Hitherto the Turco-Teutonic brand of Holy War had been fairly successful. The Allied thrust at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had failed, the Aden Protectorate was in Turkish hands, we had spent a most unpleasant Easter in Sinai, and Kut had fallen. Still, the Turks were soon to realise that a wrongly-invoked jihad, like a mishandled musket, can recoil heavily, and, before the end of May, signs were not wanting that trouble was brewing for them in the Hejaz.
We were in close touch with the shore through fishing-canoes by day and secret emissaries by night, who brought us news that some German "officers" had been done to death by Hejazi tribesmen some eight hours' journey north of Jeddah. They had evidently been first over-powered and bound, then stabbed in the stomach with the huge two-handed dagger which the Hejazis use, and finally decapitated, as a Turkish rescue party which hurried to the spot found their headless and practically disembowelled corpses with their hands tied behind them. Their effects came through our hands in due course, and we ascertained that the party consisted of Lieut.-Commander von Moeller (late of a German gunboat interned at Tsing-Tao) and five reservists whom he had picked up in Java. They had landed on the South Arabian coast in March, had visited Sanaa, the capital of Yamen, and had come up the Arabian coast of the Red Sea by dhow, keeping well inside the Farsan bank, which is three hundred miles long and a serious obstacle to patrol work. They had landed at Konfida, north of the bank, and reached Jeddah by camel on May 5. Against the advice of the Turks they continued their journey by land, as they had no chance of eluding our northern patrol at sea. They were more than a year too late to emulate the gallant (and lucky) "Odyssey" of the Emden's landing-party from Cocos Islands up the Red Sea coast in the days when our blockade was more lenient and did not interfere with coasting craft. They hoped to reach Maan and so get on the rail for Stamboul and back to Germany, as the Sharif would not sanction their coming to the sacred city of Medina, which is the rail-head for the Damascus-Hejaz railway. After so staunch a journey they deserved a better fate. Among their kit was a tattered and blood-stained copy of my book on the Aden hinterland.[A]
Meanwhile affairs ashore were simmering to boiling-point, and on the night of June 9 we commenced a bombardment of carefully located Turkish positions, firing by "director" to co-operate with an Arab attack which was due then but did not materialise till early next morning, and was then but feebly delivered. We found out later that the rifles and ammunition we had delivered on the beach some distance south of Jeddah to the Sharif's agents in support of this attack had been partly diverted to Mecca and partly hung up by a squabble with their own camel-men for more cash.
We continued the bombardment on the night of the 11th and were in action most of the day on the 12th, shelling the Turkish positions north of Jeddah, which we had located by glass and the co-operation of friendly fishing-craft who gave us the direction by signal. During the morning the Hejazis made an abortive and aimless attack along the beach north of Jeddah, and so masked our own supporting fire, while the Turks gave them more than they wanted.
By this time the senior ship and others had joined us, and the S.N.O. approved of my landing with a party of Indian signallers to maintain closer touch with their operations, provided that Arab headquarters would guarantee our safety as regards their own people. This they were unable to do.
The bombardment grew more and more strenuous and searching as other ships joined in and our knowledge of the Turkish positions became more accurate. On the 15th it culminated with the arrival of a seaplane carrier and heavy bombing of the Ottoman trenches which our flat-trajectory naval guns could hardly reach. The white flag went up before sunset, and next day there were pourparlers which led to an unconditional surrender on June 17, 1916.
Mecca had fallen just before, and Taif surrendered soon after, leaving Medina as the only important town still held by the Turks in the Hejaz.
We began pouring food and munitions into Jeddah as soon as it changed hands; for the rest of this cruise my ship was a sort of parcels-delivery van, and when the parcel happens to be an Egyptian mountain battery its delivery is an undertaking.
My personal contact with the Turks and their ill-omened jihad ended soon after, as I was invalided from service afloat, but I kept in touch as an Intelligence-wallah on the beach and followed the rest of it with interest.
They got Holy War with a vengeance. The Sharif's sons (more especially the Emirs Feisal and Abdullah, who had been trained at the Stamboul Military Academy), ably assisted by zealous and skilled British officers as mine-planters and aerial bombers, harried outlying posts and the Hejaz railway line north of Medina incessantly.