should move up to Sheikh Saad, north of Deraa, astride the line of
retreat of the main Turkish forces. The British staff-officer appointed
by Joyce as senior military adviser for the expedition objected. He
said that Allenby had set the Arabs as watchmen merely of the Fourth
Army; they had seen its disorderly flight and their duty was over. They
might now honourably fall back twenty miles out of the way to the east
and there join forces with the Druses under their leader, Lawrence’s
foolish friend Nesib.
Lawrence would not hear of this. He was most anxious for the Arabs to
be first in Damascus and to do their full share of the fighting. To
thrust behind Deraa into Sheikh Saad would put more pressure on the
Turks than any British unit was in a position to put. They could be
prevented from making another stand this side of Damascus, and the
capture of Damascus meant the end of the War in the East, and probably
the end of the European War too. So for every reason the Arabs should
go forward. The staff-officer would not be convinced. He argued and
tried to drag Nun Said into the debate. Finally he insisted that he
was the senior military adviser and must reluctantly point out that
as a regular officer he knew his business. It was not the first time
that Lawrence had been slighted for not being a regular. He merely
sighed, and said that he must sleep now, because he was getting up
early to cross the line with his body-guard and the Bedouin, whatever
the regulars did. However, Nuri Said decided to come with Lawrence and
so did Pisani, and so did the rest of the British officers. And
Tallal and the Emir Nuri and old Auda were already pressing forward.
Tallal and Auda undertook attacks on Ezraa and Ghazale, towns on the
Damascus railway. The Emir Nuri would sweep towards Deraa in search
of escaping Turkish parties. Lawrence himself went to Sheikh Saad
with his body-guard, arriving there at dawn on the twenty-seventh of
September. There was nearly a serious accident here, for they were
invited to guest at the tent of one of the Emir Nuri’s blood-enemies.
Fortunately, the man himself was absent, so Lawrence’s party accepted:
Nuri, when he arrived, would find himself temporary host of his enemy’s
family and have to obey the rules. It was a great relief. Throughout
the campaign they had been bothered with these same blood-feuds, barely
suspended by Feisal’s authority. It was a constant strain keeping
enemies apart, trying to keep the hostile clans in friendly rivalry on
separate ventures, making them camp always with a neutral clan between,
and avoiding any suspicion of favouritism. As Lawrence comments, the
campaign in France would have been harder to control if each division,
almost each brigade, of the British Army had hated every other one
with a deadly hatred and had fought at every chance meeting. However,
Feisal, Nasir and he had managed successfully for two years and the end
was only a few days off.
Auda returned boasting, having taken Ghazale by storm and captured
a train, guns and two hundred men. Tallal had taken Ezraa, held by
none other than Abd el Kader, the mad Algerian. When Tallal came
the townsmen joined him and Abd el Kader had to escape to Damascus.
Tallal’s horsemen were too heavy with booty to catch him. The Emir Nuri
captured four hundred Turks with mules and machine-guns: these
prisoners were farmed out to remote villages as labourers to earn their
keep. The rest of the army now arrived under Nuri Said and the peasants
came shyly up to look at it. Feisal’s army had hitherto been only a
legendary thing. When no Turks were about, the peasants had spoken in
whispers the famous names of its leaders—Tallal, Nasir. Nuri, Auda,
‘Aurans’; whom now they saw in the flesh.
Lawrence and five or six others went up a hill for a look south to see
if anything was moving. To their astonishment a company of regulars
in uniform—Turks, Austrians, Germans—was coming slowly towards them
with eight machine-guns mounted on pack-animals. They were marching up
from Galilee towards Damascus after their defeat by Allenby, thinking
themselves fifty miles from any war. Some of the Ruwalla nobles were at
once sent to ambush them in a narrow lane: the officers showed fight
and were instantly killed, the men threw down their arms and in five
minutes had been searched and robbed and were being led off to the
prisoners’ camp in a cattle-pound. Next, Zaal and the Howeitat were
sent against three or four other parties seen moving in the distance,
and soon returned, each man leading a mule or a pack-horse. Zaal
disdained to take such broken men prisoners. ‘We gave them to the girls
and boys of the village for servants,’ he sneered.
The whole of the Hauran had now risen and in two days’ time sixty
thousand armed men would be waiting to cut up the Turkish retreat.
