THE GATHERING OF THE DESERT TRIBES
Chafing under the red tape of army regulations, certain slight differences had arisen between the chiefs at G.H.Q. and independent young Lawrence. His aversion to saluting superiors, for instance, and his general indifference to all traditional military formalities did not exactly increase his popularity with some of the sterner warriors of the old school. In the Arab uprising Lawrence saw an avenue of escape from his Cairo strait-jacket. Ronald Storrs, then Oriental secretary to the high commissioner of Egypt, was ordered to make a trip down the Red Sea to Jeddah, with messages to Emir Hussein, instigator of the Mecca revolt. Although he had played no part in starting the Hedjaz revolution, Lawrence had long realized the possibility of the Arabs’ helping prick the kaiser’s imperialistic bubble; so he asked permission to take a fortnight’s vacation, and he has been on that leave of absence ever since!
Some of his superiors at the Savoy Hotel in Cairo were delighted at the prospect of getting rid of this altogether too obstreperous upstart “shavetail” lieutenant, and his request was granted with alacrity. But Lawrence, contrary to the custom of war-worn veterans on leave, did not go sailing down the Nile to the races at Alexandria, or up-stream to Luxor to while away his holiday at the Winter Palace. Instead, he accompanied Ronald Storrs down the Red Sea. On arrival at Jeddah, Lawrence succeeded in getting permission from Grand Shereef Hussein to make a short camel journey inland to the camp of Emir Feisal, third son of the Grand Shereef, who was attempting to keep the fires of revolution alive. The Arab cause looked hopeless. There were not enough bullets left to keep the army in gazelle meat, and the troops were reduced to John the Baptist’s melancholy desert fare of locusts and wild honey. After exchanging the usual Oriental compliments over many sweetened cups of Arabian coffee, the first question Lawrence asked Feisal was, “When will your army reach Damascus?”
The question evidently nonplussed the emir, who gazed gloomily through the tent-flap at the bedraggled remnants of his father’s army. “In sh’Allah,” replied Feisal, stroking his beard. “There is neither power nor might save in Allah, the high, the tremendous! May He look with favor upon our cause. But I fear the gates of Damascus are farther beyond our reach at present than the gates of Paradise. Allah willing, our next step will be an attack on the Turkish garrison at Medina, where we hope to deliver the tomb of the Prophet from our enemies.”
A few days with Emir Feisal convinced Lawrence that it might be possible to reorganize this rabble into an irregular force which might be of assistance to the British army in Egypt and Sinai. So absorbed did he become in working out this idea that when his two weeks’ furlough came to an end he stayed on in Arabia without even sending apologies to Cairo. From then onward Lawrence was the moving spirit in the Arabian revolution.
When Lieutenant Lawrence arrived the situation was critical. The Turks had rushed an army corps down from Syria to strengthen Medina, and they had sent down mule and camel transport, armored cars, aëroplanes, cavalry, and more artillery with which to stamp out the revolution. An expeditionary force from Medina was already on its way south, to recover Mecca and hang the rebel leaders higher than Haman. To be sure, this advancing army had two hundred and fifty miles of desert to cross, but they would have crossed it had not strange events occurred causing them hurriedly to revise their plans. As the Arab chroniclers recount: “The hosts of Othman, the minions of the usurper califs, advanced defiantly. But God was not with them! Praise be to Allah, the protector of all those who trust in him!”
Lawrence had no definite plan but the thought was in his mind to devise a way of harassing the Turk and attracting the attention of a portion of the Ottoman forces opposing the British to the north in Sinai. He had startled Feisal with the remark that he believed his troops would be in Damascus within two years. “If Allah wills,” had replied the emir with a dubious smile, as he stroked his beard and gazed at his riffraff army lolling in the shade of the date-palms. But something in Lawrence’s quiet manner impressed him with confidence, and he accepted the offer to coöperation. To the young archæologist turned soldier the thought of participating in a desert war appealed greatly. Here he saw an opportunity not only of beating the Germans but of testing the theories of the great military experts whose books had so fascinated him.
Once he had made up his mind to help the Arabs, Lawrence was immediately transformed from a scholarly student of the metaphysical and philosophical side of war to a student of the stern realities of war. To reach Mecca he thought the Turkish expedition would first attempt to drive Feisal’s force out of the hills in order to capture Rabegh, the tiny but strategically important Red Sea port one hundred miles north of Jeddah. Here, behind coral-reefs, under a picturesque grove of palm-trees, were excellent wells. Lawrence’s first plan was to supply the Bedouin irregulars in the hills between Medina and Rabegh with modern rifles and plenty of ammunition, in the hope that they would be able to hold up the advancing Turks in the narrow defiles, until a regular army of Arab townsmen, more amenable to discipline, could be whipped into shape. Next, he planned to intrench them outside Rabegh, where they could coöperate with the British fleet and give battle to the enemy when the latter finally broke through the hills. The Turks, however, upset this scheme with alarming speed. Much sooner than anticipated, and without warning, they pushed straight through the hills as though the Bedouin irregulars were not there. The situation now was even more precarious than when Lawrence first arrived. It seemed to the Arabs as though “the Maker of the Sun and Moon and Stars were guiding the destiny of the enemy.”
