Golden Warrior, The

by Lawrence, James

  This setback had unforeseen consequences. After their easy triumph at Tafila, the Turco-German columns, alerted to a British offensive across the Jordan, were able to return to Qatrani to reinforce Amman.15 16 Although some German and Turkish troops travelled by motor trucks, trains were readily available for their outward and return journeys. The campaign to disrupt the Hejaz railway was simply not yielding any useful tactical results.

  It was the inability of the Arabs to make any headway in the railway war which led Allenby to propose a sequence of Anglo–Arab offensives against Amman and Maan at the end of March and the beginning of April. These operations were a preliminary to the big push northwards into Syria which had been sanctioned by Lloyd George in January. Before he could contend with the main concentrations of Turkish, German and Austrian forces (there were 25,000 Germans serving with the Ottoman army by November 1918), Allenby needed to have a secure eastern flank. The March–April operations were designed to achieve this by a permanent scission of the Hejaz railway at Maan and Amman and the elimination of Turkish strongholds south and east of the Dead Sea. Salt was to be occupied by British forces and would serve as the point of contact between Allenby’s army and Faisal’s. Since the co-operation of Arab forces was vital in this campaign, Lawrence was closely involved in its planning. Between 21 February and 3 March he was variously at Allenby’s HQ at Ramleh, Beersheba and Cairo; on 4 March he briefly returned to Aqaba, where he consulted Faisal; and from 8 to 15 March he was back in Egypt.

  This was the first occasion when Arab forces were expected to contribute materially to a major operation. To ensure thorough planning beforehand, Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Dawnay was detached from Allenby’s staff and sent to Faisal’s HQ at el Quweira to advise and co-ordinate preparations. He had ‘wanted a little fun’ according to Young, but his real purpose was to ensure rigorous professional standards were adhered to before and during the operation. Lawrence was singularly impressed by this elegant, intelligent and open-minded Etonian who, alone of British senior officers, shared his vision of the Arab Revolt. ‘He married war and rebellion in himself; as, of old in Yanbu, it had been my dream every regular officer would.’ In the Seven Pillars Lawrence described Dawnay as a man who charmed and instructed: ‘His perfect manner made him friends with all races and classes. From his teaching we began to learn the technique of fighting in matters we had been content to settle by rude and wasteful rules of thumb.’

  Lawrence’s part in the operation was to bring irregular forces to a rendezvous with the British at Salt on 30 March. What followed was a sequence of mischances. On 23 March ANZAC units, the 60th Londons and the Imperial Camel Corps crossed the Jordan and were soon in trouble. A fortnight of heavy rain made the going tough and there was stiff resistance from Turco-German forces, including detachments which had been moved from Tafila. Amman was briefly taken during heavy fighting between 27–30 March, but was abandoned as British forces withdrew to their original positions. They had lost 404 dead and over a thousand wounded. Lawrence was uncharitable about the British performance in the Seven Pillars, where he remarked that it was ‘deplorable’ that ‘we should so fall down before the Arabs’. Even more unfairly, he censured the inability of British and Dominion forces to do what he and the Arabs had so conspicuously failed to do, make the railway unusable.

  Lawrence was masking the fact that the Arab contribution to the operation had been shameful. The Bani Sakhr saw the attack on Amman as an opportunity to seize and plunder two stations to the north of the town, which they did and galloped off with their loot. During the fighting around Salt some Beduin momentarily forgot which side they were supposed to be on and fired on British cavalry.17 The widespread feeling of having been let down was recalled by WT. Massey, the invariably well-informed Times correspondent. Assistance had been expected from Arab forces during the attack on Amman, but none materialised. ‘We seemed to have more trouble with various Arab tribes east of the Jordan than in obtaining their promises of support.’18 There was a minor compensation: once the Turco-German garrison pulled out of Tafila, the Arabs re-entered the town.

  Two minor incidents, one risible, the other rather harrowing, marked Lawrence’s return south. As they were about to head south, a bevy of gypsy pedlar-prostitutes arrived at Lawrence’s camp seeking business from his bodyguard. Lawrence and Farraj borrowed some of their clothes and, accompanied by three of the whores, entered Amman to examine the state of the town. Importuned by Turkish soldiers they just managed to escape. Soon after, his servant, Farraj, was mortally wounded after a brush with a Turkish patrol, so Lawrence, rather than leave him to fall into Turkish hands, delivered the coup de grâce with his revolver.

