Barrow seemed rather disconcerted at being forestalled, and Lawrence pressed home the advantage by his air of calm assumption that Barrow’s troops were the guests of the Arabs. “My head was working full speed in these minutes, on our joint behalf, to prevent the fatal first step by which the unimaginative British, with the best will in the world, usually deprived the acquiescent native of the discipline of responsibility, and created a situation which called for years of agitation and successive reforms and riotings to mend.”
After finding that he had been forestalled both in his intention to post sentries and to take over the working of the railways, Barrow “surrendered himself by asking me to find him forage and foodstuffs.” if he did not find it easy to assimilate the unexpected situation, one reason was perhaps his revulsion at the horrid sights which silently registered the night’s sack of the Turkish quarters. But having capitulated, he did it with a good grace, for when Lawrence drew his attention to Nasir’s silk pennon which hung outside the government office he saluted it in a way that sent a thrill through the Arab soldiers. The action seemed the vindication of their efforts and sacrifices.
To Lawrence, the pleasure had a salty flavour. Within the past few hours he had had a double foretaste of trouble ahead, both among the Arabs and between them and their allies. And his discomfort was sharpened by enforced immersion in a flood of drilled troops. “The essence of the desert was the lonely moving individual, the ‘son of the roads,’ [ibn turgi—an Arab phrase] apart from the world as in a grave. These troops, in flocks like slow sheep, looked not worthy of the privilege of space. My mind felt in the Indian rank and file something puny and confined; an air of thinking themselves mean; almost a careful esteemed subservience, unlike the abrupt wholesomeness of Bedouin. The manner of the British officers toward their men struck horror into my bodyguard, who had never seen personal inequality before.”
His repulsion may have been increased by his recent witness at Tafas of the bestial license to which severely disciplined troops were prone when their curbed instincts were allowed an outlet. To a man of his historical sense, it did not suffice to say that these were Turks—he could not help remembering the British troops at Badajoz. But the excesses of soldiers’ passions offended him less than the stunting of their souls and their mergence in a mass. “Our armoured-car men were persons to me, from their fewness and our long companionship; and also in their selves, for these months . . . had worn and refined them into individuals.” The newcomers were an impersonal mass, whose obtruding numbers emphasized their stereotyped demeanour.
In the days that followed, as the forces converged on Damascus, he was embedded more deeply into this unaccustomed environment, and with increase of contact revulsion grew, producing the reflection—“It came upon me freshly how the secret of uniform was to make a crowd solid, dignified, impersonal; to give it the singleness and tautness of an upstanding man. This death’s livery which walled its bearers from ordinary life, was sign that they had sold their wills and bodies to the State: and contracted themselves into a service not the less abject for that its beginning was voluntary. Some of them had obeyed the instinct of lawlessness: some were hungry: some thirsted for glamour, for the supposed colour of a military life; but, of them all, those only received satisfaction who had sought to degrade themselves, for to the peace-eye they were below humanity.” “Convicts had violence put upon them. Slaves might be free, if they could, by intention. But the soldier assigned his owner the twenty-four hours’ use of his body; and sole conduct of his mind and passions.”
If Lawrence had shared the fellowship of the trenches, in a happy battalion, he might have qualified his judgment and even found extenuating circumstances. For in the approach to the fighting line authority became curbed to the benefit of individuality, which in many cases not merely survived but even grew stronger under the pressure of the experience. The front was a Moloch that consumed bodies but souls were often tempered in its fire—the Moloch that hungered for souls lay at the base. One should remember that Lawrence had only experienced the two extremes of soldiering, the cesspool of Cairo staff offices and the solitariness of guerrilla war in the desert.
Again, in weighing his reflections one must take account of his state at this time, when his will drove along an overtried body that dragged on a depressed mind, apprehensive of troubles ahead and acutely conscious of the double nature of the part he was playing, an unceasing irk to his honesty. His dark mood in these days of triumph made an indelible impression on his companions and, because of their affection, grieved them. It seems to have been “caught” in McBey’s portrait of him, now in the Imperial War Museum, which was painted just after his arrival in Damascus—T.E. himself says now “It is shockingly strange to me.”
