Looked at after an interval of eighty years, Lawrence’s stated motives for aborting the attack seem less than justified. On the morning after my arrival, I paced out the distance between the hill crest and the station buildings, and found that it was less than the 300 yards he claimed – and in any case, the Stokes probably would have been effective from such a range. As for the station buildings being ‘too solid’ – I examined them closely and found that they were built of precisely the same basalt blocks from which all the other stations were constructed – a fact of which Lawrence must have been perfectly aware. The main obstacle was the disunity of the Arabs, and though Lawrence only hinted that this was a major consideration in the 1935 text of Seven Pillars,saying ‘we were not a happy family’, he was more explicit in the earlier Oxford text, explaining that the Howaytat were so rancorous and feud-ridden that every Bedui feared lest another deserted him or even shot him in the back. It was his unsureness about the Howaytat which finally dissuaded him from the attack. Mining a train was not only easier to control, it was also much more to the Arabs’ taste, since it involved easy looting. Lawrence later noted that the Bedu put more enthusiasm into blowing up a train than almost anything else.
They slept near Mudowwara well, and the following morning moved south across a plain then barren, but today greened by an agricultural project, to a belt of low hills, where the railway curved eastwards to avoid the instep of a fifty-foot terraced ridge. This, Lawrence thought, would be an ideal place for mining. The train would slow down to take the bend, and the terraces provided an admirable position for the Stokes mortar. It was a little high for the Lewis machine-guns, but since it faced due north it looked directly down the track and would make a superb base for enfilade fire. They hid their camels among some rocks farther up the valley and carried their weapons and tools back to the ridge. About 300 yards away, the metals crossed a two-arched culvert, which Lawrence chose as the site for his mine. Previously, he had used pressure-switches, but this time he was trying out an electrically donated charge which would be attached to a cable and a plunger, and set off by hand. Instead of burying it beneath the arches, though, he laid his fifty pounds of blasting gelatine in the sand on top, so that the downward blast would smash the bridge and derail the coaches, whatever happened to the train. It took almost two hours to lay the charge and another three to bury the 200-yard cable which stretched to some hollows near the foot of the ridge, where the exploder would be concealed. The cable proved troublesome: no sooner had one part been buried than another would spring out of the sand. Finally, Lawrence had to weigh it down with heavy boulders, then sweep over the sand with his cloak to disguise the tell-tale marks. Unfortunately, the culvert could not be seen from the firing position, so Lawrence decided that he would have to stand half-way between the track and the exploder in order to give the signal to Salem – one of Feisal’s slaves – who had volunteered for the task of pressing the plunger. This, of course, meant that Lawrence would be in full view of the soldiers on the train.
All was set for the ambush, when things suddenly began to go wrong. The Bedu who had been left to guard the camels had climbed to the top of the ridge, merely to ‘sniff the breeze’, and could be seen clearly both from Mudowwara station, about nine miles to the north, and from Hallat Ammar station – four miles to the south. Lawrence shouted to them to come down, but the Turks had already spotted them, and an outpost opened fire from two and a half miles away. The Arabs were saved by the sunset, however, and Lawrence’s party slept confident that the Turks would not come looking for them in the dark. Not long after dawn the next day, though, a detachment of forty Turks was observed advancing up the line from Hallat Ammar. Lawrence sent thirty Howaytat to engage them and draw them off, but at noon a much larger force – about 100 strong – left Mudowwara station and moved menacingly down the line to the south. Lawrence decided to pull out and leave the mine for another occasion. At that moment, however, the sentry on top of the ridge shouted out that there was a train standing in the station at Hallat Ammar. Lawrence rushed up to see, and as he did so the locomotive began to steam slowly towards them. He and Za’al screamed to the Bedu to get in position, and the tribesmen and the British NGOs jogged from their camping-place to the terrace on the ridge. Yells and Brook took their positions on the shelf, while the Bedu riflemen fanned out in niches and crannies along the track. As the train came up, Lawrence saw that it consisted of not one but two coupled locomotives and about twelve box-wagons crammed with Turkish troops, who, anticipating an attack, were shooting blindly into the desert from loopholes and sangars on the roofs. Lawrence was amazed to see the two engines and decided on the spur of the moment to fire the mine under the second, so that it would not be able to draw the carriages away if the first was derailed. At precisely the instant when the cab of the second engine crossed the culvert, Lawrence raised his hand. Down went the plunger, there was a thunderclap and a plume of smoke and dust 100 feet high through which lumps of mangled iron whanged towards them, including one complete locomotive wheel which whizzed past Lawrence’s head and clanged into the desert. The culvert had been blown, the first engine derailed and the second smashed to smithereens. At once Sergeant Yells and the Arab crew opened up with the two Lewis guns, raking with deadly plunging fire along the roofs of the box-wagons, bowling the Turks over like ninepins, and cutting away the planking in showers of chips. According to Corporal Brook, Lawrence strolled calmly back to the gun-position on the ridge, ‘with a complete disregard of flying bullets’. ‘His bearing,’ wrote Brook, ‘made us feel that the whole thing was a picnic.’ 18From the terrace, Lawrence and the NCOs saw the Bedu, stripped down to their baggy trousers, leaping out of their holes and rushing towards the train. This was an unscheduled move, but it was too late to prevent them. The Turks were falling out of the doors on the eastern side of the wagons and taking shelter behind the embankment, firing point-blank at the leaping brown figures of the Bedu. They were huddled together, making a perfect target for the mortar, and Corporal Brook lobbed two shells at them, the second of which found its mark, killing a dozen men instantly. The terrified survivors began to run away across the desert, exposing themselves once again to the Lewis guns. Drum after drum of bullets throbbed into the retreating horde, until the sand was streaked with blood and littered with scores of bodies. The smoke and dust drifted away, the Turkish rifles fell silent. The battle was over, and, glancing at his watch, Lawrence was shocked to see that the whole engagement had lasted only ten minutes.
He ran down to the line to inspect the damage, and found the Bedu in a feeding-frenzy, ripping off the doors of the box-wagons, smashing cargo, tearing about yelling, shooting dementedly, plunging into the train and reappearing with bales and carpets. They had gone so wild that they pretended not to know Lawrence and three times Bedu snatched at his headcloth and his dagger, obliging him to fight them off. He found the first engine lying half on its side, and detonated a gun-cotton charge on its cylinder so that it should never be used again:’I fear, however,’ he wrote in his dispatch, ‘that it is still capable of repair. The conditions were not helpful to good work, for there were many prisoners and women hanging on to me.’ 19Lawrence joined the looters, and chose for himself a fine Baluch prayer-carpet. The Bedu were beyond all control, grabbing at the nearest camel, whoever it belonged to, loading their booty on to it and making off. The Turkish patrols from the two stations were now closing in, shooting, and the Bedu began to streak off into the desert. Lawrence, Yells and Brook, who had returned to the ridge to retrieve the guns and the cable, suddenly found themselves alone. They were on the verge of abandoning the guns when Za’al Abu Tayyi and his cousin Howaymil rushed back on their camels, and helped to load them. Yells and Za’al made a fire of the spare drums and ammunition, laid twenty loose mortar-shells on it, then ran. The Turks, advancing on the train, were met by a barrage of fire from the detonating shells and cartridges.