LAWRENCE THE TRAIN-WRECKER
Fate never played a stranger prank than when she transformed this
shy young Oxford graduate from a studious archæologist into the
leader of a hundred thrilling raids, creator of kings, commander
of an army, and world’s champion train-wrecker.
One day Lawrence’s column was trekking along the Wadi Ithm. Behind
him rode a thousand Bedouins mounted on the fleetest racing-camels
ever brought down the Negb. The Bedouins were improvising strange
war-songs describing the deeds of the blond shereef whom General
Storrs had introduced to me as “the uncrowned king of Arabia.”
Lawrence headed the column. He paid no attention to the song
lauding him as a modern Abu Bekr. We were discussing the possibility
of ancient Hittite civilization forming the connecting link between
the civilizations of Babylon and Nineveh and ancient Crete. But
his mind was on other things and suddenly he broke off to remark:
“Do you know, one of the most glorious sights I have ever seen is
a train-load of Turkish soldiers ascending skyward after the
explosion of a tulip!”
Three days later the column started off at night in the direction
of the Pilgrim Railway. In support of Lawrence were two hundred
Howeitat. After two days’ hard riding across a country more barren
than the mountains of the moon, and through valleys reminiscent of
Death Valley, California, the raiding column reached a ridge of
hills near the important Turkish railway-center and garrisoned town
of Maan. At a signal from Lawrence all dismounted, left the camels,
walked up to the summit of the nearest hill, and from between
sandstone cliffs looked down across the railway track.
This was the same railway that had been built some years before to
enable the Turkish Government to keep a closer hand on Arabia
through transport of troops. It also simplified the problem of
transportation for pilgrims to Medina and Mecca. Medina was
garrisoned by an army of over twenty thousand Turks and was strongly
fortified. Lawrence and his Arabs could have severed this line
completely at any time, but they chose a shrewder policy. Train-load
after train-load of supplies and ammunition must be sent down to
Medina over that railway. So whenever Lawrence and his followers
ran out of food or ammunition they had a quaint little habit of
slipping over, blowing up a train or two, looting it, and
disappearing into the blue with everything that had been so
thoughtfully sent down from Constantinople.
As a result of the experience he gained on these raids, Lawrence’s
knowledge of the handling of high explosives was as extensive as
his knowledge of archæology, and he took great pride in his unique
ability as a devastator of railways. The Bedouins, on the other
hand, were entirely ignorant of the use of dynamite; so Lawrence
nearly always planted all of his own mines and took the Bedouins
along merely for company and to help carry off the loot.
He had blown up so many trains that he was as familiar with the
Turkish system of transportation and patrols as were the Turks
themselves. In fact he had dynamited Turkish trains passing along
the Hedjaz Railway with such regularity that in Damascus seats in
the rear carriage sold for five and six times their normal value.
Invariably there was a wild scramble for seats at the rear of a
train; because Lawrence nearly always touched off his tulips, as
he playfully called his mines, under the engine, with the result
that the only carriages damaged were those in front.
There were two important reasons why Lawrence preferred not to
instruct the Arabs in the use of high explosives. First of all, he
was afraid that the Bedouins would keep on playfully blowing up
trains even after the termination of the war. They looked upon it
merely as an ideal form of sport, one that was both amusing and
lucrative. Secondly, it was extremely dangerous to leave footmarks
along the railway line, and he preferred not to delegate tulip
planting to men who might be careless.
The column crouched behind great chunks of sandstone for eight
hours until a number of patrols had passed by. Lawrence satisfied
himself that they were going at intervals of two hours. At midday,
while the Turks were having their siesta, Lawrence slipped down to
the railway line, and, walking a short distance on the sleepers in
his bare feet in order not to leave impressions on the ground which
might be seen by the Turks, he picked out what he considered a
proper spot for planting a charge. Whenever he merely wanted to
derail the engine of a train he would use only a pound of blasting
gelatin; when he wanted to blow it up he would use from forty to
fifty pounds. On this occasion, in order that no one might be
disappointed, he used slightly more than fifty pounds. It took him
a little more than an hour to dig a hole between the sleepers, bury
the explosive, and run a fine wire underneath the rail, over the
embankment, and up the hillside.
Laying a mine is rather a long and tedious task. Lawrence first
took off a top layer of railway ballast, which he placed in a bag
that he carried under his cloak for that purpose. He next took out
enough earth and rock to fill two five-gallon petrol tins. This he
carried off to a distance of some fifty yards from the track and
scattered along so that it would not be noticed by the Turkish
patrols. After filling the cavity with his fifty-pound tulip-seed
of dynamite, he put the surface layer of ballast back in place and
leveled it off with his hand. As a last precaution he took a
camel’s-hair brush, swept the ground smooth, and then, in order
not to leave a footprint, walked backward down the bank for twenty
yards and with the brush carefully removed all trace of his tracks.
