After his first splash of exultation, Lawrence suffered the sudden disillusionment of a goal attained. The life that he had not expected to keep lost the savour that it had borne while being risked. The very drabness of the scene accentuated the barrenness of his satisfaction.
Hunger called him out of this trance, back to the barrenness of the cupboard. There were five hundred of his men, seven hundred prisoners, a couple of thousand new allies to feed, and no supplies, save for the green dates that the palms offered, and the meat that the camels might afford at the price of mobility. He had proved his generalship, but now he had to be a quartermaster-general. Partly because of his irregular leave-taking he had set out from Wejh without the same thorough arrangements for Naval co-operation as in the earlier move to Wejh. He had, indeed, been promised by Boyle that a ship would sail up the Gulf of Aqaba as often as possible, but the problem of keeping watch for the Arabs’ arrival was complicated by the uncertainty of this arrival as well as by the Turkish mines in the sea-approaches to Aqaba. Actually, when Lawrence reached Aqaba he heard that a British ship had appeared, and disappeared, about an hour earlier. It meant that he could hardly hope for another visit before a week had elapsed.
MAP 7 ‘AMMAN–DER‘A ZONE
Thus two military problems now confronted him; or, rather, two sides to one problem—that of keeping the prize he had gained. How was it to be held against the Turks? How was it to be held on an empty stomach?
The solution of the first was in accord with Lawrence’s new and original theory of war. It was arranged to cover all the possible approaches to Aqaba, not by a series of interdependent posts, but by four Independent ones, sited in places as nearly Impregnable by nature as possible and each menacing the enemy’s rear if he tried to advance by the others, so that while not one could be easily taken, none could be neglected. It seemed a good way to paralyse an assailant’s Initiative.
There was to be a post at Guweira where Auda himself went, a post at Batra on the flank of Abu el Lissal, another in the rocks at Nabathean Petra, and a fourth at Delagha, on the intermediate Wadi Gharandil route to the great Wadi Araba trough. The last provided a backstairs communication between the first and third and would also serve to keep the doubtful Sinai and Beersheba Arabs from joining hands with the Turks from Ma‘an. To site posts of this kind successfully in a hurry a soldier needs to be not merely a tactician but a high-speed geographer. Lawrence’s map studies with Hedley and the survey of Egypt were of great value to his plans here, as always.
In the solution of the second and more urgent part of the problem Lawrence was also characteristically individual. He decided to go himself across the Sinai desert to Suez and obtain the dispatch of a food-ship. It was a hazardous venture. There were a hundred and fifty miles of the Sinai desert to cross, and only one well on the route. If any rider fell out he was doomed, yet both camels and men were tired when they started. Lawrence himself had been averaging fifty miles a day for a month past.
Picking out eight of the best riders and camels he set of on the night of his arrival at Aqaba. As they rode round the bay they discussed the choice between going gently, and risking collapse from hunger, or going fast, and risking collapse from exhaustion. Finally, they decided to keep at a walk but ride almost continuously. This meant transferring the worst strain to the rider instead of the camel.
The first test came early, in climbing the steep path, one in three and a half, up the Sinai scarp. Men and camels were trembling with fatigue when they reached the top, and one, obviously unfit, was sent back while there was still time.
Near midnight they reached Themed, and paused for a drink at its wells. No more water would be met until they reached Suez. A few minutes’ pause at dawn; again at midday when roughly midway, near the ruins of Nekhl; an hour’s halt at sunset before crossing the Mitla Hills, another hour at the second day’s coming—that was all the rest they allowed themselves. Their failing strength eked out by the cooling breezes that greeted them from the Gulf of Suez, they were among the sand-dunes by noon on the 8th, and at three o’clock rode, weary but relieved, into Shatt, the post on the Canal opposite Suez.
But the manner of their welcome was a fresh trial, hardly bearable. They found the post deserted, with no one to tell them that the troops had moved out to a camp in the desert because of an outbreak of plague. Lawrence found a telephone in the empty offices and rang through to headquarters at Suez, only to be told that he must apply to the Inland Water Transport for a passage across the canal. This he did, only to be told that there was no boat available. Adding that one would be sent in the morning, to take him to quarantine, the Inland Water Board rang off.
