Gallipoli Diary Volume II Part 19

K. has pounced like a hawk on Bailloud's statement (which I cabled to him yesterday) that he is taking steps for Brulard to hold the French section with one division.

Have answered:--

"(No. M.F. 703). From General Sir Ian Hamilton to Earl Kitchener. Your No. 8409, cipher. Not one word of my No. M.F. 693 can I take back. The situation at Cape h.e.l.les cannot be fully realized. May I remind you that when on 20th August I moved the XXIXth Division to Suvla, I left at Cape h.e.l.les only the minimum garrison compatible with safety. Since that date the total British troops there have decreased in strength from 15,300 to 13,300 rifles, and now I am losing a French composite division which is made up of the only troops of the Corps Expeditionnaire on whom I can rely, as well as 44 guns. It is my considered opinion that to leave protection of Cape h.e.l.les to one division of Colonial troops, plus 13,300 worn-out British Territorials and Naval Volunteers, is running too serious a risk. To-day, therefore, I am moving one brigade of XXIXth Division back from Suvla to reinforce VIIIth Corps in order to have some regular troops there on whom I can rely. This makes it impossible to spare the LIIIrd Division. The change of opinion on the part of Bailloud, when he gets away from a position which I have found it difficult to persuade him to hold with two divisions, and which he now, as you say, thinks can be held with one division composed largely of blacks, is startling enough to need no comment. If you want to get at his real opinion, suggest that he stays here with one division while Brulard goes to Salonika.

"A despatch from Bailloud has _just_ reached me on the situation in French section after his own departure with one division. It is as follows:--

"'One division will then be defending our present line with an effective strength reduced by half, and with Infantry which comprises only Colonial contingents, half European and half native. I feel it to be my duty to expose the situation to you in order that you may be able to decide whether the time has not now arrived to reduce the present section of the C.E.O., making part of it occupied by British troops and holding a solid reserve in rear of the Allies' first line capable of dealing with any situation.'

"I believe this indicates Bailloud's real opinion; it is a curious contrast to that quoted in your No. 8409, cipher, dated 30th September."

At 11.30 crossed to "K" and inspected the 87th Brigade of the 29th Division. Lucas, of the Berks Regiment, commanded. Saw the Border Regiment under Colonel Pollard; then the renowned Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers under Major Pierce, the full strength of the Battalion on parade "all present" was 220! Next the K.O.S.B.s; they were under the command of Major Stoney; last the South Wales Borderers under the command of Captain Williams.

The men were in rags and looked very tired. This is the first time in the campaign our rank and file have seemed sorry for themselves. Ten days of rest had been promised them and now they are being hurried back to the trenches before they have had a week. My heart goes out to them entirely. Were I they I would feel mad with me. The breaking of my word to the 29th Division has to be shouldered by me just like all the other results of this new Balkan adventure; the withdrawal of the Irish and the French for Salonika leaves no margin of rest for what's left.

Inspected also the West Riding Field Company of Royal Engineers under Major Bayley, and the West Lancas.h.i.+re Field Ambulance.

A long letter from Maxwell putting his point of view about the 51st and 53rd Sikhs. Were we both sealed-pattern Saints we'd be bound to fall foul of one another working under so perverse a system. He has written me very nicely; nothing could be nicer. I have replied by return:--

"Yours of 24th just received. As to the wires about the 51st and 53rd between myself and the War Office, and your remarks thereon, we stand so much on one platform, and are faced so much by the same difficulties, that I think it ought to be fairly easy for us to come to an understanding in most conceivable circ.u.mstances, as indeed our co-operation up to date has shown.

"If Egypt goes, then I shall not last very long. If I am wiped out, I think it will be the preface to trouble in Egypt.[13]

"As to myself I am 60,000 below strength. I had a cable from the War Office a day or two ago expressing nave astonishment at this figure. I replied that the figure was accurate and that there was nothing new about it as it only denoted the acc.u.mulation of a state of things which had been continuously reported since the very first day when we started off from England minus the ten per cent. margin of excess given to every unit going across to France. This is the essential cause of our repeated failure to make that last little push which just differentiates partial from conclusive success. In every case this has been so. Had I been able to throw in my ten per cent. margin on the third day after landing, there is no doubt in the world we would have got right up on to Achi Baba. Afterwards, each engagement we fought, although our total numbers may have been largely increased, the old formations were always at half strength or something less. However, I won't bother you about this as your time is too precious to enter into 'might-have-beens' and so is mine.

"Meantime, my line is very, very thin, and the men are getting entirely worn out. In the midst of this I am called upon to send away two Divisions, the French and the Irish, to ---- you know where. I have done so without a murmur, although it puts me into a ticklish position.

