Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 Part 4

The employing of the instrument which he had created could be left to other hands.

Many appreciations of him appeared at the time of his lamented pa.s.sing, and have appeared since. His character and his qualifications as man of action and elaborator had not always been appraised quite correctly during his lifetime, and they are a subject of differences of opinion still. Often was he spoken of as a great organizer and administrator. But his claim to possess such qualifications rested rather upon the results that he obtained than upon the methods by which he obtained them. Of detail he possessed no special mastery, and yet he would concern himself with questions of detail which might well have been left to subordinates to deal with. He won the confidence of those under him not so much through trusting them in the sense of leaving them responsibility, as through compelling them to trust him by the force of his personality and by the wide compa.s.s of his outlook upon the numberless questions that were ever at issue. He had been described as harsh, taciturn, and unbending. He was on the contrary a delightful chief to serve once one understood his ways, although he would stand no nonsense and, like most people, was occasionally out of humour and exacting.

A more cunning hand than mine is needed to depict adequately the great soldier-statesman. But this I would say. There has been much foolish talk as to this individual and to that having won the war. That any one person could have won the war is on the face of it an absurdity.

The greatest factor in achieving the result was the British Navy; but who would claim that any one of the chieftains in our fleets or pulling the naval strings ash.o.r.e decided the issue of the struggle?

Next, however, to what our sailors achieved afloat, the most important influence in giving victory to the side of the Entente was the development, to an extent previously undreamt of, of the British fighting resources ash.o.r.e. That was primarily the handiwork of Lord Kitchener. His country can fairly claim that he accomplished more than did any other individual--French, American, Italian, Russian, British--to bring German militarism to the ground.

No reference to the famous Field-Marshal's career during the Great War would be complete without one word as to "Fitz." Fitzgerald was, after a fas.h.i.+on, the complement of his Chief. We in Whitehall would have been lost without him. A comparatively junior officer, he was looked upon with some suspicion by those high up in the War Office just at first, in consequence of the exceptional influence that he enjoyed with the War Minister, and of his always knowing more about what was going on than anybody else but the War Minister himself. But all hands speedily came to appreciate the rare qualities of this seeming interloper, to realize what useful services he was able and ever ready to perform, and to turn his presence at his Chief's elbow to the best account. Sometimes he would be acting as a buffer; at other times he a.s.sumed the role of coupling-chain. Lord Kitchener frequently employed him to convey instructions verbally, and on such occasions the emissary always knew exactly what was in the War Minister's mind. If after an interview with the Chief one felt any doubts as to what was required of one, a hint to Fitz would be sure to secure the information of which one stood in need. Lord K. reposed implicit confidence in the judgement of this Personal Military Secretary of his, and with good reason. Often when the solution of some problem under discussion appeared to be open to question, he would say, "Let's have in Fitz and see what he thinks."

The relations between them were like father and son. Each swore by the other, and Lord K. indeed never seemed better pleased than when one showed a liking for the Bengal Lancer whom he had chosen when in India and attached to himself. "I'll go and talk it over with Fitz, sir,"

was sure to be rewarded with a pleasant smile and a "Yes, do."

Possessing a charming personality, a keen intellect, a fund of humour and a considerable knowledge of the world, Fitz was an extremely attractive figure quite apart from the exceptional qualifications which he possessed for a post which he filled with so much credit to himself, and with such advantage to others. Of the thousands who went down in the great struggle, few were probably more sincerely mourned by hosts of friends than the gallant soldier whose body, washed ash.o.r.e on the iron-bound coast of the Orkneys, we laid to rest one showery June afternoon in the hillside cemetery overlooking Eastbourne.

CHAPTER V

THE DARDANELLES

The Tabah incident -- The Dardanelles memorandum of 1906 -- Special steps taken with regard to it by Sir H.

