With the Zionists in Gallipoli.
by John Henry Patterson.
PREFACE
The narrative of the Zionists in Gallipoli has been written during the enforced idleness of the past month--a month which has been spent in endeavouring to recover sufficient health and strength to enable me to take a further, and, I trust, a more useful, hand in the Great Drama now approaching its climax.
In the following pages I have "set down nought in malice," neither have I given a word of praise where praise is not due--and more than due. My relations with those with whom I came into contact were excellent, and on the very rare occasions when they were otherwise, it was not due to any seeking of mine, but, unfortunately, my temperament is not such that I can suffer fools gladly.
My story is one of actual happenings, told just as I saw them with some suggestions thrown in, and if from these a hint is taken here and there by those in the "Seats of the Mighty," then so much the better for our Cause.
My chief object in writing this book is to interest the Hebrew nation in the fortunes of the Zionists and show them of what their Russian brothers are capable, even under the command of an alien in race and religion. Those who have the patience to follow me through these pages will, of course, see that I am not by any means an alien in sympathy and admiration for the people who have given to the world some of its greatest men, not to mention The Man who has so profoundly changed the world's outlook.
LONDON, 1916.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
I propose in the following pages to have something to say on the general policy of the Gallipoli campaign, and also upon the operations of war in execution of that policy. Now, in the discussion of these questions, I shall have some criticisms to make, so it may not be altogether inappropriate to give the reader some little idea of a few at least of my qualifications for such a role; otherwise he might well be tempted to say: "A fig for this fellow and his criticisms. What is he but a mere muleteer?"
Perhaps I may remark, to begin with, that when I took over the command of the Zion Mule Corps, I knew a great deal about soldiering and the art of war, but very little about the muleteer or the artful mule. But that's just "a way we have in the Army!"
From my boyhood I have either been a soldier or taken the keenest interest in soldiering, not only in England but in all parts of the world. My military experiences extend through home, India and South Africa, and have been by no means of a sketchy character. I spent the best part of three years in South Africa, where I commanded a Yeomanry regiment, and at times Regular troops of all arms, during the Boer War.
Those were glorious days--days when one could thoroughly enjoy warfare--a wild gallop over the veldt, a good fight in the open, and the day won by the best men.
In these days war is robbed of all its glory and romance. It is now but a dyke-maker's job, and a dirty one at that; but much as the soldier may dislike this method of warfare, it has come to stay, and we must make the best of a bad job, adapt ourselves to the new conditions, and by sticking it out, as we have always done, wear down the foe.
In addition to practical experience of soldiers and soldiering in England, India, and South Africa, I have watched our troops at work and play in many out-of-the-way parts of the Empire--the King's African Rifles in East Africa and Uganda; the Cape Mounted Rifles in South Africa; the "Waffs" in West Africa; the "Gippies" in Egypt, and the North-West mounted men of Canada away in the wilds of the Klondyke.
Nor have I confined my attention to the Empire's soldiers only.
In my various visits to America, I looked very keenly into the training and organisation of the American Army. I was especially fortunate in being able to do this, as I had the privilege of being Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's guest at the White House, while he was President, and his letters of introduction made me a welcome visitor everywhere. I saw something of the Cavalry and Artillery both East and West. I watched their Infantry amidst the snows of Alaska. I also noted what excellent game preservers the Cavalry troopers made in the Yellowstone Park--that wonderful National Reserve, crammed with nature's wonders and denizens of the wild, where a half-tamed bear gave me the run of my life!
Whenever I was with American soldiers, their methods were so like our own that I never could feel I was with strangers.
There is only one fault to find with America's Army, and that is that there is not enough of it; for its size, I should say that it is one of the finest in the world. Never have I seen more efficiency anywhere, more keenness among officers and N. C. O.'s; and certainly never in any army have I eaten such delicious food as is supplied to the American private soldier; the soldiers' bread, such as I tasted at Fort Riley, baked in military ovens, cannot be surpassed at the "Ritz," "Savoy" or "Plaza."
It is incomprehensible to me why the average American should have such a strong prejudice against the Army. He seems to imagine that it is some vague kind of monster which, if he does not do everything in his power to strangle and chain up, will one day turn and rend him, and take all his liberties away.
