LIFE IN MIANEH
Training local levies--A city of parasites and rogues--A knave turns
philanthropist--Turks getting active--Osborne's comic opera
force--Jelus appeal for help--An aeroplane to the rescue--The
Democrats impressed--Women worried by aviator's "shorts"--Skirmishes
on the Tabriz road--Reinforcements at last.
When the Wagstaff Mission finally reached Mianeh from Zinjan it began
to collect grain supplies, by purchase, and set to work to raise and
train irregulars. Although the Persian hates drill and discipline,
there was no dearth of recruits for the local army. The pay was
good, about £2 a month with rations and uniform, which meant
affluence to the average Persian villager, who was usually too poor
to buy enough bread to keep himself alive.
Mianeh, which is rightfully credited with being the most unhealthy
spot in North-Western Persia, has a population of about 7,000. It is
the chosen home of a poisonous bug (Argas Persicus) whose bite
produces severe fever and occasionally death. There is also a set of
parasites, human this time, whose sting is very deadly in a financial
sense. They are the Merchants' and Grain-Growers' Guilds, {162} and
they were always attempting to dip deep and dishonestly into the
British treasure chest. It would be doing this delectable spot no
injustice to say that, in proportion to its population, it can boast
a greater percentage of unchained rogues than any other town in the
whole province of Azerbaijan.
One of these knaves turned "philanthropist" once. He begged the
Mission to start relief works to help the starving poor of Mianeh,
and offered to supply the British with spades for excavation work at
cost price. The spades were paid for and the relief work
started--and about a week later it was accidentally discovered that
the "philanthropist" was collecting two krans a day as spade hire
from the dole of the starving peasants! On another occasion he
induced a too-confiding officer to sanction the payment of a sum of
money for rendering less malodorous the streets of this pestiferous
town. The money was drawn, and then its recipient discovered that
the people were partial to noxious vapours, and had conscientious
objections to any interfering and misguided foreigner meddling with
their pet manure heap. So nothing was done, but the money
disappeared. Such is morality as practised in this corner of the
Shah's dominions!
The Telegraph Compound which, during our occupation of Mianeh, served
as Wagstaff's headquarters, stood on the brink of a knoll overlooking
the main street leading to the Bazaar Quarter. On the face of a
corresponding eminence opposite, and divided {163} by a bend of the
road, was the local Potter's Field, where friendless peasants and
penniless wanderers from afar who had paid the great debt of Nature
within the inhospitable walls of Mianeh were interred (when the lazy
townsfolk found time to give them sepulture) in a hastily dug and
shallow grave. In the meantime the defunct ones were wont to be
dumped down on a rude bier and left there, sometimes for a whole day,
under the fierce rays of a mid-June sun. Mianeh was as uncomfortable
for the dead as it was unhealthy for the living. Truly, few Persians
seem to possess any olfactory sensitiveness. They would pass the
Potter's Field hourly, showing no concern at the repulsiveness that
must have assailed their eyes and noses.
News filtered down the road from Tabriz that the Turks there were
displaying great activity. They were daily being reinforced, and
made no secret of their intention to attempt, when sufficiently
strong, the task of chasing the British from Azerbaijan. They
established posts on the Tabriz road southwards as far as Haji Agha,
about sixty miles from Mianeh.
The answer to all these Turkish preparations for breaking our slender
hold upon Azerbaijan was for Wagstaff urgently to ask for
reinforcements and especially mountain guns. In the meantime he sent
Osborne back up the Tabriz road, with all the fighting men that could
be spared, to watch the enemy and to attempt to prevent his breaking
farther south. {164} Osborne's chief reliance was placed on the few
British N.C.O.'s who accompanied him. Beyond these, all he had to
stem any Turkish advance was about half a squadron of newly enrolled
irregular horse and a couple of platoons of native levies who had
been taught the rudiments of musketry and elementary drill.