Campbell-Bannerman -- Mr. Churchill first raises the question -- My conference with him in October 1914 -- The naval project against the Straits -- Its fundamental errors -- Would never have been carried into effect had there been a conference between the Naval War Staff and the General Staff -- The bad start -- The causes of the final failure on the 18th of March -- Lord K.'s instructions to Sir I. Hamilton -- The question of the packing of the transports -- Sir I. Hamilton's complaint as to there being no plan prepared -- The 1906 memorandum -- Sir Ian's complaint about insufficient information -- How the 1906 memorandum affected this question -- Misunderstanding as to the difficulty of obtaining information -- The information not in reality so defective -- My anxiety at the time of the first landing -- The plan, a failure by early in May -- Impossibility of sending out reinforcements then -- Question whether the delay in sending out reinforcements greatly affected the result in August 1915 -- The Dardanelles Committee -- Its anxiety -- Sir E. Carson and Mr.

Churchill, allies -- The question of clearing out -- My disinclination to accept the principle before September -- Sir C.

Monro sent out -- The delay of the Government in deciding -- Lord K. proceeds to the Aegean -- My own experiences -- A trip to Paris with a special message to the French Government -- Sent on a fool's errand, thanks to the Cabinet -- A notable state paper on the subject -- Mr. Lloyd George and the "sanhedrin" -- Decision to evacuate only Anzac and Suvla -- Sir W. Robertson arrives and orders are sent to evacuate h.e.l.les -- I give up the appointment of D.M.O.

No sooner did disquieting intelligence come to hand to the effect that the Ottoman authorities had given the _Goeben_ and the _Breslau_ a suspicious welcome in Turkish waters during the opening weeks of the great struggle, than it became apparent that war with a fresh antagonist was at least on the cards. It was, moreover, obvious that if there were to be a rupture between the Entente and the Sublime Porte, the Bosphorus was certain to be closed as a line of communication between the Western Powers and Russia. Such an eventuality was bound to exercise a far-reaching influence over the course of the war as a whole. One therefore naturally gave some attention to the possibilities involved in an undertaking against Constantinople and the Straits--a subject with which by chance I happened to be probably as familiar as anybody in the army.

Some eight years before, in the early part of 1906, H.M. Government had found itself at variance with the Sublime Porte in connection with a spot called Tabah at the head of the Gulf of Akaba, which we regarded as within the dominions of the Khedive but which Osmanli troops had truculently taken possession of. The Sultan's advisers had been rather troublesome about the business, and Downing Street and the Foreign Office had been obliged to take up a firm att.i.tude before the Ottoman Government unwillingly climbed down. I had been in charge of the strategical section of the Military Operations Directorate at that time, and, in considering what we might be able to do in the military line supposing that things came to a head, had investigated the problems involved in gaining possession of the Dardanelles. Some years earlier, moreover, I had pa.s.sed through the Straits and had spent a night at Chanak in the Narrows, taking careful note of the lie of the land, of the batteries as then existing, and so forth.

After an accommodation had been arrived at with Johnny Turk in 1906, the Committee of Imperial Defence had followed up this question of operations against the h.e.l.lespont, more or less as an academic question; and I had drafted a paper on the subject, which was gone through line by line by General Spencer Ewart who was then D.M.O., in consultation with myself, was modified in some minor respects by him, was initialed by General Lyttelton, the Chief of the General Staff, and was accepted in principle by the C.I.D., Sir J. Fisher (as he then was) having as First Sea Lord expressed his full concurrence with the views therein expressed. These in effect "turned" the project "down."

When about the end of August I searched for the 1906 memorandum in the files of the Committee of Imperial Defence papers which were in my safe, I found a note in the file concerned to say that by order of the Prime Minister the memorandum had been withdrawn. The reason for this I discovered at a later date. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had fully realized the importance of this Dardanelles transaction of 1906. He had perceived that it was a matter of quite exceptional secrecy. He had dreaded the disastrous results which might well arise were news by any mischance to leak out and to reach the Sublime Porte that the naval and military authorities in this country had expressed the opinion that successful attack upon the Dardanelles was virtually impracticable, and that H.M. Government had endorsed this view. Tell the Turk that, and our trump card was gone. We could then no longer bluff the Ottoman Government in the event of war with feints of operations against the Straits--the very course which I believe would have been adopted in 1914-1915, had the Admiralty War Staff and the General Staff considered the question together without Cabinet interference and submitted a joint report for the information of the War Council. That 1906 memorandum and the Committee of Imperial Defence transactions in connection with it were treated differently from any C.I.D. doc.u.ments of a.n.a.logous kind then or, as far as I know, subsequently. I never saw the memorandum from 1906 till one day in May 1915, when Mr. Asquith pushed a copy across the table to me at a meeting of the War Council in Downing Street, and I recognized it at once as in great measure my own production. It would not seem to have been brought to the notice of the Dardanelles Commission that the memorandum (to which several references are made in their Reports) was practically accepted by the Committee of Imperial Defence as governing the military policy of the country with respect to attack on the Straits in the event of war.

