1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [31]
The French who were defending their own soil, and were in no position to get out, would not have taken kindly to this idea, even if anyone had had the courage to suggest it. But neither would Sir John French. Far from London and the deliberations of the War Council the British and French Commanders had been hatching plans of their own. General Joffre wished to launch an offensive that would strike at the Germans’ Achilles heel – those long and straggling lines of supply that led from the heart of France across the conquered territories to the heart of Germany.
The line held by the Germans ran from the Alps across the Vosges mountains in Alsace, into Lorraine, across Champagne, swinging north through Picardy and Flanders to meet the North Sea on the coast of Belgium. It was a long, long line to keep supplied with troops and materials and behind it in places the roads and rail lines essential to German transport and communications were few and far between. Joffre’s plan was to breach them in a series of piecemeal attacks on either side of the huge salient where the German line bulged deep into France. He would strike north from Reims, north from Verdun, and east from Arras, and he would keep up the pressure, gradually squeezing, always tightening his grip. It might take months, but the prize would be worth it, for if the French could slice across the salient cutting German communications as they went, the enemy would be deprived of his lifeline to the Fatherland and might well be obliged to retire and eventually give up the line.
This plan attracted Sir John French, for it fitted in well with a plan of his own. It was an idea which had met with only half-hearted approval from the War Council, which had already turned down his plan to attack with the Belgian Army up the Belgian coast along the minuscule strip of unflooded land that lay behind the sand dunes and the sea. That project had been mooted and encouraged by Winston Churchill who, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had promised naval support – but now Churchill had other fish to fry and the War Council, as a whole, had a shoal of them. Since the end of October when Turkey had entered the war on the side of the Germans, the options had increased, and it seemed that every minister had his own pet theory as to how the war should be waged. Fisher, the First Sea Lord, favoured an attack on Germany from the Baltic; Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer, favoured striking at Austria by attacking from the Adriatic coast; Lord Kitchener proposed launching an attack on the Turks from the coast of Palestine. But it was Winston Churchill who came up with the one irresistible idea. To seize the Dardanelles, to capture Constantinople and thus, at one blow, open up the Black Sea highway to the Russians, relieve the pressure on Russia’s army on the eastern front, and – best of all – force open Germany’s back door by way of the Danube. Not least of the attractions was that all this would be achieved by the Royal Navy who would merely be required to enter the straits and bombard the forts that protected them. Casualties would be few, and only a small force of men need be landed in the wake of the navy to secure the forts and raise the British flag. The plan had been drawn up by Admiral Carden, Commander of the Mediterranean fleet, at Winston Churchill’s request, and it was more than irresistible. All things being equal, it was fool-proof.
It was put forward at a meeting of the War Council on 13 January – the very meeting at which Sir John French’s plan to attempt an advance up the Belgian coast had been turned down. French had travelled to London to attend it and even he had reacted with lukewarm (and temporary) enthusiasm to Winston Churchill’s plan, presented with all the force