by Peter Hart
Second Lieutenant Raymond Weil, 39th Régiment d’Artillerie, 1st Division, CEO
The darkening scene was greatly complicated by the wavering of the French government, which promised four divisions of reinforcements for a possible Asiatic landing and then reversed the decision. General Joseph Joffre, the Commander in Chief of the French Army on the Western Front, had insisted that no further troops could be sent until after his September offensives there. The French commitment to Gallipoli began to ebb away as they switched their focus to countering the threat to Serbia, under attack from a combined Austo-Hungarian and German Army and further threatened from the rear by the mobilisation the Bulgarian Army in September 1915. This, coupled with the failure of Greece to enter the war in accordance with its treaty obligations to Serbia, meant that it would fall to Britain and France to provide an expeditionary force to defend Serbia. Suddenly Gallipoli was no longer a priority. Reinforcements must be sent to Salonika, forming a new front. Kitchener reacted quickly, ordering two divisions to be sent from Gallipoli. Thus the French 2nd Division and the 10th Division left the Peninsula for good in late September. In October hostilities commenced against Bulgaria. As in Gallipoli, there would be much confusion over the purpose, level of commitment and leadership of the Salonika force. Nothing had changed in the irrational strategic policy directions emanating from the respective governments of Britain and France in 1915. Hamilton railed against the decisions, but to no effect. He had had his chance.
THE TROOPS ON THE PENINSULA had lost any remaining faith in the future of their campaign. All they could do was sit in their trenches and think of what might have been. Many of their suppositions were disturbingly unrealistic, showing that they had not learnt any lessons on the superiority of the Turkish tactical position, the hardiness of their troops, the solidity of their leadership and their ease of access to reserves that could quickly reduce any small success of the Allies to dust with one well-timed counter-attack. Major Cecil Allanson was one such; his views combine a depressing realism with pure fantasy.
Generally, it would look now as if things were at a standstill and deadlock. It will cost us thousands if we are to break through the Turkish trenches which now envelop us and it will cost them more considerably, I trust, if they try to break through us. Winter is approaching: the weather at night is getting very cold, we hear no breath of fitting us out for the winter, and we shall have terrible sickness if they do not. I have no idea what the future holds forth, what our subsequent movements may be. I can only speak of the narrow front we hold, and one knows little of what goes on elsewhere. We have had our chance here, and we have missed it. Towering above us is the Sari Bair Ridge, on which we should be safely ensconced and are not, and had we held it Achi Baba and Krithia must have fallen. I never look up to those rugged heights without a sigh of bitter regret.4
Major Cecil Allanson, 1/6th Gurkha Rifles, 29th Indian Brigade
It is tempting to see the fate of Lieutenant Charles Lister as somehow symbolic of the campaign history: stationed at the British Embassy in Constantinople, he was present at the genesis of the war; then he was one of the happy band sailing to adventure with the RND in March 1915; he was wounded three times during the fruitless trench warfare at Helles; now as all hope faded he was fighting his own final battle aboard the hospital ship Gascon. Lister was as chipper as ever when he wrote home to his father, Lord Ribblesdale, on 26 August to tell him of his latest wounds.
Just think, I have been wounded once more, the third time. We were in a trench, observing the Turkish trenches, when suddenly they fired some shells into our trenches. I went along to see what had happened, got my people back into a bit of a trench they had had to leave, then went down the trench, thinking the show was over, and then got it, being struck in the pelvis and my bladder being deranged, and slight injuries in the legs and calves. I have been operated on, but am sketchy as to what has been done. I am on a hospital ship, comfy enough, but feeling the motion of it a good deal, and I have to be in bed and cannot change my position. The hours go slowly, as one does not feel very much up to reading. However, I got to sleep all right. I feel this will be a longish job, and I don’t know where I shall do my cure – perhaps Alexandria. My doctor is quite happy at the way things are going. The shell that hit me killed one man and wounded the others. Forgive this scrawl, but it’s not easy to write.5
Lieutenant Charles Lister, Hood Battalion, 1st Naval Brigade, RND
Sadly, the next letter to his father was from the hospital ship chaplain on 29 August.
