Golden Warrior, The

by Lawrence, James

  The account of the small campaign which Lawrence compiled for GHQ Cairo was a vindication of the type of guerrilla warfare which he and Clayton believed the Arabs were best suited to perform. Just over 700 irregulars had been enrolled, of whom 200 were detailed to guard the base camp in the Wadi Sirhan, and others joined up during the campaign. Against them were five battalions of Turkish infantry at Maan and a cavalry force of 400 at Dera. Turkish intelligence at Maan was not very efficient, but evidence that wells had been destroyed suggests that the local commander was aware of the presence of hostile Arabs north-east of the town.

  The campaign opened on 23 June with a series of reconnaissance sorties and small–scale demolitions along the line north of Maan. Lawrence also claimed, and this was later denied by Arab sources, that he had led an expedition to examine the bridges on the Yarmuk Valley section of the Haifa–Dera line, which he later specified as targets for sabotage in his report to the War Office. The second stage of the campaign followed a successful attack by a small force on a gendarmerie outpost at el Fuweila, seventeen miles south-west of Maan. Given that the authorities in Maan were already alerted to the possibilities of an advance against Aqaba and had reinforced units between there and Maan, the response was quick and designed to be overwhelming.

  A column of the 178th Regiment, lately drafted to Maan and numbering about 550 men, moved towards el Fuweila, and accordingly the Arabs withdrew. With probably just less than that number, the Arabs pulled back to a defensive position on high ground overlooking Bir el Lasan on 2 July. Their opponents foolishly refused to contest the high ground and camped on the valley floor close to some springs. The well-chosen reverse-slope position gave the Arabs safety from artillery fire. Just after sunset Awda charged the camp with fifty camelry while the rest of the army rode down the hillside firing from the saddle. Lawrence, astride a racing camel, was in at the kill, firing his revolver. One shot hit the camel, which fell dead and he was catapulted through the air. Dazed and unable to do anything but repeat to himself some half–remembered verses, he was found later. He was told that in the mêlée the Turks’ nerve had broken and that 160 had surrendered. A further 300 were dead, many killed by Arabs enraged by the killing of some Huweitat women and children near el Fuweila a few days before.

  The advance to Aqaba was now under way. At el Quweira the garrison of 120 surrendered on 4 June, while further down the Wadi el Yutm the 300 or so men of the reinforced Aqaba garrison had retreated inland. They had heard the news of the fighting to the north and clearly feared that it was the prelude to another seaborne attack. In their efforts to keep out of the range of possible naval gunfire the garrison found themselves surrounded by local tribesmen encouraged by reports of Turkish defeats. The men who had scurried off eight weeks ago when British warships had come over the horizon had little stomach for a fight. After Lawrence and Nasir had assured them that their lives would be spared, they surrendered. On the morning of 6 July Lawrence, Awda and Nasir led their small army into the abandoned port, where they discovered a German engineer NCO who had been boring wells.

  Immediate measures had to be taken to forestall a counter-attack by the five battalions in Maan. The Arabs and their 600 prisoners had few rations beyond dates. Straightaway Lawrence set off across Sinai to Port Suez with an escort of eight men, and on the 9th he reached el Shatt, having covered 150 miles. Four days later HMS Dufferin anchored off Aqaba, unloaded food and picked up the Turkish prisoners. In Jiddah, Hussain ordered all public buildings to be illuminated in honour of a great Arab victory.

  When he returned to Cairo in June 1917, Lawrence said he had taken Aqaba at ‘Sharif Faisal’s instructions’. In fact he had jumped the gun, since Faisal had intended to take the town nine days later as part of a combined land and sea operation. After the engagement at Bir el Lasan he had had little choice but to fall back on Aqaba, take it and get help from Egypt. A return to bases in the eastern Syrian desert would have been risky since the Turks, now fully alert to the presence of his small army, could easily have intercepted it with overwhelming forces. Even so, it seems likely that Wingate and Clayton were not taken by complete surprise when they heard that Lawrence had captured Aqaba. ‘With few close exceptions’, Lawrence’s superiors had not known the plans he intended to carry out when he had left al Wajh on 9 May. This much Lawrence was prepared to tell St Quentin when they discussed the operation a few weeks later.49 Arab possession of Aqaba suited their and Lawrence’s plans for the future of the Arab movement.

