Hero_ The Life And Legend Of Lawrence Of Arabia Part 8

The next day Lloyd left to ride back from Auda's encampment to Aqaba with his soldier-servant, who was suffering from sunburn and opthalmia (as well as wood splinters in his hands and legs, from climbing the telegraph pole); Lawrence immediately missed Lloyd's company, as he went on to more "war, tribes and camels without end." Camels were a constant preoccupation. Once the Bedouin were encamped somewhere, they sent the camels far off to graze, so there were none close by Auda's encampment for Lloyd to ride back to Aqaba-one senses also, reading between the lines of Lawrence's account, that Auda and the Howeitat were not in a generous or cooperative mood, and were making difficulties even over such a small matter as the loan of a couple of camels for a British member of Parliament.

Lawrence needed to keep the Howeitat reasonably happy-they had supposed optimistically that the capture of Aqaba was the triumphant climax of their part in the war, rather than the beginning of a longer and more difficult campaign-since they were the first rung in the ladder of tribes that was to take him from Aqaba to Yarmuk. He therefore attempted to make peace between Auda and the tribesmen, and to urge them on to one more big effort. Finally, near midnight, Auda held up his camel stick for silence, and they heard from far away a noise "like the mutter of a distant, very lowly thunderstorm." It was October 27, and Allenby's attack on the Gaza-Beersheba line had begun with a prolonged artillery barrage against Gaza.

The sound of the guns had a strong effect on the Howeitat-here, at last, was some sign that the British were prepared to fight-and Lawrence remarked that the atmosphere in the camp became "serene and cordial," in contrast to that of the previous night. However, as Lawrence was aboutto mount his camel, Auda leaned close, brushed his beard against Lawrence's ear, and whispered, "Beware of Abd el Kader." There were too many people around for Auda to expand on this warning, and it is notable that even in his own camp, Auda did not feel able to speak freely. As in the French Resistance movement in World War II, treachery, double-dealing, and betrayal were facts of everyday life-Lawrence was behind the enemy lines from the moment he set foot out of Aqaba, and at the mercy of anybody who wanted to claim a reward or curry favor with the Turks. In any case, since he would need Abd el Kader once he arrived at Yarmuk if he stuck to his original plan, he seems to have decided to ignore Auda's warning-or it may be that he thought Abd el Kader was more of a buffoon than a threat.

The sound of the big guns firing on Gaza urged Lawrence on to greater speed and greater risks if he was to fulfill his promise to Allenby. The distance from Jefer to Azrak was nearly 150 miles, across flinty desert, broken only by steep, rocky escarpments and dry wadis; even on a modern map of the Middle East it is shown as a vast empty area, bisected only by oil pipelines. On the British War Office map of 1917 it is shown as beige-colored blank s.p.a.ce, meaning that no European had ever surveyed it, or even seen it. Lawrence's Indian machine gunners could do at best thirty or thirty-five miles a day, so he was already falling behind schedule. From the way he writes about the journey in Seven Pillars of Wisdom Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he might seem to have been enjoying the scenery, but inwardly he must have been seething with impatience.

No matter how empty the desert looked to a European, it was full of hostile strangers. At one point, near Beir, Lawrence's group came under attack from raiders firing indiscriminately over their heads. These turned out to be Suhkuri of the Beni Sakhr tribe, "a dangerous gang," as Lawrence described them; once they had ceased firing, at the sight of Ali, they explained that it was an immemorial Beni Sakhr custom to shoot at all strangers. Though these rough, surly customers were distinctly unfriendly, Lawrence and Ali went to the trouble of putting them at their ease, and their chief eventually arrived and put on a tribal show by way ofapology. The show was a rough equivalent of a Moroccan fantasia fantasia, in which the tribesmen rode around Lawrence's group at a full gallop on their horses, firing their rifles into the air and shouting at the top of their voices, "G.o.d give victory to our Sharif!" in honor of Ali, and, "Welcome Aurens, harbinger of victory!" to Lawrence-perhaps merely a sign that his reputation was firmly established as a man with gold sovereigns to distribute.

One senses, in Lawrence's description, how strained and fixed his smile must have been, both because of the delay and because of the danger of being hit by a stray bullet. When the Beni Sakhr finally stopped raising the dust and wasting ammunition, Abd el Kader, apparently infuriated by their hailing of Ali and Lawrence, and not of him, and eager to demonstrate that he could put on as good a show, mounted his mare and rode around in circles, as in a dressage ring, followed by his seven servants, firing into the air with his rifle, until the Beni Sakhr chief asked that Lawrence and Ali put a stop to this before one of his own men was shot. This was not, as it happened, a remote possibility. Abd el Kader's brother, Emir Mohammed Said el Kader, "held what might well be the world's record for three successive fatal accidents with automatic pistols in the circle of his Damascus friends," according to Lawrence. This had led Ali Riza Pasha, the governor of Damascus, to remark, "There are three things notably impossible: one, that Turkey win this war; one, that the Mediterranean become champagne; one, that I be found in the same place with Mohammed Said, and he armed."

As Lawrence continued on across the desert toward Azrak, he still heard the thunder of the British guns, louder now. On October 31 "some 40,000 troops of all arms," were on the move to attack Beersheba, after an intense four-day artillery barrage, which had convinced Kress von Kressenstein that Allenby was about to launch another full-scale a.s.sault on Gaza. By the end of the day, after intense fighting and a brilliant and daring cavalry charge by the Fourth Australian Light Horse Brigade, whose troopers not only swept over two lines of Turkish trenches at the gallop, but then "dismounted and cleaned up with the bayonet thetrenches over which they had pa.s.sed," the Turkish left simply collapsed. "General Allenby's plan to mislead his enemy had been entirely successful"; he had taken Beersheba and, more important, the wells there, before the Turks were able to dynamite them. Fierce fighting would continue over the next few days, but the Gaza-Beersheba line, which had resisted the British since 1914, was broken, and the only question remaining was where-and if-the Turks could reestablish a line in Palestine.

At every stop on the way to Azrak, Lawrence received more disturbing news about the strength and disposition of the Turks in the Yarmuk gorge, from tribesmen and their chiefs who were reluctant to join him. There were three routes he could take, but as the paramount sheikh of the Serahin explained to Lawrence, none of them was good.

In one place the Turks had sent large groups of military woodcutters (wood was a constant preoccupation, since the Turkish locomotives south of Damascus were fueled by wood, it being impossible to add a further burden to the already overtasked railway system by s.h.i.+pping large amounts of coal), and Lawrence could not hope "to slip through undetected." In another place-Tell el Shehab-the villagers were enemies of the Serahin "and would certainly attack them in the rear"; in addition, the ground would turn muddy in the event of rain, and the camels would then be unable to cross it to get back to the desert. Finally, the villages of the Algerian descendants in the Jaulan that Abd el Kader claimed to control would certainly be hostile, and "nothing would persuade [the Serahin] to visit the one under the guidance of the other." Lawrence could not go forward without the Serahin-they were the last major tribe on his way-so he gave them a rousing speech, which won them over for the moment. The next day they marched for Azrak, where a Roman legion had once been garrisoned, leaving behind it in the desert monuments dedicated to Emperor Diocletian, and where "the ruins of the blue fort on its rock above the rustling palms" were "steeped in an unfathomable pool of silence and past history," an Arab Camelot of legends, mythic heroes, and "lost kingdoms."

