Lawrence and the Arabs

by Robert Graves

XVIII

It fell on Lawrence then to be the leader, a task to which he was opposed on principle. He had from the first made a point of letting the Arabs run their own campaign as far as possible by themselves: he was merely their technical adviser and assistant. But he now constantly found himself forced into leadership, not only because of his obvious qualities as a desert fighter and outwitter of the Turks, but because of his freedom from tribal complications, his whole-hearted zeal for the Revolt, his disregard of loot and distinctions, his generosity and tact. Yet, again, he was a most unsuitable commander of a Bedouin raid. It meant his deciding such difficult questions as food-halts, pasturage, road-direction, pay, disputes, division of spoil, feuds and march-order. To be an efficient leader in this sense would mean a lifetime’s training. However, he managed that day without mishap and was rewarded at night by seeing the party sit down at only three camp-fires. Around one were Lawrence’s own men, including three Syrian peasants of the Hauran, from whom he intended to learn on the road such things as would be useful to him later when the Revolt was carried up to their country. At the second fire was Zaal with his twenty-five famous camel-riders. At the third were the other jealous clansmen from Rumm. Late at night, when hot bread and gazelle-meat had made tempers better, it was possible for Lawrence to gather all the chiefs together at his own neutral hearth to discuss the next day’s fighting. It was decided to water the next evening at a well in a covered valley two or three miles the near side of Mudowwara station; and from there go forward to see whether it could be taken with the few men that they had.

Next day, then, they reached the well, an open pool a few yards square. It looked uninviting. There was a green slime over the water with queer bladder-like islands on it, fatty-pink. The Arabs explained that the Turks had thrown dead camels into the well to make the water foul; but time had passed and the effect was wearing off. They filled their water-skins; it was all the drink that they could hope for unless they took Mudowwara. One of Zaal’s men slipped in by mistake and when he struggled out again, leaving a black hole in the green scum, the disturbed water stank horribly of old dead camel. At dusk Zaal, Lawrence, the sergeants and one or two more crept forward quietly to a Turkish trench-position on a ridge four or five hundred yards from the station. It was deserted. The station lay below with its lighted doors and windows, and its tent-camp. Zaal and Lawrence decided to creep nearer. They went on until they could hear the soldiers talking in the tents. A young, sickly-looking officer sauntered out towards them; they could see his features in the light of a match with which he lit a cigarette, and were ready to spring up and gag him; but he happened to turn back. At the ridge they held a whispered council of war. The garrison was perhaps two hundred men—Lawrence had counted the tents—but the station buildings seemed too solid for the Stokes shells, which were time-fused, not bursting on percussion; and the hundred and sixteen Arabs, though they had the advantage of surprise, could not yet be trusted to fight honourably together. So Lawrence voted against the attack, which was put off until a better day. They went away then, deciding at least to make sure of a train. Mudowwrara was not taken for another eleven months.

Some miles south of the station they found an ideal place for their mine and ambush. There was a low ridge of hills under cover of which they could ride quite close to the railway, and where the ridge ended was a curve such as Lawrence always chose for his mines because of the difficulty of replacing curved rails. This curve was within range of the ridge, which was fifty feet above the level of the rails; and a raised embankment across a hollow seemed exactly the right spot for the mine, for in the middle there was a two-arched bridge which allowed for the passage of flood-water in the rainy season. Whatever the effect of the mine might be on the engine, the bridge would certainly go and the coaches behind would be derailed. From behind the ridge, which was on the outside, not the inside of the curve, Lewis could sweep the lines in either direction and Stokes could use his trench-mortar unobserved. Lawrence was glad to have his two chief responsibilities posted where they had a safe retreat, especially as Stokes was weak with dysentery from the Mudowwara water, and Lewis unwell too.

The camels were hobbled out of sight and Feisal’s negro freedmen, who were in charge of the baggage-camels, carried their loads to the chosen place—the two Stokes guns with their shells, the two Lewis guns, the electric mine apparatus and the gelatine. Lawrence went to the bridge to dig a bed between the ends of two steel sleepers in which to bury his sandbag-full of gelatine, a fifty-pound shaking jelly. It took him two hours to do this properly because he had to remove the ballast which he had dug out, carrying it in a fold of his cloak, and dump it where it would not show. Also he had been forced to cross a sandbank and the tracks of his feet had to be covered. Then the two heavy wires, each two hundred yards long, had to be unrolled, connected with the charge and carried over the ridge where the exploder was to be put under cover. The wires were stiff and would not lie flat unless weighed down with stones, and it took three hours more to hide the marks made in burying them. Lawrence finally finished off the job with a pair of bellows and long brushings of his cloak to imitate a smooth wind-swept surface. It was well done; nobody could see where the mine was, or how the wires ran. The man who fired the exploder, however, being out of sight of the bridge, had to be given the signal from a point fifty yards ahead of him; so Lawrence decided to give the signal rather than work the exploder himself. Feisal’s favourite freedman Salem was given that honour and was taught on the disconnected exploder to bang down the handle exactly as Lawrence raised his hand for an imaginary engine on the bridge. Meanwhile the rest of the men, who had been left with the camels, had got tired of the valley and were perched upon the skyline with the sunset flaming behind them (the ambush was west of the line), in full view of a small Turkish hill-post four miles to the south and also of Mudowwara somewhat farther to the north. Lawrence and Zaal threw them off the ridge, but it was too late; the Turks had seen them and began to let off rifles at the lengthening shadows for fear of a surprise attack. However, Lawrence hoped that the Turks might think them gone if the place looked deserted in the morning; so they stayed in the valley, baked bread and settled down comfortably for the night. The party was now united and, ashamed of their folly on the skyline, the jealous Howeitat tribesmen chose Zaal for their leader.

