Golden Warrior, The

by Lawrence, James

  As a first stage in this process of conciliation Weizmann, accompanied by Ormsby-Gore and carrying a letter of recommendation from Clayton, visited Aqaba on 6 June 1918 for a meeting with Faisal. Faisal, who could speak English, preferred to conduct the talks through an interpreter, a task which fell to Joyce. Lawrence was present in Aqaba but he did not offer his services, even though he was probably a better Arabist. According to Joyce’s recollection of the discussions, Faisal expressed a view that Arab–Jewish co-operation was necessary but refrained from offering any political opinions since he was just an agent of his father. Weizmann explained how the creation of a Jewish Palestine would assist the development of an Arab kingdom which would have Jewish backing. Turning to the knotty problem of Palestine, Weizmann hoped that under British protection it would be colonised by Jews.

  Faisal was uneasy about this: as an Arab he could not speak on the future of Palestine, which had already been widely bruited by the Turco-German propaganda machine ‘and would undoubtedly be misinterpreted by the uneducated Beduins if openly discussed’. Only when the Arab military and political position had been consolidated could the business be aired. Faisal personally accepted ‘a future Jewish claim to Territory in Palestine’ and Weizmann promised to get United States Jews to support the Arab movement. Joyce felt that Faisal was sincere in his wish for Arab–Jewish co-operation and he noted that he and Weizmann agreed that ‘outside Jews and Arabs no one else had any territorial claim on Syria’.24 Weizmann met Lawrence and left Aqaba with the impression that he was the mainstay of the military side of the Arab movement. Six months later they met again in London, where Lawrence. convinced that an Arab–Jewish accord was essential for Middle Eastern equilibrium, reintroduced him to Faisal and chaired discussions between them.

  Just after he had spoken to Weizmann, Faisal returned to his secret negotiations with the Turks. On this occasion Lawrence intercepted his message and delivered a copy to Cairo, although in principle he approved of Faisal keeping his options open. The underhand exchanges with the Turks, the Arab reaction to the Balfour Declaration, and Britain’s earlier moves towards a peace with Turkey were all reminders of the precariousness of the Arabs’ position in the world. Lawrence knew this better than most, just as he realised that what he considered their moral rights counted for very little with his government. Their only chance to escape the thicket of diplomacy was to hack themselves out. Victory on the battlefield, Lawrence believed, not only gained land for the conquerors but bestowed on them moral rights which he believed could not be lightly tossed aside by the world.

  V

  War’s Mischances: November 1917—July 1918

  The face of the Arab campaign changed rapidly during the winter of 1917–18. What Major Hubert Young called ‘the picturesque days of lone-handed enterprise and dashing raids’ gave way to a new style of warfare which was more calculated, conventional and tightly controlled from above. Lawrence’s influence was still all-pervasive, although since July he had followed Allenby’s orders and worked in conjunction with a steadily expanding group of staff officers who were being assigned to service with the Arab forces. This body was titled the Hejaz Operations Staff, which was quickly abbreviated to ‘Hedgehog’. Hedgehog also embraced the numerous specialists who ran signals, supply and transport and the officers in charge of the ancillary RAF, armoured-car and motorised artillery units concentrated at Aqaba and the forward bases at el Quweira and Bir el Lasan.

  These support detachments brought with them British other-ranks: aircraftsmen, mechanics, armourers, drivers, gunners, instructors and wireless operators. There was also Captain Pisani’s mountain and machine-gun company of 146 French Algerians which took an important part in nearly every major engagement until the end of the campaign. Aqaba was guarded by an Egyptian infantry battalion and the unloading and movement of supplies was undertaken by the Egyptian Transport Corps. More Egyptian troops appeared in Aqaba at the beginning of April, the 160-strong company of the Egyptian Camel Corps, commanded by Bimbashi [Major] F.G. (‘Fred’) Peake, which was destined for service as mounted infantry with the railway raiding parties. In total there were over 1,000 Egyptians attached to Faisal’s army, many openly pro-Turkish and all contemptuous of the Arabs. Their presence along with the British and French forces was a clear indication that Lawrence’s dream of running the campaign with minimal outside help had long evaporated.

