Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918

im in October 1914 - The naval project against the Straits - Its fundamental errors - Would never have been carried into effect had there been a conference between the Naval War Staff and t

ty of sending out reinforcements then - Question whether the delay in sending out reinforcements greatly affected the result in August 1915 - The Dardanelles Committee - Its anxiety - Sir E. Carson and Mr. Churchill, allies - The question of clearing out - My disinclination to accept the principle before September - Sir C. Monro sent out - The delay of the Government in deciding - Lord

at least on the cards. It was, moreover, obvious that if there were to be a rupture between the Entente and the Sublime Porte, the Bosphorus was certain to be closed as a line of communication between the Western Powers and Russia. Such an eventuality was bound to exercise a far-

been rather troublesome about the business, and Downing Street and the Foreign Office had been obliged to take up a firm attitude before the Ottoman Government unwillingly climbed down. I had been in charge of the strategical section of the Military Operations Directorate at that time, and, in considering what we might be able to do in

Prime Minister the memorandum had been withdrawn. The reason for this I discovered at a later date. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had fully realized the importance of this Dardanelles transaction of 1906. He had perceived that it was a matter of quite exceptional secrecy. He had dreaded the disastrous results which might well arise were news by any mischance to leak out and to reach the Sublime Porte that the naval and military authorities in this country had expressed the opinion that successful attack upon the Dardanelles was virtually impracticable, and that H.M. Government had endorsed this view. Tell the Turk that, and our trump card was gone. We could then no longer bluff the Ottoman Government in the event of war with feints of operations against the Straits-the very course which I believe would have been adopted in 1914-1915, had the Admiralty War Staff and the General Staff co

the subject, a memorandum of a decidedly discouraging nature. As a matter of fact, what was perhaps the strongest argument against the undertaking at that time was by oversight omitted from the document-the Greeks had no howitzers or mobile heavy artillery worth mentioning, and any ordnance

bilities in connection with the Dardanelles. I found the First Sea Lord (Prince Louis of Battenberg) and the Fourth Sea Lord (Commodore C. F. Lambert) waiting, as well as Mr. Churchill, and we sat round a table with all the maps and charts that were necessary for our purpose spread out o

icable for troops to disembark from boats in fine weather, which was situated about the locality that has since become immortalized as Anzac Cove. A project on these lines is what we actually discussed that morning in the First Lord's room. I pointed out the difficulties and the dangers involved, i.e. the virtual impossibility of effecting a real surprise, the perils inseparable from a disembarkation in face of opposition, the certainty that the enemy was even now improving the land defences of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and the fact that, at

stically, upon the results that would be gained by the Entente in the event of such an undertaking being successfully carried out-on that subject we were all quite at one. The story of this informal pow-wow has been recorded thus at length, because it was really the only occasion on which the General Staff were afforded anything like a proper opportunity of expressing an opinion as to operations against the Dardanelles, until after

those interminable waits which take place in the course of a day's gun practice from a coast-defence battery, as to what would be likely to happen in the event of the work actually engaging a hostile armament, one could picture oneself driven from the guns under the hail of flying fragments of rock, concrete, and metal thrown up by the ships' huge projectiles. But one did not picture the battery as destroyed and rendered of no eff

ccessive days, and which, as I had told Mr. Churchill three months before, our ships would find most difficult to deal with; these guns would probably give the mine-sweepers much more trouble than the heavy ordnance in the enemy's fixed defences. Then, again, one could not but be aware that the Sister Service was none too well equipped for dealing with the enigma of mines in any form-that had become obvious to those behind the scenes during the first six months of the war-and one's information point

was opposed to it but allowed himself to be overruled by the War Council. Had those three admirals met three representatives of the General Staff, Sir J. Wolfe-Murray, General Kiggell and myself, let us say, sitting round a table with no Cabinet Ministers present, I am certain that the report that we should have drawn up would have been dead against the whole thing. The objections ra

ng side, as there was plenty of sea-room and no worry about mines. If the warships could not finally dispose of Turkish works such as this, and with everything favourable, by long-range fire, then long-range fire was "off." Once inside the Straits, the fleet, man?uvring without elbow-room, would have to get pretty near its work, mines or no mines, if it was going to do any good. The i

was running short. Their heavy guns, and the ammunition for them, was a matter of quite secondary importance. The fleet was beaten off owing to the effect of the drifting mines. The Turks thought that the damage done to the ships was due to their batteries, when it was in reality caused by their mines. They did not appreciate the situation correctly, for they do not appear to have been short of mines. The Russian plan of letting these engines of

rrived on the spot that the naval attack actually failed and that military operations on an ambitious scale against the Gallipoli Peninsula took the stage. The fact that when the transports arrived at Mudros they were found not to be packed suitably for effecting an immediate disembarkation on hostile soil, has been a good deal criticized. Although it was not a matter within my responsibility, I was sharply heckled over the point by Captain Stephen Gwynne when bef

at this time not exercising its proper functions or being invested with the powers to which it was entitled. There never was a meeting of the various directors in the War Office concerned, under the aegis of the General Staff, to go into these matters in detail. The troops would certainly be called upon to land somewhere, sooner or later, whether the fleet forced the Dardanelles or not, and all the arrangements as regards supplies

