Surveying the entire scene, Lawrence thought: “I was seeing even further than this: northwards to Damascus, the Turkish base, their only link with Constantinople and Germany, now cutoff: southward to Amman and Maan and Medina, all cutoff: westward to Liman von Sanders isolated in Nazareth: to Nablus: to the Jordan Valley. Today was September the seventeenth, the promised day, 48 hours before Allenby would throw forward his full power. In 48 hours the Turks might decide to change their dispositions to meet our new danger; but they could not change them before Allenby struck.”2 It was too late; even with forty-eight hours to spare, it was over. The Turks were simply a few more moves from checkmate, and Lawrence’s men, as Allenby’s white knight, were the opening gambit that jumped them deep into the enemy’s rear. Even as the knight was moved into position, the Turks had no inkling of their own immediate danger and approaching doom.
This did not, however, prevent them from reacting violently to Allenby’s knight gambit. After the demolitions were blown, the Arabs and their allies pulled away. From his perch high on the ridge overlooking Deraa, Lawrence with his powerful binoculars was able to penetrate the midday haze and see a very unsettling scene. The Turks were rushing aircraft into action on the local airfield; as many as eight or nine planes were revving their engines on the flight line, spewing forth immense clouds of dust. The Turkish infantry manned their trenches and began to fire at the departing column. The reaction was largely ineffectual; by this time the column was already several miles distant. Several unarmored locomotives were preparing to depart as they rushed to gather steam. Beyond Deraa, though, everything else was “still as a map.” Suddenly, out of the amber haze a Turkish aircraft dropped, as if readying to deliver a load of bombs. But as it came closer, Lawrence realized it was a Pfalz configured in an innocuous reconnaissance role. It flew over, high, attempting to discern the nature of the threat facing them at Deraa. Then eight more planes appeared, less docile and more aggressive than the first, bombing and strafing the tiny targets below. In response, Nuri Said opened up with his Hotchkiss machine guns, the tracers arcing lazily into the high heat. Pisani elevated his four mountain guns, setting his shrapnel shells on short fuses, hoping for a lottery strike. The last action drove the Turkish fliers higher, thinking they were now facing a serious antiaircraft defense. The higher they climbed, the less accurate their bombing and strafing became.
Elsewhere, more thorough demolitions were laid under the track by Peake and his Egyptians. While the actions continued, Lawrence met hastily with Nuri and Joyce. They considered the new challenge: the north-south section of track—from Damascus down through Deraa to Maan and Medina—had been devastated. The question was how to obliterate the east-west portion of the line that ran from Deraa to Yarmuk and into Palestine. Lawrence’s force would have to swing way around to the other, western side of Deraa to get at that portion of the rail. Under the circumstances, the Turkish aircraft would strafe and bomb the column throughout the entire evolution of its maneuver. At the same time, Peake’s sappers would be dangerously exposed if the Turkish infantry screwed up enough courage and sallied from their trenches against the engineers.
As the three officers contemplated their next move, the gods of war unexpectedly smiled down upon them. Lieutenant Junor, the lone pilot left back at Azrak with his decrepit B.E. 12, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He dove out of the sun upon the unsuspecting Turks with his two machine guns twinkling away. Though he was hopelessly outnumbered and outclassed, the shock of his sudden appearance and dead-eye accuracy made the enemy think they had been bounced by an entire squadron of Sopwith Camels. After his initial blazing pass, Junor flew westward across Deraa. Incredibly, the Turkish pilots followed him in hot pursuit. Junor’s heroic action completely removed the air threat to Lawrence’s plans. With the newfound freedom of maneuver, he detached two of Pisani’s guns along with 350 of Nuri’s regulars and sent them west to Mezerib and the western part of the rail line.
