6/7 June 1915

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Patrick Miles

By the end of 4 June, seven out of the twelve available reserve battalions of VIII Corps had been sent in to reinforce the failure of the attacks on the left and right flanks — although it has been suggested that using them to reinforce the success in the centre would have been even more disastrous. Consequently, as Bryn Hammond of the Imperial War Museum writes in a special paper on the Third Battle of Krithia, there were insufficient reserves to ‘meet the Turkish forces flung against the captured positions on the following two days. As a result, those who were counter-attacked were hard pushed to hold on and the loss of the whole of Helles was a very real threat’.

The situation at the end of 7 June was that there was a slight salient in front of Twelve Tree Copse, but the 88th Brigade had had to abandon trenches H14, H13 and H12 (see map in post for 4 June). Essentially, the whole front now ran along line 11 of the trenches — the original First Objective of the battle. Only 250-500 yards had been gained on a front of about a mile. Of their original attacking force of about 34,000 troops, the Allies had lost 6500, of which 4500 were British. The Turks had lost at least 9000 men.

The 52nd (Lowland) Division was now arriving at Helles. These troops were the reinforcements promised by Kitchener at the beginning of May. On 6 June the 1/5th Battalion (Territorials) of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers landed as part of this Division. In the ineffable words of the Official History, ‘by an unfortunate mistake in psychology’ the first task of the 1/5th KOSB was to bury the corpses of the 1st KOSB killed on 4 June, which it will be remembered were piled up as ramparts on either side of the new communication trench being dug during the Turkish counter-attacks.

The overwhelming probability is that George Calderon’s body was removed by the 1/5th KOSB in this operation on 6 or 7 June. The fact that between June and September Kittie received conflicting War Office telegrams about George’s fate suggests that his identity disc was not retrieved. One wonders why, but after three days in the hot sun these corpses must have been so decomposed as to necessitate burial as quickly as possible. It is most likely that he was buried at a cemetery behind Fir Tree Wood.

After the Armistice of 1918, the graves from Fir Tree Wood Cemetery were brought together with those from many other local burial grounds to form a single cemetery at the site of the original Twelve Tree Copse (see map in my post of 4 June). Of the 3360 servicemen buried or commemorated here, 2226 are unidentified. The identified men include twenty from the 1st KOSB killed on 4 June 1915. Amongst these is the commander of George Calderon’s company, Captain Grogan. We may reasonably assume, then, that George’s remains now rest at  Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery.

Next entry: George Calderon: a tribute

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4/5 June 1915

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Patrick Miles

The first wave of the KOSB attack at noon on 4 June was, as the Official History put it, ‘practically blotted out’. The carnage was so terrible that on his own initiative their commander delayed the second wave. At 12.35, however, seeing that the Worcesters were making progress on the left and the Royal Fusiliers on the right, he sent C and D Companies forward in ‘platoon rushes’. They captured all the First Objective trenches and pressed on. By 1.00 p.m. the 88th Brigade as a whole had taken hundreds of prisoners and even reached its Second Objective, H14 (see map in yesterday’s post).

But the fortunes of the battle had fluctuated wildly. The redoubts on the Dardanelles and Aegean flanks had proved invincible, and the allied forces’ withdrawals there had exposed other troops, particularly the Royal Naval Division, to devastating enfilade fire. In the middle of the front the 127th Manchester (Territorial) Brigade had broken through the Turkish line and reached the outskirts of Krithia itself. Then they too were enfiladed from the right, but managed to maintain a salient. Across the line VIII Corps was forced to retreat and ‘conform’. At 5.15 p.m. yesterday Hunter-Weston issued orders to consolidate for the night on the ground already gained.

After the KOSB had advanced beyond the First Objective, consolidating forces swiftly moved in to strengthen the captured trenches H9a-H11 and in particular to construct a trench from them back to the old front line. However, shortly after Hunter-Weston’s 5.15 p.m. order the Turks counter-attacked. To protect themselves, the excavators piled up the corpses from the first-wave KOSB attack on either side of the new communication trench. Almost certainly, George Calderon’s body was one of them.

In their evening counter-attack, Turkish reserves pushed the Manchesters back in the centre over most of the ground captured during the day.

A year later, A.P. Herbert, who had been with the Royal Naval Division, wrote as the Dedication of his book Half-hours at Helles:

This is the fourth of June.
Think not I never dream
The noise of that infernal noon,
The stretchers’ endless stream,
The tales of triumph won,
The night that found them lies,
The wounded wailing in the sun,
The dead, the dust, the flies.

At dawn on 5 June the Turks launched more attacks. As Peter Hart has put it, that day ‘it became clear that the Allies were no longer directing the course of the Third Battle of Krithia’. Officially, the battle ended on 4 June; but clearly the Turks were still fighting it two days later.

Next entry: 6/7 June 1915

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4 June 1915: The Third Battle of Krithia

Posted on June 4, 2015 by Patrick Miles

At nine o’clock last night the 1st Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers paraded near W Beach, received a benediction from their padre, and were addressed by their commanding officer. They had been taken from the 87th Brigade and attached to the 88th, which included the 2nd Hampshire, 2nd Royal Fusiliers, 4th Worcestershire and 1/5th Royal Scots, with the 1st Essex in reserve. They now moved up Gully Ravine as they had the night before, but this time were taken to their position in the trenches. The 1st KOSB extended from the middle of Twelve Tree Copse on the right to the edge of a long strip of scrub on the left. The Royal Fusiliers were to their right, the Worcesters to their left. They spent the night mainly in support trenches. This is the trench diagram issued with orders on 3 June, but simplified by removing communication trenches and features such as orchards:

The Third Battle of Krithia

(CLICK ON MAP TO ENLARGE)

The sun rose this morning in a cloudless sky and it was obviously going to be a beautiful summer’s day. There was a fresh breeze from the north-east.

The orders for the battle were tabulated thus:

8 a.m. to 10.30 a.m.: Bombardment of strong-points. Final registration by                   field batteries.
11.05 to 11.20 a.m.: Bombardment of enemy front line.
11.20 to 11.30 a.m.: All guns cease fire, except those on enemy’s line of                           approach. Infantry cheer, and show fixed bayonets above trenches to                   induce the enemy to man his parapets.
11.30 to noon: Intensive bombardment of enemy front line.
12.00 noon: Batteries increase their range. Infantry, first wave, assault 1st                  objective.
12.15 p.m.: Infantry, second wave, assault 2nd objective.

