CHAPTER XV.THE LAST BATTLE.By the 25th of September the German armies were back on the great line devised by Hindenburg in the autumn of 1916. The one chance left to them was to hold out there during the winter, in the hope that they might be able to bargain with the Allies. If the Allies attacked, there were two sections which Ludendorff viewed with anxiety. One was his left wing on the Meuse, where, if the Allies broke through, the Hindenburg Line would be turned on its flank. The other was the German centre from Douai to St. Quentin, the main Hindenburg Line, which was not only the fortress where he hoped to pass the winter, but the one protection of the great railway from Lille by Valenciennes to Mezières, on which his whole position depended. He therefore laboured to keep his left and centre as strong as possible; for, in spite of his experience in August and September, he could not conceive the possibility of an assault on every section.For Foch this was to be the crowning battle of the war. If he could break through the German centre, and at the same time turn the German left, defeat would stare the enemy in the face, and there would be victory long before Christmas. If the Americans on the Meuse succeeded, they would make retreat imperative; but if Haig in the centre succeeded, he would make retreat impossible, and disaster must follow. The British were assigned the most difficult part. They had to attack in the area where the enemy defences were most highly organized and his forces strongest. If the Hindenburg Line held, the German courage might yet recover, and a new era of resistance begin. Haig's armies had already borne the heaviest share of the summer fighting, and every division had been sorely tried. Yet the attempt must be made, for it was the essential part of the whole strategy, and the measure of difficulty was the measure of the honour in which Foch held the fighting qualities of his British allies.In deciding to make the attack, and to break the Hindenburg Line at one blow, Sir Douglas Haig stood alone. So difficult seemed the operation that the British Government were in the gravest doubts, and left the burden of responsibility upon the Commander-in-Chief. Even the French generals hesitated. The movement was undertaken on Sir Douglas Haig's initiative; he bore the whole burden of it; and therefore to him belongs the main credit of what was destined to be one of the decisive actions of the war.Foch began on his right flank, and on 26th September the American army attacked on the Meuse. Next day, the 27th, Haig struck towards Cambrai. The two main defences of the Hindenburg Line were the Canal du Nord, and, behind it, the Scheldt Canal, the latter forming the outwork of the system. The principal German trenches were on the east bank; but on the west bank lay advanced posts, skilfully placed. In one section the canal passed through a tunnel 6,000 yards long, connected by shafts with the trenches above. In another part it lay in a deep cutting, the sides of which were honeycombed with dug-outs. The fortified zone was from 5 to 7 miles wide, and culminated on the east in what was known as the Beaurevoir Line, strongly wired double-trench lines of the same type as those on the western side.On the 27th the Third Army under Byng, and the First Army under Horne, attacked on the left, crossed the Canal du Nord, and by the evening had reached the edge of the Scheldt Canal. Next day that canal had been partially crossed, and Cambrai was menaced from two sides. These events roused acute apprehension in the mind of the German Staff. The crossing of the Canal du Nord by Tanks on the backs of Tanks, and the passing of the Scheldt Canal at its northern end, had shaken their confidence in the outer Hindenburg defences. Next day, the 29th, came Haig's crowning blow. He struck at the strongest part, and it crumbled before him.The attack was made by Rawlinson's Fourth Army. For two days his guns had not been silent; the enemy's garrisons were forced into tunnels and deep dug-outs, and the transport of food and ammunition was made all but impossible. The Germans were, therefore, in a state of confusion and fatigue when Haig attacked at 10 minutes to 6 on the morning of Sunday, the 29th.This action was one of the greatest of the campaign, whether we regard the difficulties to be faced or the strategic value of the gains. Ludendorff was fighting for his last hope, and he had warned his men accordingly. One captured order reminded his troops that "Our present position is our winter position." Another ran: "There can be no question of going back a single step further. We must show the British, French, and Americans that any further attacks on the Hindenburg Line will be utterly broken, and that that Line is an impregnable rampart, with the result that the Entente Powers will condescend to consider the terms of peace which it is absolutely necessary for us to have before we can end the war." Germany was already busy with peace proposals, and she had nothing to bargain with except these defences in the West.The key of the position was the angle of the Scheldt Canal where it bent east, with the village of Bellenglise in its bend, for if the canal were forced there the defences on either side would be turned. The work was entrusted to the 46th Division of North Midland Territorials, which had a long and brilliant record in the war. Theirs was an amazing performance. The canal before them was some 50 to 60 feet wide, the water in some parts being as much as 10 feet deep. and in others a mere trickle. It was a morning of thick fog when behind the tornado of the barrage the Midlanders, carrying life-belts and mats and rafts, advanced to the attack. Since parts of the canal were impassable, the crossing had to be made on a narrow front. Swimming or wading, and in some cases using foot-bridges which the enemy had left undestroyed, they passed the canal west and north of Bellenglise, swarmed up the farther bank, and took the German trenches beyond. Then, fanning out, they attacked in rear the positions to the south, capturing many batteries still in action. That day this one Division took over 4,000 prisoners and 70 guns.It was the same everywhere else on the British front. The main Hindenburg defences had been breached, and all next day the Fourth Army pressed through the gap. The greatest battle of the war was now approaching its climax, and the whole 250 miles of front, from the Meuse to the sea, were ablaze. Ludendorff could not have withdrawn even if he had wished it. By 7th October Haig had broken through all the front Hindenburg Line, and was pressing upon the last defences. The time was therefore ripe for a great movement on the broadest possible front, which would destroy the whole zone. For, in the words of the official dispatch, "Nothing but the natural obstacles of a wooded and well-watered country lay between our armies and Maubeuge."The great movement was begun by Haig early on Tuesday, 8th October. It was a wild, wet, autumn morning when Byng at 4.30 and Rawlinson at 5.10 attacked on a 17-mile front, while a French army extended the battle 4 miles farther south. The enemy resisted desperately, but nothing could stay the rush of the Allied infantry and the deadly penetration of their Tanks. By the evening Haig had advanced between 3 and 4 miles, and the Hindenburg zone was no more. The enemy was falling back to the Oise and the Selle, and for the moment his organization had been broken. Every road converging on Le Cateau was blocked with transport and troops, and our cavalry were galloping eastward to confuse the retreat.Sir Douglas Haig's battle, which ended on the 10th October, may be considered the determining action in the campaign, and it has been described by Foch as "a classic example of military art." It had no defect either of plan or of execution. The enemy was fairly and clearly defeated in a field action. Foch had played on the whole front a crescendo of deadly music, and the enemy's strategic position was now so desperate that no local stand could save him. There was talk at the time of a German retreat to the Meuse. but it was an idle dream. Long before her broken divisions could reach that river Germany would be upon her knees.PART III.THE "SIDE SHOWS."CHAPTER XVI.THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI.Early in 1915 it seemed to the British Government that, since there were no longer any flanks to be turned on the Western front, the lines in France and Flanders were settling down to a siege and a war of positions. They therefore looked elsewhere for some more promising area of battle, since, if the front door of a fortress is barred, there may be an entrance by a back door. The place which promised best was the narrow straits called the Dardanelles, which led from the Ægean into the Sea of Marmora, and so to Constantinople. There full use could be made of the British fleet. The capture of the Straits would involve the fall of the capital, and this might drive Turkey out of the war. Success there would bring over to our side the hesitating Balkan neutral states. It would open the road for Russia to import munitions of war, and to export her accumulated supplies of wheat. Lastly, Russia was being hard pressed, and had appealed to the Western Allies for aid, and her request could not be refused.Accordingly, it was decided to make an attempt upon the Dardanelles. The first effort was made by ships alone. But the Turks had powerful forts on both sides of the straits which could not be destroyed by naval guns. It was clear that the Dardanelles could not be opened until the Gallipoli Peninsula on the north side was captured. Unfortunately, the naval attack had forewarned the enemy, and he had enormously strengthened his position on the Gallipoli heights.The forces put at Sir Ian Hamilton's disposal for the enterprise were the 29th Division of regulars and Territorials, two divisions from Australia and New Zealand, the Royal Naval Division, and a French brigade. Of these troops only the 29th Division had had any experience in war. Sir Ian Hamilton decided that the only possible landing-places were the beaches at the south-west end of the Peninsula, and another beach at Gaba Tepe, some distance up the northern side. His aim was, by landing at the point, to fight his way to Krithia village, and carry the Achi Baba ridge, while the Australians from Gaba Tepe could turn the right wing of the Turkish defence. Once the Achi Baba heights were captured the Straits would be ours.The day originally fixed for the attempt was 23rd April. But on the 20th a storm rose which for forty-eight hours lashed the Ægean. On the 23rd it abated, and that afternoon the first of the black transports began to move out of Mudros harbour. Next day the rest of the force followed, all in wild spirits for this venture