mounted men and officers. There were only a hundred and sixty prisoners
taken, many of them wounded, for the Howeitat were avenging yesterday’s
murder of their women and children. Three hundred dead and dying were
scattered in the valley. Auda came up on foot, his eyes mad with
delight of battle, and the words bubbling incoherently from his mouth:
‘Work, work, where are words? Work, bullets, Abu Tayi ...’ and he held
up his shattered field-glasses, his pierced pistol-holster, and his
leather sword-scabbard cut to ribbons. He had been the target of a
volley which had killed his mare under him, but the six bullets through
his clothes had not touched him. He told Lawrence later in confidence
that thirteen years before he had bought a miniature Koran as an
amulet. It had cost him one hundred and twenty pounds and he had never
since been wounded. The book was a Glasgow photographic reproduction
and was priced at eighteen-pence inside the cover; but nothing
that the deadly Auda did might be laughed at. Least of all by Lawrence
who, I think, envied Auda’s natural mediæval style; he himself could
only doubtfully and self-consciously use the materials of this
scientific age in the mediæval setting. Mohammed al Dheilan was angry
with Auda and Lawrence, calling them fools and saying that Lawrence was
worse than Auda for insulting him and provoking the folly that might
have killed them all. However, Lawrence could not regret his action,
for the Arabs had only had two men killed and he would have been
content to have lost many more. Time was of the greatest importance
because of the food shortage, and this victory would frighten the
little Turkish garrisons between Aba el Lissan and Akaba into quick
surrender. As for Maan, prisoners told him that there were only two
companies of Turks left in the town, not enough to defend it; much less
to send reinforcements to Aba el Lissan.
The Howeitat then clamoured to be led to Maan, a magnificent place to
loot, though the day’s plunder should have satisfied them. However,
Nasir and Auda helped Lawrence to restrain them; it would have
been absurd to have gone there without supports, regulars, guns or
communications, without gold even—for they were already issuing notes
with promises to pay ‘when Akaba is taken,’ the first notes ever passed
current in Arabia—and no base nearer than Wejh, three hundred miles
away. Yet it would be wise to alarm Maan further, so mounted men went
north and captured two small garrison-villages between them and it; and
news of this, and of the Aba el Lissan disaster, and of the capture of
herds of convalescent army camels pasturing north of Maan by another
of these raiding parties, all reached Maan together and caused a
proper panic.
That night Lawrence experienced the shameful reaction after the
victory: he went walking among the plundered dead with a sick mind; his
thoughts were painful, emotional and shallow. Auda called him away at
last; they must leave the battlefield. Partly this was a superstitious
fear of the ghosts of the dead, partly a fear of Turkish reinforcements
and of neighbouring clans, his blood-enemies, who might catch his
force disorganized and pay off old grudges. So they moved on into the
hills and camped in a hollow sheltered from the wind. While the tired
men slept, Nasir and Auda dictated letters to the Howeitat near Akaba
telling them of the victory and asking them to besiege the Turkish
posts in their district until the force arrived. At the same time one
of the captured officers to whom they had been kind wrote a letter for
them to the garrisons at Guweira, Kethera and other posts on the way,
advising surrender.
The food had been exhausted and water was scarce, so the expedition
had to make haste forward. Fortunately the chief Howeitat sheikh of
the hill tribes, an old fox who had been balancing in his mind which
side to take, was impressed by the victory and captured the Guweira
garrison of a hundred and twenty men. The next post on the Akaba road
refused to surrender, so they decided to attack it, and in irony
assigned the honour to the old fox and his less weary tribesmen,
advising him to attack after dark. It was a strong post commanding
the valley and looked costly to take. The sheikh shrank from the task
and made difficulties, pleading the full moon. Lawrence promised that
there would be no moon that night; by the greatest good luck
he had noticed in his diary that an eclipse was due. So while the
superstitious Turkish soldiers were firing rifles and clanging copper
pots to frighten off the demon of darkness who was devouring their
moon, the Arabs crept up and captured the place without loss.
They went on through the defiles and found post after post deserted.
