More than a Sideshow? An Analysis of GHQ Decision Making during the Planning for the Landings at Suvla Bay,Gallipoli,August 1915

I. Introduction

Ever since the failure of the August offensive at Gallipoli in 1915 the poor performance of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford’s IX Corps has been dogged by controversy over blame and confusion about the exact nature of the corps’s role in the offensive. In the aftermath of the campaign General Sir Ian Hamilton, the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF), was instrumental in apportioning blame upon Stopford. Hamilton was supported by senior figures such as Winston Churchill, the former first lord of the Admiralty whose imagination had spawned the overall campaign, as well as Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, the commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). ¹ This view was confirmed in the British Official History written by Cecil Aspinall Oglander, who had been the GHQ operations staff officer responsible for planning the August offensive. ²

Revisionist historians have recently dismissed the-‘Stopford as a scapegoat’ myth on the basis that General Headquarters (GHQ) MEF had allocated IX Corps only a subsidiary role to Birdwood’s ANZAC, so IX Corps’s failure at Suvla was of little consequence to the overall result. GHQ’s intentions for Suvla, according to historians such as Robin Prior and Rhys Crawley, were always limited to securing Suvla Bay as a defensive base, so IX Corps’s lack of support for ANZAC was largely immaterial. Tim Travers and more recently Edward Erickson have furthermore concluded that the confusion over IX Corps’s role in the offensive stemmed from a fundamental misunderstanding between GHQ and HQ IX Corps during the planning stages. ³

Thus the controversy surrounding Suvla has been largely attributed to Hamilton’s desire for reputation preservation, while the confusion over Stopford’s role has been ascribed to differences between GHQ and HQ IX Corps. While there is some truth in each of these views, a closer examination of GHQ’s planning for Suvla suggests the root cause of the problem lay within GHQ, and not further down the chain of command. This paper will demonstrate that Hamilton intended IX Corps’s landing at Suvla to play a more active role in the August offensive than has hitherto been acknowledged; however, divergent expectations of the offensive between Hamilton and his operations staff introduced an ambiguity into the subsequent development of the Suvla plan. Hamilton’s expectation that IX Corps would combine closely with ANZAC in a decisive offensive was at odds with the more discreet and limited role for IX Corps expected by his operations staff. The divergence of understanding within GHQ and Hamilton’s subsequent remoteness from Stopford ensured that the staff’s defensive interpretation was passed on to Stopford and IX Corps.

II. Origins

The fleet’s failure to secure its passage through the Dardanelles in March 1915 heralded the switch of primacy from maritime to MEF land operations. The MEF’s operational objective became the capture of the Kilid Bahr plateau, which dominated the Ottoman defences of the Narrows and was considered by GHQ to be the ‘key to the opening of the Dardanelles’. ⁴ The original intention was to swiftly capture the Kilid Bahr plateau from the south of the peninsula by a direct attack from Cape Helles. This attack was to be supported by a subsidiary operation at Anzac to seize the Sari Bair range, which would sever the land communications to the north of the plateau. ⁵ After both these landings failed to achieve their objectives, the MEF’s subsequent offensive efforts were concentrated at Cape Helles, where a series of sweeping frontal assaults gave way to more incremental advances until, by early June, GHQ realized that the capture of Kilid Bahr was going to take much longer than originally anticipated. ⁶

GHQ’s realization coincided with an initiative by Birdwood to expand his tiny beachhead at Anzac. On 13 May he wrote to Hamilton proposing a turning movement north of Anzac to capture the Sari Bair range, which dominated the Anzac position. This operation would provide Birdwood’s corps with improved security and much-needed elbow room. ⁷ (See Figure 1.) Encouraged by Hamilton, Birdwood expanded this idea over the next fortnight into a more elaborate scheme, one that could be mounted from within the existing Anzac position and required only limited reinforcement.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The Anzac and Suvla areas of the Gallipoli peninsula, showing the main Ottoman land routes leading southwards to the Kilid Bahr plateau.

Birdwood’s initial proposal, which he submitted to GHQ on 30 May, involved the turning of the Ottoman right flank to the north of Anzac and the capture of the Sari Bair range, before a short advance would be made from the south-east of the existing Anzac position. If successful, this operation would not only place ANZAC in a more favourable tactical position, but it would also provide the MEF with a suitable starting point from which to launch further operations across the waist of the peninsula. ⁸

Meanwhile, on 7 June GHQ received a telegram from Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, confirming the release of the last three remaining divisions (later grouped as IX Corps under Stopford) of Kitchener’s First New Army to the MEF. ⁹ This telegram drew GHQ into the process, and over the next several days Hamilton and his staff each separately examined the question of how to employ these reinforcements, the outcome of which would confirm Birdwood’s proposal and switch the MEF’s future offensive effort from Cape Helles to Anzac.

Hamilton saw the ANZAC plan as an alternative to the impasse at Cape Helles. His imagination had been so fired by the prospect of restoring decisive action to the campaign that he had already informed Birdwood how he envisaged the ‘main push and decisive movement’ would be made from Anzac, and he anticipated that the capture of Sari Bair ‘may prove to be the fulcrum for the lever which will topple over Germany and the pride of the Germans’. ¹⁰ Such was Hamilton’s confidence that he did not consider any other option. On 8 June, without consulting his staff, Hamilton discussed this plan with Vice Admiral John de Robeck, commanding the naval forces at the Dardanelles, and ‘worked off the broad general scheme in the course of an hour and a half’. ¹¹

