THE PAUSE IN JULY
While dwelling upon prominent actions in our efforts to advance, such
as those of June 4, June 21, and June 28 and the following days, one
must always realise that the fighting in various parts of the front
lines was in fact continuous by day and night. On both sides local
attempts were repeatedly made to capture or destroy some section of
the opposing trenches. It frequently happened that different parts of
the same trench would be held by the enemy and our companies. At the
turn of an angle, or the mouth of a communication trench, the men on
either side would suddenly find themselves face to face with the enemy,
and a combat, waged for bare life with bombs, bayonets, and revolvers,
ensued. Sandbag barriers were quickly erected across entrances, but
sometimes, while one section was at rest or engaged in cooking, a
sentry would give warning that a party of about fifty men in blue-grey
uniforms had crept over the parapets to right or left, cleared out the
section there, and threatened to enfilade. At such moments the safety
of a line depended upon the alert resource of some junior officer and
the steady nerves of the platoon under his command. No history will
ever record the deeds of silent self-sacrifice which ennobled these
daily struggles, and passed almost unnoticed at the time, except by
the men who witnessed them and were themselves too often afterwards
obliterated with their memories.
Nor must it be forgotten that the Turkish bombardment was daily
repeated at intervals in so-called “hates.” Though the front lines both
at Helles and Anzac were too close together to be shelled with safety
to their own men, all the beaches, except Gully Beach, were exposed;
and though the effect of the fire could not be seen on Anzac Cove and
Lancashire Landing, the range on both was accurately registered, and no
one there was safe, whether disembarking stores, or dressing wounds, or
just coming to land, or at rest, or bathing, or engaged in workshops
and signalling offices, plump into which at Helles I saw a large shell
fall on August 1 with terrible results in deaths and wounds.[137] But,
certainly, V Beach, beside the _River Clyde_, was most openly exposed.
The French depôt there constantly suffered, especially after the
Turks late in June placed four heavy batteries on the opposite shore
in a hidden position between Erenkeui and the Trojan plain. Nor were
communications safe. On July 4 a large transport, the _Carthage_, a
British ship but used by the French, was torpedoed by a submarine just
off W Beach. Fortunately, she was empty.
[Sidenote: TURKISH ATTACKS]
Every day and night at the end of June and beginning of July was marked
by minor attacks from the Turkish lines. But the attack on July 2 was
evidently intended to be more than minor. It began with a violent
bombardment of our extreme left, to which our guns, for mere want of
ammunition, could make no efficient reply. At 6 p.m. the Turks came
swarming down from the upper reaches of the Gully Ravine. Checked by
machine-guns and the fire of the destroyer _Scorpion_, they renewed
the bombardment, and immediately afterwards two battalions were seen
advancing in regular order, shoulder to shoulder, across the open,
their officers waving their swords, and running bravely forward to
encourage their men. To machine-guns the shrapnel of the 10th Battery,
R.F.A., was now added, and the Gurkhas were sent up to reinforce. No
one could stand against our fire. The surviving Turks ran back into the
ravine in disorder. Two clearly marked lines of dead showed the limit
of the advance.
A similar attack on a grand scale was tried only two days later (the
night of July 4–5). Anzac was heavily bombarded, a Turkish battleship
in the Narrows near Chanak throwing at least twenty 11·2-inch shells
into the lines there, right across the Peninsula, to say nothing of the
guns in the Olive Grove and on the Anafarta Hills. At Helles, every
gun on Achi Baba and the Asiatic shore was brought to bear. On W Beach
alone, 700 big shells from Asia fell. At least 5000 shells exploded
on our lines and beaches. At 7.30 a.m. the Turkish infantry attempted
to storm, rightly choosing the junction of the Royal Naval Division
with the French as our weakest point. A few yards of front line were
entered, but in fifteen minutes cleared again. A similar attempt to cut
in between the 42nd Division and the 29th entirely failed, and again
the Turks were driven to the shelter of the upper Ravine. The General
Staff estimated the enemy’s losses during the preceding week at over
5000 killed and 15,000 wounded. So encumbered was their position with
the dead rotting in the intense heat that on July 10 a request for five
hours’ armistice to bury them came from the German Commandant, signing
himself “Weber Pasha.”[138] Unwillingly, and only in justice to his own
men, Sir Ian refused. For it was known that Turks, even more than most
troops, were reluctant to charge over their dead comrades, whose bodies
thus became for us an extra barrier of defence, equal to a barbed-wire
hedge.
