Another observer said, “He always seemed to be looking from under a tent.” Looking with those magnetic blue eyes that poet Robert Graves thought were maternal. Lawrence recounts a story of meeting an old Arab woman during his early travels through the Levant. She stares into his eyes with a mixture of fear and awe; she says his eyes remind her of the blue desert sky. With a flash of hesitation she adds: a blue sky seen through the eye sockets of a skull.
The eyes were set in the face of a boxer: that was Kennington’s assessment. Perhaps reflective of Lawrence’s Irish roots: “Though not broad he was weighty from shoulders to neck, which jutted, giving a forward placing of the head, and a thrust to the heavy chin.” Thus the contrast: sensitive yet fearless eyes shielded by a pugilist’s bones. “It was the face of a heavyweight boxer, and in all circumstances, dynamic. Above and around and behind this fighting machine was a full development of brain, deep from back to front, and more high than broad.” Kennington “was puzzled how the head could be at once so strong and so sensitive.” Lawrence stood up and the sculptor thought: “Boxer’s face, and tightrope athlete’s body.” Foreshadowing the fighter Muhammad Ali, Kennington observed: “He stands as if floating—like a fish.” Or perhaps a butterfly?
In October 1916, Lawrence learned that Storrs was going to the Hejaz to confer with Hussein and applied for ten days’ leave to tag along. Clayton approved. On October 12, Lawrence wrote with characteristic understatement: “I am going off tomorrow for a few days. I hope to be back in about a fortnight or less.” And so began Lawrence’s adventure of a lifetime.
WHEN THE ARAB REVOLT erupted in June 1916, the Turks had one clear, key end in mind: For political and especially religious reasons, Mecca, as the navel of the Muslim world, had to be held at all costs. The sultan of Ottoman Turkey was also, as caliph, the spiritual leader of Islam—a role unique in the political leadership of the day. When Sherif Hussein’s irregular forces seized Mecca on June 13, the Turks were quick to respond. This response was, however, shaped and influenced by several geographic considerations that Lawrence would soon exploit.
The railroad system of the region, conceived of as a large “T,” formed the chessboard that would define the operations throughout the theater. The horizontal rail line ran from Baghdad westward through Mosul and Aleppo to Istanbul; sections of the twelve-hundred-mile line were in various stages of completion, so the line was not totally continuous along the east-west axis. (See map.) The thousand-mile vertical line ran south from Aleppo through Damascus, Deraa, and Maan, culminating in the holy city of Medina. Mecca lay 250 miles farther to the south across fairly rugged terrain without any rail connection.
The Arab forces initially tried the same methods at Medina that had eventually proved successful at Mecca. They had not considered, however, the signal advantage the railroad gave the Turkish army, which quickly reinforced the Medina garrison. With these reinforcements, the Turks pushed the Arabs fifty miles to the southwest into the hills, where they took up defensive positions astride the main road into Mecca. Here, mutually exhausted, both sides dug in as the Turks contemplated their next move.
Within a few short months, the railroad gave the Turkish army under Fakhri Pasha the means to establish a large expeditionary corps of about ten thousand men at Medina. Another twenty-five hundred secured the railway running to the north, and twelve hundred men garrisoned the Red Sea port of Wejh. By October, Hussein’s Arab forces had coalesced into three main operational groupings under his sons: five thousand under Ali stationed at the key harbor of Rabegh; nearly four thousand under Abdullah at Mecca; and seven thousand under Feisal at the port of Yenbo, aimed to strike at the long rail line off to the east. On October 19, when the Turks renewed their advance, it was clear to all that the tiny port of Rabegh had become the linchpin to the defense of Mecca.
British logistical blood flowed from Egypt and something even more precious: gold. Two English pounds sterling bought a man and a rifle, four more bought a camel. Here it is important to point out that—contrary to Hollywood depictions—90 percent of the Arab forces fought on foot. The port at Rabegh had to be held at all costs. Furthermore, it was the most defensible piece of terrain north of Mecca, where the flat bowling-ball landscape invited a direct Turkish attack. Finally, the road down from Medina went through Rabegh, becoming a natural line of communications for the Turks’ advance to Mecca.
