Part 19

The success excited the camp at Akaba. Everybody wanted to try this new and profitable sport of train-mining. The French captain of the Algerian company of gunners at Akaba, by name Pisani, was the first volunteer, an active and ambitious officer on the look-out for decorations. Feisal provided three young noblemen of Damascus who were eager to lead tribal raids, and on the twenty-sixth of September the party rode to Rumm in search of tribesmen volunteers. Lawrence said that the next raid was especially intended for Gasim’s clan. This was heaping coals of fire on the adversary’s head, but the adversary was too greedy to refuse the chance. The difficulty indeed was to keep down the numbers. They took a hundred and fifty men and a huge train of baggage-camels for the spoils.

This time they worked in the direction of Maan, riding over the Syrian border into the high hills by Batra where the keen air of the northern desert came blowing at them through a pass at the top. From Batra they turned west and struck the railway, marching along it until they came to a convenient bridge in an embankment, as at Mudowwara. Here, between midnight and dawn, they buried an automatic mine of a new and wonderful lyddite type. They lay in ambush a thousand yards away among the wormwood thickets, but no train came that day or the following night. Lawrence found the waiting intolerable. The Arabs paid no attention to the leaders appointed by Feisal and would listen to no one but Lawrence, whose success was now beginning to have results very unwelcome to him. He was asked to act as judge and had to consent. With Feisal’s example and his own pre-war experience at Carchemish to help him out, he settled during that six days’ ride twelve cases of armed assault, four camel-thefts, a marriage, two ordinary thefts, a divorce, fourteen feuds, two cases of evil eye and a bewitchment.

The evil eyes he cured by staring at their possessors with his own for ten minutes (‘horrible blue eyes,’ as an old Arab woman once told him, ‘like bits of sky through the eye-holes of a skull’), the bewitchment by casting a mock-spell of his own over the wizard. Then he began to realize what he was doing—probably Pisani’s presence reminded him that he was only an Englishman playing at being an Arab. He went off on a long train of shameful thought about himself and the fraud that he was playing on the Arabs. Again Pisani’s presence reminded him that he was leading them into this war of freedom knowing well enough that the chances were heavily against their being allowed to keep the freedom if ever they won it. The agony of his mind’s conflict at Nebk returned to him in double force. The stings of a scorpion on his left hand kept him awake that night with an arm so swollen that at least he was distracted by the pain from further thinking, but by next morning his position began troubling him again, and he decided to renounce his leadership. He called up the sheikhs to tell them of his decision. But at that moment a train was reported, and as always happened with Lawrence, who was another Hamlet, sudden enforced action cleared away his philosophic doubts and hesitations. He jumped up to watch the success of the mine.

However, the train with its cargo of water-tanks passed over without accident. The Arabs, who wanted something better than water, thanked him as if he had intended this failure. He had then to go down to lay an electric mine over the other; the electric mine would set the first one off. The Turks did not catch him at work, for it was their hour of midday sleep. There were three bridges in the embankment and the southern one had been chosen for the ambush. Under the arch of the middle bridge Lawrence hid the exploder. The Lewis guns were put under the northern one to rake the far side of the train when the mine went off. On the near side was a convenient cross-channel in the valley, three hundred yards from the railway, where the Arabs could line up behind the wormwood bushes. No train came that day; enemy patrols went constantly up and down the rails, but without finding the mine. The next morning, the sixth of October, a train came out of Maan, but ahead of the train a patrol was walking, and there was an anxious wait to see which arrived first. If the patrol won the race it would give warning to the train; however, Lawrence calculated that it would be beaten by two or three hundred yards, so the Arabs took up their position. The train came on panting up the gradient. It was a heavy train with twelve loaded wagons.

