Gallipoli (66 page)

Just that morning, Mustafa Kemal had received a new order from his worthy Commander: Lieutenant-Colonel Wilhelm Wilmer has been appointed Commander of the Anafarta region, which will extend from Ejelmer Bay as far as Sazli Gully and Rhododendron Ridge … When necessary, your division is to help them.
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To Mustafa's eyes, the order is sloppy, leaving a very blurred line between what should be two very distinct areas of command: his area to the south and Wilmer's to the north. This makes them all vulnerable to an offensive at the obvious point of Rhododendron Ridge, a spur on the west side of Chunuk Bair, leading right to its summit.

And yet, when Esat and Fahrettin join him, they do not see what he sees. With the Peninsula now sitting like a map before them – so intricately bumpy, so complex that ‘features of the terrain are easily confused with shadows'
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– Colonel Fahrettin quips, ‘This terrain could only be navigated by guerrillas.'

General Esat turns to his younger, self-assured colleague, Colonel Mustafa, and asks, ‘Where will the enemy come from?'

Without hesitation, Mustafa points in the direction of Anzac Cove and traces a line north along the coast all the way towards Suvla Bay, saying as he does, ‘From here.'

‘All right,' General Esat responds, ‘for the sake of argument, what if they do come from there? From where will they then make their move?'

Without hesitation once more, Mustafa Kemal lifts his arm and traces a line from the northern end of Anzac Cove inland along the Sazli Gully, all the way up Rhododendron Ridge to the highest point of the Sari Bair Range at Hill 971, saying, ‘They will advance through here.'

General Esat laughs and pats the earnest Colonel Mustafa on the shoulder. ‘Don't worry … they will not come through there.'

Mustafa Kemal realises that he will not have his position taken into practical consideration by command and sees no reason to prolong the debate. Instead he defers to General Esat, saying, ‘Allah willing, it will occur according to your estimations, Sir.'
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Just 2000 yards away, effectively at the bottom of the hill on which they stand, General Birdwood and his Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Skeen, have continued to refine the draft of a plan that General Hamilton has already shown a great deal of interest in, what Birdie describes as ‘a sweep around my left flank'.
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With just one more division, he has told Hamilton, he will be able to ‘seize and hold the high crest which dominates his own left'
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– the hills of the Sari Bair Range. By sending two forces out beyond the perimeter on its poorly defended northern section at night, they could push along the beach and then turn east, to come at Sari Bair's high points of Chunuk Bair and Hill 971 from behind. If they could seize them in the night, they would not only be able to see the Narrows at last but also enfilade the Turkish trenches opposite the ANZAC trenches.

With those positions held, there would be few spots on the Peninsula that they could not shell, and, ‘in fact, any strong force of Turks guarding the European side of the Narrows can then be starved out'.
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20 JUNE 1915, MALTA, NURSE LYDIA KING … DEAR DIARY

21 JUNE 1915, IN MELBOURNE, KEITH MURDOCH MAKES A MOVE

After nine months of working and festering in Melbourne as political correspondent for Sydney's evening paper
The Sun
, while the greatest story in the world – the war – is going on far away and covered by Charles Bean, the frustrated Keith Murdoch receives an interesting offer. The owner of his paper, Hugh Denison, has decided to bring back from London his star performer there, Campbell-Jones.

Would Keith like to fill his vacancy?

Perhaps. What he really wants to do is cover the war, a feeling exacerbated by the fact that yet another brother is about to join up. But at least this would get him closer to the action. And there is something more …

When he talks on the subject to his close friend, Labor Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, the Australian leader affirms his view that Keith is doing the right thing by not going into uniform, as he would ‘make only an indifferent soldier',
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and he gives him a task on the way over. The Prime Minister is now beyond frustrated at the lack of information coming from Gallipoli. No matter that he is the democratically elected leader of the Australian people, the British Government make no allowance for his rights to know the welfare of Australian troops, and his major source of information remains the heavily censored articles of Charles Bean. When Murdoch is travelling through the halls of power in London, he could be Prime Minister Fisher's eyes and ears on the ground on all matters affecting the troops. And could he go to Egypt on the way over, and hopefully to the Dardanelles from there, and write a report for him?

The Prime Minister has been worried sick about just how bad the situation is, and he fears for the welfare of the soldiers. Nominally, at the behest of the Defence Minister, Murdoch is to provide any suggestions for improvement in ‘Arrangements for the receipt and delivery of letters, papers and parcels to and from members of the Australian Imperial Force',
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but truly his brief will be much wider than that.

Yes, Prime Minister.

Murdoch soon decides it is precisely the kind of thing he would like to do, for though, as he writes in a letter to Prime Minister Fisher, he ‘cannot overlook the fact that all the cabling and writing in the world is not going to win this war',
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this will be something he really can do to help the war effort. His delight is manifold when Fisher also arranges a letter of introduction to the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces, General Sir Ian Hamilton, who will hopefully allow Murdoch to actually visit the Dardanelles to further his investigations.

Thrilled at the way things are turning out, Murdoch makes his preparations to leave.

Meanwhile, arriving back at Imbros, with an all-new wardrobe, writing materials and nothing less than a Parisian
cuisinier
in tow, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett is also eager to show his fellow correspondents his new toy – a genuine movie camera, with which he can record events beyond writing word pictures.

