Characters

Vice-Admiral Sir John Michael De Robeck: Commander East Mediterranean Squadron

De Robeck John was born in 1862 in Ireland, and entered the navy in 1875 as a naval cadet. and had reached the rank of Rear-Admiral by 1911. In 1912 he was appointed Admiral of Patrols, but with the declaration of war in August 1914, he was given command of the 9th Cruiser Squadron.

With the reinforcement of the East Mediterranean Squadron in January and February 1915 to enable it to attempt the plan of Admiral Sackville Carden to force the Dardanelles and bombard Constantinople with warships, De Robeck was assigned as Carden’s second-in-command. The strain of naval operations in February and early March, however, caused a breakdown in Carden’s health. The game’s commencement on 16 March 1915 thus finds De Robeck taking over command of the Squadron from Carden.

De Robeck has a large naval force under his command, although most of the ships are obsolescent. The majority of ships are British, but there is also a substantial French component under Vice-Admiral Guéprette including 4 pre-dreadnoughts supported by cruisers and submarines. Russia has contributed the light cruiser “Askold”, and the Royal Australian Navy has sent the submarine “AE2”. De Robeck also controls the Royal Naval Division, a Weak division that he may choose to retain for direct support of naval operations or to take the historical course of adding to Hamilton’s command. The Royal Naval Division starts the game on the island of Lemnos.

There are 18 capital ships comprising the Squadron: the state-of-the art dreadnought HMS Queen Elizabeth undergoing her shakedown cruise, the battlecruiser HMS Inflexible, 12 British pre-dreadnoughts and four French pre-dreadnoughts. These are supplemented by a large number of smaller ships- for game purposes the Squadron is assumed to start with 10 armoured cruisers, 10 light cruisers, 20 destroyers, and 10 submarines. Supporting ships include the seaplane-operating aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, the Balloon Kite ship HMS Manica operating a tethered observation balloon, and 30 North Sea trawlers converted to minesweepers, with mixed civilian and naval crew.

General Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton: Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force

Born in 1853 on Corfu, General Sir Ian Hamilton was 61 years of age at the start of the Gallipoli campaign, 41 of those years being spent in army service. After fighting in campaigns in South Africa, India, Afghanistan, Sudan, Hamilton rose to prominence in the Second Boer War, where he became Lord Kitchener’s Chief of Staff and was subsequently knighted for his services.

In more recent years, Hamilton has held the post of Commander in Chief of British Mediterranean forces for 4 years, until being recalled to Britain at the outbreak of WWI to command the Home Forces. With the increasing likelihood that army assistance will be needed in the Dardanelles, however, Hamilton has been summoned by his old master, the Minister of War Lord Kitchener, to once again command troops in the Mediterranean. This time, however, the force will consist not only of British divisions, but also divisions contributed by France and Australia, and brigades from New Zealand and India. Hamilton’s appointment is supported by Churchill, a personal friend since 1897. After his appointment on 12 March 1915, Hamilton leaves London the next day by train, and then a Channel crossing by destroyer and a train journey across France takes him to Marseilles. The start of the game- 16 March 1915- finds him boarding the fast British light cruiser HMS Phaeton at Marseilles for the last leg of his journey east.

Although all Allied troops in the game (approximately 75,000 men at the start of the game) are under his ultimate command, the only forces under Hamilton’s direct control at the start of the game are the well-trained British 29th Division just now departing from England by ship, and the 1st Division of the French Corps Expeditionnaire D’Orient, currently being transported across the Mediterranean.

Major-General Sir William Riddell Birdwood: Commander ANZAC Corps

Birdwood was born in Bombay in 1865. Educated at Sandhurst, he was commissioned in 1885 and from 1887 served in the India Army. Like Hamilton, he served in Lord Kitchener’s staff in the Second Boer War.

In December 1914, Birdwood was appointed to command the Australian and New Zealand troops stationed in Egypt. These troops were subsequently organised into the famous ANZAC Corps Birdwood led in the Gallipoli campaign, and afterwards on the Western Front.

Birdwood was to become a Lieutenant-General in August 1915, and was knighted shortly thereafter. He became general in command of the entire Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in November 1915, and presided over the highly successful evacuation of Allied troops. He was a popular leader with his men, and one of the few British commanders to come out of the Gallipoli campaign with his reputation intact- he subsequently obtained a peerage and attained the rank of Field Marshal of the Australian Military Forces in 1925.

Birdwood starts the game with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), consisting of the 1st Australian Division and the New Zealand and Australian Division, which starts the game in Alexandria.

Enver Pasha: Ottoman Minister of War

Enver Pasha was born in 1881 in Constantinople. At a young age, Enver was commissioned into the Turkish army. Part of his military training took place in Germany, and so impressed him that he subsequently became determined to develop the Ottoman army along German lines.

