Nor did it help that Birdwood and Godley ran their battles from headquarters. They issued orders about battles they barely understood because they weren’t on the ground. Both made reckless assumptions and ignored simple truths.
The volunteer soldiers had been let down by their career commanders. Lone Pine had been the only victory – and it was a diversion. The Turks would never surrender Chunuk Bair. Hill 971 had never been seriously threatened. The Turks at the Nek celebrated their victory and wondered if the Anzacs would be silly enough to try again. After four days, the Allies had taken no territory that mattered, despite 12500 Anzac casualties. The British officer Aubrey Herbert summed up the position: ‘On the hills we are the eyebrows and the Turks are the forehead.’
The campaign looked to be lost. Hamilton, as usual, refused to acknowledge the obvious. ‘Birdie [Birdwood] and Godley are at work upon a scheme for [Chunuk Bair’s] recapture,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘The Turks are well commanded: that I admit. Their Generals knew they were done unless they could quickly knock us off our Chunuk Bair. So they have done it. Never mind: never say die.’
Hamilton’s last hope rested with Lieutenant General Stopford and the Suvla landing. Stopford had conjured reasons to keep his troops on the beach. He spent the days after the landing thinking up more fanciful excuses.
Hamilton’s patience ran out after Stopford explained that his troops could not attack because the Turks were ‘inclined to be aggressive’. Stopford was sacked on 15 August. He slinked back to London and filed the military equivalent of an unfair dismissal claim.
By then, Suvla had become another hopeless siege. The surrounding hills were relatively clear when Stopford’s men landed. But the Turks had occupied the high ground as Stopford stalled and fussed for forty-eight hours. The British troops at Suvla lacked experience and basic supplies. The Daily Telegraph journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett found patches of scorched khaki where ‘another mismanaged soldier of the King had returned to mother earth’. A company of King George’s farmhands charged into smoke and disappeared.
Hamilton wrote a lengthy report to Kitchener. He admitted the offensive had failed and asked for more troops. He also urged his commanders to take extra ground. Maybe he thought that a lot of small wins might make up for several huge losses.
Birdwood wrote to his wife that his Anzacs were as ‘weak as cats’.
Two furious battles on 21 August were hardly worth dying for. The Allies wanted to secure the Suvla beachhead and join the Allied line from Suvla to Anzac Cove. But winning these battles wouldn’t put the Allies any closer to the Dardanelles. Many Australians died in savage struggles on Hill 60, a small rise about halfway between Anzac and Suvla.
The British staged a bigger battle at Scimitar Hill, a few kilometres inland from Suvla. The hill erupted in smoke and flames. British reinforcements fell like tenpins on the dry salt lake as Turkish shrapnel shells burst above them. Wounded men were burnt to death in scrub fires. By nightfall, British casualties stood at 5300 out of 14300 men. No ground had been gained.
The Australian attack on Hill 60 started the same afternoon and lasted for more than a week. Monash’s brigade was down to 1400 men, compared with 4000 when he landed. His men rushed at Hill 60 in charges almost as suicidal as those at the Nek.
Two lines of 150 Anzacs went forward through wheat-fields and thick scrub, carrying picks, shovels and barbed wire. The Turkish trenches had been undamaged by an earlier bombardment. The first Anzac wave went in and 110 men fell. It was much the same with the second line. Bushfires broke out and ‘Dad’ Brotchie, of the 14th Battalion, watched ‘writhing bodies trying to get away from the fire, the ammunition from the pouches going off and exploding’. Chaplain Andrew Gillison was shot dead trying to rescue the wounded. He was buried wrapped in a Union Jack. Chaplain E. N. Merrington removed Gillison’s wedding ring and sent it home to his wife.
The 18th Battalion, from New South Wales, had been ashore three days when it was ordered to Hill 60. The old Anzacs looked like scarecrows. The new men looked fresh and clean. They were told to charge the Turkish trenches at Hill 60 with bayonets and bombs, even though they had no bombs. About a quarter of the 750 who charged were killed in their first battle.
