Gallipoli (97 page)

On 5 June 1916, Lord Kitchener found himself on HMS
Hampshire
, travelling to the Russian port of Archangel, with a mission of negotiating with the Tsar's government ways to better coordinate the Allies' military operations.
Hampshire
had two escort ships,
Unity
and
Victor
, which, alas, received orders from Captain Saville of
Hampshire
to return to Scapa Flow because they had fallen behind in the bad weather and it was considered unlikely that enemy submarines would be active in such conditions.

Hampshire
continued alone, soon finding itself just off the Orkneys (an archipelago in northern Scotland) in a Force 9 gale and … a minefield. The mines had been laid three days earlier by a German submarine,
U-75
, and had already claimed a British ship,
Crown
. Shortly before 7.30 pm,
Hampshire
, with 655 men on board, suddenly hit a mine and was quickly on its way to the bottom, taking Lord Kitchener and all bar 12 sailors with it. Captain FitzGerald was close by his side to the end.

One survivor reported that Kitchener met his death with typical dignity and resolution to the last. The news of his demise hit Great Britain, and indeed the British Empire, like a thunderclap. ‘Never,' his biographer Sir George Arthur would insist, ‘since man has made the lightning his messenger, did the passing of an individual so profoundly move humanity as a whole. For an instant a hush seemed to fall alike on soldier and citizen, on camp and council-chamber …'
²⁸

The Memorial Service for Lord Kitchener was held in a packed St Paul's Cathedral, and was presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury. When Their Majesties the King and Queen arrived in an open carriage with an escort of Life Guards, they were saluted by a group of Australian and New Zealand soldiers, who, though so badly wounded in Gallipoli they had to be accompanied by their carers, had been released from hospital for the occasion, so they could pay their deepest respects to Lord Kitchener.

(I know.)

Captain Oswald FitzGerald's body was washed ashore in Great Britain, and he was quietly buried in Eastbourne, Sussex.

Winston Churchill, of course – the other principal architect of the Dardanelles campaign – was far more fortunate, and managed to not only outlast the most fierce opprobrium for his part in the affair but also go on to become Britain's most famous Prime Minister. After serving with some distinction as an officer in France, Churchill returned to England and parliament in June 1916, and, under the Prime Ministership of David Lloyd George in 1917, once again became Minister of Munitions. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Churchill's career waxed and waned, but of course it prospered as never before shortly after the Second World War broke out – vindicating his warnings about the danger of an Adolf Hitler-led Germany over the previous seven years. He took over the Prime Ministership from Neville Chamberlain, retaining it till just after the end of that war. He regained the position in 1951, retired in 1955 and died in 1965.

Herbert Asquith resigned on 5 December 1916, after losing the confidence of the public, the press and his fellow politicians over his lack of dynamism in his conduct of the war so far. Though he remained in the Commons and leader of the Liberal Party, he never again held office. He died on 15 February 1928.

The man selected to provide that dynamism was Lloyd George, and one of his first moves was to make Lord Northcliffe his ‘Director of Propaganda' – a role in which the pressman prospered. On the day of Armistice, 11 November 1918, Northcliffe resigned, and went back to exclusively running his tabloid newspapers, before dying in August 1922 of a blood infection.

Among Lord Northcliffe's closest confidants at the time of his death – even though he had returned to Australia – was Keith Murdoch, who had become so enamoured of the Lord and his methods that he was soon to become known as ‘Lord Southcliffe'. Lionised for his intervention in the Gallipoli campaign, Murdoch had become close to many key figures in England's ruling class, made regular visits to the Western Front and continued to rise in journalism – before returning to Melbourne early in 1921 to take a position as Editor-in-Chief of the Melbourne evening
Herald
. That paper became a stunning success, in part because Murdoch followed much the same model of tabloid journalism he had learned firsthand from his inspiration, Lord Northcliffe. By both covering and
generating
political controversy, and always putting it on the front page, as well as providing heavy celebrity coverage, he lifted circulation by 50 per cent in just his first four years.

