With the Persian Expedition

by Martin Henry Donohoe

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 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 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 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 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.