Hamilton’s eyes would be opened at Gallipoli.
CHAPTER 5
Gallipoli and the Anzac Spirit
It has been raining for three days as winter creeps across the peninsula. The land seems to bear the drenching with quiet resignation. So does the lone shepherd, who turns his face from the stinging squalls that whip across the dull waters of the Dardanelles and lash his flock as they trudge along the shoreline. The sheep need little encouragement when the shepherd urges them into a stone-lined opening in one of many man-made grassy hillocks. As they file into the shelter, the shepherd relaxes and lights up a smoke. His face is weathered like the rocks around the cavernous entrance, lined with hard experience.
It is a scene typical of this land and of its people: one of adaptation, endurance and survival. The shelter has been here for centuries. Originally it was part of the network of massive gun emplacements protecting the waterway that divides Europe and Asia. Today local shepherds use it to shield their flocks from the worst of the Turkish winter.
Our guide here is retired Captain Ali Efe, a compact, courtly man with beautiful manners and a ready wit. He’s the ideal size for his former profession, a submarine commander in the Turkish Navy patrolling the Black Sea during the Cold War. After retiring he studied history at the University of Istanbul, majoring in World War I. Now he acts as a special guide to the battlefields of Gallipoli. ‘My name is Ali Efe … a small Turkish name for a small Turkish man,’ he says, offering a welcoming hand.
Aged 66, Captain Ali knows the land here intimately. As a child he spent long days roaming the Gallipoli battlefields with his father, Ahmet. Ali’s dad was well versed in the history and folklore of the place – as well he might be. His father, Hussein (Ali’s grandfather), died here fighting the Anzacs.
Hussein Efe was a fisherman who came from an ancient village, now known as Guzelyali (or ‘beautiful beach’) but originally called Dardenos (after which the Dardanelles, the narrow strait that joins the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara, were named). Guzelyali is on the Asian side of the Dardanelles, about 15 kilometres from Çanakkale, the closest large city on the eastern shores of the Dardanelles. Hussein died during the terrible fighting at a tiny ridge the Turks called Kanlisirt (or ‘bloody ridge’). The Australians know it as Lone Pine. Ali’s dad, Ahmet, was just six months old when his grandfather was killed.
Captain Ali is deeply connected to the land he loves. Like the trees here, the poplar, pine, apple, peach, almond and olive, he draws sustenance from the land. Ali also understands the Australian fascination with Gallipoli. He shares our reverence for the place and the events that occurred here:
The Anzac soldiers on the battlegrounds, with their blood, gained the Anzac spirit and they gave that Anzac spirit to the people of Australia and New Zealand. It is the best gift. It was won by their blood. If you gain something with your blood it should be a sacred thing.
Captain Ali feels a powerful personal connection with the campaign:
My grandfather was 22 years of age when he lost his life on Lone Pine. He had a baby son. That six-month-old baby son became my father. We are part of the land here.
This land has always lived under threat of invasion. For thousands of years it’s been sought after and fought over. You can see that in the structure in which the flock shelters. Massive stone walls, sunk deep into the earth and built to withstand the heaviest bombardment, open out to reveal a honeycomb of passageways and rooms which protected men and munitions. The air is cool and dank and the walls and ceilings are black with mould. It’s part of a labyrinth of similar fortifications woven into the surrounding countryside on both shores of the Dardanelles.
These fortifications played a special, if indirect, part in Australian history. From these chambers Turkish gunners fed ammunition to great guns that bombarded the British fleet in March 1915 as it tried to force its way up the Dardanelles to the Sea of Marmara and Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). The success of the Turkish soldiers who manned these chambers in repelling the world’s greatest naval power led the Allies to change to Plan B: land attacks on the peninsula. These, in turn, gave birth to the Anzac legend.
