Guerrilla Leader

by James Schneider

  Soon they left the redoubtable Germans behind and sought easier pickings among the other remnants. By now the peasants had recovered weapons from the battlefield wreckage, some even riding abandoned mules. The madness of Tafas rampaged well into the night. The Turks were murdered, then killed—again and again. Finally, through sheer exhaustion and the fall of night, the execution stopped.

  LAWRENCE RETURNED TO Sheikh Saad, physically, spiritually, and emotionally savaged. All he could think about was the day of wrath. After a while his mind turned to the Germans, the first time he had fought against them. The Germans were a marked distinction beside the Turks, and Lawrence further wondered how the revolt would have fared against this different and more implacable enemy.

  He arrived in camp after midnight, his fourth night in a row of riding, with little if any sleep. After a brief rest, Lawrence found a third camel, the great-hearted Baha, and rode back to Deraa, which he reached at dawn. Nasir had occupied the mayor’s mansion and began to consolidate his hold on the city. The Indians under General Barrow had just arrived and were about ready to make a full-scale attack upon the town. Lawrence immediately rode out with el Zaagi to inform the general that the town was already in friendly hands. As the two riders approached, the Indians readied their weapons on the unlikely pair, uncertain of their intentions. At about the same time, a flight of British planes flew off to bomb the town in preparation for the ground assault. The unfortunate Nuri Said bore the brunt of the bombing, as his regulars were just arriving from Sheikh Saad into the far side of Deraa. Lawrence hastened to find Barrow to explain that the Arabs had already been in control of the town since the previous evening. Lawrence was also trying his utmost to ensure that Arab autonomy was maintained in as many captured places as possible in order to strengthen their position during any forthcoming armistice negotiations. At first Barrow was unsure of Lawrence’s claims, but eventually Lawrence managed to convince the general that just for the sake of expediency, it was best to let the Arabs hold the places they had seized by force of arms. In the end, Barrow asked for food and other supplies and continued on toward Damascus for his rendezvous with Chauvel’s Australians.

  Feisal arrived the next day from Azrak with a jubilant entourage, celebrating the first great tangible result of the Arab Revolt since the capture of Aqaba. The triumph was punctuated by a mild earthquake, which was greeted as an auspicious omen. Lawrence remained in Deraa another night, holding his place at the airfield, for he held the town in contempt after its long association with the Turks. After having dinner with his bodyguard, he contemplated his recent triumph: “I tried in the blankness to think forward: but my mind was blank, my dreams puffed out like candles by the strong wind of success. In front was our too-tangible goal: but behind lay the effort of two years, its misery forgotten or glorified. Names rang through my head, each in imagination a superlative: Rumm the magnificent, brilliant Petra, Azrak the remote, Batra the very clean. Yet the men had changed. Death had taken the gentle ones; and the new stridency, of those who were left, hurt me.”11 At last the end had crossed upon the horizon and come into view. Yet somehow, if only for an instant, Lawrence refused to accept it. He wanted to continue, perhaps forever; for an end meant a new and uncertain beginning. After the revolt, then what?

  He could not sleep, so he roused Major Stirling and his drivers early at dawn. They all piled into Blue Mist, the Rolls-Royce tender, and headed out for Damascus, at last to put everything to a final rest. The bodyguard followed. By noon they had caught up with Barrow and his headquarters. Here Lawrence traded his car for a camel. Barrow, shocked to see Lawrence ride up, asked, “When did you leave?”

  “This morning,” Lawrence replied.

  Barrow had expected to reach Damascus in three forced marches and was astonished by Lawrence’s speed. He asked him, “Where will you stop tonight?”

  “In Damascus.”

  Lawrence’s jaunty reply left Barrow a bit dumbfounded. He had no choice but to continue his careful, deliberate pace to Damascus while Lawrence simply rushed ahead.