“I refused to spend a single superfluous night with my familiar vermin. I wanted a bath, and something with ice in it to drink: to change these clothes, all sticking to my saddle sores in filthiness: to eat something more tractable than green date and camel sinew. I got through again to the Inland Water Transport and talked like Chrysostom. It had no effect, so I became vivid. Then, once more, they cut me off. I was growing very vivid, when friendly northern accents from the military exchange floated down the line; It’s no b——good, sir, talking to them f—— water b——.’ “
The operator took the initiative of putting Lawrence through to Major Lyttleton at the Embarkation Office. He at once promised to send his own launch, asking Lawrence not to give away the fact of the breach of red-tape. Within half an hour the launch appeared and carried Lawrence across to Suez where, after overcoming the distrustful manner of the Sinai Hotel staff, he had six cold drinks and a hot bath, followed by dinner and bed after he had arranged for the care of his Arab companions.
Next day, armed with ticket and pass he boarded the train for Ismailia and Cairo. On the way he had a fresh encounter with officialdom and was sufficiently refreshed to indulge his leg-pulling propensity. The military police looked suspiciously at this Englishman in bare feet and white silk robes. Instead of showing his pass he curtly said “Sherif of Mecca—Staff.” “What army, sir?” “Mecca.” “Never heard of it: don’t know the uniform.” Lawrence retorted, “Would you recognize a Montenegrin dragoon?”
As allied troops were allowed to travel without passes, the police were driven to wire up the line for a special intelligence officer. When he boarded the train, perspiring, Lawrence produced his pass. The would-be spy-catcher did not appreciate the joke.
The train was just running into Ismailia, and here on the platform Lawrence saw Admiral Wemyss, deep in talk with an unknown general. Lawrence seized the chance to speak to Captain Burmester, Wemyss, chief of staff. For a moment Burmester failed to recognize Lawrence, so burned with the sun and so fine-drawn through prolonged strain—his weight had fallen from about nine stone to six stone ten pounds. But there was no barrier of red-tape from the moment of recognition. Stirred by the news of Aqaba’s capture, Burmester gave instant orders for the Dufferin to load up with al available food at Suez and steam for Aqaba.
From Burmester Lawrence learnt that the unknown general was Allenby, sent out to replace Murray after the second failure at Gaza—of this also Lawrence now heard for the first time. He “fell to wondering whether this heavy rubicund man was like ordinary generals, and if we should have trouble for six months teaching him. Murray and Belinda had begun so tiresomely that our thought those first days had been, not to defeat the enemy, but to make our own chiefs let us live.”
Lawrence had an early chance to gauge Allenby’s attitude. On arrival in Cairo he made his report to Clayton, and arranged wititi him for sixteen thousand pounds in gold to be sent at once to Aqaba, so that Nasir might be able to redeem at once the “notes” that Lawrence had issued. They were pencilled promises, on army telegraph forms, to pay so much to bearer in Aqaba. “It was a great system, but no one had dared issue notes before in Arabia,” so early redemption was essential if Arab prejudice was to be overcome for the future. Then, before Lawrence had been able to get new uniforms made, there came a summons from All
enby.
“In my report, thinking of Saladin and Abu Obeida, I had stressed the strategic importance of the eastern tribes of Syria, and their proper use as a threat to the communications of Jerusalem. This jumped with his ambitions, and he wanted to weigh me.”
For almost three years in France, Allenby had been the target of criticism. “The Bull,” as he was universally known, had fitted his nickname both in action against the enemy and attitude to his subordinates. An ardent cavalryman, trench-warfare had irked his spirit and several times goaded him into launching attacks that were not justified by the openings nor guided by knowledge of the real situation. At other times, showing more research for surprise than was the custom, he had been frustrated by the high priests of the artillery cult, with their ritual bombardments, and by his own inability to counter their technical arguments. He had been irked, too, by subordination to Haig, a man of equal determination but more orthodox thought, whom he had outshone as a column leader in South Africa only to fall behind on the ladder of promotion. The strain between them was not merely due to personal differences. Allenby was a man cast by nature for an independent role, better and bigger in carrying out his own plans than in executing another’s. Here he had an essential likeness to Lawrence, in other ways so different.
