The embarkation was fixed for January 9th. The long awaited step was at last decided upon. It was never taken. The orders were cancelled—and finally.
On January 6th, Wilson had reached Jidda on his return from a quick visit to Egypt. On his way he had stopped at Yanbo, where he had seen not only Feisal but Lawrence. Although Wilson had hitherto been strongly in favour of sending British troops to Rabegh, he came back with a changed opinion. He was more optimistic as to the situation and more apprehensive of the reaction that might follow the landing of British troops.
On arrival at Jidda Wilson saw the Sherif’s last telegram, and deemed it unsatisfactory. He wrote to Wingate to suggest that no troops should be sent unless the Sherif would actually demand them in writing and hold himself responsible for the consequences of their appearance in the Hejaz.
On January 9th Wingate sent a telegram to the Sherif in these terms. Although many of his entourage were in favour of acceptance, the Sherif hesitated to accept the responsibility. He remained undecided for two days. On the 11th he replied that he had no need of British troops for the moment, although he wished to retain the possibility of calling on them later if circumstances changed.
But Feisal, with Lawrence at his side, had already set out from Yanbo on a two hundred mile flank march up the Red Sea Coast, to Wejh. This was captured on the 23rd by an advance party of Arabs landed from ships. Two days later the British brigade in waiting at Suez was handed back to Murray.
“In War,” said Napoleon, “it is not men, but the man who counts.” it is still more true of irregular war.
One hundred and twenty-one years earlier, in January, 1796, a young man of twenty-six had subtly persuaded the Directory to adopt an audacious plan which likewise began with a flank march along the coast—of the Riviera. Lawrence, now on the threshold of his first Arabian campaign, was exactly two years older than Napoleon Bonaparte in his first Italian campaign—for both were born on the same day of the year, August 15th. Lovers of coincidence may find an extraordinary chain. On October 16th, the day that Lawrence landed in Arabia, Napoleon was made General of Division in reward for his services in the Vendémiare rising, the crisis that formed his opportunity. On March 27th Napoleon assumed command of the Army of Italy, and Lawrence carried out his first independent attack against the Hejaz railway. On May 10th, the anniversary of the “Bridge of Lodi,” from which Napoleon dated his vision of “superhuman” achievement, Lawrence would definitely cut loose from the British mission, to embark, alone with the Arabs, on the expedition that raised the Arab campaign onto a new plane and set him on a pinnacle apart.
But the parallel should not be pressed too far. Napoleon never attained wisdom nor learnt the folly of phantom ambition. Shrinking from truth, he stumbled into the abyss.
Note 1
At the meeting on November 2nd the War Committee bowed before Robertson’s rigid obduracy, but they did not share his easy view that “the possible occupation of Rabegh by the Turks had never been a matter of much importance.” Instructions were sent to Wemyss “to give all the naval protection to Rabegh which he could,” and to land a naval detachment if necessary. The Sirdar was to send whatever military aid he could spare from the Sudan. The French Government was asked to dispatch any troops they had available near the scene. After Wingate’s telegram of November 7th there was a fresh impulse to develop these vague provisions into definite measures, an impulse which, gained impetus from a fresh move by the French. Brémond had added his voice to the appeal for a brigade, and at the same time had expressed unwillingness to allow his detachment of artillery and machine-guns to leave Suez unless they were assured of proper infantry support at Rabegh. The French Government backed him and suggested to the Foreign Office that Murray could easily spare a brigade from the Sinai front in view of the Turks’ relatively low strength there. It also offered to lend Murray a couple of Senegalese battalions in order to facilitate the withdrawal of one of his British brigades.
This French intervention was none the more palatable to Robertson because of its implied reflection on his strategical dispositions.
