A study of the writings of those who had a part in the inception and carrying out of the ill-fated Gallipoli project gives one a sense of the difficulty which representative governments have in carrying on a war. This consists of placing in positions of power over the war- making facilities of the country civilians who have little knowledge and no experience in military or naval matters. And, when the civilian so placed happens to be of dominating character, intolerant of advice, the results are disastrous.
The decisions one has to make on distant service always depend for their accomplishment on the support of those “behind the lines” who are far removed from contact with actual conditions at the front. They are also frequently rendered more difficult by errors in the original decisions of “higher authority” upon which the whole mission is based, and in the Gallipoli project we find both, in that the decision originally was forced on the War Council by a civilian of such dominating character as to silence the technicians, and entirely cut the Council off from their advice. Furthermore, Kitchener failed to support Hamilton properly.
A study of this operation, therefore, becomes of great interest, not only to those who may be thrown into actual command of like projects but, of far greater importance, to those on whom the distant command may have to depend, both for the “rightness” and soundness oi the mission originally laid down and for whole-hearted support after the issue is joined. In both of these things, General Sir Ian Hamilton found himself in hot Water from the day he was delegated to command, but like the cavalry at Balaclava, “his not to reason why,” and with true British fortitude he accepted the assignment and did his best to succeed.
The writings of Winston Churchill, Lord Kitchener, Admiral Sir John Fisher, General Liman von Sanders, and Sir Ian Hamilton leave a feeling that Churchill’s idea of cutting off Turkey from the Triple Alliance and at the same time ensuring closer contact with Russia via the Dardanelles was a brilliant conception and, if worked out systematically, could have been carried out with celerity and completeness, but that from the first step of the War Council throughout the operation it was marked for failure, the fact being that even before General Hamilton was designated in command the situation was against success.
The first decision of the War Council, on January 13, was a decision made without technical advice, made by laymen on what was under any circumstances a hazardous undertaking needing the highest technical advice and skill. The decision was: “The Admiralty should prepare for a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula.” By these few words they sealed the death warrant of 150,000 men sent to die uselessly as a monument to what “muddling through” always means. The War Council, by ignoring the advisers they had in the room at the time they made their decision, wrote failure across the project. The fact that the results of this decision could have been obviated to a great degree later can in no way excuse the direct ignoring of the Nelsonian maxim, “a sailor would be a fool to attack a fort,” with all subsequent history to support it. Our Civil War, Sampson at Santiago, the Japanese at Woosung, furnish all the proof any normal man would wish; so it is to be hoped that in future we will have no ambitions on that score in the Navy.
The above order of the Council naturally energized the fleet off the Dardanelles and almost daily bombardments took place, which, designated as “futile” by Fisher, only served to say to the Turkish High Command, “We are going to do something here so look out!” Even then there was a way out if only a head had been appointed to work out a plan but, curious to relate, no plan was ever worked out.
Admiral Fisher, who did not believe in trying to take Gallipoli with the fleet, had a plan which included an expeditionary force and which, if worked out in detail, would have prevented the failure, but he was submerged in a peculiar sense of loyalty to Churchill, who, by his brilliant persuasiveness, swung the Council to his own idea, and cut them off entirely from Fisher’s advice. Later it was decided to send an expeditionary force (just when is obscure), but we do know that on March 12 General Sir Ian Hamilton was called into Kitchener’s office and told he was to sail immediately to take command of the expeditionary force at the Dardanelles; that the Navy was going to force the Straits and that the Army would be a second string, but if a landing were made it must be pushed to completion.
General Hamilton states that he had not previously been informed that he was to be ordered in command; that in fact the Gallipoli project had never been mentioned to him.
He found that the War Office had no data to give him except that an aide went over with him an old Greek scheme for occupying the Peninsula. The number of British and Anzac troops were given to him but, while they stated that he would also have a French contingent, nothing was known of its size. No data was available as to how many Turkish troops he might have to face, but a careless estimate of 40,000 was made by Kitchener. There were no instructions except that his force was secondary, and that he was not to try landing on the Asiatic shore.
