The Suvla Landings

Note

I SHOULD like to record my particular thanks to General Lüfti Güvenc, of the Historical Branch of the Turkish General Staff, who gave me the fullest access to official archives in Ankara, and to Colonel Sükrü Sirer, who prepared many maps and accompanied me over the battlefield itself: to Major T. R. Molloy of the British Embassy in Ankara, who translated Mustafa Kemal’s war diaries for me: to Brigadier-General Cecil Aspinall-Oglander and Captain Basil Liddell Hart, who, in reading through the text, have saved me from much error: to General Hamilton’s literary executor, Mrs. Mary Shield, who has allowed me to make use of the General’s private papers: and to my wife, who has worked with me on the book in all its stages.

Among the many others who have most kindly helped me with their reminiscences and their advice are Sir Harold Nicolson, Lord Hankey, Field-Marshal Sir John Harding, Field-Marshal Sir William Slim, Lady Violet Bonham-Carter, Mr. H. A. J. Lamb, Mrs. Helen Hugo, Lieut.-General Lord Freyberg, V.C., and Major Tasman Millington. I am also most grateful for the help I have received from the Admiralty, the War Office, the Imperial War Museum, the staffs of the London Library, and the British Embassy in Ankara.

A large library exists on the subject of the Gallipoli campaign, and while I cannot pretend to have read it all I must acknowledge here my especial indebtedness to Brigadier-General Aspinall-Oglander’s official history, Sir Winston Churchill’s World Crisis, Sir Ian Hamilton’s Gallipoli Diary, and the memoirs of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Keyes.

The spelling of Turkish names has presented difficulties which I have been unable to resolve. Gallipoli, for example, is to the Turks Gelibolu, and Chanak is more correctly spelt Çanak. Other places have changed their names since the campaign, notably Constantinople which is now Istanbul. However, since this book is written in English, it seemed best to adopt the names which are most familiar to English-speaking readers, and so in general I have followed the spelling used in the British military maps of the time.

CHAPTER ONE

EVEN as late as August 1914 it was by no means certain that Turkey would come into the first world war on the German side. There was no need for her to go to war, nobody seriously threatened her, and in fact at that time it was the policy of the Allies and the Central Powers alike to keep her neutral if they could. Certainly the country was in no condition to fight. In the five years that had elapsed since the Young Turks had first come to power the Ottoman Empire had very largely disintegrated: Bulgaria was independent, Salonika, Crete and the Ægean islands had gone to Greece, Italy had seized Tripoli and the Dodecanese, and Britain had formally proclaimed the protectorate of Egypt and the annexation of Cyprus.

Since the previous year the German Military Mission had made great improvements in the Turkish army, but the long series of defeats in the Balkan wars had done enormous harm. At many places the soldiers had gone unpaid for months, and morale had sunk almost to the point of mutiny. Except in a few corps d’élite they were ragged, hungry and short of nearly every kind of weapon required for a modern war. The fleet too was hopelessly out of date, and the garrison at the Dardanelles was far too weak, its guns too obsolete, to stand a chance against a determined attack from any one of the great powers.

Politically the situation was chaotic. The Young Turks with their Committee of Union and Progress had begun well enough when they had deposed the Sultan in 1909, and their democratic ideas had had the support of all liberal-minded and progressive people everywhere. But five years of wars and internal troubles had been too much for them. The ramshackle government of the empire had run down too far to be revived in another and a better way, and inevitably the energies of the Young Turks had become swallowed up in the simple and desperate struggle for their own political survival. Now there was no longer any talk of democratic elections and the freedom and equality of all races and creeds under the Crescent. The bloom had long since worn off the Committee: it was revealed as a ruthless party machine which was almost as sinister and a good deal more reckless than anything Abdul the Damned had contrived. Financially the Government was bankrupt. Morally it had reverted to the old system of force and corruption; there were Committee cells in every sizeable town in what was left of the empire in Asia, and no political appointment could be obtained without their support. Local government at the outlying centres like Baghdad and Damascus was in an appalling state, and Constantinople had so little hold over them that it was always possible that some local chieftain might set himself up in yet another independent state.

It was this very helplessness both abroad and at home that made Turkey turn to the outside world for allies, and in effect it came down to a choice between Germany and Britain. The German alliance was, tactically, the obvious one, since the Kaiser was eager for it and was in a position to put the Turkish army back on its feet. But the Germans were not liked. Lewis Einstein, the special minister at the American Embassy in Constantinople, was probably right when he said that the Turks preferred the English to all other foreigners — and this despite the fact that the British officials in Turkey tended to regard as ‘good’ Turks only those who prayed five times a day and turned to the English for advice. England had the money, she had command of the seas, and she had France and Russia on her side. The presence of Russia in the alliance was, of course, an embarrassment, since Russia was the traditional enemy of Turkey, yet even this might not have been too much for the Young Turks to have accepted had the English been enthusiastic. But they were not. They did not think at all highly of this government of young revolutionaries, and suspected that it might be put out of office at any moment. When the Young Turks came to London with a proposal for an Anglo-Turkish alliance they were politely turned aside.

And so by August 1914 things had drifted into a compromise that was rather weighted on the German side. The British Naval Mission continued to serve at Constantinople, but it was counterbalanced — perhaps over-balanced — by the German Military Mission which was actively filtrating through the Turkish army; and while the British and the French continued to give their tacit support to the older more conservative politicians in Constantinople, the Kaiser firmly nobbled the younger and more aggressive leaders of the Committee. It was, then, very largely a question of which side had backed the right horse: if the Young Turks were turned out the Allies could count on a friendly neutral government in Constantinople and the end of the German threat in the Near East. If on the other hand the Young Turks remained in office then the British and the French would be in the uncomfortable position of having to switch, of being obliged to try and get their money on the winner before the race was over.

It was a situation which had extreme attractions for the oriental mind, and the Young Turks made the most of it. Moreover the setting could hardly have been better for the complicated intrigues that now began: the foreign ambassadors, installed like robber barons in their enormous embassies along the Bosphorus, the Young Turks in the Yilditch Palace and the Sublime Porte, and everywhere through the sprawling decaying beautiful capital itself that hushed and conspiratorial air which seems to overtake all neutral cities on the edge of war. It was the atmosphere of the high table in the gambling casino very late at night when every move takes on a kind of fated self-importance, when everyone, the players and the watchers together, is engrossed, and when for the moment the whole world seems to hang on some chance caprice, some special act of daring, the turning of a card. In Constantinople this false and artificial excitement was all the more intense since no one really knew the rules of the game, and in the uncertain jigsaw of ideas which is created by any meeting between the East and the West no one could ever look more than a move or two ahead.