All was now ready for the assault on Aqaba. Nasir, Nasib and Auda had recruited 535 men of the Towayha Howaytat, and 150 Rwalla and Shararat. Dhami was also there, with thirty-five of his Kawakiba from Tadmor. Nasir and Lawrence detached 200 of these Bedu to guard the tents in the Wadi Sirhan, and on 20 June the remainder loaded their camels and horses and turned south-west, riding to the ancient wells at Bair, set in a depression in the stony wasteland known as the Ard as-Suwwan. Here, they found that the three principal wells had been blown with gelignite, probably by Auda’s blood-enemies, the ibn Jazi Howaytat, under the supervision of the Turks. There were traces of perhaps 100 cavalry in the ruined khan.The work had been done badly, however, and though one of the wells had been filled in, the other two were only slightly damaged. The charges had been poorly laid, Lawrence concluded: ‘I took out two sets on the end of a rope,’ he wrote in his journal. ‘Nasty job, for all well-lining was very loose.’ 29There was a fourth well, some distance from the others, however, which had not been blown at all, and since this well belonged to the ibn Jazi, Auda’s suspicions were confirmed. The party settled down to occupy Bair, while a scout was sent to the next group of wells, al-Jefer, to find out whether the Turks had destroyed these, too, and a small caravan of camels with local brands was dispatched to Tafilah in the hills of Edom, to buy flour. Nasir opened negotiations with the ibn Jazi Howaytat, hoping to bring them under the Hashemite umbrella and settle the feud with the Abu Tayyi, and put out feelers to the small sections of Howaytat whose tents were pitched in the Wadi Ithm. Meanwhile, Lawrence rode off with Za’al Abu Tayyi to visit several other Arab leaders and to dynamite a bridge near Minifir in the Yarmuk valley, as a further diversionary measure to convince the Turks that their objective lay farther north. The plan was unsuccessful, but on their return they attacked the lonely station of Atwi, killing three Turks and plundering a flock of sheep. They returned to Bair on 28 June to find that their food supply caravan had come in from Tafilah with a week’s ration of flour for the whole party. This meant that they must take Aqaba within a week or starve. Their funds had already run short, and Nasir had been obliged to pay the Bedu in promissory notes to be drawn ultimately on the British government. They pulled out of Bair the same day, and as they rode there arrived a messenger from Nuri ash-Sha’alan, informing them that a regiment of 400 Turkish horse with four machine-guns was now scouring the Wadi Sirhan for them. Nuri had lent the Turks his nephew Trad as a guide, to be certain they lost the way and made slow progress. This was a further incentive to hasten the attack on Aqaba, for until the cavalry returned from Sirhan, the Turks would assume that Lawrence’s party were still there, and would not be on their guard in the Aqaba district.
By 30 June they were at Jefer – Auda’s headquarters – a tiny oasis of thorn-trees in a plain of mud cracked into filigree patterns by the sun, and dazzling white with salt-licks, from which the railway station at Ma an was just visible on the horizon. Here, too, the wells had been blown by the Turks, but by carefully sounding them with a mallet, the Agayl discovered that one – the ‘King’s Well’: Auda’s own property – had not been damaged, but was merely plugged with earth. They spent hours digging it out in the sun, while Nasir dispatched a messenger to the Dumaniyyah Howaytat – the signal for them to attack the Turkish fort at Fuweilah, dominating Aba 1-Lissan, a watering-place at the mouth of the great pass at Nagb ash-Shtar, through which they must descend to reach Aqaba. This was the opening gambit in the carefully-laid plan for the advance, and the direction of the campaign depended on the success of this first attack. All day they waited tensely for news, crouching in the shadow of sparse bushes near the wells, with their camels and horses ready-saddled. In the evening an exhausted rider stalked into camp: Fuweilah had been taken, and the Ottoman garrison massacred to a man. The Howaytat, under their Sheikh, Gasim Abu Dumayk, had, in fact, opened fire as soon as word had reached them that morning, but at first the Turks had driven them off. Believing that this was merely a tribal outburst, the Turkish garrison had sent out a mounted pursuit-party which had come across an undefended Howaytat camp and had slit the throats of six women and seven children and stabbed to death an old man. Outraged, the Howaytat had rushed down from their hill-top, cut off the Turks’ retreat and slaughtered them all. They had then turned on the fort with renewed fury, taken it in a ferocious charge, and shot dead every Turk they could find, though a few had escaped and retreated back to Ma’an. This was the news Lawrence’s party had been waiting for, and within ten minutes they had mounted and were riding across the Jefer plain towards the station of Ghadir al-Haj on the Hejaz railway, en route for the head of the pass at Aba 1-Lissan.
