Gallipoli Diary Volume I Part 18

Daily we make progress, and whenever the reinforcements close at hand begin to put in an appearance, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force will press forward with a fresh impulse to accomplish the greatest Imperial task ever entrusted to an army.

_27th May, 1915. H.M.T. "Arcadian."_ The _Majestic_ has been torpedoed and has sunk off Cape h.e.l.les. Got the news at mid-day. Fuller, my Artillery Commander, and Ashmead-Bartlett, the correspondent, were both on board, and both were saved--minus kit! About 40 men have gone under.

Bad luck. A Naval Officer who has seen her says she is lying in shallow water--6 fathoms--bottom upwards looking like a stranded whale. He says the German submarine made a most lovely shot at her through a crowd of cargo s.h.i.+ps and transports. Like picking a royal stag out of his harem of does. To my Staff, they tell me, he delivered himself further but, as I said to the Officer who repeated these criticisms to me, "judge not that ye be not judged."

_28th May, 1915. H.M.T. "Arcadian."_ Went for a walk with the Admiral.

He refuses any longer to accept the responsibility of keeping us afloat.

As h.e.l.les, Anzac and Tenedos have each been ruled out, we are going to doss down on this sandbank opposite us. One thing, it will be central to both my theatres of work.

_29th May, 1915. H.M.T. "Arcadian."_ The Commodore, Roger Keyes, arrived mid-day and invited me to come over to h.e.l.les with him on a destroyer, H.M.S. _Scorpion._ He was crossing in hopes--_in hopes,_ if you please--of hitting off the submarine. The idea that it might hit him had not seemed to occur to him. On the way we were greatly excited to see the bladder of an indicator net smoking. So we rushed about the place and bombs were got ready to drop. But the net remained motionless and, as the water was too deep for the submarine to be lying at the bottom, it seemed (although no one dared to say so) that a porpoise had been poking fun at the Commodore.

Landing at h.e.l.les inspected the various roads, which were in the making.

Next saw Hunter-Weston. Canva.s.sed plans with him and felt myself refreshed. Then went on to Gouraud's Headquarters, taking the Commodore with me. My Commanders are an a.s.set which cancels many a debit. Gouraud is in excellent form and gave us tea. Walked down to "V" Beach at 6 p.m.

When we got on to the pier, which ends in the _River Clyde_, we found another destroyer, the _Wolverine_, under Lieutenant-Commander Keyes, the brother of the Commodore. She was to take us across, and (of all places in the world to select for a berth!) she had run herself alongside the _River Clyde_ which was, at that moment, busy playing target to the heavy guns of Asia. I imagined that taking aboard a boss like the Commander-in-Chief, as well as that much bigger boss (in naval estimates) his own big brother, the Commodore, our Lieutenant-Commander would nip away presto. Not a bit of it! No sooner had he got us aboard than he came out boldly and very, very slowly, stern first, from the lee of the _River Clyde_ and began a duel against Asia with 4-inch lyddite from the _Wolverine's_ after gun. The fight seems quite funny to me now but, at the time, serio-comic would have better described my impressions. Sh.e.l.ls ash.o.r.e are part of the common lot; they come in the day's work: on the water; in a c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l--well, you can't go to ground, anyway!

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF "V" BEACH, TAKEN FROM S.S. "RIVER CLYDE"

_"Central News" photo._]

Heavy fighting at Anzac. The Turks fired a mine under Quinn's Post and then rushed a section of the defence isolated by the explosion. At 6 in the morning the crater was, Birdie says, most gallantly retaken with the bayonet. There are excursions and alarms; attacks and counter-attacks; bomb-showers to which the bayonet charge is our only retort--but we hold fast the crater!

When I tell them at home that if they will give me munitions enough to let me advance two miles I will give them Constantinople, that is the truth. On paper, the Turks no doubt might a.s.sert with equal force that if they got forces enough together to drive the Australians back a short two hundred yards they could give the Sultan the resounding prestige of a Peninsula freed from the Giaour. But that would require more Turks than the Turks could feed, whereas we know we could do it now, as we are--given the wherewithal--trench mortars, hand grenades and bombs, for example.