Romantic as the legends surrounding Azrak might be, it was here that Abd el Kader and his servants slipped away from the group. Lawrence had no doubt that Abd el Kader would betray him to the Turks; an equally difficult problem was that without him, two of the three approaches to the Yarmuk were essentially closed off, leaving only Tell el Shehab, from which a retreat might be impossible, and where the troops guarding the bridge would now be on the alert-for Abd el Kader knew all of Lawrence's plans. At this point, Lawrence had no choice but to go forward to Tell el Shehab-indeed, the only surprise is that he managed to so inspire the doubtful Serahin tribesmen that they went forward with him.

Yarmuk was a two-day ride from Azrak, and during those two days Lawrence's nerves and patience were further stretched by the need to pa.s.s judgment on two of his men who had tried to shoot each other in a quarrel while out hunting gazelle. Pushed once again into a position where only he could make a judgment without causing a blood feud, Lawrence ordered "that the right thumb and forefinger of each should be cut off," the traditional punishment. The fear of this drove the two men to make peace, in token of which each man was beaten around the head with the sharp edge of a dagger, so that the painful scar should become a permanent reminder of their obligation not to renew the quarrel. Under the circ.u.mstances Lawrence was lucky that a scouting party sent out by the Turks just missed his men as they were about to water their camels and fill their water skins for the last time before the ride to the bridge. They faced a ride of forty miles; then the laying of the charges; and, after the bridge was demolished, another forty miles of hard riding back into the desert-all of it to be done in the thirteen hours of darkness.

Some measure of just how dangerous the operation was, even had Abd el Kader not betrayed Lawrence, can be gleaned from the concern of Hogarth in Cairo, who wrote to his wife, apparently not mindful of censors.h.i.+p, or in a position to ignore it, "I only hope TEL will get back safe. ... If he comes through it is a V.C.-if not-well, I don't care to think about it."

Hidden as best he could manage in a hollow by the railway line, Lawrence made a drastic, last-minute decision to rely on speed rather than force. The Indian machine gunners were still slow and clumsy riders, sohe picked the six of them who were the best riders, and their officer, and reduced his firepower to one Vickers machine gun. He weeded out the least enthusiastic of the Arabs, particularly among the Serahin, whose zeal for the operation, never great to begin with, was rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng; and with the help of Wood, who was to remain close by in case Lawrence was killed or wounded, he removed all the explosive from its wrapped packages, kneading it all into thirty-pound lumps, then placing each lump in a white sack that one man could carry downhill in the dark under fire. The fumes from the explosive gave both Lawrence and Wood a severe headache.

At sunset, Lawrence set off with his much-reduced company, and rode through the darkness, "very miserably and disinclined to go on at all." Along the way they b.u.mped into terrified nocturnal travelers-a peddler and his two wives, a shepherd who opened fire on them, a Gypsy woman, a stray camel-and saw the flares of Deraa station, lit up for army traffic. The going in the dark was slow and difficult-this was not desert; it was cultivated land, and the camels "sank fetlock in," and began to stumble, slip, and labor, as a steady drizzle started to turn the ground to mud, just as the Serahin had warned. Shortly after nine o'clock they halted before a band of pitch darkness, with the sound of a waterfall in their ears-they had reached Yarmuk gorge.

They dismounted and made their way down a steep bank, gripping with their toes in the slippery mud-the reluctant Serahin chosen to carry the bags of explosive were particularly nervous, since a stray shot could set it off-and set off toward the bridge. They halted about 300 yards from it. Lawrence could look down at it from the edge of the gorge through his binoculars, and could clearly see a sentry standing in front of a fire, and a guard tent, on the far side. Followed by the "explosive-porters" he made his way down a steep construction path to where the bridge ab.u.t.ted, the river running far below it. All he had to do now was to climb the latticework of steel beams that supported the bridge, fasten each thirty-pound bag of explosive where it belonged, place the fuses and wires-all of this in the dark, without alerting the sentry-and then makehis way with the wires back to where Wood waited with the exploder. If the sentry heard anything, the Indians were to rake the guard tent with their Vickers.

This daring and ambitious plan was thwarted at the last minute when one of the Indian machine gunners, slipping on the steep path down to the bridge, dropped his rifle. The Turkish sentry opened fire in return, blindly, in the dark; the Turkish guards came rus.h.i.+ng out of their tent and opened fire; and the terrified "explosive-porters" dropped their sacks, which fell down the steep gorge toward the river, where it would obviously be impossible to retrieve them.

The retreat from the bridge was grim-every village on the way opened fire as Lawrence and his party pa.s.sed it in the night, this being the standard practice when strangers were about. Also, the Serahin, angered by something Lawrence had said about their cowardice in dropping the explosives, paused to attack a group of peasants returning home late from the market at Deraa, stripping them of everything, including their clothes, and setting off from all sides outraged screams and volleys of rifle fire.

However sick at heart Lawrence might be at his failure, his Arabs were determined to come home with something in the way of loot; and since there was still one sack of explosive left, they wanted to blow up a train. Lawrence seems to have felt that this was unwise. For one thing, he had decided to send the machine gunners back to Azrak accompanied by Wood. (He hoped that Wood could enforce peace between the Indians and the Arabs, who hated each other even though both groups were Muslims.) Also, the party had run through its rations, having expected to dash back to Azrak once the bridge was blown, and so was not prepared for the day or two it might take to find a suitable place on the railway line and wait for a train. Still, Lawrence himself had no wish to return to Azrak without having accomplished anything.