Omitting the one fact that he was to have the 29th Division, a seasoned outfit, this appears to have been just such an expedition as in olden times set out in quest of the Holy Grail, with all the haphazardness of collection and arrangement and blind optimism as to the future. All of this was loyally explained by Hamilton in his diary as being Kitchener’s way of putting up to the subordinate the details of carrying out a project; all very well for an operation close to base where he could have a definitive hand in the work “behind the lines,” or if he could have depended on having his requests from the front carried out, but entirely impossible in this case to carry on 2,500 miles from base with all sorts of other influences undermining any adequate attention to his needs, which could only be ascertained in the field and communicated by cable or letter.
It must be remembered that the Allies had been blockading the Straits ever since the first days of the war when the Goebeti and Breslau took refuge there, so that there was ample opportunity for naval airplanes to have thoroughly reconnoitered the Peninsula and have made a photographic survey which would have been of inestimable value to Sir Ian at this time. But of this there was not a trace.
We all know how difficult a distant operation is under the best preliminary preparation, due largely to the inability to make those at the base realize that the demands for supply and replacement must be met immediately as called for by the man in command on the ground, but here we have no preparation; no estimate of the situation; no attempt to establish a proper line of authority and responsibility for intelligent support of this distant activity continuously; in fact, no evidence that the problem had been visualized at all as to its probable ramifications, and as to its relative importance in the general war. Its original motive seems to have been to relieve the pressure on the Russian troops fighting in the Caucasus, but it was immediately translated by Churchill’s active mind as an opportunity for the Navy, and himself, to attain everlasting glory by forcing the Dardanelles, and, by attacking Constantinople, compel the Turkish government to capitulate and thus open a clear way into the Black Sea and contact with the Russians.
The basic idea of instituting action which would cause Turkey to capitulate was a brilliant one and entirely feasible if properly approached, but one to whose demands first place must be given if it were to be a success.
The war at this time had become a dead- lock on the Western Front, and a defensive attitude there could have been held until this project was completed or until it had been proved not feasible. If the detachment of Turkey from Germany was considered of prime importance, as it really was when the situation in the Balkans is considered, then it could well have been made the allied objective for the comparatively short time which should have been necessary for its completion, and should have been driven with all the power which they could have put behind it, but the picture which unfolds itself is quite the opposite. In the Balkans at that time both Bulgaria and Rumania were wavering as to which cause they should espouse, and it seems certain that, had a successful occupation of the Peninsula been effected, both would have joined the Allies, especially as Greece would have surely done so.
This is really not just hindsight in the ordinary sense of the word because, granting that the thing could be done, any estimate of the subsequent situation would certainly have led to the above conclusion, it was the only method in sight for the Allies which could surely produce such a result. Certainly with so much at stake a whole-hearted try for such a conclusion seems well worth while.
From General von Sanders we learn that there were at this time not more than 20,000 troops on the Peninsula, and about the same number on the Asiatic shore of the Straits when he took command on March 26. We also find from the same source that no real preparation for a defense of the northwestern shore of the Peninsula had yet been made, all defenses being along the shores of the Straits, and these defenses strengthened only after the allied fleet had indicated a serious intention to force the Narrows.
On his arrival on the Peninsula, von Sanders immediately set about creating those defenses, and he says “Fortunately the Allies gave me a month in which to rectify the defense lines and make preparation for preventing a landing on the north shore,” so that we have a picture of what little opposition the Allies would have had if the landing had been made coincident with the first hostile actions of the fleet.
General von Sanders’ story is so fair and definite as to these things that it carries conviction. The month of which he speaks was wasted because of the lack of proper arrangement in the preparation of the project. Hamilton found the transports loaded without any system which would permit a landing direct from the transports, as was essential under the conditions. The equipment of the various divisions of his command had been loaded indiscriminately without regard to orderly discharging. So little reconnaissance of the Greek Islands had been made that their unsuitability as bases was unknown. Hamilton had to proceed to Alexandria to unload and reload the ships before trying to land.
During the time between the decision of the War Council and the time when the fleet tried to break through, the constant bombardments, which Admiral Fisher describes as “futile,” had caused the Turks to strengthen the defenses of the Narrows by mounting many batteries along the shore outside the permanent fortifications, a strong defense against the fleet alone but helpless if the heights on the Peninsula were held by the Allies and batteries mounted there.