Today, the only sounds here are the occasional low bleating from the flock and the whistling of the wind as it plays across the entrance to the bunker. But it’s easy to imagine the deafening blasts of 18 March 1915 and to see those gun-layers straining every muscle to maintain the supply of explosives to the gunners outside. The British fleet was trying to bludgeon its way through to Constantinople. It had the finest ships afloat, 18 battleships in all, each bristling with massive guns and all spewing their deadly missiles at the shore batteries. The Royal Navy, along with ships from its French allies, planned to stand off the coast, out of range of the shore batteries, and use the greater range of their guns to blow the Turkish defenders aside. Even now, deep in the chambers, you get a fleeting impression of the claustrophobic fear which must have pervaded the place as the artillerymen heard the cacophony of destruction above them and waited for what must have seemed their inevitable turn to be blown into atoms.
But the Turkish defenders fought with superb tenacity and the Allied fleet was soon caught in a deadly quandary. The Turks had mined the straits. The British knew that. They had tried on many occasions to sweep the waters prior to the massed fleet attack. But the Turkish guns had rained fire down on the minesweepers and forced them to back off before they could complete the work. This placed the British East Mediterranean Fleet’s naval commander, Vice-Admiral Sackville Carden, in a dilemma. He couldn’t defeat the shore batteries until he brought his fleet into the Dardanelles so they could wreak their havoc from close range, but he couldn’t risk bringing the fleet in closer until he’d swept clear the mines.
Carden was a cautious, even ponderous leader, believed by many to be dominated by the bombastic First Lord of the Admiralty, the young Winston Churchill. Churchill saw the Gallipoli campaign as a great career move: a bold gamble, which could open up the route to Russia, bring critical supplies to the beleaguered Tsar’s armies and force the Germans to continue fighting on two fronts. Churchill, along with the British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, was convinced the Turks lacked the heart for a prolonged conflict. The British High Command also believed that once the Turks had seen the might of the Allied Fleet in action, they would throw in the towel. Another theory adopted by the Allies was that because Constantinople was largely made up of wooden buildings it was susceptible to the threat of massive fires, which could result from naval bombardment once the fleet reached the city. The feeling was that the Turkish administration would surrender rather than risk such a terrible conflagration.
Churchill harried Carden until he tossed the dice and ordered his fleet into the Dardanelles. Carden was taken sick on the evening of the attack and Vice-Admiral De Robeck took over command.
The inevitable happened. After some early successes against the shore guns, first the ageing French cruiser Bouvet and then the British warships Irresistible and Ocean struck mines. The Bouvet went down immediately, losing almost all her crew. The Irresistible and Ocean were both disabled and eventually sank and many other ships were hit. One-third of the fleet was sunk or disabled in one day. De Robeck pulled back his badly mauled force and licked his wounds.
The desperate Turkish defenders forced the British to change their attitude and their plan of attack. They would now try to take the peninsula with land forces supported by the Navy. For the men in the shore batteries along the Dardanelles it was a mighty victory. Ever since, 18 March 1915 has been revered in Turkey as the day their brave gunners overcame all the odds to send the invaders packing. It was yet another battle honour in the long history of the defenders of the Dardanelles.
Britain’s First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, did all he could to deter Churchill from pursuing his plans to conquer the peninsula, writing to him: ‘You are just simply eaten up by the Dardanelles and cannot think of anything else. Damn the Dardanelles! They will be our gr
ave!’
We are at one of history’s great gateways. Since the middle of the 15th century, huge batteries of guns on either side of the straits have barred passage to ships intent on sailing up through the Sea of Marmara to attack Constantinople, which stands astride the Bosphorus, one foot in Europe, the other in Asia. The Dardanelles, this thin, 60 kilometre-long channel which opens the way from the Mediterranean via the Aegean Sea, through the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, has witnessed some of history’s most critical turning points. It has seen many great armies on the march. Almost all of them have passed through, heading to other conquests.
Agamemnon tried it more than 3000 years ago when he arrived with 1000 ‘black ships’ transporting 100,000 Greek warriors attacking the Trojans, the inhabitants of the city of Troy on the Asian side of the channel. Then Xerxes, the Persian, swept through here on his way to Athens in 480 BC. In 334 BC Alexander the Great travelled in the opposite direction, bound for India.