  When Lawrence reached Maan a battle was in full swing. The final arrangements for the attack had been settled by Faisal, Zaid, Jafar and Nuri es Said ‘after long and heated debate’ on 6 April.19 It was agreed that a column of regular and irregular forces would occupy Abu el Jurdhan, straddle the line and entrench while a second column attacked Maan. A third, commanded by Dawnay, would assault various targets along the line to the south of Maan and ensure the town’s isolation. Nuri es Said dissented and Dawnay doubted whether the untried Arab regulars would be up to the task of storming Maan, but the other Arab commanders were keen to prove their men’s mettle in hard fighting. There was further consultation between the commanders of the Maan and Abu el Jurdhan columns at Wahaida on the 13th just before the fighting began when plans were changed.20

  Throughout the operation Arab forces were given close support by the RAF: aircraft guarded the flanks of the columns, made reconnaissance flights over the battlefields, flew a leaflet raid over Maan and carried out bombing raids on all targets. There was assistance as well from the French gunners, who were attached to the Maan force, and the British motorised artillery, armoured cars and Egyptian Camel Corps, who were with Dawnay. Lawrence, who had picked up a Model-T Ford and driver at el Quweira, acted throughout as a liaison officer between columns, carried messages back to X Flight’s forward airstrip at Decie, and undertook several reconnaissance sorties with Dawnay’s force.

  After a two-day pause, the central column left Bir el Lasan on 9 April. Commanded by the veteran Iraqi officer Maulud Pasha, it mustered 600 regular infantry, 50 mule-mounted cavalry with artillery and machine-gun support and 400 Huweitat tribesmen under Awda. After a feint towards Ghadir al Haj station, where 1,200 rails were wrenched up, the column turned northwards. On the morning of the following day, 14 April, Maulud’s men occupied the Jebel Samna west of Maan, where the newly arrived Lawrence watched them take their positions. The attack on Maan station began with an artillery bombardment on the morning of the 15th, after which Arab regulars advanced and took a low hill 300 yards southeast of their objective, a vital position which ‘they evacuated for no reason during the night’.21 22 This ground was retaken during the next day after a seven-and-a-half-hour bombardment and an air raid. Turkish resistance was stubborn and the final attack on the station was driven off by heavy machine-gun fire.

  Under Nuri’s direction (Maulud had been wounded), the Arab forces pulled back to the Jebel Samna, dug in and checked a pursuit by the Turkish garrison, which had been reinforced from the north on the 18th. Further north, Jafar’s column of 600 regular infantry had attacked and carried Abu el Jurdhan station on 13 April. The approach of a large force of cavalry from Amman forced their withdrawal and the Turks quickly began to repair the line, which was partially open to traffic by the 21st. Six days later trains were operating between Amman and Maan.23 The ferocity and determination of the Arab attacks had caused consternation among the Turks. Intercepted and deciphered wireless messages revealed that the officer commanding in Maan, Faik Bey, had appealed for 1,000 reinforcements, but the Fourth Army’s commander, Muhammad Jamal Pasha, was unmoved.24 Among the Arab command, there were recriminations. Nuri was contemptuous of Awda, whose irregulars would risk themselves only when it was clear that resistance was crumbling and loot was in the offing. They were ‘
quite useless’, thought Young.25

  After the Maan attack had been called off, Lawrence was driven to the airstrip at Decie, where he passed on this information. A fivehour drive then took him to Dawnay’s HQ where he arrived at ten in the evening of the 18th, just after Dawnay and Hornby had completed their final reconnaissance of Tal as Shahm station. The attack began the next morning. Dawnay had carefully predetermined his units’ dispositions and movements, much to the wry amusement of Lawrence. Breakfast was taken at 3.30 a.m. and at dawn the three Rolls-Royce armoured cars took up their covering positions 4,000 yards west of the station with Lawrence and Dawnay following in a tender. At 9.00 a.m. the Egyptian camelry and Arab irregulars deployed on high ground above the station. As a precaution against a relief train from the south, Lawrence, Dawnay and Hornby blew up a culvert. After an RAF air raid and shelling by the ten-pounders, the thirty-one-strong station garrison surrendered.26

