The Turkish N.C.O. who found the haversack was rewarded, and his Corps Commander published an order warning his officers against carrying papers when out on reconnaissance. More important from the British point of view, the Turks now concentrated their efforts on strengthening the defences near Gaza, to the neglect of those on the other flank. Kress von Kressenstein also kept his only reserve division behind the Gaza flank, despite the suggestion of his distant superior, Falkenhayn, that it should be placed at or behind Beersheba. And when the attack on Beersheba actually came, on October gist, Kress refused the appeal to send reinforcements. To Meinertzhagen’s subtle web of ruse were mainly due the faulty dispositions of the enemy, if a share of the credit must go to Murray’s successive failures at Gaza, which had apparently persuaded the Turks that British stupidity was limitless.
Distraction was certainly more necessary than ever. Since Allenby’s coming the British had been reinforced not only with troops but with heavy artillery, owing to his own demands and Lloyd George’s vigorous pressure at home; the army in Palestine had now been raised to seven infantry and three mounted divisions, totalling some 75,000 rifles and 17,000 sabres. But the Turkish strength had also grown, if even more on paper than in reality. Its eight weak divisions and two cavalry regiments mustered some 30,000 rifles and 1,400 sabres.
Moreover, like a looming cloud behind them there was the new Yilderim (“Thunderbolt”) Army Group which had been formed under Falkenhayn’s command to turn the scales in the Middle East. It included seven Turkish divisions now assembling at Aleppo and had a steel core in the new German “Asia Corps” made up predominantly of artillery, machine-guns and other mechanical specialists. Originally intended by the Turks to recapture Baghdad, Falkenhayn had decided to divert it to an offensive on the Palestine front. This was barely forestalled by the British attack.
In considering his means of distraction, Allenby had bethought himself of his Arab allies. A telegram was sent to Lawrence which caught him on his return from the Ma‘an raid. An aeroplane carried him across the desert to General Headquarters, where he gave an account of the existing situation around Ma‘an, and pointed out the value of partial pressure on the Hejaz artery, rather than complete strangulation, so that the Turks might be induced to cling on to Medina while incapable of serious mischief.
As regards more direct action in aid of Allenby’s coming offensive, Lawrences decision hung between two courses, suspended by a doubt.
“We knew, better than Allenby, the enemy hollowness, and the magnitude of the British resources”—that superior knowledge was the natural consequence of being behind the Turkish front. Given fine weather, Allenby should be able to take not only Jerusalem but Haifa also within a month, “sweeping the Turks in ruin through the hills.”
“Such would be our moment, and we needed to be ready for it in the spot where our weight and tactics would be least expected and most damaging. For my eyes, the centre of attraction was Deraa, the Junction of the Jerusalem-Haifa-Damascus-Medina railways, the navel of the Turkish Armies in Syria, the common point of all their fronts; and, by chance, an area in which lay great untouched reserves of Arab fighting men, educated and armed by Feisal.”
The Arabs alone, by their superior mobility and pervasive fluidity, had the chance of striking this solar plexus of the Turkish body. Lawrence “pondered for a while whether we should not call up all these adherents and tackle the Turkish communications in force. We were certain, with any management, of twelve thousand men: enough to rush Deraa, to smash all the railway lines, even to take Damascus by surprise. Any of these things would make the position of the Beersheba army critical: and my temptation to stake our capital instantly on the issue was very sore.”
Lawrence’s restraint was due to a doubt of the British Army’s capability, and a perception of the consequences of failure to the ultimate aim. Although the Arabs around Deraa were ready enough to rise, Lawrence felt that the risk was “not one that Feisal could scrupulously afford unless he had a fair hope of then establishing himself there.” A withdrawal “would have involved the massacre, or the ruin, of all the splendid peasantry of the district.” “They could only rise once, and their effort on that occasion must be decisive. To call them out now was to risk the best asset Feisal held for eventual success, on the speculation that Allenby’s first attack would sweep the enemy before it, and that the month of November would be rainless, favourable to a rapid advance.”
