Raiders of the Sarhad / Being an Account of the Campaign of Arms and Bluff Against the Brigands of the Persian-Baluchi Border during the Great War

by R. E. H. Dyer

Lamps were brought, and it was quickly found that the zareba was empty. What had happened seemed fairly obvious. The prisoners had evidently taken off all their clothes and flung the heavier garments over the barbed wire. This done, and acting in consort, they had broken or borne it down by sheer weight. In any case the whole lot of them had escaped, absolutely naked, leaving their clothes behind on the barbed wire!

Of course an immediate search was instituted, but the Raiders had escaped into the rough, broken hills during the few minutes succeeding the alarm, and not a single one was re-taken. The only prisoners now left in our hands were Jiand and his son.

After such a set-back a man may be pardoned for being at his wits' end. Not only did it spell failure to keep faith with the Indian Government in regard to the prisoners, but it became plain that the wireless troop, whose safe passage I had practically guaranteed, was now in peril; for they would, almost certainly, be attacked, as they must by this time be right in the heart of the enemy territory, whose fighting men would now be elated beyond bounds at their successful coup.

I quickly realised that we must act without an instant's delay. We must first rescue that wireless troop with its small escort at any cost. The best thing to be done at the moment was to order the prisoners' escort—who now had no one to escort! except Jiand and his son—to proceed instantly in the direction along which the wireless troop was coming, whilst Sanders and myself, with every man we could collect after leaving some sort of garrison for Khwash—goodness knows we were few enough already!—set out to join up with the escort, which would have to march due East that day.

I could then take some of the men forming that escort and go in the direction of Kamalabad with the object of holding off the Gamshadzais under Halil Khan; I was convinced they would now, without question, put into execution the threat they had so repeatedly made of trying to rescue Jiand. As will be seen my objective was the Kamalabad valley, where I should at least have a better chance of holding them up than elsewhere.

The messenger was thereupon directed to return at once to the officer commanding the escort, with a letter directing the new move and telling him at what point I would intersect his march that evening.

As soon as he had been dispatched a servant was sent to awaken Sanders, Idu and the Sarhad-dar, and summon them immediately to my tent. When they were told the bad news their dismay was fully equal to mine. The Sarhad-dar seemed to think the world had come to an end. The situation was in any case quite black enough, and it was a very depressed little party that an hour later set out from the camp.

It was not until well on into the evening that the force composing the prisoners' escort joined us at the appointed rendezvous, but when it did I proceeded to re-arrange the composition of units without delay. I took twenty-five cavalry, some fifty of the infantry, also the two machine guns, and ordered the officer commanding, who was desperately downcast at the disaster, to march at top speed with the force left him in the direction along which the wireless troop must now be coming. His further orders, on getting in touch, were to tell them what had happened, and, as I did not now consider it safe for them to come at present to Khwash, to go back with him to Saindak, where he was to hand over Jiand and his son to the Hazaras now waiting to receive them.

He was further instructed to say that I was marching in another direction, towards Kamalabad, in an endeavour to hold up Halil Khan and the Gamshadzais, who, according to rumours reaching us that evening, were on their way in great force to Gusht, at the end of the Kamalabad valley.

My little force started then and there, marching a distance of about twelve miles through the night, and reached Kamalabad before daybreak. It must be remembered that campaigning under conditions obtaining in a district such as the Sarhad is utterly different from that of any other type of warfare.