Private Myles O’Reilly disobeyed orders and loaded his rifle before the charge. He was squeamish about the thought of bayoneting a Turk. He helped take a Turkish trench when the enemy ran away. Turks started throwing bombs from O’Reilly’s left. He climbed onto the parapet to fire when a bomb exploded behind him. O’Reilly was badly wounded but lived. He always suspected that the hard biscuits in the haversack on his back saved his life.
Private James Grieve, of the 18th Battalion, survived the first charge and battled Turks for the next thirty-five hours. In a letter to his parents, he wrote of bullets and shrapnel whizzing around his head. The smell of piled dead bodies was ‘awful but that was not the worst’.
We were in such a cramped position & it was almost impossible to get water & I never felt the want of water so much in my life before. I would have given all I possessed in this world to have had a real good drink of water.
Grieve signed off the letter with a row of fifteen kisses. It was found in a dugout near Hill 60 on the same day that he was killed.
The remnants of the 10th Light Horse regiment rushed Hill 60 on 28 August and took Turkish trenches. Lieutenant Hugo Throssell, a 31-year-old farmer, had been in the fourth wave at the Nek, three weeks earlier. Now he piled sandbags to stem Turks rushing from around trench corners. He shot five men before the Turks began lobbing bombs.
The Australians threw their own bombs. As at Lone Pine, unexploded bombs went back and forth in trenches less than 10 metres apart. Anzac rifles burned so hot, they had to be swapped for those of the dead and wounded. Throssell held the trench, despite being shot in the neck and shoulder. Beside him was Corporal Syd Ferrier, a Victorian in his mid-thirties. Ferrier kept throwing bombs even after a Turkish bomb burst in his hand and blew away his arm to the elbow. He walked away for treatment but died on a hospital ship.
Birdwood thought Hill 60 had been taken. Yet the Turks still held half the summit. The Allies had suffered 2500 casualties without gaining control of the hill. The Australian 4th Brigade was down to under 1000 men. ‘The whole was a rotten, badly organised show – and those who planned it are responsible for heavy loss to this brigade,’ Monash wrote in his diary.
Throssell’s shirt was peppered with bomb fragments when he left the line. His wounds stiffened so that he could not hold a cigarette to his mouth. He returned after having his wounds dressed but a superior officer ordered him to leave and not come back. For his actions on 29 August, Throssell became the last Australian VC winner at Gallipoli.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Intrigues
Some British politicians resented Hamilton’s campaign even before he left England. They believed that the Dardanelles scheme stole troops and weapons from more critical battles in France. The campaign was supposed to have been swift and decisive. Now, after the failure of the August offensive, it had become an embarrassment.
Hamilton’s leadership had been questioned for months. The journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett had returned home in June, mainly to replace clothes lost when his boat was torpedoed, but also to express his concerns to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and to Churchill, Kitchener and other power-brokers. Ashmead-Bartlett had doubted the campaign tactics from the start. His habit of explaining his ideas to anyone who would listen had infuriated Hamilton’s staff.
By August, some of Hamilton’s own staff had lost faith in him, much as they admired him as a man. They knew he fed Kitchener reports that were absurdly optimistic. One of the staff officers, Guy Dawnay, was chosen to go to London. Dawnay was well connected. He spoke to King George – who had lost faith in Hamilton – and to everyone else who mattered. Dawnay had set himself an impossible task. He tried to remain loyal to Hamilton while explaining that the Dardanelles campaign was failing.
His mission was muddled by intrigues in London. The war cabinet fumbled with the difficulties of a world war it had not yet begun to understand. No war had ever been this vast. Bulgaria was now edging towards joining forces with Germany, which would allow Germany to transport heavy guns to Gallipoli. With more guns, the Turks might blow the Allies off the peninsula. Some politicians wanted to stay at Gallipoli. Others fretted that a loss would cripple British prestige.
Then Keith Murdoch, an Australian journalist, arrived in London from Gallipoli. Murdoch had prospered as a reporter in Australia after earlier failing to entrench himself in London’s Fleet Street press. He had overcome a stammer that sometimes left him unable to speak. At thirty years of age, Murdoch was patriotic and quick to judge. He also knew how to manipulate people. He said openly that he wanted to be a ‘power’. He thought more about courting politicians than improving his writing, which was often windy. Myth has it that Murdoch wrote a letter that prompted the British government to evacuate Gallipoli. The truth is more complicated.
