by Peter Hart
General Sir Ian Hamilton, Headquarters, MEF
THE BRITISH OFTEN FORGET that there are two sides in every conflict and have the particular habit of assuming that the actions of their generals are somehow the prime factor in deciding the outcome of any campaign or battle; that the overall situation, tactics and qualities of their enemies are all but irrelevant. This leads to excessive praise of generals benefiting from the egregious blunders of their opponents, or, far more often, undeserved opprobrium for those facing a dismal outlook, a competent opposing general and well-trained troops. Sadly, during the Gallipoli campaign it was the Turks who had the upper hand from the outset. They occupied the ground that the British required. Unless the British were able to get inside the loop of the Turkish command decision-making process, causing them to recast their plans spontaneously and thereby triggering chaos, then the Turkish High Command would be setting the agenda in the battles to come. As long as they occupied the high ground on either side of the Narrows, they were winning the battle. Nothing else was at issue; there was no merit to the British wearing down the strength of the Turkish armies, no bonus points for a close run race or the apposite use of classical quotations in despatches. Physical dominance of the Dardanelles was the only factor that would decide the outcome of the campaign.
General Otto Liman von Sanders, appointed to command the new Turkish Fifth Army, was given responsibility for the defence of the Straits. His command was made up of the III Corps (the 7th, 9th and 19th Divisions and the Chanak Fortified Area Command) and the XV Corps (the 3rd and 11th Divisions) with the 5th Division and a cavalry brigade as reserves. Liman was born in Prussia on 17 February 1855. He had risen steadily to the rank of lieutenant general in 1911, whereupon, not being considered quite up to taking command of an army corps, he had eventually been despatched to lead the German Military Mission in Constantinople in December 1913. Having reached the port of Gallipoli on 26 March 1915 and set up his headquarters, Liman was faced with the challenge of how to distribute his forces.
The important question was where the hostile landing should be expected. On it depended the grouping of the troops, which were rather inconsiderable in comparison with the great extent of the coast. Technical feasibility for the landing of large bodies of troops existed in many parts of the coast. All could not be occupied. The decision therefore must be made on tactical grounds. The positions of the five existing divisions up to March 26 had to be altered completely. They had been posted on different principles and distributed along the entire coast, somewhat like the frontier detachments of the good old days. The enemy on landing would have found resistance everywhere, but there were no reserves to check a strong and energetic advance. I ordered the divisions to hold their troops together and to send only the most indispensable security detachments to the coast within their sectors. Whatever might be in store, in view of our weak forces, our success depended not on sticking tight, but on the mobility of our three battle groups.2
General Otto Liman von Sanders, Headquarters, Fifth Army
The strength of the Turkish Army in 1914 was a moot point critical to the outcome of the imminent campaign. It was undoubtedly large, with thirty-six cadre divisions with a peacetime strength of just over 200,000 men and 8,000 officers but which could be expanded to a wartime mobilised strength of approximately 500,000 and had the capacity to expand to about 800,000 after six months. However, the army was woefully ill equipped with a lack of modern artillery, machine guns and even rifles. Munitions of every form were also in short supply. Yet this distressing catalogue hid some solid military virtues. The ordinary Turkish soldiers, used to a hard-grafting civilian existence where life was cheap, coped well with the privations of military life and were hammered into shape by a draconian disciplinary system. The appointment of Enver as the Minister of War in 1913 had also brought a much-needed cull of old, incompetent or over-political officers. This increasing professionalism of the officer corps was enhanced by a whole generation of carefully trained staff officers. The harsh lessons of the Balkan Wars had been to some extent assimilated and their training emphasised, at least in theory, mobility, the value of achieving superiority in the fire fight that preceded any battle, the necessity of digging trenches to consolidate features of tactical importance, and the advantage of immediate counter-attacks to regain lost ground. There was also a grim determination among the Turks not to be beaten again.
A year earlier we had the Balkan Wars and we were defeated very badly, but on the other hand we had the practice of fighting. In this war at Gallipoli we were facing two great forces in the world – the French and British people. They had great armies, but they were lacking practice.3
Captain Ashir Arkayan, Artillery, Fifth Army
The Turkish Army was organised into infantry divisions, each consisting of three regiments of three battalions. This triangular structure would prove extraordinarily resilient under the pressures of war and would eventually be adopted by most of the combatants in the Great War. Although the Balkan Wars had been a disaster due mainly to overambitious operational plans, the troops themselves had fought with considerable grit and determination. All told, the raw materials of the Fifth Army at Liman’s disposal were far better than either the British or the Germans realised.
One often unappreciated problem Liman faced was the topography of the Gallipoli Peninsula. It was for the most part rough terrain lacking in the shelter, water or easy supply routes that would allow the maintenance of thousands of men there for months at a time. This meant that large units could not be situated far from the few centres of population that existed. Of course these problems would also be faced by the Allies once they had landed.
