Lawrence and the Arabs

by Robert Graves

XVII

While waiting for Feisal’s army to come up Lawrence began getting his thoughts in order again. The war in Arabia was as good as over and Feisal’s army, now under the wing of Allenby, was about to take part in the military deliverance of Syria. Syria Lawrence knew well. He had wandered up and down in it before the War, from city to city and tribe to tribe; he had even written a book about it. Syria was a fertile strip of land running between the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and the great Syrian desert, with a backbone of mountains dividing it. It had been for centuries a corridor between Arabia and Europe, Asia and Egypt, and held at one time or another by Turks, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Arabs, Persians, Assyrians and Hittites. It was naturally divided up into sections by the mountain spurs, and the constant passing to and fro of armies had filled the land with an extraordinary variety of peoples—to almost every valley a different population, each little colony kept separate from its neighbours by the spurs between. There were Circassians, Kurds, Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Persians, Algerians, Jews, Arabians, and many more, with as many varieties of religion among them as of race.

The six principal cities, Jerusalem, Beyrout, Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, were also each of them entirely different in character. The only possible bond between most of these pieces of the Syrian mosaic was the common language, Arabic, and though at this time there was much talk of Arab freedom, it was impossible to think of Syria as a national unity. Freedom to the Syrians meant local home-rule for each little community in its valley or city, but a freedom impossible in modern civilization where roads, railways, taxes, armies, a postal system, supplies have all to be maintained by a central government. And whatever central government might be imposed on Syria, even though Arabic were the official language, would be a foreign government; for there was no such thing as a true or typical Syrian. How to spread the Revolt up to Damascus over this chequer-board of communities each divided against its neighbour naturally by geography and history, and artificially by Turkish intrigue was a most baffling problem: which however Lawrence set himself to solve.

It was difficult to do anything on the Mediterranean side of the central mountain-range, where the mixed population was Europeanized and could probably not be converted to the idea of an Arab confederation with its headquarters in the ancient Arab capital of Damascus; it would prefer a French or English protectorate. But inland, between the mountains and the desert where the tribes were simpler and wilder, the national ideal might well be preached. Lawrence decided then to build up a ladder of friendly tribes in Eastern Syria beginning at the south with the Howeitat, for three hundred miles until Azrak was reached, half-way to Damascus. It was the method that had been used before in Arabia from Jiddah through Rabegh, Yenbo, Wejh to Akaba. Once they were at Azrak, the Arabs of the Hauran would probably rise in sympathy; the Hauran being a huge fertile land, just south of Damascus, populous with warlike self-reliant Arab peasantry. This rising should end the war.

Once more the tactics should be tip and run, not the regular advance of an organized army, and for this the eastern desert was most convenient. One might look on it as a sort of sea in which to manœuvre with camel-parties instead of ships. The railway, to cover it from the British Fleet, had been built down the eastern side of the central mountains and could be raided from the desert without fear of retaliation, for the Turks had no camel-corps worth anything, and in any case no important point to strike back against. From the war in the south Lawrence had learned that the best tactics were to use the smallest raiding parties on the fastest camels, and to strike at points widely separated with the most portable weapons of destruction. These weapons would be high-explosive for demolition work and light automatic guns, Hotchkiss or Lewis, which could be fired from the saddle of a camel running at eighteen miles an hour. Lawrence at once begged for quantities of these from Egypt.

The difficulty of the campaign was that, though all the tribes might join in the Revolt, their jealousies were such that no tribe could fight in a neighbour’s territory and no tribal combinations were possible as they had been in Arabia. Feisal’s authority in Syria was not great enough to heal the feuds. This meant that the brunt of the fighting had to be borne by a small force of Ageyl and others from the south, against whom, as distant strangers under the command of members of the Prophet’s family, there was not so much prejudice. It was impossible for the Turks to foresee the strength and direction of the attacks: the camels could, after a watering, travel two hundred and fifty miles in three days; and in an emergency could go a hundred and ten miles in twenty-four hours. (Twice Lawrence’s famous Ghazala did one hundred and forty-three miles of a march alone with him.) This meant that it might not be impossible to strike at points near Maan on Monday, near Amman on Thursday, near Deraa on Saturday, and to get fresh tribesmen and camels from each district to join in the attack. Above all, the regular raiders must be self-supporting. From Akaba they could go out with six-weeks’ flour-ration and ammunition, explosive and gold, and do without the complicated system of supply-trains and dumps which slows down the pace and shortens the fighting range of every regular army.

