Asir 2: India and Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is incensed at Yemen's peace with India, calling it, among other things, a betrayal. One Saudi minister is heard to compare Yemen with Adam as he accepted the apple from Eve in Eden. Rhetoric aside, the Saudis can see that their task will be that much more difficult.
Knowing that India is certain to renew an offensive in late February as their troops move north, the Saudis launch a spoiling attack on 13 February. Indian and Filipino positions are hit and bend, but do not break - though several instances of ferocious hand-to-hand combat are reported in the Raghdan area. The Saudi offensive peters out after six days.
India counter-attacks north from Al Qunfudhah along the coastal road on 22 February. Saudi forces dig in along a seasonal riverbed just north of Abu Hanash, against the advice of their attached Dutch advisor, who points out the threat of Indian naval gunfire. On 24 February, the Saudi defenders observe an Indian aircraft circling high above their positions, followed by the arrival of about two hundred seventy rounds of 15 cm fire from the cruiser Jaipur. Later in the afternoon, the monitor Bindusara arrives and pounds away at several strong points with 21 cm shells. When troops of the Sind Krait division assault the positions, resistance is light and ineffective, with over one hundred prisoners taken.
The Dutch observer, one Captain W. Ludovicus Rooijen, is also captured, and is treated for shrapnel wounds. He invokes his status as an unarmed neutral and declines to say much more than his name, rank, and identification, though he is overheard to say something along the lines of, "I told that idiot he would find a cruiser parked offshore, but did he listen?"
He is handed over to the Red Crescent for repatriation, in front of several reporters and two news cameras, on 1 March. The body of his aide, Sergeant Wijbo Ermerins, is also returned; he had been cut down by a 15 cm shell on the 24th. Afterward, the reporters are shown some of the rather new looking rifles, machine guns, mortars and other equipment of Dutch origin that were captured in the battle.
After this defeat, which costs Saudi Arabia a battalion, there is only token resistence to the Indian drive up the coast, which culminates in a meeting between Indian troops and Hedjazi guerrillas on the southern outskirts of Jiddah in mid-March.
Inland, the situation is different, and the Saudis fight more doggedly against an Indian attack towards Al Tawilah, though the town does fall to the Chakravaat Division on 2 March anyway. Indian attacks continue at a measured pace north towards At Ta'if, with the Chakravaat being replaced by the re-deployed Green Dervishes as fatigue and casualties mount. Still, by the end of March, At Ta'if is within artillery range, as is the camp containing Indian pilgrims.
On 22 March, Prince Faisal enters Jiddah, where he proclaims the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Hedjaz. He tells a cheering crowd, "What the House of Saud began in 1924 has now come to an end. Their repressive, anti-technological cult of Wahhabism shall not cause you to live in fear and ignorance any longer."
By the end of the month, most towns and cities in the old kingdom are in the hands of guerrillas who have driven out whatever Saudi loyalists were stationed there. As for Asir, Qal'at Bishah is the only sizeable town still held by Saudi forces, though the contest between Indian Camel Corps and Saudi irregular cavalry continues to go back and forth in bloody fashion in the rocky wastes of the northeast.
There is no significant fighting in the Persian Gulf, though one Saudi speedboat is sunk by an Indian gunboat on 12 March. With the Red Sea essentially peaceful by mid-month, a number of Indian units, including most of the amphibious forces, steam out of the Red Sea and make for Bushehr, Persia.