Note 2
Robertson’s report further stated that troops could not be taken from any other theatre, and that if they were taken from Murray’s force in Sinai he would have to suspend the advance to El Arish which the War Committee had ordered. (In view of this declaration, it is interesting to note that there were in Sinai only two weak Turkish divisions, totalling some 15,000 rifles, opposed to the British, who had more than treble their strength.) On the other hand, if this advance was made it would relieve the menace to Mecca far more effectively than any landing at Rabegh “by threatening the enemy’s communications with the Hejaz.” “It was, moreover, improbable that the reported advance from Medina on Rabegh and Mecca was being attempted, and, if attempted, that it would succeed.” “The difficulties to be overcome would be enormous, even for the Turks who were accustomed to desert warfare.” For all these reasons, he submitted in conclusion “the expedition ought not to be sent.”
The report, certainly, is proof that a General Staff appreciation may have more resemblance to counsel’s address to the jury on behalf of his client than to a judicial summing up. The idea that an eventual advance to El Arish on the Mediterranean coast six weeks hence might have an immediate effect on the situation near Mecca, and be an effective threat to the Hejaz railway, 120 miles distant across the Dead Sea and desert, is peculiarly amusing. It certainly surpasses any of those amateur calculations of Lloyd George’s which Robertson was so fond of denouncing. The humour of this confident assurance becomes still more apparent in retrospect when we remember that the British advance was held up a few miles beyond El Arish, and there remained until the following autumn.
Note 3
Dissatisfied both with the situation and Hussein’s attitude, Brémond, who was an ardent advocate of armed intervention, crossed the Red Sea to visit the Sirdar, accompanied by Captain (later Lord) Lloyd. He declared to Wingate that nothing could stop the Turks, and that money alone was keeping the Arabs in the field. Hence, to avert the fall of Mecca, he urged that the. British should at once land at Aqaba or advance by Gaza to cut the Hejaz railway, that they should occupy Rabegh in strength, that they should occupy Wejh as another base of action against the railway, and leave Medina alone for the time being. When Wingate pointed out that he had no troops available, and could barely scrape together fifteen hundred to deal with the local menace in Darfur, Brémond remarked that Uganda had furnished no men to Britain, whereas French West Africa had raised tens of thousands.
* * *
1 Sir Mark Sykes was called into consultation. He had embodied his proposals in a formula that—“Towards all Arabs . . . whether independent allies, as Ibn Sa‘ud or the Sherif, inhabitants of protectorates, spheres of influence, vassal states, we should show ourselves as pro-Arabs, and that wherever we are on Arab soil we are going to back the Arab language and Arab race, and that we shall protect or support Arabs against external oppression by force as much as we are able, and from alien exploitation.” The significance of his formula lies in its illumination of his own view when drawing up the Sykes-Picot agreement.
1 See Note 1 at end of chapter.
1 See Note 2 at end of chapter.
1 See Note 3 at end of chapter.
CHAPTER VII
THE WEDGE
December, 1916–January,
Lawrence’s advice against sending British troops to the Hejaz wins him favour—He is sent himself, instead—He arrives to find Feisal driven back and Yanbo in danger—A searchlight display restores the balance—A new move turns the scales—Feisal’s army sets out on a march up the coast—The capture of Wejh turns the flank of the Turkish menace to Mecca
ON LAWRENCE’S return to Cairo after his first visit to Feisal, he had written a report for Clayton which was similar to but rather stronger than the views he had expressed at Khartoum. It was “a short and very pungent note, opposing the dispatch of a briga
de, root and branch.” He considered that the Arabs were capable of maintaining themselves in the hill-belt, which crossed the routes to Mecca, so long as they were supplied with plenty of light automatics, with adequate artillery to offset the Turkish guns, and with technical advice. But from his own experience he was definitely against the dispatch of British troops; in his opinion their arrival would create so much suspicion and prejudice among the Arabs that it would destroy such unity as now existed. Moreover, he regarded British infantry as too cumbersome for operations in such barren and rugged country, and thought that the Turks were quite capable of evading a static force at Rabegh.
He pitched his argument the more strongly because of the preparations he found in progress to send a force. Soon afterwards he had cause to reinforce his objections because of his discovery that Brémond, in pressing for its dispatch, was influenced by political motives—Lawrence’s suspicions were aroused by a conversation in which Brémond hinted that, if the Arabs resented the landing of Allied troops, their resentment would be directed against the Sherif, who would in consequence become more dependent on Allied support—and more subservient.