At 6.00 a.m. the 1st KOSB’s adjutant, a Captain Paterson, went round the trenches. ‘Everyone’, he recorded in his diary, ‘seemed to understand their jobs’. At 8.00 the howitzers started registering and the troops had breakfast. Paterson describes the bombardment of strong-points as ‘tentative […] all the morning’, only ‘warming up’ between 11.00 and 11.25 when the Turkish front line was the target. The wind was now stiffening and blowing a thick cloud of fumes and dust back to the KOSB trenches. At this point the troops performed their ‘feint’ of cheering and showing their fixed bayonets above the parapet. ‘There was no doubt’, Paterson wrote, that the Turks were in their fire trenches, ‘as I have never heard such heavy rifle and machine gun fire.’ The ‘intensive’ bombardment of those trenches then resumed.

Platoon No. 8, commanded by George Calderon, was in support trenches on the extreme left of the KOSB line, touching the strip of scrub. It would be in the first wave of assault, comprising A and B Companies. George seems to have given his men a tot of brandy each. A witness statement dated 13 July 1915 says that he then ‘picked the leaf of a certain shrub, and told the men to do the same and to chew the leaves, as these were said by the Turks to give vigour. All the men near picked leaves and chewed them’.

At 11.55 they moved up into the fire trench that they had prepared on the night of the 2nd. ‘The Turkish fire’, wrote Paterson, ‘was still very heavy’. The first wave was to go over the top in two consecutive lines, A Company first on the right, B on the left. A Company mounted the ladders. At noon the whistle went and they leapt over the sand bags. Simultaneously, Turkish machine-guns opened fire right along the top of the parapet. As an eye witness, Sergeant-Major Daniel Joiner, put it, ‘instead of going forward, [A Company] either fell back again wounded or killed’. There was a lull in the fire, within seconds the whistle went again, and George led his men forward in B Company.

4 June 1915

The 1st Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers go over the top at noon in the Third Battle of Krithia, 4 June 1915.       Published by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum.

From where we stand on this side of the parapet, George had ‘vanished in the smoke of battle’, as so many of his friends later put it.

But it is the job of a biographer to go with his subject to the very end. George’s first biographer, Percy Lubbock, understood this and stated: ‘George was seen to fall, severely wounded, in the open. He was close to a Turkish trench, however; [so] there was a chance that he might prove to be a prisoner.’ But this was a vain hope.

Exhaustive study of all the published and unpublished evidence suggests that George, with his superior running skills, managed to get over a hundred yards towards the nearest Turkish trench, H9a, with men falling all around him. The trench itself was about another thirty yards ahead. At this point, I believe, he was hit by machine gun fire from H8a, in the Worcesters’ sector, or even H8 on the far right, as Paterson says that ‘all our losses had been caused by cross-fire from the flanks’. Only one officer from B Company survived.

This officer, and the witness whose statement was dated 13 July, believed that George was killed outright. I agree, and naturally I hope it was so. According to Paterson, ‘nearly all the corpses we got were hit six or seven times’.

Next entry: 4/5 June 1915

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‘We’re the Jims’

Posted on June 3, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps (in effect, all the British forces on the Helles front) issued its orders today, Thursday 3 June 1915. They were meticulous and ‘for the first time accompanied by a trench diagram, showing the various objectives to be reached’ (Official History). This diagram was based on good photographs taken by the Royal Naval Air Service. A company commander wrote in his diary: ‘It was the first time I had seen such elaborate orders. Every detail was provided for, and the plan seemed invincible.’ It must have been communicated to the officers of the 1st Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers today, because of the first sentence of George’s letter, which I shall explain in my commentary.

June 3

My dearest Mrs P,

When there’s a brickfield we’re the Jims.

I’m snug in the bottom of my dugout, in shirt sleeves, shaded by a new waterproof sheet. Last night I went on a ‘fatigue’. Left here with 100 men of the Company and went digging up by the firing line. Hasty snack of dinner at the outdoor table (the earth with a trench for legs round it) [then] marched off in blobs to a beautiful ravine: up it in the clean twilight. Sandstone cliffs, shelves with green, white sand bottom with a stream along the edge. Sikhs, and all manner of folk; muleteers, camps, with innumerable little fires in every chink of the cliffs; patient pickets of horses. Bullets plocked and hummed overhead from the battle. At the first I bobbed my head and a Scot by the wayside said ‘Aye, bob yer heid!’ and laughed. They were most of them 40 feet above us I suppose; though a few fell in the nullah. Another gang went up first and we lay down ‘to sleep’ in a turn of the ravine, where there were telephone and RAMC-caves; we lay on the grass. Men smoked and talked and the hollow magnified the plocks and pips and zims enormously, deafeningly. Sometimes a rattling fusillade, silenced by a bang-whizz-bang of a round or two from the big guns, firing over our hollow. Beautiful flashlights, a curved rocket with golden sparks ending in a bright silver star that hangs and illuminates. (These we see beautifully from our camp; the French with a parachute star that hangs for more than a minute, a Turkish that I have seen send a double curve, one to each side; red stars; and green stars — which are signals of some sort.) At 11.30 two guides took us up precipitous cliff paths, across a hilly heath into a great winding corridor of sand, endless and monochrome, with caves here and there in it, plocks and zims over the edge, and tired men lying sleeping in the pathway: telephone wires here and there to catch the chin. Through a side door we emerged on an open heath again — where the plocks and zims had a personal air. The first gang had broken the surface and got down a little. We continued. I had to make bold, once or twice, under good example of other officers, to walk along redistributing jobs and tools. When the clear moon rose the bullets seemed to be fired with some personal animosity. In some places we had to lie low and work on the belly. By 3 a.m. we had done a decent job of cover for those who are to succeed and deepen the work in the daylight. Nobody hit. In another company doing a similar job, they had one k. and one w. Dawn was breaking. We climbed down and marched home in early daylight; with an orange-tawny daybreak spreading horizontally about the tantalising molehill. I worked with my hands so vigorously that all the envelopes that I cadged from the Padre are stuck together. (This is one.)

