All this fighting proved clearly that the Turks, with all their power of fresh men, their closeness to their reserves, and their superior positions, could not beat us from what we had secured, nor keep us from securing more. Our advance into the Peninsula, though slow and paid for with much life, was sure and becoming less slow. What we had won we had fought hard for and never ceased to fight hard for, but we had won it and could hold it, and with increasing speed add to it, and the Turks knew this as well as we did. But early in May something happened which had a profound result upon the course of the operations. It is necessary to write of it at length, if only to show the reader that this Dardanelles Campaign was not a war in itself, but a part of a war involving most of Europe and half of Asia, and that, that being so, it was affected by events in other parts of the war, as deeply as it affected those parts in turn by its own events.
No one, of the many who spoke to me about the campaign, knew or understood that the campaign, as planned, was not to be, solely, a French and English venture, but (in its later stages) a double attack upon the Turkish power, by ourselves, on the Peninsula and the Hellespont, and by the Russians, on the shores of the Black Sea. The double attack, threatening Turkey at the heart, was designed to force the Turks to divide their strength, and, by causing uneasiness among the citizens, to keep in and about Constantinople a large army which might otherwise wreck our Mesopotamian expedition, threaten India and Egypt and prevent the Grand Duke Nicholas from advancing from the Caucasus on Erzerum. But as the Polish campaign developed adversely to Russia, it became clear that it would be impossible for her to give the assistance she had hoped.
Early in May, Sir Ian Hamilton learned, that his advance, instead of being a part of a concerted scheme, was to be the only attack upon the Turks in that quarter, and that he would have to withstand the greater part of the Turkish army. This did not mean that the Turks could mass an overwhelming strength against any part of his positions, since in the narrow Peninsula there is not room for great numbers to manœuvre; but it meant that the Turks would have always within easy distance great reserves of fresh men to take the place of those exhausted, and that without a correspondingly great reserve we had little chance of decisive success.
This change in the strategical scheme was made after we were committed to the venture: it made a profound difference to our position. Unfortunately we were so deeply engaged in other theatres that it was impossible to change our plans as swiftly and as profoundly as our chances. The great reserve could not be sent when it became necessary, early in May, nor for more than two months. Until it came, it happened, time after time, that even when we fought and beat back the Turks they could be reinforced before we could. All through the campaign we fought them and beat them back, but always, on the day after the battle, they had a division of fresh men to put in to the defence, while we, who had suffered more, being the attackers, had but a handful with which to follow up the success.
People have said, "But you could have kept fresh divisions in reserve as easily as the Turks. Why did you not send more men, so as to have them ready to follow up a success?" I could never answer this question. It is the vital question. The cry for "fifty thousand more men and plenty of high explosive" went up daily from every trench in Gallipoli, and we lost the campaign through not sending them in time. On the spot of course our generals knew that war (like life) consists of a struggle with disadvantages, and their struggle with these was a memorable one. Only, when all was done, their situation remained that of the Frank rearguard in the Song of Roland. In that poem the Franks could and did beat the Saracens, but the Saracens brought up another army before the Franks were reinforced. The Franks could and did beat that army, too, but the Saracens brought up another army before the Franks were reinforced. The Franks could and did beat that army, too, but then they were spent and Roland had to sound his horn and Charlemagne would not come to the summons of the horn, and the heroes were abandoned in the dolorous pass.
Summer came upon Gallipoli with a blinding heat only comparable to New York in July. The flowers which had been so gay with beauty in the Helles fields in April soon wilted to stalks. The great slope of Cape Helles took on a savage and African look of desolation. The air quivered over the cracking land. In the blueness of the heat haze the graceful terrible hills looked even more gentle and beautiful than before; and one who was there said that "there were little birds that droned, rather like the English yellow-hammers." With the heat, which was a new experience to all the young English soldiers there, came a plague of flies beyond all record and belief. Men ate and drank flies, the filthy insects were everywhere. The ground in places was so dark with them, that one could not be sure whether the patches were ground or flies. Our camps and trenches were kept clean; they were well scavenged daily; but only a few yards away were the Turk trenches, which were invariably filthy: there the flies bred undisturbed, perhaps encouraged. There is a fine modern poem which speaks of the Indian sun in summer as "the blazing death-star." Men in Gallipoli in the summer of 1915 learned to curse the sun as an enemy more cruel than the Turk. With the sun and the plague of flies came the torment of thirst, one of the greatest torments which life has the power to inflict.
At Cape Helles, in the summer, there was a shortage but no great scarcity of water, for the Turk wells supplied more than half the army and less than half the water needed had to be brought from abroad. At Anzac however there was always a scarcity, for even in the spring not more than a third of the water needed could be drawn from wells. At first, water could be found by digging shallow pans in the beach, but this method failed when the heats began. Two-thirds (or more) of the water needed at Anzac had always to be brought from abroad, and to bring this two-thirds regularly and to land it and store it under shell fire was a difficult task. "When operations were on," as in the August battle, the difficulty of distribution was added to the other difficulties, and then indeed want of water brought our troops to death's door. At Anzac "when operations were on" even in the intensest heat the average ration of water for all purposes was, perhaps, at most, a pint and a half, sometimes only a pint. And though this extremity was as a rule only reached "when operations were on," when there was heavy fighting, it was then that the need was greatest.
In peace, in comfortable homes, in cool weather, civilised people need or consume a little less than three pints of liquid in each day. In hot weather and when doing severe bodily labour they need more; perhaps half a gallon in the day. Thirst, which most of us know solely as a pleasant zest to drinking, soon becomes a hardship, then, in an hour, an obsession, and by high noon a madness, to those who toil in the sun with nothing to drink. Possibly to most of the many thousands who were in the Peninsula last summer, the real enemies were not the Turks, but the sun in Heaven, shaking "the pestilence of his light," and thirst that withered the heart and cracked the tongue.
Some have said to me, "Yes, but the Turks must have suffered, too, just as much, in that waterless ground." It is not so. The Turks at Cape Helles held the wells at Krithia; inland from Anzac they held the wells near Lonesome Pine and Koja Dere. They had other wells at Maidos, and Gallipoli. They had always more water than we, and (what is more) the certainty of it. Most of them came from lands with little water and great heat, ten (or more) degrees further to the south than any part of England. Heat and thirst were old enemies to them, they were tempered to them. Our men had to serve an apprenticeship to them, and pay for what they learned in bodily hardship. Not that our men minded hardship; they did not; they were volunteers who had chosen their fate and were there of their own choice, and no army in the world has ever faced suffering more cheerily. But this hardship of thirst was a weight upon them, throughout the summer; like malaria it did not kill, but it lowered all vitality. It halved the possible effort of men always too few for the work in hand. Let it now double the honour paid to them.
In the sandy soil of the Peninsula were many minute amœbæ, which played their part in the summer suffering. In the winds of the great droughts of July and August the dust blew about our positions like smoke from burning hills. It fell into food and water and was eaten and drunk (like the flies) at each meal. Within the human body the amœbæ of the sand set up symptoms like those of dysentery, as a rule slightly less severe than the true dysentery of camps. After July, nearly every man in our army in Gallipoli, suffered from this evil. Like the thirst, it lowered more vitality than it destroyed; many died, it is true, but then nearly all were ill: it was the universal sickness not the occasional death that mattered.