He selected a stone culvert, in which he carefully concealed his bag of explosive, though he was hampered by the fact that he had only sixty yards of insulated cable with him-it was in short supply in Egypt-andwould be uncomfortably close to the explosion when it occurred. Before the exploder could be attached, a train of freight cars went by, and Lawrence huddled, "wet and dismal," unable to blow them up. It rained hard, soaking the Arabs, but also discouraging the Turkish railway patrols from looking too hard at the ground as they went by, within a few yards of where Lawrence was hiding behind a tiny bush. The next to arrive was a troop train, and as it went by he pushed down the handle of the exploder, but nothing happened. As the carriages clanked by-three coaches for officers and eighteen open wagons and boxcars for the troops-he realized that he was now sitting in full view only fifty yards away from the train. Officers came out onto the little platforms at either end of their carriage, "pointing and staring." Lawrence feigned simplicity and waved at them, aware that he made an unlikely figure of a shepherd in his white robes, with twisted gold and crimson agal agal wound around his headdress. Fortunately, he was able to conceal the wires and get away when the train drew to a stop and some of the officers got out to investigate-he "ran like a rabbit uphill into safety," and he and his Arabs spent a cold, hungry, wet, sleepless night in a shallow valley beyond the railway. In the morning, Lawrence managed to get a small fire going by shaving slivers off a stick of blasting gelignite, while the Arabs killed one of the weakest camels and hacked it into pieces with their entrenching tools. wound around his headdress. Fortunately, he was able to conceal the wires and get away when the train drew to a stop and some of the officers got out to investigate-he "ran like a rabbit uphill into safety," and he and his Arabs spent a cold, hungry, wet, sleepless night in a shallow valley beyond the railway. In the morning, Lawrence managed to get a small fire going by shaving slivers off a stick of blasting gelignite, while the Arabs killed one of the weakest camels and hacked it into pieces with their entrenching tools.

Lawrence prepares to blow up a train full of Turkish soldiers and their officers.

Before they could eat the meat, however, the approach of another train was signaled. Lawrence ran 600 yards, breathlessly, back to his tiny bush and pushed the handle of the exploder just as a train of twelve pa.s.senger carriages drawn by two locomotives appeared. This time it worked. He blew his mine just as the first locomotive pa.s.sed over it, and sat motionless while huge pieces of black steel came hurtling through the air toward him. He felt blood dripping down his arm; the exploder between his knees had been crushed by a piece of iron; just "in front of [him] was the scalded and smoking upper half of the body of a man." Lawrence had injured his right foot and in great pain limped toward the Arabs, caught in the cross fire as the Arabs and the surviving Turks opened fire on each other. He had suffered a broken toe and five bullet grazes, but was pleased, as the smoke cleared, to see that the explosion had destroyed the culvert and damaged both locomotives beyond repair. The first three carriages were badly crushed, and the rest derailed. One carriage was that of Mehmed Jemal Kuchuk Pasha,* the general commanding the Turkish Eighth Army Corps, whose personal chargers had been killed in the front wagon and whose car was at the end of the train. Lawrence "shot up" the general's car, and also his imam, a priest who was thought to be "a notorious pro-Turk pimp" (an unusually savage comment for Lawrence); but there was not much more he could do against nearly 400 men with only forty Arabs, and the surviving Turks, knowing they were under the eye of a general, were beginning to deploy as they recovered from the shock. The Arabs were able only to loot sixty or seventy rifles, some medals, and a.s.sorted luggage scattered from the wreckage-enough, however, for them to feel that it was an honorable episode. the general commanding the Turkish Eighth Army Corps, whose personal chargers had been killed in the front wagon and whose car was at the end of the train. Lawrence "shot up" the general's car, and also his imam, a priest who was thought to be "a notorious pro-Turk pimp" (an unusually savage comment for Lawrence); but there was not much more he could do against nearly 400 men with only forty Arabs, and the surviving Turks, knowing they were under the eye of a general, were beginning to deploy as they recovered from the shock. The Arabs were able only to loot sixty or seventy rifles, some medals, and a.s.sorted luggage scattered from the wreckage-enough, however, for them to feel that it was an honorable episode.

Lawrence made an effort to gather up those wounded who could be saved, including one Arab who had received a bullet in the face, knocking out four teeth and "gas.h.i.+ng his tongue deeply," but who still managed to get back on his camel and ride away. Someone had been farsighted enough to lash the b.l.o.o.d.y haunch of the slaughtered camel to his saddle, so once they were deeper in the desert, they halted and ate their first meal in three days, then rode back to Azrak, "boasting, G.o.d forgive us, that we were victorious."

For Lawrence, this was a humiliating episode. Derailing a general's train was not the kind of feat he wanted to bring Allenby. He guessed that the constant rain, turning everything to mud, would slow down the British advance in Palestine, and now regretted that he had been hesitant about sparking an Arab rising in Syria and had chosen to go for the Yarmuk bridge instead.

Lawrence took over the old fortress at Azrak, and made it his winter headquarters, so as to reach out toward Syria. Despite the icy cold, rainy weather, which rendered travel difficult, visitors poured in from the north to pledge their homage to Feisal, which Sharif Ali ibn el Hussein was happy to receive on his behalf; but Lawrence was not at his best in enforced idleness, or with the endless obligatory politeness of Arab greetings, or with the memory of his failure at the Yarmuk bridge tormenting him. From the small red-leather notebook in which he wrote down fragments of poetry that caught his attention, he searched for consolation and reread Arthur Hugh Clough's "Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth": And not through eastern windows only,When daylight comes, comes in the light,In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,But westward, look, the land is bright.

But it was irony he found, not consolation. Westward, in Palestine, the weather was the same as at Azrak; and since Lawrence could safely leavethe greeting of Syrian dignitaries to Ali, he set out to do a reconnaissance with the swaggering, glamorous Talal el Hareidhin, sheikh of Tafas, "an outlaw with a price upon his head," who was familiar with the approaches to Deraa. For Deraa still fascinated Lawrence as an objective; if he could take the town and hold it, if only for a few days, he could cut off all railway traffic to Palestine, and as well give the Arab cause a victory that would not only satisfy Allenby, but go a long way toward convincing the British, and perhaps even the French, to accept an independent Arab state in Syria. His mind buzzed with plans to take Deraa, but he needed to see for himself the lay of the land, and above all the strength or weakness of the Turkish garrison there.

He decided to go there himself.

Probably no incident in Lawrence's life looms larger than Deraa, or is more controversial. His decision to go there is hotly debated, and often criticized, but Lawrence had always been as reckless when it came to his own safety as he was careful of the life of others-indeed he made a point of courting danger-and it is also hard to calculate the degree to which his failure to destroy the bridge at Tell el Shehab weighed on him. His admiration for Allenby was enormous, uncomplicated, and sincere-Allenby's huge, commanding presence made him seem to Lawrence like a natural feature, something immovable and irresistible, a mountain perhaps; and having failed to keep what he regarded as a promise to Allenby, he felt obligated to provide an acceptable subst.i.tute. Capturing Deraa would be as good as destroying the bridge at Tell el Shehab, or even better.

Talal could not have accompanied Lawrence into Deraa, even had he wanted to-he was a das.h.i.+ngly dressed and flamboyant figure, with "a trimmed beard and long pointed moustaches ... his dark eyes made rounder and larger and darker by their thick rims of antimony," who had "killed some twenty-three Turks with his own hand," and was wanted by the Turks almost as much as Lawrence was. Talal appointed Mijbil, an elderly, ragged peasant, to guide Lawrence through the town, and Lawrence disguised himself by leaving behind his white robes and gold dagger, and wearing instead a stained, muddy robe and an old jacket.

