Indeed, Auda’s bitterest enemy was Hammayd ibn jazi, a descendant of ‘Ar’ar, with whom he had disputed a point of honour. A scion of ibn Jazi had taken a camel from a certain Sharari tribesman who happened to be under the protection of Auda’s family. Auda and some kinsmen had arrived at ibn Jazi’s tent demanding restitution, whereupon they had been fired on: Auda had shot dead the son of one of his opponents and seized the camel. From that moment, the ibn Jazi and the Abu Tayyi had been at each other’s throats, and the feud had resulted in the murder of Annad, Auda’s son, who had been cut down by five riders of the Motalga ibn Jazi at Bair in the Ard as-Suwwan. Auda’s only remaining son, Mohammad, from whom he was rarely parted, was a little boy of eleven. In 1914 the various branches of the Howaytat had made an uneasy truce, and moved east of the railway to the desolate Jefer plain near the Wadi Sirhan, from where they had plundered Turkish caravans and raided the Bani Sakhr – a powerful Bedu tribe to the north. They were also at war with the Shararat – the despised clan of camel-herders – to the south. Finally, around the beginning of April 1917, Auda had turned up in the camp of Feisal near Wejh, with eleven-year-old Mohammad as his only protector, and declared in favour of the Hashemites. This was a great victory for Feisal, for to have such a man as Auda with him not only added to his prestige, but gave him the key to the crucial region of Ma’an and the hinterland of Aqaba – now the only major Red Sea port still held by the Turks. Moreover, the Howaytat were accustomed to menacing the railway – in 1909 they had threatened to destroy all the bridges in the Ma an district unless the Governor paid protection-money. Although the blackmail had been paid, Howaytat raiders continued sporadically to attack and loot stations. When Lawrence returned to Wejh in mid-April 1917, bursting with his new guerrilla doctrine, and convinced that Medina should hereafter be ignored, he found in Auda the very ally he required.

The idea of capturing Aqaba was not Lawrence’s: it had been discussed from the very beginning of the war. In August 1916, before Lawrence had even arrived in Arabia, General Murray had broached the idea with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Robertson, in London: ‘As for Aqaba,’ Robertson cabled him, ‘the thing to do is to work out your scheme and let us know what it means – and then we will decide whether it should be undertaken or not.’² However, all the schemes mooted for the occupation of the port envisaged an assault from the sea – an approach which Lawrence had realized as ineffective, probably as early as 1914: he had certainly argued against it in a report he wrote in 1915. On 1 March 1917, Charles Vickery sent a telegram to Clayton to sound out his attitude to the question of taking Aqaba with troops from Feisal’s army. ‘Sharif Feisal is very anxious to occupy the town,’ Vickery wrote, ‘as he thinks …that its capture and occupation by him would have an excellent political effect on the Syrians.’³ However, Feisal clearly had in mind a seaborne landing with the support of British troops and naval artillery. Clayton’s reply, which came a week later, stressed political rather than military objections: ‘… it is questionable,’ he wrote, ‘whether, in the present circumstances, the presence of an Arab force at Aqaba would be desirable, as it would unsettle tribes which are better left quiet until the time is more ripe.’⁴ In May, though, he revealed the true nature of his reservations in a report to McMahon: ‘the occupation of [Aqaba] by Arabic troops might well result in the Arabs claiming that place thereafter and it is by no means improbable that after the war [Aqaba] may be of considerable importance to the future defence scheme of Egypt. It is thus essential that [Aqaba] should remain in British hands after the war.’⁵ On his return to Wejh, Lawrence found Feisal depressed and disheartened. The Sharif had originally been intent on Medina, but now planned to press on into Syria as soon as possible, for in late March he had heard the disturbing rumour that 60,000 French troops had already landed or were about to land in Syria. Since he believed that the arid Hejaz could not exist as an independent country without the support of fertile Syria, the prospect of the country falling into French hands at this eleventh hour was tragic. Lawrence agreed. He went to see the British OC Wejh, Pierce Joyce, in his tent by the beach, to persuade him to drop the strike against al-‘Ula which he was planning, with the object of cutting off the Medina garrison. Lawrence now saw this plan – originally devised by Newcombe – as folly: to hold a middle point on the railway would mean exposing it to a pincer attack from the Medina force and the strong garrison in Tebuk. He explained the epiphany he had had in Wadi ‘Ais – his sudden insight that it was to the advantage of the Arabs if the Turks stayed in Medina. He expressed again his fears that if there were large casualty lists, the Bedu would lose heart. To keep the railway just crawling along and to induce the Turks into passive resistance, he felt, would be the most rewarding strategy. Joyce refused to listen. Plans for the assault at al-‘Ula were already in progress: Garland and Newcombe were both poised to strike, and if Medina were captured Feisal could then move north very quickly.

Seeing that he would make no convert of Joyce, Lawrence turned to Auda. A seaborne landing at Aqaba was out of the question, and he had long been meditating on an alternative course. Aqaba’s defences and the fortifications at the mouth of the Wadi Ithm faced the sea – that was the direction from which the enemy was expected. A deep infiltration raid by a small force of picked men, who would appear suddenly out of the desert in the Turkish rear, would certainly take them by surprise. It was an original and audacious plan – the model for all the deep penetration raids later undertaken by Special Forces units throughout the century. It was also incredibly hazardous. To reach Aqaba by way of Wadi Ithm required a circuitous route of 600 miles across some of the worst desert in Arabia, including a stretch called al-Houl – literally ‘The Terror’ – where not even a fly or a blade of grass could survive. There would be no sophisticated equipment – no artillery, no machine-guns, no wireless – and no supply caravan or trained regulars.⁶ Such a raid required hardened desert men who could live off the land. Ironically, the Bedu were ruled out because they would not fight beyond their tribal districts. This left only Feisal’s ‘Agayl, the tough professional mercenaries recruited from the oases of the Najd. Only a small party – no more than squadron strength – would be viable in these waterless wastes if the supply problem were to be solved, but with such limited firepower the long-range patrol would have to avoid contact with the enemy, for once behind hostile lines they would be at the mercy of any larger force and without a clear escape route. Within striking distance of their target, they would be obliged to recruit local volunteers, for such a small patrol could not, on its own, capture Aqaba. Thus the mission would entail some persuasive preaching as well as great hardship and danger. They decided to adopt a circuitous turning movement through the Wadi Sirhan, a major corridor of communication between Arabia and Syria, where the Howaytat grazed their camels. Even if the patrol were spotted by Turkish spies in Sirhan, its objective could not be accurately guessed – the direction of march would suggest an attack on Ma’an, Dara a or even Damascus rather than Aqaba, and Lawrence would launch lightning raids on the railway as far north as the Yarmuk valley in order to confirm this suspicion. At the very last moment, his force would turn sharply to the south-west and dash across empty desert to the gates of Wadi Ithm. This, Lawrence guessed, was where the key battle would be fought.