Guerrilla Leader

by James Schneider

  Feisal’s words struck Lawrence with such irony that his laugh turned into a giggle of immense emotional relief. He looked at Feisal and replied with a twinkle, “I cannot understand what you mean.”

  “I offered to serve for this last march under your orders: why was that not enough?” he asked.

  “Because it would not go with your honor,” Lawrence said.

  “You prefer mine always before your own,” Feisal murmured. Then, all of a sudden he leapt to his feet, clapped his hands, and said almost gleefully, “Now, gentlemen, praise Allah and work.”10

  The final phase of the crisis was thus resolved in less than three hours. The entire camp burst into a frenzy of activity as everyone ran about their duties, making ready the massive move to Azrak. The planning schedules were quickly revised, and Feisal promised to meet Lawrence at Azrak no later than September 12. Lawrence then sped away in his Rolls-Royce to meet with Nuri Shaalan and mend fences with the Ruwalla.

  ALLENBY WAS PLEASED to learn that the dispute between Hussein and his son Feisal had been resolved—at least for the time being. It meant he could move forward with his plans, which had fully matured to the point of operational execution. His unifying concept was to strike the Turks such a powerful blow as to shock, paralyze, and shatter them out of existence. A strong infantry stroke along the Mediterranean coast would open the attack and rupture the Turkish front. Here the elite Desert Mounted Corps would unleash a massive exploitation maneuver that would slash Turkish lines of communications as it cleaved into the Jordan Valley. The plan was the culmination of Allenby’s months of discovery and learning, leading to the realization that simplicity trumps complexity and that violence of execution outbids naked force. Every detail received the minutest scrutiny; nothing was left to chance. Logistically, Allenby’s forces were in much better shape than previously, especially with regard to water. Although the railhead from Egypt was strung as far as Lod, corps transport assets were necessary to redistribute supplies to the divisions. By the time the offensive began, nearly six hundred trucks were required to meet this need. In the case of Lieutenant-General Edward Bulfin’s XXI Corps, difficult terrain meant that twenty-two hundred camels had to carry forty-four thousand gallons of water during the operations.

  Crucial to Allenby’s design of operational shock, the Royal Air Force would play a decisive role—first by striking at Turkish communications nodes and infrastructure and second by continuously harassing retreating enemy columns from the air. Finally, the RAF kept an impermeable shield of concealment over the Allied forces, preventing enemy aircraft from discovering Allenby’s true operational form. The air force was thus a key component to the overall deception plan that confused and confounded Liman and his staff. Secrecy, the reverse side of the deception coin, was maintained at the highest levels since the war began. Mission objectives were not disclosed to division and brigade leaders until two or three days before D-Day. Allenby then cycled through the divisional headquarters personally to brief commanders and their staffs about the overall campaign design. This personal regard raised the morale and confidence of officer and soldier alike. If leadership, planning, and attention to detail meant anything at all, Allenby had already won the fight.

  On Lawrence’s front, things had finally begun to move toward Allenby’s “three men and a boy with a revolver.” The movement began according to the following order of battle. On August 30, Joyce sent out a caravan of six hundred camels on the long march to Azrak, escorted by thirty Gurkha machine gunners and thirty-five Egyptian camelry. On September 2, after quieting the troops because of Hussein’s bold affront, a second caravan of eight hundred camels left Aba el Lissan. Lawrence, Nasir, and Lord Winterton, a useful remnant from Buxton’s Imperial Camel Brigade, left on September 4 in Lawrence’s Rolls-Royce. He was followed by 450 Arab camelry armed with twenty Hotchkiss machine guns, two English armored cars, five Rolls-Royce roadsters, two RAF aircraft, and Pisani’s French mountain guns. Feisal and Joyce would bring up the rear.

  As Lawrence raced off to meet with Nuri Shaalan and his Ruwalla tribesmen, he was seized by the exhilaration of the final culminating point of long months of hard work and moments punctuated by death, terror, and self-doubt: “For on this march to Damascus (and such it was already in our imagination) my normal balance had changed. I could feel the taut power of Arab excitement behind me. The climax of preaching of years had come, and a united country was straining towards its historic capital.… [B]y a momentary miracle we had truced all the feuds for this month, so that from Aqaba up to Damascus all was clear going.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Days of Wrath; O Days of Sorrow—the Road to Damascus

  Our united forces entered Damascus unopposed. Some confusion manifested itself in the city. We strove to allay it; Allenby arrived and smoothed out all difficulties. Afterwards he let me go.

  —T. E. LAWRENCE, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

  September 6, 1918, found T. E. Lawrence in a Rolls-Royce speeding along from Aqaba on his way to Azrak. He was riding with Lord Winterton, lately of Buxton’s Camel Brigade, and with the redoubtable Sherif Nasir. Much had changed since the triumph at Aqaba over a year ago. The Arab Revolt had expanded greatly, as had Lawrence’s role in it. Formerly, he had been like a checkers player: on a small board with rather prosaic, one-dimensional playing pieces. Now, however, everything seemed transformed. His area of operations was now like a large chessboard and he was its master, working the complex pieces into intricate combinations and maneuvers. And Lawrence’s board was now just one among several played under the deft hand of General Allenby over in Palestine. In the old days, Lawrence had prided himself on being able to ride hard from Aqaba to Azrak in three days, spending twenty-two out of twenty-four hours of the day mounted, braced in the saddle in a kind of rigid stupor, somehow maintaining sufficient awareness so as not to fall off the camel.

