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Diggers, Dervishes and Dungaree's - Part 1 - One lucky shell

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Landings at Beach Z (OTL Anzac Cove) - 25/4/1915

The Initial Landings at Beach Z, Ari Burnu in the tongue of the turks, at 4:30 in the morning were marked by chaos and bloodshed as the first and second waves of six companies struggled to gain ground against well defended and entrenched Ottoman positions under the command of one Lieutenant-Colonel M. Kemal and Colonels Mehmet Sefik and Halil Sami, Lieutenant Colonel Kemal was recorded by observers to have realised the necessity holding the Chunuk Bair hills, and disobeying Halil's request of reinforcing his position in favour bringing an artillery pack to the hills in order to hold the superior ground and reign destruction down on landing ANZAC forces. Unfortunately, in doing so his artillery pack became targets for the naval support vessels assigned to beach Z, and while attempting to rally a group of retreating conscripts slightly to the south of the hills, at 10:15 he was struck by a shell fired by either the Triumph or the Majestic pre-dreadnought battleships, reports vary on if he survived long enough to give any orders to his men, but regardless they rallied long enough to form a defensive line along the Chunuk Bair by 11:45, centered around a cadre of junior officers and sergeants.

Extract from Diary of (then) Captain Blair Swannel - 25/4/1915

The Turks have spirit, nothing like what the papers claimed. One of them almost blew my head off, which is why i'm sitting in this damnable stretcher as opposed to being out in the thick of it. Still I suppose I am lucky, all things considered. Most assuredly several of my fellow were not, I hear that Joseph was not so fortuitous, poor fellow had his legs blown off by an artillery shell, nothing left below the knees. Nobody wants to tell me how we're doing outside, I can still hear fighting, damnable yabbering of the mohammedans and the cries of my own men alike. I only know they don't have a direct line of fire down here in the cove, else I suspect i'd be lain against a rock as I'd been all afternoon.

One thing is for certain though, in future I shall show my men how to shoot a rifle before the battle, rather than when the bullets are whizzing past my head.

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The Captured Ottoman Artillery Piece at Baby 700


By 16:00 hours the Ottoman lines has rallied enough to form a proper counterattack of almost 12,000 infantrymen, though initially succeeding in pushing the ANZAC forces off of Battleship Hill, the attack faltered when it met entrenched resistance at Baby 700, one of the primary hills overlooking Beach Z. From 16:30 to 21:45, a brutal series of charges, melee's and skirmishes took place between the ANZAC and Ottoman troops. Almost 400 ANZAC's and a similar number of Ottoman soldiers were killed or wounded during the battle, which included such novelties as one of the New Zealander companies turning a captured artillery piece on their Turkish foes, only for it to blow up on them after the third shot. But at the end the Ottoman fores were made to retreat back to what would become initial defensive lines around and above Birdwood Gully, whilst the ANZAC forces were unable to push further in the darkness, losing several men to sniper fire when they did so.

By 23:00 the first day of the Thracian campaign had concluded, and there were another several hundred to go.


Authors Note -


So historically, the Gallipoli landings
were a miserable failure, costing a great number of troops their lives and not achieving much of note. Well this ain't that story, in case you didn't notice.

I shall be completely honest here, I am Australian and consequently have a bias in favour of certain subjects and against others. I shall however, try to keep things in the realm of reality, and make the best possible effort to not allow my biases to influence my writing (which I am doing for entertainment really) That said, rule of cool may be snuck in on a few occasions... just don't expect it to actually work in favour of whichever idiot uses the wunderwaffen.
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