Chief of Staff, said. “Ranger units to seize key airfields. The 101st to
grab Istanbul and its approaches. This thing is doable.”
Reed looked at the general with distaste, then turned to Admiral Scott.
“Surely you gentlemen aren’t seriously suggesting we declare war on
Turkey? The last I heard, they were on our side.”
“That seems to be debatable, Madam Secretary,” Scott told her, “at least
in view of their refusal so far to allow us overflight privileges or
access to our battle group. I believe an amphibious operation may be the
only way to secure the safe extraction of our people.”
“The worst aspect,” Admiral Magruder pointed out, “is the length of the
entire Dardanelles-Bosporus channel. It’s three hundred kilometers–make
that a hundred eighty miles–from the Aegean end of the Hellespont to
the Black Sea end of the Bosporus. Most of that is the Sea of Marmara,
in between the two, but we’d still have several hundred miles of
coastline to secure, a mammoth operation. And it’s not like we’d be
facing some third-rate, minor country, either. We’ve counted on Turkey
as NATO’s right flank for so long that we’ve equipped them pretty well.
Worse, we’ve trained their people pretty well. An op of this scope would
be no walkover.”
“You’re not suggesting that we give up, are you, Admiral?” Scott asked
sharply. Magruder heard in that tone a bit of desperation; Scott needed
support here and was afraid that Magruder was backing off.
“Certainly not. But there are other governments in the area that we
could approach. If we could convince Greece and Bulgaria to go along
with us on this, we might manage an air-mobile op against just the Black
Sea end of the Bosporus. We could land north of Istanbul just long
enough to clear the shipping channel.”
“We’d still have the problem of extracting our ships,” Scott said.
“But it would buy us time and open some new possibilities, I think.”
“There’s also,” Kirkpatrick said, “the option of striking directly at
the problem. Hit the Russians, threaten them with an expanded war
against a real enemy, not just Ukrainians or other Russians. Hit ’em and
hurt ’em until they yell uncle and let our people go.”
“Difficult, General,” Scott said, “without a nearby base of operations.
Or are you suggesting we invade Russia from eastern Europe or the
Baltic?”
“Unacceptable!” Reed said sharply. “Remember, the whole point of this
exercise is to avoid becoming involved in a war over there. It would be
easier and cheaper to go ahead and let the Russians have our damned
ships!”
“Gentlemen,” Waring said, shaking his head. “I have to weigh in and say
that I’m completely opposed to any operations against Turkey anywhere
along those straits. There’s historical precedent not to try something
like that, you know. Anybody here remember Gallipoli?”
“What’s that?” Reed asked him. “A city?”
“A battle, Madam Secretary,” Magruder said. “In World War I.”
“That,” Reed said with a lift of her chin, “was a bit before my time.”
Gallipoli had been one of the bloodier failures of the First World War,
an attack by Great Britain against Germany’s Ottoman Turk allies in
1915. Brainchild of the British First Lord of the Admiralty, one Winston
Churchill, the idea had been to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula at the
Aegean mouth of the Hellespont and seize the straits, isolating Istanbul
from the Asian portion of the Turkish-Ottoman Empire, knocking the Turks
out of the war, and opening a new line of supplies to the embattled
Russians. Simple in concept, the plan had been wrecked by hesitation and
slow-moving commanders. After seizing a beachhead with few casualties
against light opposition, the invasion force had failed to move inland
off the narrow thrust of the peninsula; the Turks had closed them off,
and there’d followed an extended battle by attrition.
Some 252,000 men had become casualties on the Allied side alone. Nearly
as many Turks had been killed or wounded as well, and the entire
operation had accomplished exactly nothing. The most skillfully handled
part of the entire campaign had been the British evacuation of the
beachhead at the end, early in 1916.
“Gallipoli failed,” Magruder said carefully, “because of a failure of