Gallipoli (33 page)

As two pigeons fly above the armada, a soldier comments, ‘Doves of peace',
⁷⁷
but it seems unlikely …

Aboard HMT
Suffolk
in Port Mudros, Lieutenant-Colonel James Lyon-Johnston now takes the opportunity to, for the first time, tell his men of the 3rd Brigade's 11th Battalion just where it is that they are going and what it is that they are likely to be facing. Gathering the soldiers in the waist of the ship, with many men even climbing the rigging to better hear his every word, he begins.

‘Boys,' he says, ‘we have been instructed, along with the 9th and 10th Battalions, to form a covering party for the Australian landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula … The position of honour has been assigned to us in being thus chosen as vanguard for one of the most daring enterprises in history.'

He pauses momentarily, watching the effect of his words wash over the men, the knowledge that they have been accorded the greatest privilege of their lives … lives that may very well end in just a few hours.

‘Boys, the General informs me that it will take several battleships and destroyers to carry our brigade to Gallipoli; a barge will be sufficient to take us home again!'
⁷⁸

Oh, how they cheer.

Gallows humour – perhaps their own gallows – but there is no doubt they really do keenly appreciate the honour.

A message is then read to them, from General Hamilton.

Listen up, men …

For his part, on the eve of the eve of this momentous battle, General Hamilton receives a message of his own from Lord Kitchener:

DAWN, 24 APRIL 1915, LEMNOS, NEVER SEND TO KNOW FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS; IT TOLLS FOR THEE …

Today is the day for the bulk of the Anzacs to get moving. After all these months of training,
finally
they are about to engage in battle.

The mood of the men is a startling combination of tension, excitement and, yes, fulfilment. After all the hard slog, the hoping, the waiting, it really is about to happen. They are about to be tested in battle!

As the soldiers of the 1st Brigade wake, the view from their portholes is dark and the mood tense. They are the first due to leave, and after a'gulping down their standard breakfast of porridge, stew, bread and jam, and taking their last swig of tea, they collect their packs and parade on deck.

Moving out in an orderly fashion, they climb down from their ships one by one, plonking themselves into the rowboats that are waiting for them below. They are then taken to the four arranged transports, the oars leaving whole loaves of bread and other discarded foods wobbling in their wake. The stink of the harbour is rancid.

Bound for the Bay of Purnea, on the north side of the island of Lemnos, they are underway by the time the sun comes up, following the
Minnewaska
, which also contains several battalions, including that of Captain Gordon Carter. At the prow of that mighty vessel, the Lieutenant gazes longingly at the shadowy bulk of the SS
Sicilia
as she passes, saddened that he still has not been able to see Nurse King. Unbeknownst to him, she is awaking at this very moment, and his is the first ship she sees from her porthole. She prays that Gordon will be all right, whatever happens.

Meanwhile, the men of the 2nd Brigade are the next due to go. After inspection on deck, many of them sit down to write letters to their loved ones. One such letter-writer is the intrepid, fresh-faced, 20-year-old Lieutenant Alan Dudley Henderson. He has just been made a Platoon Commander, which is a far cry from his everyday vocation as an accountant. Due to land in the Second Wave of troops, he is excited to at last be approaching departure and slowly begins to write:

Nearby, aboard
London
, Captain William Annear – who is due to be among the first to land – commits to paper a simple instruction:

At a little after midday, the 2nd Brigade, together with the two Indian Mountain Batteries, each armed with six ten-pounder breech-loading screw guns, leave the harbour and also head to the Bay of Purnea, ready to move on towards the Dardanelles at midnight.

By the early afternoon, it is the turn of the 3rd Brigade, who, led by Colonel Ewen MacLagan, are to hit the beaches first, to act as a covering force for those who will follow. The bulk of them (2500) are aboard four transports, from where they will transfer to the seven destroyers at 11 pm, while the 1500 of the first landing wave will board the battleships
Queen
,
Prince of Wales
and
London
, which will lead them in.

