Churchill the Young Warrior, page 24
Carden sent the Admiralty War Group another telegram on January 12, which provided a detailed plan for the proposed Dardanelles naval campaign, and indicated it could be undertaken one month hence. Fisher was as enthusiastic as ever, and even suggested adding their most modern battleship, the Queen Elizabeth, which was about to be tested off Gibraltar. The idea transformed Winston’s thinking away from his Baltic campaign to the Dardanelles. The QE could outgun the Goeben and the Breslau, placing Constantinople at the mercy of the British fleet. It might even persuade Enver Pasha—who was now the Turkish Minister of War—to abandon his German ally.
Asquith listened wordlessly to all the proposals before voicing his own conclusion. It was that the Admiralty should consider a possible naval action in the Adriatic immediately, and also prepare to bombard the Gallipoli Peninsula in February with the objective of taking Constantinople.
Gallipoli
Planning went ahead immediately with the ships that Carden asked to be fitted with mine-bumpers. An airfield was situated on a convenient Greek island. The Adriatic plan was abandoned altogether at Fisher’s request, since he advised that the Dardanelles campaign would require “our whole available margin.” According to his enthusiastic assessment, their success there would ‘influence every Mediterranean power.’
But Fisher seemed hesitant the following day, as if he’d had time to think it over and was now less sure of his claim not to require troops. He wrote to Admiral Jellicoe for 200,000 soldiers to act in conjunction with the fleet. Otherwise, he said in a complete turnabout, “I just abominate the Dardanelles.”
Churchill, who had been swept away by Fisher’s zeal for the plan, now found the old Admiral’s behavior erratic, even bizarre. And some others viewed Fisher’s disruptiveness as a portent of failure for the entire operation. “He is old & worn out & nervous,” wrote the Assistant Director of Operations at the Admiralty.5 He added that Fisher was a “failing old man, anxious for popularity,” who did not want to be blamed for anything that might go wrong.
Fisher even offered to resign on February 25. Apparently he didn’t want to see huge losses of life attributed to him. Then, the next day, Fisher wrote to Asquith to insist on military cooperation or he was against the plan. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister ordered the Dardanelles campaign forward—at which Fisher got up abruptly from his seat and hurriedly left the room. Kitchener followed him out to ask him what he intended to do. Fisher said he would resign as First Sea Lord.
All those remaining at the conference table enthusiastically expressed their own reasons for considering the operation important. Later on, Fisher changed his stance again by telling Winston he would support it.
The bombardment was planned for mid-February, but had to be postponed to wait for the necessary mine-sweepers. Then Winston’s advisers at the admiralty argued that a military force was needed after all, to follow up the naval success on land. The Prime Minister agreed to troops, and the 29th Division was allocated for the Gallipoli Landing.
The war council met again on February 16, and agreed also to send redundant Australian and New Zealand troops from Egypt to Lemnos, as reserves for the Gallipoli landing. The Dardanelles campaign had now become a combined military and naval operation. Admiral Carden began bombarding the outer forts of the Dardanelles as a preliminary step to force the Straits. At that point, Kitchener informed them of news of a Russian setback that required the 29th Division. If taken away, it would leave only 30,000 Australian and New Zealand troops to achieve the landing at Gallipoli. This change of plan struck Lloyd George, Asquith, and Grey as unacceptable, and they all argued against Kitchener.
Admiral Carden reported that bad weather prevented any more firing during four days of poor visibility. Meanwhile, Winston requested that the 29th Division be sent to the Dardanelles. “We might be in Constantinople by the end of March,” he told them hopefully. But Kitchener was now convinced that the Turks would withdraw from the Peninsula even if faced with the power only of naval gunnery on its own. So that, when Asquith asked to be reassured that the Australian and New Zealand troops were good enough, Kitchener intimated that they were all right, “if a cruise was all that was contemplated” for them. Asquith attempted to press him again to use the 29th Division. But Kitchener was evasive and refused to commit himself. Even so, the Prime Minister was so convinced of the positive effects resulting from the operation that he remarked philosophically, “One must take a lot of risks in war.”