He had very skilled attention and very careful nursing while on board, and was, I know, a wonderful patient. He never complained or even spoke of his wound, and if he had pain he bore it very bravely and patiently. But I believe that he did not have too much pain. We talked together sometimes, but he was easily tired, and one could not stay with him long. My great regret is that I did not know yesterday that he was so much worse until rather late, and when I went to see him he was unconscious. It is seldom comparatively that one sees a man in such command of himself, and so controlled. The books at his bedside spoke for his literary taste and the day before he died I lent him a copy of the poems of Rupert Brooke whom we both knew. As I write we are waiting for the boat to take his body ashore at Mudros, where the burial will take place tomorrow. He will lie almost within sound of the heavy guns.6
Chaplain Mayne, HMHS Gascon
The chaplain responsible for that burial was none other than Ernest Raymond, the man who would subsequently become the high priest of Gallipolian romanticism with the publication of his much-acclaimed novel Tell England in 1922. Here he had to perform the last rites as he supervised the burial of one of the beaux sabreurs he so revered.
As burial officer I went down to the little wooden jetty to receive them. They were lifted from a steam pinnace on to the jetty, each wrapped up in a grey army blanket which, holding tight to his figure, gave him the shape of an embalmed Egyptian. Each had pinned on to his breast some available scrap of paper, giving his name, regiment and religion, and no more. The Corporal in charge of my burial party said, ‘One of ’em’s an officer, Sir!’ and pointed to the longest figure of all; officers having to be buried in a different part of a cemetery from Other Ranks; so retaining their class distinction beyond the grave. With my record book in my hand I went to the officer’s body to enter his name. The paper pinned on to his breast chanced to be an envelope snatched in an orderly room or other office; and I read, ‘On His Majesty’s Service. Lieut., the Hon. Charles Lister.’ For Charles Lister and his companions in death a GS wagon drawn by two mules waited by the jetty. I sat with them in the wagon, and so did the Corporal and his burial party, as we jolted to the cemetery. We and the dead were the whole company. Our little army cemetery on Mudros East lay far behind the hills that rolled up from the great Lemnos harbour and held the white-tented hospitals in line abreast. It was a bare and lonely little acre on a stony plain within a fence of barbed wire. Of course there was no firing party or Last Post; only a silence among the empty hills.7
Chaplain Ernest Raymond, HMHS Gascon
And there Charles Lister remains to this day, buried in East Mudros Military Cemetery, his manifest potential cut short well before his prime.
WHETHER AT HELLES, SUVLA OR ANZAC the situation was fundamentally the same. The Turks occupied the high ground and the Allies sat sullenly below them, surviving as best they could and pondering the injustice of their fate.
This is the dullest war that ever was! So far none of the triumphs and victories that make wars so wonderful, so dramatic, so splendid. The events I have seen have been but boundlessly sanguinary. What suffering! What misery! What pathetic patience! Mechanism is destroying humanity. It is a pitiful spectacle! Out of the brain of man has sprung this monster that devours his genius! Genius has been engineered out of existence. An aeroplane is a miserable substitute for the mighty imagination of a Napoleon and vastly less efficient. And the reward of great courage is in ninety-nine c
ases out of a hundred – death!8
Major Claude Foster, 9th Worcestershire Regiment, 39th Brigade, 13th Division
All too aware of the lethal hidden dangers of the battlefield, many found it difficult to motivate themselves to do anything that might add to their troubles and, like Lieutenant George Hughes, they had learnt through bitter experience to keep their heads down, both literally and metaphorically.