The following day Hamilton and his Chief of the General Staff (CGS), Major General Sir Walter Braithwaite, discussed the ANZAC plan with Birdwood and the other MEF corps commanders, and it met with ‘warm approval’. ¹² Hamilton later expressed his satisfaction at the outcome of this work, noting how the ‘whole scheme hinges on these crests of Sari Bair’, which he felt was the ‘keep’ to the Narrows. ¹³ Birdwood added weight to Hamilton’s hopes for a swift result when he suggested that capturing the Sari Bair range at Anzac might ‘compel the Turks either to come out and fight us to a finish, or capitulate’. ¹⁴ These optimistic comments made by Hamilton and Birdwood are significant because they reflected their growing confidence that the capture of the Sari Bair range might unhinge the entire Ottoman defence of the peninsula and so provide an opportunity to end the campaign quickly and decisively. ‘I only await the promised reinforcements’, Hamilton cabled the War Office on 13 June, ‘to enable me to take the next step in the prosecution of my main plan from ANZAC.’ ¹⁵

Meanwhile, the GHQ operations staff under Aspinall had exhaustively reviewed a range of detailed options for the employment of these reinforcements and, like Hamilton, they concluded that Birdwood’s scheme offered the best prospects for achieving campaign success. ¹⁶ Their view, however, was not as optimistic as Hamilton’s. Aspinall, who was supported by Major Guy Dawnay, the GHQ General Staff Officer Grade 2 (GSO2), felt that the capture of Sari Bair and an extension of Birdwood’s limited advance across the peninsula would provide an opportunity to disrupt the Ottoman lines of communication to the south of the peninsula, which would eventually starve the enemy on Kilid Bahr of men and materiel. This guarded conclusion was consistent with the view prevalent at GHQ at the time, which held that the decision at Gallipoli would only be achieved once the Kilid Bahr plateau was captured, and that even with significant reinforcement this process would take considerable time. ¹⁷

While both Hamilton and his operations staff agreed on the prosecution of the next offensive from Anzac, Hamilton’s optimism, which Aspinall noted inclined him to make ‘light of the obstacles still to be encountered’, led the C.-in-C. to expect more dramatic results from the capture of Sari Bair than did his operations staff, who tended to look for eventual success beyond Sari Bair in the subsequent disruption of the Ottoman lines of communication to the south of the peninsula. Beneath an outward appearance of unity there was a divergence of expectation between Hamilton and his operations staff, the effects of which would become more pronounced as planning developed. This growing divergence within GHQ was the root of the misunderstanding about Suvla’s future role in the August offensive.

On 23 June, after learning of the arrival dates of the New Army divisions, Aspinall submitted another memorandum, the purpose of which was ‘to decide where these divisions are to be employed’, which was strange given Hamilton’s 13 June telegram to the War Office had apparently made it clear that they were to be employed at Anzac. Not surprisingly the memorandum reflected the earlier conclusions recommending the Anzac option; however, it also reiterated the warning that the operation was unlikely to provide the opportunity for a decisive battle, and nor was it likely to lead directly to Ottoman surrender. ¹⁸ ‘Such a success’, Aspinall wrote, ‘might not, and probably would not, be decisive, as the Germans would naturally endeavour to make the Turks [sic] retreat south to Kilid Bahr where they could still be supplied with food and ammunition across the Narrows.’ ¹⁹ Aspinall and Dawnay were still anticipating a lengthy campaign, which would extend well beyond the initial ANZAC attack upon Sari Bair.

The remainder of the memorandum was predicated upon the conduct of a protracted campaign. It expressed concern about Anzac’s limited capacity to sustain these protracted operations, and the difficulties of landing stores over the beaches as the weather deteriorated beyond the autumn. ²⁰ This concern would have been magnified by the news that a further two Territorial Force divisions might also become available for the offensive. Consequently, the memorandum introduced the idea of using Suvla Bay as a suitable base from which to supply the offensive in the wake of a successful advance from Anzac. ²¹ It went on to propose that a tramway could ‘eventually’ be constructed from Suvla ‘to bring supplies up to the troops’, which was language hardly suggestive of the decisive battle on Sari Bair that Hamilton and Birdwood had hoped might end the Gallipoli campaign.

Aspinall’s memorandum was the first mention of Suvla Bay in relation to the planning of the August offensive, and it spawned the plan to land IX Corps, to which the narrative will later return. At this stage, however, it is relevant to note that Suvla was conceived by Aspinall and Dawnay as a suitable base from which to sustain the protracted operations they anticipated would be required to starve the enemy off the Kild Bahr plateau after Sari Bair had been captured in the initial ANZAC attack.

The anomalous position taken by Braithwaite, Hamilton’s CGS, during this initial planning would also contribute to the growing divergence of understanding between Hamilton and his operations staff. Braithwaite’s preference for pursuing operations at Cape Helles and his substantial influence over Hamilton’s decision making was a major reason for the 23^rd June memorandum. ²² That evening, after it had been submitted to Hamilton, Dawnay complained to Orlo Williams, the GHQ cipher officer, about Braithwaite’s begrudging acceptance of the ANZAC scheme, noting mournfully that ‘when people are persuaded into doing things against their inclination they don’t do them wholeheartedly’. ²³

Braithwaite, as the CGS and Hamilton’s principal adviser, was the conduit between Hamilton and the remainder of the GHQ staff. It was Braithwaite’s responsibility to ensure that Hamilton’s intentions were translated into action by the staff; however, his ambivalence towards the ANZAC scheme and his continuing preference for operations at Cape Helles suggests that he may not have been inclined to perform this role as effectively as he ought. ²⁴

Hamilton approved Aspinall’s memorandum on 25 June, so he was aware that his staff’s view of a protracted campaign was at odds with his own hopes for a decisive outcome in the August offensive, yet neither he nor Braithwaite sought to resolve this difference of opinion. Hamilton was caught between his own intuitive optimism, which naturally attracted him to the possibility of a decisive result, and the cold logic provided by Aspinall and Dawnay, which urged a more measured view of future campaign progress. Hamilton’s inability – or unwillingness – to reconcile this difference reflected a major weakness in his exercise of command. An examination of Hamilton’s exercise of command lies beyond the scope of this paper; however, regardless of the reasons for Hamilton’s incongruous position at the end of June, increasing pressure from London for a rapid decision at Gallipoli over the next few weeks would cement Hamilton’s expectations firmly in favour of a decisive result in the August offensive.