Yet, if allowance should be made for that mood, there is a fundamental truth in his reflection on the nature of armies which holds a lesson even for those who have to create armies. It helps to explain why the best drilled armies have so often become blunt swords, and why soldiers are so often ruined in the making. His reflection, moreover, helps to explain why he himself chose the Air Forces for his later service. “The problem of the ranks in the R.A.F. is to produce the mechanic of individual intelligence.”
Lawrence distrusted the type of discipline traditional in Regular armies as being a process of the mass that ran counter to the mobility essential for war—war economically and effectively waged. Moreover, he regarded such discipline as more suited to the conditions of peace than of war. The suggestion that “discipline” is not a military virtue may seem paradoxical, especially to soldiers, but Lawrence’s view was that the form of discipline developed on the parade-ground, instead of impressing the idea that the soldier’s will must actively second his superior’s, tends to make obedience merely a reflex action.
This automatic response, without momentary pause for thought transmission, may increase quickness under peace conditions but it makes no allowance for the friction of war, or for casualties among the leaders. One may here recall that Grandmaison and the French General Staff before 1914 expressly aimed at a discipline of the muscles, not of the intelligence, sacrificing initiative in order, by incessant repetition, “to develop in the soldier the reflexes of obedience.” That doctrine—and its consequences—go far to bear out Lawrence’s view.
Further, he deemed such unthinking obedience harmful to authority itself. By putting excessive power in the hands of arbitrary old age, it often led to an indulgence that deadened the commander’s subjunctive mood—to his own ruination.
From experience and reflection, Lawrence had come to a distrust of instinct, which has its roots in animality. Reason seemed to him to give men something deliberately more precious than fear or pain—the customary agents of “discipline.” And this conviction led him to discount the value of peace-smartness as a war-education.
For he had observed that in war a subtle change took place even in the regular soldier, and that discipline as a driving force was blended with or even swallowed by an eagerness to fight. It was the degree of this eagerness which decided the issue in the moral sense, and often in the physical sense. War was made up of crises of intense effort; after each expenditure of effort there was a reaction, while the prolongation of any single effort drained the capacity for renewed effort. Discharges of nervous energy had to be brief, with time to recuperate.
The commander must not only avoid running down the batteries, but exercise care in charging them. Here, it seemed to Lawrence, lay the deeper explanation of smartening discipline. There were obvious dangers in generating the excitement of war to create a military spirit in peace-time. To use his own simile, it would be like the too-early doping of an athlete. “Smartness” serves as a substitute, by which the military spirit can be diverted into a harmless channel.
A price has to be paid, however, when war comes—in loss of individual intelligence and initiative. The straitly disciplined soldier is apt to feel uneasy, if not helpless, unless in a herd. War, e
ven regular war, brings frequent shocks that disintegrate the mass and throw the individual on his own resources. If these have atrophied under restraint he is unable to cope with the emergency. Lawrence once remarked that “lack of independent courage” is the root fault of the military system. Analysis of history would suggest that it is the main cause of military failure—in all grades, since even the highest have usually “been through the mill” in their time.
On the morning of the 29th Barrow marched north up the Pilgrims’ Road, having asked the Arab leaders to cover his right flank. Actually, Nasir, Nuri Shaalan and Auda with’ twelve hundred irregular horse and camelry were already ahead of him, having moved the day before to catch up the main enemy column. And all through the 29th they clung on to it, harassing its steps.
Lawrence himself had stayed behind to see Feisal, who arrived that day from Azrak, and to make sure that the Arab administration took firm hold. He had hopes of a night’s sleep, but finding it would not come he woke up Stirling, and set out northward before daylight in the “Blue Mist” on the sixty mile course to Damascus. Finding their progress was blocked by columns of cavalry transport, they turned aside and drove to the disused railway line that ran north from Muzeirib. Climbing the embankment they drove fast, if bumpily, along it over the ballast, and so circumvented the block. By noon they caught up the tail of Barrow’s headquarters, which was halted. Lawrence’s bodyguard was accompanying it; so, taking one of the camels, he rode to see Barrow and find out the reason for the halt. Barrow, who had stopped to water his horses, showed astonishment when he saw Lawrence on camelback and heard that he had only left Deraa that morning! When Barrow asked where they were going to stop that night, he received the teasing Lawrentian reply—”In Damascus.”
