Memoir of the Career of Thomas Edward Rogers [‎24r] (47/118)

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other of our small staff at the Residency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, established in the provinces and regions considered part of, or under the influence of, British India. who often worked interdependently
as a team would make tours to supervise tactfully the effectiveness of
distribution of wheat and other basic foodstuffs which our convoys had struggled
to bring round the Cape. I return later to one such tour made.
In early 1942 there was a bizarre incident at the newly opened Russian
Consulate at Bushire. A Vice-Consul and his wife had been installed to keep an
eye on, among other things, the transshipment of supplies for the Russian front
which were expected shortly. These would be mainly lorries brought in on
lighters in knocked-down form and put together by a British agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. (United Kingdom
Commercial Corporation) using local labour on a primitive assembly line. The
supply route through Persia was the most important by far of the five lines
feeding the Russian front and indeed the Russian 'lift' was the chief achievement
of British troops. The rail link from the head of the Gulf to the Caspian took
the bulk of supplies and our long road route from Bushire through Shiraz and
Isfahan to Teheran made only a modest contribution. The peak assembly rate for
lorries reached fifty per day because conditions were so makeshift, but there were
miscellaneous supplies carried on the assembled lorries and other transport.
One day the Russian Vice-Consul was found shot inside his consulate. Had he
shot himself or had he been murdered by his wife? In her predicament the wife
called on Charles Stewart's help, perhaps because she knew more English than
Persian or perhaps because she preferred her country's ally to the Persian
authorities. But they of course had legal jurisdiction and the police were at once
brought in. They at first thought her guilty of murder having found some evidence
of her husband's misbehaviour with a local official's Swiss wife. I thought
suicide more likely for the wife would hardly bring down upon herself hostile
Persian and ruthless Russian interrogation - at this time the Red Army shot its
soldiers found looting on the streets of Teheran. The police plumped finally for