Part 8 (2/2)

Our naval policy was to all intents and purposes framed with a German war as its ultimate goal. The probability of a conflict with the Boches had for some years past virtually governed our military policy.

But in East Africa we were in a measure caught napping.

There had been lack of foresight. I had been guilty of this myself, so that I have the less hesitation in referring to it; for I had been at both Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam early in 1908. At the first-named port our s.h.i.+p only spent a few hours, so that any kind of reconnaissance work would have been out of the question. But we lay for four days on end in Dar-es-Salaam harbour, and yet it never occurred to me to examine the place and its immediate surroundings from the point of view of possible attack upon it in the future--this, moreover, after having just given over charge of the strategical section in the War Office. Even allowing for the fact that war with Germany was not looming ahead to the same extent in 1908 as it was from 1909 onwards, there was surely something wrong on that occasion.

The start that was made in East Africa in 1914 can only be described as deplorable. Following a custom which to my mind is more honoured in the breach than in the observance, the mortifying results of the attempted maritime descent upon Tanga which ushered in the hostilities, were for a long time kept concealed from the public. That reverse const.i.tuted a grave set-back--a set-back on a small scale perhaps, but as decided a one as we met with during the war. Our troops not only lost heavily in casualties, but they also suffered appreciably in _moral_. For months subsequent to that untoward event we were virtually on the defensive in this theatre of war, although we unquestionably enjoyed the advantage in actual numbers, and although the maritime communications were open to our side and closed to that of the enemy. The enemy enjoyed such initiative as there was. Bodies of hostile troops used to cross the border from time to time and inflict unpleasant pin-p.r.i.c.ks upon us. The situation was an eminently unsatisfactory one, but what was to be done?

That ”German East” was just the very place to utilize South African troops in, became apparent at a comparatively early stage of the proceedings. Even before General Botha and his men had completed his conquest of ”German South-West,” one had already begun to dream dreams of these same forces, or their equivalent, coming to the rescue on the farther side of the Dark Continent, and of their getting our Indian and native African contingents, with their small nucleus of British regulars, out of the sc.r.a.pe that they were in. Being in constant communication with General C. W. Thomson, who was in command of the exiguous body of British soldiers left at the Cape, I was able to gauge the local feeling out there fairly correctly, and became convinced that we should be able to rely on securing a really high-cla.s.s contingent of improvised units for ”German East” out of South Africa, of units composed of tough, self-reliant, experienced fighting men who might not be disposed to undertake service on the Western Front. The special character of the theatre of war in East Africa, the nature of the fighting which its topography imposed on the contending sides, its climate, its prospects for the settler, and its geographical position, were all such as to appeal to the dwellers on the veldt. But when the subject was broached once or twice to Lord K.

during the summer of 1915 he would have nothing to do with it. Once bitten twice shy. The War Minister looked on side-shows with no kindly eye. Nor could he be persuaded that this was one which would only be absorbing resources that could hardly be made applicable to other quarters.

Mr. Bonar Law, who was then Colonial Minister, was very anxious to have the military situation in this part of the world cleared up, and I rather took advantage of Lord K.'s absence in the Near East in November to bring the whole thing to a head. Sir A. Murray quite agreed that South Africa ought to be invited to step in and help. So it came about that the business was practically settled by the time that the Chief came back from the Dardanelles, and although he was by no means enthusiastic, he accepted the situation and he chose Sir H.

Smith-Dorrien for the command. Whether this was, or was not, a justifiable side-show is no doubt a matter of opinion. But a very large proportion of the troops who eventually conquered ”German East”

under Generals s.m.u.ts, Hoskins and Van Deventer would scarcely have been available for effective operations in any other theatre, and the demands in respect to artillery, aircraft, and so forth were almost negligible as compared to the resources that were in being even so early as the winter of 1915-16. Perhaps the most powerful arguments that could be brought forward against the offensive campaign that was initiated by General s.m.u.ts in German East Africa were its cost and the amount of s.h.i.+p-tonnage that it absorbed. The primary object for which operations in this region were undertaken, the capture of Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam so as to deprive the enemy of their use for naval purposes, had rather dropped out of consideration owing to the seas having been cleared of enemy non-diving craft in the meantime.