With all this in mind Liman identified three main possibilities for large Allied landings. The first was on the Bulair Isthmus at the neck of Gallipoli, which he seems to have considered crucial, although misgivings as to the rationality of this preoccupation have surfaced ever since. As a result he based the 7th Division in the town of Gallipoli and had them occupying the Bulair Lines, with the reserves of the 5th Division also concentrated near the Bulair Isthmus, while the independent cavalry brigade guarded the coast of the Gulf of Saros. A further identified risk was a landing on the Asian side, with Kum Kale and Besika Bay being seen as possible landing sites from which an Allied advance could take the Asiatic Straits batteries from the rear. To counter this perceived threat the 3rd Division had one regiment forward covering Kum Kale and Yeni Shehr, while the other two waited close to the ruins of Troy. Similarly, the 11th Division had pushed forward one regiment to watch Besika Bay while the main strength was at Ezine. Finally, Liman thought any invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula itself was likely to be launched either at Helles, on the southern tip, or on either side of the Gaba Tepe promontory, which lay directly opposite the town of Maidos and the Kilid Bahr Plateau. The whole area was the responsibility of the 9th Division, under the command of Colonel Sami Bey, who stationed the 27th Regiment to guard the Gaba Tepe sector, while the 26th Regiment was set to guard the coastline all the way from just south of Gaba Tepe down to Helles. The 25th Regiment was the divisional reserve positioned at Serafim Farm up on Kilid Bahr Plateau, to be deployed elsewhere or defend the plateau as required. The 19th Division, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, was the army reserve, based centrally at Boghali, not far from Maidos, and ready to be committed wherever Liman wished.
The concept of centralised reserve units marching swiftly to the landing points required a considerable amount of hard work and preparation if it was to have any chance of operating smoothly in the disorder of battle.
The chief issue was to so arrange matters as to be able to reach landing-places with fighting forces as quickly as possible. Such a fluid condition of the reporting elements, and rapid mobility of the troops, could only be attained by constant practice. This required time. On the 27th March, the Marshal, who was hurriedly surveying his whole zone shortly after assuming command, said to me, ‘If the English
will only leave me alone for eight days.’ Actually four weeks passed.4
Colonel Hans Kannengiesser, Headquarters, Fifth Army
The Turks were granted the time they craved for training exercises, and they were also able to improve their defence works on the most likely looking landing sites, particularly the beaches at Helles and south of Gaba Tepe. Lacking material resources and further hampered by the threat of naval bombardments, they would have to rely on their ingenuity.
For the improvement of the field fortifications of the most endangered stretches of the coast all available men were put to work and mostly at night. The available Turkish means of obstruction were as short as were the tools, but we did the best we could. Torpedo heads were used alongside with the regular land mines and the fences of gardens and fields were stripped of their wood and wire. At places particularly suitable for landings barbed wire was stretched under water.5
General Otto Liman von Sanders, Headquarters Fifth Army
Liman is often regarded as the architect of everything sound in the Turkish plans for the defence of Gallipoli, but it seems possible that his Turkish subordinates had already begun to move to a light screen and central reserve system before his arrival.6 The Bulair Lines had already been dug and strengthened to keep the Bulgarians and Greeks out of the Peninsula, while the fortifications dug on Kilid Bahr in 1913 indicate that the Turks had a firm understanding of what were the key geographical features of the area. It would hardly be unusual for a general to put himself more at the centre of events in his memoirs than might be justified. More pertinently, had Liman, as some of the Turkish officers feared, depleted the coastal detachments too much in his desire to bolster the flexible reserves? Were they left too weak to perform their designated function of holding the Allies until the reserves could arrive? By late April the Turks had made their dispositions, rehearsed their plans and prepared their fortifications as best they could. They held the ground they needed to hold; the question now was could the Allies throw them out?
AS GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON considered his options for the military operations it was apparent that the Allies had broken another important principle of waging war successfully: surprise. The desired objective of securing the Dardanelles Straits was obvious. Any chance of a strategic shock had been surrendered when the fleet bombarded the entrance forts way back in November 1914, thereby drawing the eyes of the world to the Straits. Tactical surprise was to some extent still possible, but only if the Allies could come up with a plan that could isolate the disparate elements of the Turkish forces. Hamilton had to blind and confuse the Turkish commander as to his real intentions.
The first and foremost step towards a victorious landing was to upset the equilibrium of Liman von Sanders, the enemy commander of the Fifth Army. I must try to move so that he should be unable to concentrate either his mind or his men against us.7
General Sir Ian Hamilton, Headquarters, MEF
In trying to achieve this, Hamilton had considerable advantages, for the Straits themselves already divided the Turkish forces, while the marching distance between Helles at the tip of the Peninsula and Bulair could be measured in days rather than hours. Even local reserve forces would be delayed by the rough ground when marching to the landing sites. There was therefore the potential for Hamilton to cause Liman the very greatest difficulties.
In making his decision as to where to land Hamilton had to consider the trade-off between unexpected landing points and the best locations to allow a rapid advance to secure the Narrows. The obvious approach of landing at either the most suitable beaches or close to his objectives would find the Turks ready and waiting, thereby threatening excessive casualties; a more indirect route might allow the troops to come ashore safely, but the inappropriate nature of the beach, the distance to be travelled, or the rough terrain would give the Turkish reserves ample time to block the approach to the main objectives.