On 25 June, Kitchener’s private secretary, Oswald Fitzgerald, wrote to Braithwaite about the government’s desire to achieve an expeditious result at Gallipoli. ‘The Government’, Fitzgerald’s letter relayed, ‘is most anxious to get through the Dardanelles this autumn, as it appears to be the only decisive action that we are able to accomplish this year.’ ²⁵ On 1 July, Braithwaite replied, stressing the concerns he and Hamilton shared about a winter campaign. In this letter, however, Braithwaite also reassured Fitzgerald and Kitchener that the IX Corps reinforcements would allow the MEF to ‘carry through our operations with success’, which suggests that despite Braithwaite’s begrudging acceptance of the ANZAC scheme, he now also shared at least some of Hamilton’s confidence in its prospects. ²⁶ On 7 July, in his next letter to Fitzgerald, Braithwaite stressed that the MEF ‘should be able to do what you tell me the government is most anxious should be done this autumn’, and, less than a week later, Hamilton informed Kitchener that the MEF only required ‘offensive ammunition’ for no more than two months, which means that both Hamilton and Braithwaite expected a result before the onset of the Gallipoli winter. ²⁷

On 17 July, Fitzgerald stressed to Braithwaite how ‘Lord K[itchener] is … most anxious to get the Dardanelles operations decided before the autumn gales start, in fact this must be done somehow or the other.’ ²⁸ In reply Braithwaite stated that he and Hamilton ‘fully realised the necessity of finishing these operations up quickly’. ²⁹ ‘I hope’, Hamilton wrote of the August offensive to Kitchener on 23 July, ‘to strike a blow which, if successful, should bear greater fruit than the mere winning of any one enemy position.’ ³⁰ This important correspondence between GHQ and Whitehall reveals the increasing pressure Kitchener was applying on Hamilton for a decisive result, but equally it also demonstrates how Hamilton, who was later criticized by the Dardanelles Commission for his excessive subordination to Kitchener, was by late July convinced that the MEF could deliver decisive success in the shorter rather than longer term. ³¹

While this pressure from London had resolved any doubts that may have existed in Hamilton’s mind as to the decisive outcome expected from the August offensive, his operations staff remained steadfast in their belief that it would not end the campaign. Aspinall’s and Dawnay’s views had not changed since the conduct of their initial staff appreciation in early June, which Dawnay reflected in conversation with Orlo Williams. ‘Dawnay’, Williams wrote in his diary on 21 July, ‘is not very optimistic even about the result of success in our next big push. Seems to think the best one could hope for would be to get a strong position across the peninsula and build up a safe base at Suvla Bay.’ ³² Hamilton and his operations staff each defined success in the future August offensive quite differently.

Hamilton’s over-reliance on Braithwaite, his personalized style of decision making and the segregated nature of GHQ’s planning meant that these different expectations for the August offensive, although recognized at GHQ, were not reconciled by either Hamilton or Braithwaite at the outset of planning. These unresolved differences in expectation, which were exacerbated by Braithwaite’s inability to ensure Hamilton’s views were clearly understood by the staff, meant that, conceptually at least, Hamilton and his operations staff were subtly out of step with one another. It was within this divergent context that the idea to land IX Corps at Suvla Bay emerged and was developed into a plan. It is therefore necessary to return the narrative to Aspinall’s memorandum of 23 June, when the idea to make another landing at Suvla was first mentioned, and trace the effect this divergence between Hamilton and his staff had on the subsequent development of the Suvla concept.

III. The Development of the Suvla Concept

It will be recalled that Aspinall’s 23 June appreciation introduced the idea to occupy Suvla Bay as a base from which to supply the further operations across the peninsula and against the Kilid Bahr plateau, which the staff expected would follow the successful capture of the Sari Bair range from Anzac. Aspinall and Dawnay assumed that the Suvla area, which was assessed as being only lightly defended by the Ottoman Army, would fall automatically into Allied hands once the ANZAC attack had succeeded. The memorandum had noted how the capture of the Sari Bair range in the first stages of the ANZAC attack:

would place us in possession of Suvla Bay which is protected from the prevalent North wind and could be made into a useful advanced base in the case of a successful advance into the [Maidos] plain from the existing Anzac position. ³³

The assumption that Suvla Bay would automatically fall into the MEF’s hands was important because the memorandum had also considered it ‘doubtful’ whether the navy at that stage possessed sufficient suitable small craft to disembark even two divisions under fire. ³⁴ Captain Edgar Anstey, one of Aspinall’s subordinate staff officers, also noted that an assault landing was not under active consideration at the time. ³⁵ The occupation of Suvla, seemingly as a matter of course, and the lack of suitable naval craft meant that Aspinall and Dawnay initially conceived the landing at Suvla more as an administrative operation rather than as a full-blown amphibious assault. While the navy did subsequently provide suitable landing craft and the plans were adjusted to reflect the need to overcome some Ottoman opposition, the initial staff conception of the landing was far more administrative than operational.