  A powerful sense of community soon developed among the band of British officers of Hedgehog. It was an exciting, adventurous form of service completely unlike anything they had experienced before. Veterans of Gallipoli and the Western Front found themselves wonderfully free of the regulations and restrictions which governed large-scale operations. They waged war riding across the desert alongside wild tribesmen, grew beards and dressed as they pleased, sometimes like Lawrence in Beduin robes. The subterranean billet was replaced by the camp under the stars. It was all very romantic and intoxicating.

  Everyone was mesmerised by Lawrence, whose behaviour and attitudes were a refreshing if sometimes exasperating novelty. Major Stirling, a swashbuckler who turned up at Aqaba in the summer along with a large green Vauxhall car ordered for Faisal, knew what to expect. He had worked with Lawrence and Woolley in Cairo and remembered a couple of ‘individualists who laughed at the military machine’ and ‘said things that we longed to, but on account of upbringing did not say’.1 Stirling, Joyce, Young, Major Lord ‘Eddie’ Winterton, Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Dawnay all fell under Lawrence’s spell, remained his friends after the war and contributed to the spread of his reputation. Young, an aristocratic and strongminded professional, found Lawrence a prickly colleague and, although sincere in his admiration, was never blind to his friend’s faults. These also surfaced in the memoirs of another colleague, Lieutenant Alec Kirkbride, who first met Lawrence in February 1918. Kirkbride was bowled over by his charm yet sensed its limitations, commenting that ‘He was capable of kindness, particularly to those whose youth and inexperience excluded them from the category of possible rivals.’2

  Kirkbride was not taken in by the glamour which surrounded Lawrence and delighted the Arabs, and he was unconvinced by what he wrote afterwards: ‘He made no secret of the fact that he loved fame and it was, no doubt, this longing for notoriety that led him to exaggerate and embroider his versions of the happenings in which he played a part.’3 There were plenty who took Lawrence and his stories at face value. In his absence, some members of the group entertained the American journalist Lowell Thomas in their mess at el Quweira, and fed him yarns which he believed unreservedly.4 When Lowell Thomas had worked over this and other material and on the stage and in print had made Lawrence a celebrity, Stirling believed that none who had served with him felt envy or resentment. Young regretted the post-war ballyhoo, but never allowed it to obscure the fact that Lawrence had been indispensable.

  The British other-ranks soon learned to respect and admire him. For the first time in his life, Lawrence came into close daily contact with working men. They were initially puzzled by his habits and attitudes, which were very different from what they had come to expect from officers. Air Mechanic Birkinshaw of X Flight heard of Lawrence from his mates after he had been ordered to drive him up country in a Crossley tender. ‘“Who’s Captain Lawrence and how am I going to take him?” And somebody said, “He’s the wizard Lawrence, he is. He looks you in the face and you do what he likes.”’ When their wagon broke down, Lawrence went off to fetch some camels, leaving Birkinshaw with a copy of Hamlet to read and some advice. ‘Interesting story. Better read it. Hamlet was like me, somehow. Always got himself into trouble without any reason.’5

  Men like Birkinshaw were unaccustomed to such familiarity from their officers. ‘It was already amusing me to think of Lawrence as a severe military colonel,’ recalled Driver Rolls. ‘In our corps [Armoured Cars], as in others, orders were snapped out like curses, and salutes were exacted in the fullest measure. Lawrence’s orders were directions, and he cared nothing
about saluting, except he preferred to dispense with it.’ Lawrence’s manner of command was donnish and reminiscent of the tutorial. ‘nstead of an order he usually seemed to raise, first of all, a question for discussion; giving the impression, a true one, that he wanted to have one’s opinion of what was best, before he decided on the course to be followed.’6 It was a style of leadership which fitted the circumstances and was ideally suited to small teams of specialists; and it worked.

