CHAPTER 5
Intelligence from March 1915
With the arrival of Hamilton in the Aegean, it is time to consider the preparations which had already been made in Egypt, the Mediterranean and closer to the Dardanelles. In Egypt, in addition to their primary task of defending the Suez Canal and Egypt, and in Birdwood’s case training the Anzac Corps (originally destined for France, but held in Egypt to help with its defence) as well, Generals Sir John (‘Conkey’) Maxwell and Birdwood did a great deal of intelligence-gathering and preliminary planning for their ‘Special Mission’ to the Dardanelles before Hamilton appeared on the scene. Clearly Hamilton had to see the situation for himself, which he did during the Fleet’s bombardment on 18 March. It was then decided that Hamilton’s Force needed to sail on to Egypt to reorganise; owing to a disastrous lack of clear strategic direction and planning in London, it had not been loaded for an opposed landing. This gave the Turks several more weeks to prepare for invasion.
Egypt as an intelligence centre
Following the outbreak of war, Maxwell, GOC Troops in Egypt, appointed Captain Gilbert Clayton as his Intelligence chief. In 1914 Clayton – the ‘“Bertie” of Khartum, of Cairo, of Palestine, of Mesopotamia’ – was the Sudan government’s Agent in Cairo, the Sirdar of the Sudan controlling the Sinai Peninsula and its frontier with Southern Palestine, and also the Egyptian Army’s Director of Intelligence.1 There was a gradual proliferation of intelligence agencies in Egypt, and within a year there was ‘a variety of (sometimes conflicting) civil and military departments’.2 Hamilton described Egypt as a ‘no man’s land in the region of responsibilities’.3 Egypt’s position was curious, as it was still nominally under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Sultan. Much of the population felt affection for Turkey and loyalty to Islam, and in November 1914 the proclamation of a British Protectorate rather than Annexation, as desired by Asquith’s government, did much to stabilise the situation. It was naturally impossible to prevent the Turks from finding out what British forces were up to in Egypt, but the damage caused by any leakage was amplified by a general lack of security. The arrival of letters addressed to the Constantinople Expeditionary Force did not help.
In the autumn of 1914 Maxwell and Clayton recruited a team of highly talented ‘special service’ Arabic-speaking officers, several of whom had been involved in the recent Sinai and southern Palestine survey, for Clayton’s Intelligence Department (from which the later Arab Bureau would evolve) in Cairo – T E Lawrence from GSGS and Major S F Newcombe RE, both of whom arrived on 14 December, were followed a few days later by George Lloyd, Aubrey Herbert (after recovering from a wound acquired at Mons) and Leonard Woolley.4 Following his induction in the Geographical Section in London Lawrence, as ‘Maps Officer’, provided in-theatre liaison between the Survey of Egypt and the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.
Herbert wrote from Shepherd’s Hotel (GHQ) on 9 February 1915 that his colleagues in Clayton’s Intelligence Department comprised members of parliament, engineers, archaeologists and still more members of parliament, and that all except the MPs were very keen on devising new policies. No doubt he had Lawrence’s Alexandretta scheme in mind. Herbert thought his fellow officers were deluded enough to believe that the War Office and Foreign Office ‘work lucidly in a sort of millennium with each other’, and that Russia and France were ‘sweetly reasonable’. Although a member of parliament, he wickedly started to develop a policy; his superiors reacted to this by tasking him with the Turkish order-of-battle. He had to learn the (revised) Turkish Army handbook by heart and mark up a giant map with Turkish troop movements. He delegated the map to his servant, Johny Allen.5
On 12 February Herbert was sent by Newcombe on an intelligence-gathering mission in the battleship Bacchante, to identify Turkish troop movements in the Levant. Any information on the dispositions of the Turkish Army would help to fill in the enemy-order-of-battle map, and would also help Maxwell and Kitchener to assess more accurately the Turkish garrison at the Dardanelles. Bacchante arrived at Alexandretta on the 14th after an eerily uneventful voyage via Haifa and Beyrout. All was thus quiet on the Levant front.
