Gallipoli

Mackenzie’s description of him at their first meeting is of ‘a slim man in khaki with a soft felt hat the colour of verdigris, a camera slung around his shoulders, and an unrelaxing expression of nervous exasperation.’

He ‘walked along the deck with the air of one convinced that his presence there a

Yet the really irritating thing about Ashmead-Bartlett was that he was so often right. He was torpedoed aboard the Majestic that same night. And there was indeed a great deal to criticize in the generals’ plans since they so frequently did end in disaster. Moreover, he could not be ignored. In London he had the ear of a number of important people in the cabinet, and however much he was disliked on Imbros the soldiers at the front were glad enough to see him, and he was often at the front. As a war correspondent, Ashmead-Bartlett was extremely capable.

He was still with the expedition and more exasperated than ever when at the conclusion of the August battles Murdoch arrived.

Murdoch was not really a war correspondent at all. He was on his way to London to act as the representative of various Australian newspapers there, and had been given a temporary official mission by his government to call in at Egypt and report upon the postal arrangements for the Australian troops. He was carrying letters of introduction from the Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher, and the Australian Minister for Defence, Senator Pearce.

On August 17 Murdoch wrote to Hamilton from Cairo saying that he was finding it difficult to complete his inquiries in Egypt. He asked for permission to come to Gallipoli, and added, ‘I should like to go across in only a semi-official capacity, so that I might record censored impressions in the London and Australian newspapers I represent, but any conditions you impose I should, of course, faithfully observe… May I add that I had the honour of meeting you at the Melbourne Town Hall, and wrote fully of your visit in the Sydney Sun and Melbourne Punch;[29] also may I say that my anxiety as an Australian to visit the sacred shores of Gallipoli while our army is there is intense.’

Hamilton says that he was not much impressed at having been written up in the Sun and Punch, but he sent off the necessary permission and on September 2 Murdoch arrived. Hamilton, at their single meeting, found him ‘a sensible man’. He was to prove, however, much more than that: so far as Hamilton was concerned he was a very dangerous man.

Murdoch signed the usual war correspondent’s declaration saying that he would submit all he wrote to the censor at headquarters, and then made a brief visit to the Anzac bridgehead. On his return to Imbros he set up at the Press Camp, and there found Ashmead-Bartlett. The two at once discovered that they had much in common.

Murdoch had been genuinely appalled by what he had heard and seen at Anzac: the danger and the squalor of the men’s lives, the sickness, the monotonous food, the general air of depression. The Australians he talked to were extremely critical of G.H.Q., and they said that they dreaded the approach of winter. Ashmead-Bardett was able to corroborate all this and add a good deal more. He gave it as his opinion that a major catastrophe was about to occur unless something was done. The authorities and the public at home, he said, were in complete ignorance of what was going on, and under the existing censorship at Imbros there was no way of enlightening them — unless, of course, one broke the rules and sent out an uncensored letter. After some discussion they agreed that this must be done. Murdoch was due to leave for England in a day or two; it was arranged that he would take a letter written by Ashmead-Bartlett and get it into the hands of the authorities in London.

While they were waiting for the next ship for Marseilles, Ashmead-Bartlett wrote his letter, and then coached Murdoch very fully in the mistakes and dangers of the campaign so that Murdoch would be able to furnish information on his own account on his arrival in London. ‘I further,’ Ashmead-Bartlett says in his book The Uncensored Dardanelles, ‘gave Murdoch letters of introduction to others who might be useful in organizing a campaign to save the Army on Gallipoli, and arranged for him to see Harry Lawson[30] to urge him to allow me to return. I promised him that if he was held up in his mission, or if the authorities refused to listen to his warnings, I would at once resign and join forces with him in London.’

Early in the second week of September Murdoch set off. When he arrived at Marseilles a few days later he was met on the quay by a British officer with an escort of British troops and French gendarmes. They proceeded to place him under arrest, and it was not until he had handed over Ashmead-Bartlett’s letter that he was released and allowed to go on his way to London.

Long afterwards, when the war was over, Ashmead-Bartlett and Murdoch learned how they were given away: they had been overheard in their discussions at Imbros by another correspondent, (Henry Nevinson) who sent a letter to Hamilton warning him of what was afoot. Hamilton was inclined to be amused at first, and he wrote, ‘I had begun to wonder what had come over Mr. Murdoch and now it seems he has come over me!’ But he acted very quickly. A cable was sent off to the War Office in London asking them to intercept Murdoch on his journey; and on September 28 Ashmead-Bartlett at Imbros was sent for by Braithwaite and told that he must leave the Army.

Hamilton’s informant had been wrong in one respect. The letter had not been addressed to Lawson as he thought, but to Asquith, the Prime Minister. Hamilton was not dismayed when he heard this news from London: ‘I do not for one moment believe Mr. Asquith would employ such agencies and for sure he will turn Murdoch and his wares into the wastepaper basket… Tittletattle will effect no lodgement in the Asquith brain.’

But here again he was wrong, for Murdoch had by no means given up the hunt. He had lost Ashmead-Bartlett’s letter, but he had his own pen. On his arrival in England he wrote an 8,000-word report on Gallipoli, and addressed it to the Australian Prime Minister, Andrew Fisher. Ashmead-Bartlett’s letter, which was now safely pouched in the War Office, had said that Hamilton and his staff were openly referred to by the troops at Gallipoli with derision, and that morale in the Army had collapsed; but this was the mildest pin-pricking compared with the views that Murdoch now disclosed. Part of his report was a eulogy of the Australian soldiers: his criticism was reserved for the English. Braithwaite, he informed the Australian Prime Minister, was ‘more cordially detested in our forces than Enver Pasha’. Birdwood ‘had not the fighting qualities or the big brain of a great general’. Kitchener ‘has a terrible task in getting pure work from the General Staff of the British Army, whose motives can never be pure, for they are unchangeably selfish’. Murdoch had seen one of Hamilton’s staff officers ‘wallowing’ in ice while wounded men were dying of heat a few hundred yards away. As for the British soldiers of the New Army, they were ‘merely a lot of childish youths without strength to endure or brains to improve their conditions’. One would refuse to believe that these could be British soldiers at all, their physique was so much below that of the Turks. ‘From what I saw of the Turk,’ the report went on, ‘I am convinced he is… a better man than those opposed to him.’

29

Hamilton had made a visit to Australia shortly before the war.

30

The proprietor of Ashmead-Bartlett’s newspaper the Daily Telegraph.