Guerrilla Leader

by James Schneider

  WHILE ALLENBY WAS thus considering his options, Lawrence waited under the cloud of rain at kilometer 172. Finally, at noon on November 10, the weather broke sufficiently to provide the scouts with several hundred yards of good visibility. They quickly spotted a train, but its progress was slow. Like virtually all of the wood-burning locomotives Lawrence encountered, this one was defective. It look nearly an hour to crawl over the culvert where Lawrence waited with the exploder. The first ten open cars were jammed with troops, and when the engine was directly over the mine, he jacked the plunger: nothing. Again: nothing. Two more times, and still no result. Crouching behind a foot-high bush, Lawrence suddenly realized his “fig leaf” nakedness: a train full of troops was just fifty yards away. He could make a run for it, but movement would probably reveal his existence. He decided to play the rabbit and just sit motionless. As he sat there, he counted the cars slowly rolling by: eighteen open cars, three boxcars, and three officers’ carriages. No one took notice until one of the officers pointed curiously in his direction. Several of his companions stood up and waved at Lawrence, who waved back rather furtively. The train looked as if it would break down at any moment as it labored under its heavy cargo. Finally, after struggling five hundred yards beyond the mine, it shuddered to a halt. At that instant, Lawrence leapt up, quickly covered over the demolition wires, and ran up the creek to safety. Soon a party of officers sniffed around the culvert, looking for the out-of-place Arab dressed in his fine Meccan garb. Then a whistle blew and the Turks disappeared.

  By now the raiders were inconsolable. The Serahin complained that “bad luck is with us.” Lawrence rejoined that perhaps they much preferred “to sit on camel-guard” rather than do any real fighting, as they had demonstrated that night at the bridge. This insult brought immediate outrage from the Serahin. The Beni Sakhr rose in unison to defend Lawrence, when Ali, hearing the uproar, came running to intervene. Ali insisted that as an ancestor of the Prophet, he had the “sight” and ordained that their luck was about to turn. Since no one was in the mood for a real fight, they accepted his vision, and calm eventually prevailed. Lawrence then began fidgeting with the exploder. He managed to jimmy it open with his prized ornamental dagger and to remove the moisture and grit from the firing mechanism inside. Confident that it was now operational, Lawrence returned to the mine and another night of cold and hungry waiting.

  In the dawn, they chipped some of the gelatine to start a small cooking fire and with their entrenching tools chopped to pieces one of the camels for breakfast. Just as they were separating the gore from the good, a scout yelled, “Train!” Everyone immediately dashed to their positions. The train was magnificent: two engines and a dozen passenger carriages, probably a corps headquarters. Lawrence quickly fell to his knees and connected the exploder to the explosive wires. In an instant he jammed hard the plunger: “The explosion was terrific. The ground spouted blackly into my face, and I was sent spinning, to sit up with shirt torn to my shoulder and the blood dripping from long, ragged scratches on my left arm. Between my knees lay the exploder, crushed under a twisted sheet of sooty iron. In front of me was the scalded and smoking upper half of a man. When I peered through the dust and steam of the explosion the whole boiler of the first engine seemed to be missing.”7 In addition to his lacerations, Lawrence suffered a broken toe, making it difficult and painful to move. As he tried to move, the stupor in his head gave way to a terrific headache. He began to stagger off to the Arab position, where heavy firing was now directed at the mass of stunned troops on the train. As he shambled off in his muddy robe, headdress askew, Lawrence muttered to himself again and again: “Oh, I wish this hadn’t happened.”

  Meanwhile, the Turks had recovered from the blast and began to return a misdirected volley at the Arabs hidden among the rocks in the ravine. Lawrence was now caught in a crossfire and tripped over his broken toe, falling heavily to the ground. Ali thought he had been severely hit and rushed to his aid along with twenty or more of the Beni Sakhr. The Turks caught the rescuers in a beaten zone of deadly fire and nailed seven of them instantly. The rest half dragged and half carried Lawrence to safety, while the other raiders maintained a heavy and accurate covering fire. Under cover, Lawrence did a quick damage assessment and found that in addition to the broken toe and slashed arm, he had taken five bullet creases that had shot his fine Meccan garb to shreds.

