ARRIVAL OF HOSTILE SUBMARINES
Nearly a fortnight later (May 25 and 27), a large German submarine, U51, which had come round by Gibraltar (others perhaps hailed from the Austrian naval base at Pola), struck two heavy blows in succession. Off Anzac, the Triumph (11,800 tons, completed 1904) lay at anchor, with nets out. Suddenly she was struck by a torpedo, which cut through her nets like thread. In ten minutes she sank, carrying down three officers and sixty-eight men, within sight of the Anzac forces, which she had so finely served. All of the Anzacs volunteered a month’s pay toward the expense of salving her, but that was impossible. The next morning but one, the Majestic (Captain Talbot), 1895, 14,900 tons, Rear-Admiral Stuart Nicholson’s flagship, lying at anchor close off Helles, her nets out, and surrounded by small craft of all kinds, met the same fate. The submarine picked her out as a good sportsman picks out the king of a herd. Fortunately, she was prepared for the stroke, and only forty-eight men were lost. She sank in six fathoms, listing heavily to starboard, and then turning completely over, so that her keel remained visible, like the back of a huge whale, above the surface till near the end of the campaign, when she was blown up as an obstruction. On the same day as the disaster to the Triumph, a submarine also aimed at the Vengeance, the Lord Nelson (Admiral de Robeck’s flagship), and three of the French battleships. It was evident that the whole system of naval action, anchorage, and supply must be changed.
Warships and transports were rapidly withdrawn, for the most part to Mudros harbour. The Queen Elizabeth had been sent home at the first rumour of the peril, as being too valuable to risk upon a distant and secondary purpose. For the rest, the neighbouring island of Imbros, lying only from ten to twelve miles west and south-west from the landing-places on the Peninsula, afforded an open bay as roadstead, sandy, shallow, and fully exposed to the north wind. On the east side, the bay or inlet is protected by a long promontory of sand dunes and sandstone cliff, known as Cape Kephalos. On the west rise the mountains of Imbros, perhaps the most beautiful even of Ægean islands. On this part of the island only three small hamlets stand, squalid with poverty. But a mountain track over a pass in the central range leads to the chief village of Panaghía, and two other large villages, rich, as Greek islands go, in maize, vines, fig trees, and olives. About two miles beyond Panaghia lies the crumbling little port of Kastro, dominated by an ancient ruined castle, Byzantine, Venetian, or Turkish, into which slabs of white marble have been built, remnants of some Greek temple. The island appears to have small place in Greek history and literature, though an unknown staff officer, meeting me in one of the valleys, unexpectedly quoted perhaps from Sappho a passage about it or Lemnos. And, indeed, it is a haunt fit for rugged and pastoral gods rather than for polite literature, civilisation, and war. From the top of the pass the whole of the Peninsula is seen; the Straits and the plain of Troy beyond; and far in the distance the grey heights of Ida, and dim mountains of Mitylene. Looking west across a narrow water, one sees near at hand the vast red peaks of Samothrace, a natural home of savage mysteries.
G.H.Q. AT IMBROS
The arrival of hostile submarines caused the dispersal of the fleet and transports, leaving the main supply of the army to indefatigable trawlers, fleet-sweepers, and other small craft, and involving the removal of General Headquarters from sea to land. For some days the Arcadian had a merchant ship lashed each side of her for protection, but the navy refused further responsibility, and at the end of May Sir Ian and his Staff put ashore on Imbros. There was no choice, for Tenedos was largely occupied by the French; Mudros was too distant; and on the Peninsula no place could be found for General Headquarters without entanglement in the headquarters of divisions or the Anzac Corps. Kephalos Bay was nearly equidistant from both landings (about twelve miles from Anzac, and ten from Helles), with both of which it was rapidly connected by telephone and telegraph. Accordingly, the camp was pitched among the sand dunes at the base of the Kephalos promontory, looking over the bay to jagged mountains beyond. A small stone pier was built, for Headquarter use only, whence Sir Ian visited the Peninsula on a torpedo boat three or four times every week. On the opposite side of the bay the navy constructed a similar but longer pier, and sank a collier and two smaller Italian vessels to form a breakwater against the north. Thus a fairly sheltered port was made for the trawlers running daily to the Peninsula with drafts and supplies, and for those which returned to Mudros for more. Level ground, stretching over a mile south-west, was used as a store-depôt, a rest-camp, and a training-place for reinforcements. Up in the hills a camp was laid out for Turkish prisoners, who worked at road-making. Two or three miles away, above a salt marsh, and upon the south coast, were stations for R.N.A.S. aeroplanes, which numbered about 60 in all, but never counted more than 25 or 30 in action. In the later months of the expedition, General Headquarters were removed to the entrance of the deep valley leading up to the pass, because gales, dust storms, hostile aeroplanes, and want of water and shade upon the sand dunes added, as might have been foreseen, to the inevitable discomforts of war.
