1918
Savige and his small band rode on towards the rear of the long refugee column. But their compassion caused them to stop repeatedly en route ‘in order to bind up the wounds of some unfortunate woman’. They were saddened and disgusted to see more refugees running rampant in some of the towns they passed, looting and killing Persians.
‘We passed villages in which there was not a single living Persian . . . Houses and household utensils were wantonly destroyed, and the crops, which had been harvested and stacked on the outskirts, were all set afire by the Christians . . .’
‘One very soon saw that the Mohammedan is not the only fanatic in the world,’ Savige would observe in a frank admission. This was revenge for what the Turks had done to them. But it was the unfortunate Persian Muslims who were now the innocent victims.
‘Still two wrongs do not make a right,’ Savige would write, ‘and later on we had to adopt very strict measures [even executions] to put a stop to this destruction.’1
***
After riding a further 50 kilometres they finally reached the brave 45-year-old Mrs Shedd. The other male and female workers from the mission station at Urmia were sharing the burden of looking after the wounded and stragglers, and using rifles to fend off the pursuing Turks and Kurds.
They were overjoyed to see Savige ride up with his squad and introduce himself. They had been fighting a losing battle for five gruelling days.
Mrs Shedd looked drained. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair awry, her long dress torn. ‘Where’s your husband?’ Savige asked, shaking hands.
‘About a half-mile further down the road,’ she said.
‘How many men has he with him?’
‘Two dozen,’ she replied, as she looked sadly around at those with her. ‘At least, that was the last count.’
‘Then we will increase that strength,’ Savige said, with a calm confidence appreciated by the desperate little group.
‘There are hundreds of them in pursuit,’ Mrs Shedd said, holding Savige’s gaze as if gauging his courage.
‘We shall see,’ Savige responded. ‘We have machine guns. We also have some expert marksmen.’
His easygoing manner nearly caused Mrs Shedd to faint. He steadied her. She began crying.
‘You are very brave,’ Savige said, ‘but you can relax now. You will make it to safety before noon tomorrow.’
‘But my husband . . .’
‘Don’t worry,’ Savige reassured her, ‘we shall ride on to him now.’ He paused, shook her hand again and said quietly, ‘Jesus is with you.’
He could not have said a more comforting thing to Mrs Shedd. She wiped her eyes. ‘May God be at your side, young man.’
‘He always is,’ Savige said with a gentle smile.
With that, he and his men rode on.2
***
Savige and Petros found Shedd and his men resting on a ridge, on the lookout for the next Turkish onslaught.
Savige went to shake hands with the lanky American, whose face was hollow-looking. But his offer was rebuffed.
‘Better not,’ Shedd said, ‘I may have something [a disease]. Been looking after people endlessly.’
‘What do you have?’
‘Not sure,’ Shedd said with a half-smile. ‘This physician can’t heal himself, mainly because he’s a doctor of religion, not medicine.’ Seeing Savige’s concern, he added, ‘I may have cholera. There’s a lot of it about. Easy to pick up. It’s deadly.’
‘You should see a doctor. And you need rest.’
‘Rest? What’s that? We’ve been fighting continuously for five days and nights.’
‘You’ve done so well,’ Savige said. ‘But I don’t understand why more of the people don’t stop and fight with you. You could beat off the attackers that way.’
‘What can one do,’ Shedd said with a shrug, ‘seeing that self-preservation seems to be the motto of most of the men?’
‘We’ve seen this on the road. We passed lots of men on horseback, armed with rifles. They had plenty of ammunition around their waists. But they were going in the wrong direction. The women were left to tramp on as best they could. We tried to recruit them to our column but they weren’t interested.’
‘You know the problem, then.’
At this point Petros interjected. ‘Dr Shedd, we are taking over your command,’ he said. ‘It would be better if you caught up with the main body of refugees. Your influence with them is greater than mine or any of my men’s.’
Shedd looked out over the ridge in the direction from which the Turks would be coming. He pointed down the road. ‘The last encounter we had with them [the raiders] was about 6 miles away,’ he said. ‘They are mainly wandering Kurds or small bands of Turks.’ His tone darkened. ‘They sneak up on the column, then attack hard, and loot as much as they can pack on their horses.’ He took a deep breath. ‘They also take the prettier girls, whom they later sell to the lords of the Turkish harems.’
