“After supper Lawrence had the men collected round a large central blaze and gave them the straightest talk I have ever heard. He explained the general situation to them, told them that he was going to take them through a part of Arabia where no white man had ever set foot and where the Arab sub-tribes were none too friendly, that there was no need to worry about the Turks but every need to worry about our allies the Bedouin. They were mistrustful folk, he said, and would most certainly think that we had come to take their grazing-grounds. The essential thing was to avoid any cause of friction. If any were offended or insulted he begged of them to turn the other cheek—both because they were better educated and therefore less prejudiced and also because they were so very few. The men were delighted and retired for the night, thinking that they were about to embark on the greatest rag in the history of war—as perhaps they were!”
On August 2nd they set out by the Wadi Ithm for Rimm, Lawrence himself guided them over this first critical stage through the Howeitat country because of the importance of surprise, if casualties were to be avoided. If they encountered some of the suspicious tribesmen his presence might help to calm them and also prevent warning being passed on to the Turks. It was fortunate that he went, for when the contingent reached Rumm the Howeitat who were encamped there showed themselves most resentful of this English intrusion. Although the efforts of Lawrence and Sherif Hazaa allayed trouble with the chiefs, odd tribesmen frequently sniped the party during the hours of darkness. When morning came diplomacy had a better chance, and by midday Lawrence felt that it was safe for him to go back, while Stirling, who had attained a remarkably quick influence with the Beni Atiya, helped by their common love of horses, was left with Buxton.
It had been a strange experience for Lawrence to be among a body of English soldiers, typical of their simple and friendly kind, and it brought on a sudden homesickness, making him feel an outcast. By reaction it made him more conscious of the way he was playing England’s tune upon the Arab keyboard.
A fresh reminder came when, after riding back, he found an aeroplane waiting to take him to Jefer, to meet that Nuri Shaalan who had taxed him a year before with the difference between England’s pledges to the Arabs and those she had given to the French. Thus as the aeroplane barely scraped over the mountain-ridge, Lawrence found himself almost hoping that it would crash and wipe out in his blood the shame of those promises with which he excessively tortured himself.
However, the interview with Nuri Shalaan and his Ruwalla sheikhs was not so difficult as in Lawrence’s anticipations. Momentarily suppressing his qualms of conscience, he joined with Feisal in a subtly moving appeal to the idea of Arab nationality, emphasizing the mystical enchantment of sacrifice for freedom, until “the Rualla melted in our double heat” and Nuri Shalaan committed his tribe to the cause. It was a moment of triumph that like others would yield Lawrence aeons of introspective torment. After it, Lawrence flew back to Guweira and then rode to Aqaba, where the news of Buxton’s success at Mudauwara brought a thought-quenching exhilaration.
After a preliminary reconnaissance by car, which showed that all was quiet, Buxton’s force had converged on the station in three parties during the early hours of August 8th. This, the “black day” of the German armies in France, proved equally black for the Turkish garrison of Mudauwara. The British plan was inspired by the idea of an indirect approach to come round between the station and its guardian redoubts, and attack both from the inner side. White tapes had been laid before midnight to the jumping-off point, but as no one knew the ground save from air photographs it proved extremely difficult to lead the parties into position. Thus the time margin became unpleasantly narrow and faint streaks of daylight were coming when at last the assault was ready. Another ten minutes delay and it might have been a surprise the wrong way round. Happily, the bombing parties stole in and caught two of the redoubts unawares, and the station also. The northern redoubt, however, offered a hot resistance for an hour until it was battered into surrender by shells from the motor-guns, and 150 prisoners were taken for a loss of seven killed and ten wounded. After destroying the station, with its water-tower and steam pumps, and also the wells, Buxton’s force marched north to Jefer at dusk.
