We left Abd el Main there and rode on past the other bodies, now seen clearly in the sunlight to be men, women and four babies, toward the village whose loneliness we knew meant that it was full of death and horror. On the outskirts were the low mud walls of some sheep-folds, and on one lay something red and white. I looked nearer, and saw the body of a woman folded across it, face downward, nailed there by a saw-bayonet whose haft stuck hideously into the air from between her naked legs. She had been pregnant, and about her were others, perhaps twenty in all, variously killed, but laid out to accord with an obscene taste. The Zaagi burst out in wild peals of laughter, in which some of those who were not sick joined hysterically. It was a sight near madness, the more desolate for the warm sunshine and the clean air of this upland afternoon. I said: “The best of you brings me the most Turkish dead”; and we turned and rode as fast as we might in the direction of the fading enemy. On our way we shot down those of them fallen out by the roadside who came imploring our pity.
Tallal had seen something of what we had seen. He gave one moan like a hurt animal, and then slowly rode to the higher ground, and sat there a long while on his mare, shivering and looking fixedly after the Turks. I moved toward him to speak to him, but Auda caught my rein and stayed me. After some minutes Tallal very slowly drew his headcloth about his face, and then seemed to take hold of himself, for he dashed his stirrups into his horse’s flanks and galloped headlong, bending low in the saddle and swaying as though he would fall, straight at the main body of the enemy. It was a long ride, down the gentle slope and across the hollow, and we all sat there like stone while he rushed forward, the drumming of his horse’s hoofs sounding unnaturally loud in our ears. We had stopped shooting and the Turks had stopped shooting; both armies waited for him. He flew on in this hushed evening, till he was only a few lengths from the enemy. Then he sat up in the saddle and cried his war-cry “Tallal, Tallal” twice in a tremendous voice. Instantly, all their rifles and machine-guns crashed out together, and he and his mare, riddled through and through with bullets, fell dead among their lance points.
Auda looked very cold and grim. “God give him mercy! We will take his price.” He shook his rein and moved slowly forward after the enemy. We called up the peasantry, now all drunk with fear and blood, and sent them from this side and from that against the retreating column. Auda led them like the old lion of battle that he is. By a skilful turn he drove the enemy into bad ground and split their column into three parts. The third part, the smallest, was mostly made up of German and Austrian gunners, grouped round three motor-cars which presumably carried high officers. They fought magnificently and drove off our attacks time and again, despite our desperation. The Arabs were fighting like devils, the sweat blinding our eyes, our throats parched with dust, and the agony of cruelty and revenge which was burning in our bodies and twisting our hands about so that we could hardly shoot. By my orders they were to take no prisoners—for the first time in the war.
This account of the death of Tallal el Hareidhin of Tafas, in Lawrence’s own words, shows us what marvelous descriptive powers this young soldier-scholar has at his command, and gives us a hint of the masterpiece that the world should one day receive from his pen.
Two German machine-gun companies had resisted magnificently and escaped, with the Turkish commander-in-chief, Djemal Pasha, in his car in their midst. The Arabs wiped out the second section completely after a bitter hand-to-hand struggle. No prisoners were taken, because the Arabs were wild with rage over the Tafas massacre. Two hundred and fifty German prisoners had been captured during the day, but when the Arabs discovered one of Lawrence’s men with a fractured thigh pinned to the ground with two German bayonets, they acted like enraged bulls. Turning their machine-guns on the remaining prisoners they wiped them out.
After the encounter, Nuri Shaalan, at the head of the Rualla horse, rode straight into the main street of Deraa. There were two or three fights on the way, but they took the town in a whirlwind gallop. The next morning Nuri returned to Lawrence at Tafas with five hundred infantry prisoners and the freedom of the town of Deraa. Some of Allenby’s troops arrived in Deraa that day also.
