Gallipoli (2 page)

There were many other valued researchers too, including Matthew Sheldon, who visited the British Library and the Parliamentary Archives at the Palace of Westminster, Lachlan Dudley, who did general research, and Bryce Abraham, who was particularly expert on the story of Albert Jacka.

I first started working with my professional on the ground at the Australian War Memorial, Glenda Lynch, for my book on Tobruk over a decade ago. In this one, she was as uber-efficient and thorough as ever, a pleasure to work with – as was her fellow researcher at the Australian War Memorial, Jean Main.

I also tapped the expertise of people in particularly specialised fields, and I offer my warm thanks to: Dr Michael Cooper, who helped inform me on the medical aspects of the story; Gregory Blake, for his assistance in all matters to do with firearms and artillery; Dr Kevin Fewster, on the Battle of the Wazza; Hugh Dolan, on the submarine narrative; Keith Quinton, for help with the
Pfalz
saga; Mike Carlton, on the
Emden
; Ashley Ekins, for his expertise on esoterica, including the latest figures on the casualties of the campaign; Berhan Göz, for his excellent research assistance in Turkey; and Dr Mehdi Ilhan from the Australian National University, for help with the Turkish side.

Many of the diary and letter entries you see in this book came courtesy of Noel Boreham, who has spent years at the Australian War Memorial reading and understanding them, and placed his expertise and treasure trove at my disposal. My appreciation, too, to Glenda Veitch of the State Library of New South Wales, who was very helpful throughout, as was Dolores Ho of the National Army Museum in New Zealand.

By the time I had a draft manuscript, Gallipoli expert Dr Peter Williams was extremely helpful in vetting it, spotting errors and providing helpful feedback. Throughout the book, Dr Peter Pedersen was a wonderful source of advice, as were my friends, Australia's most esteemed historian, David Day, and our most esteemed historical writer, Thomas Keneally. I acknowledge the valued input of Tim Sullivan, the Deputy Director of the Australian War Memorial. Elizabeth Brenchley, Mike Carlton and, most particularly, the granddaughter of Hugo Throssell, Karen Throssell, also provided wonderful advice in their particular fields, for which I thank them. I have used some of the interviews done with Gallipoli veterans for the ABC by Steve Sailah, and thank him for his cogent advice. The Melbourne writer and journalist Christopher Bantick was a great sounding board on many sensitive issues.

As to illustrations and maps, I am once more particularly indebted to Jane Macaulay and Bill Denheld. I make a particular plea that before embarking on this book
you look at those maps and drawings
. Digest them. Refer back to them. It took me a long time to get my head around the landscape of Gallipoli and the Dardanelles, which is why I commissioned so many maps and drawings.

The story of Gallipoli is obviously well-covered ground, with myriad writers having already forged paths for those of us following, trying to understand. While I have a comprehensive bibliography at the end, allow me to particularly salute Charles Bean, who laid the foundation stone for us all, together with his fellow correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. As to authors, I also particularly appreciated books by Peter Burness, John Hamilton, Fred and Elizabeth Brenchley, Sir Winston Churchill, Edward Erickson, Martin Gilbert, Oliver Hogue, Robert Rhodes James, Sir Roger Keyes, John Masefield, Robert Massie, Dudley McCarthy, Alan Moorehead, Les Carlyon, Henry Morgenthau, Tolga Örnek, Feza Toker, Christopher Pugsley and Dacre Stoker (who published under his birth name of Henry Stoker). Of them all, I particularly loved the work of Dudley McCarthy, Alan Moorehead and Oliver Hogue, who gave a fantastic insider's account, which I have drawn heavily from; and I was awed by just how comprehensive the work of the late Jill Kitson was when it came to documenting Keith Murdoch's involvement at Gallipoli, and acknowledge my great debt to her labours.

I also thank the families of soldiers at Gallipoli, who allowed me to publish their forebears' words in this book. I thank Associate Justice Mark Derham and his family for allowing me to access Sir Cyril Brudenell White's papers at the Australian War Memorial; Dorothy Hoddinott and Alan Bingham for granting me permission to use the diary of their father, Charles Edward Bingham, as a source; and John Carter and Alison Flanagan for providing me with the wonderful story of their grandparents, Gordon Carter and Lydia Kathleen King.