I was glad to get back at 4.30 a.m. to my broom-strown bed in my little ditch; heath-strown, rather, for softness. I staggered home at the head of my company like a drunken man.

I had the misfortune to break the vulcanite eyepieces of the Colonel’s field glasses. But now they are strange and better than ever — for I asked the armourer sergeant to do what he could for me and he has fixed them up with the tips of brass shell-caps, shrapnel-fuses. I carry them in a rude canvass bag which I sewed from a mess-tin cover: and on the whole am getting to look like the tramp cyclist at the music halls.

Well, nobody knows what may be happening to him in this land of adventure. But we all hope for the best, and nothing is safer than success, at which we all aim, and for which we are not ill provided. I only hope that the Turks will recognise the regiment; then they’ll fly for Byzance yelling, ‘Allah, it’s them Scots again!’ and nobody will find out that I’m a timid little penman from London.

Anyway I’m always a fortnight behind the newspapers, and always your loving little P., who wishes he were safely back in the bosom of Tommy[,] Shady[,] Elizabeth & Co but is nevertheless very well pleased to be where he is.

P.P.P.

The opening one-liner would have been impenetrable to the censor, but it means ‘when the balloon goes up, we shall be in the firing-line’. Kittie would have understood this, as it refers to their young friend Jim Corbet at the Battle of the Brickstacks on the Western Front (see my post of 27 January), which involved trench to trench fighting. Corbet was in great danger then, and subsequently killed (see my post of 15 April). George is making it quite clear, therefore, that he is about to go into battle.

The ‘beautiful ravine’ that George went up the previous night is Gully Ravine, running parallel to the Aegean coast. Here the Turkish position was almost as strongly fortified as the extreme right on the Dardanelles shore, and fiercely fought over. The British position was held by the 29th Indian Brigade, including the Gurkhas and Sikhs. RAMC = Royal Army Medical Corps.

From Gully Ravine George and his company evidently moved through well-established communication trenches to what was in effect the front line opposite Krithia. This was a series of trenches that were marked as dashes on the trench diagram and had to be deepened/built up to become firing trenches in this section of the front for the attack tomorrow. The moonlight made them targets. The ‘tantalising molehill’ was Achi Baba.

The ‘broom’ and ‘heath’ with which George’s bed is ‘strown’ are wild flowers (probably Cytisus and Erica species). The field glasses he refers to were most likely given him by Colonel Hawkins of the 9th Ox and Bucks at Brockhurst.

‘Little P.’ is ‘Little Peety’, George’s invented persona as a dutiful husband. Tommy is the Calderons’ dog, Shady their cat Shadrach, Elizabeth their housemaid Elizabeth Ellis, and ‘Co.’ are probably the two Belgian refugees and all George and Kittie’s closest friends. ‘P.P.P.’ stands for ‘Pore Peeky Peety’. It is enclosed in a circle meaning ‘I hug you tightly’.

In old age Kittie wrote in a very shaky hand on the envelope containing this letter: ‘G.C.’s last letter to K.C.’ She did not receive it until 20 June 1915.

Next entry: 4 June 1915: The Third Battle of Krithia

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Commemoration

Posted on June 2, 2015 by Patrick Miles

In two days time the following ‘In Memoriam’ will appear in The Times:

CALDERON George Leslie, Russianist, journalist, dramatist, anthropologist, adventurer, killed at Gallipoli 4 June 1915. ‘What he believed, he did’ (Laurence Binyon).

Since George wrote more for The Times than any other newspaper, it is possible there will also be a tribute to him on its pages. I shall give a full account of commemorations of George’s death in posts later in June.

George Calderon was the oldest member of Trinity College, Oxford, to fall in action in the 1914-18 War. His name is honoured in a commemorative exhibition currently outside the College Hall, alongside the earliest manuscript of Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’.

Numerous people across the world have told me that they will ‘raise a glass’ to George’s memory on 4 June.

The ‘Calderonia’ team will mark the anniversary privately at Hampstead.

If you have followed this blog covering the last year of George Calderon’s life, you might like to remember him and his supreme sacrifice in the two minutes after 12.00 noon on 4 June, the probable time of his death in the Third Battle of Krithia, Gallipoli.

*                    *                     *

On this day, 2 June 1915, Ian Hamilton issued orders for the attack across the whole of the Helles front to be launched on the morning of 4 June. These orders described the general objectives as follows.

The French Corps on the extreme Dardanelles side was to capture the high ground overlooking Keres Dere and establish a footing at two points on the left bank of this nullah — actually the most difficult task of the whole operation. Next to them, on the left, the Royal Naval Division and 42nd Division were to capture the enemy’s forward line, but ‘every opportunity was to be seized for exploiting any success’ (Official History). Further left, roughly between Krithia Nullah and the Aegean shore, the 29th Division (including the 1st KOSB) had the bigger task of capturing three lines of trenches and advancing to within a kilometre of Krithia itself.

Today was a Wednesday. In Kent the weather was bright, almost touching 21 degrees C. At Foxwold Kittie received George’s letter of 18 May, forwarded from Hampstead (see my post of 18 May). In this letter he said he would arrive at Malta next day, and ‘Nobody knows where he is going’. So Kittie still had no idea that he was at Gallipoli.

Next entry: ‘We’re the Jims’

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1 June 1915

Posted on June 1, 2015 by Patrick Miles

1st K.O.S.B

87th Bg., 29th Div., M.E.F.