It was at this stage in the campaign that Lawrence decided to disregard Foch’s dictum, that the object of modern war is to locate the enemy army and annihilate it. He came to the conclusion that to win a war against the Turks, or any other well-trained troops in the desert, it would be better to imitate the tactics of Hannibal and other military leaders of pre-Napoleonic wars. He realized that in a stand-up fight against the better disciplined Turks the Arabs would be doomed. On the other hand, he figured that if Hussein’s followers confined themselves exclusively to the hit-and-run type of guerrilla warfare, to which they were so thoroughly accustomed, the Turks would be helpless to retaliate. The failure of his first plan opened Lawrence’s eyes, and the situation as he now saw it resolved itself to this:
Shereef Hussein’s followers had captured Mecca, the most important city of the Hedjaz. They had also taken Taif and Jeddah, and had swept the hated Turk from the whole of their country, with the exception of the city of Medina and the fortified posts protecting the Hedjaz Railway, connecting Medina with Damascus. In other words, the Arabs were already in possession of all of their country with the exception of a very small part. Furthermore, the Turkish garrisons at Medina and along the Hedjaz Railway could not move easily from their base without the consent of the Arabs, for they were surrounded by that mysterious element to which they were not accustomed, the unknown and unfathomable desert. An army corps of Turkish infantry would be as helpless in the desert as they would be at sea. On the other hand, the Arabs were at home among the shifting dunes. When a Bedouin tribe starts off on a raid, each man and his camel are a separate unit, each desert warrior as independent as a war-ship at sea; there are no lines of communication. Mounted on his racing-camel, a Bedouin can cruise across the desert sands for weeks without returning to his base of supplies. The dictum of a Bedouin strategist is quite contradictory to the dictum of Marshal Foch. His theory is not to hunt out his enemy and fight it out to the finish, but to stalk his prey as a hunter stalks his game. At an unguarded moment he sweeps down upon him, accomplishes his mission, and then, before his opponent has time to collect his wits, he vanishes, swallowed up by the trackless sands. This was the game Lawrence decided to play for all it might be worth.
When he came to this decision, he was lying in his tent stricken with a fever, and the Turkish expeditionary force was bearing rapidly down upon Rabegh. Instead of strengthening the system of trenches around the port and awaiting them, Lawrence and Feisal started north, leaving Shereef Hussein’s youngest son Zeid with a small band of Bedouins to harass the enemy. This left Jeddah and Mecca practically unprotected and gave the Turkish army a clear right of way.
What was Lawrence’s scheme?
To the north were two small ports, Yenbo and El Wejh. These were still held by the Turks as a protection for the Hedjaz Railway, the life-cord both of the Medina garrison and of the Turkish army marching south on Mecca. His plan was to capture both of these important posts, threaten the railway, and compel the enemy expeditionary force to return to Medina or run the risk of being cut off in the desert without supplies. The more Lawrence thought about this the more he became convinced that if the Turkish expedition could be drawn back to Medina the Arab war would be won; at any rate, won so far as the liberation of the Hedjaz was concerned. He estimated that there were about one hundred and fifty thousand square miles of territory in the country and that if the Turks wanted completely to subjugate it and to stamp out all revolution they would need at least half a million soldiers. Since they had a maximum of only one hundred thousand troops for the purpose, Lawrence concluded that if he could succeed in welding the scattered inhabitants of the desert into an army he might be able not only to drive the Turks from Holy Arabia but to invade Syria as well. To do this he must convince them that they should give up cutting each other’s throats over century-old tribal disputes. He must convince them that, instead, they must risk their lives for the freedom of their country and that they should die willingly for the liberation of the whole Arab world from Ottoman oppression.
The General Staff at headquarters in Cairo raised no objection to Lawrence’s remaining in Arabia when he failed to return at the end of his furlough. General Sir Gilbert Clayton, head of the Intelligence Corps, knew that he could speak the language, that he understood the people, and, indeed, that he was something of a Bedouin at heart himself. G. H. Q. merely hoped that he might encourage the Arabs a little and help keep the rebellion alive. They gave him complete freedom of action in order that he might make the most of any opportunities that might arise. That was in October, 1916, and by October, 1918, this youngster, not yet out of his twenties, had raised a formidable vaporous irregular army and had led it through the gates of Damascus.
It was by the process of accretion that Lawrence and Feisal built up their army. With only two companions the former started out across the desert. He stopped at every nomad encampment, and, calling the head men together, in faultless classic Arabic he explained his mission. The fact that Lawrence was visiting them in the name of Sidi Feisal, the most beloved of Shereef Hussein’s sons, insured him against personal harm, in spite of the fact that he was a Christian trespassing on sacred ground. At nightfall, after prayers, he would sit by the camp-fires before the black tents, discussing with his Bedouin hosts the past greatness of Arabia and her present condition of servitude, until he had every member of the tribe worked up to a high pitch of frenzy. Over roasted goat killed in his honor, and cups of sweetened tea, in phrases more eloquent than the words of the tribal wise men, he would discuss with them the possibility of driving out the Turks. He convinced them that they would be flying in the face of Allah if they hesitated longer, since their ancient enemy was at the moment too busy fighting the British, French, Italians, and Russians to offer serious resistance to an Arab uprising. That he succeeded in persuading the Bedouins to renounce their blood-feuds and unite against their common enemy was demonstrated by the fact that within six months he had united nearly all of the tribes of the Hedjaz into a loose alliance.
