The Gallipoli Story Page 2
No one could have predicted this in 1914. Few spoke out against the war. Germans living in Australia were spat upon and locked up. The St Kilda Football Club, in Melbourne, changed its colours when it was noticed they matched those of the German flag. As one writer has noted, Australia
didn’t know what it was like to lose the best spirits of a generation, to read casualty lists that took up whole columns in the newspapers, to see young men return home old and broken and wanting nothing much to do with anyone for the rest of their lives.
Spy-mania
As Australia prepared for war, the civilian population was asked to report suspicious behaviour. Spy-mania swept the country. A report of lights flashing Morse code messages from the Dandenongs in Melbourne turned out to be nothing more than a rabbit-trapper carrying a hurricane lamp. Residents in New South Wales mistook a meteorite for an airship. Whales playing in the bay of a seaside resort were reported as an invasion of German submarines.
Men began enlisting in Melbourne on 5 August. Australia’s most senior army officer, Major General William Throsby Bridges, insisted that the Australians fight as a single force. Had he not, Australian troops would have been shared out among British forces. There would have been no Anzacs and no Gallipoli legends.
Australia’s official historian of the Great War, Charles Bean, described the first men to enlist as the most ‘romantic’ and ‘adventurous flotsam that had eddied on the surface of the Australian people’. Those rejected at one place would try at another. One man rode his horse 720 kilometres to Adelaide, to be told there were no vacancies. He sailed to Hobart, and finally managed to enlist in Sydney.
The entry requirements were meant to be tough. Men had to be aged between nineteen and thirty-nine, though many sixteen-, seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds lied about their age. Recruits had to be at least 167 centimetres (5 feet 6 inches) tall. They had to have a good set of teeth. Men with flat feet or signs of corporal punishment were turned away, as were women doctors who offered their services. Camps were set up in Sydney and Melbourne before tents were found for men to sleep in. Privates were paid six shillings a day, about the equivalent of the average wage.
Men of Aboriginal appearance were rejected at first but later some were recruited to fight for the Empire. It’s difficult to know how many Indigenous people served in the Great War, because accurate records were not kept, but estimates range from 300 to 500 men.
The recruits wore khaki woollen jackets with four big pockets. The buttons were dulled so that they did not glare in the sunlight. They also wore slouch hats with the badge of the rising sun, webbing belts and packs, and brown boots. About half of the first division of 12000 men enlisted straight from their everyday jobs. Nine in ten soldiers were unmarried. One in five was aged twenty-one or under.
David McGarvie, twenty-two, of south-west Victoria, was told to go home when he tried to enlist in Camperdown. McGarvie was a crack shot and rode horses well, but the doctor laughed at him. McGarvie had a cleft palate and a muffled voice. Kids had teased him at school. A few weeks later he tried again in another town. He was accepted.
In Western Australia, a drifter from northern England enlisted as a stretcher-bearer. John Simpson Kirkpatrick smuggled a small possum onto the ship and let the animal run around inside his shirt. He thought he was getting a free ticket home to see his mother and sister. In life, he was just another battler. In death, he would become a folk hero.
The first convoy of 38 ships transporting troops to the European conflict left Albany, in Western Australia, on 1 November 1914. Life on board the convoy was dull, except when the Sydney shot up the German light-cruiser Emden, eight days out of Australia. Everyone celebrated with a half-day holiday. There were regular boxing matches and concerts. Each soldier was issued with an identity disc to put around his neck. Some Australians held the disc to their eye, to mimic British officers who wore monocles – ‘Haw haw,’ they would joke.
Few on board any of the ships knew that Britain had declared war on Turkey. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had known. They were sure they were going to fight Germans.
AN ILLUSTRATED PAGE FROM THE ANZAC BOOK, PRODUCED BY ANZAC SOLDIERS IN GALLIPOLI, 1916.
