Gallipoli Diary, Volume I. (WWI Centenary Series)

GALLIPOLI DIARY

by

SIR IAN HAMILTON

With Illustrations And Maps In Two Volumes.

Vol. I

Copyright © 2016 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

Introduction to the World War One Centenary Series

A Timeline of the Major Events of World War One in Europe

Memoirs, Diaries and Poems of World War One

Gallipoli

PREFACE

LETTER FROM GENERAL D’AMADE TO THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER I

THE START

CHAPTER II. THE STRAITS

CHAPTER III. EGYPT

CHAPTER IV. CLEARING FOR ACTION

SPECIAL ORDER.

CHAPTER V. THE LANDING

CHAPTER VI. MAKING GOOD

CHAPTER VII. SHELLS

CHAPTER VIII. TWO CORPS OR AN ALLY?

CHAPTER IX. SUBMARINES

CHAPTER X. A DECISION AND THE PLAN

CHAPTER XI. BOMBS AND JOURNALISTS

CHAPTER XII. A VICTORY AND AFTER

FOOTNOTES:

Introduction to the World War One Centenary Series

The First World War was a global war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. More than nine million combatants were killed, a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents’ technological and industrial sophistication – and tactical stalemate. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, paving the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the world’s great economic powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and the Russian Empire) and the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were both reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war: Italy, Japan and the United States joined the Allies, and the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. Ultimately, more than 70 million military personnel were mobilised.

The war was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Yugoslav nationalist, Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, June 28th 1914. This set off a diplomatic crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to Serbia, and international alliances were invoked. Within weeks, the major powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. By the end of the war, four major imperial powers; the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires—ceased to exist. The map of Europe was redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created. On peace, the League of Nations formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such an appalling conflict, encouraging cooperation and communication between the newly autonomous nation states. This laudatory pursuit failed spectacularly with the advent of the Second World War however, with new European nationalism and the rise of fascism paving the way for the next global crisis.

This book is part of the World War One Centenary series; creating, collating and reprinting new and old works of poetry, fiction, autobiography and analysis. The series forms a commemorative tribute to mark the passing of one of the world’s bloodiest wars, offering new perspectives on this tragic yet fascinating period of human history.

Amelia Carruthers

A Timeline of the Major Events of World War One in Europe

Memoirs, Diaries and Poems of World War One

In 1939, the writer Robert Graves was asked to write an article for the BBC’s Listener magazine, explaining ‘as a war poet of the last war, why so little poetry has so far been produced by this one.’ From the very first weeks of fighting, the First World War inspired enormous amounts of poetry, factual analysis, autobiography and fiction - from all countries involved in the conflict. 2,225 English war poets have been counted, of whom 1808 were civilians. The ‘total’ nature of this war perhaps goes someway to explaining its enormous impact on the popular imagination. Even today, commemorations and the effects of a ‘lost generation’ are still being witnessed. It was a war fought for traditional, nationalistic values of the nineteenth century, propagated using twentieth century technological and industrial methods of killing. Memoirs, diaries and poems provide extraordinary insight into how the common soldier experienced everyday life in the trenches, and how the civilian population dealt with this loss.

Over two thousand published poets wrote about the war, yet only a small fraction are still known today. Many that were popular with contemporary readers are now obscure. The selection, which emerged as orthodox during the 1960s, tends to (understandably) emphasise the horror of war, suffering, tragedy and anger against those that wage war. This was not entirely the case however, as demonstrated in the early weeks of the war. British poets responded with an outpouring of patriotic literary production. Robert Bridges, Poet Laureate, contributed a poem Wake Up England! calling for ‘Thou careless, awake! Thou peacemaker, fight! Stand, England, for honour, And God guard the Right!’ He later wished the work to be suppressed though. Rudyard Kipling’s For All We Have and Are, aroused the most comment however, with its references to the ‘Hun at the gate... the crazed and driven foe.’

From Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, to Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, to the poetry of Sassoon, Graves, and Brooke, there are numerous examples of acclaimed writing inspired by the Great War. One of the best known war poets is perhaps Wilfred Owen, killed in battle at the age of twenty-five. His poems written at the front achieved popular attention soon after the war’s end, most famously including Dulce Et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youth, and Strange Meeting. In preparing for the publication of his collected poems, Owen explained ‘This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.’

