Lawrence and the Arabs

by Robert Graves

Meanwhile the Arab expedition moved to Tell Arar, four miles north of Deraa, where they were to cut the northern railway to Damascus. Lawrence and Joyce hurrying to join them in the armoured cars arrived late because of bad going over heavy plough-land. They watched the battle from a hill: Ruwalla horsemen dashing towards the line over the liquorice-grown bed of a watercourse, and a Ford car, with machine-guns, bouncing after. A Turkish guard-post opened fire, but Pisani’s guns silenced it and the Ruwalla took it with only one man killed. Ten miles of railway were won in only an hour’s fighting and the Egyptians, after a halt for breakfast, began steady demolition-work from south to north while the Arab army swarmed over the plain. Lawrence could hardly realize the good fortune. It was September the seventeenth, two days before Allenby could throw forward his full power. In two days the Turks might decide to change their dispositions to meet this new danger from the Arabs at Deraa, but they could not do so before Allenby struck. Lawrence had cut the one railway that connected the Turks in Amman, Maan, Medina, Nazareth, Nablus, the Jordan valley, with their base in Damascus and with Aleppo, Constantinople, Germany.

The Egyptians used ‘tulips,’ which were thirty-ounce charges of gun-cotton planted beneath the centre of the central sleeper of each ten-yard section of the track. The sleepers were hollow steel and the explosion made them hump bud-like two feet in the air. The lift pulled the rails three inches up, the drag pulled them six inches together, and the chairs were inwardly warped. This threefold distortion put them beyond repair. And it was quick work; six hundred such charges could be laid and fired in two or three hours and would take the Turks a week to mend. While they were busy, eight Turkish aeroplanes flew out from Deraa and began dropping bombs. They did not seem to notice the Egyptians on the railway but came diving down with machine-gun fire among the Arabs. There was no overhead cover on the plain at all, so the only thing was to scatter and present the thinnest possible target, while Nuri Said’s automatic guns rattled back at the aeroplanes and Pisani’s mountain-guns fired shrapnel and made them fly too high to bomb accurately.

The question now was how to get at the Yarmuk railway-bridge which Lawrence had failed to blow up the year before. Its destruction would top off the cutting of the other two lines from Deraa. The enemy aeroplanes were, however, making movement impossible. There had been two British aeroplanes with the expedition, but the only useful one, a Bristol Fighter, had been damaged in an air-fight the day before and had flown back for repairs to Jerusalem; there remained only an antiquated and almost useless B.E.12 machine. But Junor, the pilot, had heard at Azrak from the pilot of the returning Bristol Fighter that enemy aeroplanes were active at Deraa and most bravely decided to take his place. When things were at their worst at Tell Arar he suddenly sailed in and rattled away at the eight Turkish aeroplanes with his two guns. They scattered for a careful look and he flew westward drawing them after him: he knew that the chance of an air-fight usually makes aeroplanes forget their ground-target. It was deliberate self-sacrifice on Junor’s part, for his machine was utterly useless for air-fighting. Nuri Said hurriedly collected three hundred and fifty regulars and marched them in small parties across the rails. He was making for Mezerib, seven miles west from Deraa, the key to the Yarmuk bridge. The returning aeroplanes would probably not notice that his men were gone. Armed peasants were sent on after Nuri Said, and half an hour later Lawrence called up his body-guard, to follow himself.

As he did so, he heard a droning in the air and to his astonishment Junor appeared, still alive, though surrounded by three enemy aeroplanes, faster than his own, spitting bullets at him. He was twisting and side-slipping splendidly, firing back. But the fight could only end in one way. In a faint hope that he might get down alive Lawrence rushed with his men and another British officer, Young, to clear a landing-place by the railway. Junor was being driven lower; he threw out a message to say that his petrol was finished. The body-guard worked feverishly, rolling away boulders, and Lawrence put out a landing-signal. Junor dived: the machine took the ground beautifully but a flaw of wind then overturned it and he was thrown out. He was up in a moment with only a cut chin, and rescued his Lewis-gun and machine-gun and ammunition just before one of the Turkish aeroplanes dived and dropped a bomb by the wreck. Five minutes later he was asking for another job. Joyce gave him a Ford car and he ran boldly down the hill until near Deraa and blew a gap in the rails there before the Turks saw him. They fired at him with artillery but he bumped off in the Ford, still unhurt.

Lawrence hurried forward to Mezerib with his body-guard, but an aeroplane saw them and began dropping bombs: one, two, three misses, the fourth fell right among them. Two camels fell, terribly wounded, but the riders escaped unhurt and scrambled up behind two of their friends. Another machine came by and dropped more bombs. A shock spun Lawrence’s camel round and nearly knocked him out of the saddle with a numbing pain in his right arm. He felt that he was hard hit and tears came to his eyes with the pain and the disappointment of being put out of action so soon before the triumphant end. Blood was running down his arm. Perhaps, if he did not look at it, he might carry on as if he were unhurt. The aeroplane was machine-gunning them now and his camel swung round. He clutched at the pommel and realized that his damaged arm was there, still in working order. He had judged it blown off. He felt for the wound, and found a very small very hot splinter of metal sticking into his arm. He realized how bad his nerves were. This was, by the way, the first time that he had been hit from the air, of all his twenty or more wounds.