A message from Hanbury Williams, who is with the Grand Duke Nicholas, to say that all idea of sending me a Russian Army Corps to land at the Bosphorus has been abandoned!!!

_30th May, 1915. H.M.T. "Arcadian."_ Went to Anzac in a destroyer. The Cove was being heavily sh.e.l.led, and the troops near the beach together with the fatigue parties handling stores and ammunition, had dashed into their dugouts like marmots at the shadow of an eagle. Birdwood came out to meet me on this very unhealthy spot; indeed, in spite of my waving him back, he walked right on to the end of the deserted pier.

Just as we were getting near his quarters, a couple of shrapnel burst at an angle and height which, by the laws of gravity, momentum and velocity ought to have put a fullstop to this chronicle. Actually, we walked on--through the "Valley of Death"--past the spot where the brave Bridges bit the dust, to the Headquarters of the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade. Thence I could see the enemy trenches in front of Quinn's Post, and also a very brisk bomb combat in full flame where the New Zealand Mounted Rifles were making good the Turkish communicating post they had seized earlier in the day. Nothing more strange than this inspection.

Along the path at the bottom of the valley warning notices were stuck up. The wayfarer has to be as punctilious about each footstep as Christian in the "Pilgrim's Progress." Should he disregard the placards directing him to keep to the right or to the left of the track, he is almost certainly shot. Half of the pathway may be as safe as Piccadilly, whilst he who treads the other had far better be up yonder at hand grips with the Turks. Presumably some feature of the ground defilades one part, for the enemy cannot see into the valley, although, were they only 20 yards nearer the edge of the cliff, they would command its whole extent. The spirit of the men is invincible. Only lately have we been able to give them blankets: as to square meals and soft sleeps, these are dreams of the past, they belonged to another state of being. Yet I never struck a more jovial crew. Men staggering under huge sides of frozen beef; men struggling up cliffs with kerosine tins full of water; men digging; men cooking; men card-playing in small dens scooped out from the banks of yellow clay--everyone wore a Bank Holiday air;--evidently the ranklings and worry of mankind--miseries and concerns of the spirit--had fled the precincts of this valley. The Boss--the bill--the girl--envy, malice, hunger, hatred--had scooted far away to the Antipodes. All the time, overhead, the sh.e.l.l and rifle bullets groaned and whined, touching just the same note of violent energy as was in evidence everywhere else. To understand that awful din, raise the eyes 25 degrees to the top of the cliff which closes in the tail end of the valley and you can see the Turkish hand grenades bursting along the crest, just where an occasional bayonet flashes and figures hardly distinguishable from Mother earth crouch in an irregular line. Or else they rise to fire and are silhouetted a moment against the sky and then you recognize the naked athletes from the Antipodes and your heart goes into your mouth as a whole bunch of them dart forward suddenly, and as suddenly disappear. And the bomb shower stops dead--for the moment; but, all the time, from that fiery crest line which is Quinn's, there comes a slow constant trickle of wounded--some dragging themselves painfully along; others being carried along on stretchers.

Bomb wounds all; a ceaseless, silent stream of bandages and blood. Yet three out of four of "the boys" have grit left for a gay smile or a cheery little nod to their comrades waiting for their turn as they pa.s.s, pa.s.s, pa.s.s, down on their way to the sea.

There are poets and writers who see naught in war but carrion, filth, savagery and horror. The heroism of the rank and file makes no appeal.

They refuse war the credit of being the only exercise in devotion on the large scale existing in this world. The superb moral victory over death leaves them cold. Each one to his taste. To me this is no valley of death--it is a valley brim full of life at its highest power. Men live through more in five minutes on that crest than they do in five years of Bendigo or Ballarat. Ask the brothers of these very fighters--Calgoorlie or Coolgardie miners--to do one quarter the work and to run one hundredth the risk on a wages basis--instanter there would be a riot.

But here,--not a murmur, not a question; only a radiant force of camaraderie in action.