Lawrence sat by a bush where he could see the mine, a hundred yards away, and the exploder and the Lewis guns. He gave the signal when the engine was exactly over the arch and the history of Mudowwara was repeated. There was the same roar and cloud, but a green one this time, because lyddite was being used instead of gelatine, and then the Lewis gun rattled and the Arabs charged. Lawrence smiled sourly to see Pisani running excitedly at their head singing the Marseillaise, as if this was a battle for French freedom. A Turk on the buffers of the fourth wagon from the end uncoupled the tail of the train and let it slip downhill. Lawrence ran to stop it by putting a stone underneath a wheel, but was amused at the trucks sliding off on their own to safety; his effort was half-hearted. And he had reached a point of such carelessness about his own safety that he only laughed at a Turkish colonel in the runaway wagons who fired point-blank at him from a window with his pistol. The Western military idea of trying to end the War by reducing the enemy’s man-power seemed comic in the desert. And the bullet only grazed his hip.

The train had been derailed, the engine ruined and the tender and front wagon telescoped. Twenty Turks were killed, the others taken prisoners, including four officers who stood in tears begging for their lives, which, however, the Arabs never intended to take. The wagons contained seventy tons of food-stuffs urgently needed down the line, as they learned from the captured way-bill. For a joke Lawrence receipted this and left it in the van, sending the duplicate to Feisal as detailed report of the success. What could not be taken was destroyed under the direction of Pisani. As before, the Arabs became merely camel-drivers, walking behind a long string of loaded animals. This time Lawrence was not deserted; Farraj held the camel, while Sheikh Salem (Gasim’s brother) and another of the leading Arabs helped with the exploder and the heavy wire. But rescue parties of the Turks were four hundred yards away by the time they got off. There were no Arabs killed or wounded.

Lawrence’s pupils afterwards practised the art of mining by themselves and rumours of their success spread through the tribes, not always intelligently. The Beni Atiyeh tribe wrote to Feisal: ‘Send us a _lurens_ and we will blow up trains with it.’ Feisal sent them one of the Ageyl who helped them to ambush a most important train. On board were the Turkish colonel who had left his garrison in the lurch at Wejh, twenty thousand pounds in gold, and precious trophies. The Ageyl repeated history by only saving the wire and exploder for his share. During the next four months seventeen engines were destroyed and much plunder taken. Travelling became a great terror for the Turks. People paid extra for the back seats in trains. The engine-drivers went on strike. Civilian traffic nearly ceased. The threat was extended to Aleppo merely by having a notice posted in Damascus to say that all good Arabs would henceforward travel on the Syrian railway at their own risk. The Turks felt the loss severely; not only could they not any longer think of marching out of Medina, but they were short of engines in Palestine too, just when Allenby’s threat began to trouble them.

Meanwhile, in the middle of September, Allenby calling Lawrence to Egypt asked him what exactly his aims were. Was this blowing up of the railway more than a melodramatic advertisement for Feisal’s cause? Lawrence explained his policy, unchanged since he framed it in Abdulla’s camp six months before. He was hoping to keep the line to Medina working, but only just working: the garrison was helpless to do the Arabs harm and cost less to feed than it would in a prisoners’ camp in Egypt if it surrendered. And while the mining was going on, the Arab regulars were being properly trained for a move into Syria. Allenby asked about the pass to Akaba north of Aba el Lissan where he knew from spies that the Turks intended a big attack. Lawrence explained that he and the Arabs had been working for months to provoke the Turks to come forward, and at last were about to be rewarded. The Turks had been hesitating because they had no idea of the strength of the Arabs, who being mostly irregulars went about in parties, not in stiff formation; so that neither aeroplanes nor spies could count them. On the other hand, Lawrence and Feisal always knew exactly what the Turkish forces were because they were regular troops and the Arab intelligence service was excellent. So the Arabs could always decide in time whether to fight or avoid fight.

Allenby understood then. And when at last the big attack was made from Maan on Akaba by way of the northern pass, Maulud with his regulars let the Turks into a trap from which few of them escaped. They never made another attempt on Akaba.