A British aeroplane hovered over and dropped word that Bulgaria had
surrendered. Evidently the whole war would soon be at an end as well as
this Eastern campaign. The Germans were burning storehouses and
aeroplanes at Deraa and another aeroplane dropped word that a Turkish
column of four thousand men was retiring north from the town towards
Sheikh Saad, and another column of two thousand from Mezerib. The
smaller column seemed a safer size to attack, so the bigger, which
later proved to be more like seven thousand strong, was let go by, with
merely the Ruwalla horse and some Hauran peasants to harry it and cut
off stragglers.
Tallal was anxious about the Mezerib Turks, because their path would
lie through his own village of Tafas. He hurried there as fast as he
could, determined to hold a ridge south of it. Lawrence galloped ahead
of him, hoping to delay the Turks until the rest of the army came up.
Unfortunately the camels and horses were tired out. On their way they
met mounted Arabs herding a drove of Turkish prisoners stripped to
the waist, beating them on with sticks. The Arabs shouted that these
were the remnants of the police battalion at Deraa. Their record of
monstrous cruelty towards the peasants Lawrence knew well and he made
no appeal for mercy.
At Tafas he arrived too late. The Governor of Syria’s own lancer
regiment had already taken it and was burning the houses after
massacring the inhabitants. Lawrence and the Arabs lay in ambush on
a ridge to the north as the Turks marched out in good order with the
lancers in front and rear, infantry in a central column, a flank-guard
of machine-guns, guns and transport in the centre. When the head of
the long column showed itself beyond the houses the Arabs opened fire
with machine-guns. The Turks replied with field-guns, but as usual the
shrapnel was badly ranged and burst far behind the ridge. Then up came
Nuri Said and Pisani with mountain-guns, and Auda, and Tallal,
nearly frantic with the news of the massacre of his people. The Arabs
lined the northern ridge and opened rapid fire with mountain-guns,
rifles and machine-guns. Tallal, Sheikh Abd el Aziz and Lawrence with
their attendants slipped round behind the Turkish column, the last
parties of which were just leaving the smoking village. There seemed
to be no soul left alive in the ruins. But then from a heap of corpses
a child tottered out, three or four years old, her dirty smock stained
red with blood from a lance thrust where neck and shoulder joined. She
ran a few steps, then stood and cried in a voice that sounded very loud
in the ghastly silence, ‘Don’t hit me, Baba.’ Abd el Aziz choked out
something: it was his village as well as Tallal’s. He flung himself off
his camel and stumbled to the child. His suddenness frightened her, for
she threw up her arms and tried to scream, but instead dropped in a
little heap; the blood rushed out again and she died.
They saw four more dead babies and scores of corpses, men and women
obscenely mutilated. El Zaagi broke out in peals of hysterical
laughter: Lawrence said, ‘The best of you are those who bring me the
most Turkish dead.’ They rode after the Turks, killing stragglers and
wounded without mercy. Tallal had seen all. He gave one moan, then rode
to the upper ground and sat awhile on his mare, shivering and staring
at the retreating Turks. Lawrence moved near to speak to him, but Auda
restrained him with a hand on his reins.
Very slowly Tallal drew his headcloth about his face, then seemed to
take hold of himself and galloped headlong, bending low and swaying in
the saddle, right at the main body of the enemy. It was a long ride
down a gentle slope and across a hollow. Both armies waited for him.
Firing had stopped on both sides and the noise of his hooves
sounded unnaturally loud as he rushed on. Only a few lengths from
the enemy he sat up in the saddle and shouted his war-cry, ‘Tallal,
Tallal!’ twice in a tremendous voice. Instantly the Turkish rifles and
machine-guns crashed out and he and his mare fell riddled through and
through among the lance-points.
Auda looked cold and grim. ‘God give him mercy,’ he said, ‘we will take
his price.’ Then he slowly moved after the enemy. He took command of
the Arabs, sending out parties of peasants this way and that and at
last by a skilful turn drove the Turks into bad ground and split their
force into three parts. The pursuit continued. The smallest section,
consisting chiefly of German and Austrian machine-gunners grouped round
three motor-cars, fought magnificently. The Arabs were like devils;
hatred and revenge so shook them that they could hardly hold their
rifles straight to fire. At last this section was left behind while
Lawrence and his men galloped after the other two which were fleeing in
panic. By sunset all but a few were destroyed. For the first time in
the war Lawrence gave the order: ‘No prisoners.’ The peasants flocked
to join in the attack. At first only one man in six had a weapon,
but gradually they armed themselves from the fallen Turks until at
nightfall every man had a rifle and a captured horse.
