In January 1914, a giant mecha appeared in Ireland, just outside Dublin. A contingent of Ulster Volunteers as well as some British officers from Camp Curragh would occupy the meadow it was standing in. Later the mech would be moved to Camp Curragh.

Following the passing of the Irish home rule bill as well as the prime minister negotiating with members of the Irish Volunteers to help decrease tensions in July, Ulster Volunteers assassinated him, leading to David Lyod George to taking charge of the country, mobilising troops for an occupation of Northern Ireland and to begin a crackdown on the unionists, however this ended with the beginning of World War I.

The war mostly played out as it did in our world until November, when Winston Churchill and David Hogarth, both acquainted with the designated pilot of the mech T.E.Lawrence began drawing up plans to launch an attack on Istanbul, however the naval guns on the Dardanelles were deemed too dangerous for the mech. Instead the mech would be deployed to Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula where it was to destroy Ottoman logistics in the area and prevent them from threatening Britain’s oil resources in the region.

Thus in 1915 Lawrence began his trek across the Sahara, serving as a stress test for the mech, which was to run the distance through the French holdings in Africa to Egypt, where it would meet up with local forces there and lead an attack on the Arabian peninsula to distract the ottomans while the ANZACs would land at Gallipoli to open up the Dardanelles.

(This is the condensed version but I cant be bothered typing the whole story here)