“I weighed the English army in my mind, and could not honestly assure myself of them. The men were often gallant fighters, but their generals as often gave away in stupidity what they had gained, in ignorance. Allenby was quite untried, and his troops had broken down in and been broken by the Murray period. Of course, we were fighting for an Allied victory, and since the English were leading partners the Arabs would have, in the last resort, to be sacrificed for them. But was it the last resort? The war generally was going neither well nor very ill, and it seemed as though there might be time for another try next year. So I decided to postpone the hazard for the Arabs’ sake.”
The underlying doubt which held Lawrence back was here a wiser counsellor than his reasoned calculations. For, as he admits, he underestimated “the crippling effect of Allenby’s too plentiful artillery, and the cumbrous intricacy of his infantry and cavalry, which moved only with rheumatic slowness.”
But although his sense of duty to the Arabs stopped him from risking their future, his sense of duty to Allenby compelled him in compensation to risk himself in a stroke against the communications of the Turks who were facing Allenby. To it he was also impelled by his sense of the importance of proving to Allenby that the Arab wing of his army was a profitable asset.
The site he chose for his stroke was the Yarmuk valley, the narrow and precipitous gorge up which the railway from Palestine climbed to Deraa junction. This section of the railway formed the right-hand half of the cross-stroke of the small “T” attached to the large “T” thus:— The line, winding upwards, crossed and recrossed the stream by numerous bridges. The bridge farthest west and the bridge farthest east would be the most difficult to replace. “To cut either of these bridges would isolate the Turkish army in Palestine, for one fortnight, from its base in Damascus, and destroy its power of escaping from Allenby’s advance.”
For practicability, this plan had the advantage that the Turks deemed danger to the bridges so remote that they guarded them lightly—they were 420 miles from Aqaba by way of Azrak. For potentiality, it had the further advantage that if the Turkish army collapsed under the double pressure from in front and behind, the raiding expedition to Yarmuk could be converted into a general uprising of the Arabs which would carry them like a wave into Damascus, with Allenby following.
Allenby accepted the suggestion and asked that the stroke should be attempted on November 5th, or one of the three following days. His own attack on Beersheba was timed for October 31st, and he hoped to follow it with the main stroke against the Turks’ inner flank at Sheria a few days later.
Lawrence then returned to Aqaba to prepare for the expedition. As Nasir was still away, he arranged with Feisal for the services of AM ibn el Hussein, a young and dashing Sherifian leader who had “out-Newcombed Newcombe” in railway raids around El Ala and had the prestige necessary to carry weight with the tribes near Azrak. Through Ali he could count on the Beni Sakhr, and might obtain the aid of the Serahin. The Ruwalla, unfortunately, had moved away to their winter pastures. The Arab sympathizers in Damascus were also warned to be ready, in particular Ali Riza Pasha, the Turkish Base Commandant and the Sherif’s unsuspected ally. And in view of the difficulty of blowing up the great steel bridge which was their target, and the risk of becoming a casualty, Lawrence took an understudy in Wood, the base engineer at Aqaba. For the purpose of holding enemy reinforcements at bay while the demolition was being done, Lawrence arranged to take a party of Indian machine-gunners who had already been operating in the raids from Wejh.
At the las
t moment they were joined by the Emir Abd el Kader, grandson of the man who had resisted the French in Algeria during the ’forties, and himself head of the colony of Algerian exiles who lived on the north bank of the Yarmuk. He was on his way back from a visit to Mecca, and his offer to help was welcomed because it offered a chance of controlling the middle section of the Yarmuk valley through his men, without the risk of raising the countryside as a whole. After coming to this decision they were disturbed by a telegram from Brémond warning them that Abd el Kader was in the pay of the Turks. It was not easy to tell whether this suspicion of Abd el Kader had more substance than his anti-French views, and Lawrence’s view of Brémond inclined him to give Abd el Kader the benefit of the doubt. Feisal remarked—“I know he is mad. I think he is honest. Guard your heads and use him.” Lawrence decided to take the risk “showing him our complete confidence, on the principle that a crook would not credit our honesty, and that an honest man was made a crook soonest by suspicion.” But Abd el Kader was to prove the grit in the wheels, if less from knavery than from stupidity. Fanaticism and injured dignity were his particular aspects of foolishness.