into the unknown. They recalled to one spectator the Athenians departing for the Sicilian expedition, when the galleys out of sheer light-heartedness raced each other to Ægina.The morning of Sunday, the 25th, was one of those which delight the traveller in April in the Ægean. A light mist fills the air before dawn, but it disappears with the sun, and all day there are clear skies, still seas, and the fresh, invigorating warmth of spring. At the butt end of Gallipoli there are five little beaches, originally nameless, but now for all time to be known by the letters affixed to them on the war maps of the British Army. Beginning from the left, there is Beach Y, and, a little south of it, Beach X. Rounding Cape Tekke, we reach Beach W, where a narrow valley opens between the headlands of Tekke and Helles. Here there is a broad semicircular stretch of sand. South of Helles is Beach V, a place of the same configuration as Beach W, but unpleasantly commanded by the castle and village of Sedd-el-Bahr at its southern end. Lastly, inside the Straits, on the east side of Morto Bay, is Beach S, close to the point of Eski Hissarlik. The landing at Gaba Tepe, on the north side of the peninsula, was entrusted to the Australian and New Zealand troops; that at the Helles beaches to the 29th Division, with some units of the Naval Division. It was arranged that simultaneously the French should land on the Asiatic shore at Kum Kale, to prevent the Turkish batteries from being brought into action against our men at Beaches V and S.Let us assume that an aeroplane enabled us to move up and down the shores of the peninsula and observe the progress of the different landings. About one in the morning the ships arrive at a point 5 miles from the Gallipoli shores. At 1.20 boats are lowered, and the troops line up on the decks. Then they embark in the flotillas, and steam pinnaces begin to tow them shorewards in the hazy half-light before dawn. The Australians destined for Gaba Tepe are carried in destroyers which take them close in to the shore.The operations are timed so that the troops reach the beaches at daybreak. Slowly and very quietly the boats and destroyers steal towards the land. A little before 5 an enemy's searchlight flares out. The boats are now in shallow water under the Gaba Tepe cliffs, and the men are leaping ashore. Then comes a blaze of rifle-fire from the Turkish trenches on the beach, and the men who have landed charge them with the bayonet. The whole cliff seems to leap into light, for everywhere trenches and caverns have been dug in the slopes. The fire falls most heavily on the men still in the boats, who have the difficult task of waiting as the slow minutes bring them shoreward.The Australians do not linger. They carry the lines on the beach with cold steel, and find themselves looking up at a steep cliff a hundred feet high. In open order they dive into the scrub, and scramble up the loose yellow rocks. By a fortunate accident their landing is farther north than was intended, just under the cliffs of Sari Bair. At Gaba Tepe the long slope would have given the enemy a great advantage in defence; but here there is only the 40-foot beach and then the cliffs. He who knows the Ægean in April will remember those fringed sea walls and bare brown slopes. From a distance they look as arid as the Syrian desert, but when the traveller draws near he finds a paradise of curious and beautiful flowers—anemone, grape hyacinth, rock rose, asphodel, and amaryllis. Up this rock garden the Australians race, among the purple cistus and the matted creepers and the thickets of myrtle. They have left their packs at the foot, and scale the bluffs like chamois. It is an achievement to rank with Wolfe's escalade of the Heights of Abraham. Presently they are at the top, and come under the main Turkish fire. But the ground gives good cover, and they set about entrenching the crest of the cliffs to cover the boats' landing. This is the position at Sari Bair at 7 a.m.As we journey down the coast we come next to Beach Y. There at 7 a.m. all is going well. The 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Plymouth battalion of the Naval Division, landing at a place which the enemy thought wholly impracticable, have without difficulty reached the top of the cliffs. At Beach X things are even better. TheSwiftsurehas plastered the high ground with shells, and the landing ship, theImplacable, has anchored close to the shore in six fathoms of water. With scarcely a casualty the 2nd Royal Fusiliers have gained the cliff line.[image]The Landing Beaches at Gallipoli.There has been a harder fight at Beach W, between Tekke and Helles, where the sands are broader. The shore has been trenched throughout, and wired and mined almost to the water's edge, and in the scrub behind are hidden the Turkish snipers. Though our ships have bombarded the shore for three-quarters of an hour, they cannot clear out the enemy, and do not seem to have made much impression on the wire entanglements. The first troops have landed to the right under the cliffs of Cape Helles, and have reached the top, while a party on the left has scaled Cape Tekke. But the men of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers who landed on the shore itself have had a fiery trial. They suffered heavily while still on the water, and on landing came up against unbroken lines of wire, while snipers and concealed machine-guns rained death on them. Here we have had heavy losses, and at 7 a.m. the landing has not yet succeeded.The case is more desperate still at Beach V, under Sedd-el-Bahr. Here, as at Beach W, there are a stretch of sand, a scrubby valley, and flanking cliffs. It is the strongest of the Turkish positions, and troops landing in boats are exposed to every type of converging fire. A curious expedient has been tried. A collier, theRiver Clyde, with 2,000 men of the 2nd Hampshires, 1st Dublin Fusiliers, and 1st Munster Fusiliers on board, and eight boat-loads towed by steam pinnaces, approached close to the shore. The boat-loads—the rest of the Dublin Fusiliers—suffered horribly, for when they dashed through the shallows to the beach they were pinned to the ground by fire. Three lines of wire entanglements had to be forced, and a network of trenches. A bank of sand, 5 or 6 feet high, runs at the back, and under its cover the survivors have taken shelter. In the steel side of the ship doors have been cut, which open and disgorge men into the lighters alongside, like some new Horse of Troy. But a tornado of shot and shell rained on her, and of the gallant men who leaped from the lighters to the reef and from the reef to the sea, very few reached the land. Those who did have joined their fellows lying flat under the sand-bank on that beach of death. At Beach S, in Morto Bay, all has gone well. Seven hundred men of the 2nd South Wales Borderers have been landed from trawlers, and have established themselves on the cliff tops at the place called De Totts Battery.CHAPTER XVII.THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI (continued).Let us go back to Sari Bair and look at the position at noonday. We are prospering there, for more than 10,000 men are now ashore, and the work of disembarking guns and stores goes on steadily, though the fire from inland is still deadly. We see a proof of it in a boat full of dead men which rocks idly in the surf. The great warships from the sea send their heavy shells against the Turkish lines, sea-planes are "spotting" for them, and wireless stations are being erected on the beach. Firing from the ships is not easy, for the morning sun shines right in the eyes of the gunners. The Royal Engineers are making roads up the cliff, and supplies are climbing steadily to our firing line. On the turf of the cliff top our men are entrenched, and are working their way forward.Unfortunately the zeal of the Australians has outrun their discretion, and some of them have pushed on too far. They have crossed three ridges, and have got to a fourth ridge within sight of the Straits. In that broken country such an advance is certain death, and the rash attack has been checked with heavy losses. The wounded are being brought in, and it is no light task getting them down the cliffs on stretchers, and across the beach and the bullet-splashed sea to the warships. Remember that we are holding a position which is terribly conspicuous to the enemy, and all our ammunition and water and food have to be dragged up these breakneck cliffs. Still, the first round has been won, Indian troops are being landed in support, and we are firmly placed at Sari Bair.As we move down the coast we find that all goes well at Beach X, and that the troops there are working their way forward, but that at Beach Y the Scottish Borderers are being heavily counter-attacked and are making little progress. TheImplacablehas knocked out of action a Turkish battery at Krithia which gave much annoyance to our men at Beach X. At Beach W we have improved our position. We have cleared the beach and driven the Turks out of the scrub at the valley foot, and the work of disembarking men and stores is proceeding. Our right wing—the 4th Worcesters—is working round by the cliffs above Cape Helles to enfilade the enemy who are holding Beach V, where our men are still in deadly jeopardy.The scene at Beach V is strange and terrible. From the deep water theCornwallisand theAlbionare bombarding the enemy at Sedd-el-Bahr, and the 15-inch shells from theQueen Elizabethare screaming overhead. The Trojan Horse is still lying bow on against the reefs, with her men unable to move, and the Turkish howitzers playing on her. If a man shows his head he is picked off by sharpshooters. The troops we have landed lie flat on the beach under cover of the sand ridge, unable to advance or retreat, and under a steady tornado of fire. At Beach S things are satisfactory.Meantime the French landing at Kum Kale has achieved its purpose. Originally timed for 6 a.m., it did not take place till 9.30. They had a skirmish with the Turks, partly on the height at Kum Kale, and partly on the Trojan plain. Then they advanced along the swell of ground near the coast as far as Yeni Shehr. Next evening they re-embarked and joined our right wing at Beach S. They took 500 prisoners, and could have taken more had there been room for them in the boats. The Turk, who showed himself a dauntless fighter, surrendered with great good-humour when the game was up. He had no crusading zeal in the business.As darkness fell on that loud Sabbath, the minds of the Allied Staff may well have been anxious. We had gained a footing, but no more, and it was but a precarious lodgment. The complexity and strength of the enemy's defence far surpassed our expectation. He had tunnelled the cliffs, and created a wonderful and intricate trench system, which took full