June 1st

Dearest Mrs P., Nothing in my letters need make you anxious, for you’d know if I was a casualty thro’ the W.O., before any letter had time to alarm you, same as we see the big brown clouds of smoke and dust flying long before we hear the bang of explosion. Such clouds! and right in the Turkish lines. There’s a shaking bang behind, to one side, then an irregular quiet whizzing away over the landscape, and while you’re listening to it you are suddenly aware that a cloud the size of the Hotel Cecil is drifting across the slopes in the distance followed by bang two. We are free from shells since I wrote last; though a couple went just a little way over us this morning. Of course they go most for the artillery. They ended the day in the quiet evening sunshine yesterday, with a shower of 12 screaming things, in about 4 seconds, into a greatly favoured nullah not very far from us. A sergeant has a beautiful shrapnel shell here from Sunday; fresh, bright, and undamaged. It had gone off and scattered its bullets; but he found its fuse or pointed cap and screwed it on again. We read the range in Turkish numbers on the fuse and know where it came from. The ear grows accustomed to the various sounds. Here as I write in the Mess dugout (there are new officers joined who stand in a shell-inviting way about our usual oak tree) I hear our own guns and the little angry whew of Turkish anti-airman shells bursting in the sky, about one of our airmen. These fellows cruise about for 2 or 3 hrs at a time, persistently dodging those little pretty white clouds. I am after my lunch, between two naps. We hear that the Turks may attack tonight but expect nothing much for ourselves; there are two or three lines between us and them. But we shall go to bed in our boots. I got up at 5.30, my regular hour; m.g. from 7-8. Then with my platoon, inspecting rifles, getting a list of the lousy etc. A remedy recommended is to take a Turkish cartridge, sprinkle the powder along the seam of the trousers and ignite. I have, however, neither lice nor Turkish cartridges. 10.30-12.15, more m.g. 12.30 lunch.

At Sunday’s shelling the Padre ended with dignity, before we dispersed, with a proper benediction. Many shells fell near our transport horses and mares. One of them foaled that morning early, and the little colt was brought back after the cannonade very happy and trustful; no doubt supposing it was our usual way of going on. Its mother was slightly wounded.

There are horrible centipedes here, as fat as my fountain-pen and 6 to 8 inches long; they get into dark places, under bedding, in boots etc. There is a sweet smell from a sort of verbena that grows in quantities on this heath. It was not a corncrake that I meant, but a nightjar. The classical beauty of the landscape towards the blue Dardanelles is greatly heightened by the white pillars of a lost aqueduct.

Among other duties we have to censor our men’s letters. They were some months in Rugby and half the letters are to various Jessies and Bessies in Rugby. One writes: ‘I have written 4 times to Mary and she has not answered. I will give her socks [i.e. hit her] if God spares me to return.’ Last night I instructed a few of my men in bomb throwing. I do not know how far they recognise us new officers. One of my men, being asked, in my presence, whose platoon it was, said ‘Sergeant Smith’s’.

Besides the daily paper ‘The Peninsula Press’ there is an irregular comic paper printed at HQR called ‘The Dardanelles Driveller’. I have not managed to see a copy yet.

Two shells have just gone overhead for the beach; neither of them exploded.

The enemy have no planes at all. There are many things we hear, of which I make no mention, for we are censors of our own letters; but I have no doubt you hear of them all in the newspapers. This regiment (and all this brigade and division) has played a very gallant part out here, and it is a great honour to be attached to them. The Brigade is all Borderers: the K.O.S.B.’s, the Border Regt and the S. Wales Borderers. General Doran, our cross-looking but rather noble old shipmate, commands the brigade in front of us, Tresidder’s and Ratcliff’s. We pride ourselves that we are held in reserve to deliver the smashing and decisive blow.

It is a consolation to think that if I sleep in my boots, there can be no centipedes in them in the morning. I have not smoked since Lemnos, and I’ve been sleepy all the time. Tea is arriving. Goodbye, dear little Mrs P.  In spite of all precautions we receive no letters at all. I wish we did. Goodbye to Glengarries; the men have just got their topies back. Yr dear little P.

I’ve got one man in my platoon who wears the kilt, a tall fair beautiful man from the Highlands, the rest in breeches.

This is the first time the above letter has been published in its entirety. The version that appears in Percy Lubbock’s George Calderon: A Sketch from Memory, p. 189-90, is severely edited.

The Hotel Cecil was a grand hotel built by the Thames in the 1890s. The word ‘nullah’, meaning a natural watercourse with steepish sides, was a military term from the Raj; George is most likely referring to Krithia Nullah. George had a phobia of moths, centipedes, spiders etc. For ‘not a corncrake’ see my post of 27 May. ‘There are many things we hear’ probably refers to the criticisms back home of Churchill, Kitchener and the management of the whole Gallipoli campaign. Brigadier-General W. Doran had come over with George and the others from Britain on the Orsova and taken command of the 88th Brigade ahead of them, on the front line. Tresidder and Ratcliff were in the Royal Scots regiment.

‘I’ve been sleepy all the time’: see my post of 9 May.

*                    *                    *

On this day, Kittie left Hampstead to stay at Foxwold and Emmetts again until 10 June.

Today Hunter-Weston issued special instructions explaining to VIII Corps senior officers the scheme of the forthcoming battle. ‘The assaulting troops were to be divided into two waves. The first wave, with a strength of five men to every four yards of front, would capture the enemy’s front line […]. As soon as the front line had been captured, the second wave, strength one man per yard, was to leapfrog over the first wave, and capture the second objective, 400-500 yards ahead’ (Official History). Immediately after this, Royal Engineers were to strengthen the captured lines and dig communication trenches back from them to the previous British line.

No date had yet been announced for the attack.

Next entry: Commemoration

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31 May 1915

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Today the fate of George Calderon and several thousand other British soldiers at Gallipoli was sealed. Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, decided to fight a general action on the Helles front without waiting for the extra troops promised him by Kitchener, the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

This is described by Peter Hart (Gallipoli, p. 238), as an ‘egregious blunder’, but it is difficult to see that Hamilton had much choice. Every day the Turks were receiving fresh troops and strengthening their positions, so waiting for the 52nd Division might have made no difference. Moreover, the commander of VIII Corps, Lieutenant-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, assured Hamilton that the recently arrived ‘replacement drafts’ were enough to make a general attack feasible. It was actually an encouraging achievement that since 9 May the units under Hunter-Weston’s control had managed to advance the British front line by nearly half a mile with very low casualties. They were also more rested now than when they had fought the Second Battle of Krithia.

On this day, Hunter-Weston and the French corps commander General Henri Gouraud presented detailed plans for the attack. These will be described over the next few days. They were based on aerial photographs of the Turkish lines translated into an extremely accurate trench diagram, of which I shall give a version on 4 June. Hamilton accepted Hunter-Weston and Gouraud’s plans, but insisted that no attempt must be made to capture Achi Baba in a day. The attacks were to capture the Turks’ forward system of trenches and nowhere advance more than 800 yards.