Moving rapidly through the cover of cornstalks and thistle, Nuri’s detachment reached the position in half an hour. Lawrence was about to follow them with his Ageyli bodyguard when he again heard the deep thrum of aircraft engines. To his amazement, Junor materialized out of the afternoon mirage with his escort of Turkish fighters peppering after him with a deadly hail of fire. They now had his slower machine hemmed in on three sides, but their numerical advantage became a disadvantage in their fear of shooting one another out of the sky. Junor zoomed overhead, dropping a quick message on Lawrence’s head: “My fuel is shot!” Lawrence immediately took his men to clear a makeshift landing strip to get his pilot safely down. As Junor floated in, the wind suddenly intervened on behalf of the enemy and flipped the plane into the ground. The craft cartwheeled across the strip at a sharp angle and came to rest on a pile of boulders. The Turks witnessed the crash, and with their honor thus salved, they skulked back to Deraa. Lawrence rushed up to the crash, imagining the worst. As he came to the other side of the wreck, he was astonished to find Junor grinning painfully from a slash to the jaw but otherwise unhurt.
Major Young drove up from behind in his Model T just as a diehard Turk spilled his last bomb on the wreckage. But still Junor was not finished. He off-loaded his Lewis and Vickers machine guns with ammo drums and requisitioned Young’s Ford to offer his service to Peake’s sappers.
THE TASK STILL remained to cut the track at Mezerib and destroy the lucrative bridge below Tell el Shehab, where Lawrence had failed twice before. Joyce remained back at Tell Arar, leading the supply trains and a reserve detachment of Nuri’s Arab regulars. The Ruwalla horsemen, the Gurkhas, and the motorized troops under Peake also remained there. Lawrence would use his bodyguard as the striking force against the bridge, moving as fast as possible against the target. Initially, his party made good progress, moving widely dispersed like common Bedouin. All of a sudden a Turkish fighter-bomber, which had crept up on them, dropped a stick of bombs in their midst, taking out two of the camels. Their riders, unhurt, quickly leapt on two nearby beasts and continued on. Then another machine floated in silently, with its engine turned off, and dropped two more bombs. One of them wounded Lawrence in the right elbow, striking near the ulnar nerve and numbing his arm. The sight of blood running down his arm and onto his wrist and hand momentarily unnerved him. The first plane had by now circled back to begin another strafing run, knocking Lawrence out of his initial shock. It was the first time he had been wounded from the air; what disturbed him more than the sting of shrapnel and sight of his mortal blood was the emotional assault to his nerves.
The Turks soon flew off without pressing their advantage, demonstrating again their preference for inflicting random acts of violence on unsuspecting local tribesmen over engaging in a coherent tactical fight. Lawrence finally reached Mezerib and learned that the remainder of Nuri’s troops was still two miles behind. While they waited, his men watered their camels and quenched their thirst after the long day of heavy action. By now the whole area was alive with news of their arrival—the first time Allied troops had been in the location since Lawrence’s abortive raid in the fall. The local Haurani peasants now began to stage a virtual uprising, with many approaching Lawrence’s campsite in a mood of jubilation, bringing useful intelligence about the nearby Turks. The Turkish railway station was just over three hundred yards to their front, seemingly on the verge of surrender. Tallal, one of Lawrence’s retainers who hailed from the area, said he knew the stationmaster personally and could persuade him to capitulate. The pair walked cautiously toward the station; suddenly the guards opened up with a heavy blast of rifle fire. The two quickly found themselves flat on the ground in a thatch of tall weeds. They slowly withdrew back to their supports when Nuri arrived with his regulars and Nasir. A quick leadership council was held: Should they bypass the station and simply take out the more important bridge?
Peake’s earlier demolition would suffice in the north-south direction; blowing the bridge would sever the east-west route. Why bother with the
station at all? As they continued to discuss the matter, the nearby hordes of Haurani—men, women, and children—had been taunting the Arabs to attack. To Lawrence, it seemed likely that the peasants themselves were readying to storm the station at any moment. That decided the issue: Pisani was ordered to deploy his two remaining mountain guns and began pumping rounds into the Turkish defenses; Nuri unloaded with a score of machine guns. At that, a huge cheer exploded from the crowd, and at the sound, the soldiers swiftly advanced and carried the position without loss. Forty prisoners were quickly rounded up and offered to Nuri to crown his victory.
