Lawrence always vigorously supported this strategy and after instruction from Garland led many daring raids against the line in Hejaz and Syria. Like all the men involved in the planning and execution of these raids he defended them on two grounds. As long as the Turks had unimpeded use of the Damascus-to-Medina line they could shift men and munitions through an area which would eventually become the eastern flank of General Murray’s Syrian front. To keep the line open, the Turkish High Command had to deploy between 15,000 and 16,000 men in Medina and its hinterland and a further 6,000 disposed in a chain of fortified stations and outposts which stretched northwards to Maan, where there was a garrison of 7,000. In all about 27,000 men were tied down guarding the line, although the figure fluctuated because of wastage through disease and desertions, which was made good with periodic reinforcements.
According to Lawrence’s analysis of the situation, set out in the Seven Pillars, this force could, by using the railway, intervene at any time to menace British operations in Syria. This had been Murray’s fear and there had been a spasm of nervousness in March 1917 when two Turkish prisoners claimed that Fakhri had been ordered by Enver to abandon Medina and bring his forces back to Syria.11 This proved to be untrue, but it highlighted a peril which would remain as long as the line stayed open. Moreover, Lawrence argued, a guerrilla war of attrition against the railway would injure Turkey where she was most vulnerable. ‘In Turkey things were scarce and precious, men less esteemed,’ and so the destruction of scarce war materials did more lasting harm than the killing of men. Such a war of tip-and-run raids was the only possible option open to his Beduin irregulars with their brittle morale, dread of casualties and inability to take, hold and defend positions against disciplined Turkish troops.
This was certainly the best way to use the Arab irregulars, but was the Turkish war effort as seriously damaged as Lawrence imagined? His assumption that the Medina garrison would have been a valuable reinforcement for the Syrian Fourth Army was shared by von Sandars. In February 1918 he sought Enver’s permission to evacuate Medina and redeploy its garrison in Syria, where Turco-German forces were already outnumbered. Enver refused. From the first days of the Arab Revolt he had resolved to hold the holy city of Medina for propaganda purposes and as a bargaining counter in the event of peace talks.12 So long as Enver remained Minister of War there was no chance that Fahreddin’s forces would be committed to Syria. Inside Medina, Fahreddin was not unduly troubled by the persistent attacks on the railway. The blockade by Abdullah’s army was never tight enough to cut off supplies of food from Ibn Rashid.
Nor was Fahreddin inconvenienced by the destruction of track, as Garland discovered:
In fact, Fakhri Pasha said to me after the armistice, that whenever he heard the detonations of railway destruction in the night, he chuckled to himself and said, ‘My lazy troops will not be able to loaf tomorrow’13
Supplies of track and sleepers were plentiful in Medina, where they had been stored before the war in readiness for laying a branch line to Mecca: These were used by the excellent Turkish railway troops to repair the line, which remained open to trains from the north. After six months the results were disappointing, as Wemyss reported to the Admiralty: ‘In spite of persistent raids by British officials against the Hejaz Railway the enemy has succeeded in getting munitions, supplies and reinforcements into Medina.’14 Results apart, the railway campaign waged between January 1917 and the end of the war at least kept the Arab irregulars occupied, and reports of their demolitions were assiduously forwarded by Wingate to the War Office and Cabinet where they no doubt reassured those who read them that the government was getting a return on its subsidies.
