Guerrilla Leader

  While Lawrence was pondering the offer, Brémond sent down a telegram warning Lawrence that Abd el Kader was a spy. After observing him carefully, Lawrence decided there was no evidence to support the charge. Feisal told Lawrence, “I know he is mad. I think he is honest. Guard your heads and use him.” Lawrence would soon come to a more realistic assessment: “As a matter of fact, he was an Islamic fanatic, half-insane with religious enthusiasm and a most violent belief in himself. His Muslim susceptibilities were outraged by my undisguised Christianity.” In the end, though, Abd el Kader would become a chief nemesis to Lawrence and dog him all the way to Damascus—not out of willfulness, but out of sheer “bullet-headed” stupidity, wounded pride, and obstinacy. He was also nearly stone-deaf.

  The mission departed Aqaba on October 24, traveling through Rumm toward Jefer, where Auda ruled. Lawrence reconstituted his bodyguard with six motley men. He had to bail Farraj and Daud out of trouble for painting up Sheikh Yusuf’s prized camel like a circus clown. The party straggled badly, with Wood becoming separated and lost in Wadi Itm. When Lawrence arrived at Rumm, Wood was already there, sick from exhaustion and his nagging head wound. Ali and Abd el Kader arrived the next day, in a bitter argument over tribal precedence. The Indians recovered their stray camels and the march continued the next day, with Ali and the emir continuing their strife from the rear of the column.

  On October 28 they reached Auda’s camp, where they found him still squabbling with the minor sheikhs over wages. They ate in Mohammed el Dheilan’s tent; ever gracious, he greeted Lawrence with generosity and respect. After dinner Lawrence went out in search of Zaal, “one of the finest raiders alive.” Lawrence found him much changed since the raid on Aqaba and the summer that followed. The Zaal of Aqaba was not the Zaal of the present. He was losing his nerve and offered Lawrence his help only if asked directly, as a point of personal honor. Of course, Lawrence would never burden the warrior, or challenge their honor and friendship, with such a request, though he could seek Zaal’s advice. As he was presenting him with his plan, the “most competent to judge my half-formed scheme,” a camel boy rushed up in terror to announce that a “dust-cloud” of riders was approaching fast from Maan. The fear was that a large part of the Turkish garrison force, consisting of a cavalry regiment and a dragoon regiment mounted on mules, would soon overrun the camp. Lawrence had thirty rifles and Auda’s five able-bodied men—the rest of the tribe had gone to greener pastures. He quickly formed a firing line among the alkali bushes and terrain depressions, while Auda tore down the few remaining tents. The machine guns found dominating fields of fire, and the entire force commanded a fire sack eight hundred yards deep. As the “dust-cloud” crested the bank, to everyone’s relief, Sherif Ali ibn el Hussein el Harith and Abd el Kader miraculously materialized. The “odd couple” had diverted their ride in the night to shoot up a portion of the railway, losing two men and a horse in the venture.

  After the excitement, George Lloyd left the party on a diplomatic effort for the long journey to Versailles. His genial personality and his moral contribution to the mission would soon be sorely missed. At night around the tribal campfire, Lawrence chose to resolve the issue of Auda’s quarreling with the lesser chiefs over money and wages. By midnight, he appeared to be gaining ground in the matter through the force of his leadership and his argument, when suddenly Auda raised his riding crop for silence. The men tensed at the apparent danger: “After a while we felt a creeping reverberation, a cadence of blows too dull, too wide, too slow easily to find response in our ears. It was like the mutter of a distant, very lowly thunderstorm. Auda raised his haggard eyes towards the west, and said, ‘The English guns.’ ”

  ALLENBY HAD JUST launched the second bombardment of the offensive with this firestorm directed at Beersheba. Although he had issued orders for the attack on October 22, the redeployment of a rifle corps and the Desert Mounted Corps turned into an extremely intricate maneuver that had to be carried out at the last moment. Darkness and a full moon facilitated the complex move, however. A sudden encounter with the Turks by one of the redeploying units on October 27 almost wrecked the whole plan, but the initial barrage on Gaza turned the enemy’s attention in that direction. The movement was completed flawlessly by October 30, and thanks to a preponderance of manpower, the British could afford to split their forces in half, leaving a sizable and therefore credible force behind at Gaza. At Beersheba, the British outweighed the Turks two to one in infantry, eight to one in cavalry, and three to two in artillery. The advantage was necessary in order to achieve maximum shock and momentum. It was crucial that the nearby waterworks be captured swiftly and intact.

