The Last Lion Box Set: Winston Spencer Churchill, 1874 - 1965 (93 page)

The bond between Churchill and Kitchener was vital to the campaign, and at this very unfortunate moment it was cut. The origins of the dispute are unclear. Apparently Winston, on one of his visits to France, had told Sir John French that he might be in a position to lend him some Admiralty troops and equipment. It had been an informal remark. It was also ill-advised. K of K was sensitive about his prerogatives. When French sent the War Office a written request for the men and matériel Churchill had so unwisely dangled before him, the war minister went straight to the prime minister. Asquith wrote Winston: “Kitchener has just been to see me in a state of some perturbation. He has just received two official letters from French, in which he announces that you have offered him a Brigade of the Naval Division, and 2 squadrons of armoured cars. Kitchener is strongly of the opinion that French has no need of either. But, apart from that, he feels (& I think rightly) that he ought to have been told of, & consulted about, the offer before it was made.” That evening Margot Asquith wrote in her diary: “Of course Winston is intolerable. It is all
vanity
—he is devoured by vanity…. It’s most trying as K and he had got a modus vivendi.” Churchill explained that it was all a misunderstanding, but in the morning Asquith wrote Venetia: “I am rather vexed with Winston who has been tactless enough to offer Sir John F (behind K’s back & without his knowledge) a brigade of his Naval Division, and 2 squadrons of his famous Armoured Cars which are being hawked about from pillar to post.”
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On such petty quarrels did the fate of millions hang. Winston wrote Kitchener on February 19, attempting a reconciliation. It wasn’t enough. The war minister’s rage was still glowing when the War Council met that afternoon to confirm its decision, made three days earlier, to send the Twenty-ninth Division to Lemnos. K of K bluntly told the dismayed ministers that he had changed his mind. He had decided to withhold, not only the nineteen thousand trained men of the Twenty-ninth Division, but also the thirty thousand Australians and New Zealanders in Egypt. Asquith, Churchill, and Lloyd George protested—Lloyd George thought even these wouldn’t be enough; he wanted to reinforce them with the ten-thousand-man Royal Naval Division, fifteen thousand Frenchmen, and ten thousand Russians. Grey’s support was tepid; Lemnos rankled, after all. Kitchener said he would think it over. But four days later when Winston repeated his request for men—it was “not a question of sending them immediately to the Dardanelles,” he explained, “but merely of having them within reach”—K of K replied that the Twenty-ninth still could not be spared. The Russian front was fluid, he had said; if disaster struck there, the men of the Twenty-ninth were “the only troops we have available as a reserve to send over to France.” It was his impression that the Dardanelles had been conceived as a naval attack; did Churchill plan to lead an army, too? Not at all, said Winston. He could, however, imagine a situation in which victory was within reach “but where a military force would just make the difference between success and failure.” One senses his frustration when Lloyd George, his strongest supporter in the last discussion, now warned against using troops “to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the Navy,” suggesting that if the Dardanelles miscarried, “we ought to be immediately ready to try something else” in the Middle East—presumably Syria, his pet idea. Kitchener was immovable. He doubted the Turks would try to defend Gallipoli. Churchill said they might have forty thousand men there already. If so, Kitchener predicted, they would evacuate the peninsula after the bombardment.
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The War Council voted to postpone further discussion of the division’s destiny until the next meeting. Winston, appalled and angry, demanded that his objection be entered in the council’s minutes, and so it was: “
MR CHURCHILL
said that the XXIX Division would not make the difference between failure and success in France, but might well make the difference in the East. He wished it to be placed on record that he dissented altogether from the retention of the XXIX Division in this country. If a disaster occurred in Turkey owing to the insufficiency of troops, he must disclaim all responsibility.” That evening he wrote his brother that this “was vy vexatious to me, & hard to bear…. The capacity to run risks is at famine prices. All play for safety. The war is certainly settling on to a grim basis, & it is evident that long vistas of pain & struggle lie ahead. The limited fund of life & energy wh I possess is not much use in trying to influence these tremendous moments. I toil away.”
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Asquith shared his chagrin, but such was Kitchener’s power to intimidate that even the prime minister wasn’t prepared to risk offending him. Of this pivotal meeting he wrote Venetia: “We are all agreed (except K) that the naval adventure in the Dardanelles shd be backed up by a strong military force.” Kitchener was being “very sticky,” he thought, because “he wants to have something in hand, in case the Germans are so far successful against Russia for the moment, as to be able to despatch Westwards a huge army—perhaps of a million—to try & force Joffre & French’s lines.” Asquith himself felt that “one must take a lot of risks in war, & I am strongly of the opinion that the chance of forcing the Dardanelles, & occupying Constantinople… presents such a unique opportunity that we ought to hazard a lot elsewhere rather than forgo it. If K can be convinced, well & good: but to discard his advice & overrule his judgment on a military question is to take a great responsibility. So I am rather anxious.”
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Churchill at any rate could send the Royal Naval Division, survivors of Antwerp. For the first time in his life he joined a royal entourage; he and the prime minister accompanied George V to Blandford, where the King reviewed the men before they shipped out. Oc Asquith was there, and Rupert Brooke. Margot wrote in her diary: “The whole 9,000 men were drawn up on the glorious downs and Winston walked round and inspected them before the King arrived. I felt quite a thrill when I saw Oc and Rupert with walking sticks standing in front of their men looking quite wonderful! Rupert is a beautiful young man and we get on well, he has so much intellectual temperament and nature about him. He told Oc he was quite
certain
he would never come back but would be killed—it didn’t depress him at all but he was just
convinced
—I shall be curious to see if this turns out to be a true instinct….
They marched past perfectly.
I saw the silver band (given to the Hood Division by Winston’s constituents) coming up the hill and the bayonets flashing—I saw the uneven ground and the straight backs—“Eyesssssss
RIGHT
!”—and the darling boy had passed. The King was pleased and told me they all marched wonderfully.” Brooke wrote:
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His instinct turned out to be true. In two months he was dead. He had been twenty-seven years old. Winston wrote his obituary in
The Times:
“This life has closed at the moment when it seemed to have reached its springtime. A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true, more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth in arms engaged in this present war, than any other—more able to express their thoughts of self-surrender, and with a power to carry comfort to those who watched them so intently from afar. The voice has been swiftly stilled. Only the echoes and the memory remain.”
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It wasn’t much. His father, a housemaster at Rugby, where Rupert had been so popular, drew small comfort from it. His dons at King’s College, Cambridge, wondered instead what he would have become. Oc grieved for a year. Then he himself, having survived the Dardanelles, was killed in France.