The next day, the nineteenth of September, Zaal and his cousin Howeimil managed with difficulty to keep the fidgeting Arabs in the hollow, but perhaps after all the Turks saw something, for at nine o’clock a party of forty men came out from the southern post, advancing in open order. If they were left alone they would discover the ambush in an hour’s time; if they were opposed the railway would be alarmed and traffic held up. The only thing to do was to send a small party to snipe at them and, if possible, draw them away in pursuit behind another ridge of hills out of sight. This would hide the main position and reassure the Turks as to the size and intention of the force they had seen. The trick worked well; they could hear by the shots gradually sounding fainter in the distance that the Turks were being drawn off.

An ordinary patrol of eight men and a stout corporal then came up the line from the south in search of mines or obstructions. Lawrence could see the corporal mopping his forehead, for it was now eleven o’clock and really hot. They walked over the mine without noticing anything, but a mile or two farther on halted under a culvert, lay down, drank from their water-bottles and at last went to sleep. It seemed that the Turks were quite satisfied that the ridge was deserted, but about noon Lawrence through his field-glasses saw a force of about a hundred soldiers coming up towards them from Mudowwara, about six or seven miles away. They were marching very slowly and no doubt unwillingly at the thought of losing their accustomed midday sleep, but it could not be more than two hours before they arrived. Lawrence decided to pack up and move off, trusting to luck that the mine would not be noticed and that he might come back later and try again. They sent a messenger south to their drawing-off party to arrange a meeting-place behind some rocks a mile or two away. But a minute later the watchman reported smoke from the south. There was evidently a train in the next station and, as they watched, it came puffing out towards them. A wild scramble followed as the Arabs got into position behind the ridge. Stokes and Lewis forgot their dysentery and raced to their guns.

The train rushed on at full speed and Lawrence saw that there were two engines in front, not one, which rather upset his calculations: but he decided to fire the mine under the second. If he mined the first, the second might uncouple and steam away with the wagons. He was glad that it was not an automatic mine. The Arabs with their rifles were only a hundred and fifty yards from the bridge, and the Stokes and Lewis guns three hundred; the exploder was in between, on the same ridge. On came the train at full speed and opened random fire into the desert where the Arabs had been reported. The firing sounded heavy and Lawrence wondered if his eighty men were enough for the battle. There were ten coaches with rifle-muzzles crowded at the windows and sandbag nests on the roofs, filled with sharpshooters. The whistles screamed round the curve, and Salem was dancing round the exploder on his knees, calling on God to make him fruitful. As the front wheels touched the bridge Lawrence raised his hand in the signal to Salem.

There was a terrific roar and the line vanished behind a column of black dust and smoke a hundred feet high and wide, while fragments of steel and iron struck clanging all about. An engine-wheel went whirling over the ridge and fell heavily in the desert behind. There followed a deathly silence. Lawrence ran to join the sergeants while Salem picked up a rifle and charged into the smoke. As Lawrence ran he heard shots, and the Bedouin could be seen leaping forward towards the track. The train was stationary and the Turks were tumbling out of the doors on the other side to shelter behind the railway embankment beyond. Then the Lewis gun opened fire straight down the train, and the long row of Turks on the roofs was swept off by the furious spray of bullets. When Lawrence reached Stokes and Lewis, the Turks behind the eleven-foot high embankment, in the middle of which the bridge had been, were firing point-blank at the Arabs between the wheels of the train. The Lewis gun could not reach them, protected by the train and by the curve of the embankment, but the Stokes mortar could. Its second shell dropped among them in the hollow and made a shambles of the place. The survivors ran in a panic across the desert, throwing away their rifles and equipment. This was the turn of Lewis again, who, with his assistant, a Sherari boy, mowed down the Turks as they ran. That ended the battle. The Sherari dropped the Lewis gun and rushed down to join the others in the plundering. The whole affair had taken ten minutes. Lawrence looked north and saw the hundred men from Mudowwara breaking back uncertainly to the railway to meet the train-fugitives running up the line. He looked south and saw the other thirty Arabs racing each other to share in the spoil. The Turks with whom they had been fighting, were coming slowly after them firing volleys. Evidently the plunderers would be safe for half an hour more.

Lawrence ran down from the ridge to see what effect the mine had had. The bridge was gone and into the gap had fallen the front wagon, which had been filled with sick. The smash had killed all but three or four and rolled dead and dying in a bleeding heap at one end. One of those still alive called out the word ‘typhus’ in delirium. So Lawrence wedged the door shut, and left them until their friends should come. He was feeling pretty sick. The wagons following were derailed and smashed; the frames of some were buckled beyond repair. The second engine was a blanched pile of smoking iron. The first engine had come off better; though it was derailed and lying half over with the cab smashed, its driving gear was intact and the steam still at pressure. The destruction of locomotives was the chief object of the campaign against the railway, so Lawrence had kept a box of gun-cotton with fuse and detonator ready for this very emergency. He put it on the cylinder, lit the fuse and drove the plunderers back a little way. In half a minute the charge burst, destroying the cylinder and the axle too. The engine would not run again.