by Peter Hart
Yet, before the year ended there was one enemy that Falkenhayn accepted could be dealt with permanently in the period of grace granted by the string of defeats suffered by Russia in 1915: Serbia. He allocated the German Eleventh Army to the task of joining with Conrad’s Austrian armies in an assault on Serbia under the overall command of Mackensen. They were also to be helped by a new ally: the Bulgarians, who had been greatly impressed by the triumph at the Battle of Gorlice-Tarnow and had begun serious negotiations with a view to joining the war on the side of the Central Powers. Germany astutely played on the Bulgarian resentments stemming from the chastening treatment meted out to Bulgaria in the second stage of the Balkan War of 1912, and offered them substantial territorial gains at the expense of Serbia or indeed any other Balkan countries that had the temerity to join the Allies. These diplomatic moves were co-ordinated to coincide with the Mackensen Offensive, timed to commence in early October 1915, with the express intention not only of knocking Serbia out of the war but also of opening up a land route via Serbia and Bulgaria to Turkey to allow guns and munitions to get through to assist the Turks in the Gallipoli Campaign. Allied counter-diplomacy, even a last-ditch ultimatum from Russia, failed to have any impact: the Bulgarians under Tsar Ferdinand I were determined to join the Central Powers.
On 6 October Mackensen launched his assault with a heavy bombardment pounding the Serbian positions all along the Sava and Danube Rivers. The German Eleventh Army and Austrian Third Army managed to establish significant bridgeheads and, once the integrity of the Serbian river lines was broken, their weight of numbers soon hurled back the Serbians and Belgrade fell again on 9 October. Then, on 14 October, the Bulgarian First and Second Armies invaded Serbia from the east. The campaign that ensued was brutal. But the Central Powers had underestimated both the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Serbs and the impact of the winter weather in the mountainous areas of the central Balkans. With their totemic but still ailing leader, Field Marshal Radomir Putnik, travelling in a sedan car, the Serbians eluded attempts to cut them off and fell back through the mountain passes into Montenegro and Albania. Ravaged by disease, freezing to death in the bitter winter, lacking food or transport, harassed all the while by unsympathetic Albanian guerrillas, left with little or no hope to sustain them, the survivors managed somehow to stagger to the Albanian coast from where they could hope to be evacuated to safety by the Royal Navy. The Central Powers had captured Serbia, but the Serbian Army would fight on regardless. It was a potent example of the difficulties attached to fighting a war against nation states that will not accept defeat.
THE END OF 1915 HAD NOT BROUGHT DECISIVE VICTORY to the Central Powers on the Eastern Front. Falkenhayn had never thought it would; for him it would always be a sideshow. He could not envisage any circumstances under which the Russians had enough of their men destroyed to force surrender; and nor could he imagine which tactical objectives or cities would have to be captured to make the Russians give up. His troops had captured Warsaw without a flicker of defeatism from the Russians. As a student of military history the German Chief of General Staff knew enough not to push on towards Moscow; that way lay only madness and defeat. Falkenhayn had only ever turned to the Eastern Front in order to bolster the Austrians. With the Russians momentarily cowed, the Bulgarians on the side of the Central Powers and the Serbs seemingly defeated, his mind turned to the Western Front. Once again the troop trains began to move the German divisions, this time from east to west.
7
GALLIPOLI, 1915
‘This is one of the great campaigns of history. Think what Constantinople is to the East. It is more than London, Paris and Berlin all rolled into one are to the West. Think how it has dominated the East. Think what its fall will mean.’1
First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Winston Churchill
THE CONSEQUENCES OF EVEN A MOMENTARY LOSS of naval control by the Royal Navy could not have been more starkly illustrated than by the escape of the German battlecruiser Goeben and the accompanying light cruiser Breslau from the Mediterranean at the outbreak of the war. Since 1912 these two ships, under the command of Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, had been acting as symbols of the German state during their regular visits to Constantinople where their presence made a considerable impact on Turkish popular opinion, creating the perception that German military power had a strong naval dimension. The Germans already maintained a Military Mission providing advice to the Turkish Army, while the Royal Navy had a Naval Mission performing a similar role for the Turkish Navy. However, even before hostilities began, the First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had undermined Britain’s position in Turkey by unilaterally confiscating the two Turkish dreadnoughts nearing completion in British naval yards. This decision, although not taken lightly, resounded across Turkey. The ships had been financed by popular subscription and embodied a considerable degree of national pride. To have them wrenched away was intolerable.
