Lawrence

by Michael Asher

  ‘And what did Lawrence look like?’

  ‘A tall, strong man, with a long beard,’ the Arab said.

  Later, the grandson took us to see the battlefield, a rolling red meadow, traversed by a stream and full of nests of boulders. It was remarkably close to the village, and seemed unexpectedly small-scale for such a dramatic event. The slaughter of a Turkish column on this very field at Tafas on 27 September 1918, and the subsequent massacre of both Turkish and German prisoners, indeed, were among the most controversial acts of Lawrence’s career – convincing some of his critics that he was a bloodthirsty sadist, or alternatively that his torture and rape at Dara’a had permanently unhinged his passions. It was a controversy that Lawrence stoked with customary glee: ‘The best of you brings me the most Turkish dead,’ he claimed to have told his bodyguard that day, commenting, ‘By my order we took no prisoners, for the first time in the war.’1 This ruthlessness was engendered by fury at the slaughter of non-combatant peasants in Tafas by the retreating Turks, one of the most sickening sights Lawrence had witnessed in the campaign. Not only had they massacred babies, they had also killed and deliberately mutilated women, leaving their corpses spread out obscenely: Lawrence had seen one pregnant woman lying dead with a bayonet thrust between her legs. Talal, a Sheikh of Tafas, with whom Lawrence claimed to have made his fateful reconnaissance of the Hauran the previous November, he wrote, had been so incensed by the slaughter of his people that he died in a suicidal lone charge towards the massed Turkish ranks.

  The Tafas massacre was part of the final phase of the campaign that had begun in May 1918, when Lawrence had applied to Allenby for the 2,000 camels made redundant by the disbanding of the Imperial Camel Brigade in Sinai. ‘And what do you want them for?’ the GOC had asked: ‘To put a thousand men into Dara’a any day you please,’ Lawrence replied. His plan was to mount a force of Arab regulars on camels and march them north from Waheida, the Arabs’ new forward H Q near Ma’an, to Azraq and then to Dara a with a supply column and artillery, machine-guns, armoured cars and aeroplanes. They would carry all their own supplies, reach Dara’a in only a fortnight, and cut the railway with the aid of Bedu irregulars from the Rwalla, just as the GOC made his autumn offensive into Syria. Allenby pondered the request. Camels were scarce in the Middle East, and his Quartermaster required them urgently for another division. Finally, Lawrence’s enthusiasm convinced him. He handed over the camels to the Arab Revolt, and Lawrence rushed to meet Feisal at Aba 1-Lissan the following day, certain that they had just been given the means of final victory. Almost at once, he sent home the Egyptian Transport Corps camel-men who were busily but inefficiently shifting supplies from Aqaba to Aba 1-Lissan, and replaced them with Arab camel-drivers from Mecca, who would put the animals to better use. The organization of logistics was assigned to Captain Hubert Young, the officer Lawrence had first met at Carchemish before the war. Young had been carefully selected by Lawrence himself as an understudy in case he should be killed: he was a fluent Arabic speaker and a first-class organizer, but he was flawed by an irascibility which made it difficult for him to live peacefully with anyone for very long. Nuri as-Sa id wrote that Young’s temper was his own worst enemy, and recalled once managing to soothe some Arab officers whom Young had upset by telling them: ‘Don’t worry. He shouts at the British just the same!’ Had it not been for this Achilles heel, Young might have been another Lawrence of Arabia. Possibly the most able of all the British officers who served with the Arab forces, his powers of visualizing an operation down to the last camel-load far outweighed those of the mercurial Lawrence, who tended to ride first and consider logistics afterwards. Yet while Lawrence charmed, Young had the manner and appearance of a well-intentioned, highly intelligent, but bad-tempered schoolboy. In February 1918 he had been mysteriously ordered from a posting in India to Cairo: ‘It was not until I reported to GHQ at the Savoy …’ he wrote, ‘and the door opened to admit the familiar little figure, that I was enlightened.’ ‘They asked me to suggest someone who could take my place in case anything happened to me,’ said Lawrence, ‘… and I told them no one could. As they pressed me I said I could only think of Gertrude Bell and yourself, and they seemed to think you’d be better for this particular job than she would.’2 Alan Dawnay, Hedgehog’s CO, soon realized that the ‘understudy’ plan would never work because of Young’s abrasiveness, however, and instead assigned him to the Dara’a operation as Quartermaster.

