Gallipoli (38 page)

Once again Kemal protested; a dividing line between two commands, he said, was always the weakest point. The responsibility for Sazlidere must be made perfectly clear, and strong forces posted
there. Essad was growing weary of the argument. ‘Little valleys like this,’ he wrote, ‘cannot be inclusive or exclusive of either side.’ However, he agreed to come down one
day with his chief-of-staff to survey the position. Kemal led them to his advance headquarters on a plateau known to the British as Battleship Hill, and from there they looked down, as from an
aircraft, at the coastline to the north of Anzac, the salt lake glistening in the distance by the sea, the empty bay at Suvla, the hills to the east, and in between, the flat plain reaching up to
the tangle of foothills around Sazlidere at their feet. The three crests of Sari Bair—Chunuk Bair, Hill Q and Koja Chemen Tepe—with their apparently unclimbable slopes, rose up above
them immediately to their right.

Kemal reports the discussion that followed in these words: ‘Seeing this view, the Chief-of-Staff of the Corps said, “Only raiding parties could cross this ground.”

‘The Corps Commander turned to me and said, “Where will the enemy come from?” Pointing with my hand in the direction of Ari Burnu, and along the whole
shore as far as Suvla, I said, “From here”.

‘ “Very well, supposing he does come from there, how will he advance?” Again pointing towards Ari Burnu, I moved my hand in a semi-circle towards Koja Chemen Tepe. “He
will advance from here,” I said. The Corps Commander smiled and patted my shoulder. “Don’t you worry, he can’t do it,” he said. Seeing that it was impossible to
convince him I felt it unnecessary to prolong the argument any further. I confined myself to saying, “God willing, sir, things will turn out as you expect”.’

In short, Kemal had anticipated the general lines of Hamilton’s attack—the landing at Suvla, the advance up Sazlidere and the neighbouring ravines to the crests of Sari
Bair—and perhaps it was only human that Kemal later should have written in his journal: ‘When from the 6th August onwards the enemy’s plans turned out just as I expected and tried
to explain, I could not imagine the feelings of those who, two months before, had insisted on not accepting my explanations. Events were to show that they had been mentally unprepared and that due
to insufficient measures in the face of hostile action, they had allowed the whole situation to become critical and the nation to be exposed to very great danger.’

From the British point of view the important thing was that Kemal at this stage had no power to enforce his ideas, and while he fumed and complained on Battleship Hill all the broken ground from
Sazlidere to the north-east remained virtually unoccupied by the Turks, and the Suvla plain was left to the care of only three weak battalions. However, the German officer arrived to take command
of the area, a Major Willmer of the Bavarian cavalry, a tall, spare figure with a duelling scar on his cheek, and he proved to be a very capable man indeed. When the salt lake dried up in July,
Willmer saw that it was no use posting his 1,800 men along the coast, since there was no hope of preventing an enemy landing there. Just two outposts were left beside the sea: one of them on a
patch of rising ground known as Hill Ten, to the north of the salt
lake, and the other at Lala Baba, a 200-foot hillock between the salt lake and the bay. In the event of a
landing being made, these men were told to resist as long as they could, but not to get cut off: they were to retire to the hills some three miles inland where the bulk of the little force was
entrenched. And there, somehow or other, Willmer hoped to hold on until help reached him from Bulair in the north.

At the end of July Willmer received the warning issued to all Turkish army commanders that an enemy offensive was to be expected at any time, and he took care to conceal his men as much as
possible by day and to push on with the digging of his entrenchments by night.

On August 6 the Major went down to the coast to inspect his outpost at Lala Baba, and it was there, late in the afternoon, that he heard the tremendous barrage of guns starting up at Anzac.
Shortly afterwards he received an order from Liman to send one of his battalions there. The men were put on the road, but Willmer himself remained at Lala Baba to watch the horizon for any sign of
approaching enemy ships. He saw the crimson sun go down on a flat and empty sea, and then, giving orders to his men to remain in instant readiness through the night, he rode home to his
headquarters in the hills. He had hardly arrived there when he had word from Lala Baba that enemy soldiers were coming ashore on the beach below them in the darkness. At once he sent off a signal
to Liman asking for the return of the battalion which was on the march to Anzac. Liman refused, and Willmer was now left with a force of less than 1,500 men to hold the whole area around Suvla
Bay.