[Sidenote: OUR ATTACKS ON JULY 12 AND 13]
As the enemy’s loss was so heavy, the advantage in their repeated
counter-attacks would have rested with us, had it not become evident
that they could draw upon large reinforcements. Early in July five
fresh Nizam divisions arrived on the Peninsula. They were perhaps
partly released by the disappearance of danger from Russia; but, as
most of them came from Adrianople, their presence was more probably
due to the growing understanding between the Central Powers and
Bulgaria--an understanding believed to have developed into a secret
Treaty about the middle of July. The arrival of these fresh troops
rendered the enemy’s attacks more serious and more frequent. Only
by strong counter-attack could our position at Helles be maintained
and the initiative remain with us. Accordingly, a formal assault,
similar to those in June, was ordered for July 12. This time the main
attack devolved upon our right and right-centre, the French and the
52nd (Lowland) Division being chiefly engaged. After the customary
bombardment, supported by heavy naval guns, the infantry rushed forward
and gained the first two lines, but the French and Scots (155th
Brigade) lost touch, the 4th K.O.S.B., parties of whom actually reached
the slopes of Achi Baba, came under gun-fire, and nothing further was
possible till the afternoon. Then, after another bombardment, the 157th
Brigade pushed on and captured a strong redoubt on the edge of the
Kereves Dere. Soon after dawn on the 13th, however, this Brigade was
attacked by bombers, and a portion of its right was driven back. It
was speedily rallied, and three battalions of the R.N.D. were sent up
to reinforce and advance the position.[139] A certain advance was also
made on their left, while on the extreme right the French succeeded in
reaching the mouth of the Kereves Dere itself. Nearly 500 prisoners
were taken, and but for inefficient Staff work, considerable advantage
might have been secured. But little advance was thus effected towards
the summit of the elaborately entrenched and fortified hill, the base
of which was protected by great redoubts and sprinkled with concealed
guns beyond the maze of trenches. After this action our supply of
shell was so much reduced, the reserve so dangerously encroached upon,
that further attack became for the present impossible without heavy
risk. Even such bombardment as was sanctioned for those two days could
only be effected by borrowing French guns--about six batteries of
“75’s” and a few howitzers.
[Sidenote: CHANGES IN COMMANDS]
Under the strain of these successive days and nights of fighting
Major-General Egerton, as already mentioned, was ordered to hospital
for twenty-four hours’ rest, and the command of the 52nd Division
was entrusted to Major-General F. C. Shaw, recently arrived to
command the 13th Division (“Kitchener’s” or New Army) now coming in.
General Egerton resumed his command next day, and retained it till
mid-September, when he was appointed Base-Commandant at Alexandria,
and was succeeded by Major-General Lawrence. But in mid-July the army
suffered a still more serious loss in Major-General Hunter-Weston, the
experienced Officer Commanding the famous 29th Division in the earlier
battles, and subsequently the VIIIth Army Corps. For three months,
without cessation by day or night, this General, who certainly never
spared his troops, had himself endured all the perils, anxieties,
and sorrows of an officer directing a series of desperate actions,
or rather one continuous desperate action, which, as the price of an
unparalleled achievement, had deprived him of nearly all his most
trusted subordinates, devastated devoted troops with irreparable
loss, and stretched his mind on the rack of ceaseless apprehension
how best to encounter imminent dangers with insufficient means.
Burning sun, dust storms, and repeated incalculable crises of peril
may wear down the bravest physical nature, and in high fever he was
compelled to seek refuge first in the Admiral’s _Triad_, and then
in a hospital ship leaving the scene of his great exploits. Such
consolation as is possible for a man so placed he might derive from the
eulogy justly bestowed upon “the incomparable 29th Division” by the
Commander-in-Chief when the brigades were withdrawn in turn for a brief
rest at Imbros after the battle of late June. For, after speaking of
their recent deeds, Sir Ian concluded:
“Therefore it is that Sir Ian Hamilton is confident he carries
with him all ranks of his force when he congratulates Generals
Hunter-Weston and De Lisle, the Staff, and each officer, N.C.O., and
man in this Division, whose sustained efforts have added fresh lustre
to British arms all the world over.”
The command of the VIIIth Army Corps was temporarily taken over by
Lieut.-General Sir Frederick Stopford, who had arrived at Imbros with
his Staff on July 11. He was thus given an opportunity of experience
in the kind of fighting required of his forces when he commanded the
IXth Army Corps, then gradually concentrating for a new enterprise.
Major-General Douglas (42nd Division) next took command for a time.
For the permanent command, perhaps, Sir Bruce Hamilton might have
been appointed but for his deafness. Ultimately Lieut.-General Sir
F. J. Davies, who had seen much service of every kind since entering
the Grenadier Guards in 1884, was sent out. He arrived from France on
August 5, took over the command on August 8, and commanded the VIIIth
Army Corps to the end.
On the part of the French, the losses during the first half of July
were also heavy. Of individual losses, the most serious were caused
in the early morning of July 12 by a heavy shell which destroyed the
1st Division command-post, killing Major Romieux, Chief of Staff, and
mortally wounding General Masnou, commanding the 1st Division. He was
succeeded by General Brulard, who had seen much service in Morocco.
Lieut.-Colonel Vernhol was his Chief of Staff.
