1918
By the new year, the ramifications of the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and Russia’s withdrawal from the war were making themselves felt. Haig was more than worried about the German troops who would now be unleashed on the Western Front. There were further consequences in Armenia, where Russia had been fighting the Turkish armies. The Russians had also occupied Northern Persia (now Iran) in cooperation with the British, who controlled the south. This had created a barrier to stop German and Turkish forces from reaching Central Asia, Afghanistan and India.
Now the Russians were out, those regions were vulnerable to Turkish armies and their proxies in the area. The British felt they needed to intervene, particularly to protect their Indian interests and access to Suez ports.
The astute Germans had long realised that revolt in India could reduce resources and cause the British to divert its armies from Europe. The Germans had been building a Berlin–Baghdad railway to further disrupt their main imperial rival. But while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty (1911–1915), Winston Churchill had blocked that move by buying up the oilfields round Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf.
The Russians’ departure had left the way open for the Germans again, this time by road. Turkish and German envoys were set to take advantage of this by bribing influential Afghans and northern Indians and making big trouble for the British.
Britain could not afford to take a brigade of 5000 soldiers from the Western Front and risk them in a region remote from the main theatre of war. Instead, it created a mission for around 500 hand-picked men under Major General Lionel Charles Dunsterville, at the time based in London. It became known as Dunsterforce. The idea was for this special group to train local Georgians and Armenians to counter Turkish operations. The force would be made up of Australian, New Zealand, British and Canadian officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) drawn mainly from the Western Front.
The London high command directed General Birdwood to ask his divisional commanders for men of ‘the Harry Murray type’ – which was a tall order, given that very few could compare with this highly decorated, ultra-brave Tasmanian Victoria Cross (VC) winner. The selected men had to be prepared to leave their battalions, and their brigade commanders would decide if they could go or not.
The full-blooded imperialist Dunsterville – the inspiration for the main character in his schoolmate Rudyard Kipling’s novel Stalky & Co. – specified his requirements. The men chosen had to have special abilities, for instance as marksmen or horsemen, and most were also required to have outstanding leadership skills. The high command added: ‘It is essential that good men, constitutionally strong, as well as of determined character, should be selected.’1
Savige more than fitted the bill. Gellibrand put the proposal to him and a handful of others in 6th Brigade. Gellibrand made it clear that he did not want Savige to go, but he felt obliged to give him the option.
Savige had a few days to think about the offer, which would see him promoted to captain. It created a dilemma. On the one hand, he was totally loyal to his brigade and wanted to stay with it until the war was over. On the other hand, ‘roughing it’ in a remote region with a specific military aim appealed to him to a degree.
The specifications were vague, but he was finding that directives from superiors were often unclear. Gellibrand did inform him that the enterprise was top-secret. Not surprisingly, Savige was told the odds were that he might not survive. It wasn’t a suicide mission, yet it would be ‘a hazardous enterprise, requiring initiative, resource, courage and the power to manage men’.2
Savige also began to think of the advantages of turning his back on the senseless carnage he had experienced on the Western Front. Anything had to be better than what he had been through at Pozières, Bullecourt and Passchendaele. Every waking hour his thoughts were filled with the many mates who had perished. Leaving France would at least push away those memories that haunted him.
Savige turned once more to prayer and guidance from the Bible. The mere fact that this offer had come when he was fed up with the gruesomeness of his experiences and had been praying for an end to them, made him think he should make the change.
***
Confusion about Dunsterforce’s destination increased when Savige was fitted out at London’s Horseferry Road Barracks on 13 January 1918. Savige was asked to buy two outfits, one for the Arctic and the other for the tropics. He was told he would need sufficient gear and medicine for two years.
At that moment he had a flinch of regret. Two years would see him back in Australia in 1920.
Plenty of Russians fussed over the star recruits at the barracks, suggesting that the men of Dunsterforce would be off to that country. When they began teaching Russian to the men, this supposition seemed confirmed. But why were they going to Russia, Savige wondered. The Russians had pulled out of the war, hadn’t they?
The mystery was solved in part on 29 January when the officers were told they would be going to the Persian Gulf. The weight of their mission was emphasised by the presence of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir William Robertson, who addressed them for half an hour. He spoke in generalisations and platitudes about the ‘vital importance’ of the adventure they were about to embark on. Robertson gave nothing away, but his mere presence galvanised them.