He buried the wire for a distance of two hundred yards up the side
of the hill and then calmly sat down under a bush, right out in
the open, and waited as nonchalantly as though tending a flock of
sheep. When the first trains came along the guards stationed on
top of the cars and in front of the engine, with their rifles
loaded, saw nothing more extraordinary than a lone Bedouin sitting
on the hillside with a shepherd’s staff in his hand. Lawrence
allowed the front wheels of the engine to pass over the mine, and
then, as his column lay there half paralyzed behind the boulders,
he sent the current into the gelatin. It exploded with a roar like
the falling of a six-story building. An enormous black cloud of
smoke and dust went up. With a clanking and clattering of iron the
engine rose from the track. It broke squarely in two. The boiler
exploded, and chunks of iron and steel showered the country for a
radius of three hundred yards. Numerous bits of boiler-plate missed
Lawrence by inches.
Instead of provisions, this train carried some four hundred Turkish
soldiers on their way to the relief of Medina. They swarmed out of
the coaches and started in a menacing manner toward Lawrence. All
this time the Bedouins, lining the tops of the hills, were popping
at the Turks. Evidently one Turkish officer suspected that the lone
Arab was the mysterious Englishman for whom rewards up to fifty
thousand pounds had been offered. He shouted something, and the
men, instead of shooting, ran toward Lawrence with the evident
intention of taking him prisoner; but before they had advanced six
paces Lawrence whipped out his long-barreled Colt from the folds
of his aba and used it so effectively that they turned and fled.
He always carried a heavy American frontier-model weapon. Although
very few persons ever actually saw him, it was well known among
the British officers that he spent many hours at target-practice,
with the result that he had made himself an expert shot.
Many of the Turks dodged behind the embankment and began shooting
through the carriage-wheels; but Lawrence, in anticipation of this,
had posted two Lewis machine-guns just around a curve in the track,
where they covered the opposite side of the railway embankment
behind which the Turks had taken refuge. The gun-crews opened fire,
and before the Turks knew what had happened their line was raked
from end to end and every man behind the embankment either killed
or wounded. The rest of the Turks who had remained on the train
fled panic-stricken in all directions.
The Arabs, who were crouching behind the rocks popping away with
their rifles, charged down, tore open the carriages, and tossed
out everything on board that was not nailed down. The loot consisted
of sacks of Turkish silver coin and paper currency and many
beautiful draperies which the Turks had taken from the private
houses of wealthy Arabs in Medina. The Bedouins piled all the loot
along the embankment, and with shouts of glee commenced dividing
it among themselves, while Lawrence signed the duplicate way-bills
and playfully returned one copy to a wounded Turkish guard whom he
intended to leave behind. They were just like children around a
Christmas tree. Occasionally two men would want the same silk
Kermani rug and begin fighting over it. When that happened Lawrence
would step between them and turn the rug over to some third man.
Early in September, accompanied by two sheiks of the Ageilat Beni
Atiyah from Mudowarrah, Lawrence left Akaba and trekked up to the
multicolored sandstone cliff country which the tribesmen called
Rum. In less than a week he had been joined by a force of 116
Toweiha, Zuwida, Darausha, Dhumaniyah, Togatga, Zelebani, and
Howeitat.
The appointed rendezvous was a small railway bridge near Kilo 587
south of Damascus. Here Lawrence buried his usual bit of tulip-seed
between the rails, and stationed Stokes and Lewis guns at
vantage-points three hundred yards or so distant. The following
afternoon a Turk patrol spotted them. An hour later a party of
forty mounted Turks put out from the fort at Haret Ammar to attack
the mine-laying party from the south. Another party of over a
hundred set forth to outflank Lawrence from the north, but he
decided to take a chance and hold his ground. A little later a
train with two engines and two box-cars moved slowly up from Haret
Ammar, machine-guns and rifles spitting lead from the roofs and
from loopholes in the cars as the train advanced. As it passed,
Lawrence touched his electric switch and exploded a mine directly
under the second engine. The jar was sufficient to derail the
first, demolish the boiler, as well as smash the cab and tender of
the second, up-end the first box-car, and derail the second. While
the Arabs swarmed around looting the wrecked train, Lawrence fired
a box of guncotton under the front engine, completing its
destruction. The boxcars were full of valuable baggage, and the
Arabs went wild with joy. In all, seventy Turks were killed, ninety
taken prisoner, and an Austrian lieutenant and thirteen Austrian
and German sergeants blown up.
Every fourth or fifth man of the famous fighting Howeitat tribe is
a sheik. Naturally the head sheik has but little power. Frequently
these men would accompany Lawrence on a raid. On one such expedition
to the railway near Biresh-Shediyah he had to adjudicate for them
in twelve cases of assault with weapons, four camel-thefts, one
marriage settlement, fourteen feuds, a bewitchment, and two cases
of evil eye. He settled the bewitchment affair by counter-bewitching
the hapless defendant. The evil eye cases he cleverly adjusted by
sending the culprits away.