advantage of the natural strength of the ground. The fire from our leviathans on the deep was no more effective against his entrenched positions than it had been against the forts of the Straits.Let us resume our tour of the beaches about 10 o'clock on the morning of the 26th. At Sari Bair the Australians are facing a counter-attack. It lasts for two hours, and is met by a great bombardment from our ships. The end comes when, about noon, the Australians and New Zealanders advance with the bayonet, and drive back the enemy. But all that day there is no rest for our troops, who are perfecting their trenches under a deluge of shrapnel. Their flanks are indifferently secured, and they have but the one landing-place behind them, from which their front line is scarcely 1,000 yards distant. They are still clinging precariously to the coast scarp.At Beach Y things have gone badly. Our men there had advanced during the Sunday afternoon, and had been outflanked and driven back to the cliff edge. The Scottish Borderers lost their commanding officer and more than half their men. It was decided to re-embark and move the troops to Beach X, and as we pass the retreat is going on successfully under cover of the ship's fire. At Beach X there has been a hard struggle. Last night we were strongly attacked there, and driven to the very edge of the cliffs, where we hung on in rough shelter trenches. This morning we are advancing again, and making some way.At Beach W, too, there has been a counter-attack. Yesterday afternoon our right wing there, which tried to relieve the position on Beach V by an enfilading attack on the enemy, got among wire, and was driven back. During the night the Turks came on in force, and we were compelled to fling our beach parties into the firing line, bluejackets and sappers armed with whatever weapons they could find. This morning the situation is easier, we have landed more troops, and are preparing to move forward.At Beach V the landing is still in its first stage. Men are still sheltering on the deadly beach behind the sandbank. We have gained some positions among the ruins which were once Sedd-el-Bahr, but not enough to allow us to proceed. Even as we look a final effort is beginning, in which the Dublin Fusiliers and the Munster Fusiliers distinguish themselves, though it is hard to select any for special praise among the splendid battalions of the 29th Division. It continues all morning, most gallantly directed till he fell by Lieutenant-Colonel Doughty-Wylie of the Headquarters Staff, and about 2 p.m. it is successful. The main Turkish trenches are carried, the debris of the castle and village are cleared, and the enemy is in retreat. The landing can now go forward, and the men, who for thirty-two hours have been huddled behind the sandbank, enduring torments of thirst and a nerve-racking fire, can move their cramped limbs and join their comrades.By the morning of Tuesday, the 27th, all the beaches—except Beach Y, which had been relinquished—were in working order, and the advance could proceed. Next morning it began, and by the evening of the 28th we had securely won the butt of the peninsula, and our front ran from 3 miles north-west of Cape Tekke to a mile north of Eski Hissarlik.So ended the opening stage of the Gallipoli campaign—the Battle of the Landing. It was a fight without a precedent. There had been landings—such as Abercromby's at Aboukir and Wolfe's at the cove west of Louisburg—fiercely contested landings, in our history, but none on a scale like this. Sixty thousand men, backed by the most powerful navy in the world, attacked a shore which nature seemed to have made impregnable, and which was held by not inferior numbers of the enemy, in positions prepared for months, and supported by the latest modern artillery. The mere problem of transport was sufficient to deter the boldest. Every rule of war was set at nought. On paper the thing was impossible, as the Turkish army orders announced. According to the text-books no man should have left the beaches alive. We were fighting against a gallant enemy who was at his best in defence and in this unorthodox type of battle. That our audacity succeeded was due to the unsurpassable fighting quality of our men—the Regulars and Territorials of the 29th Division, the Naval Division, and not least to the dash and doggedness of the Australasian corps. The Gallipoli campaign was to end in failure, but, whatever be our judgment on its policy or its consequences, the Battle of the Landing must be acclaimed as a marvellous, an unparalleled feat of arms.CHAPTER XVIII.THE DEPARTURE FROM GALLIPOLI.By September 1915 it was clear that the Gallipoli expedition could not succeed. All summer the hopeless struggle had continued for the heights of the peninsula. In July reinforcements arrived, and in August these new divisions, together with the Anzacs,[#] made an attack, that of the left wing at Suvla Bay being designed to turn the enemy flank. This supreme effort failed. There was no chance of further reserves, for the entry of Bulgaria into the war meant that the Allies must send troops to Salonika to help Serbia if possible, and in any case to protect the northern frontier of Greece. Only one course was possible—to get off the peninsula as best we could.[#] So called from the initial letters of the first Australasian Corps—"Australian and New Zealand Army Corps."After much discussion it was decided to evacuate the positions at Suvla and Anzac, and to retain those at Cape Helles. Nearly everybody concerned in the matter assumed that this would entail a heavy loss. Many estimated it at 15 per cent., and the most hopeful were prepared for the loss of at least one division. An embarkation in the face of the enemy had always meant a stiff rearguard fight and many casualties.On the 8th December Sir Charles Monro, who was then in command of the British troops in the Ægean, issued orders for evacuation. The difficulties were enormous. It was a question of embarking not a division or two, but three army corps; it was impossible to move them all at once with the available transports; there must be a gap between the operations, and this meant that the enemy would probably be forewarned of the later movements. Moreover, a lengthy embarkation put us terribly at the mercy of the winter weather. Even a mild wind from the south or south-west raised a swell that made communication with the beaches precarious.The plan was to move the war material, including the heavy guns, by instalments during a period of ten days, working only at night. A large portion of the troops would also be got off during these days, certain picked battalions being left to the last. Everything was to be kept normal during the daylight, and every morning before daybreak the results of the night's work must be hidden. Success depended upon two things mainly—fine weather and secrecy.From the 8th December onward the troops, night after night, watched the shrinkage of their numbers. There was a generous rivalry as to who should stay till the last—a proof of spirit, when we remember that every man believed that the rearguard was doomed to death or capture. Soon only those in the prime of health and strength were left; all the weak and sickly had gone aboard the transports, which nightly stole in and out of the moonlit bays. Soon the heavy batteries had gone. Then the field guns began to disappear, leaving only enough to keep up the daily pretence of bombardment. It was an eerie business for the last battalions as they heard their protecting guns rumbling shoreward in the darkness. Then the horses and motor-cars were also shipped, and by Friday, the 17th December, very few guns were left. To the Turkish observers the piles of boxes on the beaches looked as if fresh supplies had been landed and we were preparing to hold the place indefinitely.The weather was warm and clement, with light moist winds and a low-hanging screen of cloud. Coming in the midst of an Ægean winter it seemed to our men a direct interposition of Providence. It was like the land beyond the North Wind, which Elizabethan mariners believed in, where he who pierced the outer crust of the Polar snows found a country of roses and eternal summer. No fisherman ever studied the weather signs more anxiously than did the British commanders during these days. Hearts sank when the wind looked like moving to the west. But the weather held, and when the days fixed for the final embarkation arrived, the wind was still favourable, skies were clear, and the moon was approaching its full. Nature had joined the daring conspiracy.On Saturday, the 18th December, only a few picked battalions held the Suvla front. The final embarkation had been fixed for the two succeeding nights. The evening fell in a perfect calm. The sea was still as a mill-pond, and scarcely a breath of wind blew in the sky. Moreover, a light blue mist clothed all the plain of Suvla, and a haze shrouded the moon. At 6 p.m. the crews of the warships went to action stations, and in the darkness the transports stole into the bay. Not a shot was fired. In dead quiet, showing no lights, the transports moved in and out. Every unit found its proper place. By 1 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, the 19th, the bay lay empty in the moonlight.That Sunday was one of the most curious in the war. Our lines looked exactly as they had done during the past four months. We kept up our usual fire and received the Turkish answer, but had any body of the enemy chosen to attack they would have found the trenches held by a mere handful. There were 20,000 Turks on the Suvla and Anzac fronts, and 60,000 in immediate reserve. Had they known it, they had before them the grand opportunity of the campaign. Night again fell with the same halcyon weather. The transports—destroyers, trawlers, picket boats, every kind of craft—slipped once again into the bay, and before midnight the last guns had been got on board. By 3.30 a.m. the last of the troops were on the beach, and long before the dawn broke all were aboard. One man had been hit in the thigh by a bullet, but that was the only casualty.