  Immediately the Arabs surged into the station and pandemonium followed as, ‘screaming like Tigers’, they fell upon the stores. The Egyptian camelry joined in and Lawrence had to intervene to prevent a brawl. Well satisfied with their plunder, most of the irregulars departed. The rest disappeared the following day after the force found Ramlah station abandoned. Dawnay’s depleted force now faced its toughest task, an attack on the well-garrisoned Qalat al Mudawarrah station. The prospects were not good for, on 20 April, a reconnaissance plane from X Flight had reported a train carrying reinforcements moving from Tabuk. As Lawrence later informed staff at Decie airstrip, the train contained two Austrian howitzers with a range of 8,000 yards, which had the advantage over Dawnay’s ten-pounders. 27 Both guns were ready for action on the morning of the 21st when Dawnay’s armoured cars and artillery deployed before Qalat al Mudawarrah station. Rather than risk heavy losses, Dawnay called off the attack and withdrew. The station was finally attacked and its garrison overwhelmed by two companies of British Imperial Camel Corps on 8 August. ‘A beastly indecent performance’ was how Dawnay described the operation to Hogarth, thinking no doubt of the Arab contribution.28 He, the British and Egyptian detachments had accomplished much in four days.

  The war of attrition against Maan and the stations to the north continued with intermittent raids during May, June, July and early August. Regular Arab units were now playing an increasingly active role, with the RAF and British and Egyptian ground units providing the essential muscle. Lawrence was never happy about the growing dominance of Arab and non-Arab regular units, nor did he like having to keep in step with Allenby. ‘Our movement, clean cut while alone with a simple enemy,’ he wrote in the Seven Pillars, ‘was now bogged in its partner’s contingencies,’ which meant, one supposes, that the Arabs were having to share some of the burden of fighting the Turks where they were strong, a task hitherto confined to British and Dominion troops.

  While Lawrence doggedly stuck to his principles of guerrilla warfare as waged by the Beduin, his colleagues found the Arabs fickle and feckless. Even with substantial support they were unsteady in a crisis. On 21—22 January a force of 2,500 backed by armoured cars and artillery refused to attack Qalat al Mudawarrah and scattered when they heard that a relief force was coming up from Tabuk.29 At the end of April, Faisal’s agent with the Bani Sakhr pledged tribal support for a British incursion which never materialised, causing the operation to miscarry. Lawrence blamed British staff for trusting ‘some airy promise’ of a handful of sheiks while Wavell, Allenby’s biographer, drily remarked, ‘it was difficult for G.H.Q. at the time to realize the complete irresponsibility of Arab warfare.’30 Others with first-hand experience soon learned the lesson. Young was exasperated by the tribesmen’s unreliability and Kirkbride felt that they were incapable ‘of doing so much damage that the line would be disrupted’. What he and others endured is conveyed in the comments written by Captain Pascoe in the War Diary of the motorised artillery detachment then serving with the Beduin.

  8.6.18. Sharif Muhammad Ali of Bani hasn’t arrived.

  10.6.18. Conference with Hamdi Effendi, commander sharifian forces — decided to await arrival of Muhammad.

  30.6.18. Bedu again changed plans and decided would not attack without money. I said unless attack as agreed, the English force would retire.31

  Sometimes even Lawrence’s patience ran out. After a tussle with Zaid in which he failed to persuade him to exploit the victory at Tafila, he wrote angrily to Clayton, ‘These Arabs are the most ghastly material to build into a design.’

  The regular Arab army contained better material. On 11—12 May a force supported by RAF bombers captured Abu el Jurdhan station and took 200 prisoners, but was forced to retire because of a shortage of water. A second attack on the station five days later was badly mauled by a garrison which had been increased to 400.32 Sometimes, however, the regular Arabs’ inexperience and hurried training gave their allies some awkward moments. During an attack on a station in July, an armoured car officer noticed that ‘The first line of Infantry, numbering as I could judge about 50 men, were not reinforced and remained at 600 yards range,’ and then followed what was euphemistically called a ‘general retirement’, leaving the cars to take the full brunt of Turkish fire.33 Such behaviour must have been particularly galling, considering what Driver Rolls called the ‘increasingly lofty attitude’ of the Arabs towards the British.

