To compensate their own unreadiness the French now added their voice to the chorus that was urging the dispatch of a brigade to Rabegh.
Fakhri Pasha had not yet moved against Mecca, but, inevitably, with every week that passed the menace of a move became more imminent. Although none of the British officers could predict the duration of Turkish inertia, there must surely, they felt, be a limit.
Despite their early losses the Turks’ strength in the Hejaz was almost as high as at the outset. It comprised some 10,000 troops based on Medina, 2,500 along the railway to the north, and 1,200 garrisoning Wejh.
The Arab forces were now distributed in three groups, one of about 5,000 men under Ali, based on Rabegh; another of about 4,000 under Abdulla, near Mecca; and the third of about 7,000 under Feisal which was now based on Yanbo, with the idea of operating against the railway. But although they kept guard on the hills, they kept at a distance from Medina. Moreover, Ali and Abdulla seem to have left most of the strain to be borne by Feisal, and his men even could not stand much.
On October 19th he fell back from Bir Abbas to Hamra in face of a Turkish advance, which was subsequently reported as consisting of a reconnoitring party of eighty Turkish camel-men.
Three days previously Storrs and Lawrence had landed at Jidda, where Abdulla met them. Lawrence, who was on the look-out for an inspired prophet and leader, a new Mahomet, soon formed the opinion that Abdulla did not fill the part. His character was portrayed in his short stout build, round smooth face, full lips and twinkling eyes. In Arab opinion he was both an astute politician and a far-sighted statesman. In Lawrence’s view he suggested the former rather than the latter. He was more full of complaints than of inspiration, if he relieved them by a cheerful cynicism. And although he suggested that nothing might remain save to die fighting before the Holy City, it was his father that he cast for this heroic end. The Sherif, who now came through on the telephone from Mecca, confirmed this decision, whereupon Abdulla, “smiling a little,” asked that a brigade of British troops, Moslems if possible, should be kept ready at Suez to avert such a disaster, should the Turks begin an advance from Medina.
Lawrence suggested, in answer, that he would like to visit Feisal and see the situation for himself. Storrs, on the telephone, persuaded the Sherif into giving a reluctant permission. The telephone, incidentally, was a new toy whose fascinations had not faded; that evening the Englishmen were called to the telephone to hear another new toy, the Sherifs brass band, newly captured from the Turks, playing in Mecca. And when Storrs expressed his appreciation, the Sherif said he would send it down by forced marches next day, so that he himself in turn might have the pleasure of hearing it from Jidda.
On the second morning, after this treat had been given, Lawrence sailed for Rabegh, where he met Ali. He likewise could be dismissed from the quest. Worn and tired at thirty-seven, with drooping mouth and delicate hands, his physical frailty had its accompaniment in a character more well-meaning than well-balanced. For Lawrence’s onward journey Ali provided him with a camel and a couple of guides. To hide the fact that an infidel was going into the interior of the holy province, Ali delayed Lawrence’s start until after dark, and in addition made him wear an Arab cloak and headcloth. As they rode through the night Lawrence’s thoughts were “how this was the Pilgrim Road, down which, for uncounted generations, the people of the north had come to visit the Holy City, bearing with them gifts of faith for the shrine; and it seemed that the Arab Revolt might be in a sense a return pilgrimage, to take back to the north, to Syria, an ideal for an ideal, a belief in liberty for their past belief in a revelation.” it reveals the romantic faith of the man who would inspire the inverted Crusade.
After pausing for a meal and resting a few hours at a hamlet sixty miles out, Lawrence reached Hamra late on the second day and found Feisal awaiting him.
“I felt at first glance that this was the man I had come to Arabia to seek—the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt to full glory. Feisal looked very tall and pillar-like, very slender, in his long white silk robes and his brown headcloth bound with a brilliant scarlet and gold cord. His eyelids were dropped; and his black beard and colourless face were like a mask against the strange, still watchfulness of his body.” He reminded Lawrence of the monument of Richard Cœur de Lion at Fontevraud. The likeness went deeper than the surface.