Lawrence and Storrs arrived at Jidda aboard the Lama on October 16, three days before the Turks launched their long-awaited offensive. The most memorable recollection of Lawrence’s arrival was the heat: “Then the heat of Arabia came out like a drawn sword and struck us speechless.”1 The streets of Jidda were a shimmering dazzle of black shadow and white light. Walking through the town market, they watched as clouds of flies sortied back and forth between the meat and the dates. Lawrence idly noticed that Storrs’s white uniform had been stained red where he had sat in the old leather armchair aboard the Lama. Now he appeared like a rhesus monkey in search of jungle shade.
The pair at length reached the local consulate and were greeted by Lieutenant-Colonel C. E. Wilson, lately dispatched by General Charles Wingate from the Red Sea Province of the Sudan. Wilson had arranged the meeting with Abdullah that was about to take place. The Arabs regarded Abdullah as a visionary statesman and a shrewd politician, the intellectual father of the Arab Revolt. In truth, he had initiated the revolt only so his family could control it and gain the fruits of its success. Abdullah arrived on a white mare with a covey of heavily armed slaves, full of himself after his recent victory at Taif. Although Lawrence had never laid eyes on him before, Abdullah readily treated Storrs as the old friend he had become. Lawrence immediately saw through the garrulous facade and the affective wrappings of feigned cheerfulness, wondering if this could be the true leader of the revolt: “The Sherif’s rebellion had been unsatisfactory for the last few months: standing still, which, with an irregular war, was the prelude to disaster: and my suspicion was that its lack was leadership: not intellect, nor judgment, nor political wisdom, but the flame of enthusiasm, that would set the desert on fire. My visit was mainly to find the yet unknown master-spirit of the affair, and measure his capacity to carry the revolt to the goal I had conceived for it.”2 Lawrence’s assessment was that Abdullah had been the immediate source of ignition, but he was too politic, too at ease with himself with the work he had already done, to become the true and enduring flame of the rebellion. His role would be important but not crucial. That leader had yet to be identified.
FOLLOWING THE FORMALITIES of introduction, discussion turned to matters of civil administration of which Abdullah and his Bedouin were wholly innocent. The populace in Medina and Mecca were cosmopolitan and urbane, mostly Egyptians, Indians, Africans, and other foreigners unsympathetic to the Arab cause. The commercial townsmen had always seen the Bedouin as an economic threat encountered only along the dark byways of the desert. Now they were ensconced in the heart of the city as liberators and tax collectors dispensing the newly found largesse to the countryside. Civil law became another matter of contention when Abdullah abolished the secular Turkish code and replaced it with sharia religious law, which benefited the Bedouins over the townsmen.
After further discourse, the topic of conversation turned to military affairs. Abdullah wondered what the two men thought of the idea of readying a British brigade of Muslims to reinforce, on call, the Arab position at Rabegh. Lawrence presented the military complications of such a requirement. First, there were no Muslim units in the British Army; second, naval shipping was rare, and empty hulls could not be held indefinitely back in Egypt. Besides, the alternative, a British brigade, was a clumsy tactical unit for the kind of guerrilla war being fought against the Turks; it would take too long to embark and disembark to be agile at the moment of crisis. The position at Rabegh was too large for a lonely brigade to defend in any case. At best the infantry would be able to defend a stretch of beach under the guns of its naval force. Abdullah replied that
the allocation need only be temporary, as Arab strength was rapidly being mobilized. Lawrence made a further argument that British troops were immediately needed for the defense of the canal. Moreover, the use of Christian troops to support an Arab, though Muslim, cause might raise some questions among the Islamic world. In any case, Lawrence would present Abdullah’s views fairly to general headquarters back in Egypt.
Then there was a brief pause: Lawrence wondered aloud if his arguments would be stronger if he could see the Arab situation himself, meet with Feisal—Abdullah’s youngest brother—and report back with firsthand knowledge of the revolt. An imperceptible shadow of suspicion crossed the prince’s bearded visage. He was about to nix the idea when Storrs suddenly jumped into the conversation with his full support of the notion. He told Abdullah the importance of getting full and timely information back to Murray as soon as possible. And for Murray to detail one of his best staff officers in the person of Lawrence would also signal to the Arabs the seriousness of British support for the whole effort. Abdullah, at last convinced, phoned his father, Hussein, for permission to send Lawrence up to Rabegh and Feisal’s camp in Jebel Subh. Hussein had grave misgivings over the offer. At length, Abdullah handed the phone to Storrs, and here he proved his value a hundred times over. His natural charm and deep understanding of Arab culture transformed the old sherif so thoroughly that by the end of the conversation, Hussein presented the idea back to Abdullah as his own. The next morning, Lawrence left by boat for Rabegh.