Some idea of the habitual life in the fighting lines during the next
two or three weeks of comparative quiet may be gathered from notes
which I wrote hurriedly at the time. Towards the end of July I was
staying on the wreck of the _River Clyde_, daily visiting one section
or other of the British lines (the French being “out of bounds,” though
in later months I found all French officers and men anxious to welcome
us). One day when I had been chiefly with the 42nd Division and the
38th Brigade (13th Division) temporarily attached to them for training,
I made the following notes among others:
[Sidenote: DESCRIPTION OF HELLES]
“Starting from W Beach, you struggle through dust clouds, ‘left
shoulder up,’ till you find one of the dusty white tracks by which
Krithia villagers used to visit the town of Seddel Bahr. One passes
through what was lately a garden of wild flowers, fields, vineyards,
and scattered olive trees, but is now the desolation which people
make and call war. It is a wilderness of mounds and pits and
trenches, of heaped-up stores and rows of horses stabled in the
open, of tarpaulin dressing-stations behind embankments, of carts
and wagons continually on the move, of Indian muleteers continually
striving to inculcate human reason into mules. Except for a few
surviving trees, hardly a green thing remains. Over all this
wilderness a cloud of dust sweeps perpetually, and on the results of
war flies multiply with a prosperity unknown to them before.
“Shaded by the largest remaining trees lay the headquarters of the
Royal Naval Division, always near the front, always engaged, and
hardly enough recognised. Being neither army nor navy, they share the
common danger of nondescripts, and people at home do not forget the
untrained condition in which they were rushed out to Antwerp. Now war
has given them the sternest training, and here they stand, always
ready to take a foremost place in the fighting line, singularly clean
in dug-out and trench, singularly free from all the common ailments
of a war in sun and flying dirt.
“I went on to the 42nd Division, and passing the Divisional
Headquarters entered a shallow nullah, rather safer than the track;
for the whole of the open ground right away from Cape Helles is
exposed to shell-fire. The peculiarity of this watercourse is that
there is visible water in it--a trickle of filthy greenish water
unfit for washing or drinking; but still the men wash where it has
settled down in the large holes made by ‘Jack Johnsons’ or ‘Black
Marias’ which have pitched in its bed.
“One point where the watercourse divides is inevitably called
‘Clapham Junction.’ But Lancashire names have been given to the main
trenches and ‘dumps.’ Burnley, Warrington, and Accrington have given
names to the narrow clefts which are the homes of the Lancashire
men, and a long communication trench, constructed by the Turks with
extraordinary ingenuity, has now become Wigan Road. Like all this
part of our position, that trench was captured in the fighting of
June 4–6, relics of which, in the shape of the dead who cannot be
reached for burial, still lie exposed in certain places among our
own lines, so keen is the watch of the Turkish sniper.
“The 38th Brigade is all Lancastrian too. In its headquarters,
General Baldwin was giving a discourse to his officers. A young
Captain Chadwick, of the machine-guns, showed the way round the
trenches. Through periscopes, or by raising the eyes for a few
seconds above the parapet (for I found it hard to judge distances
through a periscope), one could see the Turkish black and white
sandbags only forty or fifty yards from our front, and follow the
long lines and mazes of trenchwork round the base of Achi Baba.
Holes through the tops of the periscopes proved the vigilance of the
Turkish outlook, and in passing certain points everybody has to run.
“The rifle-fire was not very frequent. Shells kept flying over
our heads, but only to burst far away upon the wilderness, or on
W Beach. Except during an attack, the firing line is not the most
dangerous part of the Peninsula. In the midday heat, the men who were
not ‘standing to,’ were quietly engaged in cooking or eating their
dinner. They cooked on little wood fires lighted in holes scooped out
in the trench side, and their tin ‘canteens’ served for cooking pots
and plates.
“So there these sons of Lancashire stood, almost naked in the blaze
of sun, jammed between high walls of white and parching marl;
some were cooking, some having their dinner from the pans, some
crouching in any corner of shade that could be found, some engaged
upon war’s invariable occupation of picking lice off the inside of
their clothes. I don’t know what work they had done before--weaving,
spinning, mining, smelting, I don’t know what--but they were at an
unaccustomed sort of work now, and yet how quickly they have adapted
themselves to so strange a life in so strange a land!”
[Sidenote: MONOTONOUS FOOD]
The food thus cooked was abundant but monotonous. The chief luxury was
the ration of apricot jam--welcome for a time, but always apricot.
Officials naturally find monotony the easiest form of supply, and
forget that variety is essential in human food. The case of “bully
beef” was worse. Certain kinds of it (South American) were so salt
that it ought to have been stewed or boiled before issued. Salt meat,
unvaried week after week under a burning sun and in stifling trenches
where water is limited to teacupfuls, is not attractive. To troops
afflicted with violent diarrhœa it is uneatable and dangerous. When
the Anzac men threw over tins of meat to the Turks in exchange for
packets of cigarettes, it was a cheap gift, and the enemy returned the
message, “Bully Beef Non. Envoyez milk.” Salt, hard and distasteful
food, in persistent monotony, increased the prevalent disease until the
demand for castor oil (which was considered the most soothing remedy)
far exceeded the calculated supply, and at Anzac General Birdwood was
obliged to issue orders against excessive indulgence, lest castor oil
should become Australia’s national drink. Appeals for a canteen where
variety could be purchased remained unheeded till much later in the
campaign. At Imbros, a few Greeks were licensed to erect stalls where
fruit, cigarettes, “Turkish Delight” (lakoumi), candles, and various
tinned goods could be purchased by the brigades mustering there, or
withdrawn there for rest. Greek sailing-boats anchored along K Beach,
the main landing-place on that island, also did a similar trade,
especially in fruit. At Helles, on W Beach, stood a canteen shed,
nearly always empty. Late in August or in September a canteen ship at
last reached Anzac, but the supply was so small that the representative
purchaser from each battalion was not allowed more than a sixth of what
he asked and had money to pay for. Yet whenever the simplest alteration
in rations was possible, such as the issue of rice, cocoa, raisins, or
even a different jam, the health of the men improved.
