GURKHAS AT GALLIPOLI – PART TWO – FIRST BLOOD In hindsight having failed to force the narrows by the navies, the operation should have been abandoned at that point, but now began what in modern military parlance is described as ‘mission creep’. It had already been accepted that once the forts had been knocked out troops would have to land to occupy them, and one brigade of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC Corps) training in Egypt, was reluctantly accepted as being available, along with Naval landing parties and Royal Marines. Now, however, Churchill wanted a major assault on the peninsula by the army which would knock out the forts from the landward side and allow the navy to push on up to Constantinople. Churchill, supported by others including the Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George, was convinced and continued to be convinced that the already large casualties on the Western Front were unnecessary and that Britain should seek to attack the ‘soft underbelly’ by ‘knocking away the props’, the props being Austria, Turkey and, eventually, Bulgaria. That Germany was the prop, without whose money, industrial base and expertise the Austrians, Turks and Bulgars could not wage war, passed Churchill by. The generals were aghast: no troops could be spared from the Western Front, for the only way to win the war was by defeating the main enemy – Germany – in the main theatre – the Western Front.
GURKHAS AT GALLIPOLI - PART TWO - FIRST BLOOD
GURKHAS AT GALLIPOLI - PART TWO - FIRST BLOOD
GURKHAS AT GALLIPOLI - PART TWO - FIRST BLOOD
GURKHAS AT GALLIPOLI – PART TWO – FIRST BLOOD In hindsight having failed to force the narrows by the navies, the operation should have been abandoned at that point, but now began what in modern military parlance is described as ‘mission creep’. It had already been accepted that once the forts had been knocked out troops would have to land to occupy them, and one brigade of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC Corps) training in Egypt, was reluctantly accepted as being available, along with Naval landing parties and Royal Marines. Now, however, Churchill wanted a major assault on the peninsula by the army which would knock out the forts from the landward side and allow the navy to push on up to Constantinople. Churchill, supported by others including the Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George, was convinced and continued to be convinced that the already large casualties on the Western Front were unnecessary and that Britain should seek to attack the ‘soft underbelly’ by ‘knocking away the props’, the props being Austria, Turkey and, eventually, Bulgaria. That Germany was the prop, without whose money, industrial base and expertise the Austrians, Turks and Bulgars could not wage war, passed Churchill by. The generals were aghast: no troops could be spared from the Western Front, for the only way to win the war was by defeating the main enemy – Germany – in the main theatre – the Western Front.