On 4 August, the day after Franco-German hostilities began, Souchon attempted to interfere with the French convoy operations transporting the XIX Corps from North Africa to Marseilles and what was to become the Western Front. Despite the attentions of the French and British Mediterranean Fleet, the Goeben and Breslau managed to escape in circumstances of considerable confusion not helped by a plethora of Admiralty signals attempting to control affairs from London. Souchon arrived at the Dardanelles on 10 August, whereupon his ships were promptly ‘sold’ to Turkey to ‘replace’ the two dreadnoughts confiscated by the British. This proved a great step in Turkey’s journey to war which, after a considerable period of politicking and intrigue, finally triggered a raid by the Turkish fleet led by Souchon aboard the Goeben on the Russian Black Sea ports. This in turn provoked the Russia declaration of war on Turkey on 2 November 1914. The focus of attention was on the Dardanelles, the narrow strip of water between Europe and Asia, one of the great maritime sea lanes, acting as the gateway to Constantinople, the Black Sea and Russia. Shortly afterwards, the Turkish Sultan Mehmed V, as the titular head of the Muslim Caliphate, declared a Holy War with a clarion call to all Muslim subjects in British, French or Russian domains to rise up against their infidel masters. This would have a minimal impact but it was nevertheless worrying, in particular to the British, who were concerned as to the possible impact on the large Muslim population within the Empire.
The Allies were ordered into immediate action and bombarded the forts at the entrance of the Dardanelles on 4 November 1914, thereby drawing attention to the paucity of the existing Turkish defences covering that vital waterway. While the Turks subsequently put much effort into improving their fortifications the Royal Navy bided its time. This remained the situation until Kitchener received a request for help from the Russians hard-pressed by a Turkish offensive in the Carpathian Mountains in December 1914. The British response was to despatch a joint Anglo-French fleet under the command of Vice Admiral Sackville Carden to force the Dardanelles. Early bombardments of the Turkish forts achieved little, not helped by the restrictive flat trajectory of the naval guns coupled with difficulties in observation. The British operation was further hamstrung by the entirely legitimate opposition of both the First Sea Lord Sir John Fisher and the Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet Sir John Jellicoe who were jealous of any naval resources denied the Grand Fleet as it faced the High Seas Fleet across the North Sea.
Finally, on 18 March, the Allied fleet made a major effort to force open the Dardanelles. Carden had folded under the pressure and had been replaced in command by Vice Admiral John de Robeck when at 10.30 in the bright sunshine of a lovely spring day the fleet sailed into the Straits. The naval guns blazed out, pounding the forts, but the effects were minimal. When under fire the forts fell silent, but the moment the ships moved closer the Turkish guns burst back into life. More dangerous still, on the night of 8 March the Turkish minelayer Nusrat had laid a line of mines right where the ships were accustomed to manoeuvre. These had not been detected and the consequences were devastatin
g. At 14.00 the French pre-dreadnought Bouvet ran on to a mine. There was a dreadful internal explosion and she sank within minutes. Some 639 French lives were lost in this tragedy. Still the battle raged on. Things began to get desperate for the Allies when the battlecruiser Inflexible, already battered by shells, also ran on to a mine, followed by the pre-dreadnoughts Ocean and Irresistible. Although the Inflexible managed to withdraw and run herself aground, the other two sank. Fortunately, the crews were for the most part saved. Bowing to the inevitable and with his minesweepers making no progress, at 17.50 de Robeck ordered the fleet to retreat. He had lost nearly a third of his ships and had achieved nothing. Subsequently siren voices claimed that the fleet had fallen back at the point of victory, that the Turks had been ready to give way. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Turks still had plenty of shells left for both forts and howitzer batteries; the minefields and torpedo tubes were still intact. From this total defeat would be born the Gallipoli land campaign.
