Grand lunch at the Abdin Palace with the Sultan. Most of the Cabinet present. The Sultan spoke French well and seems clever as well as most gracious and friendly. He a.s.sured me that the Turkish Forts at the Dardanelles were absolutely impregnable. The words "absolute" and "impregnable" don"t impress me overmuch. They are only human opinions used to gloss over flaws in the human knowledge or will. Nothing is impregnable either--that"s a sure thing. No reasons were given me by His Highness.
Have just written home about these things: midnight.
_29th March, 1915. 9.30 p.m. Palace Hotel, Alexandria._ Early start to the Mena Camp to see the Australians. A devil of a blinding storm gave a foretaste of dust to dust. That was when they were marching past, but afterwards I inspected the Infantry at close quarters, taking a good look at each man and speaking to hundreds. Many had been at my inspections in their own country a year ago, but most were new hands who had never worn uniform till they "listed for the war. The troops then marched back to Camp in ma.s.s of quarter columns--or rather swept by like a huge yellow cloud at the heart of which sparkled thousands of bayonets.
Next I reviewed the Artillery, Engineers and Cavalry; winding up with the overhaul of the supply and transport column. This took time, and I had to make the motor travel getting across twelve miles or so to inspect a mixed Division of Australians and New Zealanders at Heliopolis. G.o.dley commanded. Great fun seeing him again. These fellows made a real good show; superb physique: numbers of old friends especially amongst the New Zealanders. Another scurry in the motor to catch the 4.15 for Alexandria. Tiring day if I had it in my mind to be tired, but this 30,000 crowd of Birdwood"s would straighten up the back of a pacifist. There is a bravery in their air--a keenness upon their clean cut features--they are spoiling for a sc.r.a.p! Where they have sprung from it is hard to say. Not in Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth--no, nor in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland, did I meet specimens like unto these. The spirit of War has breathed its fires into their hearts; the drill sergeant has taken thought and has added one cubit to their stature.
D"Amade has just been to make me known to a couple of Frenchmen about to join my Staff. They seem to be nice fellows. The French have been here some days and they are getting on well. Hunter-Weston landed this morning; his first batch of transports are in the harbour. I am to see the French troops in four days" time; Hunter-Weston"s 29th Division on the fifth day. Neither Commander has yet worked out how long it will take before he has reloaded his transports. They declare it takes three times as long to repack a ship loaded at haphazard as it would have taken to have loaded her on a system in the first instance. Six days per ship is their notion of what they can do, but I trust to improve a bit on that.
Hunter-Weston had written me a letter from Malta (just to hand) putting it down in black and white that we have not a reasonable prospect of success. He seemed keen and sanguine when we met and made no reference to this letter: so it comes in now as rather a startler. But it is best to have the black points thrust upon one"s notice beforehand--so long always as I keep it fixed in the back of my mind that there was never yet a great thought or a great deed which was not cried down as unreasonable before the fact by a number of reasonable people!
_30th March, 1915. Alexandria._ Have just dictated a long letter to Lord K. in the course of which I have forced myself to say something which may cause the great man annoyance. I feel it is up to me to risk that.
One thing--he knows I am not one of those rotters who ask for more than they can possibly be given so that, if things go wrong, they may complain of their tools. I have promised K. to help him by keeping my demands down to bedrock necessities. I make no demand for ammunition on the France and Flanders scale but--we must have _some_! There must be a depot somewhere within hail. Here is the crucial para.:--
"I realise how hard up you must be for ammunition, but I hope the M.G.O.
will have by now put in hand the building up of some reserves at our base in Alexandria. If our batteries or battalions now serving in France run short, something, at a pinch, can always be sc.r.a.ped together in England and issued to them within 24 hours. Here it would be a question of almost as many days, and, if it were to turn out that we have a long and severe struggle, with no reserves nearer us than Woolwich--well--it would not be pleasant! Moreover the number of howitzers, guns and rifles in France is so enormous that it is morally impossible they should all be hotly engaged at the same time. Thus they automatically form their own reserves. In other words, a force possessing only ten howitzers ought to have at least twice the reserves of a force possessing a hundred howitzers. So at least it seems to me."
In the same letter I tell him about "Birdwood"s crowd" and of their splendid physique; their growing sense of discipline, their exceeding great keenness, and wind up by saying that, given a fair chance, they will, for certain, "render a very good account of themselves."
Confabs with d"Amade and Hunter-Weston. Hunter-Weston"s "appreciation"
of the situation at the Dardanelles is to be treated as an _ad interim_ paper; he wrote it, he says now, without the fuller knowledge he is daily acquiring--knowledge which is tending to make him more sanguine.