Lawrence and his army spent that night—and a very uneasy night it was—on Sheik Saad hill. He did not feel certain of victory since there was always a risk of his small force being washed away by a great wave of the enemy in retreat. All that night the Hauran horsemen clung tenaciously to the great Turkish column from Deraa, made up of six thousand men, which Lawrence had not dared engage in pitched battle. Instead of sleeping with the regular troops at Sheik Saad, Lawrence spent part of the night helping the Hauran cavalry, and at dawn he rode off to the westward with a handful of men Until he met the outposts of the fourth cavalry division of the British army. After guiding them into Deraa and starting them off on their northward march toward Damascus, Lawrence galloped back full speed to the Hauran cavalry. Although the Turkish column when it left Deraa was six thousand strong, at the end of twenty-four hours only five thousand remained. One thousand had been picked off by the Bedouins. Eighteen hours more and there were three thousand; and after a point called Kiswe, where Lawrence headed off the remnant of the Turkish Fourth Army and flung them into one of Allenby’s cavalry brigades coming from the southwest, only two thousand remained.
In all, Lawrence, Joyce, Jaffer, and Nuri, and their scattered force of wild Bedouins and regular camel corps had killed about fire thousand of the Turks in this last phase of the campaign and captured more than eight thousand of them, as well as one hundred and fifty machine-guns and thirty cannons. In addition to the column of less than one thousand men who had started north from Akaha with Lawrence, Auda Abu Tayi and two hundred of the best fighting men of the Howeitat tribe took part in Lawrence’s war-dance around Deraa, also two thousand Beni Sakhr, “the Sons of Hawks,” from east of the Dead Sea, four thousand Rualla under Nuri Shaalan from the North Arabian Desert, one thousand Druses from the Hauran, and eight thousand Arab villagers from the Hauran.
In a letter which he wrote to me more than a year after the war, Colonel Stirling, who had played a prominent rôle in this final raid, summed up the effects of what the Arabs had done to help Allenby overwhelm the Turks:
“This, after all,” wrote Colonel Stirling, “was the main justification of our existence and of the money and time we had spent on the Arab Revolt. The raid itself was really very dramatic in that we started out, a small regular force of Arabs 400 strong and marched 600 miles in 23 days through unmapped Arabia and came in out of the blue—miles behind the Turkish main armies, and as an absolute surprise. Two days before the British advance in Palestine began we had cut three lines of railways and for five days allowed no trains to get through to the Turkish armies. The result was that when their re-treat commenced they found all their advance food depots and ammunition dumps were exhausted. During these days we of course led a somewhat precarious existence, generally shifting camp twice in a night to avoid being surprised. We were only a very weak force then, you see, though by the time we got on and rushed Damascus, something like 11,000 mounted Arabs had joined us.”
Some of the Arab horsemen rode right on that evening into Damascus, where the burning ammunition-dumps turned night into day. Back at Kiswe, just a few miles south of Damascus, and not far from where Saul of Tarsus was dazzled by the light that transformed him into Paul the interpreter of Christianity, the glare of the fires from Damascus and the roar and reverberation of explosions kept Lawrence awake most of the night. He was completely worn out. From September 13 to 30, he had caught only occasional snatches of sleep. Mounted on a racing-camel or dashing about the country on an Arab steed, riding inside the turret of an armored car or flying about in one of the fighting planes, he had led the relentless existence demanded of him in this great emergency of the war. Now the end of the war was in sight in the Land of the Arabian Nights. But sleep was difficult because all night long the Turks and Germans were blowing up their ammunition-dumps eight miles
north in Damascus. With each explosion the earth shook, the sky went white, and splashes of red tore great gaps in the night as shells went off in the air. “They are burning Damascus,” Lawrence remarked to Stirling. Then he rolled over in the sand and fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXV
LAWRENCE RULES IN DAMASCUS, AND THE TREACHERY OF THE ALGERIAN EMIR
THE next morning they saw Damascus in the center of its gardens as green and beautiful as any city in the world. The enchantment of the scene, “like a dream that visits the light slumbers of the morning—a dream dreamed but to vanish,” reminded Lawrence of the Arab story that when Mohammed first came here as a camel-driver, upon seeing Damascus from a distance, he refused to enter, saying that man could only hope to enter paradise once. Coming out of the desert and beholding this view, than which there is none more enchanting and alluring in the world, it is no wonder Mohammed was sorely tempted and even trembled for his soul. Seen from afar, this oasis of verdure, rimmed round by yellow desert against a background of snow-capped mountains, is indeed a pearl in an emerald setting. So it is only natural that the desert-dweller should look upon it as an earthly paradise.