The place where the shepherd shelters with his flock is called The Narrows. Europe and Asia almost touch here. Just 1.5 kilometres separate them: 1500 metres – the distance Murray Rose, Kieren Perkins and Grant Hackett swam to win gold at the Olympics – between forts, which dominate the high ground on either side of the water as it flows to the Aegean.
On the Asian side, the Cimenlik Fortress (meaning ‘grassy’, because part of it is hidden under the earth) guards Çanakkale, a city that grew up around the fort between the port and the Saricay (‘yellow’) River. On the European side, the heart-shaped Kilitbahir (‘lock of the sea’) Fortress stands sentry to the town of Eceabat. Mehmet II, conqueror of Constantinople, built both fortresses halfway through the 15th century. Legend has it that his great guns could only fire cannonballs about 800 metres – just over halfway across The Narrows – hence the need for the twin fortresses to cover the full span of the channel.
There is still no bridge across The Narrows, and travellers must make the crossing by car ferry. During the crossing you get an inkling of how invaders must have felt running the deadly gauntlet between the fortresses.
In so many ways this is where the legend of the Anzacs began. It happened by accident. It arose from adversity. It ended in defeat. But somehow, from the dregs of an ill-conceived and ultimately pointless campaign, three nations drew positives. The armies and the peoples of Turkey, Australia and New Zealand all emerged with enhanced reputations. Though suffering grievous losses (more than a quarter of a million killed and wounded), Turkey emerged with renewed international respect and national self-respect. And both Australia and New Zealand emerged with a brand-new reputation. As captain Ali points out:
You can imagine the Turkish defenders’ surprise when they discovered the invaders who landed at Ari Burnu [from then on to be known as Anzac Cove] had travelled halfway around the world to try to steal their country.
For most of the young Australians who answered the bugle call when Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, it was a chance for a great adventure. Australia’s official World War I historian, Charles Bean, likened it to a crusade. Perhaps it’s the same with most nations in most wars, but this was Australia’s first chance to play a role in a world conflict.
The Prime Minister, Joseph Cook, said simply that when the British Empire was at war, so was Australia. Labor leader Andrew Fisher fully agreed, famously promising ‘our last man and our last shilling’ to the cause.
Australians and Kiwis volunteered in their thousands for this great adventure. Men came from the bush, from country towns and from the Big Smoke. Bean believed the Aussie soldier had a head start because of his upbringing:
The Australian was half a soldier before the war; indeed throughout the war, in the hottest fights in Gallipoli and in the bitterest trials of France or Palestine, the Australian soldier differed very little from the Australian who at home rides the station boundaries every week-day and sits of a Sunday round the stockyard fence.
In these heady early days, only the finest specimens were accepted into the Australian Imperial Force, the 1st AIF, and then only after having passed rigorous physical examinations. The successful recruits had to be at least 5 feet 6 inches tall, with a chest measurement of 34 inches. They had to be at least 19 years old and not older than 38. Those with flat feet or physical defects were rejected out of hand. Those with poor teeth – a far more common occurrence in those days – were also turned away. These restrictions naturally eased as the war dragged on, but the first waves of the men who would earn the title ‘Anzacs’ were the cream of the crop. More than half of the 416,000 Aussies who enlisted during the course of World War I had worked with their hands as labourers or tradesmen, and one in every seven came from the land. Interestingly, around one-third of the volunteers had been born in Britain.
The New Zealand volunteers – around 8500-strong, the largest single body of men ever to leave the ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’ – sailed from Wellington on 14 October 1914 and rendezvoused with almost 20,000 Australians at Albany in Western Australia. On 1 November an armada of 39 ships, containing around 30,000 troops and 10,000 horses, escorted by Australian, New Zealand, British and Japanese warships, sailed for an unknown destination. They originally thought it would be Britain via the Cape of Good Hope, but it turned out to be Alexandria in Egypt, where they were put into strict military training. Not surprisingly, the young Anzacs didn’t take the military life too seriously, and they went looking for a good time in Cairo, which Charles Bean described as ‘the home of all that is filthy and beastly if you like to go and look for it’. Many found it, aided by their generous pay (six shillings a day compared to the British Tommies’ one shilling a day). An embarrassing number of Australians, several hundred, were subsequently sent home suffering from venereal diseases.