This administrative conception of the landing conformed to the limited or defensive view of Suvla held by Aspinall and Dawnay. This view was also shared by the navy, which was attracted to Suvla Bay because it offered the prospect of a safe harbour on the peninsula, one that was protected from both enemy submarines and the weather. ³⁶ ‘Suvla’, Dawnay later wrote to Aspinall, ‘stood out as the more or less obvious place’. ³⁷ In a letter written to his wife shortly after the landing, Dawnay wrote of Suvla Bay providing a ‘good harbour there for the winter in case we want it’ and how he saw the operations at Anzac and Suvla as ‘quite distinct from the other’. ³⁸ From its conception Aspinall and Dawnay regarded the landing at Suvla as a separate operation from the main ANZAC attack upon Sari Bair; its importance was considered in relation to supplying subsequent operations after the Sari Bair range had been captured and not as an intimate part of the initial ANZAC attack upon it.

Yet from the outset Hamilton placed far more emphasis upon Suvla’s close association with the ANZAC attack than did his staff. At this stage GHQ had earmarked two IX Corps divisions for use at Anzac and the third IX Corps division for a landing at Suvla, which was to be commanded by Stopford. On 29 June, Hamilton told Kitchener that he would employ these three divisions ‘to turn the enemy’s right at Anzac’, and on 4 July he informed Admiral de Robeck that the troops at Suvla were to ‘act in concert with the troops from ANZAC’ and much would depend on the ‘celerity’ with which the navy could land them. ³⁹ Although Hamilton’s language was still vague and he spoke in general terms only, the strong inference is that he considered the role of the Suvla division to be more closely related to the overall turning movement against Sari Bair rather than merely the capture of Suvla Bay as a base.

At this stage Birdwood provided two important updates to his original Anzac proposal, and these would further influence Hamilton’s belief in the close relationship between operations at Anzac and Suvla. On 1 July, Birdwood, who was then unaware of Hamilton’s decision to include a landing at Suvla in the August scheme, suggested that a brigade-sized landing at Suvla would protect the flanks and rear of the ANZAC forces attacking Sari Bair. If he was allocated more reinforcing divisions, however, Birdwood proposed landing one of them near Suvla to capture the Tekke Tepe ridge, which lay 4 miles to the east of Suvla Bay, at the same time as the ANZAC captured the Sari Bair range. The simultaneous capture of these features would give the MEF command of the Anafarta Gap, which was easily accessible from Suvla Bay and provided direct access onto the Ottoman land lines of communication beyond the Sari Bair range. Birdwood proposed sending ‘a strong striking force’ through the Anafarta Gap to sever these lines of communication and unhinge the Ottoman defences upon Sari Bair. Suvla Bay was the logical place from which such a thrust could be launched. At that stage, however, Birdwood lacked the resources to form the ‘striking force’, so it remained little more than an aspiration. ⁴⁰

The following day, 2 July, Birdwood discussed this proposal with Hamilton at GHQ in what would be the last meeting between the two officers before the beginning of the August offensive. Birdwood was informed about the intention to land IX Corps at Suvla and that he need only concentrate upon the attack upon Sari Bair, although Birdwood must have understood that GHQ would ensure the close coordination of both corps, because he later recalled how Hamilton ‘looked at Suvla and Anzac combined as his main operation’. ⁴¹ On 10 July, after learning about the availability of the two Territorial Force divisions, Birdwood provided GHQ with a second update to his original proposal. He recommended that a force of two divisions should be ‘shoved through [the Anafarta Gap] as quickly as possible behind, and in direct conjunction’ with the ANZAC attack on Sari Bair and the occupation of Tekke Tepe at Suvla. Birdwood implied that the anticipated high losses during the main ANZAC attack on Sari Bair and the increasing Ottoman defences to the south of the Anzac position meant that a thrust through the far less heavily defended Anafarta Gap could even become the decisive act. ⁴² In a letter written to the War Office shortly afterwards Birdwood stressed that such a thrust could get the ‘Turks [sic] on the run’, in which case it was ‘possible that Stopford and I may be able to manage this between us’. ⁴³

Birdwood’s 10 July Anafarta Gap proposal was not taken any further at GHQ, probably because the additional Territorial Force divisions to provide the ‘striking force’ were not expected to arrive in time for the beginning of the offensive, but also because Hamilton, whose trademark optimism had been fuelled by a perception that the MEF then held a ‘moral ascendancy’ over the enemy, was confident that success could be achieved without the extra divisions. ⁴⁴ Despite not progressing further at GHQ, the Anafarta Gap proposal was especially significant, because it provided Hamilton with an alternative option for achieving a decision in the event that the capture of the Sari Bair range failed to bring about the Ottoman capitulation he expected.

If the Ottoman forces did not immediately yield on Sari Bair as Hamilton hoped, then the staff’s assessment of a longer campaign became a far more realistic proposition. In such a case Aspinall and Dawnay’s original plan had been to use the follow-on forces’ landing at Suvla to pass southwards through the confined Anzac beachhead, break out to the south-east, and then advance across the Maidos plain to sever the Ottoman lines of communication north of the Kilid Bahr plateau. The GHQ staff view of this breakout direction was at odds with that of Birdwood, whose increasing concerns about strengthening Ottoman defences to the south of Anzac had been a motivating factor behind his Anafarta Gap proposal. ⁴⁵