As the sun-rays fell aslant, weaving a fairy gossamer veil over the minarets and cupolas of this dream city, Lawrence and Stirling drove into Damascus in their famous Rolls-Royce, the Blue Mist. They went straight to the town-hall and there called a meeting of all the leading sheiks. Lawrence selected Shukri Ibn Ayubi, a descendant of Saladin, to act as the first military governor under the new régime. Then he appointed a chief of police, a director of local transportation, and numerous other officials. These details arranged, Shukri, Nuri Said, Auda Abu Tayi, Nuri Shalaan, and Lawrence, at the head of their Bedouin irregulars, proceeded through the streets of Damascus.
The twenty-nine-year-old commander-in-chief of the greatest army that had been raised in Arabia for five centuries, who in less than a year had made himself the most important man in Arabia since the days of the great Calif Harun al Rashid, made his official entry into this ancient capital of the old Arabian Empire at seven o’clock on the morning of October 31. The entire population, together with tens of thousands of Bedouins from the fringes of the desert, packed the “street that is called straight” as Lawrence entered the gate, dressed in the garb of a prince of Mecca. All realized that at last their glorious city had been freed from the Turkish yoke. Howling dervishes ran in front of him, dancing and sticking knives into their flesh, while behind him came his flying column of picturesque Arabian knights. For months they had heard of the exploits of Shereef Lawrence, hut now for the first time they saw the mysterious Englishman who had united the desert tribes and driven the Turks from Arabia. As they saw him come swinging along through the bazaars on the back of his camel, it seemed as though all the people of Damascus shouted his name and Feisal’s in one joyful chorus. For ten miles and more along the streets of this, the oldest city in the world that still remains standing, the crowds gave the young Englishman one of the greatest ovations ever given to any man. Dr. John Finley, of the American Red Cross, who came north with Allenby, said, in describing it, that “there were scenes of joy and ecstasy such as may never be witnessed on this earth again. The bazaars were lined with hundreds of thousands of people. The ‘street that is called straight’ was so packed that the horses and camels could hardly squirm through. The housetops were crowded. The people hung priceless Oriental carpets from their balconies and showered Lawrence and his companions with silken head-cloths, flowers and attar of roses.”
Fortunately for the Arabs, Allenby had ordered Light Horse Harry Chauvel to hold his Australians back and let Feisal’s advance-guard enter the city first, and Allenby also had not given any arbitrary orders regarding the establishment of a temporary government in Damascus. So Lawrence was astute enough to see to it that representatives of the Arabian army entered just ahead of the British, thereby giving Emir Feisal first possession.
Colonel Lawrence remained in Damascus only four days. But during that time he was the virtual ruler of the city, and one of his first moves was to visit the tomb of Saladin, where the kaiser, back in 1898, had placed a satin flag and a bronze laurel wreath inscribed in Turkish and Arabic: “From one great emperor to another.” The wreath and inscription adorned with the Prussian eagle had irritated Lawrence on his pre-war visits to Damascus, and early in the campaign, when they were far south at Yenbo, Lawrence and Feisal had vowed that they would not forget Saladin’s tomb. The bronze wreath now adorns the office of the curator of the British War Museum, while the kaiser’s flag returned with me to America.
During Lawrence’s brief rule of Damascus, the kaleidoscopic bazaars of that most orthodox of all Oriental cities were seething with excitement. Only his intimate acquaintance with the personal caprices of the conspirators behind the innumerable intrigues and counter-intrigues made it possible for him to control the situation. Even then there were thrilling incidents and danger from assassins.
On November 2 a riot broke out in Damascus, a disturbance that might easily have blossomed into a counter-revolution. The moving spirit in it was an Algerian emir, one Abd el Keder, who had long been an arch-enemy of King Hussein and his sons. This blackguard was the grandson of the celebrated Emir Abd el Keder, who for many years had fought the French in Algiers and, when finally defeated, had fled to Damascus. His two grandsons, Emir Muhammed Said and Emir Abd el Keder, played an unsavory part in the war in the Near East. The former served as an agent of the Germans and Turks in Africa, where he exhorted the Senussi of the Sahara to invade Egypt, while his younger and even more truculent brother, Abd el Keder, as a superspy for Enver Pasha, joined the Shereefian army. A mock escape from Constantinople gave Abd el Keder all the alibi needed for him to get into the good graces of the Arabs, and when he arrived across the desert at Feisal’s headquarters in Akaba he posed as an Arab Nationalist. In fact, so plausible and eloquent was he, and so seemingly genuine were the promises of coöperation which he made, that even King Hussein welcomed him to Mecca and gave him an honorary title.