The first three tribes won over were the Harb, who inhabit the desert between Medina and Mecca; the Juheina, who dwell in the region between the Red Sea coast and Medina; and the people of the Billi tribe, who roam the country east of El Wejh. The first of these includes over two hundred thousand people and is one of the largest tribes in all Arabia.
Throughout the entire first phase of the desert campaign the Arabs were given invaluable assistance by the British navy. While Lawrence trekked north through the interior encouraging and supervising the gathering of the clans, Feisal left the Mecca road undefended and started up the coast accompanied by every man available, except the few snipers who remained with Shereef Zeid. By the time Feisal had advanced within striking distance of Yenbo, the first port north of Rabegh, Lawrence had sent several thousand more tribesmen to his support. The Turkish garrison evacuated before the Arabs arrived, the guns of the British war-ships causing them to take to their heels. The entry into Yenbo was splendid and barbaric. Emir Feisal, as commander-in-chief of the Arabian army, rode in front, dressed in robes as white as the snows of Lebanon. On his right rode another shereef, garbed in dark red, his head-cloth, tunic, and cloak dyed with henna. On Feisal’s left rode “Shereef” Lawrence, in pure white robes, looking like the reincarnation of a prophet of old. Behind them were Bedouins carrying three large banners of purple silk, topped with gold spikes, and followed by a minstrel twanging a lute and three drummers playing a weird march. After them came a bouncing, billowy mass of thousands of wild sons of Ishmael, on camels, all members of Feisal’s and Lawrence’s body-guard. They were packed together in a dense throng as they passed down the corridor of palm-trees, under the minarets of the mosque. The riders were wearing robes of every color, and from their saddles hung gay trappings and rich brocades. It was indeed a resplendent cavalcade. All were singing at the tops of their nasal voices, improvising verses descriptive of the virtues of Emir Feisal and his fair-haired “grand vizier.”
From Yenbo they at once pushed on north along the coast, for another two hundred miles toward El Wejh, which was held by a thousand Turkish troops. The name of this port recalls to mind another expedition. About 24b. c.Augustus Cæsar sent Allius Gallus to Arabia with eleven thousand of the picked soldiers of Rome. After wandering for six months through the thirst-stricken land they finally gave up their attempt to reach the frankincense country, and when they sailed back to Egypt from this same port of El Wejh there was but a sorry remnant left. They had learned to their grief what Lawrence already knew, that an army in Arabia must be able to endure much and live on little. By now Lawrence and Feisal had collected ten thousand men, and this force was divided into nine sections. They converged at the village of Um Lejj, about half-way. There they received fresh supplies from the British war-ships, with whom perfect liaison was maintained throughout the entire coastal operations. From Um Lejj on the north, one hundred and twenty miles of waterless desert lay before the Arab army. So barren was this region that there were not even thorns on which the camels might subsist. But an armed merchantman of the Indian merchant marine followed up the coast, ran the risk of ripping wide her hull on hidden coral reefs, and put into an uncharted bay with a small quantity of water for the mules but none for the camels. Hundreds of the latter were lost, but the army reached the hills overlooking El Wejh on January 25, 1917, without the loss of a single man from hunger or thirst.
El Wejh stands at the southwestern corner of a small coraline plateau, bounded on the west by the sea, on the south by a dry wadi, and on the east by an inland plain. The British war-ships bombarded the Turks out of their main fortress by firing from fourteen thousand yards, which enabled them to keep far outside the range of the Turkish guns. After shelling them for a few hours, a landing-party of Arabs, who had been carried up by sea for the purpose, went ashore and attacked the demoralized garrison. At the same time, Lawrence and his men swept in from the desert and took a hand both in the street fighting and the looting. True to tradition, Lawrence’s Bedouins made off with every movable object in El Wejh.
Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss directed the sea attack in person. To use the Arab phrase, Admiral Wemyss was the “father and mother” of the Arabian revolution during its early stages. Much of the credit for the early successes of the Arabs should go to him. Whenever Lawrence wanted to stage a cinema show, as he described demonstrations made to impress the rather restive Arabs, who were too much inclined to revert to their old habit of fighting among themselves, he would simply notify the admiral, who would steam down from Suez in his huge flag-ship, theEuryalus,and engage in target-practice with his nine-inch guns along the coast within sight of the Shereefian army. On two occasions the admiral anchored theEuryalusin Jeddah Harbor at critical moments, ostensibly to present his compliments to the Grand Shereef. There is no doubt that the mammoth size of the admiral’s flag-ship was largely responsible for the impression which the aged monarch gained of Britain’s power.
“She is the great sea in which I, the fish, swim,” he remarked on one occasion. “And the larger the sea the fatter the fish!”
THE BATTLE AT THE WELLS OF ABU EL LISSAL
Simultaneously with Feisal’s attack on the small Red Sea ports of Yenbo and El Wejh, his brother Abdulla appeared out of the desert several miles to the east, near Medina. He was accompanied by a riding-party mounted on she racing-camels. These raiders wiped out a few enemy patrols, blew up several sections of track, and left a formal letter tacked, in full view, on one of the sleepers, and addressed to the Turkish commander-in-chief, describing in redundant and lurid detail what his fate would be if he lingered longer in Arabia.