Just one group of Arabs who had not heard of the horror of Tafas took
prisoners the last two hundred men. Lawrence went up to inquire why
their lives had been spared, not unwilling to leave them alive as
witnesses of Tallal’s price. But a man on the ground screamed out
something to the Arabs and they turned to see who it was. It was one
of their own men, his thigh shattered, left to die. But even so
he had not been spared. In the manner of Tafas he had been further
tormented with bayonets hammered through his shoulder and other leg,
pinning him to the ground like a collector’s specimen. He was still
conscious. They asked him, ‘Hassan, who did it?’ For answer he looked
towards the prisoners huddled together near him. The Arabs shot them
down in a heap and they were all dead before Hassan too died.
The killing and capturing of the retreating Turks went on all night.
Each village, as the fight rolled towards it, took up the work. The
main body of seven thousand men had tried to halt at sunset, but
the Ruwalla had forced them on in a stumbling scattered mob through
the cold and darkness. The Arabs, too, were scattered and nearly as
uncertain and the confusion was indescribable. The only detachments
that held together were the Germans. Lawrence for the first time felt
proud of the enemy that had killed his two younger brothers. They went
firmly ahead, proud and silent, steering like armoured ships through
the wrack of Turks and Arabs. When attacked they halted, took position,
fired at the word of command. It was glorious. They were two thousand
miles from home, without hope and without guides, footsore, starving,
sleepless: yet on they went, their numbers slowly lessening.
The Ruwalla took Deraa in a mounted charge that night; the garrison had
been holding up the Indians at Remthe. Lawrence rode to Deraa to take
charge of things, with his body-guard and Nuri Said. He was riding his
grand racing-camel, Baha, so called from the bleat that she had from
a bullet wound in her throat. He gave her liberty to stretch herself
out, drawing ahead of the tired body-guard, so that he arrived alone
at Deraa in the full dawn. Nasir was already there arranging
for a military governor and police. Lawrence helped him by putting
guards over the pumps and engine-sheds and what remained of the looted
repair-shops and stores. Then he explained to Nasir what course had
to be taken if the Arabs were not to lose hold of what they had won.
Nasir, who now for the first time heard that there would be difficulty
in persuading the English to take the Arabs seriously, was bewildered.
But he soon grasped the point.
General Barrow, commanding the Indians, was advancing now to attack
the town, not knowing that it was already captured. Some of his men
began firing on the Arabs and Lawrence rode out with El Zaagi to stop
them. A party of Indian machine-gunners was proud to capture such
finely-dressed prisoners, but Lawrence explained himself to an officer
and was allowed to hurry off to find General Barrow. His troops were
already encircling the town and his aeroplanes bombed Nuri Said’s men
as they entered from the north. Barrow seemed annoyed that the Arabs
had got there first, but Lawrence was not sorry for him; particularly
since he had delayed a day and a night watering at the poor wells at
Remthe, though his map had showed the lake and river of Mezerib close
ahead on the road by which the enemy was escaping. Barrow said that his
orders were to take Deraa and he was going there anyhow, whoever was
in possession. He asked Lawrence to ride beside him. But Baha’s smell
disturbed the horses, so Lawrence had to take the centre of the road
while the General and his staff rode their bucking horses in the ditch.
Barrow said that he must put sentries in Deraa to keep the populace
in order. Lawrence explained gently that the Arabs had appointed a
military governor. When they reached the wells the General said
that his engineers must inspect the pumps. Lawrence answered that he
would welcome their assistance, but that the Arabs had already lit the
furnaces and hoped to begin watering his horses in an hour’s time.
Barrow snorted that Lawrence seemed to be at home; so he would only
take charge of the railway station. Lawrence pointed to an engine
moving out towards Mezerib and asked Barrow to instruct his sentries
not to interfere with the proper working of the line by the Arabs.