After a greeting Feisal politely inquired—“And do you like our place here in Wadi Safra?”
“Well; but it is far from Damascus.”
It was a thrust that drew blood and yet formed a binding tie, as when two men opened their veins and mingled their blood in the ancient rite.
But even Feisal’s spirits were low. Although they had risen when he was reinforced by the Egyptian battery, they had been damped by the discovery that the Turkish artillery easily outranged these antiquated pieces. It spelt an end to the dream that they might reduce Medina as Taif had been reduced. Feisal candidly admitted that he had fallen back for a rest. His insistent demand was for artillery, modern artillery.
Lawrence had a similar but even more vehement appeal from Maulud, a real fighting soldier and the first regular soldier to join Feisal. As a Turkish officer Maulud had been such a firebrand of Arab nationalism that he had been twice degraded and had spent two years of exile as secretary to Ibn Rashid in Nejd. Then, commanding a Turkish cavalry regiment in Mesopotamia he had been taken prisoner by the British at Shaiba, but as soon as he heard of the Arab rising he had volunteered to join Feisal’s forces. Galled by the consciousness of their impotence he cried out to Lawrence—“Don’t write a history of us. The needful thing is to fight and fight and kill them. Give me a battery of Schneider mountain-guns, and machine-guns, and I’ll finish this off for you. We talk and talk and do nothing.”
A discussion after supper gave Lawrence a significant glimpse of the Arab point of view. He had expressed sympathy with the Arab leaders who had suffered at Jemal’s hands in Syria, when, to his surprise, he was met with the retort that they had paid, if indirectly, a just penalty for their readiness to accept French or British suzerainty as the price of assistance. And although Feisal did not join in the condemnatory chorus, he took care to impress its meaning on Lawrence, pointing out that Britain’s established reputation for swallowing the territories she came to protect was bound to cause uneasiness among infant allies.
Next day, Lawrence took the opportunity of studying the Arab forces at close quarters. “They usually took me for a Turk, and were profuse in good humoured suggestions for my disposal.” He made a note—“They are a tough-looking crowd, all very dark-coloured, and some negroid: as thin as possible, wearing only a thin shirt, short drawers and a headcloth which serves for every purpose.” Lawrence leaves to the imagination the state of the hair beneath, but there is an Arab proverb that a deserted head shows an ungenerous mind. Feisal’s new army was lavish in at least one respect—“They go about bristling with cartridge belts, and fire off their rifles when they can. They are learning by practice to use the sights. As for their physical condition, I doubt whether men were ever harder.”
It seemed to him that their unity was still an uneasy bond, and might be too easily frayed by adversity; that the shock of one serious defeat in the field, with heavy loss, would break their will to continue the war. But he found new comfort in the sight of the country, so rough and precipitous. The only practicable routes were through valleys that would more justly be called gorges. Hence he felt that even these Arab irregulars should be capable of holding up any Turkish advance so long as they were provided with light machine-guns to sweep the defiles. “The average range possible is from too to 300 yards,” he noted in his report, “and at point blank ranges the Arabs shoot quite well. The hill-belt is a very paradise for snipers, and a hundred or two of determined men (especially with light machine-guns, capable of being carried by hand up-hill), should be able to hold up each road.”
Having sized up the situation, Lawrence obtained an escort as far as
Yanbo, where he waited until a British warship put in, and gave him a passage to Jidda, which he reached on November 1st. Here he found Admiral Wemyss, with whom he crossed the Red Sea to Port Sudan, where they met two British officers, Joyce and Davenport, who were on their way to Rabegh. Lawrence travelled on with Wemyss to Khartoum, where he gave his impressions to Wingate before going down the Nile to Cairo.
Lawrence himself considered the situation “full of promise” so long as some skilled British officers were attached to the Arab leaders as technical advisers. He was opposed to the idea of sending British units into the Hejaz, having formed the opinion that such a landing would turn the tribes against the Sherif. In both these views, however, he found himself in a minority—at this moment and place.