The consequence of my having made myself familiar with the question in the past was that, when at the beginning of September 1914 Mr.

Churchill raised the question of a conjunct Greek and British enterprise against the Straits, it was a simple matter for me to prepare a short memorandum on the subject, a memorandum of a decidedly discouraging nature. As a matter of fact, what was perhaps the strongest argument against the undertaking at that time was by oversight omitted from the doc.u.ment--the Greeks had no howitzers or mobile heavy artillery worth mentioning, and any ordnance of that cla.s.s that we disposed of in the Mediterranean was of the prehistoric kind. The slip was of no great importance, however, because there never was the remotest chance of King Constantine, who was no mean judge of warlike problems, letting his country in for so dubious an enterprise.

We were not actually at war with the Ottoman Empire for another two months. But hostilities had virtually become certain during the month of October, and one morning in the latter part of that month the First Lord sent a message across asking me to come over to his room and discuss possibilities in connection with the Dardanelles. I found the First Sea Lord (Prince Louis of Battenberg) and the Fourth Sea Lord (Commodore C. F. Lambert) waiting, as well as Mr. Churchill, and we sat round a table with all the maps and charts that were necessary for our purpose spread out on it. The problem of mastering the Straits was examined entirely from the point of view of a military operation based upon, and supported by, naval power. If the question of a fleet attack upon the defences within the defile was mentioned at all, it was only referred to quite incidentally.

From my own observation on the spot, and as a result of later examination of maps, charts, confidential reports, and so forth, I had come to the conclusion that the key to the Dardanelles lay in the Kilid Bahr plateau, which dominates the channel at its very narrowest point from the European (Gallipoli Peninsula) side. By far the best plan of gaining possession of this high ground would, I considered, be to land, by surprise if possible, the biggest military force that could be very rapidly put ash.o.r.e on that long stretch of coast-line practicable for troops to disembark from boats in fine weather, which was situated about the locality that has since become immortalized as Anzac Cove. A project on these lines is what we actually discussed that morning in the First Lord's room. I pointed out the difficulties and the dangers involved, _i.e._ the virtual impossibility of effecting a real surprise, the perils inseparable from a disembarkation in face of opposition, the certainty that the enemy was even now improving the land defences of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and the fact that, at the moment, we had no troops to carry such a scheme out and that we were most unlikely to have any to spare for such an object for months to come. One somewhat controversial tactical point I gave particular attention to--the efficacy of the fire of wars.h.i.+ps when covering a military landing and when endeavouring to silence field-guns on sh.o.r.e; my own view was that the potentialities of a fleet under such conditions were apt to be greatly overestimated. My exposition was intended to be dissuasive, and I think that Mr.

Churchill was disappointed.

We had a most pleasant discussion, the First Lord having a good working knowledge of military questions owing to his early career and training, and being therefore able to appreciate professional points which might puzzle the majority of civilians. At the end of it he seemed to clearly realize what a very serious operation of war a military undertaking against the Straits was likely to be, but he dwelt forcibly, and indeed enthusiastically, upon the results that would be gained by the Entente in the event of such an undertaking being successfully carried out--on that subject we were all quite at one. The story of this informal pow-wow has been recorded thus at length, because it was really the only occasion on which the General Staff were afforded anything like a proper opportunity of expressing an opinion as to operations against the Dardanelles, until after the country had been engulfed up to the neck in the mora.s.s and was irretrievably committed to an amphibious campaign on a great scale in the Gallipoli Peninsula. Prince Louis resigned his position as First Sea Lord a few days later; Commodore Lambert often mentioned the pow-wow in conversation with me in later days, after the mischief (for which the professional side of the Admiralty was only very partially to blame) had been done.

