Gallipoli (13 page)

In the end, the only way to clear the area and re-establish control is for the police on horseback to charge back and forth along the footpath and the roads, bowling the rioters out of their way. By midnight, the crowd has dispersed.

In short, as the weeks pass, the situation for the authorities becomes ever more reminiscent of the apocryphal remark most often attributed to Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, after surveying the British troops sent to him in Spain in 1808: ‘I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they terrify me.'
⁷⁴

The authorities need to get these men on the ships and get them on their way.

MID-OCTOBER 1914, PERTH, A RIDING REGIMENT RISES

The best thing is that it now looks as if the war is not going to be over by Christmas, as many had feared, and there should still be plenty of fun to go around. Even more men join.

In Western Australia, a squadron of Light Horse had been so quickly filled out with 158 men, it had been decided to raise a whole regiment, composed of 546 officers and men. They begin forming up the 10th Light Horse of the 3rd Brigade at Guildford, a small rural settlement ten miles or so north-east of Perth. Composed of tinkers, tailors, candlestick-makers, not to mention rich men, poor men, beggar men and thieves, together with barristers, auctioneers and graziers … they are at least all united by a common ability as horsemen – and in many cases even bring their own horses with them.
⁷⁵

Among them are two notable blue-bloods, Ric and Hugo Throssell, scions of a former Premier of Western Australia who, after being educated at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide, have made a big go of it farming the property their father bought for them at Cowcowing in the Western Australian Wheatbelt – even though in the last two years they have faced a severe drought that has somewhat loosened their hold on the land, and the land's hold on them. Selling the horses and stowing the hoes, they had ridden, brothers-in-arms, the 60 miles to Northam to enlist.

Thirty-year-old Hugo – who is in fact the youngest of the 14 Throssell siblings – is the standout member of the new recruits. At school, he had been a brilliant boxer, great runner and captain of the football team, as well as a highly accomplished student. Tall and refined-looking, with the rather ascetic, angular face of a natural aristocrat, albeit with a jaw made of solid granite, he has an easy grace about him and the odd combination of humility and an ability to inspire the men he leads that soon sees him commissioned as a Second-Lieutenant in charge of a troop of 39 men,
⁷⁶
while Ric has the rank of Corporal. No one is prouder of Hugo than Ric, and indeed the bond between the two is remarkable from the first. As brothers who have been raised together, schooled together, and who then lived together as they worked their farm, the two have decided to head off to war together.

And now they train together, ever and always inseparable, even among the 500 other men, as from sun-up to sundown they gallop, wheel and whirl, under the hot sun on the hard soil that lies by the Helena River at Guildford, before finally retiring to their tents on the nearby grassy slope.

As popular as the friendly Hugo Throssell is, however, the man they all look to, the one in charge of the whole regiment, is 48-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Noel Murray Brazier, a licensed surveyor and pastoralist from Kirup, as stout a citizen soldier of the Old School as he is in build. (Unlucky the horse that must bear him.) A strict disciplinarian – under his rule, your first offence is your last – the man variously known as ‘the Colonel' and ‘the Father of the Regiment' has a moustache that bristles rather in tune with his personality, but he is nevertheless loved by the men and loves them in turn.

It is he who is the driving force that has formed them, who believes in them, who had personally recruited many of them by first approaching their fathers, with whom he had worked with distinction in the Boer War,
⁷⁷
who works them till they drop and then works them some more before, in the evenings, he often holds court in his tent with a pot in one hand and a cigar in the other, among his senior officers.

It is a life he was born to, which he adores. ‘Fine looking men,' this son of a Victorian clergyman had recorded in his diary as his first impressions of the first lot of Western Australians on parade, ready to leave the state. ‘March discipline only fair. Lump in my throat all the same.'
⁷⁸

21 OCTOBER 1914, COMING TO THE POINT OF CONCENTRATION

Another body of fine men is just preparing to leave Victoria on this unseasonably warm day as the first licks of the summer up ahead start to caress the shimmering air at Port Melbourne Pier. There, the Victorian contingent of the Australian Imperial Force start filing up the gangplanks of their many ships and prepare to settle in.

Most importantly, those now boarding include General Bridges and his 1st Australian Division HQ staff, who board the luxury liner
Orvieto
. For the next six weeks, the nerve centre of the whole operation will be in
Orvieto
's drawing room.