To give some little idea of the feeling of Americans towards soldiers or soldiering, I will relate a little conversation which I overheard at Davenport, a town away out in the State of Iowa. I had had a very strenuous morning in the hot sun, watching the 7th Cavalry at squadron training and other work, and had got back to the hotel, thoroughly tired out after my arduous day. In the afternoon I was sitting on the shady side of the hotel which was on the main street; at a table near me were seated three Americans whose remarks I could not help overhearing; they were travellers in various small articles, one of them being a specialist in neckties; while they were talking two men of the 7th Cavalry walked past; my friend, the necktie man, looked after them, shook his head, and in most contemptuous tones said: "I suppose we must pay the lazy, useless brutes just for the look of the thing." The speaker was a pasty-faced, greasy, fat hybrid, about twenty-eight years old. I am afraid he was a type of which there are many in America; their God is the almighty dollar, an idol the blind worship of which will one day surely bring its own punishment.
Of course I do not, for a moment, wish it to be thought that people of this type predominate in America. I am happy to state that among her citizens I have met some of the most charming, hospitable, intellectual, unselfish and noble people to be found on the face of the globe.
America holds many interests for me, and I never fail to pay our cousins a visit when the opportunity occurs. Perhaps the chief of her attractions, so far as I am concerned, centre in and around the State of Virginia, that beautiful piece of country where most of the great battles of the Civil War were fought.
All my life I have made a point of studying military history and the campaigns of the great Captains of the past. Indeed, I have tramped over many battlefields in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, not at all with the idea that the knowledge would ever prove of value from a military point of view, but solely because I was deeply interested in soldierly matters.
In Spain and Flanders I have followed the footsteps of both Napoleon and Wellington.
In Canada I have sailed up the stately St. Lawrence, and with Wolfe in imagination again stormed the Heights of Abraham. When I stood on those heights some one hundred and fifty years after the great victory which added Canada to the Empire, I was able to realise, more fully than I had ever been able to do from books, the magnitude of the task which General Wolfe had before him when, on that fateful night of the 13th September, 1759, he led his troops up that precipitous road to victory.
In the United States I have, on horseback and on foot, followed Stonewall Jackson up and down the Shenandoah Valley, from Harper's Ferry (over the Potomac) to the Wilderness, where he was seized with such strange inertia, and on to that fatal Chancellorsville where an unlucky bullet, fired from his own lines, put an end to his life and all chances of victory for the South.
When I was at Washington, General Wotherspoon, the Chief of the War College there, very kindly supplied me with maps and notes which he had himself made of the battlefield of Gettysburg, and I am convinced that, if General Longstreet had arrived on the field in time, victory would have rested with the South; and I am equally convinced that, if Stonewall Jackson had been alive, Longstreet would have been in his proper place at the right time.
What a pity we have no Stonewall Jackson with us in these days. How noble is the epitaph on the monument of this great soldier. I only quote the words from memory, but they are something like this:
"When the Almighty in His Omnipotence saw fit to give victory to the North over the South, He found that it was first necessary to take to Himself Stonewall Jackson."
It was a great pleasure to me to see his wife, Mrs. Stonewall Jackson, when I was at Washington, but unfortunately I did not have the chance of speaking to her.
I was delighted to meet Miss Mary Lee several times, the daughter of the best loved General that ever led an Army--Robert E. Lee, the Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Forces. Miss Lee gave me much pleasure by recounting many anecdotes about her famous father. Among other interesting reminiscences she told me that when the war broke out her youngest brother was a mere boy still at school, but the stirring accounts of the great fights in which his father commanded and his older brothers took part, so fired his ardour that one day he disappeared from school, and was not heard of by any of his family for the best part of a year. During this time he served as a soldier in a battery of Artillery.
One day, while a furious battle was raging and the fortunes of war swayed first to the South and then to the North, General Lee observed some of his guns rapidly retiring from a particularly hot position. He galloped up to them himself and ordered them back into the fight. The Commander-in-Chief was somewhat surprised when a powder-blackened, mud-grimed young soldier, in a blood-stained shirt, said to him: "What, Dad, back into that hell again?"--and back into that hell the General sternly sent them at a gallop, and by so doing won the day for the South. Luckily, his boy came out of the battle unscathed and is alive to this day.
A few years ago I received an invitation from the German General Staff to visit Berlin. What I saw then, and on subsequent visits, impressed me very much with the thoroughness of the German nation, not only from a military, but also from a civil point of view.
A captain on the Staff was detailed to be my "bear-leader," while I was in Berlin. As we were strolling down Unter den Linden one day, discussing the youthfulness of senior officers of the British Army, as compared with those of the German Army, he confided to me that when he was ordered to conduct an English Colonel, he fully expected to see an old and grizzled veteran, whereas to his astonishment, he found me younger than himself, who was only a Captain. I shall never forget how, when I laughingly told him that I had jumped from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Colonel in about eight months during the South African War, he stopped short in the middle of the pavement, saluted me gravely and said: "You are Napoleon!" Of course, in these days, this meteoric flight is quite an everyday occurrence in our Army!