XIX

In October, 1917, Allenby, who was fast reorganizing the British Army on the borders of Palestine, had decided on an attack of the Gaza-Beersheba line, to begin on the last day of the month. He had resolved that this time the attempt must not fail as before for want of artillery and troops, but since the Gaza end of the line (nearest the sea) was very strongly entrenched—its very strength seemed to have tempted the former disastrous British attacks—the scheme was to try south at the Beersheba end. Elaborate care was taken to deceive the Turks with false secret documents which they were allowed to capture, into thinking that the Beersheba attack was a mere feint and that the main attack was coming from Gaza.

It was for Lawrence to decide how much help the Arabs could afford to give Allenby. He was in the unfortunate position of serving two masters. And he did not ‘hate the one and love the other, cling to the one and despise the other.’ He admired and had the confidence of both, yet found himself unable to explain the whole Arab situation to Allenby, or the whole British plan to Feisal. Allenby expected much from Lawrence as one of his officers. But Feisal trusted him implicitly and this trust made him perhaps more careful on the Arab behalf than he might otherwise have been: and Feisal’s was the weaker cause, always attractive to Lawrence. Now, the country immediately behind the Turkish lines was peopled with tribes friendly to Feisal and a sudden rising there might have an enormous effect on the War. If Allenby was given a month’s fine weather to make possible the advance of his cumbrous artillery and supplies he ought to be able to take not only Jerusalem, which he was aiming at, but Haifa too. In that case it would be a chance for the Arabs to strike from behind at the all-important junction of Deraa, the nerve-centre of the Turkish army in Palestine, where the Medina-Damascus railway joined the railway that ran to Haifa and to Jerusalem. Near Deraa were great untouched reserves of Arab fighting men, secretly taught and armed by Feisal from his base at Akaba. Four main Bedouin tribes could be used there and, better still, the peasants of the Hauran plain to the north, and the Druses, a settled mountain folk from the east.

The attack on Beersheba had not yet begun, so Lawrence was in doubt whether or not to call up all these helpers at once, to rush Deraa at the same time as Allenby attacked Gaza and Beersheba, smash all the railway lines, and even go on to surprise Damascus. He could count on at least twelve thousand men, and success would put the Turks facing Allenby into a desperate condition. He was greatly tempted to stake everything on immediate action but could not quite make up his mind. As a British officer he should have taken the risk, as a leader of the Arab Revolt he should not have. The Arabs in Syria were imploring him to come. Tallal, the great fighter who led the tribes about Deraa, sent repeated messages that, given only a few of Feisal’s men in proof of support, he could take Deraa. This would have been all very well for Allenby, but Feisal could not decently accept Tallal’s offer unless he was sure that Deraa could be held once it was taken. If anything went wrong with the British advance and the Turks sent reinforcements down from Aleppo and Damascus, Deraa would be recaptured and a general massacre would follow of all the splendid peasantry of the district. The Syrians could only rise once and when they did there must be no mistake. The English troops were brave fighters, but Lawrence could not yet trust Allenby, or rather the commanders under him who were, he thought, quite capable of ruining a perfectly sound scheme, as at the Suvla landing in the Dardanelles campaign, by not profiting from their first sudden gains. And there was the weather. So he decided to postpone the rising until the following year. It is difficult to say now whether he was right. Allenby’s army fought excellently, but was later held up by the rains.