There must be no discipline in the ordinary sense of a chain of command going down from general to colonel, to captain, to lieutenant, to sergeant, to corporal, to private; every man must be his own commander-in-chief, ready, if need be, for single combat against the enemy without waiting for orders from above or co-operation from his fellows. And discipline could not in any case have been enforced: the Arabs were independent by nature and were serving voluntarily. Honour was the only contract and every man was free to draw his pay up to date and go home at any time he liked; only the Ageyl and the small regular army under Jaafar were serving for a definite term, so that the war when fought was fought with goodwill. There were no shameful incidents like those on the Western Front where the first dead man that I saw was an English suicide, and the last one also.

Mr. Herbert Read, by the way, has made a rather unfortunate critical condemnation of Lawrence’s Seven Pillars as being an account of a campaign where men did not heroically suffer the machine-made boredom and agony of the Western trenches, and which therefore can hardly be taken seriously. This reads like a glorification of the more horrible sort of war at the expense of the less horrible, which cannot be what Mr. Read (an anti-militarist, and for good reason) intends. If he wishes to point out that all war is evil in itself, whatever its glamour, he should not complicate his argument by a false comparison of heroisms.

LAWRENCE’S RIDES

Six weeks had elapsed since the capture of Akaba, and the Arabs had had opportunity to strengthen themselves. Feisal and Jaafar had now arrived at Akaba with the army. Plentiful supplies were landed from Egypt and armoured cars and guns—though the long-range guns never arrived until the last month of the war—and Egyptian labourers to rebuild the town and turn round the fortifications to face inland. The defiles through the hills were strongly held. On the other hand, the Turks had also been busy and had the advice of the German general Falkenhayn who had been chiefly responsible for saving them two years before at the Dardanelles. They had sent down a whole division to Maan and fortified it until it was quite secure against attack except by the strong regular forces and heavy guns which the Arabs did not have. There was an aeroplane-station there now and great supply dumps.

It was probable that the Turks would try to retake Akaba by way of Aba el Lissan and Guweira. They had already pushed their way up to Aba el Lissan and fortified it while cavalry held the neighbouring hills. But Lawrence knew that Akaba was safe enough. He would even welcome a Turkish attempt on it, which could only end in great losses. There were Arab posts out north and south of the pass, and old Maulud with his mule-mounted regiment had taken up his position in the ancient ruins of Petra north of Maan and was encouraging the local tribes to raid the Turkish communications in competition with their rivals at Delagha, a few miles to their south. Raiding went on for weeks and the Turks got more and more irritated. To prick them into retaliation a long distance air-raid was made on Maan, from El Arish on the left of the British Army.

Thirty-two bombs were dropped about breakfast-time in and about the unprepared station: the aeroplanes flew dangerously low but returned safely the same morning to a temporary landing-ground thirty miles north of Akaba where the airmen patched up the shrapnel-torn wings of their machines. Two of their bombs had struck the barracks and killed a number of Turks, eight struck the engine-shed, doing great damage, one fell in the General’s kitchen, four on the aerodrome. The next morning they visited Aba el Lissan, bombed the horse-lines and stampeded the animals, and then the tents and stampeded the Turks. The same afternoon they decided to look for the battery of guns that had troubled them that morning; there was just enough petrol and bombs. Skimming the hill-crest they came over Aba el Lissan at a height of only three hundred feet. They interrupted the Turks’ usual midday sleep and took the place completely by surprise. They dropped thirty bombs, silenced the battery and were off again. The Turkish commander at Maan set his men digging bomb-proof shelters and dispersed his aeroplanes, when they had been repaired, for fear of a fresh attack on the aerodrome.

