Ian Hamilton

“ Buildings gutted: walls and trenches turned inside out and upside down: friend and foe surely must be wiped out together under such a fire: at least they are stupefied—must cease taking a hand with their puny rifles and machine guns? Not so. Amidst falling ruins; under smoke clouds of yellow, black, green and white; the beach, the cliffs and the ramparts of the Castle began, in the oncoming dusk, to sparkle all over with hundreds of tiny flecks of rifle fire. ”

“ Anchored off Tenedos just before 4 p.m. Lay outside the roadstead; close by us is the British Fleet with an Armada of transports,—all at anchor. As we were closing up to them we spotted a floating mine which must have been passed touch-and-go during the night by all those warships and troopships. A good omen surely that not one of them fell foul of the death that lurks in that ugly, horned devil—not dead itself, but very much alive, for it answered a shot from one of our three pounders with the dull roar and spitting of fire and smoke bred for our benefit by the kindly German Kultur. ”

“ A perishing formation loses moral force in more rapid progression than the mere loss of members would seem to warrant. When a battalion which entered upon a campaign a thousand strong,—all keen and hopeful,—gets down to five hundred, comrades begin to look round at one another and wonder if any will be left. When it falls to three hundred, or less, the unit, in my experience, is better drawn out of the line. The bravest men lose heart when, on parade, they see with their own eyes that their Company—the finest Company in the Army—has become a platoon,—and the famous battalion a Company. ”

“ The men are not fighting blindly as in South Africa: they are not fighting against forces with whose motives they half sympathise. They have been told, and told again, exactly what we are after. They understand. Their eyes are wide open: they know that the war can only be brought to an end by our joining hands quickly with the Russians: they know that the fate of the Empire depends on the courage they display. ”

“ What a change since the War Office sent us packing with a bagful of hallucinations. Naval guns sweeping the Turks off the Peninsula; the Ottoman Army legging it from a British submarine waving the Union Jack; Russian help in hand; Greek help on the tapis. Now it is our Fleet which has to leg it from the German submarine; there is no ammunition for the guns; no drafts to keep my Divisions up to strength; my Russians have gone to Galicia and the Greeks are lying lower than ever. ”

“ It would have melted a heart of stone, Hunter-Weston said, to see how tired our men looked in the grey of morning when my order came to hand urging them to counter-attack and pursue. Not the spirit but the flesh failed them. With a fresh Division on the ground nothing would have prevented us from making several thousand prisoners; whether they would have been able to rush the machine guns and so gain a great victory was more problematical. Anyway, our advance at dawn was half heroic, half lamentable. The men were so beat that if they tripped and fell, they lay like dead things. ”

“ From the trenches that ran along the crest a hot fire was being kept up, and swarms of bullets sang through the air, far overhead for the most part, to drop into the sea that lay around us. Yet all the time there were full five hundred men fooling about stark naked on the water's edge or swimming, shouting and enjoying themselves as it might be at Margate. ”

“ Unless I want to stir up jealous feelings, now entirely quiescent, I cannot use this cable as a lever to get French guns across into our area. Gouraud's plans for his big attack are now quite complete. A million pities we cannot attack simultaneously. That we should attack one week and the French another week is rotten tactically; but, practically, we have no option. We British want to go in side by side with the French—are burning to do so—but we cannot think of it until we can borrow shell from Gouraud; and, naturally, he wants every round he has for his own great push on the 21st. ”

“ Faced by a heavy artillery, machine gun and rifle fire our troops, French and British alike, made a fine effort; the French especially got well into the Turks with the bayonet, and all along, excepting on our extreme left, our line gained ground. I might represent the battle as a victory, as the enemy's advanced positions were driven in, but essentially the result has been failure, as the main object remains unachieved. The fortifications and their machine guns were too scientific and too strongly held to be rushed, although I had every available man in to-day. ”

