The Darkness and the Thunder

by Stewart Binns

  From the top of the hill Hywel can see most of the assault beaches. The shoreline of the once-remote, windswept peninsula is alive with men and their instruments of war. He is surprised how close the other beaches are: the whole spit of land is less than three miles across. It seems to his untrained eye that the beaches are secure, with very few Turks to be seen. He looks north-east along the hinterland, which appears to be deserted: no columns of men; no artillery pieces on the move; no vehicles of any kind. With many hours of daylight remaining, he asks himself the obvious question: Why do we not advance? But he puts it aside, assuming that the generals know what they are about.

  He looks back to the landing beaches. It is an extraordinary sight. At sea, the great battleships are pounding away at the Turkish positions, each shell producing a thunderous rumble and plumes of yellow-grey gun-smoke which billow up into the clear sky. Around them, destroyers and support ships linger like bees around their queen while the landing craft go backwards and forwards like workers bringing nectar to the hive. But the men on the beaches look more like ants scurrying across the sand, thousands of them, and, as under the brutal laws of nature, not all of them survive.

  On W Beach, the Worcesters are landing as the second wave of the attack. Spared, by the bravery of their northern comrades, the slaughter meted out to their predecessors, a thousand sturdy Mercians are wading ashore and making their way across the beach.

  On the opposite side of the Straits, the French Senegalese Tirailleurs of the 6th Colonial Regiment secure the fort and village of Kum Kale with relative ease.

  Fifteen miles away in the far north, the Anzacs have been put ashore a mile further up the peninsula than intended because of unexpected currents. The terrain they face is very difficult to manoeuvre across, and poor communication makes progress haphazard. The peninsula is wider here, more than five miles, but there is little opposition and they have the chance to dash across its breadth and isolate the Turks to the south. However, other than in small, isolated groups led by the more audacious of junior officers, who then become marooned from one another, there is no coordinated thrust forward.

  Also, by sheer chance, the Turkish commander, Mustafa Kemal, is in the vicinity. He realizes the threat and, in a masterstroke of bravery and ingenuity, manages to gather a large enough force to mount a counter-attack. Kemal’s subsequent order uses language far less poetic than the florid prose of Sir Ian Hamilton, but it proves to be much more effective:

  Every soldier who fights here with me must realize that he is honour bound not to retreat one step. Let me remind you all that, if you want to rest, there may be no rest for our whole nation throughout eternity. I am sure that all our comrades agree on this, and that they will show no signs of fatigue until the enemy is finally hurled into the sea.

  Bitter hand-to-hand fighting in the narrow gullies and steep ravines lasts all day, as the small groups of Anzacs are attacked and forced to retreat. Eventually, the Turkish 57th Regiment regains all the high ground around the Anzacs’ landing ground, leaving them with no more than the precarious toe-hold of a beach-head.

  X Beach is attacked by 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers. It is a 200-yard-long strip of sand with a high ridge behind it, just to the north-west of their fellow Fusiliers from Lancashire. When they land, they find only a handful of defenders and make it to the ridge almost unopposed, and are soon able to join forces with the luckless Lancastrians to their right.

  Put ashore by HMS Cornwallis, 2nd Battalion South Wales Borderers, who, under their previous title, 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, were the heroes of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift in the Zulu Wars, command S Beach, three miles to the right of the Lancastrians. Unlike on the other beaches, the Turkish trenches here are visible from the ships off the coast, and thus the bombardment is successful in depleting Turkish numbers and resolve. By ten thirty all the Borderers’ objectives have been achieved, digging of defensive positions has started and counter-attacks have been repulsed.

  V Beach is a different story. Less than a mile to the right of the Lancastrians, it is also festooned with barbed wire and guarded by two companies of Turkey’s 26th Regiment – veteran troops, disciplined men and well led. An hour of artillery fire precedes the landing, scattering the defenders far and wide, but as soon as it ceases they rush back to their trenches to wait for the attack. Machine guns and breeches are loaded and men pick out their targets in light that improves by the minute as the sun rises higher and higher.

