had occupied the Sudan, though as they said, not wanting it; perhaps
they might also take Arabia, not wanting it. They hungered for desolate
lands, to build them up and make them good: one day Arabia might tempt
them. But the English idea of good and the Arab idea of good might be
different, and forced good would make the people cry out in pain as
much as forced evil. Feisal was a man of education, but Lawrence was
surprised at the grasp that these tribesmen, the ragged and lousy ones
even, had of the idea of Arab national freedom. Freedom was an entirely
new idea to the country, and one that they could hardly have been
taught by the educated townsmen of Mecca and Medina. But it appeared
that the Sherif had wisely made his priestly family into missionaries
of this idea; their words carried much weight.
The Sherif had had the sense too, in spite of his great piety as a
Mohammedan, to keep religion out of the war. Though one of his chief
personal reasons for declaring war was that the young Turks were
irreligious, he realized that this would be an insufficient reason
for the tribes. They knew that their own allies the British were
Christians. ‘Christian fights Christian, why not Mohammedan Mohammedan?
We want a Government which speaks our own language and will let us live
in peace. And we hate the Turks.’ They were not troubled by questions
of how the Arab Empire was to be ruled when the Turkish Empire was
ended. They could only think of the Arab world as a confederation
of independent tribes, and if they helped to free Bagdad and Damascus
it would be only to give these cities the gift of independence as new
members of the Arab family. If the Sherif liked to call himself Emperor
of the Arabs, he might do so, but it was only a title to impress the
outer world. Except for the departure of the Turks everything would go
on much as before in the land.
The next morning Lawrence was up early and walking by himself among
Feisal’s troops. He was anxious to find out what they were worth as
fighters by the same means that he had used the night before with their
chiefs. There was not much time to spare for getting the information
he wanted and he had to be very observant. The smallest signs might be
of use for the report which he was to make to Egypt, one which perhaps
might rouse the same confidence in the Revolt that he had always had.
The men received him cheerfully, lolling in the shade of bush or rock.
They chaffed him for his khaki uniform, taking him for a Turkish
deserter. They were a tough crowd of all ages from twelve to sixty,
with dark faces: some looked half negro. They were thin, but strong and
active. They would ride immense distances, day after day, run barefoot
in the heat through sand and over rocks without pain, and climb the
jagged hills. Their clothing was for the most part a loose shirt with
sometimes short cotton drawers and a head shawl usually of red cloth,
which acted in turn as towel, handkerchief or sack. They were hung with
cartridge-bandoliers, several apiece, and fired off their rifles for
fun at every excuse. They were in great spirits and would have liked
the war to last another ten years. The Sherif was feeding them and
their families and paying two pounds a month for every man and
four pounds extra for the use of his camel.
There were eight thousand men with Feisal, of whom eight hundred were
camel-fighters: the rest were hill men. They served only under their
own tribal sheikhs and only near their own territory, arranging for
their own food and transport. Each sheikh had a company of about a
hundred men. When larger forces were used they were commanded by a
Sherif, that is, a member of the Prophet’s family, whose dignity raised
him above tribal jealousies. Blood feuds between clans were supposed to
be healed by the fact of the national war and were at least suspended.
The Billi, Juheina, Ateiba and other tribes were serving together in
friendship for the first time in the history of Arabia. Nevertheless,
members of one tribe were shy of those of another and even within
a tribe no man quite trusted his neighbour; for there were also
blood-feuds between clan and clan, family and family; and though all
hated the Turk, family grudges might still be paid off in a big attack
where it was impossible to keep track of every bullet fired.
Lawrence decided that in spite of what Feisal had said the tribesmen
were good for irregular fighting and defence only. They loved loot and
would tear up railways, plunder caravans and capture camels, but they
were too independent to fight a pitched battle under a single command.
A man who can fight well by himself is usually a ‘bad soldier’ in the
army sense and it seemed absurd to try to drill these wild heroes.
