Chapter VII: The Chinese Miracle
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too
As General Allenby surveyed the peninsular that he had come to command he was a worried man, the main Ottoman defensive line ran from the town of Gallipoli to an imposing ridge on his left. There was a small depression after the ridge, but the flat costal land there was so small as to be a bottleneck. The Bull, as he was known be friend and foe alike, had recently relieved Sir Ian Hamilton of command, from the reports the man had given he saw that the landings had been executed with a high degree of success, but that the usual frontal attacks upon the Turkish positions would be bloody and futile. One of the things that he is often credited for, by modern military historians, is his ability to see diverse and eclectic forces and find a way to use them to their best extent. He quickly realised that, although the ANZAC and Indian infantry were of the highest quality, his best forces for those of the British Gurkhas, a force of hardy men used to fighting upon hills and immensely brave.
Allenby had been given strict orders when he had been assigned to the theatre, and those orders were to crack the Ottoman lines as quickly as possible, regardless of cost. As such the man knew that he would have to act fast, he was uncomfortable with the casualty projections from another massed assault, but there seemed little other option. For several days the commander of Ottoman forces and his Germany advisor surveyed the steady build-up of allied forces around the area of Gallipoli with obvious interest. Mustafa Kemel knew what to expect, intelligence recently received had alerted him to the fact that the British General had been reinforced with a large compliment of heavy guns recently. He had little doubt of what was to come, the change in leadership, it appeared, had not changed the allied penchant for massing men for a direct attack [1].
British Gurkhas in position the the ridge near the town of Galliopli
When one thinks of what life was like in the Ottoman trenches for the week long, heavy, bombardment of their lines, one can only imagine the horrors and fear that must have gripped Turkish hearts. This would have mitigated, of course, by the fact that this had already happened before, the Ottoman’s on the front were, like their German colleagues in Flanders, confident in their knowledge that they would sit out the massive bombardment for exactly a week before the Allied troops would attack on either the hour, or the half [2]. The sheer amount ordinance that was being flung in high arcs by the Allied guns left Kemel safe in the knowledge that he knew exactly where the attack would come from and almost the exact time of the Allied sally at his lines. He brought up his reserve so as to be able to resist the advance in an elastic way, as was the advice of his Teutonic advisor, everything was in place, and once again a British General would pay a high price in his men’s blood for a futile attempt.
The first thing that struck the Ottoman officer was the lack of force behind this attack. The large guns had ceased and a few units had advanced, but there was not the usual glut of targets for his machine guns. Had the man seen the situation incorrectly? Was this new General trying something new? The answer came quickly as men behind the front lines reported seeing men coming ashore, accompanied by heavy fire and multiple explosions. To the young Turk’s immense relief, the British General had blundered into a perfect trap, he quickly summarised that although the plan had been innovative, his recently positioned reserves were in a uniquely good position to throw the amphibious attack back into the murky water of the Dardanelles. Orders were quickly dispatched to have his mobile reserves deal with the incursion and as the forces on the far right, close to the ridge, were seeing no action to move further some of them back to Gallipoli, Kemel had an idea, not only would he repulse the attack but he would counter it.
Mustafa Kemel, Field Commander of Ottoman forces
The theory was sound, although he had a disparity in troops, the Ottoman reasoned that with a seemingly significant portion of his enemy engaged on the shore, if he pushed hard back against the Indian and ANZAC troops in front he could, at least, threaten his opponent’s guns, if not force a rout. He put his plan into action and watched as his troops massed, we can only imagine the look upon his face as his smile must have transformed into a look of gentle surprise, he heard thunder from the north, but looked into the sky and saw not a cloud in sight, suddenly he is reported to stammered and staggered, uttering the, probably apocryphal, words “thunder? Surely not with this… Bull! What have you done?” [3]
Allenby was a happy man, his diversion had been a brilliant success and even now his infantry were engaging the Ottoman lines. The Gurkha units had already overrun a position on the ridge and were pouring enfilading fire down upon the hard pressed defenders. The first aspect of the diversion had been accomplished through the harassment of London until a battery of French artillery had been delivered from a bewildered command, they did not understand his reasoning as the quick-firing guns that he asked for had been shown to be ineffective against entrenched positions. The General had a unique way of thinking and he had quickly realised that in order to make a bombardment of enemy positions as realistic as possible, he would either mean concentrating all of his artillery together or find another solution. What he realised was that by using the quick-firing guns, of which his opponent had no idea, he could make it seem that all of his artillery was placed to attack Gallipoli, when in fact most of his guns were facing the position his men were attacking.
The quick-firing French 75mm artillery piece
The second stroke of genius came from an unlikely source, Bernard Freyberg [4], a New Zealander who had fought in the Mexican civil-war and won a prize fight in New York in order to pay for his passage to Britain at the outbreak of war. Freyberg was an unusual man, of who many considered to be overly fond of fire and explosions, but the British commander entertained his ideas. The first was the reintroduction into the British army of a Napoleonic oddity, the rocket. While the French guns could cover for the artillery already in place, the Allies knew that their opponents had received information showing that heavy guns had been brought to the front, if they were missing from the bombardment, they would have been noticed. Freyberg’s idea was to use simple rockets with large payloads to simulate their effects, when it was pointed out how horribly inaccurate they were, he simply replied that it would not matter as the effect was what was needed, not results [5]. His second action was to row ashore behind enemy lines with a large assortment of fireworks to confuse and hopefully divert the enemy. The small-arms fire which had been reported to Kemel was nothing more than Chinese fire-crackers, bangers and other such things only normally seen on the 5th of November.
The last moment of inspiration had been the use of the 4th and 12th Light Horse (Australian) Regiments. The units, that had previously seen action the Boer War, were mounted troops who mainly acted as mounted infantry, but did also provide cover for some cavalry roles. They had been used by Hamilton as normal infantry while their steads, mainly hardy Australian Waler horse, had been acclimatising in Egypt. They had performed admirably, but now they were reunited with their equine colleagues, and Allenby employed they as pure cavalry to punch through the breach and rush upon the lightly flanks of Kemel’s forces, encircling them and forcing their surrender [6].
The Famous Australian Light Horse
After the long and arduous campaign so far, the long awaited breakthrough had been accomplished and Allenby spurred his troops on toward a new, hastily built, Ottoman defensive line. The Imperial forces were off the peninsular and while they lacked the means to directly take the war further, they cheered as the Royal Navy’s monstrous looking battlecruisers [7] steamed past, the straights were open and the only thing that now separated the Ottoman capital from 16 inch high explosive shells was the ancient Turkish navy and two German ships. The war had changed in an evening, Allenby had pushed a small snow-ball down a slope, and the question was where the avalanche would stop [8].
[1] Needless to say this is all made up by yours truly
[2] Depressingly true, the Germans knew exactly when an Allied attack was going to come because of this
[3] Yeah in HOI terms Allenby would have the ‘trickster’ trait among others
[4] This guy is amazing, seriously Google him
won the VC on the day of the landing doing something similar to here… I think he will also get a VC for his work here
[5] Not sure if this would work very well, but meh…
[6] These forces joined Allenby in Palestine and charged enemy guns and trenches, very useful force
[7] The dreadnought’s have returned to home waters, but the I-Class so humbled in the North Sea, should do wonderfully well here
[8] Just released a whole bunch of butterflies now