The next plan that Lawrence had for the Arabs was to reduce the troops that the Turks could spare for the Akaba attack by making frequent raids on the railway and so forcing them to defend it more strongly. The gloomy reaction after Aba el Lissan had long passed and left him adventurous as before and ready to kill without remorse. He thought out a series of demolitions for mid-September; it might be a good idea, too, to mine another train. He would try for one at a station called Mudowwara, eighty miles south of Maan, where a smashed train would greatly embarrass the enemy. Now, to make sure of the train new methods had to be found: the automatic mine was uncertain and might be set off by a trolley or by a train carrying civilian refugees which they would want to let pass; or, if the Turks put the engines to push instead of to pull the trains, might only explode under an unimportant wagon: and the train could then retire safely. What was wanted seemed to be a mine that could be exploded at will by electricity. The apparatus was sent to him from Egypt and explained by electricians on the guard-ship at Akaba. It consisted of a heavy white box, the exploder, and yards of heavy cable insulated with rubber. With the engine blown up and the train perhaps derailed, machine-guns and artillery would be needed to complete the destruction. For machine-guns, the Lewis guns would have to do, but artillery was a problem because to take along even the smallest mountain-guns meant slow travelling. Lawrence then thought of the Stokes trench-mortars which had lately been used successfully in France. They were simple guns, like small drain-pipes, tilted at an angle on a tripod. Down the mouth a heavy shell was allowed to slide, and when it struck the bottom a charge in its base was fired and it went flying two or three hundred yards and burst according to a time-fuse. This was not too short a range for a railway ambush and the Stokes shell was powerfully charged with ammonal.

Two sergeant-instructors were sent from Egypt to teach the Arabs at Akaba how to use these weapons. The one in charge of the Lewis guns was an Australian; reckless, talkative, tall and supple. The Stokes-mortar sergeant was an English countryman; slow, stocky, workmanlike and silent. Lawrence knew them as Lewis and Stokes, naming them after their guns. They were excellent instructors and though they knew no Arabic taught the tribesmen by dumb-show, until in a month’s time they could use the guns reasonably well.

Lawrence decided that his raid might include an attack on Mudowwara station. It was not strongly held, and three hundred men might rush it at night and destroy the deep well there. Without its water, the only plentiful supply in the dry hot section below Maan, the trains would have to waste their wagon-space in carrying water-tanks. Lewis was anxious to join in the raid; he was sick of being a mere instructor at the base in Egypt and wanted to do some fighting. Stokes said that he would come too. Lawrence warned them what to expect, of hunger, heat and weariness, and explained that if anything happened to him it might go badly with them alone with the Arabs. This warning only excited Lewis and did not put off Stokes. Lawrence lent them two of his best camels.

So they started on September the seventh, riding up to Guweira where they collected some of Auda’s Howeitat tribesmen. Lawrence was at first afraid that the heat would be too much for the sergeants. The granite walls of the valley down which they rode were burningly hot; a few days before in the cooler palm-gardens of Akaba beach the thermometer had shown a hundred and twenty degrees. It was now even hotter. As neither of the sergeants had ever been on a camel before he let them take the ride easily. He was amused at the way that they behaved with the Arabs. Lewis, the Australian, seemed at home from the first and behaved freely towards the Arabs, but was astonished when they treated him as equals; he could not have imagined that they would forget the social difference between a white man and a brown. This race prejudice, however, would soon wear off: meanwhile the joke was that Lewis was burned a good deal browner than any of the Arabs. On the other hand, Stokes, the Englishman, remained insular and his shy correctness reminded the Arabs all the time that he was not one of them. They treated him with respect and called him ‘sergeant,’ whereas Lewis was merely ‘the long fellow.’ Lawrence found them typical of the two opposite kinds of Englishmen in the East: the kind that allowed themselves to be influenced by native customs and thought in order to be able the more easily to impose their will on the country; and the kind that became more English by reacting against native customs and thought. Lawrence being an extreme instance of the former type, to the point of identifying himself at times with the Arabs rather than with the English, seems to have felt a sneaking regard for the John Bull constancy of Sergeant Stokes.