By identifying the possibility of switching the breakout flank from the south-east of Anzac to the Anafarta Gap in the north, Birdwood was reinforcing Hamilton’s perception of the close relationship between operations at Suvla and Anzac. Hamilton was evidently interested in this northern alternative because on 14 July he personally wrote to Admiral de Robeck requesting an aerial reconnaissance of the precise route through the Anafarta Gap proposed by Birdwood. ⁴⁶ Birdwood, who it will be recalled did not see Hamilton again after first raising this possibility with him on 2 July, was convinced that providing this northern route onto the Ottoman lines of communication is what Hamilton ‘hoped for as a result of the Suvla landing’. ⁴⁷ In fact, on 13 July, only three days after receiving Birdwood’s latest proposal, Hamilton had made very clear the direct connection he made between IX Corps’s landing at Suvla and campaign success. ‘If the landing operation is successful to the degree for which I hope,’ Hamilton had informed the War Office, ‘it will be the turn of the Navy to undertake the operation which is the primary reason of its presence here.’ ⁴⁸

By mid July, therefore, Hamilton had linked the landing at Suvla with delivering the Gallipoli campaign to a decisive conclusion in two ways. First, a combined Anzac–Suvla attack upon the Sari Bair range could trigger an Ottoman capitulation and achieve rapid success in what Hamilton described shortly afterwards as ‘one big rush’. ⁴⁹ In the event that this ‘one big rush’ failed to deliver immediate results, Hamilton also had at his disposal an alternative option, one in which follow-on forces could be thrust directly from Suvla through the Anafarta Gap onto the vulnerable Ottoman lines of communication north of Anzac, thus avoiding any passage of the congested Anzac position itself, and the need for these follow-on forces to fight their way south- east across the peninsula in accordance with the original staff plan. In each case Hamilton envisaged the Suvla landing to be bound more closely within his aspirations for a decisive result than did his operations staff, whose contrasting view of a protracted campaign had led them to introduce the landing as a separate task to the attack from Anzac.

IV. Construction of the Suvla Plan

Meanwhile the plan for the offensive was taking shape at GHQ. As a result of another unsuccessful attack at Cape Helles on 12 July there had been a redistribution of the forces assigned to the coming offensive. At Anzac, Birdwood would receive from Stopford’s IX Corps the 13th (Western) Division and one brigade from the 10th (Irish) Division, together with the 29th (Indian) Brigade from Cape Helles. Stopford was to command the landing at Suvla, which would be conducted by the 11th (Northern) Division and the remaining two brigades of the 10th (Irish) Division. Hamilton would retain in general reserve the two Territorial Divisions, which were destined to arrive after the offensive had begun. While Birdwood was left to develop the ANZAC scheme, Hamilton’s rigid insistence upon secrecy meant that Aspinall and the operations section undertook the detailed planning for the landing of IX Corps at Suvla by themselves.

Hamilton had been so disturbed by the poor operational security during the initial April landings that he considered secrecy for the Suvla landing was ‘so ultra vital’ that it had to be kept ‘within a tiny circle’ of trusted operations staff officers led by Aspinall. ⁵⁰ In addition, this ‘tiny circle’ of staff officers was also responsible for overseeing the conduct of existing operations at Cape Helles and at Anzac, while simultaneously organizing the disembarkation, accommodation, and sustainment of Birdwood’s reinforcements, which were to be smuggled ashore at Anzac Cove in the days immediately before the offensive began. ⁵¹ Dawnay’s letters to his wife during this period reflect the enormous pressure the operations section was under at the time, which can only have been compounded by Hamilton’s penchant for secrecy. ⁵² The direct effects of this excessive workload are difficult to quantify; however, when considered alongside Hamilton’s personalized style of decision making and Braithwaite’s indifference, then it is possible to appreciate how Aspinall and Dawnay, who were already subtly out of step with Hamilton’s thinking, may not have fully appreciated the closer association Hamilton had made between the landing at Suvla and his hopes for a swift conclusion of the Gallipoli campaign.

Aspinall and Dawnay’s failure to fully appreciate Hamilton’s greater aspirations for Suvla are evident in several crucial decisions that were made at GHQ during this period. The first concerned the command and control arrangements for the operations at Suvla and Anzac. Hamilton’s first inclination was to command the operations of both Birdwood’s and Stopford’s corps personally from a small tactical headquarters located ashore at Suvla. ⁵³ As Hamilton considered Anzac and Suvla to be ‘combined as the main operation’, then this degree of coordination would be essential to maintaining the unity of effort Hamilton required. ⁵⁴ Yet, as Aspinall later confessed, Hamilton was ‘over-persuaded by the staff’ to remain 18 miles away at GHQ on the island of Imbros, from where he could oversee operations across the entire Gallipoli peninsula. ⁵⁵ This advice, which significantly reduced Hamilton’s ability to exercise any effective command of Stopford’s and Birdwood’s corps, reflected the staff perception of the August offensive as consisting of distinct tactical operations at Anzac and Suvla, and not the more combined attack envisaged by Hamilton.

The second decision was the allocation of the actual troops to conduct the landing at Suvla. Hamilton originally wanted to use the seasoned British 29th Division from Cape Helles to spearhead the night assault at Suvla because he felt that this Regular Army formation, which had performed so valiantly at the initial Cape Helles landings in April, would be more capable of pushing rapidly inland than would a division of inexperienced New Army troops, a desire that was consistent with his more aggressive view of Suvla’s role in the offensive. ⁵⁶ Hamilton, who had by this stage refined his earlier vague notions on the employment of the IX Corps divisions, felt that the first division ashore at Suvla would need to move swiftly off the beaches and capture the Tekke Tepe ridge by dawn the next morning in order to secure the landing. He believed the speed of this initial landing was important because it would allow the second division, which was to land immediately afterwards, to move rapidly inland and combine closely with ANZAC in an attack that he later described would ‘smash the mainspring of the Turkish [sic] opposition upon Sari Bair’. ⁵⁷