All night long I would hear the ping of bullets against the sandbags which sometimes becomes a crack like a whip if it gets a stone. The first sensation is that one would not be the other side of those sandbags for all the threats of all the generals in the British Army. But one gains courage for the first week as a rolling stone gains impetus; after that one’s courage gradually oozes away again. But once volunteer to go out on patrol and the next night you are ordered to go and bomb the disused Turkish trench from one end to see whether there were any Turks in the other.9
Lieutenant George Hughes, 5th Dorsetshire Regiment, 34th Brigade, 11th Division
Gradually, as weeks turned into months, it became evident that survival was the only attainable goal at Gallipoli. For many this took the most practical of negotiations in their prayers: ‘Oh God, not in the belly or the balls!’10 as one soldier was heard to say while going over the top. All ranks at Gallipoli were vulnerable as everywhere was within range of shells.
At present I am ensconced in my dugout as there is a nasty strafe going on. Commanding Officers don’t cower they ‘ensconce’ but I don’t mind confessing that my ensconcement is just about as close to the front part of my dugout that I can jam myself.11
Major Norman Burge, Nelson Battalion, 1st Brigade, RND
Life at Gallipoli was nasty, brutish and often short. The conditions of service were such that everything seemed to conspire to make men ill.
I felt so very depressed and low spirited, I hardly knew what to do with myself. Somehow or other, I had developed an attack of influenza which made me very weak, and I had also contracted a cough, with a splitting headache. All this, combined with the reaction, made me feel right down ill and I would have given anything to have been at home just then, for there was not a single soul to sympathise with me, or to say one loving word to me, I had to bear it all alone. Ah! No one can possibly realise what this means, unless they have gone through it all; it is an awful experience. This is one of the great drawbacks in military service; it may be all right when you are strong and well, able to rough it; but when you are feeling so bad, and longing for some gentle hand to be laid upon your burning brow, and a soothing voice to speak words of sympathy and love, then is the time you miss your home and dear ones.12
Private Ridley Sheldon, 1/6th Manchester Regiment, 125th Brigade, 42nd Division
Lieutenant Norman King-Wilson was by this time the Medical Officer in charge of an advanced dressing station at Suvla. As he gazed at the queues of invalids lining up in front of him he was mortified to realise that he could not minister to them all or soon there would be no one left to fight.
They all looked so ill, poor devils, that it required a heart of stone to send the lighter cases, say of simple diarrhoea, back to duty. However, one had to remember the military exigencies, and my heart used to bleed as I watched some poor, diarrhoea-stricken, emaciated skeleton, with sunken lack-lustre eyes and unsteady gait, accept without murmur my decision that he must return to duty, pick up his kit and slowly return to the stinking, pestilence-stricken, ill-constructed trenches.13
Lieutenant Norman King-Wilson, 88th Field Ambulance, RAMC
Some men could stand it no longer and a few were driven to take matters into their own hands.
A rifle shot went off behind some bushes beside us, followed by howls from someone in agony. A soldier lay on his back with his rifle beside him, his left foot merely held on by his puttee. His comrades, I see, are convinced that this was an intentionally inflicted wound. I have never before seen a man shoot off more than a finger or toe, carrying off a foot shows that the man has plenty of pluck of a sort.14
Captain George Davidson, 89th Field Ambulance, RAMC
Out at sea were the hospital ships with their bright lights twinkling as a promised land of safety, comfort and hope for the future. All Gallipoli had to offer was unending misery, disease and the threat of death.
A thin, bright silver strip of moon hung in the transparent blue just over the hospital ship, which lay about a mile from the shore. Out of the darkness her lights shone with piercing radiance. You could not see the ship: only a high white light at the bow and stern, a row of green lights along her side, like a string of emeralds, with a great cross of red flaming in the centre, all reflected in gleaming streaks wavering in the water. It gave one the impression of a great fairy lantern, hung on the moon, shining with almost unearthly beauty.15
Chaplain John Ewing, 1/4th Royal Scots, 156th Brigade, 52nd Division
One of those evacuated was Private John Gallishaw of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment. His departure had a bitter postscript that soured his relief to have escaped from Suvla with his life intact.