Rather less grandly making his entrance onto the same ship is the gangling figure of Charles Bean – now ‘Captain Bean', if you please, of the AIF – Australia's official war correspondent. (And perhaps even writer of the Official History, as Defence Minister Pearce has intimated to him before departure.) It is with quite some emotion that he takes his leave. He gazes through his round spectacles, already coated with a fine salt layer, down upon his father in the madding crowd on the pier – they have broken through the sentries – as the luxurious Orient liner
Orvieto
pulls away, keeping his eyes on him till the last, just as his father is keeping his eyes on him, though the latter also diverts his gaze to the HMAT
Euripides
, on
Orvieto
's starboard, where Charles's brother, Captain John (Jack) Willoughby Butler Bean – a medical officer with the 3rd Battalion – is also on his way. The whole Bean family are very close, and the Bean boys' mother, Lucy, would also have been there, bar the fact that she did not think she could bear it.

Emerging from Port Phillip Bay,
Orvieto
and its convoy turn west, heading across the Great Australian Bight to gather in King George Sound, Albany, and then start the long haul to conquer the Indian Ocean before heading to England.

25 OCTOBER 1914, OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF …

Another Sunday, another bloody compulsory Church Parade at Broadmeadows. It is something so generally dull that, only a few weeks before, four blokes had been lagged for playing two-up in the middle of the sermon! But it does have its moments …

On this day, the preacher is just getting to the climax of his sermon when he exclaims loudly, ‘You live on bread …'

Without missing a beat comes the muffled reply from 2000 throats, ‘And jam.'
⁷⁹

LATE OCTOBER 1914, ‘THE FUTURE OF TURKEY IS AT STAKE'

It has been 11 weeks since the declaration of war. Admiral Souchon, the German officer with the French name and the high Turkish posting, is growing more than merely impatient. He can abide Turkish neutrality no longer and decides to ‘cash the blank cheque' sent to him by Berlin on 4 August: ‘Concur proposal to undertake operation Black Sea with agreement or against the will of Turkey.' The operational order was, ‘Do your utmost: the future of Turkey is at stake.'
⁸⁰

General Enver, too, wishes to end the prevarication and pledges support. Turkey's Minister of War issues a secret order:

On 27 October, the
Goeben
and
Breslau
, sailing under the crescent moon of the Turkish flag, and accompanied by the Ottoman cruiser
Hamidiye
and other small vessels of the Turkish Navy, sail into the Black Sea for ‘manoeuvres'. The Russians are wary of the German–Turkish Fleet and stalk them closely. With the rising of the sun on 29 October, manoeuvres turn hostile.

Over the next two days, the
Goeben
and
Breslau
busy themselves – in the company of a scattering of Turkish warships – firing salvo after salvo of high-explosive shells and sending torpedoes into the Russian ports of Odessa, Sevastopol, Feodosiya and Novorossiysk, in this last sinking 14 ships – including the British-registered steel schooner
Friedericke
– and setting fire to the oil tanks.

All hell breaks loose, with fire, brimstone and explosions aplenty … and not simply in the said ports. In response to the stupefied Russians' outrage at this unprovoked attack, Admiral Souchon claims that the Russians had started it.

The Grand Vizier, Said Halim, receives a heavily doctored description of the altercation from the Minister of War, General Enver. Sitting down to read the correspondence, this man who has been so eager to avoid any Ottoman–Russian naval engagement in the Black Sea realises he has been duped. His Empire is set on the path to war thanks to a handful of Cabinet members.

Though war is yet to be declared, thanks to Germany the war has come to Turkey. In a last-ditch diplomatic effort on the afternoon of 30 October, the British, Russian and French Ambassadors to Constantinople give a 12-hour ultimatum to the Turkish Cabinet. The Ottoman Empire is to disarm
Goeben
and
Breslau
, expel its German Admiral and sailors, end secret relations with Germany and become strictly neutral or face the consequences.
⁸²

Well, then …

That evening at the Sublime Porte, an emergency Cabinet meeting is held. It is Talaat Pasha, the Minister for the Interior, who is perhaps the most outspoken. Yes, he is very annoyed at Germany's independent aggression in the Black Sea, but that changes not the position. ‘The Entente can give us nothing but the renewal of promises, so often broken,' he insists to his colleagues, ‘to preserve to us our present territory. Hence there is nothing to be gained by joining them. And if we refused aid to our German allies now in the time of their need, they will naturally refuse to help us if they are victorious. If we stay neutral, whichever side won will surely punish Turkey for not having joined them …'
⁸³

Therefore, he concludes, Turkey must fight on the side of Germany. Most of the others agree. Turkey will not back down. And there is more to be gained by siding with Germany, against Russia, than with Great Britain.