“ If this is a queer start for me, so it is also for de Robeck. In sea warfare, the Fleet lies in the grip of its Admiral like a platoon in the hands of a Subaltern. The Admiral sees; speaks the executive word and the whole Fleet moves; not, as with us, each Commander carrying out the order in his own way, but each Captain steaming, firing, retiring to the letter of the signal. In the Navy the man at the gun, the man at the helm, the man sending up shells in the hoist has no discretion unless indeed the gear goes wrong, and he has to use his wits to put it right again. ”

“ The Turks were no longer in mass but extended in several lines, less than a pace between each man. Before this resolute attack our men, who were much weaker, began to fall back. One Turkish Company, about a hundred strong, was making an ugly push within rifle shot of our ship. Its flank rested on the very edge of the cliff, and the men worked forward like German Infantry in a regular line, making a rush of about fifty yards with sloped arms and lying down and firing. They all had their bayonets fixed. Through a glass every move, every signal, could be seen. ”

“ Enemy are entrenched, line upon line, behind wire entanglements spread to catch us wherever we might try to concentrate for an advance. Worst danger zone, the open sea, now traversed, but on land not yet out of the wood. Our main covering detachment held up on water's edge, at foot of amphitheatre of low cliffs round the little bay West of Sedd-el-Bahr. At sunset last night a dashing attack was made by the 29th Division South-west along the heights from Tekke Burnu to set free the Dublins, Munsters and Hants, but at the hour of writing they are still pinned down to the beach. ”

“ The Turkish trenches are deep and narrow, and only effective weapon for dealing with them is the howitzer. I realize your difficulties, and I am sure that you will supply me with both howitzers and ammunition as soon as you are able to do so. I shall be glad in the meantime of as many more trench mortars and bombs as you can possibly spare. We realize for our part that in the matter of guns and ammunition it is no good crying for the moon, and for your part you must recognize that until howitzers and ammunition arrive it is no good crying for the Crescent. ”

“ If we wait one week the Turks will have become twice as strong in their numbers, and twice as deep in their trenches, as they are to-day. Hunter-Weston and d'Amade see that perfectly. I hold the idea myself that it would be good tactics, seeing shell shortage is our weakness, to make use of the half hour before dawn to close with the enemy and then fight it out on their ground. To cross the danger zone, in fact, by night and overthrow the enemy in the grey dawn. ”

“ Have told Lord K. in my letter we have just enough shell for one more attack. After that, we fold our hands and wait the arrival of the new troops and the new outfit of ammunition:—not "wait and see" but "wait and suffer." A month is a desperate long halt to have in a battle. A month, at least, to let weariness and sickness spread whilst new armies of enemies replace those whose hearts we have broken,—at a cost of how many broken hearts, I wonder, in Australasia and England? ”

“ To see words working themselves out upon the ground; to watch thoughts move over the ground as fighting men....!
Both Battalions, the Plymouth and the K.O.S.B.s, had climbed the high cliff without loss; so it was signalled; there is no firing; the Turks have made themselves scarce; nothing to show danger or stress; only parties of our men struggling up the sandy precipice by zigzags, carrying munitions and large glittering kerosine tins of water. Through the telescope we can now make out a number of our fellows in groups along the crest of the cliff, quite peacefully reposing—probably smoking. ”

“ It is a huge handicap to us here that our great men keep all their tricks for their political friends and have none to spare for their natural enemies. There has been very little attempt to disguise our aims in England, and Maxwell and McMahon in Egypt have allowed their Press to report every arrival of French and British troops, and to announce openly that we are about to attack at Gallipoli. ”

“ Manchester Brigade disembarking. I have never seen a better looking lot. The 6th Battalion would serve very well as picked specimens of our race; not so much in height or physique, but in the impression they gave of purity of race and distinction. Here are the best the old country can produce; the hope of the progress of the British ideal in the world; and half of them are going to swap lives with Turks whose relative value to the well-being of humanity is to theirs as is a locust to a honey-bee.
That night Bailloud, Commander of the new French Division, came to make his salaam. ”

