Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-39133133-20200423205640/@comment-35614398-20200429205110

U.K. May-Aug 1916

- American transports to Iceland are hounded mercilessly by the Royal Navy. Dockyards under construction are heavily shelled.

- Continued fortification of Newfoundland in the absence of an American attack.

- In Greece, British forces find themselves pushed to the outskirts of Thessaloniki, but a bailout from Portuguese forces allows the Allies to regain a footing in the city. Elsewhere Greek forces repel Turkish assaults, and at Prilep in Macedonia a large-scale engagement with Jagdkommandos ends in a Greek victory after an uprising within the city by Macedonian nationalists. At Elbasan, twenty miles south of Tirana, Ghurka specialists enter hand-to-hand fighting with Jagdkommandos in fighting which I expect would look pretty cool. A British assault spearheaded by tanks fails to take the city, and the Danubians force a British withdrawal from the immediate area.

- A largely Sikh force continued its determined push north to Beirut, and by August the British have reached the city suburbs. The Ottomans have been preparing however, and yet again there is a frustrating delay as further urban warfare devastates the region.

- The Battle of Three Cities becomes the Battle of Two Cities as Jeddah (by now a city of ruins) falls to Colonial troops. However, an assault on Mecca is slaughtered when the attacking troops are ambushed by a largely civilian force, killing most of the attacking British. There are numerous incidents of British troops massacring Ottoman civilians under suspicion of being Jihadists. The situation becomes even more complex when some British troops, largely Pakistani, refuse to fight on religious grounds. Tensions threaten to flare up within the ranks, and numerous court marshals and in some cases executions fail to ease the situation. The southern Arabian offensive therefore grounds to a halt. In the north Egyptian and Anzac troops reach Medina, but as in Mecca religious jihadists prove problematic as supply lines are raided and rear forces ambushed by civilians. At Abyar Kali, a South African platoon slaughters over 120 civilians suspected of being Jihadists, an act not likely to be forgotten and inciting further violence against the attackers.



- British forces launch a large offensive at Sedan in an attempt to relieve pressure off of Verdun (distant Sabaton noises). Further north a third determined offensive at Ypres begins, and British tanks spearhead an offensive to secure Mons and liberate Charleroi.

- The Siege of Gibraltar begins. American assaults on the rock are slaughtered by concentrated machine-gun fire, but these positions soon fall prey to the guns of American warships. A Royal Navy task force engages the Americans in a costly battle which ultimately fails to drive away the attackers. When the Americans attempt to scale the sides of Gibraltar rock they are met with stones, tires and in some cases burning gasoline. British supplies and guns and troops and whatever arrive at Gibraltar through Portugal and then Spain, which does violate Spanish territory but apparently quite a lot of that happened in WWI. And besides to be truly neutral is to allow anything I guess.