Gallipoli (90 page)

How to accomplish that?

The key job of forming up the plans for the evacuation of the Anzacs falls to the recently promoted Brigadier-General Brudenell White, a clear thinker and an excellent organiser who is General Godley's right-hand man at Anzac.

On the same day that Kitchener had sent his cable to London, General Birdwood had sent his own cable to Brudenell White at Anzac Cove, noting that, while Birdie personally remains against evacuation, MY VIEWS UNLIKELY TO BE ACCEPTED … INFORM GENERAL GODLEY AND START FUTURE PLANS ACCORDINGLY.
⁵⁴

Brudenell White, the Australian soldier whose curriculum vitae boasts graduation from the prestigious British Army Staff College of Camberley, England, does exactly that, initially working off the sketchy plan that had been provided three weeks earlier by Lieutenant-Colonel Cecil Aspinall and his committee. It is no small job …

Two massive armies are so very close to each other, in a perpetual death grip, and yet somehow a plan must be formulated to shift no fewer than 83,000 soldiers contained across Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove – not to mention huge quantities of munitions, guns, animals and stores – out from under the noses of the Turks, without them being aware. And, yes, Brudenell White is firm from the beginning: Anzac and Suvla
must
be evacuated simultaneously, as doing one before the other would obviously alert the enemy.

Though there had been no detail to the plan, Lieutenant-Colonel Aspinall's solution to the problem – working it out at Port Mudros with senior army and naval officers, much of it during the visit of Lord Kitchener – had been to carry it out in three stages, and with this Brigadier-General Brudenell White broadly agrees. (Though he strongly disagrees with Aspinall's notion that the men could come off during the day, as requested by the navy, for ease of operations. This would alert the enemy, and the evacuation would be ruined. As Brudenell White is clear from the start, ‘It is upon the existence of perfectly normal conditions that I rely for success.')
⁵⁵

Now, a classic military evacuation would see frontline troops retreating through the second and third lines, and setting up a new line, before the second and third lines do the same successively and successfully, until fully detached from the enemy. But, as Brudenell White is quick to note, and Bean to chronicle, at Anzac Cove there is never a possibility of this because ‘the centre of the enemy's line, at the Nek, is within 800 yards of the chief embarkation point at North Beach'.
⁵⁶

Given that the enemy only has to push a short way forward to Russell's Top and they will have clear vision to the beach – together with line of fire artillery – the only way here is going to be to hold the frontline to the last, and keep the enemy ignorant that all behind have gone, before letting the frontline make good their escape.

To the meticulous Brudenell White, one thing is obvious from the first. Things must continue to appear normal, however many men are taken off, and they must conjure an image of ‘going to Winter Quarters'.
⁵⁷
Following this line of reasoning, Brudenell White starts spending hours every day, and well into the wee hours, sitting at his desk at ANZAC HQ – with his braces and tie on, his pipe hanging out the right-hand side of his mouth – filling out page after page in his notebook with highly detailed plans.

As all of Anzac has to be evacuated simultaneously with Suvla, he liaises constantly with the Chief of Staff of IXth Corps, Brigadier-General Hamilton Reed, who has carriage of the evacuation there. And it will take a great deal of persuasion, and even intervention from Birdwood, who is also finally able to get Lieutenant-General Julian Byng to agree to maintain the Suvla frontline to the end – even though they are more able to keep pulling back – so as not to forewarn the Turks of their evacuation.

Brudenell White quickly establishes that, in the preliminary stage – lasting for a fortnight or so and starting immediately – the back areas of Anzac, well behind the frontlines, could be gradually thinned of all the sick and wounded, so as not to arouse suspicion. This would bring the Anzac Cove troops from around 42,000 down to 36,000. Even if the evacuation does not go ahead, this thinning would be no more than prudent, as Anzac moves into defensive mode to get through the winter, requiring fewer men.

