To be caught by the Turks at the bottom of the Pass unsupported would mean disaster for the expedition, so very reluctantly we turned the armoured car's head for Zinjan. We learned that there were Turks in Mianeh, but none of those who had quitted Zinjan in such haste before the advance of the Wagstaff column had come along the Jamalabad road. Pierpont, who was in charge of the car, was a mild-mannered youth, but of a very warlike disposition, and was much disappointed that we had not had a brush with his old enemy, the Turk. Down Mesopotamia way he once charged an infantry position and engaged in "close action" by laying his armoured car alongside a front-line trench, where he speedily closed the account of its defenders with machine-gun fire. Another swift stroke now placed us in possession of Mianeh and brought us eighty miles nearer Tabriz. Captain Osborne, taking with him a small detachment from Wagstaff's force, as well as a contingent of hastily recruited Persian irregulars, was despatched from Zinjan over the recently reconnoitred {156} route. He had a convoy of Ford vans, took with him the armoured car under Lieutenant Pierpont, and pushed forward rapidly, negotiating the difficult Baleshkent and the still more difficult Kuflan Kuh Passes. The Kuflan Kuh at its highest point is 5,750 feet, and the ascent on the south side and descent on the north side are very difficult for ordinary wheeled transport. This is especially so on the south slope, which, in a series of short, sharp gradients rises 2,000 feet in two miles. By the aid of a good deal of native labour the armoured car was safely taken over the formidable Kuflan Kuh, and duly made its appearance in Mianeh. The Turks were reported to have had a small post here, but when Osborne's party entered Mianeh the enemy had already withdrawn towards the north-west. The premises of the Indo-European Telegraph Company, which had a stout wall and a compound, were selected as British headquarters. Leaving a part of his slender command here to hold the place until Wagstaff and his main body could come up, Osborne with the armoured-car patrol and a few British N.C.O's pushed along the Tabriz road, crossed the Shibley Pass twenty miles south-east of Tabriz, and reconnoitred up to the gates of the city itself. It was a hazardous and daring undertaking, but it would have succeeded, and we could easily have won the race to Tabriz and so checkmated the less enterprising Turks, had a few companies of {157} British troops been available to hurry to the support of Osborne. But one cannot very well expect the equivalent of a sergeant's guard to perform the work of a battalion, and to hold a city of 200,000 inhabitants whose attitude was doubtful from the point of view of friendship. So Osborne had to fall back slowly towards Mianeh.