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The Empire sure takes Hong Kong seriously. I don't know the rest of you but I sure hope the Japs invades Hong Kong. After all someone has to test the new toys our author has been raving about.
 
Yeah, I admit to be a little anxious myself to see some of HM's new toys in action, not to mention how this beefed up Empire on a whole fares in the World War.
 
Great update!

“Higgins! You lazy sheep fornicatin’ barmy bastard!

:) Is Higgins from Ballymena by any chance...? ;)
 
Now what’s to stop the Japanese from cutting HK’s supply lines and letting all those men starve to death? :eek: Still it does send a strong message that Great Britain plans if necessary to fight. :cool:

Joe
 
Storey said:
Now what’s to stop the Japanese from cutting HK’s supply lines and letting all those men starve to death? :eek: Still it does send a strong message that Great Britain plans if necessary to fight. :cool:

good point!! they've got bombers, and now troops, but the they're still gonna need his majesty's navy to put up an effective defence.

and a squadron or two of spit's would help as well.

later, caff
 
Lord E - For diplomacy, all I'm gonna say is that the Empire's plan is going to take yet another step forward.

Vann - and indeed it did!

lifeless - Yep. Besides, with 200K ANZACS (with a few Canadians thrown in for good measure!) on your doorstep and an unknown number of hostile Japanese headed in your general direction, would you open the doors and tap a few more kegs?

GhostWriter - Crap! You got me. I meant to write that they were coming from the EAST! Oops!

Chargone - Let's just say that in this time line, the ANZACS are considered as valuable as every other soldier, sailor and airman coming from the British Isles. None are going to be wasted on silly old frontal assaults. Sorry, can't say no more.

molobo - Thanks much. Sorry I can't promise any within the next coming few updates, especially since I forgot to take any screen shots until well past 1941!

stnylan - Th answer is yes. or was it no? I can't remember. All I can remember is that at the time, the Empire was equally concerned about the Japanese and the Chi-Coms, and the Imperial General Staff was concerned about the trustworthiness of the Colony's government. Just say there were some interesting times in Hong Kong.

prussiablue - Patience, my friend, patience. Look at the dates and take my word for it that the balloon goes up right about when it's supposed to. But it's gonna be one helluva ride to get there!

therev - Trust me... the Empire has a plan for those boys from Down Under!

VILenin - You too? Glad therev and I weren't the only ones itching for the bullets to start flying!

GeneralPaisley - Could be!

Storey - Well, Joe, at this point we still have the RN's Far East Station with the HMS Eagle (CV) and HMS Capetown (CL) two destoryer flotillas and two sub flotillas... plust the availablity of the former Royal Australian Navy and the former Royal New Zealand Navy. And anything else I can scrounge up. And that message was heard loud and clear!

caffran - Did somebody ask about Spits? I do believe I may have some handy here soon!

Jape - Sugar from the tea and wind from the sails!


I'm not going to promise anything folks, but I might be able to get the next post up sometime before Monday (my time that is). Let's all keep our fingers crossed, eh?

C'ya soon (hopefully!)
 
Draco Rexus: - Crap! You got me. I meant to write that they were coming from the EAST! Oops!

when i saw west, i thought, "Hong Kong is on the east coast, how can this be." so i look it up in an Atlas, and west is not an impossible direction. due west is, but not southwest which is certainly close enough to write about. i assumed that those troops had trained in England... :D

even so, this is a magnificent AAR! ! :cool:
 
Of course, it has just occurred to me that a large body of troops sitting in Honk Kong are quite well placed for deployment to all sorts of interesting places.
 
I'm not going to promise anything folks, but I might be able to get the next post up sometime before Monday (my time that is). Let's all keep our fingers crossed, eh?

Considering your amazing proficency for regular updates I think we can let such a delay slip. Take a break. Have a cup of tea and maybe a chocolate digestive. OK! Two.

sorry.
:D
 
stnylan said:
Of course, it has just occurred to me that a large body of troops sitting in Honk Kong are quite well placed for deployment to all sorts of interesting places.
Hmmmmm.......
Taiwan and the Japanese homeland come to mind. Take out your enemies - make the first hit a killing blow!
 
Glad am I that my readAARs are as devious as I am! :D
 
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

On the third of August, 1939, the British Empire achieved a diplomatic coup when it was announced that the Republic of Turkey was joining the Imperial Alliance headed by the British Empire.

Although pushing hard for “westernization” in all aspects of government, social and religious life, Turkey had been closely linked to the Soviet Union following the end of the Great War, during the Turkish war of Independence that followed the final death of the Ottoman Empire, and in the early years of the Republic. Led by Mustfa Kemal Atatürk (Atatürk meaning “Father Turk”), an ardent admirer of the West, Turkey paradoxically kept close ties with Communist anti-West Russia throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, obtaining material and technical support to industrialize, such aid that was not forthcoming from the West.

