There was no time for recriminations, however. The situation in Yanbu’ was grave and the Turks were expected at any minute. The total number of Arab troops in the town did not exceed 1,500. Feisal sent the remnants of the Juhayna back up into the hills to harry the Turkish lines, and when he returned Garland took charge of the physical defences, refurbishing old entrenchments, strengthening the 300-year-old coral town walls, unreeling barbed wire and posting machine-gun crews. Boyle signalled to the carrier Raven, riding at anchor in Sharm Yanbu’ – a creek eight miles north of the port – to dispatch its brace of seaplanes against Turkish positions, and then came ashore to survey the ground. Yanbu’ was built on a peninsula with the sea on three sides, a flat, dusty plain on the other, which was entirely devoid of cover. If the Turks attacked they would have to attack at night, he thought, and then the Navy would be waiting for them. At sunset on 11 December, a hush fell upon the port. No one slept. At about ten o’clock, the Turkish advance-guard, which had crept silently down from the hills with a Juhayna guide, engaged Arab pickets only six miles from the town walls. Town criers alerted the garrison. British naval spotters on the minaret of the mosque signalled to the ships in the harbour, whose crews immediately began to traverse the plain with powerful searchlights and to train their guns. The troops stood to arms in utter silence, and waited tensely for the Turkish assault. But the attack never came. The Turks lost their nerve at the sight of the eerie spotlights playing across the open plain like the fiery eyes of monsters hidden in the darkness. They turned south towards Rabegh, leaving Yanbu’ unmolested – a decision, Lawrence wrote, which ultimately cost them the war.9
Now all eyes were turned towards Rabegh, the key chess-piece in the game. Soon, Fakhri Pasha’s advance-guard was within thirty miles of the port, which was defended only by al-Masri’s anaemic army of half-trained Arab regulars, and a flight of aircraft under Major Ross. Sharif ‘Ali, in command of the Rabegh garrison, decided to march out boldly with his forces to engage the Turks, to take the pressure off Feisal in Yanbu’ and to make a final stand. When the Turks had evacuated Nakhl Mubarak, Feisal returned there and by a tremendous effort of rhetoric convinced the Juhayna to join him again. The following day his entire force went in pursuit of the Turks, hoping to trap them in the hills between his army and ‘Ali’s. It was not to be, however. Ali’s bold spirit deserted him as soon as he was out of sight of British naval guns, and he retreated when he heard a false rumour that the local Harb had gone over to the Turks – much to the disgust of his War Minister, al-Masri. Feisal pulled his Juhayna back to Nakhl Mubarak with equal disgust. Zayd and ‘Ali had both sat in Rabegh while he had faced the Turks alone on the Darb Sultani, and now both had proved ineffectual. Meanwhile, in Mecca, Hussain panicked, and against all previous misgivings demanded a British brigade to defend Rabegh. In November he had scored another diplomatic home-goal by declaring himself ‘king’ of the Hejaz. It was a title alien to Arab tradition, for while the Arabic counterparts of the words ‘Sultan’ and ‘Emir’ have connotations of authority, the Arabic word for king, malik, implies ownership. Hussain had announced his change of status without previous warning and without consulting his allies: the move was of no real advantage politically, and could only serve to infuriate other Arab potentates such as ibn Sa’ud in the Najd. At a meeting with Wilson in Jeddah on 12 December, he accused the British of defaulting on their promise to cut the Hejaz railway, a promise which had never, in fact, been made. It was bluster designed to excuse the Hashemites’ blunders. If Rabegh fell, then Mecca would fall and Hussain and his sons would be executed. The only way to save Mecca seemed to be a landing of British troops at Rabegh, but if this happened, then Hussain might lose all Muslim support anyway. After much deliberation, Win-gate informed the Sharif that the two brigades on standby at Suez would be dispatched to Rabegh only on receipt of his own written request. Hussain prevaricated. The British troops never came. Zayd had lost the Wadi Safra. Feisal had withdrawn to the Wadi Yanbu’. Abdallah was inactive in Hanakiyya, near Medina, short of food, water and ammunition. ‘Ali had marched out of Rabegh and promptly marched back. The Arab cause seemed lost.