All of the Entente countries' Ambassadors take the cue, promptly requesting their passports and signalling their intention to leave.

Later that evening, American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau visits his British counterpart, Sir Louis Mallett, who is sitting in his study. Before him is a roaring fire, and in a semicircle around him are large piles of documents, which he is slowly feeding into the flames as secretaries and clerks ferry back and forth replenishing the diminishing piles.

‘These papers,' Morgenthau would record, ‘contained the embassy records for probably a hundred years. In them were written the great achievements of a long line of distinguished ambassadors … [and they] now went, one by one, into Sir Louis Mallet's fire. The long story of British ascendency in Turkey had reached its close. The twenty-years' campaign of the Kaiser to destroy England's influence and to become England's successor had finally triumphed, and the blaze in Sir Louis's chancery was really the funeral pyre of England's vanished power in Turkey.'
⁸⁴

The following day, the Ottoman Government declares war on the Entente.
⁸⁵

1 NOVEMBER 1914, FAREWELL TO THE HOMELAND

Every day, for the last five days, it has been the same thing. Rumours have swirled among the 36 transport ships and their three escorting warships at anchor just outside the inner harbour of Western Australia's Albany that, the following day, the first contingent of the Australian Imperial Force – all 24,000 of them – will be on their way to England, but the following day has dawned, and nothing has happened.
²
Most of the movement in and out of the harbour remains just the Norwegian whalers who have been in operation here for the last two years. At last, however, the previous evening, solid, confirmed word had been received of departure on the morrow.

And now, after weeks of delays, dashed hopes and false rumours, it is actually happening! For with the grey dawn there is a flurry of activity of tenders and barges among the ships, as all eyes turn to the flagship of the transports,
Orvieto
, bearing General Bridges and his staff. Its massive form is illuminated by the red sun rising above a picturesque island out to seaward, bearing a lighthouse sharply silhouetted against a sky getting a little foggy as the funnels of all the ships pour steam and smoke.
³

As described by the ‘Special Commissioner with the Australian Troops for
The Sydney Morning Herald
', Andrew ‘Banjo' Paterson, aboard the troopship
Euripides
, the whole scene is wondrously picturesque: ‘The sea is dull, still grey, without a ripple. A vague electric restlessness is in the air. What are those coming out of the inner harbour? Two grim, gliding leviathans, going majestically out to sea to take their places as guardians of the fleet.'

Yes,
Sydney
and
Melbourne
are here and getting into position on the flanks. And the flagship
Minotaur
will shortly lead them out, with
Ibuki
joining them in two days' time.

‘There is something uncanny in the absolute silence with which everything is done. They glide past the frowning cliffs, whose feet are awash with the sea, through the long lines of waiting transports, and are soon lost to sight steaming right out into the eye of the sun.'

And now, Banjo, look there!

As the correspondent watches closely, an oily rush of lightly churning water is visible at the stern of
Minotaur
. Her screws are turning.

‘At least a thousand pairs of field glasses,' Banjo records, ‘are centred on her anchor chain. Link by link it comes in-board, and the leader of the fleet is underway. Noiselessly the great ship gathers speed and moves ahead through the waiting fleet; and, as she goes out, the vessels that are to follow her in line get silently under way and fall in line behind her.'

They are moving.

‘As gracefully as a fleet of swans after some great leader, they drop into place and soon are rising to the sea.'

Among all the Australian ships, of course, are the distinctively greyish-black transport ships of the New Zealanders – all of them with all-black funnels – and as the ship of Banjo Paterson streams past, the sailors aboard give their fellows a rousing haka. ‘
Ake, Ake, Ake, Kia Kaha
,' they cry,
⁴
all with impressive and synchronised gesticulations, their words translating, Banjo says, to ‘we will fight on for ever and ever'.
⁵

As opposed to the Australians, a large portion of the New Zealanders are experienced professional soldiers. None more so than Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone, the Commanding Officer of the Wellington Infantry Battalion. A good, God-fearing officer of the Old School, he is a 55-year-old French-speaking farmer turned solicitor turned military officer from Taranaki, who plays the piano like a maestro and yet whose major passion is his wife and three young children from his second marriage back in Stratford, and five older children nearby.

