First Battle of St Joseph (1903)

First Battle of St Joseph
Part of The First Great War Fale Ocean Front
File:Firstbattlestjoseph.jpg Zhenyan infantry storming the harbour at St Joseph
Date 21 May 1903 - 23 May Location St Joseph, Pepper Atoll Result Zhenyan victory St Joseph occupied by Zhenyan troops
Belligerents
Brytene	Template:Country data Zhenya
Commanders and leaders
Governor Alexander Julius  Lieutenant Colonel Wulfhere †	Template:Country data Zhenya Colonel Rostislav Bodrov
Strength
1,156 marines	Template:Country data Zhenya 1,200 men 8 armored cars 18 field guns
Casualties and losses
451 killed, 701 POW, 4 missing TOTAL - 1,156	Template:Country data Zhenya 141 killed, 180 injured TOTAL - 321
Unknown civilian casualties

The First Battle of St Joseph took place in May 1903, and marked Brytisc and Zhenyan entry into the First Great War. Following three days of heavy fighting, the remaining garrison, led by Governor Alexander Julius, surrendered to the Imperial Lancer Regiment and the city was occupied by the Zhenyan military.

Background

Militant separatists on the island chain of Pepper Atoll rose up on the night of April 24th, 1903. Violence swept through the city of St Joseph, resulting in the deaths of around fifty Brytisc marines and several hundred rebels and civilians. Retreating Brytisc marines set up a machine-gun post on the road leading to the governor's villa, and there opened fire on a crowd of several hundred people, killing close to two hundred civilians. According to the report of Captain Brown, the ranking officer at the scene, the crowd contained armed men and shots were fired at her gun section, but the story was not corroborated and many of the dead were later found to be civilians.

Captain Brown was court-martialled by Governor Alexander Julius and executed by firing squad the following day, but Brytene had lost control of the city. The governor's villa was fortified and a telegram requesting reinforcements was dispatched to Lundene, but further chaos was caused when the CFS Ajax and CFS Odysseus, two gunships anchored off the harbour, opened fire on a convoy of ships attempting to leave the city. Amongst these were vessels from Zhenya. One of these, the Otvazhnyy was sunk with significant loss of life before the Brytisc captains realised their mistake.

753 men of the 1st Battalion Nortymba Regiment arrived from Brytene on the 30th of April, nearly a week later. They helped the surviving garrison to restore order in the city

Tsar Konstantin III, the absolute monarch of Zhenya, authorized the deployment of elements of the First Army to take action against the Brytisc military forces on Pepper Atoll, who were blamed for the sinking of the Otvazhnyy convoy ship. The Imperial Lancer Regiment, equipped with the Imperial Zhenyan Army's only experimental armored cars, sailed to Pepper Atoll from the port of Saltoskii.

Order of battle

Brytene

The Brytisc forces in the town consisted of the 350 surviving garrison soldiers, reinforced by the 2nd battalion of the Nortymba Regiment which numbered just over 800 men and women. The Brytisc marines were largely armed with the Kuribayashi Bolt Action infantry rifle. Each company also had two crew-operated, water-cooled machine guns and a squadron of mounted dragoons, used primarily for scouting and courier duties.

The town was also in possession of four 7.5cm light battalion guns and one 140mm naval artillery gun. The naval artillery gun was mostly used to keep order at the harbour, placed in a fortified bunker on the headland which, when unmasked, allowed it to reach most of the coastline of the town, whilst one pair of battalion guns was placed opposite the main harbour and the other pair was sited by the governor's villa.

Zhenya

The Zhenyan assault consisted of 1,200 men in total, lightly-armed and mobile, along with several experimental armoured cars. The Imperial Lancer Regiment was, at the time, organized into four battalions of three hundred men each. Each battalion was allocated two B.Z. 1901s as well as three horse-pulled 75mm field guns. Because the horses could not land on the beach, the guns were pulled by teams of men instead. The regiment as a whole was also equipped with six 90mm guns, but these were kept offshore until it was necessary to force a Brytisc surrender.

The average soldier was equipped with either an 1896 Bolt Action Rifle or a 1880 Mk. 11 Rifle- standardization of infantry small arms was not implemented until 1905. Each soldier carried the ammunition for his own rifle; this made ammunition sharing among personnel difficult.

The Battle

On May 21st, two battalions of Zhenyan light infantry landed in St Joseph; they were met with withering fire from Brystic defenders and driven back to the beach with heavy losses. After some logistical difficulties, wooden ramps were set up on the wet sand which allowed the armored cars to advance. The Zhenyan infantry attacked for a second time behind their vehicles. The Brystic forces were driven back by the B.Z. 1901s and their defensive line collapsed. Roughly 300 prisoners were captured, whilst 451 were killed, including an entire company summarily executed in what became known as the Massacre in St Joseph. The Zhenyan government formally apologized for the incident in 1936. The survivors barricaded themselves inside the governor's villa complex, supported by light field guns, but after a two day siege Governor Alexander Julius surrendered his force of 402 soldiers, prompted by the arrival of Zhenyan heavy artillery.

Aftermath

The Brytisc POWs were interned in a makeshift camp on the outskirts of the city, whilst the Zhenyan flag was raised above the governor's villa. The city was declared to be under Zhenyan control, but within weeks the Brytisc Fleet counter-attacked, leading to the Second Battle of St Joseph.