Monro becomes commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean

The British chronology of the war records under 25 November 1915 that General Charles Monro became commander-in-chief of the reconstituted Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and General William Birdwood commander of the Dardanelles Army. Lord Kitchener had signed the order two days earlier. The telegram, dated 23 November aboard the cruiser Dartmouth in the harbour of Mudros, read: “You will take command of the troops in the Eastern Mediterranean outside Egypt. General Sir W. Birdwood will command at Gallipoli, where the evacuation of the peninsula will be carried out according to the plans already prepared in cooperation with the navy.” On 24 November the minister sailed for England, and the new command structure came into operation.

The third change in a month

This was already the third command arrangement in less than a month. On 4 November Kitchener, who opposed evacuation, had given the Gallipoli command to Birdwood and moved Monro to Salonika. Birdwood, however, did not announce the order and asked for Monro to stay. Once the minister had arrived at the Dardanelles and spent a week in conferences, he came to trust Monro more and more. The British official history writes that he was won over by Monro’s unbending firmness. By 16 November Kitchener had practically decided to give him command of all the British forces in the Mediterranean outside Egypt, leaving Birdwood at Gallipoli and General Bryan Mahon at Salonika. Monro accompanied the minister on his journey to Salonika and, boarding a boat there in a rough sea, badly injured his ankle (the British official history of the Gallipoli campaign speaks of a fracture, that of the Macedonian campaign of a sprain), but despite the pain he went on working. On 19 November Kitchener, stopping at Mudros on his way from Salonika to Athens, informed the Prime Minister of his intention. The War Office was opposed and, in Kitchener’s absence, preferred to deal with Birdwood and Mahon directly.

The final shape of the decision was settled by the events of the last few days. Kitchener returned to Mudros from Athens, where he had obtained from King Constantine a promise that Allied troops withdrawing from Serbia would not be interned in Greece. On 22 November, after another conference at which Monro again firmly demanded evacuation, Kitchener recommended to the government the withdrawal of the troops from Suvla and Anzac, keeping the Helles bridgehead for the time being. Late in the evening of 23 November a telegram arrived from Asquith saying that the War Committee favoured the evacuation of the whole peninsula, Helles included, and that the Cabinet would decide the matter. Kitchener then confirmed Monro as commander-in-chief and entrusted Birdwood with carrying out the evacuation.

The new organisation

Monro established his headquarters at Mudros. General Arthur Lynden-Bell became his chief of staff. The troops on the Gallipoli peninsula, hitherto called the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, were renamed the Dardanelles Army. Its headquarters remained on Imbros, in the former command post, with a reduced staff. The name Mediterranean Expeditionary Force was kept by Monro’s superior command, to which both the Dardanelles Army and Mahon’s British Salonika Army were subordinate. To save time, Birdwood was to deal with the War Office directly on the most urgent matters, sending Monro copies of the telegrams. According to the British official history of the Macedonian campaign, this arrangement came fully into force only after Kitchener’s return to London, and Monro did indeed also supervise Salonika, spending several days there in December.

The new commander at once ordered the preliminary stage of the evacuation to be speeded up: the removal from the peninsula of surplus stores, ammunition and men. The joint army and navy committee assumed that for the final stage 26,000 men and 40 guns would remain at Anzac and at Suvla each, and 18,500 men and 60 guns at Helles. Monro asked for 56 hospital ships, including the great liners Mauretania, Aquitania and Britannic, and for at least 12,000 hospital beds in Egypt and Malta. The soldiers were given invented reasons for the withdrawal of units: that the stores were needed at Salonika after many ships had been sunk, or that more troops than before were going away to rest. The government in London, however, was still hesitating, and the decision to evacuate Suvla and Anzac was taken only at the beginning of December.