It occurred to Lawrence that Abd el Kader would long since have given the Turks an accurate description of him, but this does not appear to have caused him any concern, though it should have. His intention was simply to walk through the town with Mijbil and see whether it would be better to rush the railway junction first, or to cut the town off by destroying the three railways lines that entered it. They made "a lame and draggled pair" as they sauntered barefoot in the mud toward Deraa, following the Palestine railway line past the fenced-in "aerodrome," where there was a Turkish troop encampment, and a few hangars containing German Albatros aircraft. Since Lawrence was looking for a way to attack the city from the desert, this approach made sense-the railway bank and the fence were impediments worth noting-but it must also be said that he could hardly have picked anyplace in Deraa more likely to be guarded with some care than a military airfield.

In any case, after a brief altercation with a Syrian soldier who wanted to desert, Lawrence was grabbed roughly by a Turkish sergeant, who said, "The Bey wants you," and dragged him through the fence into a compound, where a "fleshy" Turkish officer sat and asked him his name. "Ahmed ibn Bagr," Lawrence replied, explaining that he was Circa.s.sian. "A deserter?" the officer asked. Lawrence explained that Circa.s.sians had no military service. "He then turned around and stared at me curiously, and said very slowly, 'You are a liar. Keep him, Ha.s.san Chowish, til the Bey sends for him.'"

Lawrence was led to the guardroom, told to wash himself, and made to wait. With his fair complexion, blond hair, and blue eyes he might, of course, have been a Circa.s.sian, and it was no doubt his boyish appearance and size that had attracted unwelcome attention. He himself had always admitted that he could not "pa.s.s as an Arab," but now his life depended on whether he could pa.s.s as a Circa.s.sian. He was told that he might be released tomorrow, "if [he] fulfilled all the Bey's pleasure this evening," which can have left him in little doubt about what was in store for him. Lawrence had the impression that the bey was Hajim (actually Hacim Bey), the governor of Deraa, but he could have been mistaken.

"The garrison commander at Deraa was Bimbas.h.i.+ [Major] Ismail Bey and the militia commander Ali Riza Bey." It seems unlikely that the governor of Deraa would have lodged in a military compound next to the airfield and the railway yard; and in Turkish the t.i.tle "bey" had long since lost its original significance of "chieftain" and become a widespread honorific roughly equivalent to the use of "esquire" instead of Mr. in Britain: i.e., a member of the educated professional, officer, or senior civil servant cla.s.s, a step above "effendi" and a couple of steps below "pasha."

That evening Lawrence was taken upstairs to the bedroom of the bey, "a bulky man sitting on his bed in a night-gown trembling and sweating as though with fever." The bey looked him over, and then dragged him down onto the bed, where Lawrence struggled against him as if they were wrestling. The bey ordered Lawrence to undress, and when he refused to, called in the sentry who was posted outside the door, ordered the sentry to strip Lawrence naked, and began "to paw" at him. Lawrence then kneed the bey in the groin. The bey collapsed in pain, then, calling for the other three men of the guard, had him held naked, spat in Lawrence's face, and slapped his face with one of his slippers, promising "that he would make me ask pardon." He bit Lawrence's neck, then kissed him, then drew one of the men's bayonets and plunged it into Lawrence's side, above a rib, twisting it to give more pain. Lawrence lost his self-control enough to swear at him, and the bey then calmed himself, and said, "You must understand that I know about you, and it will be much easier if you do as I wish."

Lawrence feared that the bey had identified him, and much of the horror that was to follow may have been enormously increased by his belief that at the end of the ordeal he would simply be hanged, as well as by his burning conviction that Abd el Kader was responsible for his being stopped in the first place, and by his sense of failure for not destroying the bridge at Tell el Shehab. All this was to become firmly fixed in Lawrence's mind, and would have unexpected consequences toward the end of the war.

