CHAPTER 32

When Churchill got it very wrong: Gallipoli

The Gallipoli campaign in Turkey was one of World War One’s most notorious military disasters. Churchill was its chief architect, and the outcome cost him his job. This piece tells the story of the ill-starred operation, the bravery and suffering of the soldiers, and how it unexpectedly gave birth to the modern identities of Australia and New Zealand

Three of Britain’s most illustrious warships grace Portsmouth’s historic dockyard: Henry VIII’s Mary Rose, Nelson’s HMS Victory, and the groundbreaking ironclad HMS Warrior.

Now, nestling among them, they have a more modest cousin.

HMS M33 was launched on the 22nd of May 1915. She was so insignificant she did not even warrant a name: just ‘M’ for monitor class and a number. Yet now she is famous as the only naval survivor of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign.

In this centenary year of Gallipoli, M33 has opened today in Portsmouth as a museum for the public to experience what life was like for her 72 men. As well as offering a fascinating insight into naval warfare a century ago, it provides a moment to reflect on what happened at Gallipoli, and why it matters.

The campaign’s objective was simple but bold: to take Ottoman Turkey out of the war completely. The plan was to launch a naval attack and amphibious landing to secure the Gallipoli peninsula and open up the Dardanelles strait. Allied vessels would then pass through the strait and on to Istanbul, where they would take the city and cripple the Ottoman war effort. The campaign’s main advocate was a 41-year-old Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty in Asquith’s Liberal government.

On the 19th of February 1915, the naval bombardment began hammering the Ottoman coastal defences, and minesweepers started clearing the mouth of the Dardanelles. However, the area turned out to be surprisingly well defended, and casualties were unexpectedly high. Three British warships were lost, with three more heavily damaged. Meanwhile, amphibious units under General Ian Hamilton had left Egypt for Lemnos, and at 0600 on the 25th of April, in broad daylight, they landed on five beaches along the western shore of the strait at Cape Helles.

Unfortunately, the prolonged naval bombardment had given the Ottomans time to anticipate troop landings and make preparations. Accordingly, the unsuspecting attack units waded ashore directly into mined trip wires in the shallows, barbed wire, sniper fire, and heavy machine guns.

Fighting was intense, and called for immense courage. On W Beach alone, the Lancashire Fusiliers earned six VCs before breakfast.

French troops landed at Kum Kale on the eastern side of the strait, while the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) beached 12 miles north of Cape Helles at Ari Burna, or ANZAC Cove. Two days later, the Zion Mule Corps also landed in support.

Ottoman defences turned out to be so strong that by the 28th of April there was a frustrating stalemate. The Allies had succeeded in establishing beachheads, but were unable to advance beyond them. Even the addition of Indian infantry and Gurkha Rifles on the 1st of May at Sari Bair failed to break the deadlock. The commander of the Ottoman troops at Ari Burna was jubilant. (He would later become famous as first president of the new Republic of Turkey: Mustafa Kemal ‘Atatürk’.)

Back in Britain, a political storm erupted. On the 15th of May, Lord Fisher resigned. He was First Sea Lord and arguably the most important British admiral since Nelson. He had long argued against the viability of the campaign, and been highly critical of Churchill’s obsession with it.

As spring turned to summer, the British staged a further landing on the 6th of August at Suvla Bay, just north of ANZAC Cove. Among the ships participating was the brand spanking new M33: a 568-ton M29-class, built in just seven weeks with two oversize six-inch guns and a shallow draft specially designed for close coastal bombardment. However, to everyone’s frustration, this landing also ended in another small beachhead and a stalemate.

There appeared to be no way forward.

In September, Lt General Charles Munro took command and recommended abandoning the whole venture. In November, Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, visited Gallipoli and agreed. The order was given, and all troops were extracted by the 9th of January 1916.

The lack of success was blamed on poor strategy and planning, along with inadequate equipment and munitions. Churchill was stripped of his position as First Lord of the Admiralty. He resigned from politics in defeat, and went to fight in France. Asquith’s reputation was fatally damaged, and he eventually resigned, to be replaced by David Lloyd George.

The Allies had lost around 52,500 men. The aim of crippling the Ottomans had failed. And yet, the campaign came to be defined by the bravery of the Allied forces. Britain’s soldiers and sailors won 12 VCs, Australia’s nine, and New Zealand’s one. In Australia and New Zealand, the 25th of April 1915 is still commemorated annually as ANZAC Day, when the ‘ANZAC spirit’ of grit and determination was born: a baptism of fire that transformed the two dominions into nations.

So, in Portsmouth’s historic dockyard, is there an unflattering comparison between Nelson’s Victory and M33’s defeat?

The answer is no. The Allies may not have secured the Dardanelles or taken Istanbul. But they did tie up a vast amount of Ottoman firepower, which undoubtedly achieved the secondary objective of relieving the pressure on Grand Duke Nicholas’s Russian forces fighting the Ottomans in the Caucasus.

Visiting the diminutive M33 in Portsmouth provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the fact that military science requires the study of operations that go well and those that do not. Gallipoli may not have succeeded in its primary goal, but it provided vital lessons about amphibious landings, many of which were applied directly in planning the decisive Allied landings in Normandy on D-Day June 1944.

All told, the little M33 represents just as rich a slice of British history as HMS Victory or the Mary Rose. It is a mark of totalitarian regimes to insist only on honouring those who fall in burnished victories. The 72 men of M33, and those who fought at Gallipoli, served to the utmost of their ability in what they were tasked to do. In putting M33 next to Victory, we are saluting them all.