His transfer to Egypt was a turning point in his career, as it became a fresh turning point in Lawrence’s. The steel harness of Western warfare had sat uneasily on Allenby’s shoulders, and in this new theatre, itself more open and occupied by a foe less mechanically endowed, he found the right field for his gifts and his instincts. He needed little persuasion to place his trust in mobility rather than in hard pounding.
Even so, Lawrence felt that “he was hardly prepared for anything so odd as myself—a little bare-footed silk-skirted man offering to hobble the enemy by his preaching if given stores and arms and a fund of two hundred thousand sovereigns to convince and control his converts.” “Allenby could not make out how much was genuine performer and how much charlatan. The problem was working behind his eyes, and I left him unhelped to solve it.”
Lawrence did most of the talking and expounded his ideas of Eastern Syria, its people, and the policy to be adopted. At the end Allenby briefly said, “Well, I will do for you what I can.” And Lawrence gradually found that “what General Allenby could do was enough for his very greediest servant.” The £200,000 was later increased to £500,000, of which Lawrence had a balance of £10,000 to return when Damascus was reached.
If Lawrence had already perceived a new horizon, Allenby’s words brought it closer. The assurance encouraged him to draw up a program and submit it to Clayton. In the discussion that now took place we can see the change that seven months had wrought in Lawrence—the passage he had made between Yanbo and Aqaba. Before going to Yanbo he had tried to evade the responsibility of being adviser. Now he sought the far greater responsibility of being director. But he did not mind whether he had, or who had, the trappings of authority so long as he had the reality.
To be “King without the crown” had been his desire. He did not ask for command but that his policy and strategy should be adopted in the Arab theatre of war—that his new “northern” plan should become the official one. By making this point clear he turned the flank of Clayton’s objection that even irregular war did not reverse regular methods so far that the most junior officer should take command. Lawrence was more than willing to accept the practical alternative that Joyce should be sent as commanding officer at Aqaba. For with Joyce, as with Newcombe, he would be assured not only of a free hand but of solid backing. Joyce would make a strong shaft for Lawrence’s spear-head, and all the stronger because Joyce had the capacity for that necessary organization which Lawrence was anxious to escape—needed to escape if he was to direct.
Lawrence has an astonishing grasp of detail—to read some of his intelligence reports is a revelation of the rare combination of wide views with minute observation. And I have often been amused, as well as impressed, by his super-methodical organization of some quite petty job—although the method is usually unconventional. But he long ago learnt the truth that the man who tries to do everything himself will never achieve anything big. Experience had shown Mm that he had to be the spear-head of any big drive that his plan required. The others had courage and the team-spirit, but he alone could supply the decisive ingenuity. To quote his own words, which others have endorsed, “I knew my ground, my material and my allies. If I met fifty checks, I could yet see a fifty-first way to my object. But if I had to be the spear-point I dared not weary myself over ship-loads of rice and flour.” Distribution of effort is the beginning of military wisdom.
As for the program itself, the deliverance of Syria now succeeded the deliverance of the Hejaz, which, virtually accomplished, dropped into the background. Now the essential difference between the land that had been delivered and the land that he sought to deliver was that whilst the former was almost entirely desert, the latter was predominantly cultivated. It was easier to lift the yoke from, floating globules than from a settled body. The new problem required a new treatment. Lawrence realized that the Arab peoples in the north could only be freed through the aid of the British Army, whose northward advance was the necessary lever to overturn the Turkish dominion that the Arabs could undermine. Each was necessary to the other, and each might help the other’s progress. The co-operation need not be close; in fact it would be all the better, strategically and politically, if British and Arabs were long-range collaborators rather than direct associates. Such was Lawrence’s idea, and in Allenby he found a ready response to it, “We agreed to keep the Dead Sea and Jordan between us—except when he gave me notice he was going to Amman, and I gave him notice I was recruiting in Sinai.” in strategic policy it meant adaptation—to settled instead of nomadic conditions. In principle it should be easier to develop a sense of unity and a creed of nationality, among a people who were tied to their fields. But in actuality, unity was likely to break apart on the many divisions and subdivisions of the people.
