The Hants and the Ghurkas had now to bear the brunt of the attack. The Turks, reinforced, came on in surging waves and flowed over their trenches. Both units made a gallant but ineffectual fight, and were forced back up the Pass, suffering considerable losses. The enemy followed up his advantage and stormed the Pass itself. A last stand was made at the summit to cover the retreat of the guns. Here Hants and Turks fought hand to hand with bayonet and clubbed rifle, until the sadly diminished remnant of this brave battalion, after losing their gallant sergeant-major, were literally pushed over the crest and down the reverse slope. But they had stood their ground long enough to save the guns from capture. The Worcesters, who had been in reserve on the southern slope, now came doubling into action to the assistance of the hard-pressed Hants. Taking shelter behind the boulders which are plentiful on both sides of the roadway, they covered the retirement, driving the Turkish snipers off the summit of the Pass and arresting any immediate pursuit on the part of the enemy. The caravanserai at the Kizil Uzun Bridge, where Colonel Matthews had his headquarters, being now untenable, he withdrew with his remaining force across the Baleshkent Pass to Jamalabad on the road to Zinjan. As for the runaway levies, some of them did not halt until they had placed a good twenty miles between themselves and the scene of the Kuflan Kuh fighting. {194} The Turks pursued us to Jamalabad, but it was the last kick. Their offensive spent itself here, thanks to a new factor which had entered into the game. This was the armoured car sections, light and heavy, under Colonel Crawford and Lieutenant-Colonel Smiles, which, when our position was indeed precarious, had been rushed up from Kasvin and Zinjan in support of our retiring column. The Turks got a bad peppering at Jamalabad, and a few miles farther south at Sarcham where the cars were in action. The enemy had no liking for this sort of fighting, and troubled us no more. They withdrew from Jamalabad and, in anticipation of a counter-offensive on our part, proceeded to fortify themselves on the Kuflan Kuh. A week after the fight at the Kuflan Kuh two men of the Hants who had been captured by the Turks arrived in our lines, clothed in nothing save a handkerchief apiece. While their captors were squabbling amongst themselves as to the distribution of the worldly possessions of the prisoners, the latter had slipped away unperceived and gained Jamalabad. There they were waylaid by Persian thieves, badly beaten, stripped of their clothing, and left for dead on the roadside. Still, they were a plucky pair, for, recovering, they set out afresh, and, completing a fifty-mile tramp in the blazing sun without food or raiment, rejoined their unit. The Crawford armoured cars and the Matthews column slowly fell back on Zinjan, and there {195} ended the military activities of the Tabriz expedition.