In the late 1920s, following the worldwide Depression following the “Crash of ‘29” and despite an economic recovery that Atatürk’s right hand man, Mustafa İsmet İnönü, had formulated with the assistance of Moscow, relations gradually cooled between the Turks and Soviet Russia. While there is no concrete proof, there are several allegations that Atatürk shied away from closer relations with Stalin due to the Turk’s recognition of the Soviet leader’s rabid paranoia. While making for interesting fiction writing, the more believable truth is that Turkey had modernized itself as far as it could with the assistance of the Soviets and began courting the West to continue the Republic’s rise from the ashes of the old Ottoman Empire.

In the mid-1930s with tensions in Europe growing in relation to the rise of fascist governments in German, Italy, Spain and Hungary, and Communist efforts to topple the governments of France, Belgium and the British Empire, Turkey fended off approaches of several Western nations, intending to stay as neutral as possible for as long as possible, while simultaneously reaping the benefits of multiple economic agreements with those same nations. Secretly aided by sources outside the Republic, several Communist political groups emerged about the same time and began calling for a rejection of Turkey’s associations with the West and a return to closer ties with the Turk’s large neighbor to the north who had been of assistance since the birth of the Republic. In an eerily similar chain of events to what occurred in London, Atatürk was assassinated in early 1938 by members of a radical Communist Party.

MustafaKemal.jpg

Mustfa Kemal Atatürk

Replacing Turkey’s first and beloved President was Atatürk’s right hand man and former Army Chief of Staff, Mustafa İsmet İnönü, who with almost rabid support from the citizens of the Republic, squashed the Communist groups operating within Turkey and severed all ties with the Soviet Union and began to allow the West to open negotiations for closer ties

Ismet1.jpg

Mustafa İsmet İnönü

While acknowledging the opportunity to enlarge the ring around Communist Russia, the British Empire failed to put much effort into securing an alliance with Turkey, although numerous trade agreements were produced through the negations of 1938. With the dawn of 1939 and worsening relations with Italy, the Foreign Office had a change of heart, realizing that the Turks could provide a counter to any Soviet incursions into Persia as well as give pause to any Italian designs upon the Eastern Mediterranean. In a diplomatic blunder that still reverberates to this day, the Soviet Union attempted to counter the Empire’s new courtship of Turkey by bluntly threatening the Turks and demanding that Turkey come into the Soviet sphere of influence by way of economic and military alliances.

Reacting quite negatively to Moscow’s heavy handed approach, Turkey agreed to join the Imperial Alliance and hosted the official signing of the alliance documentation between King George VI and İsmet İnönü in Turkey’s new capital of Ankara on August 3, 1939.

Excerpt from The Roads to War
By F.E.H. von Longaernon​



Up next: The Royal Marines become even more scary... :cool:
 
The anti-fascist, anti-communist net becomes yet more diverse I see. A rather interesting ally I would think.
 
I just hope that Britains many allies prove able partners in battle and not bumbling sidekicks who need to be bailed out. You want to be able to concentrate in one or two theatres and not have to worry about propping up your allies.

I'm up for anything that makes the RMs bigger and badder, so bring it on! :D
 
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The Song of The Marines

There’s gotta be pork, there’s gotta be beans,
In order to fill up and fatten the fightin’ Marines,
The Mighty Marines.
We carry all our vitamins inside a little can,
For corned beef is a delicacy in China or Japan,
We know that we go prepared
To fight the foe or see that we keep ‘em scared;
On land we always land a bit of femininity,
And then we hear the bugle blow,
And where the heck are we?

Over the sea let’s go, men!
We’re shovin’ right off,
We’re shoven’ right off again;
Nobody knows where or when,
We’re shovin’ right off
We’re shovin’ right off again.
It may be Shanghai,
Farewell and goodbye;
Sally and Sue, don’t be blue;
We’ll just be gone for years and years and then,
We’re shovin’ right off for home again!

There’s gotta be work, as well as canteens,
In order to discipline all of those fightin’ Marines,
The blighted Marines.
But also by this rule they must have lots and lots of play,
And that’s how you bring up the Marines into the fighting way;
And so, a good N.C.O. can takes us in tow,
None of us then give a hang,
But deal the blow with parry and thrust and bang;
And when the scrap is over, we’ll relax in our own way,
Each man for himself with the dames around,
Call it a day;

Over the sea let’s go, men!
We’re shovin’ right off,
We’re shoven’ right off again;
Nobody knows where or when,
We’re shovin’ right off
We’re shovin’ right off again.
It may be Shanghai,
Farewell and goodbye;
Sally and Sue, don’t be blue;
We’ll just be gone for years and years and then,
We’re shovin’ right off for home again!​

