Defence of Baku begins

On 26 August 1918 Nuri Pasha’s Caucasian Army of Islam struck the defenders of Baku in greater strength for the first time since the failed assault of 5 August. The objective was a mud volcano north of Biləcəri station, a low hill at the point where the defence line turned east. The British called it the Mud Volcano or Dirty Volcano. It was the most threatened point of the whole line, and for that reason it was held by British soldiers rather than by units of the Centro-Caspian Dictatorship. According to the British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign by F.J. Moberly, the hill was defended by D Company of the 7th Battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment under Captain Sparrow: five officers and 135 men. It was to be supported by two Armenian battalions stationed by Biləcəri station.

The assault on the hill

At about 10.30 a.m. the Turks advanced from the south-west in four lines of skirmishers, with cavalry on their right flank. The commander of the 39th Infantry Brigade, Lieutenant-Colonel Faviell, estimated them at about a thousand men; the historians of the Caucasian wars, the Briton W.E.D. Allen and the Russian émigré Paul Muratoff, write of two battalions. They were supported by mountain guns and heavier artillery in the rear. The defenders repulsed four attacks with machine-gun and rifle fire. The fifth swept away post no. 1. At about 12.30 p.m. the Turks went round the hill from the north, brought up machine guns and began to rake the remaining posts from the flank and rear. At about 1.30 p.m. posts nos. 2 and 3 were taken. All the company’s officers were killed, missing or wounded. Moberly gives three officers killed or missing and two wounded, and among the men 46 killed or missing and 31 wounded. The 58 survivors were gathered by Major A. H. Ruston of the Dunsterforce machine-gun company and withdrawn to Biləcəri.

The Armenians who were to come to the rescue were not at the station. According to Faviell, the two battalions designated as the reserve for this sector never left the city at all, either because they refused to march or because the local staff did not pass on the order. The sector commander, Colonel Kazarov, explained that support had always been stationed there, only that day the old units had already gone down to the city and the new ones had not yet arrived. The Baku artillery was silent, reportedly because there were no officers with it. The other units of the defence, from which the hill was clearly visible, did not move.

Stafford Hill

At the same time the Turks attacked from the village of Novxanı a hill west of Binəqədi, defended by an Armenian battalion. A North Staffordshire company under Lieutenant Craig, sent from Digah to help, found the trenches abandoned at about 2.15 p.m. The British ran up to the top just as about 250 Turks were climbing the northern slope, and drove them back with fire at close range. They repulsed a second attack without difficulty. They lost about ten men, including Craig, who was wounded. From then on the hill was called Stafford Hill. Reinforcements from the city, about 130–140 soldiers of the North Staffordshire and the Royal Warwickshire Regiment under Major Ley, sent by lorry, a company of the Worcestershire Regiment and two guns of the 8th Field Battery, arrived only in the afternoon, when the volcano had already been lost. Ley occupied a new line from Stafford Hill through a height named Warwick Castle to Biləcəri station. The Turks did not press their attack further.

Without the general

Major-General Lionel Dunsterville was not in Baku at the time. On 24 August he had sailed to Enzeli to conclude a final peace with Kuchik Khan’s Jangalis and recover British prisoners. He returned on 27 August and only then heard of the loss of the hill from Lieutenant-Colonel Keyworth, who commanded the British forces in the city. He judged that the North Staffordshire company had “saved Baku that day”: had the attack fallen on the local units, the Turks would have reached the line of cliffs and entered the city. He knew, however, that his incomplete brigade, little more than a thousand infantrymen, had borne the whole weight of the fighting, while the enemy had received reinforcements. According to Allen and Muratoff, the first units of the Turkish 36th Caucasian Division were already approaching Baku. Dunsterville wrote in his memoirs that he faced the question of whether he could still risk his soldiers’ lives in a cause that seemed hopeless.

The following days brought only artillery fire. On 31 August the Turks took Stafford Hill and Warwick Castle, and on 1 September they drove the defenders out of Digah. Dunsterville then informed the city authorities that he was withdrawing his troops, but in the end the British remained in Baku for another two weeks, until the decisive assault.