The Turkish forces advancing on Mecca received news of the fall of Yenbo and El Wejh, more than a hundred miles to the northwest of them, and of Shereef Abdulla’s raids a hundred miles to the northeast, at almost the same moment. They were amazed and bewildered, for a few days previously the Arab army had been sitting in front of them at Rabegh.
Thanks to the sniping of Emir Zeid’s handful of followers by day and to small raids by night, the Turks had been tricked into thinking the main Hedjaz army still there, but now there appeared to be Arab armies on all sides of them. The relentless rays of the sun, beating down with blistering ferocity on the parched region where they encamped, not only increased their thirst but stimulated their imagination as well. To their feverish, sunken eyes, every mirage now seemed to be a cloud of Bedouin horsemen. Each hour brought camel couriers with news of raids on El Ula, Medain Saleh, and other stations north of Medina and of the capture of two more of their Red Sea garrisons at Dhaba and Moweilah. Thoroughly frightened by the news of these unexpected reverses, as well as by the rumors of fictitious Arab victories circulated purposely among them by Lawrence’s secret agents, the Turks, panic-stricken, fled back to defend their base at Medina and to defend the railway, which was their sole line of communication with Syria and Turkey.
In the north of Holy Arabia, near the head of the Gulf of Akaba, the Turks had another garrison far more important than any as yet taken in the campaign except the garrisons at Mecca and Jeddah. Before Feisal’s followers could hope to sweep their ancient enemy out of all the Hedjaz, excepting Medina, this important stronghold at the head of the gulf must be accounted for. This accomplished, Lawrence had in mind a far bolder and vaster plan which he hoped to execute.
Of all the strategic places along the west coast of Arabia north of Aden, the most important from a military standpoint is the ancient seaport of Akaba, once the chief naval base of King Solomon’s fleet, and also one of the first places where the Prophet Mohammed preached and made his headquarters. For any army attempting to invade Egypt or strike at the Suez Canal from the east, Akaba must be the left flank, as it must be the right flank for any army setting out from Egypt to invade Palestine and Syria. From the beginning of the war the Turks had maintained a large garrison there, both because they intended to wrest Egypt from the British, and because it was essential to the security of the Hedjaz Railway.
It was Lawrence’s intention to capture Akaba and make it the base for an Arab invasion of Syria! This was a truly ambitious and portentous plan.
On June 18, 1917, with only eight hundred Bedouins of the Toweiha tribe, two hundred of the Sherart, and ninety of the Kawachiba, he set out from El Wejh for the head of the Gulf of Akaba, three hundred miles farther north. This force was headed by Shereef Nasir, a remote descendant of Mohammed and one of Feisal’s ablest lieutenants. As usual, Lawrence went along to advise the Arab commander; he always made it a point to act through one of the native leaders, and much of his success may be attributed to his tact in making the Arabs believe that they were conducting the campaign themselves.
The advance on Akaba is an illustration of how ably Lawrence handled Feisal’s army, in spite of his complete lack of military training and experience. In order to outwit the Turkish commander at Medina he led a flying column nearly one thousand miles to the north of El Wejh; but instead of going right up the coast toward Akaba, he led them far into the interior, across the Hedjaz Railway not far from Medina, where they blew up several miles of track on the way, then through the Wadi Sirhan, famous for its venomous reptiles, where some of his men died of snake-bite, then across the territory of the Howeitat tribe east of the Dead Sea, and still on, north into the land of Moab. He even led a party of picked men through the Turkish lines by night, dynamited a train near Amman (the ancient Greek city of Philadelphia), blew up a bridge near Deraa, the most important railway junction just south of Damascus, and mined another several hundred miles behind the Turkish front-line trenches, near the Syrian industrial city of Homs.
It was possible for Lawrence to conduct raids on such a grand scale only because of the extra ordinary mobility of his forces. With his camel corps he could cruise across the desert for six weeks without returning to his supply base. As long as the members of his party kept to the desert and out of sight of the Turkish fortified posts along the frontiers of Palestine and Syria, they were as safe as though they were on another planet. When they saw an opportunity to dash in and make a surprise attack, they would do so, and then dash back into the desert where the Turks dared not follow because they neither had the camels, the intimate knowledge of the desert, nor the phenomenal powers of endurance which the Bedouins possessed. During a six weeks’ expedition, Lawrence’s followers would live on nothing but unleavened bread. Each man carried a half-sack of flour weighing forty-five pounds, enough to enable him to trek two thousand miles without obtaining fresh supplies. They could get along comfortably on a mouthful of water a day when on the march, but wells were rarely more than two or three days’ march apart, so that they seldom suffered from thirst.
