Lawrence and the Arabs

by Robert Graves

At last the Sherari said that he would settle it for them without murder. So he looped the man’s wrist to his saddle and trotted him off with the rest of the party for the first hour: they were still near the railway but four miles from the village when the Sherari dismounted, stripped the Circassian of his outer garments and threw him down on his face. Lawrence wondered what was coming next; the Sherari then drew his dagger and cut the man deeply across the soles of his feet. The Circassian howled as if he were being killed. Then Lawrence understood. The man would be able to crawl to the railway on his hands and knees; it would take him about an hour, but his nakedness would keep him there in the shadow of the rocks until sunset. It was kinder than killing him, though he did not seem to be grateful.

Soon they came to a small station consisting of two stone buildings and crept within a hundred yards behind limestone rocks. They heard singing from one of the buildings, and a soldier drove out a flock of young sheep to pasture. The Arabs counted them hungrily, weary of a parched corn diet. The sheep settled the fate of the station. Zaal led a party of men round another side of the station and Lawrence saw him take very careful aim at the party of officers and officials sipping coffee in shaded chairs outside the ticket-office. He pressed the trigger; there was a crack and the fattest man slowly bowed in his chair and sank to the ground among his horrified friends. This was the signal for a volley and a rush. Zaal’s men broke into the nearest building and began plundering; but the door of the other clanged to and rifles were fired from behind the steel shutters. Lawrence’s party fired back, but soon saw that it was no good and stopped: so did the Turks and allowed the plundering to go on.

The sheep were driven off into the hills, where the camels were tied up, and the plundered building was splashed with paraffin and set on fire. Meanwhile the Ageyl were measuring out explosive and fixing charges; which were afterwards fired. A culvert, many rails and a quarter of a mile of telegraph-wire were destroyed. The explosions scared the sheep and the knee-haltered camels who shook off the rope-hitches and scattered in all directions. It took three hours to recapture them, but fortunately the Turks did not attempt anything in the interval, and the whole party reached Bair safely at dawn without losing a man. They had had a grand feast of mutton on the way; twenty-four sheep eaten at a sitting by a hundred and ten men. Nothing was left, for the riding-camels were trained to like cooked meat and finished off the scraps. The only difficulty had been the skinning, for there was a shortage of knives, but they had used flints instead.

At Bair they found that Nasir had bought a week’s flour and were glad to think that they might well take Akaba before starving again. That day a messenger came post-haste from the Emir Nuri to say that four hundred Turkish cavalry had started from Deraa to Sirhan in search of them. He had sent his nephew as a guide to mislead them by devious routes, so that men and horses were suffering terribly from thirst. They were now near Nebk. The Turkish Government would believe that the expedition was still in Sirhan until the cavalry returned, and that would be some days. So the coast was clear, especially since the Turks thought that the Bair wells had been utterly destroyed and that therefore Maan was safe. The Jefer wells had been also destroyed, and that settled it. But Lawrence wondered whether the destruction of the wells at Jefer had not been bungled too. A Howeitat chief who had been present, and was one of those who had sworn allegiance at Wejh, sent secretly to say that the King’s Well (Auda’s family property and the biggest of the wells) had been dynamited from above; but that he had heard the upper stones clap together and key over the shaft. They hoped this was so and rode forward on June the twenty-eighth to find out, over a hard mud-plain blinding white with salt.

Jefer seemed hopeless; the seven wells were completely wrecked. However, they sounded around the King’s Well and the ground rang hollow, so volunteers of the Ageyl began to dig away the earth outside. As they dug, the core of the well stood up in the hollow like a rough tower, and they carefully removed the stones until at last they knew that the report had been true; they could hear the mud fragments slipping between the stones and splashing many feet below. They worked hard, in relays, while the rest of the men sang to encourage them, promising rewards of gold when water was found. At sunset came a rush and rumble, followed by a splash and yells; the well was opened. The key of stones had given way and one of the Ageyl had fallen in and was swimming about trying not to drown. All night long they watered there, while a squad of Ageyl, singing in chorus, built up a new well-head. The earth was stamped in around this and the well was, in appearance at least, as good as ever. The Ageyl were rewarded by being feasted on a weak camel which had failed in the march that day.

