Gallipoli

The Germans at Hamidieh Fort and the other batteries on the opposite bank displayed a different kind of courage. Many of these men were gu

But none of these makeshifts, nor the discipline and the fanaticism of the defenders, could alter the fact that they had so much ammunition and no more. So long as it lasted they were quite confident that they could keep the Fleet at bay — and probably this confidence governed every other feeling at this high point of the attack. But if the battle went on and no unforeseen reinforcements arrived it was obvious to the commanders that the moment would come when they would be bound to order their men to fire off the last round and then retire. After that they could do no more.

They were convinced that the Fleet would attack again on the following day. They knew nothing of the alarming mystery which had been created among the British and the French by the loss of the Bouvet, the Irresistible and the Ocean. This was a matter which the Germans and the Turks could have explained in two minutes. What had happened was that on the night of March 8 a Lieut.-Colonel Geehl, who was a Turkish mine expert, had taken a small steamer called the Nousret down into Eren Keui Bay and there, parallel to the Asiatic shore and just inside the slack water, he had laid a new line of twenty mines. He did this because he had seen British warships manœuvring there during the previous day. Somehow in the ten days before the March 18 attack the British minesweepers had never found these mines; three of them, it is true, had been swept up, but it was not realized that there was a whole line of them; nor had they been noticed by the British aerial reco

To the Turks and the Germans it hardly seemed likely that the enemy warships would make this mistake a second time. And so through this night of March 18 they worked and waited for what the morning would bring, not over-elated by the success of the day or indifferent to their danger, but simply determined to fight on.

The British knew nothing of all this — of the plight of the gu

As early as February, before ever Carden had begun the bombardment, Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister, had been privately approached over the matter. As an inducement for Greece to come in on the side of the Allies he was offered two divisions, one British and one French, to stiffen his northern flank at Salonika. Venizelos judged that this reinforcement would be just enough to bring his enemies down on top of him and not enough to hold them off, and he therefore declined the offer. At the end of February however he changed his mind. Carden’s bombardment was going very well and it looked as though he might be in the Sea of Marmara at any moment. On March 1 the Greeks offered to send a force of three divisions to occupy the Gallipoli peninsula and then advance, if possible, upon Constantinople.

There is a fatuity about the negotiations which followed that still has power to cause surprise across the gulf of two world wars. It was to everybody’s interest — Russia’s more than anyone’s — that Greece should come in with her army and buttress the Fleet at the critical moment; yet the arrangements that were now made were precisely calculated to keep her out and almost lose her allegiance altogether. Britain and France would have accepted the Greek offer at once. But to Russia it was a matter of great alarm. It revived all her old fears about the guardianship of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, her one vital outlet to the south. She by no means wished to have the Greeks in Constantinople when she might be there herself. Blind to the fact that his own military situation was desperate, and that the revolution and his own death were not far off, the Czar permitted himself to say to the British Ambassador on March 3 that in no circumstances would he see Greek soldiers in Constantinople. In particular, King Constantine was not to appear there.

When this news reached Athens the Venizelos Government fell and was replaced on March 7 by a new ministry of pro-German views. Britain and France meanwhile, with an eye to bolstering Russia’s morale, informed the Czar that he should have control of the Bosphorus as soon as Constantinople fell, and an agreement to that effect was signed in the middle of March. With this all the Navy’s hopes of getting an army quickly into the Gallipoli peninsula were gone. It remained to be seen what could be done by Britain and France.

In London the chief advocate for an army for Gallipoli was Lord Fisher. ‘The Dardanelles,’ he cried in a note to Lloyd George, ‘Futile without soldiers!’ and he remarked very sensibly, ‘Somebody will have to land at Gallipoli some time or other.’ The decision on this matter, however, did not rest with the Admiralty; it rested with Kitchener, and Kitchener had been saying all along that he had no soldiers to spare. In point of fact he did have soldiers who were not then employed — notably the 29th Division, which was a very fine unit of the regular Army standing idle in England. Through February a lively argument developed between the western front generals and the supporters of the Dardanelles scheme as to who should get possession of this valuable force. By the middle of the month Kitchener was coming round to the Dardanelles side, and on the 16th he a

But now a new factor came into the scene. General Sir William Birdwood was sent out to the Dardanelles to report on the military position there, and one of his earliest messages to Kitchener on March 5 was disturbing. He did not believe, Birdwood said, that the Fleet would get through by itself; the Army would have to come in.

One sympathizes with Kitchener, for the situation was complicated. At one moment he is offered a Greek army and at the next it is snatched away. On March 2 Garden says he can get through. On March 5 Birdwood says he ca