When they came near Guweira a Turkish aeroplane droned over and the party at once rode off the open road into bushy country where the camels would not be seen. It was a daily aeroplane that never did much damage but provided the idle Guweira camp with excitement and conversation. They halted, still in the saddle, until the aeroplane had dropped its three bombs and returned to its own lines near Maan. Lawrence found the Howeitat all at odds. Auda who drew the wages for the whole tribe, only a clan of which he ruled personally, was using his power to compel the smaller clans to accept him as their leader. This they resented, threatening either to go home or to join the Turks. Feisal had sent up a sherif, a close kinsman, to settle the dispute, but Auda was obstinate, knowing how much the success of the Revolt depended on him. Now some of the clans from the south towards Mudowwara were about to desert the cause, and they were the very men on whom Lawrence was counting for help in his operations; but Auda would not give way. However, he told Lawrence to ride forward some miles with his twenty baggage-camels and halt to wait events.

They went, glad to leave behind the swarms of flies that plagued them at Guweira. Lawrence much admired the way that the sergeants stood the stifling heat, the worst that they had ever experienced; it was like a metal mask over the face. Not to lower themselves in the Arabs’ estimation, they did not utter a word of complaint. They were, however, ignorant of Arabic or they would have known that the Arabs were themselves making a great fuss about it. Rumm, a place of springs, half-way to Mudowwara, should have been their first halt, but they went on by easy stages, stopping the night in a grove of rustling tamarisk under a tall red cliff. In the very early morning, while the stars were still shining, Lawrence was roused by the Arab commander of the expedition, one of the Harith, a poor member of the Prophet’s family. He crept up shivering and said, ‘Lord, I have gone blind.’ Blindness for an Arab was a worse fate than for a European and the sherif must now look forward to a life of complete blankness. However, he would not go home; he could ride, he said, though he could not shoot, and he would make this his last adventure and, with God’s help, would retire from active life at least with the consolation of a victory.

They rode for hours the next day through the valley of Rumm, a broad tamarisk-grown avenue two miles wide between colossal red sandstone cliffs. They rose a sheer thousand feet on either side, not in an unbroken wall, but seemed built in vertical sections like a row of skyscrapers. There were caverns high up like windows and others at the foot like doors. At the top were domes of a greyer rock. The pygmy caravan passing down this street for giants felt awed and kept quite silent. Towards sunset there was a break in the cliffs to the right, leading to the water. They turned in here and found themselves in a vast oval amphitheatre floored with damp sand and dark shrubs. The entrance was only three hundred yards wide, which made the place more impressive still. At the foot of the enclosing precipices were enormous fallen blocks of sandstone, bigger than houses, and along a ledge at one side grew trees. A little path zigzagged up to the ledge and there, three hundred feet above the level of the plain, jetted the water-springs. They watered their camels here and cooked rice to add to the bully beef which the sergeants had brought, with biscuits, as their ration.

Coffee was also prepared for visitors: they had heard Arab voices shouting in the distance at the other end of the place. The visitors soon arrived, head-men of the several Howeitat clans, all boiling with anger and jealousy against Auda. They suspected Lawrence of sympathizing with Auda’s attempt to force them to offer him their allegiance; they refused to help Feisal further until he gave them assurance that they would be allowed complete independence as clans. Lawrence had to do the entertaining that night in place of the blinded sherif; the awkwardness of the occasion made his task doubly difficult. One of the head-men, by name Gasim abu Dumeik, a fine horseman who had led the hill-men at Aba el Lissan, was particularly furious in his denouncement of Auda. Lawrence singled him out for a verbal battle and finally silenced him. The other head-men, for shame, gradually veered round to Lawrence’s side and spoke of riding with him the next day to Mudowwara. Lawrence then said that Zaal would arrive the next day and that the two of them would accept help from all the clans except Gasim abu Dumeik’s. And that the good services of this clan would be wiped from Feisal’s book because of Gasim’s words and it would forfeit all the honour and rewards that it had earned. Gasim withdrew from the fireside, swearing to go over to the Turks at once. The cautious others tried in vain to stop his mouth. Next morning he was there with his men ready to join or oppose the expedition as the whim went. While he hesitated Zaal arrived and the pair had a violent quarrel. Lawrence and one or two more got between them and stopped the fight: the other chiefs then came quietly up in two’s and three’s as volunteers, begging Lawrence to assure Feisal of their loyalty.

