Charles Monro takes command at Gallipoli

On the morning of 28 October 1915 General Sir Charles Monro landed on the island of Imbros and took command of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, which had been fighting since April on the Gallipoli peninsula. For eleven days, since the departure of General Ian Hamilton, the troops had been commanded temporarily by General William Birdwood. Monro brought with him a new chief of staff, General Arthur Lynden-Bell. The day before, in the harbour of Mudros on Lemnos, he had inspected an Australian brigade and had been impressed by the bearing of its soldiers.

The task

Monro had not come to carry the campaign on, but to judge whether it made any sense at all. The instructions he had received from Lord Kitchener were clear. He was to report frankly and fully on the military situation, consider how to break the deadlock, and answer as soon as possible whether, from a purely military point of view, it would be better to evacuate the peninsula or to make one more attempt to take it. He was also to estimate the losses an evacuation would entail and the number of troops needed to open the Straits, hold them and take Constantinople. Winston Churchill later pointed out that the instructions said not a word about the part of the fleet in what was by its nature an amphibious operation.

The new commander had left London on 22 October, after several conferences with Kitchener. He was an experienced general from the Western Front, where he had commanded a division, a corps and an army, and at the same time a convinced “Westerner”, that is an advocate of concentrating all forces in France. According to the British official history, he was already inclined on the journey to give up Gallipoli.

The first days

On the morning of 28 October Monro met the corps commanders, and in the afternoon he sent his first report to the War Office. There was no mention of evacuation in it. He wrote that the health and morale of the troops were reportedly improving, and asked for experienced company commanders and for materials for winter fortifications. In the evening he read a memorandum which the staff had prepared for him while Birdwood was still in command. It described both options, a new attack in the spring and evacuation, but did not say which to choose, because on Imbros the government’s plans for other fronts were not known. The next day Monro told the memorandum’s author that he agreed with its conclusions, but regretted that he had not come out more clearly in favour of evacuation.

Kitchener was growing impatient. On the morning of 29 October, before Monro had spent a full day in his new post, he telegraphed: “Please send me as soon as possible your report on the main issue at the Dardanelles, namely, leaving or staying.” The telegram reached Imbros in the evening. On 30 October, a beautiful, almost summer day, Monro toured all three beachheads in a single day: Helles, Anzac Cove and Suvla. No one had attempted to do this in one day before. The general, used to French ports and railways, was astonished by the makeshift piers, the unloading of supplies by hand from rocking lighters, and the crush on the narrow beaches under fire. At Anzac he is said to have told the staff officer accompanying him that it was like Alice in Wonderland: “curiouser and curiouser”.

At the headquarters of each corps he put the same questions to the divisional commanders: were their men capable of a sustained attack, and would they hold their positions through the winter if they received no reinforcements while the Turks obtained German guns and ammunition? The answers were similar. In their present state of health the troops could be relied on for at most twenty-four hours of fighting, and the commanders could promise to hold their positions only on condition that the Turks did not receive an unlimited supply of ammunition.

“He came, he saw, he capitulated”

Monro returned to Imbros with his mind made up. On 31 October he telegraphed to Kitchener that the troops on the peninsula, apart from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, were not capable of a sustained effort, and that the Allies held only a strip of coast facing strongly entrenched Turks. He recommended the evacuation of the peninsula. He estimated the losses in a withdrawal at 30–40 per cent of men and materiel. Churchill, who defended the expedition to the end, summed this up in the phrase: “He came, he saw, he capitulated.” The British official history judges it differently. It considers that, given what was then known on the peninsula, Monro’s courageous recommendation cannot be faulted, and that after two and a half months of government indecision a quick decision brought relief. It adds, however, that had Monro been able to promise the commanders fresh divisions, reinforcements and ammunition, he would have heard quite different answers from them.

Kitchener, who greatly feared an evacuation, did not want to sign such an order before he had seen the peninsula himself. At the beginning of November he set out for the Mediterranean in person. The final decision to withdraw the troops from Gallipoli was taken a few weeks later.