The Dardanelles campaign

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

CHAPTER IV
THE PREPARATION

SIR IAN’S APPOINTMENT

As was mentioned, Sir Ian Hamilton reached Tenedos on March 17, the day before the naval engagement. The appointment to command the military forces had come to him unexpectedly but five days earlier, and on March 13 he started from London. He had received only slight and vague instructions from Lord Kitchener, but on certain limitations the Secretary for War insisted, and all of them strongly influenced Sir Ian’s subsequent action. If possible a landing was to be avoided; none was to be attempted until the fleet had made every effort to penetrate the Straits and had failed; if a landing became unavoidable, none should be made until the full force available had assembled; and no adventurous operations were to be undertaken on the Asiatic side. All these instructions were followed.[78]

But they revealed the hesitating reluctance with which the Dardanelles campaign was regarded, not only by Lord Kitchener himself, but by his subordinate generals at home and in France. The “Westerners” were, naturally, in the ascendant. The danger to the Allied cause lay close at hand. It had only recently been averted from the Channel and from Paris. The British Staff, equally with the French, represented that not a man could be spared from France, and that the only assured road to victory lay straight through the German lines. The opposition to any “side-show,” especially if it diverted a Regular Division such as the 29th, was expressed with the emphasis of jealous alarm.

SIR IAN’S QUALIFICATIONS

Even the appointment of Sir Ian Hamilton to the distant enterprise was likely to be received with mingled sentiments. He counted forty-two years of service in the army. Since the days of the Afghan War and Majuba Hill (where his left hand was shattered), he had risen step by step to all but the highest commands. The Nile, Burma, Chitral, and Tirah had known him. He commanded the infantry in the rapid but vital engagement at Elandslaagte, and during the siege of Ladysmith had charge of the extensive and dangerous sector known as Cæsar’s Camp and Wagon Hill. In the final months of the Boer War he was Lord Kitchener’s Chief of Staff, and commanded mobile columns in the Western Transvaal, greatly contributing to the conclusion of the war. Since then he had served at home as Quartermaster-General, as G.O.C.-in-Chief of the Southern Command, and as Adjutant-General. Abroad he had served as Military Representative of India with the Japanese army in Manchuria (1904–1905, when, in A Staff Officer’s Scrap-Book, he foretold the disappearance of cavalry and the prevalence of the trench in future warfare), as General Officer-Commanding-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, and Inspector-General of the Overseas Forces (1910–1915). Except that he had never yet held supreme command in any considerable campaign, his experience in military affairs and in almost every phase of our army’s activity was hardly to be surpassed.

On the other hand, he was sixty-two; and, though he was a year younger than Lord French, and retained a slim and active figure such as enabled Lord Roberts to take command in South Africa at seventy, sixty-two was regarded as a full age for any officer in so difficult a campaign upon a desert promontory. From a mingled Highland and Irish descent he had inherited the so-called Celtic qualities which are regarded by thorough Englishmen with varying admiration and dislike. His blood gave him so conspicuous a physical courage that, after the battles of Cæsar’s Camp and Diamond Hill, the present writer, who knew him there, regarded him as an example of the rare type which not merely conceals fear with success, but does not feel it. Undoubtedly he was deeply tinged with the “Celtic charm”—that glamour of mind and courtesy of behaviour which create suspicion among people endowed with neither. Through his nature ran a strain of the idealistic spirit which some despise as quixotic, and others salute as chivalrous, while, with cautious solicitude, they avoid it in themselves. It was known also that Sir Ian was susceptible to the influence of beauty in other forms than those usually conceded to military men. He was an acknowledged master of English prose, and though our people read more in quantity than any other nation, the literary gift is regarded among us as a sign of incapacity, and is not, as in France and ancient Greece, accepted as assurance of far-reaching powers. What was worse, he was known to have written poetry.

Before the war, his opposition to the introduction of conscription in the United Kingdom had roused the animosity of all who aimed at establishing militarism as a permanent system in this country. Thus political animosity was added to the official prejudice against a buoyant and liberal temperament, conjoined with a politeness and an open-hearted manner startlingly at variance with official usage. One must acknowledge that, in choosing the man for command, Lord Kitchener hardly took sufficient account of qualities likely to arouse antipathy among certain influential classes and the newspapers which represent their opinions. But careless of such prudent considerations, as his manner was, he allowed his decision to be guided by the General’s long experience of warfare, and designedly selected an eager temperament, liable to incautious impetuosity, but suited, as might be supposed, to an undertaking which demanded impetuous action. It was, however, probably in fear lest natural impulse should be given too loose a rein that the instructions mentioned above impressed only caution upon the appointed commander. In view of the strong opposition to the whole enterprise, it was also assumed that no reinforcements could be promised, and none should be asked for. Even the allotted Divisions were not allowed the ten per cent. extra men usually granted to fill up the gaps of immediate loss.

After that conference in the Queen Elizabeth on March 22 (when Sir Ian left the final decision to the naval authorities), it was evident that a military landing could not be avoided, unless the whole expedition were abandoned. It is easy now for belated prudence to maintain that Sir Ian should then have abandoned it, secured (if he could) the acquiescence of the navy in defeat, counter-ordered the assembling troops, and returned to London. Prudence could have said much for such a retirement. Small preparation had been made; the strongest part of the striking force was still distant; the number of the enemy (though roughly estimated at 40,000 on the Peninsula, and 30,000 in reserve beyond Bulair) was quite unknown; ever since the appearance of our fleet, Turks had been digging like beavers every night at most of the possible points of our offence; and it had been proved that the cross-fire of naval guns could not dislodge them even from the toe of the Peninsula, where, for about five miles up to the rising ground in front of Achi Baba, the surface appeared comparatively level. All these objections could have been urged, and, indeed, were urged at the time by Generals to whom, as to the German commanders of the Turkish defence, a landing appeared impossible. But if any one believes that a high-spirited and optimistic officer was likely to consider a retirement to be his duty just when he had received a command which he regarded as the surest means of terminating the war, he errs like a German psychologist in his judgment of mankind.

DELAY OF RELOADING TRANSPORTS