Battle of Dushak

On 14 October 1918 the troops of the anti-Bolshevik Transcaspian government and Indian units attacked the Bolshevik positions at Dushak station. Dushak lies on the railway from Ashgabat to Merv, between Kaakha and Tejen, and Bolshevik troops from Tashkent were stationed there. The date of 14 October is given by F. J. Moberly’s British official history, by Russian accounts and by most recent works. Charles Ellis, an officer of the British mission who later described the fighting, writes that the column set out across the desert on the night of 12 October and that the attack came at dawn, which would point to 13 October. The British chronology of the war records the “action at Dushak” under 12 October.

After the Bolsheviks had been beaten off at Kaakha, General Wilfrid Malleson, head of the British mission in Mashhad, decided to go over to the offensive and push the enemy back beyond Merv. His detachment at the front had been reinforced at the beginning of September by a battery of British field artillery, and at the end of the month by two squadrons of the Indian 28th Light Cavalry. The main column consisted of two companies of the 19th Punjabis, about 400 Russian and Armenian infantry of the Transcaspian government and a similar number of Turkmen infantry, with the British battery and two Russian guns. The Indian cavalry moved to the south, under cover of the hills, while the Turkmen horsemen were to go round the station and cut the line behind it. A company of the Hampshire Regiment remained in reserve at Kaakha. According to Ellis, there were then no more than about 500 British and Indian soldiers in the whole of Transcaspia.

Surprise failed. Before dawn two Punjabi patrols ran into each other in the dark and opened fire on each other, which alerted the Reds. The attack went in nonetheless. On open ground the advance came under machine-gun fire from trenches and irrigation ditches. The Transcaspians went to ground, and the Turkmen infantry scattered across the desert. The Punjabis, supported by the battery’s fire, charged with the bayonet and within a few minutes drove the enemy from his line, capturing six guns and sixteen machine guns. The Indian cavalry caught the fleeing Bolsheviks. One shell hit an ammunition wagon at the station, and the explosion destroyed the buildings and the trains standing nearby, killing many enemy soldiers. At that point, however, the Transcaspian government’s soldiers and the Turkmens threw themselves into looting the trains. The Bolsheviks, reinforced from Tejen, counter-attacked with the support of armoured trains. The Punjabis, though bled white, charged again with the bayonet, and the cavalry helped to throw the enemy back. Because of the disorder among their allies, however, the commanders decided not to pursue the Reds. In the evening the whole column returned to Kaakha with its wounded.

The losses of the Indian units were very heavy. The 19th Punjabis had all their British officers killed or wounded, and according to Ellis also 47 men killed and 139 wounded. Moberly gives a total of 186 killed and wounded in this regiment and 17 in the 28th Light Cavalry. The British estimated Bolshevik losses at about a thousand killed and wounded, mainly from the explosion. Other authors more cautiously give over 500. A few days later the Reds abandoned Dushak and fell back to Tejen, and at the end of October also from Merv, towards Charjui on the Amu Darya. The Transcaspian troops with an Indian detachment occupied Merv on 1 November. The Government of India, however, forbade the British to go any further, and Soviet historians later presented the Battle of Dushak as a Bolshevik victory.