Gallipoli (5 page)

As night fell the
Goeben
increased speed above 24 knots and vanished. It was not until two days later, when the war had already begun, that the British discovered that she was coaling
with the
Breslau
at Messina, in Italy, and they still did not know that Admiral Souchon, who was in command of the vessel, had there received a message instructing him to proceed directly
to Constantinople. At 5 p.m. on August 6 the
Goeben
and the
Breslau
emerged from Messina with their bands playing and their decks cleared for action. Still under the impression
that they would either turn west to attack the French transports or north to the friendly port of Pola, the British fleet had disposed itself to the west of Sicily and at the mouth of the Adriatic.
The
Goeben
and the
Breslau
turned south-east, and when the British light cruisers of the Adriatic squadron failed to engage they got clean away. Two days later, still undetected,
they were hanging about the Greek islands waiting for permission from the Turks to enter the Dardanelles.

The excitement in Constantinople was now intense. To allow the German vessels to pass through the straits was virtually an act of war. But Wangenheim was ready with a solution: once the ships
arrived in Turkish waters they would cease to be German and instead become part of the neutral Turkish Navy. But would they arrive? That was the point. On August 8 there was still no news of the
two vessels in Constantinople, and it seemed possible that they had been sunk by the British Fleet.

Curiously it was Enver who lost his nerve, and he attempted to restore the situation by performing a simple double-cross. He sent for the Russian Military Attaché and proposed to him the
terms of a Russian-Turkish alliance which would have cancelled out the agreement with Wangenheim which had been signed only a week before. Indeed, under one clause, Liman von Sanders and all German
officers were to be dismissed from the Turkish service.

The Germans were quite unaware of this duplicity when on the following day one of the officers on Liman’s staff arrived at the Ministry of War with the news that the
Goeben
and the
Breslau
were outside the Dardanelles and waiting to enter. Enver said he must consult his colleagues. The German officer, however, insisted that an answer must be
given at once. There was a slight pause. Then Enver said, ‘Let them come in.’ The following evening the
Goeben
and the
Breslau
steamed through the Dardanelles and the
proposed alliance with Russia was forgotten.

But it was not the end. Germany still had no wish to bring Turkey actively into the war, since, as a friendly neutral, she was performing a very useful purpose in tying up a British squadron at
the mouth of the Dardanelles, and in threatening the British lines in Egypt. Moreover, if, as everyone expected, the war was going to be over in a few months there was no point in contracting
additional obligations to Turkey.

For the Russians, the British and the French, on the other hand, the situation was becoming intolerable. Here was the
Goeben
anchored in the Bosphorus, here was Admiral Souchon and his
crew going through the farce of dressing-up in fezzes and pretending that they were sailors in the Turkish Navy, and here was Liman von Sanders with his Military Mission re-organizing the Turkish
Army. At night the cafés in Pera and Stamboul were filled with roistering Germans; staff cars embellished with the Kaiser’s eagles drove ostentatiously through the streets, and
Enver’s Ministry of War became every day more like a German military headquarters. A rueful pun went round the foreign colony: ‘
Deutschland über Allah
’.

Sir Louis Mallet protested repeatedly about the
Goeben
but he was assured that she was now a Turkish ship. Then, he argued, the German crews should be dismissed. But they were no longer
Germans, Enver told him, they were part of the Turkish Navy; and in any case Turkey was short of sailors. Her best men had been sent to England to man the two British-built battleships which were
never delivered. Nothing could be done until these men returned. The Turkish crews returned, but still nothing was done,
beyond putting a handful of them on board the
Goeben
; the German crew remained.

The Allies were now thoroughly alarmed, for they desired, even more than the Germans, that the Turks should remain neutral. For a time Mallet and his Russian and French colleagues kept pointing
out to Enver and the war party that Turkey had been exhausted by the Balkan Wars and that she would be ruined if she took up arms again so soon. Then towards the end of August they adopted a much
stronger line: they proposed in return for Turkish neutrality that Britain, France and Russia should guarantee the Ottoman Empire from attack.

This was a momentous proposal, and had it been put forward before the war it must have been decisive. But now an entirely new factor entered the scene: on September 5, 1914, the Battle of the
Marne had been fought in France, and with every succeeding week it became more and more apparent that the first German onrush across France had been stopped. In the east as well the Russians were
making headway against the Austrian forces. It was no longer so evident that this was to be a short war ending in a German victory; Germany was beginning to need allies. She now wanted Turkey in
the war.

One of the earliest indications of this changed attitude was in the treatment of the British Naval Mission. This Mission, under the command of Admiral Limpus, had for some years past undertaken
the training of the Turkish Navy. With the arrival of the
Goeben
its position had become at first embarrassing and then insupportable. Early in September it was clearly impossible for
Admiral Limpus to go on. On the 9th the Mission was withdrawn, and the Germans now controlled the Turkish Navy as well as the Army. Then on September 26 something much more serious happened. A
Turkish torpedo-boat was stopped at the mouth of the Dardanelles by the British squadron lurking there, and when it was found that there were German soldiers on board the vessel was ordered to go
back to Turkey. On hearing this news a certain Weber Pasha, the German soldier commanding the fortifications, took it on himself to close the Dardanelles. New mines were laid
across the channel, lighthouses were extinguished, and notices were put up on the cliffs warning all vessels that the passage was blocked. This was by some way the boldest thing that
the Germans had attempted yet, for the free passage of the Dardanelles was governed by an international convention which affected both belligerents and neutrals alike, and any interference with
international shipping there was an act of war.

