1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [197]
Not a single man at Gallipoli would have disagreed, although most would have put it in robust and less elegant terms. By mid-June they had all had more than enough of it. The Gallipoli adventure was not going according to plan and it had gone wrong from the beginning.
The unsuccessful attempt by the Royal Navy to force the straits in March had put the Turks on their guard, and the long lapse of time before the landings gave them ample time to take precautions, to send a strong force to the peninsula and to build and strengthen its defences. They had no doubt that they would be needed, and needed soon, for the plan to invade Gallipoli was the worst-kept secret of the war.
While Sir Ian Hamilton and his staff were still in Egypt letters were arriving from the War Office by the regular mail openly addressed to ‘The Constantinople Expeditionary Force’ to the horror and fury of its Commander-in-Chief who, before leaving London, had specifically requested that it should be known as ‘The Mediterranean Expeditionary Force’. Well before the end of March Egyptian newspapers were not merely reporting the arrival of troopships, but were making no bones about the fact that the troops were bound for the Dardanelles. The Army had money to spend and officers of the advance guard were buying up mules and donkeys by the score and scouring the bazaars for milk-cans, canisters, and any other containers that could possibly be used to carry water. In Port Said they were even purchasing vessels by the dozen – the flat-bottomed lighters that sailed out to unload big ships and bring their cargoes to the shore, and the lowly hoppers that worked alongside dredgers and carried away the silt or gravel. No matter how old or slow or decrepit the boats were, so long as they were reasonably seaworthy the Army was willing to pay a good price. Their owners drove excellent bargains and the word spread. It did not require a high degree of inquisitiveness to guess that something big was underway, nor a high degree of intelligence to guess what it was.
The Greek government was not yet fully committed to the cause of the allies but it was common knowledge that Greece had been glad to allow them to use the islands of Imbros, Lemnos and Bozcaada as forward bases in the interest of wresting Constantinople from the hands of their old enemies the Turks. Destroyers and battleships were concentrating in the harbour of Tenedos on Bozcaada and at Mudros on the island of Lemnos. The lighters and hoppers that would take the troops from the ships through shallow water to the shore were towed across the Mediterranean to cluster in swarms round the island of Lemnos. Hospital ships steamed into position. The preparations could not possibly be concealed, and with small boats scudding between the islands on their everyday business of fishing and trading there was very little that did not reach the ears and even the eyes of the Turks. Looking out to sea from vantage points on the peninsula they watched British warships diligently patrolling a few miles from the coast, guessing perhaps that Staff Officers on their decks had their eyes fixed on Gallipoli, peering through powerful binoculars and trying to form an impression of the lie of the land. It was the closest they could get to reconnoitring.
From the sea the Gallipoli Peninsula was a sight of remarkable beauty. Beyond the narrow bays and escarpments at the toe of the promontory, at Cape Helles where the Dardanelles met the Aegean Sea, a low plain rose behind the seashore village of Sedd-el-Bahr, cupped in a saucer between low cliffs, and stretched north to the inland village of Krithia. Beyond it crouched Achi Baba, a deceptively unimposing hill with a broad-breasted summit just high enough to command a view of the Aegean across its western shoulder and the narrows of the Dardanelles to the east. Further north on the western coastline, the land took on a wilder aspect. Sheer cliffs scarred with deep gullies and ravines swept down almost to the water’s edge and towered up to rugged heights of formidable