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.