As ever, my dear friend at
The Sydney Morning Herald
, Harriet Veitch, gave me wise counsel on every part of the manuscript and did the preliminary editing, sorting out tangled sentences, pointing out inconsistencies and placing at my service the extraordinary width of her general knowledge.

I thank all at Random House, most particularly Nikki Christer, Peri Wilson and –
please give it up for!
– Alison Urquhart, for her enthusiasm and support from first discussing this idea over lunch in 2010 to now putting this book to bed. She is my publishing Uluru.

My thanks also, as ever, to my highly skilled editors, Brandon VanOver and Kevin O'Brien, who have gone through the lot with the finest of all fine-tooth combs, like only they possess, and given the whole thing a professional sheen, while Catherine Hill and David Henley proved endless in their patience in the last push.

Thank you, thank you all.

I hope you enjoy it.

Peter FitzSimons
Neutral Bay, Sydney
September 2014

A NATION IS BORN

Just as pilgrims head to the Promised Land, merchants gravitate to the metropolis and the mightiest oceans attract the greatest of seafarers, so too are there certain spots on earth whose siren call has Emperors, Kings, Sultans, Presidents and Prime Ministers sending their armies and navies from even the most distant of seas, flooding forth on the tides of war to attack with every weapon at hand.

The decades and centuries pass, the Empires rise and fall, but still the soldiers and sailors attack, and still they die … until one Empire occupies the spot and the next rising Empire must gird its loins,
stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood
, to try for it once more … or be no Empire at all.

In the history of the world, there is no greater exemplar of this blood-drenched phenomenon than the drowned valley of the Dardanelles, the narrow waterway that cleaves the mountainous forms of Europe and Asia on either side. It is an axis on which whole Empires have hung in the balance for 3000 years, an abyss that has swallowed armies and navies whole since the first mass of men took up arms.

A natural crossroads for Emperors embarked on imperialism, just as it is for pilgrims pursuing the path to Jerusalem and Mecca, securing its right of passage has been a rite of passage for Emperors, Kings, Popes, Caliphs, Warlords and barbarians alike. Since the time of the Trojans, all of the Peloponnese, Hellenic, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Venetian, Ottoman and British Empires have shed blood to dominate it. Nigh on 1200 years
BC
, the city of Troy, which lies on the eastern shores of the Dardanelles, was destroyed after being besieged by the Greeks in the Trojan War – an epic of fire and slaughter that was immortalised in Homer's
Iliad
. The Dardanelles is a dreamy place of hazy but hazardous history stretching back to antiquity, where the flowers bloom, the birds sing, the goats bleat and the butterflies float by as the seasons pass and all is a bastion of the bucolic … only to regularly and suddenly burst into savagery on a mass scale, causing death by the tens of thousands.

Never, however, was there a battle involving so many men, from so many nations, from so far afield, leaving behind so many shallow graves, as the one that took place there in 1915 …

Two old and grand Empires, one at the height of its powers, the other in decay, fought with a ferocity unmatched, before or since. One Empire felt that the fate of the fight for
world
domination rested on the result. The other was in no doubt – the remains of their own Empire were on the line.

So how did federated Australia, a new nation just a decade and a half old, far distant from the centre of both Empires, come to send tens of thousands of her sons to the Dardanelles, and why did they fight with such fury against a people with whom they had no direct quarrel?

Therein lies a tale, which, if you cock your ear to the wind, begins with the sound of many marching bands …

Coming up Sydney's George Street on this fine morning of 1 January 1901, the day of Federation, when the nation is to be
born
, band after band form part of a grand procession on their way to Centennial Park, where the precious document will be signed.

The pageant proceeds, the crowd cheers – an estimated half a million have turned out for the occasion – and the many Union Jacks wave gaily in the morning breeze.