  The attack was launched on the early morning of October 31 and was initially successful. By early afternoon, most key objectives surrounding the town had been reached, but heavy machine-gun fire from the town proper began to slow the advance. The capture of Beersheba before nightfall appeared doubtful, when General Harry Chauvel ordered his Aussies to mount an all-out attack. Led by the Fourth Australian Light Horse Brigade, and supported by the other brigades of the Australian Mounted Division, the unit led a pell-mell charge across nearly three miles of shell and fire into Beersheba. The shock of the attack was the tipping point that led to the cascading disintegration of the defense.

  After the battle, it was clear that the scale of the British deception had led the senior Turkish leaders to expect the main blow to fall at Gaza. The Turkish high command was also critical of German commander Kress von Kressenstein for nailing them to the cross of a static defense. They claimed he had denied them the mobility to fight an active defense. In this they were correct, and Falkenhayn agreed with them, for within a few days Kress was relieved of his duties. The Turks suffered nearly five thousand casualties. Their immediate fear was the perceived threat toward Jerusalem. This energized the Turks sufficiently to heed the potential danger. Meanwhile, the British were in the midst of an operational pause as they reconsolidated their strength for the next phase of the operation, which was to roll up the entire Turkish line all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. This was planned to occur around November 4. In order to fix the Turks at Gaza, a diversionary attack was ordered for November 1, with the bombardment of October 27 as part of the diversion. The artillery prep also included naval gunfire and was the most intense barrage outside the western front, with fifteen thousand shells fired in one day alone. The attack was successful in that it forced the commitment of the only Turkish reserve in the area and so prevented its redeployment to Beersheba.

  While the Gaza attack continued, events unfolded around Beersheba. Lieutenant-Colonel S. F. Newcombe, old friend and colleague of Lawrence’s, had led a hundred-man raiding party deep around and behind the town with the intention of attacking from the east. This small force, though ultimately destroyed and Newcombe temporarily captured, caused sufficient confusion to keep the Turks and their German advisers off balance. But now the Turks were beginning to rally along the heights about ten miles north of Beersheba. With reports coming in from the front, Allenby was beginning to sense that an opportunity was slipping away. As he glanced at the map toward Yarmuk, he wondered, Where was Lawrence?

  LAWRENCE WAS PREPARING to leave Auda’s encampment on the morning of October 31 after spending the night listening to the far-off British artillery barrage. Auda was in an especially good mood, having reconciled himself to Lawrence’s demands over the issue of sub-chiefs and booty. As Lawrence was about to mount his camel, Auda embraced him and whispered in his ear: “Beware of Abd el Kader.” With so many others about, Auda could say no more.

  The party moved off at a slow pace, dictated mainly by the Indians and their poor riding skill. For Lawrence, the thirty-five-mile-a-day pace was a comfortable walk in the park. They had camped for their noon meal when suddenly the alarm was raised: riders were swiftly bearing down upon the camp from north and west. By now, the Indian machine gunners had been drilled into readiness by such alarms. Their four machine guns formed the anchor
of the position, located in a shallow fold of ground. Sherif Ali urged the men to hold fire as Lawrence expressed a nodding pride at the professional manner of their tactical deployment, when all of a sudden Awad, a Sherari camel boy, jumped up and ran off in seeming recognition toward the attackers. After some shooting and confusion, the “attackers” turned out to be a clan of the Beni Sakhr. Once greetings were exchanged, the clan welcomed the raiding party with a celebratory show of horsemanship around the wells of Bair.

  Ali had some other business to attend to: it was at Bair that Lawrence and Nasir had encountered the dynamited wells on their way to Aqaba in the summer. Mifleh, clan-chief of the Beni Sakhr, had asked Feisal for some masons and well drillers to reline the wells, so a team of masons was sent from Bisha to do the repair. But now months later the work was still unfinished, and Feisal had sent Lawrence and Ali to investigate the costly delay on their way to Yarmuk. It turned out that the men had been lounging about, forcing the local Arabs to feed them in luxurious style while they delayed in their well repair. Ali unleashed his servants, who meted out the appropriate tribal justice, and after they received promises of rapid progress, all was forgiven and the entire party prepared for Mifleh’s great feast.