News came that the defenders had all been withdrawn to trenches four
miles from Akaba, a magnificent position for beating off a landing from
the sea, though facing the wrong way for an attack from inland. They
were, it was said, only three hundred men and had little food (the
Arabs were in the same fix), but were prepared to resist strongly. This
was found to be true. The Arabs sent a summons to surrender by white
flag and by prisoners, but the Turks shot at both; at last a little
Turkish conscript said that he could arrange it. He came back an hour
later with a message that the Turks would surrender in two days if help
did not come from Maan. This was folly; the tribesmen could not be held
back much longer and it might mean the massacre of every Turk and loss
to the Arabs too. So the conscript was given a sovereign and Lawrence
and one or two more walked down close to the trenches with him again,
sending him in to fetch an officer to parley with them. After some
hesitation one came and, when Lawrence explained that the Arab forces
were growing and tempers were short, agreed to surrender next morning.
The next morning fighting broke out again, hundreds of hill-men having
come in that night knowing nothing of the arrangement; but Nasir
stopped it and the surrender went off quietly after all. There were now
no more Turks left between them and the sea.
When the Arabs rushed in to plunder Lawrence noticed an engineer
in grey German uniform with a red beard and puzzled blue eyes; he was a
well-borer and knew no Turkish. He begged Lawrence to explain what was
happening and was astonished when he was told that this was a rebellion
of the Arabs against the Turks. He wanted to know who the Arab leader
was, and Lawrence answered: ‘The Sherif of Mecca.’ The German supposed
that he would be sent to Mecca, but Lawrence told him, ‘No, Egypt.’
He inquired the price of sugar there and was glad to hear that it was
cheap and plentiful. He was only sorry to leave the artesian well
he had been boring, the pump of which was only half-finished. After
quenching their thirst here with help of a sludge-bucket, Lawrence and
his men raced on to Akaba in a driving sandstorm and splashed into the
sea on July the sixth, exactly two months after setting out from Wejh.
XVI
Akaba was in ruins. Repeated bombardments by French and British
warships had knocked the little town to pieces. To the Arabs it seemed
hardly worth while taking at the cost of so much blood and pain and
hunger. And hunger was still with them. They now had seven hundred
Turkish prisoners to feed in addition to their original five hundred
men and two thousand allies, no money (or any market to buy food
in); and the last meal had been two days before. All that they had
to eat was riding-camels, a most expensive form of food and a poor
one. And dates. But this was July and the dates were still green.
Raw, they tasted very nasty, and cooking made them no better. The
only alternative to constant hunger was violent pains. The forty-two
officer-prisoners were an intolerable nuisance. The colonel of the
Turkish battalion at Aba el Lissan had been a difficulty ever since
his capture, when Nasir had only just saved him from the fury of the
tribesmen: the silly man was trying to restore the battle with a little
pocket-pistol. Later he had grumbled at being given a quarter loaf of
brown Turkish ration bread. Farraj and Daud had looted it for their
master Lawrence, who divided it up among the four of them. The colonel
asked was it a fit breakfast for a Turkish officer. Lawrence answered,
certainly it was (he himself a British staff-officer had eaten his with
relish), and he must expect to make it do for lunch and dinner as well
and probably for to-morrow’s breakfast, lunch and dinner too. The Turk
also complained that one of the Arabs had insulted him with an obscene
Turkish word: Lawrence answered that the man must have learned it from
one of his Turkish masters and was rendering to Cæsar the things that
were Cæsar’s. At Akaba it was worse still: the officer-prisoners
were disgusted when they found how unprovided their captors were: they
thought it was only a fraud to annoy them and would not believe that
Lawrence and Nasir had not all the delicacies of Cairo hidden somewhere
in their saddle-bags.
[Illustration:
description: Photo wide shot framed by trees of moored
ships and boats; people and tents are in
foreground
caption: AKABA
_Copyright_
]
In the evening, the first reaction after success having passed off,
they thought of defence. Auda went back to Guweira and three other
defensive posts were set in a semi-circle about Akaba. Lawrence decided
to go to Egypt at once with the great news and ask for food, money
and arms to be sent at once by sea as reward. He chose eight men to
go with him, mostly Howeitat, on the best camels of the force. A bad
ride was ahead of them, and it was difficult to decide whether to go
gently, sparing the animals, in which case they might fail with hunger;
or whether to ride hard, when they might break down with exhaustion or
sore feet in mid-desert. Lawrence decided in the end to keep at a walk;
if they could hold out, they would reach Suez in fifty hours. But in
such cases the test of endurance is harder for the man than for the
camel, and Lawrence was near the end of his strength, having ridden an
average of fifty miles a day for the last month, with very little food.
