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.