Gallipoli (9 page)

It was almost true. When the storm quietened on February 25 Vice-Admiral de Robeck in the
Vengeance
led the attack right up to the mouth of the straits, and the Turkish and German
gunners, unable to keep up the unequal struggle any longer, withdrew to the north. During the next few days, through intermittent gales, parties of marines and bluejackets were put on shore, and
they roamed at will across the Trojan plain and the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, blowing up the abandoned guns, smashing the searchlights and wrecking the enemy emplacements. There were one or
two skirmishes with the Turkish rearguard, but for the most part the countryside around Cape Helles and Kum Kale was deserted. The minesweepers were having some difficulty in making headway against
the current, but they penetrated for a distance of six miles into the straits without finding any mines, and although the warships were repeatedly hit by the mobile guns on shore no vessel was lost
or even seriously damaged. The casualties were trifling. On March 2 Admiral Carden sent a message to London saying that, given fine weather, he hoped to get through to Constantinople in about
fourteen days.

This news was received with elation at the Admiralty, and in the War Council. All earlier hesitations vanished; now everyone wanted to be associated with the adventure, and Lord Fisher even
spoke of going out to the Dardanelles himself to take command of the next stage of the operations: the assault on the main enemy forts at the Narrows. In Chicago the price of grain fell sharply in
expectation that, on the arrival of the Allied fleet in Constantinople, Russia would soon resume the export of her wheat.

But now difficulties appeared. The Turkish soldiers on shore were beginning to recover their confidence, for they returned to Kum Kale and Cape Helles and drove off the British landing parties
with heavy rifle fire. At the same time the Turks had much
more success against the Fleet with their howitzers and small mobile guns; they lay low until each bombardment from
the Fleet was over and then, emerging from their emplacements, moved to other hidden positions in the scrub; and so it often happened that the batteries which the British thought they had silenced
in the morning had to be dealt with all over again in the afternoon. This hardly affected the battleships, but it was a serious matter for the unarmed minesweepers, especially at night in the
narrow waters below Chanak where they were instantly picked up by searchlights and exposed to a harassing fire.

None of these things amounted to a definite reverse, but by March 8, when the weather worsened again, it was evident that the first impetus of the attack had spent itself. It was an exasperating
position for the Admirals: they were being held up, not by the strength of the enemy, but by his elusiveness. The minesweepers could not go forward until the guns were silenced, and the battleships
could not get near enough to silence the guns until the mines were out of the way. The Fleet’s seaplanes with their new wireless equipment might have solved the problem for the naval gunners
by acting as spotters, but each day the sea proved either too rough or too smooth for the machines to take off. In this dilemma Carden began to hesitate and delay.

Roger Keyes, who was constantly up at the front of the attack, was convinced that it was all the fault of the civilian crews of the minesweepers who had been recruited from the North Sea fishing
ports of England. Their officers told him that the men ‘recognized sweeping risks and did not mind being blown up, but they hated the gunfire, and pointed out that they were not supposed to
sweep under fire, they had not joined for that’.

Well then, Keyes suggested, let us call for volunteers from the regular Navy, and in the meantime offer the civilian crews a bonus if they will go in again tonight. This was on March 10, and as
soon as he had got the Admiral’s rather reluctant consent, Keyes himself went in with the flotilla under the cover of darkness. Five brilliant searchlights burst out at them directly they
entered the straits, and the battleship
Canopus
, following behind, opened fire.

‘We were fired at from all directions,’ Keyes says. ‘One saw stabs of light in the hills and in the direction of the 6-inch battery covering the
minefields on both sides of the straits, followed by the whine of little shells, the bursting of shrapnel, and the scream of heavy projectiles which threw up fountains of water. It was a pretty
sight. The fire was very wild, and the
Canopus
was not hit, but for all the good we did towards dowsing the searchlights we might just as well have been firing at the moon.’

It was too much for the minesweepers. Four of the six passed over the minefield below Chanak without getting their kites down, and one of the remaining pair soon struck a mine and blew up. For a
time a tremendous fire poured down on the survivors, and it was an astonishing thing that, with so many mines cut loose and drifting about in the darkness, only two men were wounded before the
flotilla got away.

Next night Keyes tried again without the assistance of the battleship, hoping to steal up on the Turks unawares. ‘The less said about that night the better,’ he wrote later.
‘To put it briefly, the sweepers turned tail and fled directly they were fired upon. I was furious and told the officers in charge that they had had their opportunity, there were many others
only too keen to try. It did not matter if we lost all seven sweepers, there were twenty-eight more, and the mines had got to be swept up. How could they talk of being stopped by heavy fire if they
were not hit? The Admiralty were prepared for losses, but we had chucked our hand in and started squealing before we had any.’

And so too it seemed to Churchill in London. On this same day, March 11, he sent the following telegram to Carden:

‘Your original instructions laid stress on caution and deliberate methods, and we approve highly the skill and patience with which you have advanced hitherto without loss. The results to
be gained are, however, great enough to justify loss of ships and men if success cannot be obtained without. The turning of the corner at Chanak may decide the whole operation. . . . We do not wish
to hurry you or urge you beyond your judgment, but we recognize clearly that at a certain point in your operations you will have to
press hard for a decision, and we desire to
know whether you consider that point has now been reached.’

By March 13 new crews had been assembled for some of the minesweepers—just as Keyes had anticipated there had been an immediate response to the call for volunteers—and that night the
attack was renewed with great resolution. The enemy gunners waited until the trawlers and the picket boats were in the middle of the minefield and then, turning on all their searchlights together,
opened up with a concentrated fire. This time the trawlers stuck to it until all but three were put out of action, and the effect of this was seen on the following morning when many mines came
floating down with the current and were exploded. From this time forward it was decided that the sweeping should be done by day, and it was hoped that sufficient progress would be made for the
Fleet to close in for the full scale attack on the Narrows on March 17 or 18.

