The political effects of the wedge became manifest almost immediately, and continued to augment, giving a larger meaning to an old Chief’s remark during the advance from Yanbo—“It is not an army, it is a world which is moving on Wejh.”
The Billi tribe, for the most part, did not delay to offer their services to the man who had so successfully established himself in their territory. This accession, although an uncertain one, enabled Feisal to release the Juheina to assist Abdulla in the Wadi Ais area.
North of the Billi territory lay the Beni Atiyeh, who likewise promised allegiance and free movement through their country. North of them again, lay the southern-most tribes of that vast area ruled by Nuri Shaalan, the Emir of the Ruwalla, and head of the great confederation of the Anazeh. Although his military support against the Turks could hardly be expected yet, because of his dependence on the markets of Damascus and Baghdad, his benevolent neutrality was essential to an extension of operations. For he controlled the Wadi Sirhan, a two hundred mile chain of water-holes which stretched from Jauf, his capital, to Azrak near the Syrian border. The free use of this communication cord was needed by Feisal if he were to secure the active help of Auda, the great fighting chief of the eastern Howeitat. And upon Auda’s help depended the possibility of extending the tide of revolt to Aqaba and Ma‘an.
These desires received promise of fulfilment soon after the occupation of Wejh. First arrived a welcome present of baggage camels from the Ruwalla. Then came emissaries from the eastern Howeitat, while an ever-increasing stream of sheikhs and volunteers from lesser tribes came in to offer allegiance. Them, Feisal made take the oath on the Koran—“to wait while he waited, march when he marched, to yield obedience to no Turk, to deal kindly with all who spoke Arabic, and to put independence above life, family and goods.” But oaths notwithstanding, it was mainly Feisal’s personality, his tact and his patient impartiality, which stilled their hereditary feuds and kept the peace among them. British gold, dipped out in handfuls, also acted as an ointment.
Another important individual accession was that of Ja‘far Pasha, who had last been in action on the far side of Egypt leading” the forces of the Senussi against the British. After his capture he had tried to escape from the Citadel at Cairo, but the blanket-rope had, not unexpectedly, failed to bear his weight, and, crippled by his fall, he had been re-taken—and fined the value of the blankets! When he heard of Jemal Pasha’s execution of his Arab friends in Syria he volunteered to assist the Sherif and was now given command of the new Arab regular force that was being formed.
Finally, after weeks had passed, Auda himself appeared, gauntly majestic, the very figure of a warrior.
In thirty years of incessant warfare he was said to have slain seventy-five men with his own hand, excluding Turks whom he did not trouble to count. He had been wounded thirteen times, and married twenty-eight times. A slumbering volcano, he was a charming companion until he ceased to smile save that he loved to tell appalling stories about the private character of everyone, himself included. That day of his coming was a day to be remembered. It meant so much to their cause. But he relieved the solemnity by giving them a lighter incident to remember, when he suddenly dashed out of the tent and pounded his false teeth in pieces, explaining—“I had forgotten. Jemal Pasha gave me these. I was eating my lord’s bread with Turkish teeth.”
By the time Auda joined them, the military sequel to the capture of Wejh was in active development. It took the form of a concerted series of raids on the Hejaz railway, with the aim of interrupting supplies and loosening the Turks’ hold on Medina. Now that British officers, of bold initiative and trained judgment, were available, as well as ample explosives, these raids became a far more serious interruption than in the past, when the Arabs had simply pulled up a few rails—usually re-laid by the Turks within a few hours. No longer would trains run into Medina every alternate day with unruffled regularity.
The five hundred mile stretch of railway between Ma‘an and Medina was divided into three almost equal sections—Ma‘an to Tebuk, Tebuk to Medain Saleh, Medain Saleh to Medina. From Medain Saleh, a caravan route ran eastwards to Hail in central Arabia. Just south of it was El Ala, whence a caravan route ran to the Red Sea coast at Wejh, one hundred and thirty miles distant. But these two important stations, like Tebuk, were strongly garrisoned. Hence the opening raids were aimed above and below them.