[Illustration: WATER-CARRIERS AT ANZAC]
The water supply was a perpetual anxiety, especially at Anzac. Water
could be found in a few places by digging, especially near the shore,
where, however, it soon became brackish. At Helles there were a few
springs and a few old wells. At the extreme left or north of the Anzac
position (near the hill known as Fort 3), Colonel Bauchop, then in
command there, showed me in July an excellent spring of pure water,
said to have been discovered by a “diviner,” Sapper Stephen Kelly, of
Melbourne, with a hazel twig. As it was close to the sea, at the mouth
of one of the largest watercourses that drain the range of Sari Bair,
though dry on the surface in summer, it might have been possible to
divine the presence of water beneath the surface without supernatural
aid; but the source was soon fitted up with pumps and cisterns,
supplying that district well. For the centre of Anzac and the outlying
trenches along the heights, most of the water was brought from the Nile
in lighters and pumped into iron reservoirs upon the Cove beach in
front of General Headquarters. A larger one containing 30,000 gallons
was also constructed on a platform up the cliff, but without great
success, owing to the breakdown of the pumping-engine. The water was
carefully rationed out into water-bottles or tins--so carefully that a
man was fortunate to get a mugful for washing and shaving. “Having
a good clean up?” said General Birdwood, in his friendly way, to an
Australian thus engaged. “Yes, sir,” the man replied, “and I only wish
I was a bloody canary!”
[Sidenote: DAILY LIFE AT ANZAC]
From notes written down by myself in the middle of that July, I take
the following description:
“So here the Anzacs live, practising the whole art of war. Amid dust
and innumerable flies, from the mouths of little caves cut in the
face of the cliffs, they look over miles of sea to the precipitous
peaks of Samothrace and the grey mountains of Imbros. Up and down the
steep and narrow paths, the Colonials arduously toil, like ants which
bear the burdens of their race. Uniforms are seldom of the regulation
type. Usually they consist of bare skin dyed to a deep reddish copper
by the sun, tattooed decorations (a girl, a ship, a dragon), and a
covering that can hardly be described even as ‘shorts,’ being much
shorter. Every kind of store and arm has to be dragged or ‘humped’
up these ant-hills of cliff, and deposited at the proper hole or
gallery. Food, water, cartridges, shells, building timber, guns,
medical stores--up the tracks all must go, and down them the wounded
come.
“So the practice of the simple life proceeds, with greater simplicity
than any Garden Suburb can boast, and the domestic virtues which
constitute the whole art of war are exercised with a fortitude rarely
maintained upon the domestic hearth.”
July 23 was the anniversary of the “constitution” proclaimed by the
Young Turks in 1908, and it was expected that the enemy would celebrate
the dawn by another attack. Being then at Anzac, I made the following
notes, which are here included as giving some idea of usual daily life
upon the outer lines:
“Reinforcements were known to be arriving, or perhaps arrived, across
the Narrows--100,000 men, as reported. It was Ramazan, and the sacred
moon, three-quarters full, gave light for climbing the precipitous
yellow cliffs. By eleven I was at the highest point. Through deeply
cut saps and ‘communications,’ the work of Australian miners, the
way runs in winding labyrinth. Though the depth of our three-mile
position measures no more than three-quarters of a mile from the
shore to the farthest point inland (not counting by the measurement
of cliff and valley surface, but straight through the air), the
length of sap and trench runs to much over a hundred miles. The point
I reached had served as a machine-gun emplacement, but that evening
it was watched by a Sikh sentry who stood in the shadow, silent as
the shadow. Mounted on the firing-step I looked over the sandbag
parapet upon a peculiar scene.
“Far on my right lay the sea, white with the pathway of the setting
moon. Up from the shore ran the lines of our position. Close outside
the lines, north, south, and east, the Turks stood hidden in their
trenches--25,000 to 35,000 of them, as estimates say. All the time
they kept up a casual rifle-fire. Some six miles away, in the centre
of the Peninsula south, I could see the long and steep position of
Kilid Bahr plateau, where the Turks drill new troops daily, and three
or four miles farther still away rose the dangerously gentle slopes
and low, flat summit of Achi Baba. Beyond it gleamed the sudden
flashes of Turkish and British guns defending or assaulting the
sand-blown point of land between Krithia and Cape Helles. Sometimes,
too, a warship’s searchlight shot a brilliant ray across the view.