  PART FOUR

  THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

  July 1917–October 1918

  I

  The Railway War

  The Aqaba coup made Lawrence an overnight celebrity in Cairo. According to St Quentin, he had become ‘the most remarkable figure in the army and the British government in the East’.1 ‘His reputation has become overpowering,’ Hogarth told his wife. A clever and sometimes peevish intelligence officer had been transformed into a resourceful, audacious and brave commander. He had won the admiration of men he had once affected to mock, and he enjoyed the satisfaction of having been proved right about the hitherto underrated Arabs. What Lawrence had accomplished in his behind-the-lines mission and the taking of Aqaba had all the hallmarks of a G.A. Henty or Boys’ Own Paper yarn and this must have recommended Lawrence to officers who had been brought up on such stuff. Hubert Young caught the prevailing mood by claiming that Lawrence was afflicted with the same madness which Wolfe had shown at Quebec.2

  Wingate was the most fulsome in his praise. ‘His magnificent achievement,’ he told Colonel Wilson, was, ‘in my opinion one of the finest done during the whole war.’3 The High Commissioner’s career stretched back thirty years to the Sudan campaigns and that age in which lion-hearted young British officers had won the hearts of wild tribal levies and led them through the sheer force of personality. Lawrence and ‘his Arabs’, as they were soon to be known, seemed to have strayed from the lost world of Skinner’s Horse or Gordon’s ‘Ever Victorious’ Chinese army. How different it all was from the present war in which men hid themselves underground in an unequal struggle against machines, chemicals and explosives.

  What mattered for Lawrence and the future of the Arab cause was that he had made himself a reputation as a commander and fighting soldier. Henceforward, his superiors would have to take him seriously, and they did. This was true of General Sir Edmund Allenby, the new Commander–in–Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, who had superseded Murray on 27 June. After discussions with Lawrence and reading his reports, Allenby told Wingate, ‘He strikes me as being a very fine soldier and I think our military operations could not be in better hands.’4 Allenby stuck to this judgement, although it was somewhat eroded by Lawrence’s behaviour at Damascus and what he later wrote in the Seven Pillars. Some time after the war, and with a dash of characteristic pepperiness, Allenby, asked for his view of Lawrence, replied, ‘I had a dozen chaps who could have done the job better.’5 On another occasion he remarked to his old friend and brother-in-arms, General Sir George Barrow, ‘Lawrence goes for you in the book, George.’ Barrow agreed, but thought it was pointless to take issue. Allenby concurred: ‘No, that would be a mug’s game. Besides we know Lawrence. He thinks himself a hell of a soldier and loves posturing in the limelight.’6 This was in the future; in July 1917 Allenby and his staff officers recognised in Lawrence an officer of extraordinary ability whose judgements were to be heeded.7

  Most importantly, Lawrence had offered Allenby not only Aqaba, but a coherent programme of ways in which the Arabs could assist the forthcoming advance on Jerusalem. A more flexible and imaginative general than Murray, Allenby had been ordered by Lloyd George to take the city before Christmas, and so boost Allied morale at a time when the news from every other front was gloomy Allenby began to lay the plans for his offensive during July and immediately recognised the value of Lawrence’s suggestions.

