“The night passed in these mutual conversations. My unseeing eyes saw the dawn-goal ahead . . . and my parts debated that the struggle might be worthy, but the end foolishness and the re-birth of trouble.”
Those who saw Lawrence when at last, on the 26th, he rode into Aqaba say that he seemed like a wraith, so white and remote. He said but the briefest word, just a mention of the bridge failure in the Yarmuk Valley, and then crept away to a tent.
A few days later he received a summons to go up to Palestine. He went by air to Suez and when he reached Allenby’s headquarters he found the air within so full of the noise of victorious battle that it drowned the echoes of his ride to the Yarmuk Valley, a tale on which he himself had no wish to enlarge. Not that his work had been unappreciated. For Aqaba he had been promoted major in order to be made Companion of the Bath, a decoration he never wore. He was also recommended for the Victoria Cross by Wingate, but the circumstances did not fit the customary conditions. A reward that he appreciated more was the chance to be present at the official entry into Jerusalem on December 11th. Hastily rigged out by friends on the staff in the borrowed glory of a British “brass-hat,” he took part in the ceremony at the Jaffa Gate—“which for me was the supreme moment of the war.” At the lunch after it he heard with delight Allenby’s rebuke to M. Picot’s suggestion of setting up a civil government in Jerusalem. And immediately after lunch he seized the moment to discuss new military projects with Allenby.
Allenby’s idea was, first, to secure his gains by obtaining more elbow-room north of Jerusalem and restoring the railway thither; then, with a push of his right elbow eastward to drive the Turks from Jericho and clear the Jordan Valley north of the Dead Sea. He suggested that Feisal should now move north from Aqaba towards Tafila, near the southern end of the Dead Sea. Thus he could link up with the British on the other side, and help them by cutting off the food supplies which the Turks were drawing from the corn belt between the Dead Sea and the Hejaz railway. The grain-ships which came up the Dead Sea were a buttress to the Turks’ power of resistance which it was important to destroy.
Lawrence not only responded to this idea but added a second proposition—that when Jericho was captured, Feisal’s base might be transferred there from Aqaba, and his fifty tons a day of supplies and ammunition delivered there. Allenby expressed his agreement, “if and when transport surplusses permitted,” and Lawrence went back to Aqaba to prepare for this forward move by stages.
One of his steps was the formation of a bodyguard. The reward offered by the Turks for his capture or killing, hugely raised since he had blown up Jemal Pasha’s train, was sufficient reason, if not the only reason. “Of course, the offer was rhetorical; with no certainty whether in gold or paper, or that the money would be paid at all. Still, perhaps it might justify some care.” He had taken Farraj and Daud as his personal followers during the expedition that ended with the capture of Aqaba, and had added three Haurani peasants soon afterwards. But all these save Rahail had now been left behind at Azrak, so that he had to find fresh followers—which his reputation made easy.
The beginning had promise. As he was reading in his tent one afternoon a lithe Ageyli stole in, dropped a superb saddle-bag on the floor, and went away; he came again next day and left “a camel-saddle of equal beauty"; on the third day he came empty-handed and asked to be taken into Lawrence’s service. His name was Abdulla el Nahabi (Abdulla “the Robber”) and he bore a recommendation from Ibn Dakhil, the old captain of Feisal’s bodyguard, to the effect that he was “the most experienced Ageyli, having served every Arabian prince and having been dismissed each employment, after stripes and prison, for offences of too great individuality. Ibn Dakhil said that the Nahabi rode second only to himself, was a master-judge of camels, and as brave as any son of Adam; easily, since he was too blind-eyed to see danger. In fact, he was the perfect retainer and I engaged him instantly.”
“He examined the applicants for my service, and, thanks to him and to the Zaagi, . . . my other commander, a wonderful gang of experts grew about me. The British at Akaba called them cutthroats, but they cut throats only to my order.” “I needed hard riders and hard livers; men proud of themselves and without family.”