The Mesopotamian operations during the first year and a half were conducted entirely by the India Office and India, and, up till after Sir W. Robertson had become C.I.G.S., we had no direct responsibility in connection with them in the War Office. I had a subsection that dealt entirely with Indian matters; this kept watch, noted the telegrams, reports, and so forth, dealing with what was going on on the Shatt-el-Arab and beyond, and it could at any moment supply me with general information as to the situation. From time to time I used to ask how the operations were progressing, and, without ever going carefully into the matter, was disposed to look somewhat askance at the procedure that was being adopted of continually pressing forward from place to place--like the hill-climber who on reaching one crest ever feels himself drawn on to gain the next--far beyond the zone which had in the first instance been regarded as the objective of the Expeditionary Force. The meteor of conquest appeared to be alluring ”D” Force too far. Without examining the position of affairs closely, it was obvious that the farther our troops proceeded up the Tigris the longer became their line of communications, the shorter became that of the Turks, and the greater must inevitably become the contingents put in the field by our side. What had started as a limited-liability and warrantable side-show was somehow imperceptibly developing into a really serious campaign in a remote region.

Looking back upon those months in the light of later experience, the att.i.tude which one felt disposed to a.s.sume, the att.i.tude that as this was an India Office business with which the War Office had nothing to do it was their funeral, was a mistaken one. The War Office could not, of course, b.u.t.t in unceremoniously. But Lord Kitchener was a member of the Government in an exceptionally powerful position in all things connected with the war, and had one represented one's doubts to him, he would certainly have gone into the question and might have taken up a strong line. I, however, have no recollection of ever speaking to him on the subject of Mesopotamia during the period when ”D” Force was working right up into Irak, moving first to Amarah, then to El Gharbi, and then on to Kut, thus involving the Empire in a regular offensive campaign on an ambitious scale in the cradle of the world.

Then came that farther advance of General Townshend's from Kut to Azizieh, the project for an advance right up to Baghdad a.s.sumed shape at Army Headquarters on the Tigris, in Simla, and at the India Office, and it was then that the General Staff, now with Sir A. Murray in charge, was suddenly called upon to give a considered opinion concerning this ambitious scheme for the information of the War Council. Now it is an interesting fact that just at that very same time we were called upon to give a considered opinion on the subject of the best plan of rendering Egypt secure, and that this necessarily raised the question whether the plan should favour an active form of defence involving an expedition to Alexandretta or thereabouts, or whether it should take a more pa.s.sive form of holding positions away back near the Suez Ca.n.a.l. The two Memoranda were as a matter of fact printed in the one secret doc.u.ment.

As regards Alexandretta we had no doubts whatever, although, as already mentioned on p. 79, Lord K. and the experts in connection with Egypt favoured operations in that direction. We made up our minds without the slightest difficulty, and p.r.o.nounced dead against a forward policy of that kind at such a time. But in reference to Baghdad we all of us, I think, felt undecided and in a quandary.

Unacquainted with General Townshend's views, a.s.suming that the river transport upon which military operations up-Tigris necessarily hinged was in a reasonably efficient condition, ignorant of the obstacles which forbade a prompt start from Azizieh, we pictured to ourselves a bound forward at a very early date. Actually the advance did not materialize for more than a month, and in the meantime the Turks were gathering reinforcements apace. The city might have been occupied had General Townshend been able to push forward at once; for an army (favoured, it is true, by incomparably more effectual administrative arrangements) did sixteen months later reach the place within seven days of quitting Azizieh, although strongly opposed. But so exiguous an expeditionary force could not have maintained itself in that isolated situation in face of swelling hostile numbers. In falling back to his advanced base its leader would have been faced with nearly double the distance to cover that he compa.s.sed so successfully in his retreat from Ctesiphon. The little army would almost certainly have been cornered and compelled for lack of supplies to surrender in some advanced position in Irak five months earlier than, as it turned out, Kut hauled down the flag.

But, be that as it may, we made ourselves to some extent responsible for the disaster which occurred to General Townshend's force, owing to our not taking a decided line on the subject and not obeying the elementary principle that resources must not in war be wasted upon unnecessary subsidiary enterprises. Whether it was or was not feasible to get to Baghdad at the time was a matter of some uncertainty. But that the whole business of all this pouring of troops into Mesopotamia was fundamentally unsound scarcely admitted of dispute. That ought to have determined our att.i.tude on the minor Baghdad point.