Do you like it, Charles Bean?

The Australian correspondent, back at Imbros on one of his regular breaks, is not sure, reaching out his long fingers to touch the alien object, as if it is a boiling-hot potato, or a jam-tin bomb. What he is certain he does not like is word from Ashmead-Bartlett that he has been telling influential people in London that the whole Gallipoli campaign is ‘going all wrong'. ‘It seemed,' Bean confides in his diary, ‘to be typically and exactly the thing that a War Correspondent ought not to do.'
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Of the Old School of journalism, proper and professional, Bean passionately believes that the role of a war correspondent, or any journalist for that matter, is to record faithfully what is occurring and not try to alter what is occurring. (Unless, of course, a man is wounded and under fire and you can scurry forward and save his life.) And though sometimes gutted by the way things have turned out, and the lives that have been lost, Bean still has faith that the campaign can be saved.

And so has General Hamilton, as it happens, the more so when informed that another two divisions – beyond the three already promised – will soon be on their way to him. Clearly, back in London, the Easterners are winning the debate, and from being the poor relation in the piece, Hamilton is now being flooded with resources – so many and so much it is decided to postpone for a couple of weeks the ANZAC breakout conceived at Birdwood's Headquarters. This initial plan comprised slipping out of Anzac Cove by night, travelling north along the virtually unprotected coast to Fisherman's Hut, sparsely held by either side in such rough country that the natural defences are already formidable, and attacking Chunuk Bair from the west, along the seaward ridges and slopes.

But now it is clear that, by early August, General Hamilton will have a total of 13 divisions to throw into the line, and so a much grander plan starts to take shape. Added to the ANZAC breakout will be the simultaneous landing of the IXth Corps, composed of two New Army Divisions plus corps troops, some 40,000 men in all, at Suvla Bay to establish a northern base. The bonus of a Suvla Base is that it will simply give Hamilton somewhere to store his new-found surfeit of soldiers. In subsequently taking the Anafarta Range to the north and east of Suvla Bay and pushing east across the Peninsula, the Allies can sever communication between the Turkish Army and Constantinople, while at the same time communication will be established with the ANZAC breakout's newly won northernmost positions on the Sari Bair Range, creating a front stretching south all the way from Suvla Bay to Gaba Tepe.

Let the Turks try to stop
that
.

LATE JUNE 1915, ANZAC COVE, A MESSAGE FROM ABOVE

Look, if it is not quite manna from heaven, it at least runs close, as on this day, some eight weeks after the Anzacs have first landed on Turkish shores, a German aeroplane flies overhead at an altitude just above rifle range, and drops leaflets on the Australian and New Zealand lines. Or at least it intended to. In fact, most of them flutter down into Turkish trenches, but never mind. For after realising the leaflets have been sent to the wrong address, many of the Turks wrap them around a stone, sometimes with a nasty message scrawled on it (‘The old Turk,' Bean records, ‘scribbled on the back of this in pencil some very filthy remarks about our wives and mothers')
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and throw them over.

The leaflets promise the Anzacs excellent treatment and bounteous provisions if they'll do just one thing:

Of course, none of the Anzacs take them up on the offer, but at least for a few days the lucky ones have the rare luxury of toilet paper. (For his part, Captain Gordon Carter is amused by their presumption, though he writes to his parents, ‘There is one thing to the credit of the Turk – he is a clean fighter. What prisoners I've seen have been fine stalwart fellows with good clean faces – they looked gentlemen.')
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28–30 JUNE 1915, BATTLESHIP HILL, TURKEY BROKEN AT THE NEK

Mustafa Kemal is convinced that there's a major Allied attack on the horizon. There is movement down in the Krithia region, and the enemy fire seems to be getting more and more intense in his sector. Typically, however, it is not enough for him simply to wait for the enemy to attack … his men must get in first, and they must do it quietly, under a veil of utmost secrecy.

In these latter days of June, as the weather gets hotter and the impetus is to have this whole affair over with, Mustafa frames an attack at the northern end of the Nek, knowing that if they can break through, they will be able to direct their fire right onto the principal Anzac anchorage at North Beach, as well as onto all the posts that line Monash Valley. The enemy's position would be untenable, and Mustafa Kemal is prepared to take mighty risks to achieve it – even sacrificing the cream of the accomplished 18th Regiment, which has just arrived to be positioned in front of Baby 700 and the Chessboard, a grid-like network of Turkish trenches opposite Pope's Hill.

On the night of 29 June, the last trace of sunlight is gone by 9.30 pm, and a huge gust of wind brings with it the rolling sound of thunder. At 9.55 pm, Colonel Mustafa – thrilled that General Enver himself happens to be here for the occasion – gives the word, sending the 18th Regiment written instructions to ‘attack the enemy opposite your positions'.
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Those worthies say their prayers and steel themselves. The wind, thick with salt, is blowing off the Aegean, picking up any loose debris it can find on its ravenous path up to Russell's Top and tossing it over the Turks' newly dug trenches at the Nek, flinging it into the soldiers' faces. There is trouble in the air, menace and confusion, as the Turkish barrage begins, lobbing shells down on the Australian defenders – who happen to be Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander White's 8th Light Horse Regiment.