He had to do something less than raising a general revolt, in return for Allenby’s supplies and arms. So he decided that it would have to be a big raid made by a Bedouin tribe without disturbing the settled peoples, and something that would help Allenby in his pursuit of the enemy. The best plan was to blow up one of the bridges crossing the deep river-gorge of the Yarmuk just west of Deraa on the line leading to Jerusalem. This would temporarily cut off the Turkish army in Palestine from its base at Damascus, and make it less able to resist or escape from Allenby’s advance. It would be a fortnight before either of the two biggest bridges could be rebuilt. To reach the Yarmuk would mean a ride of about four hundred and twenty miles from Akaba by way of Azrak. The Turks thought the danger of an attempt on the bridges so slight that they did not guard them at all strongly. So Lawrence put the scheme before Allenby, who asked him to carry it out on November the fifth or one of the three days following. If the attempt succeeded and the weather held for the British advance, the chances were that few of the Turkish army would get back to Damascus. The Arabs would then have the opportunity of carrying on the wave of the attack from a half-way point where the British, because of transport difficulties, must stop exhausted. They should be able to sweep on to Damascus.

In that case some important Arab was needed to lead the raid from Azrak. Nasir, the usual pioneer who had led the Akaba expedition, was away. But Ali ibn el Hussein was available, the young Harith chief whom Lawrence had met disguised in his first ride to see Feisal a year before, and who had lately been active in raids on the railway down the line just above Davenport’s section. Ali knew Syria, for he had been, with Feisal, the forced guest of the Turkish general Jemal at Damascus. Besides, his courage, resource and energy were proved, and no adventure had ever been too great or disaster too deep but Ali had faced it with his high yell of a laugh. He was so strong that he would kneel down, resting his forearms palm upwards on the ground, and rise to his feet with a man standing on each hand. He could also outstrip a trotting camel running with bare feet, keep his speed for a quarter of a mile, and then leap into the saddle. He was headstrong and conceited, reckless in word and deed, and the most admired fighter in the Arab forces. Ali would win over the tribe of Beni Sakhr, who were half-peasants, half-Bedouin, on the southern border of Syria. There were good hopes also of securing the Serahin, the tribe about Azrak, and there were others farther north on whom they might count for help.

Lawrence’s plan was to rush from Azrak to the Yarmuk village which was the ancient Gadara; it commanded the most westerly of the two most important bridges, a huge steel erection guarded by a force of sixty men quartered in a railway station close by. No more than half a dozen sentries were, however, stationed actually on the girders and abutments of the bridge itself, as Lawrence had learned on his previous ride to Damascus through this country. He hoped to take some of Auda’s tough Abu Tayi Howeitat with him under Zaal. They would make certain the actual storming of the bridge. To prevent enemy reinforcements coming up, machine-guns would sweep the approaches to the bridge; the men to handle these were a party of Mohammedan Indian cavalrymen, now mounted on camels, under command of Jemadar Hassan Shah, a firm and experienced man. They had been up-country from Wejh for months, destroying rails, and might be assumed to be by now expert camel-riders. The destruction of the great steel girders with only small weights of explosive was a problem. Lawrence decided to fix the charges in place with canvas strips and buckles and fire them electrically. But this was a dangerous task under fire, so Wood, an engineer officer at Akaba, came as a substitute in case Lawrence might be hit. Wood had been condemned as unfit for active service on the Western front after a bullet through the head.

They were making their last preparations when an unexpected ally arrived, the chief Abd el Kader. He was an Algerian of a family that had been living in Damascus since his grandfather, the defender of Algiers against the French, had been deported from there thirty years before. Abd el Kader, quarrelsome, deaf and boorish, was a religious fanatic who, being recently sent by the Turks on secret political business to Mecca, had paid a dutiful call instead on Sherif Hussein and come away with a crimson banner and noble gifts, half-persuaded of the right of the Arab cause. Now he offered Feisal the help of his Algerian villagers, exiles like himself, living on the north bank of the Yarmuk, half-way between the two important bridges but close to others whose destruction might answer nearly as well. This seemed excellent. As the Algerians did not mix with their Arab neighbours, the destruction of the bridge or bridges could be arranged quietly without exciting the whole peasant countryside into revolt.