Dulce et Decorum Est, one of Owen’s most famous poems, scathingly takes Horace’s statement, ‘Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori’, meaning ‘It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country’ as its title. It chiefly describes the death of an anonymous soldier due to poison gas, vividly describing the suffering of the man, ending with a bitter attack on those who see glory in the death of others. Such themes were also widely utilised by authors unaccustomed with the literary canon - the common soldier noting down their experiences for their loved ones, and for posterity. Each unit in World War One was in fact required to keep a diary of its day-to-day activities, many portraying the anxiety and terror of the opening days of the war. Diaries from soldiers in the First Battalion South Wales Borderers (among others, recently released at the British National Archives) described the battles of the Marne and the Aisne, with one captain who said the scenes he witnesses were ‘beyond description... poor fellows shot dead are lying in all directions... everywhere the same hard, grim pitiless sign of battle and war. I have had a belly full of it.’

Other, lighter aspects of everyday life including tugs of war, rugby matches and farewell dinners to mark the end of the fighting have also been documented, giving us a rare insight into what the First World War was like for the men on the front line. Letters were an incredibly important part of life as a soldier. Receiving and writing them helped keep them sane, and could take them away from the realities of trench life. Every week, an average of 12.5 million letters were sent to soldiers by family, friends, and partners. More formalised memoirs have also become a key way of understanding the conflict, from gas attacks, the fear of going over the top, methods of coping with death - as well as the jovial camaraderie which often grew up between the men. The first memoirs of combatants were published in 1922, not long after the armistice: A Tank Driver’s Experiences by Arthur Jenkins and Disenchantment by Charles Edward Montague. These were shortly joined with Good-Bye to All That (1929) by Robert Graves, A Subaltern’s War (1929) by Charles Edmund Carrington, and Blasting and Bombardiering (1937) byPercy Wyndham Lewis. Nurses also published memoirs of their wartime experiences, such as A Diary without Dates (1918) by Enid Bagnold, and Forbidden Zone (1929) by Mary Borden. Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth (first published 1933) has been acclaimed as a classic for its description of the impact of the war on the lives of women and the civilian population - extending into the post-war years.

Storm of Steel, written by Ernst Jünger, published in 1920 was one of the first personal accounts to be published - a graphic account of trench warfare, unusually glorifying the sacrifice encountered. The book has consequently been criticised for lionizing war, especially when compared with works such as Remarque’s (albeit fictional) All Quiet on the Western Front. In the preface to the 1929 English edition, Jünger stated that; ‘Time only strengthens my conviction that it was a good and strenuous life, and that the war, for all its destructiveness, was an incomparable schooling of the heart.’ As is evident from this short introduction to the memoirs, diaries, letters and poems of the first world war - it is an intensely complex field. Dependent on military rank, geographic position and placement, nationality and subjective experience and character, they take on a wide variety of forms and focuses. Such works give an amazing insight into the experiences of combatants and it is hoped the current reader is encouraged to find out more about this thoroughly worthwhile topic.

This book is part of the World War One Centenary series; creating, collating and reprinting new and old works of poetry, fiction, autobiography and analysis. The series forms a commemorative tribute to mark the passing of one of the world’s bloodiest wars, offering new perspectives on this tragic yet fascinating period of human history.

Amelia Carruthers

View from the battleship HMS Cornwallis: Burning of British stores during the withdrawal from Gallipoli

Gallipoli

The new dawn lights the eastern sky;

Night shades are lifted from the sea,

The Third Brigade with courage storm

Thy wooded heights, Gallipoli

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

Australians tread Gallipoli.

Thunderous bursts from iron mouths -

Myriad messengers of death,

Warships ply their deadly fire

Watching comrades hold their breath

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

There’s hell upon Gallipoli.

Serried ranks upon the beach,

Courage beams in every eye

These Australian lads can face

Giant Death, though e’er so nigh,

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

There’s death upon Gallipoli.

On they press in endless stream,

Up the heights they shouting go;

Comrades fall; but still press on

They press the now retreating foe

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

The Turks flee on Gallipoli.

One by one the brave lie low,

Machine Guns, shrapnel do their work;

Brave Australians know no fear,

Never have been known to shirk,

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

Their names carved on Gallipoli.

Reduced, cut up, there numbers show

The murderous fire that swept thy field;

But still victorious they stand,

Who never have been known to yield

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

Thick dead lie on Gallipoli.

For days they hold with grim set grip,

Their feet firm planted on the shore,

Repelling every fierce attack

And cheerfully they seek for more

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

Their trenches line Gallipoli.

For thirty weary days they fight,

For Britain’s sake they give their best;

With uncomplaining voice they stand

And neither look nor ask for rest

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

They’ve conquered thee, Gallipoli.