Hamilton’s operations staff, however, did not consider such urgency necessary. They convinced him that asking the splendid, yet battle-weary, 29th Division to make a second amphibious landing was asking too much, and so the task was allocated to the inexperienced and untested 11th (Northern) Division. ⁵⁸ Aspinall, writing after the war as the campaign’s official historian, conceded that Hamilton’s first thoughts were right but at the time ‘other counsels prevailed’. ⁵⁹ These ‘other counsels’ were based on Aspinall and Dawnay’s view that IX Corps’s landing at Suvla was not critical to the initial attack on Sari Bair from Anzac, and that the operation was expected to be routine. In fact, Braithwaite would later recall how, once news had been received that IX Corps was successfully ashore, the GHQ operations staff had expressed relief that ‘the thing is done’, which not only reinforces the staff’s limited expectations for Stopford’s troops but suggests that even Braithwaite’s understanding of Hamilton’s intentions may have been somewhat confused. ⁶⁰ To Aspinall and Dawnay, Suvla’s significance lay in its usefulness as a base from which to mount and sustain subsequent operations across the peninsula and southwards against the Kilid Bahr plateau and not as an intimate component of the offensive’s early stages.

The staff’s limited view of the initial landing at Suvla was also apparent in a letter Aspinall presented to GHQ’s senior administrative staff officer, Brigadier General Winter, on 16 July. The letter contained a series of movement tables that detailed the expected rates of advance for the divisions landing at Suvla. These tables made it clear that the first division ashore at Suvla was expected to advance between 2 and 3 miles from the beach during the first 24 hours after the initial landing. This advance would still place the first division between 1 and 2 miles short of the Tekke Tepe ridge, which Hamilton had expected to be captured by dawn the next morning, or only 12 hours after this division had landed. Furthermore, Aspinall’s movement tables subsequently indicated that the first division’s final advance onto the Tekke Tepe ridge would not occur until the second day ashore, or nearly 48 hours after it had first landed. ⁶¹ Aspinall’s staff work did not reflect any of the ‘celerity’ that Hamilton had earlier ascribed to the landing of the first division at Suvla. ⁶²

According to Aspinall’s movement tables the Sari Bair range would also have been captured by Birdwood’s ANZAC within the first 24 hours of IX Corps’s initial landing at Suvla. Stopford’s second division ashore, which Hamilton expected would combine closely with the ANZAC attack upon Sari Bair, was not planned to be in a position to influence this operation until well into the second day of the offensive. This meant that any support Hamilton expected Stopford’s second division to provide to the ANZAC attack on Sari Bair would be delayed by anything up to 48 hours. Furthermore, the slow rate of movement planned for the first division ashore would only increase the chances of congestion and confusion as the two IX Corps divisions competed for space in a slowly expanding beachhead. ⁶³

The significance of Aspinall’s 16 July letter is that it confirms how the movements of Stopford’s and Birdwood’s corps were not synchronized to achieve the decisive effect Hamilton was seeking during the initial stages of the offensive. The consequences of this lack of synchronization would be further compounded by the ill-fated decision to leave Hamilton isolated 18 miles away on Imbros. Unfortunately Hamilton’s intention for the troops at Suvla to ‘act in concert with the troops from ANZAC’ for the initial attack upon Sari Bair was not apparent in Aspinall’s staff work, which again confirms the staff view of the Suvla landing as a separate operation not intended to play an intimate role in the first stages of a decisive offensive. ⁶⁴

This more limited interpretation of Suvla’s role was apparent in GHQ’s initial instructions issued to Stopford on 22 July. These instructions, which were written by Aspinall and signed by Braithwaite, describe how the general plan was to deal the enemy ‘a crushing blow’ from Anzac before driving the ‘remnants south towards Kilid Bahr’. ⁶⁵ They explained that the success of the overall offensive depended on the capture of Sari Bair and the ‘capture and retention of Suvla Bay as a base of operations for the northern army’. ⁶⁶ The first of these critical tasks was given to Birdwood’s ANZAC, while Stopford’s IX Corps was to secure Suvla Bay. ⁶⁷ Suvla’s relevance was highlighted in relation to supplying the subsequent stages of the offensive only, and not the ‘crushing blow’ upon Sari Bair. There was no specific mention of the 10th (Irish) Division – the second IX Corps division ashore – beyond a vague reference to a hope that ‘the remainder’ of IX Corps might be available to assist afterwards should the ANZAC attack upon the Sari Bair range become stalled. ⁶⁸ IX Corps’s support of the initial ANZAC attack was only implied, and even then the instructions suggest this would not be needed unless ANZAC ran into trouble on Sari Bair, which merely reflected the slow rates of advance advocated by Aspinall’s earlier movement tables.

Maurice Hankey, the well-respected secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence and soon to be the British government’s eyewitness to GHQ’s conduct of the August offensive, wrote to the British prime minister shortly afterwards about the two opposite conceptions of the landing at Suvla. Hamilton’s desire for a combined Anzac–Suvla attack upon the Sari Bair range was the offensive conception but it was the security of Suvla Bay – the defensive conception – that Hankey felt ‘exercised on the whole a baneful influence on the operations’. ⁶⁹