The first heavy stroke was delivered by Garland. Setting out from Wejh on February 12th, with a party of fifty Bedouin, and moving south-east he reached the railway at Toweira after an eight days’ camel ride. Relying on Arab reports that trains now ran only during the daytime, he judged that he had time to make an extensive break carried out at leisure under cover of the night. He therefore sent a party to lay explosive charges under a bridge south of the station, while he himself mined a section farther down the line. Then to his dismay, he heard the sound of a train coming from the north. It made a brief stop at the station, and then steamed on its way. With only a few minutes in hand he had just time to complete the laying of a reduced charge and to run back from the line—when the train was barely a couple of hundred yards away. The explosion came when he had gone only fifty yards. The engine left the rails, and toppled down the embankment. The crash aroused the Turkish post at the station, and the garrison hurried out of their blockhouses. It was a testimony to the coolness of the Arab entrusted with the other demolition that he paused to fire his charge and blow up the bridge before they reached him.
The raids multiplied in scale and frequency, and Newcombe proved his raiding talents. On the night of March 3rd, he attacked Dar el Hamra, north of Medain Saleh, with a party of Arabs. The station was stormed, fifteen prisoners were taken, and a stretch of the line was wrecked. More might have been wrecked if the Arabs had been as thorough as in their search for loot.
Hornby became another famous raider. Both he and Newcombe revelled in playing lone hands, and took to Arab dress completely. Later Joyce and Davenport joined in the game, after their arrival from Rabegh.
For Wingate, as well as the officers on the spot, quickly appreciated the advantage of operating against the enemy’s tenuous and sensitive flank, instead of against his short hill-barred front below Medina. This led to a progressively northward concentration of force and effort. On March 8th, Wingate gave orders to Wilson to evacuate Rabegh and bring the Egyptian detachments, as well as the Arab regulars, up to Wejh. There also was now installed the light of aircraft under Major Ross, the Egyptian detachment continuing to act mainly as the guard over its landing ground. The French detachment, however, was only moved as far as Yanbo, where it formed a new base, and continued to assist the forces of Ali and Abdulla. It was now at last reinforced by a mountain battery, for which Brémond had long appealed.
This separation of the French and British also helped to diminish the chances of friction, which, even though personal relations were often good, was so apt to arise from differing political interests and still more, from suspicion of each other’s motives. Differences were accentuated, first, by the tendency of Hussein and Abdulla to play off one ally against the others in order to keep them both from interference, and, second, by each ally’s fear of arousing Arab suspicions if they appeared to be co-operating too closely. Abdulla, in particular, was ever ready to sow the seeds of distrust. In October, when urging the dispatch of a force to save Rabegh, he had complained to the French—“What the British fear is not Moslem opinion, but that you will come in their train.” The capture of Baghdad by the British in March caused a fresh access of mistrust, and Abdulla accused the British of breaking faith with the Sherif. But the Arabs were even more mistrustful of the French efforts to establish a political and commercial footing in the Hejaz, and showed an amusing aptitude in frustrating them.
A fresh source of trouble for both had arisen through Hussein’s action at the end of October, 1916, in proclaiming himself—“King of the Arab Nation.” Both British and French were taken completely by surp
rise, and both found it equally unpalatable. For the French it was an obvious challenge to their future intentions in Syria. To the British it was not merely distasteful from the point of view of ultimate policy but had the immediate practical disadvantage of offering offence to the other great Arab Chiefs, especially Ibn Sa‘ud, and so being likely to turn them against both Hussein and the British. The High Commissioner in Egypt had promptly telegraphed Hussein to express disapproval. The French and British Governments in accord followed this up by delivering similar notes. They were willing to recognize him as king of the Hejaz and as “chief of the Arab population in revolt against the Turks.”
