caused by their
mines. They did not appreciate the situation correctly, for they do
not appear to have been short of mines. The Russian plan of letting
these engines of destruction loose at the Black Sea end of the
Bosphorus to drift down with the current indeed provided the Osmanlis
with a constant supply of excellent ones; they were picked up, shipped
down to the Dardanelles, and used against the Allies' fleet. These
weapons, drifting and fixed, together with the mobile artillery which
so seriously interfered with mine-sweeping, proved to be the trump
cards in the hands of Johnny Turk and his Boche assistants.

I was present when Lord Kitchener met Sir I. Hamilton and his chief
staff-officer, General Braithwaite, and gave Sir Ian his instructions.
At that time Lord K. still hoped that, in so far as forcing the
Dardanelles was concerned, the fleet would effect its purpose,
practically if not wholly unaided by the troops. These were designed
rather for operations subsequent to the fall of what was after all but
the first line of Ottoman defence. It was only after Sir Ian arrived
on the spot that the naval attack actually failed and that military
operations on an ambitious scale against the Gallipoli Peninsula took
the stage. The fact that when the transports arrived at Mudros they
were found not to be packed suitably for effecting an immediate
disembarkation on hostile soil, has been a good deal criticized.
Although it was not a matter within my responsibility, I was sharply
heckled over the point by Captain Stephen Gwynne when before the
Dardanelles Commission. But the troops left before there was any
question of attempting a landing in force in face of the enemy in
the immediate vicinity of the Straits. At the date when they sailed it
remained quite an open question as to what exactly their task was to
be. The transports could not have been appropriately packed even after
military operations in the Gallipoli Peninsula had been decided upon,
without knowing exactly what was Sir Ian's plan.

Sir Ian complained to the Dardanelles Commission that no preliminary
scheme of operations had been drawn up by the War Office; and he
certainly got little assistance in that direction, although it might
not have been of much use to him if he had.[4] He also complained that
there was a great want of staff preparation, no arrangements for
water, for instance, having been made. This was in effect the
consequence of the General Staff