There Lawrence and Joyce greeted them on the 12th, and went on with them, combining a dual purpose—that of reconnoitring an armoured car road for the Deraa move as well as smoothing the way for Buxton. They travelled by car, with an armoured car as escort; it was the first time such a strange mechanical beast had been seen in these northern deserts, and it startled the Bedouin. But it also induced among them a more friendly manner than they often showed to unarmoured travellers. The virgin voyage was a triumphal passage, the Rolls-Royces making light of the desert route. They reached Azrak on the 14th, and came back still quicker, sometimes roaring along at forty miles an hour, so that at dusk next day they sighted Buxton’s camp-fires at Bair.
Here they found trouble. Young had duly sent fourteen days’ rations thither, but only eight days’ supply had arrived, the unwilling camel-drivers having apparently asserted their independent will when they got out of reach of Young’s. It meant an alteration of plan. “Buxton purged his column of every inessential, while I cut down the two armoured cars to one, and changed the route.”
Once more the fact of being among British soldiers brought Lawrence a sense of mixed ease and unease. He felt proud of his fellow-countrymen; they were so kindly and homely, and fitted so naturally into so strange a setting. But it made him feel the stranger. It was his thirtieth birthday and he used it to take mental stock of himself. Four years earlier, when he plunged into the war, a queer spasm of ambition had made him decide to be a general and knighted by the time he was thirty. Now the opportunity lay within his grasp, if he survived, but he had lost the taste for such childish trappings. The one ambition that survived was to be held in respect by men he could respect. This desire made him sensitively quick to question his own self-truthfulness. He thought of the way Allenby and the Arabs trusted him, and how his bodyguard were ready to die for him. He was too clear-sighted to regard himself as superman. He did not fully realize the ordinary man’s craving for idols—perhaps because he was not free from it himself—or the power of legend to create them. So he inclined to ascribe it to his actorship, and to wonder whether all fame was built on fraud.
He was the more ready to criticize himself because he had an instinctive shyness born of a sense of difference. That shyness often led to the abhorrent imputation of modesty, which in its conventional sense implies blindness. In trying to rid himself of the charge Lawrence has often shown an assertiveness which has led to the equally foolish charge of conceit. His intense consciousness of his own thoughts and actions produced an exceptional power of self-analysis, which became habit, incessant save when it could be submerged in violent effort. From it sprang a curiosity as to himself which was the mainspring of much of his action. He was perhaps not so different from other thinking men as he imagined.
He was conscious that he enjoyed the fame he had gained, and because of his excessive sense of remoteness from other men he had the more fear of this enjoyment becoming known to them. This led him to reject the honours he had first desired, until eventually his pleasure was to come within reach of his object without actually grasping it. One may perhaps see here an instinct allied to his desire for friendship that shrank from the touch of friendship, physical or mental. Like a number of men who truly stand out from the herd he had a sense of loneliness deepened by an instinct of friendliness, and had disencumbered himself, too freely for his own peace, of the common ties and pleasures that help others in laying bridges across the gulf. Nor like others could he drown doubts in the joy of creation, for his reason disapproved the attempt. Even independence had an unwanted lavour, for his instinct was to find a worthy master, while reason working on experience warned him that all idols were discovered to be hollow if approached too closely. So reflection led him not merely to more doubt but to more
distaste for himself.
When movement was renewed he obtained release, and a passing gratification of his military instinct, in noting Buxton’s quick adaptability to irregular warfare. For Buxton broke up the stiff column formation into a cluster of groups, each moving at its own gait, suited to the variations of ground. The camel-loads had been lightened and rehung, the system of clock-hour halts abandoned, and the halts devoted to grazing rather than grooming. All these changes pleased the connoisseur of irregular war. “Our Imperial Camel Corps had become rapid, elastic, enduring, silent,” although even now Lawrence’s camels, brought up to walk in Arab style, averaged more than four miles an hour, instead of three, and so gained extra time for grazing.
On the 20th they reached Muaggar, fifteen miles southeast of Amman, whence they intended to strike at the great bridge. Unluckily, as they approached, a Turkish aeroplane flew over the column. And from villagers they heard that several parties of Turkish mule-mounted infantry were quartered in the villages near the bridge, guarding the tax-gatherers. This force was not sufficient to prevent success, but it might make success expensive. In view of the ban on casualties, Lawrence regretfully decided to abandon the attempt, to the still greater disappointment of the Camel Corps.
