Briefly about the Transcaspian region.
The SRS, Mensheviks, Turkestan nationalists, and Russian white guards raised the Askhabad revolt in July 1918, seized the Transcaspian region, and created the "Transcaspian provisional government", which on July 26, 1918, asked the British to send military aid.
1) White Transcaspian government had an army, although it was very, very bad. Composition:
a) Detachments of Russian volunteers. At the first, "democratic" stage - workers from railway workers and former soldiers from the front, as well as many officers and other volunteers.
b) Turkmen horsemen from local tribes under the control of former Turkmen officers.
c) Armenians from the local population of the Transcaspian region and refugees.
2) After the arrival of the British in the summer of 1918, the situation changed. English presence in Turkestan headed the British military mission in Turkistan, based in Askhabad. The mission was led by major General Malleson, whose headquarters were located in Mashhad (Iran). In the early stages of the intervention, he gave instructions by Telegraph, only from the end of January 1919 until the withdrawal of troops in April, he was constantly in Askhabad. Malleson also visited the city in December 1918. All work on the site was entrusted to captain Reginald Teague-Jones, his Majesty's representative in Askhabad. From the beginning of 1919, help began to arrive from the Caucasus from General Denikin. Replacements - mostly Cossacks of the Terek army, captured red army men, some parts of the Caucasians. There are still many officers and Armenians, but there are now noticeably fewer Russians.
3) A separate form for the Transcaspian army was supposed to develop, but the project remained a project. I don't know exactly what the Transcaspian army wore, but the information is very sketchy. The simplest assumption is that at the first stage they wore what everyone had. That is, the usual uniform, civilian clothes and national costumes. Also, individual officers, according to some sources, had English coats and white tunics - white tunics and hats-Panama hats were the uniform of the troops of the Turkestan military district: although most of them went to the Reds, the whites also got something. Also, the red army wrote that in one of the battles the enemy wore white ribbons on their headdresses - apparently to differ from the red ones, who were dressed in the same way.
4) A Distinctive feature of the war on the Transcaspian front was that it was fought along the railway and therefore of great importance were armored trains, which managed to make quite a lot, with machine guns and artillery. Because of the lack of armor, they were often armored with bales of cotton (
>>1151117 ) - such bales could easily hold a bullet from a rifle. The army also had one airplane and several old guns, ranging from three-inch guns to wedge guns, an outdated system. Due to the lack of weapons on both sides (Turkestan was cut off from other fronts, and the British could only supply the region through a narrow and difficult connection through Persia), the production of artisanal ammunition, in particular, grenades from cans, was widely practiced.
5) The intervention in Transcaspia was an adventure of the British Persian command, mainly Malleson, who was sure that the Bolsheviks would fall if they only helped the local rebels. However, the British forces were not enough, and without them the front promised to collapse. The uncertain situation lasted until the end of 1918, when it became clear that it was necessary either to withdraw troops (especially since after the end of the First World war, the opposition to Turkish troops from the Caucasus, which in theory could reach India, lost its meaning), or to strengthen its presence in the region. The latter was reckless, given that Turkestan joined forces with troops from Central Russia - and the level of the red Army had already grown significantly. Therefore, by spring, there were no English left in Transcaspia, with the exception of a small garrison in Krasnovodsk. By the way, even under malleson, he did not report directly to Him, but to India. Finally, Malleson tried to negotiate with the local government (I don't know whether it was on his own initiative or not) and suggested declaring an independent Transcaspian Republic as a self-determined territory of the Turkmen, and then legalizing it at the Paris conference. This would form a "sort of" Turkmen state under an English protectorate. The transcaspians (who were also not happy about the intervention) did not like the idea and preferred to remain a province under Denikin's rule.
1) Malleson bon - Like other parts of the Russian Empire, the Transcaspian region suffered from huge inflation, and there was absolutely not enough money for daily economic activities. In such circumstances, even the British military mission in Askhabad was forced to issue its obligations.
2) British positions at Krasnovodsk, summer 1919