On May 25 (one month after the landing) Sir Ian issued a special order “to explain to officers, non-commissioned officers, and men the real significance of the calls made upon them to risk their lives, apparently for nothing better than to gain a few yards of uncultivated land.” He pointed out that “a comparatively small body of the finest troops in the world, French and British, had effected a lodgment close to the heart of a great Continental Empire, still formidable even in its decadence.” Owing to their attacks, the Government at Constantinople was gradually wearing itself out. Understating the estimates received from the agents of neutral Powers, he showed that, at the beginning, the Peninsula had been defended by 34,000 Nizam (first line) troops and 100 guns, with 41,000 half-Nizam, half-Redif (second line) on the Asiatic side. By May 12 these had been reinforced by 20,000 infantry and 21 batteries of field artillery. Since then at least 24,000 had been added from Constantinople and Smyrna. Our small expeditionary force, though so much reduced,[120] had during the month held in check nearly 130,000 of the enemy, and, at a low estimate, had inflicted on him the loss of 55,000, thus diminishing the fully trained men at his disposal. The order concluded with the words:
“Daily we make progress, and whenever the reinforcements close at hand begin to put in an appearance, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force will press forward with a fresh impulse to accomplish the greatest Imperial task ever entrusted to an army.”
HOPE OF RUSSIAN SUPPORT FADES
The task was indeed great, if not the greatest; but in London and on the fronts of war events combined to increase its difficulty. So far as the expedition was concerned, the collapse of the Russian armies under General von Hindenburg’s violent attacks in Courland, Poland, and Galicia was the event of most vital importance. In this month of May the enemy seized the port of Libau, approached Przemysl, threatened Warsaw, and drove the Russians back from the Carpathians into the basin of the Dniester. In consequence of these successive blows, it became certain that the Russian Army Corps of 43,000 men under General Istomine, which was to advance upon Constantinople from the eastern side as soon as our fleet and army dominated the Dardanelles, would be withdrawn, and the expectation of Russian assistance was abandoned. No longer threatened from the Black Sea, Turkey could now divert an equivalent force to the defence of the Peninsula, and did, in fact, divert four or five Divisions. What was worse, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, long hesitating on which side his interests lay, was encouraged by the Russian defeats to put his calculating trust upon the German alliance. Yet our diplomatists, apparently unpractised in deception and ingratitude, had fondly supposed that Bulgaria would never take arms against her Russian deliverer, and were even counting upon her co-operation in the Near East. In spite of such errors, it is currently believed that aristocratic diplomatists and Foreign Ministers are endowed with an ancestral instinct for diplomacy beyond the possible possession of people less nobly born, and for this reason, if for no other, we must indeed be thankful that our aristocracy has survived to protect us from blunders even more disastrous than their own.
In the middle of May the Salandra-Sonnino Ministry, urged on by the poet D’Annunzio and the Futurist Marinetti, declared war upon Austria; but Italy’s intervention had small influence on the position in the Dardanelles. Mr. Asquith’s deliberate overthrow of his own Cabinet, and his attempt to promote the national cause by a large Coalition Ministry, in which he might well have anticipated a hostility fatal to his leadership, had greater effect, and the effect was malign. Mr. Winston Churchill, who could be counted upon to promote the interests of the expedition as his own particular child, retired to the Duchy of Lancaster, resigning the Admiralty to Mr. Balfour’s charge. Just before his resignation his trusted adviser and opponent, Lord Fisher, had himself resigned, and refused to return, though called upon by the appeal of the whole nation, outside the industrious promoters of panic. His place as First Sea Lord was taken by Sir Henry Jackson; but the country deplored the loss to her service of a great personality. That element of luck which forms part of a successful General’s endowment was already turning against the expedition, and critics were beginning to advise retreat, foretelling disasters which the prophecy of evil often contributes to promote.[121]