Egypt gave rise to little anxiety during the spring and summer of 1915 in consequence of the signal discomfiture which the Turks had suffered on the Ca.n.a.l early in the year; the arid tract known as the Sinai desert indeed provided a satisfactory defence in itself during the dry months. But as autumn approached, the prospect of Ottoman efforts against the Nile Delta had to be taken into serious consideration, the more so that neither the Dardanelles Committee nor the War Council which took its place could disguise from themselves that the abandonment of the Dardanelles enterprise was at least on the cards, and that this would liberate Osmanli forces for efforts in other directions. There had been a school of thought in Egypt all along that the best defence of that region against Turkish invasion was by undertaking operations on the Syrian or Palestine coast, based on the Gulf of Iskanderun for preference, but possibly based on Beirut or Haifa. As the situation in the Near East grew rapidly worse during September, the War Council began to dream of diversions in new directions, quite apart from the Gallipoli Peninsula and Salonika, and some of them pitched upon the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Iskanderun, the strategical importance of which was unquestionable. A force landed in that quarter would give the enemy something to think about, would afford excellent protection to Egypt, and would indirectly a.s.sist our troops, which had been gradually penetrating along the Tigris right up into Mesopotamia.

On this project the General Staff was called upon to report, as already mentioned in Chapter IV, and as stated above, and the General Staff rejected the project without hesitation. This was a very different scheme from that which had been regarded with approval in the winter of 1914-15. Then the enemy resources in these environs had been insignificant, the Turkish communications leading thither had still been interrupted by the Taurus Mountains, and there had been no U-boats in the Mediterranean. Now the enemy was fully prepared in this quarter and would be on the look-out for our troops, the tunnels through the Taurus had been completed, and wars.h.i.+ps and transports could not possibly have lain moored in the roadstead of Alexandretta for fear of submarines. The landing would have had to take place in the inner portion of the Gulf of Iskanderun, Ayas Bay, where there were no facilities, where the surroundings were unhealthy, and where it would be particularly easy for the Turks to put up a stolid resistance. Our view was that for any operation of this kind to be initiated with reasonable safety, a very large body of troops would be necessary, that as far as Egypt was concerned the Nile Delta could be rendered absolutely secure with a much smaller expenditure of force, and that the inevitable result of embarking on a campaign in this new region would be to withdraw yet more of the Entente fighting resources from the main theatre of war in France. It would have been a side-show for which very little could be said and the objections to which seemed to us manifest and overwhelming. The War Council took our advice and dropped the scheme, although Lord Kitchener, who was out in the Aegean, favoured it. Any anxiety that prevailed as to Egypt settled itself shortly afterwards owing to the Gallipoli troops, so skilfully withdrawn from Anzac, Suvla and h.e.l.les, all a.s.sembling in the Nile Delta, where they were refitted and obtained some rest after their terribly arduous campaign in the Thracian Chersonese. This practically synchronized with the time of my leaving the War Office for the time being and proceeding to Russia.

As will be mentioned in Chapter XIV., one heard more about Alexandretta while out in that country. I, moreover, became indirectly concerned in that same old question again at a considerably later date. For, early in October 1917, the War Cabinet hit upon a great notion. On the close of the Flanders operations a portion of Sir D.

Haig's forces were to be switched thither to succour Generals Allenby and Marshall in their respective campaigns, and were to be switched back again so as to be on hand for the opening of active work on the Western Front at the beginning of March 1918--a three months'

excursion. This scheme seems to have been evolved quite _au grand serieux_ and not as a joke. At all events, a conference (which I was called in to attend as knowing more about the Dardanelles business from the War Office end than anybody else) a.s.sembled in the Chief of the Imperial General Staff's room one Sunday morning--the First Sea Lord and the Deputy First Sea Lord with subordinates, together with General Horne who happened to be over on leave from his First Army, and prominent members of the General Staff--and we gravely debated the idiotic project.

n.o.body but a lunatic would, after Gallipoli experiences, undertake serious land operations in the Alexandretta region with less than six divisions. To s.h.i.+p six divisions absorbs a million tons. There were United States troops at this time unable to cross the Atlantic for want of tonnage, and, allowing for disembarkation difficulties on the Syrian coast, two soldiers or animals or vehicles could be transported from America to French or English ports for every one soldier or animal or vehicle that could be s.h.i.+fted from Ma.r.s.eilles or Toulon to the War Cabinet's fresh theatre of operations, given the same amount of s.h.i.+pping. Our Italian allies were in sore straits over coal for munitions and transportation purposes, simply because sufficient tonnage could not be placed at their disposal. Our own food supplies were causing anxiety, and the maintenance of the forces at Salonika afforded constant proof of the insecurity of the Mediterranean as a sea route. But fatuous diversion of s.h.i.+pping represented quite a minor objection to this opera-bouffe proposal. For, allowing for railing troops from the Western Front to the Cote Azure and embarking them, and for the inevitable delays in landing a force of all arms on a beach with improvised piers, the troops at the head of the hunt would already have to be re-embarking in Ayas Bay by the time that those at the tail of the hunt came to be emptied out on the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf of Iskanderun; otherwise the wanderers would miss the venue on the Western Front.