  The landing is to be led by 1st Battalion Royal Munster Fusiliers, 2nd Hampshire Regiment and 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers. The Munsters are aboard a collier, SS River Clyde, purchased only two weeks earlier and adapted for the landing by having sally-ports cut into her hull so that the men can disembark.

  By 6 a.m. the Dubliners have been put in small landing craft and are being towed ashore. There is silence as the flotilla of little boats reaches the shore. Those aboard are convinced that, other than the three lines of barbed wire they will have to stride over, their landing will be unopposed and effortless. Their miscalculation becomes all too apparent as soon as the first Dubliners’ serjeant jumps from the lead boat. He is hit by a hail of bullets, which catapult his body several different directions at once, before, lifeless, it collapses and is swallowed by the shallow water. All the remaining men in the first boat are dead within moments; those in the other boats fare little better. The only survivors are a few who slip over the side and find cover. The sea turns from Mediterranean turquoise to muddy red within minutes as the complement of Dubliners is reduced from 700 to 300, half of whom are wounded.

  The River Clyde is deliberately run aground at 6.22, but the intensity of fire is so great from the ramparts of Sedd-el-Bahr Fort above that the Munsters cannot use the sally-ports to disembark. Several incredibly brave sailors, notably Commander Edward Unwin, the skipper of the River Clyde, attempt to build a bridge of small boats to allow the infantry to rush the beach. For over three hours, with bullets hissing and spitting into the water all around them, the sailors try to lash together enough boats to reach the shore.

  The Munsters make three attempts to run the 150-yard gauntlet from ship to shore, which can be attempted only in single file. One in ten makes it. Eventually, late in the morning, all further attempts are abandoned. A mere 200 men are ashore, skulking wherever they can find shelter. Their comrades, mainly the Hampshires, wait, safe behind River Clyde’s steel hull. Only when darkness comes can the collier disgorge her haul, not this time a consignment of inert coal but the remnants of three brave battalions of Britain’s army. This final landing is unopposed – the Turks know they cannot see their targets at night – and there is not a single casualty.

  Y Beach most typifies the day’s mismanagement, mistakes and miscalculations. Slightly less than four miles up the west coast from Cape Helles, it is more a cliff than a beach but is totally undefended. The landing is made by 1st Battalion Scottish Borderers and Plymouth Battalion, Royal Marines. They make landfall unopposed and climb the cliff with ease. By the time the sun is fully up, with their comrades being slaughtered just a few thousand yards away, 2,000 men are relaxing, drinking tea. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Godfrey Matthews, the clement sun of a spring morning caressing his back, strolls across an agreeable plateau of Turkish countryside until he can see, less than 500 yards in the distance, the minaret of the mosque of the small town of Krithia, the only significant settlement in the area.

  Krithia is empty of both civilians and soldiers and thus at the mercy of the Allies. Matthews has more men at his disposal than all the Turkish troops to his south and can, with a single act of daring, take Krithia and the surrounding high ground. This would secure enough of the bottom of the peninsula to create a much more defensible bridgehead and probably forestall much of the horrendous suffering that is to come. But, without direct orders, he decides against a precipitous act and ambles back from whence he came.

  Even though Sir Ian Hamilton sails past Y Beach at eight thirty a
nd sees the Borderers and Marines at leisure, he issues no fresh orders. So, at 3 p.m., Colonel Matthews decides to withdraw his men to the top of the ridge above the beach and to dig in. It is an order that has been issued far too late. While British commanders fail to grasp any initiative presented to them, the Turkish leadership acts differently. Lieutenant Colonel Khalil Sami Bey, commander of the 9th Division, rushes troops southwards to halt any further advances. He issues a blunt order: ‘It is quite clear that the enemy is weak; drive him into the sea, and do not let me find an Englishman in the south when I arrive.’

