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 24 b. 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, the _Euryalus,_ 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
the _Euryalus_ in 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!”