Reinforcements are now to be diverted elsewhere and my command is not an enviable one. I quite understand the necessity of trying to maintain a barrier between Essen and Constantinople. I quite understand also the danger of doing so at the expense of this attenuated, exhausted force. I have represented the facts home, and it is for them to decide."

Dined with the Admiral.

_2nd October, 1915._ The despatch of the Salonika force and their outfit are absorbing all my energies. Our whole Expeditionary Force is being drawn upon to send the 10th Division creditably turned out to the new theatre. The twenty-four hours' delay caused by the political crisis at Athens has been a G.o.dsend in enabling me to reclothe and re-equip the detachment from top to toe. The supplies for my own force are now exhausted, but,--on the principle of the starving garrison who threw loaves over the ramparts at the besiegers, we must try and make a good first impression on the Greeks.

The submarine catcher, or the "Silver Baby" as the men call it, has been flying about all day, without luck. Gascoigne and Bertier dined. Blazing hot; quite a setback to August temperatures.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 12: We had to get into Kephalos Harbour before dark; otherwise the submarine indicator nets were damaged.--IAN H.]

[Footnote 13: The last time this subject was broached between Lord Kitchener and myself was immediately after the evacuation of h.e.l.les.

Everyone was intensely relieved, especially Lord Kitchener, for he had realized better than our politicians the desperate stakes we had planked down in our gamble with the Clerk of the Weather. Yet in that very moment when the burden of an intolerable anxiety had just been lifted from his shoulders he took the occasion to declare to me that he stood by every word he had said. What he "had said," was that any withdrawal from the Dardanelles must react in due course upon Islam, and especially upon Egypt. Cairo, he held to be the centre of the Mahomedan doctrine and the pivotal point of our great Mahomedan Imperium. An evacuation of the Dardanelles would serve as an object lesson to Egypt just as our blunders in the Crimea had served as a motive to the Indian mutineers.

Ultimate success was not the point in either case. The point was that the legend of the invincibility of British troops should be shattered in some signal and quite unmistakable fas.h.i.+on. "The East," he said, "moved slowly in the fifties, and it will move slowly now. We've had a wonderful delivery but--depend upon it--the price has yet to be paid!"--IAN H., 1920.]

CHAPTER XXI

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

_3rd October, 1915. Imbros._ Church Parade. Inspected escort, men of the Howe and Nelson Battalions and a contingent from the 12th and 26th Australian Infantry. At 12.15 Bailloud, Brulard and Girodon arrived from Mudros for a last conference. Everything is fixed up. We are going to help the derelict division of French in every way we can. Bailloud, for his part, promises to leave them their fair share of guns and trench mortars. Whenever I see him I know he is one of the best fellows in the world. We went down and waved farewells from the pier. He was quite frank. He does not think the Allies have either the vision or the heart to go through with Gallipoli: he begins to suspect that the big push on the Western Front is going to yield no laurels: so Salonika hits his fancy.

Lieutenants Weston and Schemallach of the Australians and Lieutenant Gellibrand of the Naval Division lunched. A Mr. Unsworth came to talk over gifts for the Australian troops. He seems a capital chap; full of go and goodwill to all men.

_4th October, 1915. Imbros._ Vague warnings have taken shape in an event. A cable from K. telling me to decipher the next message myself. I have not drafted out an average of fifty telegrams a day for Lord K. for six months at a stretch without knowing something of his _modus scribendi_. The Staff were pleasantly excited at the idea that some new move was in the wind. I knew the new move--or thought I did.

Well, not that: not exactly that; not this time. But the enemies of our enterprise have got our range to a nicety and have chucked their first bomb bang into the middle of my camp.

A "flow of unofficial reports from Gallipoli," so K. cables to me, is pouring into the War Office. These "unofficial reports" are "in much the same strain" (perhaps they spring from the same source?). "They adversely criticize the work of the Headquarters Staff and complaints are made that its members are much out of touch with the troops. The War Office also doubt whether their present methods are quite satisfactory."

K. therefore suggests "some important changes in your Headquarters Staff; for instance, if you agreed, Kiggell from home to take Braithwaite's place with you. Should you, however, decline and desire to remain as at present, may we a.s.sume that we are quite safe in regarding these unofficial reports as not representing the true feelings of the troops?"

So----! On the face of it this cable seems to suggest that a man widely known as a straight and capable soldier should be given the shortest of shrifts at the instance of "unofficial reports"; i.e., camp gossip.

Surely the cable message carries with it some deeper significance!