[image]Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula.The operations at Anzac were conducted on the same lines. The beaches at Suvla were 5 miles from the enemy and open to observation; at Anzac, in places they were less than 2 miles distant, but were concealed from view under the steep seaward bluffs. Some of our gun positions there were on dizzy heights, down which a gun could only be brought part by part. The work was brilliantly performed. On the Saturday night three-fifths of the entire force were got on board the transports. On Sunday night the rest were embarked, with two men wounded as the total casualties. By 5.30 a.m. on Monday morning the last transports moved away from the coast, leaving the warships to follow.Then on the 12 miles of beach, from Suvla Burnu to Gaba Tepe, there was seen one of the strangest spectacles of the campaign. The useless stores left behind had been piled in great heaps on the shores and drenched with petrol. Before the last men left parties of Royal Engineers set time fuses. About 4 a.m. on the Monday morning the fires were alight, blazing most fiercely near Suvla Point. As the beach fires flared up, the enemy, thinking some disaster had befallen us, shelled the place to prevent us extinguishing the flames. The warships shelled back, and all along that broken coast great pillars of fire flared to heaven like giant beacons in some strife of the Immortals. Up to 8 o'clock picket boats were still collecting stragglers; by 9 a.m. all was over, and the last warship steamed away from the coast which had been the grave of so many high hopes and so many gallant men.We were just in time. That night the weather broke, and a furious gale blew from the south which would have made embarkation impossible. Rain fell in sheets and quenched the fires, and soon every trench at Suvla and Anzac was a torrent. Great seas washed away the landing stages. The puzzled enemy sat still and waited. He saw that we had gone, but he distrusted the evidence of his eyes. History does not tell what fate befell the first Turks who penetrated into our empty trenches, or what heel first tried conclusions with the hidden mines.The success—the amazing success—of the Suvla and Anzac evacuation made the position at Cape Helles more difficult. No one believed that a similar performance would be possible there after the enemy had been so fully warned; but on the 27th December it was decided to evacuate Helles, and the work went on during the last days of the month and the first week of the new year. On Friday, January 7, 1916, there was a Turkish attack, which the few men remaining managed to repel. Next day, Saturday, the 8th, was calm and fine, and all was ready for the final effort.About 4 o'clock in the afternoon the weather changed. A strong south-westerly wind blew up; by 11 p.m. it increased to a gale of 35 miles an hour. This storm covered our movements from the enemy, but it nearly made retirement impossible. On some beaches the piers were washed away and no troops could be embarked. Nevertheless by 3.30 the last men were on board.All night the Turks gave no sign, but when the transports had moved off the stores left behind were fired simultaneously by time fuses. Red lights instantly burned along the enemy lines, and a bombardment began which continued till sunrise. The Turks proclaimed that the retreat had been attended with desperate losses and great captures of guns. The claim was an absurd falsehood. We blew up and left behind the ruins of seventeen old worn-out pieces. Our total casualties at Helles amounted to one man wounded.To avoid the disastrous consequences of a defeat is, as a military operation, usually more difficult than to win a victory. There is less chance of the high spirit of the attack, for such is the generosity of the human spirit that safety is less of an incentive to effort than the hope of victory. To embark so great an army secretly and without loss in mid-winter was an extraordinary achievement. It was made possible only by an almost miraculous series of favourable chances, and by the perfect organization and discipline of our men. We had failed at Gallipoli, but we had escaped the worst costs of failure. We had defeated the calculations of the enemy and upset every precedent.Across the ribbon of the Dardanelles, on the green plain of Troy, the most famous war of the ancient world had been fought. The European shores had now become a no less classic ground of arms. If the banks of Scamander had seen men strive desperately with fate, so had the heights of Achi Baba and the loud beaches of Helles. Had the fashion continued of linking the gods with the strife of mankind, what strange myth might not have sprung from this rescue of the British troops in the teeth of winter gales and uncertain seas I It would have been rumoured, as of old at Troy, that Poseidon had done battle for his children.CHAPTER XIX.THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM.At the outset of the war the conquest of Egypt was an important aim of the Turkish Government and their German masters. But early in 1915 the Turkish invasion was scattered on the banks of the Suez Canal, and hopes of an easy victory were shattered. Nevertheless, the defence of Egypt remained an anxious problem for Britain. That country was the base both for Gallipoli and for Mesopotamia, and moreover, as Moltke pointed out long before, was the key of Britain's Eastern possessions. It was soon realized that Egypt could not be properly defended on the Canal, but only on the Palestine frontier, beyond the Sinai Desert.During 1915 and 1916 Turkey and Germany projected many schemes for an Egyptian invasion, and the British generals in Egypt were no less busy. If the war was to be carried into Palestine railways and water pipes must be laid across the desert. Slowly the British front crept eastward. The Turks were defeated in various desert battles, and in the spring of 1917 the British army crossed the frontier of Palestine.The British purpose had somewhat changed. The offensive had been substituted for the defensive. So far as possible it was desired to do in Palestine what Sir Stanley Maude was doing in Mesopotamia—to pin down large Turkish forces, and so alarm Turkey about the safety of certain key points in her territory that she would demand aid from Germany and thus confuse the plans of the German General Staff.The land from the Wadi el Arish—the ancient "River of Egypt"—to the Philistian Plain had for 2,600 years been a cockpit of war. Sometimes a conqueror from the north or the south met the enemy in Egypt or in Syria, but more often the decisive fight was fought in the gates. Up and down the strip of seaward levels marched the great armies of Egypt and Assyria, while the Jews looked fearfully down from their barren hills. In the Philistian Plain Sennacherib smote the Egyptian hosts in the days of King Hezekiah, only to see his army melt away under the stroke of the "angel of the Lord." At Rafa Esarhaddon defeated Pharaoh, and added Egypt and Ethiopia to his kingdoms. At Megiddo, or Armageddon, Josiah was vanquished by Pharaoh Necho, who in turn was routed by Nebuchadnezzar. At Ascalon, during the Crusades, Godfrey of Bouillon defeated the Egyptians, and 150 years later that town fell to the Mameluke Sultan after the battle of Gaza. In this gate of ancient feuds it now fell to Turkey's lot to speak with her enemies.But at first the British advance was checked. In March and April 1917 two battles were fought at Gaza—two frontal attacks which failed. During the summer Sir Edmund Allenby was appointed to the chief command, and slowly and patiently he perfected his plans. He saw that a direct attack on Gaza was likely to fail, but far to the east he observed a weak point in the enemy front where the town of Beersheba constituted a detached and separate defensive system. If Beersheba could be taken, the whole Gaza position could be turned on the flank.Beersheba was duly taken at the end of October 1917, and on the 7th November Gaza followed. The enemy suffered severely, and was in full retreat, almost in flight. Sir Edmund Allenby's objective was now Jerusalem, and his problem was less one of manoeuvres than of supply. His troops would advance just as fast as water and food could be brought up behind them.[image]FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY(VISCOUNT ALLENBY OF MEGIDDO).The advance was made in two main directions—one from Hebron due north towards Bethlehem; the other by the coastal plain, aiming at the junction where the Jerusalem railway joined the main line to Damascus. The Turkish army was split into two parts, retreating in different directions. Though Enver came from Constantinople and Falkenhayn from Aleppo it was difficult for them to devise a defence. Allenby seized Jaffa, and then swung eastward into the Judæan highlands. Now the progress became slow, while squalid little villages, whose names are famous throughout the whole Christian world, fell to the British troops. On the 30th November the British line had the shape of a sickle, with the centre of the curve flung far forward towards Jerusalem, and it was necessary to bring up the handle, which consisted of the cavalry and infantry which were at Hebron. By the 7th these had taken Bethlehem, and by the 8th British troops were before Jerusalem on the south and west, and within a mile and a half of its walls.The Turkish garrison did not await the attack. In the night preceding Sunday, the 9th December, the day of the festival of the Hanookah, which commemorates the recapture of the Temple by Judas Maccabæus, detachments of broken Turkish soldiers poured in at the western or Jaffa Gate, while an outgoing stream flowed eastward across the valley of Jehoshaphat. Early in the morning the enemy sent out a white flag of surrender, and before noon British patrols were in the city.Two days later Sir Edmund Allenby entered by the Jaffa Gate. Close by was the breach made in the walls to admit the German Emperor when he made his foolish pilgrimage in 1898. Far different was the entry of the British general. It was a clear, bright day, and the streets and housetops were thronged with black-coated, tarbushed Syrians and Levantines, picturesquely-clad peasants from the near villages, and Arabs from the fringes of the desert. There was no display of bunting and no bell-ringing or firing of salutes. On foot, accompanied only by his Staff, the commanders of the French and Italian detachments, and the military attachés of France, Italy, and the United States, he was received by the newly appointed Military Governor of the city, and a guard representing all the nationalities engaged in the campaign. He turned to the right into the Mount Zion quarter, and at the Citadel, at the base of the ancient Tower of David, his proclamation was read to the people.Then he quietly left the city. Yet no conqueror had ever entered it with more prestige. For centuries there had been current an Arab prophecy that a deliverer should come from the West, and in 1898 the people of Palestine had asked if the Kaiser was indeed the man. But the prophecy foretold that such would not be the manner of his coming, for the true saviour would bear the name of a Prophet of God, and would enter Jerusalem on foot, and that he would not appear till the Nile flowed into Palestine. To the peasants of Judæa the prophecy now seemed to be fulfilled, for the name of the English general was in Arabic "the Prophet," and his men had come into the land bringing with them the waters of Egypt.
CHAPTER XV.
THE LAST BATTLE.
