THE FIGHT AT TIKMADASH
Treachery of our irregulars--Turkish machine-gun in the
village--Headquarters under fire--Native levies break and
bolt--British force withdrawn--Turks proclaim a Holy War--Cochrane's
demonstration--In search of the missing force--Natives mutiny--A
quick cure for "cholera"--A Turkish patrol captured--Meeting with
Cochrane--A forced retreat--Our natives desert--A difficult night
march--Arrival at Turkmanchai--Turks encircling us--A fresh
retirement.
The Turks came against Osborne at Tikmadash on September 5th. For
days previously they had been carefully preparing for the attack.
Overnight they sent into the village, unperceived by the British, an
infantry detachment which fraternized with the inhabitants and also
with a small party of our irregulars who were on observation duty
there. The treacherous irregulars said nothing of the presence of
the Turks in their midst, and made common cause with them at once.
Towards midnight the Turks smuggled in a machine-gun, which they
subsequently mounted on the flat roof of the dwelling of a Persian
official. At daylight the Turks, from cover of the village itself,
opened a violent machine-gun fire on the headquarters of Osborne,
which were in a serai a short distance on {172} the Mianeh side of
Tikmadash village. All the officers, some eight or ten in number,
lived here. There were two doors to the serai on two different sides
of the building. Both these exits were sprayed with machine-gun
fire. There was nothing for it but to open the door and run the
gauntlet. It was like coming within the vortex of a hail-storm, yet,
surprising to relate, few were hit.
Beyond the weak units of the 14th Hussars, the Hants, and the
Ghurkas, Osborne had nothing to depend upon in this critical hour
save levies recruited in Mianeh and elsewhere who, in spite of their
boastings, were always fire-shy. They took up a position this
morning at Tikmadash, but it was clear from the beginning that their
hearts were not in the business.
After firing some shrapnel into the position, the Turks stormed it
with two thousand infantry. The shell fire had already stampeded the
Persians, but their British officers, Captains Heathcote, Amory, and
Trott of the Devons, and Hooper of the Royal West Kents, by dint of
persuasion and threats, temporarily stopped the disorderly flight,
and induced the wavering men to follow them back into the line. But
a few more shells from the Turkish gun, which burst with telling
accuracy, finished the resistance of the levies. Osborne had no
artillery, the mountain battery section from Mianeh not having yet
arrived.
This time the portion of the line held by the levies {173} doubled up
like a piece of paper. Panic seized them, and they fled with all the
swiftness of hunted animals, throwing away their rifles as they ran.
The Hants, Ghurkas, and Hussars were now all that was left to cover
the retirement. The Turks were working round both flanks and, had
the British hung on, the whole force would have been surrounded and
killed or captured. Some of the British soldiers were so incensed at
the cowardice of the Persians that they turned their rifles against
the fugitives and shot them in their tracks.
When a retirement was seen to be inevitable, the charvadars were
ordered to load up the stores and medical supplies at the serai. In
the midst of their preparations the levies broke and fled. This
decided the charvadars, who showed themselves to be as arrant cowards
as the rest of their race. Cutting away the lashings securing the
loads on the transport mules, they jumped on the animals' backs and
galloped panic-stricken to the rear.
Captain John, of the Indian Medical Service, who had worked like a
Trojan attending to the wounded under fire, now collected three or
four British N.C.O's. and sought to rally the runaway charvadars, or
at least to recapture some of the transport mules. As well might
Dame Partington have tried to mop back the waves of the Atlantic.
John, however, did succeed in moving the British wounded, but all the
officers' kits, medical supplies, and ammunition fell into the hands
of the enemy.
{174}
The sadly diminished and battered British force withdrew to
Karachaman, preceded by the fleeing native levies, who magnified the
extent of our reverse, and as they ran spread panic amongst the
villages on our line of retreat.
Eight days before the Turks hit us at Tikmadash, news had filtered
through to Mianeh that the enemy was becoming active in Eastern
Azerbaijan. Raiding parties of Turkish cavalry had penetrated to
Sarab, eighty miles east of Tabriz, and stray bands of tribal levies
who had taken service under the Turkish flag were reported farther
east towards Ardabil and the Caspian littoral. They distributed
proclamations broadcast announcing a Jehad or Holy War against the
British, and calling upon the people to rally to the banner of the
Ittahad-i-Islam, or Pan-Islamic movement, and so make an end of the
Infidel occupation of Persia. The hapless villagers themselves had
little choice in the matter; compulsion was drastically applied, and
a village that showed hesitation, or evinced any apathy in embracing
the tenets of the political-cum-religious and Turkish-controlled
Ittahad-i-Islam, was laid waste, its inhabitants maltreated, or
sometimes put to the sword.
