With the Persian Expedition

by Martin Henry Donohoe

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 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.

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 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, 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.