“At one o’clock the moon set in a deep red haze over the sea. But
nothing happened. The enemy merely kept up a casual fire upon our
sandbags, shaking the sand down upon my face as I lay on a kind of
shelf beside the parapet. Then suddenly, just on the stroke of two
(about midnight in London), an amazing disturbance arose.
[Sidenote: A TURKISH OUTBURST]
“Every Turk who held a rifle or commanded a machine-gun began to fire
as fast as he could. From every point in their lines arose such a din
of rifle-fire as I have seldom heard even at the crisis of a great
engagement. It was one continuous blaze and rattle. From a gap in the
parapet I could see the sharp tongues of flame flashing all along the
edges, like a belt of jewels. Minute followed minute, and still the
incalculable din continued. Now and again one of our guns flung up a
shell which burst like a firework into brilliant stars, as though to
ask, ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ Now and again another
gun threw a larger shell which came lumbering up Shrapnel Gully with
a leisurely note, to burst crashing among the enemy’s trenches. And
still the roar of rifles and machine-guns went on incessantly, and
still nothing occurred. Suddenly, after just a quarter of an hour,
the tumult ceased, with as little reason as it had begun.
“What was the origin of it all, no one who knows the Turk would
guess. A salutation to the dawn of Constitution Day; panic at the
imaginary appearance of ghostly bayonets fixed for the charge; the
instinct which impels a man to fire a rifle when another fires? In
lately captured orders, the Turks were seriously warned against
wasting ammunition, and now, in a quarter of an hour, they had
expended thousands of rounds upon sandbags; one man killed and two
slightly wounded. I afterwards learnt that the Anzacs fired off only
two belts (500 rounds) of machine-gun, and 74 rounds of rifle.
“When the storm subsided, we and the Turkish snipers settled down
again to normal relations, and all was star-lit peace. At half-past
three the phantom of false dawn died into daylight, and the men who
had been ‘standing to’ all night sank to sleep at the bottom of the
trenches. Picking my way over their splendid forms, I climbed down
the cliffs again to my cavern beside the sea. I was told that, as an
attack was expected that night (spies so reported), not a single man
in the Anzac force had gone sick.”
That was a special occasion, but no matter where one slept at Anzac,
the air overhead wailed ceaselessly with bullets, and from time to time
shrapnel burst or heavy shell exploded, especially around headquarters
close to the beach in the centre of Anzac Cove. There, up a short
flight of steps, General Birdwood had his dug-out, and there during
the night of July 27, Lieutenant B. W. Onslow (11th K.E.O. Lancers),
the General’s A.D.C., an excellent soldier, sleeping on the top of his
dug-out owing to the intense heat, was killed instantly as he slept.
[Sidenote: THE _ARAGON_]
At the advanced base in Mudros harbour (the third vital point in the
expedition at this time), an important change in command was effected
in the middle of this month. Throughout the first weeks of fighting
and organisation, this base was left destitute of an Inspector-General
of Communications. The heavy and complicated work involved, especially
in the transhipment of all drafts and supplies and ammunition from
the ordinary transports to trawlers and small craft after the
danger of submarines was reported, fell upon the Principal Naval
Transport Officer (Admiral Phillimore) and the Quartermaster-General
(Brigadier-General S. H. Winter). In June, Major-General Wallace was
appointed to the office, but his long experience as an executive
officer in India had not specially qualified him for a peculiarly
difficult piece of administrative work, and complaints arose of the
confusion and delay on board the s.s. _Aragon_, assigned to him as
headquarters. Hitherto this liner (hired at great cost from the Royal
Mail Steam Packet Company) had served as offices for the Principal
Naval Transport Officer, and as the General Post Office. The new Staff
of enormous size was now added, and the ship also became a kind of
clearing-house or depôt for officers passing to and fro. She acquired
an evil name owing to frequent loss of parcels from home for officers
and men upon the Peninsula. Unhappily, there was no question about
the losses; but this unpardonable crime against the fighting men, who
were literally dying for want of variety and small pleasures in food,
may have been committed at other points of the postal service. More
definite, though less serious, was the charge of luxury on board.
Certainly, to any one coming fresh from the dug-outs, dust storms,
monotonous rations, and perpetual risks of the Peninsula, the _Aragon_
was like an Enchanted Isle. All who have campaigned in a desert land
know the first physical delight of getting on board a well-equipped
vessel--the plenty and variety of food, the clean cooking, the iced
drinks, tablecloths for dinner, sheets in the bunks, a good chance of
washing, and baths. To the campaigning soldier, those are comforts
beyond the dreams of luxury, but in ordinary life the most ascetic of
saints does not renounce them all as necessarily sinful. Perhaps it was
the arbitrary exclusion of many passing officers from the delights of a
real dinner and other pleasurable contrasts to life at the front which
made the _Aragon_ a byword, as though she were “a sink of iniquity”;
and from the same contrasts arose the report that at the end of the
campaign she was discovered to be aground upon empty bottles, as upon a
coral reef. This appears unlikely, since the harbour took battleships
with ease, to say nothing of the _Aquitania_ and the largest liners
afloat.[140]
In the first half of July, Major-General Altham (Royal Scots), a
Christ Church, Oxford, man, who served as Chief Intelligence Officer
under Sir George White in Ladysmith, succeeded as Inspector-General
of Communications, and he also made his headquarters in the _Aragon_.