  Lawrence advised Rolls and his fellows to show forbearance. He believed that on balance the Arabs had gained the upper hand during the first six months of 1918, although their gains had been modest and the major success of the campaign, the permanent severance of the line between Maan and Medina, had been accomplished by a British unit. Inept leadership, a lack of reserves and muddle had prevented Arab forces from asserting control over the area south of the Dead Sea. Measured in purely strategic terms the Arabs had gained and kept an advantage on the Maan front. Faisal’s 3,500 regulars and the fissiparous tribal forces had managed to contain 4,000 men in Maan and a further 1,000 distributed in penny packets guarding stations northwards towards Amman. A further 6,000 Turkish troops were scattered in outposts in southern Jordan and along the line south from Maan. So long as the railway attacks persisted, these units had periodically to be strengthened. Of course this diversion of Turkish forces owed much to the presence with the Arabs of small but powerful Allied auxiliary units. Local aerial supremacy (in February 1918 there were three Rumpler C1s of the Ottoman Air Force stationed at Maan) was a further, perhaps decisive, factor in the Arabs’ favour.

  Yet Maan still held out, forcing the Arabs to maintain a blockade. During July intelligence decrypts of wireless messages from the commander at Maan revealed food, fodder, fuel and cash shortages and a spate of desertions as morale drooped.34 Still, the Turkish soldier was amazingly resilient and the Maan garrison could and did take the offensive against outlying Arab pickets. Any relaxation of the pressure on Maan would have invited a Turkish sally which could have endangered the forward posts at el Quweira and Bir el Lasan and communications with Aqaba. There was still plenty of fight left in the Turks on this front: on 21 July an Arab attack on Abu el Jurdhan, well backed by aircraft, armoured cars and artillery was thrown back with eighty dead by the 400-strong garrison.

  Lawrence was not present at this action. More and more of his time was taken up with administration and liaison with British HQ, although he still undertook reconnaissance and sabotage missions. On these he commonly travelled by car or lorry, which gave him greater mobility as well as greater comfort (in spite of solid tyres) and his first taste of the excitement of speed. When time pressed, he flew to and from HQ, and on 28 May he went as an observer on a reconnaissance flight over Qalat el Mudawarrah.35 As the summer progressed, he had less and less time for such diversions; by July Allenby was well into his preparations for an autumn grand offensive against Syria which required closely co-ordinated Arab support. Damascus and Syria now seemed within Lawrence’s and the Arabs’ grasp.

  VI

  Damascus: Flawed Triumph

&
nbsp; At midnight on 19–20 September, Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force launched the brilliantly planned and long-awaited offensive against the Turco-German army in northern Palestine. Twenty-four hours later the heavily outnumbered Turkish 7th and 8th Army Corps and the German Asian Corps were falling back north-eastwards in disarray, closely pursued by the 4th Cavalry and Australian Mounted Divisions. Outpaced by the cavalry and harassed by round-the-clock bombing and strafing, the fragmented and demoralised units rushed helter-skelter towards Dera. The rout was shortly joined by the remnants of the 4th Army Corps which had abandoned Maan on 23 September and Amman the day after.

  According to Allenby’s battle plan, the fugitives who escaped would converge on Dera. Lawrence had been instructed to take a strong Arab column northwards from Bir el Lisan and seize Dera by the 22nd or 23rd, having first cut its rail links to the north, south and east.1 With Dera occupied, the retreating armies would be trapped in a bottleneck, cut off from Damascus and with no alternative but surrender. For the first time in the war, Arab forces were fighting as an integral part of a larger Allied army and had been assigned tactical objectives whose achievement was essential for the overall success of a major campaign.

  Lawrence’s sights were set far beyond Dera. As the Turkish army fell apart the moment was right for a political masterstroke, the occupation of Damascus by the Arab army. For Lawrence such an audacious coup was the only possible consummation of the Arab movement; over the past two years he had goaded and coaxed Faisal towards the city and made it for the Arabs what Jerusalem had been for the Crusaders. What he had intended when he had first met Faisal would be accomplished, and the Arab national renaissance could be proclaimed to the world with a dramatic flourish. The military climax of the Arab Revolt would determine its post-war future, for physical possession of Damascus would give substance to Faisal’s hitherto flimsy political pretensions as the future ruler of Syria.