Just like Northcliffe, Murdoch also aspired to own the newspapers, and in 1928 he became Managing Director of the company that owned the paper
The Herald & Weekly Times
, the same year that the 42-year-old married the 19-year-old Melbourne beauty Elisabeth Joy Greene. In short order – and even while Murdoch bought the exceedingly dull
Adelaide Register
before turning it into a tabloid, and then took over
The Adelaide Advertiser
and
The Adelaide News
– the couple had one son and three daughters.

Keith Murdoch's key breakthrough came in 1948, when he persuaded the
Herald
board to sell to him its holdings in
The Adelaide News
, and when he died in 1952, this was the key asset of his estate – allowing his dream to be fulfilled. For, from the moment of establishing his family and having a son, Murdoch had been obsessed with training that son, Rupert, so he could take charge of the family business and make a success of it.

He did.

The rights and wrongs of ‘the Murdoch letter' would be heatedly discussed for a century and counting … Though there would be many critics, led by General Hamilton, who were scathing in the accusations of dishonour levelled at Murdoch for breaching the censorship regulations, Keith Murdoch was an ardent defender of his own actions. In response to the Hamilton criticisms, he said simply, ‘I had a perfectly clear conscience as to what I did. I went to London and I hit Sir Ian Hamilton as hard as I could. I thought the vital thing was to get a fresh mind on the spot. The British Cabinet confirmed this view by recalling him within a week of my report being discussed by it …

‘I broke no censorship pledge … I wrote nothing for publication without censorship. I wrote a report for the Prime Minister of my own country, and received his thanks, and also the thanks of the succeeding Prime Minister.'
²⁹

He had already been backed up by former Australian Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, who, upon being installed as one of those presiding on the Dardanelles Commission, had explained to his fellow Commissioners that Murdoch had visited the Dardanelles at
his
behest, and that the correspondent's first loyalty – strange as it might seem to them – was to Australia. You see, gentlemen, Australia has a ‘separate-ness' from Britain, and as a ‘self-governing Dominion',
³⁰
sometimes its interests would be different from Great Britain's.

The controversy would rumble on, however, and other writers – particularly the most esteemed contemporary writer of the lot, Les Carlyon – have strongly downplayed the significance of the letter, maintaining Murdoch was little more than a pawn in the grand power play of others.

Again, for what it's worth, I most respectfully disagree with Les, and cite the words of Charles Bean in 1958: ‘Keith felt that the Australians were being sacrificed … and he wrote his letter with the sledgehammer phrases – often massive over-statements – which were typical of his writing in controversy. But there was much truth behind them – the troops had no great confidence in Hamilton; he had not the crude strength for such an enterprise … Murdoch's letter was, I should say, the main agent in bringing about Hamilton's fall.'
³¹

With Hamilton's fall, and Monro's fresh eyes on site, the evacuation that would save so many Australian lives became all the more likely.

Rupert Murdoch has himself been a great defender of the faith, noting, ‘My father's letter from Gallipoli to Fisher was a highly emotional, important and nationalistic piece of reporting.'
³²

Charles Bean? His time at Gallipoli and then the Western Front as a war correspondent, filling 226 notebooks along the way, would form the foundation stone for his work for the next 23 years, as he compiled 12 volumes of the
Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918
, of which he wrote the first six, with the 12th and final volume being published in 1942.

A significant part of that was his return to Gallipoli in January 1919, leading the Australian Historical Mission, to gather facts and increase Australian understanding of the lie of the land from the other side of the trenches. At the Nek, they had to tread lightly, around and over the bones of the Light Horsemen who lay there still. (In some of the lesser known spots of Gallipoli, human bones from 1915 can still be seen today – though their provenance is not certain.) In 1946, Bean released a separate, single-volume account of the war titled
Anzac to Amiens
, and in 1957 published
Two Men I Knew
, about the founders of the AIF, William Bridges and Cyril Brudenell White.