The expense of maintaining the ship was estimated at £300 a day, and
proposals were made for removing the headquarters to land in order to
save money. But on the east side of the harbour stood the dusty and
unwholesome town or village of Mudros, together with various camps,
and the western shore and rising slopes behind it were covered with
hospitals, Australian, Irish-Canadian (run by women), and others,
besides rest-camps beyond. It was also thought necessary to remain on
the water in order to keep touch with the naval organisation under
direction of the flagship _Europa_ (Admiral Wemyss), and this, together
with the absence of deep-water piers and wharves, was probably the
decisive reason. And as to expense, the saving of some £9000 a month
has, unfortunately, never been regarded as particularly praiseworthy
in this war. The _Minnetonka_ (Atlantic Transport Company) served as
headquarters of the Ordnance Services and depôt for the supply of
engineering implements, tools, and ammunition, which, however, was not
usually unloaded from the smaller craft. Brigadier-General R. W. M.
Jackson, Director of Ordnance Services, worked sometimes at Mudros,
sometimes at the base in Alexandria. Brigadier-General F. W. B. Koe,
Director of Supplies and Transports, did the same.
[Sidenote: THE _SATURNIA_]
In spite of the lamentable experiences at the first landings, the
arrangements for the removal of the wounded from the Peninsula were
still inadequate. The four original hospital ships were present--two
military and two lent by the navy--each adapted to receive about 500
men. The remainder of the wounded had to be put on transports not
specially prepared, and not protected by The Hague Convention from
attack. Before new hospital ships arrived (about fifty at the end),
this lack of accommodation caused many deaths and much suffering
after a battle on the Peninsula. A particular instance, much spoken
of and strongly condemned at the time, was the case of the transport
_Saturnia_, which appeared at Mudros after the attack of June 28
with about 700 on board, crowded haphazard into any corner, in much
confusion, and so neglected that their wounds were in many cases
putrefying and full of maggots. The transport, having been used for
horses and mules, was also in a filthy and stinking condition. Naval
and military surgeons were ordered to assist. Among the foremost was
Staff-Surgeon Levick of the cruiser _Bacchante_ (Captain Boyle), who
had accompanied Captain Scott on the Antarctic expedition, and was the
author of an excellent scientific monograph on penguins. Supported
by Surgeon Lorrimer of the same ship, and a priest, Father Barry, he
remained on board four days and nights, constantly operating. But,
for want of adequate assistance, and owing to the lack of bandages,
dressings, and instruments, comparatively little could be effected, and
many died who might have recovered with proper care.
Such incidents were but further evidences of the general confusion
due to an unexpected war, and of the secondary position assigned to
the Dardanelles in the Cabinet’s strategy. Prompted, perhaps, by the
depressing reports which had lately reached them, the “Dardanelles
Committee” of the Cabinet, as the former “War Council” was called after
June,[141] resolved to institute an inquiry for themselves. On the
Peninsula it was widely rumoured that Mr. Winston Churchill was coming,
and variegated opinions were expressed. Perhaps it would have been well
if he had come; for he, at all events, realised the vital importance
of the expedition in relation to the war as a whole. Ultimately,
Colonel Maurice Hankey, Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence
since 1912, came alone--a man of high reputation for intelligence and
capacity. He arrived in the last week of July, and stayed till August
20, but before his arrival the Cabinet had already resolved upon
sending out such reinforcements as they considered sufficient to comply
with Sir Ian’s demands.
[Illustration: A “BEETLE”]
[Sidenote: MONITORS, “BLISTER SHIPS,” & “BEETLES”]
On July 13 a new and strange type of warship, called a “Monitor,”
arrived at Kephalos, and next day began bombarding the guns on the
Asiatic coast. The monitors were originally constructed for operations
in another sphere. They were, in fact, large floating platforms or
flat-bottomed forts, supporting, some two 12-inch, and others two
14-inch, guns of American make, without further armament. Their tonnage
was about 6000, and their chief peculiarity a broad, flat shelf or
platform extending from the hull just below the water-line; so broad
and flat that numbers of men could walk upon it while bathing, so
that they appeared to be walking upon the water. The shape of the
vessels rendered them difficult to steer, and so slow in motion that
their progress against such a current as ran in the Narrows would have
been very gradual. About the same time, smaller “monitors” arrived.
They were nicknamed “Whippets,” and were marked by numbers only. Four
“blister ships” (cruisers protected against torpedoes by bulging
protuberances along both sides) also came. The “blisters” reduced
their speed by about three knots, but, being safe at anchor, they
served especially as marking points for survey and “registration.”
