Charles Monro to succeed Hamilton

On 15 October 1915 the Secretary of State for War, Lord Herbert Kitchener, sent General Ian Hamilton the telegram that the commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force had been expecting for several days. The British government had decided to recall him from the Gallipoli peninsula. His successor was to be General Charles Monro, commander of the Third Army in France. The decision had been taken the day before by the Dardanelles Committee, which since June had directed British strategy. Hamilton read the telegram on the morning of 16 October at his headquarters on the island of Imbros.

Evacuation in the background

Seven weeks had passed since the failure of the August offensive and the fighting for Scimitar Hill, and the government still did not know what to do next with the expedition to the Dardanelles. At the beginning of October everything became more complicated. Bulgaria was joining the Central Powers, and the Germans and Austro-Hungarians had invaded Serbia. If they opened the overland route to Constantinople, the Turks would receive heavy guns and ammunition, and the position of the troops on the peninsula would become very difficult. Some of the troops from Gallipoli had already sailed to Salonika, and British staff officers advised returning to the offensive in France. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Henry Jackson, on the other hand, believed that the only sensible secondary front was Gallipoli and that reinforcements should be sent there.

On 11 October the Dardanelles Committee decided to send strong forces to Egypt, “without prejudice to their ultimate destination”, and to send a selected officer to the Mediterranean, preferably Kitchener himself or General Douglas Haig, who was to assess on the spot where they should be used. That same evening Kitchener asked Hamilton how many men he would lose in an evacuation of the peninsula. On the morning of 12 October the general replied that losses of less than half the entire force could not be counted on, not including guns, stores and horses. He added that with a little luck the losses might be much smaller, but that with inexperienced troops at Suvla and Senegalese troops at Helles there might also be “a veritable catastrophe”.

Lost confidence

In London confidence in Hamilton had already run out. At the end of September two documents reached the ministers. The first was a report by General Frederick Stopford, the commander of IX Corps removed in August, in which he defended himself against the accusations and blamed General Headquarters. Kitchener ordered four generals in London to examine the Suvla affair, and then informed the government that their review had produced “considerable criticism” of Hamilton’s command, although the generals themselves stipulated that without the accounts of men from the front they did not feel able to formulate it. The second document was a letter from the Australian journalist Keith Murdoch to the Prime Minister of Australia, Andrew Fisher. Murdoch, after a short stay on Imbros, sharply attacked the expedition’s command in it, and the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, circulated the letter to ministers as a state paper, although he later admitted that many of the charges were untrue. The British official history judges that the government attached too much weight to both texts.

On 14 October the Dardanelles Committee met in Downing Street. The previous night German airships had bombed London, and that same day Bulgaria declared war on Serbia. The ministers had before them Hamilton’s estimates concerning evacuation and decided to send a new commander to Gallipoli, who would look at the matter with a fresh eye.

The telegram

The next day Kitchener telegraphed to Imbros. Hamilton described in his diary how late in the evening a coded message marked “secret and personal” arrived, with instructions that he decode the next telegram himself. He guessed what it contained, so he ordered it brought to him only in the morning. Kitchener wrote that the government fully appreciated his work and the courage with which he had fought for the success of the undertaking in the face of enormous difficulties, but nevertheless wished to make a change in the command, which would also give him the opportunity of a meeting with the general. Hamilton’s chief of staff, General Walter Braithwaite, was to return with him, because Monro was bringing his own. Until the new commander arrived, the troops were to be commanded temporarily by General William Birdwood, commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Hamilton was invited to visit Salonika and Egypt on his way home. The general noted bitterly that as recently as September Kitchener had assured him of his full confidence.

The new commander

General Sir Charles Monro was 55 years old and had a good reputation from the Western Front. In France he had commanded in turn the 2nd Division, I Corps and, from the summer of 1915, the newly formed Third Army. The British official history describes him as a level-headed and able soldier of independent judgement, and at the same time a convinced advocate of concentrating all forces on the Western Front. According to it, Monro, even as he left London, was inclined to think that the most sensible course would be, if practicable, to give up Gallipoli. Winston Churchill, the expedition’s chief advocate, later wrote that the government did not know the new commander’s views. Monro was to examine the situation and report 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.

The appointment postponed the final decision by at least two weeks. Before leaving, Monro conferred several times with Kitchener and set out from London only on 22 October. Hamilton handed over command to Birdwood and sailed from Imbros on 17 October. He never again received a command in the field.