It was obvious to the Hashemites and to their British advisers that a decisive move was necessary. Wilson pushed Feisal to reactivate his plan to march on Wejh, 200 miles up the coast – the last Turkish-held port in the Hejaz. Once Wejh had fallen, Feisal would be in a position to menace the Hejaz railway north of Medina, and Fakhri Pasha would inevitably be distracted from Rabegh. Feisal now justified Lawrence’s trust in his diplomatic powers, and by a combination of superb oratory and British gold he managed to regroup the Juhayna, and to assemble a force of thousands of camelry – including ‘Utayba, Harb and Billi – in the Wadi Yanbu’. Though the irregulars had proved ineffective in the field, Lawrence continued to see their worth. He realized that it had been the potential threat to the railway which had caused Fakhri Pasha to hesitate for so long, and if the Arabs threatened the railway, then the Turkish flank would be extended up to Damascus, 800 miles away, and the Turks would be obliged to spread their troops thinly across that entire distance. Lawrence and Feisal between them came up with a two-pronged plan. First, to move Sharif ‘Abdallah and his 5,000 Bedu from Hanakiyya to the Wadi ‘Ais, where he could strike at the Hejaz railway more easily, and yet remain within reach of Yanbu’. Second, to march on Wejh with Feisal’s entire force of tribesmen, leaving only a skeleton unit to defend the port. These two moves would certainly put the Turks on the defensive, Lawrence thought. Feisal hung back, however, fearing for Rabegh. He would sooner die in defence of his family than be cut off helplessly from them when the axe fell. On 27 December, Wilson arrived in Yanbu’ and gave Feisal his personal assurance that the navy could hold Rabegh until his troops reached Wejh. A week later, Feisal’s Bedu army rode out of Nakhl Mubarak with banners flying. It was a magnificent, barbaric sight, the like of which had not been seen in the Hejaz in living memory. This was no tribal ghazwa, but massed tribes on the march. The army was divided into nine sections, and Sharif Feisal rode at the head of his Agayl bodyguard, with Lawrence slightly to the rear, and behind him three standard-bearers carrying banners of purple silk, and three kettle-drummers pounding their great drums to the rhythm of the camels’ feet. The ‘Agayl, 1,200 of them, fanned out to the right and left, with their camels pressed together almost flank to flank in a wildly snorting mass, taking up the refrain of an improvised camel song, led by the tribal bard. Their greased, shoulder-length plaits, bleached with camels’ urine, swung from beneath their headcloths, their brilliantly coloured shirts billowed, and the tassels on their saddle-bags swung majestically, as every man sang for all he was worth ‘the deep-throated roaring of the tribes’, so that the camels pricked up their ears, lowered their heads, stretched out their necks, and lengthened their pace. Day by day, their numbers increased as Bedu contingents from almost every tribe in the Hejaz flocked to the Hashemite banner, until the force was 8,000 strong. Suddenly, the dismal image of defeat began to recede: suddenly, even the capture of Damascus looked possible. Feisal and Lawrence knew that this was the real beginning of the revolt, for after this historic massing of the tribes, the Hejaz would never be the same again. Lawrence called it the ‘biggest moral achievement of the new Hejaz government’: for the first time in memory, he said, an entire tribe had marched into another tribe’s district without thought of plunder or blood-feud, complete with transport and supplies, united in a military goal against a common enemy. It was, as Auda ibn Hamad, Sheikh of the Rifa’a, told Feisal, ‘not an army, but a world which is moving on Wejh’.10
At dawn on 23 January, a small flotilla of British ships, including Fox, Espiegle and Hardinge, nosed through a blanket of seafog off the Red Sea coast near Wejh. Admiral Wemyss, scanning the shore with his binoculars, could make out the shape of a stone Martello tower standing on a high cliff, but there was no sign of Feisal, Lawrence, or the Bedu column. Wemyss concluded that Feisal had not made the rendezvous, and he was perple
