BUXTON’S MEN BLOWING UP MUDOWWARA STATION
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However, Kissir bridge and tunnel escaped too. On August the twentieth they came within sight of the railway and hid in the ruins of a Roman temple some miles off. Lawrence sent forward members of his body-guard who were peasants of the district to scout in the three villages between them and the bridge. They returned to say that by bad luck Turkish tax-gatherers were in the villages that night, measuring out the heaps of corn on the threshing-floors under guard of troops of mounted infantry. Three such troops were in the three villages nearest the great bridge, villages close to which they would have to pass on their way to blow it up. And a Turkish aeroplane had come over their column that morning and probably seen them. They took counsel. Lawrence had no doubt that Buxton’s men could deal with the Turkish bridge-guard and blow up the bridge. The only question was whether the business was worth its cost in British lives. The plan was to dismount nearly a mile from the bridge and advance on foot. The blowing up of the bridge with three tons of gun-cotton would wake up the whole district and Turkish patrols might stumble on the camel-park, which would be a disaster. Buxton’s men could not, like Arabs, scatter like a swarm of birds after the explosion, to find their own way back. In night-fighting some of them would be sure to be cut off. They might lose altogether fifty men. This was too expensive. The destruction of the bridge, anyhow, was only to frighten and disturb the Turks so that they would leave Maan alone until August the thirtieth, when the great attack on Deraa was to be made from Azrak. This was already the twentieth. The danger seemed nearly over now, for the Turks had wasted the last month, doing nothing.
Buxton’s men were most disappointed when they heard that the raid was off, but Lawrence reassured them that the chief object of their coming would be gained. He sent men down to the villages to spread reports of a coming great attack on Amman, of which this was the advance guard. It was what the Turks dreaded most; patrols were sent up at once to report on the truth of the villagers’ wild reports, and found the hill-top, where the raiders had been, littered with empty meat tins, and the valley slopes cut up by the tracks of enormous cars. Very many tracks there were; as Lawrence, with his single car, had taken care that there should be. This alarm checked them for a week; the destruction of the bridge would only have added a few days more. The expedition returned by way of Azrak, where the Englishmen bathed in the pools, and to Bair (shouting ‘Are we well fed? No! Do we see life? Yes!’), where they found a few more ‘iron rations’ dumped for them from Akaba. Then Buxton took them back to Palestine. Lawrence returned with the armoured cars to Akaba.
XXV
At Akaba preparations for the grand expedition of all arms to cut the railways at Deraa were complete—so complete that Dawnay and Joyce were both for the moment on holiday. Lawrence was glad to be there to cope with a most unexpected and absurd situation. The Sherif, Hussein, had issued a Royal Gazette from Mecca with a proclamation to the effect that fools were calling Jaafar Pasha the General Officer Commanding the Arab Northern Army, whereas there was no such rank, indeed no rank higher than captain in the Arab Army, in which Sheikh Jaafar, like many another, was doing his duty. Hussein had heard of Jaafar’s C.M.G. and had published this proclamation in jealousy without warning Feisal. He intended by it to spite the Syrian and Mesopotamian Arabs in Feisal’s army. They were fighting, he knew, to free their own countries for self-government, but he was aiming at a regular Arab Empire which he was ambitious to rule from Mecca, with the spiritual leadership of the Mohammedan world thrown in. Jaafar and all the Arab officers at once resigned. Feisal refused the resignations, pointing out that their commissions as officers were issued by himself and he alone was disgraced by the proclamation. He telegraphed to Mecca resigning command. Hussein appointed Zeid in his place. Zeid promptly refused to take command. Hussein sent threatening messages by cable and all military life was at an end from Akaba to Aba el Lissan.
Lawrence had to do something. The first alternative was to put pressure on Hussein to withdraw his statement; the second to ignore the humours of this narrow-minded old man of seventy, and carry on; the third, to set up Feisal in independence of his father and, when Damascus fell, try to give him a throne there. But the difficulty was that the expedition had to start in three days’ time if it was to reach Deraa before Allenby began his advance. The first course was best, to avoid the appearance of dissension among the Arabs, but might take weeks. So Allenby and the High Commissioner of Egypt (who provided Hussein’s subsidy) were at once set to work on the Sherif, whose answers to Feisal through them were cabled across to Akaba in cipher. Lawrence, remembering Hussein’s trick on the telephone, saw to it that the cable-station at Akaba only accepted the desirable parts of the messages and made a hopeless jumble of the others, notifying these to Mecca as ‘corrupt.’ Fortunately Hussein instead of repeating the censored passages, toned them down until at last there came a long message, the first half a lame apology and withdrawal of the proclamation, the other a renewal of the offence in a new form.