To make halts for cooking unnecessary they carried lumps of boiled
camel and cooked dates in a rag behind their saddles.
The camels were trembling for weariness early in the night, for the
road wound up across the Sinai hills with a gradient of one in three
and a half. When they reached the top one camel had to be sent back as
unfit for further travel. The others were allowed to graze for an hour.
About midnight they reached Themed, the only wells on the journey,
watered the camels and drank themselves but did not stay many minutes.
They rode all that night and when the sun rose gave the camels
half an hour’s grazing, then on again all day until sunset, when they
halted for an hour. They rode all that second night at a mechanical
walk, over hills, and when dawn came saw a melon-field sown in this
no-man’s-land between the armies by some adventurous Arab. They halted
for an hour and cracked the unripe melons to cool their mouths, then
again forward until Suez came in sight, or something that probably
was Suez, a jumble of points bobbing about far away in the mirage.
They reached great trench lines with forts and barbed wire, roads and
railways; but they were all deserted and falling into decay; the war
had long since moved on a hundred and fifty miles to the north-east.
At last in the middle of the afternoon of the third day they arrived
at the Suez Canal. They had ridden for forty-nine hours without sleep
and with only four short halts and had come a hundred and sixty-eight
miles. When it is remembered that they were tired men before they
started, and that the camels were exhausted too, this must rank as a
good ride, though Lawrence surpassed it himself later.
He found himself still on the wrong side of the Canal, and the
garrison-post that he had aimed for was deserted—he did not know why,
but learned later that there had been an outbreak of plague, so the
troops were out camping in the uninfected desert. He found a telephone
in a deserted hut and called up the Canal Headquarters. He was told
that they were sorry but they couldn’t take him across; there were
no free boats; but next morning for sure they would send across and
take him to the Quarantine Department (for he was now technically
infectious). He tried again, explaining that he had urgent messages
for Headquarters at Cairo, but he was rung off. Fortunately the
telephone-exchange operator told him with friendly oaths that it
was no use talking to the Canal people, and put him through to a Major,
the Embarkation officer at Suez. He was an old friend of the Revolt,
who would catch Red Sea warships as they entered the harbour and make
them unwillingly pile their decks with stores for Wejh or Yenbo. The
Major understood at once the urgency of the matter and sent his own
launch from the harbour to take Lawrence across, making him swear not
to tell the Canal authorities, until after the war, of this invasion of
their sacred waters. The men and camels were sent up the Canal for ten
miles to a rest-camp for animals; he arranged rations for them there by
telephone.
At Suez where he arrived verminous and filthy, with his clothes
sticking to his saddle-sores, he went to a hotel and had six iced
drinks, a good dinner, a hot bath, and a comfortable bed. He
appreciated this dull hotel-comfort after having in the last four
desperate weeks, though not yet recovered from a severe illness, ridden
fourteen hundred miles on camel-back through hostile country. They were
weeks of little sleep, poor food, frequent fighting and never-ceasing
anxiety at the hottest time of the year in one of the hottest countries
of the world. Later he found that he weighed only seven stone, nine
stone being his normal weight; though in his first year at the
University he had carried eleven without being out of condition.
He went to Cairo by train on a permit-ticket given him by the
Embarkation officer. A mixed party of Egyptian and British military
police on the train was most suspicious of him. When he said that he
was in the uniform of a staff-officer of the Sherif of Mecca they
could not believe it. They looked at his bare feet, white silk robes,
gold head-rope and dagger. ‘What army, sir?’ asked the sergeant.