Carden meanwhile had still not replied to the Admiralty’s message, and on March 14 Churchill telegraphed again. ‘I do not understand,’ he said, ‘why minesweepers should
be interfered with by firing which causes no casualties. Two or three hundred casualties would be a moderate price to pay for sweeping up as far as the Narrows. I highly approve your proposal to
obtain volunteers from the Fleet for minesweeping. This work has to be done whatever the loss of life and small craft and the sooner it is done the better.

‘Secondly, we have information that the Turkish forts are short of ammunition, that the German officers have made despondent reports and have appealed to Germany for more. Every
conceivable effort is being made to supply ammunition, it is being seriously considered to send a German or an Austrian submarine, but apparently they have not started yet. Above is absolutely
secret. All this makes it clear that the operation should now be pressed forward methodically and resolutely at night and day. The unavoidable losses must be accepted. The enemy is harassed and
anxious now. The time is precious as the interference of submarines is a very serious consideration.’

To these messages Carden now replied that he fully appreciated the situation, and that despite the difficulties he would launch his main attack as soon as he could:
probably March 17.

Carden was ill. Under the increasing strain of the operations he was unable to eat and he slept very little at night. He was worried about the failure of the seaplanes, about the mines and about
the weather. It had taken him two days to make up his mind as to how he was to reply to Churchill’s messages, and now that he had pledged himself to this drastic all-out attack his confidence
began to ebb away. He did not explicitly lose faith in the adventure, but in his weakened condition he seems to have felt that he no longer had the personal power to command it.

In fairness to Carden it ought perhaps to be remembered that it was only by chance that he had ever come to the Dardanelles at all; this was a post that should have gone to Admiral Limpus, the
head of the former British Naval Mission to Turkey, the man who knew all about the Dardanelles. But at the time when Limpus left Constantinople Turkey was still a neutral, and the British did not
wish to irritate the Turks by deliberately sending the man who knew all their secrets to blockade the Dardanelles. So Carden had been lifted out of his post as Superintendent of Malta Dockyard, and
he had already had a long winter at sea off the straits before this action had begun. The enterprise had not been exactly thrust upon him—indeed, he himself had suggested the method of
attack—but in agreeing to it in the first place one can imagine that he was influenced by the knowledge that he was going the way the young First Lord wanted him to go. And now this highly
dangerous operation had built itself up around him into a tremendous thing. It had gathered an impetus out of all proportion to its beginnings, and since as yet he had fought no major action, had
lost no ship and scarcely any men, he felt bound to go on. But he dreaded it.

On March 15, after another bad night, Carden told Keyes he could continue no longer. This meant the end of his career, and both Vice-Admiral de Robeck and Keyes begged him to reconsider.
However, on the following day a Harley Street specialist
who was serving with the Fleet announced after an examination that Carden was on the edge of a nervous collapse; he
must sail for home at once.

The attack was now due to be bunched within forty-eight hours, and a new Commander had to be found in haste. Admiral Wemyss, the commandant of the base on the island of Lemnos, was the senior
officer on the station, but he at once offered to stand down in favour of de Robeck, who had been involved in the fighting from the beginning. On March 17 Churchill cabled his agreement to this
arrangement, and sent de Robeck the following message:

‘Personal and Secret from First Lord. In entrusting to you with great confidence the command of the Mediterranean Detached Fleet I presume . . . that you consider, after separate and
independent judgment, that the immediate operations proposed are wise and practicable. If not, do not hesitate to say so. If so, execute them without delay and without further reference at the
first favourable opportunity. . . . All good fortune attend you.’

De Robeck replied that weather permitting he would attack on the following day.

There is an excitement about the attack on the Narrows on March 18, 1915, a sense of natural adventure, which sets it apart from almost any other battle in the two world wars. Those who took
part in it do not remember it with horror, as one might remember poison gas or the atomic bomb, or with the feeling of futility and waste that eventually surrounds most acts of war. Instead they
look back on this battle as a great day in their lives: they are delighted that the risk was taken, delighted that they themselves were there, and the vision of the oncoming ships with great
fountains of spray about them, and the gunfire echoing along the Dardanelles, is still an exhilaration in their memory.

In our time most decisive naval actions have been fought far out at sea, and often in rough weather and over a large area of water so that no one man’s eye could command the whole scene.
But here the land was near, the area of action very closely confined, and from morning until dusk a brilliant sun shone down on the
calm sea. An observer, whether in the
fighting tops of a battleship or standing on any of the hills on either side of the straits, could have seen precisely what was going on as the struggle unfolded itself from hour to hour; and even
when night fell the battlefield was still illuminated by the beams of the searchlights constantly sweeping across the water.

In another sense this struggle was unusual, for it was essentially a naval attack upon an army, or at any rate upon artillery. From first to last the Turkish and German warships never appeared,
and no aircraft were employed by either side. Then too, there was no element of surprise. Every fine morning had brought the Turks and the Germans the prospect of this attack. The forces on either
side were very largely known—just how many ships and guns and mines—and the object of the struggle was perfectly obvious to everybody from the youngest bluejacket to the simplest
private. All hung upon that one thin strip of water scarcely a mile wide and five miles long at the Narrows: if that was lost by the Turks then everything was lost and the battle was over.

De Robeck arranged his fleet in three divisions. Line A, steaming abreast, consisted of the four most powerful British ships which were to open the attack—
Queen Elizabeth
,
Agamemnon
,
Lord Nelson
and
Inflexible
—and they were accompanied on either flank by two more battleships,
Prince George
and
Triumph.