By the 25th of September the German armies were back on the great line devised by Hindenburg in the autumn of 1916. The one chance left to them was to hold out there during the winter, in the hope that they might be able to bargain with the Allies. If the Allies attacked, there were two sections which Ludendorff viewed with anxiety. One was his left wing on the Meuse, where, if the Allies broke through, the Hindenburg Line would be turned on its flank. The other was the German centre from Douai to St. Quentin, the main Hindenburg Line, which was not only the fortress where he hoped to pass the winter, but the one protection of the great railway from Lille by Valenciennes to Mezières, on which his whole position depended. He therefore laboured to keep his left and centre as strong as possible; for, in spite of his experience in August and September, he could not conceive the possibility of an assault on every section.
For Foch this was to be the crowning battle of the war. If he could break through the German centre, and at the same time turn the German left, defeat would stare the enemy in the face, and there would be victory long before Christmas. If the Americans on the Meuse succeeded, they would make retreat imperative; but if Haig in the centre succeeded, he would make retreat impossible, and disaster must follow. The British were assigned the most difficult part. They had to attack in the area where the enemy defences were most highly organized and his forces strongest. If the Hindenburg Line held, the German courage might yet recover, and a new era of resistance begin. Haig's armies had already borne the heaviest share of the summer fighting, and every division had been sorely tried. Yet the attempt must be made, for it was the essential part of the whole strategy, and the measure of difficulty was the measure of the honour in which Foch held the fighting qualities of his British allies.
In deciding to make the attack, and to break the Hindenburg Line at one blow, Sir Douglas Haig stood alone. So difficult seemed the operation that the British Government were in the gravest doubts, and left the burden of responsibility upon the Commander-in-Chief. Even the French generals hesitated. The movement was undertaken on Sir Douglas Haig's initiative; he bore the whole burden of it; and therefore to him belongs the main credit of what was destined to be one of the decisive actions of the war.
Foch began on his right flank, and on 26th September the American army attacked on the Meuse. Next day, the 27th, Haig struck towards Cambrai. The two main defences of the Hindenburg Line were the Canal du Nord, and, behind it, the Scheldt Canal, the latter forming the outwork of the system. The principal German trenches were on the east bank; but on the west bank lay advanced posts, skilfully placed. In one section the canal passed through a tunnel 6,000 yards long, connected by shafts with the trenches above. In another part it lay in a deep cutting, the sides of which were honeycombed with dug-outs. The fortified zone was from 5 to 7 miles wide, and culminated on the east in what was known as the Beaurevoir Line, strongly wired double-trench lines of the same type as those on the western side.
On the 27th the Third Army under Byng, and the First Army under Horne, attacked on the left, crossed the Canal du Nord, and by the evening had reached the edge of the Scheldt Canal. Next day that canal had been partially crossed, and Cambrai was menaced from two sides. These events roused acute apprehension in the mind of the German Staff. The crossing of the Canal du Nord by Tanks on the backs of Tanks, and the passing of the Scheldt Canal at its northern end, had shaken their confidence in the outer Hindenburg defences. Next day, the 29th, came Haig's crowning blow. He struck at the strongest part, and it crumbled before him.
The attack was made by Rawlinson's Fourth Army. For two days his guns had not been silent; the enemy's garrisons were forced into tunnels and deep dug-outs, and the transport of food and ammunition was made all but impossible. The Germans were, therefore, in a state of confusion and fatigue when Haig attacked at 10 minutes to 6 on the morning of Sunday, the 29th.
This action was one of the greatest of the campaign, whether we regard the difficulties to be faced or the strategic value of the gains. Ludendorff was fighting for his last hope, and he had warned his men accordingly. One captured order reminded his troops that "Our present position is our winter position." Another ran: "There can be no question of going back a single step further. We must show the British, French, and Americans that any further attacks on the Hindenburg Line will be utterly broken, and that that Line is an impregnable rampart, with the result that the Entente Powers will condescend to consider the terms of peace which it is absolutely necessary for us to have before we can end the war." Germany was already busy with peace proposals, and she had nothing to bargain with except these defences in the West.
The key of the position was the angle of the Scheldt Canal where it bent east, with the village of Bellenglise in its bend, for if the canal were forced there the defences on either side would be turned. The work was entrusted to the 46th Division of North Midland Territorials, which had a long and brilliant record in the war. Theirs was an amazing performance. The canal before them was some 50 to 60 feet wide, the water in some parts being as much as 10 feet deep. and in others a mere trickle. It was a morning of thick fog when behind the tornado of the barrage the Midlanders, carrying life-belts and mats and rafts, advanced to the attack. Since parts of the canal were impassable, the crossing had to be made on a narrow front. Swimming or wading, and in some cases using foot-bridges which the enemy had left undestroyed, they passed the canal west and north of Bellenglise, swarmed up the farther bank, and took the German trenches beyond. Then, fanning out, they attacked in rear the positions to the south, capturing many batteries still in action. That day this one Division took over 4,000 prisoners and 70 guns.
It was the same everywhere else on the British front. The main Hindenburg defences had been breached, and all next day the Fourth Army pressed through the gap. The greatest battle of the war was now approaching its climax, and the whole 250 miles of front, from the Meuse to the sea, were ablaze. Ludendorff could not have withdrawn even if he had wished it. By 7th October Haig had broken through all the front Hindenburg Line, and was pressing upon the last defences. The time was therefore ripe for a great movement on the broadest possible front, which would destroy the whole zone. For, in the words of the official dispatch, "Nothing but the natural obstacles of a wooded and well-watered country lay between our armies and Maubeuge."
The great movement was begun by Haig early on Tuesday, 8th October. It was a wild, wet, autumn morning when Byng at 4.30 and Rawlinson at 5.10 attacked on a 17-mile front, while a French army extended the battle 4 miles farther south. The enemy resisted desperately, but nothing could stay the rush of the Allied infantry and the deadly penetration of their Tanks. By the evening Haig had advanced between 3 and 4 miles, and the Hindenburg zone was no more. The enemy was falling back to the Oise and the Selle, and for the moment his organization had been broken. Every road converging on Le Cateau was blocked with transport and troops, and our cavalry were galloping eastward to confuse the retreat.
Sir Douglas Haig's battle, which ended on the 10th October, may be considered the determining action in the campaign, and it has been described by Foch as "a classic example of military art." It had no defect either of plan or of execution. The enemy was fairly and clearly defeated in a field action. Foch had played on the whole front a crescendo of deadly music, and the enemy's strategic position was now so desperate that no local stand could save him. There was talk at the time of a German retreat to the Meuse. but it was an idle dream. Long before her broken divisions could reach that river Germany would be upon her knees.
PART III.
THE "SIDE SHOWS."
CHAPTER XVI.
THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI.
Early in 1915 it seemed to the British Government that, since there were no longer any flanks to be turned on the Western front, the lines in France and Flanders were settling down to a siege and a war of positions. They therefore looked elsewhere for some more promising area of battle, since, if the front door of a fortress is barred, there may be an entrance by a back door. The place which promised best was the narrow straits called the Dardanelles, which led from the Ægean into the Sea of Marmora, and so to Constantinople. There full use could be made of the British fleet. The capture of the Straits would involve the fall of the capital, and this might drive Turkey out of the war. Success there would bring over to our side the hesitating Balkan neutral states. It would open the road for Russia to import munitions of war, and to export her accumulated supplies of wheat. Lastly, Russia was being hard pressed, and had appealed to the Western Allies for aid, and her request could not be refused.
Accordingly, it was decided to make an attempt upon the Dardanelles. The first effort was made by ships alone. But the Turks had powerful forts on both sides of the straits which could not be destroyed by naval guns. It was clear that the Dardanelles could not be opened until the Gallipoli Peninsula on the north side was captured. Unfortunately, the naval attack had forewarned the enemy, and he had enormously strengthened his position on the Gallipoli heights.
The forces put at Sir Ian Hamilton's disposal for the enterprise were the 29th Division of regulars and Territorials, two divisions from Australia and New Zealand, the Royal Naval Division, and a French brigade. Of these troops only the 29th Division had had any experience in war. Sir Ian Hamilton decided that the only possible landing-places were the beaches at the south-west end of the Peninsula, and another beach at Gaba Tepe, some distance up the northern side. His aim was, by landing at the point, to fight his way to Krithia village, and carry the Achi Baba ridge, while the Australians from Gaba Tepe could turn the right wing of the Turkish defence. Once the Achi Baba heights were captured the Straits would be ours.
The day originally fixed for the attempt was 23rd April. But on the 20th a storm rose which for forty-eight hours lashed the Ægean. On the 23rd it abated, and that afternoon the first of the black transports began to move out of Mudros harbour. Next day the rest of the force followed, all in wild spirits for this venture into the unknown. They recalled to one spectator the Athenians departing for the Sicilian expedition, when the galleys out of sheer light-heartedness raced each other to Ægina.
