Guerrilla Leader

by James Schneider

  After reaffirming the Aqaba principle, the three confronted Nesib and Zeki. Auda and Nasir reiterated Lawrence’s case, but Nesib remained unconvinced. To prevent a complete rupture in the unity that had brought the raiders so far, Auda and Lawrence arranged a compromise. The two Syrians would go off on their own half-baked scheme with the idea of fomenting a revolt among their fellow Syrians. However, there was a proviso. If Nesib would hand over two of the bags of gold Feisal had shared out at the beginning of the mission, Lawrence promised abundant English money, as long as Nesib could deliver Damascus. Without hesitation, the optimistic Nesib agreed and handed over the treasure, knowing anyhow the three leaders would refuse to let him leave without it.

  THE WHOLE UNHAPPY episode brought Lawrence face-to-face with his own essential duplicity in the imperial scam directed against the Arabs, reminding him of the betrayal of “what’s right”: “The Arab Revolt had begun on false pretenses. To gain the Sherif Hussein’s help our Cabinet had offered, through Sir Henry McMahon, to support the establishment of native governments in parts of Syria and Mesopotamia, ‘saving the interests of our ally, France.’ This last modest clause concealed a treaty—kept secret, till too late, even from McMahon, and therefore from the Sherif—by which France, England and Russia agreed to annex some of these promised areas, and to establish their respective spheres of influence over all the rest.”

  Of course, rumors of the “fraud” had been running rampant throughout the Middle East for months. Lawrence himself was asked repeatedly about them and, to his own acknowledged and bitter shame, simply lied and reaffirmed British good intentions. At the same time, though, Lawrence began to recognize that if the Aqaba operation was successful, his role as adviser would be greatly enhanced—with the Syrians and, especially because of the potential for direct cooperation, with the British Army in Gaza. At the same time, Hussein and his sherifs would be in a weaker position in their ability to influence political and strategic events so far from their base of power. Lawrence reveled in the irony of the situation. The new circumstances, if Aqaba fell, offered him a more direct opportunity to become the main deliverer of the Arab Revolt to the British. If he played his hand correctly, Lawrence could make the British pay a heavy price for securing his moral duplicity. In poetic revenge, he vowed to himself: “I will make the Arab Revolt the engine of its own success, as well as the handmaid of Murray’s Egyptian campaign: and vow to lead it so madly in the final victory that expediency should counsel the Powers a fair settlement of the Arabs’ moral and political claims. This presumes my surviving the war, to win the later battle at the Council Chamber.…” The irony and its hope were extraordinary, breathtaking, presumptuous—all these adjectives and more. Lawrence would lead and unleash the energy and chaos of the revolt and by his success would turn his duplicity on its head. The revolt would be more successful than the imperial frauds ever imagined, and Lawrence would gain moral redemption through victory at Damascus.

  The happy thought was delicious to Lawrence’s ironic palate, and in the savoring moment another bold plan emerged: Nesib’s mad scheme held within its core a fleeting opportunity of real strategic value. Clearly the liberation of Syria was part of the essential logic and design of the Arab Revolt, but only after Aqaba. By now, the Turks were aware of the noisy move of Lawrence and his men from Wejh into the Sirhan. They were also aware of the natural vulnerability of Aqaba. Yet Aqaba wasn’t the only point of danger; Deraa and especially Damascus were also sensitive. By clever deception, the Turks could be made to believe that the force was really intended to strike at Damascus. It now appeared like a masterstroke of military genius to let the bumbling Nesib and Zeki loudly proclaim the approach of the revolt to Damascus; they would provide the deception effort Lawrence would need.

  Syria had a further attraction for Lawrence: as the land of the Crusades, it beckoned and bestirred his memory.

  AROUND JUNE 2, 1917, Lawrence left the Arab camp at Nebk to begin a major strategic reconnaisance alone. He traveled to Azrak, where he donned the appropriate mufti and continued on to the train junction at Deraa. Part of the mission also reinforced the deception effect of the unknowing and unwitting Nesib. Lawrence began with a dangerous sea voyage from Haifa to Beirut, moving inland to the teeming Damascus metropolis. Here he tested his disguise, ever conscious of his shaky linguistic skills, and was able to gain important information, more from his keen powers of observation than from casual dialogue with the locals. When he did chat with the natives, it was to drop hints of an impending raid on the city by an Arab army. He was able to discover that the immediate concerns of the Turkish military were toward the region south of Beersheba and the threatening posture of Murray’s army. Military rail activity was especially heavy from Damascus to Deraa, following the rail line west and south toward Nablus and Jaffa as the Turks concentrated for the defense of Jerusalem and land to the south. As far as Lawrence could determine, there was no special concern over Aqaba.

