The Turkish forces had increased since the previous attempt, and the bulk of them, some six thousand, were now holding an immensely strong position at Shunet Nimrin astride the main route to Amman. It lay on the escarpment of the great plateau which, abandoned by the British in their previous retreat, now formed a barrier across their path. To overcome this increased resistance the British force, otherwise the same as before, had the Australian Mounted Division added.
The 60th Division, reinforced by part of the Anzac Mounted Division, was destined for the forbidding task of frontal attack on the position, while the rest of the mounted troops were to ride north up the Jordan valley, climb the escarpment and gain Es Salt, held by only a few companies of Turks. Thence they were to sweep south against the rear of the main position. The supposed representatives of the Beni Sakhr had promised meantime to block the tracks to Amman by which the Turks were supplied. Thus, in promise the Turks were completely bottled.
The men of the 60th Division soon had cause to realize the difficulty of their task. Despite repeated efforts their attack was stopped by machine-gun fire. Meantime the cavalry rode a dozen miles north to the Es Salt-Ed Damiye track. Here a brigade was dropped astride the track to cover the flank, but the bridge was left in the Turks’ hands. The rest of the cavalry now turned east by two tracks and scrambled up on to the plateau, becoming strung out in. the process; Es Salt was not occupied until the evening. The 5th Brigade, composed of English Yeomanry, which had been still more delayed, staged an attack on the place next morning only to be greeted, not with Turkish bullets, but with Australian chaff.
That morning also the 60th Division had a more seriously hurtful reception when it attempted to renew its attack on Shunet Nimrin. What of the cavalry who should have saved them this vain effort by descending on the enemy’s rear? The 5th Brigade pushed down as far as a little bridge at El Huweiz where they were halted by shells from a single Turkish gun sited on a cliff beyond. They seemed to have shown an irregular aversion to casualties without the irregular’s capacity for finding a way round. The brigadier “proceeded with the plan which to his mind was the only one possible; to take up a strong position astride the road and await the attempt of the Turks to force a way back,” if and when they were driven to retire by the 60th Division. As these are the words of the Official History, one cannot suspect them of irony. But they apparently mean that the brigadier, instead of coming to the aid of the infantry, preferred to let the infantry help him. Eventually, in the afternoon, the brigadier rode back to see the divisional commander, who, accepting his estimate of the strength of the Turkish position without going to see it for himself, decided to postpone further action until next day, when a second brigade would be employed. This was a fatal decision. As time trickled away, opportunity ebbed.
For Turkish reinforcements had been brought from the northwest across the Jordan by the Damiye bridge and were being driven like a wedge down the eastern bank towards the British line of retreat. It now became a race between the British cavalry move against the Turkish rear and the Turkish infantry move against the British rear. The cavalry proved the less capable of progress and the more sensitive to danger. Despite vigorous messages from the higher command they did little next day, May 2nd, save detach units to cover their own rear, while the unfortunate infantry of the 60th Division continued to attempt hopeless frontal attacks. By the 3rd the situation of the cavalry, who had exhausted their rations, certainly became awkward, if not so dangerous as they believed. That afternoon Allenby came down to see Chauvel and, confronted with “a somewhat exaggerated report,” decided to cut his loss and order the abandonment of the whole enterprise. The “withdrawal to the Jordan was skilfully executed and achieved without serious interference from the enemy.
The apparent danger had caused an urgent summons to Lawrence. He was “asked to be ready to ly over to Salt, land, and lead the cutoff cavalry via Madeba, Kerak, Tafila, back to safety. It would have been possible, as there was lots of water and some food. The Turks would have been properly flummoxed! The staff thought the Salt force were probably cut off from the Jordan by forces too strong to pierce.”