Soon after the capture, a mob of peasants descended, along with the night, upon the station and began a frenzied plunder. By now Young had come up with the reserves. He and Lawrence found two railcars crammed with German PX goodies. The Arabs were especially suspicious of the canned goods. One enterprising plunderer had opened a tin and discovered to his horror that its contents contained pickled pig’s feet, a prized German delicacy. The mob found trucks topped off with gas and tried to drive them over the railroad tracks. In the process, several of the trucks tipped over and burst into flames. The resulting conflagration spread to the wooden outbuildings, and hungry flames licked high into the air, even above the nearby water tanks.
While the marauding continued, Lawrence and Young ran off and cut the main telegraph line at Deraa: the most important communications node in the entire theater of operations. It connected the whole theater back to Damascus and thence to Constantinople. In a highly centralized and directed force like the Turkish army, loss of higher control meant a sudden paralysis and collapse that would occur by the time Allenby launched his offensive. From his perch high atop a telegraph pole, Lawrence gazed down upon the rampant pillaging and looting. He witnessed a scene as lurid as it was apocalyptic. All was by now aflame; the peasants in their hitched-up white robes flashed and flickered about the burning plunder like silver piranhas feasting on the spoils, their faces a frenzied red, reflecting a long-denied rage and hunger for Turkish wealth. At the edges of this incandescent turmoil, streams of peasants came pouring down from the nearby hills, attracted by the fiery commotion and the opportunity to loot. But for some others, the conflagration became an uncertain beacon of freedom, signaling a time to rejoice at the impending destruction of the Turkish yoke.
The town elders of Deraa soon came forth, begging Lawrence and Nasir to accept the keys to the town, if only they would act on their behalf against the Turks in the city. Yet once again Lawrence and Nasir demurred, deferring the decision to the principles of responsible leadership: the attainment of the local tactical prize of Deraa could not stand against the strategic reward that stood beyond the flames at Damascus.
BUT THE NIGHT was far from over. Around nine o’clock, another would-be celebrant showed up. He was a young boy, the son of the headman of Tell el Shehab. His father, the sheikh, had recently been killed, so Lawrence became suspicious when the lad described the defenses at the bridge in great detail. The suspicion was somewhat allayed when he offered to bring the garrison commander into the discussions within the hour. At the appointed time the boy returned with the commander, an Armenian captain, who, like all Armenians, hated the Turks and was willing to settle old scores. He warned, however, that the garrison contained a number of hard-core diehards. He promised to neutralize the main sentry posts as long as Lawrence would bring up a detachment swiftly in order to seize the sleeping camp.
At eleven, Lawrence moved out with a mixed column; Nasir and Nuri were in tactical command. Tell el Shehab was deep in the Yarmuk Valley. The one-hundred-twenty-foot bridge crossed the Wadi Khalid, which fed into the Sea of Galilee. As they approached the bridge from above, they could hear the powerful rushing waters. The sound dampened their movement as they crept into the ravine. The sleeping garrison was hidden by an evening mist that rose from the river and obscured the position. As Lawrence sank into the fog, one of his men suddenly grabbed his arm and pointed to a dim cloud of smoke rising through the mizzle a short distance to the west: a train! By the time the column had moved farther into the valley, the train had reached the garrison station, huffing and puffing as it began to take on water. Although the garrison was now essentially cut off from the east, it still had communications to the west, into Palestine. Since the train had taken such a long time to brake itself to a halt, Lawrence guessed it was quite large, probably bringing reinforcements to Deraa. Lawrence, Nasir, and Nuri decided to halt the attack.
By now it was past midnight, and the wet air began to seep into the raiders’ wool cloaks. Soon the men were shivering under their sodden wraps as they waited for events to unfold and watched the unusually active Turks move around the locomotive. Soon, Lawrence caught a speck of white moving through the damp darkness, coming ever closer to his position. Dancing through the mist, the fleck became the boy of Shehab. Breathless, he whispered that the plan had gone awry. The train was German and had just brought over a relief force under the command of a colonel, probably a full regiment. It had come from Afuleh, sent by the wily General Liman von Sanders to reinforce Deraa. The Germans had also arrested the Armenian captain. He also warned that a strong picket had been deployed not more than a hundred yards to their front. The changed situation now created another reframing exercise.