From our point in time, we can say that the officers of the 9th Ox and Bucks at Fort Brockhurst who volunteered for active service in an unspecified theatre of war had walked straight into a trap, called ‘The Third Battle of Krithia’.

Next entry: 1 June 1915

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30 May 1915

Posted on May 30, 2015 by Patrick Miles

1st bn KOSB 87th Brigade 29th Division M.E.F. May 30th

Dearest Mrs P, I’m hard up for paper. Please send some. We’re still on the same spot, in broiling sun, dry and beautiful; sea to either side. […] Daily programme something like this: Get up a little before six. The men run by twelves for 10 mins over the heath and back. 7-8 fiddling with machine gun. Breakfast in ‘White Horse Cellar’. Go to my platoon (no. 8, all lovely Scots), look at rifles, talk about the need of leaving no rubbish about for flies. Grogan comes round and does the same; then Capt Stoney the [officer commanding the battalion] does it again. Then m.g. again in the shade of a tree; or in some Turkish trenches near here (deserted trenches). Then soon after noon all is rather drowsy: we sit at the back of ‘Cadogan Mansions’ under the little oak tree and read and write and talk, the Padre or another gazing all the time through the telescope which stands on a tripod (it is Stoney’s) looking at the firing line. Rifle firing is quietish there in the daytime. Our guns not far from here are sending up shells; they throw up big black clouds on the hill, in line. An aeroplane hums over, little pops and little white clouds mark the enemy’s shrapnel chasing it. Officers of neighbouring battalions wander by. […]

After lunch, a visit to Hogan, who sits, fatherly, under his shady peach tree in the midst of his little vineyard, with pits and clothes about him, nursing and examining a Turkish rifle with strange letters on the ironwork. Other officers drowse around him. I settle awhile to reading the m.g. book, looking at Hedley’s maps, learning a few Turkish words. Yesterday before tea I visited Tresidder’s camp half a mile forward from here: I found Ratcliff, a tall and most pleasant Scot, and one or two other Orsovans. A man near by said ‘Ah’m hit!’ with surprise and indignation; he was hit in the muscles beside the chest by a stray rifle shot aimed at the firing line. Ratcliff (who is 6 ft 2 in) nursed him and cosetted him; the wounded man (still surprised) said, ‘Why, I feel quite at home with you.’ They have a good many shells in that camp. Until today (which is Sunday) all we had were 3 or 4 at 7.30 two nights ago, when I was late for dinner. Today we have had about 80 in the camp or round it.

At 9 we had Church Parade all gathered sitting in a big group. First the old hundredth (all the service, prayers and song, was to be done sitting on the ground). Then the Padre improvised a long good prayer, and read Exodus 4. Then we sang ‘Jesus, Lover of my Soul’; then he began to preach on the symbolism of Moses’ rod (Ex. 4) and he had hardly begun when the shells began to fall so mightily close that we threw ourselves on the ground. But not at once. We had to remain sitting, looking as unconcerned as possible, while the men dispersed gently, a platoon at a time. There were about 20 of us trying to take cover behind one slim tree. The men went to their trenches; I and some officers to the Mess. The shelling has gone on, off and on, for a couple of hours. There are two men wounded, I think, and a horse or mule; no more. I keep diving into trenches.

Last night I was rather wakeful and heard a great noise of fighting, rifle and canon. It was one of the most beautiful nights I ever saw: a full moon shining on the waters to right and left of us; a clear starry sky; a landscape of hills and woods and distances like an early Victorian steel engraving. In the contrast of scene and war the scene far outweighs the war, which only plays an accompaniment. The pipers, save one taking a skirl at it, have not yet played. Our regimental tune is the Bonnets of Dundee. […] The shells are still flying and I am bobbing up and down like a moorhen as I write. Grogan, quite unconcerned, stands chatting 80 yards away. As I rise again from the bottom of my ditch I am glad to see him taking cover. […]

Poor Paterson, my servant in the Blues, sits on my conscience. The pound cheque I sent 3 months ago to Greave came back. I wish you would send another c/o Capt Fitzgerald, and a note explaining.

Our Padre (I don’t know his name) has a big church in Buchanan Street, Glasgow […]

My dearest love.

Your fond loving P.

[On back of envelope: P.S. Silence reigns.]

Clearly Kittie could send George letters and small parcels, but we never hear of any arriving. On the back of the envelope containing his previous letter he had written: ‘Please knit me marching socks. By mistake I left all but one pair in Egypt. P.’

Captain Grogan, aged 25, commanded B Company (in which George commanded Platoon No. 8), Captain Hogan commanded D Company. Trenches and features were commonly named after famous streets etc back in Blighty. Frederic and Catherine Lubbock’s London residence was 26 Cadogan Gardens.

‘Old hundredth’: the well-known hymn tune, most often associated at this time with Psalm 100, ‘O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands’.

For Captain Fitzgerald of the Blues, see my posts of 15-18 October and 24 October. George’s readiness to dive for cover is reminiscent of the character Vlang, who is a survivor, in the third of Tolstoy’s Sebastopol stories.

Kittie was temporarily back in Hampstead. She had not received a letter from George since 22 May at Emmetts.

Next entry: 31 May 1915

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‘Nothing happened’

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Patrick Miles

It is a very curious thing, but in none of the sources that I have used for understanding the full military context of George’s life on Gallipoli does the date 29 May feature. Nor did he write a letter to Kittie on this day. So is it one of those black holes in his biography that I have referred to before, and which all biographers know so well? On this day, 29 May 1915 (a Saturday), did ‘nothing happen’?

On the contrary. ‘Everything’ happened, in the sense that ‘everything went on’. At Anzac and Helles soldiers continued to dig, the air still smelt of corpses, snipers still killed. Bakers baked in the enormous bakeries. Cooks cooked. The latrines heaved with flies. With the departure of the battleships, the Turkish artillery on the Asian shore became more active against the beaches and the ‘plain’ on which George was camped. Troops and munitions arrived. On board his command ship, the Arcadian, Sir Ian Hamilton agonised over whether he had enough of both to ‘push on’ as Kitchener urged him to.