On 23 February, Maxwell had an interview with ‘Colonel M_______’, who vigorously drew a tiny but disturbing sketch map of the Dardanelles area, with Turkish troop deployments – 40,000 on the Peninsula, 50,000 in Thrace, 50,000 on the western Asiatic Coast facing the islands, and 30,000 on the Asiatic Shore of the Dardanelles.6 This mystery Colonel was Maucorps, the former French military attaché in Constantinople, who was now in Cairo with the French Military Mission and who, like Frederick Cunliffe Owen, was pessimistic about the chances of success. Maucorps also submitted a report on the 26th, following which Maxwell cabled Kitchener that the Peninsula was ‘practically a fort’, being heavily fortified; any attack without heavy guns would be hazardous.7 The key points of Maucorps’ report telegraphed by Maxwell to Kitchener (though the figures had been toned down) were:8
1. It would be ‘extremely hazardous to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula, as the peninsula is very strongly organised for defence’;
2. It was garrisoned by 30,000 men; another 30,000 were on the Asiatic Shore;
3. The Bulair Lines had been rearmed, and
4. The Turkish commander of the Peninsula was an excellent and energetic officer
If anything, these communications from Maxwell reinforced Kitchener in his view that the Peninsula was ‘a hornets’ nest’, and in his determination not to land large military forces.
Birdwood’s reconnaissance
Meanwhile, on 24 February, Birdwood, with his senior staff officer Lt-Col. Skeen, sailed in the Swiftsure to meet Carden; while at sea they received a message telling them to make for Imbros, Hamilton’s destination. Swiftsure arrived on 28 February and Birdwood met Carden on 1 March, before transferring to the Irresistible the next day to make his reconnaissance. Irresistible sailed to the Dardanelles, and Birdwood and Skeen:
… examined coast and interior from north-west of Tekke Burnu [Cape Tekke at Helles] over Krithia to Achi Babi Peak. General survey indicated possibility of fire of ships to cover or support movement. No coast suitable for landing. Then round to Tekke Burnu – Helles Burnu. A stretch of beach suitable but somewhat shallow – a very conspicuous trench runs down from Light House and seems commanded by a rise north of lighthouse. Would be useful as an additional beach if pressed for time. Beach between Cape Helles and Sedd el Bahr by no means as favourable as conveyed by Plan in N.I.D. Report [NID 838, May 1908].9
The requirement for intelligence and operational information flows worked in both directions. On 26 February Kitchener wired to Maxwell for Birdwood: ‘please keep me fully informed of your operations, referring to War Office Map GS[GS] 2285’.10 This was the two-sheet, one-inch map of Gallipoli which, during March, was enlarged to 1:40,000 and reproduced at the Survey of Egypt. The Royal Naval and 29th Divisions were equipped with the one-inch map just two days before leaving England.
Also on 26 February the War Office (Military Operations) in London replied to Maxwell who, confused by the conflicting instructions he was receiving, had cabled, disingenuously or perhaps facetiously, or both, that he was:
… considerably in the dark, as I have no knowledge of the deep study which must have been made of the whole question of the forcing of the Dardanelles by the Imperial General Staff and the Navy for many years, the result of which must be in the War Office and résumé of which I would much like.11
Maxwell was letting the cat out of the bag, and putting the War Office in a quandary; no single ‘deep study’ existed, but various short feasibility and intelligence reports did, and were probably, like the 1906 report, considered too sensitive, or negative in their conclusions, to release.
As already suggested, the War Office’s reply of 26 February was a masterpiece of evasion, and is worth repeating here:
Difficult to send you resume of General Staff studies of Gallipoli. Suggest your consulting Admiralty reports of Turkey Coast def
ences, Part II, of which all war ships have copy. Ten copies of Military Report 1905 Eastern Turkey in Europe being sent you to-day by bag.12
(Frequent King’s Messengers and diplomatic bags were a prime means of sending such documents.) Maxwell was being told to mind his own business as far as strategy was concerned. But how could he formulate objectives and plans if he was not put in the strategic picture, and was not told whether it was to be a purely naval operation, a naval operation with limited assistance from the Army, or a fully combined amphibious operation? In the event, as carried out by de Robeck and Hamilton, it was a purely naval operation followed, after a month, by a fully military one with the navy putting the army ashore, but doing little else other than providing covering fire. No simultaneous attempt to force the Narrows was made.
