Authors: Alan Moorehead
Gallipoli (2 page)
But the eventual withdrawal proved to be the only efficient part of the campaign. To prevent the Turks from seeing what was happening and exploiting weakness, the men in the line were
progressively thinned out. On 18 December the main evacuations began, and on 8 January 1916 the last men were taken off Cape Helles. Five hundred wretched mules, the last of thousands landed to
serve as pack animals, were shot on the beaches.
An Australian officer left behind a note for the Turks, asking them to preserve Anzac graves, saying he felt sure they would do this, as they had behaved ‘most honourably’ during the
fighting. Another soldier messaged: ‘You didn’t push us off, Jacko, we just left.’ An Australian light horseman laid a table for four and set it with jam, bully beef, biscuits and
cheese. His note said: ‘There are no booby traps in this dugout.’
The Dardanelles campaign had cost the Turks 251,309 casualties, including 87,000 dead; the French lost 10,000 killed, the Anzacs 8,709, the British 21,000. Proportionate losses were highest
among the New Zealanders, in both world wars perhaps the finest of all Allied fighting soldiers. Of 8,556 who served at Gallipoli, 2,701 died, 4,752 were wounded. Compared with the slaughter on the
Western Front, this toll was relatively small. The British would lose as many dead in a mere day or two on the Somme in 1916. But somehow the Dardanelles, that parade of futility played out so
close to Troy, in a land and seascape steeped in classical legend, achieved a special place in the history of the war. For Australians, in the words of one of their historians, it became ‘a
Homeric tale’. Ever since, they claimed it as their own in a fiercely and characteristically nationalistic fashion. Even in the twenty-first century, each year Gallipoli draws their
descendants in astonishing numbers to attend commemorations. Australian folklore brands the peninsula as the place where the generals of the old ‘mother country’ grossly betrayed the
young men of the dominions. This is not entirely a false image, but it is sometimes irksome to find modern Australians quite ignorant of the fact that more than twice as many British soldiers
perished there as Australians.
Winston Churchill believed to his dying day that had the admirals and generals been bolder and more competent, the course of the war might have been transformed here. Few modern historians
agree. The Gallipoli campaign was fundamentally flawed, as well as ineptly executed. The First Lord bore most of the bitter political recriminations for the failure. He was obliged to resign his
office and accept command of a battalion in France. It was 1917 before he was again admitted to Lloyd George’s government, and some British politicians did not forgive him or forget his
responsibility for the Dardanelles campaign until 1940.
Many battles in many wars seem futile to posterity, because all wars involve wasted human lives. The diaries and letters of the young men who fought and died at sea in the Dardanelles and ashore
at Gallipoli are among the most profoundly moving documents of the war. To visit the battlefield is to make a pilgrimage to one of the most emotive landmarks of one of the most terrible conflicts
of history, of which Alan Moorehead remains perhaps the most vivid chronicler.
Sir Max Hastings
September 2013
The Dardanelles and Gallipoli, 1975
Gallipoli: The Landings, April 25th
The Suvla Landings
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.
ALAN MOOREHEAD
‘
Essentially the great question remains: Who will hold Constantinople?
’—NAPOLEON
E
VEN
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.