But if they were given Lewis guns (light machine-guns looking like
overgrown rifles) to handle themselves, they might be able to hold
the hills while a regular army was built up at Rabegh. This regular
army was already being formed under command of another Arab deserter
from the Turkish army, somewhat of a martinet, called Aziz el
Masri. In the British prisoners-of-war camps in Egypt and Mesopotamia
were hundreds of Syrians and Mesopotamians who would volunteer against
the Turks if called upon. Being mostly townsmen and therefore not so
independent, they were the right material for Aziz to train. While
the desert fighters harassed the Turks by raids and sudden alarms,
this regular force could be used to do the regular fighting. As for
the immediate danger, the advance through the hills—Lawrence had seen
what the hills were like. The only passes were valleys full of twists
and turns, sometimes four hundred, sometimes only twenty yards across,
between precipices; and the Arabs were fine snipers. Two hundred good
men could hold up an army. Without Arab treachery the Turks could not
break through; and even with treachery it would be dangerous. They
could never be sure that the Arabs might not rise behind them, and if
they had to guard all the passes behind them they would have few men
left when they reached the coast.
The only trouble was that the Arabs were still terrified of artillery.
The fear might pass in time, but at present the sound of a shell
exploding sent the Arabs for miles round scuttling to shelter. They
were not afraid of bullets or, indeed, of death, but the manner
of death by shell-fire was too much for their imagination. It was
necessary then to get guns, useful or useless, but noisy, on the Arab
side. From Feisal down to the youngest boy in the army the talk was all
of artillery, artillery, artillery. When Lawrence told Feisal’s men
that howitzers were being landed at Rabegh that could fire a shell as
thick as a man’s thigh, there was great rejoicing. The guns, of course,
would be no military use; on the contrary. As fighters the Arabs
were most useful in scattered irregular warfare. If they were sent
guns they would crowd together for protection, and as a mob they could
always be beaten by even a small force of Turks. Only, if they were
given no guns, it was clear that they would go home, and this would end
the Revolt. Artillery, then, was the only problem; the Revolt itself
was a real thing, the deep enthusiasm of a whole province.
VIII
Later Lawrence saw Feisal again and promised to do what he could.
Stores and supplies for his exclusive use would be landed at Yenbo, a
hundred and twenty miles north of Rabegh, and about seventy miles from
where he now was at Hamra. He would arrange, if he could, for more
volunteers from the prisoners’ camps. Gun-crews and machine-gun crews
would be formed from such volunteers, and they would be given whatever
mountain-guns or light machine-guns could be spared in Egypt. Lastly,
he would ask for British Army officers, a few good men with technical
knowledge, to be sent to him as advisers and to keep touch for him with
Egypt. Feisal thanked Lawrence warmly and asked him to return soon.
Lawrence replied that his duties in Cairo prevented him from actual
fighting, but perhaps his chiefs would let him pay a visit later when
Feisal’s present needs were satisfied and things were going better.
Meanwhile he wished to go to Yenbo and so on to Egypt as quickly as
possible.
Feisal gave him an escort of fourteen noblemen of the Juheina tribe
and in the evening he rode off. The same desolate country as before,
but more broken, with shallow valleys and lava hills and finally a
great stretch of sand-dunes to the distant sea. To the right, twenty
miles away, was the great mountain Jebel Rudhwa, one of the grandest
in the country, rising sheer from the plain; Lawrence had seen it from
a hundred miles away from the well where Ali ibn el Hussein and his
cousin had watered. At Yenbo Lawrence stayed at the house of Feisal’s
agent, and while waiting for the ship which was to take him off, wrote
out his report. After four days the ship appeared; the commander
was Captain Boyle, who had helped in the taking of Jiddah. Captain
Boyle did not like Lawrence at first sight, because he was wearing a
native headcloth which he thought unsoldierlike. However, he took him
to Jiddah, where he met Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, the British Admiral in
command of the Red Sea Fleet, who was just about to cross over to the
Sudan.
The Navy under Sir Rosslyn had been of the greatest assistance to the
Sherif, giving him guns, machine-guns, landing parties and every other
sort of help; whereas the British Army in Egypt was doing nothing for
the Revolt. Practically no military help came except from the native
Egyptian Army, the only troops at the disposal of the British High
Commissioner. Lawrence crossed over with the Admiral and at Port Sudan
met two English officers of the Egyptian army on their way to command
the Egyptian troops which were with the Sherif, and to help train the
regular forces now being formed at Rabegh. Of one of these, Joyce, we
shall hear again: the other, Davenport, also did much for the Arab army
but, working in the southern theatre of Revolt, was not with Lawrence
in his northern campaign. In the Sudan, at Khartoum, Lawrence met the
commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army who a few days later was made
the new High Commissioner in Egypt. He was an old believer in the
Revolt and glad to hear the hopeful news Lawrence brought: with his
good wishes Lawrence returned to Cairo.