There is a delirious aspect to it, though not everyone is swept away by it. A writer for the
Bulletin
magazine, whose mood is clearly out of kilter with those around him, is quick to note just who makes up most of the procession. ‘Instead of the battling “men and women who really make Australia” there were soldiers and soldiers and soldiers, emphasising the sadness that Australia, the land of peace, has become for British ends a land of war …'
⁴

Stiff of back, clear of eye, gay in their brightly coloured uniforms, the soldiers keep marching, men from all over the continent, and indeed the world.

But the
Bulletin
writer is adamant. These men, in his view, are ‘bred for slaughter, ignorant of personal responsibility, following the fetish “loyalty” blindly, utensils of the privileged classes for the defence of whose prerogative they exist … The people gazed fascinated, and cheered – did they know what? And so, with the blare of bands, through the packed streets the pageant passed, with the Governor-General at the tail looking so puny, so wan – as if in his own person he figured the wan and puny basis of the idea of monarchy which he represented.'
⁵

But such churlish views really are in a tiny minority on this day to beat all days. In Sydney, you could perhaps count them on the fingers of one finger, as the people continue to roar their acclaim. Within two hours – from the moment that Lord Hopetoun, Australia's first Governor-General, and Prime Minister Edmund Barton and his ministers of State are sworn in, as a choir of 15,000 sings on – Australia becomes a nation.

From the beginning, for most people, having men under arms is a hugely important part of being a nation, second only to having those men ‘blooded' in battle, actually fighting for the nation. Back in 1889, the ‘Father of Federation', Sir Henry Parkes, had spoken of ‘the crimson thread of kinship', the common blood that binds the white people of the colonies to each other, and to the nations of the British Empire. And yet there is also a strong notion abroad in the land that no nation is worthy of the name until that crimson thread becomes a river, shed in the service of that Empire.

It is a culture that grows in the first decade of the century, and nowhere is the reverence for matters military better illustrated than with the arrival on Australian shores of the most illustrious military man in the British Empire.

For did anyone
ever
make a finer entrance to Sydney Town?

As the train bearing Lord Kitchener of Khartoum on his national tour pulls into No.1 Platform at Central Station shortly after 3 pm on this day in early January 1910, there is a flurry of activity on the platform, as delicious expectation crowds forward.

And there he is! The great man – the double row of ribbons and medals on his chest attesting to his bravery over the decades – alights from the train and is instantly surrounded by federal, state and local politicians. A roar goes up from the crowd, kept back by barricades, so loud and powerful it is all but strong enough to rustle the myriad Union Jacks and palm fronds that adorn the arches above the platform for the occasion.

Get back! Get
back!

‘Tall, well set up, and military-looking,'
The Sydney Morning Herald
will describe him, ‘Lord Kitchener has a typically British face, florid, with brown moustache, and keen blue eyes.'
⁶

Tightly behind him, just as he is always close to him wherever he goes, is his dashing Aide-de-Camp – and perhaps more, for theirs is a bond beyond the mere military – Captain Oswald FitzGerald. (His predecessor in the role, Captain Frank Maxwell, had been sacked on the spot when Lord Kitchener found that he had married while on leave.
Married!
Captain FitzGerald is unlikely to do that, and in fact shares living quarters with Lord Kitchener in London.)

No fewer than 80 policemen escort Lord Kitchener and the attendant Captain FitzGerald to their waiting car, through an honour guard of the metropolitan police who have served in the Boer War and are wearing their medals for the occasion. Next to them –
Attehnnn-shun!
– half a dozen cadets stand at rigid attention, scarcely daring to believe that this icon of the Empire is inspecting them, and even speaking briefly to a lucky, tremulous few …

At his very appearance outside the railway station, 10,000 voices roar their acclaim, and there are tens of thousands more on every wall, railing, lamppost and footpath as he makes his way to Government House.

That evening, backed by a coterie of his most senior officers, here is Lord Kitchener again, in Sydney, right now, in front of us privileged few, at this glittering blacktie soiree – filled with such luminaries as the Chief Justice of the High Court, the Archbishop of Sydney, the Defence Minister and the High Commissioner for Australia – at the Town Hall.