The morning of Sunday, the 25th, was one of those which delight the traveller in April in the Ægean. A light mist fills the air before dawn, but it disappears with the sun, and all day there are clear skies, still seas, and the fresh, invigorating warmth of spring. At the butt end of Gallipoli there are five little beaches, originally nameless, but now for all time to be known by the letters affixed to them on the war maps of the British Army. Beginning from the left, there is Beach Y, and, a little south of it, Beach X. Rounding Cape Tekke, we reach Beach W, where a narrow valley opens between the headlands of Tekke and Helles. Here there is a broad semicircular stretch of sand. South of Helles is Beach V, a place of the same configuration as Beach W, but unpleasantly commanded by the castle and village of Sedd-el-Bahr at its southern end. Lastly, inside the Straits, on the east side of Morto Bay, is Beach S, close to the point of Eski Hissarlik. The landing at Gaba Tepe, on the north side of the peninsula, was entrusted to the Australian and New Zealand troops; that at the Helles beaches to the 29th Division, with some units of the Naval Division. It was arranged that simultaneously the French should land on the Asiatic shore at Kum Kale, to prevent the Turkish batteries from being brought into action against our men at Beaches V and S.
Let us assume that an aeroplane enabled us to move up and down the shores of the peninsula and observe the progress of the different landings. About one in the morning the ships arrive at a point 5 miles from the Gallipoli shores. At 1.20 boats are lowered, and the troops line up on the decks. Then they embark in the flotillas, and steam pinnaces begin to tow them shorewards in the hazy half-light before dawn. The Australians destined for Gaba Tepe are carried in destroyers which take them close in to the shore.
The operations are timed so that the troops reach the beaches at daybreak. Slowly and very quietly the boats and destroyers steal towards the land. A little before 5 an enemy's searchlight flares out. The boats are now in shallow water under the Gaba Tepe cliffs, and the men are leaping ashore. Then comes a blaze of rifle-fire from the Turkish trenches on the beach, and the men who have landed charge them with the bayonet. The whole cliff seems to leap into light, for everywhere trenches and caverns have been dug in the slopes. The fire falls most heavily on the men still in the boats, who have the difficult task of waiting as the slow minutes bring them shoreward.
The Australians do not linger. They carry the lines on the beach with cold steel, and find themselves looking up at a steep cliff a hundred feet high. In open order they dive into the scrub, and scramble up the loose yellow rocks. By a fortunate accident their landing is farther north than was intended, just under the cliffs of Sari Bair. At Gaba Tepe the long slope would have given the enemy a great advantage in defence; but here there is only the 40-foot beach and then the cliffs. He who knows the Ægean in April will remember those fringed sea walls and bare brown slopes. From a distance they look as arid as the Syrian desert, but when the traveller draws near he finds a paradise of curious and beautiful flowers—anemone, grape hyacinth, rock rose, asphodel, and amaryllis. Up this rock garden the Australians race, among the purple cistus and the matted creepers and the thickets of myrtle. They have left their packs at the foot, and scale the bluffs like chamois. It is an achievement to rank with Wolfe's escalade of the Heights of Abraham. Presently they are at the top, and come under the main Turkish fire. But the ground gives good cover, and they set about entrenching the crest of the cliffs to cover the boats' landing. This is the position at Sari Bair at 7 a.m.
As we journey down the coast we come next to Beach Y. There at 7 a.m. all is going well. The 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Plymouth battalion of the Naval Division, landing at a place which the enemy thought wholly impracticable, have without difficulty reached the top of the cliffs. At Beach X things are even better. TheSwiftsurehas plastered the high ground with shells, and the landing ship, theImplacable, has anchored close to the shore in six fathoms of water. With scarcely a casualty the 2nd Royal Fusiliers have gained the cliff line.
[image]The Landing Beaches at Gallipoli.
[image]
[image]
The Landing Beaches at Gallipoli.
There has been a harder fight at Beach W, between Tekke and Helles, where the sands are broader. The shore has been trenched throughout, and wired and mined almost to the water's edge, and in the scrub behind are hidden the Turkish snipers. Though our ships have bombarded the shore for three-quarters of an hour, they cannot clear out the enemy, and do not seem to have made much impression on the wire entanglements. The first troops have landed to the right under the cliffs of Cape Helles, and have reached the top, while a party on the left has scaled Cape Tekke. But the men of the 1st Lancashire Fusiliers who landed on the shore itself have had a fiery trial. They suffered heavily while still on the water, and on landing came up against unbroken lines of wire, while snipers and concealed machine-guns rained death on them. Here we have had heavy losses, and at 7 a.m. the landing has not yet succeeded.
The case is more desperate still at Beach V, under Sedd-el-Bahr. Here, as at Beach W, there are a stretch of sand, a scrubby valley, and flanking cliffs. It is the strongest of the Turkish positions, and troops landing in boats are exposed to every type of converging fire. A curious expedient has been tried. A collier, theRiver Clyde, with 2,000 men of the 2nd Hampshires, 1st Dublin Fusiliers, and 1st Munster Fusiliers on board, and eight boat-loads towed by steam pinnaces, approached close to the shore. The boat-loads—the rest of the Dublin Fusiliers—suffered horribly, for when they dashed through the shallows to the beach they were pinned to the ground by fire. Three lines of wire entanglements had to be forced, and a network of trenches. A bank of sand, 5 or 6 feet high, runs at the back, and under its cover the survivors have taken shelter. In the steel side of the ship doors have been cut, which open and disgorge men into the lighters alongside, like some new Horse of Troy. But a tornado of shot and shell rained on her, and of the gallant men who leaped from the lighters to the reef and from the reef to the sea, very few reached the land. Those who did have joined their fellows lying flat under the sand-bank on that beach of death. At Beach S, in Morto Bay, all has gone well. Seven hundred men of the 2nd South Wales Borderers have been landed from trawlers, and have established themselves on the cliff tops at the place called De Totts Battery.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI (continued).
Let us go back to Sari Bair and look at the position at noonday. We are prospering there, for more than 10,000 men are now ashore, and the work of disembarking guns and stores goes on steadily, though the fire from inland is still deadly. We see a proof of it in a boat full of dead men which rocks idly in the surf. The great warships from the sea send their heavy shells against the Turkish lines, sea-planes are "spotting" for them, and wireless stations are being erected on the beach. Firing from the ships is not easy, for the morning sun shines right in the eyes of the gunners. The Royal Engineers are making roads up the cliff, and supplies are climbing steadily to our firing line. On the turf of the cliff top our men are entrenched, and are working their way forward.
Unfortunately the zeal of the Australians has outrun their discretion, and some of them have pushed on too far. They have crossed three ridges, and have got to a fourth ridge within sight of the Straits. In that broken country such an advance is certain death, and the rash attack has been checked with heavy losses. The wounded are being brought in, and it is no light task getting them down the cliffs on stretchers, and across the beach and the bullet-splashed sea to the warships. Remember that we are holding a position which is terribly conspicuous to the enemy, and all our ammunition and water and food have to be dragged up these breakneck cliffs. Still, the first round has been won, Indian troops are being landed in support, and we are firmly placed at Sari Bair.
As we move down the coast we find that all goes well at Beach X, and that the troops there are working their way forward, but that at Beach Y the Scottish Borderers are being heavily counter-attacked and are making little progress. TheImplacablehas knocked out of action a Turkish battery at Krithia which gave much annoyance to our men at Beach X. At Beach W we have improved our position. We have cleared the beach and driven the Turks out of the scrub at the valley foot, and the work of disembarking men and stores is proceeding. Our right wing—the 4th Worcesters—is working round by the cliffs above Cape Helles to enfilade the enemy who are holding Beach V, where our men are still in deadly jeopardy.
The scene at Beach V is strange and terrible. From the deep water theCornwallisand theAlbionare bombarding the enemy at Sedd-el-Bahr, and the 15-inch shells from theQueen Elizabethare screaming overhead. The Trojan Horse is still lying bow on against the reefs, with her men unable to move, and the Turkish howitzers playing on her. If a man shows his head he is picked off by sharpshooters. The troops we have landed lie flat on the beach under cover of the sand ridge, unable to advance or retreat, and under a steady tornado of fire. At Beach S things are satisfactory.
Meantime the French landing at Kum Kale has achieved its purpose. Originally timed for 6 a.m., it did not take place till 9.30. They had a skirmish with the Turks, partly on the height at Kum Kale, and partly on the Trojan plain. Then they advanced along the swell of ground near the coast as far as Yeni Shehr. Next evening they re-embarked and joined our right wing at Beach S. They took 500 prisoners, and could have taken more had there been room for them in the boats. The Turk, who showed himself a dauntless fighter, surrendered with great good-humour when the game was up. He had no crusading zeal in the business.
As darkness fell on that loud Sabbath, the minds of the Allied Staff may well have been anxious. We had gained a footing, but no more, and it was but a precarious lodgment. The complexity and strength of the enemy's defence far surpassed our expectation. He had tunnelled the cliffs, and created a wonderful and intricate trench system, which took full advantage of the natural strength of the ground. The fire from our leviathans on the deep was no more effective against his entrenched positions than it had been against the forts of the Straits.
