1918
Savige wrote a hasty letter to Lilian, telling her of his assignment in vague language, without giving her any hint of the danger he faced.
‘I can assure you it will be nothing like the last few years,’ he wrote, ‘but I am not sure what lies ahead. However, whatever it is, I am in an elite force that will see off any unlikely attacks.’1
The next day he and his small contingent had to face one of the greatest passes of Persia, the Pia-Tak Pass, the gateway to the southwest. It was extremely hot, and a bad stretch of country.
‘The mountain ahead was a veritable wall,’ he wrote, ‘and up its side we zigzagged until we eventually reached the top. On the left, cliffs towered up to the very heavens and, on the right, deep gorges yawned.’
They pitched camp on the plateau. Savige had time to admire ‘the wondrous beauties of unconquered nature. For miles the ranges extended, broken with tumbled and jagged peaks and perpendicular cliffs.’2 It inspired him.
He slept well, and the next morning organised the mules for the day’s journey, this time through an open valley, which allowed the group to admire Persia’s grand variety of stunning wildflowers. Savige was at peace as they trundled slowly along, listening to the mellifluous sound of the bells around the mules’ necks.
However, he and his men were not going to be lulled into a lax attitude. They remained alert as they passed into more dangerous country. Savige ordered four of his men to scale the heights overlooking the many passes, on the lookout for hostile tribesmen bent on ambushing the party.
Savige did his share too, taking a South African sergeant with him on horseback as the main long train of 250 mules meandered into a narrow gorge. Savige and the sergeant were 400 metres ahead. They looked back to see the leading mules.
Savige and the sergeant used their binoculars and picked up about 20 tribesmen below a plateau about 100 metres away. They were armed with rifles and looked set to cause trouble.
‘If they shoot the front mules and the rear ones,’ Savige whispered, ‘they will cause enough confusion to be able to pick off scores of our team.’
‘What should we do, Captain?’
‘We have to stop them.’
‘Shoot them?’
‘Not if we can help it,’ Savige said, looking down as half the mule train reached the gorge. ‘I’ll see if I can frighten them off.’
‘How?’
‘That fellow with the green bandana looks like the leader. I’ll see if I can knock the rifle out of his hand. You cover me, just in case they spot our position.’
Savige crawled onto a rock, lying flat. He lined up the barrel of the leader’s rifle. The leader steadied his weapon, and seemed to be about to shoot the mules at the front of the train.
Savige fired. He hit the leader’s rifle at the beginning of the barrel, causing the leader to fire, probably accidentally. The rifle span away from him. The tribesman panicked and took cover.
Then Savige made a second risky move. He aimed at another tribesman’s weapon. The second bullet smashed into the weapon’s wooden handle, splitting it.
The 20 tribesmen panicked and dashed for horses tethered in bush about 30 metres away. They took off at the double, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.
The sergeant shook hands with Savige.
‘That was amazing shooting, sir,’ he said. ‘You have a steady hand and a wonderful eye!’
‘The doctors say I’m long-sighted. I’ll have a problem when I’m 50.’
‘Not possible,’ the sergeant mumbled in awe, ‘not possible . . .’3
***
The mule train straggled on and up into the rugged high plains without further incident, except for the occasional sighting of tribesmen in the distance. Over the next few days, none ventured closer than 500 metres, as if they had heard about the crack shot in the force. Savige was concerned but not alarmed when he picked out rifles slung over the tribesmen’s shoulders. They were clearly watchful with the intrusion of this foreign squad into their territory. After the earlier incident, the force deployed advance and flank guards by day, and sentries and pickets by night.
Nomads were often spotted too. Savige and the sergeant could not resist the temptation to go and see a camp up close.
There were about 20 big, black canvas shelters filled with humans, goats, sheep, dogs and fowl. The floors were covered in mud. The rough shelters were surrounded by ‘a crowd of the usual howling camp dogs, and naked curious children’.
Savige noted that ‘The men and women greeted us with black looks and scowls, as if our presence polluted the sanctity of the village.’