His description of the incident in Seven Pillars of Wisdom Seven Pillars of Wisdom is remarkable. Even in moments of horror-such as the attack on the train at Mudawara, with the looting, pillaging, and cutting of throats; or the scalded trunk of a man that landed at his feet when he blew up Jemal Pasha's train-Lawrence's style is usually ironic and almost deliberately detached. But he writes about Deraa in an unflinching style that is at once physically detailed, intense, and lurid, almost p.o.r.nographic, in the manner of William Burroughs or Jean Genet-indeed at certain moments, like the precise and even finicky description of the whip that was used on him, it is reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade, who reveled in such descriptions. It is clear that Lawrence, as in his brilliant, almost is remarkable. Even in moments of horror-such as the attack on the train at Mudawara, with the looting, pillaging, and cutting of throats; or the scalded trunk of a man that landed at his feet when he blew up Jemal Pasha's train-Lawrence's style is usually ironic and almost deliberately detached. But he writes about Deraa in an unflinching style that is at once physically detailed, intense, and lurid, almost p.o.r.nographic, in the manner of William Burroughs or Jean Genet-indeed at certain moments, like the precise and even finicky description of the whip that was used on him, it is reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade, who reveled in such descriptions. It is clear that Lawrence, as in his brilliant, almost pointilliste pointilliste descriptions of the desert landscape, is determined that the reader will understand descriptions of the desert landscape, is determined that the reader will understand exactly exactly what he saw and felt. It is the one pa.s.sage in the book, apart from a few attempts at humor, when he slips out of the skin of a man whose ambition it was to write "a great book," one that could take its place beside what he saw and felt. It is the one pa.s.sage in the book, apart from a few attempts at humor, when he slips out of the skin of a man whose ambition it was to write "a great book," one that could take its place beside Moby-d.i.c.k, Thus Spoke Zarathustra Moby-d.i.c.k, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and The Brothers Karamazov Brothers Karamazov, and relies on his own voice, without literary artifice: They kicked me to the landing at the head of the stairs, and there threw me on the guard-bench and stretched me along it on my face, pummelling me. Two of them knelt on my ankles, bearing down with their arms on the back of my knees, while two more twisted my wrists over my head till they cracked, and then crushed them and my ribs against the wood. The corporal had run downstairs, and now came back with a Circa.s.sian riding whip, of the sort which gendarmes carried. They were single thongs of supple black hide, rounded, and tapering from the thickness of a thumb at the grip (which was wrapped in silver, with a k.n.o.b inlaid in black designs) down to a hard point much finer than a pencil.He saw me s.h.i.+vering, partly I think with cold, and made it whistle through the air over my head, taunting me that before the tenth cut I would howl for mercy, and at the twentieth beg for the caresses of the Bey, and then he began to lash me across and across with all his might, while I locked my teeth to endure this thing which wrapped itself like flaming wire about my body. At the instant of each stroke a hard white mark like a railway, darkening, slowly, into crimson, leaped over my skin, and a bead of blood welled up wherever two ridges crossed. As the punishment proceeded the whip fell more and more upon existing weals, biting blacker or more wet, till my flesh quivered with acc.u.mulated pain, and with terror of the next blow coming. From the first they hurt more horribly than I had dreamed of and, as always before the agony of one had fully reached me another used to fall, the torture of a series, worked up to an intolerable height.To keep my mind in control I numbered the blows, but after twenty lost count, and could feel only the shapeless weight of pain, not tearing claws, for which I was prepared, but a gradual cracking apart of all my being by some too-great force whose waves rolled up my spine till they were pent within my brain, and there clashed terribly together. Somewhere in the place was a cheap clock, ticking loudly, and it troubled me that their beating was not in its time.I writhed and twisted involuntarily, but was held so tightly that my struggles were quite useless. The men were very deliberate, giving me so many, and then taking an interval, during which they would squabble for the next turn, ease themselves, play a little with me, and pull my head round to see their work. This was repeated time and again, for what may have been no more than ten minutes. They had soon conquered my determination not to cry, but so long as my will could rule my lips I used only Arabic, and before the end a merciful bodily sickness came over me, and choked my utterance.At last when I was completely broken they seemed satisfied. Somehow I found myself off the bench lying on my back on the dirty floor, where I snuggled down, dazed, panting for breath but vaguely comfortable. I had strung myself to learn all pain until I died, and, no longer an actor but a spectator, cared not how much my body jerked and squealed in its sufferings. Yet I knew or imagined what pa.s.sed about me.I remembered the corporal kicking me with his nailed boot to get me up and this was true, for next day my left side was yellow andlacerated and a damaged rib made each breath stab me sharply. I remembered smiling idly at him, for a delicious warmth, probably s.e.xual, was swelling through me: and then that he flung up his arm and hacked with the full length of his whip into my groin. This jerked me half-over, screaming, or rather trying impotently to scream, only shuddering through my open mouth. Someone giggled with amus.e.m.e.nt, but another cried, "Shame, you've killed him." A second slash followed. A roaring was in my head, and my eyes went black, while within me the core of my life seemed to be heaving slowly up through the rending nerves, expelled from its body by this last and indescribable pang.By the bruises, perhaps they beat me further: but I next knew that I was being dragged about by two men, each disputing over a leg as though to split me apart: while a third astride my back rode me like a horse. Then Hajim called. They splashed water in my face, lifted me to my feet, and bore me, retching and sobbing for mercy, between them to his bedside: but he now threw me off fastidiously, cursing them for their stupidity in thinking he needed a bedfellow streaming with blood and water, striped and fouled from face to heel. They had laid into me, no doubt much as usual: but my indoor skin had torn more than an Arab's.So the crestfallen corporal, as the youngest and best-looking of the guard, had to stay behind, while the others carried me down the narrow stairs and out into the street. The coolness of the night on my burning flesh, and the unmoved s.h.i.+ning of the stars after the horror of the past hour, made me cry again. The soldiers, now free to speak, tried to console me in their fas.h.i.+on, saying that men must suffer their officers' wishes or pay for it, as I had just done, with still greater suffering.They took me over an open s.p.a.ce, deserted and dark, and behind the Government house to an empty lean-to mud and wooden room, in which were many dusty quilts. They put me down on these, and brought an Armenian dresser who washed and bandaged me in sleepy haste. Then they all went away, the last of the soldiers whispering to me in a Druse accent that the door into the next room was not locked.I lay there in a sick stupor, with my head aching very much, and growing slowly numb with cold, till the dawn light came s.h.i.+ning through the cracks of the shed, and a locomotive began to whistle in the station. These and a draining thirst brought me to life, and I found I was in no pain. Yet the first movement brought anguish: but I struggled to my feet, and rocked unsteadily for a moment, wondering that it was not all a dream, and myself back five years ago in the hospital at Khalfati, where something of the sort had happened to me.The next room was a dispensary, and on its door hung a suit of shoddy clothes. I put them on slowly and clumsily, because of my swollen wrists: and from the drugs chose some tablets of corrosive sublimate, as a safeguard against recapture. The window looked north on to a blank long wall. I opened it, and climbed out stiffly. No one saw me, which perhaps was the reason why I had been shut up in so weak a place.I went timidly down the road towards the village, trying to walk naturally past the few people already astir. They took no notice, and indeed there was nothing peculiar in my dark broadcloth, red fez and slippers: but it was only by restraining myself with the full urge of my tongue silently to myself that I refrained from being foolish out of sheer terror. The atmosphere of Deraa seemed inhuman with vice and cruelty, and it shocked me like cold water when I heard a soldier laugh behind me in the street.By the bridge were the wells, with men and women already about them. A side-trough was free, and from its end I scooped up a little water in my hands, and rubbed it over my face: then drank, which was precious to me: and afterwards wandered aimlessly along the bottom of the valley for some minutes, towards the south, till out of sight of both town and station. So at last was found the hidden approach to Deraa for our future raiding party, the purpose for which Mijbil and myself had come here it seemed so long ago.Further on a Serdi, riding away on his camel, overtook me hobbling up the road towards Nisib. To him I explained that I had business there, and was already footsore. He had pity, and mounted me behind him on his bony camel, to which I clung the rest of the way, learning the feelings of my name saint on his gridiron. The tribe's tents were just in front of the village, where I found Mijbil and Daher, very anxious about me, and curious to learn how I had fared. Daher had been up to Deraa in the night, and knew by the lack of rumour that the truth about me had not been discovered. I told them a merry tale of bribery and trickery, which they promised devoutly to keep to themselves, laughing aloud at the simplicity of the Turks.We rested there the night, during which time I managed to get along towards the village, and to see the great stone bridge to the north of it, one of the most important in this neighbourhood. Then we took horse, and rode very gently and carefully towards Azrak, without incident, except that on the Giaan el Khunna a raiding party of Wuld Ali let us and our horses go unplundered, when they heard who I was.This was an unexpected generosity, for the Wuld Ali were not yet of our fellows.h.i.+p; and their action revived me a little. I was feeling very ill, as though some part of me had gone dead that night in Deraa, leaving me maimed, imperfect, only half-myself. It could not have been the defilement, for no one ever held the body in less honour than I did myself: probably it had been the breaking of the spirit by that frenzied nerve-shattering pain which had degraded me to beast-level when it made me grovel to it; and which had journeyed with me since, a fascination and terror and morbid desire, lascivious and vicious perhaps, but like the striving of a moth towards its flame.

When allowance is made for Lawrence's post-Victorian avoidance of certain words, and for his dislike of the subject of s.e.x in the first place, this is certainly one of the most horrifying descriptions of torture and male rape ever written, made even more horrifying by the knowledge that Lawrence, as so many of those who knew him confirm, hated being touched by anyone, under any circ.u.mstances. Even a friendly handshake, a pat on the back, or an affectionate embrace was torture to him, and here he was stripped naked, beaten savagely, fondled, kissed, and eventually b.u.g.g.e.red, to use the word he avoided using himself, all of it taking place in the shadow of the knowledge that if the bey's words meant what Lawrence supposed they meant, he would be hanged at the end of it all.

