CHAPTER II
THE STRAITS
Table of Contents Cast anchor at Tenedos at 3 p.m., 17th March, 1915, having entered the harbour at the very same instant as le général d'Amade.
Hurried over at once to a meeting aboard that lovely sea monster, H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth.
Present-
Admiral de Robeck,
Commodore Roger Keyes,
Admiral Guépratte, cmdg. French Fleet,
General d'Amade,
General Braithwaite,
Admiral Wemyss,
Captain Pollen,
Myself.
De Robeck greeted me in the friendliest fashion. He is a fine looking man with great charm of manner. After a word or two to d'Amade and being introduced to Wemyss, Guépratte and Keyes, we sat down round a table and the Admiral began. His chief worry lies in the clever way the enemy are now handling their mobile artillery. He can silence the big fortress ordnance, but the howitzers and field guns fire from concealed positions and make the clearing of the minefields something of a V.C. sort of job for the smaller craft. Even when the Fleet gets through, these moveable guns will make it very nasty for store ships or transports which follow. The mine-sweepers are slow and bad with worn out engines. Some of the civilian masters and crews of the trawlers have to consider wives and kids as well as V.C.s. The problem of getting the Fleet through or of getting submarines through is a problem of clearing away the mines. With a more powerfully engined type of mine-sweeper and regular naval commanders and crews to man them, the business would be easy. But as things actually stand there is real cause for anxiety as to mines.
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. There has been a muddle about these seaplanes. Nominally they possess very powerful Sunbeam engines; actually the d--d things can barely rise off the water. The naval guns do not seem able to knock the Turkish Infantry out of their deep trenches although they can silence their fire for awhile. This was proved at that last landing by Marines. The Turkish searchlights are both fixed and mobile. They are of the latest pattern and are run by skilled observers. He gave us, in fact, to understand that German thoroughness and forethought have gripped the old go-as-you-please Turk and are making him march to the Parade-schritt.
The Admiral would prefer to force a passage on his own, and is sure he can do so. Setting Constantinople on one side for the moment, if the Fleet gets through and the Army then attacks at Bulair, we would have the Turkish Army on the Peninsula in a regular trap. Therefore, whether from the local or the larger point of view, he has no wish to call us in until he has had a real good try. He means straightway to put the whole proposition to a practical test.
His views dovetail in to a hair's breadth with K.'s views. The Admiral's "real good try" leads up towards K.'s "after every effort has been exhausted."
That's a bit of luck for our kick-off, anyway. What we soldiers have to do now is to hammer away at our band-o-bast[5] whilst the Navy pushes as hard, as fast and as far as its horsepower, manpower and gunpower will carry it.
The Admiral asked to see my instructions and Braithwaite read them out. When he stopped, Roger Keyes, the Commodore, inquired, "Is that all?" And when Braithwaite confessed that it was, everyone looked a little blank.
Asked what I meant to do, I said I proposed to get ready for a landing, as, whether the Fleet forces the passage and disembarked us on the Bosphorus; or, whether the Fleet did not force the passage and we had to "go for" the Peninsula, the band-o-bast could be made to suit either case.
The Admiral asked if I meant to land at Bulair? I replied my mind was open on that point: that I was a believer in seeing things for myself and that I would not come to any decision on the map if it were possible to come to it on the ground. He then said he would send me up to look at the place through my own glasses in the Phaeton to-morrow; that it would not be possible to land large forces on the neck of Bulair itself as there were no beaches, but that I should reconnoitre the coast at the head of the Gulf as landing would be easier with every few miles we drew away towards the North. I told him it would be useless to land at any distance from my objective, for the simple reason that I had no transport, mechanical or horse, wheeled or pack, to enable me to support myself further than five or six miles from the Fleet and it would take many weeks and many ships to get it together; however, I ended, I would to-morrow see for myself.
The air of the Aegean hardly differs so much from the North Sea haze as does the moral atmosphere of Tenedos differ from that of the War Office. This is always the way. Until the plunge is taken, the man in the arm chair clamps rose coloured spectacles on to his nose and the man on the spot is anxious; but, once the men on the spot jump off they become as jolly as sandboys, whilst the man in the arm chair sits searching for a set-back with a blue lens telescope.
Here, the Peninsula looks a tougher nut to crack than it did on Lord K.'s small and featureless map. I do not speak for myself for I have so far only examined the terrain through a field glass. I refer to the tone of the sailors, which strikes me as being graver and less irresponsible than the tone of the War Office.
The Admiral believes that, at the time of the first bombardment, 5000 men could have marched from Cape Helles right up to the Bulair lines. (Before leaving the ship I learnt that some of the sailors do not agree). Now that phase has passed. Many more troops have come down, German Staff Officers have grappled with the situation, and have got their troops scientifically disposed and heavily entrenched. This skilful siting of the Turkish trenches has been admired by all competent British observers; the number of field guns on the Peninsula is now many times greater than it was.
After this the discussion became informal. Referring again to my instructions, I laid stress on the point that I was a waiting man and that it was the Admiral's innings for so long as he could keep his wicket up. Braithwaite asked a question or two about the trenches and all of us deplored the lack of aeroplanes whereby we were blinded in our attack upon an enemy who espied every boat's crew moving over the water.
The more I revolve these matters in my mind, the more easy does it seem to accept K.'s order not to be in too great a hurry to bring the Army to the front. I devoutly hope indeed (and I think the fiercest of our fellows agree) that the Navy will pull us out the chestnuts from the fire.
At the close of the sitting I made these notes of what had happened and drafted a first cable to Lord K., giving him an epitome of the Admiral's opening statement about the enemy's clever use of field guns to hinder the clearing of the minefields; his good entrenchments and the nightly work thereon; our handicap in all these matters because the type of seaplanes sent us "are too heavy to rise out of effective rifle range"-(one has to put these things mildly). I add that the Admiral, "while not making light of dangers was evidently determined to exhaust every effort before calling upon the soldiers for their help on a large scale"; and I wind up by telling him Lemnos seems a bad base and that I am off to-morrow on an inspection of the coasts of the Peninsula. Having got these matters off my chest on to the chest of K., was then taken round the ship by the Flag Captain, G.P.W. Hope. By this time it was nearly 7 so I stayed and dined with the Admiral-a charming host. After dinner got back here.
18th March, 1915. H.M.S. "Phaeton." Cleared Tenedos Harbour at 4 a.m. and reached Lemnos at 6 a.m. I never saw so many ships collected together in my life; no, not even at Hong Kong, Bombay or New York. Filled up with oil fuel and at 7 a.m. d'Amade and Major-General Paris, commanding the Royal Naval Division, came on board with one or two Staff Officers. After consulting these Officers as well as McLagan, the Australian Brigadier, cabled Lord K. to say Alexandria must be our base as "the Naval Division transports have been loaded up as in peace time and they must be completely discharged and every ship reloaded," in war fashion. At Lemnos, where there are neither wharfs, piers, labour nor water, the thing could not be done. Therefore, "the closeness of Lemnos to the Dardanelles, as implying the rapid transport of troops, is illusory."
The moment I got this done, namely, at 8.30 a.m., we worked our way out of the long narrow neck of Mudros Harbour and sailed for the Gulf of Saros. Spent the first half of the sixty mile run to the Dardanelles in scribbling. Wrote my first epistle to K., using for the first time the formal "Dear Lord Kitchener." My letters to him will have to be formal, and dull also, as he may hand them around. I begin, "I have just sent you off a cable giving my first impressions of the situation, and am now steaming in company with Generals d'Amade and Paris to inspect the...
