A British division for the Dardanelles

On 16 February 1915 members of the British War Council decided that land forces would go to the Dardanelles. The 29th Division, the last division of the British regular army still remaining at home, was to set out for the island of Lemnos as soon as possible, within about ten days. Only three weeks earlier the Council had approved an attack by the fleet alone, without soldiers. Now it began to retreat from that position, though not yet entirely.

Why the army

The change of mind was prompted by news from the Balkans and from the Eastern Front. The British and French wanted to send a division each to Greek Salonika to encourage Greece to help the threatened Serbia. On 15 February, however, the prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos replied that without Romania’s participation Greece would not enter the war. Romania, for its part, had no intention of moving while the Russians were retreating in East Prussia and in Bukovina. The Salonika plan collapsed, and the Dardanelles remained the only place where the Central Powers could be struck quickly and the attitude of the Balkan states influenced.

At the same time the conviction was growing in the Admiralty that ships alone would not be enough. Even if the fleet forced its way through the strait, someone had to occupy the shores and destroy the batteries so that they could not close its way back. The example of Admiral John Duckworth was recalled, who in 1807 had sailed through the Dardanelles but had been unable to hold them and had to withdraw under fire. On 15 February the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Henry Jackson, wrote in a memorandum that a bombardment of the forts was not a sound operation unless a strong military force was ready to support it or at least to follow it up as soon as the forts were silenced. For the time being only two battalions of Royal Marines were sailing to the Dardanelles, to destroy guns and guard the base.

The decisions of 16 February

The meeting was held in a smaller circle, and some historians even call it informal. It was agreed that the 29th Division would sail to Lemnos, where the fleet was preparing a base in Mudros Bay. Additional troops were to set out from Egypt if necessary. The Admiralty was instructed to send to the Dardanelles the small craft needed for a landing and to build special transports and lighters capable of carrying 50,000 men. That same day it ordered ships to be prepared for the 29th Division. According to the plan, its soldiers could embark at Avonmouth as early as 22 February.

This was not yet a decision on a land campaign. The army was only to stand ready to support the operations of the fleet if needed. No one had settled whether, or where, the soldiers would land.

The choice of the 29th Division

The 29th Division had been formed at the beginning of 1915 in Warwickshire from regular battalions brought back from garrisons in India and other parts of the empire, whose places had been taken by Territorial units. It was the last large formation of the regular army in Britain and at the same time the only good reserve at the disposal of the War Office. For precisely this reason both Field Marshal John French in France and the French command regarded it as earmarked for the Western Front. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, and the admirals argued for their part that the Dardanelles operation needed at least one core of experienced soldiers. The Royal Naval Division and the Dominion troops training in Egypt had as yet no combat experience.

Kitchener backs out

The decision lasted only three days. On 19 February, as the fleet was beginning its bombardment of the forts at the entrance to the strait, the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, told the War Council that he could not release the 29th Division for the time being. Bad news was coming from the Eastern Front about the Russian defeat in Masuria, and Kitchener feared that the Germans would shift troops to the west and attack in France. He proposed that instead the Australians and New Zealanders should go to the Dardanelles from Egypt, where the danger had passed after the Turkish attack on the Suez Canal had been repulsed. Churchill warned that it would be unforgivable if a promising operation failed for lack of military support. Kitchener promised only that if the absence of the division endangered the success of the attack, he would send it.

In practice this meant a halt to the preparations. On 21 February Kitchener’s military secretary informed the Admiralty that the division would not go and that the transports need not be prepared. Churchill learned of this only a week later and protested sharply. The dispute over the 29th Division dragged on through further meetings of the Council. Kitchener agreed to send it only on 10 March. The division sailed from Avonmouth from 16 March onwards and went into action on 25 April 1915, in the landing at Cape Helles. By then the fleet had already learned that it could not force the straits on its own.