This was natural, for pessimism, proverbially, is always greater at the base than in the front line, and Lawrence alone of the European officers had been near the front. The others inevitably felt the depression that prevailed at Rabegh, and inclined to the opinion that a landing in force there was the only sure way to prevent the Turks from regaining Mecca. A natural tendency to measure a military situation by regular standards impelled them to the conclusion that the Arab Army was incapable of offering any serious resistance to the Turks. It was a just conclusion so long as the Arabs tried to practise regular methods.
As a result of his conference with Wemyss, Wingate telegraphed home on November 7th that, in order to hold Rabegh against a strong attack, and after making allowance for naval assistance, at least one brigade of regular troops with artillery was required. As an alternative, if this was refused, he suggested a trained Arab force of 5,000 men, also with artillery. Realizing the likelihood of further opposition and delay at home, and its dangers, he added that he proposed to dispatch the guns and machine-guns and a light of four aircraft, already sanctioned, and to begin organizing a force of Arabs.
Wingate’s telegram was hailed by the General Staff at home as proof of their contention that any intervention would become an unlimited liability. Robertson seized on and emphasized the “at least.” He had had another battle with the War Committee on November 2nd, when Ministers had referred to “what was then happening to Rumania and had happened a year before to Serbia”; they had drawn “a gloomy picture of the figure we would cut in the eyes of the world if another ally was allowed to perish for want of help.”
With a touch of pathos, Robertson subsequently complained that such arguments “were not easy to meet on the spur of the moment.” For lack of counter-arguments he felt that “the only safe course was rigidly to adhere to the conclusions previously reached . . .” 1 A year later, to England’s cost and his own undoing, he was to adopt the same attitude over the Passchendaele offensive, where he insisted on giving a blank cheque to Haig despite his own doubts, and wrote the terrible confession—“I confess I stick to it . . . because my instinct prompts me to stick to it than because of any good argument by which I can support it.” A strategy that was prompted by animal instinct instead of by reasoned calculation, and that could not be justified by reasoned argument, carried its own condemnation even before bitter experience confirmed this. In his attitude to the Arab campaign he was saved from a similar condemnation by history because a strategist appeared, from the ranks of amateur soldiers, who was capable of evolving from reason a strategy suited to realities.
As he still stood fast the War Committee tried to shift the inconvenience by shifting the decision to a sub-committee, composed of Sir Edward Grey, Lord Curzon and Mr. Austen Chamberlain. Here, Grey was dominated by his habitual reluctance to override official military advice, but the qualms of the other two ministers were subdued by their sense of the danger in Arabia and its possible repercussions. After a prolonged discussion, that he found “rather unpleasant,” Robertson was asked to report what force was necessary to hold Rabegh against the potential attack. He grudgingly agreed to do this, although he added the warning—“I could never bring myself to issue an order for British troop to be employed in the manner contemplated.” it was an unmistakable threat of resignation if policy were to override his idea of strategy, and it had the more effect at a stage of the war when statesmen, in all countries, had become thoroughly subservient to soldiers through their fear of popular clamour.
Robertson drew up a report in which he emphasized that we ought to be “strong enough to meet the maximum, and not the minimum, numbers which the enemy could employ,” and on this basis estimated the requirement as two infantry brigades, two artillery brigades, and two camel corps companies, with auxiliary services, “a total strength of about 16,000 men.” As there were not more than 15,000 Turks altogether in the Hejaz even on Robertson’s calculation, this was certainly a generous estimate for a force that would be standing on the defensive, covered by the guns of the Navy. But the higher it was put, obviously, the less likely it was to be sent.1
The report when presented, or the threat that preceded it, sufficed to satisfy the Prime Minister; and the attention of other ministers was distracted by the political moves which preceded the fall of Mr. Asquith’s Government. Rabegh was buried in its ruins and returned to the age-long obscurity from which it had so surprisingly emerged. When the new War Cabinet was formed under Mr. Lloyd George its members naturally had no desire to precipitate an immediate conflict with their chief military adviser on such a minor issue. And although there were subterranean rumblings, any danger of revived controversy and of Robertson’s renewed embarrassment was allayed by a solution that was suggested from the Arabian shore. It was not without reason, and for more than a military reason, that Robertson in later years paid tribute to “the inspiration of Colonel Lawrence” in achieving a change in the situation.