Early in the afternoon the “Blue Mist” passed the British advanced guard and through the screen, and, forging ahead, dropped notes at successive villages to await the cavalry’s arrival. If the information was appreciated, the veiled imputation was hardly palatable. But Lawrence found relief as well as amusement in rubbing it in—“It irked Stirling and myself to see the caution of Barrow’s advance; scouts scouting empty valleys, sections crowning every deserted hill, a screen drawn forward so carefully over friendly country. It marked the difference between our certain movements and the tentative processes of normal war.” “It also showed a total ignorance of the air arm”—for British aircraft were flying over this area all day.
The “Blue Mist” drove on towards Kiswe, some ten miles short of Damascus, where Barrow was to reunite with Chauvel and the remainder of the Desert Mounted Corps. In mid-afternoon Lawrence heard firing to the right near the Hejaz railway line. Then he sighted a Turkish column of about two thousand men, moving in ragged groups. Round it, like flies, buzzed the Arabs, and Nasir, riding up, told Lawrence that this was all that remained of the original six thousand. The attrition of this column was entirely the work of the irregulars, for the Arab regulars, like the British cavalry, had been too slow-moving to share in the work. But now there was a chance for the latter to take a hand in finishing off the remnant.
Asking Nasir to block its path and hold it up for an hour if possible, Lawrence turned round and drove to fetch British help. Three miles back he came upon the advanced guard. Stirling relates that the elderly colonel commanding it “was particularly stuffy with Lawrence and evidently resented intensely that our little Rolls should be able to dash about with impunity miles in advance of his cavalry, which was moving northward at the time with infinite and quite unnecessary caution.” He reluctantly sent forward a squadron, but when the Turks’ little mountain guns opened fire the Colonel ordered a retirement. Dismayed at the risk to Nasir and disgusted at such an exhibition, Lawrence hurriedly drove back to make fresh appeal to the Colonel, but could not move him, and so drove on to find the brigade commander. General Gregory at once” sent forward a horse battery and a yeomanry regiment, while another regiment moved wide to head off the enemy.
But time had been lost and darkness was falling when the guns came within range. Nevertheless they were in time to forestall a Turkish counter-attack on Nasir, and their shells spurred the enemy to make for the heights of Jebel Mania, abandoning guns and transport. Auda was lying in wait there, having ridden on to collect the Wuld Ali tribesmen; during the night, tired at last of killing, he captured six hundred Turks. The rest escaped in the darkness only to be rounded up two days later by the Australians. In all the Arab forces had taken eight thousand prisoners and killed a number that were estimated at nearly five thousand, besides capturing 150 machine-guns and about thirty guns. Thus the extinction of the Fourth Army may justly be placed to their credit and dated from this night of September 30th on the slopes of Jebel Mania.
Already in the afternoon the north-western exit from Damascus had been closed by the Australian Mounted Division, which had made good progress along its westerly route through Quneitra, and reached the edge of the Barada gorge just as part of the Damascus garrison was retreating through it. Sweeping the fugitive stream with machine-guns fired from the overhanging cliffs the Australians quickly caused it to coagulate into a fear-frozen mass, of whom some four thousand were taken prisoners.
That afternoon also the Sherifial party in Damascus had assumed power and had hoisted the Arab flag over the town hall while the retreating Turks were still marching out. The Turks had swallowed the insult, making no attempt to tear down the flag.
Ali Riza Pasha himself, who had so long combined the dual function of Turkish commander and head of the Arab committee, was not present to inaugurate the change. He had just previously been dispatched to take charge of the Turks’ last line of defence, a duty that he had accepted as a conveniently early chance to join the British. And after reaching Barrow’s headquarters he so much enjoyed telling how he “had selected heavy-artillery positions that could not be occupied for lack of water,” that in his merriment he upset the table on which their breakfast was laid.