Murdoch was approached in 1915 to set up a cable service in London for Australian newspapers. He stopped in Egypt to do a minor job for the Australian government. For a fee of £25, he was to investigate delays in the Anzacs’ mail service. He went to Gallipoli, met Hamilton, and wandered around the peninsula for a few days. He also met Ashmead-Bartlett, and fell under his spell.
Ashmead-Bartlett’s criticisms of the campaign inspired Murdoch to breach the British government’s censorship regulations. He would take a damning letter, written by Ashmead-Bartlett, to the British Prime Minister. Murdoch was stopped by military police when he left his ship in France and forced to surrender the letter. Hamilton had been tipped off about it, probably by another journalist outraged at the breach of censorship rules. Murdoch travelled on to London and wrote his own letter, intended for the Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher.
Murdoch’s letter, dated 25 September, made similar points to Ashmead-Bartlett’s, but his tone was scornful, his attitude know-it-all. Murdoch got facts wrong. He had Gurkhas fighting on Hill 971. He falsely stated that British officers were directed to shoot soldiers who lagged behind. His troop and casualty numbers were wrong. Murdoch was smitten by the Anzacs, and wrote that the British soldiers at Suvla lacked endurance and brains.
The errors didn’t matter much. Important politicians wanted the Gallipoli campaign to end. This letter helped their cause. And for all its faults, Murdoch’s statement captured the hopelessness of Gallipoli. He pointed out that the medical arrangements were scandalous. Naval guns of low trajectory, he wrote, were useless when opposing trenches were metres apart. Murdoch wrote that the Anzac trenches would slide away when winter set in. He had, of course, obtained much of this information from Ashmead-Bartlett.
A London newspaper editor introduced Murdoch to senior British politicians opposed to the Dardanelles campaign. One suggested that Murdoch send his letter to the British Prime Minister. Asquith printed the document as a state paper and distributed it. Murdoch had finally become a man of influence. Others, however, deserve more credit for ending Gallipoli.
Dawnay was in London, explaining the critical situation, ten days before Murdoch got there. Ashmead-Bartlett had been sent home when his original letter was intercepted. He did what Murdoch didn’t do – he created headlines. He gave a newspaper interview outlining his concerns. His criticisms were reported in the Australian newspapers.
Australia’s new Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, was asked in federal parliament what he thought of Ashmead-Bartlett’s opinion. ‘I do not pretend to understand the situation but I do know what the duty of this government is, and it is to mind our own business, to provide our quota of men for the Imperial Government, and to see that they are efficiently led, fed and equipped,’ Hughes said.
Australia still considered itself an outpost of the British Empire in 1915. Hughes’ parliamentary colleagues were said to loudly cheer his statement.
They had encouraged their brightest and fittest countrymen to enlist in a foreign war. Thousands of Australians lay dead on the other side of the world. And the war was none of their business?
October
Kitchener wrote to Hamilton about ‘unofficial reports’ criticising the Dardanelles staff for being out of touch with the troops. Kitchener suggested that Hamilton replace some of his staff. Bound by old-fashioned loyalty, Hamilton refused. In doing so, he probably gave up any chance of saving his own job.
The Dardanelles Committee in London asked Hamilton’s opinion on likely casualties if the peninsula was evacuated. Hamilton was shocked by the suggestion. He replied that half of all men and supplies would be lost.
At a meeting on 14 October, two committee members argued strongly that Gallipoli should be evacuated. The committee also decided that Hamilton should be replaced. Kitchener was directed to break the news. Hamilton was woken late at night to be told there was a message for his eyes only. He went back to sleep. He guessed that he had been sacked. He would read about it in the morning.
