1918
The roof sentry scrambled down a ladder at first light and bustled into the house as Savige and the rest of the group were just preparing a breakfast of mutton, rice and tea.
‘There’s something happening out there,’ he said, though without panic in his voice. ‘You’d better have a look.’
Savige grabbed his binoculars and followed the sentry onto the flat roof. He scanned the area and could see about 150 horsemen in the valley far below them.
‘Are they the tribesmen we encountered yesterday?’ Savige asked.
‘Probably,’ the sentry replied as the group dismounted, chatted and lit cigarettes.
‘They won’t be in a hurry to tackle us after what we did to them last night,’ Savige said as he began to climb down the ladder. ‘Just keep a close eye on them.’ He returned to his interrupted breakfast.
Two minutes later, the sentry called down to him again. The man’s voice had an edge this time.
Savige and others climbed onto the roof. There were now an estimated 600 Turks below them. They posed a direct threat to the refugees.
‘Damned Turks,’ Savige mumbled. ‘They’ve followed our tracks.’
‘What are the orders, Captain?’ a sergeant asked.
Not one to panic, Savige looked over at hundreds of refugees who were breaking camp and preparing their wagons.
‘Must move now,’ he said, still with his binoculars on the valley below. ‘They’ve split into three groups. The first has dismounted in the valley in front of the village. The other two groups are riding along the hills on both flanks.’
Savige hurried back down into the courtyard. ‘No time for breakfast,’ he said to his men as he buckled on an ammunition belt and reached for his Enfield. He ordered one machine gun mounted on the roof of a house facing the valley, and then directed Captain R.K. Nicol, the New Zealander, to take a machine gun and men to the left flank.
‘You two will come with me,’ Savige said, pointing to Sergeant Brophy, a 21-year-old Canadian, then to an Armenian chieftain left with him by Petros.
He also took a light machine gun, and led the way on horseback to the vital right flank, where the village could be cut off if he didn’t move fast enough. He dismounted, crept into a poplar grove and took up a position behind a low mud wall near the edge of the wood.
The Armenian was frantically keen to fire.
‘No,’ Savige said, ‘they’re too far away.’
He watched as about 200 Turks came down from the ridges on the right, and began dismounting and discussing how to make their attack on the village.
He had no second thoughts. He set up his Lewis gun and lined up his view finder as dawn crept fully over the valley.
‘Laying the sights on to the thickest group in the centre of the crowd,’ Savige later wrote, ‘I pressed the trigger until the whole magazine had been expended.’
The assassin who had terrorised Turkish marksmen on Gallipoli was once more killing his old enemy, en masse. About a dozen were felled.
Brophy replaced the empty magazine. Savige fired again and ‘burst into the now panic-stricken enemy. Men and horses were rolling and kicking on the ground amongst the others, and those of the enemy who were fortunate enough to be holding their horses, quickly mounted and galloped back to the protection of the hills.’1
***
Savige’s attack had triggered Nicol on the left flank to do the same. But the enemy on the left were not checked. They kept coming. This panicked eight of the Assyrians and Armenians, who ran for their lives, taking most of the ammunition and machine-gun magazines with them. Nicol, one Assyrian and one Armenian fought on with fast-dwindling bullets. Yet their courage and Savige’s attack caused the hundreds of Turks to hold back.
Savige ordered a West Australian horse-breaker, Sergeant Bernard Francis Murphy, to retreat along the ridges away from Kara Kand. With help from some others, Murphy had the group’s mule train on the move within minutes. Savige’s message was: ‘Keep them going. We’ll be in front of you, defending.’
Murphy struggled to manoeuvre the animals clear of the village streets. Savige was in two minds about whether to rush from their position 650 metres away or continue to fire on the marauding Turks, who were now coming out of the hills from several directions.
His first instinct was to put his energies into stopping the enemy soldiers coming down. He had to prevent them from cutting off him and his men.
But Murphy’s was a Herculean task. Savige and his men could all see the Kurds in action now, apparently ready to attack the mules. When the last of the animals finally moved clear of Kara Kand, Savige looked over at Murphy and sent up a silent prayer of thanks on his behalf.
‘He raced to a rise two hundred yards clear of the village,’ Savige later noted, ‘keeping his horse under cover, dismounted and crept up the slope, placing his gun in position to obtain a good field of fire.’
Murphy had just set himself up when at least 200 horsemen dashed into the open. He held his machine gun steady and let go a continuous stream of fire. It felled at least a dozen Kurds. The rest fled to the cover of the mud walls of the village.
They regrouped inside four minutes and attempted another sweep of the mules. Murphy had had time to prepare again. His gun spat at the enemy and brought down a further 10 antagonists. Once more the Kurds scattered and regrouped, chastened but not beaten, even though they’d lost 10 per cent of their force inside 10 minutes.
The men with the mules were being cut down by fire from a distance now. Their loads, including ammunition, would be the target for opportunistic looting; the raiders would take risks beyond the norm to acquire such a prize and ride off with it. It was the way of all Middle Eastern tribes – Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Armenians, Syrians and many others – and had often become the method of the British too.
Captain Nicol on the left flank seemed emboldened beyond his courageous acts so far. He left his machine gun and hurried on foot into the open, in an attempt to give the mulers a hand.
Yet he stayed aiding them a minute too long. He was shot, and fell forward, motionless.
‘Murphy, who was nearest Nicol’s horse, ordered one of the [Armenian] lads to gallop out and bring him in, while he kept the enemy back with the fire of his machine gun,’ Savige later recalled. ‘The lad had not traversed fifty yards, when down crashed his horse, though in some miraculous way, not a bullet touched the rider, who luckily was near cover, under which he crawled back once more.’
Murphy ordered another man to attempt to drag Nicol clear, but his horse was felled also. Again, the man ran clear and was not hit.
Meanwhile, Murphy had run out of ammunition. He rode around under the cover of trees to Savige’s position in search of bullets to replenish his stock.
‘We looked around for some of the twenty-four Armenians and Assyrians, who were carrying the loaded magazines for the guns, to find that at least half of them had pulled back along the road to a place of more safety.’
Both Savige and Murphy were fuming, but with no time even to curse, they turned their attention to the stricken Nicol, who had not moved a muscle.
A third Armenian was ordered to ride out and retrieve him, but he was beaten back by heavy fire. Most reluctantly, they had to leave their comrade.
It seemed that ‘in all probability the would-be rescuers would be shot down one after the other in their futile attempts,’ Savige later wrote. ‘Feeling sure that he was beyond help, we decided to preserve the lives of the remainder [of the men and mules] to the last minute, in order to hold up the enemy’s advance.’2
***
The intense fire terrified the refugees. Many left their wagons and ran away. Savige sent a message to the cavalry commander Colonel Bridges, who was close to the refugees, for help. Then he did his best to round up the escaped Armenians carrying their ammunition, but they were nowhere to be found.
Savige decided on a tactic: ‘As the Turks and Kurds pressed our front and extended further along round our flanks, we decided to gallop back to the next position [ridge or spur], which was done under fire from three sides.’3
With just eight of his own men, plus an Armenian and Assyrian who had not fled, against at least 500, this method was their only chance of fending off their attackers. If Savige failed, the main body of tens of thousands of refugees might be slaughtered.