Churchill at any rate could send the Royal Naval Division, survivors of Antwerp. For the first time in his life he joined a royal entourage; he and the prime minister accompanied George V to Blandford, where the King reviewed the men before they shipped out. Oc Asquith was there, and Rupert Brooke. Margot wrote in her diary: “The whole 9,000 men were drawn up on the glorious downs and Winston walked round and inspected them before the King arrived. I felt quite a thrill when I saw Oc and Rupert with walking sticks standing in front of their men looking quite wonderful! Rupert is a beautiful young man and we get on well, he has so much intellectual temperament and nature about him. He told Oc he was quite certain he would never come back but would be killed—it didn’t depress him at all but he was just convinced—I shall be curious to see if this turns out to be a true instinct…. They marched past perfectly. I saw the silver band (given to the Hood Division by Winston’s constituents) coming up the hill and the bayonets flashing—I saw the uneven ground and the straight backs—“Eyesssssss RIGHT!”—and the darling boy had passed. The King was pleased and told me they all marched wonderfully.” Brooke wrote:82
Now, God be thanked, Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.
His instinct turned out to be true. In two months he was dead. He had been twenty-seven years old. Winston wrote his obituary in The Times: “This life has closed at the moment when it seemed to have reached its springtime. A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true, more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth in arms engaged in this present war, than any other—more able to express their thoughts of self-surrender, and with a power to carry comfort to those who watched them so intently from afar. The voice has been swiftly stilled. Only the echoes and the memory remain.”83
It wasn’t much. His father, a housemaster at Rugby, where Rupert had been so popular, drew small comfort from it. His dons at King’s College, Cambridge, wondered instead what he would have become. Oc grieved for a year. Then he himself, having survived the Dardanelles, was killed in France.
But they had marched well at Blandford. Even the King had remarked on it.
Sackville Hamilton Carden was not the ideal commander for the Aegean squadron. Approaching sixty, he had been superintendent of the Malta dockyards until the outbreak of the war and lacked the temperament of a fighter. Churchill’s candidate for the appointment had been Sir Arthur Limpus, a younger, more aggressive admiral who had studied the Dardanelles for years, but in early September, when Turkey had still been neutral, Grey had felt that naming Limpus would provoke the Turks. Carden was an able strategist. His plan to rush the Dardanelles was sound. But he was a worrier. He worried about the heavy concentration of enemy guns on the banks of the strait and was uncomforted by assurances that they were small, obsolete, and poorly sited. Driftage in the channel troubled him; although there was no tide in the strait, tributaries and melting snows produced a five-knot current, and chunks of floating ice could be expected at this time of year. Vessels which could navigate the Orkney Islands, however, would have no problems here. The danger of minefields preyed on his mind. This was a real hazard, but the Admiralty had judged the risk acceptable and provided him with sufficient minesweepers. None of these objections mattered in themselves. Carden’s weakness was that, faced with an operation requiring exceptional daring, he was unsure of himself. It was a disease among military leaders in that war, and it was catching. Confronted by so many martial innovations, most senior officers had by 1915 become excessively cautious and easily discouraged. Bravery had nothing to do with it. Carden’s second in command, Vice Admiral John de Robeck, was brave in battle, but faced with crucial decisions, he would prove to be of the same stripe.
Their long-awaited attack opened at 9:51 on the blustery morning of Friday, February 19, 1915. The Allied task force—eight British battleships, four French—approached the mouth of the strait and opened fire on the Turkish forts guarding its lips, Kum Kale and Cape Helles. It was no contest. The range of the defensive batteries was so short that their shells couldn’t even reach the ships. At two o’clock that afternoon the warships closed to six thousand yards; at 4:45 P.M. de Robeck led Vengeance, Cornwallis, and Suffren closer still. Most of the blockhouses, shrouded in smoke, appeared deserted. Then night fell. High seas, snow, and sleet prevented further action until the following Thursday. But in the interim Carden, encouraged by the one-sided duel, telegraphed the Admiralty: “I do not intend to commence in bad weather leaving result undecided as from experience on first day I am convinced given favourable weather conditions that the reduction of the forts at the entrance can be completed in one day.”84 When the weather cleared, de Robeck carried the assault up to the very muzzles of the blockhouses. The remaining Turkish and German gunners fled northward. Royal Marines landed on Gallipoli, spiking guns and destroying searchlights. Another party went ashore at Kum Kale. Minesweepers penetrated the strait six miles upstream, to within three thousand yards of Kephez Point, without meeting significant resistance. Carden wired London that he expected to reach Constantinople in two weeks.
