It would soon be sunset and the Turks were losing heart at the unexpected resistance. ‘Never have I seen rebels fight like this in my forty years of service,’ said their general. ‘The force must advance.’ But he spoke too late. Rasim on the right and the herdsmen on the left attacked simultaneously and wiped out the crews of the machine-guns on each Turkish flank with a burst of fire from their automatics. That was the signal for the main body of the Arabs. They charged forward, headed by Zeid’s chief steward on a camel, his robes billowing in the wind, and the crimson standard of the Ageyl flapping over his head. Lawrence stayed behind with Zeid, who was clapping his hands for joy to see the Turkish centre collapse and stream back towards Kerak. Behind the Arabs followed a body of Armenian villagers, deported here some years before after the Turkish massacres; they were armed with long knives and howling for vengeance on the Turks.
Then Lawrence realized just what he had done: to avenge a personal spite against the Turks and to parody the usual farce of a regular battle, he had caused a wanton and useless massacre. And, worse, he had carelessly thrown away the lives of many of his Arab friends. It would have been quite possible to have refused battle, even without yielding the village, and by manœuvring about to have drawn the Turks into a trap from which they would have escaped with some loss and great irritation. But this was ghastly. The Turkish survivors were pouring down a steep defile back towards Kerak, with the whole force of Arabs in pursuit. It was too late now for Lawrence to run after and call the Arabs off, and he was too tired to try. In the end, only fifty exhausted Turks of the whole brigade got safely back. For though the Arab army did not pursue the broken enemy for more than a mile or two, the peasants farther along the Kerak road shot them down one by one as they ran.
The Arabs had captured the two mountain howitzers (very useful to them afterwards), the twenty-seven machine-guns, two hundred horses and mules, two hundred and fifty prisoners. But twenty or thirty dead Arabs were carried back across the cliff to Tafileh and the sight filled Lawrence with shame. Then it began to snow and the wind blew to a blizzard. Only very late and with great difficulty they got in their own wounded; the Turkish wounded had to lie out and were all dead the next day. The blizzard continued and Lawrence was unable to follow up his success. He amused himself by writing a report of the battle, in his boyish handwriting, to the British Army Headquarters in Palestine. It was a parody, like the battle itself, and full of all the usual military catchwords used in official despatches. It was taken quite seriously. Lawrence was thought to be a brilliant young amateur doing his best to imitate the great models and the bad joke was turned against him by the offer of another military decoration, the Distinguished Service Order this time.
He partly regained his self-respect three days later by a far more important piece of work, which was the stopping of the transport of food up the Dead Sea, which Allenby had asked him to undertake. He had arranged with a chief of the Beersheba Bedouin, encamped near by, to raid the Turkish ships that were at anchor in a little port below Kerak at the south-east end of the Dead Sea. This was one of the two occasions in British military history when mounted men have fought and sunk a fleet. The Bedouin, in a sudden charge at dawn, surprised the sailors asleep on the beach, then scuttled the launches and lighters in deep water and looted the port. They took sixty prisoners, burned the storehouse, and came away without any loss to themselves.
Lawrence in making his report ironically countered the award of the military D.S.O. by recommending himself for a naval D.S.O., which has a different coloured ribbon. But this time Headquarters saw the joke; which he hammered away at later in a further ridiculous self-recommendation.
At Tafileh it was colder than ever and though there was food enough Lawrence could not stand the squalor of crowding with his twenty-seven men in two tiny rooms. It was the fleas and the painful smoke of green wood on the open fire, and the dripping mud roof. And his men’s tempers. One of the Syrians who had given trouble before on the ride to the Yarmuk bridge had a dagger fight with Mahmas, a camel-driver. In Europe, Mahmas would have been called a homicidal maniac, so possibly it was not the guardsman’s fault. If Mahmas was worsted in argument or laughed at, or even for a mere fancy, he would lean forward with his little dagger and rip the other man up. Three men at least he had killed so; once Lawrence had the unpleasant task of disarming him when he was running amok. After the War when Eric Kennington, who has edited the illustrations of this book, was in Transjordania drawing portraits of Arabs, one of the men he chose out, without knowing his history, was Mahmas. As he was working on the portrait he noticed the whites of Mahmas’s eyes turning up queerly and his face going insane; and suddenly he was on Kennington with his dagger raised. Kennington pretended to pay no attention but stooped carelessly to pick up a piece of chalk. This saved his life. The madness died and Mahmas was as friendly as he had been before the attack. Kennington sketched in the dagger as a comment on the occasion.
MAHMAS
from a drawing by ERIC KENNINGTON
For his fight—quarrelling in the guard was an unforgivable offence—Mahmas was heavily whipped by El Zaagi, his captain, so was the other contestant. Lawrence, in the next room, could not endure the noise of the blows after his Deraa experience and stopped El Zaagi before he had gone very far. Mahmas was weeping before the punishment started and when it was over was in disgrace as a coward. To the Syrian, who had endured without complaint, Lawrence gave an embroidered silk headcloth next morning for his faithful services; but did not tell the man the real reason of the gift. After this, Lawrence decided to scatter his body-guard among the other houses. The men were too high-spirited to be shut up together in two small rooms with nothing to do. He went off himself on a journey to get the gold that Zeid would need, when the fine weather came, for enrolling the new tribesmen through whose territory the Arabs were to advance.