The Turks themselves received no warning that this step was to be taken by the Germans, and there was an agitated meeting of the cabinet in Constantinople on September 27. But by now Enver and
Talaat had delivered the country into German hands. The other members of the government might protest and threaten to resign, but there was nothing they could do to alter the situation.
Russia’s lifeline was cut. For some weeks merchantmen from the Black Sea ports filled with Russian grain and other exports piled up in the Golden Horn until there were hundreds of them there,
and a motor boat crossing the harbour could hardly find a way between them. When at last it was evident that the blockage was permanent the ships one by one sailed back to the Black Sea, never to
return.

One can judge the importance of this day from the fact that the great maritime trade of the Dardanelles has never again been revived. When the straits were re-opened in 1918 the revolution had
already taken place in Russia, and in the years since then the Soviet Empire has effectively cut itself off from the seaborne trade of the West. The consulates of all the great powers which used to
line the foreshore at Chanak with their fluttering flags have been closed, and nothing now passes except the local caiques, a thin stream of ocean traffic on the Constantinople run, and, just
occasionally, some solitary communist vessel that goes by with a silent and rather fated air, as though it were a visitor from some other planet.

The last few weeks of peace in Turkey ran out very quickly. More and more German technicians arrived, and all night long a constant clanging sounded from the naval yards where the old Turkish
ships were being fitted out for war. Most of the German
naval officers were quartered in the
General
, a depot ship tied up near the Galata Bridge in the Golden Horn,
and it was common knowledge that in the nightly drinking parties there these officers boasted that if Turkey did not soon move then the German themselves would take a hand. Admiral Souchon was
constantly sending the
Goeben
into the Black Sea on manœuvres. Once, being moved by a sense of humour which is a little difficult to gauge at this distance, he brought his ship to a
standstill before the Russian Embassy on the Bosphorus. The sailors appeared on deck in their German uniforms and treated the enemy ambassador to a concert of German national songs. Then, putting
on their fezzes, they sailed away again.

The end came in the last days of October. On the 29th the
Goeben
, the
Breslau
and a Turkish squadron which was manned in part by German sailors steamed through the Black Sea,
and on this and the following day they opened fire without warning on Odessa harbour, on the Russian fortress at Sevastopol and on Novorossik, sinking all shipping they could reach and setting the
oil tanks on fire. Djemal, the Turkish Minister for Marine, was playing cards at his club in Constantinople at the time, and when the news was brought to him he declared that he had not ordered the
raid and that he knew nothing about it. Whether this be true or not, it seems hardly likely that Enver and Talaat were not informed. Moreover, at that same moment a Turkish column at Gaza, in the
Palestinian desert, was about to set out on a major raid on the Suez Canal.

On October 30 the Russian, British and French ambassadors at Constantinople delivered a twelve-hour ultimatum to the Turkish government, and when it was unanswered, asked for their passports.
Hostilities began on the following day.

Mustafa Kemal had no part in these events. He had, in the previous year, chosen to send a strong letter to Enver inveighing against Liman von Sanders and the German Mission. Turkey, Kemal
argued, needed no help from foreigners of any kind; only the Turks themselves could find their own salvation.

Enver could afford to be lenient, for it was inconceivable that
Kemal could ever become a rival. He posted him off as military attaché to the Turkish Embassy at
Sofia.

There is a lurid legend of how Kemal employed his time in this semi-banishment. He is said to have made a gauche attempt to learn dancing, and to enter the social life of the Bulgarian capital;
then, when he failed dismally in this enterprise, he is reputed to have reverted to debauchery. There may be some truth in the story. Yet he acted very promptly when he heard that his country had
gone to war: he wired from Sofia for permission to return to active service. He had no answer for a time—an anti-German man was not wanted in the new Turkish Army—and was on the point
of deserting his post and of making his way back to Turkey when orders came through for him from Constantinople. He was posted to Rodosto, at the head of the Gallipoli peninsula. It was an event
which, passing quite unnoticed at the time, was to change the whole course of the campaign that lay ahead.

B
Y
their daring—perhaps even because they had to dare in order to keep in office—the Young Turks had got their country into a war which
was much too big for them. They were small gamblers in a game of very high stakes, and, as it usually happens in such cases, their presence was hardly noticed by the other players for a while. They
watched, they waited, they made their anxious little bids, they tried desperately to understand which way the luck was going, and they put on an air of being quite at ease which was very far from
being the case.

October, November and December went by and their small army had still not been risked, nor had they cared to expose their borrowed warships in any way. Two expeditions had set out: one to the
east headed by Enver himself, and the other to the south commanded by Djemal, the Minister of Marine; and their objectives were nothing less than the conquest of the Caucasus from the Russians and
the ejection of the British from Egypt. But as yet nothing had been heard of either of these two enterprises, and a certain cynicism was beginning to develop in the other Balkan states which had
not dared to risk their fortunes in the war. Nothing would have given greater pleasure in Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania than the humiliation of the Turks in some major battle, and they waited
hopefully for the Allies to move.

There were one or two skirmishes at sea. A squadron of British and French warships was patrolling the Ægean in the hope that the
Goeben
would emerge, and in November the ships
opened up their guns on the forts of Sedd-el-Bahr and Kum Kale on either side of the entrance to the Dardanelles. It was all over in twenty minutes, and there was no reply from the Turks. Then on
Sunday,
December 13, Lieutenant Norman Holbrook penetrated through to the Narrows in the submarine B 11. Entering the straits as soon as the Turkish searchlights were
extinguished at dawn, he found his way through the minefields and after four hours hoisted his periscope. He saw a large two-funnelled vessel, the Turkish battleship
Messudieh
, at anchor
in Sari Sigla Bay, and fired his torpedoes at her from 600 yards away. Waiting just long enough to see that his target was destroyed, Holbrook dived steeply and bumped along the bottom until he
reached deep water and the open sea. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.