The Allies had already wavered from the original intention of a purely naval assault. The strategic confusion at the heart of the British government was indicative of the inability of politicians to grasp the implications of their involvement in a continental war based firmly on Europe, rather than the traditional random maritime interventions of yore. Troops had begun to gather in the Mediterranean area almost by default, with no real attention paid to their readiness for war. The bedrock was the 29th Division, hastily patched together from regular garrison troops gathered from around the Empire, while the French 1st Division of the Corps Expéditionnaire d’Orient (CEO) was a well-trained formation with a full artillery complement. Sadly, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and Royal Naval Division (RND) were filled with promising material, but had little experience as soldiers. These gathering forces were placed under the command of General Sir Ian Hamilton, who had arrived the day before the abortive naval attempt. In reserve Hamilton had access to the 42nd Division of Lancashire Territorials and an Indian Brigade. Failure on 18 March triggered the decision to attempt a landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula with the aim of seizing the Kilid Bahr Plateau which dominated the narrows of the Dardanelles.
The challenge ahead of Hamilton should not be underestimated. This would be the first opposed landing in the era of modern weapons; not only that, but it would have to be conducted on a narrow peninsula in terrain that greatly favoured the defenders. Furthermore, there was an inevitable delay while the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) gathered and prepared for action, a delay which allowed the Turks to improve their defences. All chance of a strategic surprise had been lost by the previous naval bombardments; now all Hamilton could hope to strive for was an element of tactical subtlety to try and wrong-foot the Turks. His complex plans, designed to confuse the Turks, were predicated on the Turks posing minimum resistance. No less than five separate landings were to be made by the 29th Division around the Helles tip of the Peninsula. The ANZAC Corps was to land on the beaches just north of Gaba Tepe further up the Peninsula and opposite Kilid Bahr, while the French would land at Kum Kale on the Asiatic coast in order to protect the rear of the 29th Division. Just to complicate matters further, diversionary operations would be launched by the French at Besika Bay and the RND at the Bulair neck of the Peninsula. In trying to confuse the Turks, Hamilton divided his forces, failing to concentrate them at any one point and opening up the possibility of failure everywhere. The Turkish Fifth Army charged with defending Gallipoli was under the command of General Otto Liman von Sanders. His plans revolved around light coastal screens charged with causing the maximum possible delay while the reserves would march to the point of danger and launch counter-attacks designed to sweep the invaders into the sea. As such, by accident or design, he happened on the perfect counter to Hamilton’s scattergun approach.
The ANZAC Corps would be landed at night at 04.30 on 25 April, the men being towed in strings of naval cutters behind steam boats. As they approached the shore stealthily there was a tremendous amount of confusion with the end result being that the boats landed bunched together around the Ari Burnu promontory at the northern end of a small sheltered beach which would soon become known as Anzac Cove.
Boats ground in 4 or 5 feet of water owing to the human weight contained in them. We scramble out, struggle to the shore and, rushing across the beach, take cover under a low sandbank. ‘Here, take off my pack and I’ll take off yours!’ We help one another to lift the heavy water-soaked packs off. ‘Hurry up, there!’ says our Sergeant. ‘Fix bayonets!’ Click! And the bayonets are fixed. ‘Forward!’ And away we scramble up the hills in our front. Up, up we go, stumbling in holes and ruts. With a ringing cheer we charge the steep hill, pulling ourselves up by roots and branches of trees; at times digging our bayonets into the ground and pushing ourselves up to a foothold, until, topping the hill, we find the enemy have made themselves very scarce.2
Private Alfred Perry, 10th (South Australia) Battalion, AIF
The initial landing was all but unopposed – just one company of the 2/27th Regiment faced the invaders – but a combination of the tortuous terrain and cautious leadership restricted the Australian advance to about quarter of a mile inland. The arrival of the rest of the 27th Regiment prevented any further progress.