  Meanwhile, Nasir, Nuri Shaalan, and Auda were well out ahead, trying to smash up another Turkish column of remnants, perhaps as many as seven thousand. Lawrence finally caught up with his comrades and informed them that the Indians were at least three miles to the rear. The main body of Turks was walled up in a farmstead and would be difficult to root out on the fly. Stirling suggested they go back to Barrow for reinforcements to help overcome the defense. In a short time an Indian cavalry squadron came up with its English colonel, a rather decrepit man more concerned with maintaining rank-and-file order on the march than thriving on the chaos of attack. He approached the enemy but was quickly driven off by a few rounds from a mountain gun. Stirling and Lawrence became incensed at his performance, but the old colonel refused to shift from his safe distance and engage the defenders. The two then went to Brigadier-General C. L. Gregory, commander of the 10th Cavalry Brigade in Barrow’s 4th Cavalry Division, who offered a formidable force: horse artillery and British troops from the Middlesex Yeomanry Regiment. They drove forward among the Arabs and pushed into the rear of the Turkish position. By nightfall, the whole column was crushed and forced to abandon all its equipment as it streamed toward Damascus. Only Auda maintained pressure throughout the night, driving the remnants of the Fourth Army to its shallow grave near Kiswe.

  BY SEPTEMBER 30, the Arab Revolt was essentially over. Lawrence and most of his men spent the night in Kiswe, trying to stay out of the way and out of trouble. Meanwhile, the Australians enveloped Damascus to the north and west. Feisal began to implement his Damascus plan, which sought to wrest political control of the city when the Turks retreated with their German allies. By that evening, the Arab flag was waving to the departing enemy from the top of the Town Hall. Lawrence tried to dissuade Nasir from entering the town that evening amid all the confusion. A formal entry ceremony was planned for dawn on October 1. Still, by midnight on September 30 there were already four thousand men, mostly Ruwalla tribesmen, in Damascus.

  The Germans left the city as the rear guard, setting all the military stores and ammo dumps alight: setting a beacon for all of Syria to see. Lawrence arrived outside the gates of the city at dawn and expected to find the worst after all the demolition. From atop a ridge, he saw to his surprise that the emerald gardens were tranquil beneath a dewy river mist. A citadel was set in the center of the gardens like a crown jewel to Arab freedom. Only a few wisps of smoky sentinels stood guard over the treasure. A dispatch rider now approached Lawrence and said, “Good news: Damascus salutes you!” Nasir was up ahead, waiting outside the gate with Nuri Shaalan. Nasir was given the privilege of entering the city first, with Nuri at his side. Nasir’s fifty battles earned him the honor. Lawrence went with Stirling to shave in a nearby stream, certain that today of all days, presentation would matter. An Indian noncom tried to arrest them for their outlandish uniforms, but their total lack of concern told the would-be jailer that he had made a serious mistake.

  After a critical duel with their razors, the pair drove off slowly along the bank of the Barada. Long delays finally brought them to City Hall, where they crashed their way into the antechamber. Here serious Arab politicking was under way, especially now that Nasir and Nuri Shaalan had joined the government. Lawrence tried to speak with Nasir in order to gain a tenor of the conversation. Then, all of a sudden the room convulsed, as though an elephant were trying to force its way through the throng of politicians. The source of the convulsion soon became evident: Auda abu Tayi and Sultan el Atrash, sheikh of the Druzes, were locked in a violent hand-to-hand, hand-to-gland struggle, throwing each other around the room. Lawrence and Mohammed el Dheilan tried to break the two apart and after much effort were able to drag Auda into a large ceremonial ballroom, incongruent for its high decadence and adornment. Zaal and Hubsi were called in as reinforcements, ushering Auda into a large stuffed chair. By now Auda had gone thoroughly mad in rage over Sultan’s unknown insult. After almost h
alf an hour, Auda calmed down enough to hear the spoken word again. Auda’s clenching wrath had cracked his Allied false teeth, the ones he’d received after Aqaba. He finally stopped lurching for his pistols, and slowly his twitching fits subsided. He wiped the seething foam from his crooked mouth and blood from his battered face. His hair was a tangled mat stuck to his bare head. At last he spoke, offering Lawrence and Mohammed three days to seek revenge upon Sultan. Without another word, Lawrence left to seek out Sultan and escort him secretly and safely from the city.