Let us resume our tour of the beaches about 10 o'clock on the morning of the 26th. At Sari Bair the Australians are facing a counter-attack. It lasts for two hours, and is met by a great bombardment from our ships. The end comes when, about noon, the Australians and New Zealanders advance with the bayonet, and drive back the enemy. But all that day there is no rest for our troops, who are perfecting their trenches under a deluge of shrapnel. Their flanks are indifferently secured, and they have but the one landing-place behind them, from which their front line is scarcely 1,000 yards distant. They are still clinging precariously to the coast scarp.
At Beach Y things have gone badly. Our men there had advanced during the Sunday afternoon, and had been outflanked and driven back to the cliff edge. The Scottish Borderers lost their commanding officer and more than half their men. It was decided to re-embark and move the troops to Beach X, and as we pass the retreat is going on successfully under cover of the ship's fire. At Beach X there has been a hard struggle. Last night we were strongly attacked there, and driven to the very edge of the cliffs, where we hung on in rough shelter trenches. This morning we are advancing again, and making some way.
At Beach W, too, there has been a counter-attack. Yesterday afternoon our right wing there, which tried to relieve the position on Beach V by an enfilading attack on the enemy, got among wire, and was driven back. During the night the Turks came on in force, and we were compelled to fling our beach parties into the firing line, bluejackets and sappers armed with whatever weapons they could find. This morning the situation is easier, we have landed more troops, and are preparing to move forward.
At Beach V the landing is still in its first stage. Men are still sheltering on the deadly beach behind the sandbank. We have gained some positions among the ruins which were once Sedd-el-Bahr, but not enough to allow us to proceed. Even as we look a final effort is beginning, in which the Dublin Fusiliers and the Munster Fusiliers distinguish themselves, though it is hard to select any for special praise among the splendid battalions of the 29th Division. It continues all morning, most gallantly directed till he fell by Lieutenant-Colonel Doughty-Wylie of the Headquarters Staff, and about 2 p.m. it is successful. The main Turkish trenches are carried, the debris of the castle and village are cleared, and the enemy is in retreat. The landing can now go forward, and the men, who for thirty-two hours have been huddled behind the sandbank, enduring torments of thirst and a nerve-racking fire, can move their cramped limbs and join their comrades.
By the morning of Tuesday, the 27th, all the beaches—except Beach Y, which had been relinquished—were in working order, and the advance could proceed. Next morning it began, and by the evening of the 28th we had securely won the butt of the peninsula, and our front ran from 3 miles north-west of Cape Tekke to a mile north of Eski Hissarlik.
So ended the opening stage of the Gallipoli campaign—the Battle of the Landing. It was a fight without a precedent. There had been landings—such as Abercromby's at Aboukir and Wolfe's at the cove west of Louisburg—fiercely contested landings, in our history, but none on a scale like this. Sixty thousand men, backed by the most powerful navy in the world, attacked a shore which nature seemed to have made impregnable, and which was held by not inferior numbers of the enemy, in positions prepared for months, and supported by the latest modern artillery. The mere problem of transport was sufficient to deter the boldest. Every rule of war was set at nought. On paper the thing was impossible, as the Turkish army orders announced. According to the text-books no man should have left the beaches alive. We were fighting against a gallant enemy who was at his best in defence and in this unorthodox type of battle. That our audacity succeeded was due to the unsurpassable fighting quality of our men—the Regulars and Territorials of the 29th Division, the Naval Division, and not least to the dash and doggedness of the Australasian corps. The Gallipoli campaign was to end in failure, but, whatever be our judgment on its policy or its consequences, the Battle of the Landing must be acclaimed as a marvellous, an unparalleled feat of arms.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DEPARTURE FROM GALLIPOLI.
By September 1915 it was clear that the Gallipoli expedition could not succeed. All summer the hopeless struggle had continued for the heights of the peninsula. In July reinforcements arrived, and in August these new divisions, together with the Anzacs,[#] made an attack, that of the left wing at Suvla Bay being designed to turn the enemy flank. This supreme effort failed. There was no chance of further reserves, for the entry of Bulgaria into the war meant that the Allies must send troops to Salonika to help Serbia if possible, and in any case to protect the northern frontier of Greece. Only one course was possible—to get off the peninsula as best we could.
[#] So called from the initial letters of the first Australasian Corps—"Australian and New Zealand Army Corps."
After much discussion it was decided to evacuate the positions at Suvla and Anzac, and to retain those at Cape Helles. Nearly everybody concerned in the matter assumed that this would entail a heavy loss. Many estimated it at 15 per cent., and the most hopeful were prepared for the loss of at least one division. An embarkation in the face of the enemy had always meant a stiff rearguard fight and many casualties.
On the 8th December Sir Charles Monro, who was then in command of the British troops in the Ægean, issued orders for evacuation. The difficulties were enormous. It was a question of embarking not a division or two, but three army corps; it was impossible to move them all at once with the available transports; there must be a gap between the operations, and this meant that the enemy would probably be forewarned of the later movements. Moreover, a lengthy embarkation put us terribly at the mercy of the winter weather. Even a mild wind from the south or south-west raised a swell that made communication with the beaches precarious.
The plan was to move the war material, including the heavy guns, by instalments during a period of ten days, working only at night. A large portion of the troops would also be got off during these days, certain picked battalions being left to the last. Everything was to be kept normal during the daylight, and every morning before daybreak the results of the night's work must be hidden. Success depended upon two things mainly—fine weather and secrecy.
From the 8th December onward the troops, night after night, watched the shrinkage of their numbers. There was a generous rivalry as to who should stay till the last—a proof of spirit, when we remember that every man believed that the rearguard was doomed to death or capture. Soon only those in the prime of health and strength were left; all the weak and sickly had gone aboard the transports, which nightly stole in and out of the moonlit bays. Soon the heavy batteries had gone. Then the field guns began to disappear, leaving only enough to keep up the daily pretence of bombardment. It was an eerie business for the last battalions as they heard their protecting guns rumbling shoreward in the darkness. Then the horses and motor-cars were also shipped, and by Friday, the 17th December, very few guns were left. To the Turkish observers the piles of boxes on the beaches looked as if fresh supplies had been landed and we were preparing to hold the place indefinitely.
The weather was warm and clement, with light moist winds and a low-hanging screen of cloud. Coming in the midst of an Ægean winter it seemed to our men a direct interposition of Providence. It was like the land beyond the North Wind, which Elizabethan mariners believed in, where he who pierced the outer crust of the Polar snows found a country of roses and eternal summer. No fisherman ever studied the weather signs more anxiously than did the British commanders during these days. Hearts sank when the wind looked like moving to the west. But the weather held, and when the days fixed for the final embarkation arrived, the wind was still favourable, skies were clear, and the moon was approaching its full. Nature had joined the daring conspiracy.
On Saturday, the 18th December, only a few picked battalions held the Suvla front. The final embarkation had been fixed for the two succeeding nights. The evening fell in a perfect calm. The sea was still as a mill-pond, and scarcely a breath of wind blew in the sky. Moreover, a light blue mist clothed all the plain of Suvla, and a haze shrouded the moon. At 6 p.m. the crews of the warships went to action stations, and in the darkness the transports stole into the bay. Not a shot was fired. In dead quiet, showing no lights, the transports moved in and out. Every unit found its proper place. By 1 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, the 19th, the bay lay empty in the moonlight.
That Sunday was one of the most curious in the war. Our lines looked exactly as they had done during the past four months. We kept up our usual fire and received the Turkish answer, but had any body of the enemy chosen to attack they would have found the trenches held by a mere handful. There were 20,000 Turks on the Suvla and Anzac fronts, and 60,000 in immediate reserve. Had they known it, they had before them the grand opportunity of the campaign. Night again fell with the same halcyon weather. The transports—destroyers, trawlers, picket boats, every kind of craft—slipped once again into the bay, and before midnight the last guns had been got on board. By 3.30 a.m. the last of the troops were on the beach, and long before the dawn broke all were aboard. One man had been hit in the thigh by a bullet, but that was the only casualty.
[image]Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula.
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Evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula.
The operations at Anzac were conducted on the same lines. The beaches at Suvla were 5 miles from the enemy and open to observation; at Anzac, in places they were less than 2 miles distant, but were concealed from view under the steep seaward bluffs. Some of our gun positions there were on dizzy heights, down which a gun could only be brought part by part. The work was brilliantly performed. On the Saturday night three-fifths of the entire force were got on board the transports. On Sunday night the rest were embarked, with two men wounded as the total casualties. By 5.30 a.m. on Monday morning the last transports moved away from the coast, leaving the warships to follow.