  Lawrence next rode the rails from Damascus to dusty Amman to gather intelligence and spread rumor among the locals, plying them with pieces of British gold. Here he was surprised to discover strong pockets of Turkish loyalty among the town-dwelling Arabs, making a mental note to avoid the area in future operations. At this stage of the recon, Lawrence began to reconsider his leave from the caravan, thinking perhaps it was time to return. But he hesitated: by now he had amassed a significant amount of intelligence that would be invaluable to Murray and his staff as they planned for the offensive to retake Jerusalem. Furthermore, there was an opportunity to strike at the great Yarmuk Valley bridges that supported Turkish rail traffic west into Palestine.

  He had left the camp on merely his own authority, a perilous journey over hundreds of miles of enemy territory. The risks were enormous, though the gains in intelligence and the destruction of the bridges on the face of it might seem worth the gamble. But what of the revolt? Would the possible loss of Lawrence mean the loss of the Arab cause? Was any one man that valuable? Lawrence smiled to himself: he would take the risk—and he would fail at Yarmuk, just narrowly escaping with his life.

  LAWRENCE ARRIVED BACK at Auda’s camp on June 16. During his absence, Auda and Nasir had played on each other’s nerves and a rift had developed between the two. Although the tension was easily remedied, it caused Lawrence to appreciate anew the constancy of Nasir’s and especially Auda’s leadership. And realize that he would have to rely on the two even more during the next phase of the operation. In Lawrence’s mind, the three leaders had become a kind of trinity: Lawrence offered direction; Nasir provided purpose; and Auda gave motivation to the whole endeavor.

  The strike against Aqaba had arrived at a crucial turning point. Now five weeks out of Wejh, Lawrence had spent nearly all the gold; his men had consumed all the Bedouin sheep; and all the wasted camels had at last been replaced. The deprivations of the long march had been largely forgotten, and the raiders looked forward to the last ride into Aqaba. Caught up in the new euphoria, Auda offered a final farewell feast for the newly expanded army. The display of Auda’s boundless largesse offered Lawrence a natural setting to see the true scope of Auda’s native leadership. Auda’s authority sprang from his powerful unaffected charisma. When he entered a tent, all would rise out of fondness as much as respect—and this was an honor rarely accorded even the highest-ranking sheikhs. It was evident that Auda was the clan’s father-leader.

  After the great feast was consumed, Lawrence wandered about the camp to find Mohammed el Dheilan and thank him for the fine gift of a she-camel. Soon Lawrence came upon Auda and mentioned the missing Mohammed: he had looked several times in his tent, always to find it empty. As if on cue, Auda pointed to a dejected Mohammed sitting across the way, unobserved in the shadows of the campfire. After a moment, Auda exclaimed in a loud voice, “Ha! Shall I tell you why Mohammed for fifteen days has not slept in his tent?” Auda’s exclamation was a call for all to hear one of his inimitable stories. The whole camp now gathered around
their leader to listen. Auda began by claiming that while in Wejh, Mohammed had bought a fine set of pearls, yet while he had been in camp lo these many days, he had not seen fit to give it to any of his wives. Auda’s claim, of course, was a pure fabrication, but it was presented in the great nomadic oral tradition to maintain tribal cohesion. After some further elaboration from Auda, the unhappy Mohammed, who had endured the same story at least a dozen times, turned to Lawrence to bear witness against Auda’s falsehood. At this Lawrence ceremoniously stood up and gravely cleared his throat, getting a rise from the crowd. Auda quieted the spectators and asked him to confirm the truth of the incident.

