Authors: Alan Moorehead
Monro had quite made up his mind about the general strategy of the war. It could be won, he believed, on the western front, and nowhere else, and any other campaign could only be justified
provided that it did not divert men or materials from France. To kill Germans had become with him an act of faith: Turks did not count.
It was apparent then—or rather it should have been apparent—that some unusually bright prospect of success would have to be demonstrated to him at Gallipoli if he was to recommend
that the campaign should go on. The terms of his appointment were very clear: he was to advise on whether or not the Army was to be evacuated; and if it was not, he was to estimate what
reinforcements were required to carry the peninsula, to keep the straits open and to capture Constantinople.
The new commander did not hurry to the Dardanelles. He spent several days in London studying the problem at the War Office, and it was not until October 28—ten days after Hamilton’s
departure—that he arrived on Imbros with his chief of staff Major-General Lynden-Bell.
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He was met by Birdwood and the
three
officers who had recently been promoted to the command of the three corps at the front: Byng at Suvla, Godley at Anzac, and Lieut.-General Sir Francis Davies at Cape Helles.
Churchill in his account of the campaign says that Monro was ‘an officer of quick decision. He came, he saw, he capitulated’. But this is not entirely fair, for Kitchener was
impatiently pressing for a decision. ‘Please send me as soon as possible,’ he cabled, ‘your report on the main issue, namely, leaving or staying.’ Monro got this message at
Imbros within twenty-four hours of his arrival and on October 30 he set out for the peninsula. Lynden-Bell complained of a sprained knee, and his place on the trip was taken by Colonel
Aspinall.
No commander as yet had succeeded in visiting Suvla, Anzac and Cape Helles in a single day, but Monro achieved this feat in a destroyer in a matter of six hours. At each of the three bridgeheads
the divisional generals met him on the beach, and he put to each of them in turn an identical set of questions: could their men attack and capture the Turkish positions? If the Turks were
reinforced with heavy guns could they hold out through the winter?
The British guns at this time were down to a ration of two shells a day, no winter clothing had arrived, and during the stalemate of the past two months many units had dwindled to half their
strength. Yet there had been no thought of evacuation among the troops. Evacuation was a kind of death, and no one imagined that Monro had come to Gallipoli to discuss it. He had arrived like some
eminent specialist called down to the country from London when the local doctors had failed, and it was thought that he would suggest new remedies and ways of treatment, perhaps even some bold act
of surgery which would make all well again. But there was no hint of this in his questions. No mention was made of any reinforcements being sent to the peninsula. It was very depressing. The
generals replied that the men might keep up an attack for twenty-four hours, but if the Turks made a counteroffensive
with unlimited shells and fresh troops—well then
they could only do their best. They could say no more.
But Monro hardly needed to hear the generals’ replies. One glance at the beaches had been enough: the ramshackle piers, the spiritless gangs of men hanging about with their carts and
donkeys, the shanty-town dug-outs in the cliffs, the untidiness of it all. At Anzac the General glanced at Aspinall with a specialist’s rueful smile. ‘Like Alice in Wonderland,’
he said. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’
On the following day he sent Kitchener a message recommending the evacuation of the peninsula. Only the Anzac Corps, he said, was in a fit condition to carry on. What the men needed was rest,
re-organization and training. The best thing to do was to get as many as possible back to Egypt where after a few months they might be ready for action again. He followed this with a second message
saying that he estimated the losses in an evacuation at between thirty and forty per cent: in other words some 40,000 men.
Here it was then in black and white: the end of the campaign. So many dead and all for nothing, and another 40,000 men to be lost. For the cabinet in London who had to take the final decision it
posed an intolerable dilemma, and even those who had been advocating the Salonika adventure were sobered by it. They had asked the professional expert for his opinion, and now they had got it: and
it was unthinkable. They hesitated. And while they hesitated the thing they most wished for happened: a new factor came into the scene.