The War Council was ecstatic. Fisher wanted to hurry to the Aegean and lead the next assault, on the Narrows. The export of Russian wheat seemed imminent; in Chicago the price of grain fell sharply. Churchill, meanwhile, was counting all his unhatched chickens. At the end of February he cabled Grand Duke Nicholas: “The progress of an attack on Dlles is encouraging & good & we think the Russian Black Sea Fleet shd now get ready at Sebastopol to come to the entrance of the Bosporus at the right moment, of wh we will send notice.” Asquith wrote Venetia: “Winston is breast high about the Dardanelles.” That same evening the political climate in Athens went through yet another transformation. King Constantine was having second thoughts. Like the rest of the Balkan rulers, he wanted to be on the winning side. Violet Asquith was “sitting with Clemmie at the Admiralty when Winston came in in a state of wild excitement and joy. He showed us, under many pledges of secrecy, a telegram from Venizelos promising help from the Greeks…. Our joy knew no bounds.” Violet asked if Constantine knew of this. “Yes,” said Churchill, “our Minister said Venizelos had already approached the King and he was in favour of war.” Moreover, he went on, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Italy were all “waiting—ready to pounce—all determined to play a part in the fall of Constantinople.” Violet recrossed the Horse Guards “treading on air. Turkey, encircled by a host of enemies, was doomed, the German flank was turned, the Balkans for once united and on our side, the war shortened perhaps by years, and Winston’s vision and persistence vindicated.”85
He was already contemplating peace terms. To Grey he wrote two days later: “We must not disinterest ourselves in the final settlement of this region…. I am having an Admy paper prepared abt the effect of a Russian control of the Straits and Cple. I hope you will not settle anything further until you can read it. English history will not end with this war.” Others were also looking to the future. Fisher wrote Winston: “Moral:—Carden to press on! and Kitchener to occupy the deserted Forts at extremity of Gallipoli and mount howitzers there!… Invite Bulgaria by telegram (direct from Sir E. Grey) to take Kavalla and Salonica provided she at once attacks Turkey and tell Greece ‘Too late’! and seize the Greek Fleet by a ‘coup’ later on. They wd probably join us now if bribed! All the kings are against all the peoples! Greece, Bulgaria, Rumania! What an opportunity for Democracy!” Asquith told Venetia that one of his ministers had written “an almost dithyrambic memorandum urging that in the carving up of the Turks’ Asiatic dominions, we should take Palestine, into which the scattered Jews cd in time swarm back from all the quarters of the globe, and in due course obtain Home Rule. (What an attractive community!)” Hankey had prepared a seven-page paper: “After the Dardanelles: The Next Steps.” He advocated a broad drive by British, Serbian, Greek, Rumanian, and Russian troops, targeted on the Carpathian Mountains between what are now Czechoslovakia and Poland.