The expedition left Aqaba on October 24th, riding by way of Rumm to Jefer, where Auda was encamped. Lloyd accompanied them thus far, before going, regretfully, back to Egypt on his way to join the Inter-Allied Staff at Versailles. Lawrence had the more reason to regret his going because of the friction already developing between Ali and Abd el Kader. Auda, too, they found still quarrelling with the lesser chiefs over money, while Zaal, upon whose raiding experience Lawrence had especially counted, showed no relish to share in the venture. Glut of success had changed the “hard-riding gallant of spring into a prudent man, whose new wealth made life precious to him.”
As they sat round the fire the night before launching out from Jefer they “felt a creeping reverberation, a cadence of blows too dull, too wide, too slow easily to find response in our ears. It was like the mutter of a distant, very lowly thunderstorm.” it was the bombardment of the Gaza defences by the British guns in preparation for Allenby’s attack.
Two divisions of Chauvel’s Desert Mounted Corps and the four infantry divisions of Chetwode’s XX Corps were already sidestepping eastward by nightly stages for the decisive stroke. Sixty thousand rifles and sabres were thus assembled close to Beersheba, held by less than five thousand Turks. Pinned by the British infantry attack on the morning of October 31st, their eastern flank was encircled by the Australian and New Zealand horsemen. Shortly before dusk the town was captured. The left flank, at Sheria, of the main Turkish position now lay exposed.
Water was the main limiting condition. Before die second act could open the water supplies at Beersheba had to be developed. The mass of the mounted force was the brake on its mobility. Fortunately the wells had been captured almost intact, so that Allenby was encouraged to count on being ready to attack the Sheria position on November 3rd, or early on the 4th. It was preceded by a fixing attack on the night of November 1st which bit into a segment of the Gaza defences.
But the water problem at Beersheba belied optimistic hopes, and jammed the machinery of the offensive. Partly this was due to faults in the human factor. Allenby’s men and horses had not the same endurance capacity as Arabs and camels. A hot Khamsin blew, and in raising clouds of dust produced a thirst that drained the water supplies beyond calculation. And the hope of finding sufficient water north of Beersheba to eke out the supply was also disappointed.
Thus the second act had to be postponed until November 6th. The delay allowed the Turks an ominously long interval in which to reinforce the threatened spot. That they did not do so was due largely to the initiative and self-sacrifice of another member of the British mission to the Arabs. And it offered one more proof that, in distraction especially, the resourceful man counts far more than any number of herd-men.
Newcombe had been shipped back sick to Egypt in July, paying the price of his rail-raiding exertions. While in Cairo he suggested to Allenby that he should move with a small party into the desert east of Beersheba and raise the Bedouin against the Turks at the moment of Allenby’s offensive, blocking the road north to Hebron and Jerusalem after Beersheba had been captured. Allenby accepted the proposal, and Newcombe chose seventy British camelry with a few Arab scouts to form his party. It was very strong in fire-power for its size, having ten machine-guns besides a number of Lewis guns and explosives.
Newcombe’s detachment moved out from Asluj on October 30th and made a wide circuit to Es Semua, twenty miles north-east of Beersheba. On the evening of the 31st he moved down to the Beersheba-Hebron road and cut the telegraph to Jerusalem. Hearing that night from friendly Bedouin of Beersheba’s capture, he determined to bar the Hebron road so as to cut the enemy’s northward line of retreat. In thus staking his tiny force Newcombe hoped for the speedy advance of the British cavalry to his relief, a hope which proved vain. But his distraction opened a path through the centre for the British Army.
