CHAPTER 50
To: General Harris - Simla
From: General Barber - Meshed
A company of infantry, the 19th Punjabis, and a machine-gun detachment of the Royal Fostershire Regiment, based in Persia, crossed into Russian Turkestan several days ago. These troops were under orders to support the Ashkhabad FTU Trans-Caspian government and its troops in their fight against the Bolshevik forces based in Tashkent. The whole force is under the command of Brigadier Fishlock, with Colonel Squires commanding the Punjabis.
I have the honour to report that the Fostershire’s machine-gun detachment has already fought with honour as it covered a retreat of the FTU forces from the railway station at Dushakh. This retreat of the FTU troops from Dushakh station was in the face of overwhelming superiority of Bolshevik troop numbers. British casualties were nil Bolshevik casualties are unknown. The FTU and the British troops now have set up defensive positions at the station of Kaakha some two hundred miles west of Dushakh.
‘This, Colonel Routledge, is the first time since the Crimean war sixty odd years ago that British and Russian troops have fired on one another. Odd when you think in all that time we were expecting war with the blighters to break out during the “Great Game” of the nineteenth century - it never did. Now it has finally happened ostensibly when we are still allies – well with some Russians.’
‘I wonder where it will end though, sir. I have been looking at the map and these Bolos are moving steadily west, too steadily by half, sir.’
‘With our lads behind them these FTU troops will soon push them back, mark my words.’
The Cotton Spies Page 51