“To gain what I could, I sent Saleh and the other chiefs down to spruce their people with tall rumours of our numbers, and our coming as the reconnaissance of Feisal’s army, to carry Amman by assault in the new moon. This was the story the Turks feared to learn: the operation they imagined: the stroke they dreaded. They pushed cavalry cautiously into Muaggar, and found confirmation of the wild tales of the villagers, for the hill-top was littered with empty meat-tins, and the valley slopes cut up by the deep tracks of enormous cars. Very many tracks there were! This alarm checked them, and, at a bloodless price for us, kept them hovering a week. The destruction of the bridge would have gained us a fortnight.” By thus playing on the Turks’ fears for Amman, Lawrence interposed a distraction to their concentration of forces—for an attack on Ja‘far’s force before Ma‘an. “I wanted Jaafar not to be actively engaged with an offensive enemy when we marched off his mounted men towards Deraa.”
But it was not merely the coming Arab move that profited from this preparatory bluff, for it would appear to have led the Turkish command to divert newly arriving reinforcements to the Fourth Army at Amman, at the expense of the British-menaced coastal sector.
At dusk on the 20th Buxton’s force set off towards Azrak, where they enjoyed a brief rest, marred by the death of Lieut. Rowan—due to the carelessness of an Arab with his rile. “We buried him in the little Mejaber graveyard, whose spotless quiet had long been my envy.”
At Azrak Lawrence also buried the guncotton ready for use in the coming Deraa raid. On the 26th they were back at Bair,1 where Lawrence took leave of them and raced on to Abu el Lissal by armoured car.
Here trouble greeted him—he should have learned to expect it by now. The Meccan official newspaper which had come up by mail was found to contain a proclamation to the effect that fools were styling Ja‘far Pasha the general commanding the Arab Northern Army, whereas there was no such rank among the Arabs. This seems to have been published by Hussein out of spite, after hearing that Ja‘far had received a British decoration. Its outcome was that Ja‘far tendered his resignation to Feisal, and was followed by all the senior Arab officers. Feisal and Lawrence did their best to allay the resentment, but when Feisal telegraphed a protest to his father he received a vitriolic answer. Thereupon Feisal telegraphed back offering his own resignation, and Hussein sent a further telegram appointing Zeid, who promptly refused the post. For a few days the wires vibrated with indignant messages and counter-messages.
The trouble could not have come at a more awkward time, because it threatened to upset an operation, composed of a series of moves, in which for once everything turned on time-table. And not merely the military issue. Allenby might still win his battle without the Arabs’ aid at Deraa but the Arabs could not stake their claim to independent sovereignty unless they not only helped Allenby but gained Damascus.
Sacrificing the lesser to the greater, Lawrence’s first act was to send off a messenger to warn Nuri Shaalan that he could not, as he had promised, come to address the gathering of the Ruwalla tribes. By arousing Nuri’s doubts, this failure to appear might lose the services of the Ruwalla in the Deraa operation, but without Feisal’s army there would be no operation.
Then Lawrence turned to oil the machinery at Abu el Lissal. Nuri Said, who in later years was to become Prime Minister of Iraq, gave invaluable aid in proving that his political gifts were as marked as his military. So did Stirling. Taking the lead from Nuri the Arab officers agreed to move to Azrak pending an apology from Hussein. “If this was unsatisfactory, they could return, or throw off allegiance.”
On Lawrence’s own methods of internal diplomacy Stirling sheds an amusing sidelight—“It was an education to listen to Lawrence at one of the Arab Councils. When in debate some sheikh became a little difficult, Lawrence, from his amazing knowledge of the past life and inner history of every leading Arab, would let drop a hint or reference to some small disreputable incident in the sheikh’s past which was generally enough to silence the man in question and put the rest of the Council in a good humour.” Quite as often, however, Lawrence gained his way by a timely reference to some reputable achievement—“I could flatter as well as flutter.”