‘The Meccan army,’ Lawrence answered. ‘Never heard of it, don’t
know the uniform,’ the sergeant said. ‘Well,’ said Lawrence, ‘would
you recognize the uniform of a Montenegrin dragoon?’ This beat the
sergeant. Any Allied troops in uniform might travel without permits,
and the police, though expected to recognize all the uniforms of every
army, were not even sure who all the Allies were. Mecca might be the
name of some new country that had joined in without their knowledge.
They wired up the line and a perspiring intelligence-officer boarded
the train near Ismailia to check the statements of this possible spy;
he was very angry to find that he had been sent on a fool’s errand.
At Ismailia all changed and waited on the platform for the Port
Said-Cairo express. Another train had also just arrived and from it
stepped a tall determined-looking general in company with Admiral
Wemyss, the Naval Commander-in-Chief, and two or three important
staff-officers. They marched up and down the platform deep in talk.
After awhile Lawrence caught the eye of a naval captain, who came over
and spoke to him, wondering who he was. When the captain heard of the
surprise capture of Akaba he was properly excited, promising to have
a relief-ship sent there at once loaded with all the spare food in
Suez. He would make immediate arrangements on his own responsibility
so as not to disturb General Allenby. ‘Allenby? what’s he doing here?’
asked Lawrence. ‘Oh, he’s Commander-in-Chief now.’ This was most
important news. Allenby’s predecessor, who at first had been against
the Revolt, had gradually been brought to realize its value to him, and
in his last dispatches to London had written in praise of the Arabs
and particularly of Feisal. But after the second battle of Gaza, which
had been forced on him by orders from London against his better
judgment and ended in defeat, he had been recalled. Lawrence wondered
whether he would have to spend months training Allenby in the same way
to realize the importance of the Arabs. Allenby had been commanding
divisions in France since the outbreak of war and was full of Western
Front notions of gun-power and masses of men wearing down the enemy
by sheer slaughter, ideas which did not apply at all well to war in
the East. But he was a cavalry man and ready perhaps to go back to the
old-fashioned idea of a war of movement and manœuvre.
Later at Cairo he sent for Lawrence, having got his report about Akaba.
It was a comic interview. Lawrence was still in his Arab clothes,
because when he went to the hotel to look out his old army uniform he
found that insects had been at it. Allenby sat in his chair looking
at Lawrence, very much puzzled at this haggard little man, with silk
robes and a face burned brick red with the sun, explaining with a map
a fantastic plan for raising the Eastern Syrians in revolt behind the
enemy lines. He listened quietly, asking few questions and trying to
make up his mind how far Lawrence was a charlatan and how far a real
performer—a doubt that was also constantly in Lawrence’s own mind.
He asked what help he wanted. Lawrence said, stores and arms and a
fund of two hundred thousand pounds in gold to convince and control
his converts. Allenby put up his chin at last, a well-known decisive
gesture and said, ‘Well, I will do for you what I can.’ And meant it.
The meeting of Lawrence with Feisal had begun a new successful phase of
the war in Arabia, the meeting of Lawrence with Allenby began an even
more successful one.
Hitherto Lawrence had sent few and misleading reports to Egypt—even
these were, I am told, often doctored by the Staff on the way to
the Commander-in-Chief—because he could not be sure how acceptable
the truth would be, or how well his secrets would be kept; he had
not, for instance, warned the Commander-in-Chief of his intended
capture of Akaba. But he learned to take Allenby more deeply into his
confidence and never afterwards regretted it. There was little personal
intimacy between the two then or afterwards—they have not met since
1921—but great trust and liking. Allenby is an extremely practical
man and a first-class soldier: spiritual conflicts or philosophic
doubts do not appear to touch him and it is impossible to imagine
him living among Bedouin or doing any of the crazy things that were
Lawrence’s daily life. Lawrence’s methods and motives were a mystery
and remained a mystery to him, but he gratefully accepted him as a
fact and let the rest go by. Lawrence was simply to him, as he told
me recently, a first-class irregular leader and exactly the man he
wanted for the protection of the floating right flank of his army. I
asked whether in his opinion Lawrence would have made a good general
of regular forces too. ‘A very bad general,’ said Allenby, ‘but a good
Commander-in-Chief, yes. There is no show that I would believe him
incapable of running if he wanted to, but he would have to be given
a free hand.’ I also asked Lawrence his opinion of Allenby. ‘A great
man,’ said Lawrence. ‘For instance?’ I asked. ‘For instance, when a
Major-General of the Royal Army Medical Corps, the surgeon-in-chief of
Allenby’s army, had to go, he chose to replace him with the Medical
Officer of a Territorial unit, a mere lieutenant-colonel. And surely
a man who can persuade armoured cars, cavalry, infantry, camel-corps,
aeroplanes, warships and Bedouin irregulars to combine in a single
military operation is a great man, isn’t he?’ When recently
Lawrence published his book the one favourable opinion that he was
really anxious to get was Allenby’s, for the Field-Marshal is as
strict on points of style—he loves Milton’s _Comus_—as upon historical
accuracy. Allenby approved both its style and accuracy; which satisfies
Lawrence completely.
