His other objections to the plan were of a vague and more subtle kind. In the original drafting it had been stated quite definitely that, since speed was. essential, the assaulting troops were to reach a series of low hills, known as Ismail Oglu Tepe, by daylight. There were good reasons for this. The interrogations of prisoners had gone to show that no more than three enemy battalions were holding the Suvla area, and the whole point of the landing was to overwhelm them and seize the high ground before the Turkish reinforcements could arrive. Since all Liman’s forces in the south of the peninsula would already be engaged at Anzac and Helles, it was believed that these reinforcements would have to be brought down from Bulair, some thirty miles away. Yet it was unwise to count on more than fifteen or twenty hours’ respite; from the moment the first Allied soldier put his foot ashore the Turks would be on the march. Everything in their bitter three months’ experience in Gallipoli had made it plain to Hamilton’s headquarters that once the period of surprise was gone there was very little chance of breaking the enemy line. Every hour, even every minute, counted.
Stopford demurred. He would do his best, he said, but there was no guarantee that he could reach the hills by daylight.
Hamilton does not appear to have pressed the point; he was content, he said, to leave it to Stopford’s own discretion as to how far he got inland in the first attack. This was a drastic watering-down of the spirit of the original plan, and it had its effect when Stopford came to pass on his instructions to his divisional commanders. The orders which General Hammersley issued to the 11th Division contained no references to speed: the brigade commanders were merely instructed to reach the hills ‘if possible’. Hammersley, indeed, seems to have gone into action in complete misunderstanding of his role in the battle; instead of regarding himself as a support to Birdwood’s main attack from Anzac he thought — and actually stated in his orders — that one of the objects of the Anzac attack was to distract the Turks from Suvla Bay while the 11th Division was getting ashore.
General Hammersley was not the only man who was in ignorance of the real objects of the offensive. An extreme secrecy was maintained by G.H.Q. at Imbros up to the very last moment.
Hamilton felt very strongly about this question of security, for he had bitter memories of the indiscretions of the Egyptian Press before the April landing. He feared the exposure of his plan by many means: by garrulous cabinet Ministers in England, by the Greek caiques that were constantly arriving in the islands from the mainland and slipping away again, by wounded officers who, on being invalided back to Egypt, might talk too freely in hospital. There was even a danger that some soldier who knew what was on foot might be captured on Gallipoli and induced by the Turks to give the show away.
In view of all this the plan was confined to a very small group at G.H.Q. throughout June and July, and Hamilton was even cautious in his letters to Kitchener. In the middle of July he sent a sharp telegram to Corps Headquarters at Anzac when he heard that Birdwood had been discussing the matter with General Godley and General Walker. ‘I am sorry you have told your divisional generals,’ he wrote. ‘I have not even informed Stopford or Bailloud (the French corps commander who had succeeded Gouraud). Please find out at once how many staff officers each of them has told, and let me know. Now take early opportunity of telling your divisional generals that whole plan is abandoned. I leave it to you to invent the reason for this abandonment. The operation is secret and must remain secret.’
Stopford himself knew nothing of the plan until three weeks before it was to be put into effect, and it was not until the last week of July that Hammersley was given his orders; Stopford took him up the coast in a destroyer to survey the intended landing places from the sea. On July 30 the brigadiers were briefed at last, and on August 3—three days before the battle was to begin — the brigadiers and their colonels were allowed a quick glimpse of the beaches from the decks of a destroyer. All other reconnaissance from the sea was forbidden lest the suspicions of the Turks should be aroused, and when finally the 11th Division embarked for the landing on August 6 many of its officers had never seen a map of Suvla Bay.
It was an excess of caution and it was not wise. Liman von Sanders says that in any case he was warned. Early in July he began to hear rumours from the islands that another landing was imminent: some 50,000 men and 140 ships were said to have been assembled at Lemnos. On July 22—the same day that Hamilton was breaking the secret to Stopford — Liman received a telegram from Supreme Headquarters in Germany. ‘From reports received here,’ it ran, ‘it seems probable that at the beginning of August a strong attack will be made on the Dardanelles, perhaps in connection with a landing on the Gulf of Saros (the Bulair area), or on the coast of Asia Minor. It will be well to economize ammunition.’
Liman himself was inclined to agree with this forecast, and he deployed his army accordingly. He now had a force of sixteen small divisions (which was roughly equivalent to Hamilton’s thirteen), and three of these he posted at Bulair, three opposite the Anzac bridgehead, five at Cape Helles, and the remaining three at Kum Kale on the Asiatic side of the straits. As for the Suvla area, the British were very nearly right in their estimate of the Turkish garrison there. Liman did not consider it a danger point, and he stationed only three weak battalions — about 1,800 men — around the bay. They had no barbed wire and no machine-guns.
There were then three main Turkish battle groups on the peninsula: the Bulair force in the north commanded by Feizi Bey, the force opposite Anzac in the centre commanded by Essad Pasha, and the southern force at Cape Helles commanded by Wehib Pasha (a younger brother of Essad Pasha). Mustafa Kemal was in a somewhat dubious position at this time. Liman respected him very much as a soldier, and would have promoted him, but he found him quarrelsome and difficult to control. A major row had developed in June when Enver, arriving on one of his periodical visits from Constantinople, cancelled an attack which Kemal had planned to launch on Anzac. Kemal, he said, was too much given to the squandering of troops, and Kemal at once resigned. Liman managed to restore peace between them, but when the attack turned out to be a complete disaster recriminations broke out afresh. Kemal declared that Enver’s interference had spoiled his plans, and Enver retaliated by making an address to the soldiers in which he praised them for the way they had fought under such poor leadership. It was another and violent example of the ‘jealousy and lack of co-operation so common among Turkish general officers’. Kemal once more resigned in a sour rage, and it was only when Enver left the peninsula that he calmed down and agreed to continue with his division — the old 19th. He was still with it on the north of the Anzac front in August, a senior divisional commander but no more.
It seems possible that Liman was to some extent taken in by the British feint on the island of Mytilene, the ancient Lesbos, for it was very thoroughly done. In July British officers made ostentatious inquiries among the local population of Turks and Greeks about the water supply and sites for encampments; and a little later a brigade of troops actually arrived. Maps of the Asiatic coast were freely distributed through the Army, and on August 3 Hamilton himself came over to the island to inspect the troops: an indication they were on the eve of going into battle, as indeed they were, but not in Asia. These moves can hardly have failed to have been reported to the Turks, for there were many people on the island who were hostile to the Allies, and a fantasy of espionage and counter-espionage was going on. In particular there was one family named Vassilaki of two brothers and three alleged beautiful sisters, which was the talk of the islands. The brothers kept eluding the British intelligence officers, and it was all very enjoyable in an opéra bouffe kind of way.