BOOKS.
THE DARDANELLES CAMPAIGN.*
Ma. NEVINSON'S clear and vivid account of the Dardanelles cam- paign, like Mr. Masefield's Gallipoli, is one of the very few out of an unnumbered host of war books that the discerning reader will wish to keep on his shelves. Mr. Nevinson followed the campaign as a war correspondent, and he has used not only the numerous official and unofficial records, but also the private information given to him by officers actively engaged. His maps, though not perfect, are much better than those commonly available for the tangle of wild hills and ravines in which our brave men fought for nine long months in 1915. Mr. Nevinson's admirable style and his commendably impartial tone lend distinction to his story of the gallant and tragic enterprise. Our chief criticism would be that he does not or cannot put the Dardanelles campaign in its true perspective as an episode of the Great War. The future historian, who will know the actual strength of the trained British divisions in the early spring of 1915, in the summer, and in the autumn, and who will also have particulars of our output of guns and munitions at those dates, will be in a far better position than any contemporary and unofficial writer to say whether Lord Kitchener's unwillingness to take great risks in Gallipoli was justified. Mr. Nevinson is inclined now and then to scoff at " Westerners," but the question at issue was one of foot and not of theory. Every one admits the attractiveness of the conception underlying the Dardanelles Expedi- tion, which was to open a way to the Black Sea, reinvigorate Russia, deter Bulgaria from joining the enemy, and cut off Germany from the Near East. But was it possible for us at that time to put a sufficiently strong and well-equipped army ashore at Gallipoli and break down the Turkish resistance ? The evidence so far available suggests that it was not possible for us to do so without gravely imperilling our thin khaki line in Northern France and Flanders, and few will contend that we could have exposed not merely the Channel ports but also the whole French line to grave danger for the sake of crushing the Turks and helping Russia. Our resources in trained men were still very small ; our supplies of guns and shells were painfully meagre, because we were utterly unpre- pared for war. Every one knows that trained divisions cannot be improvised in a few months. But it is not every one who realizes how ill provided our volunteers of 1915 were in the artillery which • The Dardanelles Campaign. By Henry W. Nevinson. London: Nisbet sad Co. [His. net.] we now know to be an essential instrument of modern war. Our gunners in France were restricted to a few shells a day. But Mr. Nevinson rightly emphasizes the fact that in Gallipoli the guns as well as the shells were lacking. Again and again our Generals had to borrow a few batteries of " seventy-fives " from our French Allies in order to effect what would now be regarded as a very trivial bombardment before an assault. If the expedition of 1915 could have been supplied with field-guns, heavy guns, howitzers, and trench mortars, and all the other apparatus which our field armies of 1918 have been using, it would undoubtedly have attained its objects within a few weeks, for the men, though for tho most part but imperfectly trained, were magnificent, and the Turks were not very strong in artillery until the end of the campaign, though they were far superior to us. But in the early part of 1915 we had scarcely begun to produce guns or munitions on a great scale, and this fact is all-important for the due comprehension of the Gallipoli episode.
Nevertheless the expedition might have achieved success with more skilful leading and with a little good luck. The landings at Hellos and Anzac, which Mr. Nevinson describes most vividly, were miracles of bravery and endurance. The troops who made good their footing on the rocky coast were capable of anything. There seems little doubt that the Suvla landing of August, combined with the Australian and New Zealand advance on the heights crowned by Chunuk Bair and Sari Bair, should have given us command of the peninsula. Sir Ian Hamilton's plan was sound, but, like the original conception of the campaign, it was wrecked by blunders and by misfortunes which could hardly have been foreseen. The most critical moment came early in the morning of August 9th, 1915, when the 6th Gurkhas and the 6th South Lancashires, from General Cox's column, worked their way up the precipices of Chunuk Bair and flung the Turks off the ridge:—
" For a moment Major Allanson and his men paused to draw breath. They were standing on the saddle between Chunuk Bair and Hill Q.' The dead lay thick around them. But below, straight in front, lit by the risen sun, like a white serpent sliding between the purple shores, ran the sea, the Narrows, the Dar- danelles, the aim and object of all these battles and sudden deaths. Never since Xenophon's Ten Thousand cried The sea ! the sea ! ' had sight been more welcome to a soldier's eyes. There went the ships. There were the transports bringing new troops over frcm Asia. There ran the road to Maidos, though the town of Maidos was just hidden by the hill before it. There was the Krithia road. Motor-lorries moved along it carrying shells and supplies to Achi Baba. So Sir Ian had been right. General Birdwood had been