  The expansion of the war had also transformed the desert landscape. There were now men everywhere: in columns, in files, in ranks, all moving steadily north over the Jefer plain, Lawrence’s chessboard. They were advancing to keep pace with Allenby’s successes to their west in Palestine. And Allenby was a hard taskmaster, constantly lunging and pressing the harassed Turks. The Turks, meanwhile, knew they were beaten, for even their German advisers said so. Yet somehow, perhaps through a perverted courage of despair, they clung on, having to be winkled out of their posts and positions at the point of the bayonet.

  Corporal Green, Lawrence’s experienced driver, had pushed the Rolls hard, sometimes racing past blurs of camels and columns at sixty-seven miles an hour. Nasir was astonished by the speed, and his salutations to the foot soldiers were always a few seconds too late. When they arrived at Azrak, it was already dark. They spent the night at the nearby airfield, sleeping under a large canvas hangar. A brisk, westerly wind threatened to bury the sleepers under a coating of blowing sand. By midnight the zephyr vanished, leaving in its wake a cloud of dagger-barbed camel flies that attacked them relentlessly. Near dawn, the camel flies were relieved by arriving waves of mosquitoes eager to have an early breakfast.

  After the miserable night, Lawrence decided to move the camp to higher ground, up on the Mejaber ridge. On its rim he had a spectacular view of the Deraa-Amman road and the marshaling of the army below. Lawrence gazed upon the scene for some time, and as the sun set, he began to sense the new mood of the final campaign against Damascus: “I could feel the taut power of Arab excitement before me. The climax of the preaching of years had come, and a united country was straining towards its historic capital. In confidence that this weapon, tempered by myself, was enough for the utmost of my purpose, I seemed to forget the English companions who stood outside my idea in the shadow of ordinary war. I failed to make them partners of my certainty.”1 Yet Lawrence knew there could never be a full partnership, for who among the English shared his hopes and aspirations for the Arabs as he did? How silly: they had their own British and, yes, imperial interests at heart. It was Lawr
ence who was outside the circle; it was he who stood beyond the pale, outside its shadow.

  But Allenby, the commander in chief, was not interested in shadows and contrasts. He wanted unity and homogeneity of action in order to accomplish his final mission: the seizure of Damascus. To that end, he saw Lawrence and his Arabs playing a pivotal role. First, they would demonstrate around Azrak as if to strike at Amman. Their very presence at Azrak had already accomplished as much. Next Lawrence would cut the rail at Deraa—and here Allenby was quite specific. As long as Lawrence was able to show up at Deraa with the proverbial “three men and a boy with pistols,” that would suffice. Their presence would be like a lever, enough to threaten the Turks and their rail lifeline and help wedge them out of Palestine.

  On September 11, Feisal arrived with the rest of the Arab army—an especially welcome sight to the hordes of camel flies, which darted after the two thousand camels with relish and determination. Next Nuri Shaalan turned up with the usual suspects: Auda abu Tayi, Mohammed el Dheilan, and Zaal. The recently mobilized tribes emerged with their leaders: ibn Bani, chief of the Serahin; ibn Genj of the Serdiyeh; Majid ibn Sultan of the Adwan; Fahad and Adhub, lords of the Zebn; and others. After exchanging a few pleasantries with Feisal, Auda, and Mohammed, Lawrence excused himself and left to be alone. He strolled down the valley to Ain el Assad, his old haunt by the dusky tamarisk. Yes, he thought, how things have changed: “I am tired of these Arabs; petty incarnate Semites who attained heights and depths beyond our reach, though not beyond our sight. They realized our absolute in their unrestrained capacity for good and evil; and for two years I had profitably shammed to be their companion! Today it came to me with finality that my patience as regards the false position I had been led into was finished. A week, two weeks, three, and I would insist on relief. My nerve had broken; and I would be lucky if the ruin of it could be hidden that long.” But the underlying thread of the last two years had remained the same: the constant unwinding of shared deceit and trickery in obscuring British true intentions for the Arabs. The skein of betrayal hid the imperial interests, only now it promised to wrap Lawrence in its shroud of grief, guilt, and hopelessness. But the swindler’s guilt was also compounded by the survivor’s guilt: his two brothers had been dead now for over three years.

  AT DAYBREAK ON the morning of September 14, Lawrence’s column marched out. He stood above on a high cliff, watching the formation slowly depart. There were one thousand riders up from Aba el Lissan and three hundred nomad cavalry under Nuri Shaalan. The two thousand Ruwalla camelry would remain in reserve at Wadi Sirhan until needed, which was expected to be very soon. The horsemen consisted primarily of the elite nobility: sheikhs or their servants who could afford the expense of a horse and its kit. Lawrence was delayed a day in order to attend to political and strategic affairs with Feisal and Nuri Said. On the second day, Lawrence caught up with the column by fast car.

