5th July, 1915. Imbros. Spent a long, hot day hanging at the end of the wire. Heavy firing on the Peninsula last night under cover of which the Turks at dawn made, or tried to make, a grand, concerted attack. Not a soul in England, outside the Ordnance, realizes, I believe, that barring the guns of the 29th Division and the few guns of the Anzacs, our field artillery consists of the old 15-prs., relics of South Africa, and of 5-inch hows., some of them Omdurman veterans. Quite a number of these guns are already unserviceable and, in the 42nd Division, to keep one and a half batteries fully gunned, we have had to use up every piece in the Brigade. The surplus personnel are thus wasted. To take on new Skoda or Krupp guns with these short-range veterans is rough on the gunners. Still, but for the Territorial Force we should have nothing at all, and but for those guns to-day some of the enemy might have got home.
A sort of professional gossip turned up to-day from G.H.Q. France. We do not seem to be so popular as we deserve to be in la belle France! But what I would plead were I only able to get at Joffre and French is that we are "such a little one." Were we all to be set down in the West to-morrow with our shattered, torn formations, they'd put us back into reserve for a month's rest and training. As for the guns, they'd scrap the lot. They don't want ancient 15-prs. and 5-inch hows. out there. They picture us feasting upon their munitions, but half of what we use they would not touch with a barge pole and, of the good stuff, one Division in France will fire away in one day what would serve to take the Peninsula.
Braithwaite has a letter from the D.M.I. telling him that 5,000 Russians sailed from Vladivostock on the 1st inst. to join us here. One Regiment of four Battalions plus one Sotnia of Cossacks. A reinforcement of 5,000 stout soldiers tumbling out of the skies! Russians placed here are worth twice their number elsewhere, not only because we need rifles so badly, but because of the moral effect their presence should have in the Balkans.
This little vodka pick-me-up has come in the nick of time to hearten me against the tenor of the news of to-day which is splendid indeed in one sense; ominous in another. The Turks are being heavily reinforced. All the enemy troops who made the big attack last night were fresh arrivals from Adrianople. I do not grumble at the attack (on the contrary we like it), but at the reason they had for making it, which is that two fresh Divisions, newly arrived, asked leave to show their muscle by driving us into the sea. Full details are only just in. The biggest bombardment took place at Anzac. A Turkish battleship joined in from the Hellespont, dropping about twenty 11.2-inch shells into our lines. At Helles, all night, the Turks blazed away from their trenches. At 4 a.m. they opened fire on our trenches and beaches with every gun they could bring to bear from Asia or Achi Baba. Their Asiatic Batteries alone fired 1,900 rounds, of which 700 fell on Lancashire Landing. At least 5,000 shell were loosed off on to Helles. A lot of the stuff was 6-inch and over. The bombardment was very wild and seemed almost unaimed. Soon after 4 a.m. very heavy columns of Turks tried to emerge from the Ravine against the left of the 29th Division. "It wanted to be the hell of a great attack," as one of the witnesses, a moderate spoken young gentleman, states. When the Commanders saw what was impending they sent messages to Simpson-Baikie begging him to send some 4.5 H.E. shell into the Ravine which was beginning to overflow. He was adamant. He had only a few rounds of H.E. and he would not spend them, feeling sure his 18 prs. with their shrapnel were masters of the field. At 6 a.m. out came the Turks, not in lines, but just like a swarm of bees. Our fellows never saw the like and began to wonder whenever they were going to stop, and what on earth could stop them! Thousands of Turks in a bunch, so the boys say, swarmed out of their trenches and the Gully Ravine. Well, they were stopped dead. There they lie, still. The guns ate the life out of them.
It was our central group of artillery who did it. As that big oblong crowd of Turks showed their left flank to Baikie's nine batteries they were swept in enfilade by shrapnel. The fall of the shell was corrected by the two young R.A. subalterns at the front, neither of whom would observe in the usual way through his periscope. They looked over the parapet because that method was more sure and quick, and the stress of the battle was great. There is a rumour that both were shot through the head: I pray it may be but a rumour. Out of all these Turks some thirty only reached our parapets. The sudden destruction which befell them was due in the main to the devotion of these two young heroes. At 7.30 a.m. the Turks tried to storm again. Some of them got in amongst the Royal Naval Division, who brought up their own supports and killed 300, driving out the rest. Ninety dead Turks are laid out on their parapet. Another, later, enemy effort against the right of the 29th Division was clean wiped out. 150 Turks are dead there. But it is on the far crestline they lie thick.