CHAPTER THREE
War Games
November 1914 – March 1915
The Australians were dropped off in Egypt for more training. They lived in tents at Mena, near Cairo, and quickly became bored with desert drills and long marches. The soldiers awoke to a bugle and trained in the shadows of the pyramids. They cut their long trousers short because of the heat, and laughed because they looked like schoolboys. Some were disappointed they had not sailed to England. John Simpson Kirkpatrick, for one, expected they still would.
Cairo was a new world. Sand got ‘in your tucker, in your ears, eyes, nose, everywhere and anywhere’. Arab hawkers bugged the soldiers to buy oranges or souvenirs. The Australians learned new words such as imshee yalla (go away) and igri (hurry up). ‘They are the funniest people on earth,’ Joe Cumberland wrote to his sister. ‘They all dress in gowns like you see in pictures in the bible.’
Egyptian Escapades
The Australian troops in Egypt had to be back in camp by 9.30 pm every night. From 9 pm most nights, the road from Cairo took on the appearance of a modern-day traffic jam. Phillip Schuler, war correspondent for the Age, described the ‘whooping Australians’ urging their donkeys on as cars and trucks sped past. ‘By great good fortune no disaster occurred: minor accidents were regarded as part and parcel of the revels’, Schuler wrote.
Many Australians climbed the pyramids. Walter Cass, Brigade Major to the 2nd Brigade, in a letter to his future wife, dated 16 November 1914, wrote of two climbers: ‘Hundreds of our fellows have gone up – two never will again for one slipped and fell from about 2/3 of the way up. He broke most of the bones he has – his skull included – but is still alive. The other tried to climb the second pyramid by himself at night. He was found next morning but is done for all time. The doctors have lifted the pressure from the spinal cord but he will be paralysed for all time so they say.’
The Australians gained a reputation for unruliness. A joke went around about a sentry confronting men returning to camp at night:
Sentry: Halt! Who goes there?
Voice: Ceylon Planters’ Rifles.
Sentry: Pass, friend.
(later)
Sentry: Halt! Who goes there?
Voice: Auckland Mounted Rifles.
Sentry: Pass, friend.
(later)
Sentry: Halt! Who goes there?
Voice: What the - - - - has it got to do with you?
Sentry: Pass, Australian.
Some Australians went into Cairo, got drunk, and brawled. Christmas Day 1914 was especially bad. ‘The Australians are notorious characters when let loose and on this occasion they completely ran amuck,’ said a 3rd Battalion sergeant. A British general accused the Australians of blowing their wages on ‘rather naughty’ pursuits. Maybe he was right. Hundreds caught sexually transmitted diseases from local women. They had their pay docked. In February 1915, 120 men copped the cruellest penalty of all. They were sent home.
The Australians were now known as the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Clerks stamped A&NZAC on official papers. That’s how the word ‘Anzac’ began.
Who’s Who of Gallipoli
Herbert Asquith British Prime Minister
Lieutenant General William Birdwood Commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
Major General William Bridges Commander of 1st Australian Division
Winston Churchill First Lord of the Admiralty
Joseph Cook Australian Prime Minister till 17 September 1914
Andrew Fisher Australian Prime Minister from 17 September 1914 to 27 October 1915
Major General Alexander Godley Commander of Australian and New Zealand Division
General Sir Ian Hamilton Commander-in-chief of the Gallipoli groundforce
William H
ughes Australian Prime Minister from 27 October 1915
Major General Aylmer Hunter-Weston Commander of British 29th Division
Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal Commander of Turkish 19th Division, and later commanded troops at Suvla and on the north flank of Anzac
Field Marshal Lord Herbert Kitchener British Secretary of State for War
Colonel William Malone Commander of New Zealand Wellington Battalion
Colonel John Monash Commander of Australian 4th Brigade
General Otto Liman von Sanders German Commander of Fifth Turkish Army
Lieutenant General Harold Walker Commander of 1st Division, after Bridges
The men heard rumours about where they might be sent. They didn’t know of the political intrigues in London. In offices scented with leather and cigars, Britain’s most powerful men tinkered with a bold scheme to ‘knock Turkey out of the war’.