Those who are critical of Lawrence have argued that he exaggerated the incident, or even invented it altogether. But the episode was not improbable-the brutality of the Turks toward their subject races was a known fact, and the practice of a.n.a.l rape, while by no means restricted to the Turkish soldiery and their officers, was a recognized peril of becoming a prisoner of the Turks in World War I, as in the many earlier Balkan wars-nor was it uncommon; indeed it remains one of the dangers of warfare in the Middle East. Lawrence, given his small size, pale skin, apparent youth, and seemingly delicate body, would have looked like an obvious victim for this kind of treatment (some of the portraits painted of him after the war emphasize the androgynous quality of his features, particularly the lips); indeed it had almost happened to him earlier, before the war, when he and Dahoum were arrested as deserters and imprisoned.

Bearing in mind that no pages of Seven Pillars of Wisdom Seven Pillars of Wisdom were more often revised by Lawrence than those describing the incident at Deraa, or subjected to more criticism and soul-searching by his many literary advisers, including Bernard Shaw and E. M. Forster, the reader will have to decide whether they carry conviction or not. There seems no good reason why Lawrence would have invented the incident-on the contrary, it seems more like the kind of thing that he would have suppressed, had he not been determined to tell the whole truth even when it was distasteful and damaging to him. For he does not strain himself to come out of it with credit; it is not just his body but his spirit that was broken, and much of what happened in 1918, and what became of Lawrence later, after the war, would be incomprehensible except for Deraa. were more often revised by Lawrence than those describing the incident at Deraa, or subjected to more criticism and soul-searching by his many literary advisers, including Bernard Shaw and E. M. Forster, the reader will have to decide whether they carry conviction or not. There seems no good reason why Lawrence would have invented the incident-on the contrary, it seems more like the kind of thing that he would have suppressed, had he not been determined to tell the whole truth even when it was distasteful and damaging to him. For he does not strain himself to come out of it with credit; it is not just his body but his spirit that was broken, and much of what happened in 1918, and what became of Lawrence later, after the war, would be incomprehensible except for Deraa.

He himself put it best, in 1924, in a letter to Charlotte Shaw, who by then had become a kind of alternative mother figure: "About that night, I shouldn't tell you, because decent men don't talk about such things. I wanted to put it plain in the book, & wrestled for days with myself-respect. ... For fear of being hurt, or rather, to earn five minutes' respite from a pain which drove me mad, I gave away the only possession which we are all born into the world with-our bodily integrity. It's an unforgiveable matter, an irrecoverable position: and it's that which has made me forswear decent living & the exercise of my not-contemptible wits & talents.

"You may call this morbid: but think of the offense, and the intensity of my brooding over it for three years. It will hang about me while I live, & afterwards if our personality survives. Consider wandering among the decent ghosts hereafter, crying 'Unclean, unclean!' "

Considering that the Shaws had what used to be known as un mariage blanc un mariage blanc-that is, they were legally married and lived together as man and wife, but Charlotte remained celibate-perhaps n.o.body could have been better suited to understand Lawrence's mortification and shame than she, who had all her life refused to have s.e.x, or even to contemplate the possibility of childbirth. In this revulsion toward s.e.x, she and Lawrence were very much alike, except that he had been violated, had given in under the pressure of pain, and had even felt, the ultimate horror, "a delicious warmth, probably s.e.xual ... flooding through me ... a fascination and terror and morbid desire, lascivious and vicious perhaps, but like the striving of a moth towards its flame."

In short, he had not only been humiliated, tortured, and brutally raped, but to his horror had felt a s.e.xual excitement that made his torturers mock him and filled him with shame. The ultimate abas.e.m.e.nt is not to be violated, after all, but to enjoy enjoy being violated, and Lawrence had discovered in himself at Deraa just what he had been at such pains all his life to avoid admitting. being violated, and Lawrence had discovered in himself at Deraa just what he had been at such pains all his life to avoid admitting.

Whole books have been written putting Lawrence posthumously on the a.n.a.lyst's couch, but it is hardly necessary to be a professional psychoa.n.a.lyst to glean from Lawrence's description of the incident at Deraa and his later explanation to Charlotte Shaw-they were equally frank about their lives to each other-a fair understanding of what happened, and some sense of why Lawrence felt he had to atone for it. He had failed tolive up to his own standards, impossibly high as they might be-by giving in to pain and fear, by submitting himself to rape as an escape from the pain, and by discovering that despite himself he felt a forbidden s.e.xual excitement that he could not conceal from his torturers.

Those who have doubted the story point out that the governor of Deraa, Hacim Bey, though brutal, was a notorious womanizer, and that if he really knew he had Lawrence in his hands, he would never have dared to let him go. But neither of these things is necessarily so. The bey, as we have seen, could have been one of at least two other Turkish officers in Deraa, and the phrase "I know all about you" could have meant many things. The bey, whoever he was, may have meant, "I know all about what kind of man you are, and what you like, so stop fighting against it"; indeed this is far more likely than that he knew the man standing stripped before him was Major T. E. Lawrence, CB. A Turkish officer who had such a notorious figure as Lawrence in his hands and let him escape would have been court-martialed and shot; besides, there was a substantial reward on Lawrence's head.

Lawrence limped to safety, still suffering from the toe he had broken while destroying the train; rode back to Azrak; concealed his wounds and what had happened to him; and returned to Aqaba, where "he seemed like a wraith, so white and remote ... and crept away into a tent," and where he learned that Allenby, ahead of schedule, had given the British people what Lloyd George wanted for them as a Christmas present: Jerusalem.

Allenby had not yet entered Jerusalem, however, and he wanted Lawrence to be there when he did.

Years before, in 1898, Kaiser William II had visited Jerusalem, and had caused the Jaffa Gate to be enlarged so that he could ride into the city, in his glittering full uniform. At the time, a wit at the Foreign Office had remarked, "A better man than he entered the city on foot," and this thought must have occurred to Sir Mark Sykes, ever the imperial stage manager, who telegraphed Allenby from London with the advice todismount, or get out of his automobile, and enter Jerusalem humbly on foot. Very likely Allenby, no mean stage manager himself, had already reached the same conclusion.

