Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918

by Sir C. E. Callwell

The consequence of my having made myself familiar with the question in the past was that, when at the beginning of September 1914 Mr. Churchill raised the question of a conjunct Greek and British enterprise against the Straits, it was a simple matter for me to prepare a short memorandum on the subject, a memorandum of a decidedly discouraging nature. As a matter of fact, what was perhaps the strongest argument against the undertaking at that time was by oversight omitted from the document—the Greeks had no howitzers or mobile heavy artillery worth mentioning, and any ordnance of that class that we disposed of in the Mediterranean was of the prehistoric kind. The slip was of no great importance, however, because there never was the remotest chance of King Constantine, who was no mean judge of warlike problems, letting his country in for so dubious an enterprise.

We were not actually at war with the Ottoman Empire for another two months. But hostilities had virtually become certain during the month of October, and one morning in the latter part of that month the First Lord sent a message across asking me to come over to his room and discuss possibilities in connection with the Dardanelles. I found the First Sea Lord (Prince Louis of Battenberg) and the Fourth Sea Lord (Commodore C. F. Lambert) waiting, as well as Mr. Churchill, and we sat round a table with all the maps and charts that were necessary for our purpose spread out on it. The problem of mastering the Straits was examined entirely from the point of view of a military operation based upon, and supported by, naval power. If the question of a fleet attack upon the defences within the defile was mentioned at all, it was only referred to quite incidentally.

From my own observation on the spot, and as a result of later examination of maps, charts, confidential reports, and so forth, I had come to the conclusion that the key to the Dardanelles lay in the Kilid Bahr plateau, which dominates the channel at its very narrowest point from the European (Gallipoli Peninsula) side. By far the best plan of gaining possession of this high ground would, I considered, be to land, by surprise if possible, the biggest military force that could be very rapidly put ashore on that long stretch of coast-line practicable for troops to disembark from boats in fine weather, which was situated about the locality that has since become immortalized as Anzac Cove. A project on these lines is what we actually discussed that morning in the First Lord's room. I pointed out the difficulties and the dangers involved, i.e. the virtual impossibility of effecting a real surprise, the perils inseparable from a disembarkation in face of opposition, the certainty that the enemy was even now improving the land defences of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and the fact that, at the moment, we had no troops to carry such a scheme out and that we were most unlikely to have any to spare for such an object for months to come. One somewhat controversial tactical point I gave particular attention to—the efficacy of the fire of warships when covering a military landing and when endeavouring to silence field-guns on shore; my own view was that the potentialities of a fleet under such conditions were apt to be greatly overestimated. My exposition was intended to be dissuasive, and I think that Mr. Churchill was disappointed.

We had a most pleasant discussion, the First Lord having a good working knowledge of military questions owing to his early career and training, and being therefore able to appreciate professional points which might puzzle the majority of civilians. At the end of it he seemed to clearly realize what a very serious operation of war a military undertaking against the Straits was likely to be, but he dwelt forcibly, and indeed enthusiastically, upon the results that would be gained by the Entente in the event of such an undertaking being successfully carried out—on that subject we were all quite at one. The story of this informal pow-wow has been recorded thus at length, because it was really the only occasion on which the General Staff were afforded anything like a proper opportunity of expressing an opinion as to operations against the Dardanelles, until after the country had been engulfed up to the neck in the morass and was irretrievably committed to an amphibious campaign on a great scale in the Gallipoli Peninsula. Prince Louis resigned his position as First Sea Lord a few days later; Commodore Lambert often mentioned the pow-wow in conversation with me in later days, after the mischief (for which the professional side of the Admiralty was only very partially to blame) had been done.

As one gradually became acquainted in the following January with the nature of the naval scheme for dealing with the Straits, it was difficult not to feel apprehension. While, as Brigade-Major R.A. in the Western Command and later as commanding a company of R.G.A. at Malta, concerned with coast defence principles, the tactical rather than the technical scientific side of such problems had always interested me. When musing, during those interminable waits which take place in the course of a day's gun practice from a coast-defence battery, as to what would be likely to happen in the event of the work actually engaging a hostile armament, one could picture oneself driven from the guns under the hail of flying fragments of rock, concrete, and metal thrown up by the ships' huge projectiles. But one did not picture the battery as destroyed and rendered of no effect. Anybody who has tried both is aware how infinitely easier gun practice is at even a moving target on the water than it is at a target on land. One foresaw that the enemy's warships would plaster the vicinity of the work with projectiles, and would create conditions disastrous to human life if the gun-detachments did not go to ground, but that they would not often, if ever, actually hit the mark and demolish guns and mountings.

