constant concern with his own pain and suffering makes it clear that it was not with the perpetrators but with the victims of these imaginary punishments that he identified. While a masochistic tendency is clearly observable throughout his life, a sadistic stratum is not. Lawrence was by nature gentle, highly sensitive and compassionate: ‘… they say his mouth suggests cruelty,’ wrote his friend Vyvyan Richards; ‘… is there any trace of that in his nature? I have found none in all the thirty years I have known him… his campaign shows only strong justice where patience and mercy would have been a greater evil.’²¹ Alec Kirkbride, who was with Lawrence at the very end of the Syrian campaign, wrote: ‘it is complete nonsense to describe him as having been either sadistic or fond of killing … He once told me that his ideal of waging war was based on the professional condottieri of medieval Italy. That is to say, to gain one’s objectives with a minimum of casualties on both sides.’²²

Lawrence makes two related claims in Seven Pillars regarding Tafas: first, that he gave the Arabs the order to take no prisoners, and secondly, that the Arab regulars machine-gunned a host of prisoners with his approval. He does not state specifically that he himself ordered the prisoners shot: this claim only appears after the war in conversation with his brother Arnie. Unlike most events in Lawrence’s career, though, there were other witnesses at the battle of Tafas. Fred Peake, who arrived there soon after Lawrence, and who saw the atrocities for himself, wrote to Arnie Lawrence years later that his brother had actually tried to halt the killing of wounded Turks. The Arabs had gone berserk, Peake said, and when he turned up with his Camel Corps detachment, Lawrence had asked him to restore order. Peake had dismounted 100 troopers and marched them into Tafas with fixed bayonets. The Arabs had given way, stopped killing the wounded, and had ridden after the retreating column, finishing off a few strays but withdrawing quickly when they saw that the Turks meant to fight. It is hardly surprising that Lawrence should have failed to mention this, for among the berserk Arabs were members of his own bodyguard over whom he claimed to have an almost hypnotic control.²³ As for the ‘no prisoners’ command, Peake recalled that Lawrence had ordered him personally to ensure the safety of Turkish prisoners – proof, he said, that there was never any such thing. Moreover there is a discrepancy in Lawrence’s two accounts of the massacre, for while in his official dispatch he wrote ‘we’ ordered ‘no prisoners’, in Seven Pillars the ‘we’ has become T. There were several senior figures present by the time Lawrence arrived at Tafas: Sharif Nasir, who was in command of the irregulars, and Nuri as-Sa’id, in charge of the trained troops. Auda Abu Tayyi was also present, and was said by Lawrence himself to have taken command of the last phase of the attack. Is it likely, therefore, that Lawrence, who claimed to work through the Arabs’ own leaders rather than taking the foreground himself, should have been in a position to order the entire Arab force to take no prisoners? Both Peake and biographer john Mack agreed that the ‘we’ was a ‘commander’s we’ – that is, not a personal order, but an assumption of responsibility. Young, who was not present at Tafas, heard from an Arab officer named ‘Ali Jaudet that he and Lawrence had desperately tried to prevent the killing of prisoners after the battle, but to no avail. ‘I am certain,’ Peake wrote, ‘that Lawrence did all he could to stop the massacre but he would have been quite unable to do anything as any human mob that has lost its head is beyond control.’²⁴ According to Nuri as-Sa’id, however, many Turkish prisoners who fell into Arab hands had actually survived.²⁵ Why should Lawrence claim falsely to have committed an act which he knew was against military convention, not to mention morally reprehensible, especially when he was known as a man of great compassion – who had, indeed, only weeks before, spared an unarmed Turkish soldier he had come across on the railway, and who had written to Edward Leeds that the ‘killing and killing’ of Turks sickened him? There are resonances here of the tale of Hamad the Moor’s execution – the alleged incident which forms the overture to his arrival in the desert battle-zone. On the one hand such apparent acts depict Lawrence as a strong and ruthless man capable of righteous anger, on the other they show an apparent burden of guilt which he delighted in displaying to the world. Arnie Lawrence himself suggested to John Mack that he had doubts about the veracity of his brother’s claim, and Alec Kirkbride believed that Lawrence had a horror of bloodshed: ‘… it is because of this,’ he wrote, ‘that he tends to pile on the agony in the passages of Seven Pillars, dealing with death and wounds … however, I suspected him of liking to suffer himself.’