John Masefield’s Great War: Collected Works

by Philip Errington

  The army designed for this honourable and dangerous task consisted of the following:

  A division of French soldiers, the Corps Expéditionnaire de l’Orient, under M. le General d’Amade. This division was made up of French Territorial soldiers and Senegalese.

  The 29th Division of British regular troops.

  The Royal Naval Division.

  The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.

  The French Division and the 29th Division of British Regular soldiers were men who had been fully trained in time of peace, but the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and the Royal Naval Division, who together made up more than half the army, were almost all men who had enlisted since the declaration of war, and had had not more than six months’ active training. They were, however, the finest body of young men ever brought together in modern times. For physical beauty and nobility of bearing they surpassed any men I have ever seen; they walked and looked like the kings in old poems, and reminded me of the line in Shakespeare:

  “Baited like eagles having lately bathed.”

  As their officers put it, “they were in the pink of condition and didn’t care a damn for anybody.” Most of these new and irregular formations were going into action for the first time, to receive their baptism of fire in “a feat of arms only possible to the flower of a very fine army.”

  Having decided to use the army, the question how to use it was left to the commanding General, whose task was to help the British fleet through the Narrows. Those who have criticized the operations to me, even those who knew or pretended to know the country and military matters (but who were, for the most part, the gulls or agents of German propaganda), raised, nearly always, one or both of the following alternatives to the attack used by Sir Ian Hamilton. They have asked:

  (1) Why did he not attack at or to the north of Bulair in the Gulf of Xeros, or

  (2) Why did he not attack along the Asiatic coast instead of where he did, at Cape Helles and Anzac?

  Those who have asked these questions have always insisted to me that had he chosen either alternative his efforts must have been successful. It may be well to set down here the final and sufficient reasons against either folly.

  Firstly, then, the reasons against landing the army at or to the north of Bulair in the Gulf of Xeros.

  The task demanded of the army was to second the naval attack in the Straits – i.e., by seizing and occupying, if possible, that high ground in the Peninsula from which the Turkish guns molested the minesweepers. As this high ground commanded the Asiatic shore, its occupation by the British troops would have made possible the passage of the Straits. This and this alone was the task demanded of the army; no adventure upon Constantinople was designed or possible with the numbers of men available. How the army could have seconded the naval attack by landing three or four days’ march from the Narrows within easy reach of the large Turkish armies in European Turkey is not clear.

  Nevertheless, our task was to land the army, and all landing-places had to be examined. Pass now to –

  (a) Bulair was carefully reconnoitred, and found to be a natural stronghold, so fortified with earthworks that there was no chance of taking it. Ten thousand Turks had been digging there for a month, and had made it impregnable. There are only two landing-places near Bulair: one (a very bad one) in a swamp or salt marsh to the east, the other in a kind of death-trap ravine to the west, both dominated by high ground in front, and one (the eastward) commanded also from the rear. Had the army, or any large part of it, landed at either beach, it would have been decimated in the act and then held up by the fortress.

  (b) Had the army landed to the north of Bulair on the coast of European Turkey, it would have been in grave danger of destruction. Large Turkish armies could have marched upon its left and front from Adrianople and Rodosto, while, as it advanced, the large army in Gallipoli, reinforced from Asia across the Straits, could have marched from Bulair and fallen upon its right flank and rear.

  (c) But even had it beaten these armies, some four times its own strength, it would none the less have perished, through failure of supplies, since no European army could hope to live upon a Turkish province in the spring, and European supplies could have been brought to it only with the utmost difficulty and danger. There is no port upon that part of the Turkish coast; no shelter from the violent southerly gales, and no depth of water near the shore. In consequence, no transports of any size could approach within some miles of the coast to land either troops or stores. Even had there been depth of water for them, transports could not have discharged upon the coast because of the danger from submarines. They would have been compelled to discharge in the safe harbour of the subsidiary base at Mudros in Lemnos, and (as happened with the fighting where it was) their freight, whether men or stores, reshipped into small ships of too light draught to be in danger from submarines, and by them conveyed to the landing-places. But this system, which never quite failed at Anzac and Cape Helles, would have failed on the Xeros coast. Anzac is some forty miles from Mudros, the Xeros coast is eighty, or twice the distance. Had the army landed at Xeros, it would have been upon an unproductive enemy territory in an unsettled season of the year, from eight to twenty hours’ steam from their one safe subsidiary base. A stormy week might have cut them off at any time from all possibility of obtaining a man, a biscuit, a cartridge, or even a drink of water, and this upon ground where they could with little trouble be outnumbered by armies four times their strength with sound communications.

  Secondly, for the reasons against attacking along the Asiatic coast –

  (a) The coast is commanded from the Gallipoli coast, and therefore less important to those trying to second a naval attack upon the Narrows.

  (b) An army advancing from Kum Kale along the Asiatic shore would be forced to draw its supplies from overseas. As it advanced, its communications could be cut with great ease at any point by the hordes of armed Turks in Asia Minor.

  (c) The Turkish armies in Asia Minor would have attacked it in the right and rear, those from Bulair and Rodosto would have ferried over and attacked it in front, the guns in Gallipoli would have shelled its left, and the task made impracticable.

