“What was the origin of it all, no one who knows the Turk would guess. A salutation to the dawn of Constitution Day; panic at the imaginary appearance of ghostly bayonets fixed for the charge; the instinct which impels a man to fire a rifle when another fires? In lately captured orders, the Turks were seriously warned against wasting ammunition, and now, in a quarter of an hour, they had expended thousands of rounds upon sandbags; one man killed and two slightly wounded. I afterwards learnt that the Anzacs fired off only two belts (500 rounds) of machine-gun, and 74 rounds of rifle.
“When the storm subsided, we and the Turkish snipers settled down again to normal relations, and all was star-lit peace. At half-past three the phantom of false dawn died into daylight, and the men who had been ‘standing to’ all night sank to sleep at the bottom of the trenches. Picking my way over their splendid forms, I climbed down the cliffs again to my cavern beside the sea. I was told that, as an attack was expected that night (spies so reported), not a single man in the Anzac force had gone sick.”
That was a special occasion, but no matter where one slept at Anzac, the air overhead wailed ceaselessly with bullets, and from time to time shrapnel burst or heavy shell exploded, especially around headquarters close to the beach in the centre of Anzac Cove. There, up a short flight of steps, General Birdwood had his dug-out, and there during the night of July 27, Lieutenant B. W. Onslow (11th K.E.O. Lancers), the General’s A.D.C., an excellent soldier, sleeping on the top of his dug-out owing to the intense heat, was killed instantly as he slept.
THE ARAGON
At the advanced base in Mudros harbour (the third vital point in the expedition at this time), an important change in command was effected in the middle of this month. Throughout the first weeks of fighting and organisation, this base was left destitute of an Inspector-General of Communications. The heavy and complicated work involved, especially in the transhipment of all drafts and supplies and ammunition from the ordinary transports to trawlers and small craft after the danger of submarines was reported, fell upon the Principal Naval Transport Officer (Admiral Phillimore) and the Quartermaster-General (Brigadier-General S. H. Winter). In June, Major-General Wallace was appointed to the office, but his long experience as an executive officer in India had not specially qualified him for a peculiarly difficult piece of administrative work, and complaints arose of the confusion and delay on board the s.s. Aragon, assigned to him as headquarters. Hitherto this liner (hired at great cost from the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company) had served as offices for the Principal Naval Transport Officer, and as the General Post Office. The new Staff of enormous size was now added, and the ship also became a kind of clearing-house or depôt for officers passing to and fro. She acquired an evil name owing to frequent loss of parcels from home for officers and men upon the Peninsula. Unhappily, there was no question about the losses; but this unpardonable crime against the fighting men, who were literally dying for want of variety and small pleasures in food, may have been committed at other points of the postal service. More definite, though less serious, was the charge of luxury on board. Certainly, to any one coming fresh from the dug-outs, dust storms, monotonous rations, and perpetual risks of the Peninsula, the Aragon was like an Enchanted Isle. All who have campaigned in a desert land know the first physical delight of getting on board a well-equipped vessel—the plenty and variety of food, the clean cooking, the iced drinks, tablecloths for dinner, sheets in the bunks, a good chance of washing, and baths. To the campaigning soldier, those are comforts beyond the dreams of luxury, but in ordinary life the most ascetic of saints does not renounce them all as necessarily sinful. Perhaps it was the arbitrary exclusion of many passing officers from the delights of a real dinner and other pleasurable contrasts to life at the front which made the Aragon a byword, as though she were “a sink of iniquity”; and from the same contrasts arose the report that at the end of the campaign she was discovered to be aground upon empty bottles, as upon a coral reef. This appears unlikely, since the harbour took battleships with ease, to say nothing of the Aquitania and the largest liners afloat.[140]
In the first half of July, Major-General Altham (Royal Scots), a Christ Church, Oxford, man, who served as Chief Intelligence Officer under Sir George White in Ladysmith, succeeded as Inspector-General of Communications, and he also made his headquarters in the Aragon. The expense of maintaining the ship was estimated at £300 a day, and proposals were made for removing the headquarters to land in order to save money. But on the east side of the harbour stood the dusty and unwholesome town or village of Mudros, together with various camps, and the western shore and rising slopes behind it were covered with hospitals, Australian, Irish-Canadian (run by women), and others, besides rest-camps beyond. It was also thought necessary to remain on the water in order to keep touch with the naval organisation under direction of the flagship Europa (Admiral Wemyss), and this, together with the absence of deep-water piers and wharves, was probably the decisive reason. And as to expense, the saving of some £9000 a month has, unfortunately, never been regarded as particularly praiseworthy in this war. The Minnetonka (Atlantic Transport Company) served as headquarters of the Ordnance Services and depôt for the supply of engineering implements, tools, and ammunition, which, however, was not usually unloaded from the smaller craft. Brigadier-General R. W. M. Jackson, Director of Ordnance Services, worked sometimes at Mudros, sometimes at the base in Alexandria. Brigadier-General F. W. B. Koe, Director of Supplies and Transports, did the same.
THE SATURNIA
In spite of the lamentable experiences at the first landings, the arrangements for the removal of the wounded from the Peninsula were still inadequate. The four original hospital ships were present—two military and two lent by the navy—each adapted to receive about 500 men. The remainder of the wounded had to be put on transports not specially prepared, and not protected by The Hague Convention from attack. Before new hospital ships arrived (about fifty at the end), this lack of accommodation caused many deaths and much suffering after a battle on the Peninsula. A particular instance, much spoken of and strongly condemned at the time, was the case of the transport Saturnia, which appeared at Mudros after the attack of June 28 with about 700 on board, crowded haphazard into any corner, in much confusion, and so neglected that their wounds were in many cases putrefying and full of maggots. The transport, having been used for horses and mules, was also in a filthy and stinking condition. Naval and military surgeons were ordered to assist. Among the foremost was Staff-Surgeon Levick of the cruiser Bacchante (Captain Boyle), who had accompanied Captain Scott on the Antarctic expedition, and was the author of an excellent scientific monograph on penguins. Supported by Surgeon Lorrimer of the same ship, and a priest, Father Barry, he remained on board four days and nights, constantly operating. But, for want of adequate assistance, and owing to the lack of bandages, dressings, and instruments, comparatively little could be effected, and many died who might have recovered with proper care.
Such incidents were but further evidences of the general confusion due to an unexpected war, and of the secondary position assigned to the Dardanelles in the Cabinet’s strategy. Prompted, perhaps, by the depressing reports which had lately reached them, the “Dardanelles Committee” of the Cabinet, as the former “War Council” was called after June,[141] resolved to institute an inquiry for themselves. On the Peninsula it was widely rumoured that Mr. Winston Churchill was coming, and variegated opinions were expressed. Perhaps it would have been well if he had come; for he, at all events, realised the vital importance of the expedition in relation to the war as a whole. Ultimately, Colonel Maurice Hankey, Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence since 1912, came alone—a man of high reputation for intelligence and capacity. He arrived in the last week of July, and stayed till August 20, but before his arrival the Cabinet had already resolved upon sending out such reinforcements as they considered sufficient to comply with Sir Ian’s demands.