²⁶ Indeed, there is a sense in which Lawrence, the masochist, liked to absorb the sin and suffering of the world: the duplicity of the British he bore on his shoulders, together with the inconstancy, cruelty and barbarousness of the Arabs. There is, as we have already seen, a Christ-like leitmotif in Lawrence’s story – especially in his betrayal, torture and humiliation at Dara’a and his ‘resurrection’ afterwards. Lawrence was perfectly aware of this messianic strand: just as Christ died for the sins of the world, Lawrence’s penchant for sacrifice may have obliged him to assume responsibility for savage acts in which he personally had played no part.²⁷

At sunset, Trad ash-Sha’alan’s horsemen reached Dara’a and captured the Turkish rearguard of 500 soldiers. Lawrence arrived at first light. There was no time to linger, however, for British cavalry pickets were already in sight, and, ignorant of the fact that the town had fallen, were actually starting to engage Arab troops. General Barrow, commanding the British spearhead, had been ordered by Allenby to capture Dara’a and was intent on launching a full-scale assault. Only fast work would avert a disaster. Lawrence and his bodyguard rode out to meet Barrow through British lines – a hazardous undertaking, for he was dressed as an Arab and the British cavalrymen, trigger-happy and flushed with fight, could not distinguish between Hashemite Bedu and Arab irregulars in Turkish pay. George Staples, who was leading a troop of the Middlesex Yeomanry, claimed that he had almost given the order to shoot Lawrence: ‘… it was a blistering hot day,’ he told a Toronto newspaper, ‘and we were all edgy, when around a sand dune came about ten Arabs on camels … They came straight at us and our horses … started to shy. We thought they were the enemy and took aim at the leading Arab. Just as we were about to fire the Arabs stopped and out of the flowing robes came an Oxford accent. He said, “I’m Lawrence. Where’s Barrow?” He acted as if the whole world should know who he was and he was terribly self-opinioned … I had quite a shock, I don’t mind telling you when I realized I might have given the order to shoot him down – he was a thin little chap, about my size, five foot five …,’²⁸ Lawrence, however, recalled only being ‘captured’ by an Indian machine-gun post, and that while he was being held up he had watched British aircraft bombing Nuri’s regulars on the Dara’a road, having mistaken them for Turks. His task became urgent, and he managed to speak to a British officer who directed him to General Barrow. He found the General uncompromising: Allenby had given him no instructions as to the status of the Arabs, and Clayton had not intervened, believing that the Hashemites deserved only what they could keep. For a moment the Arab efforts – and Lawrence’s miseries – of two years hung in the balance:’… my head was working full speed,’ he wrote, ‘… to prevent the fatal first steps by which the unimaginative British … created a situation which called for years of agitation… to mend.’²⁹ Barrow announced his intention of posting sentries to control the inhabitants of the town: Lawrence countered that the Arabs were already in control: the General said that his sappers would inspect the wells: Lawrence said they were welcome, but that the Arabs had already started the pump engines. Barrow snorted that the Arabs seemed to have made themselves at home and said that he would take charge of the railway station: Lawrence pointed out that the Arabs were already working the railway, and asked politely that British sentries should not interfere. Once again, it was Lawrence’s rhetoric which saved the Hashemites: so persuasive was he, indeed, that Barrow not only accepted that the Arabs were in possession of Dara’a, but, on entering the town, actually made them the thrilling compliment of saluting the Hashemite flag fluttering from the ruined serail.