Another indication of the general lack of plan for this important project lies in the relations between Hamilton and the officials in Egypt. Egypt had just had a change in government, in that the British had sent a High Commissioner to control a new Khedive whom they had placed on the throne in place of the old one who had fled to Turkey earlier in the war, while the defense was placed in the hands of General Maxwell. When it was found that the Gallipoli expedition had to base on Alexandria, no coordinating head was appointed to evaluate the respective needs of the two commands, so that available quantity of personnel and material could be used to advantage. Later when Hamilton needed re-enforcement and replacements for his troops, although there were 70,000 troops of the kind he needed in Egypt, he could not depend on getting a single man from there if General Maxwell saw fit to refuse, which he normally did. In other words, with plenty of troops within thirty-six to forty hours’ sail, Hamilton could not rely on them even when Kitchener afterwards told him to draw on Maxwell.
Here we have two men, far from the War Office, each loaded with responsibility for a project entirely separate from the other basing at the same point, and each feeling that his own needs were paramount, with no co-ordinating head to decide which was paramount. As a result the human material was never used to the best advantage at any time.
While it should have been clear that an attack on Gallipoli of major force would guarantee safety to Egypt, and the dry season in the desert would render impossible a Turkish advance in that direction, yet troops, vital to the success of the Gallipoli operation, were held in Egypt, and all this after the attack by 16,000 Turks on the Suez in February had demonstrated how easily such attacks could be repulsed, and proved the Canal to be a perfect defensive barrier.
Ten thousand troops properly equipped with artillery and machine guns could easily have taken care of any force the Turks could bring to that point, while certainly 20,000 troops were ample for the other military requirements in Egypt, and as a reserve for the defense of the Canal, which would have left at least 40,000 men available to re-enforce Hamilton, and for replacements after the landing. This was the time to have had those replacements, because it was vital that continuous attack should be maintained until the heights were taken and fortified.
To add to the general difficulties under which Hamilton worked, the Turks were kept constantly informed, by the Egyptian press both in Cairo and Alexandria, of all preparations being made by the expeditionary force for landing, and when Hamilton protested to the High Commissioner and to General Maxwell, urging the prevention of this publicity, he was told that nothing could be done about it.
Up to this time General Hamilton had not had an administrative staff, and as a result he was forced to use his general staff on administrative work, just at the time when he was preparing his plans for the operation. His adjutant general and quartermaster general did not arrive with their staffs until April 1.
When one comes to a study of the material reserves of the expedition the picture becomes even more incomprehensible. General Hamilton writes in hi5 diary on April 4: “Have just written to Lord Kitchener, ‘I would like to have some hint as to my future supply of ammunition as the Naval Division has only 430 rounds per rifle and the 29th Division only 500 rounds per man.’ ” Here is a British commander preparing to force a landing on a well-defended hostile shore, 2,500 miles from his real base of supply, on a very difficult terrain of which his knowledge, to say the least, was sketchy, with his major units equipped with fewer than 500 rounds of rifle ammunition per ^an, and the same condition, in some Aspects worse, as to artillery, particularly trench mortars, hand grenades, and high explosive shell. What possible idea could have been actuating Lord Kitchener and his chief of ordnance supply to cause them to believe that any force, which could be handled on the limited terrain provided on the Peninsula in the preliminary stages of the landing, could effect anything serious, except to themselves, with such inadequate supply of ammunition?
Throughout the operation one senses the terrible lagging of the War Office in burnishing replacements and ammunition, and the type of artillery called for by the nature of the campaign. Everything asked for arrived too late to be of maximum service, when it came at all. Niggardly supply dribbling in week after week and necessarily dribbled out in consequent bruited and in effectual effort! Time after time the Turks were practically out of ammunition and a continuation of the Allied drive would have broken through, but each time the lack of ammunition and replacement forced a cessation of action on the Allies. Certainly in the early days and weeks of this campaign there were never in sight the necessary ammunition and replacement to permit the unlimited expenditure of both material and personnel necessary to a quickly successful conclusion. The heights could not be taken by sporadic attack, and sporadic attack was forced by the lack of the wherewithal to continue an incessant battering of the enemy trenches.
