Anxious to make the most of this initial success, Lawrence sent couriers to all the tribes of the desert, although news of the battle of Abu el Lissal and the advance on Akaba seemed to travel as though flashed about Arabia by radio. He realized the tremendous importance of propaganda and sent some of his cleverest Arab lieutenants through the enemy lines to spread the news of the fall of Akaba far and wide to the remote corners of the Turkish Empire.
So it was that this young Briton, just down from Oxford, away in a long-forgotten corner of the earth, captured the ancient seaport of Solomon where a battle had probably not been fought for a thousand years and more, thereby winning the second important victory of the war in the Land of the Arabian Nights and paving the way for an invasion of Syria. From a mere local squabble, Lawrence’s victory at Akaba transformed the Hedjaz revolt into a campaign of far-reaching importance directed against the heart of the Turkish Empire; and from that day his undisciplined rabble of swarthy desert brigands became the right wing of Allenby’s army, and from then on this second lieutenant played the rôle of a lieutenant-general.
CHAPTER IX
ACROSS THE RED SEA TO JOIN LAWRENCE AND FEISAL
Emir Feisal and Colonel Lawrence had got as far as Akaba with their campaign when Mr. Chase and I arrived from the Palestine front with our battery of cameras. It was by no means an easy matter even to get to the Arab base-camp and our adventures in doing so may even justify another digression from the story of Lawrence and his associates, in order to better illustrate how remote this campaign really was from the rest of the World War. Shortly after I had met Lawrence in Jerusalem, while lunching with General Allenby and the Duke of Connaught, the name of the archæologist turned soldier came up during the conversation. Out of curiosity I asked the commander-in-chief why the Arabian campaign and Lawrence’s exploits had been kept such a secret. He replied that it had been considered advisable to say as little as possible, because they hoped that large numbers of the conscript Arabs fighting in the Turkish army might desert and join Shereef Hussein in his fight for Arabian independence. They were afraid lest the Arabs of Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia whom the Turks had conscripted should get the mistaken idea that the Allies were inspiring the Hedjaz revolt and hence erroneously conclude that it was not a patriotic rebellion. For this reason the Allies were anxious that the campaign should appear in its true light as an independent Arabian movement. But so successful had been Lawrence’s efforts that Allenby said it was no longer quite so necessary to maintain such strict secrecy, adding that if I happened to be interested in what was going on in Arabia he would be glad to have me join King Hussein’s army, and afterward tell the world a little of what the Arabs had done toward helping to win the Great War.
This was exactly what I had often thought of asking permission to do; but I had been warned that because of the secrecy with which the campaign was being conducted there was not the slightest chance of receiving the commander-in-chief’s consent. I of course lost no time in accepting and jumped at this opportunity of going on what I was sure would be an adventure of a lifetime.
We were told that it would be practically impossible to make the journey overland from Palestine to Arabia, or at any rate that it could only be done by going through the Turkish lines in disguise. We had neither the time nor the inclination nor the necessary knowledge of the country and the language to attempt this; so, accompanied by Mr. Chase, my artist colleague, I returned to Egypt to consult the heads of the Arab Bureau in Cairo. There we were told:
“You can get as far as Akaba in a cargo boat, but next to Timbuctoo it is the most out-of-the-way place in the world. You will find no hotel porters at the dock to receive you, and you will have to be content with a block of coral for your pillow and a date-palm for your shelter.”
In pre-war days a tramp wind-jammer returning from Borneo or the Solomon Islands with a cargo of copra would occasionally lose its way in a storm and drive up the Gulf of Akaba, but apart from rare occasions like that almost no one had visited the place for a thousand years.
“You will get nothing to eat but unleavened bread, dates, and perhaps a few fried locusts,” remarked one general, on whose advice we bought many little luxuries, including fifty bars of milk chocolate. A colonel cheerfully warned me, “If you value your lives, take plenty of cigarettes for the Bedos.” So we filled every crevice of our outfit with “gaspers,” which proved worth their weight in sovereigns. On the day we landed in Arabia the thermometer happened to register above the melting-point of chocolate, and when I opened my kit-bag I found a semi-fluid mass of bullets, matches, cigarettes, pencils, note-books, and chocolate.