As one gradually became acquainted in the following January with the nature of the naval scheme for dealing with the Straits, it was difficult not to feel apprehension. While, as Brigade-Major R.A. in the Western Command and later as commanding a company of R.G.A. at Malta, concerned with coast defence principles, the tactical rather than the technical scientific side of such problems had always interested me. When musing, during those interminable waits which take place in the course of a day's gun practice from a coast-defence battery, as to what would be likely to happen in the event of the work actually engaging a hostile armament, one could picture oneself driven from the guns under the hail of flying fragments of rock, concrete, and metal thrown up by the s.h.i.+ps' huge projectiles. But one did not picture the battery as destroyed and rendered of no effect. Anybody who has tried both is aware how infinitely easier gun practice is at even a moving target on the water than it is at a target on land. One foresaw that the enemy's wars.h.i.+ps would plaster the vicinity of the work with projectiles, and would create conditions disastrous to human life if the gun-detachments did not go to ground, but that they would not often, if ever, actually hit the mark and demolish guns and mountings.

The Admiralty's creeping form of attack, chosen on Admiral Carden's initiative, ignored this aspect of the question altogether. The whole scheme hinged upon _destroying_ the Ottoman coast batteries, the very thing that s.h.i.+ps find it hardest to do. They can silence batteries; but what is the good of that if they then clear out and allow the defenders to come back and clean up? The creeping plan, moreover, obviously played into the hands of Turkish mobile guns, which would turn up in new positions on successive days, and which, as I had told Mr. Churchill three months before, our s.h.i.+ps would find most difficult to deal with; these guns would probably give the mine-sweepers much more trouble than the heavy ordnance in the enemy's fixed defences.

Then, again, one could not but be aware that the Sister Service was none too well equipped for dealing with the enigma of mines in any form--that had become obvious to those behind the scenes during the first six months of the war--and one's information pointed to the Turkish mine-defence of the Dardanelles being more up to date than was their gun-defence. Finally, and much the most important of all, this deliberate procedure was the worst possible method to adopt from the army's point of view, supposing the plan to fail and the army then to be called in to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. The enemy would have been given full warning, and would deliberately have been allowed what the Turk always stands in need of when on the war-path--time to prepare.

The "First Report" of the Dardanelles Commission, as well as sidelights thrown upon the affair from other quarters, have established that of the three eminent naval experts who dealt with the project and who were more or less responsible for its being put into execution, two, Sir Arthur Wilson and Sir Henry Jackson, were by no means enthusiastic about it, while the third, Lord Fisher, was opposed to it but allowed himself to be overruled by the War Council. Had those three admirals met three representatives of the General Staff, Sir J. Wolfe-Murray, General Kiggell and myself, let us say, sitting round a table with no Cabinet Ministers present, I am certain that the report that we should have drawn up would have been dead against the whole thing. The objections raised from the military side would have been quite sufficient to dispel any doubts that the sailors had left on the subject. As for that nave theory that we might draw back in the middle of the naval operations supposing that the business went awry, of which I do not remember hearing at the time---- Pooh! We could hardly, left to ourselves, have been such flats as to take that seriously.

The cable message from Tenedos which announced the result of the first effort against the conspicuous and comparatively feeble works that defended the mouth of the Straits, was the reverse of heartening. The bombarding squadron enjoyed an overwhelming superiority in armament from every point of view--range, weight of metal, and accuracy. The conditions were almost ideal for the attacking side, as there was plenty of sea-room and no worry about mines. If the wars.h.i.+ps could not finally dispose of Turkish works such as this, and with everything favourable, by long-range fire, then long-range fire was "off." Once inside the Straits, the fleet, manoeuvring without elbow-room, would have to get pretty near its work, mines or no mines, if it was going to do any good. The idea of the _Queen Elizabeth_ pitching her stuff over the top of the Gallipoli Peninsula left one cold. Several days before Admiral de Robeck delivered his determined attack upon the defences of the Narrows of the 18th of March, one had pretty well made up one's mind that the thing was going to be a failure, and that the army was going to be let in for an extremely uncomfortable business.

