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By Root 2453 0

should send out Major Rhys Samson (hitherto working on liaison duties with the French) to set up a joint espionage and counter-espionage operation in Athens. From February 1915 Samson, with cover as assistant military attaché, started to work on gathering Turkish military information. Two fellow countrymen, who had lived in the region before the war, were engaged. Using a humanitarian relief agency as cover, they began recruiting agents, mainly Asiatic Greeks, to work in Turkey itself. One example of their work has survived: an eight-page report from Keşan in European Turkey, on one of the main supply routes to the Gallipoli peninsula, dated 13 May, sent on by Athens on 24 May and received in London on 4 June 1915. The report noted the movement of Turkish reinforcements (some under German command) to Gallipoli and described how ‘the moral[e] of all the troops is gone’. One German officer, it alleged, ‘shot thirteen Turkish officers during the recent fighting’. There were shortages of food and military supplies. The report asserted that the region around Keşan close to the Turco-Greek frontier could be captured by ‘10,000 soldiers’: ‘All the Christians and Pomaks (Bulgarian speaking Moslems) would flock to the Allies’ colours.’ Christians in the Turkish forces had been disarmed and ‘were employed in digging trenches, doing spade-work, etc’, but ‘would do good work as guides and soldiers. All the local Christians ask is 24 hours’ grace to pay off old scores on the Moslem population.’

A despatch from Athens on 17 July with ‘Extracts from Dedeagatch letter of 8th July 1915’ contained reports from agents numbers ‘2’, ‘4’ and ‘5’, again reporting low morale: ‘The Turks were much dispirited as a result of the last battle on the peninsula. They expect to be driven out of their positions at the next attack.’ A Greek who had visited Chanak (Çanakkale) on the Asian shore reported that there were wounded ‘everywhere’. There were reports of Turkish officers deserting and ‘at Uzun Keupri [Uzunköprü, north of Keşan] 24 Turkish officers and soldiers were killed by four German officers for desertion. Comrades of the Turks killed the four German officers.’ A third report from Athens, on 16 September, said that, because of chronic shortages of ammunition, ‘a sustained attack by the Allies’ was ‘the thing which is most dreaded by the Turkish general staff’. The Greek minister at Constantinople had learned ‘that if continuous pressure was brought to bear by the Allies, the Turks could not last a month’. These three reports were each circulated only to the Admiralty Director of Intelligence and Colonel French in the War Office. There is no indication of what influence they may have had on decision-making, though they corroborate the over-optimism which permeated the early days of the Gallipoli campaign, and the widely held assumption that the Turks would not put up stiff resistance. The first two reports, indeed, may have contributed to the decision to launch a new assault at Suvla Bay during the first week of August, but by the time of the third report that offensive had petered out into a costly stalemate.

Espionage was also run from Mytilene on the island of Lesbos where the main agent, Clifford Heathcote-Smith, a Briton long resident in the region, had over a period of eighteen months in 1915-16 produced results which the General Officer Commanding in Egypt, Sir Archibald Murray, described as ‘exceptionally valuable’. The reports submitted included a plan of the Smyrna batteries and defences upon which the Royal Navy had largely based their bombardments in February 1916; early information concerning the Turks’ second campaign against Egypt (1916), which had easily been repulsed, and the despatch of Turkish troops to the Galician front; daily statistics of troop trains and the transport of munitions from Constantinople into Asia Minor; and the distribution of Turkish divisions throughout the Ottoman empire. ‘It is beyond discussion’, wrote Heathcote-Smith in January 1917, that his agent ‘at daily and ever-present personal risk has rendered