The Turks further showed their contempt for Persian authority by
seizing the telegraph office at Sarab and kicking out the detachment
of Persian Cossacks who held the place in the name of the Shah and
did police duty in the district. These Cossacks, in common with the
rest of their brigade, were under {175} the command of a Russian
officer. He evidently harboured some extraordinary view as to his
duty towards the Shah's Government, for he accepted with meek
submissiveness the imperative orders of the Turks to take himself and
his command out of Eastern Azerbaijan without any unnecessary delay.
The Persian Cossacks, the "paid protectors of the poor," to give them
one of their official designations, rarely "protected" anybody unless
as a financial investment, and their brutality and greed for illicit
gain caused them to be as much dreaded by the Persian peasant and
bazaar shopkeeper as were those brutal, plundering ruffians, the
Turkish Bashi-bazouks whom the senior partner in the Pan-Islamic firm
had let loose in upper Azerbaijan.
To counteract enemy activity round Sarab and Ardabil a small mounted
force was despatched from our post at Karachaman under Captain Basil
Cochrane of the 13th Hussars. Cochrane had with him about forty
British enlisted Sowars of Khalkhal Shahsavans. Moving across the
mountains, he boldly rode into Sarab. The Turks, assuming his to be
but the advance guard of a large British force, scattered at his
approach. The Governor and the townsfolk welcomed him effusively,
and promised him military support. But Persian promises are not
always redeemable, as we had already found to our cost. Turkish
cavalry were advancing afresh and threatening his rear, so Cochrane,
who was fifty miles as the crow flies from the nearest British post,
{176} had to let go his hold on Sarab, and retire towards the south.
Then a veil of silence enshrouded his movements; and at Mianeh
headquarters it was feared that he had been cut off and killed with
his whole party.
I had just come back from a long trek, and had stretched my weary
self out on a camp bed and gone fast to sleep, booted and spurred,
when someone shook me vigorously. I awoke and found it was Wagstaff,
chief of the Mission, with orders for me to take out a mounted party
and go in search of Cochrane. I mustered the available Sowars of the
station, about fifty in all. They were recruited from the Shahsavan
tribesmen, and we had had hitherto no reason to suspect their
fidelity. But immediately they divined that trouble was brewing and
that they might get a "dusting" from the Turk, they decided that
Mianeh was a healthier place than Sarab, and mutinied to a man.
Neither threats nor persuasion could move them. Having, so to speak,
thrown in their hands, they dismounted from their shaggy,
fleet-footed hill ponies, and stood sullenly with folded arms,
refusing obedience to all orders.
Leaving Wagstaff to deal with the mutinous Sowars, I collected about
a dozen of my own Persian police, and with these and two British
N.C.O's., Sergeants Calthorpe, R.F.A., and Saunders of the 13th
Hussars, set off on my mission.
We marched the greater part of the night, and early next day reached
Turkmanchai on the Tabriz {177} road, twenty-five miles north-west of
Mianeh. Here I impressed ten Sowars of ours who, feigning illness
and suffering from "fire-shyness," had stolen out of the trenches at
Tikmadash. Our route from Turkmanchai lay nearly due north towards
the foothills of the lofty Bazgush Range and the country of the
Khalkhal sub-tribe of Shahsavans. We bivouacked for the night in the
prosperous village called Benik Suma, which stands in the middle of
an arboreal-cloistered dale watered by a shallow but swift-running
mountain stream. Supplies were plentiful, and the hand of famine had
not touched this secluded Persian hamlet, which nestled so cosily
beneath the glorious foliage of oak and chestnut.
When the march was resumed in the morning, it was found that four of
the "malingerers" from Turkmanchai had deserted overnight. My little
command did not seem at all easy in its mind at the prospect of
having a brush with the enemy, and every hour that brought us nearer
to the hill country an increasing number of Sowars reported sick and
begged to be allowed to fall out.
At first I was puzzled by the spread of this sudden malady, for the
symptoms were identical in each case--severe abdominal pains; but
presently the mystery was explained. I encountered on the road a
Persian Cossack who had ridden in from the Sarab district, and had
come across the mountains that lay ahead of us. He volunteered the
information that in a village about twenty miles distant he had {178}
seen a Turkish cavalry patrol. Our Sowars on hearing this looked
very glum, and four of them at once complained of violent illness.
They rolled on the ground in pretended agony, artfully simulating an
acute cholera seizure. This time, and without much difficulty, I
diagnosed the disease as being that of pure funk, or what is commonly
known in military parlance as "cold feet." While sympathizing with
the sufferers, I gravely told them that I had instructions to shoot
off-hand any of my command who became cholera-stricken, and to burn
their bodies in order to prevent the disease spreading. The result
was little short of magical. The "severe pains" disappeared, and the
patients made such a wonderful recovery that within half an hour they
were able to mount their horses and turn their faces towards Sarab
once more. And the "epidemic" did not reappear.
