Finally, what was the sane and rational decision to take? To risk a few old battleships with a chance of winning the campaign? Or to evacuate, to give up everything with the loss of 40,000 men?

By November 3 Keyes had made headway with these arguments. Jackson, the First Sea Lord, had said he was in favour provided that the Army attacked at the same time. Balfour had all but committed himself. Churchill had needed no persuading. ‘I believe,’ he had written in a recent cabinet paper urging a new attempt, ‘we have been all these months in the position of the Spanish prisoner who languished for twenty years in a dungeon until one morning the idea struck him to push the door which had been open all the time.’ And now Keyes found himself with Kitchener.

Kitchener had been appalled by Monro’s message. He could not bring himself to believe, he said, that a responsible officer could have recommended to the Government so drastic a course as evacuation. He had replied curtly by asking Monro for the opinion of the corps commanders, and Monro had answered that both Davies and Byng were for evacuation, while Birdwood was against it (but only because he feared the loss of prestige in the East). And then there had been this devastating estimate of the loss in cold blood of 40,000 men. Angrily, resentfully, realizing at last how much he was committed to the Dardanelles, Kitchener had been passing between the War Office and the cabinet room saying that he himself would never sign the evacuation order, and that if the Government insisted on it he himself would go out and take command, and that he would be the last man off. Keyes came in like a fresh wind at this moment, and Kitchener seized upon his plan. He told Keyes to return to the Admiralty and get some sort of a definite undertaking from them.

Keyes now was hot on the trail. He was back with Kitchener after dinner with the news that the First Sea Lord had given at least a partial promise: if the Army would attack, then the Navy would probably agree to force the straits at the same time.

While Keyes had been away Kitchener himself had taken a drastic decision which committed him more deeply than ever to the Dardanelles. It was a thunderblast in the old Olympian manner, impulsive, imperious, and absolute. He sent the following message to Birdwood, his follower of former days:

‘Most secret. Decipher yourself. Tell no one. You know Monro’s report. I leave here tomorrow night to come out to you. Have seen Commodore Keyes, and the Admiralty will, I believe, agree naval attempt to force straits. We must do what we can to assist them, and I think as soon as ships are in the Marmara we should seize and hold the isthmus (i.e. Bulair) so as to supply them if Turks hold out. Examine very carefully best position for landing near marsh at head of Gulf of Xeros, so that we could get a line across at isthmus with ships on both sides. To find troops for this purpose we should have to reduce to lowest possible numbers the men in all the trenches, and perhaps evacuate positions at Suvla. All the best fighting men that could be spared, including your boys from Anzac and reinforcements I can sweep up in Egypt, might be concentrated at Mudros ready for this enterprise. The admiral will probably be changed and Wemyss given command to carry through the naval part of the work. As regards command you would have the whole force and should carefully select your commanders and troops. I would suggest Maude, Fanshawe, Marshall, Peyton (all new commanders recently sent out from England), Godley and Cox, leaving others to hold the lines. Work out plans for this or alternate plans as you think best. We must do it right this time. I absolutely refuse to sign order for evacuation, which I think would be the greatest disaster and would condemn a large percentage of our men to death or imprisonment. Monro will be appointed to command the Salonika force.’[33]

This was followed by a War Office signal officially appointing Birdwood to the command of the Expedition and directing Monro to Salonika.

The Field Marshal was up till midnight with Keyes making his plans, and it was arranged that he was to leave for the Dardanelles on the following day. Keyes was to go with him provided that first he got the guarantee of certain naval reinforcements for his attempt on the Narrows.

This was on November 3. November 4 was a still more agitated day. In the morning Keyes got his reinforcements. Four battleships, Hibernia, Zealandia, Albemarle and Russell, 4 destroyers and 24 more trawlers were ordered to the Dardanelles. In the afternoon Balfour sent off a tactful message to de Robeck saying that he had heard that he was not well and in need of a rest; he must come home on leave. ‘In making arrangements for your substitute during your absence,’ the message went on, ‘please bear in mind the possibility that an urgent appeal from the Army to co-operate with them in a great effort may make it necessary for the Fleet to attempt to force the straits. The admiral left in charge should therefore be capable of organizing this critical operation and should be in full agreement with the policy.’

Then in the evening there was a setback. At a farewell meeting with the cabinet Kitchener found the other Ministers still divided between Gallipoli and Salonika. Bonar Law was actually threatening resignation unless the peninsula was evacuated, and Balfour made it absolutely clear that the Navy would do nothing at the Dardanelles unless the Army also attacked. Could the Army attack? Kitchener was forced to say he did not know. After the meeting he sent off a gloomy cable to Birdwood cancelling his previous message. ‘I fear,’ he said, ‘the Navy may not play up… The more I look at the problem the less I see my way through, so you had better very quietly and very secretly work out any scheme for getting the troops off.’

Then he set off, taking the overland route through France to Marseilles, where the Dartmouth was waiting to transport him to the Dardanelles. However, there was better news waiting for the Field Marshal in Paris, where he stopped that night to consult with the French government; the French told him that they were opposed to evacuation. On hearing this, Kitchener cabled Birdwood once again saying that he yet might be reinforced, and another message was despatched to Keyes in London telling him to proceed at once to Marseilles to join the Dartmouth so that they could discuss the joint naval and Army attack on their voyage to Gallipoli.

Keyes never got this message. It arrived at the Admiralty in London, but the officer on duty there decided (quite erroneously) that there was no point in sending it on to the Commodore since he had no hope of getting to Marseilles before the Dartmouth sailed.

Now they were all at sixes and sevens. When Keyes failed to turn up at Marseilles Kitchener concluded that the naval plan must have fallen through, and he sailed despondently without him. Keyes meanwhile, knowing nothing about all this, was jubilant. He went across to Paris, got a promise of six more warships from the French Minister of Marine, and hurried off after Kitchener, confident that all was well. At the Dardanelles de Robeck was getting ready to pack his bags, believing that he was about to be superseded by Wemyss; and Monro, who had been on a trip to Egypt, was confronted with the baffling news that Kitchener had been secretly arranging for his removal to Salonika. Birdwood perhaps was the most perplexed man of all. Kitchener was thrusting greatness upon him, and he was not at all sure that he wanted it. He did not believe that the Army would have a ghost of a chance in making a fresh landing in the vicinity of the Bulair isthmus, and he had no wish to become Commander-in-Chief. He suppressed the War Office cable announcing his appointment, and cabled Kitchener saying that he hoped Monro would remain in command.