But to find a suitable form of address proved a worse difficulty, because of the various senses attached to the word “Djelala.” The French pointed out that it had the meaning of “Majesty” and was employed by them in addressing the Sultan of Morocco. As the British had refused this to the Sultan of Egypt they did not like to cause trouble by granting it to Hussein, and their attitude was interpreted by the French as meaning that they regarded the Hejaz as a British dependency. Eventually, after weeks of agitated correspondence the British officers were instructed to address him as “your Lordship.” it mattered little because there was no exact relationship between Arabic and European words, and commonsense soon led both British and French representatives on the spot to modify their instructions accordingly.
There were cross-currents also in the military sphere—and undercurrents. Stimulated by the capture of Wejh and anxious to use his large detachment still in waiting at Suez, Brémond sought to win support both in Cairo and on the Arab coast for his project of occupying Aqaba. He found general agreement as to the idea but polite differences of view when it came to the question of execution. The General Staff in Egypt had no more desire to send a force to Aqaba than formerly to Rabegh. Feisal, whom he visited at Wejh on January gist, had no desire to see a Franco-British force at Aqaba. When Brémond spoke of the place being lightly held, Feisal neatly turned the argument into a reinforcement for his own reply, that he could and would undertake the capture of Aqaba without European aid.
FEISAL’S ARMY COMING BACK INTO YANBO. DECEMBER, 1916
THE TRIUMPHAI ENTRY INTO AQABA. JULY 1917
Brémond had already seen Lawrence in Cairo and had tried to enlist his support. He had only succeeded in arousing Lawrence’s suspicion of his ulterior motive. A Franco-British force at Aqaba might be as great a barrier as a hostile Sirhan to his aim of spreading the Arab Revolt into Syria. Hiding his deeper objection he told Brémond that Aqaba must be taken from the rear as otherwise the mountain-barrier behind it would bottle up any advance from it towards Ma‘an. Failing to deter the Frenchman by this sound strategic argument, Lawrence hastened back to Wejh to warn Feisal before Brémond arrived. He had the pleasure of listening to Feisal’s answers to Brémond, and enhanced Brémond’s displeasure by his aggravating smile.
Baulked in his Aqaba design, Brémond was henceforth reduced to fostering the operations against Medina. Doubts of his zeal in this direction had apparently been aroused in France, for Joffre, the Commander-in-Chief, had recently sent him a telegram saying—“From your telegrams, you seem to fear the taking of Medina by the Arabs, by reason of the encouragement that it will give to their aims in Syria. This attitude, already known to the English and to the Sherif, is likely to give rise to the belief that we are trying to go back on our agreements, and may have serious consequences for the development of our action in the Levant. It is essential therefore that your attitude should not lend itself to such an interpretation.”
By one of the sublime ironies of human affairs this reluctance to achieve the capture of Medina was now to be shared by the man most opposite to Brémond—although for very different reasons. Lawrence’s new attitude was due partly to a fear that the Turks, ejected from Medina, would be able to strengthen their hold on Syria, and thus check the spread of revolt there. It was due also to the growth of a new theory of war in his mind, which rejected and reversed the theory of the French, and also the British, official school of war.
Its growth coincided with a change in the military situation.
Under the impulsion of Britain’s new Prime Minister, the initiative against Turkey was at last to be regained. Immediately he came into office in early December Mr. Lloyd George pressed for an offensive campaign in the East with a view to some striking success, economically won, that would enhearten the allied peoples, wearied by the drab slaughter of the Somme. Sir William Robertson did his utmost to resist this demand, an affront to his sacred principle of “concentration at the decisive spot,” and his resistance stiffened when Murray, asked what force he would need to press his advance beyond El Arish over the frontier, suggested that he would like two additional divisions, if they could be lent to him temporarily.
Robertson replied to Murray on December 12th, that “the Prime Minister wishes you to make the maximum possible effort during the winter,” but added himself that no further troops could be sent until the winter was over. A telegram from Murray next day showed that he had reckoned on using three of the possible divisions for passive defence of his communications. On December 15th Robertson instructed him—“to be as aggressive as possible with the troops at your disposal subject to your main mission of defending Egypt,” and added that he did “not quite understand why,” when Murray had occupied El Arish and cleared the enemy from Sinai, it should be necessary to keep so large a proportion on the lines of communication. The question seems pertinent when we compare this estimate with the far smaller force that the Turks allotted to guard their far longer lines of communication against an omnipresent threat.