Others wanted to follow the Danube from the Black Sea through Austria-Hungary, into Germany’s Black Forest. Churchill, to whom the War Council now listened with great respect, disagreed. “We ought not to make the main lines of advance up the Danube,” he said on March 3. “We ought not to employ more troops in this theatre of war than are absolutely essential in order to induce the Balkan states to march.” He still believed that the proper strategy was an “advance in the north through Holland and the Baltic.”86
During this euphoric interlude, Kitchener’s Twenty-ninth Division shrank in significance. Churchill told the War Council that in exploiting Constantinople’s capitulation they could count on 140,000 men: the British troops in Egypt, the Royal Naval Division now at sea, 2,000 Royal Marines already on Lemnos, a French division, the three Greek divisions Venizelos had promised, and a Russian corps preparing to embark at Batum, the Black Sea port near the Russo-Turkish border. He hadn’t even counted the Rumanians, Bulgarians, and Italians waiting in the wings. Greece’s 60,000 troops alone could seize and fortify Gallipoli. But speed, as Fisher had noted, was essential. On March 4 Winston wrote Grey: “Mr Venizelos shd be told now that the Admiralty believe it in their power to force the Dardanelles without military assistance, destroying all the forts as they go. If so, Gallipoli Peninsula cannot be held by Turks, who wd be cut off & reduced at leisure. By the 20th inst 40,000 British Infantry will be available to go to C’nople, if the Straits have been forced, either by crossing the Bulair Isthmus, or going up the Dardanelles. A French Divn will be on the spot at the same time. M. Venizelos shd consider Greek military movements in relation to these facts.”87
It was at this point that what he later called “the terrible Ifs” began to accumulate. If Greece had entered the war then, everything would not have hinged on Carden’s conquest of the Narrows. The forts there could have been taken from the rear, by land. Churchill warned Grey two days later: “If you don’t back up this Greece—the Greece of Venizelos—you will have another wh will cleave to Germany.”88 Precisely that happened. It wasn’t Grey’s fault. The blame lay in Saint Petersburg. Both London and Paris agreed that King Constantine should receive Constantinople’s surrender. The czar, who more than anyone else needed a victory on this front—whose very life depended upon it—refused even to discuss the idea. The Bosporus was his, he told the incredulous British ambassador on March 3; once Constantine entered it in triumph he would never leave. When word of this reached Athens three days later, the Venizelos government fell and was replaced by German sympathizers led by M. Zaimis, who held that Greece must remain neutral because it was threatened by an invasion of Bulgarians. The first domino had failed to topple. The others awaited events in the Dardanelles.
That same day Carden began to encounter difficulties—nothing serious, but enough to exasperate him and temper the enthusiasm at home. Turkish riflemen reappeared at Cape Helles and Kum Kale and drove off the British landing parties. Gales and another storm developed on March 8, and when the sky cleared the admiral’s battleship captains, ordered to silence the land batteries between Kephez Point and Chanak, reported that they couldn’t get within range of them. Minefields barred the way. It was then that the admiral discovered his Achilles’ heel. By tradition, British trawlers used for minesweepers were manned by civilians, fishermen recruited in England’s commercial ports. The Turkish guns couldn’t reach the warships, but they were raking the trawlers, which backed away. One trawler officer told Commodore Roger Keyes, Carden’s chief of staff, that his men “recognize sweeping risks and don’t mind getting blown up, but they hate the gunfire, and point out that they aren’t supposed to sweep under fire, they didn’t join for that.”89
Keyes, the ablest officer in the operation, called for volunteers from his Royal Navy tars. Meanwhile, he offered the fishermen bonuses. That night the trawlers tried again. The enemy surprised them with huge searchlights from Germany, uncrated that very afternoon. Blinded by their glare, the sweeper crews turned tail. Keyes pointed out that the enemy fire, though deafening, was wild. He persuaded them to try again the following night. Again they fled. As he wrote afterward: “I was furious and told the officers in charge that they had had their opportunity…. It did not matter if we lost all seven sweepers, there were twenty-eight more, and the mines had got to be swept up. How could they talk of being stopped by heavy fire if they were not hit? The Admiralty were prepared for losses, but we had chucked our hand in and started squealing before we had any.”90
In London, Churchill agreed. That same day—March 11—he wired Carden: “Your original instructions laid stress on caution and deliberate methods, and we approve highly the skill and patience with which you have advanced hitherto without loss. The results to be gained are, however, great enough to justify loss of ships and men…. We do not wish to hurry you or urge you beyond your judgment, but we recognise clearly that at a certain period in your operations you will have to press hard for a decision, and we desire to know whether you consider that point has now been reached.” There was no reply—Winston terrified Carden—but in forty-eight hours the bluejacket volunteers were ready, and despite the arrival of new German searchlights and more accurate fire, the sweepers persevered. In the morning shoals of mines, cut adrift by the trawlers’ kites, floated southward with the current. In four or five