Among many other interesting things that the Prussian Captain showed me was their Hall of Glory, the walls of which are covered with pictures of famous battles and generals. While we were there I saw little parties of Prussian recruits being taken from picture to picture, guided by veterans. With straightened shoulders and glowing eye the old soldiers kindled the enthusiasm of the coming warriors by recounting to them the glorious and daring deeds performed by their forefathers on many a well-fought field.
This, no doubt, is only one of the numerous carefully thought out schemes of the General Staff to instil into the German nation the spirit of military pride and glory.
I paid another visit to Germany shortly before the present war broke out, and, soon after my return, I happened to meet in London the German Military Attache, Major Renner, who seemed most anxious to hear from me what my impressions were. I suppose he wondered if I had seen much of the vast preparations, which were even then being made, for the great war into which Germany has plunged the world. Of all my observations the only things I confided to him (which he noted down as if they were of great importance!) were that I considered the abominable type used in German newspapers and books responsible for the be-spectacled German; that although their railway stations were wonderfully clean, yet they were without a decent platform, and my insular modesty had been shocked on many occasions by the amount of German leg I saw when the ladies clambered into and out of the carriages; and lastly, that I thought the long and handsome cloak worn by the officers might be greatly improved by making a slit at the side, so that the hilt of the sword might be outside, instead of inside the cloak, where not only did it make an unsightly lump, but was hard to get at in case of urgent need.
A day or two after war was declared, I happened to be dining in London with Mr. and Mrs. Walrond. Among the other guests was a Staff Officer from the War Office, Major R., who is now a general. Hearing that I had been recently in Germany, he asked me what I thought of their chances. I told him that I felt sure that Germany would have tremendous victories to begin with, and that I believed her armies would get to the gates of Paris, but did not think they would capture Paris this time; and that, although it would take us time, we would beat them eventually, for so long as we held command of the sea, we were bound to win in the end.
Some of the guests at this dinner party have since complimented me on the accuracy of the first part of my prophecy, and I feel absolutely convinced that the remainder of my forecast will, in spite of all bungling, prove equally true, always provided the Navy is given a free hand, and allowed to do its work in its own way.
In poor, brave little Belgium also I had every opportunity given to me by the General Staff to see their Cavalry at work; and while I was in Brussels, Colonel Fourcault, commanding the 2nd Guides, gave me the freedom of the barracks, where I could come and go as I liked. I became very good friends with the officers of the regiment, and we had discussions about Cavalry, its equipment and fighting value. On being asked for my opinion on the relative value of the rifle as compared with the lance and sabre, I unhesitatingly backed the rifle. I saw that the Belgian Cavalry were armed with a small, toylike carbine and a heavy sabre, and in the discussions which we had, I told them that in my humble opinion they would be well advised to scrap both and adopt the infantry rifle and a lighter thrusting sword--but above all I impressed upon them to be sure about the rifle, as the occasions for the use of the _arme blanche_ in future would be rare, with all due deference to General von Bernhardi.
I was, of course, looked upon as a Cavalry leper for expressing such heretical opinions in a Cavalry mess, but I had my revenge later on, when Captain Donnay de Casteau of the 2nd Guides called on me at my club during his stay in London after poor little Belgium had been crushed. He came especially to tell me that those who were left of the regiment often talked of the unorthodox views I had so strongly expressed and he said: "We all had to agree that every word you told us has proved absolutely true."
While I was in Belgium I went down to the now famous Mons, and was the guest of the 7th Chasseurs a Cheval, where I got a thorough insight into the interior economy of the regiment.
It has always been a profound mystery to me that our Intelligence did not give Field-Marshal French earlier information while he was at Mons of the fact that large German forces were marching upon him from the direction of Tournai. Some strange and fatal inertia must have fallen both on the French Intelligence and our own, otherwise it would have been impossible for a large German army to have got into this threatening position without information having been sent to the Commander-in-Chief.
When in Spain I was privileged, owing to the courtesy of the Madrid War Office, to see something of the Spanish Army. I cannot say that I was deeply impressed; there was too much "_Manana_" about it, or in other words, "Wait and see!" From what I observed I was not at all surprised to find it crumple up before the Americans in Cuba. It would, however, be a glorious thing to be a colonel in the Spanish Army, as they seemed to be able to do what was right in their own eyes.