Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 293
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 293]
144
labour recruiters, or less wealthy ones with a cunning Jewish middleman financing them behind the scenes, a partnership we found to be very unsatisfactory. One of the would-be contractors was a Persian nobleman Anayatolah Khan who had been educated in France. He was a charming and gay fellow but I did not fancy him as a contractor for road construction. On one occasion he entertained me at his Summer residence in the foothills, and put on a nautch-girl dancing show for my benefit. Arched bridges of dressed stone were built by Greek stone masons who specialised in this work throughout the Middle East and did excellent work for an agreed fixed price. Construction of an airfield, complete with a pair of fifty-feet-wide hangars made of local materials, was another urgent job for which the Territorial 72nd Field Company, Royal Engineers, commanded by Major Grimshaw, was brought up from Iraq. The erection of a number of wards and other buildings for an Army hospital was also undertaken, using native labour under the supervision of two of our New Zealand officers, one an architect, the other a civil engineer.
Early in August Turkish irregular troops attacked the Armenians, many of whom left their homeland and fled southward in a body into Persia under their leader Aga Petross. They were harassed and decimated as they went and finally reached Major Starne's outposts, which engaged the Turks and drove them off. For his leadership and gallantry in this action one of our Australian officers, Captain Stan Savige was awarded the Distinguished Service Order: he became Major General Savige in the Second World War, and founder of the Legacy Movement to care for war orphans. The Armenians continued on down from Sain Kaleh, through Bijar, nearly to Hamadan, pillaging and murdering innocent Persian villagers and farmers on the way. On their arriving a few miles from Hamadan they had to be threatened with machine guns to deter them from entering the town. They were accommodated in a specially erected tented camp, about three thousand of them, and were given British Army standard rations every day. Because the wheat harvest was in full swing and was all done by hand we were short of native