Gallipoli by Peter Fitzsimons Page B

destroyer Parramatta . Stoker, at least amused that the natives have taken to calling the Australian submarines ‘Devil Fish’, 26 must bide his time with his team in Rabaul Harbour, waiting for their own turn the following day.
    At 2.30 that afternoon, the AE1 and Parramatta exchange signals, just as they have been doing all day, when a tropical haze starts to descend. Within an hour, the two lose sight of each other and Parramatta returns to base, arriving at Herbertshöhe at 6 pm. The captain of Parramatta , Lieutenant ‘Cocky’ Warren, is surprised that AE1 is not back yet, and all the more surprised that she does not return that evening. Perhaps she has had engine failure, or has beached herself on one of the many islands that abound all around?
    But no. The next day, despite an extensive search by Encounter , Parramatta , Warrego , Yarra and the particularly devastated skipper and crew of the AE2 – knowing there is only 24 hours of oxygen in the submarine if it is still intact – there is no sign of AE1 . Nor the next day. Nor the day after that.
    Lieutenant-Commander Stoker and the crew of the AE2 are not only worried sick, like everyone else, but also haunted. Wherever their friends on the AE1 are – and over the months they have all become close to the three officers and 32 sailors, who are, like them, half-British and half-Australian – it could just as easily have been the men of the AE2. Are they alive, trapped under the water and slowly, excruciatingly suffocating? Are they all already dead, after some cataclysmic event has sent them to the muddy bottom? Has the submarine exploded after one of the eight torpedoes it carries has detonated? Earnestly, desperately, the men of their sister sub, the AE2 , scan the waters and the shores for the tiniest sign of debris. They look over the sides, hoping to see a dark shadow that might indicate a blob on the bottom. Something, anything . But there is nothing. Stone-cold, motherless nothing .
    After three days – a good two and a half days after AE1 would have run out of oxygen anyway – the search is called off.
    Lieutenant-Commander Stoker accepts that the men are dead, but he will never stop mourning them. And nor will the rest of the crew members – one of them, Torpedoman John H. Wheat, later dedicating his memoirs to the crew of the AE1 : ‘They lie coffined in the deep, keeping their silent watch at Australia’s North Passage, heroes all …’ 27
    17 SEPTEMBER 1914, OUT OF THE LOOP
    Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal, now serving as the Military Attaché in Sofia, Bulgaria, is isolated from the major decisions of his government. And he does not agree with many of them.
    More than this, he is unsure of the leadership of General Enver, and his move to plunge the Ottomans into war. When he had heard of Enver’s appointment as War Minister earlier in the year, he had written in confidence to a member of his party, the CUP, warning of the move: ‘Enver is energetic and will want to do something. But he doesn’t stop to reflect.’ 28
    And now, with the Ottomans plunged into war, this opinion has only strengthened. He writes to his friend, ‘This is very dangerous. It is not clear which way we shall head. It is very difficult to keep a large army idle for any length of time. Looking at Germany’s position from a Military point of view, I am by no means certain that it will win this war.’ 29
    And again, today, he sits to pen a letter to another friend in Constantinople arguing that there is no need for haste, and that they are better off delaying their entry into war. He writes, ‘Our comrades will accuse me of pessimism, if the Germans are in Paris by the time you receive this letter. But I don’t care.’ 30
    Indeed, it is likely for this very reason that General Enver and the Ottoman inner clique would prefer Mustafa to stay where he is for the moment, so that his