A strong advocate of compulsory training, he had seen this war coming from a long way off and been appointed Commanding Officer of the 11th Regiment Taranaki Rifles in 1911. Despite his age, when war broke out he had immediately volunteered his services for a senior posting and been placed in charge of the Wellingtons, whom he has been training fearfully hard. (The only saving grace for his soldiers is that the ‘old man' pushes himself as hard as he does them. And as he is a solid six foot, and hard as nails, no one is much inclined to grumble
too
loudly … just to stay on the safe side.) Malone's men are spread among three ships, while the Otago Infantry Battalion, the Canterbury Infantry Battalion and the Auckland Infantry Battalion are spread across another four ships between them.

As Banjo Paterson would note for his readers – published in
The Sydney Morning Herald
some time later, after clearing the censors – ‘thirty thousand fighting men, representing Australasia, are under way for the great war'.
⁶

In a convoy strung out over nine miles of ocean, they are bound west across the vast Indian Ocean, heading back to the Old Country to be trained on England's Salisbury Plain, to get them in shape to get stuck into the Hun – provided the war is not over before they get there.

Now, while most of the Australians look with lingering gaze to their homeland slowly sinking below the horizon to the east, one man in particular is looking, at least spiritually, to England. Four years earlier at Newcastle, a then 18-year-old John Simpson Kirkpatrick had first arrived on Australian shores. He had liked it so much from the outset that he had jumped ship and spent the intervening years cane cutting and doing station work in Queensland, coalmining in the Illawarra, goldmining in Western Australia, working as a steward, fireman and greaser on vessels around the Australian coast – and even ‘waltzing his matilda' from farm to farm in Queensland as a swagman.

Now, with the outbreak of war, the strapping young man has quickly joined up under the name of ‘John Simpson' (or ‘Jack', as everyone calls him) – to avoid trouble for having previously jumped ship – in the hope, among other things, of getting back to his ageing widow mother, and his sister, at South Shields on Tyne.

Jack's great passion in life, beyond his love for his mother and sister, is animals. No stray dog had ever come into his orbit without getting a pat or a spare bit of sausage if he had one, no cat a caress, no horse a hug. Even now, as he leaves Australia, tucked inside his shirt-front is a baby possum that one of his tent-mates had found in camp and Jack has effectively adopted, feeding and watering it as if it were his own baby. But Simpson's possum is far from the only Australian native fauna now heading west, as many other soldiers have smuggled aboard everything from kangaroos to wallabies to
koalas
, tucked away into great-coats and the like.

As to what part of the army Jack will join, that has been sorted. The muscular 22-year-old with the strong streak of independence is not only physically suited to be a stretcher-bearer but there is something else besides … As one of his comrades, Sergeant Oscar Hookway, would later recount, ‘He was … too human to be a parade ground soldier, and strongly disliked discipline; though not lazy he shirked the drudgery of “forming fours”, and other irksome military tasks.'
⁷
So stretcher-bearer it is, specifically as part of the 3rd Field Ambulance.

3 NOVEMBER 1914, DARDANELLES, CHURCHILL SALLIES FORTH

How to respond to the outrageous German aggression against Russia facilitated by Turkey?

As is his greatest pleasure, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill orders the British Fleet, which is still lurking with intent off the Dardanelles, to do what British military forces have always done rather well. That is to sally forth to the forts with all guns blazing and give the enemy a ‘whiff of the grape', let them know just what they will be up against if they persist with their own infernal bellicosity.

The idea is for Admiral Carden to have two of his battlecruisers,
Indomitable
and
Indefatigable
, together with France's
Suffren
and
Vérité
, sail past the entrance to the Dardanelles at the break of day at just the range where the squadron's guns can reach the forts, fire a few salvos and then retire before the old and ineffective guns of the forts will be capable of making effective reply.

No, war has not yet been officially declared on the Ottoman Empire – at least not by Great Britain and France – but no matter. Winston Churchill simply cannot
wait
to get to grips. Despite the fact that the formal advice of Admiral Sir Edmond John Slade to the First Lord of the Admiralty is directly against such a demonstration – a bombardment of the sea face of the Dardanelles forts offers very little prospect of obtaining any effect commensurate with the risk to the ships
⁸
– Churchill insists.

And there they are now.