[Illustration:
description: Photo wide shot of Lawrence standing in a line of
Arabs on camels
caption: LAWRENCE AND HIS BODYGUARD AT AKABA
Summer, 1918
_Copyright_
]
Barrow had no orders as to the status of the Arabs and had come in
thinking of them as a conquered people; Lawrence wondered how to
prevent him from doing anything foolish to antagonize them. He had
read a military article, written by Barrow years before, in which the
General had insisted that Fear was the people’s main incentive to
action in war and peace; and knew what he was up against. Then Barrow
remarked that he was short of forage and food-stuffs, and Lawrence,
kindly offering to provide these, persuaded him that he was the guest
of the Arabs. Barrow was sufficiently convinced to salute Nasir’s
little silk flag propped on the balcony of the Government office, with
a sentry beneath it. The Arabs thrilled with pleasure at the compliment
and were ready to listen to Lawrence’s instructions that these Indians
must be given all hospitality as guests. Later, General Allenby’s
Chief Political Officer assured Barrow that Lawrence’s attitude was
politically right, so all was well. There had been no disturbances,
though the Indians pilfered freely from the Arabs, and the Bedouin were
horrified at the manner of the British officers towards their men. They
had never seen such personal inequality before.
Thousands of prisoners had meanwhile been taken by the Arabs. Most
were boarded out in the villages, some were handed over to the
British, who counted them again as their own captures. Feisal drove up
in his green car from Azrak the next day, September the twenty-ninth,
with the armoured cars behind him. General Barrow, now watered and fed,
was due to meet Chauvel, the general commanding the Australians, for
a joint entry into Damascus. He told Lawrence to ask Feisal to take
the right flank. That suited Lawrence, for there along the railway was
Nasir still hanging on to the main Turkish retreat (the column seven
thousand strong which the Ruwalla had harried on the night of the Tafas
massacre), reducing its numbers by continuous attack night and day. He
stayed another day at Deraa, having much to attend to, but his memories
of the place were too horrible, and he camped outside the town with his
body-guard.
He could not sleep that night, so before dawn he went off in the
Rolls-Royce towards Damascus. The roads were blocked with the Indians’
transport; he took a cut across country and along the railway. He
overtook Barrow, who asked him where he was going to stop that night.
‘At Damascus,’ Lawrence answered, and Barrow’s face fell. Barrow was
advancing very cautiously, sending out scouts and cavalry-screens
through friendly country already cleared of Turks by the Arabs.
Lawrence’s Rolls-Royce continued along the railway till he came on
Nasir, the Emir Nuri, and Auda with the tribes, still fighting. The
seven thousand Turks had melted to two in three days’ ceaseless battle.
Lawrence could see the survivors in ragged groups halting now and then
to fire their mountain-guns. Nasir rode up to greet Lawrence on his
liver-coloured Arab stallion (the splendid creature was still spirited
after a hundred miles of running flight). With him were old Emir Nuri
and about thirty of his servants. They asked whether help was
coming at last. Lawrence told them that the Indians were just behind.
If they could only check the enemy for just an hour.... Nasir saw a
walled farm-house ahead guarding the track and he and Nuri galloped
forward to hold it against the Turks.
Lawrence drove back to the Indian cavalry and told a surly old colonel
what a gift the Arabs had waiting for him. The colonel hardly seemed
grateful, but at last sent a squadron out across the plain. The Turks
turned their little guns at it. One or two shells fell near and to
Lawrence’s disgust the colonel ordered a retirement. Lawrence and the
staff-officer in the car with him dashed back and begged the colonel
not to be afraid of the wretched little ten-pound shells, hardly more
dangerous than rocket-pistols. But the old man would not budge, so the
Rolls-Royce had to rush back farther until Lawrence found a general
of Barrow’s staff and got him to send some Middlesex Yeomanry and
Royal Horse Artillery forward. That night the remaining Turks broke,
abandoning their guns and transport, and went streaming off across the
eastern hills into what they thought was empty land beyond. But Auda
was waiting there in ambush, and all that night, in his last battle,
the old man killed and killed, plundered and captured until, when dawn
came, he found that all was over. So passed the Turkish Fourth Army.
It may be interesting to note the record of these operations in the
official handbook, _A Brief Record of the Advance of the Egyptian
Expeditionary Force_:
‘The Fourth Mounted Division (General Barrow’s) coming up from the
south with the Arab forces on its right entered Deraa unopposed
on September 28th, and next day got in touch with the retreating Turks
in the Dilli area. For two days the enemy was pressed and harassed,
his columns were fired upon and broken up, and on September 30th the
division got into touch with the other divisions of the Desert Mounted
Corps and reached Zerakiye late that night.’