Their appearance, at all events, was very warlike, not to say
terror-inspiring, and, like some of the wild tribes of Polynesia,
they relied chiefly on the effectiveness of their make-up when on the
"war-path" to bring about the discomfiture of their enemies. The
Sowars were unusually awe-inspiring, hung about as each was with two
or three bandoliers studded with cartridges. Each carried a rifle, a
sword of antique design, and a short stabbing blade.
The Naib, or Lieutenant, who commanded them, was equally formidable
from the point of view of arms and equipment. He had a Tulwar shaped
like a reaping-hook, and a Mauser pistol, the butt of which was
inlaid with silver.
The tactics of the Sowar levies were something in the nature of a
compromise between a "Wild West" show and _opéra bouffe_. They would
gallop at full speed up a steep hill, brandishing their rifles over
their heads and yelling fiercely the while. It was always a fine
spectacular display with a dash of Earl's Court realism thrown in.
The rifles of the Sowars had a habit of going off indiscriminately
during these moments of tense excitement when they {165} were riding
down an imaginary and fleeing enemy, and the British officers who
watched their antics found it expedient in the interests of a whole
skin to remain at a respectful distance from the manoeuvring,
or--should one say, performing?--Sowars.
Swagger and braggadocio were the principal fighting stock-in-trade of
the levies and their Persian officers. They were always clamouring
to be led without delay against the Turks in order that we might have
an opportunity of witnessing what deeds of valour they would perform
under enemy fire. The time did come, and our brave auxiliaries found
themselves in the front line with a Turkish battalion about to pay
them a morning call--and we realized more fully than ever that the
hundred-years-old dictum of that incomparable humorist, Hadji Baba,
still held good, "O Allah, Allah, if there were no dying in the case,
how the Persians would fight!"
The Turks having outstripped us in the race to Tabriz, a belated
attempt was made early in July to get in touch with the sorely
pressed Jelus in Urumia and stretch out to them a succouring hand.
They had sent us a despairing appeal for help. Their ammunition was
running out; their available supplies were nearly exhausted; and they
were on the verge of a military collapse. The Turks threatening
Urumia had offered terms if the Jelus laid down their arms, but,
fearing treachery if they accepted, the War Council of the Jelus
refused the enemy offer, advising unabated resistance, and urging
that an {166} attempt should be made by the whole army to break out
towards the south and march in the direction of Bijar and Hamadan, in
order that they might find safety behind the British lines.
Lieutenant Pennington, a youthful Afrikander airman who was noted for
his coolness and daring, was despatched from Kasvin on July 7th. He
was to fly to Urumia carrying a written assurance of speedy British
aid for the beleaguered garrison there. Pennington made a rapid
non-stop flight to Mianeh, covering the distance from Kasvin in a
little over two hours. He spent a day at Mianeh, where he carried
out a series of useful demonstrations intended to impress the local
Democrats. They had never seen an aeroplane before, and were rather
vague as to its offensive potentialities. Moreover, they had been
inclined to be scornful of our want of military strength so glaringly
revealed at Mianeh. But now, at all events, the Democrats were duly
impressed by Pennington and his machine. They argued that, if one
aeroplane could come from Kasvin in a couple of hours, so could a
whole flotilla, and armed with death-dealing bombs. Not altogether
ignorant of the doctrine of consequences, the Democrats realized the
value of oratorical discretion; so for a while they put a curb on
their poisonously anti-British tongues.
Meanwhile Pennington continued his aerial journey to Turkish-menaced
Urumia, the city by the lake shore, where a Christian army was
sheltering and wondering anxiously whether it was succour or the
{167} sword that awaited it. Within two hours of leaving Mianeh, the
intrepid airman was crossing over Lake Urumia heading for the western
shore. He dropped low on approaching the city itself, and his
unexpected appearance brought consternation to the inhabitants.
Aeroplanes were unknown in those parts. They felt that this visitor
from the clouds could hardly be a friend; therefore he was presumably
a foe. Reasoning thus, the Jelus lost no time in blazing away a
portion of their already slender stock of ammunition in the hope of
bringing him down. The aviator had many narrow escapes, and so had
his machine. He landed with a few bullet holes through his clothing,
but his aeroplane, happily, had not been "hulled," or he would have
been immobilized at Urumia.
