Lawrence and the Arabs

by Robert Graves

‘SIR,—

‘Your reviewer of Revolt in the Desert denies the Arab Army any “serious military significance,” and suggests that Allenby’s advance on Damascus would have been successful had it never existed. As one who took part in the Palestine campaign, and was for a considerable time entrusted with the preparation of the “Enemy Order of Battle,” may I affirm the contrary? The revolt of 1916 isolated the Assir Division of six battalions, destroyed two-thirds of the Hejaz Division of nine battalions and brought a new division (58th) from Syria to Medina. In the autumn of 1917 when Lord Allenby struck his first blow the equivalent of twenty-four battalions was strung out on the line from Deraa to Medina. I include mounted infantry and camel corps. Some artillery was also engaged. Had the Arabs sat still two-thirds of this force, which included good Anatolian units such as the 42nd and 55th Regiments, would have been available for the Gaza-Beersheba front. In 1918 the British threat to Transjordania only became possible because of the growing strength of the revolt and the increasing sympathy of the local Arab population for Arab success. Lord Allenby’s demonstrations and the activity of the Arabs tied up more and more Turks and some German units, and by September, 1918, reinforcements from Rumania (part of the 25th Division) and the Caucasian front (48th Division) liberated by the Russo-Rumanian collapse, had been used up east of Jordan instead of on the Palestine front. Without going into details of military organization and the dislocation of troops, dull reading to any but the professional military historian, I can confidently assert that the Arab Army of 4,000 fighting men and an uncertain number of occasional pillagers was worth an Army Corps to the British Army on the Palestine front, not only on account of the Turks, whom it kept busy in the wrong place, but on account of the strain it put on Turkish transport and supply.

‘Finally, may I remark that Lawrence and his Arabs saw a good deal more at Tafas than one mutilated Arab woman, and the wonder to me is not that they saw red then, but that they generally showed such astonishing restraint against an enemy who habitually shot his Arab prisoners, tortured Arab wounded with obscene ingenuity, and often indulged in gross brutalities, at the expense of non-combatants, women and children.

‘Yours, etc.,
‘B.’

The humour of the controversy lies in the siding of Lawrence himself with the critics of whom ‘B.’ disposes so crushingly. What is called ‘serious military significance’ is part of the whole modern theory of War, the seeking out and destroying by one side of the organized military forces of another—a theory which he rejected as futile and barbarous almost from the start. What Lawrence wanted, rather, was to achieve serious political significance for the Revolt by whatever means lay readiest to his hand. Actual fighting, as opposed to pin-pricking raids and demolitions, was a luxury that he indulged the Arabs in merely to save their self-respect. They could not have thought freedom honourably won without it. The capture of Akaba is a clear instance of an operation that, though it affected the more conventional war at Gaza and Beersheba, had in itself serious political rather than serious military significance. It was only by an accident that the Turkish battalion happened to bar the way at Aba el Lissan and invite destruction. The rest of the operation was more like a chess problem; white to play and mate in three moves.

This is not the place, and it probably is not the time to weigh up Lawrence’s strategy and tactics during the Arab Revolt. Of the strategy he makes no secret whatever. It lies in Revolt in the Desert open for anyone who can use a map intelligently. The Seven Pillars gives yet fuller details; the first number of the Army Quarterly (1920) contains a long article by him on the subject of irregular war—a summary of the results of his sick-bed theorizing in Emir Abdulla’s camp in March 1917. The obvious comment to be made on his strategy is that it enabled the Arab Revolt in the sphere of politics, as in the sphere of war, to assume a much larger share of influence and attention than its material importance justified. B.’s letter just quoted, had it compared the Arabs’ resources in arms and equipment, as well as in men, with those of the Turkish forces opposed to them, would have made the point still clearer. Lawrence would probably take this judgment as the highest praise, for we find him throughout insisting, with a repetition that conveys the painfulness of his problem, upon the extreme economy of means necessary. The material and military assistance that the Arabs could themselves provide, with all the goodwill in the world, was small. Nor might it be helped out by large borrowing of material and military resources from the Allies without a proportionate political debt when the fighting was over. Lawrence would therefore be proud to think that he made his little go such a long way—even the total of ten million pounds and the score or so of British casualties that the Arab Revolt cost Great Britain was a flea-bite compared with, for instance, the monthly cost of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force in lives and cash-and that politically he made so much ado out of what had begun as little or nothing.

From the point of view of tactics, his conduct is far less clear. A casual reading of his books might lead one to suppose that he fought his battles with bluff and crimson banners for main argument; or even that the hypnotic effect that his presence seems to have had on the Arabs extended to the enemy, who were fascinated into stupidity—that the moon herself came under the influence and consented to open one of the more difficult gates to Akaba for him. But actually his tactics were, I believe, thought out with the same care and artifice, not to say humour, as his general strategic principles. And his reasons for slurring over the ways and means of fighting are connected with the political relations between the Syrian Government and the French in 1919 when he first wrote his book. Both sides were preparing for armed struggle in Syria and it looks as if Lawrence set himself to contribute nothing in the form of a manual of warfare that could be used in this struggle. His late re-draftings of the book at a time when the danger had become less acute only modified the literary style without adding (or taking away) much of the content. He had to select the materials to be used with great severity. His two active years provided enough for ten books of the size to which he limited himself—his memory was uncomfortably clear and full—so that wherever possible he sacrificed the details of the fighting.

He mentions, for instance, no more than three or four armoured-car actions in which he took part; but it seems that he fought at least fifty, enough to evolve a whole system and scheme of battle for them. (Readers of Revolt in the Desert will have found no more than two or three occasions mentioned on which Lawrence was wounded, against the four or five mentioned in the Seven Pillars; but the total number was nine times, including the occasion of Minifer when he had five bullet grazes, cuts from flying boiler-plate and a broken toe.) Nor is adequate mention made in either book of the numerous engagements in which he tempered his body-guard into a real fighting weapon. We can only gather, from casual allusions, that he did not leave the tactics of the desert as he found them.

He based his strategy on an exhaustive study of the geography of his area; of the Turkish Army; of the nature of the Bedouin tribes and their distribution. So he based his desert tactics on a study of the raiding parties of the Arabs. As we have seen, one of his first actions on being posted as military adviser to Feisal was to accompany a raid on the Turkish force attacking Rabegh. And he continued this self-education, in the school of Auda and Zaal and Nasir, until after the occupation of Akaba. Only by graduating in this Bedouin school could he win the experience and prestige that would allow him to modify its traditions.

Exactly what these modifications were is nowhere explained, though they seem to have achieved a greater unity of purpose among the members of the raiding party, at the more critical moments before and after the attack, without impairing the self-reliance and self-sufficiency of any individual. His English companions knew the difference between an Arab raid when he was present and one when he was not present; but they were not professional soldiers, nor students of war, so could not put their finger on the precise points of difference. And he himself, except in the battle fought north of Tafileh, withholds any account of himself in command. This battle proves what we knew already, that he relied on automatic rifles and not on ordinary rifles. The rapid-fire exercise, with an ordinary rifle, of fifteen to thirty aimed shots a minute, saved the British Expeditionary Force at the first battle of Ypres in face of enormously superior machine-gun fire; but it was only perfected by years of intense musketry training. The Bedouin Arabs would never have had the patience to master it and in any case it would have been of little use to them in camel-fighting.