An explanation might be that the War Office believed the fleet bombardment would cover this deficiency, and in truth the fleet support did aid materially in making it possible for the troops to hold their position on the Peninsula, but it in no way enabled them to advance and take trenches which were protected from the ships’ fire by the undulations of the terrain, and a study of contour maps, if they had any, should have proved this to the War Office.
The more probable reason is that, having embarked on this enterprise without plans and without a proper estimate of the situation, and therefore without the slightest knowledge of what it would entail, the demands must have seemed excessive, and when coupled with the constant demands of the Western Front, with no evaluation of the importance of the two, the dribbling process was a natural result. There seemed to be a curious blindness to the fact that when once landed there was no possible backing out, and therefore there must be the surest and strongest support that could be given if the operation were ever to reach a conclusion, and if the conclusion were to be successful the early days were the ones that counted most.
The French contingent seems to have been much better supplied since Hamilton frequently mentions in his diary that the French had plenty of ammunition for their 75’s while his guns never had an adequate supply.
The close co-operation of the fleet was later much interfered with by the arrival of submarines supposedly from Germany via the Adriatic which successfully torpedoed several ships and forced the others to remain largely in the net-protected harbors, and at last forced the withdrawal of the Queen Elizabeth from the station entirely.
The equipment for landing, in the way of barges, etc., seems to have been limited since we find Hamilton asking the War Office to send out some of the specially- built, self-propelled barges which had been built for Fisher’s proposed landing of Russians on the Pomeranian coast. These barges were shallow-draft affairs with plate armor and would have been just the thing for the Gallipoli landing, as they were entirely self-maneuvering and faster than towed barges could possibly be, while they afforded protection from rifle fire right up to disembarkation. Each barge carried 500 men. These barges were not sent out at this time and the process of landing was much slowed down and the losses much increased by lack of them.
General von Sanders gives as one of the reasons that the Turkish government decided there was going to be an attempt at landing was that two British officers appeared at Athens and bought some forty barges.
We find in the autobiography of Admiral Sir John Fisher a letter written to Churchill on January 2, 1915, which shows that Churchill, and through him the War Council, had at its hand a general plan outlined sufficiently to have made it possible to use it as a basis of developing an actual concrete plan which, from what was found out later, would have had every chance of success.
Fisher writes in characteristic style:
Immediately replace all Indians and 75,000 seasoned troops from Sir John French’s command with Territorials from England (as you yourself suggest), and embark this Turkish expeditionary force ostensibly for the protection of Egypt, with all possible dispatch at Marseilles, and land them at Besika Bay, direct, with feints before they arrive with troops from Egypt, at Haifa and Alexandretta; the latter to be a real occupation because of its inestimable value as regards the oil fields of the Garden of Eden, with which, by rail, it is in direct communication, and we shove the Germans out who are established at Alexandretta with immense Turkish concessions.
The Greeks to go for Gallipoli the same time as we go for Besika Bay, the Bulgarians for Constantinople, and the Russians, Serbians, and Rumanians for Austria.
Sturdee forces the Dardanelles with the Majestic and the Canopus classes, God bless him!
But as the great Napoleon said, “Celerity, without that—failure.” In the history of the world a Junta has never won. You want one man.
The breadth of this conception weakens his plan by the inclusion of the Greeks, Rumanians, and Bulgarians, who were not yet in the war. A successful attack on the Dardanelles would undoubtedly have brought them in as Allies, but any plan which included them at this time was, of course, faulty. However, it was a general plan which could have been taken as a ground work and from it a dependable plan worked out. It contained the element of surprise, it urged celerity, and it proposed the use of the Indian troops where climatic and other conditions would have shown them at their best, while it included seasoned troops, a very necessary proviso, as against the actual use of green troops, such as the Anzacs were, because while nothing could have been finer than their behavior in the subsequent landing, yet there must be a strong suspicion that the early advantages gained would have been greater with troops inured to war and fighting, and that the taking of the heights the first day was not beyond the bounds of probability. Certainly the fiasco at “Y” Beach would not have taken place with seasoned troops and officers, for there an unopposed landing was made, and the bluffs occupied only to be later abandoned without any real reason.