For these expeditions, far to the north and within territory occupied by the Turks, Lawrence divided his men into several different raiding-parties, in order to confuse and bewilder the enemy. After annoying them in the hills of Moab, to the east of Jericho, and then a day or two later away up around Damascus, he swept south again. It is sixty miles from Akaba to the Hedjaz Railway; and in order to prevent the Turks from guessing that Akaba was his real objective, he made a feint against Maan, the most important fortified town on the railway between Medina and the Dead Sea. At the same time, seventeen miles southwest of Maan, he swooped down upon Fuweilah station and wiped out its garrison. When news of this reached the Turks at Maan they despatched one of their crack mounted regiments in pursuit, but when the regiment reached the station only the vultures were found in possession; Lawrence and his raiders had disappeared into the blue again and, so far as the Turks knew, had been swallowed up by the desert. But, lest they should be forgotten, on the evening of the following day they reappeared out of the mist many miles distant. There they merrily planted more mines, demolished a mile of track, and destroyed a relief train. The heat during these July days was intense. In describing it, Lawrence remarked that the burning ground seared the skin from the forearms of the snipers, and the camels went as lame as the men did, with agony from the sunburned flints.
By this time Lawrence and Shereef Nasir had been joined by the Beni Atiyeh tribe, who supplied them with four thousand fresh fighting men, and also by the Abu Tayi section of the Howeitat tribe, made up of some of the finest warriors in Arabia, under the leadership of Auda, a veritable human tiger who was Lawrence’s intimate companion from then onward.
The pursuing Turkish column decided to spend the night in the bottom of a valley near some wells at Abu el Lissal, fourteen miles from Maan, where I camped with Lawrence and Feisal some months later. Lawrence, in the meantime, left his column and galloped off across the desert, to see if he could locate the Turkish battalion. As soon as he found it he hurried back for his men, brought them on to the heights around Abu el Lissal, and by dawn had the Turks completely surrounded.
For twelve hours the Arabs sniped at the Turks from their positions on the hills around the wells, picking off many of them. The sultan’s forces were indeed in a tight corner, but Lawrence knew full well that if they were under capable and daring leaders they could easily fight their way out through his thin line of Bedouins. The Turk commander, however, lacked the necessary courage. So at sunset Auda Abu Tayi, with fifty of his fellow-tribesmen, crept up to within three hundred yards of the Turks and after a moment’s rest boldly pushed out from under cover and galloped straight into the enemy camp. So surprised were the Turks by this audacity that when the old Bedouin chieftain crashed into their midst their ranks broke, but not before bullets had smashed Auda Abu Tayi’s field-glasses, pierced his revolver-holster, nicked the sword he was holding in his hand, and killed two horses under him. In spite of these incidents the old Arab was delighted and maintained afterward that it was the best scrap he had had since Ramadan.
Lawrence, who was watching from the hill on the opposite side of the basin, dashed down the slope as fast as his dromedary could carry him and charged into the midst of the now demoralized Turks, followed by four hundred other Bedouins on camels. For twenty minutes a thousand Turks and Arabs were mixed together in a wild, frenzied mass, all shooting madly. In the charge Lawrence accidentally shot his own camel through the head with his automatic; it dropped dead, and he was hurled from his saddle and lay stunned in front of it, while his followers charged right over him. Had he not been thrown directly in front of his mount he would have been trampled to death by the onrushing camels.
Photograph: IN HIS WHITE ROBES LAWRENCE LOOKED LIKE A PROPHET
Photograph: IN HIS WHITE ROBES LAWRENCE LOOKED LIKE A PROPHET
Photograph: THE DREAMER WHOSE DREAMS CAME TRUE
Photograph: THE DREAMER WHOSE DREAMS CAME TRUE
Photograph: A SHEIK OF ARABY
Photograph: A SHEIK OF ARABY
The Turks made their fatal error in scattering, just as Lawrence had surmised they would do, and the battle ended in massacre. Although many escaped in the darkness, the Arabs killed and captured more than the total number of their own force. The next morning more than three hundred dead were counted around the water-hole. Most of the prisoners taken were rounded up by Shereef Nasir and Lawrence, because the rest of the Bedouins dashed off to the Turkish tents, as usual thinking of nothing but loot. The desire to loot is an all-consuming passion with the Bedouins and is not considered a form of stealing by them but is listed among the cardinal virtues.
So bitter were the Arabs that they wanted to kill their prisoners in retaliation for the atrocities the Turks had been committing against their women and children. They were also aching to avenge the death of Sheik Belgawiya of Kerak, one of their leaders, whom the Turks had harnessed between four mules and torn apart limb from limb. The sheik’s tragic death had been the climax of a series of executions by torture which had so enraged the Arabs that they swore never to give quarter to another Turk. But Lawrence had other ideas. He wanted the rumor spread far and wide through the Turkish army that the Arabs were not only accepting prisoners but were treating them well, and so he finally prevailed upon his revengeful followers to treat these captives with special consideration. Just as he had hoped, this propaganda brought immediate results, and in the days following the battle of Abu el Lissal groups were constantly coming in holding their weapons above their heads and crying “Moslem! Moslem!” in imitation of the German cry of “Kamerad.”