  In brief, Lawrence foresaw a series of miniature offensives which would distract and tie
down Turkish forces presently on Allenby’s eastern flank, and simultaneously play havoc with the Turkish rail network throughout Palestine and Syria. The key to these operations was Aqaba. It would serve as a base for a new, ‘Northern’ Arab army under Faisal and as conduit for gold and guns which would flow to the Beduin of eastern Syria. These tribes would emerge from the upland districts east and north-east of the Dead Sea and from bases deep in the desert and demolish sections of track between Dera and Maan. Once this line was fractured, Maan and Medina would be isolated and endangered outposts, out of the war for good. Subsidiary raids would be launched against two other vital lines which linked Aleppo and Baalbek Yarmud and Dera and Damascus, which, if successful, would cut off Syria from Constantinople. A further sortie would be delivered against the Yarmuk valley section of the Dera–to–Haifa branch line. This railway had already attracted Allenby’s attention for it carried supplies to Turkish troops in the Gaza sector.8 Its severance would isolate the area where his offensive would fall and deny Turco–German units material and reinforcements and prevent their regrouping once the breakthrough had occurred. Furthermore, Lawrence claimed that his clandestine contacts in Syria had revealed a groundswell of pro–Allied sympathy which would assist Allenby once his forces were advancing. He even went so far as to predict that when the railway network was torn apart, 8,000 Beduin and Druze would attack Dera.

  Allenby immediately grasped the significance of Lawrence’s proposals and officially endorsed them on 16 July. He told the War Office. ‘The advantages offered by Arab co–operation on [the] lines proposed by Captain Lawrence are, in my opinion, of such importance that no effort should be spared to reap [the] full benefit.’ Captivated by Lawrence’s premature enthusiasm, he added that if the plan worked it could bring about ‘the collapse of [the] Turkish campaigns in the Hejaz and Syria’.9

  This was welcome news to Robertson who had always been a lukewarm supporter of the Jerusalem offensive.10 Once again, Lawrence had come to his rescue with a scheme which depended on local rather than British manpower. Getting Arabs to do some fighting saved men and material then needed for the imminent Passchendaele campaign. Robertson therefore approved placing Lawrence directly under Allenby’s command, and, on 9 August, he was ordered ‘to serve with Beduin troops and advise and, as far as possible, direct operations’.11 At every level it was understood that Lawrence alone could provide the momentum to bring his ambitious plans to fruition. It was as much the force of his passion as his tactical arguments which had swayed Allenby who, on their first encounter, momentarily wondered whether Lawrence was a mountebank. Fortunately for Lawrence, the general had had enough experience fighting Boer guerrillas to appreciate how small bodies of men could throw off balance larger forces. Moreover, Allenby trusted the vast local knowledge of Clayton who asserted that Lawrence had the power to maintain Arab confidence.12

  Faisal did, however, need some persuading for he was naturally cautious. When Lawrence met him at Wajh at the end of July, he was disturbed by rumours that the Maan garrison might launch a counter-attack against Aqaba. Lawrence allayed his fears; a big-gun monitor, HMS Humber had been ordered to anchor off Aqaba on 27 July. It remained there for six months and was replaced by another in January 1918, for Faisal and the Arabs continued to need assurance. Hussain accepted his son’s departure, the creation of what would be known as the Northern Arab Army, and the opening of a new front with misgivings.13 He knew that Faisal and not he would be the ultimate political beneficiary of Lawrence’s plans. Faisal had been brought closer to his goal, Damascus and the establishment of an independent Hashemite kingdom in Syria. His father could have no part in such an enterprise for, as Faisal sensibly admitted, ‘the educated Syrian would never have accepted government from Mecca on sharia lines’.14 It was up to him to prove that he could provide them with enlightened rule and could make an accord with the French.

  With Faisal installed in Aqaba, Lawrence threw himself into honouring the pledges he had made to Allenby. He had voluntarily taken upon himself tasks which demanded prodigious physical and emotional energy and stamina. For the next fifteen months he was a diplomat charged with maintaining Faisal’s goodwill and convincing him that his and the Allies’ interests were the same, often in the teeth of evidence which suggested otherwise. At the same time he was a busy staff officer, responsible for Allied-Arab field liaison, the supervisor of a network of spies, and an active commander of guerrilla units.