Admiral Fisher wanted to give one man a tree hand, a good idea after the decision as to what was to be attempted had been made, and this decision should certainly have been arrived at by a study of the problem by the war and naval staffs, who alone were competent to decide such a question, and to make the plan, since it combined the efforts of the two services. However, it does not matter what he intended, because Churchill did not present the Fisher letter to the Council, nor did he or any other member of the Council call on either technical staff for suggestion or opinion. The combination of Churchill and Kitchener caused a decision to be made without study and without any seeming attempt to visualize what such a decision might result in.
Curiously enough Admiral Fisher’s “one-man” idea was the cause of the disaster, at least Winston Churchill relegated to myself the decision of what was to be done and by his persuasiveness forced it on the council, and even when Lord Fisher, annoyed by being ignored by Churchill, showed that annoyance by starting to cave the room and was only dissuaded by Kitchener, he was not asked for his opinion by any member of the Council, he and Admiral Wilson were the only two present competent to decide what the fleet could and could not do in such a circumstance.
Kitchener was another example of an erroneous use of the one-man idea. The general staff had been running the War Office continuously from 1904, when it was formed on the insistence of General Sir Henry Wilson, but the instant a real war broke out “in pops Kitchener,” as General Hamilton expresses it, and out goes the whole scheme of decentralization with a co-ordinating head; a one-man show if ever there was one; wonderful for a single condensed operation with all matters pertaining thereto within the sight and grasp of that one man, but fatal for widely separated, independent, enormous operations such as war entailed. As Hamilton stated it: “Yes, we remove the best experts from the War Office and pop in Kitchener, like a powerful engine without control, regulators, and safety valves. Yet see what wonders he has worked!” True he did work wonders in arousing the British people to a belated realization that they would have to get into the war with armies as well as with their fleet, and that preparation must be made for a war of four years instead of six weeks. He did raise armies, and in all that he was peerless, but in matters of general administration we find in him a tendency to stick to old ideas and old methods. Obstinate, self-centered, retroactive, and uncompromising as he was, we find the British war machine groaning and creaking in a thousand joints.
General Hamilton says:
As late [so-called] Chief of Staff of Lord Kitchener in South Africa, I could have told them [the War Council] that whatever “K” fancies at the moment he must swipe at it that very moment off his own bat. The one-man show carried on royally in South Africa and all the narrow squeaks we had have all been swallowed up in the final success, but how will his “no system” system work now? Perhaps he may pull it through; anyway he has started with a beautifully clean slate. He has surpassed himself in fact, for I confess even with past experience to guide me, I did not imagine our machinery could have been so thoroughly smashed in so short a time. The long years of general staff; Lyttleton, Nicholson, French, Douglass; where are your well-thought-out schemes for an amphibious attack on Constantinople? Not a sign! The Dardanelles and the Bosporus might be in the moon for all the military information I have got to go on. When I asked the crucial question, the enemy’s strength? “K” thought I had better prepare for 40,000. How many guns? No one knows.
Self-repression is a salient characteristic of the inhabitant of the British Isles; an appearance of casualness being more important to him than any other tenet of his creed, and herein lies the great difference between them and ourselves, the Canadians, and the Australians and New Zealanders, and this casualness appears in Kitchener’s method of sending Hamilton off on his tremendous task. It isn’t sporting to show excitement or intensity of feeling under any circumstances. While this tends to make them strong in adversity, and not liable to panic, it has drawbacks which tend to annul these good qualities. It produces a kind of lethargy both of mind and spirit; establishes a tempo which cannot be quickened to meet emergencies; and chokes off that vital spark which carries the champion sprinter to the tape in a last triumphant burst of speed.
In the case of the landing at Gallipoli it would partially explain two otherwise inexplicable happenings, both of which had an effect on the final result.
The landing at “Y” Beach was considered by General Hamilton as a most important part of his general scheme. He felt he could surprise the Turks here by gaining the top of the bluff and dominating their rear, greatly assisting the major drive by Hunter-Weston from the tip of the Peninsula and make the early attainment of Achi Baba that much easier.