The ‘baneful influence’ of the defensive conception was apparent in these first instructions, which Hamilton and Aspinall presented to Stopford at Cape Helles on 22 July. Hamilton later informed the Dardanelles Commission that he ‘had a long and interesting talk’ with Stopford, who Hamilton felt was in general agreement with the scheme. ⁷⁰ Yet Hamilton’s version of events does not correlate with Aspinall’s, whose account downplayed Hamilton’s participation in the meeting. Aspinall described being ‘sent over to Helles by the CGS [Braithwaite] to see General Stopford and unfold to him the plan of operations to be undertaken at Suvla and Anzac’. ⁷¹ Aspinall met with Stopford privately in the latter’s dugout, where ‘we got the maps out and I told him Sir Ian Hamilton’s whole plan’. ⁷² Aspinall suggests that the instigator of the meeting was Braithwaite and not Hamilton, who afterwards could not recall discussing the instructions with Stopford at all. Stopford ‘says he got his secret instructions from me on 22nd July’, Hamilton later confessed in a letter to Braithwaite; ‘it does not seem probable that I handed him his secret instructions but I may have done so’. ⁷³ Hamilton’s inability to recollect such an important event reflects his cultural reluctance to engage with the detail of the written plan. ⁷⁴ As a result Hamilton was more likely to have used his ‘long and interesting talk’ with Stopford to ensure that the IX Corps commander was ‘fully seized with his ideas’, which meant he would have placed greater general emphasis on the offensive conception than did Aspinall, whose subsequent detailed discussions with Stopford that day were more likely to have reinforced the contrasting defensive conception of the landing. ⁷⁵

Aspinall left Cape Helles on the afternoon of 22 July under the impression that Stopford was satisfied with the plan, although Stopford disputed this, which suggests there was an element of confusion in Stopford’s mind after the Cape Helles meetings with Hamilton and Aspinall. ⁷⁶ After further consultation with his own principal staff officer and then Birdwood, Stopford’s confusion fermented into a serious doubt about IX Corps’s ability to secure Suvla Bay as a base (the staff defensive conception) and to support the ANZAC attack (Hamilton’s offensive conception) on Sari Bair. ⁷⁷

On 26 July, Stopford visited GHQ to discuss these concerns with Hamilton. Unfortunately Hamilton was not receptive to discussing the issue without Braithwaite, who was away at the time. Stopford later recalled how Hamilton told him:

that he would take the opportunity of riding over some day with his CGS [Braithwaite] to speak about them. He never did so, nor asked me to see him, and I never had another word with him on the subject before the operations began. ⁷⁸

Hamilton’s appointment diary, which was maintained by his personal staff assistant, does not mention this or any further meetings with Stopford before the offensive began. In fact, Hamilton’s detachment from Stopford had been a feature of their relationship ever since their first meeting at GHQ on 11 July, when Hamilton chose not to divulge any important information about IX Corps’s role because of his concerns for the maintenance of secrecy. ⁷⁹ Hamilton’s remoteness led Stopford to seek clarification on the role of IX Corps from the GHQ operations staff instead.

Stopford spoke with Aspinall and asked whether the security of the bay or the support for ANZAC should have priority, which further suggests how the effect of the divergence between Hamilton and his staff had caused Stopford’s confusion over priorities. ‘It is the wish of the GOC in C’, Aspinall replied emphatically, ‘that the security of the harbour should be the first consideration and that that security is not to be forfeited by going to Biyuk Anafarta [in support of ANZAC].’ ⁸⁰ Edgar Anstey, the junior operations staff officer assisting Aspinall and Dawnay, noted in his journal at the time how the ‘main object of securing Suvla as a base is looming larger in the plans as I always thought it should’. ⁸¹ Contrary to Hamilton’s expectations, Aspinall’s advice to Stopford and Anstey’s journal observations reflected the staff’s view of the need to prepare for protracted operations well beyond the capture of the Sari Bair range.

Yet on 27 July, the day after Aspinall had confirmed Suvla’s defensive purpose to Stopford, Hamilton reaffirmed his hopes for a swift and decisive result from the August offensive. ‘The necessity of finishing up these operations quickly and before the autumn gales is fully realised,’ Braithwaite stressed on Hamilton’s behalf in a letter to Kitchener’s private secretary, ‘and we are straining every effort to do so.’ ⁸² Maurice Hankey, who by then had arrived at GHQ in his role as the government’s observer, had also caught this optimistic mood. In language redolent of that used by Hamilton and Birdwood rather than the GHQ operations staff, Hankey wrote to the British prime minister of his belief that the capture of Sari Bair at Anzac ‘should bring about the surrender of the Turks [sic]’. ⁸³

Meanwhile, Hamilton had also confirmed that the landing at Suvla was also intimately bound up with the attack on Sari Bair and the ‘surrender of the Turks [sic]’. ⁸⁴ In a formal instruction issued to the commander of the French Corps Expéditionnaire at Cape Helles, Hamilton wrote of his decision to concentrate force ‘against the enemy’s northern wing’ and that the ‘Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and the IX Army Corps will carry out the main attack’. ⁸⁵ This instruction was one of six formal directives issued to subordinate formations by GHQ in preparation for the offensive; however, it was the only one in which the operations of the forces at Anzac and Suvla were described as being combined in relation to the main attack at Anzac. Significantly, this was also the only formal directive that Hamilton signed personally and in which he was referred to in the first person, which suggests that if it was not actually written by Hamilton then he had a far greater hand in its compilation than in the other directives, none of which made such an explicit linkage between operations at Suvla and Anzac. ⁸⁶