THE CAPTURE OF KING SOLOMON’S ANCIENT SEAPORT
Lawrence had left El Wejh, hundreds of miles to the south, with but two months’ rations. After giving a part of his supplies to the captured Turks, the food situation became critical. Nevertheless the half-starved Arab army, led by this youngster, continued its march through the jagged, barren mountains that bite the North Arabian sky. The news of their victories traveled ahead of them, and when Lawrence arrived at Gueirra, a Turkish post in King Solomon’s Mountains, twenty-five miles from Akaba, at the entrance to an extremely narrow pass known as the Wadi Ithm, the Gueirra garrison came out and laid down their arms without firing a shot. He then proceeded to march his Bedouins on, down the Wadi Ithm to Kethura, another outpost guarding the only land approach to Akaba. There Lawrence charged another garrison and captured several hundred more men. Trekking through the gorge they came to an ancient well at Khadra, where two thousand years before the Romans had constructed a stone dam across the valley, the remains of which can still be seen. The Turks had massed their heavy artillery behind that ruined wall. It constituted the outermost defense of Akaba. By the time the Shereefian army arrived in front of this final barricade the Bedouins of the Amran Darausha and Neiwat tribes, who lived in the desert near Akaba, had heard of the great victories at Fuweilah and Abu el Lissal and were scampering across the lava mountains by the hundreds to join the advancing Arab forces.
The overwhelming defeat of the Turkish battalion at Abu el Lissal was really the first phase of the battle of Akaba. The second consisted in the spectacular manœuver when Lawrence accomplished what the Turks thought impossible and succeeded in leading his scraggly, undisciplined horde of Bedouins through the precipitous King Solomon Mountains, over the old Roman wall, right past the bewildered Turkish artillerymen, and down into Akaba on the morning of July 6, 1917. But to save the Akaba garrison from massacre Lawrence and Nasir had to labor with their fierce followers from sunset to dawn. They would not have succeeded then, had not Nasir walked down the valley into No-Mans’-Land and sat on a rock to make his men quit firing.
Akaba is picturesquely located at the southern end of the wide Wadi Araba, perhaps the driest and most desolate valley in the world, which runs down from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akaba. Up this same wadi Moses and the Israelites are believed to have made their way toward the Promised Land, and down this valley rode Mohammed, Ali, Abu Bekr, and Omar. It was here that Mohammed preached many of his first sermons. Beyond a narrow semicircle of date-palms which fringe the shore, lie the blue waters of the now deserted gulf where Solomon’s fleets, Phenician galleys, and Roman triremes rode at anchor. Behind Akaba loom jagged, volcanic, arid mountains. Like most of the smaller towns of the Near East the place itself is a chaotic jumble of mud huts. Awnings cover the narrow streets, and the stalls in the bazaar are filled with brocades, shabby prayer-rugs, cones of cane-sugar swarming with flies, piles of dates, and dishes of glistening brass and hammered copper.
The Turks and Germans were so paralyzed and bewildered by the unexpected achievement of the Arabs in getting across the mountains and through the passes that they surrendered without further ado. Immediately after the entrance into Akaba a German officer stepped up and saluted Lawrence. He spoke neither Turkish nor Arabic and evidently did not even know there was a revolution in progress.
“What is all this about? What is all this about? Who are these men?” he shouted excitedly.
“They belong to the army of King Hussein”—the Grand Shereef had by this time proclaimed himself king—“who is in revolt against the Turks,” replied Lawrence.
“Who is King Hussein?” asked the German.
“Emir of Mecca and ruler of this part of Arabia, was the reply.
“Ach Himmel! And what am I?” added the German officer in English.
“You are a prisoner.”
“Will they take me to Mecca?”
“No, to Egypt.”
“Is sugar very high over there?”
“Very cheap.”
“Good.” And he marched off, happy to be out of the war, and happier still to be heading for a place where he could have plenty of sugar.
This time the plans of Emir Feisal’s youthful British adviser went through true to form. From now on the Turks were kept on the defensive. They were obliged to weaken their army by splitting it into two parts; one half remained in Medina, and the other defended the pilgrimage railway. If he had wanted to do so Lawrence could have dynamited the railway in so many places that the Turks would have been completely cut off at Medina; then, by bringing up a few long-range naval guns from the Gulf of Akaba, he could have blown Medina off the map and compelled the garrison to surrender. But he had an excellent reason for not attempting this, as we shall soon see. In his mind he had worked out a far finer and more ambitious scheme, the successful carrying out of which demanded that the Turks should be inveigled into sending down more reinforcements to Medina, and as many guns, camels, mules, armored cars, aëroplanes, and other war materials as they could be compelled to part with from their other fronts. He hoped they would keep a huge garrison there until the end of the war, which would mean so many less Turks opposing the British armies in Palestine and Mesopotamia; and the supply-trains which would necessarily have to be sent down from Syria might be made a constant source of supply for the Arabs. If Medina were captured and the Turks all driven north, it would deprive Lawrence of this magnificent opportunity of maintaining his army on Turkish supplies. That was far more to his advantage than occupying Medina.
After the capture of Akaba, Lawrence and his men lived for ten days on unripe dates and on the meat of camels which had been killed in the battle of Abu el Lissal. They were compelled to kill their own riding-camels at the rate of two a day to save themselves and their hundreds of prisoners. Then in order to keep his army from starving, Lawrence jumped on his racing-camel and rode her continuously for twenty-two hours across the uninhabited mountains and desert valleys of the Sinai Peninsula. Completely worn out after this record ride, which came at the end of two months’ continuous fighting and a thousand miles of trekking across one of the most barren parts of the earth and living on soggy unleavened bread and dates and without having a bath for more than a month, he turned his camel over to an M.P. at one of the street corners in Port Tewfik, Suez, walked a little unsteadily into the Sinai Hotel, and ordered a bath. For three hours he remained in the tub with a procession of Berberine boys serving him cool drinks. That day, he declares, was the nearest approach to the Mohammedan idea of paradise that he ever expects to experience. From Suez he went on to Ismailia, the midway station on the canal.