The Turks had abandoned Jerusalem, and for many, including Lawrence himself, the taking of the city by British and Commonwealth troops was "the most memorable event of the war." Allenby, with an unfailing genius for the big event, was determined to make the most of his capture of the Holy City, and left orders at Aqaba that Lawrence was to join him at once. Lawrence, not unnaturally, supposed that Allenby was going to give him h.e.l.l for his failure at Yarmuk, but an airplane had been sent for him, and he was flown directly to Allenby's headquarters in the field, north of Gaza, still barefoot and in white robes. To his surprise, the interview with Allenby went better than he had imagined-the breakthrough at Gaza and Beersheba and the fall of Jerusalem had pleased Allenby so much that he didn't seem to mind about the bridge at Tell el Shehab. He had wanted the Turks to the east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan River to be hara.s.sed, preoccupied, and disorganized as he advanced from Beersheba, so that he could not be attacked on his right from the desert, and G.o.d knows Lawrence had achieved this, and with fewer than 100 armed men.

As a sign of his regard, Allenby insisted that Lawrence should be present as part of his staff when he entered the city, so Lawrence borrowed bits and pieces of uniform from the other staff officers, and resplendent with red staff collar tabs and a major's crown on each shoulder, he walked behind Allenby on December 11, through the Jaffa Gate and into Jerusalem.

Sykes had originally hoped to write Allenby's proclamation to the inhabitants of Jerusalem himself, and as a new convert to Zionism he wanted to include a few rousing words about the Balfour Declaration; but after due deliberation by the cabinet, Lord Curzon was asked to draft a more cautious message, merely promising to safeguard "all inst.i.tutions holy to Christians, Jews and Muslims," and declaring martial law. Within hours after the city was taken, the pattern of the future was clear: the Ashken.a.z.i Jews were exultant that Allenby had entered the city "on the Maccabean feast of Hanukah," though this timing had been wholly unintentional; the Arabs complained not only about that, but about their suspicion that the Jews were attempting to "corner the market" in small change; and Picot protested that the right of the French to have their soldiers, and theirs alone, guard the Holy Sepulcher was being ignored. Lawrence wrote his first letter home in more than a month to tell his family that he had been in Jerusalem, adding that he was now "an Emir of sorts, and have to live up to the t.i.tle," and that the French government "had stuck another medal" onto him. This medal was a second Croix de Guerre, which he was trying to avoid accepting, no doubt in part because it would surely have involved being kissed on both cheeks by Picot.

Storrs, who had missed the official entry, arrived to take up his surprising new duties as "the first military governor of Jerusalem since Pontius Pilate," with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel. It was in this capacity that Storrs first met Lowell Thomas, the brash American journalist, doc.u.mentary filmmaker, and inventor of the travelogue. Thomas was a former gold miner, short-order cook, and newspaper reporter with a gift for gab, who had studied for a master's degree at Princeton, where he also taught, of all things, oratory, and who had been sent by Woodrow Wilson, a former president of Princeton, to make a film that would drum up Americans' enthusiasm for the war and for their new allies, now that the United States had joined it-an early and groundbreaking attempt at a propaganda film. Thomas, his wife, and the cameraman Harry Chase set off for Europe, but one look at the western front was enough to convince them that nothing there was likely to serve their purpose, or to convince the American public that it was a good idea to send their sons to the war. They went on to Italy, but that was not much better-Italy was locked in battle with the German and Austro-Hungarian armies in circ.u.mstances that were almost as grim as the western front, and that would be described perfectly after the war, from firsthand experience, by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms A Farewell to Arms. There, however, Thomas learned about General Sir Edmund Allenby's campaign against the Turks in Palestine, which sounded like more promising material for a film, and particularly for an American public to whom biblical place names-Jerusalem, Gaza, Beersheba, Galilee, Bethlehem-still had more resonance than Verdun, the Somme, or Pa.s.schendaele.

Thomas, who had the American go-getter's ability to move like lightning when his interest (or self-interest) was aroused, quickly had himself accredited as a war correspondent; and he arrived in Jerusalem, with Harry Chase, in time to film Allenby's entrance into the city-a worldwide scoop. Sometime later, he was buying dates on Christian Street when he saw a group of Arabs approaching. His "curiosity was excited by a single Bedouin, who stood out in sharp relief from his companions. He was wearing an agal, kuffieh, and aba such as are only worn by Near Eastern Potentates. In his belt was fastened the short curved sword of a prince of Mecca, insignia worn by the descendents of the Prophet. ... It was not merely his costume, nor yet the dignity with which he carried his five feet three, marking him every inch a king or perhaps a caliph in disguise ... [but] this young man was as blond as a Scandinavian, in whose veins flow Viking blood and the cool traditions of fiords and sagas. ... My first thought as I glanced at his face was that he might be one of the younger apostles returned to life. His expression was serene, almost saintly, in its selflessness and repose."

Wisely, Lowell Thomas sought out Storrs ("British successor to Pontius Pilate"), and asked him, "Who is this blue-eyed, fair-haired fellow wandering around the bazaars wearing the curved sword of-?"

Storrs did not even allow Thomas to finish his question. He opened the door to an adjoining room, where, "seated at the same table where Von Falkenhayn had worked out his unsuccessful plan for defeating Allenby, was the Bedouin prince, deeply absorbed in a ponderous tome on archeology. Introducing us the governor said, 'I want you to meet Colonel Lawrence, the Uncrowned King of Arabia.' "

* to be fair, this was also true of Franklin D. roosevelt, and of course vastly more true of Stalin, whose sense of humor was directed at his terrified subordinates, and was distinctly cruel and sinister in tone. to be fair, this was also true of Franklin D. roosevelt, and of course vastly more true of Stalin, whose sense of humor was directed at his terrified subordinates, and was distinctly cruel and sinister in tone.

* The lowest estimate for the number of Armenians murdered by the turks in 1915 is somewhere between 1 million and 1.5 million. The lowest estimate for the number of Armenians murdered by the turks in 1915 is somewhere between 1 million and 1.5 million.

* Stirling particularly admired Lawrence's courage and toughness, and was a good judge of both. When told of the attempt on Stirling's life, an Arab friend remarked incredulously, "Did they really think they could kill Colonel Stirling with only six shots?" ( Stirling particularly admired Lawrence's courage and toughness, and was a good judge of both. When told of the attempt on Stirling's life, an Arab friend remarked incredulously, "Did they really think they could kill Colonel Stirling with only six shots?" (Safety Last, 243). Last, 243).

* Jemadar Jemadar was the lowest commissioned rank in the indian army, the approximate equivalent of a lieutenant. was the lowest commissioned rank in the indian army, the approximate equivalent of a lieutenant.

* Known as "Jemal the Lesser" to distinguish him from Jemal Pasha. Known as "Jemal the Lesser" to distinguish him from Jemal Pasha.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

1918: Triumph and Tragedy.