  Lawrence began his tale with a formal introduction to a story: “In the name of Allah the merciful, the loving-kind. We were six at Wejh. There were Auda, and Mohammed, and Zaal, Kasim el Kimt, Muffadhi and a poor man—myself; and one night just before dawn, Auda said, ‘Let us raid against the market.’ And we said, ‘in the name of Allah.’ And we went; Auda in a white robe and a red head-cloth, and Kasim sandals of pieced leather, Mohammed in a silken tunic of ‘seven kings’ and barefoot; Zaal … I forget Zaal. Kasim wore cotton, and Muffadhi was in silk with blue stripes with an embroidered head-cloth. Your servant was as your servant.” The listeners were amazed as Lawrence continued his parody of Auda’s epic style in the oral tradition: the same precise intonation, elocution, and emphasis as Auda. Lawrence described meaningless detail after detail: the tents, the names of the tents, every horse and camel they encountered, every village, virtually every stone and blade of grass—for the sake not only of entertainment, but also for information.

  After a while, Lawrence resumed the story with the march from Wejh and described for all how the land was “all bare of grazing, by Allah that country was barren. And we marched: and after we had marched the time of a smoked cigarette, we heard something, and Auda stopped and said, ‘Lads, I hear something.’ And Mohammed stopped and said, ‘Boys, I hear something.’ And Zaal, ‘By Allah you are right.’ And we stopped to listen and there was nothing, and, I, humble man, said, ‘By Allah, I hear nothing.’ And Zaal said, ‘By Allah, I hear nothing.’ And Mohammed said, ‘By Allah, I hear nothing.’ And Auda said, ‘By Allah, you are right.’

  “And we marched: and beyond the whatchamacallit there was what-there-is as far from hither to thither, and thereafter a ridge; and we came to the ridge, and went up that ridge: it was barren, all that land was barren: and as we came up that ridge, and were by the head of that ridge, and came to the end of the head of that ridge, by Allah, by my Allah, by very Allah, the sun rose upon us.”6

  The end of the tale found the spectators in the throes of riotous laughter, with Auda laughing the loudest, both at the story and at the parody of himself. The story had finally wound in upon itself after several hours of verbal turning, tightening into a mirthful knot of pointlessness. With the laughter dying away, Auda stood up and embraced Mohammed, admitting to all that the pearl necklace story was sheer fantasy. In gratitude, Mohammed invited the riders to his reclaimed tent for a parting breakfast before tomorrow’s long march.

  Lawrence, walking back to his tent alone, had witnessed another dimension of nomadic leadership: the role of the leader as central storyteller and mythmaker. The story was a way to bind the listeners together in a common physical presence and within a common literary narrative and cultural tradition. Among the nomads, the warrior-leader was also a heroic leader, one who was the object of story and legend. Furthermore, the leader himself had to tell the story as his own. It meant that the hero had to wield the word with the same skill as the sword. Auda’s skill was matchless in his ability to thrust and parry using a narrative foil. With the leader as the center of the story, his character and competence became reaffirmed among his followers. For their part, his companions vied and competed among themselves for inclusion and honor in the narrative. In this way, they would achieve their immortality. That alone, Lawrence thought, was a powerful motivating force for the raiders, who knew they would help write the next chapter in Auda’s epic.

  THE RAIDERS STARTED out before noon, Nasir on his new camel, Ghazala, Lawrence riding Naama, and Auda on Ageila. The raiders had increased tenfold since they’d left Wejh, now numbering over five hundred fierce Howeitat warriors—the equivalent of a conventional light cavalry regiment of the day. They left Sirhan after climbing a sixty-foot ridge, Ard el Suwan. The column was headed for a group of wells at Bair, thirty-five miles east of the Hejaz railway and some sixty miles distant. Here the caravan would camp for a few days, replenishing their food stocks from the villages near the Dead Sea. Nasir would make it a special “rice night” to celebrate the first leg of the journey.

  In the morning, the party made the last few miles into Bair proper. Auda asked Lawrence to accompany him alone as the two rode off ahead of the rest. They rode fast for a couple of miles until Auda suddenly stopped by a small hill. Just over the hill were the grave sites of Auda’s family, including his dead son, Annad. Annad had been murdered by five of his Motalga cousins. They sought revenge after Annad had killed their boss, Abtan, in a hand-to-hand fight. Auda continued the story, telling Lawrence how his son had charged into his killers without fear before meeting a bloody death. Now Auda, in a demonstration of his great fondness and respect for Lawrence, grieved and wept openly—not only for his tragic loss, but for fear that only his little son, Mohammed, stood between him and childlessness.

