With the Persian Expedition

by Martin Henry Donohoe

Our job in sitting down in Bijar was to hold the place against the Turks and prevent their coming back, to instil a little wholesome respect for law and order into the minds of the plunder-loving Kurds, and to stop them from eating up the smaller and unprotected Persian fry. To keep the Turk at bay and hold the Kurd in awe, we had approximately a couple of squadrons of the 14th Hussars, under Colonel Bridges, a detachment of the Gloucesters in charge of Captain Stephenson, machine-gun and mountain battery sections, and a couple of hundred of Persian levies who were commanded by Captain Williams, an Australian officer. Colonel Bridges was in command of the whole force. The total certainly did not err on the side of numerical superiority.

The day after I reached Bijar the Governor arrived to pay an official call. After the usual formalities as laid down by Persian etiquette for ceremonies of this kind had been safely negotiated, he begged my acceptance of a manuscript copy of his poems, and incidentally hinted that, as the district was in the throes of famine, he would have no objection to collaborating in the purchasing of wheat with British money in order to alleviate the prevailing distress.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE END OF HOSTILITIES

Types of Empire defenders—Local feeling—Dealing with Kurdish raiders—An embarrassing offer of marriage—Prestige by aeroplane—Anniversary of Hossain the Martyr—News of the Armistice—Local waverers come down on our side of the fence—Releasing civil prisoners—Farewell of Bijar—Down country to the sea and home.

I have often wondered if the British who stayed at home, through force of circumstances rather than any reluctance to participate in the Great War, can have had any conception of the varying types of men who helped to uphold British interests in this remote and little-known corner of the Asiatic Continent. Here, then, are a few of them taken at random!

There was Hooper, an Australian Captain, who in civil life was a farmer on a rock-girt island off the Tasmanian coast, and had been through more than one big push in France. Williams, also an Australian officer, was a Rhodes Scholar from the University of Adelaide. He commanded Persian levies, made a hobby of dialects, and was always eager to try his growing wisdom teeth on such abstruse problems as "How the camel got his hump," or, "Why Jonah gave the whale indigestion." But he was a good lad, was this youthful pedant, a fearless soldier, and an untiring worker who, in a few months, gained a surprising knowledge of colloquial Persian. Then there was Seddon, a Government land surveyor from New Zealand, who also had looked on Red War in Flanders. In cold weather, of all times, he was always shedding surplus garments, until there was a positive danger of his arriving at the stage of the "altogether." Seddon was fiercely intractable on the subject of hygiene as applied to clothing, and would hear of no compromise where his cherished principles were concerned. It was said that he was wont to lie awake at night planning new curtailments in his winter kit. Still, there must have been some wisdom in his methods, for, although thinly clad during the early winter months, he was always in perfect health, and escaped the pulmonary maladies which proved fatal to so many others who looked askance at him and his hygienic, minimum-clothing theory.

We had Gordon Wilson who came from the Argentine to enlist at the outbreak of the War and attempted to leap the age-limit barrier. His ardour was somewhat damped on being refused by the Home Authorities. But, nothing daunted, he went to France, joined the Foreign Legion, and saw a good deal of fighting. He was afterwards transferred to a British Field Battery and given a commission, and lost no time in winning the M.C.

In the 14th Hussars was a lieutenant named Voigt, an Afrikander born, who had gone through the South African campaign. One day, riding with Voigt and his troop of Hussars in a "punitive" expedition against raiding Kurds, I asked him casually—and quite forgetful of the momentous past—with whom he had served in South Africa. He replied with the flicker of a smile on his broad, sun-tanned face, "I was with Louis Botha's commando." And such is the material out of which has been woven our thrilling island story!