No, he decided, he would not like to visit either Egypt or Salonika. He would go home at once and tell them that it was still not too late. Let them send Kitchener out to take command with an adequate force — a force that would hardly be missed in France — and they would have Constantinople within one month. He would buttonhole every Minister from Lloyd George to Asquith, grovel at their feet if necessary, and persuade them that Gallipoli was not lost. They could still win.
It was another cold and windy day. Birdwood and the other Corps Commanders came over to the island to say good-bye, and Hamilton was grateful to the French for their lightness of touch. There was a farewell dinner with de Robeck and Keyes in the Triad, and on the following day a last ride across the island for a last word with the staff. In the afternoon with Braithwaite and his A.D.C’s he went aboard the cruiser Chatham which was to take him home. He was very tired. Now that it was all over it was a little too much to remain on deck and watch Imbros fade from view, and he went down to his cabin. Presently, however, when the anchor was weighed, a message was sent to him from de Robeck asking him to come up on to the quarter-deck of the Chatham, and because he had never wanted for courage he felt bound to go. As he came on deck he found the Chatham steering on a corkscrew course between the anchored vessels of the Fleet. And as he passed each ship the sailors stood and cheered him on his way.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR CHARLES MONRO had already achieved something of a reputation as a cool and determined commander on the western front when he went out to Gallipoli. He was fifty-five, a methodical and authoritative man, one of the kind who accepts the rules and excels in them. There was nothing speculative about him, nothing amateur. Of all the generals who served at Gallipoli one is most tempted to compare him with Liman von Sanders, for he had the same dispassionate and professional air, the same aura of calm responsibility. ‘He was born,’ Hamilton wrote, ‘with another sort of mind from me.’
Monro had quite made up his mind about the general strategy of the war. It could be won, he believed, on the western front, and nowhere else, and any other campaign could only be justified provided that it did not divert men or materials from France. To kill Germans had become with him an act of faith: Turks did not count.
It was apparent then — or rather it should have been apparent — that some unusually bright prospect of success would have to be demonstrated to him at Gallipoli if he was to recommend that the campaign should go on. The terms of his appointment were very clear: he was to advise on whether or not the Army was to be evacuated; and if it was not, he was to estimate what reinforcements were required to carry the peninsula, to keep the straits open and to capture Constantinople.
The new commander did not hurry to the Dardanelles. He spent several days in London studying the problem at the War Office, and it was not until October 28—ten days after Hamilton’s departure — that he arrived on Imbros with his chief of staff Major-General Lynden-Bell.[31] He was met by Birdwood and the three officers who had recently been promoted to the command of the three corps at the front: Byng at Suvla, Godley at Anzac, and Lieut.-General Sir Francis Davies at Cape Helles.
Churchill in his account of the campaign says that Monro was ‘an officer of quick decision. He came, he saw, he capitulated’. But this is not entirely fair, for Kitchener was impatiently pressing for a decision. ‘Please send me as soon as possible,’ he cabled, ‘your report on the main issue, namely, leaving or staying.’ Monro got this message at Imbros within twenty-four hours of his arrival and on October 30 he set out for the peninsula. Lynden-Bell complained of a sprained knee, and his place on the trip was taken by Colonel Aspinall.
No commander as yet had succeeded in visiting Suvla, Anzac and Cape Helles in a single day, but Monro achieved this feat in a destroyer in a matter of six hours. At each of the three bridgeheads the divisional generals met him on the beach, and he put to each of them in turn an identical set of questions: could their men attack and capture the Turkish positions? If the Turks were reinforced with heavy guns could they hold out through the winter?
The British guns at this time were down to a ration of two shells a day, no winter clothing had arrived, and during the stalemate of the past two months many units had dwindled to half their strength. Yet there had been no thought of evacuation among the troops. Evacuation was a kind of death, and no one imagined that Monro had come to Gallipoli to discuss it. He had arrived like some eminent specialist called down to the country from London when the local doctors had failed, and it was thought that he would suggest new remedies and ways of treatment, perhaps even some bold act of surgery which would make all well again. But there was no hint of this in his questions. No mention was made of any reinforcements being sent to the peninsula. It was very depressing. The generals replied that the men might keep up an attack for twenty-four hours, but if the Turks made a counteroffensive with unlimited shells and fresh troops — well then they could only do their best. They could say no more.
But Monro hardly needed to hear the generals’ replies. One glance at the beaches had been enough: the ramshackle piers, the spiritless gangs of men hanging about with their carts and donkeys, the shanty-town dug-outs in the cliffs, the untidiness of it all. At Anzac the General glanced at Aspinall with a specialist’s rueful smile. ‘Like Alice in Wonderland,’ he said. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’
On the following day he sent Kitchener a message recommending the evacuation of the peninsula. Only the Anzac Corps, he said, was in a fit condition to carry on. What the men needed was rest, re-organization and training. The best thing to do was to get as many as possible back to Egypt where after a few months they might be ready for action again. He followed this with a second message saying that he estimated the losses in an evacuation at between thirty and forty per cent: in other words some 40,000 men.
Here it was then in black and white: the end of the campaign. So many dead and all for nothing, and another 40,000 men to be lost. For the cabinet in London who had to take the final decision it posed an intolerable dilemma, and even those who had been advocating the Salonika adventure were sobered by it. They had asked the professional expert for his opinion, and now they had got it: and it was unthinkable. They hesitated. And while they hesitated the thing they most wished for happened: a new factor came into the scene.
Roger Keyes was still a small man in these affairs. He was no more than a young commodore, his admiral was against him, and for the past eight months he had been isolated from the great political and military issues of the west. But he had one advantage. When nearly everyone was wavering and hesitating about the Dardanelles his views had the clarity that comes from a long pent-up exasperation. His blood was up, he knew what he wanted, and he was every bit as determined as General Monro to whom he was implacably opposed. There is a remarkable counterpoise in the movements of the two men during these few days.
On October 28, when Monro arrived at Imbros, Keyes reached London. Although it was nine o’clock at night he went straight to the Admiralty hoping to get in to see the admirals then and there, but they put him off until the following morning. At 10.30 a.m. on October 29, when Monro was examining the problems of evacuation at Imbros, Keyes had his plan in the hands of Admiral Oliver, the chief of the War Staff, and from there he went on to Sir Henry Jackson, the First Sea Lord. Soon the other admirals were brought in, and at five in the evening he went off to see the First Lord, Arthur Balfour. Next day, when Monro was preparing his evacuation report after his visit to the beaches, Keyes had a second interview with Balfour. They continued for two hours, Balfour lying back full-length in his armchair listening, Keyes talking resolutely on. At a quarter to five in the afternoon Balfour sustained himself with a cup of tea, and at twenty past five he rose and said, ‘It is not often that when one examines a hazardous enterprise — and you will admit it has its hazards — the more one considers it the better one likes it.’ He sent Keyes back to talk to the admirals again.
31
Churchill saw them off at dawn in London on October 22. As the train was drawing out of the station he threw a bundle of papers into Monro’s compartment and declared, ‘Remember that a withdrawal from Gallipoli would be as great a disaster as Corunna.’