The waves break on thy wave swept shores,

The breeze still blows across thy hills;

But crosses near and far abound,

A sight that deepest grief instils

Gallipoli! Gallipoli !

Their graves lie on Gallipoli.

For those brave hearts that died to show

Australia’s worth in this dread war,

The far off tears and sighs for those

Who sleep beneath the cannons roar

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

Thou still, shalt pay, Gallipoli.

The few that valiant still remain,

War worn but grim and anger yet

To hurl full vengeance on the foe.

Because they never can forget

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

They ask the price, Gallipoli.

Gallipoli I warn you now,

Australia’s sons and Turks shall meet

Once more, and then our onslaught yet

Shall sweep the ground beneath your feet

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

Thy end’s in sight, Gallipoli.

Upon the Graves of those that sleep,

Upon thy wooded slope and vale,

We shall avenge. Remember then,

Australians cannot, will not fail,

Gallipoli ! Gallipoli !

Thy doom is sealed, Gallipoli.

Staff Sergeant Sydney Bolitho

6th Battalion A.I.F

27th December 1914: Are there not any alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders? Further cannot the power of the Navy be brought more directly to bear upon the enemy? If it is impossible or unduly costly to pierce the German lines on existing fronts, ought we not, as new forces become to hand, to engage him on new frontiers, and enable to Russians to do so too? [Churchill was the leading proponent of the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915].

CHURCHILL, Winston Leonard Spencer. British First Lord of the Admiralty (Naval Minister).

SIR ROGER KEYES, VICE-ADMIRAL DE ROBECK, SIR IAN HAMILTON, GENERAL BRAITHWAITE

PREFACE

On the heels of the South African War came the sleuth-hounds pursuing the criminals, I mean the customary Royal Commissions. Ten thousand words of mine stand embedded in their Blue Books, cold and dead as so many mammoths in glaciers. But my long spun-out intercourse with the Royal Commissioners did have living issue—my Manchurian and Gallipoli notes. Only constant observation of civilian Judges and soldier witnesses could have shown me how fallible is the unaided military memory or have led me by three steps to a War Diary—

(1) There is nothing certain about war except that one side won’t win.

(2) The winner is asked no questions—the loser has to answer for everything.

(3) Soldiers think of nothing so little as failure and yet, to the extent of fixing intentions, orders, facts, dates firmly in their own minds, they ought to be prepared.

Conclusion:—In war, keep your own counsel, preferably in a note-book.

The first test of the new resolve was the Manchurian Campaign, 1904-5; and it was a hard test. Once that Manchurian Campaign was over I never put pen to paper—in the diary sense[1]—until I was under orders for Constantinople. Then I bought a note-book as well as a Colt’s automatic (in fact, these were the only two items of special outfit I did buy), and here are the contents—not of the auto but of the book. Also, from the moment I took up the command, I kept cables, letters and copies (actions quite foreign to my natural disposition), having been taught in my youth by Lord Roberts that nothing written to a Commander-in-Chief, or his Military Secretary, can be private if it has a bearing on operations. A letter which may influence the Chief Command of an Army and, therefore, the life of a nation, may be Secret for reasons of State; it cannot possibly be Private for personal reasons.[2]

At the time, I am sure my diary was a help to me in my work. The crossings to and from the Peninsula gave me many chances of reckoning up the day’s business, sometimes in clear, sometimes in a queer cipher of my own. Ink stands with me for an emblem of futurity, and the act of writing seemed to set back the crisis of the moment into a calmer perspective. Later on, the diary helped me again, for although the Dardanelles Commission did not avail themselves of my formal offer to submit what I had written to their scrutiny, there the records were. Whenever an event, a date and a place were duly entered in their actual coincidence, no argument to the contrary could prevent them from falling into the picture: an advocate might just as well waste eloquence in disputing the right of a piece to its own place in a jig-saw puzzle. Where, on the other hand, incidents were not entered, anything might happen and did happen; vide, for instance, the curious misapprehension set forth in the footnotes to pages 59, 60, Vol. II.

So much for the past. Whether these entries have not served their turn is now the question. They were written red-hot amidst tumult, but faintly now, and as in some far echo, sounds the battle-cry that once stopped the beating of thousands of human hearts as it was borne out upon the night wind to the ships. Those dread shapes we saw through our periscopes are dust: the pestilence that walketh in darkness and the destruction that wasteth at noonday are already images of speech: only the vastness of the stakes; the intensity of the effort and the grandeur of the sacrifice still stand out clearly when we, in dreams, behold the Dardanelles. Why not leave that shining impression as a martial cloak to cover the errors and vicissitudes of all the poor mortals who, in the words of Thucydides, dared beyond their strength, hazarded against their judgment, and in extremities were of an excellent hope?