12 March 1915
General Sir Ian Hamilton had been a soldier for forty-two years when Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, summoned him for a brief chat. Hamilton was a brave man, twice recommended for the highest honour, the Victoria Cross. He limped from a horse-riding fall and a bullet wound in the Boer War had crippled his left hand.
Hamilton was sixty-two years old and not at all like the British generals who commanded troops in France. He was tough but not ruthless. He was kindly and courteous and didn’t like confrontations. He liked to write and did so with style. Hamilton had the temperament of an artist rather than a general.
Kitchener, a stern man with mad eyes, ordered Hamilton to lead a British army attack on Turkey. British warships already lay anchored outside the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that joined the Sea of Marmara, and the Black Sea beyond, to the Aegean Sea. Half of Russia’s exports sailed through the Dardanelles. Turkey wasn’t considered all that important in 1914. Except for its control of the Dardanelles.
Kitchener told Hamilton that British ships would steam up the straits and knock out the ancient forts lining the waterway. The ships had to sail about 21 kilometres up the Dardanelles before they would pass through the Turkish defences. The prize, several hundred kilometres further on, was the majestic city of Constantinople. Hamilton’s forces would land only if the warships failed. Kitchener thought this very unlikely. One glimpse of a Union Jack, he said, and the Turks would run.
Hamilton knew little of Turkey, its soldiers or the terrain. He didn’t even know how many men he was to have. As Hamilton later recounted in his memoirs, Kitchener resumed writing at his desk. He expected Hamilton to bow and leave the room. Kitchener was imperious and short-tempered. Querying him required a measure of courage. But Hamilton needed at least a few details. ‘I must ask you some questions,’ he said tentatively.
Kitchener impatiently explained that Hamilton would have about 70000 men, including 30000 from Australia and New Zealand. Some of the British troops would be on ‘loan’ from France only until the job was done. When Hamilton’s chief-of-staff asked for planes and pilots, Kitchener’s ‘spectacles flashed’. ‘Not one,’ he said. After all, Turkey was only a sideshow. Kitchener’s big war was in France and Belgium.
Hamilton left for the Dardanelles the next day. He read what information he had – some notes, an old Turkish army textbook and two small guidebooks. Kitchener wasn’t the only British leader to think that the Turks would shrivel at the sight of British battleships.
Britain lost the race to win Turkish support at the outset of the war. British and German diplomats had courted Turkey – or the Ottoman Empire, as it was then known. They negotiated with the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, the Young Turks. In 1908 the Young Turks had overthrown the sultan.
The empire once stretched from Hungary to the Sahara, but it had been crumbling for centuries, weakened by corruption and conflicting cultures. Now it was bankrupt. Had been for more than forty years. The Young Turks acted like a society of gangsters. They got rich while some of their soldiers went barefoot. With Russia as its traditional enemy, Turkey needed help. Its leaders put the country up for auction. The Young Turks didn’t believe in either side’s cause. They simply wanted to stay in power.
German diplomats offered a German–Turkey pact against Russia. Britain then made Turkey’s decision simple. Two Turkish warships were being built in Britain at a cost of £7.5 million. Turkey had raised the money through public subscriptions. Women had sold their hair to drop coins into collection boxes. On 3 August 1914, Britain confiscated the ships and offered no refund. The Turks were greatly offended.
Germany offered the Turks two battleships to replace the British ones. When these German ships arrived in Constantinople, the German sailors donned the Turkish Muslim headwear, the fez, as a sign of goodwill. German seamen headed up a Turkish fleet that attacked Russia from the Black Sea. The Young Turks closed the Dardanelles. One of Russia’s most crucial trading routes was blocked. Russia declared war on Turkey. Britain followed later.
A young British politician, Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, wanted to force the Dardanelles. Today, he is best remembered as the prime minister who inspired Britain in World War Two. In 1915 he bamboozled political opponents with his deft mind and fine words. The Dardanelles scheme had tantalised him for months. He had already ordered the troopships carrying Australian and New Zealand troops to stay in Egypt, rather than sailing on to England as planned.