Every one of these attacking Turks were fresh—from Adrianople! Full of fight as compared with their thrice beaten brethren. If the Turks are given time to swap troops in the middle of fighting, we can't really tell how we stand. Still; they are not now as fresh as they were. They have lost a terrible lot of men since the 28th. The big Ravine and all the small nullahs are chock-a-block with corpses. Their casualties in these past few days are put at very high figures by both Birdie and H.W. and it is probable that 5,000 are actually lying dead on the ground. I have on my table a statement made by de Lisle; endorsed by Hunter-Weston and dated 4th instant, saying that 1,200 Turkish dead can be counted corpse by corpse from the left front. The actual numbers de Lisle estimates as between 2,000 and 3,000. Now we have to-day's losses to throw in. The Turks are burning their candle fast at the Anzac as well as the Helles end. Ten days of this and they are finished.[25]
Naturally, my mind dwells happily just now upon our incoming New Army formations. Yet every now and then I feel compelled to look back to regret the lack of systematic flow of drafts and munitions which have turned our fine victory of the 28th into a pyrrhic instead of a fruitful affair. When Pyrrhus gained his battle over the Romans and exclaimed, "One more such victory and I am done in," or words to that effect, he had no organized system of depots behind him from which the bloody gaps in his ranks could be filled. A couple of thousand years have now passed and we are still as unscientific as Pyrrhus. A splendid expeditionary force sails away; invades an Empire, storms the outworks and in doing so knocks itself to bits. Then a second expeditionary force is sent, but that would have been unnecessary had any sort of arrangement been thought out for promptly replacing first wastages in men and in shell.
6th July, 1915. From early morning till 5 p.m. stuck as persistently to my desk as the flies stuck persistently to me. After tea went riding with Maitland. Then with Pollen to dine on board H.M.S. Triad. The two Territorial Divisions are coming. What with them and the Rooskies we ought to get a move on this time. Discoursed small craft with the Admiral. The French hate the overseas fire—small blame to them—and Bailloud agrees with his predecessor Gouraud in thinking that one man hit in the back from Asia affects the moral of his comrades as badly as half a dozen bowled over by the enemy facing them. The Admiral's idea of landing from Tenedos would help us here, but it is admitted on all hands now that the Turks have pushed on with their Asiatic defences, and it is too much to ask of either the New Army or of the Territorials that they should start off with a terrible landing.
7th July, 1915. No escape from the steadily rising flood of letters and files,—none from the swarms of filthy flies. General Bailloud and Colonel Piépape (Chief of Staff) came across with Major Bertier in a French torpedo boat to see me. They stayed about an hour. Bailloud's main object was to get me to put off the attack planned by General Gouraud for to-morrow. Gouraud has worked out everything, and I greatly hoped in the then state of the Turks the French would have done a very good advance on our right. The arrival of these fresh Turkish Divisions from Adrianople does make a difference. Still, I am sorry the attack is not to come off. Girodon is a heavy loss to Bailloud. Piépape has never been a General Staff Officer before; by training, bent of mind and experience he is an administrator. He is very much depressed by the loss of the 2,000 quarts of wine by the Asiatic shell. Since Gouraud and Girodon have left them the French seem to be less confident. When Bailloud entered our Mess he said, in the presence of four or five young Officers, "If the Asiatic side of the Straits is not held by us within fifteen days our whole force is voué à la destruction." He meant it as a jest, but when those who prophesy destruction are gros bonnets; big wigs; it needs no miracle to make them come off—I don't mean the wigs but the prophecies. Fortunately, Bailloud soon made a cheerier class of joke and wound up by inviting me to dine with him in an extra chic restaurant at Constantinople.
Have told K. plainly that the employment of an ordinary executive soldier as Boss of so gigantic a business as Mudros is suicidal—no less. Heaven knows K. himself had his work cut out when he ran the communications during his advance upon Khartoum. Heaven knows I myself had a hard enough job when I became responsible for feeding our troops at Chitral, two hundred miles into the heart of the Himalayas from the base at Nowshera. Breaking bulk at every stage—it was heart-breaking. First the railway, then the bullock cart, the camel, the mules—till, at the Larram Pass we got down to the donkey. But here we have to break bulk from big ships to small craft; to send our stuff not to one but to several landings, to run the show with a mixed staff of Naval and Military Officers. No, give me deserts or precipices,—anything fixed and solid is better than this capricious, ever-changing sea. The problem is a real puzzler, demanding experience, energy, good temper as well as the power of entering into the point of view of sailors as well as soldiers, and of being (mentally) in at least three places at once—