All these ships played an important part in the coming operations;
and in the later months of the campaign, when cross-observation from
De Tott’s Battery point and Cape Helles had been established, the
large “monitors” stationed off Rabbit Island did invaluable service by
suppressing the heavy guns on the Asiatic side.
Almost equally surprising was the appearance of several motor-lighters,
inevitably called “Beetles.” Originally constructed for the same
proposal as the monitors, they were long, iron barges moving under
their own oil power, and built to transport 500 men or 50 horses
apiece. From the prow projected a swinging platform or drawbridge,
which, hanging elevated as the lighter moved, had the look of a
beetle’s forceps and antennæ. The iron deck and sides gave absolute
protection against rifle-fire or shrapnel, and if the lighters had been
sent out for the first landings, hundreds of lives might have been
saved and the history of the war transformed, but only few were ready
before May or June.
[Sidenote: THE 10TH, 11TH, AND 13TH DIVISIONS]
As to military reinforcement, its necessity was obvious, since by the
end of July the casualties amounted to nearly 50,000; in round numbers,
8000 killed, 30,000 wounded (many, of course, returned to service),
and 11,000 missing (many killed).[142] The 29th Division was the best
supplied with drafts, but on the last day of July it counted only
219 officers and 8424 men. As we have seen, the brigades of the 13th
(Western) Division, under Major-General F. C. Shaw, began to arrive
in the first half of July, and were stationed with the divisions
at Helles to gain experience, which served them well.[143] The
11th (Northern) Division, under Major-General Frederick Hammersley,
began to arrive early in the second half of July, two brigades being
stationed at Imbros, and one (the 33rd) sent to Helles for a brief
experience.[144] The 10th (Irish) Division, under Lieutenant-General
Sir Bryan Mahon, arrived towards the end of July, and half of it was
stationed at Mitylene (Lesbos) on the inlet of Iero (about 6 miles from
the town of Mitylene), guarded by the old battleship _Canopus_ (Captain
Grant).[145] These three Divisions belonged to the New (so-called
Kitchener’s) Army. The infantry of two Territorial Divisions were
also promised--the 53rd (Welsh) and 54th (East Anglian)--but they did
not begin to arrive till August 10. They were about half below their
nominal strength, and had no guns.[146]
[Sidenote: AEROPLANES AND REINFORCEMENTS]
As to aeroplanes, compared with subsequent developments the service
was necessarily rather primitive. The six or eight seaplanes attached
to the _Ark Royal_ were unable to rise to any great height--not over
2000 feet. Commander Charles Samson established an aerodrome at Tenedos
early in the campaign for British and French planes,[147] and there
was an emergency landing-place at Helles. In June, Tenedos was left to
the French, and Colonel Frederick Sykes, R.N.A.S., took command over
the two British wings (Commander Samson and Lieut.-Colonel Gerard)
stationed at Imbros. At the end of July about 30 planes of different
types were in action, doing excellent service in observation and
photography. But none of them were “fighting machines,” and, as no
anti-aircraft guns were supplied till just at the end of the campaign,
the Turkish “Fokker” planes from Chanak were able to continue bombing
our lines on the Peninsula and the General Headquarters at Imbros. On
the sandy cliff beside the headquarters a large shed was erected for
a few small airships, cigar-shaped, with silvery balloons (they were
known as “Silver Babies”), which were used to scout over the channel
between Imbros and the Peninsula on the watch for submarines. The
late autumn gales tore the green canvas covering off the shed, and
ultimately it was removed to Mudros.
By the beginning of August, Sir Ian Hamilton had the following military
forces under his command: VIIIth Army Corps (29th, 42nd, and 52nd
Divisions); IXth Army Corps (10th, 11th, and 13th Divisions); Anzac
Army Corps (Australian and New-Zealand-and-Australian Divisions);
French Corps Expéditionnaire d’Orient (1st and 2nd Divisions); General
Headquarter Troops (Royal Naval Division), together with the infantry
of the 53rd and 54th Divisions then on their way out. Eleven divisions
present and two more coming represented a nominal force of about
240,000 to 250,000. The actually available forces amounted to less than
half those numbers (about 120,000 rifles), always short of howitzers,
guns, shells, trench-mortars, and bombs. The Turkish forces on the
Peninsula at the same time were estimated at about 61,000, with 39,000
in reserve.[148]
The reinforcements by land and sea rendered a change of strategy
possible. They were, in fact, supplied for this purpose. It had now
become evident that the Achi Baba lines were too strong for direct
assault. Its gradual slopes, free from dead ground, made the hill
an ideal position for defence, and this natural advantage had been
so increased by a complicated system of frontal and communication
trenches, by barbed wire, machine-guns, scattered batteries, and a
series of powerful redoubts, that an almost impregnable fortress by
this time checked further advance. In fact, the army at Helles was like
a besieged garrison, being continually threatened with assault from the
front, and by the Asiatic guns on its right flank and rear. The sea
remained open, but that outlet for communication, already exposed to
the enemy’s submarines and heavy artillery, would soon be imperilled
by autumnal storms. The Army Corps at Anzac was similarly besieged,
except that the dead ground sheltered by precipitous cliffs reduced
the danger to life in rear of the firing trenches. To break down the
siege a sortie in force had become essential. The only alternative
was to cling to the positions in the hope of a diversion from Russia
or Bulgaria. But during July the great Russian retreat from Galicia
and Poland continued almost uninterrupted, and on August 4, Warsaw
fell. As to Bulgaria, the Russian disasters confirmed Tsar Ferdinand’s
confidence in the ultimate victory of his German compatriots, and a
resolute people’s ancestral detestation of the Serbs gave him the
support of their passionate desire to recover the lands lost to them in
the second Balkan War.
