"تاريخ الحرب الكبرى استنادًا إلى وثائق رسمية: العمليات في بلاد فارس ١٩١٤-١٩١٩" [ظ‎‎٢‎٢‎٩] (٥٦٦/٤٦٣)

406
OPERATIONS IN PERSIA
East Persia;
October-
November
1918.
Major W. P. Pakenham-Walsh, the senior R.E. officer in
East Persia, was appointed Assistant Director of Works, and
General Dickson was able to obtain local labour, supervised by
British officers and personnel of the Seistan Levy Corps, for
most of the work north of Shusp. But the desert stretch south
of there to Hurmuk was uninhabited and No. 104 Labour Corps,
the remaining half of which had just arrived from India, was
allotted to this section. Attempts made to import labour from
Seistan were not very successful, and when the Duzdab-
Hurmuk road had been completed the 107th Pioneers were
moved up to the desert section, where, owing to the bad and
scanty water, the climatic extremes and the desert conditions,
all the men employed had a very trying time.
Within a few days of his arrival, General Dickson was re
quested to telegraph his estimate of the transport he would
require. The local situation in this respect was, he found, in a
somewhat chaotic condition owing to the recent rapid develop
ment of events in Trans-Caspia. The different organised camel
corps had got mixed up and were distributed all over the line;
hired transport was working on two or three different systems;
and a great proportion of the motor vans had broken down.
Finding that Colonel M. Synge, his Assistant Director of Supply
and Transport, was consequently experiencing great difficulty in
arriving at a satisfactory estimate of what would be required,
General Dickson hit on the idea of finding a simple formula,
giving the producing capacity of the various forms of transport,
which could be readily applied to the problem. In “ East
Persia he describes how, by taking the unit of transportation
energy as the moving of one ton once a week over a distance of
one mile, he obtained a figure giving the average weekly ton-
mile capacity of each form of transport; and, by expressing
consumption in a similar manner, tables were obtained from
which it was possible to calculate transport requirements with
a minimum of trouble.
On the 14th October, after a necessarily rapid examination
of the existing situation and of local resources, General Dickson
telegraphed his preliminary estimate of his additional transport
requirements. Without allowing for any additional animals
which he might be able to procure locally—of which he could
not yet give an estimate—he considered that he would re d uir ^
11,680 Government camels or 14,600 hired camels or 1,450 For *
* Readers interested in the administrative problems of this desert line 0
communications will find in this book much of interest which cannot
eluded here for lack of space.