Hamilton’s superiors had never given him enough men or artillery to take the Dardanelles. But Hamilton had never put his case strongly enough. He was too soft, both with London and his own troops. He was the wrong man in the wrong place, and had been from the start. Hamilton’s ship weaved through the anchored vessels as he left Gallipoli on 17 October. The general stood on deck. Sailors stood and cheered as he passed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Barometer Swings
September–November
Many Anzacs who landed at Gallipoli in or after September never saw a Turk. The August offensive was the last great military battle of the peninsula war. Shells and bombs still fell out of the sky. Rifle-bursts still echoed across no-man’s-land. But now there were moments of silence. Both Turks and Anzacs had grown weary. The troops continued to fight, but mostly against nature.
The Anzacs grumbled about the poor showing of the British at Suvla. They were tired of fatigue duties and slimy bully beef. Australian Sergeant Cyril Lawrence came across Anzacs gambling in a trench. The betting revolved around the direction a beetle would take when released from a jam tin. ‘You’d say it was childish, harmless lunacy, and yet here, this ability of the happy-go-lucky colonial to amuse himself and delight in childish amusements, has been all that has kept him sane,’ he wrote.
About 200 Anzacs were evacuated with illness every day. Sticking it out on the peninsula was considered a point of honour. Take the Anzac who reported to a doctor in September with ‘a little trouble’. He had dysentery, a badly broken arm and two bullet wounds in his thigh. Another bullet had passed through his diaphragm and liver before exiting his body. The private had been first wounded on 25 April.
Many of the new arrivals succumbed to illness. James Martin, from Melbourne, arrived with the 21st Battalion in September. He spent six weeks at Gallipoli, alternating between front-line duties and fatigues. ‘It is quiet where we are so we are not seeing much of the fun,’ he wrote in October.
Martin’s scrawled letters home spoke of the squalor endured by both Anzacs and Turks. ‘There was one Turk who tried to give himself up the other night and got shot by the sentry,’ Martin wrote. ‘We dragged him into our trenches to bury him in the morning and you ought to have seen the state he was in. He had no boots on, an old pair of trousers all patched and an old coat.’
Family history has it that Martin forced his parents to sign an enlistment consent form. He threatened to run away to war and never write if they refused. Martin finished his final letter from Gallipoli by begging his mother and father to write. Letters from home had not reached him since he left Victoria nearly four months earlier.
Martin died of heart failure on a hospital ship after contracting enteric fever. His official papers said he was eighteen. But James Martin was fourteen years and nine months old. He was the youngest Anzac to serve at Gallipoli. His possessions were sent home. They included a red and white streamer he had picked up when his tr
oopship left Melbourne.
The Southland
Thirty-two Australians died on 2 September 1915 when the transport ship Southland was torpedoed, near Lemnos Island. Those on deck saw the approaching torpedoes but could do nothing. One torpedo blew a large hole in the side of the ship on the waterline, while a second passed harmlessly by. Within hours nearby ships had rescued most of the troops, and a team of volunteers stayed on the Southland and successfully stoked the crippled ship into port.
The Turks suffered the same miseries as the Anzacs. Official figures state that more than 20000 died of disease on the peninsula. A Turkish officer’s diary, published in 1997 as Bloody Ridge, shows that the Turks were just as worn out as their enemy. They shied from shells and questioned their leaders. They longed for letters from home.
Mehmed Fasih was a 21-year-old lieutenant in the Turkish trenches at Lone Pine. He had been wounded in May but returned to the front in October. War had turned his hair and beard grey. He was itchy from lice and fleas. Fasih read novels out loud with fellow officers, smoked a pipe, listened to rumours and feared death.
Anzac shells blew up sections of the Turkish trenches almost daily. Fasih described six bodies after a shell hit a machine-gun emplacement. ‘Blood has drained out of bodies, and chests and arms look like wax,’ he wrote. ‘Shins and legs, seared by the explosion, are purple. Some bones have been stripped of flesh. The men’s features are unrecognisable.’
Fasih was taken to see the mutilated body of a friend. The sergeant’s head and chest were ripped open. His eyes stared at the sky. Warm tears washed down Fasih’s face as he helped bury his friend under an olive tree. ‘I can’t stand it anymore,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘What sorrow! . . . Have already witnessed so many deaths and tragedies. But none affected me to this extent. As a matter of fact, very few upset me anymore.’
The Gallipoli Story Page 10