In 1908 Enver was one of three leaders of the 'Young Turk' movement that rebelled against Sultan Abdul Hamid. From 1909-11 he served as military attaché to Berlin, and was then posted to Libya to organise resistance against the soon-to-be successful Italian invasion. 1913 saw him lead the coup d'etat that gave full power to the Young Turks, leading to a dictatorship of the “Three Pashas”- Enver, Talat and Djemal. Enver then served as Chief of General Staff during the Second Balkan War of 1913- another major defeat for the Turks, although Enver earned a degree of personal fame by seizing Adrianople from Bulgaria.

In February 1914 he became the Ottoman Minister of War, and immediately commenced a purge of the Turkish officer corps. After the Empire entered the war in November 1914, Enver personally led an offensive against Russia in Eastern Anatolia, destroying almost his entire army in the course of a disastrous campaign. He them proceeded to blame his poor showing on the Armenian population of the area, which led to major Turkish reprisals against the Armenians over the following two years.

In the game, the Enver Pasha player controls the small Ottoman navy, such German submarines that may arrive to assist it, the fixed and mobile Turkish artillery guarding the Dardanelles (approximately 100 guns of varying calibres), and any Ottoman army units that may come into play that are not made part of Liman von Sanders’ Fifth Army.

The battle strength of the Ottoman navy consists of:

• Sultan Selim: the renamed modern German battlecruiser Goeben
• Turgut Reis: Pre-dreadnought
• Hairedin Barbarossa: Pre-dreadnought
• Midilli: the renamed modern German light cruiser Breslau
• Medjidieh: Light cruiser
• 8 Destroyers
• 2 Torpedo Gunboats
• 8 Gunboats
• 12 Torpedo Boats
• 4 Minelayers

General Otto Liman von Sanders: Commander Ottoman Fifth Army

Born in 1855 in Pomerania, Liman von Sanders began his military career in 1874. In 1913 as a Lieutenant General, he was appointed director of a German military mission to the Ottoman Empire. In this capacity he worked as a diplomat to persuade the Turks to enter the Central Alliance, whilst simultaneously employing his military talents to reorganise the Ottoman army and improve its fighting capabilities.
In August 1914, Liman von Sanders accepted the command of the Ottoman First Army guarding the Bosphorus, which greatly antagonised the Russians given that the Ottoman Empire had not yet entered the war. In January 1915 he made an inspection of the Gallipoli peninsula to note possible Allied landing sites. On 24 March 1915 he was appointed by Enver Pasha to command the Fifth Army protecting the Dardanelles.
As of 24 March 1915, the Fifth Army comprises 6 Divisions- the 9th and the 19th Divisions (comprising the III Corps) spread out in small groups along the beaches of the Gallipoli Peninsula; the 11th Division on the Asian side of the Dardanelles near Kum Kale; and at Bulair guarding the neck of the Gallipoli peninsula, the 7th Division and two Shattered divisions, the 4th and the 5th (the former historically being disbanded to bring the latter to full strength). With III Corps being allocated in the game to the player of Mustafa Kemal, that leaves the Liman von Sanders player with two Weak and two Shattered divisions for his starting forces.
Although the game starts on 16 March 1915 and at that time the Fifth Army has not yet been formed and Liman von Sanders not yet in command, the players may assume that these events will automatically happen on 24 March, as they did historically.

Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal: Commander 19th Division

Born in 1881 in Salonica, the future national Turkish national hero who would come to be known as Kemal Ataturk started life known simply as “Mustafa”. He acquired, however, the nickname Kemal (“perfection”) for his brilliant mathematical skills demonstrated at his military high school. In 1905, Mustafa Kemal graduated from the War Academy in Istanbul as a Staff Captain. He subsequently was a member of the Young Turks movement, and marched with a division that put down a counter-revolution in 1909.

Kemal’s subsequent military service included fighting against the Italians in Libya in 1911-12, and assisting in the defence of the Dardanelles in the 1912-13 Balkan Wars. He then fell out of favour with the Three Pashas, and was exiled to Sofia as a military attaché in 1914, but when the Dardanelles were once again threatened in February 1915, Kemal was recalled and sent to Gallipoli as commander of the Ottoman 19th Division.

Although Mustafa Kemal is often said to be the Ottoman commander at Gallipoli, this is untrue, as that title properly belonged to General Liman von Saunders. In March 1915, Kemal was not even the most senior native Ottoman officer- indeed he was himself under the direct command of Essad Pasha, the commander of III Corps, which consisted of Lieutenant-Colonel Sami Bey’s 9th Division and Kemal’s 19th Division. Kemal, however, through a combination of strong leadership qualities and a knack of being at the right place at the right time, came to play a far more important role in the campaign than any mere divisional commander had any right to play, and by August 1915 Liman von Sanders had extended Kemal’s command to include the entire Suvla Bay and northern ANZAC sector. Posterity then enhanced Kemal’s importance yet further, until the role of the great Ataturk at Gallipoli came to eclipse completely that of Liman von Sanders in the public mind.

Kemal starts the game with only the 19th Division under his direct control, but his player should view the nearby 9th Division to be within the assertive Kemal’s “sphere of influence”. For that reason, both divisions are listed as part of Mustafa Kemal’s starting forces.