  Where the Howeitat used butter in abundance, the Beni Sakhr feasts were awash in the goo. Lawrence’s party fairly dripped in the stuff, their mouths and faces reflecting a gluttonous, buttery sheen. All were enjoying the generous meal when Abd el Kader committed one of his many faux pas by suddenly rising from the feast before the host and the others had finished and moving off to the far wall of the tent. The rest looked at one another in astonishment, then at Ali, who seemed to shrug and muttered into his mutton chop, “Asshole.” After several more helpings, the dogs were drawn in to their share of the banquet at the mouth of the pavilion. They chomped and shattered bones in feral delight, the noise a counterpoint to the more docile chewing of the satiated raiders. Abd el Kader contributed to the spectacle with a solo rhapsody of grunting, spitting, flatulating, and belching. The immensity of his grossness was meant to impress the clan with his grandeur. But instead he only boasted his ignorance in failing to understand the Bedouin culture with respect to proper table manners.

  When the celebration finally abated, the rumble of British artillery could be heard again off in the distance. Lawrence took the opportunity to vaguely inform Mifleh of their intended raid on Deraa. At this his eyes lit up with greed, and Lawrence pressed the moment and asked him for his leadership and fifteen men. Mifleh eagerly agreed and offered to bring along his son, Turki. In gratitude, Lawrence gave the son one of his fine silk robes after the dinner was formerly ended.

  The next day was November 1. The reinforced party moved out at dawn, with Lawrence riding with the Beni Sakhr contingent, trying to learn as much of the new dialect as possible and so extend the compass of his leadership. In the oral tradition of the desert, it was crucial that men knew the great tribal narratives that defined and bound the tribes into a coherent and definable social force. “To have fallen short in such knowledge would have meant being branded either as ill-bred, or as a stranger; and strangers were not admitted to familiar intercourse or councils or confidences. There was nothing so wearing, yet nothing so important for success of my purpose, as this constant mental gymnastic of apparent omniscience at each time meeting a new tribe.” Between the Arabs—especially the desert dwellers—and the Turks it was much more complex. There was personal identity at work here, but there was also a corporate aspect in the mix. “There were Englishmen whom, individually, the Arabs preferred to any Turk, or foreigner; but, on the strength of this, to have generalized and called the Arabs pro-English would have been folly. Each stranger made his own poor bed among them.” The corporate attraction between Arab and Turk was part religious but seemed mostly cultural. “The Arab respected force a little: he respected craft more, and often had it in enviable degree: but most of all he respected blunt sincerity of utterance, nearly the sole weapon God had excluded from his armament. The Turk was all things by turn, and so commended himself to the Arabs for such while as he was not corporately feared.”

  As the sound of English guns thrummed and ricocheted off the Dead Sea, Lawrence heard the Arabs whisper, “They are nearer; the English are advancing; Allah deliver the men under that rain.” Thus, even at a distance Arab commiseration and solidarity with the Turks could be strong: “They were thinking compassionately of the passing Turks, so long their weak oppressors; whom, for their weakness, though oppressors, they loved more than the strong foreigner with his blind indiscriminate justice.”2

  The following day, they approached Azrak. While Lawrence’s Ageyli bodyguards were combing their hair with butter to suffocate the feasting lice, a scout spotted a covey of riders approaching through the dense tamarisk. They were men of the Serahin tribe, on their way to offer fealty to Feisal. After a wild greeting, the two parties tented together for the evening at Ain el Beidha. In the early morning, Lawrence was roused from his slumber by the fierce hunger of the local fleas, lice, and ticks. Finding sleep now impossible, he sought out Sheikh Mteir, headman of the tribe, and discussed his mission with him.

