Gallipoli (39 page)

Scrambling up onto the plateau is Lieutenant-Colonel Harold Edward ‘Pompey' Elliot, with his men of the 7th Battalion, the first of the 2nd Brigade to hit the ground running. As per his instructions, Elliot is now planning to send his men forward to secure the heights of the First Ridge to the north-east. But, much to his surprise, Colonel MacLagan orders Elliot to take his men and dig in to the
south
. A disciplined officer, Elliot obeys the order of his senior without question and immediately departs.

Colonel James Whiteside McCay, Commander of the 2nd Brigade, comes ashore amid the ever-growing chaos of the Second Wave's landing a little before 7 am. On the beach, he allows himself a brief sigh as he looks at the terrain that looms ahead of him. Along with his Brigade-Major, Walter Cass, he makes his way to a break in the ridge in front of him, a place that is soon to be aptly dubbed Shrapnel Gully. Not long after entering the gully, he turns left and begins to climb up to a higher point – Plugge's Plateau – to ascertain the situation, so he can send a precise order back to his men, who are still plonking awkwardly off the boats.

As he starts the climb up, he sees Colonel MacLagan coming down. MacLagan informs him that he has intercepted Elliot and sent him and his battalion south, ‘because the right was being threatened with being turned in'.
³²
MacLagan then issues the command, ‘I want you to take your whole brigade off to my right.'

Colonel McCay, who has a growing reputation for questioning all manner of orders – not to mention a healthy sense of sarcasm – responds, ‘I was ordered to take it off to the left. It is a bit stiff to disobey orders first thing.'
³³

‘I assure you,' says MacLagan, ‘my right will be turned.'

Still not convinced, the 2nd Brigade's Commander retorts, ‘I had better go forward and have a look.'

‘There is not time.'

So McCay strikes a quick compromise: ‘Will you assure me that the left will be all right and the right will be turned if I do not do this?'

MacLagan does not hesitate: ‘I assure you it is so.'

As if to cast their agreement in stone, McCay replies, ‘I accept that assurance.'
³⁴

McCay orders his men to assemble on the beach and get ready to move south, absolved of any blame thanks to a firm word of assurance between officers – should this direct contravention of orders turn out badly, and the left flank be turned, the fault lies solely with MacLagan. He and his men move off.

A quarter-century earlier at the Westward Ho! school in Dover, Colonel MacLagan had been close friends with one Rudyard Kipling, among whose most famous poetic lines would be, ‘If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you / If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, / But make allowance for their doubting too …' Right now, MacLagan has kept his head, while many others are losing theirs, and he will indeed be blamed for the decision he has taken, as others doubt him. But at the time, he feels he has no choice. In his view, if they go after the Third Ridge as planned, they risk losing everything.

Approaching 8 am, Lieutenant-Colonel Şefik is ready to order his men to spread along the Third Ridge and engage the advancing enemy. The 1st Battalion is to attack from the southern flank and along 400 Plateau, while the 3rd Battalion is to take the enemy's centre, pushing them back down the Second Ridge and into the sea whence they came. As for the right flank, from Baby 700 and beyond to the peak of Hill 971, he will need Colonel Mustafa's reserve division for that. He simply does not have enough men.

Before going ahead, he sends a report to 9th Division headquarters:

Steward. Another cup of tea …

Aboard
Euryalus
, around the corner just off W Beach at Cape Helles, General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston is so far removed from the
Clyde
carnage that at 8.30 am he orders the main force to begin landing at V Beach, whereupon most of them are slaughtered too – with 175 fatalities in a matter of minutes. At 9 am, another company makes the attempt to make it from
River Clyde
, with exactly the same devastating result. At 9.30 am, a company of Hampshires emerges, also to be shot to pieces without ever setting foot on the shore.

Meanwhile, just off Y Beach in
Queen Elizabeth
, General Hamilton had already seen that the landing there had met such minimal resistance that all of the landing group are ashore without a problem. Now seeing just how catastrophic the landing at V Beach has been, Hamilton – against the counsel of his Chief of Staff, Major-General Walter Braithwaite, who thinks it a breach of military protocol – signals Hunter-Weston: Would you like to get some more men ashore on Y Beach? If so, trawlers are available.
³⁶

To Hamilton, it is obvious that when there is huge resistance in one section of the front, and little on another nearby section, you must push forward hard where there is little resistance, to
at least get your men ashore
, at which point those men could launch an attack on the flanks, and quell the resistance there too.

Hunter-Weston? He does
not
see it like that at all. In fact, he doesn't even bother replying.

