The Great War
Page 24
On 8 August, the IX Corps remained stagnant, unable to gather the impetus to get themselves up on to the dominating ridges. Instead they fiddled about, reorganising and preparing to advance – but not actually advancing. The senior officers were bereft of command skills, the troops were exhausted. Instead of driving on his subordinates, Stopford accepted their excuses, while Major General Frederick Hammersley, in charge of the 11th Division at Suvla Bay, planned an advance only at daybreak on 9 August. At last Hamilton lifted his eyes from the Anzac debacle to realise that his subsidiary operations were also collapsing into oblivion. A desperate Hamilton resolved to intervene directly and went to Suvla to meet Stopford and Hammersley. Taking command of the situation, he ordered an immediate attack by the only troops immediately to hand. So an utterly hopeless attempt to take Tekke Tepe was launched. The staff work was non-existent, no one knew where anybody else was and in the confusion just one battalion – the 6th East Yorkshires – was sent off in time. They had been holding a recently captured foothill, Scimitar Hill, but were recalled and despatched on their way without a passing thought. As they advanced up the hill they were overwhelmed by a furious Turkish counter-attack sweeping down around them.
The Suvla operations were effectively over: the Turks would control the hills. But Hamilton kept on raising the stakes. The 53rd Division was thrown into action piecemeal with the objective of recapturing the selfsame Scimitar Hill that had been so precipitously abandoned the night before. After two days of chaos the division was emasculated as a fighting force. Next to arrive was the 54th Division. It was decided to employ them in trying to clear the main Suvla Plain of Turkish snipers by the kind of ‘beating’ operation familiar to gamekeepers. The 163rd Brigade would advance stretched thinly right across the plain and flush out the snipers. It didn’t quite work like that. The Turks simply fell back and indeed in some places enveloped the advancing British – most famously, a party from the 1/5th Norfolks who passed into legend and unmarked graves. This forestalled any more attempts to improve the IX Corps position until the 10th and 54th Divisions were ordered to advance along Kiretch Tepe and Kidney Hill on the afternoon of 15 August. Another disaster. The Turks just shot them down as the troops stumbled through rough scrub towards well-concealed positions. By now the writing was on the wall for Stop-ford and Hamilton was busy exculpating himself from all blame. His neat aphorism has gone down in legend: ‘No man putteth new wine into old bottles so the combination between new troops and old generals seems to be proving unsuitable.’12 Kitchener wielded the axe as Stopford and his divisional generals and brigadiers were savagely culled, while Major General Sir Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle was temporarily moved from the 29th Division to command the IX Corps.
Despite the evidence of defeat all around him, de Lisle managed to convince himself that reinforcements from his old 29th Division, coupled with the arrival of the dismounted Yeomanry of the perversely named 2nd Mounted Division, gave him enough leeway to consider a major attack. By now the horizons had shrunk to a futile squabble over the foothills that guarded the way to the hills in front of Tekke Tepe, but the battle of 21 August was to be the largest engagement in the whole campaign. After an inadequate bombardment the infantry went over the top.
At 3 pm the Battalion shoved off 700 strong. The furthest any got was 500 yards and none came back from there. They all got mown down by machine gun fire. We lost nine officers and nearly 400 men. The Turks shelled us very heavily and the whole country, which is covered with gorse, caught fire. This split up the attack and parties got cut up. Many of our wounded were burnt alive and it was as nasty a sight as I ever want to see. Our Headquarters was very heavily shelled and then the fire surrounded the place and we all thought we were going to be burnt alive. Where the telephone was, the heat was appalling. The roar of the flames drowned the noise of the shrapnel, and we had to lie flat at the bottom of the trench while the flames swept over the top. Luckily both sides didn’t catch simultaneously, or I don’t know what would have happened. After the gorse was all burnt, the smoke nearly asphyxiated us! All this time our battalion was being cut up in the open and it really was very unpleasant trying to send down calm messages to the brigade headquarters, while you were lying at the bottom of the trench like an oven, expecting to be burnt every minute, and knowing your battalion was getting hell a hundred yards away. The telephone wires finally fused from the heat.13
Captain Guy Nightingale, 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers
The 29th Division was slaughtered. Alongside them the 11th Division fared no better. Then the last throw of the dice. The dismounted Yeomanry of the 2nd Mounted Division began their long march – in full view of the Turkish gunners – across the Salt Lake. Casualties were inevitable and on reaching Chocolate Hill they stumbled into action, disorientated, and the pace of killing redoubled. That night was a miserable frenzy of death and heroism on both sides. But the conclusion was certain: the British achieved nothing for the loss of 5,300 casualties.