Aboard
Prince of Wales
, General William Bridges has one more shot at cheering up MacLagan before he walks up the gangplank onto the destroyer HMS
Colne.
‘Well, MacLagan,' says Bridges, with a sparkle in his eye and merriment in his voice, ‘you haven't thanked me yet.'

‘Yes, sir, I do thank you for the great honour of having this job to do with my brigade,' the Colonel replies. ‘But if we find the Turks holding these ridges in any strength, I honestly don't think you'll ever see the 3rd Brigade again.'

‘Oh, go along with you!' says Bridges, laughing heartily.
⁶

Shortly after 1.30 pm, the magnificent flagship of the fleet,
Queen Elizabeth
– universally known as ‘Lizzie' – weighs anchor. Magisterially gliding, she heads for the impossibly blue waters beyond the murky harbour's entrance. Again, the cheering from the Anzacs, British, Indians and Frenchmen aboard the myriad minion battleships, cruisers and troopships is deafening. They clap and shout, jump, chant and sing.

Onward, Christian soldiers!

There is a spirit of magnificence in the air, of the battle knell, of the ringing clarion call through the ages that men have answered to take up arms against their foes. And with a ship as glorious as this at their head –
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rules the waves!
– how could they go wrong?

With big Lizzie cutting her path towards the glassy sea, the ships form up into their assigned positions. Overhead, the sun is eclipsed at flickering intervals by a seaplane, which drones and swoops back and forth, looking for any sign of German submarines.

The Anzacs are also on their way, with
Queen
– bearing General Birdwood and his senior staff – in the lead, closely followed by
London
and
Prince of Wales
. On the back of many ships, troops have scrawled signs in large letters:

 

CONSTANTINOPLE
OR BUST
ON TO THE HAREMS
BRING ON YOUR TURKISH DELIGHTS
⁷

 

Sundown that day could not have been more perfect, a golden orb sinking beneath the western horizon, and splashing pink and purple hues onto the sky-blue canvas as it does so. In the Bay of Purnea, the troops of the 1st and 2nd Brigades, who have been waiting on their transports for most of the afternoon, are mesmerised by the sky in the west when they see movement on the horizon. Five of their warships are moving east towards temporary anchorage at Imbros, which is within sight of the Dardanelles. The mighty 3rd Brigade is on its way!

The men watch silently, exchanging grins and glances that belie their trepidation. As Charles Bean aboard
Minnewaska
notes, the ships pass ‘gradually across the skyline, trailing a long streamer of smoke, until the night closed over them'.
⁸

Watching their brothers and mates sail off, and knowing they are soon to follow, they are more solemn than they had been in the jubilations of a few hours earlier. There is a difference between ‘bravado' and ‘bravery', and the latter is more quiet by nature. Who knows what sunrise will bring, and just how many of them will be there to see it?

That is certainly the feeling aboard
London
, where English war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett – a distinguished veteran of the Boer War and now a legend of Fleet Street for the six wars he has so dashingly covered – dines with Australian officers of the 11th Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Brigade in the wardroom, the very men due to be among the first ashore. ‘Everyone,' the
Daily Telegraph
correspondent would carefully record, ‘feigned an unnatural cheerfulness, the wine passed round, not a word was said of what the morrow might bring forth, yet over the party there seemed to hover the dread angel of death …'
⁹

This, mind, is all in marked contrast to the English military leadership whom Ashmead-Bartlett has been interviewing in recent weeks. For this supremely well-connected eldest son of Conservative MP Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett – who had been educated at Marlborough College along with war poet Siegfried Sassoon – is at least the social equal if not superior of the high military brass, and his unfettered access to them has given a clear impression: ‘It did not appear to me … that either the General or his Staff realised the terrible gravity of the enterprise on which they were now embarking … It seemed to me they rather regarded the Expedition as a kind of glorified picnic, and that the main consideration was the fact that they had an independent command to exercise which was extremely pleasing to their
amour propre.
'
¹⁰

On each ship after dinner this night, a church service is held, followed by hymns, including particular favourites ‘Nearer My God to Thee', ‘Stand up for Jesus', ‘God Be with You Till We Meet Again', as well as, of course, ‘God Save the King' and ‘Auld Lang Syne'.

