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 …,’ 28Lawrence, 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.’ 29Barrow announced his intention of posting sentries to control the inhabitants of the town: Lawrence countered that the Arabs were already in controclass="underline" 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.
The British remained in Dara’a one night, and on the 29th marched north for Damascus, with the Arabs under Nasir now holding their right flank. Lawrence waited for Feisal, who arrived in his Vauxhall car from Azraq, followed closely by Frank Stirling and the armoured cars. That night, however, he could not sleep, and before light he and Stirling climbed into Blue Mist and set off for Damascus, driving along the track of the disused French railway. They caught up with Barrow, watering his horses at a stream, and Lawrence borrowed a camel and rode up to him. The General, not realizing that Lawrence had come most of the way by car, was dumbfounded to hear that he had left Dara’a only that morning.
‘And where will you spend the night?’ Barrow inquired.
‘In Damascus!’ Lawrence answered, and rode away. 30
Soon, he and Stirling in Blue Mist had caught up with the Hashemite cavalry under Nasir and the Rwalla under Nuri ash-Sha’alan. The Rwalla had never ceased their harassment of the larger Turkish column, which their attrition had now reduced to half its original strength. Auda was in the country beyond, gathering the local Bedu for an ambush. Lawrence asked them to hold the Turks for an hour. Nasir selected a lonely farmstead on a distant ridge, and posted Nuri and his Rwalla there to slow down the enemy, while Lawrence and Stirling drove back to the British lines to get the Middlesex Yeomanry and horse artillery to attack the Turkish rear. With the Arabs in front and the British behind them, the Turkish column began to break up and, abandoning their guns and transport, fled in straggling groups into the hills to the east, where Auda’s hyenas were waiting: ‘In the night of his last battle,’ Lawrence wrote, ‘the old man killed and killed, plundered and captured, till dawn showed him the end. There passed the Fourth Army, our stumbling block for two years.’ 31
Lawrence and Stirling slept by the Rolls-Royce on a ridge above Damascus. It was a cold, windless night, and Stirling recalled seeing flashes of light from the direction of the hills, where Auda’s men were cutting up the remnants of the Turks. Damascus, the final prize, was hidden in darkness below them, but in the early hours of the morning they were woken up by a series of explosions from inside. ‘Good God!’ Lawrence said. ‘They are burning the town!’ They discovered later that the German troops had destroyed their ammunition dumps before pulling out. Lawrence told Stirling that he had already sent thousands of Rwalla horse into Damascus ahead of the British forces, in search of ‘Ali Ridha ar-Rikabi, the Governor of the town, whom Lawrence had met on his perilous journey north, more than a year previously. The Rwalla carried instructions from Sharif Nasir that ‘Ali Ridha or his assistant Shukri al-Ayyubi should form a government at once in the name of the Hashemites. Actually, the work had already been done: although ‘Ali Ridha was no longer in Damascus, Shukri had been supported by Lawrence’s old enemies, the brothers Abd al-Qadir and Mohammad as-Sa’id, whose Algerian bodyguard had hoisted the Hashemite flag before the last Turks had even left the town.
In the morning – 30 October – Lawrence and Stirling managed to escape some over-zealous Bengal Lancers who ‘captured’ them, and entered Damascus in Blue Mist just after sun-up, to be greeted by a galloping horseman who held out to them a bunch of yellow dates: ‘Good news: Damascus salutes you,’ he said. 32According to Lawrence, the streets along the Barada were packed with thousands of chanting people – women threw flowers and splashed scent, men hurled their hats in the air, roaring: ‘Feisal! Nasir! Shukri! Urens!’ ‘There were dervishes dancing in front of the [car],’ Stirling recalled, ‘fierce Bedu in their flowing robes, their horses mad with excitement at the noise and shouting of the townsfolk who were hysterical in their joy – as we drove through the streets with their overhanging houses the women … leaned out from their windows crying, laughing, sobbing with joy and excitement.’ 33Later, though, in a letter to Stirling, Lawrence remembered quite a different scene: ‘my memory of the entry into Damascus was of quietness and emptiness of street,’ he wrote, ‘and of myself crying like a baby with eventual thankfulness in the Blue Mist by your side. It seemed to me that the frenzy of welcome came later.’ 34Stirling remembered that Lawrence had not been happy: ‘His mind was too complex,’ he wrote, ‘to permit of satisfaction for an achievement successfully carried out… his moment of triumph was embittered by his knowledge that the government wouldn’t keep their promises to the Arabs.’ 35They arrived at the Town Hall, which was tightly packed with people, and Lawrence pushed his way through to find Auda Abu Tayyi in the centre of it all wrestling savagely with the Druse leader, Sultan al-‘Atrash. It took Lawrence, Za’al, Mohammad adh-Dhaylan and two others to drag him off and prevent him from murdering the Druse before their eyes. Nasir, the senior Hashemite, was not present, and Lawrence learned that he was with ‘Abd al-Qadir and his brother. He went off looking for them in Blue Mist, only to meet up with General Chauvel entering the town at the head of the British troops. Lawrence impressed upon him that the Arabs were in possession of Damascus, and urged him, unsuccessfully, to emulate Barrow’s action at Dara’a and salute the Hashemite flag as a gesture of good will. Lawrence returned to the Town Hall and summoned ‘Abd al-Qadir and his brother, who marched into his presence with their bodyguard. Lawrence had Nuri ash-Sha’alan’s Rwalla around him, and Nuri as-Sa’id’s regulars mustered in the square outside. He told the Algerians that as Feisal’s representative he was abolishing the government they had formed the previous day and named Shukri al-Ayyubi as Acting Military Governor with Nuri as-Sa’id as Commander of Troops. ‘Abd al-Qadir leapt up and drew his dagger intending to kill Lawrence, cursing him as a Christian and an Englishman, but in a flash Auda threw his weight on him and wrestled the blade from his grasp. Nuri ash-Sha’alan announced quietly that Lawrence had the support of the Rwalla. As the Algerians swept out in high dudgeon, someone suggested that they should be taken out and shot. Lawrence was inclined to agree, but desisted. By the next day they were brewing unrest again, however, and had gained some support from the Druses who had not fought at all in the Revolt, and who had been refused any reward by Lawrence. Now itching to shoot them, Lawrence sent a section of regulars to arrest the brothers: Mohammad as-Sa’id was taken: ‘Abd al-Qadir escaped. Lawrence had the Druses expelled, and established himself, until the arrival of Feisal, as the effective Governor of the city.