It was Hamilton’s pet idea, and when he saw his troops land and gain the heights without opposition he was delighted. Let him tell it.
Both battalions, the Plymouths, and the K.O. S.B.’s had climbed the cliff without loss; so it was signalled; there is no firing; the Turks have made themselves scarce; nothing to show danger or stress; only parties of our men struggling up the sandy precipice by zigzags, carrying munitions and large glittering kerosene cans of water. Through the telescope we can make out a number of our fellows in groups along the crest of the cliff quite peacefully reposing, probably smoking. This promises great results for our arms—not the reposing and smoking for I hope that won’t last long—but the enemy’s surprise. In spite of Egypt and the Egyptian Gazette; in spite of the spy system of Constantinople, we have brought off our tactical coup and surprised the enemy chief. The bulk of the Turks are not at Gava Tepe; here at “Y” there are none at all. If the “Y” Beach lot press their advantage they may cut off the enemy’s troops on the toe of the Peninsula. With any luck at all the K.O.S.B.’s, and the Plymouth’s at “Y” should go right on the line of retreat of the Turks who are now fighting in the south. . . . The point at issue as we sailed down to “Y” Beach was as to whether that little force at “Y” should not be re-enforced by the naval i division who were making a feint at the Bulair lines, and had by now probably finished their work. Braithwaite (Chief of Staff) had been speaking to me of it. The idea appealed to me strongly because I have been all along most keen on the “Y” Beach plan which is my own special child.
Here we have a force landed at a most important point, in that it took the enemy in the rear, and landing without resistance, scaling the heights, and then “just lying around smoking” when one would think that the most elementary knowledge of military tactics and a desire for self-preservation would have urged these troops to the most feverish activity to consolidate their position, and to send back for more troops to enable them to have a real try at cutting off the Turks to the south.
The next morning when General Hamilton arrived at “Y” Beach he found troops coming down the cliff and re-embarking. He states in his diary:
Arrived at “Y” Beach at 9:30 a.m. There the Sapphire, Dublin, and Goliath were lying close inshore, and we could see a trickle of men comic! down the steep cliff and parties being ferried off to the ships, the wounded, no doubt, but we did not see a single soul going up the cliff, whereas there were many loose groups hanging around the beach. I distrusted these aimless idlers by the sea. There was no fighting; a rifle shot now and then from the crests where we saw our fellows clearly; the Dublin said the force was coming off and we could not get in touch with the soldiers at all. No one liked the looks of things on shore. Our chaps can hardly be making off without orders, and yet, if they are making off by order, Hunter-Weston should have consulted me first. My inclination was to take a hand myself, but the staff are clear as to interference when I have no knowledge of the facts, and I suppose they are right. To see part of my scheme, from which I hoped so much, go wrong is maddening. At seven Hunter-Weston came on board and dined. He never gave the order to evacuate “Y” Beach. He never was consulted; he doesn’t know who gave the order.
Here we have a part of the operation which the commander in chief was especially keen about, and from his statement rightly so, completely abandoned before his eyes with apparently no reason, after a completely successful landing and occupation of a point of great tactical value; with troops still in possession on the crest; fighting; every opportunity for him or his staff to land and obtain the needed information and to make such arrangement as was needed to reclaim the situation, and yet restrained by some inhibition which must have had as a basis that habit of self -repression.
Why was this position evacuated by the officer in command? There appears no explanation in Hamilton’s diary. When coupled, however, with the fact that when the troops gained the crest they “lay around probably smoking,” one gets the idea that the responsible officer was not only a weakling but that he totally failed to grasp the importance that his commander in chief placed on this part of the activities, and it then goes back to the probability that his orders were given him in the usual casual manner of the Britisher, and that the great importance o1 it was not properly impressed on his mind.
Available at that time were the 11,000 men of the naval division, a powerful force to have appeared in the rear of the Turks, which could have been landed Without opposition at “Y” Beach. Truly a curious incident and to us inexplicable.