The guerrilla column rode on through the miasma of dust, until the railway line with its telegraph poles like strange totems in the emptiness appeared suddenly before them. The Turkish patrols, seeing a horde of raiders coming silently and suddenly out of the mirage, were petrified, and retreated quickly to the blockhouses. Lawrence’s Agayl jogged from bridge to bridge laying charges, knowing that the thuds of their explosions would reach Ma an and bring a Turkish relief force down upon them. But by that time, they would have vanished back into the desert like a cloud. The ‘Agayl blew ten bridges and ruined scores of rails, and in the spreading dusk they moved five miles into the plateau of Shirah, west of the line, intending to spend the night there. No sooner had they lit their cooking-fires, though, than three horsemen cantered into camp with the news that a Turkish battalion of the 178th Regiment had marched from Ma an and recaptured Fuweilah from the Howaytat. This was bad news, for unless the Arabs could clear the pass down into Wadi Ithm, the road to Aqaba would be denied them.
Instantly, Nasir gave the order to march, and the Arabs threw their saddle-bags across the camels’ backs and rode off at once with their fresh-baked bread still in their hands. All night they rode across the basalt, wormwood-strewn plateau of Shirah, and when dawn came Lawrence dismounted to take in the entrancing view of the Guweira plain, thousands of feet below them, soft golden-red in the new sun, traced with a map of drainage channels, and bounded by the great weathered massifs of the Wadi Ithm and the Wadi Rum. Gasim Abu Dumayk and his Howaytat, still bloody from their fight with the Turks, were waiting for them near Aba 1-Lissan, with the news that the Turkish battalion, encamped in the natural depression around the spring, was still asleep. Cautiously, making use of the curves and contours of the ground, the Arab snipers encircled them. Once in position, they opened fire suddenly, bringing the Turkish sentries to full alert. Za’al Abu Tayyi and a cavalry detachment galloped away to cut the telegraph line to Ma an. The Turks rallied, wiping sleep from their eyes, and blazed back salvoes of musketry into the hills. Soon their mountain-gun was puffing whoffs of smoke and shells were ripping out of the hollow, exploding far beyond the Arab lines. The Arab snipers ran, rolled and fired, moving too quickly for the Turks, who were blinded by the sun and confused by the shadows, and were unable to judge their range. The Turkish artillerymen had only twenty rounds, which were soon exhausted. That day the sun was demonic. On the plateau the Arab snipers baked slowly among the rocks, whose hot surface sheared off their skin in strips, and there was no water to ease their raging thirst. It was so hot by late afternoon that Lawrence crept into a cleft where he had located a dirty trickle of water and sucked some from the sleeve of his shirt. He was quickly joined by Nasir, panting through cracked lips. Auda, who came upon them lying there, sneered at the two of them, saying: ‘Well, how is it with the Howaytat? All talk and no work!’ Lawrence rounded on him, declaring that the Howaytat shot a great deal but hit nothing. Auda turned pale with rage and stalked off. Lawrence and Nasir called for their camels and rushed after him, just in time to see Auda, at the head of fifty Howaytat horsemen, charging straight downhill towards the Turkish lines with their carbines cracking and their sabres flashing. The enemy were braced together under a cliff, and let off an uncertain tattoo of bullets. A few horsemen fell and Auda’s horse went down under him – but the momentum of the downhill charge could not be halted. Many of the Arabs had no stirrups, and could not check their mounts at full gallop even if they wanted to. The tiny wedge of horsemen smashed through the Turkish ranks like a battering-ram. The enemy broke up in confusion. Lawrence and Nasir, watching from the crest of a hill to the east, at the head of 400 camelry, saw a chance to cut off the enemy retreat. Lawrence felt the blood rushing to his head. This was the moment he had feared all his life: close contact with an enemy intent on killing him. But it was too late for doubt. Nasir screamed ‘ Yallah!and the entire troop, with Lawrence in the van, plunged over the hilltop and raced downwards like a whirlwind into the retreating Turks. Four hundred camels, fully caparisoned, with their great swan-necks arched out and their huge limbs working, ridden by long-haired Bedu with savage, snarling faces, were too much for the Turks. They let fly a few unaimed shots, screeched in terror and rushed off. In an instant the whirlwind shivered into their flank, and Lawrence, still cantering, fired wildly about him with his revolver. There was a dreadful mix of bodies, heaving, screaming and swaying. Then, suddenly, Lawrence’s camel went down like a dead weight, hurling him from the saddle. He hit the ground with such force that the breath was knocked out of his body, and his world went black. When he recovered a few moments later, the battle was already over: the Arabs were advancing shoulder to shoulder cutting down the last knot of Turks. The entire Turkish relief battalion had been wiped out or had surrendered, the OC had been taken prisoner and the mountain-gun captured. Hundreds of corpses were strewn across the ground in low heaps. Lawrence later discovered that he had shot his own camel in the back of the head.