I am grateful to old K. He is trying to save me. He picked out Braithwaite himself. Not so long ago he cabled me in his eagerness to promote him to Major-General; he would not suggest subst.i.tuting the industrious Kiggell if he didn't fear for me and for the whole of this enterprise.

K. wants, so he says, "some important change"; that cannot mean, surely, that he wants a sufficiently showy scapegoat to feed the ravenous critics--or does it? Perhaps, he's got to gain time; breathing s.p.a.ce wherein to resume the scheme which was sidetracked by the offensive in France and smashed by the diversion to Salonika. Given time, our scheme may yet be resumed. The Turks are in the depths. Sarrail with his six divisions behind him could open the Narrows in no time. I see the plan.

K. must have a splendid sacrifice but by the Lord they shan't have the man who stood by me like a rock during those first ghastly ten days.

The new C.R.E., General Williams, and Ellison turned up for lunch.

Williams gave us the first authentic news we have had about those Aden excursions and alarms.

An amusing aftermath of the evacuation by the French and Irish Divisions. When the last of Bailloud's troops had embarked the Turks dropped manifestoes from aeroplanes along the lines of the Senegalese calling upon these troops to make terms and come over now that their white comrades had left them to have their throats cut. I have cabled this queer item to the S. of S. Evidently the enemy were quite well aware of our withdrawal. Then _why_ didn't they sh.e.l.l the beaches? At French Headquarters they believe that the Turks were so glad to see our backs that they hardly dared breathe (much less fire a sh.e.l.l) lest we should change our minds.

_5th October, 1915._ First thing another cable from K. saying, "I think it well to let you know" that it is "quite understood by the Dardanelles Committee that you are adopting only a purely defensive att.i.tude at present." Also:--"I have no reason to imagine you have any intention of taking the offensive anywhere along the line seeing I have been unable to replace your sick and wounded men." But, if he knows I _can't_ take the offensive, why trouble to cable me that the Dardanelles Committee expect me to adopt "only a purely defensive att.i.tude"? I realize where we stand; K., Braithwaite and I,--on the verge. We are getting on for two months now since the August fighting--all that time we have been allowed to do nothing--literally, allowed to do nothing, seeing we have been given no sh.e.l.l. What a fiasco! The Dardanelles is not a sanatorium; Suvla is not Southend. With the men we have lost from sickness in the past six weeks we could have beaten the Turks twice over. Now Government seem to be about to d.a.m.n everything--themselves included.

But after all, who am I to judge the Government of the British Empire?

What do I know of their difficulties, pledges, and enemies--whether outside or inside the fold?

I have no grouse against Government or War Office--still less against K.--though many hundred times have I groused.[14]

Freely and gratefully do I admit that the individuals have done their best. Most of all am I indebted--very deeply indebted--to K. for having refrained absolutely from interference with my plan of campaign or with the tactical execution thereof.

But things are happening now which seem beyond belief. That the Dardanelles Committee should complacently send me a message to say we "quite understand that you are adopting only a purely defensive att.i.tude at present" is staggering when put side by side with the carbon of this, the very last cable I have sent them. "I think you should know immediately that the numbers of sick evacuated in the IXth Corps during the first three days of October were 500 men on the 1st instant; 735 men on the 2nd instant and 607 men on the 3rd instant. Were this rate kept up it would come to 45 per cent. of our strength evacuated in one month."

Three quarters of this sickness is due to inaction--and now the Dardanelles Committee "quite understand" I am "adopting only a purely defensive action at present." I have never adopted a defensive att.i.tude.

They have forced us to sit idle and go sick because--at the very last moment--they have permitted the French offensive to take precedence of ours, although, on the face of it, there was no violent urgency in France as there is here. Our men in France were remarkably healthy; they were not going sick by thousands. But I feel too sick myself--body and soul--to let my mind dwell on these miseries.

Sealed my resolution (resignation?) by giving my answer about Braithwaite. Though the sins of my General Staff have about as much to do with the real issues as the muddy water had to do with the death of the argumentative lamb, I begin by pointing out to the War Office wolf that "no Headquarters Staff has ever escaped similar criticism."

Grumblings are an old campaigner's _vade mec.u.m_. Bred by inaction; enterprise and activity smother them. A sickness of the spirit, they are like the flies that fasten on those who stay too long in one place.

Was Doughty Wylie "much out of touch with the troops" when he led the Dublins, Munsters and Hamps.h.i.+res up from "V" beach and fell gloriously at their head? Was Williams "out of touch" when he was. .h.i.t? Was h.o.r.e Ruthven? "As to Braithwaite," I say, "my confidence in that Officer is complete. I did not select him; you gave him to me and I have ever since felt most grateful to you for your choice."