Ankara Visit

I've been in Ankara all week and, yet again, I didn't get a chance to visit the Museum of Anatolian History with it's great Hittite collection. Oh well, it looks like I will be back in three weeks so maybe then!

I did get forty minutes between meetings and my driver took me to Antikabir, the mausoleum of Kemal Atatürk. I didn't have time to get round the museum but at a later meeting someone gave me a print of a picture in the museum.

This shows Atatürk commanding the defence at Gallipoli, or Canakkale, as they call the Dardanelles campaign.

This has got me all keen on doing Palestine WW1 again. The Gallipoli Campaign isn't much fun as a wargaming period as it was not only trench warfare but trench warfare on a very steep hill (very difficult to model scenery for). Palestine has a bit more sweep to it.

Brigade Games British by Mike Owen

I have already painted some British in hot climate uniform for East Africa so I am quite tempted to get a few Turks. The trouble is that although both Copplestone and Brigade Games do Turks they only do infantry and a machine gun. No artillery or cavalry. The Turks used Krupp guns which the Perries now make for the Sudan and you could probably convert a crew from the machine gunners but cavalry would be trickier.

Adding to this pressure is the fact that they have just released the first two box sets of Young Indiana Jones in the US. I always liked this series and could never understand why the BBC buried it in the middle of Sunday afternoons. There were quite a few World War 1 episodes set in Palestine, the Western Front, East Africa and even the Italian Alps. I have just got my East Africa troops out to have a look at and may try to get some more done between now and Christmas.