  The initial attempt to cut the railway north of Amman had failed before he arrived. After Joyce explained the situation, Lawrence moved to the front of the spread-out force to find another approach more vulnerable than the site at the previous, failed location. While he was reconnoitering a position near three ancient Roman villages, Lawrence observed a dogfight between a Bristol fighter and a Turkish two-seater. After a long duel, the British pilot was successful, dropping the enemy in a ball of fire. But the British plane was now too shot up to provide adequate reconnaissance and air cover for Lawrence’s column and so had to return to Ramleh in Palestine for repairs. After the brief distraction, Lawrence returned to his task and found a suitable site for demolition: a track running across two sturdy bridges that, when demolished, would occupy the Turks with several days of repair work. The size of the target required more dynamite than he had brought; the task would thus have to wait until morning.

  Returning to camp, Lawrence now realized how the changes in the complexity of the campaign had also brought commensurate changes in the larger society of troops. The attachment of active British Army formations like the Gurkhas and other advisers had now created a segregated encampment. The quiet, sober British lay about the campfire discussing tomorrow’s mission against the bridges; the Arabs, on the other hand, maintained their usual “babbling laughing turmoil” a few hundred yards away—the one somber and withdrawn, the other exuberant and extroverted.

  During the next morning’s breakfast, Lawrence laid down the mission before the Arab chieftains. The British with the support of the two armored cars would attack both bridges, the cars providing a base of fire if needed. Meanwhile, the Arab riders would break off and head to Tell Arar along the Damascus portion of the line. There they would wait four miles north of Deraa for Lawrence to return. Around two that afternoon, a motorized detachment consisting of the two armored cars and two jeeplike vehicles Lawrence refers to as “tenders” advanced toward the bridges. The tactical plan was simple: the two “jeeps” would wait under cover; Lawrence would advance with one of the armored cars, carrying his 150-pound loaf of explosives, and move on the bridges. The other armored car would cover the stone blockhouse with its machine gun. As the vehicles moved into position, seven or eight Turkish guards suddenly spotted the maneuver and in a panic advanced in the direction of the British. After a short burst of machine-gun fire from one of the armored cars, two of the enemy were hit and knocked out of action; the other group quickly surrendered. The blockhouse garrison, after witnessing the surrender of their comrades, threw in the towel as well.

  Lawrence next turned his fine art of demolition toward the largest of the two bridges, some eighty feet long and fifteen feet high. He set the charges carefully, like a master painter preparing his palette. But where the painter’s creation represented a melding of shadow and light, Lawrence’s final composition was generated in the blast itself, the creation being in the destruction. The explosive medium of expression sought to create just enough damage to the bridge that the repair crews would first have to bring down the skeletal wreckage before they could actually start to rebuild a replacement bridge. The second span was dealt with in like fashion.

  After the destruction, the men quickly left with their prisoners; some were released, as their intelligence value was deemed worthless. About three hundred yards from the bridges, one of the “jeeps” broke a strut, causing the bed of the vehicle to drop onto the rear wheels and brake to a sudden halt. The mishap created an immediate babel of consternation: the men kicked the tires, spat, and scratched their heads, all the while cursing the devil of technology, Rolls-Royce, in several languages. By an odd coincidence, the driver was Private Rolls—no relation, but an automotive genius in his own right nonetheless. After several minutes of pushing, prodding, shaking, and hammering, Rolls came up with an ingenious solution. He would use the vehicle’s running boards, rope, and wooden balks to stabilize the bed and raise it off the rear tires. With a wary eye watching out for the inevitable Turkish patrols, the party quickly went to work. In several minutes the task was completed; after off-loading the cargo to the other vehicles, the convoy managed to make it back to Umtaiye, one of the three Roman villages, to spend the night. The rendezvous with the rest of the column would have to wait until morning.

  Despite the wrecked vehicle, the mission had successfully cut the main route between Deraa and Amman. The destruction also had a second-order consequence farther south down the line: the Turkish force at Tafileh, which was expected to attack the Allied position at Aba el Lissan, would have to wait until the line was repaired. The stressed repair crews would need at least a week to do the work, and by then it would be too late.

  THE DETACHMENT WAS off early that dawn, trying to overtake the Arab column at the rendezvous point. The terrain was rough going even for the heavy two-ton armored cars. The rouge-colored ground was splintered and split from a prolonged absence of rain. The party finally reached Tell Arar by eight o’clock in the morning. As Lawrence pulled up at the head of a ridge, he arrived just in time to witness the Arab forces att
ack the rail line just below his location. Trad led the Ruwalla cavalry, and Nuri Said deployed Pisani’s artillery to suppress the Turks inside a nearby redoubt. The horsemen were quick to seize the position with only a single loss. By nine, the Arabs had captured the main rail choke point that led into both the Hejaz and Palestine; they had fulfilled their promise to Allenby to show up at Deraa with “three men and a boy with pistols.” They did so with hardly a shot fired. From the position they commanded the entire area. The whole of Deraa itself, Mezerib, and perhaps even Ghazale could be theirs for the taking.