Other references to the Arabs’ services are similarly reticent. (There
are, however, plentiful references to the way that the Beni Sakhr tribe
_failed_ the Amman raiders some months previously.) This withholding
of credit where due was, I think, principally Lawrence’s fault; he did
not send detailed reports to General Headquarters. He was, of course,
far too busy. What really mattered to him was not that the Arabs should
be given homage in Allenby’s despatches—they would not for the most
part have been particularly gratified—but that they should set up a
government in Damascus before somebody else did.
XXVII
The war was over. Lawrence went on to Kiswe, where the Australians were
waiting for Barrow to join them. He did not stop long, for Allenby
had allowed him and Feisal a single night in which to restore order
in Damascus before the British entry. The Ruwalla horse was sent in
at dusk to find Ali Riza, the governor, and to ask him to take charge
of things. Ali Riza who, as chairman of the committee of freedom, had
long been prepared to form an Arab government when the Turks finally
left, was away, put by the Turks in command of the army retreating from
Galilee. But Shukri, his assistant, was there and with unexpected help,
as will be related, set up the Arab flag on the Town Hall as the last
Turkish and German troops marched out. It is said that the hindmost
general saluted it ironically.
Four thousand Ruwalla tribesmen were sent in to help Shukri keep order.
All that night huge explosions were heard from the town, and showers of
flame shot up. Lawrence thought that Damascus was being destroyed. But
dawn showed him the beautiful city still standing: it had only been the
Germans blowing up the ammunition dumps and stores. A horseman galloped
out with a bunch of yellow grapes, a token from Shukri, crying: ‘Good
news: Damascus salutes you.’ Lawrence, who was in the Rolls-Royce,
gave Nasir the tidings. Nasir’s fifty battles since the Revolt began
in Medina two and a half years back had earned him the right of first
entry. So Lawrence gave him a fair start with the Emir Nuri while he
stopped to wash and shave at a wayside brook. Some Indian troopers
again mistook him and his party for Turks and tried to take them
prisoners. When delivered from arrest Lawrence drove on up the
long central street to the Government buildings.
The way was packed with people crowded solid on either side of the car,
at the windows, on the balconies and housetops. Many were crying, some
cheered faintly, a few bolder ones cried out greetings. But for the
most part, there came little more than a whisper like a long sigh from
the gate of the city to the city’s heart. At the Town Hall there was
greater liveliness. The steps and stairs were packed with a swaying
mob yelling, embracing, dancing, singing. They recognized Lawrence and
crushed back to let him pass.
In the antechamber he found Nasir and the Emir Nuri seated. On either
side of these stood—Lawrence was dumb with amazement at the sight—his
old enemy the Algerian Abd el Kader who had betrayed him on the Yarmuk
raid, and Mohammed Said, the assassin, his brother. Mohammed Said
leaped forward and said that he and his brother, grandsons of the
famous Abd el Kader, Emir of Algiers, had, with Shukri, formed the
government the previous afternoon and proclaimed Hussein ‘Emperor of
the Arabs’ in the ears of the humbled Turks and Germans. Lawrence
turned inquiringly to Shukri, an honest man beloved in Damascus
and almost a martyr in the people’s eyes for what he had suffered
at Jemal’s hands. Shukri told how these two alone of all Damascus
had stood by the Turks until they saw them running. Then with their
Algerian retainers they had burst in on Shukri’s committee where it sat
in secret and brutally assumed control.
Lawrence determined with Nasir’s help to check their impudence at once.
But a diversion interrupted him. The yelling crowd was parted as if by
a battering ram; men went flying right and left among ruined chairs and
tables while a familiar voice roared them to silence. It was Auda,
in a dog-fight with the chief of the Druses. Lawrence and Mohammed el
Dheilan sprang forward and broke the two apart. They forced Auda back
while somebody else hustled the Druse chief into a side room. Auda,
with bleeding face and his long hair streaming over his eyes, was too
blind with rage to know what was happening. They held him down in a
gilt chair in the great pompous state-hall, where he shouted till his
voice cracked. His body was twitching and jerking, his hands reached
wildly for any weapon within reach. The Druse had hit him first and he
swore to wipe out the insult in blood. Zaal and one or two more came in
to help. It was an hour before they could calm Auda down and get him to
promise to ♦postpone his vengeance for three days.
♦ “pospone” replaced with “postpone”