Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  Meanwhile, the prime minister again was trying to save his government. By early October, the Cabinet was deeply divided on the issue of Gallipoli: Bonar Law passionately favored evacuation; Churchill, fervently, and, to a lesser degree, Balfour advocated seeing the campaign through. Once Bulgaria declared war on October 18, thus establishing a direct rail link between Germany and Turkey, Bonar Law predicted that German artillery and munitions would pour into Constantinople and Gallipoli, putting Allied troops on the peninsula in extreme danger. Asquith sat on the fence. His tactic was to call for reports followed by discussions of the reports; invariably, this resulted in the passage of time and the postponement of decisions. Thus, when Hamilton was recalled and Monro sent out, everyone knew that the general would recommend evacuation. Bonar Law protested, accurately describing the mission as a waste of time. When Monro’s recommendation arrived, however, so formidable was the opposition to evacuation from Churchill and others that the prime minister needed a further postponement of decision. Accordingly, Lord Kitchener was dispatched to do over again what General Monro had just done. Bonar Law, enraged, threatened to resign unless the Cabinet rescinded its decision to postpone the final decision until Kitchener made his report. On November 7, Bonar Law met Asquith and made clear to the prime minister that this conversation must be a final one between them—either evacuation or his own resignation must follow immediately. Asquith used every persuasion; Bonar Law remained firm, and, at the conclusion, the prime minister surrendered and promised that the troops would be withdrawn. Thereafter, although Kitchener did not know it, his mission became only a façade behind which the timing and sequence of the evacuation would be arranged. Luckily for Asquith, Lord Kitchener decided independently that Gallipoli should be given up and on November 23, the War Committee duly voted for evacuation, “on the strength of Lord Kitchener’s views.” One man who saw what was coming did not wait for the final vote. On November 18, Winston Churchill resigned from the Cabinet and the Duchy of Lancaster and departed England to command a battalion on the Western Front. He spent his first night sleeping in a pit of Flanders mud four feet deep, containing a foot of water.

  New horrors afflicted the men on Gallipoli. On November 26, a torrential rain followed by a two-day blizzard of sleet and snow flooded and froze the trenches. Men drowned when icy water roared down the hillsides and through the trenches; subsequently, 200 men froze to death. Eventually, over 16,000 men on the Allied side were disabled by frostbite, and 10,000 had to be evacuated. Evidence of Turkish suffering came from a stream of Turkish bodies washing down from the heights into Allied trenches.

  Despite the lost battleships, Hamilton’s removal, the gloomy visits of Monro and Kitchener, and the secret decision in London for evacuation, a counter-current had been running through the fleet offshore. De Robeck remained opposed to a new naval attempt to force the Narrows, but Roger Keyes, his Chief of Staff, had never abandoned hope. Before Kitchener arrived, Keyes had made a new proposal: the army need only hold on to its three beachheads while the navy rushed a squadron through the Straits into the Sea of Marmara. De Robeck was a forbearing superior: “Well, Commodore,” he said to Keyes, who was ten years younger, “you and I will never agree, but there is no reason we should not remain friends.” Keyes had a strong ally in Rear Admiral Rosslyn Wester Wemyss, the commander at Mudros; possibly because of this, de Robeck gave his Chief of Staff permission to go to London and personally present his plan to the Admiralty. Keyes arrived in London on October 28 and called on Arthur Balfour. The new First Lord, lying back in his armchair with his knees as high as his head, listened for two hours while Keyes poured out his appeal. Then Balfour stood up, rang for tea, 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.” To the argument that de Robeck, the admiral in command, opposed the plan, Keyes replied that Wemyss, who was senior to de Robeck on the permanent Navy List and who knew the theater equally well, supported the plan and therefore should be placed in command. Balfour nodded and suggested that Keyes make a call on Kitchener who was about to depart on his visit to Gallipoli. The field marshal listened and urged Keyes to go back to the Admiralty and get a firm commitment to the naval attack. That evening, November 3, Kitchener sent a message to Birdwood, who was temporarily in command at Gallipoli:

  Most secret. Decipher yourself. . . . 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 the Straits. We must do what we can to help them, and I think as soon as ships are in the Marmara, we should seize and hold the Bulair isthmus. . . . The admiral will probably be changed and Wemyss given command to carry through the naval part of the work. . . . We must do it right this time. I absolutely refuse to sign orders for evacuation, which I think would condemn a large percentage of our men to death or imprisonment.