Lord Kitchener, freshly appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the Imperial war hero who subdued the Sudanese and bested the Boers in South Africa, has come to our fair shores at the invitation of Prime Minister Alfred Deakin to give us formal advice – vis-à-vis the proposed new
Defence Act
– on just how we can better defend the country to ensure that the British Empire is protected.

You can see by looking at him just why, upon his arrival in Darwin a fortnight earlier, the
Herald
had noted for its Sydney readers that though from a distance he appears a ‘mild-looking gentleman, as compared with the ferocious portraits', up close he becomes ‘a swarthy, fierce-eyed man of gigantic mould'.
⁷

But hush. For here is Sydney Lord Mayor Sir Allen Arthur Taylor, standing to propose the toast to the King
– ‘The King'
,
‘The King'
,
‘The King'
– before formally welcoming Lord Kitchener. ‘I must congratulate the British Government,' the Lord Mayor begins, ‘for allowing such an eminent peacemaker, whose record is a household word amongst the British race, to come amongst us to advise the Commonwealth Government on the vital question of defence. The liberty we have enjoyed since our birth has been generously provided by a generous mother, therefore we must be prepared to assist to defend our vast continent, and thus strengthen the Empire …'
(Loud cheering.)
⁸

The Minister for Defence, Mr Joseph Cook, MP, supports the toast, welcomes their distinguished visitor on behalf of the Federal Government, and notes that they ‘have invited Lord Kitchener to give that good advice which he was so well qualified to give with regard to the defence of Australia', and in organising ‘the co-ordination of the defensive units of the Empire, and of Australia'.
⁹
(Cheers.)

More toasts to the great man follow from more luminaries, before three cheers greet Lord Kitchener himself, as he rises to respond.

‘My Lord Mayor, your Excellency, and gentlemen,' he begins in his stentorian tones, ‘I very greatly appreciate the cordiality of your welcome and your kindness in inviting me to this banquet tonight, and I can assure you that I consider it a very high compliment …'
(Loud cheering.)
¹⁰

Oh, what a night we are having. Lord Kitchener! Here in Sydney!

The great man goes on to specify his plans for how the Australian Government should introduce a new national Military Training Scheme, in order to be able to better defend itself and be of greater service to the Empire.

It will be compulsory for every male citizen and will begin with 120 hours annually of junior cadet training for all lads 12 and 13 years old, followed by senior cadet training for 14- to 18-year-olds – the equivalent of 16 days annually. This, as reported by
The Sydney Morning Herald
, will soon see ‘a senior cadet force in the neighbourhood of 100,000. That is the nucleus of the army of the future.'
¹¹
To cater for the officer class, Lord Kitchener recommends – though, coming from him, it is practically a command – the opening of a military college.
¹²

While the reaction to these plans is generally positive, this is not universal, and the most outspoken is a body formed in Adelaide, The Anti-Compulsory Military Training League, soon renamed The Freedom League, which bitterly opposes all compulsory military training as a gross infringement of personal liberty. The training scheme is ‘picturesque European tomfoolery', while the
Defence Act
is ‘wicked, foolish, and wasteful'.
¹³

Again, however, such protests are in the tiny minority, and in early 1914 there is another visitor from the British military to Australian shores.

And in the end, it's weird, you know? For, so often in the endless cavalcade of people that public figures encounter, there is nary the tiniest sign that they are meeting the person who will go on to profoundly alter their own lives. No drum roll, no trumpet, no clash of cymbals … no sign. It is just another quick handshake and chat as far as the visiting Inspecting General of British Forces, Sir Ian Hamilton, is concerned. It is just some local newspaper chappie – ‘Keith Murdoch', I think his name is? – whom he meets after making a public address at the Melbourne Town Hall. Hosted by the Caledonian Society, it is a glittering occasion, attended by 250 distinguished citizens. General Hamilton has come to Australia and New Zealand to inspect troops – to get some idea of their relative strengths – and to try to standardise forces throughout the Empire.