Meanwhile sixteen thousand pounds in English sovereigns were drawn
from a Cairo bank to be sent to Nasir at once to enable him to pay his
debts. It was important to redeem the notes that he had given out,
which were army telegraph-forms pencilled with promises to pay gold at
Akaba. The money went to Suez to join the flour that was being quickly
loaded there, ready to be rushed to famished Akaba. These were the
first things that mattered. After this the changed aspect of the war in
Arabia had to be discussed with the Arab Bureau.
Lawrence began talking with authority. His capture of Akaba made him a
person of very much greater importance than before and had given him
confidence in himself. He told his seniors that the big operations
about the railway near Medina were a mistake. The war had moved north
now. He suggested that the base at Wejh should be closed down, as Yenbo
had been closed before, and that the whole of Feisal’s army should
move up north and make its base at Akaba. Akaba was on Allenby’s right
flank, only a hundred miles from his centre, but eight hundred miles
from Mecca. Once there at Akaba, it was logical that Feisal should no
longer be tied to his father at Mecca, the nominal Commander-in-Chief
of the Arabs, but should be made an army-corps commander under
direct control of Allenby. Lawrence had talked this over with Feisal
long before in Wejh and Feisal had been ready to accept. The High
Commissioner of Egypt who hitherto had been the chief British
partner did not mind the transference being made; though Feisal’s
removal would weaken the forces in Arabia. Abdulla, Ali and Zeid were
strong enough to keep the Turks in Medina from making another attempt
on Mecca. There was only one difficulty and that was Feisal’s father,
the Sherif. Would he make any difficulty? Fortunately Colonel Wilson,
the High Commissioner’s representative at Jiddah, talked him over, and
Feisal decided to move up to Akaba at once. He sent his camel-corps up
the coast and the remainder of the army under Jaafar was transported by
a warship. More stores and ammunition were sent to Akaba, and British
officers to distribute it properly at Feisal’s orders.
Lawrence was at Jiddah with Wilson when two startling telegrams arrived
from the intelligence service in Egypt. The first reported that the
Howeitat at Akaba were carrying on a treacherous correspondence with
the Turks at Maan, the next that Auda was connected with the plot.
This was alarming, for though Lawrence could not believe it of Auda,
Mohammed el Dheilan was quite capable of double play, and the old fox
who had captured Guweira was still less to be trusted. Three days later
Lawrence arrived by warship at Akaba, where Nasir had no notion of
anything wrong. He only told Nasir that he wished to greet Auda, and
asked for a swift camel and a guide. At dawn he arrived at Guweira and
found Auda, Mohammed and Zaal in a tent together. They were confused at
his sudden appearance but said that all was well and they ate together
as friends. Other Howeitat chiefs came in and Lawrence distributed the
Sherif’s presents, telling them among other things that Nasir had at
last got his month’s leave to Mecca. The Sherif was enthusiastic
for the Revolt and would not allow his officers leave from the front.
Poor Nasir’s banishment from his family had been a stock joke and it
was said that he would certainly deserve a holiday when Akaba fell; but
Nasir had not believed that it would be granted until he was handed
Hussein’s letter the day before. In gratitude Nasir sold Lawrence a
famous pedigree camel, Ghazala, as the owner of which he had great
honour among the Howeitat.