  The morning of November 4 was the high-water mark for Keyes’s mission to London and for his plan to rush the Straits. The Admiralty, temporarily moved by Keyes’s enthusiasm, ordered four more old battleships, Hibernia, Zealandia, Albemarle, and Russell, plus four destroyers and twenty-four trawlers, to the Dardanelles. Balfour sent a message to de Robeck tactfully saying that the admiral probably was tired and ought to come home on leave for at least a month. That afternoon, however, the political tide began to turn. Kitchener, before leaving that night on his own visit to the Aegean, attended a meeting of the War Council where it was decided that a new naval attempt could only be authorized in support of a major new offensive by the army. As there were no fresh troops to launch such an offensive—all reinforcements for the Mediterranean were going to Salonika—the ministers decided that a naval attack by itself would be pointless. On November 7, the prime minister promised Bonar Law that the army would be evacuated. Keyes, however, was unaware of either of these decisions and returned to the Aegean believing that his plan would be approved. On November 18, however, he saw Kitchener, who by then had visited Gallipoli. “I have seen the place,” he said to Keyes. “It is an awful place and you will never get through.” Kitchener by then had made his own recommendation that Suvla and Anzac be evacuated and Cape Helles held.

  Still, Keyes did not give up. On November 25, de Robeck departed on leave and Sir Rosslyn Wester Wemyss assumed command of the fleet in the Aegean. Thereafter, Wemyss joined Keyes in ceaseless advocacy of a renewed naval attack. On November 28, Wemyss proposed to the Admiralty that eight old battleships, four light cruisers, and ten destroyers make the attempt, followed by four battleships acting as supply vessels. Fitted with mine bumpers, the ships would enter the Straits at dark. Veiled from the searchlights by smoke screens, they would rush through the minefields and past the Narrows forts, then attack the forts from the rear. As soon as it was light, a second squadron of six more-modern battleships would attack the forts from below the minefields. The suddenness of this surprise attack, Wemyss argued, guaranteed success.

  Monro, adamantly opposed to any further effort at the Dardanelles, vehemently objected. “I realised,” Wemyss said later, “that in him I had an opponent to our scheme who would never deviate from his attitude of hostility towards it.” Even so, for a short while, it seemed that Wemyss and Keyes might be given their chance. On December 2, Wemyss was appointed acting vice admiral, and the Admiralty asked how much time would be needed to reembark two divisions at Salonika and bring them back to Mudros. “All indications seemed pointing to fulfillment of our hopes,” Wemyss said later, “when on December 8, I received a personal telegram from the Admiralty announcing that: ‘in the face of unanimous military opinion, H.M. Government have decided to shorten the front by evacuating Anzac and Suvla.’ ” Wemyss called the decision “a disastrous mistake . . . [that] seemed to show that military opinion had prevailed and that the Western [Front] school had gained the day. . . . That naval action would have involved heavy losses is probable, but the sacrifice
would have been no greater than those offered up almost daily on the Western Front with less chance of success. . . . The results of success would have been far more reaching than in any other theatre of war. Once through the Narrows: Turkey would become a negligible factor, Russia would be rejoined to the Allies, Egypt would be saved and the end of the war brought within measurable distance.” Encouraged by Keyes and believing, because the government, the Admiralty, and Kitchener had so often waffled before, that this latest decision might still be reversed, Wemyss cabled Balfour: “The Navy is prepared to force the Straits and control them for an indefinite period cutting off all Turkish supplies to peninsula.” He attacked Monro by name: “The ‘unanimous military opinion’ referred to has, I feel certain, been greatly influenced by Sir Charles Monro. . . . A few days ago General Monro remarked to me, ‘If you succeed and occupy Gallipoli and even Constantinople, what then? It would not help us in France or Flanders.’ I mention this to show that he has quite failed to realize the significance of the . . . Near East.” Wemyss’s conclusion was emphatic: “I consider evacuation disastrous, tactically and strategically. . . . I am convinced that the time is ripe for a vigorous offensive and I am confident of success.”