The next morning they were sent across the English Channel to France, and very quickly there was a good and collegiate mixing of the officers and NCOs, once they were used to the different accents. Dunsterville later said of his force: ‘It is certain that a finer body of men had never been brought together. The Command was one of which any man might well be proud.’ Bean, given to superlatives, saw the Anzac contribution to Dunsterforce as the ‘cream of the cream’ of regimental leaders, all on a volunteer basis.3
Then they entrained for Italy. At Taranto they took a boat to Alexandria, and from there a train to Suez. A familiar ship, the Nile – on which Savige had travelled in 1915 en route to Lemnos – took the contingent to the head of the Persian Gulf, where they switched to a riverboat. This transported them up the grand Shatt al-Arab River, busy with army vessels and Arab dhows, to Basra in March.
Watching the date palms along the riverbanks had already given Savige an exciting lift as he journeyed into regions of biblical importance. Basra was located on part of the ancient site of Sumer, claimed to have been the location of the Garden of Eden. He took this as an omen that he had made the right decision to go with Dunsterforce. Whether or not God had directed him there he no longer knew after being on the Western Front. Yet it had at least been an enormous relief to travel nearly 10,000 kilometres without the second-by-second threat to his life, or exposure to the mounting toll of fellow diggers who were killed, dismembered, wounded, deranged or lost. Savige brightened, too, when he realised that Basra was the port that featured in Sinbad the Sailor, one of his favourite books.
Savige expressed his joy to Lilian at being in a region of such ‘historic weight’. Ever the diarist, he sounded like a modest man’s T.E. Lawrence in his observations of a local Arab man: ‘dark complexioned, with clear piercing eyes, set in an intelligent face. His dress is strikingly picturesque, consisting of flowing white robes, with a headdress composed of a cloth fastened with beads of fancy cord . . .’
The narrow, winding streets of Basra were roofed, he noted, ‘yet strings of mules, horse-drawn carriages and horsemen move rapidly along . . . The drivers and riders clear a passage by shouting . . .’4
The heat, approaching 50 degrees Celsius, was a concern, but he would rather that any day than what he had just been through on the Western Front. The only thing that brought back horrible recent memories was the rain, which pelted down for the first four days of ten after the force’s arrival at Basra, and left the bases of their tents awash with mud. Three hours of instruction in swordplay every morning provided a welcome distraction, though it left Savige with a strained right wrist. Nevertheless he became skilled in this ancient art of combat.
He told Lilian about the sword training but reminded her: ‘I still have my trusty weapon [his Enfield rifle] as my first choice, but so far we have not looked likely to need either. It is a nice change [from recent experiences].’
Rifle target practice was also mandatory, which was no chore for Savige. Three hundred of the officers and NCOs took part in a shooting competition. He was the clear winner in hitting two targets, one at 100 yards and the other at 300 yards.
‘It was good and necessary to keep one’s eye in,’ he noted to Lilian, ‘and not to be hitting living human targets.’5
***
More fascinating travel followed. Next it was up the winding River Tigris, where Savige’s Sunday school teachings again came to life. The river reminded him of the conquest of Palestine by King Cyrus and ‘the deportation of Jews to the banks of the noble Euphrates’. They passed the ruined city of Ctesiphon, and also sailed past the city of Kut, where 8000 British and Indian soldiers had been under siege by the Turks from December 1915 to April 1916.
It was a slow trip in extreme heat, but they finally arrived in Baghdad on 28 March 1918. The mission continued in the same pedestrian manner for another 24 days before a small group of Dunsterforce men departed the city in a fleet of Model T Fords, with the remainder following on foot.
The vehicle convoy rattled and bumped along to the Persian border town of Kasi-i-Sherin, where it was met by a 250-strong mule train. This would act as transportation to Dunsterforce HQ in Hamadan, one of the oldest cities in the world, in mountainous middle Persia.
A senior British officer took Savige aside and told him: ‘We are now in a pretty unruly region. I want you to take an advance guard to travel ahead of the main body.’
‘May I ask why, sir?
‘You come highly recommended, Captain. And you are the best shot in the force.’
‘How many men do I take?’
‘No more than eight. You have a most dangerous mission. Good luck.’6