LAWRENCE ARRIVED ABOARD the Northbrook. Hussein’s eldest son, Ali, was not pleased to see him, but his father’s orders were explicit: Help Lawrence get to Feisal by all means. Ali would have protested, but the only method of wireless communication was through the Northbrook. Since Ali could not bear to share openly a familial grievance with a foreigner, he complied. Lawrence found Ali more convivial than his middle brother, Abdullah. Ali “was of middle height, thin, and looking already more than his thirty-seven years. He stooped a little. His skin was sallow, his eyes large and deep and brown, his nose thin and rather hooked, his mouth sad and drooping. He had a spare black beard and very delicate hands. His manner was dignified and admirable, but direct; and he struck me as a pleasant gentleman, conscientious, without great force of character, nervous, and rather tired.” He was also afflicted with tuberculosis. “His physical weakness … made him subject to quick fits of shaking passion, preceded and followed by long moods of infirm obstinacy. He was bookish, learned in law and religion, and pious almost to fanaticism.”3 Lawrence deemed him too detached and with too much integrity to be ambitious. He was therefore prone to manipulation in an effort to be all things to all men. At all events, if Feisal proved less the leader than Lawrence hoped, the revolt would be better served with Ali at its head than Abdullah. Ali was assisted by his half-brother, Zeid, who was only nineteen. His mother was Turkish, and he had been brought up in the harem with little love for the Arab cause. Though Zeid was even less a leader than Abdullah, Lawrence saw potential that could be exploited later as the boy matured under the proper tutelage of a real commander.
Ali kept Lawrence’s departure a secret lest any of his followers see him leave. He left in the evening with two guides named Tafas and Abdullah. They traveled at a leisurely pace through the cool desert air. During the journey, Tafas pointed out three watering sites. Tactically this meant that the Turks could safely bypass Rabegh altogether simply by using the three wells in easy stages. Moreover, it meant that the requested British brigade would have had to extend its tactical reach twenty miles inland to block the maneuver.
The long ride was taxing to Lawrence, who had been deskbound for over two years in Cairo, “thinking hard in a little overcrowded office full of distracting noises, with a hundred rushing things to say, but no bodily need except to come and go each day between office and hotel. In consequence the novelty of this change was severe, since time had not been given me gradually to accustom myself to the pestilent beating of the Arabian sun, and the long monotony of camel pacing.”4 After more riding, the group finally reached Hamra and Feisal’s headquarters in Wadi Safra.
Lawrence was brought immediately in to see Feisal, the younger of the sherif of Mecca’s three Arab sons, after Ali and Abdullah. Lawrence “felt at first glance that this was the man I had come to Arabia to seek—the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt to full glory. Feisal looked very tall and pillar-like, very slender, in his white silk robes and his brown head-cloth bound with a brilliant scarlet and gold cord. His eyelids were dropped; and his black beard and colorless face were like a mask against the strange, still watchfulness of his body. His hands were crossed in front of him on his dagger.” Lawrence greeted the leader and sat down on Feisal’s carpet close to the door. Feisal seemed a bit diffident, gently caressing his dagger. At last he asked Lawrence of his journey. He mentioned the heat and the intensity of the pace. More silence.
“And do you like our place here in Wadi Safra?” Feisal asked finally.
“Well; but it is far from Damascus.” Lawrence’s reply was a veiled challenge to Feisal and his retainers. The word Damascus “had fallen like a sword in their midst.” The word created a shiver among them, for Damascus was the great ancient seat of Arab power. “Then everybody present stiffened where he sat, and held his breath for a silent minute. Some, perhaps, were dreaming of far off success: others may have thought it a reflection on their late defeat.”
At length Feisal raised his eyes and smiled at Lawrence, saying, “Praise be to Allah, there are Turks nearer us than that.”5 Feisal had deftly turned Lawrence’s barb.
