THE GREATEST HOAX SINCE THE TROJAN HORSE
With the capture of the ancient seaport of Akaba, which transformed
the Shereefian revolt into an invasion of Syria, and with the
official recognition of the Hedjaz army as the right wing of
Allenby’s forces, it became imperative that all Lawrence’s movements
should fit in with Allenby’s plans.
Allenby by this time was in possession of all southern Palestine
up to a zigzag line extending across the country from the Jordan
Valley to the shores of the Mediterranean just south of Mount
Carmel, the peak which since earliest times has been known as the
Mountain of God. His first drive in the autumn of 1917 had resulted
in the liberation of Beersheba, the ancient home of Abraham and
Lot, of Gaza, the capital of the Philistines where Samson was
betrayed by Delilah, and of Hebron, where Abraham, Isaac, Sarah,
and Rebecca were buried in the cave of Machpelah. It had also
resulted in the deliverance of Jaffa, the chief port of Palestine
since the days of David and Solomon three thousand years ago, of
the Plains of Philistia and the Plains of Sharon, and, more
important still, had resulted in the liberation of the sacred
cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem from the Ottoman yoke. But the
ancient land of Samaria, the city of Nazareth and all Galilee, the
coastal plain of northern Palestine and all of Syria still remained
in the hands of the Turks, so that the campaign was only half
completed. There were now two courses open to Allenby, either to
push the Turks north by degrees, or to crush Turkish power in the
East with one sweeping blow. The commander-in-chief elected to take
the big risk, and he chose the latter.
He decided to launch his final attack north of Jaffa and Jerusalem
in July, 1918; but in June, when Ludendorff was making his last
drive toward Paris and the Channel Ports, the Allies were so hard
pressed in Western Europe that they were compelled to call upon
Allenby to send many of his divisions to reinforce them in France.
This completely disrupted all Allenby’s plans. It now became
necessary for him to create a new army. The unexpected necessity
for a complete reconstruction of the forces in the Holy Land was
a staggering blow, but England’s modern Cœur de Lion was not in
the least disheartened and immediately set to work to form a new
army made up largely of Indian divisions from Mesopotamia hitherto
untried in the war, and from his veteran Anzac cavalry under Light
Horse Harry Chauvel, the Australian general whom he had placed in
command of the largest body of mounted troops that ever participated
in modern warfare. Instead of attacking the Turks in northern
Palestine in June or July, it now seemed impossible for him to
launch his final thunderbolt before October or November. Lawrence
was convinced that such a long delay would make it difficult for
him to give much assistance on the right flank. By then his restive
Bedouins would be wanting to migrate with their flocks to their
winter pastures on the Central Arabian plateaus, and, in addition,
his many years’ experience in the country led him to believe that
autumn rains would impede any military operation attempted during
that season.
He explained this to the commander-in-chief, who immediately
grasped the situation and by super-human effort whipped his new
army into shape so that his new divisions were ready to take the
field within eight weeks from the date of their arrival from
Mesopotamia! Toward the end of August he despatched an aëroplane
to Arabia with a welcome message for Lawrence, the announcement
that he would be ready for a joint attack early in September
instead of October or November.
Allenby, fully aware of the inexperience of most of his new troops,
realized that the Turks would have to be defeated by strategy
rather than by force. So he decided to dupe the Turks with a
colossal hoax, a sort of moving picture of the British Army pushing
straight up along the Jordan River from the Dead Sea toward Galilee.
But it was to be a bogus army! In preparing this hoax Allenby’s
first move was to shift all his camel-hospitals from southern
Palestine to the Jordan Valley within fifteen miles of the Turkish
lines. Next, he had hundreds of condemned and worn-out tents
shipped up over the Milk and Honey Railway from Egypt, and pitched
them on the banks of the Jordan. Then he hauled all his captured
Turkish cannons down into the Jordan Valley and started them
blazing away in the direction of the Turks encamped in the hills
of Moab. Ten thousand horse-blankets were thrown over bushes in
the valley and tied up to look like horse-lines. Five new
pontoon-bridges were flung over the river.
The sacred valley of the Jordan was filled with all the properties
for a sham battle of the ages. Never since the Greeks captured Troy
with their famous wooden horse has such a remarkable bit of
camouflage been put over on a credulous enemy.
When the German reconnaissance aëroplanes flew over the Jordan they
buzzed back to Turkish headquarters with the important news that
Allenby had placed two new divisions in this sector! This camouflage
army, arranged largely by General Bartholomew of Allenby’s staff,
was so realistic that the Germans and Turks never dreamed that it
might all be a fake; and fortunately the lines were so carefully
guarded that not a single German or Turkish spy got through.
Lawrence, also, lent a helping hand in duping the Turks. Shortly
before the date arranged for the big push three hundred members of
the Imperial Camel Corps came down from Palestine to help him. They
were under the command of Colonel “Robin” Buxton, a born soldier,
who before the war was a prominent Lombard Street banker. Under
the guidance of his tent-mate, Major W. E. Marshall, R.A.M.C., “the
fighting bacteriologist,” Lawrence sent the camel corps to attack
an important Turkish garrison at Mudawara, where a spectacular
twenty-minute battle was fought on August 8.