[Sidenote: REJECTED SCHEMES FOR FRESH ADVANCE]
The design of breaking down the siege and freeing the Narrows for the
fleet, by cutting the neck of the Peninsula at Bulair, by a landing at
Enos, or by a direct attack, was obvious and tempting. As before, its
weakness was that the occupation of Bulair would neither have cut the
enemy’s communications nor freed the Narrows. In spite of the daring
resource of our submarines in penetrating into the Sea of Marmora, and
even shelling the trains and destroying the culverts on the railway
which runs from Scutari along the north coast of the Gulf of Ismid,
the main Turkish supplies and drafts still came to the Peninsula by
sea. Some crossed to the Asiatic side from Constantinople; some came
up by train from Smyrna to Panderma; in either case, the transports
edged along the coast by stages at night till they reached the Straits
and crossed at Gallipoli, Galata, or Maidos, always keeping beyond
the range or vision of any guns on Bulair. A landing at Enos would
have lengthened the journey from Mudros by about 50 miles. An attempt
at Bulair would have implied a landing against lines long reputed
impregnable, and lately developed even more carefully than the April
defences at Helles. The attempt also would have contained no element
of surprise; for an attack at that point would be the merest amateur’s
first expectation.
[Sidenote: SIR IAN’S DESIGN]
An advance in Asia, as from Adramyti Bay opposite Mitylene, with a
view to reaching the Smyrna-Panderma railway, might have looked more
promising. It was much favoured by British authorities in Mitylene.
The arrival of half the 10th Division appeared to point that way, and
Mr. Compton Mackenzie was sent there to encourage the false report,
for the benefit of Turkish spies. The French, harassed by the Asiatic
guns, were probably anxious for some movement along that coast. But
Sir Ian was perhaps still bound by Lord Kitchener’s express orders not
to entangle himself in Asia. At all events, he refused to dissipate
his comparatively small forces at such distances apart. Committed to
the Peninsula, he felt that there or nowhere lay his hope of victory.
Already in June, with the full concurrence of Generals Gouraud and
Birdwood, he had laid his plan. Anzac, instead of remaining subsidiary
as “a thorn in the side,” was now to become the main base of attack.
The first objective was to be the Sari Bair range; the ultimate object
an advance across the five miles to Maidos. A new frontal attack was to
detain the enemy at Achi Baba. A surprise landing at Suvla Bay was to
protect the Anzac left flank, occupy the heights threatening that flank
with artillery, and assist the assault upon the central mountains of
Sari Bair range--Koja Chemen Tepe (Hill 971) and Chunuk Bair. When once
those heights were gained, the Turkish communications would indeed be
cut in two; the positions on Achi Baba and Kilid Bahr plateau would
be turned and taken in rear; the very gate of the Narrows would be
exposed to our guns. It was a high hope. The battle for its realisation
is generally known as Suvla, but more accurately as Sari Bair. In the
first week of August it began.
NOTE to p. 199.--During the assault on July 12 and 13 there was “much
confused fighting,” as Sir Ian’s dispatch states. General Paris, then
commanding the R.N.D., writes: “I know the confusion was immense,
and the difficulty of locating actual positions continued for some
(say two or three) days.” I now take the following to be the order of
events: On the morning of the 12th, the 155th Brigade went forward,
with the French on its right, and captured two lines of trenches.
It was counter-attacked, and one battalion suffered severe loss. In
support, General Hunter-Weston ordered the 157th Brigade to attack
in prolongation of the left, and this Brigade captured three lines
of trenches. Early on the morning of the 13th, part of its right was
driven back by a counter-attack of bombers, and the left of the 155th
Brigade was also heavily pressed. The men were, however, rallied
almost immediately, and returned.
As to the reinforcement by the R.N.D., I quote Sir Ian’s dispatch:
“I decided that three battalions of the R.N.D. should reinforce a
fresh attack to be made that afternoon (July 13) on such portions
of our original objectives as remained in the enemy’s hands. This
second attack was a success. The Nelson Battalion on the left
valiantly advanced and made good, well supported by the artillery of
the French. The Portsmouth Battalion, pressing on too far, fell into
precisely the same error at precisely the same spot as did the 4th
K.O.S.B. on the 12th, an over-impetuosity which caused them heavy
losses.”
It was on the morning of the 13th that Major Sketchley (R.M.L.I.)
added to his previous services on the Staff of the R.N.D. by the
action which gained his D.S.O.--“a very gallant affair,” as General
Paris writes.