Lawrence swiftly integrated the pilots and their aircraft into his strategy. He happily shared his young pilots’ breakfast of tea and sausages,* cooked over an open fire, something of a deviation from his usual vegetarian meals, and watched them shoot down a German two-seater, the wreckage of which he would later pass, “noting the two charred German bodies.” They flew back to Azrak, then traveled northwest with Feisal and that sinister old chieftain Nuri Shaalan—"packed into the green Vauxhall, which its British soldier, proud of his prince to drive, kept always spick and shining,” no mean feat in the desert—to Um el Surab, about fifty miles from Deraa. At Um el Surab, Nuri as-Said had prepared a landing ground big enough for the Handley-Page bomber. Unfortunately, they had to turn away to settle yet another of the endless intertribal disputes and so missed the great airplane’s landing. But later a single wild-eyed Bedouin riding in the opposite direction shouted that he had just seen “the biggest aeroplane in the world,” a report which quickly spread throughout all the tribes south of Deraa, and impressed the Bedouin even more than the news of Allenby’s victories. At Um el Surab they found the Handley, “majestic on the grass with the Bristols … like chickens beneath the spread of its wings.” The sight prompted the Arabs to say, “ ‘Indeed and at last they have sent us the aeroplane, of which these little things were the asses.’ “ Even the most skeptical tribesmen were now convinced that the Turks were done for.

The Handley-Page contained enough gas, spare parts for the aircraft, and food for the air force personnel to enable Lawrence to have his own small air force east of the Jordan, and also to provide his cars with enough fuel to get them to Damascus. At night the big aircraft would be used to bomb Mafrak and Deraa, further disrupting the Turkish Fourth Army’s line of retreat.

on September 23, Lawrence rested, and therefore missed the sight of old Nuri Shaalan charging the Turks on the railway line, as he “personally led his Rualla horsemen, galloping in his black broadcloth cloak with the best of them.” The next day Lawrence attacked the railway line again, but this time he was driven off by unexpectedly vigorous and accurate machine gun fire, from a German army unit, as it turned out. It did not much matter; at that point the entire Turkish Fourth Army was in hopeless and disordered retreat, becoming a mob of hungry, thirsty, unarmed stragglers, except for islands of discipline where small German units were retreating with them. Turks began throwing away their rifles, and cutting the horses loose of the guns they were pulling in order to ride them.

This sight of all this misery stretching from south of Amman almost to Damascus led to a sharp quarrel between Lawrence and Young, who with his gift for the non-U* phrase or word held what he called a “powwow” in Lawrence’s tent, where the atmosphere was not improved by Lawrence’s languid flippancy and Young’s belief that he was the one in command. Young “still regarded him more as Feisal’s liaison officer with General Allenby than as a real Colonel in the army, a position which he gave the impression of holding in great contempt.” It would dawn on him only later that Lawrence was under the opposite impression—that hewas in command of Young. Young felt that the Arabs had by now done all that Allenby had asked, and that they should at all costs avoid putting themselves between Deraa and the Turkish line of retreat, since they were on the flank of an army more than twenty times their strength. He felt that the right thing to do was to “worry the Fourth Army as it passed … and to wait for the 4th [British] division,” to appear. As a regular officer, he felt he knew more about this kind of thing than Lawrence, whose respect for regular soldiers was in any case limited. Lawrence also seems to have been at his most annoying—Young almost invariably brought out the worst in him—and was determined to cross the railway. He did not think the Turks would fight. More important, although Young might think that the war in Turkey was as good as won, Lawrence was determined to get to Damascus, whatever it cost—something he could hardly reveal to Young.

Lawrence won the argument by default, saying that he was going to sleep, since he intended to cross the railway line with his bodyguard at dawn and “reach Sheikh Saad by daylight,” with or without the Arab regulars. Nuri as-Said, who commanded the Arab regulars, had been curled up in the tent pretending to be asleep; he merely asked, “Is it true?” once Young had “gone away grumbling,” and when Lawrence said it was, nodded. At dawn they rode off with Lawrence’s bodyguard and were soon joined by Auda, Nasir, Nuri Shaalan, and Talal, and their large bodies of irregular Bedouin. With Lawrence’s blessing, Auda, Nuri, and Talal split up and each raided a separate place: Nuri and his men rode down the main road to Deraa and Damascus to pick up prisoners; Auda went to take the station at “Ghazale by storm, capturing a derelict train, with guns and two hundred men, of whom some were Germans"; and Talal took Ezraa, which was defended by Lawrence’s old foe, Abd el Kader, and his Algerian followers. To Lawrence’s regret Abd el Kader fled, but by the time the irregulars reassembled at Sheikh Saad, they were burdened with loot, machine guns, and prisoners. On September 27 an English aircraft flew low over them and dropped a message that Bulgaria had surrendered, the first of the Central Powers to do so. The Arab regulars arrived soon afterward, having taken nine hours to cover a distance that Lawrence and his bodyguard covered in three. With them were Young, whose feelings were still bruised; and Lord Winterton, who seems to have been at his happiest when raiding the railway, rather than attempting to keep the peace between his two quarrelsome superiors.

A British aircraft dropped a warning that two very large columns of Turks were moving toward Sheikh Saad—one of 4,000 and the other of 2,000. Lawrence decided to take on the smaller one, which was approaching Talal’s village, Tafas. He moved off at once, leaving Young behind.

Because “kindly” Winterton had ordered Young’s tent pitched beside his own “in a little dell some distance away from the Sherifian officers, thinking that I should like to be undisturbed,” Young, who was so tired that “he could hardly keep [his] eyes open,” fell asleep and woke up to an empty, silent camp, with just a few men left to guard the prisoners. He therefore missed the scene that would haunt Lawrence for the rest of his life.

Riding toward Tafas, Lawrence encountered “mounted Arabs, herding a drove of stripped prisoners towards Sheikh Saad … driving them mercilessly, the bruises of their urging blue across the ivory backs.” These were the Turks of the police battalion at Deraa, being whipped savagely by Arabs whom they themselves had often whipped. Lawrence recognized some of them from his own punishment at their hands at Deraa, and he had “his own account” to settle with them. He rode on faster, hearing that a regiment of Turkish lancers had already entered Tafas, from which smoke was rising. As with Lawrence’s description of his own torture in Deraa, it is best to present Tafas in his own words—this account and the execution of Gasim before Aqaba and the incident at Deraa are the three most extraordinary and grueling passages in Seven-Pillars of Wisdom;and certainly the description of Tafas, along with the Battle of Tafileh, justifies placing Lawrence among the great writers about war.

When we got within sight, we found their news true. They had taken the village (from which sounded an occasional shot), and were halted about it. Small pyres of smoke were going up between the houses. On the rising ground to this side, knee deep in dried thistles, stood a distressed remnant of the inhabitants, old men, women and children, telling terrible stories of what had happened when the Turks rushed in an hour before.