In consultation, Nuri believed he and his regulars could still storm the place under the advantage of surprise and preparation. Even though the German force may have been stronger, they were all most likely still aboard the train, resting and probably asleep. Even Lawrence had to admit to himself, “It was a fair chance: but I was at the game of reckoning the value of the objective in terms of life, and as usual finding it too dear.”3 In the end he voted against the plan. After all, they had already slit the rail line in two places, also cutting off the lines of communication of two armies facing Allenby in Palestine and effectively isolating and trapping the Fourth Army in Amman. On top of that, Lawrence had pulled at least a regiment-sized force from the defenses directly facing Allenby: all in all, not too bad for an evening’s work. In the end Nuri and Nasir agreed, and the column slowly began to back its way out of the ravine.
As they disengaged, two demolition parties were detached and blew up portions of the track west of Tell el Shehab. The act of vengeance helped somewhat to lift the fatigue of the men, who had been fighting steadily for almost twenty-four hours.
SHORTLY BEFORE DAWN, after a brief rest the entire Arab army moved eastward through the ashen rubble of Mezerib. The army was indistinguishable from the horde of peasants that followed in its wake. This brought confusion to the Turkish recon pilots, who reported the strength of the army as upward of nine thousand troops. To confuse them even further, Lawrence and Nasir urged the peasants to return to their homes and await the arrival of Allenby’s coming liberation. The subsequent hiving off of the peasants from the main body thoroughly confounded the enemy as to the Arabs’ size, direction, and location: Lawrence seemed to be everywhere, going nowhere. While passing through Mezerib station, Pisani’s gunners shot up the large water tower, leaving their final calling card. The commotion of Lawrence’s retreat forced the German column that was advancing to the relief of Deraa to hightail it back to the bridge at Shehab, expecting an attack there at any moment.
At four in the afternoon, Lawrence had reached the station at Nisib, a few miles down the line south of Deraa. Pisani immediately opened up on the garrison with his French artillery. Lawrence planned to fix the garrison in position under Pisani’s fire and maneuver with his mounted troops to destroy the bridge just to the north. The Arabs had the advantage of moving with the sun at their backs, obscuring them and making it difficult for the Turks to see their full intentions. The bridge was defended by a small but heavily fortified blockhouse. Pisani worked over the bridge house with two of his pack guns and six of the machine guns. A heavy fire was also directed at the main garrison, which was located near the village. By now Lawrence had nineteen machine guns firing into the garrison, at
tempting to pin and suppress the Turks from aiding the defense by the bridge itself. Village elders soon came out of the town, gesticulating wildly for the Arabs to stop the firing. Nasir spoke with them briefly and agreed to their entreaties provided the headmen could persuade the Turks to surrender. They agreed and returned to the village.
By later in the afternoon, the relentless hammering at the bridge drove off the occupants of the stone blockhouse. With the elders bartering for their safety, the battlefield suddenly went eerily silent. The only motion was the setting sun, casting long fingers of shadow and light across the landscape, seemingly creating a silent sound of its own. The departing sun reflected obliquely into the western faces of the rock, which dazzled and sparkled in smoky brilliance like Sinbad’s lost treasure. The unearthly scene had a strange effect on Lawrence’s bodyguard. When at last he roused himself from the uncanny mood and ordered them to advance against the bridge, they shockingly refused; now for the first time Lawrence’s own handpicked men lost their nerve in a fight. The enemy had again opened up from the village after paying little heed to the village chiefs. Bullets were flying about as Lawrence tried to tease his retainers into action, but still they refused. Finally giving up, Lawrence chose the young and frightened Hemeid to join him. Hemeid shivered in fear, barely able to climb on his camel, but he stayed close to his leader as the pair rode down to the approaches of the bridge. Here they found Nuri chewing thoughtfully on the stem of his pipe. He began to discuss tactical theory with Lawrence, arguing the next best course of action. For the following ten minutes, the three stood there as silhouettes against the twilight sky, drawing upon them stinging bullets like bees to honey. But instead of extracting nectar, the rounds impaled themselves on the nearby chert, loosing loud screams of extinction: brazeeroww … phuckeewow!
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