The night was pitch dark, and for some time the outpost at Lala Baba could not make out what was going on. Had they been able to see out to sea they would have been much more alarmed than they
were, for the British fleet had carried through the first part of the plan with remarkable timing. There were three echelons: the 10,000 men from Imbros who, in three brigades, were to make the
first landing, one of them inside the bay and the other two on the open beach to the south of it, and then, following on behind, the
6,000 men from Mytilene and the 4,000
from Mudros. Precisely at 9.30 p.m. the leading destroyers in line abreast came to a stop five hundred yards out from B Beach—the beach to the south of the lake—and quietly eased their
anchors into the sea. The beetles and the picket boats which they had been towing were then cast off and made towards the shore.

At Lala Baba the Turks held their fire, for they could still see nothing, and in a fresh and gentle breeze the boats ran up to the beach and dropped their ramps on the sand. Within a few minutes
some 7,000 men had walked ashore without getting their feet wet, and they were disturbed only by a single rifle shot which killed a sailor on the beach. As they marched inland for half a mile, two
Turkish sentries rose in the darkness, fired their rifles and fled, but there was no other opposition; the invaders were in possession of an empty countryside.

But now a red flare went up from Lala Baba on their left, and the two battalions of Yorkshire soldiers who were advancing in that direction came under heavy rifle fire. This was the first time
that Kitchener’s new civilian army had faced the enemy, and the conditions were very difficult: they had been on their feet for seventeen hours, they could see hardly more than a yard or two
ahead, and they were under orders to use only their bayonets until the day broke. A third of the men and all but three of their officers were hit, but the remainder kept trudging on until they had
driven the Turks off the top of the hill and had pursued them down to the salt lake on the opposite side. It was now midnight, and the survivors looked around for the third brigade which was
supposed to have landed inside the bay, at a place called A Beach, and to have kept a rendezvous with them at Lala Baba. But of these others there was nothing to be seen; and so the men sat down to
wait.

The Navy had been all too well justified in their dislike of the unknown waters in the bay. In the darkness the landing craft had lost their way, and those which had not fouled hidden reefs had
come ashore at least a thousand yards to the south of the place where they were intended to be. It was not until well after midnight that the first troops of this third brigade began to line up on
the beach, and nobody knew quite where they were or what they were supposed to do. However, the moon came up at 2 a.m. and by that pale light one column made a dash at a hill
which they imagined to be Hill Ten (and which was not), while another struggled up the slopes of Kiretch Tepe to the north, and still another sat down and waited on the beach. As day began to break
at 4.30 a.m. the advance everywhere had stopped. Hill Ten had still not been attacked or even found, disorganized groups were firing raggedly at any target that happened to present itself, and the
utmost confusion spread along the shore. Officers everywhere were shouting to one another for information, arguing over their orders and sending off messengers who never returned. It was not the
enemy fire that defeated then, for it was not very heavy, but their own physical exhaustion, the unfamiliar maps which seemed to bear no relation to the landscape, and the absence of anyone in high
authority to give a clear command.

General Hammersley had come ashore soon after midnight, and he spent the remaining hours of darkness vainly trying to find out what was going on. It was not until dawn that he realized that, far
from reaching the hills, his soldiers had merely seized the two arms of the bay.

General Stopford was in somewhat easier circumstances. On the voyage across from Imbros he had confided to Admiral Christian his misgivings about the whole adventure, but his spirits rose as
they approached the coast. Very little firing was to be heard on shore, and it even seemed that the landing had been made unopposed. In the very early hours of the morning the
Jonquil
dropped anchor just inside the bay. The night was warm, and the General had his mattress brought up on deck close under the bridge; and there he went to sleep. No one was sent ashore to inquire for
news, no one came out to the
Jonquil
from the beach, and no message was sent to G.H.Q. at Imbros. It was not until 4 a.m. that Commander Unwin, who had been very busy through the night, came
on board to urge the Admiral that the monitors should open fire to hearten the troops who were still held up in confusion on the shore.