He decided to go to Feisal at once to explain matters and, commending the sergeants to Zaal, who answered for their lives with his own, rode off hurriedly with a single attendant to Akaba. He found a short cut and reached Akaba in six hours. Feisal was alarmed to see him back so soon, but the affair was soon explained and Feisal at once appointed a distinguished member of his family to go to Rumm as mediator. The sherif rode back to Rumm with Lawrence and there, gathering together the Arabs, including Gasim, began to smooth over their difficulties and persuade them to peace. Gasim, no longer defiant but sulky, would not make any public statement, so about a hundred men of the smaller clans dared defy him by promising to join the raid. This was better than nothing, but Lawrence had hoped for at least a force of three hundred to deal successfully with the station. And there was no suitable leader now that the sherif was blinded. Gasim would have done, had he been willing. Zaal was the only other possible choice, but he was too closely related to Auda not to be suspected; and he was too sharp-tongued and sneering for even his good advice to be taken willingly. On the sixteenth of September, therefore, the party started out, without a leader.

At Rumm one curious incident had occurred which, though it had nothing to do with the war, made a profound impression on Lawrence. He was bathing in a little rock-pool, under one of the lesser springs—his first freshwater bathe for many weeks—lying in the clear water and letting the stream wash away the dirt and sweat of travel. His clothes were in the sun on the rock-ledge, put there for the heat to chase out the vermin. An old grey-bearded ragged man suddenly appeared, with a face of great power and weariness, and sat down upon Lawrence’s clothes, not seeming to notice them or him. At last he spoke and said: ‘The love is from God; and of God; and towards God.’ It was the strangest thing that Lawrence had ever heard in Arabia. The connection of God with Love was an idea quite foreign to the country. God was Justice, or God was Power or Fear, but never Love. Christianity was not a wholly Semitic creed, but a grafting of Greek idealism upon the hard Law of Moses, the typical Semite. It was this Greek element that had enabled it to sweep over non-Semitic Europe. Galilee, where Christianity originated, was half-Greek: at Gadara (of the swine) there was a Greek university of which St. James seems to have been a student, and with whose doctrines his Master was almost certainly familiar. But the old man at Rumm was a puzzle; he was a tribesman, a true Arab, and his brief sentence seemed to contradict all that seemed eternally fixed in the Semite nature. Lawrence afterwards invited the old man to the evening meal, hoping that he would utter doctrine, but he would only groan and mutter, and the riddle remained unsolved. The Arabs said that he was always so. All his life long he had wandered about, moaning strange things, not troubling himself for food or work or shelter. He was given charity by the tribes in pity of his poverty and madness, but never answered a word or talked aloud except when out by himself or alone among the sheep and goats.

The ride from Rumm began unpropitiously; though half an hour after starting some shamefaced men of Gasim’s clan rode out to join them, unable to endure the sight of others raiding without them. There was no common feeling between the different little parties that made up the force. Zaal was admittedly the most experienced fighter among them and yet the other sullen chiefs would not even allow him to settle the order of the march. Lawrence spent all his time riding up and down the column from one chief to the other trying to draw them together for the common purpose. He was treated by them with some respect, both as Feisal’s deputy and as the owner of Ghazala, though Ghazala was that day matched with the only other camel in Northern Arabia better than herself, a beast called El Jedha, ridden by one Motlog, her old owner. El Jedha had been a year or two before the sole occasion of a big tribal war.