THE GALLIPOLI CAMPAIGN was now all but over, although its death throes would take another four months. The French began to drift away, scenting defeat and preferring to devote their resources to the campaign building in Salonika. The Bulgarians had mobilised ready to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers in September 1915 and it was soon apparent that without Allied intervention the Serbs were doomed, so a force had been despatched to the Macedonian town of Salonika. The nearest source of troops was Gallipoli and thus Hamilton lost both the French 2nd Division, CEO and the 10th Division.
The Turks sat on the hills above the Allied lines at Helles, Anzac and Suvla, from where they could look down in total control of the situation. But still Hamilton refused to accept defeat. An unscrupulous Australian journalist, Keith Murdoch, sent a sharply critical unofficial letter to the Australian and British Prime Ministers, which caused a considerable degree of concern as to the handling of the campaign, which was then exacerbated by the whispering campaign led by Stopford on his return to London. When Hamilton refused to even consider evacuation he was summarily dismissed on 14 October and replaced by Lieutenant General Sir Charles Monro. This veteran of the Western Front visited the Gallipoli bridgeheads and was frankly appalled by what he saw. The tactical state of affairs was farcically bad, the logistical situation impossible. Monro recommended a swift evacuation but Kitchener demurred: he was afraid of triggering a reaction within Muslim parts of the Empire to such a humiliating defeat by the Turks. The old warrior decided to take a look for himself and in November came out to tour the battlefields. What he saw shocked him and he too recommended evacuation. The British government hesitated, fearing the casualties that a botched evacuation could cause, but in the end they had to acquiesce.
Ironically, the final evacuation was conducted brilliantly. The staff planned with a marked attention to detail, exemplary innovation and a realistic approach to what was and wasn’t possible. It was late in the day but at least staff functions were belatedly beginning to improve as they learnt their job. First Anzac and Suvla were evacuated on 19–20 December, then the much more dangerous task of evacuating Helles was carried out under the very noses of the Turks on the night of 8–9 January 1916.
Apologists for the Gallipoli Campaign have long tried to boast of what could have been, with a heavy emphasis on ‘if only’. This fails to recognise that the Allies fought the campaign with levels of naval and military support that were considered acceptable until the Turks defeated them. Time and time again Hamilton promised success; again and again he failed. Gallipoli was one of a series of military ‘Easterner’ adventures launched without proper analysis of the global strategic situation, without consideration of the local tactical situation, ignoring logistical realities, underestimating the strength of the opposition and predicated on a hugely optimistic assessment of the military capabilities of their own troops. Not for nothing is hubris regarded as the ‘English disease’. But the Gallipoli Campaign was a serious matter: vital resources had been drawn away fro
m where it really mattered. The Turks were all but helpless if left on their own. They had tried to launch an ambitious attack across the Sinai Desert on the Suez Canal but had been easily thwarted. Gallipoli achieved nothing but to provide the Turks with the opportunity to slaughter British and French troops in copious numbers in a situation in which everything was in the defenders’ favour. Meanwhile, back on the Western Front, was the real enemy: the German Empire. Men, guns and munitions were in the process of being deployed to Gallipoli during the first British offensive at Neuve Chapelle; they were still there when the Germans launched their deadly gas attack at Ypres in April, during the debacles of Aubers Ridge and Festubert, and during the first ‘great push’ at the Battle of Loos in September 1915. At sea Jellicoe was facing the High Seas Fleet which could pick its moment to contest the ultimate control of the seas. This was the real war – Gallipoli was nothing but a foolish sideshow.
8
SALONIKA, 1915–18
‘These men of our Eastern Armies have had the dust and toil, without the laurel, of the race to victory.’1
Bishop of London Arthur Winnington-Ingram
THE SALONIKA CAMPAIGN HAD ITS GENESIS in the bold strategic action taken by the Germans to shore up the Austro-Hungarian position in the Balkans in 1915. This was bad news for the Serbians, who had hitherto been waging war with relative success against the Austro-Hungarian Army since the outbreak of war in 1914. By September it had become apparent to the Allies that only a show of force could prevent the Bulgarians from taking advantage of the situation by attacking Serbia. The question was, could such a demonstration be arranged? With the Austrian Navy a threat in the Adriatic and the absence of harbours capable of supporting any serious expeditionary force on the Albanian coast, this left only the Greek port of Salonika as a feasible base for the launch of such a campaign. Greece was both torn from within and fearful of being drawn actively into the war. Although technically victorious in the Balkan Wars, the Greeks had still suffered a painful experience which they would rather not repeat quite so soon. So, at the outbreak of the Great War, Greece remained neutral, although this did not prevent bitter internal political battles ensuing over which side it should favour. King Constantine naturally favoured the Central Powers, having been educated and carried out his military service in Germany; indeed, he was married to the Kaiser’s sister, Sophia. But the Greek Prime Minister, Eleutherios Venizelos had long favoured the Allies and saw their intervention as a means of expanding Greek influence in the Balkans. As the threat to Serbia became more acute and a Bulgarian intervention appeared more likely, the Allies attempted to bully Greece using Venizelos as the ‘inside man’ who made the initial offer to allow an Anglo-French force to land at Salonika. If the justification was the greater good, it was certainly not the interests of Greece that motivated the Allies.