  Even though they are outnumbered two to one, a battalion of Sami Bey’s men attack Matthews’ men on the ridge at Y Beach at 17:40 hours. The fighting, soon in darkness and driving rain, is ferocious. The Borderers and the Marines have been able to dig only shallow slit trenches, but they have more cover than the advancing Turks, who attack relentlessly across open ground. Turkish reinforcements arrive at 23:00 hours, by which time the British position is perilous. Between midnight and dawn Colonel Matthews sends four messages to Major General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, begging for more men, more ammunition, and pleading that his situation is dire. He receives no reply.

  At 07:00 hours Matthews counts the cost. He has lost almost a third of his men: 627 dead or wounded. With daylight, panic sets in and, without orders, men run from their meagre cover and make for the beach, especially the Marines to the right. When groups of men arrive at the beach they signal to the ships, which send in boats to get the survivors off. When Matthews realizes that almost the whole of his right flank is undefended, he decides to make the impromptu retreat an official one and orders a withdrawal. By eleven thirty he and the remnants of his force are back at sea, leaving the beach and surrounding countryside strewn with bodies and equipment.

  Later that afternoon a naval officer goes ashore to see if any wounded have been left behind. There is an eerie silence; not a shot is fired. The Turks have left to fight on the other beaches.

  Thirty thousand Allied troops have been put ashore, but the grand scheme to open a new front against the Central Powers is already doomed to failure, on the very morning that it has begun.

  As men on both sides die in droves in the awful reality that is the Great War the fantasy world of geopolitics continues in the smoke-filled rooms of Europe’s political rulers. Should the Allied attack succeed, it has already been conceded that Russia will acquire Constantinople and the Dardanelles Straits from Turkey, but, in a secret treaty signed on 26 April, Italy, encouraged by the scale of Allied ambition, agrees to join their cause. In the treaty she gets the paper-price her leaders demand. From Austria-Hungary, she will be granted Trentino, the South Tyrol, Trieste, the counties of Gorizia and Gradisca, the Istrian Peninsula, Northern Dalmatia and numerous islands in the Adriatic. She will also be given territory in North Africa and several concessions in Albania.

  But the real price will be paid by Italy’s young men, as they add their lives to the bill already being paid by many others across Europe.

  On 28 April and again on 6 May the Allies launch massive attacks to break out of their bridgeheads and take Krithia and the high ground around it. Both attempts fail, at the cost of almost ten thousand Allied casualties. The plan that was designed to end the stalemate on the Western Front produces a stalemate of its own. Jack Churchill writes to his brother Winston.

  Part Five: May

  * * *

  A HIDEOUS SPECTACLE

  Sunday 9 May

  Laventie, Pas-de-Calais, France

  Both the Churchill brothers witness the horrors of the Great War on the second Sabbath in May. Jack is on Sir Ian Hamilton’s staff on his new command ship for the Gallipoli campaign, the Arcadia, but has gone ashore at Cape Helles to observe the Allies’ attempts to break out of their bridgeheads. When he returns to his cabin he writes an impassioned letter to Winston.

  My Dear Winston,

  It is hard to know where to begin. The French are jittery, but our chaps are, on the whole, doing well. But we need to make progress, or I fear we might get into a terrible mess. Here we are at the tip of this little appendage of Turkey, with more and more of the little terriers, for that is what they are, coming our way.

  More of our men arrive all the time, some Lancashire Territorials today, a sturdy lot, but we need more! Perversely, the weather is splendid, but it does little for the corpses that still lie around. They make for a most disagreeable assault on one’s nostrils. The poor Turks have so many to bury, they don’t put them in very deep, and, in extremis, neither do we.

  By the way, the great exploits by the Lancashire Fusiliers have led Ian H. to order that their beach be called Lancashire Landing. He’s a thoughtful cove.

  Terribly sad about Rupert Brooke. He had a very moving funeral. French and English officers carried his body about two miles by torchlight up a beautiful gully on Skyros Island. It was a spot he much admired a few days earlier – how romantic and how appropriate.

