From V beach to Morto
Bay, 2 miles away, near which inlet, under the fortress of Seddul Bahr,
the _River Clyde_, crammed with 2,500 men, had steamed in and been
run ashore (or as near shore as reefs had permitted), the fighting
continued. From the bows of this transport (an Iron Horse indeed!)
a dozen machine guns were spitting darting tongues of red as still
against her iron sides rattled the hail of Turkish bullets or burst the
shells from the guns of the forts. It is not in my story to describe
the landing from that ship--alas! now blown into fragments. It was not
till some months after she had run aground that I was aboard her.
In the last days of April she was the object to which all turned their
eyes in recognition of a gallant undertaking, magnificently carried out
by Captain Unwin, who was in charge of her. For his work this brave
officer was awarded the V.C.
[Illustration: ARMY SERVICE WAGONS AT CAPE HELLES ON THE WAY TO
THE LANCASHIRE LANDING FOR RATIONS, THE ONLY HORSED VEHICLES THE
AUSTRALIANS LANDED AT GALLIPOLI.]
[Illustration: THE "RIVER CLYDE" IN SEDDUL BAHR BAY.
French lines in foreground. Kum Kale Fort across the Straits in the
distance.
To face p. 128.]
Now the Australians faced sheer cliffs; they rushed down into gullies
and up on to farther ridges. The British troops scaled cliffs or found
stretches of sandy beach, defended with almost impenetrable barbed wire
entanglements; but beyond was a garden of loveliness--almost level
fields still bearing ripening crops, and trees laden with fruits;
poppies, anemones, and the hundred smaller wild flowers of the Levant
carpeted the soil. Those were the shores strewn with the bodies of the
most gallant men that ever fought, who had never flinched as they faced
murderous fire from far fiercer guns than any that opposed the first
rush of the Australians up that narrow section of the Anzac hills. Yet
the Turks fell back. The warships, with their protective armour, moved
in and wrought havoc on the enemy as they were driven back and back.
Behind steamed the transports. Amongst all this mixed fleet thickly
dropped the shells, splashing the water in great fountains over the
decks, casting it 50, 100 feet into the air.
Fifteen miles away Anzac was stormed and won. The Australians held with
the same bulldog grit that gave the British their footing ashore. How
did the French come to Helles? It was a few days afterwards, when the
reinforcements for the British force were so urgently needed that it
became necessary to evacuate the Kum Kale position, on the southern
entrance to the Straits, and transfer the entire French army to the
right flank of the Cape Helles position. That was the way the French
troops came with their wonderful 75's, that later in the week were so
accurately finding out the Turkish trenches, throwing a curtain of fire
before the Allied lines.
I do not believe in the history of any war (and one remembers
particularly the storming of the heights of Quebec in this regard)
has there been any battle panorama so truly magnificent, so amazingly
impressive, as that 20 miles of beaches and the entrance to the
Dardanelles as seen from the hilltops of the islands scattered round
the entrance to the Straits. Rabbit Islands may not be marked on
maps--they are only little dotted rocks on charts--but they have a
light on them to guide the mariner to the entrance to the Dardanelles,
which is about a mile and a half away. From them and the shelter of a
single farmhouse you might look right up almost to the Chanak forts,
certainly up to Kephez Bay, where the warships, screened by destroyers
and mine-sweepers, were pressing their attack on the Narrows. They
commanded a view of the beaches, round which transports had gathered
with lighters, tugs, trawlers, pinnaces, and barges, disgorging
materials and men for the great fight progressing now over the flowered
fields above from the tops of the cliffs. The white hospital ships
loomed like aluminium-painted craft in the fierce sun, and their yellow
funnels seemed fairer still by the side of the darkened smoke-stacks
of the panting destroyers, the smoke belching from their short stacks
as they raced back and forth amidst them, dragging barges here, nosing
in between warships there--warships from whose grim grey sides sprang
red-tipped tongues and sheets of flame and rolled clouds of smoke. High
into the air tore the screaming shells, which in their parabola passed
over the defenceless shipping and the troops bayoneting the Turks on
shore, to destroy the main Turkish position. Battleships, standing
farther off still, sent shells 5, 6, 8 miles up on to the enemy forts
that barked and snapped still in the Narrows.
That was one picture. Take, then, the broader view from the hills of
Imbros, 9 miles away. The whole peninsula was sprawled out in all
its irregularity, with its still green slopes ending abruptly at the
dark cliffs. In the centre were the masses of gathered hills (Kelid
Bahr position), crowned with forts, invisible even at the closest
observation except from aeroplane above; and beyond, across the
slender rim of blue of the Narrows, the towering white of Mount Ida.
I remember looking right down into the Narrows from a certain hill
on this salubrious island. How intensely blue its waters were, on
which I saw quickly pass a transport and a cruiser. I wondered that
the yellow balloon looking down on to the Straits, signalling to the
Allied warships, did not sink them with those shells which long-range
guns dropped right across the 7,000 yards of the narrow neck on to the
town of Maidos and Turkish transports lying at the wharves there. At
Nagara there was a lighthouse that was an easy landmark to pick out,
and not far distant white barracks and hospitals. Then, passing down
towards the entrance, the huge citadel of the Straits, Kelid Bahr,
blocked the view of the opposite shore and of the fortress Chanak, and
yet lower down still, where the peninsula fell away, I could see across
the narrow channel the white scarps of Dardanus and the town called
Whitecliffs. These towns in the afternoon looked like miniature cities
on the side of a vivid, wonderful landscape; they were a mass of white
domes and towers. The sun glinted on the windows of the houses, and
a thousand scintillating lights darted like the fire of rifles from
the dwellings. Blue, beyond, the hills round Troy stood back from the
raging battle being fought on the point of the peninsula. An aeroplane
swung out of the distance and flew up and down the Straits, its
observer prying into the secrets of the forts.