At the time he prepared his report it is clear that, despite his assurance, he was by no means sure of its acceptance. Murray, indeed, took the precaution of concentrating two brigades at Suez, ready to embark for Rabegh if definite orders came from England. There the force remained until, late in January, Murray was ordered to send a whole division back to France and told at the same time that he need no longer hold troops in readiness to go to Rabegh. These measures cast a somewhat ironical reflection on the vehement assertions ol inability to spare troops.
Meantime alarms and excursions continued on the Red Sea coast. The Turkish printing presses in Medina poured out propaganda sheets in which their new nominee as Sherif, Ali Haidar, announced his intention of “bringing back the Arabs into the right path” and the imminent arrival of Turkish divisions from Europe to assist the task. These sheets, circulating wide, had an ominous effect. Then on December 1st Feisal sent word to Jidda that Fakhri Pasha had left Medina and was advancing down the Wadi Safra. Feisal called for reinforcements but the growing tension between the brothers, and the inattention of Ali and Abdulla to active operations, made his prospect a barren one. British ships had brought to Rabegh nearly four thousand Arab prisoners of war from India, but only a fraction of them proved willing to join the Sherifian forces. And all of them wanted to be officers. As for the small contingent of Egyptian troops which had been sent as a guard for the aircraft, they were occupied at first in guarding themselves. It was touch and go for some days whether the Arabs might not attack them, although less from hostility than from greed of loot. It was lucky that a man of Joyce’s character was present to steady the Egyptians.
Down in the south a new gain was lost. Sherif Nasir had occupied Qunfideh in October, under the guns of a British warship, but when this left on December 5th the Turks, with Bedouin help, chased out Nasir’s men.
Early in December also, three Turkish battalions with 600 camelry and three guns attacked Feisal, and drove him back on Yanbo. His men led after trifling loss. Desertions multiplied, while the Turks now commanded the route between Yanbo and Rabegh, and had cut off Feisal from Ali, save by sea. Lawrence landed at Yanbo during the crisis.
On December 10th the Sherif came down to Jidda from Mecca for a meeting with Wilson and Brémond. He handed Wilson a let
ter asking for the dispatch of six battalions to Rabegh, and saying that although he would prefer Moslems, in view of the circumstances he would accept Christians. Wilson telegraphed accordingly to the Sirdar. But by next morning the Sherif had changed his mind and withdrew his request.1
Talk, talk, talk—so it went on. Some of the Arab leaders at the base urged that troops should be sent; others hinted at peace negotiations with the Turks. The riles that had been poured into the country in thousands had largely disappeared, many of them sold, some to the Turks. Part of the food supplies had also, it was suspected, gone the same way. On Christmas Eve, Wilson and Brémond with several local officers held a conference to consider the evacuation of Rabegh, but decided to hold on as long as possible. The approaching Turkish force was reported as about 5,000 strong.
On December 29th Wingate took over the office of High Commissioner in Egypt, from which McMahon had been ousted by hostile forces. As the only way to settle the issue of whether troops were desired, Wingate sent a telegram, through Colonel Pearson, that was virtually an ultimatum to the Sherif that he should make up his mind one way or the other. The Sherif replied with one that by its very vagueness led Pearson to read it as an acceptance of the aid of British troops. Pearson telegraphed accordingly to Cairo, and Wingate thereupon asked Murray to dispatch Mudge’s brigade which was standing ready.
It was arranged that the French detachment would go with it. Mudge’s orders were that on landing at Rabegh he would cover the base and occupy an oasis on the approaches.
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