  But on a more serious note. The Turks are so well dug in. Their ‘Jack Johnsons’ and shrapnel attacks are ferociously accurate. Did somebody suggest they’d run for the Bosporus as soon as we landed! I have seen some terrible sights. Row upon row of stretchers; the men on them mainly beyond saving. Blood and bandages everywhere; not enough nurses and doctors; only two hospital ships, which are full to the gunwales.

  We are getting far too many injuries to fingers and toes, many of which are clearly self-inflicted. It is a worry, but many of the new arrivals are reservists, not battle-hardened men. I have heard at least two reports of men shot on the battlefield for desertion.

  From my trench, I saw the French caught in a terrible ambush to our right. The Senegalese were distinctive in their dark blue, the sweat on their coal-black faces gleaming in the hot sun. Oh why does Hunter-Weston insist on attacking by day – I wish he’d come ashore and see what it’s like – and why does Ian H. let him? At least H. does come and see for himself. The French were in their pale blue, officer’s swords waving, catching the light. Suddenly, the Turks in front of them got up and ran like hell. The French picked up the pace and ran after them, thinking the day was won, but it was a deadly ruse. As soon as the French got within distance, a ferocious artillery barrage got up and covered the whole field in smoke. When it cleared, I saw only a handful of men still on their feet. The rest had been obliterated, including many Turks, who, their generals must have decided, had to be sacrificed!

  My God, Winston, it’s just like Flanders. May the Almighty help us all.

  Your loving brother,

  Jack

  Winston is desperately saddened by Jack’s letter. He knows that it is bad news for the nation’s war effort, but also for his political future. Any further setbacks, especially in the Dardanelles, will threaten Asquith’s government. The Conservative opposition will push for changes in the government, and they, fuelled by their friends in Fleet Street, will demand a scapegoat for any and all failures. Their prime target will be Asquith’s young firebrand, and Tory traitor, Winston Spencer Churchill.

  The First Lord of the Admiralty is also missing his family. After spending many months with him at the Admiralty while Clemmie nursed their third child, Sarah, who was born in October, he has rented Hoe Farm at Hascombe, Surrey, for the spring and summer. He never functions well when away from Clemmie.

  He has been in Paris overseeing the secret negotiations with Italy for her to enter the War on the side of the Allies. Under his usual alias, ‘Mr Spencer’, he stayed at the Ritz, which, despite the exigencies of war, still provides a uniquely luxurious experience, one that he enjoys with his usual gusto. Never one to see a contradiction between war and pleasure, he relieves his increasing gloom with French cuisine and fine wines. The Ritz management knows only too well of his liking for Pol Roger champagne, and a bottle awaits his arrival, as does another to accompany his departure. He also indulges his love of the French language and bounds through its nuances with abandon, if not always with great fluency a
nd not always to the exact comprehension of his audience. Amused by his bluster, the French generally welcome his well-meaning mauling of their language, preferring it to the approach of most other English visitors, who think that if they increase the volume of their English diction and reduce the speed of their delivery, their French hosts will eventually understand what they are saying.

  But Winston is now in a very different place, high in the bomb-damaged steeple of the church of St Vaast, Laventie, a small town on the French side of the Belgian–French border. On his journey back from Paris he paid a visit to his friend, Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, who in turn has invited him to witness yet another attempt to end the stalemate on the Western Front.

  From his elevated position he can see the entire battlefield. The attack he is about to witness is the British component of a combined Anglo–French offensive, the 2nd Battle of Artois. French Commander-in-Chief Joseph Joffre has asked Sir John to provide British units to support a French offensive to capture the heights of Vimy Ridge, a vital escarpment five miles north-east of Arras, on the western edge of the Douai Plains.

  The British, under the command of Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief 1st Army, will attack near the village of Laventie. Their objective, across the dreary and waterlogged terrain, is Aubers Ridge, an area of slightly higher ground marked by the villages of Aubers, Fromelles and Le Maisnil.

  Winston is appalled by what he sees during the day. Although he has fought in several wars and seen his fair share of their terrors, what he observes as a consequence of the attack on Aubers Ridge on Sunday 9 May 1915 will live with him for the rest of his life. On his journey home to London, he writes to Clemmie: