At dawn on 23 January, a small flotilla of British ships, including Fox, Espiegle and Hardinge, nosed through a blanket of seafog off the Red Sea coast near Wejh. Admiral Wemyss, scanning the shore with his binoculars, could make out the shape of a stone Martello tower standing on a high cliff, but there was no sign of Feisal, Lawrence, or the Bedu column. Wemyss concluded that Feisal had not made the rendezvous, and he was perplexed. On board Hardinge were 600 Arab volunteers, mostly ex-slaves of the Juhayna, and Feisal’s Bishah tribal police, who had been picked up from Umm Lujj. They were to fight under their own Sheikhs, ‘Amr and Salih, with the nominal direction of Major Charles Vickery and Captain N. N. E. Bray, both experienced Arabic-speaking officers who had been assigned by Wingate to his Military Mission team. Wemyss was faced with the choice of waiting for Feisal to appear or making the assault without him. The Arabs on Hardinge could not be kept aboard much longer, for they lacked food and sanitary arrangements. But could they take the town? Wejh was mostly inhabited by anti-Hashemite Egyptian immigrants from Qusair, which stood directly opposite across the Red Sea, and its Turkish garrison consisted of 800 men, with about 500 irregular camel-corps of the ‘Agayl. Wemyss decided that, with his fifty naval guns, and a landing party of 200 naval ratings to support them, the Arabs could take it, even without the backing of Feisal’s much larger force. Hardinge slipped through the mist and dropped anchor two miles beyond the town. The Arabs, dressed in camel-hair cloaks against the chill, smelling of sheep, scrambled barefooted into lighters, and put ashore in a sheltered bay, protected by a rocky coral cliff. The mist was clearing, and two miles south the naval guns began their thunder, a deep, bass booming which seemed to the Arabs to shake the earth itself. On the beach, though, there was terrible confusion. Half the tribesmen sat down and refused to budge. The rest of them, game for plunder, split up into three sections, one of which went straight over the bluff and charged, bellowing ferociously, towards the town. The Turks had been expecting a massive assault from the south, and were poorly organized. The sentries in the houses on the northern perimeter looked out of the windows to see a mob of shrieking tribesmen rushing straight towards them. A ruckle of shots rang out, hitting two or three Arabs, who slumped down like dark bundles among the rocks. This was the only defence the Turks managed, for by then the Arabs had reached the first house, and, tearing open the door, they shot down three Egyptian civilians and started tearing up mattresses and smashing furniture in a frenzied hunt for loot. Afterwards they skirmished from house to house, killing and looting. Meanwhile a second and third group of Arabs had engaged the Turkish trenches, one section covering with rifle fire, while the other, under Sheikh Salih, advanced slowly towards them. The tribesmen walked unhurriedly over the cool stones, feeling their way easily, with their dishdashas tucked into their cartridge-belts, and their rifles carried on the shoulder muzzle-forward in Bedu style. They were 1,000 yards from the Turkish position when the enemy opened fire, and at once they broke into a slow trot, making for a ridge, behind which they rolled and bobbed up shooting, hitting ten or eleven Turks. Vickery, who had advanced with them, signalled to Hardinge with a mirror, and at once the battleship began lobbing shells into the Turkish entrenchments. The Turks fled, and the bombardment stopped long enough for the Arabs to advance. They came forward steadily, and almost collided with the landing-party of 200 bluejackets. They slept in their positions that night, and on the morning of the 24th moved into the quarters of the town not yet captured, to find that most of the Turkish garrison, including the commander, had fled in the night. The few troops left were hiding out in the mosque, and staggered out weaponless as soon as Fox knocked a gaping hole through its wall. Wejh had been taken, at a cost of twenty Arabs killed, one RFC officer mortally wounded, and a bluejacket shot in the foot.

Feisal’s tribal levies, with Lawrence, and Stewart Newcombe – whom they had picked up at Umm Lujj – arrived the following day to find the town already in Arab hands: ‘It was a fine sight to see his contingents scattered over the undulating plain to the south east,’ wrote Captain Bray. ‘… Feisal himself led the van, his presence denoted by his standard-bearer, carrying a huge red banner, the only splash of colour in his army.’ The Bedu trotted into the town on their horses and camels, singing, capering and executing mock charges. Bray noted that they appeared very light-hearted, ‘which was rather to be wondered at,’ he added, ‘since they had failed us – quite inexcusably, I think, in spite of the explanations which were later given by Lawrence and Feisal… no attempt whatsoever was made to keep faith, and it was a reflection, both on Feisal’s leadership and still more on his British advisers …’¹¹ It was, indeed, a sad end to Lawrence’s 1 ‘spectacular march’ of 200 miles, and privately he was mortified by the failure. Publicly, though, he blamed the delay on lack of water, the weakness of Feisal’s camels – many of which had died – and on the ineptitude of his Juhayna guides. He defended himself by attacking Vickery’s impatience, implying that the assault had been made prematurely, and that the number of casualties had been unacceptable for an irregular army. He pointed out, correctly, that to the Arabs casualties were not statistics but personal tragedies, called the attack a ‘blunder’ militarily, and decried the looting and smashing of the town, which was, after all, required as an Arab base. Lawrence had met Vickery at Umm Lujj during the march, and they had taken a mutual dislike to one another. Vickery had thought Lawrence a braggart for boasting that the Arabs would be in Damascus by the end of the year. For his part, Lawrence, always critical of professional soldiers, condemned this gunner often years’ experience in the Sudan as insensitive because he had drunk whisky in the presence of Feisal, a devout Muslim. He regarded Vickery as one of those colonial officers who, though perfectly fluent in Arabic, was accustomed to patronize the natives, and could not distinguish between ordinary tribesmen and ‘noble’ Arabs such as the Hashemites. Lawrence’s style was very different. He tried to get ‘under the skin’ of the Arabs and emulate their ways: to see the best in them, even when their behaviour seemed unacceptable to European culture. His irritation with Vickery, though, arose from his unconscious shadow – the submerged feeling that despite his mask, he and Vickery were in essence the same, differing only in approach. Drinking whisky before Feisal might have been insensitive, he reflected, but it was at least honest (and Feisal, being broadminded, had laughingly accepted it), while his own assumption of an Arab persona was a charade. His criticism of Vickery was largely unjust, however. First, it had been Admiral Wemyss rather than Vickery who had decided not to wait for Feisal’s force: second, the Arabs had been largely beyond Vickery’s control, and third, the looting and smashing of the town had been no less appalling to Vickery and Bray than it had been to himself. Lawrence took no personal responsibility for Feisal’s failure to make the rendezvous, and his excuses were lame. Elsewhere he boasted of the Bedu’s ability to march long distances on minimal food and water, and, as Bray pointed out, he could quite easily have sent a small advance-guard of the 8,000 men ahead to Wejh to join in the attack. On the other hand, the propagandist in Lawrence appreciated that the march had been a success by its very occurrence: Feisal’s ability to assemble such a formidable force of tribesmen, to move them 200 miles through the desert, and now to threaten the Hejaz railway, would, he knew, have a devastating effect on Turkish morale.