  The damage to the Turks, however, was infinitely greater. Both locomotives were shattered beyond repair, and at least three coaches were crushed into one another like a telescope. The rest of the train was badly derailed, the cars strewn around the track like jackstraws. The insignias on the coaches indicated the staff of the VIII Army Corps, under the command of Jemal Pasha the Younger, which was coming up from Amman to reinforce the Turkish army in Palestine against Allenby. The initial rush against the train was made by Mifleh on his horse. He charged a group of officers who had spilled out of the saloon coach, but in his berserker frenzy he forgot to shoot them, so they were able to run away. The Beni Sakhr followed him through the breach, but the Serahin stopped to loot bags and pick up precious rifles along the way. Fahad, sheikh of the Beni Sakhr, had made his own dash immediately after the explosion and was swallowed up in a black cloud of debris. From Lawrence’s position, it was now apparent that the loss of the machine guns would make it impossible for the party to capture the train. Had the Indians been present, most likely not a single man would have escaped. There were at least four hundred Turkish soldiers who increasingly were gaining their tactical coherence and responding with heavy fusillades of fire.

  As Lawrence was assessing the situation, Mifleh and Adhub returned and asked about Fahad. The Serahin said he went down hard after his initial rush; they had his combat gear to prove it. Suddenly Adhub leapt from cover and ran down toward the wreckage, while the Turks merely watched in astonishment. In a short moment, Adhub reappeared from behind a damaged boxcar, dragging a limp object out of the gully, while the others rushed breathlessly down to his aid. It was Fahad. Unconscious, he had been shot through the face; the bullet shattered four teeth and grazed his tongue. After he’d been moved to safety on Mifleh’s mare, he regained consciousness enough to be placed on one of the camels.

  While the rescue was going on, the Turks, under the watchful eye of their corps commander, slowly began to flank the raiders’ exposed position. By now there were forty effective men left under Lawrence’s command. They began to withdraw, and because of his hobbling wounds, Lawrence ended up as part of the rear guard. Ali admonished him for his dawdling, but Lawrence feigned a slow and studied curiosity of the Turks in action to hide the severity of his wounds. At length the Turkish envelopment was too sluggish to trap the swifter Arabs. Finally reaching the crest of the hill, they all leapt on their camels and scattered. After riding hard five miles to the east, they stopped and rallied. Here the wounded were treated with a dose of piss—human and otherwise—to quell any infection until they reached proper medical care. Lawrence dispensed largesse in the form of money for the captured rifles, emoluments for heroism, camel meat and a death bounty to the relatives of those killed. The captured rifles were a real boon, for now all the Serahin were armed, some with two Mausers apiece.

  That night, the raiders feasted well on a meal of prime-cut camel. In the morning they marched off to Azrak, “having a great welcome, and boasting—God forgive us—that we were victors.” Their role in Allenby’s third battle of Gaza thus ended, though their work was far from over.

  ALLENBY’S TEN-DAY pursuit of the shattered Turkish army through the plain of Philistia ended on November 16. The British had advanced an average of fifty miles, the quickest and most sustained advance in the region since the war began. The success, though, came at a high price, as the Allies suffered more than six thousand casualties. The Turkish ledger tallied even greater losses, including more than ten thousand prisoners, eighty artillery pieces, and over a hundred machine guns. The greatest blow to the Turks was their loss of operatio
nal advantage in the new configuration of forces that emerged on Allenby’s map. The two Turkish armies, the Eighth Army along the coast on their right and the Seventh Army among the Judean Hills on the left, were completely separated by road and rail and could potentially be defeated in detail. The Seventh Army south of Jerusalem was especially vulnerable, as now it had lost direct access to the railroad with the capture of Junction station on November 14. All supplies would have to be brought forward by an unreliable motor transport system over bad and nonexistent roads. Allenby was now at a natural decision point: should he drive immediately for Jerusalem or announce an operational pause to refit and reconstitute for the next phase of the campaign?