right. This was the path to victory. Only hold that summit and victory is ours. The straits are opened. A conquered Turkey and a friendly Bulgaria will bar the German path to the East. Peace will come back again, and tho most brilliant strategic concep- tion in the war will be justified. In triumphant enthusiasm, Gurkhas and Lancastrians raced and leapt down the reverse slope, pursuing the Turks as they scattered and ran. Major Allanson, though wounded, himself raced with them. They fired as they went. It was a moment of supreme exultation. Suddenly, before they had gone a hundred yards, crash into the midst of them fell five or six large shells and exploded. In the words of Sir Ian's dispatch : Instead of Baldwin's support came suddenly a salvo of heavy shell.' " Mr. Nevinson thinks that the fatal shells came from Anzac howitzers whose orders to bombard the reverse slopes had not been counter- manded, and he exculpates the Navy. Whatever the true explana- tion may be, the pursuers were checked, the Turks took courage and counter-attacked, and the ridge was lost. The supporting column had lost its way, and arrived in the neighbourhood too late to be of help. The assistance expected from the Suvla forces did not come. Mr. Nevinson's account of Suvla is courteous but crushing. The general impression that it was the most unsatis- factory episode in the whole war is fully confirmed. One curious fact which emerges from this careful narrative is that Scimitar Hill, which was of vital importance to the security of our line and to the success of the attack on Chunuk Bair, was actually occupied by our advanced troops and then abandoned through a mistaken order. But the whole Suvla business was a series of bungles. The Navy has been wrongly accused of not providing water ; the truth was that the Army had no tanks ready to receive the water from the ships, and the arrangements for dealing with the water supply broke down. There wore good wells ashore which were not used in the early days. The Turks were taken by surprise at the landing, but all the advantages thus gained were thrown away and the great courage displayed by the new troops was wasted. It is a painful story, but it is well to have it told fairly and fully as an example
and a warning. And it is redeemed by the many splendid passages of bravery, such as the Australians' capture of Lone Pine on August 6th and their other and less successful feint attacks of the same day, or the ordeal of the 10th (Irish) Division on Kiretch Tope, which they took and held grimly for more than a day and a night against overwhelming &lumbers of bombers to whom they could make
no effective reply. As a soldier's battle, there is nothing finer in
our military history.
Mr. Nevinson agrees with the view that the first naval attack,
unsupported by troops, was a mistaken compromise between a proper Dardanelles Expedition and doing nothing. He notes Mr. Morgenthau's statement that, as the Navy suspected, the Turkish forts had almost exhausted their shells when our naval bombard- ment ceased, but this, he urges, strengthens the contention that the troops should have been ready to land forthwith instead of being delayed for six weeks. We may mention, too, that be is satisfied of the wisdom of the evacuation at the close of the year. Mr. Nevinson has a poor opinion of the Coalition Cabinet then in power, but he admits that it was better to take all the troops away than to keep them in Gallipoli, doing little or nothing and suffering great discomfort and heavy loss to no purpose. The evacuation was a marvellous feat which we are glad to have described again. Mr. Nevinson very properly gives the lie to the ridiculous and cruel suggestion that we bribed the Turks to let us go in peace. No doubt they were glad that we had departed, but it was not with their- consent that our large forces were withdrawn without loss. We may also call attention to the author's statement of the reasons why Sir Ian Hamilton did not land at Enos and attempt to reach the coast of the Sea of Marmora, and why he did not attack the Bulair lines at the eastern end of the Gallipoli Peninsula. The truth was that the Turkish communioations ran through Gallipoli Town to the Asiatic coast, and would have been unaffected by landings at Enos and Bulair, even if they had been less hazardous than they were. As for the suggestion that we might at one time have had the assistance of the Greek Army, Mr. Nevinson reminds us that the late Tsar refused point-blank to allow the approach of Greek troops to Constantinople. This was only one of the many instances in which the policy and prejudice of the Tsardom gravely affected our operations in the Near East. In attempting to sum up the possible results of victory at Gallipoli, the author, writing six months ago, suggests that the war would have ended in the spring of 1916, but that the Tsardom, strengthened by the occupation of Constantinople, would have taken a new lease of life. The swift march of events in these last few weeks has confounded all prophecies, and enabled us to take a wider view of even such wonderful incidents of the war as the Dardanelles Expedition. It seems idle to lament over what might have been when Providence has brought us victory far more complete and far more likely to endure than any peace which we could reasonably have attained two years ago.
Previous page
