"Maxwell wires that you are taking 300 officers and 5,000 men of his mounted troops. I do not quite understand why you require Egyptian Garrison troops while you have the LIIIrd Division at Alexandria, and the LIVth, the last six battalions of which are arriving in five or six days, on the Aquitania.
"When I placed the Egyptian Garrison at your disposal to reinforce at the Dardanelles in case of necessity, Maxwell pointed out that Egypt would be left very short, and I replied that you would only require them in case of emergency for a short time, and that the risk must be run. I did not contemplate, however, that you would take troops from the Egyptian Garrison until those sent specially for you were exhausted. How long will you require Maxwell's troops, and where do you intend to send them? They should only be removed from Egypt for actual operations and for the shortest possible time."
We may read this cable wrong but it seems to us to embody a topsy-turvy tactic! To wait till one part of your forces are killed off (for that is the plain English of "exhausted") before you bring up the other part of your forces.
It is not easy to know what to do. The very best we can do, it sometimes seems to me, is to keep quiet rather than add one iota to the anxieties of people staggering under a load of responsibilities and cares. In the good old days the Gordons fought in two decisive battles in two Continents within a few months and no one worried the War Office about drafts! The 92nd carried on—had to carry on; they fell to quarter strength—still they were the Gordons and they carried on, just as if they counted a thousand rifles in their ranks. Now, I am quite prepared to do that to-day—if that is the policy. If that were the policy; not one grouse or grumble should ever cross my lips. But that is not the policy. Press and People believe a Division is a unit made up in scientific proportions of different branches and numbering a certain number of rifles. They are told so; the War Office keep telling them so; they believe it, and, in fact, it is an absolute necessity of this modern trench war that it should be so. Although the Gordons got no drafts between the battle of Kandahar and the battle of Majuba Hill, they got six months' rest; which was even better. In those days, apart from sieges, a battle was an event, here it is the rest or respite that is an event. Even British soldiers can't stick day and night fighting for ever. The attack spirit begins to ebb unless it is fed with fresh blood. Whether K.'s mind, big with broad views, grasps this new factor with which he has never himself come into personal contact, God knows. But for his sake, every bit as much as for my own, it is up to me to keep hammering, hammering, hammering at drafts, drafts, drafts.
Dined with the ever hospitable and kind hearted de Robeck on Triad. The Navy are still divided. Some there are who would wish me to urge the Admiral to play first fiddle in the coming attack. This I will not do. I have neither the data nor the technical knowledge which would justify me to my conscience in doing so.
4th August, 1915. Imbros. Have been out seeing the New Army at work. Some of the XIth Division were practising boat work in the evening and afterwards a Brigade started upon a night march into the mountains. The men are fit, although just beginning to be infected with the Eastern Mediterranean stomach trouble; i.e., the so-called cholera, which saved Constantinople from the Bulgarians in the last war.
5th August, 1915. Imbros. The day so longed for is very near now. O that it had come at the period of our victories! But there is time enough still, and the first moves of the plan are working smooth as oiled machinery. For the past few nights there has been steady flow into Anzac of troops, including a Division of the New Army. This has taken place, without any kind of hitch, under the very noses of the Turkish Army who have no inkling of the manœuvre—as yet! The Navy are helping us admirably here with their organization and good sea discipline. Also, from what they tell me, Shaw and the 13th Division of the New Army are playing up with the clockwork regularity of veterans. All this marks us up many points to the good, before even the flag drops. For, given the fine troops we have, the prime factors of the whole conception; the factors by which it stands or falls; are:—
(1) Our success in hoodwinking the Turks; i.e., surprise.