But they had marched well at Blandford. Even the King had remarked on it.

S
ackville Hamilton Carden was not the ideal commander for the Aegean squadron. Approaching sixty, he had been superintendent of the Malta dockyards until the outbreak of the war and lacked the temperament of a fighter. Churchill’s candidate for the appointment had been Sir Arthur Limpus, a younger, more aggressive admiral who had studied the Dardanelles for years, but in early September, when Turkey had still been neutral, Grey had felt that naming Limpus would provoke the Turks. Carden was an able strategist. His plan to rush the Dardanelles was sound. But he was a worrier. He worried about the heavy concentration of enemy guns on the banks of the strait and was uncomforted by assurances that they were small, obsolete, and poorly sited. Driftage in the channel troubled him; although there was no tide in the strait, tributaries and melting snows produced a five-knot current, and chunks of floating ice could be expected at this time of year. Vessels which could navigate the Orkney Islands, however, would have no problems here. The danger of minefields preyed on his mind. This was a real hazard, but the Admiralty had judged the risk acceptable and provided him with sufficient minesweepers. None of these objections mattered in themselves. Carden’s weakness was that, faced with an operation requiring exceptional daring, he was unsure of himself. It was a disease among military leaders in that war, and it was catching. Confronted by so many martial innovations, most senior officers had by 1915 become excessively cautious and easily discouraged. Bravery had nothing to do with it. Carden’s second in command, Vice Admiral John de Robeck, was brave in battle, but faced with crucial decisions, he would prove to be of the same stripe.