From Jefer the next step was the pass of Aba el Lissan, where a Turkish block-house guarded the crest. A neighbouring clan of the Howeitat had promised to settle it, so picked men went from Jefer to help them. The Turks were not, however, taken by surprise; they manned their stone breastworks and drove the tribesmen off into cover. Thinking that this was only an ordinary tribal raid, they then sent a mounted party to take vengeance on the nearest Arab encampment. They found one old man, six women, and seven children there and cut their throats. The tribesmen only saw what was happening too late, but then furiously charged down from the hill across the return road of the murderers and cut them off almost to a man. They next attacked the now weakly-garrisoned block-house, carried it in their first angry rush and took no prisoners.

Hearing this news at Jefer the same day, Lawrence, Nasir, Auda and the rest went forward towards Aba el Lissan: striking the railway twenty miles south of Maan and blowing up a long stretch of it, including ten bridges. Lawrence had learned to destroy these at small expense by stuffing the drainage holes in the spandrels with five-pound charges of gelatine. The explosion brought down the arch, shattered the uprights, and stripped the side-walls. With short fuses it took only six minutes to finish each bridge. They continued their demolitions until all their explosive was gone and then struck westward towards Aba el Lissan, camping that evening about five miles from the railway on the Akaba side. Hardly had they finished baking their bread when three men galloped up to say that Aba el Lissan, the block-house, the pass and the command of the Akaba road were lost again. A large column of Turks, infantry and guns, had just arrived from Maan, and the Arabs at Aba el Lissan, disorganized as usual by victory, had run away. Lawrence learned later that this sudden move was an accident. A Turkish battalion from the Caucasus had arrived at Maan to relieve another that had been garrisoned there for some time; while it was still formed up at the station news arrived of fighting at Aba el Lissan and the battalion, with the addition of some mountain-guns carried on mules, was marched off at once to relieve the block-house. When the Turks climbed up to the pass they had found the place deserted, except for the vultures flying in slow uneasy rings above the block-house walls. The battalion commander was afraid that the sight would be too much for his troops, young conscripts who had never been on a battlefield before, and led them downhill again to the roadside spring, where they encamped all night.

The news was startling and unwelcome. The Arabs started off again at once, eating the hot bread as they rode. Auda was in front, singing, and the men joined in from time to time with the proud vigour of an army moving into battle. As they went, the camels in front kicked against the wormwood bushes and the scent hung in the air, making the road fragrant for those behind. They rode all night and came at dawn to the hill-crest overlooking the pass. Here the head-men of the tribe that had captured the block-house the day before were waiting for them, the blood still splashed on their anxious faces. It was decided to attack; unless the battalion were dislodged the dangers and trials of the last two months would go for nothing. And the Turks made this easy for them; they slept on in the valley while the Arabs surrounded them, seizing the crests of all the hills unobserved; and were caught in a trap.

At dawn the Arabs began sniping while Zaal and the horsemen rode to cut the Maan telegraph and telephone in the plain behind. The sniping went on all day. The Turks every now and then would make a sortie in one direction or another, but were soon driven back again to their position under some cliffs by the water spring. It was terribly hot on the hills, hotter than Lawrence had ever known it in Arabia, and the anxiety and constant moving made it worse. To make up for their small numbers they had to run behind the hill-crests from point to point to pretend to be more numerous than they really were. The sharp limestone ridges cut their naked feet, so that long before evening the more energetic men left a rusty print on the ground at every stride. Even some of the tough tribesmen broke down under the heat and had to be thrown under the shade of rocks to recover.

By noon the rifles had become so hot with shooting that they burned the Arabs’ hands, and the rocks from behind which they aimed scorched their arms and breasts, from which later the skin peeled off in sheets. They were very thirsty but had little water and could not spare men to fetch more; so every one went without rather than that a few should drink. The only consolation was that the valley was far hotter, and the Turks less used to heat than themselves. The mountain-guns were being constantly fired, which made the Arabs laugh: the little shells burst far behind the hill-crests, though to the Turkish gunners they seem to be doing great damage.