days, Carden’s staff believed, they would be ready to assault the Narrows. But Churchill was impatient. And his query was still unanswered. He telegraphed again: “I do not understand why minesweeping should be interfered with by firing which causes no casualties. Two or three hundred casualties would be a moderate price to pay for sweeping up as far as the Narrows…. This work has to be done whatever the loss of life and small craft and the sooner it is done the better. Secondly, we have information that the Turkish forts are short of ammunition, that German officers have made desponding reports and have appealed to Germany for more. Every conceivable effort is being made to supply ammunition. It is being seriously considered to send a German or Austrian submarine, but apparently they have not started yet. Above is absolutely secret. All this makes it clear that the operations should now be pressed forward methodically and resolutely by night and day. The unavoidable losses must be accepted. The enemy is harassed and anxious now. The time is precious as the interference of submarines would be a very serious complication.”91
The first lord’s information about the enemy’s ammunition shortage was accurate. German messages had been intercepted and decoded. As he testified the following year, it was this intelligence coup “that led Lord Fisher and me, with the assent of those whom we were consulting over it, to change the methodical advance and the step-by-step bombardment… into a more decided and vehement attempt to quell and smash up the fortresses at the Narrows and force them to use their ammunition.” At the time, however, security precautions prevented him from revealing his source to Carden. The strain and suspense were too much for the admiral. He replied that he expected to lunge at the Narrows on March 17, but he was exhausted. On the morning of March 15, after two sleepless nights, he told Keyes that he could not survive more pressure from Churchill. He had decided to resign his commission. His staff tried to argue him out of it, but a Harley Street neurologist serving with the fleet examined him and said the admiral was near collapse; his nerves were shot; he must be sent home immediately. Thus, less than two days before the critical attempt on the Narrows, the command devolved on de Robeck. The Admiralty telegraphed him: “Personal and Secret from First Lord. In entrusting to you with great confidence the command of the Mediterranean Detached Fleet I presume… that you consider, after separate and independent judgment, that the immediate operations proposed are wise and practicable. If not, do not hesitate to say so. If so, execute them without delay and without further reference at the first favourable opportunity…. All good fortune attend you.”92
The date was Wednesday, March 17, 1915. De Robeck replied that he would attack in the morning.
It was a day out of season: pleasant, war
m, with bright sunshine and a flawless overarching sky. De Robeck’s attacking fleet, the mightiest ever seen in the Mediterranean, was spearheaded by four dreadnoughts, flanked by two battleships. A mile behind them came the four French men-of-war, also flanked by British battleships. Six more battleships, surrounded by destroyers and trawlers, were held in reserve; they were to clear away the last obstacles, sail through the Narrows, and enter the Sea of Marmara the following morning. Twelve hours later the Union Jack and the French tricolor would fly over Constantinople.
A morning fog rose at 10:30, revealing the enemy forts, and the first six warships, taking the bone in their teeth, sailed toward them. After twenty-five minutes of maneuvering, each captain picked his target, half of them facing the Chanak, or Asian, side of the Narrows, and the other half facing the Kilid Bahr, or European, side. Once more the warships were beyond the range of the frustrated Turkish and German gunners. Howitzers on the cliffs downstream could hit the ships, but their shells bounced harmlessly off the thick steel armor. Meanwhile, the forts were being systematically demolished. Ten minutes before noon a British gunner hit the magazine of a key Chanak blockhouse; it erupted in a single sheet of flame. It was the turn of the French. At eight bells, noon, de Robeck signaled Admiral Emile-Paul-Aimable Guépratte to come forward. The Suffren, Bouvet, Charlemagne, and Gaulois fanned out and continued the terrific bombardment for another forty-five minutes. Both banks now resembled a tortured Dantean vision: billowing clouds of dense, roiling smoke, stabbing spurts of flame from the howitzers; roars of bursting shells; debris that heaved and shifted with each hit, dismembered corpses flying upward and into the channel, where ineffectual little fountains of water marked the failure of the fortress guns still in action to reach the towering warships. Occasionally a howitzer shell struck a French or British superstructure, but fewer than a dozen seamen had been wounded. The enemy was approaching extremity. Fort 13 on the European shore had also blown up. The forts’ fire-control communications had been destroyed. Batteries were covered with rubble and the dead. Breechblocks were jammed. De Robeck was now ready to sweep up the last mines and pass his fleet through to the Sea of Marmara. At 1:30 he ordered the French to move aside and signaled the last six battleships and their escorts to move forward past the defeated enemy, and it was then, at 1:45 in the afternoon, a hairbreadth from victory, that the trouble began. Bouvet, pivoting in Suffren’s wake close to the strait’s Asian bank, was rocked by a tremendous explosion. In less than two minutes she heeled over and sank, taking with her the captain and 639 seamen.