The Turks have heaps of cartridges and more sh.e.l.ls, anyway, than we have. They have as many grenades as they can throw; we have--a dozen per Company. There is a very bitter feeling amongst all the troops, but especially the Australians, at this lack of elementary weapons like grenades. Our overseas men are very intelligent. They are prepared to make allowances for lack of sh.e.l.l; lack of guns; lack of high explosives. But they know there must be something wrong when the Turks carry ten good bombs to our one bad one; and they think, some of them, that this must be my fault. Far from it. _Directly_ after the naval battle of the 18th March--i.e., over two months ago, I wrote out a cable asking for bombs. I sent this on my own happy thought, and I had hoped for a million by the date of landing five weeks later. But I got, practically, none; nor any promise for the future. In default of help from home, we have tried to manufacture these primitive but very effective projectiles for ourselves with jam pots, meat tins and any old rubbish we can sc.r.a.pe together. De Lothbiniere has shown ingenuity in thus making bricks without straw. The Fleet, too, has played up and de Robeck has guaranteed me two thousand to be made by the artificers on the battles.h.i.+ps. Maxwell in Egypt has been improvising a few; Methuen at Malta says they can't make them there. But what a shame that the sons of a manufacturing country like Great Britain should be in straits for engines so simple.

Yesterday and to-day we have fired, for us, a terrible lot of sh.e.l.ls (1,800 shrapnel) but never was shot better spent. We reckon the enemy's casualties between 1,000 and 2,000 mainly caused by our guns playing on the columns which came up trying to improve upon their lodgment in Quinn's Post. Add this to the 3,000 killed, and, say, 12,000 wounded on the 18th instant, and it is clear no troops in the world can stand it very long. But we are literally at the end of our shrapnel; and as to high explosive, according to the standards of the gunners, we have never had any!

Left on a picket boat with Birdie to board my destroyer to an accompaniment of various denominations of projectiles. One or two sh.e.l.ls burst hard by just as we were scrambling up her side.

Vice-Admiral Nicholls called after my return. Courtauld Thomson, the Red Cross man, dined; very helpful; very well stocked with comforts and everyone likes him, even the R.A.M.C.

_31st May, 1915. H.M.T. "Arcadian."_ Worked in the forenoon. Gouraud, Girodon and Hunter-Weston lunched and we spent the afternoon at the scheme for our next fight. Each of us agreed that Fortune had not been over kind. By one month's hard, close hammering we had at last made the tough _moral_ of the Turks more pliant, when lo and behold, in broad daylight, thousands of their common soldiery see with their own eyes two great battles.h.i.+ps sink beneath the waves and all the others make an exit more dramatic than dignified. Most of the Armada of store s.h.i.+ps had already cleared out and now the last of the battles.h.i.+ps has offed it over the offing; a move which the whole of the German Grand Fleet could not have forced them to make! What better pick-me-up could Providence have provided for the badly-shaken Turks? No more inquisitive cruisers ready to let fly a salvo at anything that stirs. No more searchlights by night; no more big explosives flying from the Aegean into the Dardanelles!

_1st June, 1915. Imbros._ Came ash.o.r.e and stuck up my 80-lb. tent in the middle of a sandbank whereon some sanguine Greek agriculturalist has been trying to plant wheat.

We shall live the simple life; the same life, in fact, as the men, but are glad to be off the s.h.i.+p and able to stretch our legs.

Hard fighting in the North zone and the South. Both outposts captured by us on the 29th May at Anzac and on the French right at h.e.l.les heavily attacked. In the North we had to give ground, but not before we had made the enemy pay ten times its value in killed and wounded. Had we only had a few spare rounds of shrapnel we need never have gone back. The War Office have called for a return of my 4.5 howitzer ammunition during the past fortnight, and I find that, since the 14th May, we have expended 477 sh.e.l.l altogether at Anzac and h.e.l.les combined. In the South the enemy twice recaptured the redoubt taken by the French on the 29th, but Gouraud, having a nice little parcel of high explosive on hand, was able to drive them out definitely and to keep them out.