New information about the Dardanelles defences, even if not given to Hamilton and Braithwaite at their War Office briefing, was available in theatre, and much was duly provided by the Fleet’s Intelligence Officer. Hamilton’s Intelligence Staff maintained liaison with Naval Intelligence as well as with Clayton in Cairo, and the MEF was well provided with many types of intelligence before the landings. The Army and Navy knew almost every fact about the coastal fixed defences, but of course much less about the mobile howitzer batteries and the dispositions and numbers of Turkish (and German) troops providing the garrison of the Peninsula.
On 10, 11 and 12 March sea and air reconnaissances of the Bulair Lines were carried out, a seaplane reporting four lines of traversed trenches and an entrenched camp with two redoubts.13 All air reconnaissance at this time was visual, no cameras becoming available until April. Hamilton confirmed, following his own reconnaissance in the Phaeton on 18 March, that a landing at Bulair would be disastrous. On 15 March Limpus sent a report on the Dardanelles from his intelligence hub at Malta to Rear-Admiral Phillimore at the Admiralty (who received it on 19 March), stating that he had:
… studied the matter from the inside [Turkish] point of view when I was in Constantinople and the Greeks were contemplating the same operation. Landing action was very much more necessary for them [as they did not have a fleet], but I still think it necessary for us; the more so since it is not the Turks, but the Germans, who are conducting the defence.14
Kitchener, after reading this report, signalled to Hamilton that it:
… seems to point to the advisability of effecting the main landing in the neighbourhood of Cape Helles and Morto Bay, while making a feint in considerable force north and south of Kaba Tepe with the possibility of landing and of commanding the ground of Sari Bair, so that the enemy on its southern slopes might be prevented from supporting those on the Kilid Bahr plateau. I presume that preparatory to destroying the forts at the Narrows, you will attack in force and occupy this plateau.15
This was essentially the plan adopted by Hamilton.
Aegean intelligence and the Doris
Much intelligence work was being done in the Aegean, particularly the interrogation of Greeks from the Dardanelles area. On 6 March Major Doughty Wylie, the former consul in Adis Ababa,16 and Captain Wyndham Deedes arrived at Mudros from England ‘as Intelligence Officers for dealing with ANZAC HQ’; it was hoped that they, with another (Captain J M Smith), would be able to provide Hamilton with crucial information when he arrived in theatre; they had been despatched from London on 26 February. On the 11th, Doughty Wylie, now Lt-Colonel, signalled to Birdwood from Mudros: ‘Am detaching Deedes temporarily duty Smyrna stop. Propose going myself Tenedos if you approve. Vice Admiral has no objection.’ This was approved.17 As there was much small boat movement, vital intelligence about Turkish troop dispositions and movements could be picked up from Greek inhabitants and agents. According to Aspinall, they provided vague information about Turkish troop numbers and dispositions, but ‘the district had been cleared of everybody except the soldiers and they had not been able to get any agents into it’.18
Birdwood, Major Wagstaff of his Staff, and Captain Mitchell RN, his naval liaison officer, sailed in the cruiser HMS Doris from Egypt on 16 March to meet Hamilton, due to arrive at Lemnos from Marseilles. Birdwood took with him much of the ‘Special Mission’ planning material his Staff had thus far accumulated:19
1. Set of papers re Dardanelles operations to date.
2. Large Map T[urkey] in E[urope].
3. 50 copies Squared map S[outh] end of Gallipoli.
4. 1 copy [indeciph.] sheet Gallipoli.
5. 12 copies of large scale Morto Bay [indeciph.]
Also statements showing (1) degree of preparation, (2) estimate of rate of disembarkation, (3) Draft orders to Colonel MacLagan.
This material was duly handed over to Hamilton’s Staff. Sinclair-MacLagan commanded the 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade, designated as the covering force for any landing, and training for that purpose on Lemnos.
