Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 291
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[Page 291]
143
Russian sphere of influence, there was much urgent work to be done in maintaining and constructing roads, bridges and military installations, the financing of which came through, to Field Treasure Chest Officers, from Poona in India. We were now officially named Dunsterforce, and came under India Office for everything but operations, which were still controlled from the War Office in London. My immediate superior was Lt-Colonel Young of the Indian Military Works Service located at Kasvin, but for administration I had to take orders also from the local Area Commander, a peppery old Lt-Colonel of Indian Lancers, Ricketts, and at times I was put in the perplexing position of receiving conflicting orders from each of them. Ricketts was always up and about at first light and expected everyone else to do likewise. He instituted two-hours daylight saving during the Summer and I suspect that he suffered from chronic insomnia.
The only modern macadamised road in North West Persia was the toll road that the Russians had built from the little port of Enzeli, on the Caspian Sea, down through Kasvin to Hamadan where it terminated: all other roads were merely rough camel tracks with high and narrow hump-back stone bridges, or just fords, at the river crossings. In the complete absence of motor cars, the Persians, before the war, had not felt the need of good roads. Consequently, our principal engineering task was the construction of all-weather main roads suitable for motor traffic. But we had no proper machinery, steam rollers, or vehicles for this work, and it had to be done by the most primitive means.
Big stones were carted on to the road alignment in panniers on donkeys, were spalled by Persian men and cracked to small sizes by gangs of chattering outcast women sitting on the ground, and paid so much a cubic foot: they took their time and seemed happy enough. Consolidation was done by a few heavy rollers left behind by the Russian Road Company, and drawn ever so slowly, but surely, by pairs of water buffaloes we had got in the extreme North, near Lake Urmia.
Sections of this work were let out on a "cost plus" basis to local contractors, affluent people who were really just