Roger Keyes was still a small man in these affairs. He was no more than a young commodore, his admiral was against him, and for the past eight months he had been isolated from the great
political and military issues of the west. But he had one advantage. When nearly everyone was wavering and hesitating about the Dardanelles his views had the clarity that comes from a long pent-up
exasperation. His blood was up, he knew what he wanted, and he was every bit as determined as General Monro to whom he was implacably opposed. There is a remarkable
counterpoise in the movements of the two men during these few days.
On October 28, when Monro arrived at Imbros, Keyes reached London. Although it was nine o’clock at night he went straight to the Admiralty hoping to get in to see the admirals then and
there, but they put him off until the following morning. At 10.30 a.m. on October 29, when Monro was examining the problems of evacuation at Imbros, Keyes had his plan in the hands of Admiral
Oliver, the chief of the War Staff, and from there he went on to Sir Henry Jackson, the First Sea Lord. Soon the other admirals were brought in, and at five in the evening he went off to see the
First Lord, Arthur Balfour. Next day, when Monro was preparing his evacuation report after his visit to the beaches, Keyes had a second interview with Balfour. They continued for two hours, Balfour
lying back full-length in his armchair listening, Keyes talking resolutely on. At a quarter to five in the afternoon Balfour sustained himself with a cup of tea, and at twenty past five he rose and
said, ‘It is not often that when one examines a hazardous enterprise—and you will admit it has its hazards—the more one considers it the better one likes it.’ He sent Keyes
back to talk to the admirals again.
There was a break then when Keyes went off to see his wife and children in the country. But he was back in the Admiralty on November 2. The next morning he was with Churchill, and in the
afternoon he found himself with Kitchener at last.
The plan which Keyes was propounding was quite simply a headlong assault on the Narrows with the battleships and cruisers which had been lying in harbour in the Ægean Islands since May.
The attacking fleet was to be divided into two main squadrons. The first of these, with minesweepers and destroyers in the van, was to steam straight at the Narrows just before dawn under the cover
of a smoke screen; and come what might, whether the Turkish guns were silenced or not, whether or not all the mines were swept, they were to keep on until some, at least, of the ships got through.
Keyes asked for permission to lead this squadron himself. The other squadron, meanwhile—and it was to consist
of the monitors and the newer battleships—was to pin
down the Turkish shore batteries with a furious bombardment from the mouth of the straits. Once in the Marmara the surviving vessels were to steam directly to the Bulair Isthmus, where they were to
cut the single road which was supplying the twenty Turkish divisions now stationed in the peninsula.
Keyes had effective arguments to support his plan. Many of the enemy guns on the straits, he said, had been taken away by the Turkish Army, and a naval attack was not expected. The minefields
had now been fully reconnoitred. In every respect, and especially in the support it would get from the new seaplane carriers, the Fleet had been immeasurably improved since March, and the Allied
Army was now ashore to do its part in distracting the enemy fire. Already the Turks were finding difficulty in supplying their large Army on a single road—and he pointed to the success of the
Allied submarines, three of which were in the Sea of Marmara and dominating it at that moment. Cut the neck at Bulair and the Turks were lost. The French, he added, were all for the new attempt and
had offered new warships to take part in it.
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It was true that Admiral de Robeck was still against the idea, but Admiral Wemyss, who was senior to de
Robeck and who had been all this time at Mudros, was not. He was very much for it. He should be given the command to carry it through.
Finally, what was the sane and rational decision to take? To risk a few old battleships with a chance of winning the campaign? Or to evacuate, to give up everything with the loss of 40,000
men?
By November 3 Keyes had made headway with these arguments. Jackson, the First Sea Lord, had said he was in favour provided that the Army attacked at the same time. Balfour had all but committed
himself. Churchill had needed no persuading. ‘I believe,’ he had written in a recent cabinet paper urging a new attempt, ‘we have been all these months in the position of the
Spanish prisoner who languished for twenty years in a dungeon until one morning the idea struck him to push the door which had been open all the time.’ And now Keyes
found himself with Kitchener.
