مذكرة عن السيرة المهنية للسير توماس إدوارد روجرز [و‎‎٢‎٨] (١١٨/٥٥)

course of the war dictated more direct action with Persian tribes to counter
their pro-Axis sympathies.
These considerations were later reinforced by proof that Nasir was ready to
receive German forces and had so far committed himself that he had prepared
some landing grounds and planned others. There was also evidence that some
senior officers were plotting with him. One of these, General Zahidi was
captured in December, 1942 by Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean in a daring coup at
Isfahan related in his book "Eastern Approaches". Sir Reader Bullard (knighted
following the Teheran Conference in 1943) described this exploit, in his
autobiography "The Camels Must Go", as "one of the most remarkable individual
feats of the war". I was later to meet Fitzroy Maclean when in the early sixties
I was working under the Foreign Office in Yugoslavia where he was often a visitor
to renew his wartime contacts with Tito's Partisans and especially Tito himself.
I recall wanting to question Maclean about the coup at Isfahan, as I was not far
away at the time, but he was full of a recent visit to Tito when the President
had delighted him by presenting his guest at breakfast with a metal pen and ink
stand which he had spent some of the night using his former skills as artisan to
fashion.
To return to the issue of to meet or not meet Nasir Khan. It seemed best to
make the contact. I thought him - admittedly on the basis of a short encounter -
intelligent and able with a quietly strong personality. I kept to civilities and
non-political conversation and to that extent, I suppose, did not violate the
Embassy's position which in any case only became known to me in full detail later.
The contact made could be built on if necessary or taken no further (and even,
as I was a junior officer, disowned) as best served the overall British interest.
But a cat, or perhaps just a kitten, was set among the Embassy pigeons when shortly
after my return to Bushire a tribesman of Nasir Khan rode into the Embassy compound