In Cairo there was great argument about the threatened Turkish advance
on Mecca: the question was whether a brigade of Allied troops should be
sent there: aeroplanes had already gone. The French were very anxious
that this step should be taken, and their representative at Jiddah,
a Colonel, had recently brought to Suez, to tempt the British,
some artillery, machine-guns, and cavalry and infantry, all Mohammedan
soldiers from the French colony of Algeria, with French officers. It
was nearly decided to send British troops with these to Rabegh, under
the French colonel’s command. Lawrence decided to stop this. He wrote a
strong report to Headquarters saying that the Arab tribes could defend
the hills between Medina and Rabegh quite well by themselves if given
guns and advice, but they would certainly scatter to their tents if
they heard of a landing of foreigners. Moreover, on his way up from
Rabegh he had learned that the road through Rabegh, though the most
used, was not the only approach to Mecca. The Turks could take a short
cut by using wells of which no mention had been made in any report, and
avoid Rabegh altogether; so a brigade landed there would be useless
anyhow. Lawrence accused the French colonel of having motives of his
own (not military ones) for wishing to land troops, and of intriguing
against the Sherif and against the English: he gave evidence in support
of these charges.
The Commander-in-Chief of the British Army was only too glad of
Lawrence’s report as he still had no wish to help the ‘side-show.’ He
sent for Lawrence. But first the Chief of Staff took Lawrence aside,
talked amicably and patronizingly to him about general subjects and
how jolly it was to have been at Oxford as an undergrad—he apparently
thought that Lawrence was a youngster who had left for the War in his
first year at college—and begged him not to frighten or encourage the
Commander-in-Chief into sending troops to Rabegh, because there were
no men to spare on side-shows. Lawrence agreed on condition that the
Chief of Staff would see that at least extra stores and arms and
a few capable officers were sent. The bargain was struck and kept.
The brigade was never sent. Lawrence was much amused at the change in
the attitude of the staff towards him. He was no longer a conceited
young puppy, but a very valuable officer, of great intelligence,
with a pungent style of writing. All because, for a wonder, his
view of the Revolt was agreeable to them. It is recorded that the
Commander-in-Chief was asked, after Lawrence’s interview with him, what
he thought of Lawrence. He merely replied: ‘I was disappointed: he did
not come in dancing-pumps.’
The friendly Head of the Arab Bureau, to which Lawrence was now
transferred, told him that his place was with Feisal as his military
adviser. Lawrence protested that he was not a real soldier, that he
hated responsibility, and that regular officers were shortly being sent
from London to direct the war properly. But his protest was overruled.
The regular officers might not arrive for months, and meanwhile some
responsible Englishman had to be with Feisal. So he went and left his
map-making, his Arab Bulletin (a secret record of the progress of the
revolutionary movements) and his reports about the whereabouts of the
different Turkish divisions, to other hands, to play a part for which
he felt no inclination.
IX
In December he went by ship to Yenbo, which on his advice had been made
the special base for landing supplies for Feisal’s army. Here he found
a British officer, Captain Garland of the Royal Engineers, teaching
the Arabs the proper use of dynamite for destroying railways. Garland
spoke Arabic well and knew the quick ways both of destruction and of
instruction. From him Lawrence, too, learned not to be afraid of high
explosive: Garland would shovel detonators, fuse and the whole bag of
tricks into his pocket and jump on his camel for a week’s ride to the
pilgrims’ railway. He had a weak heart and was constantly ill, but he
was as careless of his health as of his detonators and kept on until
he had derailed the first Turkish train and broken the first bridge.
Shortly after this he died.