We guessed that the enemy was advancing slowly and cautiously in order to capture the ridge where we were which dominated all sides – namely Chunuk Bair to Gaba Tepe. We set about our task of throwing the enemy and we felt a moral force in ourselves for performing this task. All the signs indicated that opposing our 2,000 armed men was a force of at least four or five times that size – or even bigger. We had to prevent the enemy from reaching and occupying the dominating line of Chunuk Bair–Gaba Tepe and had to gain time until the 19th Division arrived.3
Lieutenant Colonel Mehmet Sefik, Headquarters, Fifth Turkish Army
The arrival of the 19th Turkish Division under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal on the dominating bulk of Chunuk Bair changed the situation radically. Soon it was the Turks, not the Anzacs, who were attacking.
To my mind there was a more important factor than this tactical situation – that was, everybody hurled himself on the enemy to kill and to die. This was no ordinary attack. Everybody was eager to succeed or go forward with the determination to die. Here is the order which I gave verbally to the commanders: ‘I don’t order you to attack – I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can take our places.’4
Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, Headquarters, Fifth Turkish Army
Kemal’s words perfectly encapsulate the spirit of grim determination that motivated the Turkish troops. The Anzacs were pinned back and, after the failure of the Turkish attempt to push them finally into the sea on 19 May, here they would remain, relatively quiescent, but defending a minute bridgehead that defied all military sense.
At Helles the British landed after dawn on 25 April, confident that once they got their troops ashore the Turks would cut and run. The main landings were to be made by the 86th Brigade at V and W Beaches at the tip of the Peninsula, with subsidiary landings at S, X and Y Beaches to try and threaten the Turks’ flanks, with the French landing at Kum Kale on the other side of the Straits in order to cover their backs from the fire of the Asiatic forts. It was intended that the British troops would reach the hill of Achi Baba which dominated Helles by the end of the day before moving up the Peninsula to attack the Kilid Bahr Plateau in conjunction with the ANZAC Corps.
The troops came ashore almost unopposed at S, X and Y Beaches, but then failed to advance in a purposeful manner, indeed, the Y Beach force soon found itself battling to survive as Turkish reinforcements forced a somewhat panicked evacuation on the morning of 26 April. The story of the assaults of W and V Beach are a mixture of horror, heroism and gross British exaggeration of the odds they faced. The Turks had just two companies of the 3/26th Regiment defending these two beaches, although they were
well dug in with barbed wire defences. At W Beach the Lancashire Fusiliers were initially held up, but the Turks were soon outflanked and swept away. Yet at V Beach it was a different matter. Here the Turks fought brilliantly, pouring concentrated rifle fire on to the tows of rowing boats carrying the 1st Dublin Fusiliers and the 1st Munster Fusiliers emerging on to the exit ramps of a specially adapted tramp steamer, the River Clyde, which had been deliberately run ashore.
I had to run about 100–150 yards in the water and being the first away from the cutter escaped the fire a bit to start with. But as soon as a few followed me, the water around seemed to be alive, the bullets striking the sea all around us. Heaven alone knows how I got thro’ a perfect hail of bullets. The beach sloped very gently – fortunately! When I was about 50 yards from the water’s edge I felt one bullet go thro’ the pack on my back and then thought I had got through safely when they put one through my left arm. The fellows in the regiment had told me I was getting too fat to run, but those who saw me go through that bit of water changed their opinions later – I ran like hell!!!!!5
Captain David French, 1st Royal Dublin Fusiliers
The survivors were pinned down until the fall of night allowed the bulk of the troops to come ashore, exposing the numerical weakness of the Turkish garrison. The British troops had over-run the Turkish positions by the early afternoon of 26 April. But by this time the timetable had been thrown completely out of kilter. Communications had broken down and staff procedures collapsed as inexperienced officers lost control over the situation. There was no sense of a combined purpose; each beach landing was fought as a separate operation, with no effective co-operation to assist each other when things went wrong. This was not unique to the 29th Division; exactly the same problems had been encountered after the initial breakthrough at Neuve Chapelle on 10 March.