xed. On board Hardinge were 600 Arab volunteers, mostly ex-slaves of the Juhayna, and Feisal’s Bishah tribal police, who had been picked up from Umm Lujj. They were to fight under their own Sheikhs, ‘Amr and Salih, with the nominal direction of Major Charles Vickery and Captain N. N. E. Bray, both experienced Arabic-speaking officers who had been assigned by Wingate to his Military Mission team. Wemyss was faced with the choice of waiting for Feisal to appear or making the assault without him. The Arabs on Hardinge could not be kept aboard much longer, for they lacked food and sanitary arrangements. But could they take the town? Wejh was mostly inhabited by anti-Hashemite Egyptian immigrants from Qusair, which stood directly opposite across the Red Sea, and its Turkish garrison consisted of 800 men, with about 500 irregular camel-corps of the ‘Agayl. Wemyss decided that, with his fifty naval guns, and a landing party of 200 naval ratings to support them, the Arabs could take it, even without the backing of Feisal’s much larger force. Hardinge slipped through the mist and dropped anchor two miles beyond the town. The Arabs, dressed in camel-hair cloaks against the chill, smelling of sheep, scrambled barefooted into lighters, and put ashore in a sheltered bay, protected by a rocky coral cliff. The mist was clearing, and two miles south the naval guns began their thunder, a deep, bass booming which seemed to the Arabs to shake the earth itself. On the beach, though, there was terrible confusion. Half the tribesmen sat down and refused to budge. The rest of them, game for plunder, split up into three sections, one of which went straight over the bluff and charged, bellowing ferociously, towards the town. The Turks had been expecting a massive assault from the south, and were poorly organized. The sentries in the houses on the northern perimeter looked out of the windows to see a mob of shrieking tribesmen rushing straight towards them. A ruckle of shots rang out, hitting two or three Arabs, who slumped down like dark bundles among the rocks. This was the only defence the Turks managed, for by then the Arabs had reached the first house, and, tearing open the door, they shot down three Egyptian civilians and started tearing up mattresses and smashing furniture in a frenzied hunt for loot. Afterwards they skirmished from house to house, killing and looting. Meanwhile a second and third group of Arabs had engaged the Turkish trenches, one section covering with rifle fire, while the other, under Sheikh Salih, advanced slowly towards them. The tribesmen walked unhurriedly over the cool stones, feeling their way easily, with their dishdashas tucked into their cartridge-belts, and their rifles carried on the shoulder muzzle-forward in Bedu style. They were 1,000 yards from the Turkish position when the enemy opened fire, and at once they broke into a slow trot, making for a ridge, behind which they rolled and bobbed up shooting, hitting ten or eleven Turks. Vickery, who had advanced with them, signalled to Hardinge with a mirror, and at once the battleship began lobbing shells into the Turkish entrenchments. The Turks fled, and the bombardment stopped long enough for the Arabs to advance. They came forward steadily, and almost collided with the landing-party of 200 bluejackets. They slept in their positions that night, and on the morning of the 24th moved into the quarters of the town not yet captured, to find that most of the Turkish garrison, including the commander, had fled in the night. The few troops left were hiding out in the mosque, and staggered out weaponless as soon as Fox knocked a gaping hole through its wall. Wejh had been taken, at a cost of twenty Arabs killed, one RFC officer mortally wounded, and a bluejacket shot in the foot.
Feisal’s tribal levies, with Lawrence, and Stewart Newcombe – whom they had picked up at Umm Lujj – arrived the following day to find the town already in Arab hands: ‘It was a fine sight to see his contingents scattered over the undulating plain to the south east,’ wrote Captain Bray. ‘… Feisal himself led the van, his presence denoted by his standard-bearer, carrying a huge red banner, the only splash of colour in his army.’ The Bedu trotted into the town on their horses and camels, singing, capering and executing mock charges. Bray noted that they appeared very light-hearted, ‘which was rather to be wondered at,’ he added, ‘since they had failed us – quite inexcusably, I think, in spite of the explanations which were later given by Lawrence and Feisal… no attempt whatsoever was made to keep faith, and it was a reflection, both on Feisal’s leadership and still more on his British advisers …’11 It was, indeed, a sad end to Lawrence’s 1 ‘spectacular march’ of 200 miles, and privately he was mortified by the failure. Publicly, though, he blamed the delay on lack of water, the weakness of Feisal’s camels – many of which had died – and on the ineptitude of his Juhayna guides. He defended himself by attacking Vickery’s impatience, implying that the assault had been made prematurely, and that the number of casualties had been unacceptable for an irregular army. He pointed out, correctly, that to the Arabs casualties were not