The general position was now this: The advanced tribes this side of
Medina were keeping up the pressure on the Turks and every day sent in
to Feisal captured camels or Turkish rifles or prisoners or deserters,
for which he paid at a fixed rate. His brother Zeid was taking his
place in Harb territory while he made sure of the tribes who were
covering Yenbo. His other brother Abdulla had moved up from Mecca to
the east of Medina, and by the end of November 1916 was cutting off
the city’s supplies from the central oases. But he could only blockade
Medina, he could not make the joint attack with Feisal and Ali and
Zeid because he had with him only three machine-guns and ten almost
useless mountain-guns captured from the Turks at Taif and Mecca. At
Rabegh four British aeroplanes had arrived and twenty-three guns,
mostly obsolete and of fourteen different patterns, but still, guns.
There were now three thousand Arab infantry with Ali, of whom two
thousand belonged to the new regular army which Aziz was training: also
nine hundred camel corps and three hundred troops from the Egyptian
army. French gunners were promised. At Yenbo, Feisal was also having
his peasants, slaves and paupers organized into regular battalions in
imitation of Aziz’s model. Garland held bombing classes there, fired
guns, repaired machine-guns, wheels and harness, and the rifles of the
whole army.
Lawrence had decided that the next thing to be done was to attack Wejh,
a big port two hundred miles away from Yenbo up the Red Sea. The chief
Arab tribe in those parts was the Billi; Feisal was in touch with
these, and had thoughts of asking the Juheina tribe, whose territory
was between Yenbo and Wejh, to make an expedition against the place.
Lawrence said he would go to help raise the tribe and would give
military advice. So he rode inland in company with Sherif Abd el Kerim,
a half brother of the Emir of the Juheina. Lawrence was surprised at
the sherif’s colour; Abd el Kerim was a coal-black Abyssinian, son
of a slave girl whom the old Emir had married late in life. He was
twenty-six years old, restless and active, and was very merry and
intimate with, every one. He hated the Turks, who despised him for his
colour (the Arabs had little colour-feeling against Africans: much more
against the Indians). He was also a famous rider and made a point of
taking his journeys at three times the usual speed. On this occasion
Lawrence, since the camel he was riding was not his own and the day was
cool, did not object.
They started in the early afternoon from Yenbo at a canter which they
kept up for three hours without a pause. Then they stopped and ate
bread and drank coffee while Abd el Kerim, who made no pretence
at dignity, rolled about on his carpet in a dog-fight with one of his
men: after this he sat up exhausted, and they exchanged comic stories
until they were rested enough to get up and dance. At sunset they
remounted and an hour’s mad race in the dusk brought them to the end
of the flat country and a low range of hills. Here the panting camels
had to walk up a narrow winding valley, which so annoyed Abd el Kerim
that when he reached the top he galloped the party downhill in the dark
at break-neck speed; in half an hour they reached the plain on the
other side, where were the chief date gardens of the Southern Juheina.
At Yenbo it had been said that these gardens and Nakhl Mubarak, the
village beside them, were deserted, but as they came up they saw the
flame-lit smoke of camp-fires and heard the roaring of thousands of
excited camels, the shouting of lost men, volleys of signal shots,
squealing of mules. Abd el Kerim was alarmed. They quietly rode into
the village and, finding a deserted courtyard, hobbled the camels
inside out of view. Then Abd el Kerim loaded his rifle and went on
tiptoe down the street to find out what was happening; the others
waited anxiously. Soon he returned to say that Feisal had arrived with
his camel corps and wished to see Lawrence.
[Illustration:
description: Photo wide shot of dense grove of palm trees
caption: THE VILLAGE OF DATE PALMS
(Nakhl Mubarak)
_Copyright_
]
They went through the village and came on a wild noisy confusion of men
and camels: pressing through these they suddenly found themselves in a
dry but still slimy river-bed where the army was encamped, filling the
valley from side to side. There were hundreds of fires of crackling
thorn-wood with Arabs eating or making coffee or sleeping close
together muffled in their cloaks. Camels were everywhere, couched or
tied by one leg to the ground, with new ones always coming in and
the old ones jumping up on three legs to join them, roaring with hunger
and alarm. Caravans were being unloaded, patrols going out, and dozens
of Egyptian mules were bucking angrily in the middle of the scene. In
a calm region in the middle of the river-bed was Feisal, sitting on
his carpet with Maulud the Mesopotamian patriot and a silent cousin,
Sharraf, who was the chief magistrate of Taif. Feisal was dictating
to a kneeling secretary while at the same time another secretary was
reading the latest reports aloud by the light of a silvered lamp held
by a slave.