  Under his original campaign design, Allenby wanted to halt operations after his forces had reached Jaffa, which they seized on November 16, virtually outflanking the Turkish position beyond Junction station. Still, several of his infantry units, like the London Regiment, were nearly at half strength. Moreover, Lloyd George had hinted that some of his troops might have to be withdrawn to the western front to meet increasing manpower needs there. Where prudence might dictate a pause in operations, political and broader strategic considerations suggested to Allenby that he press the fight. The moral effect of seizing Jerusalem by Christmas was another major consideration. The more he delayed, the more time the Turks would have to prepare their next defensive position. Here the Seventh Army was most vulnerable and closest to Jerusalem. He decided, therefore, to press hard the attack. After only a one-day hiatus, Allenby began planning for the next operation.

  A serious constraint in his planning was his desire to prevent any collateral damage to Jerusalem. This meant that a direct assault on the third holiest city in Islam had to be avoided at all costs; the alternative was to hand an easy propaganda coup to the Turks. Allenby therefore decided to secure his left flank solidly with two divisions on Nahr el Auja, a river four miles northeast of Jaffa. With his remaining force he would drive eastward, hoping to surround Jerusalem and starve the Turks into surrender. The offensive would move along three main axes: pressure up from Hebron and Bethlehem, a push east through the Vale of Ajalon, and finally a deep strike behind Jerusalem at Nablus to cut the last supply line from the north.

  BACK AT AZRAK, Lawrence prepared himself for the long winter. It was essential that Azrak be held at all costs. It would offer a base from which to spread the message of revolt among the northern tribes, and it would also be a lookout post to keep an eye on Nuri Shaalan. Nuri had yet to declare himself for the revolt and was nominally supporting the Turkish cause. Lawrence’s presence would ensure that Nuri’s support would remain passive. He had great economic holdings in Syria that the Turks had essentially held hostage. Until the Allies made a concerted move in that direction, Nuri would be on a short tether.

  The old fort at Azrak was quickly made livable by the occupants. The Indians especially took special care in weatherproofing their quarters in the southeastern part of the castle. Supply was regularized with the establishment of a caravan to the Jebel Druze. There were also medical issues to attend to. Engineer Wood overcame his bout with pneumonia only to have it replaced with dysentery. Lawrence decided to send Wood back to Aqaba and have him return to his normal duties as base engineer there. Most important, Azrak became Feisal’s political center in the north. Here the little post hosted dozens of visitors on a daily basis with great pomp and circumstance in the Bedouin tradition—the Ruwalla, Sherarat, Serahin, Serdiyeh, and Beni Sakhr, along with their great headmen: ibn Zuhair, ibn Kaebir, and Rafa el Khoreisha. Azrak was fast becoming Feisal’s commercial entrepôt in the north as well. Entrepreneurs and sellers from all around, especially from Damascus, brought the finest goods to the camp: candy, sesame, spices, caramel, apricot jam, nuts, silk clothing, embroidered cloaks, fancy head cloths, sheepskins, felt rugs, Persian carpets, and, most important of all, intelligence from Syria and Mesopotamia. In exchange, the residents at Azrak offered coffee, sugar, rice, white cotton cloth, rifles, and, of greatest benefit to the merchants, news of the war. The conflict in the Middle East would always have a great influence on the commercial markets, so any war news offered a competitive advantage.

  At the center of this seething activity was Lawrence and especially Sherif Ali ibn el Hussein el Harith. Ali was Feisal’s “greatest asset” and de facto ambassador to the local tribes, and his influence extended even into Syria and Damascus. As Lawrence described him in his new role: “The lunatic competitor of the wilder tribesmen in their wildest feats was now turning all his force to greater ends. The mixed natures in him made of his face and body powerful pleadings, carnal, perhaps, except in so far as they were transfused by character.… He dressed spotlessly, all in black or all in white; and he studies gesture.… Fortune had added physical perfection and unusual grace, but these qualities were only the just expression of his powers. They made obvious the pluck which never yielded, which would have let him be cut to pieces, holding on. His pride broke out in his war-cry, ‘I am of the Harith,’ the two-thousand-year-old clan of free-booters; while the huge eyes, white with large black pupils slowly turning in them, emphasized the frozen dignity which was his ideal carriage, and to which he was always striving to still himself.”8 As with Zaal abu Tayi, this long protracted war was beginning to suck the life spirit out of him. He seldom wished to be alone, constantly seeking material distraction from the emotional struggle kept weakly at bay in his mind. The more visitors that arrived the better, if only for engagement’s sake. Whatever it was that disturbed him, he was betrayed by his own lack of articulation. Lawrence could only guess at the dark shadows that chased after his mood.