  By 22 July, Young had drawn up a detailed logistics scheme for the mission which was approved both by Joyce, commanding Feisal’s British staff, and by Feisal himself. Lawrence was then in Cairo, making his own plans for the mission with Dawnay, who suggested that they should utilize the last two companies of the Imperial Camel Corps to complete two jobs which the Bedu had as yet failed to carry off: the destruction of Mudowwara, and the demolition of the viaduct at Qissir, north of Ma an. Surprisingly perhaps, Lawrence agreed, and they sent a telegram to Joyce in Aqaba instructing him to establish supply dumps for the ICC force at Rum, Jefer and Bair. These instructions were highly unwelcome in Aqaba: Joyce had not been consulted on the question, and both he and Young saw that every load they had to transport for the Camel Corps operation would mean one load less for their ‘flying column’ to Azraq and Dara’a. Joyce and I discussed this telegram with some grinding of teeth,’ Young wrote, ‘and decided that there was nothing for it but to use some of the priceless camels to put out a dump for [the Mudowwara operation].’3 On 28 July Lawrence arrived in Aqaba, read Young’s plan and condemned it at once as unworkable. Allenby was intending to make his final push for Damascus on 19 September, and the Arabs were to lead off not more than four days previously. Timing was crucial: ‘[Allenby’s] words to me,’ wrote Lawrence, ‘were that three men and a boy with pistols in front of Dara’a on September 16th … would be better than thousands a week before or a week after.’4 Young’s plan, he pointed out, would have the Arabs in Dara’a three weeks too late. He unfolded his own scheme, worked out with Dawnay, for a more limited and more mobile operation against Dara’a. Young lost his temper. Lawrence declared sarcastically that he had executed many such mobile operations successfully in the past without the help of a Johnny-come-lately-Old Etonian-regular soldier like Young. Young riposted that Lawrence was proposing this time to move regular soldiers, not Bedu – and regulars were quite another thing. Did he expect them to ride two to a camel and live on a roll of apricot paste and a canteen of water for a fortnight? Where did he think the supplies were coming from? And what about the exfiltration? Lawrence’s plan allowed no provision for a withdrawal, and if the operation failed, they would starve: ‘[Lawrence] never knew very much about the regular army,’ Young wrote; ‘… he had no sympathy for our transport problems, for he held all military organisations in profound contempt and the letter “Q” so justly and deeply revered by regulars had no place in the Lawrentian alphabet.’5 This was essentially a conflict between the brilliant professional and the brilliant amateur. Joyce had already complained to Dawnay with some justification that Lawrence tended to bombard GHQ, with ambitious and dashing plans but would simply vanish when these ‘wildcat schemes’ had to be put into practice. The meeting ended inconclusively, and the officers scarcely spoke for three days. Young resented Lawrence’s smugness:’… the sight of that little man reading Morte d’Arthur in a corner of the mess tent with an impish smile on his face was not consoling,’ he wrote.6 Finally Joyce capitulated, and accepted Lawrence’s scheme as well as the Camel Corps operation. Young was forced to go along, and employed his genius in ferrying supplies and equipment to Ja’afar Pasha’s regulars at Waheida and Aba 1-Lissan, an operation in which he succeeded against all odds: ‘… to run a harmonious and orderly train was impossible,’ Lawrence grudgingly admitted, ‘but Young very nearly did it, in his curious, ungrateful way. Thanks to him the supply problem of the regulars on the plateau was solved.’7

  On 4 August, Lawrence guided the Camel Corps companies under Buxton to Rum,
and, leaving them to attack Mudowwara without him, flew to Jefer to meet Nuri as-Sha’alan of the Rwalla. He was distinctly apprehensive about this meeting. During his secret northern ride from Nabk in 1917, he had assured the Emir that he could trust the most recent of British promises. Nuri now knew the full terms of the Sykes-Picot agreement, and Lawrence thought he might demand fulfilment of the ‘dishonourable half-bargain’ they had made on that long-ago day in Azraq. What this mysterious ‘half-bargain’ might have been, Lawrence never revealed, only that, on their meeting at Jefer, the Emir did not claim it, and the encounter ended with Nuri giving his whole-hearted support to the Hashemite cause. A few days later, Lawrence returned to Jefer by car with Joyce to meet the Camel Corps, who had successfully captured Mudowwara station and demolished the water-tower. Lawrence completed a reconnaissance mission to Azraq, while the Camel Corps went for the viaduct at Qissir. The mission was abandoned on 20 August when the column was spotted by German aircraft, and Buxton learned that a hostile Bedu tribe lay encamped between them and their target.