The decisive factor at the last moment was Kitchener’s belief that the Turks were weak—although Churchill thought otherwise.
On February 28, Winston heard from the Grand Duke Nicholas that Russia would send 47,000 men to attack Constantinople from the Black Sea as soon as the British Fleet forced the Dardanelles, and his eagerness revived. He received a further boost of confidence on March 1 when the Greeks offered 60,000 troops to fight against Turkey. The 29th Division no longer seemed necessary. Now he waited anxiously for Carden’s attack. Then the Russians wanted to annex Constantinople themselves, and rejected any Greek participation in the campaign.
Friction of War
So far, the Conservatives had not been invited to participate in any aspects of the war. Now Churchill felt that an all-party coalition might help to develop war policy, despite their continued quarrels. He persuaded the PM to invite Bonar Law and Lansdowne to the next war council meeting on March 10. But the meeting turned out to be a failure, as the Opposition leaders sat silent and unhelpful.
Fisher had heard intelligence that the Turkish forces had run out of ammunition. Since it would take weeks for more to arrive from Germany, he was convinced that the moment had now arrived for the landings on Gallipoli. So Churchill instructed Carden to feel free to “press the attack vigorously,” which was what the Admiral had previously requested. But Kitchener suddenly changed his views on the Turks again. Instead of despising them as an easy walkover—as he’d constantly expressed before—he now decided they were a serious threat, and the attack must therefore wait for the 29th Division to arrive first.
The Decisive Moment
This was the decisive moment for Winston. But Fisher’s and Kitchener’s sudden turnabout made him uneasy. Then he received a signal from Carden which described the situation as an “unsatisfactory mine-sweeping operation,” owing to heavy fire. It seemed to make no sense to Winston, because there had been no casualties. And if Kitchener was right about the Turks running out of ammunition, it didn’t ring true. It left Winston feeling puzzled and anxious.
Then Carden decided not to wait for the Army, and planned his attack for March 18. But two days later, he became ill and passed his command to Rear-Admiral John de Roebeck. Churchill telegraphed the new commander to ask if he was satisfied with the plan, or wanted any changes to it. De Roebeck said he was satisfied and would attack in forty-eight hours.
At 10:45 a.m. on March 18 de Roebeck launched the naval attack on the Dardanelles. Six British and four French battleships entered the Straits and pounded the fortifications. By 1:45 p.m. there was no more return fire from the forts. It was time to withdraw the ships and introduce the minesweepers. Instead, the French battleship Bouvet hit a mine and sank with over 600 sailors. Soon after 4:00 p.m., the British battleship Irresistible began to list and was immovable. De Roebeck halted the operation immediately to rescue men from the Irresistible, when a third battleship, the Ocean, struck a mine.
As it turned out, British casualties were light—only fifty sailors dead and twenty-three wounded—despite the loss of three battleships. But the minefields had still not been swept. And Turkish guns continued firing from both shores. Fisher and Churchill assumed that de Roebeck would make a second attack soon. Fisher was so eager that he ordered two more battleships for de Roebeck, and told the War Council that a loss of twelve would have to be expected. They authorized de Roebeck to continue the attack if he thought fit.
De Roebeck telegraphed them next day to say he was ready for imminent action, but for the floating mines, and weather was bad. Then he had a change of mind, saying that the Army must go ashore first to demolish the forts before he could send his ship through the Narrows. He was now told that Kitchener had given orders to wait for the 29th Division from England, which would take three or four weeks before they could arrive.
