Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 297
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[Page 297]
146
The British Force had quickly established a defence line a few miles inland and across this railway. The Turks deployed, and on the 15th of September mounted an irresistable attack that overwhelmed our smaller numbers. At the last minute the levies decided by popular vote not to fight. The British Infantry fought almost to the last man, covering the retreat of the remainder as they passed through the town to the wharves and embarked on the ships again, to return to Persia. The Turkish field guns began shelling the last ships to leave as they got under way. The armoured cars had to be destroyed with explosives and a couple of artillery-observation biplanes (RE8s) were burnt.
Following the Turkish unconditional surrender, only about six weeks afterwards, on the 30th of October, another and smaller expedition was dispatched to Baku, but it too had to return in a hurry, because in the meantime the Bolsheviks, aided by the Turks, had gained control and were hunting and hanging the Menshivik leaders: they were openly hostile to our people, and the rest of the population would have no truck with us either.
The road work was now taking me far afield in all directions for visits of inspection and taking out bags of coins to make progress payments to the several contractors, the receipts for which were impressed with an engraved metal seal, not signed. A Model "T" Ford vanette was always available to me from the Area Transport Park for the long trips, on which I was accompanied by a British driver, with his rifle clipped along the bottom of the windscreen, and my trusty interpreter Joseph Ismail. We had, of course, to take sufficient petrol in cased four-gallon tins to get us to our destination and back again, with a margin for emergencies. In the mountains there were steep rocky short stretches of camel track where the "road" crossed from one valley into the next, and frequently we only got through by partly unloading the vanette to push it over the bad section and then reloading: on long stretches we had to do this twice. For shorter trips I rode one of the two horses issued to me for myself and interpreter. They were kept in