During the slow crossing in the Doris, Lieutenant Pirie Gordon RNVR, the Doris’s Intelligence Officer who had been active around the Syrian coast since November20 (a party from Doris ripped up a Turkish railway and blew up locomotives at Alexandretta on 18 December21), briefed them on Gallipoli and the Asiatic Shore of the Dardanelles, which he had visited in 1908, probably while yachting, and also on the Greek plan which, he stated, involved main landings at Ejelmer Bay and west of Bulair, covered by demonstrations between these points. In 1908, he said, the Turkish defences all faced towards the Dardanelles, to oppose a landing from within the Straits.22 Strangely, he did not mention the Greek planned main effort at Gaba Tepe, but then there were several versions of the plan. On 14 March a ‘Greek General Staff summing up of the Gallipoli Peninsula’ (garrison and troop movements) was received at GHQ and, on the 19th Major Samson (British Secret Service in Athens) sent a report about the Dardanelles, received at Anzac HQ the following day (parts of his 1910 report were incorporated into a GHQ report). Much Turkish order-of-battle material was also received, including information on Gallipoli and the Dardanelles on the 23rd. During March, intelligence bulletins were received regularly at Anzac HQ from the British and Egyptian War Offices.23
Following their briefing by Kitchener and Callwell, Hamilton, Braithwaite and their Staff arrived at Tenedos on 17 March, four days after leaving London, and conferred with de Robeck (Carden having fallen ill) and General d’Amade, commanding the French contingent, who had arrived at the same time. At this conference it was made clear that the Gallipoli Peninsula was being fortified, that trenches, redoubts and entanglements had been identified, and also that the British seaplanes were too heavy to rise out of rifle range.24 All ‘deplored the lack of aeroplanes’, which effectively blinded their attack.25 Intentions and reconnaissance were discussed. De Robeck wanted to know if Hamilton intended to land at Bulair, and received the reply that Hamilton believed in seeing things for himself, and would ‘not come to any decision on the map if it were possible to come to it on the ground’. De Robeck said that, in any case, he could not land large forces at the Bulair neck itself, as there were no beaches.26
The following day Doughty Wylie, Deedes, and Captain Smith joined GHQ MEF at Lemnos for intelligence work;27 the first two had been at Lemnos since the 6th, Deedes having visited the Smyrna area to gather information and organise agents, and Doughty Wylie, Tenedos.
On 18 March, during the big naval attack, Hamilton, a few of his Staff, and General d’Amade left Lemnos in the Phaeton to carry out their own reconnaissance of :
… the Gallipoli Peninsula, arriving about 12.30pm. She then proceeded along the North Bank of the Peninsula, and from 300 to 5000 yards distance from it to the Gulf of Saros, which was reached at 2.30pm. The natural landing places were noted, but it was observed that an elaborate network of trenches commanded all the landing places except that at Cape Helles.28
Hamilton noted: ‘Here the Peninsula looks a tougher nut to crack than it did on Lord Kitchener’s small and featureless map.’29
On the same day, de Robeck (Vice-admiral commanding Eastern Mediterranean squadron) wrote to Hamilton
(‘GOC Expeditionary Force to Turkey’) from the Queen Elizabeth:
Sir,
[1] … a telegram has been received from the British Minister at Athens to the effect that the ex-Russian Vice-consul of the Dardanelles is now at Athens at my disposal.
2. He further reports that the boatman’s guild of the Piraeus offers ex-smugglers as guides to Gallipoli Peninsula.
3. Should you think the services of the persons mentioned might be of service to you please let me know, and also what action you wish taken in the matter.
No reply was recorded, and the letter was registered under ‘Services of Diplomatic, Consular and Secret Agents’.30 Clearly the smugglers were of great value, with their knowledge of the terrain, and Greeks were used as guides during operations. One guide, Athanasios Ballas, provided useful information on 16 April to Lieutenant Woods of Anzac Intelligence; this was forwarded to GHQ. Ballas was commended by the Anzacs: ‘This man knows the Peninsula well.’ On the allocation of guides by GHQ on 18 April, two were allotted to the Anzac Corps; they were ‘said to be quite untrustworthy, though they dislike the Turks intensely’.31 Presumably several also went to the 29th Division.
HMS Doris, with Birdwood and his small Staff, finally arrived at Mudros on the 21st, and they went on board Franconia to confer with Hamilton and his GHQ Staff. De Robeck was still under the impression that the main landing would be near Bulair, despite the fact that Hamilton had decided that a landing in force was only practicable at Cape Helles, between Tekke Burnu and Morto Bay.32 De Robeck returned the next day, and it was immediately decided that Hamilton’s force needed to go on to Egypt to reorganise, before returning to Mudros prepared for an opposed landing on Gallipoli. On the 23rd, as arranged the previous day, Wagstaff gave various ‘maps and pamphlets’ (‘maps and other documents’ in the message of the 22nd) to Colonel Sinclair-MacLagan,33 commanding the Anzac ‘Special Mission’.
Grasping Gallipoli Page 19