On still another occasion, during the first week of the following
October, Lawrence was sitting out in the open near Kilo 500. His
Bedouin followers were concealed behind him in the broom-brush.
Along came a heavy train with twelve coaches. The explosion
following the turning on of the electric current shattered the
fire-box of the locomotive, burst many of the tubes, hurled the
cylinders into the air, completely cleaned out the cab, including
the engineer and fireman, warped the frame of the engine, bent the
two rear driving-wheels, and broke their axles. When Lawrence put
in his official report on this raid he humorously added a postscript
to the effect that the locomotive was “beyond repair.” The tender
and first coach were also demolished. Mazmi Bey, a general of the
Turkish General Staff who happened to be on board, fired two shots
out of the window of his private car with his Mauser pistol, which
then evidently jammed. Although it appeared advisable for him to
take to the camels and the distant hills, Lawrence and his band
swooped down on the train, captured eight coaches, killed twenty
Turks, and carried off seventy tons of food-stuffs without suffering
any losses.
His only European companion on some of his wildest train-blowing
parties was a daring Australian machine-gunner, Sergeant Yells by
name. He was a glutton for excitement and a tiger in a fight. On
one occasion, when out with a raiding-party of Abu Tayi, Yells
accounted for between thirty and forty Turks with his Lewis gun.
When the loot was divided among the Bedouins, Yells, in true
Australian fashion, insisted on having his share. So Lawrence
handed him a Persian carpet and a fancy Turkish cavalry sword.
Shereefs Ali and Abdullah also played an important part in the
raids on the Hedjaz Railway and in the capture of great convoys of
Turkish camels near Medina. In 1917 Lawrence and his associates,
in coöperation with Feisal, Ali, Abdullah, and Zeid, blew up
twenty-five Turkish trains, tore up fifteen thousand rails, and
destroyed fifty-seven bridges and culverts. During the eighteen
months that he led the Arabs, they dynamited seventy-nine trains
and bridges! It is a remarkable fact that he participated in only
one such expedition that turned out unsatisfactorily. General
Allenby, in one of his reports, said that Colonel Lawrence had made
train-wrecking the national sport of Arabia!
Later in the campaign, near Deraa, the most important railway-junction
south of Damascus, Lawrence touched off one of his tulips under
the driving-wheels of a particularly long and heavily armed train.
It turned out that Djemal Pasha, the commander-in-chief of the
Turkish armies, was on board with nearly a thousand troops. Djemal
hopped out of his saloon and, followed by all his staff, jumped
into a ditch.
Lawrence had less than sixty Bedouins with him, but all were
members of his personal body-guard and famous fighters. In spite
of the overwhelming odds, the young Englishman and his Arabs fought
a pitched battle in which 125 Turks were killed and Lawrence lost
a third of his own force. The remainder of the Turks finally
rallied around their commander-in-chief, and Lawrence and his Arabs
had to show their heels.
At every station along the Hedjaz-Pilgrim Railway were one or two
bells which the Turkish officials rang as a warning to passengers
when the train was ready to start. Nearly all of them now decorate
the homes of Lawrence’s friends. Along with them are a dozen or
more Turkish mile-posts and the number-plates from half the engines
which formerly hauled trains over the line from Damascus to Medina.
Lawrence and his associates collected these in order to confirm
their victories. While in Arabia, I often heard the half-jocular,
half-serious remark that Lawrence would capture a Turkish post
merely for the sake of adding another bell to his collection; and
it was no uncommon thing to see Lawrence, or one of his officers,
walking stealthily along the railway embankment, between patrols,
searching for the iron post marking Kilo 1000 south of Damascus.
Once found, they would cut it off with a tulip-bud—a stick of
dynamite. When not engaged in a major movement against the Turks
or in mobilizing the Bedouins, Lawrence usually spent his time
blowing up trains and demolishing track.
So famous did this young archæologist become throughout the Near
East as a dynamiter of bridges and trains that after the final
defeat of the Turkish armies, when word reached Cairo that Lawrence
would soon be passing through Egypt en route to Paris, General
Watson, G. O. C. of troops, jocularly announced that he was going
to detail a special detachment to guard Kasr el Nil, the Brooklyn
Bridge of Egypt, which crosses the Nile from Cairo to the
residential suburb of Gazireh.
It had been rumored that Lawrence was dissatisfied at having
finished up the campaign with the odd number of seventy-nine
mine-laying parties to his credit. So the story spread up and down
along the route of the Milk and Honey Railway between Egypt and
Palestine that he proposed to make it an even eighty and wind up
his career as a dynamiter in an appropriate manner by planting a
few farewell tulips under the Kasr el Nil, just outside the door
of the British military headquarters.