  Wemyss’s telegram elicited two negative replies from London: a curt, official message from the Admiralty and a gentler, personal message from the First Lord. The official telegram said that the Admiralty was not prepared to authorize the navy singlehandedly to attempt to force the Narrows and act in the Sea of Marmara, cut off from its supplies. As reasons, the Admiralty cited the opinion of “responsible generals and the great strain thrown on naval and military resources by the operations in Greece.” In any case, the Admiralty declared, “the decision of the Government to evacuate Suvla and Anzac will not be further questioned by the Admiralty.” Balfour’s personal message elaborated: “I view with deepest regret abandonment of Suvla and Anzac. But the military authorities are clear that those cannot be made tenable against an increased artillery fire while the Admiralty hold that the naval arguments against forcing the Straits are overwhelming. . . . Whilst success is most doubtful, very heavy losses are certain. . . . This would be represented as a heavy blow at our naval supremacy.” Wemyss gave up and prepared to obey orders.

  The evacuation of Gallipoli—in contrast to most other aspects of the campaign—was carried out with extraordinary efficiency and success. When the government’s decision reached the Aegean, there were 83,000 men, 200 artillery pieces, and 5,000 horses and mules in the Anzac-Suvla beachhead. The evacuation began in secrecy on December 12 and continued nightly. To help keep the withdrawal a secret by creating the illusion of normality, empty supply boxes were ferried in during the day. By the afternoon of December 18, 40,000 men, half of the force at Anzac-Suvla, had quietly climbed into boats and disappeared over the sea. Another 20,000 were taken off on the single night of the eighteenth and the last 20,000 in a dense fog on the night of the nineteenth. In the darkness, so that the Turks would not realize that the lines were deserted, fixed rifles were rigged to fire automatically. Water dripping into a tin or candles burning through strings pulled the triggers of the abandoned rifles so that for half an hour after the troops left, shots were still being fired from the British trenches. By dawn on December 20, both Anzac and Suvla had been totally evacuated, with only one man wounded. The extent of this British talent for retreat was hailed by a German military correspondent writing in the Vossische Zeitung: “As long as war exists . . . [this evacuation] will stand in the eyes of students of the strategy of retreat as a masterpiece which up to now has never been attained.”

  Thirteen miles south of Anzac and Suvla, 35,000 Allied soldiers still remained ashore at Cape Helles. The men were withdrawn, moving in darkness and complete silence along carefully prearranged march routes marked by thick lines of chalk or white flour, while more unmanned rifles fired into the night. On the afternoon of January 7, when the garrison was down to 19,000, Sanders guessed that the Allies were leaving and ordered an attack. Turkish artillery battered the Allied trenches for four hours, but when the Turkish infantry started over the top, the British saw something they had never seen before at Gallipoli: the Turkish infantry was refusing to charge. Turkish officers shouted and struck at their men, but the soldiers, who sensed that the British were departing, would not move forward. That night and the next, the remaining Allied soldiers went down to the boats and by 4:00 a.m. on the ninth, no one remained on shore. Time-fused bombs blew up abandoned ammunition dumps and caused the only Allied casualty in the entire Gallipoli evacuation: a sailor was killed when a piece of debris fell into his boat as it was leaving the beach. When daylight came and the beaches were deserted, hordes of ragged, hungry Turks who had been living on olives and bread rushed down and threw themselves onto the piles of abandoned corned beef, biscuits, cakes, and jam. One of the final victims at Gallipoli was a Turkish soldier who died from eating too much English marmalade.

  During the eight and a half months of the campaign, the Allied nations had landed half a million men on Gallipoli. More than half of these became casualties; 50,000 died, the rest were wounded. The 29th Division, which had arrived on the peninsula with 17,600 men, and been fed constant replacements, had suffered 34,011 casualties of whom 9,011 were killed or miss-ing, 11,000 wounded, and 14,000 incapacitated by disease. Overall, the British, Anzac, and Indian armies endured 205,000 casualties and the French 47,000. Turkish casualties could only be estimated, even by the Turks, but the figure is between 250,000 and 350,000. Gallipoli also became a graveyard of British careers: Carden’s, Hamilton’s, Stopford’s, Fisher’s, and—so it seemed for many years—Churchill’s. Kitchener survived in office, but the aura of omniscience and omnipotence had been stripped away.