“ The Peninsula itself is being fortified and many Turks work every night on trenches, redoubts and entanglements. Not one single living soul has been seen, since the engagement of our Marines at the end of February, although each morning brings forth fresh evidences of nocturnal activity, in patches of freshly turned up soil. All landing places are now commanded by lines of trenches and are ranged by field guns and howitzers, which, thus far, cannot be located as our naval seaplanes are too heavy to rise out of rifle range. ”

“ The stretcher-bearers carry their burdens over a carpet of flowers. Life is here around us in its most exquisite forms. Those flowers! Poppies, cornflowers, lilies, tulips whose colours are those of the rainbow. The coast line curving down and far away to meet the extravagant blueness of the Aegean where the battleships lie silent—still—smoke rising up lazily—and behind them, through the sea haze, dim outlines of Imbros and Samothrace. ”

“ But no; they switched back once more onto the Peninsula, and left their helpless prize to make a leisurely and unmolested escape. Anyone but a Turk would have opened rapid fire on seeking his target smoking like a factory chimney, ringed round by a crowd of small craft. But these old Turks are real freaks. Their fierce courage on the defensive is the only cert about them. On all other points it becomes a fair war risk to presume upon their happy-go-lucky behaviour. If this crippled ship had been full of troops instead of hay they would equally have let her slip through their fingers. ”

“ As I said, the French are helping Simpson-Baikie in his bombardment; the Fleet are helping us with the fire of the Scorpion, Talbot and Wolverine, and Birdwood has been asked to try and help us from Anzac by making a push there to hold the enemy and prevent him sending reinforcements south. On their side the Turks are making a very feeble reply. Looks as if we had caught them with their ammunition parks empty.
I went into the dugout indescribably slack; hardly energy to struggle against the heat and the myriads of flies. I came out of it radiant. The Turks are beat. ”

“ If we get through here, now, the war will, must be, over next year. My Manchurian Campaign and two Russian Manœuvres have taught me that, from Grand Duke to Moujiks, our Allies need just that precise spice of initiative which we, only we in the world, can lend them. Advice, cash, munitions aren't enough; our palpable presence is the point. The arrival of Birdwood, Hunter-Weston and Gouraud at Odessa would electrify the whole of the Russian Army. ”

“ The men from Gaba Tepe made off with this letter; not the men who came down here at all, but new men carrying a clear order. Be the upshot what it may, I shall never repent that order. Better to die like heroes on the enemy's ground than be butchered like sheep on the beaches like the runaway Persians at Marathon. ”

“ Did we land far away to the Westward we must still march round the marsh, or else we must cross it on one single road whose long and easily destructible bridges we could see spanning the bog holes some three miles inland. Opposite the fortified lines we stood in to within easy field gun range, trusting that the Turks would not wish prematurely to disclose their artillery positions. So we managed a peep at close quarters, and were startled to see the ramifications and extent of the spider's web of deep, narrow trenches along the coast and on either front of the lines of Bulair. ”

“ As to the enemy land communications, as soon as we can haul up our big guns we should command, and be able to search, all the ground between the Aegean and the Dardanelles. Now is the moment. Birdwood says that he and his men have exactly the same feeling that we have down at Helles—the feeling, namely, that now at last, we have got a right moral pull over the Turks. All we want is enough material to turn that faith into a mile or two of mountains. ”

“ Going back, found that the lighter loads of wounded already taken off have by no means cleared the beach. More wounded and yet more. Here, too, are a big drove of Turkish prisoners; fine-looking men; well clothed; well nourished; more of them coming in every minute and mixing up in the strangest and friendliest way with our wounded with whom they talk in some dumb-crambo lingo. The Turks are doing yeoman service for Germany. If only India were pulling her weight for us on the same scale, we should by now be before the gates of Vienna.
In the afternoon d'Amade paid me a long visit. ”

“ Half of the pathway may be as safe as Piccadilly, whilst he who treads the other had far better be up yonder at hand grips with the Turks. Presumably some feature of the ground defilades one part, for the enemy cannot see into the valley, although, were they only 20 yards nearer the edge of the cliff, they would command its whole extent. The spirit of the men is invincible. ”