Staggeringly, though General Hamilton himself has been watching the whole thing, it is not until 10.21 am that he again signals to the prickly Hunter-Weston: Not advisable to send more men to V Beach. We have 200 on shore unable to progress.
³⁷

Fifteen minutes later, the answer comes from Hunter-Weston: Admiral Wemyss and Principal Naval Transport Officer state that to interfere with present arrangements and try to land men at Y Beach would delay disembarkation.
³⁸

Instead, the rest of the men designated to land at V beach are diverted to land at X Beach, where just hours before a bloody ambush similar to the one at V Beach had befallen the Lancashire Fusiliers, though by now it is reasonably safe.

As for the landing of the French on the Asian side of the Straits at Kum Kale under General Albert d'Amade, it is also initially barely opposed, and the taking of the ruined old fort and village the only Allied objective so far successfully achieved. But for the French, it is all rather beside the point. They have not landed in enough numbers to actually move north against the other forts on the Asian side of the Narrows, and because General von Sanders has correctly judged their landing as a feint – committing just one of his five divisions to keep them in check – all the French can do is wait until boats come to take them to the other side of the Dardanelles, where the real action is.

Shivering aboard
Minnewaska
, Charles Bean continues to gaze earnestly towards the shore in the now strong morning light, trying to discern what is happening, when he sees it.

‘Suddenly – from high up on the further hills there twinkled a tiny white light – very brilliant … Then minutes later someone sees men upon the skyline … through the telescope you can see them, numbers. Certain ones are standing full length, others moving along them, others sitting down apparently talking … They are Australians! They have taken that further line of hills – three ridges away you can see them: the outlines of men on the further hills; men digging on the second hill; and the white flags of signallers waving on the ridge near the shore.'
³⁹

After two quick looks through the periscope during the night, now Lieutenant-Commander Dacre Stoker again brings
AE2
to a depth of just 20 feet, to take stock in daylight of just where they are. Stoker whispers to his attentive crew, ‘Ten up … keep 20 feet … time for a fix.'
⁴⁰

He is amazed to see that in fact they are just off the town of Chanak, well past the minefields and somewhere near the mid-point of the Narrows, just below the part where the body of water resembles a dogleg. The early dawn light gives a strangely beautiful quality to the damaged port. Stoker calls the bearing while Lieutenant Cary fixes the sub's position on the chart in elegant dashes of red crayon.

The first sign of what is to come, however, arrives just a minute after the periscope has surfaced – for that sight is precisely what the many Turkish sentries are looking for with their glasses – and shells from both sides of the Narrows now come pouring down upon the Australian submarine, sending up huge spouts of water all around.

Keeping calm regardless, for at their depth there is no real risk to the submarine even should a shell drop right on top of them, Stoker examines the enemy port, looking for targets, and even has the sangfroid to note that ‘around the top of the periscope the water, lashed into white spray, caused a curiously pretty effect, but added little to the ease of taking observations'.
⁴¹

Inside the sub, there are spasmodic
whumps
, as shells explode on the surface, as well as what sounds oddly like gentle hailstones on the roof, as the shrapnel from the shells floats down. Time to ‘run amuck', as he had been commanded?

Exactly. For that is what
AE2
has come to do, and right there is the perfect prize: a fat Turkish battleship, from which mines might be dropped.

Stoker is acutely aware that his crew rely on his judgement. They watch his every movement. He is the all-knowing captain, the only one who has the privilege of looking through the periscope to the world above this steel tube. ‘We are approaching the Narrows,' he says, ‘about one mile.' Some captains prefer not to inform the crew – but that is not Stoker's approach. ‘Target range 600 yards … a Turkish battleship … Prepare bow tube.'

The order is passed by word of mouth to the forward torpedo room. The outer cap is opened and seawater fills the tube. Not a word is spoken that does not need to be spoken.

‘Port 15 steer 320. Dead slow.'

Helmsman Charlie Vaughan confirms the change in course. ‘Steer 320, aye aye, sir.'
⁴²

Actually, no. For now, from behind the battleship comes a cruiser,
Feihh i Shevist
, heading straight for them – either to ram the periscope or drop mines across the bows – and Stoker instantly changes plans. Bringing his bow around so that the torpedo is perfectly positioned to hit the cruiser, he awaits his moment to fire.

500 yards … 400 yards … 350 yards … 325 yards …

Lieutenant-Commander Stoker keeps calling off the distance calmly. ‘Three hundred yards … Standby … standby … fire bow torpedo.'
⁴³