During this period the Australians began to establish their reputation for larrikin behaviour, displaying a legendary thirst for the local brews and an enduring dislike for ‘spit and polish’, evidenced by their reluctance to salute British officers. At one stage the New Zealand officers warned their troops to give the Australians a wide berth.
In Egypt, 49-year-old British General Sir William Birdwood assumed command of the Australians and New Zealanders. A veteran of the Indian and African wars, Birdwood initially proposed calling the combined force the Australasian Army Corps. Not surprisingly, the Kiwis bristled. He settled for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
Charles Bean believes the word ‘Anzac’ was actually coined in the weeks before the Australian troops left Egypt on their way to Gallipoli and gives the credit to an Aussie lieutenant, A.T. White. The Kiwis have always maintained their Sergeant K.M. Little created it to fit on a rubber stamp band for the force’s equipment. The late author John Laffin mentions that others have variously credited the Gallipoli campaign commander, Sir Ian Hamilton, Birdwood and Major C.M. Wagstaff, among others. (Interestingly, Hamilton claims credit for the word in a foreword he wrote for Ellis Silas’ sketchbook in 1916, where he describes himself as ‘the man who first, seeking to save himself trouble, omitted the five full stops and brazenly coined the word “Anzac” ’.) But Laffin believes the most likely explanation is that some unknown clerk saw ‘Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’ on cases of supplies and shortened it to Anzac on telegrams. The top brass saw the sense of this, and the rest is history.
The actual planning for the Gallipoli landings fell to the Scottish-born British General Sir Ian Hamilton. On 12 March, Kitchener appointed Hamilton Commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force – the troops chosen to support the British Navy’s attempt to force the Dardanelles. By then ‘Johnny’ Hamilton was 62 and had been a serving soldier for 42 years, with active service in South Africa, Burma, India, Afghanistan and the Sudan. Clearly he was a brave soldier, with two unsuccessful recommendations for the Victoria Cross, and the scars to prove it: a left hand crippled by a Boer bullet and a permanent limp courtesy of a riding fall. He’d been recently responsible for England’s land
defence and he was keen for a final combat command.
Kitchener gave Hamilton the British Regular Army’s 29th Division (about 18,000 troops), two divisions of Anzacs (around 30,600), the Royal Naval Division (10,000) and a French contingent (about 17,000), a total of around 75,000 troops. (We now know the High Command’s secret plan was that once Hamilton’s force had taken Constantinople and defeated the Ottoman Empire, it would be given to the Russian Tsar Nicholas II.)
Hamilton’s state of mind and the level of his preparation can be seen in excerpts from his Gallipoli Diary, published in 1920, some of it from notes he dictated in 1915:
But my knowledge of the Dardanelles was nil; of the Turk; of the strength of our own forces next to nil. Although I have met K [Kitchener] almost every day during the past six months, and although he has twice hinted that I might be sent to Salonika, never once, to the best of my recollection had he mentioned the word Dardanelles.
Despite these handicaps, Hamilton got on with his job. He decided to rely on two diversionary actions and two main attacks. The first diversion was assigned to the French Army, which was to land on the Asian side, near Troy, and to carry out feint attacks to keep the main Turkish units occupied on that side of the Dardanelles and out of the major operations on the peninsula. The second feint was to be made by the Royal Naval Division on the isthmus, near Bulair, where the Turks expected the real thrust.
The genuine attacks were to be made, first, on Cape Helles, assigned to the 29th British Division, which would land at five beaches, codenamed S, V, W, X, Y, on the toe of the peninsula and, second, by the Anzacs at Brighton Beach (codenamed Z), halfway along the peninsula’s Aegean coastline. Hamilton’s concept was that his invasion force would close in on The Narrows in a pincer movement that would trap the defenders, allow the Anzacs to attack the guns in the forts there and thus open the way for the Navy to clear the mines protecting the entrance to The Narrows and then steam on to Constantinople.
The Spirit of the Digger Page 7