_2nd June, 1915. Imbros._ Working all day in camp. Blazing hot, tempered by a cool breeze towards evening. De Robeck came ash.o.r.e and we had an hour together in the afternoon. Everything is fixed up for our big attack on the 4th. From aeroplane photographs it would appear that the front line Turkish trenches are meant more as traps for rash forlorn hopes than as strongholds. In fact, the true tug only begins when we try to carry the second line and the flanking machine guns. Gouraud has generously lent us two groups of 75s with H.E. sh.e.l.l, and I am cabling the fact to the War Office as it means a great deal to us. When I say they are lent to us, I do not mean that they put the guns at our disposal. They are only ours for defensive purposes; that is to say, they remain in their own gun positions in the French lines and are to help by thickening the barrage in front of the Naval Division.

De Robeck and Keyes are quite as much at sea as Braithwaite and myself about this original scheme of the British Government for treating a tearing, raging crisis; i.e., by taking no notice of it. I guess that never before in the history of war has a Commander asked urgently that his force might be doubled and then got no orders; no answer of any sort or kind!

When I sent K. my M.F. 234 of the 17th May asking for two Corps, or for Allies, one or the other, I got a reply by return expressing his disappointment; since then, nothing. During that fortnight of silence the whole of the Turkish Empire has been moving--closing in--on the Dardanelles. Then, by a side-wind I happen to hear of the abstraction of a Russian Army Corps from my supposed command; an Army Corps, who by the mere fact of "being," held off a large force of Turks from Gallipoli.

So I have put down a few hard truths. Unpalatable they may be but some day they've got to be faced and the sooner the better. Time has slipped away, but to-day is still better than to-morrow.

What a change since the War Office sent us packing with a bagful of hallucinations. Naval guns sweeping the Turks off the Peninsula; the Ottoman Army legging it from a British submarine waving the Union Jack; Russian help in hand; Greek help on the _tapis_. Now it is our Fleet which has to leg it from the German submarine; there is no ammunition for the guns; no drafts to keep my Divisions up to strength; my Russians have gone to Galicia and the Greeks are lying lower than ever.

"No. M.F. 288. From General Sir Ian Hamilton to Earl Kitchener. With reference to my telegrams No. M.F. 274 of 29th May, and No. M.F. 234 of 17th May. If the information sent by Hanbury-Williams, to which I referred in my No. M.F. 274, is correct it is advisable that I should send you a fresh appreciation of the situation.

"I a.s.sumed in my No. M.F. 234 that you had adequate forces at your disposal, but on the other hand I a.s.sumed that some 100,000 Turks would be kept occupied by the Russians. By the defection of Russia, 100,000 Turks are set free in the Caucasus and European Turkey. After deduction of casualties there are at least 80,000 Turks now against us in the Peninsula. There are 20,000 Turks on the Bulgarian frontier which, a.s.suming that Bulgaria remains neutral, are able to reinforce Gallipoli; some, in fact, have already arrived showing the restoration of Turkish confidence in King Ferdinand. Close by on the Asiatic side there remain 10,000 Turks, making a total of 210,000, to which must be added 65,000 who are under training in Europe.

"The movement of the Turkish troops has already begun. There are practically no troops left in Smyrna district, and there are already in the field numbers of troops from European garrisons, while recently it was reported that more are coming.

"The movement of a quarter of a million men against us seems to be well under way, and although many of these are ill-trained still with well-run supply and ammunition columns and in trenches designed by Germans the Turk is always formidable.

"As regards ammunition, the enemy appears to have an unlimited supply of small-arm ammunition and as many hand-grenades as they can fling. Though there is some indication that gun ammunition is being husbanded, it was reported as late as 27th May, that supplies of sh.e.l.ls were being received _via_ Roumania, and yesterday it was suggested that artillery ammunition can be manufactured at Constantinople where it is reported that over two hundred engineers have arrived from Krupp's.

"At the same time, the temporary withdrawal of our battles.h.i.+ps owing to enemy submarines has altered the position to our disadvantage; while not of the highest importance materially this factor carries considerable moral weight.

"Taking all these factors into consideration, it would seem that for an early success some equivalent to the suspended Russian co-operation is vitally necessary. The ground gained and the positions which we hold are not such as to enable me to envisage with soldierly equanimity the probability of the large forces adumbrated above being ma.s.sed against my troops without let or hindrance from elsewhere. Fresh light may be shed on the matter by the battle now imminent, but I am cabling on reasoned existing facts. Time is an object, but if Greece came in, preferably _via_ Enos, the problem would be simplified. It is broadly my view that we must obtain the support of a fresh ally in this theatre, or else there should be got ready British reinforcements to the full extent mentioned in my No. M.F. 234, though as stated above the disappearance of Russian co-operation was not contemplated in my estimate."