His stay at Malta and his talks with Officers there had greatly impressed him with the hardness of the nut we have to try and crack; so much so that his paper suggests an indefinite putting off of the attempt to throw open the Straits. I asked him if he had laid his view before K.
in London and he said, No; that he had not then come to it and that he had not definitely come to it now.
D"Amade"s own inclinations would have led him to Asia. When he left France he did not know he was to be under me and he had made up his mind to land at Adramiti. But now he waives all preconceived ideas and is keen to throw himself heart and soul into Lord K."s ideas and mine. He would rather I did not even refer to his former views as he sees they are expressly barred by the tenor of my instructions. The French are working to time in getting ship-shape. The 29th Division are arriving up to date and about one-third of them have landed. We are fixing up our gear for floating and other piers and are trying to improvise ways and means of coping with the water problem--this ugly nightmare of a water problem. The question of the carriage and storage of water for thousands of men and horses over a roadless, mainly waterless track of country should have been tackled before we left England.
To solve these conundrums we have had to recreate for ourselves a special field service system of food, water and ammunition supply. As an instance we have had to re-organise baggage sections of trains and fit up store ships as subst.i.tutes for additional ammunition columns and parks. We are getting on fairly fast with our work of telling off troops to transports so that each boat load of men landed will be, so to say, on its own; victualled, watered and munitioned. But it takes some doing.
Greatly handicapped by absence of any Administrative, or Q. Staff. The General Staff are working double shifts, at a task for which they have never been trained:--
It"s a way we have in the Aaarmy!
It"s a way we have in the NAAAAvy!!
It"s a way we have in the Eeeeeempire!!!
That n.o.body can deny!!!!
What would my friends on the j.a.panese General Staff say--or my quondam friends on the German General Staff--if they knew that a Commander-in-Chief had been for a fortnight in touch with his troops, engaged with them upon a huge administrative job, and that he had not one administrative Staff Officer to help him, but was w.i.l.l.ynilly using his General Staff for the work? They would say "mad Englishmen" and this time they would be right. The British public services are poisoned by two enormous fallacies: (_a_) if a man does well in one business, he will do equally well or better in another; (_b_) if a man does badly in one business he will do equally badly or worse in another. There is nothing beyond a vague, floating reputation or public opinion to enable a new Minister to know his subordinates. The Germans have tabulated the experiences and deficiencies of our leaders, active and potential, in peace and war--we have not! Every British General of any note is a.n.a.lysed, characterised and turned inside out in the bureau records of the great German General Staff in Berlin. We only attempt anything of that sort with burglars. My own portrait is in those archives and is very good if not very flattering; so a German who had read it has told me. This is organisation: this is business; but official circles in England are so remote in their methods from these particular notions of business that I must turn to a big newspaper shop to let anyone even begin to understand what it is to run Q. business with a G.S. team.
Suppose Lord Northcliffe decided to embark upon a journalistic campaign in Canada and that his scheme turned upon time; that it was a question of Northcliffe catching time by the forelock or of time laying Northcliffe by the heels. Suppose, further, that he had no first-hand knowledge of Canada and had decided to place the conduct of the campaign in the hands of his brother who would spy out the land; choose the best site; buy a building; order the printing press; engage hands and start the paper. Well; what staff would he send with him? A couple of leader writers, a trio of special correspondents and half a dozen reporters?
Probably; but would there not also be berths taken in the Cunarder for a manager trained in the business side of journalism? Quite a fair way of putting the present case, although, on the other side, it is also fair to add that British Officers have usually had to play so many parts in the charade of square pegs in round holes, that they can catch a hold anywhere, at any time, and carry on somehow.
_31st March, 1915. Alexandria._--Quill driving and dictating. Have made several remonstrances lately at the way McMahon is permitting the Egyptian Press to betray our intentions, numbers, etc. It is almost incredible and Maxwell doesn"t see his way clear to interfere. For the last day or two they have been telling the Turks openly where we are bound for. So I have written McMahon the following:--
"General Headquarters, "18 RUE EL CAIED GOHAR, "ALEXANDRIA, 31/3/15.
"DEAR HIGH COMMISSIONER,
"I was somewhat startled a couple of mornings ago by an article in the _Egyptian Gazette_ giving away the arrival of the French troops, and making open references to the Gallipoli Peninsula. The very frankness of such communications may of course mislead the Turk into thinking we mean thereby to take his mind off some other place which is our real objective, but I doubt it. He knows our usual methods too well.
"Consequently as it is very important at least to throw him into some state of bewilderment as to our movements, I propose sending the following cable to Lord Kitchener:--
""Whether of set purpose or through inadvertence articles have appeared in Egyptian Press openly discussing arrival of French and British troops and naming Gallipoli as their destination. Is there any political objection to my cautiously spreading rumour that our true objective is, say, Smyrna?"