When this new impulse came from home Murray’s preparations to occupy El Arish were almost completed. They had certainly been long in maturing. In his truly excellent history of the Palestine Campaign, General Wavell, himself an eminent professional soldier, remarks—“The lines of communication organized for the advance across Sinai were a typically British piece of work—slow, very expensive, immensely solid. The famous epigram of Tacitus on the Romans—’they make a desert and call it peace’—might aptly be inverted for this British advance—’they turn the desert into a workshop and call it war.’“
It is claimed that “it was Sir Archibald Murray’s foresight in basing the advance from the first on so broad a foundation as the standard-gauge railway and 12-inch pipeline, which made possible the subsequent drive of the army up to and beyond the gates of Aleppo.” But this drive did not take place until twenty months later, thus allowing a somewhat long interval in which any defects of a more rapid preparation in 1916 could have been remedied. And in the original advance, which at last began at the end of 1916, solidity did not suffice to prevent a check.
“Elaborate water arrangements” delayed the pounce on El Arish until December 20th. “Then, just when all was ready, the enemy withdrew.” An empty town was occupied on the morning of the 21st. The garrison of this Turkish outpost, 1,600 strong, had fallen back on the fortified posts of Magdhaba and Rafah. The former, which lay inland, and was thus a threat to the flank of any further advance, was captured by Chauvel’s mounted force on the 23rd, after the garrison had put up a fight so stout that Chauvel, fearing lest he might be held there without water, had actually issued orders for a withdrawal just as the defenders began to give way.
The railway was pushed forward across the twenty miles to El Arish by January 4th—a contrast to the previous rate of progress. On the evening of the 8th, Chetwode advanced against Rafah with Chauvel’s force and an additional brigade. He surrounded the Turkish position soon after dawn, but the curious course of the Magdhaba fight was here repeated. In the afternoon orders for a withdrawal had been issued when, suddenly, before the order could reach them, the men of the New Zealand Mounted Brigade stormed the key of the position.
But it was Turkish folly, and the false pride of keeping their foot on Egyptian territory, which had provided the British the chance of bringing off these
two coups. Kress von Kressenstein had vainly urged the withdrawal of these outlying garrisons to the main Gaza-Beersheba line of defence. And the loss of over three thousand men seriously diminished the already weak garrison of this position.
To meet the advance of three British infantry divisions, and two mounted divisions, the Turks had only one weak division and the remains of a second. And they suffered a continual drain from Arab desertions, an effect which may justly be counted an indirect credit to the revolt in the Hejaz. A third weak division was brought down by the Turks in February, during the lull of nearly three months that followed the British advance to Rafah. But even so they could oppose only some 13,000 fighting men (rifles and sabres) necessarily scattered, to the 40,000 of the British.
Thus there was the prospect of the “big success” that the British Government desired. It was important, however, that no large reinforcements should reach the Turks. Three weak divisions were holding down the restless Arabs in Syria, and at the most one of these might be spared.
But in Arabia there was a Turkish force, almost as strong as that which faced the British in Palestine. Far stronger indeed, if we count the three divisions south of the Hejaz. At present that force was being pinned down at no expense of man-power to the British save a handful of officers. Such a distraction of the enemy’s force from the “decisive spot” in Palestine should surely have gladdened the heart of the most doctrinaire upholders of the text-book principle of concentration. But if Medina were abandoned and the Turkish forces withdrawn northward, the scales in Palestine would be decisively changed.
Early in March a telegram from Jemal Pasha was intercepted by wireless in Cairo. Only part of it could be deciphered. That part, however, seemed to convey an order for the evacuation of Medina, and for the Turkish forces to retire north up the railway in mass. “It suggested an order of march, with baggage and headquarters on an accompanying train.”
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