  After he heard Lawrence’s intentions, the sheikh’s jaw fairly dropped: the western Yarmuk bridge was out of the question. The Turks had just brought up scores of wood choppers in the area, heavily armed and alert, making it impossible for a raiding party to sneak through to the west. Mteir’s greatest concern, however, was the one shared by the rest of his tribe: an overwhelming mistrust of Abd el Kader and his recently emigrated Moorish villagers, who had become the tribe’s diehard foes. Any attack against even the closer bridge at Tell el Shehab would leave vulnerable the tribe’s rear to an attack from the villagers. Furthermore, if it rained, the tribe would be cut off by the subsequent morass across the Remthe plain.

  Lawrence was now in a serious bind. The Serahin was the last tribe along the route to the bridges with sufficient manpower to support the raid. If they refused to aid the effort, the entire mission would have to be scrubbed, an eventuality that would mean failing Allenby and his operations in Palestine. It was now up to Lawrence to persuade the tribe and overcome their natural resistance and fear. Accordingly, he gathered together around the campfire his own picked men—Ali, Mifleh, and Fahad and Adhub, who were the chief war leaders of the Zebn clan—and the more courageous of the Serahin. Then he began to speak to the tribe—slowly at first, demonstrating a common solidarity against the Turks. Lawrence began to play out a thread of motivation, carefully spinning it around the tribesmen: “We put it to them … how life in mass was sensual only, to be lived and loved in its extremity. There could be no rest-houses for revolt, no dividend of joy paid out. Its spirit was accretive, to endure as far as the senses would endure, and to use each such advance as base for further adventure, deeper privation, sharper pain. Sense could not reach back or forward. A felt emotion was a conquered emotion, an experience gone dead, which we buried by expressing it.” He challenged their pride by stoking their defiance: they would defy death because it was in their honor to defy it; it was an essential exercise of their desert freedom. There was a balance in life and death, body and soul, leisure and hardship. The two ran in parallel tracks played out through the flowing desert sands of time; the wise man was he who could bring both streams to a simultaneous conclusion through action.

  True: the fight for the bridges would be dangerous, with no guarantee of success; men would be killed and maimed. Yet it was the greater man who acted in defiance of the long odds; who threw down the gauntlet to fate, daring it to exert himself even in the face of human frailty. It was the greater man who found joy in the defiance of fate and rejoiced in the struggle against Destiny: “There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat.… To the clear-sighted, failure was the only goal. We must believe, through and through, that there was no victory, except to go down into death fighting and crying for failure itself, calling in excess of despair
to Omnipotence to strike harder, that by His very striking He might temper our tortured selves into the weapon of His own ruin.”3 The speech was as much about Lawrence’s self-motivation as it was about persuading the tribe. For almost a year he had struggled against his own fear to the point of despair. And now, driven by the courage of despair, he would drive others into battle under the same lash. In this realization, he discovered the fundamental métier of the desert warrior and the true source of his thrall over them: fearlessness through despair, defiance against death. All these things Lawrence had harbored for a long time within his own psychology—his leader’s grief.

  AFTER THE LONG oration, Lawrence sank into an exhausted sleep. Early in the morning, he was awakened by the tribesmen, eager to pass in review in tribute to his persuasive oratory. They made a poor showing: ragged, full of bluster, mediocre riders; but it was all Lawrence had. Mteir was too decrepit to offer any real leadership. His protégé, ibn Bani, was too immature and political to be his real successor. At length, the review sputtered to a weary halt as the tribesmen prepared their noon meal.

  On November 4, Lawrence’s reinforced party moved off for the fort and oasis of Azrak. Azrak carried the same haunting qualities as Rumm. It had been home to long-dead Roman legionnaires, caretaker to the bones of kings and sages; Azrak had borne witness to the march of history through its silent blue stone. The men rejoiced among the shaded springs and palm gardens, for few of them had ever seen Azrak. After the celebrations ended, Lawrence noticed that Abd el Kader and his entourage were missing. An intense search revealed that he had left for the Jebel Druze, a mountainous region of Syria. With Abd el Kader’s sudden departure, Lawrence wisely assumed the worst and considered the entire plan compromised. This meant that under the worst possible circumstances the Turks would be waiting for the raiders at the westernmost bridge at Yarmuk. Lawrence decided that under the extreme circumstances only the eastern bridge at Tell el Shehab was worth the risk; the new objective also meant a more dangerous trek across open terrain between Remthe and Deraa.