CHAPTER IX
SUBMARINES
22nd May, 1915. H.M.T. "Arcadian." News in to say that yesterday, whilst Herbert was here to take orders about an armistice, some sort of an informal parley actually took place. Both sides suddenly got panic stricken, thinking the others were treacherous, and fire was opened, some stretcher bearers being killed. Nothing else was to be expected when things are done in this casual and unauthorized way. I felt very much annoyed, but Aubrey Herbert was still on board and I saw him before breakfast and told him Walker seemed to have taken too much upon himself parleying with the Turks and that Birdwood must now make this clear to everyone for future guidance. Although Aubrey Herbert is excessively unorthodox he quite sees that confabs with enemies must be carried out according to Cocker.
After breakfast landed at Cape Helles. Inspected the detachment of the Works Department of the Egyptian Army as it was on its way to the French Headquarters. Colonel Micklem was in charge. At Sedd-el-Bahr lunched with Gouraud and his Staff. General Bailloud rode up just as I was about to enter the porch of the old Fort. He was in two minds whether or not to embrace me, being in very high feather, his men having this morning carried the Haricot redoubt overlooking the Kereves Dere. At lunch he was the greatest possible fun, bubbling over with jokes and witty sallies. Just as we were finishing, news came through the telephone that Bailloud's Brigade had been driven in by a big Turkish counter-attack, with a loss of 400 men and some first class officers. Most of us showed signs, I will not say of being rattled, but of having stumbled against a rattlesnake. Gouraud remained unaffectedly in possession of himself as host of a lunch party. He said, "We will not take the trenches by not taking the coffee. Let us drink it first, and then we will consider." So we drank our coffee; lit our smokes, and afterwards Gouraud, through Girodon, issued his orders in the most calm and matter-of-fact way. He declares the redoubt will be in our hands again to-morrow.
Our lunch was to furnish us with yet another landmark for bad luck. As we were leaving, a message came in to say that an enemy submarine had been sighted off Gaba Tepe. The fresh imprint of a tiger's paw upon the pathway gives the same sort of feel to the Indian herdsman. Tall stories from neighbouring villages have been going the round for weeks, only half-believed, but here is the very mark of the beast; the horror has suddenly taken shape. He mutters the name of God, wondering what eyes may even now be watching his every movement; he wonders whose turn will come first—and when—and where. This was the sort of effect of the wireless and in a twinkling every transport round the coast was steering full steam to Imbros. In less than no time we saw a regatta of skedaddling ships. So dies the invasion of England bogey which, from first to last, has wrought us an infinity of harm. Born and bred of mistrust of our own magnificent Navy, it has led soldiers into heresy after fallacy and fallacy after heresy until now it is the cause of my Divisions here being hardly larger than Brigades, whilst the men who might have filled them are "busy" guarding London! If one rumoured submarine can put the fear of the Lord into British transports how are German or any other transports going to face up to a hundred British submarines? The theory of the War Office has struggled with the theory of the Admiralty for the past five years: now there is nothing left of the War Office theory; no more than is left of a soap bubble when you strike it with a battleaxe. Some other stimulus to our Territorial recruiting than the fear of invasion will have to be invented in future.
After lunch went to the Headquarters of the 29th Division where all the British Divisional Generals had assembled together to meet me. The same story everywhere—lack of men, meaning extra work—which again means sickness and still greater lack of men. On my return found a letter from the Turkish Commander-in-Chief giving his "full consent" to the armistice he himself had asked me for! A save-face document, no doubt: the wounded are all Turks as our men did not leave their trenches on the 19th; the dead, also, I am glad to say, almost entirely Turks; but anyway, one need not be too punctilious where it is a matter of giving decent burial to so many men.
Grand Quartier Général de la 5me Armée
Ottomane.
le 22 mai 1915.
"Excellence!
"J'ai l'honneur d'informer Votre Excellence que les propositions concernant la conclusion d'un armistice pour enterrer les morts et secourir les blessés des deux parties adverses, ont trouvé mon plein consentement—et que seule nos sentiments d'humanité nous y ont déterminés.
"J'ai investi le lieutenant-colonel Fahreddin du pouvoir de signer en mon nom.