Suddenly a telegram came from the French Colonel to say that Abd el Kader was a spy in Turkish pay. This was disconcerting, but there was no proof, and the Colonel was not greatly liked himself since his letter to Abdulla about the English and his earlier intrigues at Jiddah. Probably he was annoyed at Abd el Kader’s private and public denunciations of the French. So Feisal asked Abd el Kader to ride with Lawrence and Ali ibn el Hussein, telling Lawrence privately: ‘I know he is mad, I think he is honest. Guard your heads and use him.’ He joined the party. Whether or not he was a spy, he was a great annoyance to the party: being a religious fanatic he resented Lawrence’s undisguised Christianity, and being ridiculously vain, resented being sent along with Ali whom the tribes treated as greater, and with Lawrence whom they treated as better than himself. Also his deafness was most inconvenient.

For his body-guard Lawrence took six Syrian recruits, chosen largely for their knowledge of the various districts through which he had to pass, with two Biasha tribesmen and the inseparable Farraj and Daud. These two were busy as usual at practical jokes and on the morning of October the twenty-fourth, the day of departure from Akaba, they completely disappeared. At noon came a message from fat Sheikh Yusuf, the Governor, to say that they were in prison and would Lawrence come and talk about it? Lawrence found Yusuf shaking between laughter and rage. His new cream-coloured riding-camel had strayed into the palm-garden where Lawrence’s Ageyl were encamped. Farraj and Daud, not suspecting that the camel was the Governor’s, had painted its body bright-red with henna and its legs blue with indigo before turning it loose. The camel caused an uproar in Akaba and when Yusuf with difficulty recognized the circus-like animal as his own, he hurried out his police to find the criminals. Farraj and Daud were found stained to their elbows with dye and though swearing innocence were soundly beaten and sent to prison in irons for a week. Lawrence arranged their release by lending the Governor a camel of his own until the dye had worn off the other, and promising that the Governor should beat the boys again after the expedition. So they joined the caravan singing, though they had to walk mile after mile because of a new kind of saddle-soreness which they called ‘Yusufitis.’

The expedition went by way of Rumm, crossing the railway line near Shedia, but it was not a compact or happy family. Abd el Kader was continually quarrelling with Ali ibn el Hussein, who prayed God to deliver him from the man’s bad manners, deafness, conceit. Wood was ill and the Indians, who proved to be very bad at loading and leading the baggage-camels, had to be helped with them by Lawrence’s body-guard, and lagged far behind: Lawrence was not much troubled by these difficulties, because on the first stage of the journey he had for companion Lloyd (now British High Commissioner in Egypt), who had originally come out with him from England. It was a great thing to have someone European-minded and well-read to talk to again after months with the Arabs. Lawrence’s Bedouin self wore off as he rode ahead with Lloyd, so engrossed in talk that they nearly lost touch with the Indians behind and, losing direction too, nearly ran into Shedia station. They turned in time and crossed the railway line in safety between two block-houses; contenting themselves merely with cutting the telegraph-wires. Ali and Abd el Kader were crossing the line farther north and soon came a rattle of machine-gun and rifle-fire: evidently they had not been lucky in their crossing. It turned out later that they had two men killed.

Lawrence’s first stop was Jefer, where he had been before on the ride to Akaba and had repaired the damaged well: he took his party safely across the silver plain of polished mud and salt, and near Jefer found Auda encamped with a few of his tribesmen, including Zaal and Mohammed el Dheilan. The old man was having a violent dispute over the distribution of wages which he drew in bulk for the whole tribe, and was ashamed to be found in such difficulties. However, Lawrence did what he could to smooth them over and by giving the Arabs something else to think about, made them smile; which was half the battle. He then went to Zaal and explained his plan to destroy the Yarmuk bridges. Zaal disliked it very much. He had been most successful that summer in his fighting with the Turks, and wealth made life precious to him. And the train-ambush at Mudowwara from which he had barely escaped with his life had tried his nerve; so now he said that he would only come if Lawrence insisted. Lawrence did not insist. Lloyd having to go home at this point, he was left despondent among the Arabs to unending talk of war and tribes and camels.