At 4.55 on this sparkling morning, the four battleships move into position, some 13,000 yards from the forts on either side of the entrance to the Straits, and from his command position aboard the bridge of
Indefatigable
, Admiral Carden gives the order. The signal flag to commence operations is unfurled. In an instant, the first gun fires, soon joined by more than 30 others, hurling their heavy 12-inch shells to the forts some seven miles distant.

Yes, four shells are fired back from the forts, but they all fall so short of the British ships that the Turks soon decide not to waste their shells, and stop.

And then it happens. From one of the ships, likely
Indefatigable
, a shell blasts from the muzzle and traces a perfect arc towards the old fort at the entrance to the Dardanelles, Sedd-el-Bahr. For those firing at the fort – which is built of locally quarried stone, sitting 30 yards above the sea and all of 250 years old – there is no reason to expect that this shell will do much more damage than the other shells. That is, while it may shatter a few stones, and even take out a gun if it lands closely enough, it is unlikely to threaten the structure.

Ah, but this shell,
this
shell, somehow has the fort's number on it. By a one-in-ten-thousand shot of shots, it hits the outside wall at just the spot where it is able to penetrate before exploding inside the ammunition magazine, detonating all the shells not yet carried to the guns. To the amazement of those on the ships, the bottom part of the castle explodes before their eyes, causing ‘a column of dark grey smoke and debris reaching a height of 300 to 500 ft'.
⁹
The explosion is so powerful that all ten guns in the castle are taken out of action, and 86 Turkish soldiers are killed – ever after to be known as ‘the first martyrs'.
¹⁰

Just ten minutes after the barrage begins, the water-borne squadron withdraws.
¹¹

Churchill is thrilled with the result, while Constantinople is panicked.

The British are coming! The British are coming!

Once the news hits, many of the well-to-do of Constantinople make evacuation plans, while the common people make plans to defend the city and, whatever else, save its mosques and treasures, not to mention the Sultan himself. To prevent the British Fleet from getting right to the heart of the city, the idea of placing mines in the Bosphorus to protect the Golden Horn estuary is discussed.

Far more practically, down at the Dardanelles, the Commander of the Fortified Defences at Chanak, Major-General Cevat – a man whose soft blue eyes and moonface belie a steely temperament – is energised as never before. ‘The bombardment of November 3 came as a warning to me,' he would later recall. ‘I understood that I needed to spend all of my time organising our defence arrangements and assigning reinforcements using every means possible.'
¹²

In terms of strengthening the defences of the Dardanelles, the Turks are helped immeasurably by German Admiral Guido von Usedom, his special engineers and work troop, as all together they bolster the defences: repairing the forts, building more gun batteries, increasing searchlights and installing 60 mobile mortars and howitzers in concealed positions on both sides of the Straits. Massive mounds of earth are put around all the heavy gun batteries, just as sandbag walls are put around the gun-crew pits and ammunition stores.

The brief attack on 3 November had been exactly what was needed to galvanise the Turks and their German sponsors into bringing the defences of the Dardanelles further towards the modern age. Not for nothing would a later British inquiry into the affair conclude, ‘the preliminary bombardment of the outer forts on 3 November 1914 – ordered by the Admiralty without consultation with the War Council – [was] an almost irreparable mistake'.
¹³

In London at the time, however, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith – known to his friends as ‘Squiff', as a play on his last name and for his fondness of heavy drinking – takes it a lot less seriously. ‘The shelling of a fort at the Dardanelles seems to have succeeded in blowing up a magazine,' he writes (as he so often does) to the beautiful 27-year-old aristocrat and socialite Venetia Stanley, ‘but that is
peu de chose
…'
¹⁴

A small parenthesis here. Yes, it is odd that a 62-year-old British Prime Minister in wartime should so regularly write – sometimes as often as three times a day – to a woman 35 years his junior, but the weird ways of love have never stopped at the door of 10 Downing Street. After the doctor had prescribed separate bedrooms for Asquith and his rather fragile second wife, Margot, in 1907, Asquith had developed what Margot acidly described as a ‘little harem',
¹⁵
a collection of gorgeous young women he regularly engaged with, of whom Venetia is now the foremost. It is not only Margot Asquith who takes a rather dim view of the whole thing, as no less than Clementine Churchill is appalled to note how the current British Prime Minister frequently peers down women's dresses, while it is the claim of socialite Lady Ottoline Morrell that Asquith, ‘Would take a lady's hand as she sat beside him on the sofa, and make her feel his erected instrument under his trousers.'
¹⁶
Close parenthesis – with relief.
¹⁷