We entered the mouth of the gloomy Chachagli Pass in the Bazgush
Range. Horsemen afar off had hovered on our flanks and reconnoitred
us carefully, but the distance was too great to tell whether they
were enemy irregulars or simply roving Shahsavans in search of
plunder, who would impartially despoil, provided the chances were
equal, Briton, Turk, or Persian.
The Chachagli Pass, a trifle over 8,000 feet, must surely be the most
difficult to negotiate in the whole of the Middle East. The road or
track from the southern entrance of the Pass follows a narrow {179}
valley shut in by a high gorge. A huge mass of limestone rock,
parting company with some parent outcrop several thousand feet above
our heads, has fallen bodily into the shallow stream which rushes
down the Pass, damming up its waters momentarily. The stream is
angry, but not baffled, at this clumsy effort to bar its path.
Gathering volume and strength, and mounting on the back of the
impeding boulder, it dives off its smooth surface with all the energy
and vim of a miniature Niagara, and goes on its way humming a merry
note of rejoicing.
After traversing the stream repeatedly, the road tilts its nose in
the air and mounts sharply. With just enough room for sober-going
mules to pass in single file, it skirts the brink of a precipice
until the top is reached. The rocks radiated a torrid heat that
September morning, and the sun struck across our upward path. It was
difficult climbing, for there is not in all the Chachagli Pass enough
tree shade to screen a mountain goat.
On the north side of the summit the road descends just as abruptly;
the track is narrow and rugged, and it requires careful going to
avoid toppling over the unramped side and down into the rock-studded
bed of the stream.
It was nearing sunset on the evening of September 2nd, and my small
force was preparing to bivouac for the night, when two Sowars who had
been foraging in a village to the west came galloping with news of
the enemy. They had learned that a party of {180} Turkish irregulars
had halted in a hamlet three miles away.
We moved in the direction indicated and found the information was
correct. The enemy horsemen, believing themselves secure, had
neglected to mount a guard. They had off-saddled and were sleeping
peacefully in the shade of a mud-walled compound when we burst into
the place and surprised them. They were ten in all. Rudely
disturbed in their siesta, they surrendered without firing a shot.
The prisoners comprised two Turkish N.C.O's., six Sowars, and two
agents of the Ittahad-i-Islam. They had evidently been "billposting"
and recruiting, for their saddlebags contained letters addressed to
Turkish sympathizers in the district and also the red armlets worn as
a distinguishing badge by the newly enrolled fedais who undertook to
fight under the crescent-flag of the Osmanli.
My own Sowars were greatly elated over this minor success. Their
spirits rose accordingly, and they now professed to regard the
fighting Turk with disdain, and to be prepared to match themselves
single-handed against a whole troop of the enemy.
But it was all mere bombast. The prisoners were sent down to Mianeh
with an escort of six of these "valorous" levies. On the way they,
though, of course, unarmed, overpowered the guard, took the arms and
horses, and escaped.
At daylight next morning, September 3rd, the march northwards was
resumed. Our advanced {181} guard was fired upon by some armed
horsemen, who retired. Following them up, we found that they were
some of Cochrane's scouts who had mistaken us for Turks. Cochrane
himself I came across two hours later. With his little force he had
retreated without loss from Sarab, and had taken up a snug defensive
position on the brow of a wooded eminence, where he placidly awaited
whatever fate might send him first--the attacking Turk, or the
succouring British.
The tribesmen were friendly towards us, and, attracted by the
prospect of good pay, were offering themselves freely as recruits.
Making due allowance for the fighting instability of our levies, we
felt we were strong enough to hold on, and if the worst came to the
worst, and we were outnumbered, capable of putting up a running fight
with the enemy.
But the end bordered on the dramatic, and came with an abruptness
that neither of us had foreseen. As related in a previous chapter,
Osborne was heavily attacked at Tikmadash on the morning of September
5th, and the news of his retreat and the advance of the Turks along
the Tabriz road did not reach Cochrane and myself until 2 a.m. on the
morning of the 6th. It was a ticklish situation. Go forward we
could not, and our only way back was over the gloomy fastness of the
Chachagli Pass. The Turks, we knew, were advancing rapidly, and we
mentally saw them already astride our one line of retreat and
ourselves trapped at the south exit of the Pass.