As a result, de Roebeck telegraphed that he would suspend the naval operation. His message was received on the morning of March 23, advising of a decisive strike in mid-April, “rather than risk a great deal for what may possibly be only a partial solution.” Churchill sent him a telegram to urge him to try once more, and reminded him that he also had aircraft at his disposal—and that the minefields must be swept. Before sending this telegram, he showed it to the cabinet in Downing Street. It included the words, “We do not think that the time has yet come to give up the plan of forcing Dardanelles by a purely naval operation.” The cabinet agreed with the wording. Asquith made a personal record: “The Admiral seems to be in rather a funk.”
But when Churchill returned to the Admiralty, he found that Fisher and the other two Admirals in the war group supported de Roebeck and wanted the telegram cancelled. Churchill returned again to Downing Street to obtain Asquith’s signed authority to send the telegram. But now the Prime Minister was suddenly filled with doubts and would not overrule Churchill’s most senior advisers at the Admiralty.
Churchill considered resigning immediately in the face of an impossible situation. Otherwise all he could do in the circumstances was to watch events unroll which he was powerless to prevent.6 Instead, he was isolated. But he realized that resigning would not achieve anything. All he could do was telegraph de Roebeck to ask him to think again, and leave it in his hands.
When Churchill dined with Asquith that night, he found him disappointed. But there was no doubt that an attack by ships alone would not be repeated. The Army’s opinion was that long-range Naval fire on forts was not enough unless infantry occupied the forts and held them afterwards.
De Roebeck simply waited for the Armies to assemble and were ready to attack, attempting merely to assist them with supporting fire. This was quite different from what Winston had been led to believe. The admiral left the fighting to the army, without even sweeping the minefield or sailing through the Narrows. Every decision was made either by Kitchener or by General Sir Ian Hamilton or his commanders. The entire operation had effectively been taken out of Winston’s hands, and he could do no more than passively observe events that would ruin his reputation.
What he had considered his “Golden Age” in the admiralty was finished. Although he was still First Sea Lord, never again would he be a central player on war policy in Asquith’s Government. No war council even met. And Kitchener did not even bother to send him any plans for his information or remarks. The Gallipoli Landings were a disaster; and despite securing the beachhead and cliff tops and fighting hard and long for five days, they had nothing to show for their efforts but a confusing shambles.7
The Opposition Conservative Party pointed accusing fingers at Churchill as the culprit for the waste of funds, shipping, and lives. Fisher disappeared after going home to bed. A search was made for him. “I have resigned,” he told them when found. He said he was off to Scotland. Bonar Law received a great deal of information on the fiasco from him before he left, which the Conservatives would exploit to the full to destroy Churchill.8
The only mistake that Churchill had made was not taking his own advice. During the South African War against the Boers, he had cautioned the British Government not to push them into a corner but always leave them an avenue of escape. “Never corner a rat,” he’d said, “or it will leap at your throat in desperation.” But he had reviled some of the Conservative leaders, ridiculed others, and treated them generally with contempt, without understanding that they were frightened men. Values had changed since the Industrial Revolution, and the landed gentry were losing their wealth as a result of rising costs and falling revenues from their estates. They were also losing their way and their sense of purpose. Meanwhile, he had turned away from them to support the unprivileged and poor, the ill and the unemployed, the widows and orphans. He had been oblivious to the fact that the Conservative upper classes hated him for it. Now Bonar Law was ready to leap at his throat and tear him down.
Jennie
“Poor Winston,” said Jennie. “It never entered his head that a small-minded, gloomy man like Bonar Law could detest him. He detested nobody. He could only think about winning the war. Now he brooded in anguish …”9
The only war correspondent whom Kitchener allowed to report from Gallipoli returned to London in June and wrote in his diary: “June 10, 1915. This evening I dined at Lady Randolph Churchill to meet Winston … I am much surprised at the change in Winston Churchill. He looks years older, his face is pale, he seems very depressed and he feels keenly his retirement from the Admiralty. But even if he be the creator of the Dardanelles Expedition, he is in no wise responsible for the manner in which it is being carried out … It was only towards the very end [of the evening] that he suddenly burst forth into a tremendous discourse on the Expedition and what might have been, addressed directly across the table in the form of a lecture to his mother, who listened most attentively. Winston seemed unconscious of the limited number of his audience, and continued quite heedless of those around him. He insisted over and over again that the battle of March 18th had never been fought to a finish and, had it been, the Fleet must have got through the Narrows. This is the great obsession of his mind and will ever remain so.”10
The war correspondent, Ashmead Bartlett, remembered after leaving the dinner, Winston at the open door, crying out into the night, “They never fought it out to the finish. They never gave my scheme a fair trial.”