Accounts emanating from the Turkish side have suggested that the naval operations were within an ace of succeeding, and that they only had to be pressed a little further to achieve their object. An examination of the books by Mr. Morgenthau and others does not bear this out. The Turks imagined that our fleet had been beaten off by gun-fire on the 18th, and they appear to have got nervous because the ammunition for certain of their heaviest guns was running short. Their heavy guns, and the ammunition for them, was a matter of quite secondary importance. The fleet was beaten off owing to the effect of the drifting mines. The Turks thought that the damage done to the s.h.i.+ps was due to their batteries, when it was in reality caused by their mines. They did not appreciate the situation correctly, for they do not appear to have been short of mines. The Russian plan of letting these engines of destruction loose at the Black Sea end of the Bosphorus to drift down with the current indeed provided the Osmanlis with a constant supply of excellent ones; they were picked up, s.h.i.+pped down to the Dardanelles, and used against the Allies' fleet. These weapons, drifting and fixed, together with the mobile artillery which so seriously interfered with mine-sweeping, proved to be the trump cards in the hands of Johnny Turk and his Boche a.s.sistants.

I was present when Lord Kitchener met Sir I. Hamilton and his chief staff-officer, General Braithwaite, and gave Sir Ian his instructions.

At that time Lord K. still hoped that, in so far as forcing the Dardanelles was concerned, the fleet would effect its purpose, practically if not wholly unaided by the troops. These were designed rather for operations subsequent to the fall of what was after all but the first line of Ottoman defence. It was only after Sir Ian arrived on the spot that the naval attack actually failed and that military operations on an ambitious scale against the Gallipoli Peninsula took the stage. The fact that when the transports arrived at Mudros they were found not to be packed suitably for effecting an immediate disembarkation on hostile soil, has been a good deal criticized.

Although it was not a matter within my responsibility, I was sharply heckled over the point by Captain Stephen Gwynne when before the Dardanelles Commission. But the troops left before there was any question of attempting a landing in force in face of the enemy in the immediate vicinity of the Straits. At the date when they sailed it remained quite an open question as to what exactly their task was to be. The transports could not have been appropriately packed even after military operations in the Gallipoli Peninsula had been decided upon, without knowing exactly what was Sir Ian's plan.

Sir Ian complained to the Dardanelles Commission that no preliminary scheme of operations had been drawn up by the War Office; and he certainly got little a.s.sistance in that direction, although it might not have been of much use to him if he had.[4] He also complained that there was a great want of staff preparation, no arrangements for water, for instance, having been made. This was in effect the consequence of the General Staff at this time not exercising its proper functions or being invested with the powers to which it was ent.i.tled. There never was a meeting of the various directors in the War Office concerned, under the aegis of the General Staff, to go into these matters in detail. The troops would certainly be called upon to land somewhere, sooner or later, whether the fleet forced the Dardanelles or not, and all the arrangements as regards supplies, transport, water, hospitals, material for piers, etc., required to be worked out by those responsible after getting a lead from the General Staff. If the commodities of all kinds involved could not be procured locally or in Egypt, then it was up to the War Office to see that they should be sent out from home, and be sent out, moreover, practically at the same time as the troops left so that they should be on the spot when needed.

[Footnote 4: A single "preliminary scheme of operations" would have been of little service to the C.-in-C. of "Medforce"--it must have been based on the mistaken a.s.sumption (which held good when he started) that the fleet would force the Straits, and it would consequently have concerned itself with undertakings totally different from those which, in the event, Sir Ian had to carry out. If the army was to derive any benefit from projects elaborated in the War Office, there must have been a second "preliminary scheme of operations" based on the a.s.sumption that the fleet was going to fail.

What profit is there in a plan of campaign that dictates procedure to be followed after the first great clash of arms? In the case under consideration, the first great clash of arms befell on the 18th of March, five days after Sir Ian left London with his instructions, and it turned the whole business upside down.]