The Admiralty's creeping form of attack, chosen on Admiral Carden's initiative, ignored this aspect of the question altogether. The whole scheme hinged upon destroying the Ottoman coast batteries, the very thing that ships find it hardest to do. They can silence batteries; but what is the good of that if they then clear out and allow the defenders to come back and clean up? The creeping plan, moreover, obviously played into the hands of Turkish mobile guns, which would turn up in new positions on successive days, and which, as I had told Mr. Churchill three months before, our ships would find most difficult to deal with; these guns would probably give the mine-sweepers much more trouble than the heavy ordnance in the enemy's fixed defences. Then, again, one could not but be aware that the Sister Service was none too well equipped for dealing with the enigma of mines in any form—that had become obvious to those behind the scenes during the first six months of the war—and one's information pointed to the Turkish mine-defence of the Dardanelles being more up to date than was their gun-defence. Finally, and much the most important of all, this deliberate procedure was the worst possible method to adopt from the army's point of view, supposing the plan to fail and the army then to be called in to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. The enemy would have been given full warning, and would deliberately have been allowed what the Turk always stands in need of when on the war-path—time to prepare.

The "First Report" of the Dardanelles Commission, as well as sidelights thrown upon the affair from other quarters, have established that of the three eminent naval experts who dealt with the project and who were more or less responsible for its being put into execution, two, Sir Arthur Wilson and Sir Henry Jackson, were by no means enthusiastic about it, while the third, Lord Fisher, was opposed to it but allowed himself to be overruled by the War Council. Had those three admirals met three representatives of the General Staff, Sir J. Wolfe-Murray, General Kiggell and myself, let us say, sitting round a table with no Cabinet Ministers present, I am certain that the report that we should have drawn up would have been dead against the whole thing. The objections raised from the military side would have been quite sufficient to dispel any doubts that the sailors had left on the subject. As for that naïve theory that we might draw back in the middle of the naval operations supposing that the business went awry, of which I do not remember hearing at the time—— Pooh! We could hardly, left to ourselves, have been such flats as to take that seriously.

The cable message from Tenedos which announced the result of the first effort against the conspicuous and comparatively feeble works that defended the mouth of the Straits, was the reverse of heartening. The bombarding squadron enjoyed an overwhelming superiority in armament from every point of view—range, weight of metal, and accuracy. The conditions were almost ideal for the attacking side, as there was plenty of sea-room and no worry about mines. If the warships could not finally dispose of Turkish works such as this, and with everything favourable, by long-range fire, then long-range fire was "off." Once inside the Straits, the fleet, manœuvring without elbow-room, would have to get pretty near its work, mines or no mines, if it was going to do any good. The idea of the Queen Elizabeth pitching her stuff over the top of the Gallipoli Peninsula left one cold. Several days before Admiral de Robeck delivered his determined attack upon the defences of the Narrows of the 18th of March, one had pretty well made up one's mind that the thing was going to be a failure, and that the army was going to be let in for an extremely uncomfortable business.

Accounts emanating from the Turkish side have suggested that the naval operations were within an ace of succeeding, and that they only had to be pressed a little further to achieve their object. An examination of the books by Mr. Morgenthau and others does not bear this out. The Turks imagined that our fleet had been beaten off by gun-fire on the 18th, and they appear to have got nervous because the ammunition for certain of their heaviest guns was running short. Their heavy guns, and the ammunition for them, was a matter of quite secondary importance. The fleet was beaten off owing to the effect of the drifting mines. The Turks thought that the damage done to the ships was due to their batteries, when it was in reality caused by their mines. They did not appreciate the situation correctly, for they do not appear to have been short of mines. The Russian plan of letting these engines of destruction loose at the Black Sea end of the Bosphorus to drift down with the current indeed provided the Osmanlis with a constant supply of excellent ones; they were picked up, shipped down to the Dardanelles, and used against the Allies' fleet. These weapons, drifting and fixed, together with the mobile artillery which so seriously interfered with mine-sweeping, proved to be the trump cards in the hands of Johnny Turk and his Boche assistants.

I was present when Lord Kitchener met Sir I. Hamilton and his chief staff-officer, General Braithwaite, and gave Sir Ian his instructions. At that time Lord K. still hoped that, in so far as forcing the Dardanelles was concerned, the fleet would effect its purpose, practically if not wholly unaided by the troops. These were designed rather for operations subsequent to the fall of what was after all but the first line of Ottoman defence. It was only after Sir Ian arrived on the spot that the naval attack actually failed and that military operations on an ambitious scale against the Gallipoli Peninsula took the stage. The fact that when the transports arrived at Mudros they were found not to be packed suitably for effecting an immediate disembarkation on hostile soil, has been a good deal criticized. Although it was not a matter within my responsibility, I was sharply heckled over the point by Captain Stephen Gwynne when before the Dardanelles Commission. But the troops left before there was any question of attempting a landing in force in face of the enemy in the immediate vicinity of the Straits. At the date when they sailed it remained quite an open question as to what exactly their task was to be. The transports could not have been appropriately packed even after military operations in the Gallipoli Peninsula had been decided upon, without knowing exactly what was Sir Ian's plan.