After the battle of Mudawara, Lawrence led a combined force of
camel corps and Arabs against Amman, just east of the Jordan. This
was merely a feint, but it confirmed the Turks in the belief that
the valley of the historic Jordan River was swarming with the bulk
of Allenby’s forces. Lawrence sent one of the most prominent chiefs
of the Beni Sakr toward Damascus with £7000 in gold to buy barley.
The sheik bought recklessly in every town and village on the
eastern border of Syria. The Turks, knowing well that Emir Feisal’s
Bedouin cavalry could not use such vast quantities of grain,
immediately decided that the barley must be intended for Allenby’s
forces in the Jordan Valley. Lawrence also started the rumor
through the Arab army that Emir Feisal’s host intended to launch
its main attack against Deraa railway junction between Amman and
Damascus.
“As a matter of fact,” Lawrence remarked, “we had every intention
of attacking Deraa, but we spread the news so far and wide that
the Turks refused to believe it. Then in deadly secrecy we confided
to a chosen few in the inner circle that we really were going to
concentrate all of our forces against Amman. But we were not.”
This “secret,” of course, leaked out and was betrayed to the Turks,
who immediately shifted the greater part of their forces to the
vicinity of Amman, exactly as Allenby and Lawrence had planned.
When the advance of the Arab army actually started, none but Emir
Feisal, Colonel Joyce, and Colonel Lawrence knew that the attack
was to center on Deraa. Early in September Lawrence started north
from the head of the Gulf of Akaba to help Allenby in his historic
final drive. But instead of taking his Bedouin followers from the
Hedjaz, with the exception of his personal body-guard Lawrence
recruited a new army from the tribes of the North Arabian Desert,
and Joyce kept adding to his rapidly increasing mob of deserters
from the Turkish ranks. When it started up the Wadi Araba from the
head of the Gulf of Akaba, Lawrence’s caravan consisted of two
thousand baggage-camels, four hundred and fifty Arab regulars
mounted on racing-camels, four Arab machine-gun units, two
aëroplanes, three Rolls-Royce armored cars, a demolition company
of picked men from the Egyptian camel corps, a battalion of Gurkhas
from India mounted on tall camels from the Sind Desert, and four
mountain-guns manned by French Algerians. In addition he had his
resplendent private body-guard of one hundred picked Bedouins. His
total force amounted to one thousand men mounted on camels.
Lawrence’s motto on this expedition, as on all others, was, “No
margin!” He faced a march of five hundred miles across unmapped
desert under stupendous transport difficulties. During one stage
they marched four days from one water-hole to another, carrying
their entire water-supply with them and suffering from thirst. When
they reached the new water-hole they drank copiously, only to
discover that the water was filled with leeches. These leeches
fastened themselves on the inside of their nasal membranes and
proved most painful. But the column made the trek in a fortnight.
They were hurrying north to cut three Turkish railway lines and
all the telegraph-wires around Deraa, Lawrence’s primary mission
being to prevent the Turks from communicating with Damascus,
Aleppo, and Constantinople when Allenby started his advance.
The camouflage army of the Jordan was a complete success. As a
matter of fact, there were only three battalions of able-bodied
troops in that part of the Holy Land, two of which were made up of
newly arrived Jewish troops from the British Isles and the United
States.
If the Turks had known the truth they might have sent down one
brigade, pushed up behind Allenby’s lines, and recaptured Jerusalem!
Allenby was taking enormous chances, but great men usually do.
The commander-in-chief supplied his troops in the Jordan Valley
with but three weeks’ rations in order that they might use all of
the transport for his main army. His supply people were frantic;
they said the troops along the Jordan must be given eight weeks’
food; but Allenby knew he was perfectly safe so long as his plan
for one smash went through without a hitch.
Allenby felt that it would not be safe to engage the Turks in a
pitched battle with his small and inadequately trained army, and
so his sole object was to lure all the Turkish reserves to the
wrong place, the Jordan Valley.
Allenby’s sham attack down near Jericho had been scheduled for
September 18. The British Intelligence Corps carefully allowed this
“secret” to get out, and of course the Turks were ready to meet
it. Allenby’s real attack was made not on the eighteenth but on
the nineteenth, and when they woke up and discovered how they had
been fooled, the war in the Near East was over, and most of them
were British or Arab prisoners. Furthermore, it was not made in
the Jordan Valley but away on the other side of Palestine to the
north of Jaffa on the Mediterranean coast! He had transferred
nearly all his infantry and cavalry there by night, and they
remained concealed in the orange-groves until the day of the real
battle, the battle that broke the backbone of the Ottoman Empire.
Photograph: COLONEL JOYCE, COMMANDER OF THE ARAB “REGULARS”
Photograph: ARMORED CARS IN HOLY ARABIA