Dunsterville was in contact with the Armenian National Council in Baku and urged Marshall in Mesopotamia to send infantry and artillery but Marshall refused and in June sent only the already promised, two companies each of the 1st/4th Hampshire and 1st/2nd Gurkhas, two mountain guns of the 21st Battery and supplies in the vans; the troops took over guarding the road up to Resht. The War Office and the War Cabinet questioned Marshall's judgement and asked Dunsterville directly, what it would take to control the Caspian Sea and destroy the oilfields. Dunsterville urged a forward policy but not the sabotage of the oil as this was inimical to the interests of the populations he was trying to recruit against the Ottomans. Marshall then offered the 39th Infantry Brigade of the 13th (Western) Division and artillery, provided that it could be supplied locally. (The brigade was detached on 1 July and set off in stages from the Brigade HQ arriving five days later.) Along with training and leadership, Dunsterforce was to occupy the Baku oil fields, to deny oil and the local cotton crop to the Germans and Ottomans. Dunsterforce was to operate against the Ottomans in the west and hold a line from Batum to Tiflis, Baku and Krasnovodsk (on the opposite side of the Caspian Sea) to Afghanistan.