Lawrence strenuously defended the guerrilla campaign and his views were later echoed by Liddell Hart, who used evidence drawn from the works of professional strategists such as Saxe, von Clausewitz and Foch to support the contention that a war could be waged in which one army deliberately shuns engagement with its adversary. The Arabs, moving freely as only they knew how, could use the desert as a ship uses the sea and it gave them immunity to retaliation from a conventional army whose mobility was curtailed by cumbersome columns of transport animals. More importantly, although neither Lawrence nor Liddell Hart mentions the fact, the Turks lacked sufficient aircraft and motor vehicles to reconnoitre and patrol vast areas of desert. This point was fully understood by Lawrence, who at the end of 1918 suggested that with a handful of tanks he could take on and destroy the Wahabbi camelry of Ibn Saud. Two years later Lawrence whole-heartedly backed proposals to employ RAF aircraft rather than conventional ground forces as the agents of imperial peace-keeping and punishment in Iraq, Jordan and Aden. Against the Turkish army, without armoured cars or enough aircraft, the sort of guerrilla war envisaged by Lawrence stood a chance of success. It could not beat the enemy but it could annoy him and force him to waste men and resources. This is what the diehard Boers had discovered between 1900 and 1902, when small commandos of mounted men had tied down over a quarter of a million British and Dominion soldiers. Lawrence’s Arabs were more fortunate than the Boers for they had access to such modern weaponry as aircraft, armoured cars and artillery provided by their allies. Furthermore, Lawrence and the Arabs would never have to face more than a small fragment of the Turkish army, the bulk of which was concentrated on the Syrian front to resist a more formidable adversary, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which totalled 156,000 men at the beginning of 1917.
Lawrence did not invent the concept of the Arab guerrilla war, although after the war he provided it with an elaborate intellectual justification in terms of military theory. The general idea of using Arab irregulars as guerrillas had been bandied about in Cairo and London since the start of the revolt. It was discussed when Major Bray met Robertson and Austen Chamberlain in London in November 1916. Robertson opened the exchange:
‘I hear you are one of those fellows who think the Arab is no damn good at all?’
‘No, Sir,’ I answered, ‘I think that you cannot expect them, in their present state of organisation, to hold trenches against disciplined troops, but as guerrilla fighters they will be splendid.’15
Robertson snorted; he had fought the Boers, who had also been excellent guerillas but, in the end, their campaign had just extended a war whose result had been a foregone conclusion. Clayton had no such misgivings about a guerrilla campaign. At the end of December, he wrote to George Lloyd, ‘There is only one key to the success of the Arab revolt and that is the cutting of the Hejaz railway, as has been persistently dinned into the ears of all and sundry from the beginning.’16
For Clayton such a campaign could proceed only under the direction of ‘a guiding spirit who will see issues with a clear eye’. This man would have to be bold and unorthodox, unfettered by the hidebound military thinking which so far had held up progress on the Arab front. Lawrence had the stamina for the job, his imagination had been stirred by the possibilities of a guerrilla war and he was keen to demonstrate its potential. Clayton discarded his old view that Lawrence was most valuable behind a desk in Cairo and supported him as the man most likely to transform general concepts into reality. As Wingate’s Chief of Staff he was in a position to ensure that Lawrence’s attachment to Faisal’s army became permanent. It was Faisal who tipped the balance by his insistence that Lawrence stayed.17
From January to July, Lawrence was Faisal’s political officer, working alongside Newcombe, who advised on operations, and answerable to Wilson in Jiddah and through the Arab Bureau to GHQ intelligence and Murray. His first duty was to accompany Faisal’s forces on their march northward from Umm Lajj to al Wajh. The Red Sea port had been designated in October as a base for Arab attacks on the Tabuk–to–el–Ela section of the Hejaz railway line, but operations for its capture had been postponed by the Turkish offensive during November and December.18 The attack on al Wajh opened a new, offensive phase in the Arab campaign. The overall strategy shaped by Wingate, Wilson and the Arab leadership involved the encircleme
nt of Medina by Abdullah’s army, which would keep up pressure on the southern section of the Hejaz line while Faisal’s and Ali’s forces mounted raids further north from their base at al Wajh.
The capture of al Wajh on 23 January 1917 was a fiasco which underlined the fears of many British observers that, when it came to fighting, the Arab movement was more farce than force. The plan had been for Faisal’s army of 3,000 tribesmen with four cannon and a dozen machine–guns to move north on 15 January accompanied by Lawrence and Newcombe. Nine days later they would assault al Wajh from the south and east, while Royal Navy warships shelled the Turkish trenches before sending ashore 500 Arab irregulars and 250 bluejackets. Faisal’s forces dawdled and were soon in difficulties when it was discovered that someone had forgotten to bring enough transport camels. By 23 January the Arab army was twenty-five miles from its objective without any hope of carrying out its part in the attack.