  When Lawrence returned after disposing of Sultan, he was shocked to find how quickly the city’s population had increased. There must have been well over a quarter of a million souls teeming about in wild celebration. The crowds began to chant names from the pantheon of rebel heroes: Feisal, Nasir, Shukri, Aurans—as Lawrence was known to the Arabs.

  Then Chauvel arrived and, like Barrow, had no clue what to do with a captured city, a particular blind spot among the cavalrymen. Lawrence told Chauvel that he was responsible for public order and requested that he leave his horsemen outside the city for the night, as the greatest celebration in six hundred years was about to begin. Chauvel’s chief of staff found this very agreeable, and Lawrence decided to escort the two through the ecstatic throng. There was some discussion of protocol for tomorrow’s march of Chauvel’s men, but Lawrence was hardly listening. All he heard were the cries of history that had stood silent for so long: the Middle East was about to become boisterous again.

  • • •

  THE POLITICAL SITUATION was evolving quickly, with new players moving up to the international table all the time. All the breezy promises made to the Arabs were now coming home to roost, and this time the control of Damascus would drive those promises toward fulfillment. Lawrence was determined to help the Arabs consolidate their political gains and was convinced that the next twenty-four hours would be decisive in that process. After dispensing with Sultan, he snuck back into the Town Hall. During the chaotic transition of the past few days, an Algerian faction, under the old nemesis Abd el Kader and former Aqaba trail mate and brother Mohammed Said, had seized a loose control of the political circumstances in the capital. The Algerians were nothing more than opportunists who had filled a power vacuum after the Turks relinquished control of the city. Up until that point, they had been quite loyal to their former masters. Now the situation was growing delicate. The altercation between Auda and Sultan was the beginning of a potentially dangerous coalescence of counteralliances. Lawrence needed to buy time for Feisal’s formal arrival and installation in the seat of government, but at the moment he had no real military force: his bodyguard was too blunt an instrument for political infighting. He could ask the British to intervene, but then they would never leave; best to keep them at arm’s length. At present, Nasir was still a figurehead until Feisal’s arrival. It was then decided that Shukri should be appointed head of state until Feisal appeared. The issue turned on how the decision was to be enforced. Nuri Shaalan immediately offered his horsemen, telling Lawrence, “You shall have the Ruwalla if you do all your will, and quickly.”12 Nuri quickly deployed his tribe, taking the first decisive steps to counter the emerging Algerian threat. At the same time, Nuri Said’s regulars had consolidated control over the central government district and the Town Hall. When Abd el Kader and Mohammed Said met with Lawrence to clarify relationships, he was careful to place his retainers in conspicuous places and poses.

  Late on October 1, Lawrence, as Feisal’s duly constituted deputy, formally abolished the civil government of Damascus. He appointed Shukri el Ayubi as acting military governor, Azmi as his adjutant-general, and Jemil as Lawrence’s chief of security. It came as no surprise, then, that Mohammed Said thoroughly denounced Lawrence, calling him the most abominable of names: “a Christian and an Englishman.” Next, Mohammed Said and Abd el Kader began to pressure Nasir to exert himself on their behalf. Nasir was a simple soldier without a political bone in his body and was vulnerable to the false plea of Arab solidarity that the Algerians were using to cloak their naked grab for personal power. For Nasir, the political tension was worse than the ordeal of combat. As the negotiations continued in the ballroom, the rancor and acrimony began to weigh heavily upon him. At one point, Abd el Kader suddenly leapt to his feet and confronted Lawrence with a particularly vituperative and violent outburst. He was now beyond reason, driven by an irrational lust for power that was beginning to slip from his hands. Lawrence simply ignored the outburst and tried to step around the seething politician. As Lawrence tried to avoid him, the Algerian lunged forward with his dagger. At half-stride, Auda pounced on him like a cougar and indelicately planted him into the heavy carpet. Auda was ready to slit the man’s throat in an instant after his morning frustrations with Sultan, but Nuri Shaalan intervened immediately to return Auda to the nether borders of sanity. Nuri reminded the Algerians again that the Ruwalla and the others were sworn to Lawrence. Any more trouble from the two would lead to their sudden execution. For an instant, Lawrence considered giving Auda his head and letting him dispatch the pair, but his high aspirations for model Arab governance stayed the temptation.

