AUTHORITIES
My main authorities for this chapter, as for the last, have been the Dispatches of Sir Ian Hamilton and Admiral de Robeck, Mr. Ashmead Bartlett’s Dispatches from the Dardanelles, the late Phillip Schuler’s Australia in Arms, the Rev. D. Creighton’s With the Twenty-ninth Division in Gallipoli, The Immortal Gamble, by Commander A. T. Stewart, R.N., and the Rev. C. J. E. Peshall, With Machine-guns in Gallipoli, by Lieutenant-Commander Josiah Wedgwood, M.P., and my own observation of the ground and conversations with eye-witnesses on the spot.
CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLES OF MAY
In Constantinople the naval attacks of February had created the dismay natural to a crowded population threatened with destruction. Preparations were hurriedly made for removing the Government to Eski Chehir in Asia, or even to Konia. In spite of Enver’s dominance, the Committee was charged with bringing ruin on the land, and the German Ambassador, Baron von Wangenheim, feared a separate peace. Ahmed Riza, the honourable visionary, aging survivor of the Parisian Young Turks whose revolution seven years before inspired all Europeans but the Governments with enthusiasm, now stole about the streets honoured but shunned. In his palace on the Bosphorus, the Sultan, Mehmed V., for some inscrutable reason called El Ghazi (the Hero), maundered with imbecility. Removed in March from his palace-prison of Beyler-bey on the Bosphorus to the ancient city of Magnesia, near Smyrna, the “Red Sultan,” Abdul Hamid, surrounded by ministering daughters, beguiled an abstemious and peaceful old age by watching the progress of Christianity with sardonic appreciation.[105]
CONSTANTINOPLE AND SUBMARINES
The failure of the naval attempt to force the Narrows in March restored the city’s confidence. People felt that, since the British Navy failed, the Dardanelles indeed formed an impregnable pass. Enver and Liman von Sanders regained power, if not popularity. The German bureaucracy, organising every department with efficient despotism, justified the satiric compliment which cried, “Deutschland, Deutschland über Allah!” During the subsequent five weeks of our silence it was believed that the British Government admitted failure and had abandoned the campaign. The distant sound of Russian ships bombarding the Black Sea forts at the entrance to the Bosphorus was listened to periodically with the indifference of custom. When news of the landings began to filter through, decisive Turkish victories over France and England were proclaimed. In Asia and on the Peninsula the enemy, it was said, had been repulsed with incredible loss. If any still clung to the shores of Islam, in a day or two they would be driven into the water. The anxious citizens had Enver’s word for that.
Enver himself was hurrying reinforcements to the front. Some went by the Bulair road, though it was exposed to possible fire from British warships in the Gulf of Xeros. The majority were transported down the Sea of Marmora to Gallipoli or Maidos. But within a few days of the landings, this route was rendered equally dangerous by the skill and gallantry of our submarines, two of which—E14 under Lieutenant-Commander Edward Courtney Boyle and E11 under Lieutenant-Commander Eric Naismith—explored their way under the minefields of the strait, entered the Marmora and played havoc among Turkish transports and gunboats. E14 sank two gunboats and one transport with troops. E11 was even more successful, sinking two transports, one gunboat, one communication ship, and three store ships, and driving another store ship ashore. It created alarm in the city by emerging close to the quays, and on its return down the strait it stopped and backed to torpedo another transport.[106] After this, most reinforcements were sent either through Muradhi (the nearest station to Rodosto), risking the Bulair road, or by ships hugging the Asiatic coast by night to the ferry at the Narrows, both routes long and arduous. Some also went by rail to Smyrna and thence by rail to Panderma on the Marmora before being embarked. In early May, Enver admitted that the Turkish losses already amounted to 45,000, and all Turkish towns, even to the distance of Kirk Kilisse, were crammed with wounded. Liman, in command at the front, called for 50,000 reinforcements, and about 30,000, chiefly brought in from Adrianople and Smyrna, were actually sent. Within a few weeks, divisions were also withdrawn from Syria for the same destination. For Turkish troops, the equipment was unusually good—arms, guns, and other stores passing freely through Bulgaria, or coming from the Roumanian port of Constanza down the Black Sea, where the Russian patrols remained torpid or unfortunate. For Turkish troops, the commissariat was also sufficient, the disaster of Lula Burgas having taught the authorities that even Turks cannot fight beyond a certain degree of starvation.[107]
SIR IAN’S REDUCED FORCES
Before the Turkish reinforcements could consolidate a new position across the southern slopes of Achi Baba, and convert it into an impenetrable maze of trench and wire, it was essential for Sir Ian to continue striking at their front. Only so could the pressure upon the beaches be relieved, and the continuous danger from dropping shells to some small extent be reduced; and only so could the Turks be interrupted in their schemes for driving us into the sea. So heavy had been the losses of the 29th Division that the new Lancashire Fusilier Territorials and the 29th Indian Infantry Brigade were added to the 87th and 88th Brigades so as to make up the Division, the 86th being now so much reduced in numbers that it was temporarily divided between the other two brigades. Two brigades (the 2nd Australian (Victoria) and the New Zealand Infantry) were withdrawn from Anzac and formed into a composite division in reserve with the Drake and Plymouth Battalions, R.N.D. Two battalions of the 2nd Naval Brigade, R.N.D. (Howe and Hood), were sent to reinforce the French Division on the right.
On May 6, when the attempt to push forward began, Sir Ian could count only on about 33,000 rifles, of which only 5000 were British and Irish Regulars. This total included about 8000 French troops; but of these at least 5000 were Africans. The remainder of his army consisted, as we have seen, of Lancashire Territorials, Anzacs (both excellent), and the Royal Naval Division, that finely tempered, though partially trained, body, made up partly of public-school men, but chiefly of northern and west of England miners, R.F.R. stokers and marines, whose heavy losses were due rather to devotion and courage than to lack of skill. Against them were arrayed at least 40,000 regular Turkish troops (Nizam), skilfully disposed in a system of trenches and redoubts designed by German officers and held with Turkish tenacity. As to guns, the French at this time had twenty-four of their “75’s,” together with five or six howitzers, and they never ran short of ammunition. The British had something over fifty 18-pounders, a few old and inaccurate howitzers, very few H.E. shells, and other ammunition always so short that a bombardment in preparation for attack had to be rigorously limited for fear of drawing on the small reserve. The Turkish guns in concealed positions on Achi Baba and its slopes, or behind its shelter, were estimated at about a hundred. In addition, the Turks had large guns and howitzers on the Asiatic side, the most dangerous being hidden between the Trojan plain and Erenkeui village. From time to time they exploded “Black Marias,” as the soldiers called the 9·2 and 11-inch shells, among the French depôts on V Beach and among the British signalling stations and stores on Lancashire Landing. Except beneath the cliffs on the Xeros coast, no point upon the southern Peninsula was secure from fire.