Given Lawrence’s ambitions for the Arabs—and his own carefully concealed desire for leadership and military glory—it is perhaps fitting, as Liddell Hart points out, that he and Feisal set out on the 200-mile flank march up the Red Sea coast exactly 121 years after an audacious young general named Napoleon Bonaparte, at the age of twenty-six, began the flank march along the Riviera, which would make him famous. Lawrence was only two years older than Bonaparte (but five steps inferior to him in rank); he took his own first step toward fame on January 2, when, to conceal Feisal’s departure with 10,000 men into the desert from Yenbo, he personally led a raiding party of thirty-five tribesmen in the opposite direction, climbed over steep “knife-sharp” rocks in the dark and then down into the crevices of a precipice to attack an encampment of Turks at first light, shooting up their tents and taking two prisoners. This was a far cry from making maps or writing intelligence reports at a desk in Cairo, or even acting as a liaison officer to Feisal. It was the first raid that Lawrence personally commanded, and marks his sudden emergence not only as a strategist but as a guerrilla leader whom the Arabs would respect and follow.

The next day he rode north with Feisal and the bodyguards; he was already considered one of Feisal’s own household, with a place close enough to Feisal to take several snapshots of him leading the bodyguard, followed by a camel rider bearing his standards, wrapped around long poles topped with a gilded orb and spear point—iconic photographs of hundreds of armed camel riders advancing in line across the rock-strewn, featureless desert, the vanguard of an army that, as Lawrence had predicted, grew while it moved north. For it was above all action that legitimized the Arab Revolt—the sense of being part of a great historical event was a vital factor in persuading Arabs to join, and this requiredstagecraft, and a gift for propaganda as well as gold and weapons. Lawrence’s photographs* are like those of a skilled director; they have the purposeful look of the films of early Soviet directors such as Eisenstein and Pudovkin, a sense of vast numbers irresistibly on the move, which prompted one tribal leader to remark to Lawrence, “We are no longer Arabs, but a people.”

Feisal’s dignity and his gift for showmanship were powerful factors in securing the adherence of the tribes—almost as important as the British gold he paid out to them. At the beginning of the march he and his bodyguard, now numbering more than 1,000 dashing, colorful tribesmen mounted on splendid camels, rode in silence through the massed contingents of his army, which formed up to provide a broad alley lined by Arabs on foot, each beside his camel. To each contingent, as he passed it, Feisal gave a grave greeting, bowing his head and murmuring in his “rich, melodic voice,” “Salaam aleikum,” “Peace upon you"; then, when he had passed through the whole army, the men mounted to the sound of drummers, and burst into songs in praise of Feisal and his family.

Once the column was on its way—"It looked like a river of camels,” Lawrence wrote later, “for we filled up the Wadi to the tops of its banks, and poured along in a quarter of a mile long stream"—he rode back to Yenbo to supervise the loading of the stores there on board one of the British ships (these stores included 8,000 rifles, 3 million rounds of small arms ammunition, two tons of high explosive, and many tons of foodstuff), for there was a real danger that the Turks might take the opportunity to seize the now almost undefended port. Feisal’s brother Ali, prodded into action by his father, Sharif Hussein, and by Colonel Wilson, made a feint attack on Medina, while Abdulla, also set in motion by numerous threats and entreaties, successfully surprised and defeated a Turkish battalion camped south of Medina, then attacked and captureda Turkish supply column. This happy outcome had unfortunate results, however, since the Turks were carrying a large quantity of gold—like the British, the Turks understood that tribal loyalty required payment in advance—and once the tribesmen had looted it, many of them rode straight for home with as much of it as they could carry. Still, Abdulla’s successful march brought him new followers to replace the old, and by January 19 he had reached the wells at Wadi Ais, having dominated Fakhri Pasha’s attention for nearly three crucial weeks.

March by march, Feisal led his army northward, staying close to the sea, and using the hills and mountains to screen his movement from the Turks for as long as possible, so that they would suppose he was still within easy reach of Yenbo, and able to fall back and defend it. In the meantime, Lawrence proceeded up the coast by sea to Um Lejj, a small port halfway between Yenbo and Wejh, and arrived on January 15 to meet Feisal. He was joined the next day by Major Charles Vickery; this was the first appearance of the “official” British military mission to Emir Feisal and the Arab army. Vickery was a professional soldier, a gunner, who had served many years in the Sudan, and spoke Arabic fluently. He was one of the two staff officers of Colonel Stewart Newcombe, who had been designated to command British military support, and one of the first of those British regular officers who would be, to use a slightly later term, upstaged by T. E. Lawrence in Arabia.

Newcombe himself was an old friend of Lawrence’s—he had been in command when Lawrence, then a scholar-archaeologist, with a companion, had been assigned by Kitchener before the war to complete a mapmaking survey of the Sinai—a military mission, since it involved tracing the routes by which the Turkish army might attack the Suez Canal. This daring desert adventure was concealed under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund, dedicated to retracing the exact route of Moses and the Jews. Lawrence had actually reached Aqaba and swum in the shark-infested gulf to an island offshore where he had been forbidden to go—infuriating the Turkish governor, who assumed, not unreasonably, that what was going on was espionage, not scholarship.

Newcombe, though he was a professional soldier to the core, knew Lawrence well, and liked him. Vickery, almost instantly, did not; he and Lawrence got off on the wrong foot from the very beginning. He was offended by Lawrence’s unmilitary ways and, more important, by Lawrence’s easy assumption that Feisal and Feisal’s Arab army would reach Damascus, when, so far as Vickery could see, they were hard pressed to reach Wejh on time and in good order. Matters were not helped when Vickery stubbornly insisted on wearing his Arab head cloth over his pith helmet, prompting one of the Arabs to exclaim, “Mashallah, the head of an ox!” This set all the Arabs laughing, and Lawrence joined in. Vickery was both offended and humiliated, and did not forgive Lawrence. Good as Vickery’s Arabic was, he was of the pukka sahib type, believing strongly that Englishmen should stick together and maintain their distance and their dignity when dealing with “natives.” This was just the kind of attitude Lawrence was determined to eliminate in dealing with the Arabs.

Lawrence, Vickery, and Boyle journeyed inland a few miles to Owais, where Feisal and his army were encamped. They were greeted by Feisal with a lavish meal, which Boyle described as “a greasy stew” poured over rice and topped with ladles of boiling mutton fat, into which each guest reached with the fingers of his right hand to select chunks of innards and diced fat. Both Vickery and Boyle had been shocked and disgusted by “the absence of any sanitary precautions around the camp,” and by the sight and smell everywhere of both human and camel feces drying in the blazing sun, which did nothing to improve their appetite. Vickery—one can sympathize with him—took a long swig from a large pocket flask full of whiskey, then offered it around; Lawrence and Boyle thought this was disrespectful to their Muslim host, though Feisal seems to have been more amused than not.