  Just as Allenby was about to launch his offensive against Jerusalem, Lawrence left Azrak on a reconnaissance around Deraa. Any forthcoming military operation to the east of the Jordan would have to consider Deraa as the primary decisive point. Upon his return, he learned some disturbing intelligence about the Algerian Abd el Kader. Apparently, after going AWOL with his seven servants, he left immediately for his village and entered the place as though he had conquered all of Syria, going so far as to threaten the Turkish governor with beheading. By now the Druzes and everyone else realized that the old man was suffering from some form of megalomania or other desert madness. He was unceremoniously thrown out of town, whereupon, completely unchastened, he made another victorious village entry, this time at Deraa station. With his reputation preceding him, the Turks received the Algerian as the mad prophet he was. But when his vision—that Lawrence and the other raiders would attack the Yarmuk bridges—was revealed as true, he was taken prisoner immediately and sent to Damascus for the usual interrogation. Here he was persuaded to act as a Turkish agent provocateur, using his network of associates to counter the influence of Arab nationalism that was beginning to smolder throughout Syria.

  Meanwhile, the weather in Azrak turned dismal, slashing the occupants with snow, sleet, and freezing rain, forcing Lawrence into a deep, self-reflective funk. The thought of inactivity for the next several months until the campaign season opened was depressing. It meant he would have to spend his time among the tribes trying to convince them of the righteousness of the Arab cause and the tantalizing reach of victory. Lawrence did not like the role of political salesman or missionary. The elevation of Lawrence to the exalted position of adviser and intermediary to Feisal also wore on him. He had no interest in the trappings of majesty. He had come to do his duty out of personal motivation that had long predated the present crisis. In this general mood of unease, Lawrence decided to return to Aqaba.

  Around November 22, he turned over command of the forces at Azrak to Sherif Ali ibn el Hussein el Harith and rode south with Rahail, one of his retainers. They stopped to visit Auda for a new relay of camels, but he had none to spare. After eating a few dates, they moved on, and all the while Lawrence fell deeper under a cloud of gloom and depression. His low spirit slowed his usually fast riding pace, which further frustrated him, as he wanted to reach Wood’s caravan befor
e it left Aqaba on its return to Azrak. They rode until midnight, when, exhausted, they stopped and immediately fell asleep in the mud.

  Dawn’s light found a breeze blowing, which helped to dry out the track, but still the camels broke through the crusted layers of mud, making swift progress impossible. At noon the ground hardened sufficiently to improve their tempo, and the route took them up to higher ground. All of a sudden, several rifle shots just below them shattered a brief conversation. They saw four men riding madly toward them, their yelling quickly catching the wind. Lawrence and Rahail remained calm, bringing their camels to a leisurely halt. A conversation ensued while Lawrence kept the leader covered with his Webley concealed under his cloak. It quickly became clear that the riders were a band of highwaymen. Primarily through Lawrence’s humorous insults, the astonished robbers became increasingly unsure of themselves and of whom they had waylaid. While the dense strangers sat looking at one another in bewilderment, Lawrence and Rahail managed to scurry off toward Aqaba. A hundred yards farther on, the cutthroats regained their composure and began shooting at the pair, but the rough terrain provided so much dead ground that the two cantered off safely. Though extricating themselves from a potentially deadly encounter, they became lost as they tried to lose their pursuers, which delayed them even further. Finally, around midnight on November 25, the two stumbled into Aqaba. Lawrence immediately asked after Allenby’s progress in Palestine, for he knew full well there was still another year of war to fight.