Next entry: 30 May 1915

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28 May 1915

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Patrick Miles

It may have seemed surprising, or even shocking, that Calderon did not end his letter to Kittie yesterday with any endearments to her, only a ‘warm embrace’ for their dog! But its beginning — ‘Oh dearest Mrs P.’ — is very immediate and seems to speak volumes. Moreover, the simple ‘P.’ with which he signs off has a circle drawn round it, signifying in Edwardian emoticons ‘I hug you so tightly my hands meet on the other side’.

Even so, the letter itself seems thoroughly low-key, even dull (‘I am beginning to repeat myself’). I am convinced that this is deliberate. It is an attempt by a wordsmith of great cunning to lull Kittie into thinking not much is happening, that he is leading a completely routine army life, and above all is in no danger whatsoever and never will be. The truth was quite different. At this point in the campaign you could not walk from Helles to the front line concealed in wide communication trenches. The camp George was at was in the open, exposed to shelling from Achi Baba and the Asian shore, as well as stray bullets, although it did include a number of trenches and dugouts. The reason he was being instructed in ‘bomb throwing from trench to trench’ was that the Turks had used grenades to devastating effect but the British had only just started making them (from jam-tins). All sources agree that the torpedoing of the Majestic at Helles yesterday and the rapid withdrawal of the battleships to Imros and Mudrops had a depressing effect on the troops. Finally, if Hamilton decided to fight a Third Battle of Krithia, there was absolutely no doubt that the KOSB would be in the front line.

A writer to whom I showed the 1914-15 chapter of my biography back in April responded: ‘All his mishaps and frustrations in trying to get where he wanted to be are entertainingly described — then the note darkens.’ I had hardly been aware of this myself, as I was just ‘showing it as it was’, but it is true. There are touches of Calderonian comedy in his descriptions of the clerics on board the Orsova, but on Gallipoli his humour (when it surfaces at all) is black. Here is an example from yesterday’s letter:

There are shell marks in the earth, and I found an unburst enemy shell, with the time fuse marked in foreign characters. Rattray buried it. Then a sergeant said it ought to be ‘handed in’; so I dug it up again and carried it across the camp. Six soldiers pronounced it dangerous and recommended reburial. I left them digging its grave. One said, ‘The fuse is set to time.’ I said: ‘I expect the time’s expired now.’ They were silent awhile then one laughed and they all laughed.

The precarious paradox is quintessential Calderon (see my post of 12 April), but one feels that at a deeper level the ‘joke’ is a defence mechanism. As we shall see, escape into the beauty of the landscape, the smells, sounds and sights of nature on the peninsula, was another form of defence mechanism for this super-refined man at the killing fields, pretending to be just one of the troops.

Next entry: ‘Nothing happened’

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‘New Western Polovtsians’

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Patrick Miles

                                                                                 On dry land

May 27th

Oh dearest Mrs P., I have been through another transformation, and am now a Scotch officer — in a first rate regular battalion. My address is 1st bn. K.O.S.B., 87th Brigade, 29th Div., Mediterranean Exped. Force, i.e. King’s Own Scottish Borderers — vanitously wishing I could get hold of a glengarry, with the red and white dice border — and have myself photographed in colours. We arrived yesterday afternoon and landed under the crumbled ruins of a white castle; a yellow sea shore and hill slopes at every angle, covered with camps and troops and huts and enclosures and stacks of stores; piquets of horses, lines of mules on the roads; young navy boys in dirty blue ordering sea captains and Colonels about for the landing — groups of Zouaves and Turcos on the pontoon pier where we landed, white breeches, red breeches, blue breeches, embroidered coats, bearded French faces, shiny African heads, fezzes, shakos, turbans, topies; and, on the Indian files of jogging mules, sad solitary Hindus in butter-muslin, with a cloth of the turban held by the hand over the mouth, or fixed like a yashmak.

So to a square place of sand, pegged out with barbed wire, a kind of little Gobi in the middle of the Sahara, where the men were drawn up, the draft, in their companies, and we (12) unattached officers in a group. Bang came a solitary shell of welcome and threw up a cloud of dust 100 yards away, disturbing a mule at his afternoon tea, but causing no other offence. Then a little marching and halting and detailing and waiting; I and some others with a fatigue party to get the officers’ baggage and lay it ready for the ‘supply column’, i.e. little mule carts in a caravan, some with boxes of wood, some with logs and dead branches, that go up at about 8 to the lines. At one of the haltings and waitings we were told that we were all for the K.O.S.B. […] Their HQ on the beach offered tea and bread and jam; my fatigue on the little wooden jetty was over, and [we] went up in the young moonlight with the mulecarts; I walked with a charming Scots corporal.

The firing had fallen still. Up the hill and onto a rolling plain, with broom and heath and a minty low shrub with a mauve flower. Two miles away a mound on a hill, the molehill top of a low mountain — that’s Him. And all the rolling plain lies open before him; he shells about, but does little harm.

[…]

After an hour or two, bed. This, for me, far off, in a big lonely ditch at the left of the line, with the stars above, the moon aslant and a corncrake rattling softly. Desultory sniping all night, a rattle of quick fusillade in the small hours, and the shells beginning slowly at getting-up time. Big spiders and little green lizards all among the bushes.

[…]

I saw a little wooden cross and a mound. The cross is made of two strips of a wooden case; and on it is written ‘In memory of one unknown. R.I.P.’.

Lunch is announced.

[…]

Since lunch I have been attending an instruction in bomb throwing from trench to trench. Very interesting. It is strange this careless, rather amused life, at leisure in the sunshine, in full view of Him on the big moleheap. Surely it must discourage him to see the tip-end of a big civilisation leisurely going about the routine of life while it closes up to swallow him.

[…]

Dust flies in plenty. Shells burst, four by four, now and again, angrily searching the big plain; Western civilisation sleepily pursues its gentle avocations. I am beginning to repeat myself.

A warm embrace for Tommy.

P.

We are like new Western Polovtsians swarming over a fated country, a revenge for the Tartar oncoming.

