13. Not an Army But a World is Moving upon Wejh

Yanbu’ and Wejh December 1916 – January 1917

It was wishful thinking, of course. The Bedu had never been defensive fighters, and when Fakhri Pasha finally emerged from Medina that December with three full brigades, he outflanked the Bani Salem holding the Wadi Safra and sent them scattering to their villages without a fight. Despite Lawrence’s assurances, they had never received either machine-guns or artillery, and the Turks broke through into the coastal plain within twenty-four hours, proving what Lawrence later dignified as ‘The Second Theorem of Irregular War’ – ‘that irregular troops are as unable to defend a point or line as they are to attack it’.¹ Professional soldiers such as Sir Reginald Wingate had been saying this from the beginning without any elaborate ‘theorem’, which was why British troops had been thought necessary to defend Rabegh in the first place. By then, though, it was too late. Lawrence had returned from the mountains like Moses, with the solution to the problem of Rabegh graven in stone. If a British force had landed in the Hejaz, he said later, not a single Arab would have remained with the Sharif. This, as he well knew, was exactly what General Murray wanted to hear, and the provision of machine-guns, artillery and military advisers Lawrence requested seemed to the GOC a small price to pay for the conservation of one or two brigades. Lawrence’s star was suddenly in the ascendant at GHQ, and he realized that he was in a uniquely powerful position. No one had been to the front before him, and none followed him: he was the only British officer who had seen the conditions there for himself. By presenting the evidence, carefully pruned to suit his own objectives, he had now become a major player in the Arab Revolt. His information had also given him a private channel to the other players. On his way back to Cairo, he had not only met Admiral Wemyss, commanding the Red Sea Fleet, who was, like Murray, an opponent of intervention, but had also called at Khartoum to be debriefed by Wingate, who was a staunch supporter of it. That he had managed to convince both parties that each was right was a tribute to his shape-shifting power. After the debriefing, Wingate – who was shortly to move to Cairo as High Commissioner in place of McMahon – wrote: ‘I understood him to agree that in an emergency the Arabs would welcome [a British Brigade] … and cling to this hope of success rather than acquiesce in the certain defeat that failure to hold Rabegh would mean.’² Lawrence had not – as far as he was concerned – agreed to any such thing, and Wingate was enraged when later he read Lawrence’s memorandum on the subject. But by then the die was cast, and Clayton managed to convince the Sirdar that Murray had obliged Lawrence to write the document, anyway.

Lawrence continued to see himself working from his office in Cairo, helping to direct the Revolt from a safe distance. His expedition up the Wadi Safra had done nothing to convince him that he was a field officer. He was now formally transferred to the Arab Bureau under Clayton, who assigned him the post of Propaganda Officer – a role for which he was well suited. Wingate, however, had other ideas. The Sirdar felt that his exceptional knowledge of the Arabs would be wasted in Cairo, and told Clayton to send him back to the Hejaz as liaison officer with Feisal. Clayton was loath to let him go. Lawrence, who learned of the posting on 19 November, also objected strongly, arguing that he was not cut out to be a man of action, and had no experience in leadership. This argument was not entirely true, for he had emerged from his four years at Carchemish with formidable management skills. He also maintained that Feisal was headstrong and almost impossible to advise – a claim which he himself later revealed as spurious. He was desperate to stay away from the fighting, and was prepared to use all his rhetorical skills to do so. Yet it was to no avail. The Sirdar had ordered it, and the Sirdar would have his way. Wingate conceded only that Stewart Newcombe, now promoted Lieutenant-Colonel, should take over his posting at Yanbu’ – Feisal’s current base – as soon as he was available, releasing Lawrence once again for the Arab Bureau. Lawrence realized that the time for action had come. Fate had decreed that he should go into the field, and there was no avoiding it. Once he had accepted it, he summoned all the willpower he had built up in his youth, and galvanized himself for action. He feared that his nerve would not hold out in the face of danger, yet he drew on those long years of self-punishment, the close acquaintance with pain and deprivation he had forced upon himself, and hoped desperately that it would be enough. On 25 November, he sailed once more for the Hejaz.