Lawrence paid them six pounds a month, the normal wage for a man who provided his own camel, and mounted them on his own picked beasts. Thus they were able to spend their money on adorning their own persons. “They dressed like a bed of tulips, in every colour but white, for that was my constant wear, and they did not wish to seem to presume.”
This bodyguard served him not merely as a personal protection but as the core of the force with which he made his mobile thrusts—here was the other reason for its creation. It numbered some ninety men in all, though Lawrence was rarely accompanied by more than thirty, both for the sake of mobility and because of casualties—“in my service nearly sixty of them died.” But their offensive power was much higher than their nominal strength, because of their armament as well as of their morale. For Lawrence regarded two men to one Lewis or Hotchkiss gun as a reasonable proportion of man-power to weapon-power.
He exploited the mobile possibilities of the light machine-gun to a greater extent than any other leader, or in any other army. In his next campaign he introduced the probing attack by light automatic “fingers”—two months before the Germans pierced the British front in France with the aid of similar but less economic “infiltration” tactics. In his way of using machine-guns with crews of only two men and mounted on camels—they were even fired from the saddle occasionally—he foreshadowed that post-war development, the mechanized machine-gun carrier. Fifteen years later, so stoutly does custom resist commonsense, regular armies would still be debating whether these two-man vehicles should not drag around a trailer with several superfluous men exposed to the enemy’s bullets.
Lawrence himself carried an “air-Lewis”—stripped of its clumsy radiator, casing and stock—in a bucket on his camel. It fired such “a wonderfully dispersed pattern” besides being so handy, that he adopted it in preference to the rifle he had earlier used. This rifle had a history: it was a normal British “Short Lee-Enfield” which had been captured by the Turks at the Dardanelles and then, with a gold-engraved inscription, had been presented by Enver to Feisal. Lawrence in turn had obtained it from Feisal. After the war he offered to restore it to the Essex Regiment, its original owner, but received no reply. Instead, King George took an opportunity of adding it to the collection in his private War Museum at Windsor. It has a sinister series of notches cut in it; they were made by Lawrence whenever he brought down a Turk—until he lost zest in keeping such records.
The rest of his personal armament consisted of a pistol and a curving gold-handled dagger, exquisitely carved, such as was carried by Sherifs, although not exclusively. That dagger gave rise to the legend that Lawrence was invested with the rank of Sherif, or, more picturesquely, “Prince of Mecca.” A Sherif acquired his title by birth, and by birth only, as a descendant of the Prophet; there could not be such a thing as an “honorary Sherif.” The nearest approach to a justification for the story was that one day the Arabs were indulging in the pastime of giving themselves fancy titles. Lawrence was asked, “What title will you choose?” He replied—”Emir Dynamite.” This was so apt that it stuck, and for a time became his nickname among the Arabs.
CHAPTER XV
A “REGULAR” CAMPAIGN
January–February, 1918
To aid Allenby, the Arabs operate against the corn-belt east of the Bead Sea which feeds the Turkish Armies—The Turks reacting, fell into Lawrence’s Wadi Musa trap; he meantime experiments in mechanized warfare—Following up the Turkish recoil the Arabs press deeper into the corn-belt, and occupy Tafia—The Turks’ second reaction gives Lawrence the opportunity of fighting the one pitched battle of his career—according to the best historical models—He follows up this “classical” victory by a highly original coup, capturing a grain-fleet with cavalry—But the Arabs dissipate t
he money provided to finance a further advance, and Lawrence quits them in disgust. Intending to offer Allenby his resignation—Instead, he finds a fresh mission awaiting him
IN THE campaign of 1918 Feisal’s Arab forces had not merely an indirect influence on Allenby’s situation but became a co-operating part of his forces. This brought a change in the form of their own operations which assumed a more regular pattern. Their very title, newly coined, of the “Arab Northern Army” seemed to induce a crystallization of their movements and objectives. This had its drawbacks, and brought its disappointments in the first half of the year. Yet, during that period they appear, on the whole, to have created more opportunity for Allenby’s forces than these created for them. And the campaign provided Lawrence himself with an opportunity to show his capacity in regular operations that he, half humorously, despised.