Sir Ian also mentioned that he had not been shown the 1906 memorandum before going to the Near East. As it turned out, the mystery made about this doc.u.ment (although there was excellent reason for the special steps that were taken in connection with it at the time of its coming before the Committee of Imperial Defence) proved inconvenient in 1914-15. One wonders, indeed, whether it was ever seen by the Admiralty experts at the time when they had Admiral Carden's plan of a creeping naval attack upon the Dardanelles under consideration, because the memorandum expressed considerable doubts as to the efficacy of gun-fire from on board s.h.i.+p against the land, and the event proved that these doubts were fully justified. Had I had a copy in my possession I should certainly have shown it to Sir Ian, or else to Braithwaite, with whom, as he had been a brother-Director on the General Staff at the War Office for some months previously, I was in close touch.

Sir Ian, the Report says, "dwelt strongly on the total absence of information furnished him by the War Office staff," and he complained very justly that the map, or maps, given him had proved inaccurate and inadequate. Now, that reflected upon Generals Ewart and H. Wilson, who had been holding the appointment of D.M.O. between 1906 and 1914, and it reflected upon Sir N. Lyttelton, the late Lord Nicholson (actually a member of the Commission) and Sir J. French, who had successively been Chiefs of the General Staff during the same period. Topographical information cannot be procured after hostilities have broken out; it has to be obtained in advance. On noting what was said about this in the "First Report" of the Dardanelles Commission, I asked to be allowed to give evidence again, and the Commission were good enough to recall me in due course. The object was, not to contest Sir I.

Hamilton's a.s.sertions but to point out that under the circ.u.mstances of the case no blame was fairly attributable to those who were responsible for information of some sort being available.

To have obtained full information as to the Gallipoli Peninsula and the region around the Dardanelles, but especially as to the peninsula, was a matter of money--and plenty of it. In no country in the world in pre-war days was spying on fortified areas of strategical importance without money a more unprofitable game than in the Ottoman dominions.

There were, on the other hand, few countries where money, if you had enough of it, was more sure to procure you the information that you required. Ever since the late General Brackenbury was at the head of the Intelligence Department of the War Office in the eighties secret funds have been at its disposal, but they have not been large, and there have always been plenty of desirable objects to devote those funds to. Had the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1906 taken the line that, even admitting an attack upon the Straits to be a difficult business, its effect if successful was nevertheless likely to be so great that the matter was one to be followed up, a pretty substantial share of the secret funds coming to hand in the Intelligence Department between 1906 and 1914 would surely have been devoted to this region. All kinds of topographical details concerning the immediate neighbourhood of the Dardanelles would thereby have been got together, ready for use; it would somehow have been discovered in the environs of Stamboul that the Gallipoli Peninsula had been surveyed and that good large-scale maps of that region actually existed, and copies of those large-scale maps would have found their way into the War Office, where they would speedily have been reproduced.

It was made plain to me when giving evidence before the Commission that the Rt. Hon. A. Fisher and Sir T. Mackenzie, its members representing the Antipodes, considered that there had been great neglect on the part of the War Office in obtaining information with regard to the environs of the Dardanelles in advance. But, quite apart from the peculiar situation created by the decision of the Committee of Imperial Defence, there must have been serious difficulties in obtaining such information about the Gallipoli Peninsula--only those who have had experience in such matters know how great the difficulties are. Intelligence service in peace time is a subject of which the average civilian does not understand the meaning nor realize the dangers. The Commission, which included experts in such matters in the shape of Admiral Sir W. May and Lord Nicholson, made no comment on this point in its final Report, evidently taking the broad view that the lack of information was, under all the circ.u.mstances of the case, excusable. In his special Report, Sir T.

Mackenzie on the other hand blames the Imperial General Staff for being "unprepared for operations against the Dardanelles and Bosphorus," obviously having the question of information in his mind, as he must be perfectly well aware that the planning of actual operations was just as much a matter for the Admiralty as for the General Staff, the whole problem being manifestly an amphibious one.

As a matter of fact, considering the kind of place that the Gallipoli Peninsula was, and taking into consideration the extreme jealousy with which the Turks, quite properly from their point of view, had always regarded the appearance of strangers in that well-watched region, the information contained in the secret official publications which the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force took out with it was by no means to be despised. All but one of the landing places actually utilized on the famous 25th of April were, I think, designated in these booklets, and that one was unsuitable for landing anything but infantry. A great deal of the information proved to be perfectly correct, and a good deal more of it might have proved to be correct had the Expeditionary Force ever penetrated far enough into the interior of the Peninsula to test it.

