The Gallipoli Letter (3 page)

Reid was in cable communication with Fisher about this so it appears that the Australian Government was at least consulted on the matter of the first destination of the AIF. But it knew little else about the use of its troops. In April 1915 Prime Minister Fisher was allowed to know that the Australians were on their way from Egypt to a battlefront. But he was not told where or against whom the Australians would be fighting. He was not told who would have the command of the Australians nor did he or the Australian Government have much say in any other matters relating to its own troops. It is clear that Fisher was very apprehensive about this—increasing concern for the Australian troops was causing him such worry that it impacted on his health.

Most of the Australian Government's information about the progress of the AIF came from the Australian official war correspondent, C.E.W. Bean, who had been regularly reporting back to Australian newspapers since he had sailed with the first contingent of soldiers in October. It had been an early decision to commission a single journalist, designated the official war correspondent, to travel with the troops. The government reasoned that if several reporters were credentialed to the AIF there would be too much competition among them for stories, risking the security of the enterprise and creating something of a circus.

Defence Minister George Pearce, consistent with Labor principles, asked the newsmen's union, the Australian Journalists' Association, to select one of its number as the official correspondent. The AJA invited nominations and then conducted a ballot. About twenty journalists were nominated, among them Keith Murdoch.

Murdoch had only been formerly considered a journalist since 1910 and it is a mark of his rapid progress in the profession that his nomination could be seriously considered alongside men with more extensive experience. It is a further mark of the regard in which he was held that Murdoch came second in the ballot, only a handful of votes behind the winner, Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean. Unlike Bean, Murdoch was a member of the federal parliamentary press gallery, which meant he was well known to many colleagues in Melbourne and elsewhere around the nation. It was known, too, that he had the prime minister's and defence minister's approbation, which would have helped, and that he was young and energetic. But Charles Bean had won, fair and square. Keith Murdoch was mightily disappointed.

On 8 May 1915, Fisher and his government found out—only slightly in advance of the rest of Australia—that the AIF had been diverted from Egypt to the Dardanelles where, joined with the New Zealand expeditionary force as Anzac , they had landed on 25 April 1915 in a hazardous operation. Had the government been properly briefed from London about the Dardanelles expedition Fisher and his colleagues would have learned that British ministers, particularly the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, were so worried about the stalemate on the Western Front in Europe that they were looking hopefully for any second front that might create a war of movement, and bring some heartening victories. ‘We need a big win,' said Lloyd George on New Year's day in 1915 and repeatedly thereafter, ‘and right now.' The War Council in London had looked at various options before settling on the Dardanelles. Ministers planned for the Royal Navy, assisted by ships from France and Australia, to force a passage through the Dardanelles by destroying the forts on the shoreline. Once the forts had been silenced, they hoped to send ships up the Sea of Marmara to threaten Constantinople (now Istanbul) and force the Turks out of the war. This would open up a route through the Black Sea to Russia, enabling the Allies to menace Germany from behind.

The adventure at the Dardanelles was immediately attractive to the amateur strategists in London—the politicians—though it was examined more cautiously by senior professional soldiers and sailors like War Minister Lord Kitchener and First Sea Lord and head of the British navy Admiral Jacky Fisher. The Australian Government was told nothing of this plan but the reluctance with which Admiral Fisher was brought to agreement would not have inspired confidence.

Admiral Fisher's reluctance was justified: the naval action failed on the day it commenced, 18 March 1915. Three ships were lost to mines and the forts sustained little damage. The man in charge, Admiral de Robeck, wrongly feared that the Turks were floating mines down the Dardanelles on the current, placing all of his ships at risk so the navy withdrew, with serious losses of ships and men and, despite urging from London, de Robeck declined to try again the next day or on any subsequent day.

Well, said the amateur strategists in London, let the forts be attacked from behind, over the land, and with that what had first been conceived as a naval action now became a matter for soldiers. The troops would now be required to overrun the forts so the warships could sail through the Narrows. But landing troops on enemy-held positions from the sea has rarely been attempted in military history and is about the hardest thing an army could be asked to do. Either London was ignorant of this, or they greatly underestimated the capacity and tenacity of the Turkish soldiers and their commanders.

The landing on the Gallipoli peninsula was a dangerous undertaking, even a foolhardy one. And still government ministers in Australia were almost completely in the dark with regard to this campaign. There had been no consultation whatsoever about the crucial decisions made in London in March and April 1915. No cables were sent explaining what would be attempted. No authorisation was sought from Australia or New Zealand for the use of troops. No justification was provided for the need for troops in support of a naval action.

So anxious was Andrew Fisher about this lack of consultation that in April 1915 he despatched the man who had been the first Australian Labor prime minister, John Christian (‘Chris') Watson, to London to report back on the operations at the Dardanelles. Watson briefed Fisher in person in August 1915. Soon after the landing, though, the Australian newspapers had been filled not only with stories of the landing and the fighting at Gallipoli but also with the casualty lists that now continued, thick and fast. At first newspapers attempted to publish a photograph and a pen portrait of each Australian killed on the peninsula, but it soon became apparent that the numbers of the dead would allow newspapers to list no more than the name and unit of each man killed. Australian relatives at home were in for an anxious time. And so was Andrew Fisher who felt personally responsible for the fate of the troops that Australia had so promptly and so generously sent to the war.