On Lawrence’s part, also, one may surmise that his objection to a military expedition was not purely military. Brémond, later, hinted that Lawrence’s objection was due to personal ambition, as “the arrival of a British general and a brigade would have relegated him to a subordinate position,” This suspicion does not accord with the fact that Lawrence first raised his voice against the proposal at a time when there was no thought of sending him to the Hejaz and when he had no desire to go.
There was a far more natural reason, in Lawrence’s long-standing desire to see the Arabs achieve their freedom and keep it independent of foreign tutelage. If he did not wish to see them “protected” by the British, still less did he wish to see them absorbed by the French, and turned into good Frenchmen. The improvement in their civic virtues would not, for him, compensate the loss of what he regarded as the essential spirit of liberty. And the French were not only a more extensive threat to his idea, but a more active threat. They would be the cuckoo in his nest.
Lawrence’s report earned him new respect in a quarter where he had formerly been regarded as a disrespectful and eccentric young civilian in uniform. He was suddenly translated in the eyes of General Headquarters from amateur to expert status. This, however, is the usual fortune of critics when their criticism happens to suit their professional audience. Lawrence’s observations and arguments against sending a brigade to Rabegh were most welcome to those who did not wish to spare it. “Murray and his staff turned round and said I was a broth of a boy. They telegraphed my note in extenso to Robertson, who sent me a message of thankfulness.”
So excellent an expert must be utilized further and sent where he could continue to uphold such sound views. As this newly formed opinion in high quarters coincided with that already held by the man who knew his work best, Lawrence was told by Clayton to return to Yanbo, where he would act as liaison officer with, and adviser to, Feisal. His reaction to this new commission, which was to be of such far-reaching consequence, may be related in his own words:
“This being much against my grain I urged my complete unfitness for the job: said I hated responsibility—obviously the position of a conscientious adviser would be responsible—and that in all my life objects had been gladder to me than persons, and ideas than objects. So the duty of succeeding with men, of disposing them to any purpose, would be doubly hard for me. I was unlike a soldier: hated soldiering; whereas the Sirdar had telegraphed to London for certain regular officers competent to direct the Arab War.
“Clayton replied that they might be months arriving, and meanwhile Feisal must be linked to us . . . So I had to go; leaving to others the Arab Bulletin I had founded, the maps I wished to draw, and the file of the war-changes of the Turkish Army, all fascinating activities in which my training helped me; to take up a role for which I had no inclination. As our revolt succeeded, onlookers have praised its leadership: but behind the scenes lay all the vices of amateur control, experimental councils, divisions, whimsicality.”
If there is a flick of irony in these last words, there is, I am sure, none of that false modesty which the foreigner terms English hypocrisy, and with which the Englishman struggles to hide his thoughts from himself, succeeding in proportion to his individual lack of humour. Lawrence’s words are rather those of a man who realizes the limitations of other men all the better for being conscious of his own, and whose low opinion of himself springs from an acute perception of the lowliness of all humanity. To me at least, his words are the natural product of his strange, because uncommonly successful, power of detachment.
It was early December when Lawrence landed again at Yanbo, where the British had now established a base for Feisal and were accumulating supplies. There also was the nucleus of a regular Arab force in process of formation, and a British instructor, Captain Garland of the Egyptian Army, who was a connoisseur in the art of demolition by dynamite. Lawrence was to be one of his most apt pupils. Down south at Rabegh several more British officers, headed by Joyce and Davenport, had arrived with three hundred Egyptian troops and a flight of the Royal Flying Corps. These officers were also helping to train several hundred assorted Arabs who formed another instalment of the new Sherifian Regular Army. How many they were no one exactly knew, for their Turk-trained officers had retained the modern Turkish, or 18th century British, habit of drawing rations for a generously estimated number.