There had been many occasions giving grounds for disquietude since the days of Mons, but I never felt greater anxiety at any time during the war than when awaiting tidings as to the landing on the Aegean sh.o.r.e.

We knew that this was about to take place, but I was not aware of the details of Sir I. Hamilton's plan. Soldiers who had examined carefully into the factors likely to govern a disembarkation in force in face of an enemy who was fully prepared, were unanimous in viewing such an operation as a somewhat desperate enterprise. There was no modern precedent for an undertaking of the kind. One dreaded some grave disaster, feared that the troops might entirely fail to gain a footing on sh.o.r.e, and pictured them as driven off after suffering overwhelming losses. The message announcing that a large part of the army was safely disembarked came as an immense relief. Although disappointed at learning that only a portion of the troops had been put ash.o.r.e at Anzac on the outside of the Peninsula, which, I had presumed, would be the point selected for the main attack, I felt decidedly optimistic for the moment. What had appeared to be the greatest obstacle to success had been overcome, for a landing had been effected in spite of all that the enemy could do to hinder it. As mentioned in the previous chapter, I left London immediately afterwards, and it was a bitter disappointment to hear the truth a few days later, to realize that my first appreciation had been incorrect, and to learn that gaining a footing on sh.o.r.e did not connote an immediate advance into the interior. It provides a good example of how difficult it is to forecast results in war.

By fairly early in May, there already seemed to be little prospect of the Expeditionary Force achieving its object unless very strong reinforcements in men and munitions were sent out to the Aegean. But there was shortage of both men and munitions, and men and munitions alike were needed elsewhere. The second Battle of Ypres, coupled with the miscarriage of the Franco-British offensive about La Ba.s.see, indicated that the enemy was formidable on the Western Front.

Although there was every prospect of an improvement before long in respect to munitions output, the sh.e.l.l shortage was at the moment almost at its worst. We knew at the War Office that the Russians were in grave straits in respect to weapons and ammunition, and one could not tell whether the German Great General Staff, probably quite as well aware of this as we were, would a.s.sume the offensive in the Eastern theatre of war, or would transfer great bodies of troops from East to West to make some determined effort against the French and ourselves. The change of Government which introduced Mr. Asquith's Coalition Cabinet, moreover, came about at this time, and political palaver seriously delayed decisions.

It was, no doubt, unfortunate, from the point of view of the Dardanelles campaign, that there was so much hesitation about sending out the very substantial reinforcements which only actually reached Sir I. Hamilton at the end of July and during the early days of August. But it by no means necessarily follows that if they had reached their destination, say, six weeks sooner, the Straits would have been won. Much stress has always been laid upon the torpor that descended upon Suvla during the very critical hours which followed the successful disembarkation of the new force in that region; but those inexperienced troops and their leaders must have acted with extraordinary resolution and energy to have appreciably changed the fortunes of General Birdwood's great offensive against Sari Bair.

Information from the Turkish side does not suggest that Liman von Sanders gained any great accessions of strength during July and early August. It was the ample warning which the enemy received of what was impending before ever a soldier was landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula that, far more than anything which occurred subsequently, rendered the Dardanelles operations abortive.

The Dardanelles Committee came into being in June. This body included most of the more prominent figures in the Coalition Cabinet.

Attending its deliberations from time to time one acquired the impression that an undue amount of attention was being given in Government circles to the Aegean theatre of war, an attention out of all proportion either to its importance or to our prospects of success; for the talk ranged over the whole wide world at times and the Committee dealt with a good deal besides the Dardanelles. Its members always took the utmost interest in the events in the Gallipoli Peninsula, and, up to the date when the August offensive in that region definitely failed, they were mostly in sanguine mood. One or two optimistic statements made in public at that time were indeed quite inappropriate and had much better been left unspoken. The amateur strategist, that inexhaustible source of original and unprofitable proposals, was by no means inarticulate at these confabulations in 10 Downing Street. He would pick up Sir I.