The K.O.S.B.’s are ‘in reserve’; neither on the beach nor in the firing line. The men are vara Scawtch.

The 1st KOSB had had a disastrous start at Y Beach on 26 April (see my post for that day), but had since become part of the very backbone of the 29th Division at Helles. In this letter George also tells us that he is in B Company, commanded by Captain Grogan (aged 25) of the 9th Ox and Bucks. George was a subaltern commanding one of the four platoons in this company.

The very long third sentence of the first paragraph, and the references to the enemy as ‘Him’, again mirror Tolstoy’s Sebastopol stories that George had been reading in Russian on the voyage.

For obvious reasons, George does not mention the sinking of the battleship H.M.S. Majestic off Cape Helles at 6.40 this morning by the German submarine U-21, although he must have witnessed the rescue of its crew.

The ‘big moleheap’ in the distance is Achi Baba, which the Allies had been trying to reach since 25 April.

The idea that the Turks were about to be ‘swallowed’ by ‘the tip-end of a big civilisation’ is either a joke on George’s part or a gross self-deception. The Polovtsians, a nomadic East Turkic people, were the heroes of ‘Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor‘, the ballet choreographed by George’s friend Fokine and first presented in London by Ballets Russes on 21 June 1911.

‘Tommy’ is George and Kittie’s mongrel dog, whom he exercised on Hampstead Heath.

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26 May 1915

Posted on May 26, 2015 by Patrick Miles

This afternoon the ferry steamer from Mudros with George Calderon on board arrived at Helles and its draft of soldiers from Britain landed ‘under the crumbled ruins of a white castle’ as he put it, i.e. the old fort at Sedd el Bahr. The full details of what he did today are contained in his letter to Kittie tomorrow.

Judging from the Official History, George and the other officers from the 9th Battalion Ox and Bucks were part of a ‘reinforcing draft’ of  2700 men arriving now for the crack 29th Division, which was part of VIII Corps under Hunter-Weston (see my post of 24 May). ‘With the arrival of the new drafts’, the official historian tells us, Hunter-Weston was ‘fairly confident that […] a successful attack could be made against the whole breadth of the enemy’s position’. But he still had to convince his Commander-in-Chief, Sir Ian Hamilton.

Today in London the new Coalition Government announced its cabinet. Winston Churchill was replaced as First Lord of the Admiralty by former Conservative prime minister Arthur Balfour. Churchill was being increasingly cast as the villain in the Dardanelles tragedy. At Gallipoli very few knew this, and morale remained high.

Next entry: ‘New Western Polovtsians’

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25 May 1915

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Patrick Miles

In a blue harbour surrounded by green rock-broken hills in a place I may not name.

9 a.m.

                                                                                R.M.S. “ORSOVA”

May 25th

My dearest little Mrs P., What letters, long descriptive letters, we were going to write all this morning, all of us; for a small steamer was to come at sundown and fetch us away to a seat of war which it is unlawful to mention. (The veil of secrecy has descended suddenly, with a thump; I may name nothing, describe nothing, criticise nothing.) But while I was dressing at leisure for breakfast (after morning exercise and bath) the little lugger suddenly turned up alongside and invited us to embark. So here I am sitting under a bridge-stairway on the floor, on a sort of little South Coast pleasure steamer; and in a few hours we shall see and hear much that is interesting. We haven’t started yet.

This usually empty harbour is full of many things. What a time for lonely shepherds and shepherdesses to remember in after years! Last night, a warm scented air, South Seasy, a bright moon and stars, dark forms of ships, two only gaily garlanded with green lamps and a bright red cross of light in the midst, like a regatta. And all around these lonely soft hills like the Kyles of Bute. In the daytime 2 or 3 bumboats with dark sad men selling chestnuts and oranges.

For a day or two we have been passing among countless islands of famous names. […]

Yesterday, in the evening the ship was darkened. As I sat sewing alone in the drawing room, one or two [officers] came in and one played [the piano]. Then the lights were switched off at eight .30; others flocked in, and in complete darkness, with the red glow of a cigar or two, we all sang in lusty union ‘Little Grey Home in the West’ and ‘Somewhere a Voice Is Calling’. Afterwards there was a little dark group about the harmonium in the gallery over the dining saloon and Frank’s pupil Griffith was playing ‘When my Caravan Has Rested’ and that sort of thing, very prettily. I was resting in my cabin then.

You see there’s a lot to be done. I’ve taken out the flannel lining from my tunic; we’ve all put our stars off our sleeves onto our shoulders and abolished the braid. I’ve converted a mess-tin cover into a case for the Colonel’s field-glasses. Everybody’s been sewing; what one of the youths called a ‘Dorking Society’ on deck.

So the scene changes. We Ox. and Bucks. are undivided; but my cabin companion has gone before. We still don’t know to what regiments we are to belong; but not to our own, in any case.

The sea’s a peacock green and makes the shore look yellow.

Little P. enfolds Mrs P. and departs for the seat of war.

P.

George is writing from Mudros, the harbour of the Greek island of Lemnos, technically sixty miles from Helles. ‘South Seasy’ refers to his visit to Tahiti in 1906. ‘Frank’ is Frank Hornby, a schoolmaster married to a relation of Kittie’s. ‘A Dorking Society’ is a malapropism for ‘Dorcas Society’, a church group dedicated to making clothing for the poor. ‘We Ox. and Bucks.’ were the six officers including George who had come from the 9th Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry at Gosport.

The German submarine U-21 reached Helles today and sank the old battleship Triumph off Anzac Cove, whilst the British submarine E-11 sank a large freighter, the Stamboul, in Constantinople harbour.

Next entry: 26 May 1915

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‘Hunter-Bunter’s’ plan

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Patrick Miles

As an essentially literary chap, I do not propose to embroil myself in controversy about the Commander of the 29th Division at Helles, Sir Aylmer Gould Hunter-Weston (1864-1940), popularly known as ‘Hunter-Bunter’. He has been described as ‘one of the Great War’s spectacular incompetents’, Sir Douglas Haig referred to him as ‘a rank amateur’, and I admit that in his photographs he looks a bit touched. But one can hardly deny that in impossible circumstances he did his best to come up with a new plan for advancing the Allied front in the Helles sector after the Second Battle of Krithia (see my post of 6 May).