The Turkish commander at al Wajh was aware of Faisal’s plans and withdrew himself and his mounted men rather than face naval bombardment and assault by overwhelming numbers. Wemyss, concerned about the sanitary risks involved in keeping 500 Arabs on board his three men-of-war and with no clear indication of Faisal’s whereabouts, ordered a landing on the afternoon of the 23rd. The bluejackets carried the town and, once victory was certain, the Arabs plucked up courage and rushed in to plunder. Captain Vickery, who commanded their contingent, was dismayed by their cravenness and thought gloomily ‘of the British taxpayer, who supplied those bottomless bags of gold sovereigns for Eastern potentates to squander’. The looters were also shocked, but by the ladies’ underwear they found in the quarters of the Turkish commander. One British observer in a sea-plane had been killed and five Arabs while the Turks suffered twenty casualties.19
Faisal’s forces trooped into al Wajh and seemed to Major Bray, an onlooker, to be ‘extremely light-hearted’ in spite of their lateness. To all but Lawrence the bungling at al Wajh was the Arabs’ fault. Misinformed by an Arab youth that the taking of the town had cost twenty lives, Lawrence blamed Vickery.
Vickery, who directed the battle, was satisfied, but I could not share his satisfaction. To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin. I was unable to take the professional view that all successful actions were gains. Our rebels were not materials, like soldiers, but friends of ours, trusting our leadership.
Had the seaborne forces waited for Faisal, the garrison could have been starved into surrender. This was a convenient gloss that drew attention away from Arab mismanagement, which at the time Lawrence clearly acknowledged. In his report on the march to al Wajh he lamented the Arabs’ inability to adhere to schedules, the shortage of capable subordinate commanders, inadequate provision of water camels and the fact that to keep spirits high Faisal brought with him more men than were needed.20
Recriminations after the al Wajh muddle created a rift between Lawrence and two Indian army officers, Bray and Vickery. The recriminations continued after the war. Lawrence privately described Vickery as a ‘vulgar’ fellow who ‘lowered white prestige’, and Vickery, in a lecture to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1923, wrote off the Arabs as a cowardly, venal rabble, many of whom, despite Islamic prohibitions, drank too much.21
Vickery could not share Lawrence’s tolerance for the Arabs; Bray questioned Lawrence’s military judgements and accused him of hijacking the Arab movement, dissipating its energies and thinking too much of his own glory. These charges appeared in Bray’s autobiographical Shifting Sands, which appeared in 1934. Old rancour was getting a fresh airing. By March 1917 Bray had expressed deeply felt misgivings about the way in which the Arab movement was being handled by British officers, presumably including Lawrence, and on account of these secured his transfer back to France. His public challenge to Lawrence eighteen years later was contemptuously dismissed. ‘Bray,’ Lawrence wrote, ‘is quite an honest muddle-headed sort of chap, who believed everything he wrote,’ and his criticisms were a publisher’s device to sell more books.22
With his public reputation at its height and his version of the Arab movement almost universally accepted, Lawrence could afford to be off-hand. In the beginning of 1917 he could not be so blase. To professional officers, accustomed to commanding natives, Lawrence’s softly-softly approach and respect for the Arabs seemed ludicrous.
Moreover as a political officer his intrusions into purely military affairs were resented. The events before and during the taking of al Wajh were plain evidence that the Arabs, on whom he pinned so much faith, would never amount to much. A spectacular demonstration of Arab prowess was needed to prove Lawrence’s assertion that, directed on their terms and fighting in their own way, they could make headway. If he could be the instrument of such a coup, then he would no longer be dismissed as a meddler with a bee in his bonnet. His chance came in May 1917 when Faisal despatched him with a party of emissaries under orders to penetrate Syria and sound out the loyalties of tribal leaders there.
