CHAPTER XVI

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irregulars--Turkish machine-gun in the village--Headquarters under fire--Native levies break and bolt--British force withdrawn--Turks proclaim a Holy War--Cochrane's demonstration--In search of the missing force--Natives mutiny--A quick cure for "cholera"--A Turkish patrol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.

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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.

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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.

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