Kitchener arrives at the Dardanelles

Aboard the cruiser Dartmouth the British Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, sailed from Marseilles to the port of Mudros on the island of Lemnos, the main allied base off the Dardanelles. The sources differ by one day. The British official history of the Gallipoli campaign says that he arrived late in the evening of 9 November, while Charles Bean’s Australian official history gives 10 November. In any case, on 10 November Kitchener sent his first report to Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. Almost two weeks of consultations began, on which the fate of the troops on the Gallipoli peninsula depended.

The advisers

Waiting for the minister at Mudros were the fleet commander, Admiral John de Robeck; General Charles Monro, who had arrived from Egypt on 9 November; the commander of the forces in Egypt, General John Maxwell; the British High Commissioner in Cairo, Henry McMahon; and General William Birdwood, again in temporary command at Gallipoli since 3 November. Each of them saw the matter differently. De Robeck considered a new attempt by the fleet to force the straits madness. He was ready, if ordered, to evacuate Suvla and Anzac, but wanted to keep Helles so that the fleet could block the entrance to the Dardanelles. Maxwell and McMahon feared the effect a withdrawal would have on the Muslim world, and agreed to it only on condition that the British first landed in Ayas Bay, across the gulf from Alexandretta, and cut the Turkish railway there. On the way from Egypt Monro had convinced them that the peninsula could not be held against Turks supplied with German ammunition, while he himself supported the Ayas landing plan in order to obtain consent to the evacuation. Birdwood no longer opposed evacuation so firmly, but considered a new landing dangerous for the troops on the peninsula, who in winter would be short of small craft. According to Bean, Kitchener asked him whether he could break the Turkish front with his present forces. Birdwood replied that he could with three or four additional divisions, but not with fewer.

The Ayas plan

In his first report Kitchener did not yet recommend evacuation, but he was clearly growing used to the idea, since he stressed that Maxwell, Monro and McMahon unanimously wanted it to be preceded by a landing in Ayas Bay. The troops there would sit astride the Turkish railway line, protecting Egypt and making it difficult for the Turks to move troops east, to Mesopotamia. To begin with he needed two good divisions and 3,000 cavalry, and then two more divisions from France. In London the plan was received coolly. The General Staff judged that it would tie down ten to twelve divisions at that spot for the whole war, and the French, distrustful of British troops right next to their sphere of influence in Syria, were firmly opposed to it.

On the beachheads

Then Kitchener saw the front with his own eyes. On 12 November he viewed the positions at Helles from a point above the beach, and over the next two days he visited Anzac Cove and Suvla. Hardly anyone expected the visit to Anzac on 13 November. When the small figure of Birdwood stepped from the boat onto the pier, followed by a tall figure in a cap with a red band, the soldiers recognised the visitor at once. The Australians cheered without orders, and men from the trenches began to run down the slopes towards the landing place. Kitchener talked with them and passed on: “The King has asked me to tell you how splendidly he thinks you have done. You have done splendidly, better even than I thought you would.” Bean writes that the soldiers gave no one else such a reception during the whole war. Then the minister climbed with long strides, without a rest, to the crest of Russell’s Top, leaving the staff officers panting behind him, and from the forward trenches, a few dozen metres from the Turks, looked towards the straits.

On 15 November he sent his second report to London. He considered that the positions could be held against the Turks even if they had more ammunition, but that things would be worse if German troops attacked them. He also admitted that the ground was “much more difficult than I imagined”, that the Turkish positions were natural fortresses, and praised the soldiers for “a remarkable feat of arms”. Meanwhile a joint army and navy committee judged that, if secrecy were kept and the weather held, the evacuation might cost fewer than 25,000 men, far fewer than had been feared. By the evening of 16 November Kitchener was already inclined to evacuate Suvla and Anzac and keep Helles. That same night he sailed with Monro to Salonika. He sent his final recommendation on the evacuation to London only on 22 November.