Hamilton's Army and would deposit it in some new locality, just as one might pick up one's pen-wiper and s.h.i.+ft it from one side of the blotting-pad to the other. That is how some people who are simply bursting with intelligence, people who will produce whole newspaper columns of what to the uninformed reads like sensible matter, love to make war. In a way, the U-boats in the Aegean served as a blessing in disguise; they helped to squash many hare-brained schemes inchoated around Whitehall, and to consign them to oblivion before they became really dangerous.

After the failure of the August offensive in the Gallipoli Peninsula, the members of the Dardanelles Committee became extremely anxious, and with good reason. They would come round to my room and discuss the situation individually, and I am afraid they seldom found me in optimistic vein. I had run over to Ulster in April 1914 on the occasion of certain stirring events taking place, which brought General Hubert Gough and his cavalry brigade into some public prominence, and which robbed the War Office of the services of Colonel Seely, Sir J. French and Sir Spencer Ewart. I had been allowed behind the scenes in the north of Ireland as a sympathiser, had visited Omagh, Enniskillen, historic Derry and other places, had noted the grim determination of the loyalists, and had been deeply impressed by the efficiency and the foresight of the inner organization. Necessity makes strange bedfellows. It was almost startling to find within fifteen months of that experience Sir E. Carson arriving in my apartment together with Mr. Churchill, their relations verging on the mutually affectionate, eager to discuss as colleagues the very unpromising position of affairs on the sh.o.r.es of the Thracian Chersonese.

From a very early stage in the Dardanelles venture there had been a feeling in some quarters within the War Office that we ought to cut our losses and clear out of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and that sending out reinforcements to the Aegean which could ill be spared from other scenes of warlike activity looked uncommonly like throwing good money after bad. My friends at G.H.Q., from whom I used to hear frequently, and who would look in when over on duty or on short leave, were strongly of this opinion; but they naturally were somewhat bia.s.sed.

One took a long time to reconcile oneself to this idea, even when no hope of real success remained. It was not until September indeed, and after the decision had been come to to send out no more fresh troops to Sir I. Hamilton, that I personally came to the conclusion that no other course was open than to have done with the business and to come away out of that with the least possible delay. Sir Ian had sent home a trusted staff-officer, Major (now Major-General) the Hon. Guy Dawnay, to report and to try to secure help. Dawnay fought his corner resolutely and was loyalty itself to his chief, but the information that he had to give and his appreciation of the situation as it stood were the reverse of encouraging. By the middle of October, when the Salonika affair had begun to create fresh demands on our limited resources and when Sir C. Monro was sent out to take up command of the Mediterranean [p.103] Expeditionary Force, any doubts which remained on the subject had been dispelled, and I was glad to gather from the new chief's att.i.tude when he left that, in so far as he understood the situation before satisfying himself of the various factors on the spot, he leant towards complete and prompt evacuation.

If a withdrawal was to be effected, it was manifest that this ought to be carried out as soon as possible in view of the virtual certainty of bad weather during the winter months. But the War Council, which had superseded the Dardanelles Committee, unfortunately appeared to halt helplessly between two opinions. Even Sir C. Monro's uncompromising recommendation failed to decide its members. Lord Kitchener was loth to agree to the step, as he feared the effect which a British retreat might exert in Egypt and elsewhere in the East. As will be remembered he proceeded to the Aegean himself at the beginning of November to take stock, but he soon decided for evacuation after examining the conditions on the spot. The whole question remained in abeyance for some three weeks.

My own experiences of what followed were so singular that a careful note of dates and details was made at the time, because one realized even then that incidents of the kind require to be made known. They may serve as a warning. On the 23rd of November my chief, Sir A.

Murray, summoned me, after a meeting of the War Council, to say that that body wished me to repair straightway to Paris and to make General Gallieni, the War Minister, acquainted with a decision which they had just arrived at--viz., that the Gallipoli Peninsula was to be abandoned without further ado. The full Cabinet would meet on the morrow (the 24th) to endorse the decision. That afternoon Mr. Asquith, who was acting as Secretary of State for War in the absence of Lord Kitchener, sent for me and repeated these instructions.