Their long-awaited attack opened at 9:51 on the blustery morning of Friday, February 19, 1915. The Allied task force—eight British battleships, four French—approached the mouth of the strait and opened fire on the Turkish forts guarding its lips, Kum Kale and Cape Helles. It was no contest. The range of the defensive batteries was so short that their shells couldn’t even reach the ships. At two o’clock that afternoon the warships closed to six thousand yards; at 4:45
P.M.
de Robeck led
Vengeance, Cornwallis,
and
Suffren
closer still. Most of the blockhouses, shrouded in smoke, appeared deserted. Then night fell. High seas, snow, and sleet prevented further action until the following Thursday. But in the interim Carden, encouraged by the one-sided duel, telegraphed the Admiralty: “I do not intend to commence in bad weather leaving result undecided as from experience on first day I am convinced given favourable weather conditions that the reduction of the forts at the entrance can be completed in one day.”
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When the weather cleared, de Robeck carried the assault up to the very muzzles of the blockhouses. The remaining Turkish and German gunners fled northward. Royal Marines landed on Gallipoli, spiking guns and destroying searchlights. Another party went ashore at Kum Kale. Minesweepers penetrated the strait six miles upstream, to within three thousand yards of Kephez Point, without meeting significant resistance. Carden wired London that he expected to reach Constantinople in two weeks.

The War Council was ecstatic. Fisher wanted to hurry to the Aegean and lead the next assault, on the Narrows. The export of Russian wheat seemed imminent; in Chicago the price of grain fell sharply. Churchill, meanwhile, was counting all his unhatched chickens. At the end of February he cabled Grand Duke Nicholas: “The progress of an attack on Dlles is encouraging & good & we think the Russian Black Sea Fleet shd now get ready at Sebastopol to come to the entrance of the Bosporus at the right moment, of wh we will send notice.” Asquith wrote Venetia: “Winston is breast high about the Dardanelles.” That same evening the political climate in Athens went through yet another transformation. King Constantine was having second thoughts. Like the rest of the Balkan rulers, he wanted to be on the winning side. Violet Asquith was “sitting with Clemmie at the Admiralty when Winston came in in a state of wild excitement and joy. He showed us, under many pledges of secrecy, a telegram from Venizelos promising help from the Greeks…. Our joy knew no bounds.” Violet asked if Constantine knew of this. “Yes,” said Churchill, “our Minister said Venizelos had already approached the King and he was in favour of war.” Moreover, he went on, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Italy were all “waiting—ready to pounce—all determined to play a part in the fall of Constantinople.” Violet recrossed the Horse Guards “treading on air. Turkey, encircled by a host of enemies, was doomed, the German flank was turned, the Balkans for once united and on our side, the war shortened perhaps by years, and Winston’s vision and persistence vindicated.”
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He was already contemplating peace terms. To Grey he wrote two days later: “We must not disinterest ourselves in the final settlement of this region…. I am having an Admy paper prepared abt the effect of a Russian control of the Straits and Cple. I hope you will not settle anything further until you can read it. English history will not end with this war.” Others were also looking to the future. Fisher wrote Winston: “
Moral:—Carden to press on!
and Kitchener to occupy the deserted Forts at extremity of Gallipoli and mount howitzers there!… Invite Bulgaria by telegram (direct from Sir E. Grey) to take Kavalla and Salonica provided she
at once
attacks Turkey and tell Greece
‘Too late’!
and seize the Greek Fleet by a ‘coup’ later on. They wd probably join us now
if bribed!
All the kings are against all the peoples! Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania!
What an opportunity for Democracy!
” Asquith told Venetia that one of his ministers had written “an almost dithyrambic memorandum urging that in the carving up of the Turks’ Asiatic dominions, we should take Palestine, into which the scattered Jews cd in time swarm back from all the quarters of the globe, and in due course obtain Home Rule. (What an attractive community!)” Hankey had prepared a seven-page paper: “After the Dardanelles: The Next Steps.” He advocated a broad drive by British, Serbian, Greek, Rumanian, and Russian troops, targeted on the Carpathian Mountains between what are now Czechoslovakia and Poland. Others wanted to follow the Danube from the Black Sea through Austria-Hungary, into Germany’s Black Forest. Churchill, to whom the War Council now listened with great respect, disagreed. “We ought not to make the main lines of advance up the Danube,” he said on March 3. “We ought not to employ more troops in this theatre of war than are absolutely essential in order to induce the Balkan states to march.” He still believed that the proper strategy was an “advance in the north through Holland and the Baltic.”
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