THE NEXT FEW days Lawrence spent with Feisal reviewing the state of the Arab Revolt since its inception. The first heady days of success at Medina were stanched by the raging realities of Turkish artillery. Demoralization ensued as the Turks began to play the cards of total war, trumping the rebellion with village massacres, rapine, and butchery. This brutal game, which had violated every rule of war known to the Arabs, had sent a powerful shock through them. Their first principle held that women were sacred; second, that children and those unable to protect themselves were inviolable; finally, booty impossible to carry away should be left untouched. All these were violated by the Turks. The turning point was at Awali, a quiet suburb of Medina where all the Turkish savagery was released to the fullest. Awali created the blood feud of all blood feuds against the Turks.
Lieutenant-Colonel C. E. Wilson brought money and reinforcements, but these were only the splinters of a cracking British defense: Egyptian gunners from Sudan with outmoded mountain guns that were unable to range the more powerful German-supplied pieces that the Turks fielded. By August, the whole fight had fallen upon Feisal as Abdullah demurred in Mecca and Ali and Zeid delayed at Rabegh. To preserve the remnants of his force, Feisal withdrew to Hamra, leaving a few detachments to harry the enemy supply lines. The Arabs were unwilling to advance under the Turkish guns, and the Turks were unable to advance beyond their encampments. The fight had degenerated into a duel of the vilest of epithets: the Turks calling the Arabs “English” and the Arabs calling the Turks “German.”
In the midst of the discussions, Lawrence asked Feisal for his assessment. It was his considered judgment that the Turks under Fakhri Pasha at Medina would try to seize Mecca over two hundred miles to the south. As long as the Turks held Medina, they could drive on Mecca by way of several routes and so would hold the initiative. Feisal would thus be forced to dance at the end of a long Turkish string. Fakhri had now reorganized the bulk of his troops into a mobile center of gravity, a maneuver force that could advance on Rabegh by several avenues. The only Arab advantage was the certainty that the impending Turkish movement would have to advance near Rabegh because that land held the vital source of water.
From these considerations emerged Feisal’s campaign design that was preemptive in its essence. He would withdraw even farther west from Hamra to Yenbo near the heart of the mighty Juheina tribe. With fresh reinforcements from the tri
be, he would strike at the rail line supplying Medina. Abdullah would attack Medina from the east; Ali would strike from Rabegh in close cooperation with Zeid moving into Wadi Safra. The two would fix the large Turkish force at Bir Abbas. The three-sided assault would preempt the impending enemy advance toward Mecca and give the Arabs near that city time to strengthen their defenses.
The detailed and lengthy discussions of operational art and tactics seemed to offer Feisal renewed hope. The talks with Lawrence brought things to the surface, where he could see new potential, possibilities, and opportunities. Where Feisal had appeared exhausted when Lawrence first arrived, he now appeared merely “dead-tired. He looked years older than thirty-three; and his dark, appealing eyes, set a little sloping in his face, were bloodshot, and his hollow cheeks deeply lined and puckered with reflection. His nature grudged thinking, for it crippled his speed in action; the labor of it shriveled his features into swift lines of pain. In appearance he was tall, graceful and vigorous, with the most beautiful gait, and a royal dignity of head and shoulders. Of course he knew it, and a great part of his public expression was by sign and gesture.”
Lawrence perceived many levels of Feisal’s complex style of leadership: the political chief, the operational commander, the tactical leader. The complexity seemed rooted to a kind of duality of character: fiery yet sensitive, apparently frail yet courageous, proud yet humble, imprudent yet tolerant, self-absorbed yet empathetic. “He was a careful judge of men. If he had the strength to realize his dreams he would go far, for he was wrapped up in his work and lived for nothing else; but the fear was that he would wear himself out by trying to seem to aim always a little higher than the truth, or that he would die of too much action.” Perhaps Lawrence could become the governor to that action and modulate it, ease the burden of command, sharpen the focus of thought. It thus seemed to Lawrence, at the long end of his journey, that he had found “a prophet who, if veiled, would give cogent form to the idea behind the activity of the Arab revolt. It was all and more than we had hoped for, much more than our halting course deserved. The aim of my trip was fulfilled.”6
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