British occupy Qasr-e Shirin

The British chronology of the war records under 8 January 1918 that Qasr-e Shirin, a border town in western Persia, was occupied by British troops. The town, whose name means “Shirin’s palace” and refers to the wife of the Sasanian king Khosrow II, lay on the main road from Khanaqin to Kermanshah and on to Hamadan. Since 1915 it had changed hands many times. In June 1917, when the Russians withdrew into the mountains, the Turks entered it, but by the autumn the Russian detachment of Lieutenant-Colonel Lazar Bicherakhov, which had come under British orders, was already operating in the area. F.J. Moberly’s British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign does not give the exact date on which the British entered the town, but its account agrees with the chronology: by mid-January a British column was already stationed there, and its commander had returned on 9 January from a foray to the Pa Tak pass, further into Persia.

Why the British wanted Qasr-e Shirin

At the turn of 1917 and 1918 the Russians were withdrawing from Persia. General Baratov’s corps was falling apart, and in mid-December his soldiers mutinied in Hamadan. The British minister in Tehran proposed that troops from Mesopotamia should take over the protection of the whole road from Khanaqin to Hamadan. The commander in Mesopotamia, General William Marshall, considered this a task beyond the purpose of his army and too great a burden on its supplies. At the beginning of January, at Baratov’s request, Bicherakhov moved from Qasr-e Shirin to Kermanshah to gather around him those Russian soldiers who wanted to go on fighting. Marshall then decided to occupy Qasr-e Shirin with a detachment of his own, to secure the road to Kerend and to bring back from Kermanshah a British survey party and an Australian and New Zealand wireless detachment, which had until then been working with the Russian forces. On 3 January the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, William Robertson, also ordered him to prevent German and Turkish diplomats from getting through to Tehran and to prepare safe passage for the British military mission of General Lionel Dunsterville, which was to travel through Persia to the Caucasus.

Matthews’s column

Qasr-e Shirin was occupied by the column of Lieutenant-Colonel Matthews of the 1/4th Battalion, Hampshire Regiment. According to Moberly it consisted of two troops of the Indian 12th Cavalry, most of a mountain artillery battery, the Hampshire battalion, part of a machine-gun company, a company of Indian pioneers and two armoured cars. There was no fighting, and the worst enemies proved to be the winter and the roads. Matthews pushed through to the Pa Tak pass with part of the column to take over and escort the signal and survey detachments returning from Kermanshah, and came back on 9 January after a hard journey in bad weather. On 18 January a second British column reached Qasr-e Shirin, the mounted column of Lieutenant-Colonel Bridges of the 14th Hussars, with horse artillery guns. It was to support Bicherakhov if needed, but without his call it was not allowed to go further than Harunabad. Downpours meant that it set out for Baqubah only on 13 January, and the road beyond Pa Tak was almost impassable, so it was halted at Qasr-e Shirin. Until the end of the month the soldiers of Matthews’s column repaired the road, and their main body moved forward to Surkhadiza Khan, with posts on the Pa Tak pass and at Sar-e Pol-e Zahab.

This was the first step by the British army from Mesopotamia into the interior of western Persia. London insisted that it was only a temporary measure for the duration of the crisis, not an extension of the tasks of Marshall’s army. Soon, however, more British units set off along the same road, and the occupation of the passes on the Persian border marked the beginning of a long British presence on the route from Mesopotamia to the Caspian Sea.