Jennie wrote to her sister Leonie on September 11, 1915: “It was too sad my missing seeing the zeps considering one passed over the house and all the maids saw it and the shrapnel bursting around it … Winston and Clemmie have gone to the farm. Lovely day, but I am feeling sad mostly about Winston.”
A month later, Jennie was raging to her sister: “This slow and supine government are now beginning to realise what Winston has preached for the last six months. If they had made the Dardanelles a certainty, which they could have done in the beginning, Constantinople would have been in our hands ages ago … There is a minute of his, written the beginning of June, in which he warned the Government that Germany will not bring back troops from Russia to the West but will lose them to march through Serbia … But nothing will make them listen—Winston is on the war-path!”
But when Asquith formed his new War Committee it did not include Winston. Meanwhile, Winston suffered horribly with guilt of quite another sort. One after another of his friends was lost fighting the war at the Front. Jennie wrote to Leonie on November 12, 1915: “I want you to know before you see it in the Press that Winston has resigned and is going to join his regiment at the Front next week.”
Beaverbrook visited the Churchills in Cromwell Road and found the whole household turned upside down as they prepared Winston for the trenches. According to him, Jennie was the only one who remained calm, collected, and efficient. “The delicate, fragile-looking Clemmie was showing nerves of iron … The war might have ended in 1915 and millions of lives saved but Winston could not force Kitchener and Fisher to plunge.”
One month later, on December 20, 1915, Jennie wrote to Leonie again: “I see that the Dardanelles is being evacuated. It is sad to think of all the lives lost for nothing … the Government will be shown up at the end of the war when the papers are published and the public will realise how easy it would have been to get to Constantinople had men only been sent when they were asked for … Meanwhile Winston has been offered a battalion which will be in the fighting line. It is quite true that his orderly was killed near him the other day.”
Jennie continued to rage, while Clementine remained “heroically calm.” She knew there had been no mistakes at the admiralty while Winston was in charge. The problems had come from Kitchener’s war office, and also from Fisher, who—the government now decided—had literally gone mad.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WINSTON IN THE FRONT LINE
ONE OF THE REMARKABLE CULTURAL SITUATIONS at the opening of the war, and for several years afterwards, was a lack of initiative at the gradual realization that Britain had been awakened to an unexpected and more brutal war for which leadership was lacking and neither the troops nor the tactics were properly prepared. Consequently, when soldiers arrived for battle, they did not seem to know what to expect, or what was expected of them. It seemed to be true also of the Allies and sometimes even of the Germans, despite the fact that a German military cast had planned the war. Britain had bravely responded. But no one was prepared for it. The Kaiser evidently thought that all that was necessary to win were new technologies, using traditional tactics. When it came to fighting each other, a miasma of incomprehension, uncertainty, and incompetence settled like a heavy fog over the activities on the battlefields. By the time anyone began to realize the dangers, it was already too late.
Winston had plenty of time to reflect on those problems during the period he was in disgrace. Casting his mind back to his visits to Antwerp and to the Dardanelles fiasco, and attempting to analyze the causes of confusion and inertia, he attributed them to a lack of “design and decision.” More familiar words today might be failure in strategic planning, leadership, and training. What could have been going on in the minds of the admirals and generals and other senior officers who simply could not get things right at Gallipoli? The soldiers who arrived too late to take up the best positions hesitated before seeking cover, giving the enemy time to surround them instead, so that they were forced into hand-to-hand combat to their own disadvantage.