On the Gallipoli Peninsula too, that angel of death looms, even if most of the Ottoman soldiers don't yet know it. The soldiers of the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 27th Ottoman Infantry Regiment are completely exhausted. After spending the previous night in training manoeuvres around Gaba Tepe, their officers have insisted they now march through the night to their camp at Maidos.

As the watery moon begins its long journey across the sparkling heavens, the young men want nothing more than to be lying in their tents, dreaming of their loved ones. But all they can do is keep marching.

And they are not the only Ottoman soldiers on the move. On this day, the Minister for the Interior, Talaat, signs an order that is nothing less than a death warrant for many of the Empire's Armenian population. Long have the Armenians – whose homeland is right next to the Russian border – been held in suspicion by the ruling Turks, and long have they been repressed because of it. In the extremities of these times, however, when it has become apparent that some Armenians have joined the Russians fighting against them, repression tips over into something far more murderous.

‘With the discovery of the bombs,' the circular reads, ‘and the Ottoman Armenians' joining with the Russian forces by forming voluntary regiments against the Ottoman State, it has become evident that these committees … incite upheavals in the regions and threaten the Ottoman Army … Consequently, the government has taken measures to … arrest the leaders and the members of the committees, of the people who have taken part in the activities, of the Armenians who are well known by the police forces, gathering of the suspicious people in an area in the towns so as to prevent their escape, launching of searches for weapons in suitable places have been found appropriate.'
¹¹

The Turkish Ottoman leadership will no longer abide a seditious enemy from within, not while they are being threatened on all sides from without. Turkey for the Turks!

With the approval of General Enver as the Ottoman Army Commander-in-Chief, the final orders of Talaat are distributed. The round-up is not confined to just Armenia. For, on this same day in Constantinople – a day to be later known as ‘Red Sunday' – some 250 Armenian Ottoman notables and intellectuals are arrested. Most will soon be executed as part of a general purge of the Armenian population.

MIDNIGHT, 24 APRIL 1915, TENEDOS, FISH IN A BARREL

A rumble in the night, a swish of propellers, ripples of suddenly swirling water and there is movement in the bay at the northern side of Tenedos.

Leading off are the three transports bearing the soldiers of the 29th Division who will storm W and V Beaches and Morto Bay, closely followed by
Euryalus
, bearing Admiral Wemyss,
Implacable
,
Cornwallis
and
River Clyde
. They are followed by tugs pulling floating piers, which will be used to unload supplies once the beachhead is established. The battleships must be in place before dawn, ready to begin their bombardment. The French, meanwhile, leave from the southern side of Tenedos.

Perhaps most tense are those aboard
River Clyde
, the collier ear-marked to ram the shore and disgorge over 2000 of the 29th's finest soldiers on the Turkish defenders. On the lowest deck, the men lie cramped up against each other, thankful at least for the warmth of the bodies next to them. One man, feet numbed by the cold, crawls half-asleep to a spot near the engines. He coils up and drifts off, only to wake to ‘a heavy sea boot … planted firmly on my face'. Most of the men are only pretending to sleep anyway. An officer sits up at a makeshift table made from ‘two lime barrels and a few rough boards', with a cigarette in one hand and a pencil in the other. He jots in his diary, ‘sitting on board after trying to snooze with head on a big box … but too uncomfortable for anything, so whipped out my “bookie” and scribbled; light bad, only an oily lamp with glass smoked black, and nearly 20 feet distant. Queer scene altogether … Sunday is just ten minutes old, and the ship's screw has started – we are off!'
¹²