After five minutes Savige and the sergeant were driven off, their olfactory senses greatly challenged.4
***
On 9 May, the convoy neared the city of Kermanshah, its minarets and towers presenting an enticing sight in the distance. A few kilometres out, Savige found the view of green trees surrounded by rice and wheat crops attractive. But inside the city it was different as they encountered people struck by famine.
‘On going to the city, knots of starving inhabitants were seen scattered across the valley actually eating grass,’ he later wrote, ‘and every step in the village brought one face to face with a living skeleton.’5
Soon after leaving Kermanshah, Savige scouted ahead with six men and noted a large cloud of dust about 500 metres away. It soon shaped itself into a contingent of at least 2000 Persian soldiers travelling with their families. They were preceded by drummers and trumpeters, which caused Savige to hope they were not on a mission to stop the British force, which was more than a kilometre to the rear of his advance party. Savige sent a soldier back to warn the main body of soldiers.
‘Say, sir,’ a Canadian piped up, ‘I guess we’ll have about as much chance as a snowflake in hell if these here guys cut up.’
‘That’s still a chance, Corporal,’ Savige said. ‘Stay calm.’
As the Persians came closer he saw them ‘as nothing but a rabble’, with ‘a string of about twenty camels’ out the front. The camels carried bejewelled women and their children in ‘huge box-like contrivances’. ‘The commanding officer, ablaze with gold tassels and coloured trimmings, rode ahead, surrounded by his staff.’
Savige moved quickly. He lined up his five men and ordered them to salute, ‘Eyes Left.’
The commander was stunned by the military deference shown. He bowed and saluted back smartly. Savige kept his men at attention this way until the entire column had passed.
The bluff worked, and the Persians ignored the main British force. They learnt later that the military column had been on a mission to stop the ‘miserable British force’ from passing through Persia.
‘What might have been an uncomfortable experience for us,’ Savige would write, ‘was turned into an amusing episode by playing on the vanity of the Eastern mind.’
That night a most relieved Dunsterforce contingent pitched camp under the shadow of a giant precipice.6
***
The next morning the force moved on through the valley before dawn to gain some cooler hours of travel. Savige, patrolling in front again, was alerted to rifle fire and yelling. He and his men readied their weapons. They soon learnt that the noise was coming from about 50 ‘gaily-dressed, well-mounted Kurds’, who were harassing a group of nomads.
The Kurds noticed Savige and his squad of seven about 200 metres away. They fired wildly at the scouting party, causing bullets to fly overhead or ping into the sand about 20 metres from them.
‘Aim above their heads!’ Savige ordered his men. ‘Return fire!’
The Kurds panicked when bullets whizzed close to them. They abandoned their efforts to steal the nomads’ sheep and cattle and modest possessions, and galloped off. Savige ordered his men to round up the canvas-laden cattle and the sheep, branded with red ochre, and to return any other pilfered items that the Kurds had left behind.
He, like all the diggers, was bemused by the nomads, and the way their women trudged along at the rear in the extreme heat while the men rode donkeys or mounted rickety wagons. The women who did not carry children were ‘laden with the various pots and paraphernalia of the camp’. His instinct was to have the women relieved of their burden and given the donkeys and wagons to ride on. But he quashed his chivalrous inclinations. He had seen this sort of thing done by Australians in Cairo, to no avail. In fact, local authorities had condemned them for it, and the diggers’ own command had ordered them to be less gallant or face jail terms.
***
The force arrived at thriving Hamadan, 2000 metres above sea level, which occupied a strategic position halfway between Baghdad and the Caspian Sea, a central point on the Urmia– Tehran road and 180 kilometres from the main Azerbaijan– Tehran road. General Dunsterville had already set up his HQ here with 60 officers and NCOs, who had been in Hamadan for three months. The rest of the force, in groups of 50 to 60, arrived at different times, with Savige’s contingent arriving on 18 May 1918.
After the long journey, the new ‘recruits’ were still energised at the thought of the adventures ahead. More exciting still was the prospect of meeting their legendary commanding officer.