Gallipoli (13 page)

In no circumstances was Hamilton to proceed until his whole force was assembled and he was not to fight on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles.

‘He toiled over the wording of his instructions,’ Hamilton says in his diary. ‘They were headed “Constantinople Expeditionary Force”. I begged
him to alter this to avert Fate’s evil eye. He consented and both this corrected draft and the copy as finally approved are now in Braithwaite’s dispatch box more modestly headed
“Mediterranean Expeditionary Force”. None of the drafts helps us with facts about the enemy; the politics; the country, and our allies, the Russians. In sober fact these
“instructions” leave me to my own devices in the East.

‘So I said good-bye to old K. as casually as if we were to meet together at dinner. Actually my heart went out to my old chief. He was giving me the best thing in his gift and I hated to
leave him among people who were frightened of him. But there was no use saying a word. He did not even wish me luck and I did not expect him to, but he did say, rather unexpectedly,
after
I had said good-bye and just as I was taking up my cap from the table, “If the Fleet gets through, Constantinople will fall of itself and you will have won, not a battle, but the
war”.’

By now there had been assembled some thirteen officers who were to act on Hamilton’s staff. Most of these were regular soldiers, but there were one or two who, Hamilton says, had hastily
put on uniform for the first time in their lives: ‘Leggings awry, spurs upside down, belts over shoulder straps! I haven’t a notion of who they all are.’ Others again who were to
handle the administration and quartermastering of the headquarters he failed to meet at all, since they had not heard of their appointments as yet.

However, the paramount need now was haste, and at 5 p.m. on Friday, March 13, the party, armed with the instructions, the inaccurate map, a three-years-old handbook on the Turkish Army and a
pre-war report on the Dardanelles defences, proceeded to Charing Cross station. Churchill, who had been pressing strongly for their immediate departure, had made all the arrangements; a special
train was waiting to take them to Dover where they were to cross to Calais on H.M.S.
Foresight.
At Calais another special express would take them through the night to Marseilles, where
H.M.S.
Phaeton
, a 30-knot unarmoured cruiser, was commissioned to convey them to the Dardanelles.

Churchill himself with his wife came down to Charing Cross to see the party off, and there was some last minute conversation on the subject of Hamilton’s reports from the front. They would
all have to go directly to Kitchener, Hamilton said; to address Churchill separately at the Admiralty would be disloyal. With that he was off. As the train drew out Hamilton said to Captain
Aspinall, the young officer who was to plan the operations, ‘This is going to be an unlucky show. I kissed my wife through her veil.’ Four days later the party was at the
Dardanelles.

They were just in time. Next day, March 18, Hamilton watched the assault on the Narrows from the decks of the
Phaeton.

So now at midnight they were all gathered in the arena: the Turks and the Germans at the Narrows preparing to make a desperate stand, the British and French sailors with their battered but still
powerful fleet, and the new Allied Commander-in-Chief who had arrived without an army and without a plan.

Having satisfied himself that both the
Ocean
and the
Irresistible
were safe from the Turks at the bottom of the sea, Keyes on the night of March 18 went
directly in the
Jed
to the
Queen Elizabeth
to see de Robeck. He was astonished to find the Admiral much upset. He was sure, de Robeck said, that because of his losses he would be
dismissed from the command on the following day. Keyes answered with some spirit that de Robeck had judged the situation quite wrongly: Churchill would not be discouraged. He would send
reinforcements at once and back them up in every way. Apart from the 639 men drowned in the
Bouvet
, the casualties had been amazingly small: not seventy men in the entire Fleet. All three
lost battleships were old vessels due for scrap, and even if the
Gaulois
and the
Inflexible
were withdrawn for repairs the great power of the Fleet was substantially intact.

For a time the two officers discussed the problem of the mines, and it was agreed that they should immediately set about organizing a new force to deal with them. The civilian crews of the
trawlers would be sent home, and volunteers from the lost battleships would take their place. Destroyers would be equipped with sweeping apparatus, and at the next attempt an
attack would be finally driven home.