  Some of those who raised these alternatives raised a third when the first two had been disposed of. They asked, “Even if the army could not have landed at Bulair or on the Asian coast, why did it land where it did land, on those suicidal beaches?” The answer to this criticism is as follows: It landed on those beaches because there were no others on the Peninsula, because the only landing-places at which troops could be got ashore with any prospect of success, however slight, were just those three or four small beaches near Cape Helles, at the south-west end of the Peninsula, and the one rather longer beach to the north of Gaba or Kaba Tepe. All these beaches were seen to be strongly defended, with barbed wire entanglements on the shore and under the water, with sea and land mines, with strongly entrenched riflemen, many machine guns, and an ample artillery. In addition, the beaches close to Cape Helles were within range of big guns mounted near Troy on the Asian shore, and the beach near Gaba Tepe was ranged by the guns in the olive-groves to the south and on the hills to the north of it. A strong Turkish army held the Peninsula, and very powerful reserves were at Bulair, all well-supplied (chiefly by boat from the Asian shore) with food and munitions. German officers had organized the defence of the Peninsula with great professional skill. They had made it a fortress of great strength, differing from all other fortresses in this, that besides being almost impregnable it was almost unapproachable. But our army had its task to do, there was no other means of doing it, and our men had to do what they could. Anyone trying to land, to besiege that fortress, had to do so by boat or lighter under every gun in the Turkish army. The Turks and the Germans knew, better than we, what few and narrow landing-places were possible to our men; they had had more than two months of time in which to make those landing-places fatal to any enemy within a mile of them, yet our men came from three thousan
d miles away, passed that mile of massacre, landed and held on with all their guns, stores, animals, and appliances, in spite of the Turk and his ally, who outnumbered them at every point.

  No army in history has made a more heroic attack; no army in history has been set such a task. No other body of men in any modern war has been called upon to land over mined and wired waters under the cross-fire of machine guns. The Japanese at Chinampo and Chemulpho were not opposed, the Russians at Pitzewo were not prepared, the Spaniards at Daiquiri made no fight. Our men achieved a feat without parallel in war, and no other troops in the world (not even Japanese or Ghazis in the hope of heaven) would have made good those beaches on the 25th of April.

  II

  Then said Roland: “Oliver, companion, brother . . . we shall have a strong and tough battle, such as man never saw fought. But I shall strike with my sword, and you, comrade, will strike with yours; we have borne our swords in so many lands, we have ended so many battles with them, that no evil song shall be sung of them . . . ” At these words the Franks went forward gladly. – The Song of Roland.

  Let the reader now try to imagine the nature of the landing. In order to puzzle the Turkish commander, to make him hesitate and divide his forces, it was necessary to land or pretend to land, in some force, simultaneously at various places. A feint of landing was to be made near Bulair; the French Corps Expéditionnaire was to land at Kum Kale, to attack and silence the Asiatic fortifications and batteries; the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps was to land at or near Gaba Tepe; while men of the 29th and Royal Naval Divisions landed at or near Cape Helles, some towards Krithia on the north, others nearer Sedd-el-Bahr on the south-west and south. The main attacks were to be those near Gaba Tepe and Cape Helles.

  At Cape Helles three principal landings were to be made at the following places:

  At Beach V, a small semicircular sandy bay, three hundred yards across, just west of the ruins of Sedd-el-Bahr castle. The ground rises steeply round the half-circle of the bay exactly as the seats rise in an amphitheatre. Modern defence could not ask for a more perfect site.

  At Beach W (to the west of V), where a small sandy bay, under Cape Tekke, offered a landing upon a strip of sand about the size of Beach V. The slope upward from this beach is more gentle than at V, through a succession of sand-dunes, above which the ground was strongly entrenched. The cliffs north and south are precipitous, and make the beach a kind of gully or ravine. The Turks had placed machine guns in holes in the cliff, had wired and mined both beach and bay, and thrown up strong redoubts to flank them. Beach W was a death trap.

  At Beach X (north of W, on the other or northern side of Cape Tekke), a narrow strip of sand, two hundred yards long, at the foot of a low cliff. This, though too small to serve for the quick passage ashore of many men at a time, was a slightly easier landing-place than the other two, owing to the lie of the ground. Besides these main landings, two minor landings were to be made as follows:

  At Beach S, a small beach, within the Straits, beyond Sedd-el-Bahr.

  At Beach Y (on the Ægean, to the west of Krithia), a strip of sand below a precipitous cliff, gashed with steep, crumbling, and scrub-covered gullies.

  These two minor landings were to protect the flanks of the main landing parties, “to disseminate the forces of the enemy and to interrupt the arrival of his reinforcements.” They were to take place at dawn (at about 5 a.m. or half an hour before the main attacks), without any preliminary bombardment from the fleet upon the landing-places.

  Near Gaba Tepe only one landing was to be made, upon a small beach, two hundred yards across, a mile to the north of Gaba Tepe promontory. The ground beyond this beach is abrupt sandy cliff, covered with scrub, flanked by Gaba Tepe, and commanded by the land to shoreward.