statistics but personal tragedies, called the attack a ‘blunder’ militarily, and decried the looting and smashing of the town, which was, after all, required as an Arab base. Lawrence had met Vickery at Umm Lujj during the march, and they had taken a mutual dislike to one another. Vickery had thought Lawrence a braggart for boasting that the Arabs would be in Damascus by the end of the year. For his part, Lawrence, always critical of professional soldiers, condemned this gunner often years’ experience in the Sudan as insensitive because he had drunk whisky in the presence of Feisal, a devout Muslim. He regarded Vickery as one of those colonial officers who, though perfectly fluent in Arabic, was accustomed to patronize the natives, and could not distinguish between ordinary tribesmen and ‘noble’ Arabs such as the Hashemites. Lawrence’s style was very different. He tried to get ‘under the skin’ of the Arabs and emulate their ways: to see the best in them, even when their behaviour seemed unacceptable to European culture. His irritation with Vickery, though, arose from his unconscious shadow – the submerged feeling that despite his mask, he and Vickery were in essence the same, differing only in approach. Drinking whisky before Feisal might have been insensitive, he reflected, but it was at least honest (and Feisal, being broadminded, had laughingly accepted it), while his own assumption of an Arab persona was a charade. His criticism of Vickery was largely unjust, however. First, it had been Admiral Wemyss rather than Vickery who had decided not to wait for Feisal’s force: second, the Arabs had been largely beyond Vickery’s control, and third, the looting and smashing of the town had been no less appalling to Vickery and Bray than it had been to himself. Lawrence took no personal responsibility for Feisal’s failure to make the rendezvous, and his excuses were lame. Elsewhere he boasted of the Bedu’s ability to march long distances on minimal food and water, and, as Bray pointed out, he could quite easily have sent a small advance-guard of the 8,000 men ahead to Wejh to join in the attack. On the other hand, the propagandist in Lawrence appreciated that the march had been a success by its very occurrence: Feisal’s ability to assemble such a formidable force of tribesmen, to move them 200 miles through the desert, and now to threaten the Hejaz railway, would, he knew, have a devastating effect on Turkish morale.
Another great blow to Turkish morale, though, had been delivered by Sharif ‘Abdallah, who, on 13 January, while on the march to Wadi Ais with 5,000 Bedu, had run into a Turkish column under the former assassin Ashraf Bey, near the oasis of Khaybar. ‘Abdallah, who even Feisal admitted could act with lightning decision when necessary, had sent in his horsemen so swiftly that the Turkish machine-gunners had only managed to get off sixty rounds before being swamped. He had captured the entire column, including Ashraf himself, together with £20,000 in gold, carpets, clothes, a machine-gun, howitzers, and boxes of pistols. ‘Abdallah had then crossed the railway in the Wadi Hamdh and had left a letter for Fakhri Pasha between the rails, informing him that the Arabs had Ashraf Bey, and making all manner of dire threats. ‘Abdallah had sent a messenger to Feisal with Ashraf Bey’s own jewelled dagger as a present, while he and Lawrence were encamped at Harrat Ghalib on the coast. There had been great feasting and rejoicing: the tribal bard, Lawrence wrote, had composed an ode to the victory ‘within sixteen minutes’. The Arabs had lingered an extra day at Abu
Zeraybat in the Wadi Hamdh to celebrate, and it was this delay, rather than lack of water, which had cost them the rendezvous at Wejh.
The capture of Ashraf on 13 January, together with news of the march on Wejh, ended Fakhri Pasha’s designs on Rabegh. In the Wadi Safra, the Harb were harassing his caravans, not for the sake of the Hashemites, but simply for their own benefit: his supply-lines were dangerously over-extended, and lay through hostile country. The British had air superiority in Rabegh, since the Turkish flight in Medina was grounded, and Ross’s aircraft had several times buzzed Medina itself. The Turks were also weakened by a new and even more subversive enemy – the cholera bacillus – which was claiming twenty soldiers a day. News that the Arabs were operating north of Medina was the final straw. On 18 January, five days after the loss of Ashraf, and six days before the fall of Wejh, Fakhri ordered his battalions back to Medina and the railway. The threat to Rabegh had evaporated, and the Turks never stirred again from Medina for the duration of the war.
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