Feisal, quiet as ever, welcomed Lawrence with a smile until he could
finish his dictation. After it was done he apologized for the confusion
and waved the slaves back so that the talk could be private. The slaves
and onlookers cleared a space, but at that moment a wild camel broke
through the ring, plunging and trumpeting. Maulud dashed at its head to
drag it away, but it dragged him instead, and its load coming untied,
an avalanche of camel-fodder came pouring over the lamp, Lawrence and
Feisal’s cousin. Feisal said gravely, ‘God be praised that it was
neither butter nor bags of gold.’ Then he explained what had happened
in the last twenty-four hours.
A big Turkish column had slipped behind the barrier of Harb tribesmen
on guard in the valley where Lawrence had first met Feisal, and cut
their retreat. The tribesmen farther down the valley panicked; instead
of holding up the Turks by sniping from the hills they ran away in
two’s and three’s to save their families before it was too late.
Turkish mounted men rushed down the valley to Zeid’s headquarters, and
nearly caught Zeid asleep in his tent: however, he got warning in time
and managed to hold up the attack while most of his tents and
baggage were packed on camels and driven away. Then he escaped himself;
his army became a loose mob. They rode wildly towards Yenbo, which was
three days’ journey away, by the road south of the one that Lawrence
had just taken.
Feisal hearing the news had rushed down here to protect the main
road to Yenbo which now lay open: he had only arrived an hour before
Lawrence. He had five thousand men with him and the Egyptian gunners,
the Turks perhaps had three or four thousand. But his spy-system
was breaking down—the Harb tribesmen were bringing in wild and
contradictory reports—and he had no idea whether the Turks would attack
Yenbo, or leave it alone and attack Rabegh, a hundred and twenty miles
down the coast, and so go on to Mecca. The best that could happen would
be if they heard of Feisal’s presence here and wasted time trying to
catch his main army (which was what the military textbooks would have
advised) while Yenbo had time to put up proper defences.
Meanwhile he sat here on his carpet and did all he could. He listened
to the news, and settled all the petitions, complaints and difficulties
that came up before him. This went on until half-past four in the
morning, when it grew very cold in the damp valley and a mist rose,
soaking every one’s clothes. The camp gradually settled down for the
night. Feisal finished his most urgent work, and the party, after
eating a few dates, curled up on the wet carpet and went to sleep.
Lawrence, shivering, saw Feisal’s guards creep up and spread their
cloaks gently over Feisal when they were sure that he was asleep.
Awake, he would have refused such luxury.
An hour later the party rose stiffly and the slaves lit a fire of
the ribs of palm-leaves to warm them. Messengers were still coming in
from all sides with rumours of an immediate attack and the camp was
not far off panic. So Feisal decided to move, partly because if it
rained in the hills they would be flooded out, partly to work off the
general restlessness. His drums beat, the camels were loaded hurriedly.
At the second drum, every one leapt into the saddle and drew off to
right or left, leaving a broad lane down which Feisal rode on his
mare; his cousin followed a pace behind him. Then came a wild-looking
standard-bearer with a face like a hawk and long plaits of black hair
falling on either side of his face: he was dressed in bright colours
and rode a tall camel. Behind was a bodyguard of eight hundred men.
Feisal chose a good camping-ground not far off, to the north of the
village of the date-palms.
The next two days Lawrence spent with Feisal and got a close view of
his methods of dealing with a badly shaken army. He restored their lost
spirits by his never-failing calm courage and listened to every man
who came with petitions. He did not cut them short even when they put
their troubles into verse and sang songs of many stanzas at his tent
door. This extreme patience taught Lawrence much. Feisal’s self-control
seemed equally great. One of Zeid’s principal men came in to explain
the shameful story of their flight. Feisal just laughed at him in
public and sent him aside to wait while he saw the sheikhs of the Harb
and of the Ageyl whose carelessness in letting the Turks get by in
the first place had brought about the disaster. He did not reproach
them, but chaffed them gently about the fine show they had put up and
the fine losses that they had suffered. Then he called back Zeid’s
messenger and lowered the tent-flap to show that this was private
business.