Kitchener had been appalled by Monro’s message. He could not bring himself to believe, he said, that a responsible officer could have recommended to the Government so drastic a course as
evacuation. He had replied curtly by asking Monro for the opinion of the corps commanders, and Monro had answered that both Davies and Byng were for evacuation, while Birdwood was against it (but
only because he feared the loss of prestige in the East). And then there had been this devastating estimate of the loss in cold blood of 40,000 men. Angrily, resentfully, realizing at last how much
he was committed to the Dardanelles, Kitchener had been passing between the War Office and the cabinet room saying that he himself would never sign the evacuation order, and that if the Government
insisted on it he himself would go out and take command, and that he would be the last man off. Keyes came in like a fresh wind at this moment, and Kitchener seized upon his plan. He told Keyes to
return to the Admiralty and get some sort of a definite undertaking from them.
Keyes now was hot on the trail. He was back with Kitchener after dinner with the news that the First Sea Lord had given at least a partial promise: if the Army would attack, then the Navy would
probably agree to force the straits at the same time.
While Keyes had been away Kitchener himself had taken a drastic decision which committed him more deeply than ever to the Dardanelles. It was a thunderblast in the old Olympian manner,
impulsive, imperious, and absolute. He sent the following message to Birdwood, his follower of former days:
‘Most secret. Decipher yourself. Tell no one. You know Monro’s report. I leave here tomorrow night to come out to you. Have seen Commodore Keyes, and the Admiralty will, I believe,
agree naval attempt to force straits. We must do what we can to assist them, and I think as soon as ships are in the Marmara we should seize and hold the isthmus (i.e. Bulair) so as to supply them
if Turks hold out. Examine very carefully best position for landing near marsh at head of Gulf of Xeros, so that we could get a line across at isthmus with ships on both
sides. To find troops for this purpose we should have to reduce to lowest possible numbers the men in all the trenches, and perhaps evacuate positions at Suvla. All the best fighting men that could
be spared, including your boys from Anzac and reinforcements I can sweep up in Egypt, might be concentrated at Mudros ready for this enterprise. The admiral will probably be changed and Wemyss
given command to carry through the naval part of the work. As regards command you would have the whole force and should carefully select your commanders and troops. I would suggest Maude, Fanshawe,
Marshall, Peyton (all new commanders recently sent out from England), Godley and Cox, leaving others to hold the lines. Work out plans for this or alternate plans as you think best. We must do it
right this time. I absolutely refuse to sign order for evacuation, which I think would be the greatest disaster and would condemn a large percentage of our men to death or imprisonment. Monro will
be appointed to command the Salonika force.’
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This was followed by a War Office signal officially appointing Birdwood to the command of the Expedition and directing Monro to Salonika.
The Field Marshal was up till midnight with Keyes making his plans, and it was arranged that he was to leave for the Dardanelles on the following day. Keyes was to go with him provided that
first he got the guarantee of certain naval reinforcements for his attempt on the Narrows.
This was on November 3. November 4 was a still more agitated day. In the morning Keyes got his reinforcements. Four battleships,
Hibernia
,
Zealandia
,
Albemarle
and
Russell
, 4 destroyers and 24 more trawlers were ordered to the Dardanelles. In the afternoon Balfour sent off a tactful message to de Robeck saying that he had heard
that he was not well and in need of a rest; he must come home on leave. ‘In making arrangements for your substitute during your absence,’ the message went on, ‘please bear in mind
the possibility that an urgent appeal from the Army to co-operate with them in a great effort may make it necessary for the Fleet to attempt to force the straits. The admiral left in charge should
therefore be capable of organizing this critical operation and should be in full agreement with the policy.’
Then in the evening there was a setback. At a farewell meeting with the cabinet Kitchener found the other Ministers still divided between Gallipoli and Salonika. Bonar Law was actually
threatening resignation unless the peninsula was evacuated, and Balfour made it absolutely clear that the Navy would do nothing at the Dardanelles unless the Army also attacked. Could the Army
attack? Kitchener was forced to say he did not know. After the meeting he sent off a gloomy cable to Birdwood cancelling his previous message. ‘I fear,’ he said, ‘the Navy may not
play up. . . . The more I look at the problem the less I see my way through, so you had better very quietly and very secretly work out any scheme for getting the troops off.’