The Gallipoli Campaign

Blood and Valor Scenarios, Part 1 of a Campaign

I think it is fair to say the Gallipoli campaign in WW1 was a complete disaster. There was infighting among the political elite. The idea was sound, I even think the planning was sound, but the implementation was terrible. There were missteps all along the way. The main one being all the delays from John French. I won’t lay all the faults on him. I know he was more concerned with the Western Front. After reading Churchill’s initial ideas in The World Crisis, Volume II, I agree with the assessment that opening another front and allowing the allies to help the Imperial Russians, and creating a flank attack was a good idea. The Western Front was already at an impasse with the beginnings of the trench warfare.

The Anzac assault on the Turkish forces makes for an interesting wargaming campaign. You have several different assaults on the beaches, which leads to several different what if scenarios.

Beach landings (https://www.anzacs.org/gallipolimap1.html)

For our purposes we are going to ignore Anzac Cove for now. For the purposes of this campaign, we are going to focus on the 5 southern beaches. The main thrust of this article is what could have been. The biggest decision to make is what to do with the forces at Y beach?

Y Beach

At Y Beach you have an unopposed landing. With the following forces available: King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Plymouth Battalion of the Royal Marine Light Infantry. We have options here for what we want to do, but to keep things simple, and to keep the forces needed to a minimum, I would make each of these two squads of Riflemen (12), if you are using Blood and Valor rules.

After landing, the troops milled around waiting on orders. Since this is all hypothetical, and we are playing what-if scenarios. You have one decision to make. Give them orders to march to one of the other beaches, and reinforce them.

X Beach

X Beach is another beach where the landing was largely unopposed. Here you have 2^nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers, followed by 1^st Border Regiment and 1^st Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Again, I’m going with 3 squads of 12 riflemen.

There were 12 Turkish defenders, but this won’t make for much of a game. I would roll a percentile dice, and remove that percentage of men as casualties, due to the fact that there was some shelling from the Turks before the men of X Beach could march south to help at W Beach.

W Beach

This is where the scenario really starts. W Beach was a bloodbath. If you have ever heard of the “6 VC’s before breakfast”, this was the beach. There were two companies of the Turkish 2/26th regiment (12 riflemen x2), and a machine guns protected by wire (1 or 2 machine guns). The 1st Lancashire Fusiliers (12 riflemen), have to try and get from the beach and defeat the Ottomans.

In this scenario, you could have the men from Y beach and X beach march south to attack the Turks from behind, or from the side.

Roll a 6 side for each group of reinforcements. On a 1-3, they come in from behind, on a 4-6 they attack from the side. To further complicate matters, neither side knows when the reinforcements will arrive, or if they arrive at all. First roll a d6 for each of the reinforcement companies. On a 5+, they will arrive in time to help. Then roll another d6, and that would be the turn that they come in on. This is a lot of paperwork for on battle. But it makes it more exciting, and less of a bloodbath.

Next time, I will look at how the battle actually plays out using these rules, and then we can move on to the other beaches. We may need to make some changes depending on how the battle plays out. It’s unfair to either side, depending on how the dice role.