) proved inconvenient in 1914-15. One wonders, indeed, whether it was ever seen by the Admiralty experts at the time when they had Admiral Carden's plan of a creeping naval attack upon the Dardanelles under consideration, because the memorandum expressed considerable doubts as to the efficacy of gun-fire from on board

upon Sir N. Lyttelton, the late Lord Nicholson (actually a member of the Commission) and Sir J. French, who had successively been Chiefs of the General Staff during the same period. Topographical information cannot be procured after hostilities have broken out; it has to be obtained in advance. On noting what was said about this in the "First Report" of the

the head of the Intelligence Department of the War Office in the eighties secret funds have been at its disposal, but they have not been large, and there have always been plenty of desirable objects to devote those funds to. Had the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1906 taken the line that, even admitting an attack upon the Straits to be a difficult business, its effect if successful was nevertheless likely to be so great that the matter was one to be followed up, a pretty substantial share of the secret funds coming to hand in the Inte

information about the Gallipoli Peninsula-only those who have had experience in such matters know how great the difficulties are. Intelligence service in peace time is a subject of which the average civilian does not understand the meaning nor realize the dangers. The Commission, which included experts in such matters in the shape of Admiral Sir W. May and Lord Nicholson, made no comment on this point in its final Report, evidently taking the broad view that the lack of informat

nformation contained in the secret official publications which the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force took out with it was by no means to be despised. All but one of the landing places actually utilized on the famous 25th of April were, I think, designated in these booklets, and th

precedent for an undertaking of the kind. One dreaded some grave disaster, feared that the troops might entirely fail to gain a footing on shore, and pictured them as driven off after suffering overwhelming losses. The message announcing that a large part of the army was safely disembarked came as an immense relief. Although disappointed at learning that only a portion of the troops had been put ashore at Anzac on the outside of the Peninsula, which, I had presumed, would be the point selected for the main attack, I felt decidedly optimistic for th

t La Bassée, indicated that the enemy was formidable on the Western Front. Although there was every prospect of an improvement before long in respect to munitions output, the shell shortage was at the moment almost at its worst. We knew at the War Office that the Russians were in grave straits in respect to weapons and ammunition, and one could not tell whether the German Great General Staf

ld have been won. Much stress has always been laid upon the torpor that descended upon Suvla during the very critical hours which followed the successful disembarkation of the new force in that region; but those inexperienced troops and their leaders must have acted with extraordinary resolution and energy to have appreciably changed the fortunes of General Birdwood's great offensive again

ays took the utmost interest in the events in the Gallipoli Peninsula, and, up to the date when the August offensive in that region definitely failed, they were mostly in sanguine mood. One or two optimistic statements made in public at that time were indeed quite inappropriate and had much better been left unspoken. The amateur strategist, that inexhaustible source of original and unprofitable proposals, was by no means inarticulate at these confabulations in 10 Downing Street. He would pick up Sir I. Hamilton's Army and would d

eral Hubert Gough and his cavalry brigade into some public prominence, and which robbed the War Office of the services of Colonel Seely, Sir J. French and Sir Spencer Ewart. I had been allowed behind the scenes in the north of Ireland as a sympathiser, had visited Omagh, Enniskillen, historic Derry and other places, had noted the grim determination of the loyalists, and had been deeply impressed by

lf to this idea, even when no hope of real success remained. It was not until September indeed, and after the decision had been come to to send out no more fresh troops to Sir I. Hamilton, that I personally came to the conclusion that no other course was open than to have done with the business and to come away out of that with the least possible delay. Sir Ian had sent home a trusted staff-officer, Major (now Major-General) the Hon. Guy Dawnay, to report and to try to secure help. Dawnay fought his corner resolutely and was loyalty itself to his chief, but the information that he

tely appeared to halt helplessly between two opinions. Even Sir C. Monro's uncompromising recommendation failed to decide its members. Lord Kitchener was loth to agree to the step, as he feared the effect which a British retreat might exert in Egypt and else

A. Murray, summoned me, after a meeting of the War Council, to say that that body wished me to repair straightway to Paris and to make General Gallieni, the War Minister, acquainted with a decision which they had just arrived at-viz., that the Gallipoli Peninsula was

s arranged, had been unable to come to a decision but were going to have another try on the morrow. Here was a contingency that was not covered by instructions and for which one was not prepared, but I decided to tell General Gallieni exactly how matters stood. (Adroitly drawn out for my benefit by his personal staff during

mstances was to return to the War Office. General Gallieni, when the position of affairs was explained to him, was most sympathetic, quoted somebody's dictum that "la politique n'a pas d'entrailles," and hinted that he did not always find it quite plain sailing with his own gang. Still, there it was. The Twenty-Three had thrown the War Council over (it was then composed of Messrs. Asquith, Bonar Law,

haracteristic with him and displays it even amid the deadening surroundings of the big building in Whitehall. The best laugh that we enjoyed during that strenuous period was on the morning when news came that Anzac and Suvla had been evacuated at the cost of only some h

s. It quoted the case of some similar military operation, where warriors who had gained a footing on a hostile coast-line had been obliged to remove themselves in haste and had had the very father and mother of a time during the process-it was Marathon or Syracuse or some such contemporary martial event, if I remember aright. This masterly produc

rnment a fortnight before. The orders sent out to Sir C. Monro only directed an evacuation of Anzac and Suvla to take place. This, it may be observed, seems to some extent to have been the fault of the sailor-men. They butted in, wanting to hang on to Helles on watching-the-Straits

nce submitted to the War Council, and within two or three days orders were telegraphed out to the Aegean to the effect that Helles was to be abandoned. After remaining a few days longer at the War Office as Director of Military Intelligence, I was sent by the C.I.G.S. on a special mission to Russia, and my direct connection with th