Beyond his writings, Bean's other great legacy, of course, is the Australian War Memorial. While covering the devastating battles of the Australians on the Western Front, he conceived the notion that, like the British and Canadians particularly, Australia should have an institution filled with relics, photos and records to commemorate the Australian wartime experience – and suggested as much to the Federal Government in November 1916. Bean was its first Director,
³³
put enormous energy into laying its historical foundation stones, and could take a deep bow when it opened its doors on 11 November 1941.

Surprisingly, for one who was such a devotee of the British Empire, Charles Bean more than once declined a knighthood. He died aged 88 on 30 August 1968, survived by his wife, Ethel, a one-time Queanbeyan nurse, and their daughter and grandson.

Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett also attracted a great deal of notoriety for his part in the Dardanelles campaign – most particularly its ending – and on the strength of it was able to take a lecture tour of England and Australia before returning to cover the continuing fighting on the Western Front. Strangely, in a brief belief that the sword might be mightier than the pen after all, following the conclusion of the Great War he went to Hungary to fight with an anti-Bolshevik faction, before returning to England to be elected to parliament. He stood on the side of the Conservatives and became the Member for Hammersmith North. He died in Lisbon in 1931 aged just 50.

Sir Ian Hamilton, in whom Kitchener and Churchill had invested such high hopes, never saw active service again. Bloodied but unbowed, believing himself unfairly maligned, Sir Ian continued to keep busy with service to many military institutions and veteran organisations – and, in an effort to restore his reputation, wrote and published his
Gallipoli Diary
in 1920. Based on his diary of the time – and notwithstanding accusations that he coloured it brightly for publication – it gave a great insight into his thoughts, feelings and motivation throughout the whole tumultuous campaign, albeit retrospectively. He was a driving force and Vice-President of the Anglo-German Association, established in 1928, devoted to promoting Germany in Great Britain, and declared himself a great admirer of Adolf Hitler.

Tragically, his one son, Harry, who was a graduate of Sandhurst, was killed in North Africa in 1941 by the forces of one and the same. Hamilton died in London in October 1947, at the age of 94.

Lieutenant-General William Birdwood continued to lead the Anzacs on the Western Front in France, before leaving them to first become Aide-de-General to the King, and then Commanding Officer of the Fifth Army in May 1918. Visiting Australia in 1919, he was greeted, he would recount, by a ‘poster depicting a huge hand – the hand of one of my diggers – held out to welcome a small figure, representing myself, with the words “PUT IT RIGHT THERE, BIRDIE”'.
³⁴

Shortly afterwards, he was created a baronet, before heading back to India, where he became Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army in 1925. Though coveting the role of Governor-General of Australia, such a position was not to be his, and he returned to England in 1930, where he was elected to the Mastership of Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1931. Birdie returned to Turkey in May 1936, along with Sir Roger Keyes. While walking around the old positions at Gallipoli, he ‘was able to see for the first time from the enemy's point of view … I marvelled to think how we had ever been allowed to land and retain our positions for all those long months.'
³⁵
Though Mustafa Kemal was unavailable, Birdwood did see the former 3rd Corps and Northern Group Chief of Staff, Fahrettin. As recounted in Birdwood's book
Khaki and Gown
, among other things that Sir William asked him were, ‘What had Kemal to say about our evacuation?'

‘Kemal,' Fahrettin replied, ‘had left the Peninsula before you evacuated, but when he heard the news he said, “Had I been there, and had the British got away without loss, as they did, I would have blown out my brains.”'
³⁶

In 1938, Sir William was created, if you please, ‘Baron Birdwood of Anzac and Totnes', living the rest of his years quietly until dying on 17 May 1951.
³⁷

The body of Sir William Bridges was the only one returned to Australian shores from Gallipoli, just as his horse, Sandy, was the only one of 136,000 Australian horses to return. After a funeral in Melbourne on 2 September 1915 – some 15 weeks after Sir William had died – he was finally buried at Duntroon, the establishment at which he had the honour of being the first Commanding Officer.