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Gallipoli Diary, Volume I By: Ian Hamilton (1853-1947) |
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BY GENERAL SIR IAN HAMILTON, G.C.B. AUTHOR OF "A STAFF OFFICER'S SCRAP BOOK," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I
NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 1920
PRINTED BY UNWIN BROTHERS, LTD. WOKING ENGLAND
PREFACE
On the heels of the South African War came the sleuth hounds pursuing
the criminals, I mean the customary Royal Commissions. Ten thousand
words of mine stand embedded in their Blue Books, cold and dead as so
many mammoths in glaciers. But my long spun out intercourse with the
Royal Commissioners did have living issue my Manchurian and Gallipoli
notes. Only constant observation of civilian Judges and soldier
witnesses could have shown me how fallible is the unaided military
memory or have led me by three steps to a War Diary: (1) There is nothing certain about war except that one side won't win. (2) The winner is asked no questions the loser has to answer for
everything. (3) Soldiers think of nothing so little as failure and yet, to the
extent of fixing intentions, orders, facts, dates firmly in their own
minds, they ought to be prepared. Conclusion: In war, keep your own counsel, preferably in a note book. The first test of the new resolve was the Manchurian Campaign, 1904 5;
and it was a hard test. Once that Manchurian Campaign was over I never
put pen to paper in the diary sense[1] until I was under orders for
Constantinople. Then I bought a note book as well as a Colt's automatic
(in fact, these were the only two items of special outfit I did buy),
and here are the contents not of the auto but of the book. Also, from
the moment I took up the command, I kept cables, letters and copies
(actions quite foreign to my natural disposition), having been taught in
my youth by Lord Roberts that nothing written to a Commander in Chief,
or his Military Secretary, can be private if it has a bearing on
operations. A letter which may influence the Chief Command of an Army
and, therefore, the life of a nation, may be "Secret" for reasons of
State; it cannot possibly be "Private" for personal reasons.[2] At the time, I am sure my diary was a help to me in my work. The
crossings to and from the Peninsula gave me many chances of reckoning up
the day's business, sometimes in clear, sometimes in a queer cipher of
my own. Ink stands with me for an emblem of futurity, and the act of
writing seemed to set back the crisis of the moment into a calmer
perspective. Later on, the diary helped me again, for although the
Dardanelles Commission did not avail themselves of my formal offer to
submit what I had written to their scrutiny, there the records were.
Whenever an event, a date and a place were duly entered in their actual
coincidence, no argument to the contrary could prevent them from falling
into the picture: an advocate might just as well waste eloquence in
disputing the right of a piece to its own place in a jig saw puzzle.
Where, on the other hand, incidents were not entered, anything might
happen and did happen; vide , for instance, the curious misapprehension
set forth in the footnotes to pages 59, 60, Vol. II. So much for the past. Whether these entries have not served their turn
is now the question. They were written red hot amidst tumult, but
faintly now, and as in some far echo, sounds the battle cry that once
stopped the beating of thousands of human hearts as it was borne out
upon the night wind to the ships. Those dread shapes we saw through our
periscopes are dust: "the pestilence that walketh in darkness" and "the
destruction that wasteth at noonday" are already images of speech: only
the vastness of the stakes; the intensity of the effort and the grandeur
of the sacrifice still stand out clearly when we, in dreams, behold the
Dardanelles. Why not leave that shining impression as a martial cloak to
cover the errors and vicissitudes of all the poor mortals who, in the
words of Thucydides, "dared beyond their strength, hazarded against
their judgment, and in extremities were of an excellent hope?" Why not? The tendency of every diary is towards self justification and
complaint; yet, to day, personally, I have "no complaints... Continue reading book >>
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