Along the corn-belt, which lay parallel to the railway, was a row of four small market-towns, widely spaced, which formed hooks on to which a controlling force could fasten. The southernmost was Shobek, twenty miles north-west of Ma‘an. Then came Tafila, almost level with the south end of the Dead Sea. Beyond it lay Kerak, and, at the northern end of the Dead Sea, Madeba.
Early in October the Arabs had encroached on this belt by occupying Shobek for a few days and tearing up the lines of the light railway which the Turks used for collecting wood-fuel for the Hejaz railway. This threat stung the Turks into action at last, drawing them into the trap which Lawrence had baited for them in the Wadi Musa. They launched their effort on October 27th, just as Lawrence himself was setting out on his ride to the Yarmuk Valley. An expedition of four battalions and a cavalry regiment, with ten guns, moved out from Ma‘an against Maulud’s position near Petra, which was held by two Arab camel companies and two mule companies, totalling barely three hundred and fifty men, together with less than two hundred Bedouin irregulars. After shelling the position for an hour, and also dropping bombs on it, the Turks advanced to the attack. The poorly trained camel, men gave way, recoiling on Maulud’s mule-mounted infantry, who, buttressed by the steep cliffs, brought the Turks to a halt. Then the Bedouin lapped round both their flanks, harassing them until at evening they retreated, badly bruised. Thus Lawrence’s anticipations had been fulfilled, thanks to nature and to Maulud’s skilful adaptation of the Cannæ model to Arab conditions, on a Torres Vedras foundation.
A continuation of the raids on the railway together with the harassing of supply caravans caused the Turks first to draw off troop from Abu el Lissal, and then to abandon it, when they no longer had enough to hold the wide position. Thus by January 7th they had been forced back close to Ma‘an itself, and by contracting their zone they inevitably relaxed their hold on the countryside. This opened the way for the Arabs to move north into the corn belt.
While Maulud, helped by the intense cold, was thus shepherding the Turks back into Ma‘an, Lawrence was engaged in a new experiment—a development of mechanized force. The fact that he had exploited camel-mobility to a pitch undreamt of by regular-standards did not, as with so many animal-loving regular soldiers, hide from him the possibilities of mechanization. Now, with a few days breathing space, his mind harked back to the mud-fiats he had seen on his Mudauwara raid in September. A motor-road had been made through the Wadi Ithm gorge up to Guweira, and the Rolls-Royce armoured cars and tenders had been brought up there. Lawrence and Joyce arranged to make a reconnaissance with the tenders towards Mudauwara. The surface more than fulfilled expectations, and the can touched over sixty miles an hour as they raced over the polished mud, while standing up without any fractures to the rough patches between the flats.
The trial was so promising that, after running almost to Mudauwara, they decided to attempt an immediate operation, and for this purpose went back to fetch the armoured cars, which they reinforced with a section of ten-pounder mountain-guns mounted on Talbot cars. They came within sight of the railway on New Year’s Eve and reconnoitred a Turkish post which offered a suitable target. Next morning Joyce directed the action from a crest overlooking the post, while Lawrence enjoyed the double delight of being the comfortable spectator of a fight in which no lives were gambled. For the Turkish fire at the armoured cars seemed to him like peppering a rhinoceros with bird-shot. On the other hand, the cars lacked the obstacle-crossing capacity of tanks and so could not eject the Turks from their burrow. But when they came back from their pleasure-cruise they had at least-given Lawrence a fresh extension of ideas.
From the point of view of the orthodox strategist armoured cars could be only an auxiliary, because of their lack of assaulting-power upon entrenchments. But to Lawrence, whose chief desire was to see the enemy sitting in entrenchments, they offered a primary weapon. Not only was the railway brought within a day’s run from Guweira, but all movement on the Turks’ part might henceforth be menaced by an agent that they could not meet in the open. Thus the British had only to develop this new weapon to be within reach of the real aim of strategy—the paralysis of the opponent.