He immediately ordered the expeditionary force to maintain a ‘ceaseless initiative’ of pushing forward by sapping and night advances, so as to reduce the gap between the Allied and Turkish lines to an ‘assaulting distance’ of about 200 yards. By the end of this week 1915 that had been achieved. So what next?

Hunter-Weston was convinced that an attack should now be launched along a line from the Aegean to the Straits. The newly arrived commander of the French right flank, General Gouraud, agreed with him. Rather than the old ‘pivoting round the French at Kereves Dere’ idea, which had failed at both Krithia 1 and 2, they wanted to mount a meticulously prepared general advance. Indeed it would be planned in such detail as to be ‘scientific’ — Hamilton’s word for the unsporting secret of the Germans’ military successes.

Today, then, Hunter-Weston was promoted to Lieutenant-General, and the 29th Division, 42nd Division and Royal Naval Division were put under his command as VIII Corps. However, before a ‘Third Battle of Krithia’ could be launched Hamilton had to decide whether to wait for the reinforcements that Kitchener had promised him — the 52nd (Lowland) Division. They could take another fortnight.

*                      *                       *

Today, 24 May 1915, the negotiated formal armistice was held at Anzac from 7.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., during which about four thousand Turkish and Anzac soldiers were buried in services conducted by imams and priests. ‘Nothing could cleanse the smell of death from the nostrils for a fortnight afterwards’, wrote Orientalist, M.P., lieutenant-colonel and intelligence officer Aubrey Herbert. ‘There was no herb so aromatic but it reeked of carrion, not thyme nor lavender, nor even rosemary.’

In his Gallipoli (2013) Peter Hart writes:

The true situation was now clear to the Turks. While the Australians’ position looked weak, vulnerable to just one mighty effort to throw them into the sea, in fact it had several inherent strengths that were not immediately obvious. It was almost impossible to cross a No Man’s Land defended by alert infantry armed with bolt-action rifles and machine guns, with artillery support, unless an artillery barrage had already suppressed their ability to open fire at the crucial moment. This was a universal truth of the Great War that the Allies had discovered often enough […]; now the Turks, too, learnt that lesson.

This did not prevent Hunter-Weston and Gourand from making the same mistake with their plans for a Third Battle of Krithia.

There is no evidence that when he arrived at Helles two days later George Calderon even heard about the bloodbath at Anzac on 19 May and its surreal aftermath.

But the fact that both the Turks and the Allies saw their positions at Anzac as practically invulnerable, meant that they could now divert troops to the Helles front.

Next entry: 25 May 1915

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23 May 1915

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Today George wrote hastily on the back of his letter to Kittie dated yesterday (Saturday) and written on board the R.M.S. Orsova at Alexandria:

Sunday morning. Prognostications are right. It’s in the morning. Doctors, nurses and chaplains are for the shore (a sister will post this). We are bound in this ship for Lemnos, 50 miles from the Dardanelles. There we shall be sorted out and reshipped. Good bye for the present little dear.

‘Little dear’ might be George’s equivalent of a Russian affectionate diminutive, or it might be a reference to Kittie’s stature. He was five foot nine and a half inches tall, whilst she appears to have been just over five foot.

Next entry: ‘Hunter-Bunter’s’ plan

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22 May 1915

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Today Kittie moved from Foxwold, the Pyms’ home in the Weald of Kent, to Emmetts, about a mile away. We know this from the fact that the Visitors Book at Foxwold was maintained meticulously. Emmetts was the home of Violet Pym’s parents, Catherine and Frederic Lubbock, and Catherine was the half-sister of Kittie’s first husband, Archie Ripley. The Visitors Book for Emmetts in the early twentieth century appears to be lost, but we can work out when Kittie was there from the redirected addresses written on George’s envelopes by Elizabeth Ellis, their housemaid in Hampstead.

Today, a Saturday, Kittie received George’s letter of 16 May (see my post of that date) and George wrote to her from the troopship R.M.S. Orsova:

My dearest Mrs P., here we are in the great big harbour of Alexandria, out in the midst, among shoals of ships, with coal barges, launches, sailing boats alongside, full of brown fellahs and big strong Africans, all shouting and blowing steam whistles with all their might to make as jolly a row as they can and a windlass hanking away and nurses and officers and tommies all peering over the sides and chatting idly in a tropical air. We’ve been here 24 hours without exact news. But at the moment it appears likely that we shall dump the nurses, doctors and chaplains here ashore and sail on in this ship to the Dardanelles. Still quite obscure what unit we are to join when we get there. Very likely territorial, very likely something better; can’t tell.

[…]

The officers widowed by the landing of 40 sisters at Malta are cheerful again. A captain is engaged to be married to a nurse. Almost in the Bay of Biscay — quite an old story.

Well, so we’re up against it again; but I expect I’ll be kept in reserve at first and only come in for the sack of Constantinople when the Italians have cleared the way. So on thro Bulgaria and Servia or whatever comes next, and meet Fred in Berlin coming from the opposite side.

[…]

I was a triple widower myself at Malta, losing three little sisters from the London Hospital who always walked and talked and sat together.

I’m challenged by a very nice man to chess. I know him very well; I don’t know his name. I hardly know anybody’s name.

Your very tender P.

George’s recent reading of Tolstoy (see post of 16 May) seems to have influenced the syntax of the first sentence above; it is not at all characteristic of him. What he says to Kittie about his destination is deeply ambivalent. He wants to reassure her that he will not be in danger, hence referring to being attached to a Territorial battalion and being kept ‘in reserve’, but he also cannot hide that he hopes his fighting role will be ‘something better’.

Similarly, his fantasy of sacking Constantinople and then moving up through Bulgaria and Serbia and on to Berlin may be just that, and intended humorously, but the ultimate objective of the Dardanelles campaign was to occupy Constantinople, and George could speak Bulgarian, Serbian and German. His youngest brother, Fred (see my post of 1 November 2014), was now on the Western Front. He was killed at Ypres on 3 April 1916.

On the Orsova George had drawn portraits of various nurses, including presumably the ‘three sisters’, and given them to the sitters.

Next entry: 23 May 1915

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