"With reference to your telegram No. 8012, cipher. In accordance with your telegram No. 8711, of 11th September, I am asking General Officer Commanding, Egypt, to send here, at once, the 51st and 53rd Sikhs, as I cannot do without them. I shall be very glad to receive the Patiala Sikhs as well, as the 14th Sikhs are badly in need of a reinforcement."
Imagine had we been sent Indian Divisions for Suvla and if the New Army, Territorials and Yeomen had been sent instead to France! Each category would have given (let me put it mildly) double value. The heat, the thirst, the scrub, the snipers, all so disconcerting to our fresh contingents would have been commonplaces of frontier warfare to our Indian troops. See what the handful with us here have achieved. Yet in vain do I write and cable my personal entreaties to Beauchamp Duff, the all-powerful Commander-in-Chief in India, and a very old friend, for two hundred Sikhs: first he offers me a couple of hundred Brahmins wherewith to fill the ranks of the famous 14th Sikhs and then, when I hesitate before a proposal which appears monstrous, withdraws even that offer. Again, I beg for 200 recruits for the 14th, saying I will train them myself; I am refused—very politely and at great length—refused, because it would be "politically inexpedient" to send them. In vain do we try to get our own two battalions through the Egyptian morass; they are going to stick and do sentry go over nothing. Why; were there any real trouble in Egypt I could land a whole Division there within four and a half days!
As for the New Army and Territorials, gradually entered with their veteran comrades in the trenches of France and Flanders, they too would have had more familiar surroundings and fairer play—as everyone here now recognizes, too late!
The crystals of history take shape while we fight. As in a glass darkly the outlines begin to appear to anyone who has a moment wherein to peer beyond the end of the war. Everything has gone by the contrary. Our people have done as well as their neighbours, and better, with their imaginations, whether in diplomacy, strategy or tactics. Where the Gibbon or Plutarch who survives the War Office Censor is going to damn their reputations into heaps is over their failure in business commonsense. Under their noses, parts of their system, were two great live organisms; the Indian Army and the Territorial Force. From the moment the mobilization flag was dropped it was up to them to work tooth and nail to treble or quadruple these sound, vigorous existing entities. What have they done? After a year of war, the Indian Army and the Territorial Army are staggering on their last legs instead of being the best part of our forces. Compare the East Lanes Division, who had the good fortune to escape from War Office clutches by getting right out to Egypt at the outbreak of the war, with Territorial Divisions which have remained since then under the eyes and in the hands of the War Office!
The Turks are still withdrawing troops from the Caucasus front to ours. Good for the Russians. Whilst I was at Helles, the enemy guns started a heavy bombardment along the whole of our nine mile front from the right of Anzac to the left of Suvla; a heavy musketry fire also along the Turkish trenches. An attempt was then made to launch infantry assaults against our lines, but these fizzled out, the rank and file having no heart for the job. There is no doubt the Turks have had enough of it. They can still hold on, but that's about all.
19th September, 1915. Imbros. News in to say that the Turkish rank and file at Suvla are not equal to any attack. At the end of the bombardment yesterday a few officers jumped on to the parapet and waved their swords; the men shouted from the safety of the trenches—that was all. Alec McGrigor arrived from Alexandria as A.D.C. vice Brodrick. At 9 p.m. an enemy aeroplane dropped a couple of bombs. Very jolly having Birdie here. He says that his latest returns show a daily sick list of ten per battalion of British or Australian troops and of one per battalion of Indian troops.
20th September, 1915. Imbros. Nothing doing. There is still scope for action at Suvla but we can't get them to take up any little schemes we may suggest. Shell shortage is the invariable answer. At 5 p.m. Birdie and Anglesey went back to Anzac.
21st September, 1915. Imbros. Further development of the Sikh comedy:—Maxwell cables, "No. 1883 E. Your No. M.F. 648. I have received no orders to send these regiments. According to my last information from the War Office they were to remain here, as I require them, but that I should send you a double company of Patiala Sikhs to reinforce the 14th Sikhs."
I have cabled this on to the War Office, saying, "As I understand it, your No. 8012 of 18th September does not mean that the War Office have withdrawn the offer of these two regiments, which are urgently required here. I therefore hope that you will give early authority to General Officer Commanding, Egypt, to send them on to Mediterranean Expeditionary Force."