Gallipoli Diary. Ian Hamilton

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СКАЧАТЬ S.N.O. Mudros. "Date, 18th March, 1915.

      "Negative demonstration at Gaba Tepe, 19th. Will you come to Tenedos and see me to-morrow. We have had disastrous day owing either to floating mines or torpedoes from shore tubes fired at long range. H.M.S. Irresistible and Bouvet sunk. H.M.S. Ocean still afloat, but probably lost. H.M.S. Inflexible damaged by mine. Gaulois badly damaged by gunfire. Other ships all right, and we had much the best of the Ports."

      20th March, 1915. H.M.S. "Franconia." Mudros Harbour. Stormy weather, and even here, inside Mudros harbour, touch with the shore is cut off.

      After I was asleep last night, an answer came in from K., straight, strong and to the point. He says, "You know my view that the Dardanelles passage must be forced, and that if large military operations on the Gallipoli Peninsula by your troops are necessary to clear the way, those operations must be undertaken after careful consideration of the local defences and must be carried through."

      Very well: all hinges on the Admiral.

      21st March, 1915. H.M.S. "Franconia." A talk with Admiral Wemyss and General d'Amade. Wemyss is clear that the Navy must not admit a check and must get to work again as quickly as they can. Wemyss is Senior Naval Officer at the Dardanelles and is much liked by everyone. He has put his seniority in his pocket and is under his junior—fighting first, rank afterwards!

      A letter from de Robeck, dated "Q.E. the 19th," has only just come to hand—

      "Our men were splendid and thank heaven our loss of life was quite small, though the French lost over 100 men when Bouvet struck a mine.

      "How our ships struck mines in an area that was reported clear and swept the previous night I do not know, unless they were floating mines started from the Narrows!

      "I was sad to lose ships and my heart aches when one thinks of it; one must do what one is told and take risks or otherwise we cannot win. We are all getting ready for another 'go' and not in the least beaten or downhearted. The big forts were silenced for a long time and everything was going well, until Bouvet struck a mine. It is hard to say what amount of damage we did, I don't know, there were big explosions in the Forts!"

      Little Birdie, now grown up into a grand General, turned up at 3 p.m. I was enchanted to see him. We had hundreds and thousands of things to talk over. Although the confidence of the sailors seems quite unshaken by the events of the 18th, Birdie seems to have made up his mind that the Navy have shot their bolt for the time being and that we have no time to lose in getting ready for a landing. But then he did not see the battle and cannot, therefore, gauge the extent to which the Turkish Forts were beaten.

      22nd March, 1915. H.M.S. "Franconia." At 10 a.m. we had another Conference on board the Queen Elizabeth.

      Present—

      Admiral de Robeck,

       Admiral Wemyss,

       General Birdwood,

       General Braithwaite,

       Captain Pollen,

       Myself.

      The moment we sat down de Robeck told us he was now quite clear he could not get through without the help of all my troops.

      Before ever we went aboard Braithwaite, Birdwood and I had agreed that, whatever we landsmen might think, we must leave the seamen to settle their own job, saying nothing for or against land operations or amphibious operations until the sailors themselves turned to us and said they had abandoned the idea of forcing the passage by naval operations alone.

      They have done so. The fat (that is us) is fairly in the fire.

      No doubt we had our views. Birdie and my own Staff disliked the idea of chancing mines with million pound ships. The hesitants who always make hay in foul weather had been extra active since the sinking of the three men-of-war. Suppose the Fleet could get through with the loss of another battleship or two—how the devil would our troopships be able to follow? And the store ships? And the colliers?

      This had made me turn contrary. During the battle I had cabled that the chances of the Navy pushing through on their own were hardly fair fighting chances, but, since then, de Robeck, the man who should know, had said twice that he did think there was a fair fighting chance. Had he stuck to that opinion at the conference, then I was ready, as a soldier, to make light of military croaks about troopships. Constantinople must surrender, revolt or scuttle within a very few hours of our battleships entering the Marmora. Memories of one or two obsolete six inchers at Ladysmith helped me to feel as Constantinople would feel when her rail and sea communications were cut and a rain of shell fell upon the penned-in populace from de Robeck's terrific batteries. Given a good wind that nest of iniquity would go up like Sodom and Gomorrah in a winding sheet of flame.

      But once the Admiral said his battleships could not fight through without help, there was no foothold left for the views of a landsman.

      So there was no discussion. At once we turned our faces to the land scheme. Very sketchy; how could it be otherwise? On the German system plans for a landing on Gallipoli would have been in my pocket, up-to-date and worked out to a ball cartridge and a pail of water. By the British system (?) I have been obliged to concoct my own plans in a brace of shakes almost under fire. Strategically and tactically our method may have its merits, for though it piles everything on to one man, the Commander, yet he is the chap who has got to see it through. But, in matters of supply, transport, organisation and administration our way is the way of Colney Hatch.

      Here am I still minus my Adjutant-General; my Quartermaster-General and my Medical Chief, charged with settling the basic question of whether the Army should push off from Lemnos or from Alexandria. Nothing in the world to guide me beyond my own experience and that of my Chief of the General Staff, whose sphere of work and experience lies quite outside these administrative matters. I can see that Lemnos is practically impossible; I fix on Alexandria in the light of Braithwaite's advice and my own hasty study of the map. Almost incredible really, we should have to decide so tremendous an administrative problem off the reel and without any Administrative Staff. But time presses, the responsibility cannot be shirked, and so I have cabled K. that Lemnos must be a wash-out and that I am sending my troops to get ship-shape at Alexandria although, thereby, I upset every previous arrangement. Then I have had to cable for Engineers, trench mortars, bombs, hand grenades, periscopes. Then again, seeing things are going less swimmingly than K. had thought they would, I have had to harden my heart against his horror of being asked for more men and have decided to cable for leave to bring over from Egypt a Brigade of Gurkhas to complete Birdwood's New Zealand Division. Last, and worst, I have had to risk the fury of the Q.M.G. to the Forces by telling the War Office that their transports are so loaded (water carts in one ship; water cart horses in another; guns in one ship; limbers in another; entrenching tools anyhow) that they must be emptied and reloaded before we can land under fire.

      These points were touched upon at the Conference. I told them too that my Intelligence folk fix the numbers of the enemy now at the Dardanelles as 40,000 on the Gallipoli Peninsula with a reserve of 30,000 behind Bulair: on the Asiatic side of the Straits there are at least a Division, but there may be several Divisions. The Admiral's information tallies and, so Birdie says, does that of the Army in Egypt. The War Office notion that the guns of the Fleet can sweep the enemy off the tongue of the Peninsula from Achi Baba Southwards is moonshine. My trump card turns out to be the Joker; best of all cards only it don't happen to be included in this particular pack!

      As ideas for getting round this prickly problem were passing through my mind, two СКАЧАТЬ