Mezerib surrendered after a bombardment by Pisani’s guns and twenty machine-guns. (Tallal had previously gone forward demanding a bloodless surrender—he knew the stationmaster—but the Turks had fired a volley at him and at Lawrence, who came with him, from point-blank range: they had crawled back painfully through a field of thistles, Tallal swearing.) The station was looted by hundreds of Hauran peasantry. Men, women and children in a frenzy fought like dogs over every object; even doors and windows, door-frames and window-frames, steps of the stairs, were carried off. Others smashed and looted the wagons in the siding. Lawrence and Young cut the telegraph, the Palestine army’s main link with home. They cut it slowly to draw out the indignation of the German-Turkish staff at Nazareth. The Turks’ hopeless lack of initiative made their army a directed one, so that by destroying the telegraph Lawrence went far towards turning them into a leaderless mob. The points were then blown in and tulips planted all over the station track. Among the captures were two lorries crammed with delicacies for some German canteen. Nuri Said found an Arab prising open a tin of bottled asparagus and cried out: ‘Pigs’ bones!’ The peasant spat in horror and threw them down. Nuri Said picked them up and later shared them with Lawrence, Joyce and Young. The trucks were splashed with petrol and set on fire and the blaze that evening acted as a beacon for hundreds and hundreds of Arab peasant rebels who came on camel, on horse, on foot, in great enthusiasm, hoping that this was the final release of their country.

Visitors were welcome. Lawrence’s business was to let each one tell him all the news he wanted to tell; afterwards re-arranging it in his mind and getting a clear picture of the whole enemy situation. Even the magistrates of Deraa itself came offering to open the town, but Lawrence put them off, to their disappointment. Though he knew that the town controlled the local water-supply, the possession of which must force the railway-station to surrender too, he would not risk accepting the gift. If Allenby did not completely break the Turks, Deraa might be retaken and a merciless massacre of the Hauran peasants would follow.

The next step was to blow up Tell el Shehab bridge. There had arrived the boy-chief of Tell el Shehab village, which crowned the cliff above the bridge: he described the position of the large Turkish guard at the bridge. Lawrence thought that he was probably lying, but he went off and soon returned with his friend the commander of the Turkish bridge-guard, an Armenian captain, who confirmed the story. The Armenian was anxious to betray his charge; he suggested an ambush in his own room at the village to which he would in turn call all his lieutenants, sergeants and corporals—hated Turks—to be trussed up by three or four waiting Arabs. The rest of the force would be ready then to rush the leaderless guard. Lawrence agreed and at eleven o’clock he and Nasir were close to the village with camel-men and the body-guard bringing bags of gelatine. Lawrence knew the bridge well since his attempt on it with Ali ibn el Hussein and Fahad from the other side of the ravine. It was pitch-dark and the damp air came up from the river, wetting their woollen coats. Waiting for the Armenian to come and fetch the trussers-up they could hear the occasional cries of the sentry challenging passers-by on the bridge far below, and the constant roar of the waterfall, and then the noise of a train, with the squealing of brakes as it stopped in the station close by the bridge. After awhile the boy-chief came up holding his brown cloak open to show his white shirt like a flag. He whispered that the plan had failed. The train in the ravine had been sent up with German and Turk reserves from Afuleh under a German colonel to rescue panic-stricken Deraa. They had arrested the Armenian captain for being absent from his post. There were dozens of machine-guns and dozens of sentries patrolling up and down.

Nuri Said offered to take the place by main force. Surprise and numbers were on the Arab side, but Lawrence was at his old game of reckoning the cost and as usual found it too dear. They said good night to the chief, thanked him, and turned back. Lawrence, Nasir and Nuri Said sat with rifles ready on the cliff edge, waiting for their men to get back out of danger. Lawrence’s rifle was a famous one, a British Lee-Enfield captured at the Dardanelles and given by Enver, the Turkish commander-in-chief, as a present to Feisal, with an inscription on a gold plate; Feisal had given it to Lawrence. It was a great temptation sitting there to fire a rocket pistol into the station and scare the Germans into all-night terror. Nasir, Nuri and Lawrence all had the same childish idea at the same moment, but managed to restrain each other from carrying it out. Instead, some of the body-guard were sent to blow up rails in the ravine a mile or two beyond the bridge, Tallal providing guides. The echoing explosions gave the Germans a bad night. Then the rest of the army moved from Mezerib towards Nisib on their way back to Umtaiye. Before leaving they lit a long time-fuse to a mine under the water-tower. When the Germans came forward from Tell el Shehab—they heard that Mezerib was empty—the mine exploded with a tremendous noise and they cautiously retired again.

Nisib was ten miles south of Deraa. Pisani’s guns shelled the station at two thousand yards’ range and the machine-guns supported him. But the Turks would not surrender, returning a hot fire from the trenches. This did not matter much, for the real objective was not the station but a great bridge a few hundred yards to the north, protected by a Turkish post which Nuri Said now began to bombard. Lawrence’s men were tired out, like their camels, and when he asked them to come forward with him against the bridge they refused. They knew that one bullet in the gelatine that they were carrying would blow them sky-high.