PLATE 3 Australian troops marching across Plugge's Plateau after landing on 25 April. Men in front are seen kneeling in the scrub. The troops were under fire from the other side of Shrapnel Valley. This scene is from a Turkish trench overlooking the Anzac Cove beach.
AWM Neg. No. G00907

Soon impassioned patriots cried for more men to be recruited and trained to take the places of those killed and wounded at the front. Australia now learned to accept recruiting rallies as a part of life in wartime, learned to endure these emotional appeals for men and more men. Two of Keith Murdoch's younger brothers would enlist, Ivon in 1915 and Alan in 1916. They would serve with distinction: Ivon was awarded the Military Cross and Bar, Alan the Military Cross. Both survived the war.

Stories of Gallipoli were everywhere. Any unmarried Australian male in the right age group in 1915 would have given close thought to whether or not he should go to the war. Keith Murdoch's own home values and his love of country would likely have urged him to enlist. He had left the
Age
in 1912 to become the Melbourne political correspondent for the Sydney evening paper, the
Sun
. Now the
Sun
's proprietor, Hugh Denison, offered Murdoch a transfer to London to be managing editor of the United Cable Service, which was supplying Australian newspapers with cable news. This was an appointment of real significance as so much of the news now affecting Australia was either London-based or London-sourced. Yet Murdoch agonised over the appointment. Should he go to London or should he join the tens of thousands of Australians who were now streaming into the army? In Victoria alone in July 1915 21,698 men enlisted. It would not have been easy to stand apart from this rush to the recruiting sergeant.

In June 1915 Murdoch wrote to Andrew Fisher seeking advice: ‘I turn to you as a friend for guidance in this matter and I want you to know that I have always felt that I could joyfully perform any task you set me in the service of my country.' Murdoch recognised that the London job was important but he wrote that he knew that the war would not be won by cables but by as many men as possible in the firing line. The prime minister did not mince words in reply. He stated that Murdoch could perform a much better service for his country in London than in the trenches and he did not think army life would suit Murdoch. But there was more to it than that: Murdoch could be a voice for Australia in London, he believed, and could ensure that Australians would be informed about the progress of the war at the battlefronts and about the thinking of the politicians and decision-makers in London. It was one thing to have an official correspondent in the trenches, Fisher implied, but it was equally important that Australian political leaders knew what was happening in London. On your way to London, Fisher proposed, you might well visit the battlefield at Gallipoli to report back to me. Just as Chris Watson had reported on what was happening in London, Fisher believed he needed to hear a firsthand account of the situation at the Dardanelles. Officially, Murdoch's task was to report on the organisation of mail from Australia to the soldiers at Gallipoli, and on the management of the Australian hospitals in Cairo and elsewhere, both matters which had become issues of contention at home and among the troops.

‘If you could picture Anzac as I have seen it'

Fisher no doubt wanted a trusted and alert intimate to give him an understanding of the campaign beyond whatever anodyne reports he was now receiving from the generals and from London. The Australian prime minister's main source of information on the Gallipoli campaign still remained the censored news reports that Charles Bean and British journalists were sending back for publication in the Australian newspapers. It was a remarkable situation which Fisher could only barely tolerate. He wanted to know if the campaign could be won; if Australian lives were being recklessly wasted for little gain; if General Sir Ian Hamilton's overall direction of the campaign was sound and likely to produce victory. He wanted to know about the morale of the Australian troops at Gallipoli and if they had all that they needed for success. The Australian prime minister, in other words, wanted the facts, straight and unfiltered, that he had every right to expect. And he knew that Keith Murdoch would give the facts to him straight.

Andrew Fisher's biographer, David Day, suggests that the prime minister had another objective in sending Murdoch to Gallipoli, that Fisher wanted Murdoch to see the frontline fighting for himself to convince himself, once and for all, that he could do better work for Australia in London than in the AIF. Murdoch was still wrestling with questions of his duty to his family and his country. Fisher wanted to keep Murdoch out of the army, writes David Day, and hoped firsthand experience of the war might well be the decisive influence in shaping Murdoch's thinking. Day's theory suggests an even closer relationship between Fisher and Murdoch, even a somewhat paternal concern on the part of the prime minister. Murdoch accepted the prime minister's commission and prepared to make his way to Anzac and to London.

•

Keith Murdoch stopped first in Cairo in August 1915, waiting for permission from General Sir Ian Hamilton, the overall commander, to visit Gallipoli. While he waited Murdoch visited soldiers in hospital wards, and began to hear rumours about the campaign. Murdoch had arrived in Egypt in late August, just a few weeks after a massive land offensive at Gallipoli. The offensive had been Hamilton's last throw of the dice—an attempt to capture and hold the high ground, vital if the Dardanelles campaign was to succeed. It had failed almost completely, causing a very high rate of casualties. The injured men that Keith Murdoch was meeting in the Cairo hospital wards had fought in the offensive, fresh from bloody fighting at Lone Pine and the Nek.

Charles Bean, who by now had been at Anzac for more than four months, had come to an early decision once he had experienced war at close range: he would pay little heed to accounts of the fighting coming from wounded men. This was not because these men would deliberately falsify stories of what had happened but because, under the stress of wounds and from fear for their own futures, their understanding of the situation might easily be confused. Murdoch was unaware that these wounded men might not be his best informants.

But Murdoch also spoke to Australian officers stationed in Egypt in administrative and training positions. Before he even reached Gallipoli alarm bells started to ring. Among the Australian officers there was widespread condemnation of British military inefficiency and the want of preparedness, as well as a concern about British arrogance which showed in a broad contempt for ‘colonial' ways and methods of work. We Australians are definitely second class in British eyes, officers reported. There was a suggestion that British commanders were reckless in their use of the troops at their disposal, causing unnecessary casualties.