Part 8

‘On the farther side of the inner court, framed between the uprights of a black doorway, stood a white figure waiting tensely for me. I felt at first glance that this was the man I had come to Arabia to seek—the leader who would bring the Arab Revolt to full glory. Feisal looked very tall and pillar-like, very slender, in his long white silk robes and his brown headcloth bound with a brilliant scarlet and gold cord. His eyelids were dropped; and his black beard and colourless face were like a mask against the strange still watchfulness of his body. His hands were crossed in front of him on his dagger.

‘I greeted him. He made way for me into the room and sat down on his carpet near the door. As my eyes grew accustomed to the shade, they saw that the little room held many silent figures, looking at me or at Feisal steadily. He remained staring down at his hands, which were twisting slowly about his dagger. At last he enquired softly how I had found the journey. I spoke of the heat and he asked how long from Rabegh, commenting that I had ridden fast for the season.

‘“And do you like our place here in Wadi Safra?”

‘“Well; but it is far from Damascus.”

‘The word had fallen like a sword into their midst. There was a quiver. Then everybody present stiffened where he sat, and held his breath for a silent minute. Some, perhaps, were dreaming of far-off success: others may have thought it a reflection on their late defeat. Feisal at length lifted his eyes, smiling at me, and said, “Praise be to God, there are Turks nearer us than that.” We all smiled with him, and I rose and excused myself for the moment.’

Any reader, by the way, who prefers Mr. Lowell Thomas’s version of these incidents is welcome to his choice:

‘On arrival at Jiddah, Lawrence succeeded in getting permission from Grand Shereef Hussein to make a short camel journey inland to the camp of Emir Feisal, third son of the Grand Shereef who was attempting to keep the fires of revolution alive. The Arab cause looked hopeless. There were not enough bullets left to keep the army in gazelle meat and the troops were reduced to John the Baptist’s melancholy desert fare of locusts and wild honey.

‘After exchanging the usual Oriental compliments over many sweetened cups of Arabian coffee, the first question Lawrence asked Feisal was, “When will your army reach Damascus?” The question evidently nonplussed the Emir, who gazed gloomily through the tent-flap at the bedraggled remnants of his father’s army. “In sh’ Allah,” replied Feisal, stroking his beard. “There is neither power nor might save in Allah, the high, the tremendous! May He look with favour upon our cause. But I fear the gates of Damascus are farther beyond our reach at present than the gates of Paradise. Allah willing, our next step will be an attack on the Turkish garrison at Medina where we hope to deliver the tomb of the Prophet from our enemies.”’

VII

Lawrence visited the Egyptian gunners, who seemed unhappy. Egyptians are a home-loving race and they were fighting against the Turks, for whom they had a sentimental feeling, among the Bedouins, whom they thought savages. Under British officers they had learned to be soldierly, to keep themselves smart, to pitch their tents in a regular line, to salute their officers smartly. The Arabs were always laughing at them for all this, and their feelings were hurt. Next Lawrence had a long talk with Feisal and his supporter Maulud, an Arab who had been an officer in the Turkish army and had twice been degraded for talking of Arab freedom. Maulud had been captured by the British while commanding a Turkish cavalry regiment against them in Mesopotamia. But as soon as he heard of the Sherif’s Revolt he had volunteered to fight the Turks, and many other Arab officers with him. So now he began to complain bitterly that the Arab army was being utterly neglected: the Sherif sent them thirty thousand pounds a month for expenses but not enough barley, rice, flour, ammunition or rifles, and they got no machine-guns, mountain-guns, technical help or information. Lawrence stopped Maulud and said that he came for the very purpose of hearing and reporting to the British in Egypt what was needed, but that he must first know exactly how the campaign was going. Feisal gave him the history of the Revolt from the very beginning, as it has been told in a previous chapter, and mentioned mischievously among other things that in the fighting with the Turkish outposts, which took place usually at night because the Turkish artillery was then blinded, the battle would begin with curses, insults and foul language: and this wordy warfare reached its climax when the Turks in a frenzy called the Arabs ‘English!’ and the Arabs screamed back ‘Germans!’ There were no Germans in the Holy Province and Lawrence was the first Englishman: but this final foul insult was always the signal for hand-to-hand fighting. Lawrence asked Feisal his plans and Feisal said that until Medina fell they had to remain on guard, for the Turks were certainly intending to recapture Mecca. He did not think that the Arabs would want to defend the hill-country between Medina and Rabegh merely by sitting still and sniping from the hills. If the Turks moved, he proposed to move too. He favoured an attack on Medina from four sides at once with four armies of tribesmen, with himself and his three brothers each at the head of an army. Whatever the success of the attack, it would check the advance on Mecca and give his father time to arm and train regular troops.

For without regular troops a steady war against the Turks was impossible; the tribesmen could not be persuaded to stay away from their families more than a month or two at a time, and soon got bored with the war it there was no chance of exciting camel-charges and loot. Feisal talked at some length and Maulud, who had sat fidgeting, cried out, ‘Don’t write a history of us. The only thing to be done is to fight and fight and kill them. Give me a battery of mountain-guns and machine-guns and I will finish this war off for you. We talk and talk and do nothing.’

Feisal was dead tired: his eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks hollow. He looked years older than thirty-one. For the rest, he was tall, graceful, vigorous, with a royal dignity of head and shoulders, and beautiful movements. He knew of these gifts and therefore much of his public speech was by sign and gesture. His men loved him, and he lived for nothing but his work. He always overtaxed his strength and Lawrence was told how once after a long spell of fighting in which he had to guard himself, lead the charges, control and encourage his men, he had collapsed in a fit and been carried away from the victory unconscious with foam on his lips.

At supper that night there was a mixed company of sheikhs of many desert tribes, Arabs from Mesopotamia, men of the Prophet’s family from Mecca. Lawrence, who had not revealed himself except to Feisal and Maulud, spoke as a Syrian Arab and introduced subjects for argument which would excite the company to speak their minds. He wished to sound their courage at once. Feisal, smoking continual cigarettes, kept control of the conversation even at its hottest, and without seeming to do so stamped his mind on the speakers. Lawrence spoke with sorrow of the Syrian Arabs whom the Turks had executed for preaching freedom. The sheikhs took him up sharply. The men, they said, had got what they deserved for intriguing with the French and English: they had been prepared, if the Turks were beaten, to accept the English or French in their place. Feisal smiled, almost winked at Lawrence, and said that though proud to be allies of the English, the Arabs were rather afraid of a friendship so powerful that it might smother them with over-attention. So Lawrence told a story of how the guide’s son on the ride from Rabegh had complained of the British sailors there. They came ashore every day. Soon, the guide’s son had said, they would stay overnight and settle down and finally take the country. Lawrence then had spoken of the millions of Englishmen fighting in France and had said that the French were not afraid that they would stop for ever. (As a matter of fact this was not quite true: the French peasants did have the same fear, but Lawrence had not been in France.) The guide’s son had scornfully asked whether Lawrence meant to compare France with the Holy Province.

Feisal pondered over the story and said that, after all, the British 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.