John Masefield - Gallipoli (John Masefield) - illustrated - (Literary Thoughts Edition)

Those who wish to imagine the scenes must think of twenty miles of any rough and steep sea coast known to them, picturing it as roadless, waterless, much broken with gullies, covered with scrub, sandy, loose and difficult to walk on, and without more than two miles of accessible landing throughout its length. Let them picture this familiar twenty miles as dominated at intervals by three hills bigger than the hills about them, the north hill a peak, the centre a ridge or plateau, and the south hill a lump. Then let them imagine the hills entrenched, the landing mined, the beaches tangled with barbed wire, ranged by howitzers and swept by machine guns, and themselves three thousand miles from home, going out before dawn, with rifles, packs, and water bottles, to pass the mines under shell fire, cut through the wire under machine gun fire, clamber up the hills under the fire of all arms, by the glare of shell-bursts in the withering and crashing tumult of modern war, and then to dig themselves in in a waterless and burning hill while a more numerous enemy charge them with the bayonet. And let them imagine themselves enduring this night after night, day after day, without rest or solace, nor respite from the peril of death, seeing their friends killed, and their position imperilled, getting their food, their munitions, even their drink, from the jaws of death, and their breath from the taint of death, and their brief sleep upon the dust of death. Let them imagine themselves driven mad by heat and toil and thirst by day, shaken by frost at midnight, weakened by disease and broken by pestilence, yet rising on the word with a shout and going forward to die in exultation in a cause foredoomed and almost hopeless. Only then will they begin, even dimly, to understand what our seizing and holding of the landings meant.

All down the southeastern coast of this Peninsula or outlier from Europe is a channel of sea, known, anciently, as the Hellespont, but in modern times more generally as the Dardanelles, from old fortifications of that name near the southwestern end of the Strait. This channel, two or three miles across at its southwestern end, broadens rapidly to four or five, then narrows to two, then, for a short reach, to one mile or less, after which (with one more contraction) it maintains a steady breadth of two or three miles till it opens into the great salt lake of the Sea of Marmora, and thence by another narrow reach into the Black Sea, or Euxine.

It is a deep water channel, with from 25 to 50 fathoms of water in it throughout its length. The Gallipoli, or European, shore is steep-to, with a couple of fathoms of water close inshore, save in one or two beaches, where it shoals. On the Asian shore, where the ground is lower and the coast more shelving, the water is shallower. A swift current of from two to three knots an hour runs always down the channel from the Sea of Marmora; and this with a southwesterly gale against it makes a nasty sea.

This water of the Hellespont is the most important channel of water in the world. It is the one entrance and exit to the Black Sea, the mouths of the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper and Don and the great ports of Constantinople, Odessa and Sebastopol. He who controls the channel controls those ports, with their wealth and their power to affect great conflicts. The most famous war of all times was fought not for any human Helen but to control that channel. Our Dardanelles campaign was undertaken to win through it a free passage for the ships of the Allied Powers.

While the war was still young it became necessary to attempt this passage for five reasons: 1. To break the link by which Turkey keeps her hold as a European Power. 2. To divert a large part of the Turkish army from operations against our Russian Allies in the Caucasus and elsewhere. 3. To pass into Russia, at a time when her northern ports were closed by ice, the rifles and munitions of war of which her armies were in need. 4. To bring out of Southern Russia the great stores of wheat lying there waiting shipment. 5. If possible, to prevent, by a successful deed of arms in the Near East, any new alliance against us among the Balkan peoples.

In its simplest form the problem was to force a passage through the defended channel of the Dardanelles into the Sea of Marmora, to attack the capital of Turkey in Europe, to win through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, securing each step in the advance against reconquest by the Turks, so that ships might pass from the Ægean to the Russian ports in the Black Sea, bringing to the Russians arms for their unequipped troops and taking from them the corn of the harvests of Southern Russia. The main problem was to force a passage through the defended channel of the Hellespont.

This passage had been forced in the past by a British naval squadron. In February, 1807, Sir John Duckworth sailed through with seven ships of the line and some smaller vessels, silenced the forts at Sestos and Abydos and destroyed some Turkish ships; and then, fearing that the Turks, helped by French engineers, would so improve the fortifications that he would never be able to get back, he returned. On his return, one of his ships, the Endymion frigate, 40 guns, received in her hull two stone shot each 26 inches in diameter.

The permanent fortifications guarding the Channel were added to and improved during the nineteenth century. At the outbreak of the war with Italy, four years ago, they were equipped (perhaps by German officers) with modern weapons. An attempt made by Italian torpedo boats to rush the Straits by night was discovered by searchlights and checked by a heavy fire from quick-firing and other guns. All the torpedo boats engaged in the operations were hit and compelled to return.

When Turkey entered the war against the Allied Powers, her officers had every reason to expect that the British or French fleets would attempt to force the Channel. The military prize, Constantinople and the control of the Black Sea (whether for peace or for offence), was too great a temptation to be resisted. Helped by their German allies they prepared for this attack with skill, knowledge and imagination. The Turks had no effective battle fleet, as in the sixteenth century, when they sought their enemies upon their own coasts; and had they had one they could not have passed the British fleet blockading the Dardanelles; but they prepared the channel and its shores so that no enemy ship might pass to seek them.

More than the two great wars, in South Africa and Manchuria, the present war has shown:

(a) that in modern war, defence is easier and less costly in men and munitions, however much less decisive, than attack;

(b) that the ancient type of permanent fortress, built of steel, concrete and heavy masonry is much less easy to defend against the fire of heavy modern howitzers and high explosives than temporary field works, dug into the earth and protected by earth and sandbags;

(c) that the fire of modern long range guns is wasteful and ineffective unless the object fired at can be accurately ranged, and the fire controlled by officers who can watch the bursting of the shells on or near the target;

(d) that in restricted waters the fixed or floating mine, filled with high explosive, is a sure defence against enemy ships.

Beginning with proposition (a), the Turks argued that (unlike most defences) a defence of the passage of the Dardanelles against naval attack might well be decisive (i.e., that it might well cause the attack to be abandoned or even destroy the attacking ships) since ships engaged in the attack would be under every disadvantage, since:

(b) Their guns, however heavy, would not be overwhelmingly successful against temporary field works and gun emplacements.

(c) Their officers, unable in the first place to locate the guns hidden on the shore, would be unable to observe the effect of their fire, and therefore unable to direct it, and this disadvantage would become greater as the ships advanced within the channel and became shut in by the banks.