Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 281
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[Page 281]
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number of camels, mules and pack-ponies, which were to come down out of the mountains to carry our baggage up through North West Persia, but were held up by heavy snow in the passes.
Finally they arrived, nearly three weeks late, all strung out over about two miles, accompanied by a most ruffianly and picturesque crew of muleteers and cameliers; some shouting conversation others singing with high-pitched whining voices. With the minimum of delay our baggage and stores were loaded, and we marched off into the hills that evening, moving by night to avoid the severe heat of the sun. The officers and N.C.Os. were in the lead and the long motley caravan stretched back behind us into the darkness. At the last minute an Indian Mule Corps of about a hundred animals had been added to our transport, in charge of one white captain. Taking size of animal into account, we found that the best load carrier was the grey Argentine mule and the camel was the worst.
For the first three nights we travelled on a dusty rising track between bare, treeless, silent hills, covering fifty-one miles to reach Kasr-i-Shirin, a village on the Persian frontier. There we rested for a day and a night before starting the uphill winding climb up the Pai-tak and Tak-i-Garri passes on the way to Kermanshah, exactly the same route that Alexander the Great followed on his march to the Indus River.
The Kermanshah area had been thoroughly ravaged by the homing Russian soldiery a few months previously. They had seized all the Winter reserves of grain and other foodstuffs and left almost nothing for the Persians, who had to live for a few more months in a countryside largely covered with deep snow. A dreadful famine occurred, and when we arrived for a three-day rest thousands were dying every week of starvation. It was sickening and heart-rending to walk through the streets of this big town and see them full of poor half-naked wretches, just skin-covered skeletons with big bloated bellies, from drinking too much water, and looking more like big brown frogs than human beings. The sheep and cattle that died in Australian droughts did not get as thin as these unfortunate people before they died. Some of