On Imbros Hamilton and his staff were finding the absence or news almost insupportable. The General kept pacing back and forth from his hut to the signals tent, and
although Anzac and Helles sent him their news, from Suvla there was not a word. The cable ship Levant had gone off with the invasion fleet, paying out its cable on the way, and it was arranged that
the first message that was to come through would announce that the troops were ashore. There was a dial face in the signals tent at the Imbros end of the cable, and through the midnight hours the
headquarters staff kept watching it. At last at 2 a.m. the needle on the dial began to move and a telegraphist spelt out the message: ‘A little shelling at A has now ceased. All quiet at
B.’ There was no signature—it was simply the signaller on board the Levant passing a private message to his mate at the Imbros end—but it did at least serve to reassure the
Commander-in-Chief’s mind. ‘Now, thank God,’ he wrote, ‘the deadliest of the perils is past. The New Army are fairly ashore.’

It was quite true. Nearly 20,000 men had been landed and the casualties had been very light. This time Liman had been caught completely off his guard. It was also unfortunately true that at this
moment all three senior British generals—Hammersley at Suvla, Stopford in the
Jonquil
and Hamilton on Imbros—were in almost total ignorance of what was really happening, and the
hills which they (or Hamilton, at any rate) had so much hoped to have by dawn, were still several miles away. But even so the situation was not too dangerous; the confusing darkness of the night
had gone, no Turkish reinforcements had yet arrived, and there was still time for the Suvla troops to bring help to Birdwood in his frightful struggle for Sari Bair. All depended on the dispatch
with which Stopford disentangled his forces on the shore and got them moving inland.

It had been Stopford’s original intention to go ashore with his headquarters on the morning of August 7, but he changed his mind when he heard that his signals unit had not yet arrived. He
could better control the battle, he decided, from the decks of the
Jonquil
, and it was here, soon after daybreak, that he received a
visit from Brigadier-General Hill,
the commander of the 6,000 troops who had just come in from Mytilene. Hill was not the least bewildered man at Suvla that morning. For nearly a month he and his men had been incarcerated in their
transports, and they might have been living on the moon for all they knew about Gallipoli. On the previous day they had received orders to move from their peaceful anchorage in Mytilene harbour.
They had no idea where they were going, no plan had been given to the Brigadier, and no map had been shown to him. He was surprised therefore to wake on this hot sunny morning and find himself on a
strange coast with hostile shells falling into the sea around him; and he now wished to know what he was to do.

Stopford, on the advice of Unwin, was inclined to think that Hill had better get his ships out of the shellfire in Suvla Bay and go round to the safe outer beach beyond Nibrunesi Point where he
could attach himself to General Hammersley for the time being. This would mean that the men would have to march for a mile or more under enemy fire to get back to their appointed landing-place
inside the bay; still, it could not be helped. The two generals were still debating the matter when Keyes burst in upon them. Keyes had observed the hesitations and delays on the shore, and he had
come across from the
Chatham
‘in a fever of resentment at these leisurely proceedings’ to say that shellfire or no shellfire Hill should land his men inside the bay at once. It
was decided, however, that another change of plan would cause too much confusion, and so Hill went off with his men around Nibrunesi Point. Arriving on shore his orders were instantly countermanded
by Hammersley; instead of marching north towards Hill Ten he was now to march east towards a rise known as Chocolate Hill, where the Turks were still entrenched. Later on these orders were again
cancelled. Still later the plans were altered again.

It was typical of much else that happened on this day. Indeed, it requires a more than average interest in the minutiae of military history to follow the marches and the counter-marches that now
began, the stream of orders, each one cancelling out the last, the misunderstandings between the various headquarters, the long
silences and the sudden frantic changes of
front. The best part of two divisions had now come ashore, the 11th under Hammersley and the 10th under Mahon, and hardly anyone was where he was supposed to be. Companies, battalions and even
whole brigades were hopelessly mixed up together, and any resolute action that did occur was usually the work of some junior commander who took affairs into his own hands on a limited front.