Lawrence’s arrival in Arabia had been unheralded; even G.H.Q. in Cairo were ignorant as to his movements. His exploits first became known when he met General Allenby at Ismailia on the arrival of this new leader who had just been assigned to take over command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces.
The incident was dramatic in its simplicity. Allenby had been sent out from London to succeed Sir Archibald Murray as commander-in-chief. He had just landed and was at the railway station in Ismailia walking up and down the platform with Admiral Wemyss. Lawrence, standing near-by in Arab garb, saw the important-looking general with the admiral.
“Who’s that?” he asked of Wemyss’s flag-lieutenant.
“Allenby,” was the reply.
“What’s he doing here?” queried Lawrence.
“He has come out to take Murray’s place.” Lawrence was frightfully pleased.
A few minutes later Lawrence had an opportunity to report to Admiral Wemyss, who had been the godfather of the Arab “show.” He told him that Akaba had been taken but that his men were badly in need of food. The admiral immediately promised to send ships, and a moment later he told Allenby what Lawrence had said. The general sent for him at once. The station was crowded with staff-officers and a throng of vociferous natives who were welcoming Allenby, when out of the mob stepped this bare-footed, fair-faced boy in Bedouin garb.
“What news have you brought,” asked Allenby.
In even, low tones, without any more expression on his face than if he were conveying compliments from the Grand Shereef, Lawrence reported that the Arabs had captured the ancient seaport at the head of the Gulf of Akaba. He gave all the credit for the victory to the Arabs, making no reference to the part he himself had played in the affair. He conveyed the impression that he was acting as a courier, although, as a matter of fact, the capture of that important point was due entirely to his own leadership and strategical genius.
The general was immensely pleased, because Akaba was the most important point on his right flank and the principal Turkish base on the western coast of the Arabian Peninsula.
Then when Lawrence explained in more detail the plight of the Arab troops Admiral Wemyss promised to send a vessel filled with food to Akaba. But Sir Rosslyn went even beyond that and acted in a way that will immortalize him in Arabian history. The Arabs were afraid lest the Turks should return with reinforcements and capture Akaba; so the admiral moved his office, all his personal effects, and his staff ashore to a hotel in Ismailia, and sent his flag-ship round Sinai to Akaba for a whole month to bolster up the morale of the Arabs. The presence of this huge floating fortress encouraged the Bedouins and convinced them that they were not going to be obliged to play a lone hand against the Turkish Empire. The British flag-ship was more tangible evidence of the strength of Britain than these desert nomads had ever seen before.
Admiral Wemyss also lent Lawrence and his Arabs twenty machine-guns from his ships and several naval guns. The latter are still “somewhere” in Arabia, probably mounted on the roof of Auda Abu Tayi’s mud palace. Several months after the termination of the war Lawrence received a letter from the Admiralty asking him kindly to return one of their long-range guns which had been taken ashore for the Arab show. He replied that he was very sorry but that he had “mislaid it.”
As a result of Lawrence’s victory at Akaba and his visit to Egypt, the British decided to back the Arabs to the limit in their campaign to win complete independence. The young archæologist was sent back to Akaba with unlimited resources, and within a few months he had conducted the campaign in such a brilliant manner that he was raised in rank from lieutenant to lieutenant-colonel, despite the fact that he hardly knew the difference between “right incline” and “present arms.”
The Germans and Turks were not long in finding out that there was a mysterious power giving inspiration to the Arabs. Through their spies they discovered that Lawrence was the guiding spirit of the whole Arabian revolution. They offered rewards up to fifty thousand pounds for his capture dead or alive. But the Bedouins would not have betrayed their leader for all the gold in the fabled mines of Solomon.
The fall of Akaba, next to the capture of the holy city of Mecca, was the most significant event of the Arabian revolution, because it unified the Arabs whom Lawrence had already won over to the cause of the revolution, and gave them confidence in themselves.
After winning his victory Lawrence was shrewd enough to take full advantage of it. Although his own strategy and personal bravery had played an all-important part in the success of these operations, he was astute enough to give all the credit to the principal Arab leaders under him, such as Auda Abu Tayi and Shereef Nasir. Like children, these doughty old warriors were not at all reticent about accepting it, and, of course, from then on they were Lawrence’s sworn friends.
Anxious to make the most of this initial success, Lawrence sent couriers to all the tribes of the desert, although news of the battle of Abu el Lissal and the advance on Akaba seemed to travel as though flashed about Arabia by radio. He realized the tremendous importance of propaganda and sent some of his cleverest Arab lieutenants through the enemy lines to spread the news of the fall of Akaba far and wide to the remote corners of the Turkish Empire.