His departure from Damascus might have delayed the rising, but his natural successor, Shukri. Pasha, was encouraged to act not only by the sound of the British guns but by the unexpected support of the Algerian brothers, Abd el Kader and Mohammed Said, who had remained obstinately pro-Turk until the last hour. They forced their help on Shukri by the menace of their followers; and Mohammed Said took the leadership of the committee, on the ground that he had been appointed governor by the departing Jemal Pasha.
Although the events in Damascus were unknown to the Arab leaders outside, these had sent the Ruwalla horse forward into the city as soon as the twilight scrap near Jebel Mania was over, and had supported them with the Ruwalla camelry. Lawrence had dissuaded Nasir from entering himself, both because of the risk of a mishap in the dark and because a state entry at daylight would be more impressive.
Lawrence and Stirling finally rolled themselves up in blankets at midnight and lay down on the ground beside the “Blue Mist.” For a time they talked—of this culmination of two years’ effort. Then they tried to sleep, only to be startled by a series of heavy explosions and a reddening glare in the sky over Damascus. Raising himself on his elbows, Lawrence exclaimed, “Good God! They are burning the town.” He felt sick at the thought that this goal of their endeavours might be reduced to ashes at the moment of its freedom, and as the price of its freedom. The possibility was like a symbolical portent—so had his own achievement turned to ashes. Yet to Stirling he showed no other trace of emotion and merely said, “Anyhow, I’ve sent the Ruwalla forward, and we should soon have four thousand men in and around the town.”
The facts fell short of their fears, for the explosions came from the ammunition and store dumps that German engineers were blowing up as a parting act. And at dawn of October 1st, when Lawrence rode forward to the ridge overlooking the city he saw it not in ruins, but shimmering “like a pearl in the morning sun.” As he drove down the road a horseman galloped up, and holding out a bunch of yellow grapes, cried, “Good news: Damascus salutes you.”
He was a messenger from Shukri. Lawrence at. once passed the tidings to Nasir so that “he might have the honourable entry, a privilege of his fifty battles.”
Nasir and Nuri Shaalan then rode into the city while Lawrence, to give them a fair start, stopped the car beside a little stream to wash and shave. He was interrupted by a patrol of Bengal Lancers who rushed up to take him prisoner.1 Even when Stirling threw open his cloak and showed his British uniform, he merely received a prod from a lance for his pains, and it was not until they met an officer that they obtained release.
Then they were able to make their entry into Damascus through streets lined with people who at first stupefied at the change became the more deliriously excited the more deeply they penetrated.
The women of the harem leaned out of their overhanging windows, their veils thrown aside, and showered flowers and perfumes on the heads of their deliverers. In strange contrast, there were many Turkish soldiers who watched the entry as apathetically as they waited for capture—over thirteen thousand were found in the barracks and hospitals. “Pellagra—the disease of despair, was killing them by battalions.”
At the town hall a sterner task awaited Lawrence. For, having made his way through an exuberantly demonstrative mob into the ante-chamber, he found Mohammed Said vociferously maintaining his right to the reins of office. Before Lawrence could deal with his pretensions a diversion was caused by a sudden wild fight between Auda and Sultan el Atrash, the chief of the Druses. When peace was at last restored and murder averted, the Algerian leaders had disappeared with Masir for refreshment. So Lawrence, who had already decided in his mind to appoint Shukri governor, took him off in the “Blue Mist” on a ceremonial tour of the city, showing themselves to the populace. On the outskirts they met Chauvel’s car. “I described the excitement in the city, and how our new Government could not guarantee administrative services before the following day, when I would wait upon him, to discuss his needs and mine. Meanwhile I made myself responsible for public order: only begging him to keep his men outside, because to-night would see such carnival as the town had not held for six hundred years, and its hospitality might pervert their discipline.”
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