Had this been suggested by a brand-new Ministry--a Labour Cabinet, say, reviewing the military situation at its very first meeting--n.o.body could reasonably have complained. People quite new to the game naturally enough overlook practical questions connected with moving troops by land and sea, and do not realize that those questions govern the whole business. Any third-form boy, given a map of Turkey-in-Asia and told of campaigns in Palestine, and Mesopotamia, and Armenia, and of the bulk of enemy resources being found about Constantinople and in Anatolia, who did not instantly perceive how nice it would be to dump an army down at Alexandretta, would, it is earnestly to be hoped, be sent up to have his dormant intelligence awakened by outward applications according to plan. Quite knowledgeable and well-educated people call this sort of thing ”strategy,” and so in a sense it is--it is strategy in the same sense as the multiplication table is mathematics. If you don't know that two added to two makes four, and divided by two makes one, the integral calculus and functional equations will defeat you; if it has never occurred to you that by throwing your army, or part of it, across the route that your opponent gets his food and his ammunition and his reinforcements by you will cause him inconvenience, then your name is not likely to be handed down to posterity with those of the Great Captains. But the War Cabinet of October 1917 contained personages of light and leading who had been immersed up to the neck in the conduct of hostilities ever since early in 1915.

The Royal Navy could always be trusted to play the game on these occasions. When you cannot get your own way in the army, you beslaver the local martial Esculapius with soft words and prevail upon him to back you up. ”Oh, if the medical authorities p.r.o.nounce it necessary,”

thereupon declare the Solons up top who have been sticking their toes in, ”it's of course got to be done.” Similarly, when the amateur strategist gets out of hand, you appeal to the sailors to save the situation. ”Just look at what these owls are after now,” you say; ”they'll upset the coach before they've done with it. _You_ won't be able to do your share in the business, and we----” ”Not do our share in the business? Why not? Of course we----” ”Yes, yes, I know that; but you really must help us. One of those unintelligible masterpieces of yours all about prost.i.tution of sea-power, and periscopes and that sort of poppy-c.o.c.k with which you always know how to bluff the lubbers.” ”Well, we'll see what we can do”--and the extinguisher is dexterously and effectually applied. Co-operation between the two great fighting services is the master-key opening every impeditive doorway on the path to victory.

The operations which brought about the occupation of Palestine and Syria const.i.tuted a side-show on a very important scale indeed, and they at one period swallowed up contingents of British troops that were somewhat badly needed on the Western Front, just as the Salonika business did. Troops of that character, troops fit to throw against the Hindenburg Line, however, represented quite an insignificant proportion of the forces with which General Allenby achieved his startling triumphs in the year 1918. The urgent need of increasing our strength in France and Flanders during the winter of 1917-18 was fully realized by the General Staff at the War Office, and efforts were made to induce the War Cabinet to consent to withdraw some of the British troops from Palestine. But nothing was done in the matter until after the successful German offensive of March, when the enemy almost drove a wedge through the Allies' front near Amiens. After that the bulk of General Allenby's British infantry were taken from him and rushed off to France, native troops from India which had been created by Sir C.

Monro since he had taken up the chief command there in 1916, together with some veteran Indian companies from Mesopotamia, being sent in their place. The brilliant offensive which carried our flag to Damascus and on to Aleppo after utterly defeating the Turks was executed with a soldiery of whom the greater part could be spared from the decisive theatre. The conquering army was composed almost entirely of mounted men for whom there was little scope in France, or of Indian troops. Even had the results been infinitely less satisfactory to the Entente in themselves than they actually were, a side-show run on such lines was a perfectly legitimate undertaking.

The same principle to some extent holds good in respect to the conquest of Mesopotamia by Sir S. Maude and Sir W. Marshall. The troops which won such striking successes in that theatre of war included a considerable proportion of units which would not have been employed on the Western Front in any case. The army was to a large extent a native Indian one, and latterly it included its quota of the freshly organized units which General Monro had created. The fact remains, however, that from April 1916 (when Kut fell) until the end of the war, a considerable force of British white troops was continuously locked up in this remote region, engaged upon what can hardly be called a necessary side-show.

In connection with the remarkably successful efforts made by the Commander-in-Chief in India to expand the local forces during the last two years of the conflict, there is a matter which may be mentioned here. That the victorious campaigns in Palestine and in Mesopotamia in 1917 and 1918 were in no small degree attributable, indirectly, to what General Monro had accomplished by energy and administrative capacity, is well known to all who were behind the scenes, and has been cordially acknowledged by Lord Allenby and Sir W. Marshall.

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