So it was that this young Briton, just down from Oxford, away in a long-forgotten corner of the earth, captured the ancient seaport of Solomon where a battle had probably not been fought for a thousand years and more, thereby winning the second important victory of the war in the Land of the Arabian Nights and paving the way for an invasion of Syria. From a mere local squabble, Lawrence’s victory at Akaba transformed the Hedjaz revolt into a campaign of far-reaching importance directed against the heart of the Turkish Empire; and from that day his undisciplined rabble of swarthy desert brigands became the right wing of Allenby’s army, and from then on this second lieutenant played the rôle of a lieutenant-general.
ACROSS THE RED SEA TO JOIN LAWRENCE AND FEISAL
Emir Feisal and Colonel Lawrence had got as far as Akaba with their campaign when Mr. Chase and I arrived from the Palestine front with our battery of cameras. It was by no means an easy matter even to get to the Arab base-camp and our adventures in doing so may even justify another digression from the story of Lawrence and his associates, in order to better illustrate how remote this campaign really was from the rest of the World War. Shortly after I had met Lawrence in Jerusalem, while lunching with General Allenby and the Duke of Connaught, the name of the archæologist turned soldier came up during the conversation. Out of curiosity I asked the commander-in-chief why the Arabian campaign and Lawrence’s exploits had been kept such a secret. He replied that it had been considered advisable to say as little as possible, because they hoped that large numbers of the conscript Arabs fighting in the Turkish army might desert and join Shereef Hussein in his fight for Arabian independence. They were afraid lest the Arabs of Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia whom the Turks had conscripted should get the mistaken idea that the Allies were inspiring the Hedjaz revolt and hence erroneously conclude that it was not a patriotic rebellion. For this reason the Allies were anxious that the campaign should appear in its true light as an independent Arabian movement. But so successful had been Lawrence’s efforts that Allenby said it was no longer quite so necessary to maintain such strict secrecy, adding that if I happened to be interested in what was going on in Arabia he would be glad to have me join King Hussein’s army, and afterward tell the world a little of what the Arabs had done toward helping to win the Great War.
This was exactly what I had often thought of asking permission to do; but I had been warned that because of the secrecy with which the campaign was being conducted there was not the slightest chance of receiving the commander-in-chief’s consent. I of course lost no time in accepting and jumped at this opportunity of going on what I was sure would be an adventure of a lifetime.
We were told that it would be practically impossible to make the journey overland from Palestine to Arabia, or at any rate that it could only be done by going through the Turkish lines in disguise. We had neither the time nor the inclination nor the necessary knowledge of the country and the language to attempt this; so, accompanied by Mr. Chase, my artist colleague, I returned to Egypt to consult the heads of the Arab Bureau in Cairo. There we were told:
“You can get as far as Akaba in a cargo boat, but next to Timbuctoo it is the most out-of-the-way place in the world. You will find no hotel porters at the dock to receive you, and you will have to be content with a block of coral for your pillow and a date-palm for your shelter.”
In pre-war days a tramp wind-jammer returning from Borneo or the Solomon Islands with a cargo of copra would occasionally lose its way in a storm and drive up the Gulf of Akaba, but apart from rare occasions like that almost no one had visited the place for a thousand years.
“You will get nothing to eat but unleavened bread, dates, and perhaps a few fried locusts,” remarked one general, on whose advice we bought many little luxuries, including fifty bars of milk chocolate. A colonel cheerfully warned me, “If you value your lives, take plenty of cigarettes for the Bedos.” So we filled every crevice of our outfit with “gaspers,” which proved worth their weight in sovereigns. On the day we landed in Arabia the thermometer happened to register above the melting-point of chocolate, and when I opened my kit-bag I found a semi-fluid mass of bullets, matches, cigarettes, pencils, note-books, and chocolate.
On our way to Arabia we followed a roundabout route, sailing fifteen hundred miles up the Nile into the heart of Africa to Khartum, and then across the Nubian Desert for five hundred miles to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where we hoped to get accommodation on a tramp vessel of some sort.
Our first stop up the Nile was at Luxor, where we were given a welcome that had not been equaled since “Teddy” Roosevelt stopped there on his way back from hunting big game in East Africa. A swarm of haggard guides, who had been waiting four long years in vain for American tourists, mobbed us from sheer joy. Our welcome resembled a battle royal, and the runners from the Luxor Hotel eventually succeeded in dragging us into their ramshackle gharry, and off we careened through streets lined with deserted tourists’ shops, with the rest of the crowd howling and gyrating behind us like dancing dervishes.
Our visit to Hundred-gated Thebes, the Temple of Karnak, and the Tombs of the Kings the following day was rather spoiled by a pitiful tale that our guide poured into our ears.
“American tourist he no come no more. All we guides starve. Oh, woe! Oh, woe!” wailed this melancholy old Arab. “Me guide here thirty-five years, and so help me Allah, the only real tourist in the world is you Americans. The Inglisse [English], German, and French spend all their time counting their centimes. If American see something he want he say, ‘How much?’ You tell him and, praise be to Allah, no matter what price is, he say, ‘All right, wrap ’er up!’ All us best guides specialize on Americans. Before the war me no more bother guiding anybody but American than you bother to shoot baby elephant if you see big one. Why President Wilson no stop the war; and why,” he added in a pleading voice, “you Americans send money and food to Armenians and nothing to us poor starving guides of Egypt?”