On this encouraging note the Admiral and his chief-of-staff finally went to their cabins for a few hours’ rest.

Keyes rose next morning, March 19, and having shaved, as was his custom, with a copy of Kipling’s ‘If’ propped up before him, went out to survey the condition of the Fleet,
which had spent the night sheltering about Tenedos. It was clear that a day or two must elapse before the attack could be resumed—the wind was again rising to a gale and there was much to be
done in organizing the new minesweeping force—but everywhere the captains and the crews were eager to renew the fight.

In the course of the morning a message arrived from the Admiralty condoling with de Robeck over his setback but urging him to press on with the attack.

His losses were to be made good by four more battleships—the
Queen
,
Implacable
,
London
and
Prince of Wales
—which would sail at once. In addition
the French Ministry of Marine was replacing the
Bouvet
with the
Henri IV
.

The damage to the French squadron had been severe:
Gaulois
had been forced to ground herself on Rabbit Island to the north of Tenedos, and the
Suffren
was leaking from the
effects of a plunging shell. The
Gaulois
, however, was soon pumped out and refloated, and with the
Inflexible
and the
Suffren
she went off to Malta for repairs. Meanwhile
the organization of the new minesweeping force began. One hundred and fifteen men from the trawler crews were sent home and there was an overwhelming response from the crews of the
Ocean
and the
Irresistible
for volunteers to replace them. Kites, wire mesh, and other tackle were ordered from Malta, and at Tenedos Greek fishermen were engaged to help the British crews in
equipping the destroyers as minesweepers. All day in heavy seas this work was pressed forward, and on March 20 de Robeck was able to report to the Admiralty that fifty British and twelve French
minesweepers, all
manned by volunteers, would soon be available. Steel nets would be laid across the straits to deal with floating mines when the attack was renewed. ‘It
is hoped,’ he added, ‘to be in a position to commence operations in three or four days.’

Now too an efficient squadron of aircraft under the command of Air Commodore Samson began to arrive. With this the Navy hoped greatly to improve their spotting of the enemy guns.

De Robeck also wrote to Hamilton, who had gone to Lemnos to inspect the 2,000 marines and the 4,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers who had already arrived there. He urged Hamilton not to
take these troops back to Egypt for re-grouping as he proposed to do, since it might create a bad impression in the Balkans just at the moment when the Navy was about to resume its attack.
‘We are all getting ready for another go,’ he said, ‘and not in the least beaten or down-hearted.’

Hamilton did not share this confidence. He had been deeply moved by what he had seen of the battle on March 18, and perhaps he was affected by the sight of the damaged
Inflexible
creeping back to Tenedos. Perhaps he was influenced by Birdwood, who from the beginning had never believed that the Fleet could do the job alone. Other considerations—even a simple chivalrous
desire to help the Navy—may have weighed with him; but at all events he sent the following message to Kitchener on March 19:

‘I am most reluctantly driven to the conclusion that the straits are not likely to be forced by battleships, as at one time seemed probable, and that, if my troops are to take part, it
will not take the subsidiary form anticipated. The Army’s part will be more than mere landing parties to destroy forts; it must be a deliberate and prepared military operation, carried out at
full strength, so as to open a passage for the Navy.’

Kitchener had replied with surprising energy: ‘You know my view, that the Dardanelles must be forced, and that if large military operations on the Gallipoli peninsula by your troops are
necessary to clear the way, those operations must be undertaken, after careful consideration of the local defences, and must be carried through.’

This then was the situation on March 21—a Naval Command that believes that the Fleet can still get through alone, and an Army Command convinced that it cannot.

