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.
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.”