While we were away my Staff got aboard the destroyer Colne and steamed in her to the mouth of the Dardanelles. There the whole precious load of red tabs transshipped to H.M.S. Triumph (Captain Fitzmaurice), who forthwith took up her station opposite Morto Bay and began firing salvos with her 6-inch guns at the trenches on the face of the hill. At first the Staff watched the show with much enjoyment from the bridge, but when howitzers from the Asiatic side began to lob shell over the ship, the Captain hustled them all into the conning tower. The Turks seem to have shot pretty straight. The first three fell fifty yards short of the ship; the fourth shell about twenty yards over her. The next three got home. One cut plumb through the bridge (where all my brains had been playing about two minutes previously) and burst on the deck just outside the conning tower. Some cordite cartridges were lying outside of it and these went off with a great flare. Another struck the funnel and the third came in on the waterline. Fifteen more shells were then fired with just a little bit too much elevation and passed over. Only two men were wounded,—fractured legs. Captain Fitzmaurice now decided that honour and dignity were satisfied and so fell back slowly towards Cape Helles to try the effect of his guns on the barbed wire entanglements. A good deal of ammunition was expended but only one hit on the entanglement was registered, and that did not seem to do any harm. The fire was described to me as inaccurate. The fact is, as was agreed between the two services at Malta, the whole principle of naval gunnery is different from the principles of garrison or field artillery shooting. Before they will be much good at landmarks, the sailors will have to take lessons in the art.
Passed a very interesting evening, every one excited, I with my aeroplane reports; the Staff with the powder they had smelt.
Two of the Australian Commanding Officers dined and I showed them the aerial photographs of the enemy trenches, etc. The face of one of them grew very long; so long, in fact, that I feared he was afraid; for I own these photos are frightening. So I said, "You don't seem to like the look of that barbed wire, Colonel?" To which he replied, "I was worrying how and where I would feed and water the prisoners."
16th April, 1915. S.S. "Arcadian." Lemnos. Spent the forenoon in interviews beginning at 10 a.m. with de Robeck and Mr. Fitzmaurice, late dragoman at the Embassy at Constantinople. Mr. Fitzmaurice says the Turks will put up a great fight at the Dardanelles. They had believed in the British Navy, and, a month ago, they were shaking in their shoes. But they had not believed in the British Army or that a body so infinitely small would be so saucy as to attack them on their own chosen ground. Even now, he says, they can hardly credit their spies, or their eyes, and it ought to be easy enough to make them think all this is a blind, and that we are really going to Smyrna or Adramiti. They are fond of saying, "If the English are fools enough to enter our mouth we only have to close it." Enver especially brags he will make very short work with us if we set foot so near to the heart of his Empire, and gives it out that the whole of us will be marching through the streets of Constantinople, not as conquerors, but as prisoners, within a week from the date of our making the attempt. All the same, despite this bragging, the Turks realise that if we were to get the Fleet through the Narrows; or, if it were to force its own way through whilst we absorb the attention of their mobile guns, the game would be up. So they are straining every nerve to be ready for anything. The moral of all these rather contradictory remarks is just what I have said time and again since South Africa. The fact that war has become a highly scientific business should not blind us to the other fact that its roots still draw their nutriment from primitive feelings and methods; the feelings and methods of boy scouts and Red Indians. It is a huge handicap to us here that our great men keep all their tricks for their political friends and have none to spare for their natural enemies. There has been very little attempt to disguise our aims in England, and Maxwell and McMahon in Egypt have allowed their Press to report every arrival of French and British troops, and to announce openly that we are about to attack at Gallipoli. I have protested and reported the matter to K. but nothing in the strategic sphere can be done now although, in the tactical sphere, we have several deceptions ready for them.
Colonel Napier, Military Attaché at Sofia, and Braithwaite came in after these pseudo-secrets had been discussed and joined in the conversation. I doubt whether either Fitzmaurice or Napier have solid information as to what is in front of us, and their yarns about Balkan politics are neither here nor there. John Bull is quite out of his depth in the defiles of the Balkans. With just so much pull over the bulk of my compatriots as has been given me by my having spent a little time with their Armies, I may say that the Balkan nations loathe and mistrust one another to so great a degree that it is sheer waste of time to think of roping them all in on our side, as Fitzmaurice and Napier seem to propose. We may get Greece to join us, and Russia may get Roumania to join her—if we win here—but then we make an enemy of Bulgaria, and vice versa. If they will unearth my 1909 report at the War Office they will see that, at that time, one Bulgarian Battalion of Infantry was worth two Battalions of Roumanian Infantry—which may be a help to them in making their choice. The Balkan problem is so intricate that it must be simply handled. The simple thing is to pay your money and pick the best card, knowing you can't have a full hand. So let us have no more beating about the bush and may we be inspired to make use of the big boom this Expedition has given to Great Britain in the Balkans to pick out a partner straightway.
Birdie came later and we took stock together of ways and means. We see eye to eye now on every point. Just before lunch we heard the transport Manitou had been attacked by a Turkish torpedo boat from Smyrna. The first wireless came in saying the enemy had made a bad shot and only a few men had been drowned lowering the boats. Admiral Rosy Wemyss and Hope, the Flag-Captain, of the Q.E. were my guests and naturally they were greatly perturbed. Late in the evening we heard that the Turkish T.B. had been chased by our destroyers and had run ashore on a Greek Island where she was destroyed (international laws notwithstanding) by our landing parties.
At 7.30 p.m. Hunter-Weston came along and I had the best part of an hour with him.
17th April, 1915. S.S. "Arcadian." Lemnos. Hunter-Weston came over early to finish off business left undone last night. Admiral Wemyss also took part in our discussions over the landing. Picture puzzles are child's play compared with this game of working an unheard of number of craft to and fro, in and out, of little bits of beaches. At mid-day the Manitou steamed into harbour and Colonel Peel, Commander of the troops, came on board and reported fully to me about the attack by the Turkish torpedo boat. The Turks seem to have behaved quite decently giving our men time to get into their boats and steaming some distance off whilst they did so. During the interval the Turks must have got wind of British warships, for they rushed back in a great hurry and fired torpedoes at so short a range that they passed under the ship. Very exciting, we were told, watching them dart beneath the keel through the crystal clear water. I can well believe it.
Went ashore in the afternoon to watch the Australian Artillery embark. Spoke to a lot of the men, some of whom had met me during my tour through Australia last year.
General Paris came to see me this evening.