{182}
There was no time to be lost. So, destroying our surplus stores, and
with grim faces, we set off in the darkness of the night. Our levies
surmised that something had gone wrong with the British, and fear
gripped their hearts. They deserted wholesale and without waiting to
bid us adieu. There was a picket of fifteen Persians and a British
sergeant in a village a mile to our front. The sergeant alone
reported back. His command had "hopped it" when they realized that
danger threatened. Five miles behind us on the crest of the ridge
there was an observation post of thirty irregulars with a Naib or
native lieutenant and two British N.C.O's. The Naib had the previous
evening vaunted his personal prowess, and assured Cochrane and myself
that no Turks would pass that way except over his lifeless body. But
when we reached his post in the blackness of the night, we discovered
that the gallant Naib had fled none knew whither, and taken all his
men with him. We never saw him again. The two N.C.O's. had mounted
guard alternately, and we found them cursing Persian irregulars and
Persian perfidy with a degree of vigour and a candour that did
adequate justice to their own private view of the situation.
Cochrane is an Afrikander born, and as resourceful and plucky a
soldier as ever donned khaki. Used to night marching on the veldt,
he led the advanced guard of our party through the intricate,
labyrinthian windings of the Chachagli Pass where a single false step
meant death. It was nerve-straining work, this {183} night march in
the darkness, with men, horses, and transport mules following each
other in blind procession and groping for a foothold on the narrow
causeway. That mysterious dread of the unseen and the unknown, ever
present on such occasions as these, clutched with a tenfold force the
timorous hearts of the native levies who had survived the earlier
stampede at the beginning of the retreat. Their teeth chattered, and
their trembling fingers were always inadvertently pressing triggers
of loaded rifles, which kept popping off and heightening the nerve
tension.
We got clear of the Pass shortly after daylight. Fortunately the
Turks were not there to intercept our march. With the passing of the
long night vigil, and the coming of the dawn, gloom was dispelled;
life assumed a rosier tint, and the levies recovered some of their
lost spirits and waning courage. Once free of the imprisoning hills,
and out on the broad plateau that dipped southwards to intersect the
Tabriz road, we headed straight for Turkmanchai. Once we rode into a
village as fifty well-mounted horsemen, disturbed like a covey of
frightened birds, bolted out at the other end. We found that they
were Shahsavan robbers, who looked upon our party as potential
enemies. Turkish cavalry in extended order were visible on the
skyline as we gained the shelter of Turkmanchai.
We reached this spot in the nick of time. Osborne's force had been
compelled to evacuate Karachaman, {184} the position occupied after
Tikmadash, and his sorely pressed command was now trickling into
Turkmanchai with the Turks at their heels. Turkmanchai village is at
the base of a steep hill. At its summit the road from Tabriz
squeezes through a narrow-necked pass. Here the Hants and the
Ghurkas took up a position in order to arrest the Turkish advance. A
section of a mountain battery had arrived overnight. The Turkish
cavalry appeared in column of route, out of rifle fire as yet, and
blissfully ignorant of our possession of artillery. The cavalry made
an admirable target. Two well-directed shells burst in the midst of
the astonished horsemen. Their surprise was complete, and wheeling
they opened out and galloped wildly for cover. The impromptu salvo
of artillery set them thinking, and they did not trouble us again
that day.
To hold Turkmanchai was impossible. We had stopped the Turks in
front, but they were working round our flanks, and it was only a
question of hours when we should be isolated and cut off from Mianeh.
We were outnumbered by fully ten to one, and the flanking parties of
cavalry which the enemy threw out were alone larger than the British
combined force of regulars and irregulars.
A fresh retirement was decided upon, and on the morning of September
7th we evacuated Turkmanchai. The wounded and the sick were removed
in transport carts, and two hours after midnight the head of the
column moved slowly off in the darkness. {185} I was in charge of
the advanced guard, and found myself in command of a varied
assortment of Persian irregulars, some of whom had "distinguished"
themselves at Tikmadash and Karachaman and had been "rounded up" by
British troops during the retreat. They were a motley crew, and what
infinitesimal amount of pluck they ever possessed had long ago
evaporated. In the advanced guard it was difficult to restrain their
impetuosity. They dashed off at top speed as if they were riding a
fifty-mile Derby race to Mianeh. But their one impelling motive was
to place as many miles as possible of dusty road between themselves
and the oncoming Turks before daylight.
By dint of threats of summary punishment they were brought to heel
and ultimately held in leash. Silence it was impossible to impose,
short of some form of gagging, and they chattered like a cageful of
monkeys, utterly heedless of the danger of betraying our presence to
the enemy. Then, too, their superheated imagination saw Turks
growing on every bush. "Osmani anja!" "Osmani anja!" (The Turks are
there!) they would cry, indicating some village donkey or goat taking
a hillside stroll. Fortunately for us, the Turks showed themselves
to be singularly lacking in energy, and were not keen on risking a
night attack in unknown country, or they might have ambushed the
advanced guard half a dozen times before it got clear of the danger
zone. With our Persian "braves" to rely upon, there {186} would
surely have been a "regrettable incident" to record officially.
The Turks waited for daylight, and then they attacked the main body
and the rearguard, but were beaten off, and the column extricating
itself reached Mianeh in safety.
{187}