Then on the 12 miles of beach, from Suvla Burnu to Gaba Tepe, there was seen one of the strangest spectacles of the campaign. The useless stores left behind had been piled in great heaps on the shores and drenched with petrol. Before the last men left parties of Royal Engineers set time fuses. About 4 a.m. on the Monday morning the fires were alight, blazing most fiercely near Suvla Point. As the beach fires flared up, the enemy, thinking some disaster had befallen us, shelled the place to prevent us extinguishing the flames. The warships shelled back, and all along that broken coast great pillars of fire flared to heaven like giant beacons in some strife of the Immortals. Up to 8 o'clock picket boats were still collecting stragglers; by 9 a.m. all was over, and the last warship steamed away from the coast which had been the grave of so many high hopes and so many gallant men.
We were just in time. That night the weather broke, and a furious gale blew from the south which would have made embarkation impossible. Rain fell in sheets and quenched the fires, and soon every trench at Suvla and Anzac was a torrent. Great seas washed away the landing stages. The puzzled enemy sat still and waited. He saw that we had gone, but he distrusted the evidence of his eyes. History does not tell what fate befell the first Turks who penetrated into our empty trenches, or what heel first tried conclusions with the hidden mines.
The success—the amazing success—of the Suvla and Anzac evacuation made the position at Cape Helles more difficult. No one believed that a similar performance would be possible there after the enemy had been so fully warned; but on the 27th December it was decided to evacuate Helles, and the work went on during the last days of the month and the first week of the new year. On Friday, January 7, 1916, there was a Turkish attack, which the few men remaining managed to repel. Next day, Saturday, the 8th, was calm and fine, and all was ready for the final effort.
About 4 o'clock in the afternoon the weather changed. A strong south-westerly wind blew up; by 11 p.m. it increased to a gale of 35 miles an hour. This storm covered our movements from the enemy, but it nearly made retirement impossible. On some beaches the piers were washed away and no troops could be embarked. Nevertheless by 3.30 the last men were on board.
All night the Turks gave no sign, but when the transports had moved off the stores left behind were fired simultaneously by time fuses. Red lights instantly burned along the enemy lines, and a bombardment began which continued till sunrise. The Turks proclaimed that the retreat had been attended with desperate losses and great captures of guns. The claim was an absurd falsehood. We blew up and left behind the ruins of seventeen old worn-out pieces. Our total casualties at Helles amounted to one man wounded.
To avoid the disastrous consequences of a defeat is, as a military operation, usually more difficult than to win a victory. There is less chance of the high spirit of the attack, for such is the generosity of the human spirit that safety is less of an incentive to effort than the hope of victory. To embark so great an army secretly and without loss in mid-winter was an extraordinary achievement. It was made possible only by an almost miraculous series of favourable chances, and by the perfect organization and discipline of our men. We had failed at Gallipoli, but we had escaped the worst costs of failure. We had defeated the calculations of the enemy and upset every precedent.
Across the ribbon of the Dardanelles, on the green plain of Troy, the most famous war of the ancient world had been fought. The European shores had now become a no less classic ground of arms. If the banks of Scamander had seen men strive desperately with fate, so had the heights of Achi Baba and the loud beaches of Helles. Had the fashion continued of linking the gods with the strife of mankind, what strange myth might not have sprung from this rescue of the British troops in the teeth of winter gales and uncertain seas I It would have been rumoured, as of old at Troy, that Poseidon had done battle for his children.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM.
At the outset of the war the conquest of Egypt was an important aim of the Turkish Government and their German masters. But early in 1915 the Turkish invasion was scattered on the banks of the Suez Canal, and hopes of an easy victory were shattered. Nevertheless, the defence of Egypt remained an anxious problem for Britain. That country was the base both for Gallipoli and for Mesopotamia, and moreover, as Moltke pointed out long before, was the key of Britain's Eastern possessions. It was soon realized that Egypt could not be properly defended on the Canal, but only on the Palestine frontier, beyond the Sinai Desert.
During 1915 and 1916 Turkey and Germany projected many schemes for an Egyptian invasion, and the British generals in Egypt were no less busy. If the war was to be carried into Palestine railways and water pipes must be laid across the desert. Slowly the British front crept eastward. The Turks were defeated in various desert battles, and in the spring of 1917 the British army crossed the frontier of Palestine.
The British purpose had somewhat changed. The offensive had been substituted for the defensive. So far as possible it was desired to do in Palestine what Sir Stanley Maude was doing in Mesopotamia—to pin down large Turkish forces, and so alarm Turkey about the safety of certain key points in her territory that she would demand aid from Germany and thus confuse the plans of the German General Staff.
The land from the Wadi el Arish—the ancient "River of Egypt"—to the Philistian Plain had for 2,600 years been a cockpit of war. Sometimes a conqueror from the north or the south met the enemy in Egypt or in Syria, but more often the decisive fight was fought in the gates. Up and down the strip of seaward levels marched the great armies of Egypt and Assyria, while the Jews looked fearfully down from their barren hills. In the Philistian Plain Sennacherib smote the Egyptian hosts in the days of King Hezekiah, only to see his army melt away under the stroke of the "angel of the Lord." At Rafa Esarhaddon defeated Pharaoh, and added Egypt and Ethiopia to his kingdoms. At Megiddo, or Armageddon, Josiah was vanquished by Pharaoh Necho, who in turn was routed by Nebuchadnezzar. At Ascalon, during the Crusades, Godfrey of Bouillon defeated the Egyptians, and 150 years later that town fell to the Mameluke Sultan after the battle of Gaza. In this gate of ancient feuds it now fell to Turkey's lot to speak with her enemies.
But at first the British advance was checked. In March and April 1917 two battles were fought at Gaza—two frontal attacks which failed. During the summer Sir Edmund Allenby was appointed to the chief command, and slowly and patiently he perfected his plans. He saw that a direct attack on Gaza was likely to fail, but far to the east he observed a weak point in the enemy front where the town of Beersheba constituted a detached and separate defensive system. If Beersheba could be taken, the whole Gaza position could be turned on the flank.
Beersheba was duly taken at the end of October 1917, and on the 7th November Gaza followed. The enemy suffered severely, and was in full retreat, almost in flight. Sir Edmund Allenby's objective was now Jerusalem, and his problem was less one of manoeuvres than of supply. His troops would advance just as fast as water and food could be brought up behind them.
[image]FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY(VISCOUNT ALLENBY OF MEGIDDO).
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FIELD-MARSHAL SIR EDMUND ALLENBY(VISCOUNT ALLENBY OF MEGIDDO).
The advance was made in two main directions—one from Hebron due north towards Bethlehem; the other by the coastal plain, aiming at the junction where the Jerusalem railway joined the main line to Damascus. The Turkish army was split into two parts, retreating in different directions. Though Enver came from Constantinople and Falkenhayn from Aleppo it was difficult for them to devise a defence. Allenby seized Jaffa, and then swung eastward into the Judæan highlands. Now the progress became slow, while squalid little villages, whose names are famous throughout the whole Christian world, fell to the British troops. On the 30th November the British line had the shape of a sickle, with the centre of the curve flung far forward towards Jerusalem, and it was necessary to bring up the handle, which consisted of the cavalry and infantry which were at Hebron. By the 7th these had taken Bethlehem, and by the 8th British troops were before Jerusalem on the south and west, and within a mile and a half of its walls.
The Turkish garrison did not await the attack. In the night preceding Sunday, the 9th December, the day of the festival of the Hanookah, which commemorates the recapture of the Temple by Judas Maccabæus, detachments of broken Turkish soldiers poured in at the western or Jaffa Gate, while an outgoing stream flowed eastward across the valley of Jehoshaphat. Early in the morning the enemy sent out a white flag of surrender, and before noon British patrols were in the city.
Two days later Sir Edmund Allenby entered by the Jaffa Gate. Close by was the breach made in the walls to admit the German Emperor when he made his foolish pilgrimage in 1898. Far different was the entry of the British general. It was a clear, bright day, and the streets and housetops were thronged with black-coated, tarbushed Syrians and Levantines, picturesquely-clad peasants from the near villages, and Arabs from the fringes of the desert. There was no display of bunting and no bell-ringing or firing of salutes. On foot, accompanied only by his Staff, the commanders of the French and Italian detachments, and the military attachés of France, Italy, and the United States, he was received by the newly appointed Military Governor of the city, and a guard representing all the nationalities engaged in the campaign. He turned to the right into the Mount Zion quarter, and at the Citadel, at the base of the ancient Tower of David, his proclamation was read to the people.
Then he quietly left the city. Yet no conqueror had ever entered it with more prestige. For centuries there had been current an Arab prophecy that a deliverer should come from the West, and in 1898 the people of Palestine had asked if the Kaiser was indeed the man. But the prophecy foretold that such would not be the manner of his coming, for the true saviour would bear the name of a Prophet of God, and would enter Jerusalem on foot, and that he would not appear till the Nile flowed into Palestine. To the peasants of Judæa the prophecy now seemed to be fulfilled, for the name of the English general was in Arabic "the Prophet," and his men had come into the land bringing with them the waters of Egypt.