  Long after the campaign and the war were over, frustration still gripped the men who had advocated that the navy force the Dardanelles: Wemyss, Keyes, and Churchill. Wemyss, on returning to England, saw the First Lord and found him languidly philosophical. “Mr. Balfour,” Wemyss wrote to Keyes, “was most sympathetic and assured me that he had been in sympathy with our plans from the very beginning. . . . He told me that he had been out-voted all around and ended up saying, ‘Well, it is no use crying over spilt milk.’ ” The “spilt milk,” Wemyss cried out, were “the invaluable lives and treasures squandered on this campaign. To what good were they sacrificed?” Keyes noted bitterly that the great Allied army sent to defend Salonika dug itself in and awaited an attack “which was never delivered and was probably never seriously contemplated by the enemy.” Keyes also called on Balfour, who said that “he had always felt convinced that I was right about forcing the Dardanelles. . . . He said that he was a constitutional minister and had to be guided by his Sea Lords and that they had declared that we should lose twelve ships. I could not refrain from retorting that not one of his Sea Lords had any experience at the Dardanelles or had ever seen a shot fired in war.” Winston Churchill carried the political scars of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli for twenty-five years, until, in 1940, he became prime minister. Nevertheless, looking back on the great adventure, he was to say, “Searching my heart, I cannot regret the effort. It was good to go as far as we did. Not to persevere—that was the crime.”

  CHAPTER 28 The Blockade of Germany

  In the year 1915, the Great War was fought on many fronts, of which the doomed campaign at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli was only one. In the North Sea, German battle cruisers fought and lost the Battle of the Dogger Bank and then were forbidden by the kaiser to come out again. On the Western Front, armies lunged at each other in bloody offensives that despite the involvement of millions of men and, for the first time, of poison gas, left the lines of barbed wire–laced trenches essentially in place. In May, Italy declared war on Austria, her former Triple Alliance partner (Italy’s declaration of war against Germany would wait until August 1916). In October, Bulgaria, emboldened by the obvious failure of the Allied armies at Gallipoli, joined the Central Powers and aided in the overru
nning of Serbia. On the Eastern Front, from the Baltic to the Rumanian border, a mammoth German-Austrian offensive beginning May 1 captured Warsaw, drove the Russians out of Poland, and killed, wounded, or captured 2 million men of the Russian army. Beginning in February, German submarines began attacking merchant vessels in the waters around the British Isles. And through the year, the Allied blockade continued its silent, deadly corrosion of the German war effort.

  On both sides, January of the new year had been a watershed of critical decisions. It was then that the Admiralty and the British government agreed to attack the Dardanelles. During the same weeks, the German Naval Staff, fearing the Allied blockade but forbidden to send German dreadnoughts to challenge the British fleet, proposed to employ what Admiral von Tirpitz called “the miracle weapon,” the U-boat, to turn the tables and ensure that supplies to Britain would be cut off, as the British had done to Germany. Ultimately, it was by winning on these maritime battlefields—by sustaining the blockade and defeating the U-boats—that the Allies won the Great War. But it was, in a phrase used by the Duke of Wellington in describing his victory at Waterloo, “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.”

  The ability to blockade an enemy coast and choke off seaborne commerce has always been a potent derivative of superior sea power. Blockade was not a rapid method of waging war, however; during the Napoleonic Wars, the Royal Navy blockaded the coasts of Europe for twenty years; in the American Civil War, the Union navy had blockaded the ports of the Confederacy for more than four years. Nor was a policy of blockade free of diplomatic and military risk. The efforts of a blockading fleet to control access to enemy ports ran counter to many neutral rights as well as to the more generally espoused doctrine of freedom of the seas, which in its purest form declared that vessels of neutral nations should be able to travel on the high seas untroubled by any belligerent power. So vigorously had the new American republic supported this doctrine in 1812 that when the British stopped American merchant vessels, seized their cargoes, and then began removing American seamen and impressing them into the Royal Navy, war followed. During the American Civil War, hostilities again came close when blockading Union cruisers halted British merchant vessels bringing supplies to the South and carrying cotton back to the textile mills of England. In the American South, half a century later, memories of the Union blockade remained vivid.