  After the Algerians were run out of the Town Hall, the process of consolidation continued. Feisal was being delayed for having to deal with his increasingly embarrassing “war-friends.” He had an urgent need to replace them with more reliable men who would make trusted governors. Lawrence and the others continued to shuttle emissaries between themselves and the levers of government. A core staff was quickly fielded and put to work addressing the mundane business of government: police and public safety—uniforms, regulations, pay, precincts, chains of command; water—the water supply was currently befouled with the bodies of men and animals; power supply—the powerhouse had to be tended to, and the resumption of street lighting would be the first clear and sure sign that order was being restored and a functioning government in place; sewage and refuse—typhus, dysentery, and cholera traveled in the wake of defeated armies and had to be contained; fire safety and prevention—the debris of war had made the streets tinderboxes, ready to fulminate with awesome consequences; prisons and detention—jails had to be restored and provisioned, though Shukri’s generosity and amnesty had emptied most of them for the time being; the former rebels, now citizens once again, had to be disarmed and returned to hearth and home; human services—the people had been starving for days, and if the economy became confident in the new government, supplies would again begin to flow in from the local villages. The problem, however, was transportation. The Turks had carried off their own—or killed what they left behind; the British couldn’t—or wouldn’t—share their own, so the rebels disbanded their transport to help feed the people.

  To bind Damascus to the rest of the evolving Arab kingdom, one essential was needed more than anything else: an operational railway. It cemented the people to the new nation and made the broader economy run. Like the station clock in the center of any town, it added a sense of normalcy and dependability to an otherwise chaotic moment in history. Everything would turn out all right because the trains were running, and even the mail would flow again. As for the currency, it was in terrible shape. The Aussies and other Allies were using the money as little more than toilet paper after looting millions in Turkish notes. Prices had to be fixed so as to encourage spending rather than hoarding, and an acceptable currency had to be established to further drive the battered economy. Lawrence put Major Young to the task; he used up the last of the Aqaba gold to prop up the new scrip. Young also ensured that the old Turkish property and fiscal records were secured and preserved.

  All these issues could take weeks to resolve. The most immediate concern, however, was forage for all of Allenby’s cavalry and transport: nearly forty thousand horses were milling about the outskirts of Damascus. If Lawrence couldn’t solve this one problem, nothing else would matter, at least in the critical eyes of the British. Young, Stirling, and Kirkbride performed yeoman work in aiding Lawrence to so
lve the English logistics crisis. By the end of the first night, he had established a rudimentary façade of Arab government that would stand the next two years without any outside foreign interference. This was all an extraordinary achievement, perhaps the least known of Lawrence’s many successes. He had helped win the Arab Revolt, but only sound government could secure the peace and freedom that had been so hard won by so many. October 1, that day of incredible crisis resolution, problem solving, improvisation, and innovation, had finally answered Nasir’s profound question on the way to Aqaba: Would this struggle be worth it in the end? That day, peace and freedom redeemed the long sacrifice.

  Late that night, Lawrence was alone in his rooms. He had just now come to realize the one central tenet of good government. In the Arab world, good governance meant the opportunity to practice one’s chosen religion. The sound of the Muedhdhin’s cry to prayer reminded him of what he had forgotten all day. For the Arab, life without religion was a life not worth living, no matter how free or ordered. He let the crier’s call to worship lift his weary mind above the spires of the mosques: “Allah alone is great: I testify there are no gods, but only Allah: and Mohammed is His Prophet. Come to prayer: come to security. Allah alone is great: there is no god—but only Allah.” Then, after a long pause, the crier dropped his voice a couple of octaves and cried: “And He is very good to us this day, Oh people of Damascus.” Lawrence’s last thought before drifting to sleep was his sense of overpowering existential detachment, the slaughter at Tafas for now forgotten: “The clamor hushed, as everyone seemed to obey the call to prayer on this their first night of perfect freedom. While my fancy, in the overwhelming pause, showed me my loneliness and lack of reason in their movement: since only for me, of all the hearers, was the event sorrowful and the phrase meaningless.”13