Australia in Arms / A Narrative of the Australasian Imperial Force and Their Achievement at Anzac

by Phillip F. E. Schuler

PRESENTATION OF COLOURS TO FRENCH COLONIAL TROOPS PRIOR TO THEIR EMBARKATION FOR THE DARDANELLES.

To face p. 92.

Consequently, the following day this operation was launched. General Hamilton saw it from the decks of a destroyer, on which he went into the thick of the fray. Later I heard his description of that fight, and the manner in which the Bouvet had steamed to her doom in two minutes as she left the firing line, while the British ships Irresistible and Ocean sank more slowly and their crews were rescued.

Close as had the ships crept to the towering forts of Point Kephez, there was no silencing the forts, and the attempt was given up—a failure. The Gaulois and Inflexible had both been badly damaged, and sought refuge near Rabbit Islands.

It was not till after the campaign that the Turks were prepared to admit that a little more force and the forts would have fallen—a little greater sacrifice of ships; yet I learned from General Hamilton's Staff that the Allies expected, and were prepared, to lose twelve ships.

So under such inauspicious circumstances the military operation began: yet not immediately. With all speed General Hamilton returned to Alexandria, having found in the meantime—I have, no doubt, to his chagrin and disgust—that the ships ready to embark troops contained certainly the equipment and gear, but all wrongly packed. A rearrangement was essential. This delay caused a revision of the whole of the plans of the Allies. Instead of there being a force immediately available to support the action of the ships which had battered the forts and crushed down the Turks, an intermittent bombardment, as the weather permitted, had to be kept up for a month, to prevent the Turks repairing effectively their destroyed forts, while the whole of the army was properly arranged and the transports collected. General Hamilton's army, therefore, became an invading host instead of a supporting force, landed to hold what the fleet had won. It was very patent to the War Council that now to force the Dardanelles by sending ships forward alone (even with the mine fields cleared) was impossible, and, committed to a campaign, resort had to be made to a landing.

The Turks during the month's respite, in March-April, commenced thoroughly to entrench the Gallipoli Peninsula against the execution of the Allies' plans. These plans, speaking broadly, may be thus briefly described, leaving the story of the landing to explain the details: The peninsula, regarded from its topographical aspect, was naturally fortified by stern hills, which reduced the number of places of possible landings. So in the very nature of things it was necessary for the leader of such an expedition to attack at as many landings as possible and to push home only those which were most vital. This would prevent the enemy from being able to anticipate the point where the attack was to be delivered and concentrate troops there. During April the army was assembled at Lemnos—British, Australian, French, and Indian troops, drawn from Egypt. To the British was assigned the task of taking the toe of the peninsula; to the French the feint on the Kum Kale forts and the landing along the Asia Minor coast. The Australians were to thrust a "thorn" into the side of the Turks at Gaba Tepe, which was opposite Maidos, the narrowest portion of the peninsula. Certain other troops, mostly Australians, were to make a feint at the Bulair lines, while feints were also planned by warships at Enos and Smyrna. Two attacks only were to be pushed home—the Australians at Gaba Tepe and the British (afterwards to be supported by the French) at Cape Helles, at the toe of the peninsula.

Officers of all the forces inspected the coast-lines in the various sections allotted them, from the decks of the warships bombarding the entrenchments and fortifications, which it was only too apparent that the Turks had effected in the months of warning and interval that had been given them. It looked, as it was, a desperate venture. Everything certainly hung on the successful linking up of the two landed armies round the foot of the great Kelid Bahr position, that lay like another rock of Gibraltar, protecting the Turkish Asiatic batteries at Chanak and Nagara from direct fire from the warships hammering at the entrance to the Straits and from the Gulf of Saros. But once the communications to this fortified hill were broken, it was regarded as certain that the Narrows would be won, and once field guns began to play directly on the rear of the forts at Kelid Bahr, unable to reply behind them up the peninsula, that the position would be gained.

Anxious not to miss the scene of the landing, I had made plans with my friend Mr. W. T. Massey, the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, to reach an island nearest to the entrance to the Dardanelles—Imbros. It was while trying to make these plans that one day we saw General Hamilton, from whom we had already received courteous replies to letters asking for permission to witness the landing. The Commander-in-Chief told us it was outside his power to grant this request. What he told us later is worthy of record. The same wiry leader, energetic, yet calm, his voice highly pitched, as I had remembered it during many trips with him as the Inspector-General of the Oversea Forces, round the camps of Victoria, he now greeted me cordially and spoke of his regret at being unable to offer us his help. As he spoke he paced up and down the bare room, with just a writing-desk in it, in a building situated in the centre of the town of Alexandria, which was the first base of the great Mediterranean Expedition.