The stretchers were laid across the boats, close to each other. Soon all the boats were filled. I could see the man on the stretcher to the right of me, but the one on the other side I could not see. I tried to turn my head but could not. The eyes of the man next to me were large with pain. I smiled at him, but instead of smiling back at me, his lip curled resentfully, and he turned over on his side so that he could face away from me. As he did, the blanket slipped from his shoulder, and I saw on his shoulder strap the star of a Second Lieutenant. I had committed the unpardonable sin: I had smiled at an officer as if I had been an equal, forgetting that he was not made of common clay. Once after that, when he turned his head, his eyes met mine disdainfully. That time I did not smile. I have often laughed at the incident since, but there on that boat I was boiling with rage. Not a word had passed between us, but his expression in turning away had been eloquent. I cursed him and the system that produced him.16
Private John Gallishaw, 1st Battalion, Royal Newfoundland Regiment, 88th Brigade, 29th Division
Increasing criticism and unhappiness spread among the troops as they realised that everything had gone wrong. Some soldiers blamed their own High Command for what they saw as gross incompetence.
We failed purely through bad management and the fat overfed headquarters people in their comfortable quarters on Lemnos and Imbros know nothing – or at any rate do nothing – to prevent what looks like an awful catastrophe facing us. I can’t help being a bit pessimistic tonight, but I feel as do all the others here that the mismanagement is criminal, and yet it is all smoothed over and the people in England are told nothing of it. If their eyes were opened, they would raise hell for some of our complacent superiors who get all the honours and put all the blame on the poor chaps who live like pigs here to cover up the mistakes of the authorities. So much for our English methods. We will probably muddle through in the end, but at what cost?17
Lieutenant Norman Tattersall, No. 13 Casualty Clearing Station, RAMC
These disillusioned feelings were exacerbated when news reached the Peninsula of strikes led by the trades unions back in Britain. Whatever the merits of the workers’ case there was little sympathy for them exhibited among the soldiers suffering such awful conditions and risking their lives for minimal wages.
We are fed up with the shirkers, at home. They earn more than a subaltern gets, and they can live in comfort and do their work without risk except of the recognised kind. Here one has to sweat and carry on, no matter what is happening, and the hours of work are anything up to 24 per day. It would do them good to be put in a bunch for 24 hours and be well shelled at a halfpenny a day, with no regular meals, no regular rest, and no roof over their heads – like our Tommies.18
Lieutenant Charles Cooke, Army Service Corps, 29th Division
The strikes awoke some of the deep political and class-based tensions that lurked just beneath the surface of British soci
ety.
I was awfully sick with the accounts in a speech by Lloyd George of the way ‘workers’ are hindering the production of munitions. English people really manage to produce some first-class swine without effort. These obstructers are every bit as bad as the Welsh miners. I hope Lloyd George’s pathetic references to his working-class home will have the desired effect. In the end I suppose it will be necessary to bribe the obstructers not to obstruct. My two co-staff officers are almost as bad – they can’t see the wood for the trees. I am becoming a rabid enthusiast for the public school educational system – with all its faults. Really I suppose, no amount of public school education would have turned my two hobble-de-hoys into gentlemen or their ideas – culled from middle-class homes – into those of gentlefolk. On any topic, especially where there is any question of honour and the like, their ideas are those I should have expected from the average monkey. I had no idea that such low standards existed among the manufacturing and town clerking classes.19
Captain Arthur Crookenden, Headquarters, 159th Brigade, 53rd Division
Lieutenant Clement Attlee, a prominent pre-war member of the Independent Labour Party and future prime minister, had already been evacuated with dysentery from Helles but had rejoined the 6th South Lancashires at Suvla, where he found that his socialist views made him stand out among his fellow officers. He enjoyed several pleasant evenings discussing the arcane ins-and-outs of union politics with some of his NCOs active in the trades unions during their civilian lives, but he found a far more combative approach in the officers’ mess. Never a man to flinch from a challenge, Attlee seems to have thoroughly enjoyed himself.
We used to have a merry time at headquarters where I used to go frequently of an evening. The CO would say, ‘Let’s have a good strafe, send for Attlee!’ and after dinner we would discuss some broad proposition such as, ‘All socialists are scoundrels!’20