Another incident seems to have the earmarks of being caused by race characteristics. General Hamilton says:
Hunter-Weston does well to be proud of his men and the way they played up today when he called on them to press back the enemy. He had no losses to speak of and we are now on a fairly broad front, three miles across the toe of the Peninsula, and two miles from the toe at Helles. Had our men not been so deadly weary, there is no reason why we should not have taken Achi Baba from the Turks, who put up hardly any fight at all. The intelligence hear that enemy re-enforcements are crossing the Narrows, so it is a pity we could not have gained more ground while we were about it.
Achi Baba, a hill 200 meters high, overlooking and dominating the whole situation as nearly the key to success as any commander could desire; only two miles away, with the Turks “making scarcely any resistance,” and with Turkish re-enforcements sure to come in during the night from the south shore of the Narrows, and also from Bulair, and the advance stopped because the men were tired. One cannot help comparing this with the condition of the men of the 2nd Division when they drove the Germans back seven miles on July 18, 1918, after a 24-hour rush to get on to the firing line, and without food for most of that time, with no incentive but that given by the elan of the troops not handicapped by any age-old spirit of repression. Here on the Peninsula it was a matter of life and death to these troops that they attain Achi Baba, and by not doing it they probably sealed the warrant of failure of the expedition.
Here was let slip a definite opportunity for complete success, and while it never appeared again with the same definiteness, yet later at Suvla we have another fiasco, much like that of “Y” Beach but on a much larger scale.
General von Sanders says of the Suvla landing:
We all had the feeling that after the various landings, beginning on August 6, the British leaders had delayed too long on the beach instead of advancing rapidly from the landing at any cost. . . . I mention the Kiretch Tepe as one of the sensitive points of the Turks which would surely have fallen into British hands by a rapid advance from the shore in the first two days.
Why did not the British advance? Again we have that peculiar lethargy which is the outward and visible sign of a national self-repression. It slows down the processes of thought in an emergency, kills initiative, and smothers the elan, which successful advance should give to troops, and which is the spark which makes men outdo themselves in grasping the ultimate success. This is not a new thought. Any study of the actions of the various nationalities working side by side on the Western Front will show that, while the British troops were peerless in holding a line, they were no match for the Canadians, Australians, and the Americans in driving ahead when the drive was on. They seemed not to catch the spirit of the advance and had to depend on their stolid nerve, which might carry them through a day’s work but never accomplished a miracle.
It has been necessary to present the above discussion of the actual operations on the Gallipoli in order to paint a true picture of what would have been the probable results of this adventure if the most ordinary plans and preparation had been made for it. Admiral Fisher put his finger on the two vital points when he stressed “surprise” and “celerity.” No better field for “surprise” could have been wished for. The probabilities of a landing from Egypt were various: Palestine via Suez, Haifa, Alexandretta, and Smyrna, all were open to a feint with troops from Egypt in sufficient force to assume realistic proportions and, in the case of Smyrna and Alexandretta, of real moment to northern Turkey, and near enough to have drawn troops away from the Dardanelles. The fact that the Turks had attacked the Suez on February 3 would have made a real expedition across the Suez seem a very natural thing. One cannot approve Admiral Fisher’s proposal that the Alexandretta feint be turned into a permanent landing because two major ; operations would seem to be too much to undertake at that one time, but it would seem to have been the natural commercial instinct, which every Englishman has, which actuated the Admiral in this proposal.
However, with the fleet activities at the Dardanelles held to a minimum of just blockade duties with a minimum of men-of-war maintained there until the last moment, and with ostentatious activities along the Suez, it is probable that the | Turks would never have really arranged for the defense of the Gallipoli, and that the project would have gone through on schedule.
Alexandria was a natural base for such an expedition, where equipment for landing could have been assembled without creating comment. Troops could have been drilled in boat work; ships properly loaded and when ready could have appeared off Gallipoli in less than 48 hours after leaving a base where the fleet could have joined them at the proper moment, and “celerity” would have been accomplished- During this preparation time the officers who were to handle the actual landing operations could have visited the blockading fleet and got used to the appearances of the points of attack. Preparations could have been thoroughly made without hurry, lines of supply from Alexandria arranged, and reserves of material and men collected.
Any study, even the most cursory; should have suggested some such scheme and procedure. If the general staff of the War Office had not been “Kitchenerized’ and the Admiralty “Winstonized,” in' dubitably some such procedure would have been followed.