He arrived in the eye of the gravest crisis the Revolt had suffered so far. On 1 December, Fakhri Pasha’s outriders had found an unguarded road into the Wadi Safra, and pushed quickly up behind the Bani Salem units guarding the wadi. Finding Turks behind them, the tribesmen had simply fled, anxious for their villages, and Feisal’s youngest brother, Zayd, who had been in command of the regular force of Egyptian soldiers lent by Wingate, had pushed forward to Hamra and had been stopped by a hail of machine-gun fire. Zayd himself had only narrowly escaped capture. He was retreating towards Yanbu’ on the coast, and the Turks, now occupying the Wadi Safra, were in a position to threaten both Yanbu’ and Rabegh. When the Turkish breakthrough had occurred, Feisal had been up-country recruiting a force of juhayna to march north along the coast and attack the port of Wejh, which remained in Turkish hands. The capture of the Wadi Safra had not only cut him off from Mecca and Rabegh, but had also robbed him of his support among the Bani Salem. He was left with only the Juhayna, whose loyalty, he thought, would certainly not survive the capture of Yanbu’ and Rabegh. His spy-system had broken down, and wildly contradictory reports were coming into his camp. On 2 December he dashed to Nakhl Mubarak – a large palm oasis in the Wadi Yanbu’ – with 4,000 tribesmen, ready to repel any Turkish threat to Yanbu’ port, which was now his last refuge.

Lawrence arrived at Nakhl Mubarak with ‘Abd al-Karim al-Baydawi, a Sharif of the Juhayna, just before midnight, to find a scene of utter confusion. The wadi was full of woodsmoke, and echoing with the bleating and roaring of thousands of camels. Half-naked tribesmen were running about barefoot, babbling, cursing and firing off rifles. Lawrence’s party warily hid their camels in a disused yard, and ‘Abd al-Karim went to investigate. He returned with the news that Feisal had just arrived, and shortly they found the Sharif sitting calmly amongst the madness, on a rug in the wadi, dictating letters by lamplight. With him were his aide Maulud al-Mukhlis, and Sharif Sharraf, the Hashemite Governor of Ta’ if – his second in command. Feisal was relieved to see Lawrence. The whole camp was on the verge of panic, and messengers were coming and going constantly, couching and rousing their camels around the Sharif’s tiny island on the rug. Bedu patrols loped into camp or scattered into the night noisily. Baggage trains were being unloaded, mules and horses bucked and shied, and as they talked, a recalcitrant baggage-camel bolted and dropped its load, showering them with hay. Feisal listened to every messenger, petitioner and plaintiff patiently, and spoke to his men with dignity and composure. He was fighting a desperate internal battle, Lawrence realized. He had been shocked by the suddenness of his brother’s retreat, and was privately ‘most horribly cut up’ about it. Publicly, though, he was magnificent. Lawrence watched him address the Sheikhs of a troop of Bedu he was sending out to picket the Turks: ‘He did not say much,’ Lawrence wrote. ‘No noise about it, but it was exactly right, and the people rushed over one another to kiss his headrope when he finished.’³ Once again, Feisal blamed lack of artillery for the Turkish success, and feared that the defection of the Bani Salem would have a domino effect on the other tribes: ‘Henceforward, much of the Harb will have to be ruled out,’ Lawrence wrote to Clayton. ‘The Hawazim [the section of the tribe which had run from the Turks] are most openly wrong, and all the other Bani Salem will tend to hedge, and try to make peace with the people occupying their palm groves.’⁴ Lawrence and Feisal snatched some sleep and were up only an hour later, in the chill of dawn, to the ringing of the coffee-mortar. Lawrence made a reconnaissance of the camp and talked to the Bedu, particularly the Juhayna, whom he thought unsettled and uneasy. Later that day Feisal’s force moved out of the wadi, which they suspected might soon flood, and made camp to the north. The whole army mounted together, making a swath for Feisal to ride through on his mare, followed by his lieutenants and Sharifs, his standard-bearer, and a bodyguard of 800 armed ‘Agayl and Bishah on camels. Despite the desperate situation, Lawrence was thrilled by the pageant of an Arab tribal army on the move.