He showed an equally subtle wit in the process of extracting an apology from Hussein that would satisfy Feisal’s honour and restore his position among the Arab officers—a matter that Lawrence deemed vital not for the military but for the political need. The attack on Deraa could be delivered without him, but he alone could seal their success at the occupation of Damascus. Before he could play the part of the Prophet resurrected, his prestige must be revived. Allenby and Wilson were helping by verbal pressure on Hussein, but the old man was recalcitrant. His telegrams, however, came to Lawrence for delivery to Feisal and, penetrating the cipher, he “had undesirable passages mutilated by rearranging their figures into nonsense, before handing them in code to Feisal. By this easy expedient the temper of his entourage was not needlessly complicated.”
Finally Hussein sent a long telegram, opening with a lame apology and then repeating the offence. Lawrence suppressed the second part before handing the message to Feisal in council. Feisal read it aloud and then decisively said—“The telegraph has saved all our honour.” The Arab officers burst out into a chorus of joy, under cover of which Feisal whispered to Lawrence—“I mean the honour of nearly all of us.” Lawrence pretended not to understand, whereat Feisal said to him—“I offered to serve for this last march under your orders: why was that not enough?”
“Because it would not go with your honour.”
Feisal murmured—“You prefer mine always before your own.”
But the crisis was resolved. And from other witnesses it is clear that personality played as great a part as “personalities” or suppressions in making the Arab leaders follow Lawrence’s lead.
Already on August 30th, by dint of Young’s exertions, the first convoy of six hundred laden camels had started on its 300 mile march to Azrak with an escort of thirty Gurkha machine-gunners and thirty-five Egyptian camelry. On September 2nd, the trouble among the Arab soldiers was sufficiently settled to allow the second convoy of eight hundred camels to follow, only one day late. The fighting force comprised 450 Arab Regular Camelry with twenty Hotchkiss guns, two British armoured cars and five tenders, two aircraft, and Pisani’s French mountain battery. On September 4th Lawrence himself left in a Rolls-Royce tender, in the hope of being in time to rally the aid of the Ruwalla. He was accompanied by Nasir and a new assistant, Lord Winterton, who had stayed behind as a welcome relic of Buxton’s force. Feisal and Joyce were to follow.
Thus the desert had become a military highway, dotted with northward-moving columns that headed steadily for Azrak, bringing a message of menace to the u
nsuspecting Turk. It gave a justifiable sensation of pride to the British soldiers, of difficulties overcome, of a creation achieved. But to Lawrence it brought mixed feelings as, in a Rolls-Royce, he raced past the plodding columns, so slow compared with his Bedouin. It seemed to him a shamefully comfortable form of desert-travel, although Nasir, in the back, smothered in dust, did not seem to share his view, especially when the tender hit the bumps at the end of a mud-flat at over sixty miles an hour. The desert, too, seemed shamefully populous, its familiar emptiness defiled by the unending sight of marching troops. It was some consolation to hear a report that while they were moving north, the Turks were launching another expedition south into Tafila. The news was a reminder that, strategically, the concourse was not so conspicuous, to the Turks at least, as it seemed to him. “Our formidable talk of advance by Amman had pulled their leg nearly out of the socket, and the innocents were out to counter our feint. Each man they sent south was a man, or rather ten men, lost.”
Against his regrets Lawrence could set a sense of assurance that gave him a restful enjoyment such as he had not known before. “For on this march to Damascus (and such it was already in our imagination) my normal balance had changed. I could feel the taut power of Arab excitement behind me. The climax of the preaching of years had come, and a united country was straining towards its historic capital.”
This remark may suggest that the romantic in Lawrence had reasserted itself after long suppression. For in the back of his own car he had almost the only Hejaz Arab in the force—Nasir. But in Lawrence’s mind the Hejaz was a page turned over, a tool discarded.
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