Seeing that he would make no convert of Joyce, Lawrence turned to Auda. A seaborne landing at Aqaba was out of the question, and he had long been meditating on an alternative course. Aqaba’s defences and the fortifications at the mouth of the Wadi Ithm faced the sea – that was the direction from which the enemy was expected. A deep infiltration raid by a small force of picked men, who would appear suddenly out of the desert in the Turkish rear, would certainly take them by surprise. It was an original and audacious plan – the model for all the deep penetration raids later undertaken by Special Forces units throughout the century. It was also incredibly hazardous. To reach Aqaba by way of Wadi Ithm required a circuitous route of 600 miles across some of the worst desert in Arabia, including a stretch called al-Houl – literally ‘The Terror’ – where not even a fly or a blade of grass could survive. There would be no sophisticated equipment – no artillery, no machine-guns, no wireless – and no supply caravan or trained regulars. 6Such a raid required hardened desert men who could live off the land. Ironically, the Bedu were ruled out because they would not fight beyond their tribal districts. This left only Feisal’s ‘Agayl, the tough professional mercenaries recruited from the oases of the Najd. Only a small party – no more than squadron strength – would be viable in these waterless wastes if the supply problem were to be solved, but with such limited firepower the long-range patrol would have to avoid contact with the enemy, for once behind hostile lines they would be at the mercy of any larger force and without a clear escape route. Within striking distance of their target, they would be obliged to recruit local volunteers, for such a small patrol could not, on its own, capture Aqaba. Thus the mission would entail some persuasive preaching as well as great hardship and danger. They decided to adopt a circuitous turning movement through the Wadi Sirhan, a major corridor of communication between Arabia and Syria, where the Howaytat grazed their camels. Even if the patrol were spotted by Turkish spies in Sirhan, its objective could not be accurately guessed – the direction of march would suggest an attack on Ma’an, Dara a or even Damascus rather than Aqaba, and Lawrence would launch lightning raids on the railway as far north as the Yarmuk valley in order to confirm this suspicion. At the very last moment, his force would turn sharply to the south-west and dash across empty desert to the gates of Wadi Ithm. This, Lawrence guessed, was where the key battle would be fought.
Without Auda Abu Tayyi, though, the plan would be doomed. Auda’s Howaytat controlled the Aqaba region, and not only their good will, but also volunteers from the tribe would be needed if the assault were to come off. Fortunately, Lawrence found Auda receptive, and together they formulated the details of the raid. With his British colleagues, he remained vague as to the actual nature of the operation, for he had read Clayton’s reply to Vickery and was perfectly aware that the British intended to keep Aqaba in their sphere of influence. However, he reasoned, the capture of Aqaba by the Arabs, once a fait accompli,would satisfy everyone. For the British it would place the last Ottoman Red Sea port in Allied hands, thus securing Murray’s right flank as he pushed into Palestine; for the Arabs, it would provide a supply-base for operations in Syria, and for Lawrence it would provide the master-stroke which vindicated the Arabs and his work amongst them in the eyes of his masters. He could not risk a direct order to desist, and did not specify his plans in any report to GHQ. Wilson clearly believed that Ma an was the objective, for on 1 May he telegraphed Cairo: ‘in about 10 days time …Sheikh Auda Abu [Tayyi] of the eastern [Howaytat] will proceed to his country east of [Ma an], probably accompanied by Captain Lawrence, he is at once to commence demolition work against the railway… his first objective will be the capture of [Ma an] and consequent clearing of the posts from there to [Aqaba].’ 7
Lawrence was now on his own: his operation had not been authorized, and its true aim was not even known. The risk was huge, but Lawrence satisfied his conscience by reflecting that he was not subtracting anything from the railway operation at al-‘Ula apart from himself and a small group of men. He spent his last few days in the Wejh area travelling in aircraft and armoured cars, locating a plane which had crashed in the desert. On 8 May, he and Sharif Nasir took charge of the Ј25,000 in gold they would need to raise the Bedu levies on the other side. Nasir, whom Lawrence thought the most able guerrilla fighter of all the Hashemites, would command the mission, and he would be accompanied by two Syrians, Nasib al-Bakri and Zaki Drubi, who would help recruit the Syrian peasants to the Hashemite cause. The Howaytat included Auda, his cousin the highly capable strategist Mohammad adh-Dhaylan, and his nephew the notorious raider Za’al Abu Tayyi. With them were only seventeen ‘Agayl fighters under their chief, ibn Dgaythir. Lawrence presented revolvers to Nasir, Auda and Mohammad adh-Dhaylan and the following day each of them drew half a sack of flour, filled their waterskins, crammed spare cartridges into their belts, and roused their camels, groaning and spitting, to begin one of the most daring raids ever attempted in the annals of war.
It was now high summer and the days suffocatingly hot. On the second morning they were so dazzled by the blazing reflection of the sun on the rocks that they halted at eleven o’clock, despite Auda’s wish to press on, and lay at the foot of some acacia bushes, slinging blankets over the thorns to provide a few square feet of shade. By the third day, Lawrence’s fever, boils and swellings had returned. As at almost every crucial juncture in his life, the great enterprise was to be marred by physical weakness. The going soon became execrable, and in the narrow valleys Lawrence and his men were forced to dismount and pull their camels by the headropes, then to work in tandem, one man dragging, the other driving from behind. The sun rained down hammer-blows like bitter steel, and Lawrence staggered along, almost fainting from the heat, the fever and the effort. Finally, the way followed a ledge by overhanging rocks, so perilous that two camels, already weakened by mange, slipped and fell, smashing their legs in the pass. The Howaytat slithered down to them and slaughtered them with their razor-sharp daggers, butchering the meat expertly and doling it out among the men. To avoid any further casualties, though, they were obliged to dump the camels’ loads and repack them. After a few days of slow progress they reached the pool at Abu Ragha, and by now Lawrence’s terrible fear of the risks ahead, dormant while safely in Wejh, came out to haunt him: ‘The weight is bearing down on me now,’ he wrote in his pocket diary on 13 May, ‘ …pain and agony today.’ 8He became frustrated by the slow ponderousness of the march: accustomed to running about on lightly laden camels, this slow desert trekking was irksome to him. The camels were feeble with mange, and Auda knew that they must be spared if they were to reach journey’s end. To the Bedu, the camels must come first, for to lose them meant certain death. Lawrence, faced with the most fearsome experience of his life, though, was pushed instinctively to flee forward to the fear, and the constant delays sickened him: ‘[if we could] only get on …’ he wrote on 14 May. 9