  Officers and men with the Hejaz force had the opportunity to watch Lawrence as he carried out his principal duty, liaison with the Arabs. His authority with them was now at its height and it was undertaken with consummate skill:

  He was beautifully robed in a black aba with a deep gold border, a kaftan of finest white Damascus silk with wide flowing sleeves bound at the waist with a belt containing a large curved gold dagger. A qalifah or head cloth of rich embroidered silk kept in place by an agal of white and gold. Sandals on his bare feet. In every detail a truly distinguished figure from any nobles of the Royal House of Hussain seated around us. At this, as at dozens of other conferences we attended together, Lawrence rarely spoke. He merely studied the men around him and when the arguments ended as they usually did, in smoke, he then dictated his plan of action which was usually adopted and everyone went away satisfied. It was not as is often supposed by his individual leadership of hordes of Beduin that he achieved success in his daring ventures, but by his wise selection of Tribal leaders and by providing the essential grist to the mill in the shape of golden rewards for work well done.7

  Joyce’s comments were echoed by Stirling, who was aware of Lawrence’s ‘uncanny ability to sense the feelings of a group of men in whose company he found himself’.8

  The trappings of rich costume served a practical purpose as well as satisfying Lawrence’s vanity. He knew that fine clothes and ostentatious displays of gold were the conventional, outward marks of a man’s standing and authority which commanded the immediate respect and obedience of the Beduin tribesman. He usually kept his sharifian robes for such formal occasions as conferences with Faisal, although he could never resist dressing up in them at British HQ where he attracted much attention. On active service he wore a sombre brown aba, sometimes khaki kit, but once, during the attack on Tal as Shahm station in April 1918, he graced the battlefield in his full white regalia. As he rode across country, his dramatic appearance was heightened by his twenty or so bodyguards. Like Lawrence, who owned a stable of such beasts, they were mounted on richly caparisoned, thoroughbred she-camels prized for their stamina. Each man was chosen by Lawrence, mostly from the Agayl tribe which had a tradition of mercenary service, and was paid six sovereigns a month. As befitted a warrior elite and to sustain the prestige of their master, the bodyguards wore coats of many colours. Seeing them, one British officer was reminded of the multi-coloured costumes of Diaghilev’s Russian ballet.

  With his escort of camelry, dressed in Arab robes but, on close inspection, clearly an Englishman, Lawrence was a striking figure in camp and on campaign. British officers and other-ranks who encountered him were intrigued. He made his own rules and was always elusive, coming and going without notice either into the hinterland or by boat and aeroplane to Cairo or HQ at Ramleh. He was adored by the Arabs, whose appreciative shouts at his approach were in part a reminder that he paid their generous wages, but he could also bend their will to his. Behind the flamboyant facade was a formidable reputation for courage created by reports of his activities deep inside enemy territory during the past year. Even as the nature of the Arab campaign changed, Lawrence continued to dominate it.

  One significant feature of the Arab campaign remained unchanged. Faisal’s Arab army was still under the overall direction of Allenby and was expected to assist his operations in southern Palestine. Their central objective was also the same, the elimination of Turkish communications between Syria and Medina. After the fall of Jerusalem in December and with the onset of the wet season, Allenby’s aims had been confined to consolidation of his front in preparation for the next stage of his Palestinian offensive. For this to be successful it was of paramount importance that the Hejaz railway was permanently ruptured, leaving the Medina garrison isolated and incapable of intervention in the fighting to the north. Plans devised in November for raids as far north as Damascus and Aleppo were put aside.9 The high hopes which Lawrence had entertained of large-scale, mobile raids with Druze and Rwallah support faded. During February and March disquieting intelligence reached Cairo which suggested that Druze enthusiasm for Faisal was waning and that they were veering towards the Turks after the disclosure of the Sykes–Picot agreement and reports of the Balfour Declaration.10

  Realising that long-range sorties in the Damascus region were risky and impractical, Allenby demanded that Faisal’s forces confine their efforts to a general advance into southern Jordan and attacks on the railway north and south of Maan. The occupation of a string of weakly held Turkish outposts in southern Jordan had a double purpose. If the Arabs could take them, they would be able to link up with Allenby’s forces in the Jordan valley and deny to the Turks a valuable corn-growing region.

  The campaign in southern Jordan opened on a successful note. On 3 January 1918, Nasir attacked Jurf ed Darawish station, occupied it for three days, destroyed two trains and fell back towards Aqaba. On the way back his Bani Sakhr tribesmen surprised and captured Tafila on 15 January, taking prisoner its eighty-man garrison.11 A few days later the hilltop town was reinforced by a larger force of regulars, irregulars and French Algerian gunners commanded by Faisal’s brother Zaid. He was a poor choice for general, lacking both experience and resolve, but his inadequacies were offset by Lawrence and Jafar al Askari, who acted as his advisers. Their clear heads and stout hearts were soon needed. Probably under the illusion that Tafila had been the victim of a tribal raid, the Turks sent a column of 100 cavalry and 600 infantry equipped with two howitzers and twenty machine-guns to recover the town.