Then, in the intermediate stage, they could take the numbers at Anzac down to around 22,000 over ten days or so. And finally, the key will be to get the remaining men on the frontline out over just two nights, requiring the navy to provide three times its usual number of vessels in attendance, constantly ferrying the soldiers to troopships offshore. Following the plan, the HQ staff of each unit will be withdrawn on the first of the two nights, leaving behind just one s officer with a couple of signallers. On the key final night, the men will be withdrawn in three successive instalments, ‘A', ‘B' and ‘C', with the machine-gunners of ‘C' last, the ‘Die Hards' (as they become known) to beat them all.

Now, in this final stage, it will obviously be the equivalent of holding off a rolling boulder of granite with nothing more than a balloon, but Brudenell White has a curious confidence about him, and at least projects the feeling that it can be done without losing anywhere near the number of casualties that have been estimated. If, at the end, their foothold is held by the ‘bravest and the steadiest men',
⁵⁸
it may even be possible to pull off a coup, and get most of the men off without mishap.

The numbers will at first be thinning and then falling away to a mere skeleton crew, but it must
look
to the Turks as if they are all there, as strong as ever, that nothing at all has changed in the daily goings-on the Turks have been observing for so long. And in the early stages no one must know, not even those who are being evacuated, for if the Turks get word of it, the whole thing will be impossible.

Now, how to make it appear that the Allies are there in force, firing as strongly as ever and ready to devastate any Turk who ventures across no-man's-land – even when most of the men will be long gone? This is where – almost immediately, in the first two days of deliberations – Brudenell White achieves a conceptual breakthrough. ‘We will,' he quietly tells his closest colleagues, ‘school the Turk to silence …'
⁵⁹

And that school will open for three days, starting tomorrow.

24 NOVEMBER 1915, DARDANELLES, THE ‘SILENCE RUSE' IS LAUNCHED
⁶⁰

Something is going on. But what?

The newly promoted Major Gordon Carter, back with his men for the last month – ‘I got a nasty shock to find that I hardly knew any of the officers'
⁶¹
– is convinced that, whatever is going on, it is on the quiet. As a matter of fact,
everything
is now on the quiet. For he has just received a very strange order from ANZAC HQ. From tonight, at 6 pm, and for the next two days and nights,
no one
at Anzac Cove is to move out of their trenches, fire rifles or machine-guns, throw biscuit-tin bombs or shout out. If you're going to snore, do it quietly.

Everybody is to stay silent, on pain of punishment. (And, at Gallipoli, they don't muck around. In July, an Australian Digger had been court-martialled and sentenced to death for falling asleep on duty – as a warning to all that the crime was serious – even if the sentence had been commuted to a long spell in military prison.)

Everything is to be made to appear as if the Anzacs are hunkering down, bunkering down, for the winter – and in giving this impression, the weather is certainly cooperative, as things become ever colder. In the meantime, however, other Brudenell White plans are being put into play, with company after company of soldiers being evacuated from Anzac Cove at night and not replaced.

During the day, there is normal boat traffic to and from the Cove and to the newly reconstructed piers, and the numbers of soldiers in the frontlines is as strong as ever.

24–25 NOVEMBER 1915, LONE PINE, ALL QUIET ON THE EASTERN FRONT

At 4.35 in the morning on Lone Pine ridge, Lieutenant Mehmed Fasih opens his eyes. He is exhausted, but, as a dutiful soldier, he knows he must resist the temptation to sleep.

After crawling out of his tent, he goes about his morning ablutions and then sits down with a hot Turkish coffee to write his first report of the day: ‘
Vukuat yok. 800 mermi, 6 bomba sarfolunmuş
. – No incidents. Eight hundred bullets, six bombs used.'