The following morning, March 22, de Robeck decided to take the
Queen Elizabeth
over to Lemnos for a conference with Hamilton. There is something of a mystery about this meeting, for
none of the subsequent accounts of what took place are in agreement with each other. Keyes was occupied with the arrangements for the new naval attack and was not present, but he assures us that he
believed that nothing more than future military movements were to be discussed. Those who assembled in the
Queen Elizabeth
were Hamilton, Birdwood and Braithwaite from the Army, and De
Robeck and Wemyss from the Navy.

Hamilton’s version is as follows: ‘The moment he sat down de Robeck told us that he was now quite clear
he could not get through without the help of all my troops
. Before
ever we went on board, Braithwaite, Birdwood and I agreed that, whatever we landsmen might think, we must leave the seamen to settle their own job, saying nothing for or against the land operations
or amphibious operations until the sailors themselves turned to us and said that they had abandoned the idea of forcing the straits by naval operations alone. They have done so. The fat (that is
us) is fairly in the fire.

‘No doubt we had our views. Birdie (Birdwood) and my own staff disliked the idea of chancing mines with million pound ships. The hesitants who always make hay in foul weather had been
extra active since the sinking of the three men-of-war. Suppose the Fleet
could
get through with the loss of another battleship or two—how the devil would our troopships be able to
follow? And the store ships? And the colliers?

‘This had made me turn contrary. During the battle I had cabled that the chances of the Navy pushing through on their own were hardly fair fighting chances, but since then de Robeck, the
man who should know, had twice said that he
did
think that there was a fair fighting chance. Had he stuck to that opinion at the conference, then I was ready, as a soldier, to make light
of military
croaks about troopships. Constantinople must surrender, revolute or scuttle within a very few hours of our battleships entering the Marmara. Memories of one or two
obsolete six-inchers at Ladysmith helped me to feel as Constantinople would feel when her rail and sea communications were cut and a rain of shell fell upon the penned-in populace from de
Robeck’s terrific batteries. Given a good wind that nest of iniquity would go up like Sodom and Gomorrah in a winding sheet of flame.

‘But once the Admiral said his battleships could not fight through without help, there was no foothold left for the views of a landsman.

‘So there was no discussion. We at once turned our faces to the land scheme.’

This account does not square with what Keyes knew of de Robeck’s views up to the time of this meeting; and it does not square with a message the Admiral sent to London after the meeting
was over.

‘I do not hold the check on 18th decisive,’ he wrote, ‘but, having met General Hamilton on 22nd and heard his proposals, I now consider a combined operation essential to obtain
great results and object of campaign. . . . To attack Narrows now with Fleet would be a mistake, as it would jeopardize the execution of a better and bigger scheme.’

In other words, it is only after he has heard Hamilton’s proposals that he decides to abandon the naval attack.

Whatever may be the truth of this matter—whether Hamilton enticed de Robeck away from the naval attack or whether de Robeck himself suggested that the Army should come in and
help—the important thing is that on March 22 the Admiral changed his mind; nothing more was now to be done by the Fleet until the Army, now scattered along the Mediterranean, was assembled
and ready to land.

One can perhaps glimpse something of what was going on in de Robeck’s mind. The wounds of March 18 were beginning to stiffen and hurt. To sailors of de Robeck’s generation it was an
appalling thing to lose battleships, no matter how old and out of
date they were. Most of their lives had been spent on these decks; these ships had been their home, and
through the years they had developed for them not only affection but pride as well. The whole tradition of the Navy was that the ship was more important than the man: no matter what the cost in
lives the captain must always try to save his ship. And now in a few hours three of the largest vessels of the Fleet with their famous names had gone to the bottom.

Then again de Robeck was perfectly aware of Fisher’s opposition to the Dardanelles adventure. For the moment Churchill might be holding the old Admiral in line, but young and enthusiastic
First Lords did not last for ever. Fisher stood for the Navy, its permanence and its traditions, and he was a formidable man. He had said all along that the Fleet was not likely to get through
without the aid of the Army, and now here were three sunken battleships to prove his point. Suppose another three ships were lost when the attack was renewed? It could very easily happen. What was
Fisher going to say to that?