For it spread such alarm behind the Turkish front that it created a strategic mirage. In it the enemy’s imagination saw the bulk of the British Army advancing north up the Hebron road straight for Jerusalem. So strong was the delusion that they forgot that a British Army marches on a weak stomach, which needs constant care. Having at the outset kept their main strength too close to Gaza, they now went to the other extreme. Not only did they dispatch their one division in general reserve to the Hebron lank, but also drew off the reserves from the Sheria sector, where Allenby’s blow was about to fall. Thus they “locked up nearly half their force in the Judean Hills, where it took no part in the fighting for a week after the capture of Sheria.”
A share of the credit is certainly due to the British cavalry patrols which pushed north after the fall of Beersheba. But from German and Turkish evidence it seems clear that Newcombe earned the lion’s share. His own hopes of the hill-Arabs joining him had been disappointed—unlike the Turks they preferred to wait on realities rather than clutch at promises. But the fear of an Arab rising had almost as much effect on the Turks as the reality, for a time.
On November 1st Newcombe’s party were attacked by about a hundred Turks whom they repulsed with loss. But next morning, after he had blocked all communication for forty hours, the petty obstruction was cleared away by converging forces from Hebron and Dhahriye. After twenty of his men had been killed, and most of his machine-guns disabled, he surrendered when the German-commanded Turks reached positions from which they could have shot down the survivors. The self-immolation, which came from a self-immobilization, was a sacrifice of doubtful value. It was magnificent but it was not irregular war. The fact that he had appeared from the east seems to have contributed far more than his actual obstruction to the impression he made, for it apparently conjured up a picture of a wide encircling move by British mounted forces heading for Jerusalem.
A graphic description of the effect is given by Obergeneralarzt Steuber, who arrived in Hebron just after Newcombe’s capture—“The place was like a disturbed ants’ nest; the staff of Army headquarters was standing beside its horses saddled for hasty retreat . . . Mounted Turkish gendarmes dashed through the excited populace. The main body of the English was said to be only a few kilometres off. As in all panics of this sort, rumour had grossly exaggerated the facts. A whimsical touch was given to the affair by an old Arab procuress, who in the midst of the universal terror was calmly preparing to meet the enemy with a band of scantily clad dancing-girls wearing coloured transparent veils.”
By that same evening two Turkish divisions and two cavalry regiments were stretched out in the hills near the Hebron road, with a third division on the way. There they remained, rubbing against the edge of the British Army’s flank in a series of ineffective actions until on November 6th Chetwode’s real blow crashed, like a fist through a paper screen, into the Sheria defences, where two Turkish regiments only were now stretched out to hold six miles of front.
Unfortunately, the great cavalry wave
that was to sweep like a torrent through the gap dwindled to a thin trickle, through shortage of water and the excessive effect of machine-guns in checking horsemen. The Turkish army escaped the disaster that had seemed imminent and the British had to resign themselves to a more deliberate advance up the coastal plain. Not until November 14th did they succeed in capturing Junction Station, thus securing control of the branch railway running up to Jerusalem, and forcing the Turks anew into divergent lines of retreat, one part falling back north while the other withdrew east to cover Jerusalem. Then Allenby swung in, fighting his way eastward through the Judean Hills until, after a further check, Jerusalem was at last gained on December 9th—the keys of the city being vainly offered by the Mayor to a couple of mess cooks, who had lost themselves while looking for water, and then to a couple of sergeants on outpost duty, before he at last found a British soldier willing to accept the prize that countless Crusaders through the centuries had striven for in vain.
The British capture of Jerusalem was a heavy blow to Turkey’s prestige, all the more damaging because it followed the loss of Baghdad. But as a moral tonic to the Western Allies its effect was far wider and greater. For it helped to soften the sting of a series of disheartening failures and disasters. The year had seen the collapse of Russia, the extinction of Rumania, the bankruptcy of the Franco-British offensive in the West, the grave mutinies in the French Army, the engulfing of the British in the mud of Passchendaele, the disastrous breakdown of the Italians at Caporetto. Even as December arrived a German counterstroke had turned the hasty joy-bells of “Cambrai” into a mockery. Then, as a timely Christmas present, came the redemption of the place to which the thoughts of Christendom turned at Christmastide. At such a time of the year and the war the gaining of “Jerusalem” delivered a new message of hope.
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