Background
Ian Hamilton was born on Corfu on January 16, 1853, the son of an army captain.
military Quartermaster General Adjutant general
Ian Hamilton was born on Corfu on January 16, 1853, the son of an army captain.
Hamilton attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in 1870, the first year that entrance to the army as an officer was by examination rather than by purchasing a commission.
Next came duty in India, where the charming, intelligent Johnny Hamilton blossomed; he took part in campaigns in Afghanistan, Natal, Egypt, and Burma, being promoted major in 1885 and colonel six years later. Hamilton came home in 1898 to command the Musketry School at Hythe, but the following year left for South Africa, where he took part in the relief of Ladysmith and the march on Pretoria. By then he prided himself on being a protégé of both Lord Roberts and Sir H. H. Kitchener. His career was secure: after serving as chief of a military mission with the Japanese army in 1904, he headed the Southern Command at home from 1905 to 1909, was promoted general in 1907, and from 1910 to 1914 had the Mediterranean Command at Malta.
The outbreak of war in Europe found Johnny Hamilton as aide-de-camp to King George V. Lord Kitchener, then state secretary for war, appointed Hamilton to head the Central Force, responsible for the defense of England in the event of invasion. Hamilton's fortunes turned on March 12, 1915, when Kitchener ordered him to his great surprise to depart at once for Mudros to take command of an Anglo-French force at the Dardanelles. It was fully expected in London that the navy could do the job unaided and hence Hamilton's orders were most vague; only in the unlikely event that the naval action failed, would he engage his entire force to open the way for the fleet.
Hamilton's Utopian dreams of an easy entry into Constantinople faded rapidly on March 18 as he witnessed the loss of several battleships in the first unsuccessful attempt by Admiral Sir Sackville Carden to force the Straits. When the admiral's successor, Sir John De Robeck, informed Hamilton that the navy could not renew the attack until the army had seized the craggy peninsula, Hamilton agreed; on March 27 he received the official go-ahead. His maps were woefully outdated and his knowledge of the rugged terrain nil. The element of surprise had been lost when lack of facilities at Mudros forced Hamilton to outfit his 75,000-man Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at Alexandria. Last but not least, the bungling diplomacy of the Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, had cost the Allies the support of Greece and Russia at the Straits.
This notwithstanding, Hamilton stormed the beaches at the southern tip of the peninsula at Cape Helles and Gaba Tepe, and it was primarily due to his courageous leadership that the landings were at all a success. With the Turks commanding the heights, the struggle quickly degenerated into trench warfare and Hamilton's plight became acute; repeated pleas for reinforcements went unanswered, but national prestige demanded a victory. In July the government at last sent him an additional five divisions but the Turks had also been reinforced. Hamilton secured a new beachhead at Suvla Bay on August 6, but once again the initial surprise was vitiated by defensive deployment on the beaches rather than storming the heights. The cabinet then lost confidence in Hamilton, and when he informed Kitchener in October that evacuation of Gallipoli would cost at best half, at worst all, of the force, it was decided to change commanders in Asia Minor. General Charles Monro replaced Hamilton and upon visiting all three beaches, advised immediate evacuation. As Winston Churchill put it: "He came, he saw, he capitulated."
Johnny Hamilton received no further command during the Great War. He published his account of the operation in 1920, and died in London on October 12,1947.
(Book digitized by Google and uploaded to the Internet Arc...)
Quotations: "Had only a manual of the Turkish Army, an out-of-date Admiralty report on the Dardanelles defenses, and an old map".
He spoke English, German, French and Hindi, was considered charming, courtly and kind. He appeared frail, yet was full of energy. He was twice recommended for the Victoria Cross, but on the first occasion was considered too young, and on the second too senior. He was wounded in the wrist in the First Boer War (1881) at the Battle of Majuba, leaving his left hand almost useless. His left leg was shorter than the right, as a result of a serious injury falling from a horse.
Quotes from others about the person
Different people came to hold differing opinions of him. Prime Minister H. H. Asquith remarked that he had "too much feather in his brain", whereas Charles Bean, war correspondent covering the Gallipoli campaign considered he had "a breadth of mind which the army in general does not possess". He opposed conscription and was considered less ruthless than other successful generals.
He wrote a volume of poetry and a novel contemporarily described as risqué. Works included The Fighting of the Future, Icarus, A Jaunt on a Junk, A Ballad of Hadji and A Staff Officer's Scrapbook. In the introduction of his Gallipoli Diary, he commented: "There is nothing certain about war except that one side won't win".