Continuing about his day, the Lieutenant visits his Commanders, chats, smokes, has more coffee, drops in on his men in their trenches. It seems nothing is amiss, and yet still something is gnawing at him, as if something is out of kilter …

It is 8 pm that night before it … clicks. ‘There is an exceptional silence on the front-line tonight,' he writes in his diary. ‘Such a situation is really quite strange. It's as if the watch has been stopped.'
⁶²
It is all … strangely alarming. Before retiring for the night, he notes yet again, ‘The silence of the enemy continues.'
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The front remains eerily quiet overnight, and the only thing being thrown by the enemy is ‘bully beef cans full of jam'.
⁶⁴
(Which, at least, the Turks far prefer to bully beef itself.)

The next morning, Mehmed Fasih emerges from his tent and pauses. It is not simply that his boots have crunched on frost for the first time in this campaign; it is that he can
hear
it. His every exhalation is a bloom of white as the night has brought a frozen change, and all is so quiet it gives ‘the full meaning of silence'.
⁶⁵
Hugging his coat tightly around his torso, Fasih contemplates the horror of the winter months to come in this terrible place and heads off to a meeting with his Battalion Commander, where they talk about what everyone in the Turkish trenches is now talking about – quietly – the enemy's lack of action.

Fasih and his Commander are puzzled, agreeing that it's ‘excessive. The only sounds that can be heard are coming from our side.'
⁶⁶
To add to the mystery, Fasih has been given reports that the enemy have removed the barbed wire from in front of their trenches: ‘Battalion commander really is dumbfounded.'

After some discussion, the two men walk around to the trenches to gauge the mood. ‘The rank and file, especially the ones who have been at the front-line for a while, can hardly contain their curiosity. They are walking out into the open and firing their weapons. Nothing! They are observing the enemy. Nothing!'
⁶⁷

Later in the morning, Lieutenant Mehmed Fasih is sitting down to read the newspaper when his Regiment Commander arrives.

‘The silence,' the Commander says, ‘do not be duped by it.'
⁶⁸

At that moment, Mehmed Fasih has a thought. ‘What if we send out one of our reconnaissance men?' he offers. The two men sit down to consult further on the matter. They decide to send out a volunteer to recon the enemy's trenches and get some idea of what the hell is going on.

That evening at 6 pm, Mehmed Fasih hands out the orders to his reconnaissance men and lets the most game among them do the duty of going forward:

For his part, Lieutenant George Stanley McIlroy is at Lone Pine on this day, the second day of the ruse. It is in a part of the trenches where, as he would write, ‘it would have been possible, although distinctly inadvisable to lean over and shake hands with Abdul'.
⁷⁰
So close, in fact, and in a pre-dawn so silent, the Anzacs can hear the approaching Turks before they can see them.

There! The Australian sentry on duty first sees a head, and then a shoulder, appear over the top of the trench, and then a full figure crawling towards the Australian lines. The whisper goes down: ‘Hey! Corp! Is that a bloody live target?'
⁷¹

It is quickly decided that the still approaching figure does come ‘within the meaning of the Act'.

And so, as the figure keeps approaching the loophole, clearly with intent of peeking inside, the Australians place the muzzle of a rifle at the other end.

Of course, the Turk never knows what hits him, as the bullet instantly kills him. The most amazing thing, though, is that because the discharge of the gun has been muffled further by a blanket around the other end, a
second
Turk appears and crawls forward, ‘to see what held his “cobber” gazing spellbound into the loophole'.

This fellow puts his eye to the next loophole along …

‘But as neither he nor his cobber had any inclination to return and report to their comrades, no doubt, the latter suspected there was a catch in it, and things soon settled down again to an unbroken silence.'
⁷²

A similar scene takes place at Quinn's. There, just after dawn, four Turks even venture out into no-man's-land, and could have been shot easily by the Australian machine-gunner secreted at an enfilading angle at Steele's. But the Turks are deliberately even allowed to pull back a couple of the screens that have prevented bombs landing in the trenches, and it is only when they throw bombs and one of them actually jumps into the darkened trench that muted reply is made, and the others hunted off.