  During the weeks before and after the taking of Aqaba, Lawrence had had to face military reality and concede that his plans could never be fulfilled without the active participation of non-Arab troops. The Arab ‘show’ needed more than transfusions of Allied cash and equipment, it could only proceed with the assistance of British and later Algerian, Egyptian and Indian soldiers. The Arabs alone could not hold Aqaba’s outer defence perimeter across the head of the Wadi el Yutm. Moreover, the planned railway raids needed mobile specialist detachments and aircraft, which would provide extra firepower and a much–needed stiffening to the morale of the irregulars. Swallowing his previous faith in the Arabs’ ability to go it on their own, Lawrence asked for and received from Allenby X Flight of 144 Squadron, a squadron of Rolls-Royce armoured cars and a motorised Royal Field Artillery battery and various essential technical and ancillary staff such as signallers, weapons instructors, doctors and medical orderlies. He was never entirely happy with the arrangement and later tended to underplay the role of these ancillary units. And yet, as the Seven Pillars reveals, it was these detachments which bore the brunt of the hardest fighting.

  Lawrence had got what he wanted because, in terms of the overall conduct of the Jerusalem offensive, he had presented Allenby with just what he needed. Lawrence had given him a welcome reinforcement to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force which, so long as Faisal did as Lawrence bid, would be under the general’s thumb. Allenby was now free to deliver his hammer blow on the Gaza front without having to divert attention and men to handle the Turkish armies to his left. Lawrence had confidently predicted that his operations would keep over 30,000 Turkish troops away from the main battlefield, although at no time did the Turco–German High Command seriously contemplate withdrawing them from their posts between Dera and Medina. Nor were they committed to the defence of Jerusalem at the end of November.

  Lawrence had also convinced his chiefs that the Syrian population was secretly pro-Allied and so staff forecasts of the likely course of the campaign took it for granted that British forces would be welcomed by Syrians keen to lend a hand.15 In fact, Lawrence had grossly misread the depth and degree of local sympathy for the Allies, an error he was to repeat. As the campaign unfolded during the latter part of 1917 and 1918, Palestinian and Syrian opinion remained on the whole neutral, and there were many who were openly pro-Turkish. Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, attached as intelligence officer to Allenby’s staff, observed how Palestinians living near Jerusalem cheered as Turkish POWs marched through their village, imagining that their former and clearly well-liked rulers were back. Their euphoria visibly evaporated the moment the British escort appeared.16 For most British and Dominion servicemen, the local Arab population appeared malevolently neutral, ever on the lookout for something to steal. Even the property of Faisal’s Arab army was considered fair game, and by mid-1918 relations between ANZAC units and the Arabs had deteriorated to open and sometimes violent antipathy.17 Both Australian and New Zealand official war historians wrote contemptuously of Arabs, mirroring the sentiments of their countrymen serving in Palestine and Syria.18 Lawrence was revealingly silent about this aspect of the war in the Seven Pillars, where references to ANZAC forces and their part in the campaign are noticeably sparse.

  Optimism about the strategic and tactical consequences of the railway war was also excessive. Lawrence had convinced Allenby that Arab sabotage could paralyse Turco–German armies in Palestine and Syria and significantly weaken their resistance to his offensive. In coming to this conclusion both he and the logistic ex
perts in Cairo and the War Office assumed that the Turkish armies were, like their European counterparts, heavily dependent on rail transport. This was not so. Until the beginning of 1918 there were two gaps in the Constantinople–to–Aleppo line so that men and equipment had to be ferried by German–supplied motor lorries. The Turks do not appear to have been unduly inconvenienced, for they were accustomed to conducting operations far from railheads, making use of local comestibles and pack animals. They had done so during the 1911-12 Yemen campaign and throughout the war in Iraq.

  Even when they functioned, Turkish railways were an asset of limited value as von Sandars discovered when he took command of the 4th Army in 1917. When it came to moving men and goods by train, the German was exasperated by administrative lassitude, corruption (coal supplies hijacked and sold to private contractors) and intermittent attacks by gangs of brigands and deserters who were so numerous in southern Turkey that German troops had to be employed permanently to guard trains and convoys.19 Blowing up sections of line did not appear to make much difference to a ramshackle system, thought Newcombe. Destruction of track ‘does no serious damage, as trains are now so few and no food is being sent’, he concluded after an attack on the Medina line. Timetable meant nothing to the Turks, as von Sandars realised, and Turkish railway troops knew their business and could repair lines quickly.20