  For some days before the landing the army lay at Mudros, in Lemnos, aboard its transports, or engaged in tactical exercises ashore and in the harbour. Much bitter and ignorant criticism has been passed upon this delay, which was, unfortunately, very necessary. The month of April, 1915, in the Ægean, was a month of unusually unsettled weather; it was quite impossible to attempt the landing without calm water and the likelihood of fine weather for some days. In rough weather it would have been impossible to land laden soldiers with their stores through the surf of open beaches under heavy fire, and those who maintain that “other soldiers” (i.e., themselves) would have made the attempt can have no knowledge of what wading ashore from a boat, in bad weather, in the Ægean or any other sea, even without a pack and with no enemy ahead, is like. But in unsettled weather the Gallipoli coast is not only difficult, but exceedingly dangerous for small vessels. The currents are fierce, and a short and ugly sea gets up quickly and makes towing hazardous. Had the attempt been made in foul weather a great many men would have been drowned, some few would have reached the shore, and then the ships would have been forced off the coast. The few men left on the shore would have had to fight there with neither supplies nor supports till the enemy overwhelmed them.

  Another reason for delay was the need for the most minute preparation. Many armies have been landed from boats from the time of Pharaoh’s invasion of Punt until the present; but no men, not even Cæsar’s army of invasion in Britain, have had to land in an enemy’s country with such a prospect of difficulty before them. They were going to land on a foodless cliff, five hundred miles from a store, in a place and at a season in which the sea’s rising might cut them from supply. They had to take with them all things – munitions, guns, entrenching tools, sandbags, provisions, clothing, medical stores, hospital equipment, mules, horses, fodder, even water to drink, for the land produced not even that. These military supplies had to be arranged in boats and lighters in such a way that they might be thrust ashore with many thousands of men in all haste but without confusion. All this world of preparation, which made each unit landed a self-supporting army, took time and labour – how much can only be judged by those who have done similar work.

  On Friday, the 23rd of April, the weather cleared so that the work could be begun. In fine weather in Mudros a haze of beauty comes upon the hills and water till their loveliness is unearthly, it is so rare. Then the bay is like a blue jewel, and the hills lose their savagery, and glow, and are gentle, and the sun comes up from Troy, and the peaks of Samothrace change colour, and all the marvellous ships in the harbour are transfigured. The land of Lemnos was beautiful with flowers at that season, in the brief Ægean spring, and to seawards always, in the bay, were the ships, more ships, perhaps, than any port of modern times has known; they seemed like half the ships of the world. In this crowd of shipping, strange beautiful Greek vessels passed, under rigs of old time, with sheep and goats and fish for sale, and the tugs of the Thames and Mersey met again the ships they had towed of old, bearing a new freight, of human courage. The transports (all painted black) lay in tiers, well within the harbour, the men-of-war nearer Mudros and the entrance. Now in all that city of ships, so busy with passing picket-boats, and noisy with the labour of men, the getting of the anchors began. Ship after ship, crammed with soldiers, moved slowly out of harbour in the lovely day, and felt again the heave of the sea. No such gathering of fine ships has ever been seen upon this earth, and the beauty and the exultation of the youth upon them made them like sacred things as they moved away. All the thousands of men aboard them gathered on deck to see, till each rail was thronged. These men had come from all parts of the British world, from Africa, Australia, Canada, India, the Mother Country, New Zealand, and remote islands in the sea. They had said goodbye to home that they might offer their lives in the cause we stand for. In a few hours at most, as they well-knew, perhaps a tenth of them would have looked their last on the sun, and be a part of foreign earth or dumb things that the tides push. Many of them would have disappeared for ever from the knowledge of man, blotted from the book of life none would know how – by a fall or chance shot in the darkness, in the blast of a shell, or alone, like a hurt beast, in some scrub or gully, far from c
omrades and the English speech and the English singing. And perhaps a third of them would be mangled, blinded or broken, lamed, made imbecile or disfigured, with the colour and the taste of life taken from them, so that they would never more move with comrades nor exult in the sun. And those not taken thus would be under the ground, sweating in the trench, carrying sandbags up the sap, dodging death and danger, without rest or food or drink, in the blazing sun or the frost of the Gallipoli night, till death seemed relaxation and a wound a luxury. But as they moved out these things were but the end they asked, the reward they had come for, the unseen cross upon the breast. All that they felt was a gladness of exultation that their young courage was to be used. They went like kings in a pageant to the imminent death.

  As they passed from moorings to the man-of-war anchorage on their way to the sea, their feeling that they had done with life and were going out to something new welled up in those battalions; they cheered and cheered till the harbour rang with cheering. As each ship crammed with soldiers drew near the battleships, the men swung their caps and cheered again, and the sailors answered, and the noise of cheering swelled, and the men in the ships not yet moving joined in, and the men ashore, till all the life in the harbour was giving thanks that it could go to death rejoicing. All was beautiful in that gladness of men about to die, but the most moving thing was the greatness of their generous hearts. As they passed the French ships, the memory of old quarrels healed, and the sense of what sacred France has done and endured in this great war, and the pride of having such men as the French for comrades, rose up in their warm souls, and they cheered the French ships more, even, than their own.