  Off in the distance, beyond the graves, the two men were astonished to notice for the first time smoke rising. Cautiously they approached the ancient ruins surrounding the wells at Wadi Bair. The ground was ripped and darkened by some heavy demolition. Looking down one of the wells, Lawrence found that the steyning was severely cracked and he could smell the acrid taint of dynamite. The well was choked with debris from a recent explosion.

  Auda ran to another well and found it too was jagged about its head and fouled with blackened blocks of stone. “This is Jazi work,” he said solemnly. They walked cautiously over to a third well, one used by the Beni Sakhr. It too was a black pit of rubble. Zaal arrived at last and surveyed the grim scene. He sniffed the air, studied the ground; the ranger’s keen sense grasped the danger. “There were at least a hundred horse here,” he said with some urgency. They then wandered over to a fourth well, just north of the ruins, detached from the other three, hoping against hope that it had survived. To their relief it was untouched, but the fact reinforced Auda’s belief: the undisturbed well belonged to the Jazi, a Howeitat clan who cooperated closely with the Turks from time to time. It was by now clear that the enemy was aware of their maneuver and had anticipated the march to a certain degree. The serious consideration next arose that perhaps even the wells farther on at El Jefer might also be destroyed. Such a situation would be perilous. El Jefer was to be the final staging place for the strike on Aqaba. Without the waters of El Jefer, the entire mission would be hopelessly compromised.

  The immediate concern, however, was the destruction at Bair. The single well simply could not water five hundred thirsty men and camels, that much was obvious. It became crucial, therefore, to repair at least one of the other wells. Some of the Ageyli outriders found an empty case of explosives, apparently used by the Jazi. By now Nasir had come up with the main body of riders. He went with Lawrence, Auda, and Zaal to reassess the damage. Peering down one of the wells, Lawrence could see demolition wires dangling some twenty feet below the opening. The explosives had been improperly wired and set, the charges poorly tamped. Closer inspection revealed that only the first charge had exploded; the second had hung fired. Lawrence quickly unrolled ropes from the water buckets and slowly lowered himself into the well. He saw that the explosives were less than three pounds each, jury-rigged with unreliable telephone cable. After clearing the dynamite, he scrambled out of the shaft. Now they had a second operational well.

  It was then decided that the caravan would remain at Bair for at least a week and carefully reconnoiter the surrounding area. Zaal would he
ad out for El Jefer to recon the important wells there. A small group led by Nasir would prepare an innocent caravan of obscure Howeitat clans and travel west to Tafileh to buy flour and gather intelligence, especially from the clans along the road into Aqaba. It was imperative that they remain neutral during the maneuver south. If Nasir’s diplomatic skills were up to the task, several of the clans might even join the enterprise.

  The next evening around the campfire among the darkened ruins of Bair, Lawrence, Auda, and Nasir went over the details of the final strike on Aqaba. This would be the last gathering that the three would have time together to scrutinize every last detail and examine every eventuality. The plan of attack called for a sudden advance south from El Jefer, crossing the rail track and quickly moving through the great pass at El Shtar. The defile opened up from the Maan plateau into the ruddy Guweira plain. To hold open the route, the raiders would have to capture the spring at Aba el Lissan, sixteen miles from the large Turkish garrison up at Maan. The enemy forces at Aba el Lissan were believed to be small, and the place could be seized in stride with the main attack. An initial success here, Lawrence believed, would rally the local clans and all would converge on Aqaba.

  The outcome to the entire operation hung on the likely reaction of the Turkish forces at Maan. Lawrence believed the garrison, about the strength of a reinforced battalion, would hesitate, waiting for further orders and reinforcements. His assessment of the reaction was reinforced by his careful knowledge gained from years of studying the Turks. They never made any move based on local initiative or without receiving higher authority first. If only the raiders could reach Aqaba swiftly, they could secure their rear through the pass with a stout defense of the deep gorge at nearby Itm. By then if Aqaba was seized, their “rear” would become their “front,” facing the sea and British and French naval support. The garrison at Maan thus had to be lulled into distraction by a careful deception plan.