WesWorld

January 5th 1936- Amit Yadit boarded the train taking him south to Asir, the young subaltern still shocked by the sudden orders that took him away from his job for the last year and sent him into Asir. You're being detached from your current duties and assigned to the 10th Field Force currently stationed in Asir. Report to Force Headquarters for further orders.

What is the General Staff thinking? was his thought but he knew exactly what was going on. With the plebiscite in Asir scheduled for January 28th the military was getting ready for any eventually.

January 16th 1935- Foreign Minister Kadharni attempts to find an honorable way to get away from Asir if the results of the plebiscite turned to be as expected, but today he received news that surprised him. "Is this right?, he asked his aide after reading the small note.

"Yes sir, I'm as surprised as you are. This only can be understood as their patrons don't want to get their hands dirty but they were kinda of receptive to our inquiries." was the response by the aide.

"Indeed," said Kadharni, "they could achieve a lot and still come out clean of all inquiries. Their friends could be seen as being independent in their foreign policy but we still we want private assurances from them that they will not interfere in case of an attack to the region. Please convey that message to their embassy and to their African partners tell them we will talk to our friends in Arabia. You know the recent history between them has not being one of being good neighbors."

OOC: Just what I need another hostile in the region...

Mrrr?

Quoted

10th Filed Force

Surely this unit exists only on paper.

Cheers,

It was doubtlessly trimmed down.

Quoted

Originally posted by alt_naval

Quoted

10th Filed Force

Surely this unit exists only on paper.

Cheers,

I'm sure the Dutch would prefer that paper in the "round file".

Actually I was bouncing between the round file joke, or that the name was missing an "o".

With the "o" any defeated foes could utter the classic phrase
"Curses, foiled again!"
and add the fame of the 10th foiled force.

...or you could have used an "A" in "10th filed farce".

Nasty fellows. This will come back to haunt you once you've outsourced all your call centres to Perds.

Heh, no need to worry, I'm sure they'll be shredded in combat...

Sadah Massacre
From Interlink Encyclopedia

Event occurred in the then Mandate of Asir on the early evening of January 22nd of 1935. While is accepted that indeed the Indian troops were shot by what it seems one or two rabble rousers inside the mainly peaceful demonstration in support of independence and a Yemeni connection was indeed made during the investigation of the event the response of the Indian troops facing the march was extremely violent, after ten minutes fifty civilians were dead and close to two hundred wounded. The heavy casualties were explained in the later investigations of the event that they were caused by the extremely packed mass of people fleeing the shooting, the crowded streets and the use of two rounds of canister launched by the Sher tank present.

The commander on site, Lt. Colonel K. K. Chandrasekar, was court-martialed by the actions of this day and later hanged. Other officers and men present were acquitted of any wrongdoing due to being considered that they only obeyed the orders given to them. The event galvanized the Asir population in regard to the option of joining India, one that was soundly defeated in the January 28th of 1935 plebiscite.

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January 22nd 1935 Amit Yadit silently gave a prayer for the mass of death and wounded in front of his position, feeling sorry for the still moaning wounded asking for help. The machine gun section under his command (1) started to open fire on the crowd when the tank present, were the officer in charge was directing the operation, opened fire on the crowd with a canister round after one soldier was hit by a pistol shot coming from the march.

He knew one his machine gun shot over the crowd on purpose but all of his men obeyed the orders given to them as the good Indian soldiers they were. He could see the Red Crescent personnel arriving to the scene now, all of them surveying the scene with dismay on their face. They will not look at us the same ever again. We gave then ten years of progress but they will remember this even longer , lamented Amit while telling his troops to stand down.

(1) Three Bhandara 1911 machine guns (water cooled Maxims)

OOC: India is no saint and sometimes errors happen.

The British government publicly condems this event as wilful murder of innocent civilians. Although the troops were free to defend themselves slaughtering as many innocents as possible is an act of gross murder.

A private note has been sent via our Ambassador demanding a full explanation

OOC: It was stated as a future entry on an encyclopedia so the results are pretty much know. The commanding officer in place was found guilty of overstepping his authority and was hanged for the murder of civilians.

IC: Bharat understand our friends concern in regard to the lamentable event that occurred in Asir. Be assured that a full investigation will be launch to try to find the reasons for this and to punish all guilty in this matter.

Was canister shot widely used in the period? I don't imagine that it would be on general issue, if at all.

To my knowledge canister shot was widely used in the 18/19th century, durring the American civil war for example. There are occasional uses, even today apparently but its extremly rare given the level of brutality entailed to use it.

is flechette.

When the Dutch news gets to this point there will be a short piece on the unfortunate incident in which rioters provoked Indian troops into firing. The article will note that the Indians took strong action against the commander. The article will note that ,despite the initiation of the war with the Kingdom of Saud, their tenure within Asir proper has been peaceful not been known for such events, but rather an effort at infrastructure improvement which they will shortly be leaving behind as the mandate ends.

or something like that.


As for 'cannister' as I recall, one of the negatives of rifled artillery is that cannister is bad for the bores. It is also short ranged by nature, which meant as ranges got longer with rifled weapons, it became irrelevant. Makes it odd the Indians had it loaded for crowd control.

Quoted

Originally posted by Kaiser Kirk
As for 'cannister' as I recall, one of the negatives of rifled artillery is that cannister is bad for the bores. It is also short ranged by nature, which meant as ranges got longer with rifled weapons, it became irrelevant. Makes it odd the Indians had it loaded for crowd control.

This is something that worry's Atlantis quite abit. Canister shot for crowd control is just a teensy bit heavy handed, particularily when a tank should be relatively safe from civilian crowds and MG fire should still be more than enough.

February 1st 1936- Excerpt from The Statesmen's Editor Column:

"While the final results of the Asir Plebiscite are still not official I for one salute the people of Asir in their decision. I have to agree that while our friendship have being tarnished somewhat by the tragic events of last week many in that region recognize that the errors of few are not the errors of our whole nation..."

"...Asir joining Hedjaz will bring in the humble opinion of this old newspaperman peace to the region. At least is my sincere hope that it happens."