‘We’ll handle it,’ Savige said. ‘You go with General Petros to control the refugees. They will go on causing trouble if you don’t. You’ve done an incredible job, but you owe it to yourself and them to get well.’
Shedd was still reluctant. ‘It would be a sad commentary on us as missionaries if we had been so protected as to escape a share in the sickness, suffering and death of the people we serve.’
‘I understand, and admire your attitude, sir,’ Savige said. ‘But if you join the mounting number who have gone to God, you can be of little help here.’
Shedd was reflective for several moments. Then finally he decided to leave.3
***
Savige took off with his eight Allied soldiers and 24 Armenians and Assyrians, left by Petros to help engage the 600 Turkish and Kurdish raiders. They located them in a poplar grove outside the village of Kara Kand. Savige split his party into two, sending half with a machine gun to the right, while leading the other half into the village with a second machine gun. Two men were sent on ahead to draw fire, while the two parties cantered under cover some 200 metres behind.
The two riding in front were soon shot at. Savige gave the order to fire back. Both machine guns began spitting bullets into the grove. Savige dismounted and aimed at a Kurd who had lifted his rifle 100 metres away. Savige pulled the trigger on his Enfield a second before the Kurd did, and the latter went down, a bullet in his chest.
The machine guns kept firing and the Kurds retaliated. Savige fired twice more and brought down another enemy. This seemed to signal a retreat. The rest of the raiding force dashed for their horses and thundered off down the road.
Savige led the pursuit for 2 kilometres down a road running along a ridge. There was another ridge on the right that rose about 150 metres. He sent two Assyrians to scale it, with orders to look out for any enemy activity. Then he ordered four Armenians and two sergeants with a machine gun to ride on ahead to gain intelligence about the terrain and people.
‘The remainder of us halted until reports were obtained from the scouts,’ Savige would write.
About 10 minutes later he could hear the machine gun firing. He charged off in that direction with his small remaining squad. He reached the end of the ridge’s rise. There was a view for about 3 kilometres over the flats ahead.
We ‘saw about a hundred [Kurdish] tribesmen, racing backwards and forwards, keeping up a steady fire on our chaps holding the ridge, who were answering them with their machine gun and rifles,’ Savige later noted.
He revelled in this fight against the odds, though evened somewhat by the use of the two machine guns. As he dropped to one knee, steadied himself and fired twice, his pinpoint accuracy was again telling. The first shot killed a Kurd from about 80 metres. The second struck and brought down another victim, who was dragged behind rocks by other raiders.
Savige was once more the sniper he had been on another ridge on Gallipoli. This time, though, he was less on edge about the result of his rifle skills. In the torrid adrenalin pump of the moment, he was a hardened, professional assassin, who had no second thoughts about what he was doing. There was no time to reflect, only time to kill, or risk being killed himself.
The others, particularly the more cautious Armenians, were emboldened by their leader. They used their weapons with more spirit knowing that Savige and his gunners were having an impact.
The surviving Kurdish tribesmen, who outnumbered their attackers by about five to one, looked around at their fallen comrades and decided to depart with haste.
It was half an hour before dark. Savige reckoned that his squad would be vulnerable in the ridges after night fell. He withdrew his force back to Kara Kand.
Once there, he commandeered a large house on the outskirts for the night. Then they were faced with the perennial issue of feeding their ‘vehicles’, the horses. However, ‘luckily for us,’ he later recorded, the house ‘had a large store of fodder for horses stored in one of the out dwellings within the courtyard, into which there was only one entrance which could easily be guarded by one sentry enabling the remainder of the party to get at least a few hours’ sleep.’
Savige’s main fear was the 250 Turks and 250 Kurds at the town of Miandoab, north of the road where the Dunsterforce soldiers were situated. If these 500 men heard about the ongoing battles, they would most likely come to join their Kurdish comrades. That would inevitably lead to even more looting and abuse of the Christian womenfolk.
He was distracted by the sight of two of his band hauling a sheep, throat cut, into the courtyard. A fire was lit in the courtyard’s centre. The flesh was cut off, skewered with wire and cooked.
‘On the meal being cooked, it was quickly devoured,’ Savige later noted, ‘and washed down with the clear water of the [nearby] spring.’4
The men, who had fought all day, needed to fuel their bodies for the next expected battle in the morning.