Why not? The tendency of every diary is towards self-justification and complaint; yet, to-day, personally, I have no complaints. Would it not be wiser, then, as well as more dignified, to let the Dardanelles R.I.P.? The public will not be starved. A Dardanelles library exists—- nothing less—from which three luminous works by Masefield, Nevinson and Callwell stand out; works each written by a man who had the right to write; each as distinct from its fellow as one primary colour from another, each essentially true. On the top of these comes the Report of the Dardanelles Commission and the Life of Lord Kitchener, where his side of the story is so admirably set forth by his intimate friend, Sir George Arthur. The tale has been told and retold. Every morsel of the wreckage of our Armada seems to have been brought to the surface. There are fifty reasons against publishing, reasons which I know by heart. On the other side there are only three things to be said—

(1) Though the bodies recovered from the tragedy have been stripped and laid out in the Morgue, no hand has yet dared remove the masks from their faces.

(2) I cannot destroy this diary. Before his death Cranmer thrust his own hand into the flames: his heart was found entire amidst the ashes.

(3) I will not leave my diary to be flung at posterity from behind the cover of my coffin. In case anyone wishes to challenge anything I have said, I must be above ground to give him satisfaction.

Therefore, I will publish and at once.

A man has only one life on earth. The rest is silence. Whether God will approve of my actions at a moment when the destinies of hundreds of millions of human beings hung upon them, God alone knows. But before I go I want to have the verdict of my comrades of all ranks at the Dardanelles, and until they know the truth, as it appeared to me at the time, how can they give that verdict?

IAN HAMILTON.

LULLENDEN FARM,

DORMANSLAND.

April 25, 1920.

LETTER FROM GENERAL D’AMADE TO THE AUTHOR

Mon Général,

Dans la guerre Sud Africaine, ensuite en Angleterre, j’avais en spectateur vécu avec votre armée. Avec elle je souhaitais revivre en frère d’armes, combattant pour la même cause.

Les Dardanelles ont réalisé mon rêve. Mais le lecteur ne doit pas s’attarder avec moi. Lire le récit de celui même qui a commandé: quel avantage! L’Histoire, comme un fleuve, se charge d’impuretés en s’éloignent de ses sources. En en remontant le cours, dans votre Journal, j’ai découvert les causes de certains effets demeuré, pour moi des énigmes.

Au début je n’avais pas cru à la possibilité de forcer les Dardanelles sans l’intervention de l’armée. C’est pour cela que, si la décision m’eût appartenus et avant d’avoir été placé sous vos ordres, j’avais songé à débarquer à Adramit, dans les eaux calmes de Mithylène, à courir ensuite à Brousse et Constantinople, pour y saisir les clefs du détroit.

En présence de l’opiniâtre confiance de l’amiral de Robecq j’abaissai mon pavillion de terrien et l’inclinai devant son autorité de marin Anglais. Nous fûmes conquis par cette confiance.

Notre théâtre de guerre de Gallipoli était très borné sur le terrain. Ce front restreint a permis à chacun de vos soldats de vous connaître. Autant qu’avec leurs armes, ils combattaient avec votre ardeur de grand chef et votre inflexible volonté.

Dans le passé ce théâtre qui était la Troade, venait se souder aux éternels récommencements de l’Histoire.

Dans l’avenir son domaine était aussi vaste. Si nos navires avaient pu franchir les détroits, a dit le Premier Ministre Loyd Georges le 18 décembre 1919 aux Communes, la guerre aurait été raccourcie de 2 ou 3 ans.

Il y a pire qu’une guerre, c’est une guerre qui se prolonge. Car les dévastations s’accumulent. Le vaincu qui a eu l’habileté de les éviter à son pays, se donnera, sur les ruines, des manières de vainqueur. Le premier but de guerre n’est il pas d’infliger à l’adversaire plus de mal qu’il ne vous en fait?

Si nous avions atteint Constantinople dans l’été 1915 c’était alors terminer la guerre, éviter la tourmente russe et tous les obstacles dressés par ce cataclysme devant le rétablissement de la paix du monde. C’était épargner à nos Patries des milliards de dépenses et des centaines de milliers de deuils.

Que nous n’ayons pas atteint ce but ne saurait établir qu’il n’ait été juste et sage de le poursuivre.

Voilà pour quelle cause sont tombés les soldats des Dardanelles. "Honneur à vous, soldats de France et