AD: [tinymush] The Greatest Generation: Gallipoli
cpsc...@googlemail.com
be a great war of entrenchments. The spade will be as indispensable
to a soldier as his rifle. The first thing every man will have to do,
if he cares for his life at all, will be to dig a hole in the
ground. ...The front line would be a =91belt of a thousand paces swept
by a crossfire of shells which no living being can pass.=92 Neither side
would win that monstrous battle."
- "Is war now impossible?" by Ivan Bloch, 1898
It is April 1915 and the Great War is less than a year old. The
predictions of Bloch have proven more accurate than the optimistic
projections of the generals who thought it would all be over by
Christmas. The opposing Entente and Central Powers alliances have
already suffered over a million casualties each, and the front lines
in France are seemingly fixed. While the generals plan ever larger
attacks and ever larger bombardments in an attempt to break the
deadlock, inventive minds are already casting about for alternatives.
In an attempt to regain the strategic initiative, the British First
Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, suggests an attack on the
Turkish held Dardanelles strait. Forcing the strait would open a much
needed supply route to Russia, as well as threaten Istanbul, the
capital of the Ottoman Empire and the weakest of the Central Powers.
Churchill reasons that a naval attack alone should be sufficient to
neutralise the coastal defences of the straits. His ideas are soon
tried out, and found wanting. Eighteen Entente battleships shell the
coastal defences of the Gallipoli peninsula covering the strait, but
in so doing run into a Turkish minefield. Six ships are hit, four of
them sink, and the admiral in charge calls off the attack.
While the battleships were suffering at the Dardanelles, the first
wave of New Zealand and Australian volunteers who signed up for war in
the heady days of 1914 were encamped in Egypt, undergoing training
prior to being sent to France as part of the newly formed Australian
and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). As they were conveniently close
to the Dardanelles, it was decided that they would be added to a
scratch force of British and French colonial troops hastily assembled
to try and amphibious assault on Gallipoli. Six weeks later, on the
25th April, the Anzacs were embarked at night on board small landing
craft, approaching a dark and forbidding shore, unaware that they were
about to take part in a great defining moment of their homeland.
The Greatest Generation MUSH is a roleplaying MUSH, with coded combat,
that has been going on and off for four years now. Logs of past
exploits can be found on warisunlimited.wikidot.com.
Sign up with the Anzacs and take part in the Gallipoli campaign now at
war.isunlimited.net 7115!