Lawrence rode inland to Mubarak, where he came unexpectedly in sight of hundreds of camp-fires, and heard “the roaring of thousands of excited camels” as well as other sounds of confusion and alarm. He found that it was Feisal’s force, just arrived, and Feisal himself explained the cause. A Turkish detachment had slipped round his outposts in the Wadi Safra and cut them off; then descended on Bir Said where they took Zeid’s main contingent by surprise, and dispersed it in wild flight. Feisal himself, who had left Zeid on guard while he tried to raise another tribal area, had heard of the disaster and rushed back with his five thousand to bar the road to Yanbo.
There was such an air of panic in the encampment during the night that it was fortunate the Turks did not follow up their success. Before dawn Feisal decided to move to another position, as much to distract his men’s minds as on tactical grounds. Lawrence spent the next two days with Feisal, and during them obtained an insight into Feisal’s methods of command which intensified his admiration for the leader who was holding together so shifting and shiftless a force.
“Feisal, fighting to make up their lost spirits, did it most surely by lending of his own to everyone within reach. He was accessible to all who stood outside his tent . . . and he never cut short petitions, even when men came in chorus with their grief in a song of many verses, and sang them around us in the dark . . . His extreme patience was a further lesson to me of what native headship in Arabia meant. His self-control seemed equally great.”
When Lawrence saw the arrival of the sheikhs of the Harb and Ageyl whose carelessness had been mainly responsible for the disaster, he feared a scene, and thought of the meaning of Feisal’s name—“the sword flashing downward in the stroke.” But, instead, Feisal rallied them “gently, chaffing them for having done this or that.” “I never saw an Arab leave him dissatisfied or hurt—a tribute to his tact and to his memory; for he seemed never to halt for loss of a fact; nor to stumble over a relationship.”
Lawrence also paints a picture of camp routine. Just before daybreak the army Imam uttered the call to prayer, in a strident voice. As soon as he ended, Feisal’s Imam “cried gently and musically from just outside the tent”—an ordinary bell-tent with a camp-bed, and rug, and an old Baluch prayer carpet. An hour or so later, the flap of Feisal’s tent was thrown back, as a sign that he was open to callers from the household. “After the morning’s news a tray of breakfast would be carried in.” it consisted of dates, with occasionally some odd biscuits or ce
reals. Then Feisal dictated his correspondence to his two secretaries, the task being liquidated with sips of bitter coffee and sweet tea alternately. At about eight o’clock Feisal would buckle on his ceremonial dagger and walk across to the reception tent, sitting down at the end facing the open side, with his entourage in a semi-circle behind, and the suppliants waiting outside for their turn.
The audience was usually finished by noon, when the household and guests reassembled in the living-tent to await the luncheon-tray, laden with many dishes. But Feisal himself was a very light eater—he smoked incessantly—and was apt to wave the tray away too soon for the satisfaction of those who loved their food. After lunch came talk, over coffee and syrupy green tea, and then after perhaps an hour’s retirement to his tent, the reception was renewed. A walk followed, if there was time. Soon after six the supper tray appeared, followed by talk, the recital of Arabic verses, and an occasional game of chess, with cups of tea at intervals until, very late, Feisal retired to sleep.
Feisal asked Lawrence if he would wear Arab clothes while in camp, as khaki was associated by the Arabs with Turkish officers, whereas Arab dress would not only attract less notice but also help his acceptance by the tribesmen as one of their accredited leaders. On Lawrence agreeing, he was fitted out “in splendid white silk and gold embroidered wedding garments which had been sent to Feisal lately (was it a hint?) by his great-aunt in Mecca.”
It was after this visit that Lawrence made a report on the Arab forces which foreshadows his future strategy—“As a mass they are not formidable, since they have no corporate spirit or discipline, or mutual confidence. Man by man they are good: I would suggest that the smaller the unit that is acting, the better will be its performance. A thousand of them in a mob would be ineffective against one-fourth their number of trained troops: but three or four of them in their own valleys or hills, would account for a dozen Turkish soldiers. When they sit still they get nervous, and anxious to return home. Feisal himself goes rather to pieces in the same conditions. When, however, they have plenty to do, and are riding about in small parties tapping the Turks here and there, retiring always when the Turks advance, to appear in another direction immediately after, then they are in their element, and must cause the enemy not only anxiety but bewilderment.”
Lawrence of Arabia Page 11