"Before I despatch the wire, however, I think I should like you to see it, in case you have any objections. I have all the facilities for spreading any rumour I like through my Intelligence Branch, which would be less suspected than information leaking out from political sources.
"Could you kindly send me a wire on receipt of this?
"Yours sincerely, (_Sd._) "IAN HAMILTON."
"I only propose to ask Lord K. in case there may be political reasons why I should not select any particular place about which to spread a rumour of our landing."
Forgot to note a step taken yesterday--to nowhere perhaps--perhaps to Constantinople. Yesterday the _Doris_ brought me a copy of a long cable sent by Winston to de Robeck six days ago, together with a copy of the V.A."s reply. The First Lord is clearly in favour of the Fleet going on knocking the Forts to pieces whilst the Army are getting on with their preparations; clearly also he thinks that, under rough handling from Q.E. & Co., the Turkish resistance might at any moment collapse. Then we should sail through as per Lord K."s programme. Well; nothing would suit me so well. If we are to have an opposed landing better kill two birds with one stone and land bang upon the Bosphorus. The nearer to the heart I can strike my first blow, the more telling it will be. Cable 140 puts the case very well. Winston hits the nail on the head, so it seems to me, when he points out that the Navy is not tied to the ap.r.o.n strings of the Army but that it is the other way about: i.e., if the Fleet makes another big push whilst we are getting ready, they can still fall back on the combined show with us if they fail; whereas, if they succeed they will save us all the loss of life and energy implied by an opposed landing at the Dardanelles. Certainly Braithwaite and I had understood that de Robeck would work to that end; that this is what he was driving at when he said he would not be idle but would keep the Turks busy whilst we were getting ready. Nothing will induce me to volunteer opinions on Naval affairs. But de Robeck"s reply to Winston might be read as if I _had_ expressed an opinion, so I am bound to clear up that point--definitely.
"_From_ GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON.
"_To_ VICE-ADMIRAL SIR JOHN DE ROBECK.
"Copy of number 140 from Admiralty received AAA I had already communicated outline of our plan to Lord Kitchener and am pushing on preparations as fast as possible AAA War Office still seems to cherish hope that you may break through without landing troops AAA Therefore, as regards yourself I think wisest procedure will be to push on systematically though not recklessly in attack on Forts AAA It is always possible that opposition may crumple up AAA If you should succeed be sure to leave light cruisers enough to see me through my military attack in the event of that being after all necessary AAA If you do not succeed then I think we quite understand one another AAA "IAN HAMILTON."
_1st April, 1915. Alexandria._ The _Arcadian_ has arrived bringing my A.G. and Q.M.G. with the second echelon of the Staff. G.o.d be praised for this immense relief! The General Staff can now turn to their legitimate business--the enemy, instead of struggling night and day with A.G. and Q.M.G. affairs; allocating troops and transports; preparing for water supply; tackling questions of procedure and discipline. We are all sorry for the Q. Staff who, through no fault of their own, have been late for the fair, _their_ special fair, the preparation, and find the show is practically over. On paper at least, the Australians and New Zealanders and the 29th Division are properly fixed up. We should begin embarking these formations within the next three days. After that will come the Naval Division from Port Said and the French Division from here.
_2nd April, 1915. Alexandria._ Hard at it all day in office. Am leaving to-night by special train for Port Said to hurry things along.
A cable in from the Foreign Office telling me that the Russian part of my force consists of a complete Army Corps under General Istomine--evidently War and Foreign Offices still work in watertight compartments!
Left Alexandria last night at 11 and came into Port Said at dawn. After breakfast mounted an Arab charger which seems to have emerged out of the desert to meet my wishes just as do special trains and banquets: as if I wore on my finger the magic ring of the Arabian fairy tale: so I do I suppose, in the command it has pleased K., Imperial Grand Vizier, to bestow upon this humble but lively speck of dust. Mounting we cantered through the heavy sand towards the parade ground near the docks. Here, like a wall, stood Winston"s far-famed Naval Division drawn up in its battle array. General Paris received me backed by Olivant and Staff.
After my inspection the Division marched past, and marched past very well indeed, much better than they did when I saw them some months ago in Kent, although the sand was against them, m.u.f.fling the stamp of feet which binds a Company together and telling unevenly on different parts of the line. Admiral Pierce and his Flag Captain, Burmeister, honoured the occasion: they were on foot and so, not to elevate the stature of the Army above that of the Senior Service, I took the salute dismounted.