The mountain range that runs, north and south divides the settled part into a coastal strip and an inland plain, so different in climate as to create utterly different conditions of life. And beyond the cultivated interior lies the vast desert stretch. Moreover the river-valleys running down to the Mediterranean create a series of lateral intersections. Varieties of religion introduce subdivisions within subdivisions. And Turkish policy had craftily deepened the mixture. Moreover, the chain of cities—Jerusalem, Damascus, Horns, Hama, Aleppo, and that exotic plant, Beirut—produced an urban class essentially apart from the peasant population, although differing between cities.
Syria was thus a patchwork quilt of many colours sewn together, under the hand of the Ottoman Government, by the thread of a common language—Arabic. If the colours were mixed, most of them were vivid owing to the general tendency of the Syrian mind to indulge in fanciful day-dreams.
Lawrence’s boyhood dream of a united Arabia had shrivelled in contact with Arab realities, especially among the Syrians.1 But in their dreams he saw a means, the only means, of stirring them as a whole into revolt against the Turks. The fusion would be temporary, but it might suffice to shatter the Turkish Empire—and to secure the victory. To detonate the explosion he must strike their imagination. The fuse must be sufficiently novel to be kept apart from their damping jealousies; it must not be of European manufacture lest it scratch their conceit. Feisal should be the fuse, as a personification and projection of the past glories of the Ommayad or Ayubid dynasties.
In strategic direction the new campaign would be aimed at the Hauran; once the Hauran rose the object of the campaign, Lawrence calculated, would be achieved. Deraa and the Yarmuk Valley would provide the leverage on which to bear in loosening the enemy’s hold on the Hauran. To reach them it would be necessary to set up and mount a fresh ladder of tribes, similar to that from Wejh to Aqaba. It would again be a curved ladder carrying them out through the desert before it
turned in. The steps of the ladder would be formed of the Howeitat, Beni Sakhr, Sherarat, Ruwalla and Serahin, “to raise us three hundred miles to Azrak,” the oasis which offered an advanced base for operations against the Hauran.
In strategic execution the new campaign would be a repetition of the old, but improved through the experience already gained. Not without reason had the camel been called the ship of the desert. Lawrence’s thought travelled back to Francis Bacon’s dictum, “He who commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much or as little of the war as he will.” His own war was more Elizabethan than Fochian—and the Arabs had command of the desert. Desert operations should be like such wars at sea “in their mobility, their ubiquity, their independence of bases and communications, their lack of ground features, of strategic areas, of fixed directions, of fixed points.”
“Camel-raiding parties, self-contained as ships, could cruise without danger along any part of the enemy’s land-frontier, just out of sight of his posts along the edge of cultivation, and tap or raid into his lines where it seemed fittest or easiest and most profitable, with a sure retreat always behind them into an element which the Turks could not enter.” The Arabs’ freedom of movement was fortified by an intimate knowledge of the desert-front of Syria. Lawrence himself had traversed much of it on foot before the war, tracing the movements of Saladin. “As our war-experience deepened we became adepts at that form of geographical intuition, described by Bourcet as wedding unknown land to known in a mental map.”
The tactics, Lawrence conceived, should always be “tip and run: not pushes, but strokes.” The Arabs should never try “to maintain or improve an advantage,” They ought “to move off and strike again somewhere else.” As he wrote later—“We used the smallest force in the quickest time at the farthest place. If the action had continued till the enemy had changed his dispositions to resist it, we would have been breaking the spirit of our fundamental rule of denying him targets.” This was a far subtler and also more profound principle than the familiar “concentration at the decisive spot.” More practical too in application. And with slight adaptation it would fit regular warfare, for the use of mobile forces.
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