Syria was Faisal’s goal as well as Lawrence’s. In December 1917 a report filed at GHQ intelligence in Cairo, presumably by Lawrence, indicated that Faisal was already entertaining ambitions to move north and put himself at the head of a Syrian national movement.23 Secret exchanges between representatives of Nuri Shalaan of the Rwallah and Faisal had been under way since October and Lawrence was allowed to be party to them. In January 1917 he told Wilson that Nuri, his son Nawaf and other Anazah sheiks had gathered at al Jawf and read Faisal’s letters. They agreed to make an open breach with the Turks the moment Arab forces occupied el Ela and Tayma.24 There were snags, since Ibn Rashid would resist any move against Tayma, and there was no harmony among the tribes around al Jawf.
The prospects for a Syrian revolt were promising. During 1917 GHQ intelligence in Cairo had accumulated evidence of widespread discontent generated by the after–effects of the 1915–16 famine, the repressive measures taken against local nationalists, high food prices, taxation and the continued exactions of the Turkish army. The exploitation of these grievances depended on the ability of Faisal and the Allies to suborn tribal and community leaders, of whom the majority still favoured the Turks or who would only make up their minds once it was clear which side would win. In the meantime the Arab Bureau stepped up the circulation of pan-Arabist propaganda.
Faisal needed little prodding in the direction of Syria. He was jealous of his brother Abdullah, whom he knew had Syrian aspirations and whose successes in the field contrasted with his own setbacks. Lawrence, now a close neighbour to Faisal’s counsels, encouraged his ambitions and suggested means by which they could be accomplished. Early in April Adjudant Lamotte, the French representative at al Wajh, found Lawrence and Faisal totally preoccupied with Syrian enterprises. 25 By this time plans were well developed for a programme of subversion designed to draw the Syrian Beduin into an alliance with Faisal.
At the beginning of April, Faisal and his Syrian counsellor, Dr Nasib al Bakri, had further meetings with emissaries from the Anazah, including Nuri Shalaan’s brother. They were told that in June Faisal intended to lead a small force into the Jebel Druze and then move against Dera and Afule, presumably having won over the Druze and with active assistance from the Anazah. Faisal added that he had the approval of his English advisers (Lawrence and Newcombe), who had said that these operations would not hinder the campaign against Medina. Faisal warned his listeners that the French with 60,000 men were about to land in Syria, which was nonsense, and added that, without Arab help, France would never subdue the province. If they tried to, he would fight them once the Turks had been beaten. This bullishness may have been designed to impress his audience, but Faisal had already bluntly told Brémond that he was soon to enter Syria. Brémond took him at his word and feared that the ‘dull and headstrong’ Faisal would give greater trouble to his government than Abdullah.26
In Faisal, Lawrence had found a willing accomplice for his private schemes to scotch a post-war French takeover of Syria. Colonel Bré
mond and the French mission were well aware of this, although Faisal had been chary of any direct confrontation over the Syrian issue. In a charming speech to Brémond and his colleague Colonel Cadi, he ‘begged that they would make me party to their plans and intentions so that I could help them as far as lay in me’. Recounting the conversation to Lawrence, whom he allowed to take notes, Faisal continued, ‘While saying this I saw their faces become parti-coloured and their eyes confused.’27 The Frenchmen’s response must have delighted Lawrence. Brémond replied, ‘The firmness and strength of the present bonds between the Allies did not blind them to the knowledge that these alliances were only temporary and that between England and France, England and Russia lay such deep-rooted seeds of discord that no permanent friendship could be looked for.’ If Faisal was telling the truth, his revelation to Lawrence that the French were already thinking in terms of post-war manoeuvres conceived to further their own national interests against those of their former ally would have confirmed what he had already surmised. For him, Wilson and Wingate, this candid admission justified the pursuit of secret stratagems against France in Syria.
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