  Zaid panicked when warned of the column’s approach. On the morning of 22 January he withdrew his forces from the town and placed them in a defensive position on high ground to the south. The local villagers showed more spirit and engaged the cavalry pickets, temporarily slowing down the Turkish advance. At this stage Lawrence intervened. In his own words, he had scoured his memory for ‘old maxims and rules of the military text books’, although his instinct dictated that he could check the Turks ‘by manoeuvre’. Instead he used his eye for ground and urged Zaid to take advantage of his opponents’ delay and shift his men to new positions on a ridge which overlooked the plateau where the Turks were about to deploy. From their new position, the Arab and Algerian machine-gunners were able to hinder the Turks’ deployment. Directed by Lawrence, a small party of Arabs, using ground hidden from enemy view, were able to get round the Turks’ southern flank. The Turks then faced an attack on their northern flank where armed villagers were able to surprise their machine-gun positions. Pressed from three sides and under heavy machine-gun fire, the Turks broke and scattered. The bitter cold and snow prevented an Arab pursuit.

  It was a heartening victory for the Arabs and Lawrence, who was awarded a DSO. Liddell Hart treated the skirmish at Tafila as a battle, praising Lawrence’s tactical skill, but contemporary Arab sources are silent as to his part in the fighting.12 Nonetheless, if Lawrence is to be believed, his quick-wittedness, judgement and courage were decisive. Tafila had been, by the standards of the time, a very minor engagement involving fewer than 2,000 men and casualties had been small. Lawrence, who instinctively shunned pitched fights, considered that the seven Arab dead had been too high a price to pay for victory.

  The fight at Tafila was followed by bickering between Lawrence and Zaid over money. On the day of the battle, Lawrence had applied to Clayton for £30,000 for future operations in southern Jordan. Zaid was desperate for the subsidy as he was strapped for cash and his volunteers’ pay was in arrears. Lawrence finally arrived with the funds on 17 February, ha
ving ridden through a snowstorm. He was angered when Zaid doled out the money for past services and a row followed. Lawrence returned to HQ blaming himself for the misunderstanding and protested to Hogarth and Clayton that the free hand which Allenby had given him to deal with the Arabs had burdened him with too much responsibility. The older men reminded Lawrence that he could not shirk his duty, especially when the Middle Eastern campaign was entering a crucial stage. Lawrence had to carry on and procure Arab assistance for Allenby’s next offensive, then scheduled for the summer. He quickly recovered his equanimity. ‘He is very well and very much at the top of the pole,’ Hogarth reported on 25 February. Hubert Young found him in jaunty and flippant mood, talking of how, when the matter of who might replace him in an emergency had been discussed, he had suggested Gertrude Bell. Speaking of the campaign in general, he added, ‘It is quite amusing, and there is plenty of honour and glory to be picked up without any difficulty.’13

  Soon after, news arrived which confirmed his commanders’ judgements about his irreplaceability. Without him, the Arab command at Tafila had disintegrated and the town was evacuated in a pell-mell retreat. On 3 March while Lawrence was at HQ three strong Turco-German columns which had detrained at Qatrani, Hasa and Jurf ed Darawish prepared to encircle the town. The timid Zaid, who had had ample warning of their approach, fell back under the threat of howitzer fire. Some regulars retreated ‘too fast’, which saved them since they escaped the claws of the enemy’s pincer movement, although the Algerian machine-gunners held their ground to the last moment. ‘The Turks profited from the lack of enterprise shown by the Sharifian command [Zaid] at Tafila’ was Hedgehog staff’s terse diagnosis of the débâcle. Lawrence may have anticipated something of this kind since, before he left Tafila, he had written a message to be delivered to X Flight asking for bombing sorties against the Turkish camps at Hasa and Jurf ed Darawish. Muddle or slackness delayed its arrival until 5 March, a day after Tafila had fallen.14