GHQ’s final instructions to Stopford, like all but Hamilton’s directive to the French, were written by Aspinall and signed by Braithwaite. Issued on 29 July, these instructions not only reinforced the staff’s defensive conception of the landing but removed almost entirely any possibility that IX Corps might be able to assist in the ANZAC attack upon Sari Bair. The final instructions confirmed the defensive purpose and informed Stopford that his ‘primary objective’ was to ‘secure Suvla Bay as a base for all the forces operating in the northern zone’. ⁸⁷ But the chances of IX Corps assisting in Hamilton’s offensive conception were then compromised by the admission in the instructions that the task of securing the bay might ‘require the use of the whole of the troops at your disposal’, and that Stopford need only endeavour to assist the ANZAC attack if this was not the case. ⁸⁸ Whereas the initial GHQ instructions had vaguely implied some ‘hope’ that the second division ashore might thereafter be able to assist the ANZAC attack upon Sari Bair, the final instructions removed any incentive for an increasingly worried Stopford to do so. The GHQ final instructions effectively sanctioned Stopford’s use of his entire force to secure Suvla Bay only. While the suggestion of support for Birdwood’s ANZAC filtered faintly through into these final instructions, it bore little in common with Hamilton’s desire for IX Corps to ‘act in concert’ with the ANZAC to deliver a combined attack against Sari Bair, one that he hoped would lead to Ottoman capitulation. ⁸⁹

On 31 July, Stopford submitted a memorandum to GHQ which outlined his understanding of his task and enclosed a draft IX Corps operation order for Hamilton’s approval. Stopford’s defensive interpretation of IX Corps’s role was evident from the memorandum’s opening salutation, which advised Hamilton of ‘my proposed plan of operations for the capture and retention of Suvla Bay as a base of operations for the Northern Army’. ⁹⁰ The only mention of support to ANZAC was relegated to the last paragraph of the memorandum, which reiterated the advice provided by Aspinall several days earlier. ‘I fear’, Stopford stated, ‘that the attainment of the security of Suvla Bay will so absorb the force under my command as to render it improbable that I shall be able to give direct assistance to GOC ANZAC in his attack on Hill 305 [Sari Bair].’ ⁹¹ It was only in the event that IX Corps encountered slight opposition that Stopford felt he might be able to assist ANZAC. In common with the covering memorandum, the attached draft operation order also made no mention of support of ANZAC, apart from similarly noting that IX Corps would ‘endeavour’ to assist once the bay had been secured. ⁹² Despite the dilution of Hamilton’s offensive conception, the GHQ staff later informed Stopford that his orders ‘met with the entire approval of the GOC in C’ and so Stopford consequently issued them to his two divisions on 3 August. ⁹³

Yet Hamilton, who was then 70 miles away inspecting elements of the 10th (Irish) Division at Mytilene, did not read Stopford’s orders before the landing, so any approval he gave would have been based on his staff’s assurance that the orders were satisfactory. ⁹⁴ ‘[S]o long as I had good cause to believe that Stopford himself was fully cognisant of my plan and believed in it,’ Hamilton wrote to Aspinall after the war, ‘I was not called upon to examine his divisional orders.’ ⁹⁵ In all of his previous experience of command Hamilton had ‘never known a Commander in Chief examine my orders to my troops’, and instead he believed it was the responsibility of the General Staff to ‘keep their own chief acquainted with Corps and Divisional orders’. ⁹⁶

Hamilton’s remote style of command meant that he was reluctant to involve himself in detailed matters such as the transmission of orders. His apparent lack of familiarity with GHQ’s instructions and the Suvla plan was later reflected in his subsequent correspondence with Braithwaite during the Dardanelles Commission, when, for example, he sought reassurance as to the location of the Suvla landing beaches. ⁹⁷ Hamilton’s reluctance to involve himself in the affairs of his subordinates, and Braithwaite’s failure to ensure that the GHQ operations staff were fully cognizant of the C.-in-C.’s intentions, meant that commander and staff held different conceptions of the Suvla landing. His detachment from Stopford ensured that Hamilton was committed to his staff’s defensive conception of Suvla’s purpose and, consequently, to Stopford’s limited aspirations for IX Corps.

V. Conclusion

Hamilton’s intentions for IX Corps to play an active role in a combined Anzac–Suvla attack upon the Sari Bair range, which he hoped might lead to a rapid Ottoman capitulation before the Gallipoli winter, were dashed before even a shot had been fired. Instead the August offensive would be launched as two discrete tactical operations at Suvla and Anzac, which was more consistent with his staff’s expectation of a protracted campaign. Having failed to impose his will upon the GHQ planning process, Hamilton would turn to his alternative option for Suvla in the days after the ANZAC attack had failed to secure Sari Bair. This option, it will be recalled, envisaged IX Corps securing the Anafarta Gap to facilitate the passage of the MEF’s reserves onto the Ottoman lines of communication beyond Sari Bair. By that stage, however, even further dilution of Hamilton’s intentions within IX Corps would ensure that Stopford’s troops had barely left the shore and were unable to secure Suvla Bay even as a defensive base, let alone provide it as the platform from which to launch further offensive operations.

Hoping for a rapid conclusion to the campaign, Hamilton was inclined to see the landing at Suvla more intimately bound within his vision of a decisive offensive than the GHQ operations staff, who, anticipating a more protracted struggle through the Gallipoli winter, tended to view Suvla as a separate and primarily defensive operation, one which would merely enable the prosecution of these more extended operations. It was the failure of Hamilton and Braithwaite to reconcile the different expectations for the August offensive within GHQ that generated the opposing conceptions of the landing at Suvla, but it was Hamilton’s remoteness from the planning detail and from Stopford that ensured the staff’s defensive conception ultimately prevailed.

It is quite reasonable to conclude that Hamilton’s desire to preserve the shattered remnants of his reputation was at least partly responsible for his post-campaign attempts to deflect blame for the failure of the August offensive upon the hapless Stopford and IX Corps. But for almost the entire duration of GHQ’s planning of the August offensive and the landing at Suvla, Hamilton had been working on a subtly different script from that of his operations staff. Consequently his motivation for blaming Stopford should be balanced by a recognition that he expected more from Suvla than did his own staff, and that the source of the confusion about IX Corps’s role was consequently firmly rooted within the exercise of command at GHQ.