CHAPTER LXXXI
SYRIA AND EGYPT
After the declaration of war against Turkey, the allied war vessels were concentrated in the Levant and Red Sea to watch the coasts of southern Asia Minor, Syria, and Turkish Arabia. On the Syrian coast there was only one point where a naval force could effectively attack communications between Constantinople and the Turkish forces. This was the little town of Alexandretta, and the shore north to Payaz, a small village. The Turks, if they wished to reenforce their Syrian army must move their men, guns, and stores up a mountainous road over the Amanus from Baghche to Radju, or risk great losses by the coast route between Payaz and Alexandretta. The Turks took this chance, and were successful, for there was no allied warship in the Gulf of Alexandretta to oppose their progress. On December 17, 1914, H.M.S. Doris, a protected cruiser, appeared off Alexandretta and destroyed four bridges on the road and railway between that town and Payaz. The captain of the Doris sent an ultimatum to the Turkish commandant of Alexandretta demanding the surrender of the town, failing which he threatened bombardment of the place. To this the Turks paid no attention. A second ultimatum brought forth a telegraphic message from Djemal Pasha at Damascus, threatening to execute allied subjects interned in that city if any Ottoman noncombatants were killed at Alexandretta by the British guns. The captain of the Doris promptly replied that Djemal Pasha would be held responsible for the execution of allied subjects, if he dared to carry out what he proposed. Thanks to the influence brought to bear on the Porte by the American Embassy at Constantinople, the Ottoman military authorities in Syria became more reasonable, and finally agreed to blow up the two railway engines at Alexandretta themselves, much of the war material having been removed from the town while negotiations were pending.
During the first three months of 1915 there was only one fight of any importance on the coast of the Gulf of Alexandretta. On February 6 a landing party from H.M.S. Philomel was subjected to heavy fire from a concealed trench where eighty Turks were located. Six of the British and New Zealanders who formed the crew of the Philomel were wounded, three mortally. The cruiser promptly avenged their death by steaming in and opening a point-blank fire on the trenches with her 4.7-inch guns. More than fifty of the Turks were killed or badly wounded, the high-explosive shells shattering some to pieces. After this salutary lesson the Turks at Alexandretta did not seek any further encounters with the sailors of allied war vessels.
The British cruisers were late in arriving in the Gulf of Alexandretta, and had lost some opportunities to injure the enemy by their delay, but now they did valiant duty in preventing the Turks from sending any number of men or stores to Aleppo for the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, or the Egyptian border by the coast route, which would greatly have facilitated their movements. They were forced, owing to the vigilance of British warships, to send their troops and munitions over the Giaur Dagh by the pass called the Syrian Gates, between Cilicia and northern Syria, a rough, mountainous region, with bad roads, that made progress extremely difficult.
At the beginning of the allied operations against the Dardanelles, the observation of the Syrian coast was taken over entirely by the French fleet.
On April 19, 1915, the Turkish intrenchments at El Arish were bombarded by the French battleship St. Louis. The Turks had some fifteen or twenty field guns, and replied vigorously, but only one shell hit the battleship, which did no damage. The Turks suffered some losses. In the early part of May the big camp at Gaza, where numbers of Ottoman soldiers were gathered to be reviewed by Djemal Pasha, was shelled by the St. Louis, when some fifty Turks were killed by French shrapnel, and perhaps as many more wounded.
On April 29, 1915, the cruiser D'Entrecasteaux worked effectively on the Cilician coast, shelling the trenches at Taruss, while her hydroplane, dropping a bomb on the railway tracks, blew up trucks laden with high explosives and wrecked the railway station. On May 10 the Turks at El Arish were again shelled by the guns of the Jeanne D'Arc.
On Ascension Day, Alexandretta was the scene of some spirited work, in which the cruiser D'Estrées played the leading part. M. de la Passadière, her commander, demanded of the Kaimakam that the German flag should be hauled down that was flying over the German Consulate. The Turkish commander sent no reply, and it was pretended that he was ill or absent. M. de la Passadière having fixed a time limit when the flag must be hauled down, cleared his decks for action and trained the ship's guns on the consulate building. At the expiration of the time limit he opened fire, and the consulate was reduced to ruins. The only casualties were three Turkish soldiers, who, in spite of warning, had remained near the building.
The captain of the D'Estrées on May 14, 1915, destroyed a petrol depot which might be used to supply hostile submarines, and which contained over 1,000 cases. A few days earlier a much larger depot containing some 20,000 cases at Makri on the southern coast of Cilicia had been destroyed by the cruiser Jeanne D'Arc.