The Arabs on whom Bols had counted had made their contribution to the British failure. In default of the cavalry they might have caused a collapse of the Turks’ resistance by cutting off supplies. The Official History suggests that they “appear to have been bought off,” taking a double profit for their deliberate inaction. But the real explanation seems to be given by Young, who relates that, when Mirzuk received a reply from General Headquarters which showed that they had gulped down his offer, he was frightened at the consequences of his unauthorized proposal, and decided not to attempt to move the Beni Sakhr. “He knew perfectly well that the Beni Sakhr would do nothing without guns, and no guns had arrived.” Lawrence has commented on this episode, “Mirzuk had not the authority to move them. After the shock of a month before, they would have taken a lot of moving!”
Nevertheless the fiasco of this second attempt to move into Trans-Jordan brought ultimate advantage to the British, which Allenby did not fail to exploit. For it concentrated the mind of the enemy command on this area. The British reputation for pertinacity in “try, try again” strategy encouraged Liman von Sanders to believe they might try it again yet a third time in Trans-Jordan.
From Lawrence’s point of view the failure had one advantage in that it made the British staff’ more patient with Feisal’s difficulties. It also strengthened Lawrence’s personal position, “they saw that moving irregulars was an art, like moving troops, and agreed to let me know if anything of the sort, was ever required.” But it complicated Feisal’s relations with the tribes in the north who became less willing than ever to stake their fortunes on such insecure support as the British offered as allies. “Our movement, clean-cut while alone with a simple enemy, was now bogged in its partner’s contingencies. We had to take our tune from Allenby, and he was not happy. The German offensive in France was stripping him of troops. He would retain Jerusalem, but could not afford a casualty, much less an attack, for months.” “For the moment, we must both just hold on.”
This was what Allenby told Lawrence on May 5th, which should, according to the original plan, have seen the launching of the great northward offensive. Lawrence felt concern because the relaxation of British effort meant that Feisal’s army would be unable to transfer itself to the Jordan, while committed to an uncompleted blockade of Ma‘an which the Turks at Amman might now be free to interrupt. Allenby promised to do his best to help by maintaining an air of renewed advance on Amman, which would also help to conceal his own ultimate intentions. The Air Force promised, and rendered, still more definite help to Feisal by repeated bombing raids on the railway which disorganized traffic. The Air Force, indeed, by Lawrence’s verdict, “was invaluable now.”
Lawrence also obtained an immediate present from Allenby in a way that revealed his skill in turning particular human weaknesses into assets. At tea-time he heard from Allenby that the greater part of the Imperial Camel Brigade was to be disbanded, and went to see Sir Walter Campbell, the Quartermaster-General, in the hope of obtaining their camels for Feisal’s use. Campbell, “very Scotch,” showed a rooted dislike of the idea of parting with them. They were earmarked for divisional transport.
“I returned to Allenby and said aloud, before his party, that there were for disposal two thousand two hundred riding camels, and thirteen hundred baggage camels. All were provisionally allotted to transport; but, of course, riding camels were riding camels. The staff whistled and looked wise; as though they, too, doubted whether riding camels could carry baggage. A technicality, even a sham one, might be helpful. Every British officer understood animals, as a point of honour. So I was not astonished when Sir Walter Campbell was asked to dine with the Commander-in-Chief that night.”
With the soup, Allenby raised the question of the camels. Campbell at once enlarged on what a godsend they were for transport use. “He over-acted. Allenby, a
reader of Milton, had an acute sense of style: and the line was a weak one. He cared nothing for strengths, the fetish of administrative branches.”
So when Allenby turned, and with a twinkle asked what Lawrence wanted them for, he received the more heartening reply—“To put a thousand men into Deraa any day you please.” Allenby smiled and briefly said to Campbell—“Q, you lose.”
“It was an immense, a regal gift; the gift of unlimited mobility. The Arabs could now win their war when and where they liked.” From this sprang the idea of the boldest stroke that Lawrence ever conceived. After mooting it to Allenby he went south to prepare the way.
When he arrived back at Aqaba and told the Arab leaders of Allenby’s gift, they forgot their dignity in delight. As a further aid towards mobility Lawrence proposed to dispense with the Egyptian camel-transport men, too fettered by their regulations, and replace them with Arabs. The British authorities jumped at his offer so promptly that the transport organization was temporarily dislocated while Arab drivers were being obtained. It was repaired by Young who now took over the “Q” side of the force and found in it a more apt medium for his organizing gifts than in trying to co-ordinate Bedouin operations.
He was glad to be free of them, for he had not enjoyed the part of understudying Lawrence. Nor had the Arabs. The fact that he wore British uniform and carried European tinned food in preference to eating theirs, created an initial prejudice, and his own strenuous comments on their casualness towards synchronized plans were thus all the less well received by them. On his side he had certainly room for complaint—from his point of view.
Auda’s increasing sulkiness, Mirzuk’s chimerical designs, Nuri’s natural unwillingness to lend any of his guns to the Bedouin, created embarrassments which seemed to ruin his hopes of extending the railway attacks northward. The minds of the Arab leaders were set on a fresh attack against Jerdun, and Young had to content himself with a promise that Nasir would move north with the Bedouin and four guns as soon as this was achieved. But when “he saw Feisal on the eve of the appointed day, he was apologetically told—“It is most unfortunate, but there has been a mistake in the day. Today is really the first of the Arab month, as last month had only twenty-nine days in it, but the Bedouin are convinced that there were thirty days in last month, and that to-day is, therefore, the goth.” The battle was postponed accordingly, and his own departure in consequence.
On May 12th the attack on Jerdun was delivered by the Arab Regular Army, helped by the bombs from three British aircraft, and the station was captured with 140 prisoners. The Arab leaders’ delight in the victory obscured their recollection of the promises given to Young, and more delays occurred. It was deemed fitting that “as the victorious Sherifian army was on its way to join General Allenby, it would be as well if each man were given a new pair of trousers.” But when the Regular detachment was at last on the way the Bedouin failed to appear. Then while Nasir waited for them, the Regular detachment and the guns were borrowed to assist a fresh attack on Jerdun, which the Turks had reoccupied. This attack, on the 17th, was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a train which had not been intercepted, and the Arabs fell back. Worn out by his ceaseless riding to and fro, which had led the amused Arabs to nickname him the “Shuttle,” Young now retired to a hospital with a deepened distrust of all irregulars.
Yet no sooner had he disappeared than Nasir moved north to the Wadi Hesa, with Peake’s Egyptian camelry and Hornby as demolition expert, and broke the railway so effectively over a fourteen mile stretch that the menace from Amman was kept at bay during the critical weeks.
On the surface, the event seems an example of characteristic Arab inconsistency; and so it may well have seemed to Young. But, on reflection, its scale and importance contradict so simple an explanation. Rather does it suggest that Young had failed to adjust himself to the natural conditions of irregular warfare—that his calculations allowed no grace for the political preparation, and no elasticity to compensate for the liveliness of the Ma‘an garrison. One of the deeper truths of war, especially of irregular war, has been aptly expressed by Lawrence—“timing in war depends on the enemy as much as on yourself.” Time-tables too often enable the enemy to turn the tables on you.
Nasir’s move took the Turks completely by surprise. First he destroyed Hesa station, on the 23rd, and next day Faraifra station, without having any men killed. Between his forays he fell back to his hidden valley, rich in pasture and within quick support from Tafila. These were the “intangible ghost” tactics of Lawrence’s desire.1
The news drew him north, and on the day of his arrival the Turks sent a camel detachment down to reoccupy Faraifra. It was dealt with in a way that pleased him, Nasir’s machine-guns pinning down the Turks while Auda cut in and carried off all their camels. Henceforth the only real menace to the Arabs, and the only weapon that could reach them, were the enemy’s bombing planes. Their ferreting capacity made an impression on Lawrence which was not without effect on his post-war outlook.2 Happily for his present designs he was dealing with an opponent who still placed his chief reliance on numbers of ground-troops.
On returning south Lawrence was able to assure Feisal that ample breathing space was assured until the Arabs, with the augmented mobility that the coming increase of camels promised, could renew their offensive at longer range and on a wider scale. In preparation for this he proposed that all the Arab Regulars now in the Hejaz with Ali and Abdulla should be transferred to Aqaba. This would give Feisal a regular force of about ten thousand men. Lawrence’s design was to distribute it in three parts. The largest but least mobile would continue to contain Ma‘an. Another, of about two or three thousand infantry, would move up to the Amman plateau as a core for the Beni Sakhr and a link with Allenby. The third, a highly mobile camel-force of about a thousand men, should make a long distance move against Damascus to sever the Turkish communications and thus unhinge the resistance facing Allenby. This was the spear-point of the plan—it was more than a raid that Lawrence had in mind.
“’My plan for containing Ma‘an, holding the Moab plateau, and simultaneously raising the Hauran was actually to capture Damascus and so destroy the Turkish Palestine Army between my hammer and Allenby’s anvil. He had assured me that he was immobilised . . . by the drafts withdrawn for France.” “This was now 1918, and stalemate across its harvest would have marked the ebb of Feisal’s movement. His fellows were living on their nerves (rebellion is harder than war) and their nerves were wearing thin. Also the big war was not looking too well.
“So I made up my mind to take the offensive, encouraged to it by hints from the War Council, who also felt that it was Damascus in 1918, or never. Allenby agreed, unofficially, while not promising to pass the Palestine boundary: but I felt that did I get on to near Aleppo he would come along, too.” Lawrence was certainly never more truly Elizabethan than when he formed this plan. And it had, too, an appropriate touch of Gideon.
Feisal accepted the plan and gave Lawrence letters to carry to Hussein. Knowing Hussein’s jealousy of his son, Lawrence decided first to obtain leverage upon him from the British authorities. He went to Cairo and expounded his ideas to Dawnay, who saw their value. The two then went together to Wingate, who was also ready to make this further sacrifice of his own power, although the letter he wrote for Lawrence to deliver to Hussein was more gentle than Lawrence liked. They next went up to Allenby’s headquarters, on June 19th, where the unexpected awaited them.
Lawrence found a remarkable lightening in the atmosphere. The reorganization of the army was so far advanced, and also the vision of its chiefs, that Allenby was planning not merely to carry out the postponed spring offensive but to execute it on far bolder lines, with Damascus and Aleppo as the geographical goals. The offensive would be launched in September, and the Arabs were wanted, as arranged, to cover Allenby’s flank and distract the Turks’ attention by striking at Deraa.
This news, promising a more rapid development, reduced the importance o
f the projected transfer from the Hejaz. Nevertheless Lawrence, having experience of past disappointments, deemed it wise to have an alternative ready if possible, and so, armed with a letter from Allenby, sailed for Jidda. Hussein, however, had apparently been warned of his purpose and frustrated Lawrence by staying securely in Mecca. Conversation over the telephone was an inadequate medium and gave Hussein opportunity for missing what he did not wish to hear. As Lawrence no longer felt the same urge to pursue his project, he rang off and returned to Cairo, there to devote himself to the problem of fitting the available Arab forces into the frame of Allenby’s new design. “Allenby would do the big offensive, and my job again became a permeating one. So I didn’t need the troops from Hejaz, and was rather glad to leave them alone.”
This period was Lawrence’s longest absence from the Arab front—he was away until July 28th. It is significant that this was a bad period for the Arab Army. During it they suffered several checks, culminating in the severe repulse on July 21st of a too regular daylight attack on Jerdun station. The Arabs had concentrated eight hundred regulars and a thousand Bedouin, with artillery, machine-gun, armoured car, and air support, against the Turkish garrison of 400 men but were beaten off with a loss of eighty killed. Their recoil not only enabled the Turks to reprovision Jerdun and Ma‘an, but produced such depression as to arouse fears for the safety of the Arabs’ hold on Abu el Lissal. If this loss of spirit, like the loss of Tafila in March, is indirect proof of how much Lawrence’s influence counted it also suggests that indirect tactics and irregular methods were best suited to fulfil the Arabs’ strategy—as he had always contended.
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