The question of forcing the Dardanelles or landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula was not new; it had been discussed time and time again over the past fifty years. Indeed, both British and French forces had occupied the Peninsula for a time during the 1850s and the 1870s. A series of reports on the possibilities of a naval attack, with or without military support, on the Dardanelles had been carried out for the War Office in 1906. In general, these recommended against a solely naval attack and commended both the virtues of prior practice landings and of achieving surprise. Subsequent reviews conducted in 1907 and 1908 were contradictory, illustrating the confusion as to whether it was, or was not, a feasible act of war to force the Straits. It seems that Hamilton did not have a copy of the 1906 paper but he was almost certainly in possession of the Anglo-Greek plan, which had only been prepared in 1914 by Vice Admiral Mark Kerr. The absence of any General Staff scheme can be attributed to delays in confirming that any large-scale military operations were being planned. Indeed, the poor communications between the War Council, the Admiralty, the General Staff, the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron (EMS) and the MEF make it difficult to work out when exactly a major landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula became inevitable, or indeed when the planning should have started – the only certainty was that it should have been begun earlier. The disarray was made worse by the dispersal of most of the General Staff to the BEF on the Western Front in August 1914. This may have stemmed from the understandable enthusiasm of career officers to take part in active service, but it represented an abrogation of their true responsibilities as key staff functions then had to be fulfilled by officers brought out of retirement. Such ‘dugout’ officers were almost totally ignored by Kitchener, who tended to act as Commander in Chief of the army rather than Secretary of State for War. The prevailing military culture was such that Hamilton could not make the entirely reasonable demand for a set of fully evaluated combined operations plans conditional to his accepting command of the MEF. Hamstrung by his long-subservient relationship with Kitchener, Hamilton was not the man to kick up a fuss – or not until he wrote his memoirs, by which time it was far too late.
Where are your well-thought-out schemes for an amphibious attack on Constantinople? Not a sign! Braithwaite set to work in the Intelligence Branch at once. But beyond the ordinary text books those pigeon holes were drawn blank. The Dardanelles and Bosphorus might be in the moon for all the military information I have got to go upon. One text book and one book of travellers’ tales don’t take long to master.8
General Sir Ian Hamilton, Headquarters, MEF
However, the truth seems to have been very different. Although the maps in Hamilton’s possession were not good, they were at least adequate for the purpose of operational planning. He had a 1:63,360 map which had been prepared in 1908 (based on an older 1:50,000 map from a French survey made during the Crimean War in 1854), while additional information had been incorporated to create a 1:40,000 enlargement in March 1915. There were inadequacies in the methodology of the original French survey and the subsequent British redrawing with contours shown at intervals of 100 feet suppressed many of the topographic details revealed by the original 10 metre intervals. However, nothing much had changed on the Peninsula in the last sixty years and while the lack of an accurate large-scale map was unfortunate, what could be done if the requisite topographic survey had not been carried out? After all, the main features were present on the maps. The acidic comment of a naval officer is perhaps pertinent here.
The military history refers to the surprise of many soldiers at the unexpected sharpness of the many ravines; but on looking at my copy of the map, which I have kept, the contour lines seem to have indicated this fairly clearly. As a matter of fact good map-reading is not common, and many army officers are, or were, bad at it.9
Captain Bertram Smith, HMS Vengeance
In addition, while there were no maps accurate enough to be relied on to allow indirect artillery or naval fire ‘shooting off the map’ at Gallipoli, they were not available for the Western Front either in 1915. In any event, this kind of indirect fire using
distances and angles worked out from a map was not then quite as important as it would become with the benefit of years of intensive artillery development and the associated detailed map survey work undertaken over the course of the war in France and Flanders. The Gallipoli maps would be improved only as and when the Allies either carried out their own survey, or captured copies of the better Turkish maps based on a 1:25,000 survey carried out in 1912–13.
In planning the landing on an occupied coast, intelligence therefore took on a vital importance. The sea approaches, the physical character of the beaches, the presence or otherwise of defence works, the numbers of opponents likely to be met, the nature of the beach exits, the state of the roads, the exact topography of the ground to be encountered in between the landing place and the objective – these were all crucial to the planning process. For over a hundred years naval hydrographers, consular officials, military and naval attachés, intelligence officers, even civilian yachtsmen had channelled intelligence, by open or clandestine means, back to Britain. In 1876, one naval officer had even prepared a 4-inch-to-the mile map with accompanying comprehensive notes covering the direct route between Gaba Tepe and the Kilid Bahr Plateau. What prescience! Indeed, it is noticeable that several of these reports settled on the Gaba Tepe sector as the best landing spot, as it had roads leading directly to both Maidos and Kilid Bahr. These various reports were all collated as secret documents by Naval Intelligence (1908) and the War Office (1909), but the process of intelligence acquisition certainly did not stop then and there were regular updates. Nearly all of this material, it has been convincingly argued, was made available to Hamilton and his staff, if not in London, then at the early briefing meetings out in theatre.10