Then when Allenby launched his first great drive which resulted in the capture of Beersheba, Gaza, Jerusalem, and Jericho, Lawrence was asked to cooperate by destroying an important railway bridge between the Turkish army and its Damascus base. It so happened that Abd el Keder was the feudal lord controlling much of the region round about the bridge, and when Feisal discussed the project with him he at once begged to be allowed to take part in the raid. But after accompanying Lawrence on his trek north for many days, until the party was actually within a few miles of the bridge, Abd el Keder and his cavalcade of followers galloped off in the desert night and delivered the details of Lawrence’s plan to the German and Turkish staff. Although this left him with only a few men, Lawrence nevertheless made a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to destroy the bridge, an adventure from which he barely escaped with his life.
The Turks at first suspected their Algerian spy of double-crossing them and of really having turned pro-Arab, but they finally released him and then showered him with honors. Later on, when Allenby made his last great drive toward Damascus, Abd el Keder was sent among the Syrian villagers to cajole them into remaining loyal to their Ottoman rulers. Rut when the cunning Algerian and his brother saw that the Turkish retreat was degenerating into a débâcle, their enthusiasm for their friends, Enver, Talaat, and Djemal, vanished, and they galloped to Damascus several hours ahead of Allenby and Lawrence, hurriedly organized an Arab civil government with themselves as the heads, and prepared a triumphal welcome for the approaching British and Hedjaz armies. But, naturally, they were a bit nonplussed to find the victors led by Colonel Lawrence, who peremptorily ordered them to resign and then appointed men of Emir Feisal’s choice in their stead. This so upset and enraged the intriguing brothers that they drew their weapons and would have attacked Lawrence had the others present at the council not disarmed them. Then these two unpleasant but immensely rich Algerian emirs collected together the members of their
own personal body-guard, who were mainly exiles like themselves, and paraded through the streets making impassioned speeches denouncing Emir Feisal and King Hussein as puppets of Lawrence and the British. They called upon the Damascenes to strike a blow for the faith and launch a new rebellion. Rioting soon broke out, and it took Lawrence’s men six hours to clear the town. The rioting soon degenerated into pure looting, and it was necessary for Lawrence, General Nuri Pasha, Shukri Ayubi, and the other leaders of the Shereefian force to resort to machine-gunning in the central square of Damascus and impose peace by force, after killing and wounding a score or more. The two turbulent Algerian emirs managed to hide, and for a month they kept under cover, while they planned a new rebellion. But Abd el Keder’s restless and impulsive spirit got the better of his discretion, and in a moment of passion he seized his rifle, leaped on his charger, and galloped down to Feisal’s palace, shouting for Feisal to come out and fight him, and then started shooting. So persistent was he that one of the Arab sentries, who had taken to cover, sent a rifle-ball through his head and thus abruptly ended the adventures of the Algerian emir.
After the fall of Damascus, the combined British and Arabian forces occupied the Syrian seaport of Beyrouth, where the famous American university is located that has done so much to inoculate the Near East with the spirit of democracy. Here an incident occurred that warned the Arabs of the diplomatic troubles ahead of them. As in the case of Damascus, the Shereefian forces, through the local people, took over the reins of government, but a few days later a French representative (accompanied by a British officer) came along and demanded that the Arab flag be hauled down from the town-hall so that the French tricolor could he raised in its stead. Whereupon the Arab governor laid his pistol on the table and said: “There is my revolver. You may shoot me if you like, hut I will not take down the flag!” However, after another three days Allenby wired that no flag at all should fly over Beyrouth, and that a French officer should rule the city in the name of all the Allies. From that date the Arabs had to fight an all-uphill battle on the field of diplomacy to keep from losing what they had fought for on the field of war. And once again their champion was young Lawrence.
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