"Good news: Damascus salutes you."-T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom Two names had come to dominate Cairo," Ronald Storrs wrote concerning the end of 1917: "Allenby, now striding like a giant up the Holy Land, and Lawrence, no longer a meteor in renown, but a fixed star." It is worth noting that despite the failure of the attack on the bridge at Yarmuk and the incident at Deraa (about which Lawrence had told n.o.body except Clayton and Hogarth, both of whom seem to have received a strictly sanitized version of the story), Lawrence's name was already being placed in conjunction with Allenby's, as if they were partners, rather than a full general who was the commander in chief and a temporary major who was a guerrilla leader. Lowell Thomas was not the only person to recognize that Lawrence was a great story-perhaps the great story of the war in the Middle East-as well as a genuine hero in a war in which individual acts of bravery were being submerged in the public's mind by the sheer ma.s.s of combatants. People hungered for color, for a clearly defined personality, for a hint of chivalry and panache rather than the endless casualty lists and the sheerhorror of mechanized, muddy, anonymous death on a hitherto unimaginable scale. The desire for a hero was not limited to Great Britain-in Germany it would produce at about the same time the enduring cult of Rittmeister Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, the famous Red Baron, the handsome, daring air ace, commander of the "Flying Circus," with his bright red Fokker Triplane and his eighty victories.

Lawrence's cult had started long before his arrival in Jerusalem; indeed it had its beginning among a much more critical group-his fellow soldiers. His flowing robes; his apparent indifference to fatigue, pain, and danger; his ability to lead desert Bedouin; and the fact that he appeared to be fighting a war of his own devising, with no orders from anybody except Allenby-all these gave Lawrence a legendary status well before the arrival of Lowell Thomas and Harry Chase. Lawrence had already mastered the art of seeking to avoid the limelight while actually backing into it-as his friend Bernard Shaw would write, years later: "When he was in the middle of the stage, with ten limelights blazing on him, everybody pointed to him and said: 'See! He is hiding. He hates publicity.' "

Storrs had unwittingly introduced Lawrence to the man who would shortly make him perhaps the world's first media celebrity and also the media's victim. This is not the only thing that happened in Jerusalem. Lawrence gleefully records that at an indoor picnic luncheon after Allenby's entrance into the city, Francois Georges-Picot announced to Allenby that he would set up a civil administration in Jerusalem, only to be fiercely snubbed by Allenby, who pointed out that the city was under military government until he himself decided otherwise. It was a bad day for Picot, who had been greeted everywhere on his way to Jerusalem (with the amiable Storrs as his traveling companion) as France's high commissioner for Palestine, and was now reduced to the role of a mere political officer attached to the French mission. To his fury he had been placed next to Brigadier-General Clayton in the order of precedence of those following General Allenby into Jerusalem.

Even more pleasing than this snub to the French was the fact that Allenby had important plans for Lawrence in the next stage of his campaign. Given the weather and the number of casualties he had already sustained, Allenby intended to stay put for two months, and then, in February, advance north from a line drawn from Jerusalem toward Jericho and the mouth of the Jordan River. He wanted Lawrence to bring what was now being rather grandly referred to as the "Arab army" to the southernmost end of the Dead Sea, concentrating at Tafileh, both to discourage the Turks from launching an attack against the flank of the British army, and to cut off the supplies of food and ammunition that the Turks were sending the length of the Dead Sea. Lawrence agreed to this-the area was one where the tribes were friendly to Feisal-and suggested that after Allenby took Jericho, the headquarters and supply base of the "northern Arab army" be moved from Aqaba to Jericho and supplied by rail. He did not mention that this position would make it easier for the Arabs to reach Damascus before the British could get there, and he indulged in a certain amount of flimflam, which may not have fooled a man as astute as Allenby. The "northern Arab army" consisted of Jaafar's 600 or 800 former Turkish soldiers (their number depends on whom you believe), plus however many Bedouin tribesmen could be persuaded to rally around Lawrence and Auda Abu Tayi, but its importance far outweighed its size. The most important points were that the Arab army would henceforth be acting formally as Allenby's right wing, and that blowing up railway lines and locomotives would now take second place to advancing into Syria. Lawrence was in a position to ask for more mountain guns, camels, automatic weapons, and money. In addition, he requested, and got, the support of Joyce's armored cars, and a fleet of Rolls-Royce tenders to support them. In his raid from Aqaba to Mudawara to attack the station there, he had remarked on how much of the desert consisted of smooth, flat, baked mud, and it seemed to him certain that a car could be driven across it at high speed, so that as the Arab forces advanced north into Syria the cars would give him vastly increased mobility and firepower.

Shortly after his return to Aqaba he and Joyce would put this to thetest by driving a Rolls-Royce tender equipped with a machine gun across the desert from Guweira to Mudawara, in some places at sixty miles an hour. The trip was so successful that they went back to Guweira; gathered up all the tenders, which carried water, gasoline, spare tires, and rations; and drove back to Mudawara to shoot up the station there, opening up a new phase in desert warfare that would be imitated in the Libyan Desert by the Long Range Desert Group from 1941 to 1943. The cars Lawrence used were not tanks, of course, and he could not use them to attack Turkish fortifications, but they helped to keep the Turks bottled up in their blockhouses and trenches, while the Bedouin rode where they pleased and destroyed stretches of undefended railway.

Lawrence's experience at Deraa, and the fact that Turks' price for him, dead or alive, had risen from the 100 they would pay for any British officer to "twenty thousand pounds alive or ten thousand dead" after the attack on the general's train, also persuaded him to enlarge his personal bodyguard. Its members were loyal only to him, "hard riders and hard livers: men proud of themselves and without family," as he described them, though they were often men whom other Bedouin regarded as troublemakers or worse, "generally outlaws, men guilty of crimes of violence." Chosen from different tribes and clans so that they would never combine against Lawrence, they were ruled and disciplined with "unalloyed savagery" by their officers. Their flamboyance and their total commitment to "Aurens" raised eyebrows among both the Arabs and the British. "The British at Aqaba called them cut-throats, but they cut throats only to my order," Lawrence would boast, and they would eventually grow to a force of ninety men, dressed "like a bed of tulips," in every color of the rainbow except white, which was reserved for Lawrence alone, and armed with a Lewis or Hotchkiss light machine gun for every two men, in addition to each man's rifle and dagger. This was a protective force far larger than that of any Arab prince at the time, as well as better paid, better armed, and better dressed (at the British taxpayers' expense), and it confirmed Lawrence's growing prestige. He also used his bodyguard as shock troops-more than sixty of the ninety would die in combat. They were recklesslyloyal to him, and referred to him as "Emir Dynamite" because of his continuing interest in blowing up trains, rails, and bridges.

Implicit in Allenby's plans for 1918 was a fundamental change in the tactics of the Arab army from guerrilla skirmis.h.i.+ng on the border of the desert to a full-fledged attack by the Arab "regulars" on Turkish-held towns. The Arabs would not only have to fight against Turkish troops, but take ground and hold it-something they had never done before, and that Lawrence had hitherto been determined to avoid. Lawrence saw at once that four small rural towns, which marked the border between cultivated land and the des