_3rd June, 1915. Imbros._ Meant to go to Anzac; sea too rough; in the afternoon saw de Robeck and Roger Keyes. Braithwaite came over and we went through my cable of yesterday. The sailors would just as soon I had left out that remark about the enemy being bucked up by the retreat of our battles.h.i.+ps. But the pa.s.sage implied also that their mere visible presence was shown to be most valuable. Both of them agree that I am well within the mark in saying what I did about the loss of my Russian Army Corps. Roger Keyes next launched a dry land criticism. He rightly thinks that the weakness of our _present_ units is _the_ real weakness: he thinks we are far more in need of drafts than of fresh units; he suggests that a rider be sent now to insist that the estimates in yesterday's cable were only made on the a.s.sumption that my present force is kept up to strength. I did press that very point in my first cable of 17th May, which is referred to in the opening of this cable; further, we keep on saying it every week in our War Office cable giving strengths.

After all, K. is 65. He still believes "A man's a man and a rifle's a rifle"; I still believe that half the value of every human being depends upon his environment:--we are not going to convert one another now.

As we were actually talking, Williams brought over an answer:--

"No. 5104, cipher. From Earl Kitchener to General Sir Ian Hamilton. With reference to your No. M.F. 288. Owing to the restricted nature of the ground you occupy and the experience we have had in Flanders of increased forces acting in trench positions, I own I have some doubts of an early decisive result being obtained by at once increasing the forces at your disposal, but I should like your views as soon as you can--to-day if possible. Are you convinced that with immediate reinforcements to the extent you mention you could force the Kilid Bahr position and thus finish the Dardanelles operations?

"You mentioned in a previous telegram that you intended to keep reinforcements on islands, is this your intention with regard to the Lowland Division, now on its way to you, and the other troops when sent?"

K.'s brief cable is _intensely_ characteristic. I have taken down hundreds of his wires. We are face to face here with his very self at _first hand_. How curiously it reveals the man's instinct, or genius--call it what you will.

K. sees in a flash what the rest of the world does not seem to see so clearly; viz., that the piling up of increased forces opposite entrenched positions is a spendthrift, unscientific proceeding. He wishes to know if I mean to do this. To draw me out he a.s.sumes if I get the troops, I _would_ at once commit them to trench warfare by crowding them in behind the lines of h.e.l.les or Anzac. Actually I intend to keep the bulk of them on the islands, so as to throw them unexpectedly against some key position which is _not_ prepared for defence. But I have to be very careful what I say, seeing that the Turks got wind of the date of our first landing from London _via_ Vienna. Least said to a Cabinet, least leakage.

That is not all. Curt as is the cable it has yet scope to show up a little more of our great K.'s outfit. His infernal hurry. "To-day":--I am to reply, to-day! He has taken some two and a half weeks to answer my request for two Army Corps and I am to answer a far more obscure question in two and a half minutes. Why, since my appeal of 17th May the situation has not stood still. A Commander in the field is like a cannon ball. If he stops going ahead, he falls dead. You can't stop moving for a fortnight and then expect to carry on where you left off; I think the Duke of Wellington said this; if he didn't he should have. To err is to be human and the troops, if sent at once, may or may not, fulfil our hopes. All we here can say is this:--

(1) If the Army Corps had been sent at once (i.e., two weeks ago) the results should have been decisive.

(2) If the Army Corps are not sent at once, there can be no early decision.

Braithwaite, De Robeck and Keyes agree to (1) and (2) but the cabled answer will not be so simple and, in spite of K.'s sudden impatience, I must sleep over it first.

Written whilst Williams waits:--

"No. M.F. 292. From General Sir Ian Hamilton to Earl Kitchener. Secret.

To-morrow, 4th June, I am fighting a general action. Therefore I feel sure that you will wish me to defer my answer to your telegram No. 5104, cipher, until I see the result."