For the Allies, to generate a suitable Salonika Expeditionary Force (SEF) to intervene in the Balkans was no easy matter. It was only the acceptance of the total failure of the Gallipoli operations that allowed the French to contribute their 156th Division, previously known as the 2nd Division (CEO), while the British sent the 10th Division commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Bryan Mahon. In overall command was the French General Maurice Sarrail. He was an interesting character, a politically left-leaning general who had done well during the opening campaigns in France in 1914, but who had then fallen foul of Joffre and had been dismissed in July 1915. Sarrail had some powerful friends, but also some equally powerful enemies, so the French military authorities considered that the command of the SEF would be an ideal compromise posting for him: it was a serious appointment, but a long way from the Western Front.
The first Allied troops began to disembark at Salonika port on 5 October 1915. Bulgaria had still not joined the war, but there was a more immediate complication in a violent disagreement between King Constantine and Venizelos over what in effect was a flagrant breech of Greek neutrality. The Greek prime minister was forced to resign and a prolonged period of political instability ensued. But in the end the Greeks offered no resistance to the Allies’ presence at Salonika. Yet what exactly were they there to do? When, on 6 October, Mackensen launched his offensive against Serbia, joined shortly afterwards by the Bulgarians, it was evident that whatever the SEF had been meant to achieve had been rendered redundant. Mahon had been given cautious orders from London, requiring him to stay close to Salonika pending the final decision of the Greek government as to whether to abandon neutrality, but Sarrail was determined to push inland anyway. He crossed the Serbian border on 15 October and advanced into the Vardar Valley with the intention of supporting the Serb forces. The most he could hope to achieve was to hold open a line of retreat for the Serbs. When the British finally moved forward, in early November, it was all far too little, too late, and, with hindsight, probably best not at all. The Serbian Army was already defeated, its remnants falling back towards the Adriatic coast. As they congregated in the small ports up and down the Albanian coast they were eventually to be rescued by the Royal Navy. Some 250,000 Serbian troops were evacuated to the Greek island of Corfu. It was a massive undertaking and must have appeared of little real military value as the emaciated Serbian scarecrows boarded the ships. Yet, given the chance to recover, new men would rise from what appeared like worthless dregs – some six Serbian divisions would eventually return to serve on the Salonika Front.
As the British and French fell back, they formed a line just inside the Greek border to try and hold back the Bulgarians. The British wanted to evacuate, but the French would not consider it. This attitude may seem inexplicable, given that a vital part of France was occupied by the German Army, but significant sections of the French political and military establishment considered the war there to be a hopeless stalemate and that another avenue must be taken to achieve victory. In this they were enthusiastically supported by the arch ‘Easterner’, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, who was quite obsessed with dreams of a breakthrough in the Balkans. In the end the French had their way and once again the British would ignore their better instincts in the cause of alliance warfare. The Salonika Front became a permanent fixture for the rest of the war: fighting the Bulgarians for reasons that seem opaque to this day. Clearly if they were to stay the Allies needed reinforcements, so the British 22nd, 26th, 27th, 28th and (temporarily) 60th Divisions were despatched, while the French allotted more and more reserves to the campaign until they had nine divisions serving in Salonika. The reconstituted Serbian divisions began to arrive from Corfu from April 1916. The Italians sent a division and even the Russians contributed a brigade. Sarrail was confirmed as commander of this Armée d’Orient. The truth of Clausewitz’s dictum ‘always direct [our] principal operation against the main body of the enemy army’ was to be demonstrated by the failure of the Allies to observe it.2 Despite all their efforts, the Allies still only had enough forces to defend themselves, and not enough to attack with much hope of success. As the Bulgarians were forbidden to press into Greece by the Germans, fearful of triggering direct Greek involvement in the war, there they would stay in a static oblivion that made a mockery of the fantasies of the ‘Easterners’.
Sarrail had his work cut out just building up the logistical framework within which his polyglot army could exist. Salonika itself was almost swamped as it was required to act simultaneously as a port, the main supply base depot and as a huge entrenched camp. Communications with the front lines were not good, with a paucity of roads and a long march beckoning for most of the newly arrived troops. The weather was also not conducive to the soldiers’ health: too hot in summer and far too bitterly cold in winter, especially in the mountain regions. There were also severe problems in controlling the endemic malaria which plagued the area. There was a plethora of pools, ponds and lakes, all of which provided the perfect habitat for the mosquitoes and any stagnant water soon became infested with their larvae. This was a concern that would endure throughout the campaign. Anti-malaria m
easures were vital, necessitating a constant vigilance in eradicating unnecessary standing water and regular issues of quinine to every man.