CHAPTER III
STRATEGY AND TACTICS OF THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN
Now, having recognised the tremendous issues which were involved in the fall of Constantinople, it may be asked did the Government provide a weapon sufficiently strong to carry out their policy? In my humble opinion they did,—if only the weapon had been rightly handled.
Of course, whoever is to blame for the Bedlamite policy of the first disastrous attempts by the Navy alone bears a heavy responsibility. Beyond knocking the entrance forts to pieces, all that this premature attack by the Fleet effected was to give the Turks ample warning of our intentions, of which they took full advantage by making the Gallipoli Peninsula an almost impregnable fortress and the Dardanelles a network of mines.
But even this grave initial blunder could have been rectified, if only sound strategy had been adopted in the combined naval and military attack on the Dardanelles.
The problem before the strategists was, of course, to get through to Constantinople with the Fleet, and this could only be done by forcing the Narrows, a strip of the Dardanelles heavily fortified and only a mile wide. It was therefore necessary to reduce the forts guarding the Narrows, and with an army to hold the heights on Gallipoli dominating the Dardanelles, so as to ensure the safety of the Fleet.
Having command of the seas gave us the choice of launching the attack at any point we chose on the Turkish coast; therefore the Turks were at the great disadvantage of having to divide their forces into several parts, so as to guard such points as they thought might possibly be attacked.
It was known that there was a Turkish army on the Asiatic side, at the south of Chanak, the principal Fort on the Asiatic shore of the Narrows; also that the Bulair lines, some forty miles from the extremity of the Peninsula, were strongly fortified and held; that a strong force was entrenched on the southern portion of the Peninsula in the neighbourhood of Cape Helles; and, in addition, that there was yet another Turkish army holding the heights on the Ægean at, or near, a point now known as Anzac.
Now, if any one will take the trouble to study the map, which will be found at the end of this book, he will see that the key to the Narrows is that portion of the Gallipoli Peninsula which extends across from Anzac on the Ægean, through the heights of Sari Bair, to the Dardanelles.
If, therefore, instead of dividing the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (which unfortunately was the plan adopted) and having it held up or destroyed in detail, the whole force had been thrown in its entirety at this point, and a vigorous sledge-hammer blow delivered, I feel absolutely confident that a crowning victory would have been gained and the expedition would have been a glorious success.
Of the four Turkish armies the only one that could have opposed a sudden vigorous thrust at the key position was the one at and near Anzac, and this force we could have swept aside and crumpled up before any of the others could possibly have come to its assistance.
That the Expeditionary Force could have been landed here is proved by the fact that the two Australian and New Zealand Divisions did land here, and these dauntless men, by themselves, almost succeeded in taking Sari Bair and getting astride the Peninsula. For eight months they held their end up, and more than held it up, against overwhelming odds. Had they been backed up at the time of the first landing on April 25th, 1915, by the "incomparable 29th Division," one of the best the British Army has ever seen, together with the two French Divisions, with their hundred celebrated .75 guns, and the Royal Naval Division, no Turkish troops at that time in the neighbourhood could for a moment have stood up against them, and with our grip once established on the Peninsula nothing could have shaken us off—not all the soldiers in the Ottoman Empire.
Every Turk on the southern portion of Gallipoli must inevitably have fallen into our hands within a few days, for it was well known that they were but ill supplied with ammunition and food. There was no chance of escape for them, for our Fleet commanded all the waters round Gallipoli up to the very Narrows themselves, and nothing could possibly have gained the Asiatic shore; while anything attempting to cross at the Narrows would have been inevitably sunk by the artillery which we would have mounted on the dominating heights of the Peninsula. No help could reach them from Constantinople, for the same reason, and it would have been in vain for them to have endeavoured to break through our lines, as was proved over and over again in the many determined but futile assaults they made on us in Gallipoli, when they were invariably hurled back with enormous losses.
Once astride the Peninsula, where our length of front would be less than seven miles, with over six men to the yard holding it, nothing could have shaken off our strangling hold. It would only then have been a question of directing the fire of the heavy naval guns on the Forts in the Narrows, which would, of course, be done by direct observation, and these strongholds would have been pounded to dust by the Queen Elizabeth and other battleships within a week, thus leaving open the road to Constantinople. Such might have been the glorious ending of the Gallipoli campaign if only sound strategical and tactical methods had been employed.
It is a thousand pities that this plan of operations was not adopted, for with such proved commanders as General d'Amade, General Birdwood and General Hunter-Weston—thrusters all—and with such incomparable men, there would have been no "fatal inertia" to chronicle.
It must be remembered that at the time of this landing on April 25th, the Turks had had but little time to organise their defences and it would then have been a much easier task to have seized the heights of Sari Bair than when the attempt was made with raw troops later on in August, an attempt which, even with all the drawbacks chronicled against it, came within an ace of being a success.
Another great advantage was that the weather, when we landed in April, was much cooler; there was also an ample rainfall, so that there would have been no difficulty about drinking-water, a lack of which in August proved fatal to the attempt made in that hot, dry month. We did not, of course, rely upon a chance rainfall at the time of our landing, for, as I shall show later on, ample provision had been made for carrying and supplying water, at all events for the 29th Division.
Unfortunately, such a plan of campaign as I have outlined was not put into execution. Instead, the force was split up into no less than nine parts, and practically destroyed in detail, or brought to a standstill by the Turks.
The Australian and New Zealand Divisions landed at Anzac, the key position; the 29th Division beat themselves to death attacking six different and almost impregnable positions on the toe of the Peninsula, where, I dare to say, not a single man ought ever to have been landed; in addition to the opposition they met with in Gallipoli they were subjected to a rain of shells from Asia, not only at the time of landing but throughout the whole time we wasted in occupying this utterly (from a military point of view) useless end of the Peninsula.
The Royal Naval Division was sent somewhere in the direction of the Bulair Lines, where it effected nothing, and the two French Divisions made an onslaught on the Asiatic coast, which, although well conceived and most gallantly put into execution, helped the main cause not at all. Of course, they were invaluable in preventing the Asiatic guns from firing on the 29th Division at the time of the landing, but then this Division should of course have been landed at Anzac, where they would have been out of range of those guns. Whatever Turkish force opposed the French at Kum Kale could never have got across the Dardanelles in time to have opposed our landing at or near Anzac.
If it had been thought necessary to make demonstrations on the Asiatic coast, at the toe of the Peninsula, and at the Bulair Lines, this could have been done equally well by sending the empty transports to those places, escorted by a few gunboats, and thus have held the Turks in position by making a pretence at throwing troops ashore at those points.
Of course, it is easy to be wise after the event, but I never did see, and never could see, the point of dividing our force and landing on the southern part of Gallipoli, for, once we had got astride the Peninsula from Anzac to the Narrows, all the Turks to the south of us must have fallen into our mouths, like ripe plums.
Napoleon has placed it on record that it is the besetting sin of British commanders to fritter away their forces by dividing them and so laying themselves open to be defeated in detail. It would appear that we have not even yet taken Napoleon's maxim to heart, for if ever there was an occasion on which it was absolutely vital to keep the whole force intact for a mighty blow, it was on that fateful Sunday morning, April 25th, 1915, when one concentrated thrust from Anzac to the Narrows would have undoubtedly placed in our hands the key of the Ottoman Empire.
The Dardanelles campaign will go down to history as the greatest failure sustained by British arms, and yet no more glorious deeds have ever been performed by any army in the world.