Achi Baba was the dominating feature of the lower end of the peninsula,
yet it seemed very flat beside the greater feature of Kelid Bahr and
the hills of Anzac. From the angle at which I was observing the village
of Krithia was just visible, snuggling between two shoulders of low
hills, tucked away, it seemed, from the guns. Yet I was destined to
see that village reduced to crumbling ruins by the battering guns, and
watch the burning fires covering the peninsula with grey smoke. At
night how they glowed and smouldered dully!
Far more terrible was the fire that broke out at Maidos on the
afternoon of the 29th April, when the shells from the warships
destroyed the barracks, the wharves, the granaries, the arsenal, and
set fire to the town. The smoke rose in a huge black column, and then,
reaching a higher current of air, was carried down to the very entrance
of the Straits, until in the oblique rays of the setting sun it became
a dirty brown smudge above the peninsula. Next day the fires were
burning still; at night the reflection lit the sky and silhouetted the
hills beyond. For days afterwards the smoke was shielding from view the
waters of the Narrows.
I take the following extract from my diary, written at the time from
the Imbros hills:--
2 p.m. Discovered four tents Cape Tekel. Balloon observing over Straits.
2.15 Turkish guns observed in wood on the left of Tree Hill (Achi Baba).
2.30 Smoke rising over Straits north of Kelid Bahr.
2.35 Aeroplane flying up the Dardanelles over Turkish forts.
2.40 Ships dropping shells on village of Everden (Turkish headquarters).
3.0 Smoke rising south of Maidos.
3.15 Considerable activity amongst warships.
3.20 Dense smoke 100 yards long, 400 feet high, believe to be Cham Kalesi.
4.0 Certain smoke from village Maidos, rising now 2,000 feet high--still
burning. Bombardment ceased for last ten minutes.
4.30 Firing at Gaba Tepe, warships plastering cliffs.
4.45 Intense fire from the fleet.
4.50 Maidos still burning. Balloon observing north Tree Hill (Achi
Baba).
6.30 _Queen Elizabeth_ and balloon observing ship _Ark Royal_ going
towards entrance to the Straits. All quiet. Maidos burning
fiercely. Turkish guns silent.
And so it was day after day.
What of Anzac! It was 9 miles away, but with powerful field-glasses the
boats near to the beach could be seen. The glinting rays of heliographs
shone from the cliffs. An aeroplane came rapidly from over the crests
of the hills and dropped down beside the parent ship and was hauled
on board. Four, five, or six times a day would the "Baby" observation
balloon ascend and remain with its line of flags below, motionless in
the air for hours. The destroyers, those rats of the seas as they have
been called, scampered over the blue water. Their guns thumped the
flanks of the Australian position close to Gaba Tepe, near which point
always there lay some battleship, generally the _Queen Elizabeth_,
while at Suvla Bay, close inshore, the warships closed in to throw
shells on to the Sari Bair ridge and Battleship Hill, a flat peak
that just showed a bald top above the ridge. Anzac itself was wrapped
in impenetrable mists for those first three days. From the gullies
darted flashes of the guns--our own guns, almost in the infantry
trenches--while the Turkish woolly balls of shrapnel came tumbling
above the beaches, above the tops of the hills where the troops were
digging--digging for their lives. Our own shrapnel I could see bursting
far inland and on the point of Gaba Tepe, where hidden enemy guns
were silenced. It was awe inspiring to watch the mass of earth thrown
skyward by the striking of the _Queen Elizabeth's_ shells on Mal Tepe,
a feature which dominated the alluring plain, crowned with olive groves
and guarded solely by the batteries at Gaba Tepe. How entrancingly
green those plains looked with their few scattered vineyards and
olives! I remember wondering what would have been the result if the
troops had been advancing across them just in the same way as I was
watching the British advancing from the shores up the peninsula.
There came the morning--29th April--when on the end of the peninsula,
near Cape Tekel, white-topped tents appeared, and horses could be
seen in lines. They were hidden from the Turkish view by the cliffs,
but none the less shells fell among them occasionally. It denoted the
British were firmly established. The press of shipping had increased.
At a hundred I lost count of the ships. At Anzac there was not less
than half that number, all transports, waiting--waiting as if to remove
the landed army. I could find no other reason for their being there,
idly changing position, while from their sides constant strings of
boats came and went; but in them, I learned later, were the wounded.
The transports became floating hospital wards. Up and down the shore
from Anzac to Helles patrolled the cruisers, bombarding the red road
open to view, where the Turkish columns were moving. From the very
midst of the merchant fleet the warships' guns thundered with their
"b-brum-brum-m-m," two guns together, and the faint, dull shell
explosions sounded on land along the road to Krithia, where wide sheets
of riven flame rolled along the ground, and a sickly yellow cloud
enveloped horses, men, and guns in its toils as the Turks retreated.
Then there dawned the day when the Royal Naval Air Service armoured
motor-cars dashed into action, grappling wire entanglements, and sped
back, with the Turkish shells bursting after them from the guns on Achi
Baba as they retired.
Unforgettable will remain the memory of the panorama: the calm of the
sea, the havoc on shore, the placidness of the shipping, the activity
of the fleet. Down below me in the mountain glens, where trickled
sparkling brooks, patient Greek shepherds called on Pan pipes for their
flocks, and took no more notice of the distant roar of battle--the
crackle of rifles and machine guns could be heard--than of the
murmuring of the sea on the seashore; and like it, unceasingly, day and
night for weeks, was a horrible deadly accompaniment of one's dreams.