Churchill’s colleagues on the War Council had wearied of long casualty lists from the Western Front. Why don’t we outflank the Germans? Churchill argued. Why don’t we invade Turkey? A few British ships would scare the devil out of them. And if Britain lost a few old ships, what would it matter? Churchill won tentative approval for his plan in January 1915, despite much argument.
In November 1914, the British had bombarded the outer forts of the Dardanelles and killed eighty-six Turks. In response, the Turks had laid mines across the strait, reinforced the forts, and brought in mobile guns. They waited for the British naval assault. They expected to lose. Constantinople was in a panic. The Young Turks began planning to blow up grand buildings, such as the Sancta Sophia church, so that the British could not have them.
How could Britain be stopped? The Turkish guns were old, ammunition was short, and the British navy had won victory after victory for the past 200 years.
Churchill fiddled with his scheme. No one except him fully understood it, mainly because it kept changing. Was Britain committing to a half-baked raid or a full-blown invasion?
Some British leaders thought troops should be landed, others not. Navy commanders worried about what their minister was proposing. The Secretary to the War Council, Lieutenant Colonel Maurice Hankey, expressed his doubts to the prime minister, Herbert Asquith. ‘All through our history such attacks have failed when the preparations have been inadequate, and the successes are in nearly every case due to the most careful preparations beforehand,’ he wrote. No one took much notice of him.
18 March 1915
Britain launched its naval attack. The sun shone as three lines of British and French battleships sailed into the Dardanelles. The earth shuddered as forts disappeared behind clouds of smoke. Great fountains of water erupted around the ships as the Turks fired back. By early afternoon, most of the Turkish guns had stopped firing.
No one expected what happened next. A French ship, the Bouvet, suddenly growled and keeled over, billowing smoke. She sank in less than three minutes and 639 sailors drowned. A British ship, the Inflexible, lurched to starboard near the same patch of water. Soon after, the Irresistible listed and drifted towards shore. Then the Ocean’s steering gear jammed so that she went around in circles.
The British were shocked. Three ships sunk and another three badly damaged. Eleven days earlier, a Turkish captain, Hakki Bey, had watched the British ships on sorties near the mouth of the strait. He noticed that they all turned around at the same place. Bey laid a line of mines parallel to the shore at that place. His mines blew
up the Bouvet, Irresistible and Ocean. The humble captain changed the course of the war in Turkey. Had it not been for these mines, Australians might not have landed at Gallipoli.
One of the Young Turks was so convinced that Constantinople would fall that he had two cars loaded for a quick escape. It is said that on the morning of 19 March, the Turkish gunners had only thirty shells left for their big guns. The British would probably have broken through, if they had tried. But the naval commanders weren’t used to losing ships. They conjured excuses not to attack again. Hamilton agreed to land his men. He just wasn’t sure where or how.
THE GALLIPOLI THEATRE OF OPERATIONS
February, March and early April, 1915
The Australians sailed from Egypt to Lemnos, a Greek island off the Turkish coast. They practised climbing down rope ladders with full packs. They scoffed at the French soldiers in their blue jackets and red trousers. Gossip had it that any landing force at Gallipoli would lose four in five men. Yet some Australians were disappointed to be there – Turks couldn’t fight like ‘white’ men.
The British army bought ships, mules, horses and water tanks from all around the Mediterranean. The operation was in disarray. The navy refused to attack the Dardanelles at the same time as the landing. Supplies got mixed up. Troops were delayed. No one knew how many Turks would defend the Gallipoli peninsula. Or how much fresh water there was. Or how best to treat the wounded. Hamilton had an even bigger problem. The Turks knew his army was coming.
The Turks had gathered 60000 troops and appointed a German, General Otto Liman von Sanders, to lead them. Many of von Sanders’ troops were peasant farmers who could not read or write. Like Hamilton, he lacked time to prepare. Unlike Hamilton, he did not dilly-dally. He ordered his troops to fortify the beaches with wood and wire. He scouted the peninsula and tried to work out where the British invaders would land.