Al Dubin & Charles Dunn
Remick Music Corp.
1937​


RoyalMarineHQ.jpg

Royal Marine Corps Portsmouth Barracks, Stonehouse
Office of the Commandant
Portsmouth, England
August 16, 1939


Realizing that the manpower availability solely within the British Isles was insufficient to support the growth of the Empire’s military, the Imperial General Staff had decided shortly after the start of the women’s services recruitment drive to begin plans to field “mixed” regiments. These regiments would be made up battalions of both sons of the British Isles and sons of the former Commonwealth nations and Colonies. To the shock of a good number of the IGS, many officers and men of the British Army had grave reservations of serving alongside troops from the Far East, specifically India and Malaya.
A solution was reached when General Slim of the Royal Marines entertained the thought that due to the intense interdependency of Marine regiments, it might be best to integrate these battalions in to the Marine regiments that were in the process of forming. As the fourth Marine regiment earmarked for General Slim’s Marine Force Two, the Devonshire Maritime Yeomanry, was at full compliment on March 28 and had begun the process of advanced training, it was determined to have the fifth and sixth regiments assigned to General Slim’s command would be integrated regiments.

Landingprep.jpg

the Devonshire Maritime Yeomanry in their new assault craft

On April 6, the Pembroke Yeomanry, under the command of Colonel Alasdair Kim, mustered in at Stonehouse with four of its battalions, or roughly half the Marines of the Regiment, being comprised of fierce Sikhs from the Punjab of India. While the initial stages of training for the Pembroke Yeomen as rocky due to a sense of racism among some of the Marine recruits, Colonel Kim and his cadre of NCOs were able to severely curb those feelings through a mixture of lectures and traditional military training that tore down every recruit to the lowest common denominator and then began the rebuilding process.

0409.jpg

Sikhs of 2nd Battalion, Pembroke Yeomanry

Several days after the mustering of the Pembroke Yeomanry, the Royal Marine Corps unfurled the colours of the Duke of Albany’s Maritime Infantry, a regiment that was comprised of six battalions of Gurkhas from the Imperial Protectorate of Nepal. No stranger to the Empire, Gurkhas had been in service to the British Crown since 1817 when the first Gurkha troops were employed by the British East India Company before becoming part of the British Indian Army in 1857 and of all of the “Colonial” troops being integrated into the British military, the Gurkhas were the least resisted by the British military professionals. In fact, based upon the exploits of the Gurkha Rifle regiments of the Great War, specifically during the Gallipoli Campaign when the 6th Gurkhas captured a feature later known as "Gurkha Bluff" and at Sari Bair where they were the only troops in the whole campaign to reach and hold the crest line and look down on the Straits which was the ultimate objective, and during the Battle of Loos in 1915 when the 8th Gurkha Rifles fought to the last man defending positions from a German counter-attack, many within the military welcomed the arrival of the men from Nepal, recalling the words of Sir Ralph Turner of the Queen Alexandra’s Own Gurkha Rifles:

“As I write these last words, my thoughts return to you who were my comrades, the stubborn and indomitable peasants of Nepal. Once more I hear the laughter with which you greeted every hardship. Once more I see you in your bivouacs or about your fires, on forced march or in the trenches, now shivering with wet and cold, now scorched by a pitiless and burning sun. Uncomplaining you endure hunger and thirst and wounds; and at the last your unwavering lines disappear into the smoke and wrath of battle. Bravest of the brave, most generous of the generous, never had country more faithful friends than you."

0181.jpg

Gurkhas of the Duke of Albany’s Maritime Infantry's 5th Battalion

Within several weeks, the two new Marine regiments were in the full throes of the harsh Royal Marine training regimen, and on April 16 when all three regiments were presented to General Lord Mountbatten and General Slim, the new Marines, English, Scot, Welsh, Irish, Canadian, South African, Australian, New Zealander, Sikh, and Gurkha, stood before the Royal Marine Corps Portsmouth Barracks at Stonehouse with a sense of pride at their unique status within the Empire.

For the Empire, the inclusion of the three new Marine Regiments meant that Royal Marine Corps had a total of fourteen regiments, each with an attached artillery brigade, divided into two separate field forces, Force One under the Commandant, Lord Mountbatten with eight regiments, and Force Two under Assistant Commandant, General Slim, with six regiments. At the ceremony that officially welcomed the three new regiments into the Corps, King George VI sent a clear signal to the world when he clearly indicated that the purpose of the Royal Marines was to project the power and might of the British Empire around the globe, wherever the interests of the Empire may lay or be imperiled.

Excerpt from The Roads to War
By F.E.H. von Longaernon​



****

Anybody who is intelligent fears the Gurkha... now can you imagine the impact of a Gurkha Marine? :eek:

Up Next: The descent picks up some more speed! :eek: