* * *
1 The “Arab Northern Army” now consisted of:—
The Arab Regular Army, under Ja‘far Pasha.
A Brigade of Infantry, a battalion of mule-mounted Infantry, a battalion of Camel Corps, and about eight guns.
British Section, under Lieut.-Colonel P. C. Joyce (sick at the moment).
Hejaz Armoured Car Battery (of three Rolls-Royce cars mounting machine-guns and two 10-pounder guns on Talbot lorries), a company of Egyptian Camel Corps, a flight of four aircraft, and transport and labour detachments.
French Detachment, under Captain Pisani.
Two mountain-guns, four machine-guns, and ten automatic rifles.
Bedouin and Arab Peasant Irregulars, raised in variable quantity for operations in their own areas, under Major T. E. Lawrence’s direction.
1 According to Liman von Sanders, who cites the fact as evidence of “how difficult it was to maintain the Hejaz railway in operation,” twenty-five bridges were destroyed in just over a fortnight.
2 On this point Lawrence’s own comment is Illuminating:
“The war showed me that a combination of armoured cars and aircraft could rule the desert: but that they must be under non-army control, and without infantry support. You rightly trace a cause of the R.A.F. control in Irak, Aden, and Palestine to this experience. As soon as I was able to have a voice on the Middle East, I approached Trenchard on the point, and with Winston’s eager support persuaded the Cabinet swiftly into approving (against the wiles of Henry Wilson)—and it has worked very well. The system is not capable of universal application.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE FINAL STROKE—PREPARATION
July–August, 1918
Allenby’s plan of attack—The need for distraction—A call to Lawrence—A preliminary diversion by the Imperial Camel Corps: Buxton’s raid—Lawrence’s self-analysis—A “bully beef tin” bluff—Internal complications threaten the Arab plan, but the march to the north begins
ON JULY 11th Lawrence and Dawnay were again at General Headquarters, where they were told the outline of Allenby’s plan. At that moment the British Government had received no hint of his intentions, so careful was he to cloak them until his staff had worked out calculations that promised their realization.
Lawrence’s experience of British staff calculations had made him healthily critical of them, so that he “took the precaution to go into their offices and assure myself of the exact methods on which they were working,” His anxiety was diminished when he found that the chief of the General Staff was on leave, as well as the chief of the “Q” staff, and that in their absence Bartholomew and Evans, their now unfettered right hands, were working out the material factors of the problem, and, better still, were planning to redistribute the transport of the army corps in a way that suited the varying mobility of their roles instead of a stereotyped pattern. Thus the momentum of the advance might be sustained and the pursuit extended. Instead of being tied to a fixed-length chain of supply, the fighting troops of the army were now to be given comparative freedom of movement by the use of an elastic cord that could not only be stretched but quickly attached to fresh points. There was also the definite intention of living on the country except for troops’ rations during movement.
The plan of operations was based on a reversal of the Gaza-Beersheba plan. Instead of threatening an advance near the coast to cloak the real stroke inland, every possible ruse was to be employed to suggest an inland move, from the Jordan valley, while the breakthrough was made in the coastal corridor. The mass of the infantry were to be stealthily concentrated near the Mediterranean, and the cavalry concealed behind them in the orange groves near Jaffa. After Bulfin’s XXI Gorps had smashed a hole in the Turkish front, the Desert Mounted Corps was to ride through. After pushing north for fifteen miles, it was to turn east into the hills of Samaria to seize the rail and road junction at Sebustiye, cutting the Turkish communications. Meantime Chetwode’s XX Corps would attack the Turks’ front in the hills, in order to pin them down while their bolt-holes were being blocked. It was a finely conceived picture of a decisive envelopment, Cannæ-like in its completeness. A few weeks later it was still further improved by a bold enlargement which cast the enveloping net further to the Turks’ rear, and so lessened their chances of slipping out before the net was drawn tight.
But as in all “picture-battles” its perfection was its weakness, by allowing no scope for variation—for developing an alternative if the original design could not be fulfilled. The conditions defined the plan, because it was only in the coastal sector near the railhead that sufficient reserve supplies could be accumulated or the cavalry find a suitable path for rapid advance. Well might Bartholomew express anxiety over the uncomfortably narrow margin between complete success and failure. If the Turks got wind of the intention, and were wise enough to retire in time, the British Army, as Lawrence remarked, would be “like a fish flapping on dry land, with its railways, its heavy artillery, its dumps, its stores, its camps all misplaced.”
Everything turned on maintaining the Turks in their state of delusion and keeping their eyes fixed on the Jordan. To this end the British staff were weaving a network of plausible strategic misclues on a wider scale than ever before. As Lawrence truly remarks—“Deceptions, which for the ordinary general were just witty hors d’œuvres before battle, had become for Allenby a main point in strategy.”
But for actual distraction Allenby must largely depend on his Arab wing. It was with this appeal to their inventiveness and resource that Lawrence and Dawnay travelled back to Cairo.
They were greeted by a fresh complication, in the shape of reports that the Turks were contemplating a new stroke against Abu el Lissal about the end of August. If it came, it would be likely to dislocate the move to Deraa. The Arabs now needed a distraction to secure their own plan as well as providing one for Allenby’s. The two purposes, however, might be blended. It was Dawnay who thought of the means—the idea of using the surviving battalion of the disbanded Imperial Camel Brigade. With Bartholomew’s aid they obtained the loan of two companies under Major R. V. Buxton for a month on the condition that they should avoid casualties. Lawrence was highly amused that “Bartholomew felt it necessary to apologize for the last magnificent, heart-warming condition, which he thought unsoldierly!”
Dawnay and Lawrence drew up a scheme by which Buxton’s detachment would march from the Suez Canal to Aqaba and thence to take Mudauwara station by a night attack. With a second long stride, turning north, it would reach the neighbourhood of Amman, destroy the bridge and tunnel there, and then return to Palestine.
The plan was not well received when it reached Aqaba.1 Joyce and Young had been hard at work organizing, under manifold difficulties, the transport of the Arab Regular Army for the coming move to Deraa. Young, especially, thought that Lawrence was too airy in his treatment of administrative questions, and apt to assume that the Arab regulars could move as light as his Bedouin irregulars. Young himself, with meticulous care, drew up a scheme by which a well-stored base would be established at Azrak, and intermediate dumps at Jefer and Bair, so that by October a flying column of all arms could be moved to Azrak and operate from there with a ten days’ radius of action. It could also be maintained there, through the replenishment of the base by regular convoys from Aqaba at ten-day intervals.
Dawnay’s message was a disturbing shock. Joyce feared the effect of a British force intruding into the Arab zone, and could not understand why Lawrence, so long the opponent of such a mixture, should have suddenly changed round. Young’s objection was “purely arithmetical.” For, according to the new instructions he would have to form a chain of dumps of forage and rations for Buxton’s move.
“Each camel load given to Buxton was a camel load taken from our own flying column, and we wanted all we could get.” Hence, in an urgent answer, while reluctantly accepting the Mudauwara project they protested against the second and longer-range operation. But this, in Lawren
ce’s view, was the chief part, as the means of persuading the Turks that the British were intending yet a third advance into Trans-Jordan. He saw that through it he might redeem the losses of the first two blundering attempts, by converting them into a chain of purposeful strategy. The fact that the Camel Corps had taken part before was likely to help the delusion.
Seeing the wider strategic aspects of the problem Lawrence was equally critical of Young’s scheme, when it reached Cairo. Knowing “the muddy impassable roads” of the Hauran in winter, he saw the practical weakness of a scheme which placed a force there so late in the season. More pertinent still was the fact that it did not fit the particular case. For Allenby was going to attack about the end of September. Any sort of force at the right time was better than the most perfectly equipped force that arrived too late.
He flew over to Aqaba to tell Joyce and Young of Allenby’s new plan. If his explanation was convincing it did not altogether assuage annoyance. “Relations between Lawrence and ourselves became for the moment a trifle strained, and the sight of the little man reading the M.atte d’Arthurl in a comer of the mess tent with an impish smile on his face was not consoling.” Young here would seem to speak for himself, for Joyce’s doubts were soon disarmed when Lawrence pointed out that Buxton’s force would not come in contact with the Arab Army, while the rumour of its presence would be likely to give the Turks an exaggerated impression of its size and deter them from interfering with the Arab movements. As for Young’s objections, Lawrence regarded them, as due to that creed of “impossibility” so prevalent among professional soldiers, and he was the less tender because he felt that Young had the ability to overcome difficulties if he wished, or had to.
There was an entertaining passage at arms between them. Taking Young’s schedule for the Deraa raid, Lawrence crossed out the provision for forage beyond the dump at Bair, saying that pasture was splendid this year in the Azrak-Deraa area. This removed the heaviest item. He cut down the allowance for food saying that the men could live on the country. Young sarcastically remarked that the ten days’ return journey would be a long fast. Lawrence retorted that he had no Intention of returning to Aqaba. So it went on, Lawrence meeting “regular” objections by repeating his irregular maxim that the Arabs lived by their raggedness and beat the Turk by their uncertainty.1
If Young was still annoyed, and Joyce still a trifle dubious, all hesitations were forgotten in the zest of achieving more than seemed possible—and it was strange how much more that was. Lawrence’s confidence was like the prick of a hypodermic injection—it stung locally but it produced a pervasive effect. As he himself has remarked, it was not due to a belief in his powers to do a thing perfectly, but to a preference for doing it somehow rather than leaving it undone.
The military arrangements for the move were, by comparison, easier than the diplomatic arrangements, which fell entirely on his shoulders. The ladder by which the Arab force sought to reach Deraa and Damascus had to be constructed of a series of tribal rungs, each fitted carefully into its place, and the whole fitted together. Most Important of all was it to secure Nuri Shaalan’s support, without which the expedition could hardly hope to mount the ladder. To this end he was invited down to see Feisal.
An interesting impression of Lawrence at this time is given by Major Stirling, who came from Egypt with a large green Vauxhall car for Feisal’s use and subsequently became general staff officer with the Arab force.
“Arrived at Abu Lissal, some five thousand feet up, I found Lawrence, who had just returned from a most successful raid on the railway, sitting in his tent on a beautiful Persian rug looted from some unfortunate Turkish train. He was dressed, as usual, in the most immaculate white robes with the golden dagger of Mecca in his girdle. Outside lolled some of his bodyguard cleaning their rifles and crooning softly to themselves and undoubtedly enjoying the quiet contemplation of some particularly devilish bit of work which they had just perpetrated. They were a remarkably interesting collection, numbering just under a hundred. Most of them belonged to the Ageyl and were hired soldiers by profession. Not one of them but was famed for some daring deed, and for hard living, hard riding and hard swearing, they were the pick of Arabia. This bodyguard was a very necessary precaution, for there was a price of £20,000 on Lawrence’s head, and Arabs are treacherous folk—unless they are your sworn and paid men. Any one of his bodyguard, however, would have cheerfully died for Lawrence.
“There was another reason why picked men were necessary. Lawrence’s movements were sudden and his rides long and arduous, and few ordinary Arabs cared to cover at a stretch the distances which he did. It is an amazing thing that an Englishman should have beaten all the records of Arabia for speed and endurance.
“What was it that enabled Lawrence to seize and hold the imagination of the Arabs? it is a difficult question to answer. The Arabs are notable individualists, intractable to a degree and without any sense of discipline, and yet it was sufficient for almost any of us to say that Lawrence wanted something done—and it was done. How did he gain this power? The answer may partly be that he represented the heart of the Arab movement for freedom, and the Arabs realized that he had vitalized their cause; that he could do everything and endure everything just a little better than the Arabs themselves; that, by his investment with the gold dagger of Mecca, he ranked with the Ashraf or the descendants of the Prophet, and the Emir Feisal treated him as a brother, as an equal; that he seemed to possess unlimited gold—for the average Arab is the most venal of all people. But chiefly, I think we must look for the answer in Lawrence’s uncanny ability to sense the feelings of any group of men in whose company he found himself; his power to probe behind their minds and to uncover the well-springs of their actions.”
That power was often put to the test, but never perhaps more hardly than when, in this last summer of the War, Lawrence discovered that Feisal was negotiating with the Turks in the belief that the British were a broken reed. Feisal had an excuse not merely in the defeats that the British had suffered but in his own prior discovery that the British themselves had been carrying on negotiations with the Turks—and with the section of Turks most inimical to his hopes. The conversations between Aubrey Herbert and Talaat in Switzerland came to Feisal’s ears within a week of their occurrence, and his alarm made him receptive to Turkish overtures. Then, after the British abandonment of Es Salt, Jemal Pasha sent down Mohammed Said, Abd el Kader’s brother, from Damascus, and the outcome of their discussions was that Feisal offered to forsake the British side if the Turks would evacuate Amman and hand over the province to the Arabs. The negotiations had not before been disclosed to King Hussein in Mecca; he was aghast when he heard of them, and sent a vehement telegram of protest, to the effect that he would never countenance such a pact and that the Turks should be told—“only the sword lies between us.”
Naturally, the British representatives at Aqaba and in Egypt were kept in the dark. But despite Feisal’s discretion Lawrence was quick to gain an inkling of the truth; while his sense of duty to the Arabs led him to see the necessity of keeping open a way of escape for the Arab fighting men in case of necessity, he decided to check these moves when they reached a point dangerous to the common cause. The manner of his intervention was characteristic. Gently disclosing to Feisal his knowledge of the negotiations, he pretended to regard them as a clever piece of political tactics, designed to throw the Turks off their guard, and he suggested that Feisal should develop it. This was done and the game of bargaining continued for a time. For Lawrence realized that Feisal would be constrained to change it from a purposeful policy into a harmless diversion once its existence was known to his allies.
AZRAQ
Another example of Lawrence’s art in handling Arabs was seen in the way he guided their natural instinct for dispersion of effort, so as to extract its full profit while checking its dangerous extravagance. His aim was to hit without being hit, yet to hit where it would hurt. Left to themselves the Arabs, as he once rem
arked to me, “would have chopped the tree all round,” instead of cutting at the roots. Hence while stimulating Arab activity along its natural channels, he found means to avoid unpromising moves. Sometimes he did this by going to Feisal and saying—“We won’t pay for this show.” At other times, with more subtlety, he discouraged such plans by causing a momentary upset among the leaders who were arranging to take part.
His methods of combining the Arabs for strategy were closely related to his methods in strategy, and as carefully thought out. Concentration of thought produced concentration of force—in effect if not in appearance. His outward air of dispersion may deceive the historical student as completely as it deceived the Turk. For the dispersion was on the surface, and the concentration lay in the current. He had not studied Bourcet in pre-war days without profit—he knew that a concentrated effect could only be gained through an air of dispersion that caused the dispersal of the enemy’s would-be concentration. The art of the strategist lies in reconciling these two opposite conditions. Here it is worthwhile to quote a couple of reflections that Lawrence once made on this difficult art: the first was that one should seek “to pass around obstacles, yet avoid branching the main stream”; the second that in using distractions to this end one should “leave an air space between them and the main stream to prevent ‘ruffling.’ “
On July 30th Buxton arrived in Aqaba with the two Camel Corps companies, three hundred strong, after a seven days’ march from JLubri (162 miles), on the Suez Canal. Feisal had been warned privately of their coming, and Lawrence went down to meet the force at Aqaba, where the few Bedouin who saw them were amazed, having scarcely believed that there were “so many Englishmen in the world.” To minimize possible friction Lawrence delivered a precautionary address that many remembered. Stirling gives the fullest account one has heard:
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