The chief trouble in making plans for the coming attack lies in the want of cover on, and for a mile inland of, the Suvla Bay beaches. The whole stretch of the flat land immediately East and South of the Bay lies open to the Turkish gunners. This is no longer a serious drawback if the men are holding lines of trenches. But when the trench system is not yet in working order, and they want to deploy, then it is so awkward a factor that I would have been prepared to turn the whole battle into a night attack. The others were not for it. They thought that the troops were not highly enough trained and had lost too many officers to be able to find their way over this country in the darkness. They are in immediate touch with the men: I am not.
Lindley asked if he might walk with me to the Beach, and on the way down he told me frankly his Division had gone to pieces and that he did not feel it in himself to pull it together again. Very fine of him to make a clean breast of it, I thought, and said so: also advised him to put what he had told me into writing to de Lisle, when we will relieve him and I promised for my part, to try and fit him with some honourable but less onerous job.
On Hammersley's report, Sitwell, Brigadier of the 34th Brigade, 11th Division, has just been relieved of his command.
19th August, 1915. Imbros. Sat sweating here, literally and metaphorically, from morn till dewy eve. King's Messenger left in the evening. Altham came over from Mudros. He stays to-night and we will work together to-morrow when the mails are off my mind.
Hankey dined and left with the King's Messenger by the Imogene. He has been a real help. The Staff has never quite cottoned to the chief among us takin' notes, but that is, I think, from a notion that it is not loyal to Lord K. to press the P.M.'s P.S. too closely to their bosom. From my personal standpoint, it will be worth anything to us if, amidst the flood of false gossip pouring out by this very mail to our Dardanelles Committee, to the Press, to Egypt and to London Drawing Rooms, we have sticking up out of it, even one little rock in the shape of an eye-witness.
A shocking aeroplane smash up within a few yards of us. A brilliant young Officer (Captain Collet of the R.F.C.) killed outright and three men badly hurt.
20th August, 1915. Stayed in my tent keeping an eye on to-morrow. Put through a lot with Altham. Am pressing him to hurry up with his canteens at Helles, Anzac and Suvla. In May I cabled the Q.M.G. begging him either to let me run a canteen on the lines of the South African Field Force Canteen, myself; or, to run it from home, himself; or, to put the business into the hands of some private firm like the Mess and Canteen Company, or Lipton's, or Harrods or anything he liked. In South Africa we could often buy something. In France our troops can buy anything. Here, had they each the purse of Fortunatus, they could buy nothing. A matter this, I won't say of life and death, but of sickness and health. Now, after three months without change of diet, the first canteen ship is about due. A mere flea bite of £10,000 worth. I am sending the whole of it to the Anzacs to whom it will hardly be more use than a bun is to a she bear. Only yesterday a letter came in from Birdie telling me that the doctors all say that the sameness of the food is making the men sick. The rations are A.1., but his men now loathe the very look of them after having had nothing else for three months. Birdie says, "If we could only get this wretched canteen ship along, and if, when she comes she contains anything like condiments to let them buy freely from her, I believe it would make all the difference in the world. But the fact remains that at present we cannot count on anything like a big effort from the men who have been here all these months."
De Robeck came over at 4 p.m., by formal appointment, to talk business, and deadly serious business at that! He has heard, by cable I suppose, that the people at home will see him through if he sees his way to strike a blow with the Fleet. He takes this as a pretty strong hint to push through, or, to make some sort of a battleship attack to support us. De Robeck knows that when the Fleet goes in our fighting strength goes up. But he can gauge, as I cannot, the dangers the Fleet will thereby incur. Every personal motive urges me to urge him on. But I have no right to shove my oar in—no right at all—until I can say that we are done unless the Fleet do make an attack. Can I say so? No; if we get the drafts and munitions we can still open the Straits on our own and without calling on the sister Service for further sacrifice. So I fell back on first principles and said he must attack if he thought it right from the naval point of view but that we soldiers did not call for succour or ask him to do anything desperate: "You know how we stand," I said; "do what is right from the naval point of view and as to what is right from that point of view, I am no judge."
The Admiral went away: I have been no help to him but I can't help it.
Hardly had he gone when Braithwaite (who had heard what was in the wind by a side wind) came and besought me to try and induce the Admiral to slip his battleships at the Straits. All the younger men of war are dying to have a dash, he said. That's as it may be but my mind is clear. If a sailor on land is a fish out of water, a soldier at sea is like a game cock in a duckpond. When de Robeck said on March 22nd he wanted the help of the whole Army that was quite in order. He would not have been in order—at least, I don't think so—had he said in what manner he wanted the Army to act after it had got ashore. We are being helped now by the Navy; daily, hourly: we could not exist without the Fleet; but it is not for me to say I think the battleships should or should not take chances of mines and torpedoes.