Meanwhile Lawrence, Joyce, General Nuri, and their associates had received no news of what was going on in Palestine, but they were busy day and night demolishing sections of the railway. One night Lord Winterton, who played an active part in this final stage of the desert campaign, went out on a demolition expedition and placed some thirty parties at work along the line. The earl himself dashed about in the dark from point to point in an armored car. While walking along the railway he met a soldier who said, “How are things?”
“Fine!” replied Winterton; “we have twenty-eight charges planted and will be ready to touch them off in a few minutes.” The soldier remarked that this was splendid, and then disappeared. A moment later machine-guns blazed forth on all sides, and the earl had to run for it. His questioner had either been a German or a Turk, and had the incident occurred an hour earlier it might have spoiled Lord Winterton’s work for that night. But the tulips were duly touched off, and the show was a success.
The following day Lawrence dashed back to Azarak in an armored car, then flew across the desert and northern Palestine to Allenby’s headquarters at Ramleh. A hurried conference with the commander-in-chief secured for him three more Bristol fighters, the best battle-planes that the British were using in the Holy Land. He also brought back the astounding news that more than twenty thousand prisoners had already been taken by Allenby’s forces, that Nazareth, Nablus, and many other important centers had fallen, and that they were advancing toward Deraa and Damascus. That meant that the Arabian army would be called upon by Allenby to play a still greater part from now on, because it was the only force between the crumbling Turkish divisions and Anatolia, toward which they must retreat.
Lawrence had flown to Palestine for aëroplanes because the Germans had nine of them near Deraa with which they were bombing Feisal’s followers out of the ground. One of the pilots was a Captain Peters, and another was a Captain Ross Smith, who later became world famous and was knighted for flying from England to Australia. Lord Winterton gives us a graphic picture of the events of that morning in a scintillating article in “Blackwood’s”:
While L. and the airmen were having breakfast with us, a Turkish ’plane was observed, making straight for us. One of the airmen . . . hurried off to down the intruder. This he successfully did, and the Turkish ’plane fell in flames near the railway. He then returned and finished his porridge, which had been kept hot for him meanwhile! But not for him a peaceful breakfast that morning. He had barely reached the marmalade stage when another Turkish ’plane appeared. Up hurried the Australian again; but this Turk was too wily and scuttled back to Deraa, only to be chased by P. on another machine, which sent him down in flames.
That night the Germans burnt all of their remaining machines, and from that moment the British airmen had the air above North Arabia, Palestine, and Syria to themselves.
That afternoon a giant Handley-Page arrived from Palestine with General Borton, commander of Allenby’s air squadrons, as the passenger and Ross Smith as the pilot. They brought forty-seven tins of petrol and also a supply of tea for Lawrence, Winterton, and companions. This was the first time that a great night-bombing plane ever flew over the enemy lines by day. The purpose was for propaganda, and so profoundly were the tribesmen impressed by this vast bird, which was several times larger than any they had thus far seen, that all of the peoples of the Hauran, who had been reluctant to coöperate with Emir Feisal, immediately swore allegiance to the Arab cause and galloped in on their horses, with their rifles popping off into the air, eager to charge the Turks, or at least make a noisy display of valor.
The next day the infantry under General Jaffer Pasha, the jovial commander-in-chief of Colonel Joyce’s regulars, went down to have a look at the first large bridge which Lawrence had dynamited in the vicinity of Deraa. They found it nearly repaired, but after a sharp fight they drove off its guards, who were persistent and game German machine-gunners, destroyed more of the line, and then proceeded to burn the great timber framework which had been erected by the Turks and Germans during the intervening seven days. In this rather sharp encounter the armored cars, the French detachment under Captain Pisani, and the Rualla Horse under Nuri Shaalan plunged into the heart of things. Nuri is a quiet retiring man of few words and plenty of deeds. He turned out to be unusually intelligent, well informed, decisive, and full of quiet humor. Lawrence once remarked to me that he not only was the chief of the largest tribe in all the desert but one of the finest Arab sheiks he had ever met, and that the members of his tribe were like wax in his hands because “he knows what should be done and does it.”
When Lawrence started his operations around Deraa, von Sanders did exactly what his opponents wanted him to do. He sent his last reserves up to Deraa, so that when Allenby’s troops once smashed through the Turkish front lines they had fairly clear going ahead of them. At the important railway junction of Afuleh, on the evening of the nineteenth, the Turkish motor-lorries came streaming in for supplies, not knowing that all their great depots were in the hands of Allenby’s men. As they rumbled into the supply-station, a British officer remarked politely to one and all, “Would you mind going this way, please?” That lasted for four hours, until the news spread through the Turkish back area that Allenby’s troops had taken Afuleh, the railway junction in the center of the plain of Esdraelon, where the Turkish railway which connects Constantinople, Damascus, and the Holy Land branches out, one line extending down into Samaria and the other east to Haifa on the Mediterranean. Afuleh was the main supply-base of the whole Turkish army. After Allenby had occupied Afuleh for fully six hours, a German plane came down with orders to von Sanders from Hindenburg. The occupants of the plane did not discover their predicament until they left their machine and walked over to local headquarters to report. To their chagrin they found themselves turning over their orders to Allenby’s staff.
By September 24 Allenby’s forces had advanced so far that the entire Turkish Fourth Army, concentrated around Amman and the Jordan on the mission of attacking empty tents and horse-blankets, had been ordered back to defend Deraa and Damascus. The Turkish Fourth Army generals were infuriated when they discovered that the railway line had been cut behind them, and attempted to retreat north along their motor-roads with all their guns and transport. Lawrence and his cavalry did not intend to pave their retreat with roses. Stationed on the hills they poured down such an incessant stream of bullets that the Turks were forced to abandon all their guns and carts between Mafrak and Nasib. Hundreds were slaughtered. The formal column of retreat broke up into a confused mass of fugitives, who never had a minute’s peace to reform their lines. British aëroplanes added the finishing touch by dropping bombs, and the Turkish Fourth Army scattered panic-stricken in all directions.