Memoir of the Career of Thomas Edward Rogers [‎36r] (71/118)

But I was careful not to tempt fortune in Captain Sazanov's flying circus
after a later occasion when remorse had gripped him badly. I gave a May Day
party in the Consulate for a handful of anti-locust personnel, three or four
out of work crewmen from the Vincent and the White and Red Russians. The
whisky, gin and Persian vodka flowed - a good deal in the Captain's direction.
He drank heavily but did not disgrace himself. We all thought no more of it,
especially as it was May Day, until next day he sought audience with myself and
Lean. He had let himself down, he said, and the Red Air Force too (of which, by
the way, no member was nearer than Teheran). We should report him to his superior
officers for disciplinary action. Gradually we calmed him down and said he
should forget the matter. But it was clearly no day to go flying with him. I
was left hoping my only two Red Russians met in the war were not a fair sample
of Russian emotionalism and capacity for self-reproach.
One of my overland trips was east to Minab, the first Hormuz before the great
trade centre moved itself and its name to the island off Bandar Abbas in the 13th
century. I travelled to make clear to a bad hat controlling the coast southwards
to Jask that his smuggling was one thing but having contact with our enemies quite
another. My car covered three miles in heavy sand the second day and was left
behind. I rode my first camel cautiously avoiding a colleague's reported spill
through mounting from the side a beast taught to rise at once from the crouching
position at the first pressure on its back. The trick is to jump up smartly
from the rear. I was not surprised that T.E. Lawrence after vast practice
confessed himself an imperfect camel rider: and I rejoiced that the East India
Company had operated in India and not in Arabia. We might otherwise have read
'camel' for 'horse' in their 19th century requirement for recruits adopted by
the ICS: "the ability to perform journeys on horseback".