  Meanwhile, a crisis was shaping up among the regular Arab officers at Aba 1-Lissan, who had read a newspaper report in which King Hussain denied that Ja’afar Pasha had ever been appointed Commander of the Northern Army. This was Hussain’s last attempt to assert control over his son Feisal, who had personally promoted Ja’afar Commander-in-Chief in 1917 without consulting his father. Hussain had always been suspicious of the Arab regular officers, fearing that they would ‘take over’ the Revolt, and it was for this reason he had dismissed Aziz al-Masri, Ja’far’s predecessor, who had, long before Lawrence, developed much of the strategy of the Arab campaign. Hussain knew that Feisal was a weak character, easily swayed by his advisers, and he was terrified that the Arab cause would be hijacked by the Allies’ territorial ambitions. Though Lawrence put Hussain’s reaction down to ‘jealousy’ and ‘lust for power’, the fact is that it suited the British and the French to divide the Hashemites, just as it had suited the Turks. Hussain believed that Feisal was opening the doors for French ambitions in Syria, and while Lawrence later claimed that the old man was ‘crazy’, the Emir was, of course, ultimately proved right.

  On reading Hussain’s declaration that there was ‘no Arab officer higher in rank than captain’, Ja’afar Pasha resigned, and was promptly followed by all his staff. Feisal himself resigned in solidarity, which rendered the oaths made to him by the Bedu meaningless. With Feisal’s resignation, the chances of massing the great force of Rwalla Lawrence had counted on for a direct assault on Dara’a dissolved. In one fell swoop, the entire Revolt looked ready to collapse, and on 26 August, Lawrence rushed to Aba 1-Lissan to deal with the impasse. This was a vital moment in the Dara’a operation. That very day, the first of Young’s supply convoys had been about to leave Aqaba, when a cry of ‘Tayaara! Tayaara!’ had gone up, and two German aircraft had drummed out of the heat-haze over the Wadi Araba and delivered a package of bombs among the caravans. The animals had gone wild, breaking their lead ropes, bucking and scattering their loads across the plain. With silent curses yet infinite attention to detail, Young had rallied the handlers, picked up the baggage, re-packed the camels, re-strung the caravans, and set the train on its way again. At Aba 1-Lissan, though, the Arab officers would not shift ground without some conciliatory move from Hussain. On 30 August Lawrence telegraphed Clayton that the Hedgehog staff were assuming command of the operation, which would go ahead as planned. Lawrence knew that while they might take Dara’a without Feisal, to have marched into Damascus without him would have meant the defeat of everything they had worked for over the past two years. The Arabs would then be without bargaining power, and the Allies would establish a government in Syria. He told Clayton that he could hold things together for only four days – if no solution were found by then, he would have to evacuate the forward posts and abort the Dara’a mission on which the whole future of the Arabs depended. The days clicked by interminably and there was no word from Hussain. At last, on 4 September, a long message arrived from the King consisting of both a lame apology, and a reiteration of the same accusation in a different form. Lawrence brazenly lopped off the offending part of the message, marked it ‘most urgent’ and sent it to Feisal’s tent.