Next had a look round camp. Found things so, so. Saw Arthur Asquith and Rupert Brooke of the Howe Battalion, both sick, neither bad. Asked Brooke to join my personal Staff, not as a fire insurance (seeing what happened to Ronnie Brooke at Elandslaagte and to Ava at Waggon Hill) but still as enabling me to keep an eye on the most distinguished of the Georgians. Young Brooke replied, as a _preux chevalier_ would naturally reply,--he realised the privileges he was foregoing, but he felt bound to do the landing shoulder-to-shoulder with his comrades. He looked extraordinarily handsome, quite a knightly presence, stretched out there on the sand with the only world that counts at his feet.
Lunched on the _Franconia_ and conversed with Lieutenant-Colonel Matthews and Major Mewes of the Plymouth Battalion; also with Major Palmer. To see with your eyes; to hear with your ears; to touch with your fingers enables you to bring the truth home to yourself. Five minutes of that personal touch tells a man more than five weeks of report reading. In five minutes I gained from these Officers five times more knowledge about Sedd-el-Bahr and k.u.m Kale than all their own bald despatches describing their own landings and cutting-out enterprises had given me. Paris" account had not helped me much either, the reason being that it was not first hand,--was only so many words that he had heard,--was not what he had _felt_. Now, I do really, at last and for the first time, realistically grasp the lie of the land and of the Turks. The prospect is not too rosy, but Wolfe, I daresay, saw blue as he gazed over the water at his problem, without map or General Staff plan to help him. There lay Quebec; within cannon shot; but that enemy was thrice his strength; entrenched in a fortress--there they lay confident--a landing was "impossible!" But all things are possible--to faith. He had faith in Pitt; faith in his own bright particular star; faith in the British Fleet standing resolute at his back:--he launched his attack; he got badly beaten at the landing; he pulled himself together; he met a thousand and one mishaps and delays, and when, at the long last, he fell, he had the plum in his pocket.
The Turks lie close within a few yards of the water"s edge on the Peninsula. Matthews smiled sarcastically at the War Office idea that no Turks can exist South of Achi Baba! At Sedd-el-Bahr, the first houses are empty, being open to the fire of the Fleet, but the best part of the other houses are defiladed by the ground and a month ago they were held.
Glad I did not lose a minute after seeing the ground in asking Maxwell and Methuen to make me some trench mortars. Methuen says he can"t help, but Maxwell"s Ordnance people have already fixed up a sample or two--rough things, but better than nothing. We have too little shrapnel to be able to spare any for cutting entanglements. Trench mortars may help where the Fleet can"t bring their guns to bear. The thought of all that barbed wire tucked away into the folds of the ground by the sh.o.r.e follows me about like my shadow.
Left Port Said for Kantara and got there in half an hour. General c.o.x, an old Indian friend of the days when I was A.D.C. to Sir Fred., met me at the station. He commands the Indian troops in Egypt. We nipped into a launch on the Ca.n.a.l, and crossed over to inspect the Companies of the Nelson, Drake, Howe and Anson Battalions in their Fort, whilst c.o.x hurried off to fix up a parade of his own.
The Indian Brigade were drawn up under Brigadier-General Mercer. After inspection, the troops marched past headed by the band of the 14th Sikhs. No one not a soldier can understand what it means to an old soldier who began fighting in the Afghan War under Roberts of Kandahar to be in touch once again with Sikhs and Gurkhas, those splendid knights-errant of India.
After about eighteen years" silence, I thought my Hindustani would fail me, but the words seemed to drop down from Heaven on to my tongue. Am able now to understand the astonishment of St. Paul when he found himself jabbering nineteen to the dozen in lingo, Greek to him till then. But he at least was exempt from my worst terror which was that at any moment I might burst into German!
After our little _durbar_, the men were dismissed to their lines and I walked back to the Fort. There I suddenly ordered the alarm to be sounded (I had not told anyone of my intention) so the swift yet smooth fall-in to danger posts was a feather in c.o.x"s helmet.
Back to main camp and there saw troops not manning the Fort. There were the:--
Queen Victoria"s Own Sappers Captain Hogg, R.E., 69th Punjabis Colonel Harding, 89th Punjabis Colonel Campbell, 14th K.G.O. Sikhs Colonel Palin, 1st Bn. 6th Gurkhas Colonel Bruce, 29th Mountain Battery and the Bikaner Camel Corps Major Bruce.
Had a second good talk to the Native Officers, shaking hands all round.
Much struck with the turn-out of the 29th Mountain Battery which is to come along with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps to the Dardanelles.
From the platform of the Fort the lines of our defences and the way the Turks attacked them stood out very clearly to a pair of field gla.s.ses.
Why, with so many mounted men some effort was not made to harry the enemy"s retreat, c.o.x cannot tell me. There were no trenches and the desert had no limits.