Unfortunately, Lawrence was at least a generation ahead of the military world in perceiving the strategic implications of mechanized warfare. He had no power to obtain the provision of vehicles adequate in form and number for their new strategy. Moreover, he could not even secure acceptance of the strategic theory. The British command still hankered after the capture of Medina. Their minds moved along direct channels and they wanted to wipe the Turkish force in the Hejaz off the balance-sheet, instead of encouraging the Turks to sink more capital in this bad investment.
As in the Peninsula a century before, their victories threatened danger to their own purpose. Wellington’s early battles had been profitable because they drew the French towards him in Portugal and thereby gave the Spanish guerrillas a chance to tighten their grip in other parts. But when in 1812 he began to press deeper into Spain, his victories caused the French to contract their zone; this concentration in the north revived their power of resistance, and the struggle was thereby prolonged. The French were saved from the sudden and complete collapse which would, in all probability, have come if they had continued to cling on to the whole country.
In Arabia early in 1918 it looked as if the example of 1812 might be repeated. That it was not repeated would seem to have been due to three factors. First, the Turks were more stupid than the French, and refused to heed their German advisers’ plea to withdraw their forces from the Hejaz. Second, the British were less effective in their early operations than their forebears under Wellington had been, so that their later operations had the chance of more effect. In fairness it should be recognized that they were fully aware of the dangers of a Turkish withdrawal and that their desire to sever the Hejaz railway permanently was dictated by the idea of preventing such a withdrawal. But they lacked Lawrence’s subtle perception of the fact that as long as the railway was not severed, the Turks would continue to send down it food and materials that would have been of more service in bolstering up the Turkish forces in Palestine.
Lawrence showed his subtlety not merely in theory. For as he grew in understanding of his own theory he took pains to ensure that the Arab operations should never sever the railway, by adopting what one may call a Fabian internal strategy. It seemed to him, he has remarked, less bother than setting up a kindergarten of the imagination for the benefit of the British Staff. And his sense of humour was tickled by their readiness to excuse the Arabs’ ineffectiveness because of the way it Mattered their own sense of professional superiority.
The moves against Tafila were now unfolded. The plan was for a three-fold convergence from east, south and west. As the opening move, Nasir swung out eastward to the plain of Jefer with the idea of swinging in to attack Jurf ed Derawish, the nearest station, thirty miles above Ma‘an. His force comprised a band of the Beni Sakhr, a detachment of 300 Arab Regulars under Nuri Said, and one mountain-gun. Nasir’s advance was directed towards a ridge which overlooked the station. With characteristic precaution Lawrence had gone there a few days
before and reconnoitred a gun-position. The ridge was occupied under cover of darkness, and the line cut above and below the station. At dawn the mountain-gun opened fire and with a lucky hit silenced the Turkish gun on a lower knoll. The Beni Sakhr then charged on camel-back round the foot of the ridge and their appearance from an unexpected direction caused a panic among the Turks that produced their prompt surrender. Over two hundred prisoners were taken for a loss of two lives. A couple of trains in the station were looted thoroughly and damaged less thoroughly—because of the distracting delicacies, destined for the officers at Medina, with which they were loaded.
On the next day, and the two following, there were heavy falls of snow and hail, and the cold was so Intense that ten of Nasir’s men died in one day from exposure. This caused them to fall back on their tents at Jefer; the desire of storing their booty was doubtless an additional Incentive. But the news of Jurf’s capture was the signal for a fresh rush on Shobek by the hill Arabs around Petra. The bleak weather failed, to stop them—and the Turks were no more successful. The news of Shobek’s capture unleashed Nasir again, and after a swift night ride through the snow he arrived at dawn on the cliff overlooking Tafila, summoning the Inhabitants and the small Turkish garrison (150 men) to surrender on pain of bombardment. It was an empty bluff, as Nuri Said’s regular detachment was not with him. And his bluff might have been called if Auda had not suddenly ridden forward alone to the edge, of the town and cried—“Dogs, do you not know Auda?” The defences of Tafila collapsed before his trumpeting voice as those of Jericho had once collapsed before Joshua. The town had surrendered long before Master’s Motalga arrived from the westward, from the Wadi Araba.
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