  On 3 September, against all odds, an assault caravan of Arab regulars, together with the French-Algerian artillery battery under Captain Pisani on mules, and a supply column, set out for Azraq. Feisal drove out in his Vauxhall car to review them as the camels strutted out across the grassy downs of the Shirah: ‘As each section saluted Feisal,’ Young wrote, ‘I even felt an absurd lump in my bearded throat at the greatness of the sight.’8 On the 6th, Lawrence drove to Azraq in a Rolls-Royce tender with Sharif Nasir, who was to lead the Bedu in the final stroke, and Lord Winterton, who had just been transferred to Hedgehog from the disbanded Imperial Camel Corps. Over the next week the assault force began to assemble. On 10 September two aircraft of the recently renamed Royal Air Force landed. Joyce and Stirling – another recent recruit to the Arab mission – came in on 11 September with the armoured cars. Feisal arrived on the 12th with Marshall, the medical officer. Behind him came Nuri as-Said with the 450 Arab regulars, Pisani with his Algerian gunners, the baggage convoy of 1,500 camels with Young, a company of trained demolition-men from the Egyptian Camel Corps under Peake, a section of Gurkha camel-men under Scott-Higgins, and Bedu irregulars of the Rwalla under Nuri ash-Sha’alan, of the Howaytat under Auda and Mohammad adh-Dhaylan, the Bani Sakhr under Fahad, clans of the Seridyyeh and Serahiyyin, Druses, Syrian villagers under Talal al-Haraydhin, Lawrence’s small bodyguard of Hauran peasants and Nasir’s Agayl – a total of almost 1,000 men. As hardware, they had two Bristol aircraft, four quick-firing Napoleon mountain-guns, twenty-four machine-guns, and three armoured cars with their tenders. This was the blade which would carve the victory for which Lawrence had worked so long: the climax of his years of preaching revolt had come. Yet, when the strike force was complete, Lawrence felt despondent. First, he knew that the time of reckoning was near, when the British deception of the Hashemites – and his major role in this charade – would be revealed in all its iniquity. He had raised these ‘tides of men’, he felt, on a sham promise and brought them to worship an ideal of unity in which he could not believe himself. This conflict between the ideal and the prosaic reflected the inner struggle which had been part of Lawrence since childhood. The Arabs themselves were more practical: Auda Abu Tayyi had corresponded with the Turks when the situation had seemed favourable; the Bedu of the Hejaz had retired from the fighting line when it suited them: even Feisal had made overtures to the Turks. Nuri ash-Sha’alan had remained neutral until it seemed that the Hashemites were on the winning side, while many of the tribes, or sections of tribes, of the Hejaz and even of Syria had never joined the Hashemite cause at all. Certainly, Syrian nationalists like Nasib al-Bakri – upon whom Lawrence poured vitriol – were fighting for liberty, but the Hashemites were fighting largely for family patrimony. On their own, they had proved damp squibs: Zayd had lost the Wadi Safra, ‘Ali had almost lost Rabegh. Hussain had sacked his best man, Aziz al-Masri, and almost ruined the final operation by denying that Ja’afar Pasha was his Commander-in-Chief. Zayd had lied to him: Abdallah had rejected his advice. At Azraq he felt a sudden surge of loathing for ‘these petty incarnate Semites’, and for himself who had for two years pretended to be their friend, but had never really become one of them. The terrible fear of being hurt or killed which he had staved off for months, forcing himself to Herculean heights of bravado and self-sacrifice, was reasserting itself with a vengeance. He knew that his nerve was almost at an end, and within a few weeks he must either resign from his position or crack. The old oddness, his sense of inadequacy – absent when he rode with his bodyguard or consorted with Feisal – returned when he found himself among a large crowd. Worst of all, he had heard – perhaps from Syrian recruits – that Dahoum, his pre-war friend, was dead. The boy had been employed as a guard on the Carchemish
site until 1916, when almost half the old workforce had perished in a terrible season of sickness and famine. Though Lawrence never mentioned Dahoum by name, he wrote afterwards that one of his main motives in leading the Arabs had been to make a present of freedom to a certain Arab whom he loved. He also wrote that this motive had ceased to exist ‘some weeks’ before the end of the campaign – referring not to the time of Dahoum’s probable death in 1916, but to the moment when he had actually heard of his friend’s demise. Later, composing his dedicatory poem ‘To SA’ while flying between Paris and Lyon in a Handley-Page, he wrote: ‘I wrought for him freedom to lighten his sad eyes: but he had died waiting for me. So I threw my gift away and now not anywhere will I find rest and peace.’9 In sorrow, anger and apprehension, Lawrence shunned the company at Azraq and walked off alone to ‘Ain al-Assad, where he had, perhaps, spent idle moments in November 1917 with ‘Ali ibn Hussain al-Harithi – another friend he might never see again.