As he alighted, the Jelus rushed up to finish him off, for they were
not noted for being over-merciful to Turks falling into their hands.
But seeing that he was English, they embraced him as a preliminary,
and then carried him shoulder-high into the city. He was the hero of
the hour. The people were delirious with joy, and women crowded
round and insisted on kissing the much-embarrassed aviator. As the
weather was very hot, Pennington was wearing the regulation khaki
shorts. One Nestorian woman, after gazing compassionately at the
airman's bare, sunburnt legs, and noting the brevity of his nether
garment, shook her head sadly and said she had not realized till then
that the British, too, were feeling the effects of the War and were
suffering from a {168} shortage of clothing material. There was a
whispered consultation with some sister-Nestorians, and a committee
was formed to remedy the shortcomings of Pennington's kit. The women
ripped loose their own skirts and, arming themselves with needles and
cotton, pleaded to be allowed to fashion complete trousers for the
aviator, or at least to be permitted to elongate by a yard or so the
pair of unmentionables he was wearing. The youth blushed furiously,
and was at great pains to explain that there was still khaki in
England, and that it was convenience, and not any scarcity of
material, that had caused the ends of his trousers to shrink well
above his knees.
Pennington flew back from Urumia, and it was arranged that the Jelus
with their women and children were to march south by way of Ushnu and
Sain Kaleh to meet a British relieving force moving up from Hamadan
and Bijar.
Early in August Osborne had several brushes with the Turks on the
Tabriz road. The enemy flooded our lines with spies, chiefly
Persians from Tabriz, and pushed reconnoitring patrols as far south
as Haji Agha, forty miles from Tabriz. In these road skirmishes our
Persian levies behaved with their characteristic unsteadiness. Once
they were fired upon by hidden infantry at seven hundred yards, they
forgot their promised display of valour, their courage oozed out at
their boots, and they promptly bolted. An aerial reconnaissance
revealed detachments of cavalry, artillery, and infantry marching
{169} south along the Tabriz road, but Headquarters in Bagdad refused
to attach any importance to this concentration, and for the moment
were deaf to Wagstaff's reiterated demand for reinforcements, and
especially for a mountain gun or two.
Captain Osborne and his party now dug themselves in at Tikmadash,
about fifty miles from Mianeh and a corresponding distance from
Tabriz, and fixed his headquarters in a serai close to the village
which commanded the Tabriz road. There was a supporting British post
at Karachaman not far from the main Tabriz road and fourteen miles to
the south-east.
Wagstaff's repeated pleadings with "high authority" at last began to
bear fruit. It was a generally accepted military axiom out in
Mesopotamia and Persia that, if you were insistent enough in your
demands for an extra platoon or two, with a gun or an aeroplane
thrown in, you were either given the goods, or dubbed a
"flannel-footed fool" and relegated to the cold shades of official
oblivion. It was generally the latter. When Wagstaff, therefore,
heard that he had been given a whole squadron of 14th Hussars, a
platoon of the 14th Hants, and a platoon of Ghurkas, as well as a
section of a howitzer battery and a couple of mountain guns, his
habitual soldierly calm deserted him, and he almost wept for joy on
the neck of his adjutant, debonair "Bobby" Roberts of the 4th Devons.
"C" squadron of the 14th Hussars had made a {170} forced march from
Kasvin. Its ranks had been thinned by fever, and it barely mustered
eighty sabres when it rode over the Kuflan Kuh Pass to Mianeh. It
had but two officers, Lieutenants Jones and Sweeney, fit for service.
But there was no respite. Fever-racked troopers and leg-weary
horses, after a night's halt at Mianeh, started on a fifty-mile march
to Tikmadash, where a handful of British were holding up a Turkish
force already numbering nearly a thousand and growing daily. The
tired infantry who had "legged it" all the way from Kasvin were also
pushed north in the wake of the cavalry.
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