A few days after the battle, Lawrence rode down the escarpment to the Dead Sea to urge a force of mounted Bedu from Beersheba, under Sharif ‘Abdallah al-Fair, to destroy the Turkish dhows in the harbour at Al-Mezra a which were lightering supplies to the Turks in Jericho. They attacked on 28 January, burned the supply-sheds and scuttled seven boats, effectively halting traffic on the Dead Sea. Lawrence was thrilled by the yarn-spinning possibilities of such an unusual action. It was, he announced proudly to Robert Graves, ‘One of [only] two occasions in military history [when mounted men have fought and sunk a fleet]. I recommended myself, vainly, for a naval D S O after this engagement.’ 8Meanwhile, the Hashemite plan was still to press on north to Kerak and Madeba, and in early February Lawrence rode south to Guweira to collect an extra Ј30,000 in gold they would need to recruit irregulars for the advance. When he arrived back at Tafilah on 11 February, exhausted after a scramble across the icy hills, he found to his dismay that Zayd had made no preparations for the push into Moab, and that the advantage gained from the battle of Tafilah had been squandered: ‘Zayd hummed and hawed,’ he wrote in a dispatch to Clayton the next day, ‘and threw away his chance of making profit from it. He had the country from Madeba at his feet. These Arabs are the most ghastly material to build into a design.’ 9Indeed, though Lawrence had always tried to remain in the background, he felt increasingly obliged to dictate strategy: ‘someday everybody will combine to down me,’ he wrote to Clayton. ‘It is impossible for a foreigner to run another people of their own free will indefinitely, and my innings has been a fairly long one.’ 10He realized that the Sharif had lost the determination to advance on his own, and decided to ride north to goad various irregular groups into action. The gold would arrive in Tafilah within a few days, and Lawrence felt it would be enough to finance his and the Sharif’s immediate needs and support the offensive. He rode off to make a reconnaissance in the Sayl al-Haysa with Lieutenant Alec Kirkbride – a fluent Arabic speaker who had been sent from GHQ, Beersheba to report on intelligence possibilities – and after Kirkbride had returned to Palestine, continued with a local Sheikh as far as Kerak and Madeba. The reconnaissance was highly satisfactory, and he arrived back at Tafilah on 18 February to tell Sharif Zayd that the way north was open to them. Zayd argued that this operation would require a great deal of money, and when Lawrence pointed out that he had just had Ј30,000 in gold sent up, Zayd claimed, to his astonishment, that he had already disbursed the entire amount in payment to the Muhaysin, the ‘Ayma men, the ibn Jazi, the Bani Sakhr, and various other groups. Lawrence was shattered: most of these men were peasants centred on Tafilah and could not be used for an advance: the Hashemite system was to enrol men as they moved forward, but the payroll was fictitious, for they could not possibly afford to pay more than a fraction of the men on their books, and would not do so unless there was an emergency in a particular area. Lawrence knew that Zayd was aware of this and realized suddenly that the Sharif was lying to him; the last instalment of the gold had only arrived the previous day, and there were simply not enough clerks to have counted it and disbursed it all within twenty-four hours. Lawrence’s intuition that some day the Sharifs would turn against him had all too quickly proved correct. Zayd stuck to his lie, and for once Lawrence lost his cooclass="underline" ‘I am in no way under your orders,’ he told the Sharif, ‘or responsible to you: rather the contrary. In all respects I expect to have my wishes considered and not acted against without due and previous explanation: and where the British provide through me the whole resources for an operation, it should follow as exactly as possible my instructions.’ 11Zayd would not relent, however, and Lawrence realized the Dead Sea campaign was finished. Once more, he had failed to keep his promise to Allenby. In the morning he sent a note to Zayd asking for the return of the money, and when the Sharif merely sent back a specious account of his expenditure, Lawrence decided to ride to Beersheba, explain to Allenby that he had let him down for a second time due to faulty judgement, and give up for ever his role in the Arab Revolt.
On the very day he arrived at Allenby’s GHQ, though, the Turks evacuated Jericho and the campaign in Palestine entered a new phase. The War Office in London was pushing for a final blow to the Turks, and Allenby was already preparing to spring on Damascus and Aleppo. Lawrence’s petty squabble with Zayd over Ј30,000 was forgotten in the new euphoria. Allenby wanted his right flank secured, and the railway cut. He could not afford to have the Medina garrison brought back into play at this crucial stage. He was prepared to send his Egyptian Camel Corps and Australian Light Horse across the Jordan river to take as-Salt, west of Amman, and thus safeguard an Arab assault on Ma’an, the garrison that had proved a constant thorn in the Hashemite side. Lawrence thought that with proper transport, Ja’afar Pasha’s 4,000 Arab regulars in Aqaba could be leap-frogged to a point on the railway north of Ma an and could sit on the line until the Turks marched out to remove them. He now believed the Arab regulars more than a match for Turkish troops in open battle, but doubted they could take Ma’an by frontal assault. To move the regulars, he told Allenby, would require camels, cash and guns. Instantly, the General granted him 700 baggage camels with Egyptian handlers and Ј300,000 in gold, and promised him artillery and machine-guns. Lawrence moved to Cairo, where, with Pierce Joyce and Lieutenant-Colonel Alan Dawnay – a gifted tactician who had now been assigned as chief of Hedgehog – he planned the advance on Ma an. The final act of this drama would be an attack on the Mudowwara stretch of the railway to cut off the Medina garrison once and for all.
Sadly, the plans went wrong. The British took as-Salt, but failed to take Amman, and were driven back by a massive Turkish counterattack, abandoning the town on 2 April. On the same day Lawrence, who knew nothing of the defeat, was riding back to Aba 1-Lissan with his bodyguard, when, he wrote, his men urged him to attack an eight-man Turkish patrol on a railway bridge near Faraifra. The attack was undisciplined: Lawrence’s servant Othman (‘Farraj’) rode recklessly ahead of the rest and was cut down by a bullet just as he drew his camel to a halt by the bridge. To Lawrence it seemed that he had deliberately stopped in front of the enemy to draw their fire. When he arrived, ‘Farraj’ was mortally wounded in the spine, but was ‘happy to die’, since his partner, Ali (‘Da’ud’), had perished of cold at Azraq a few weeks previously: ‘Farraj’ had never smiled again, and had lost the will to go on without his friend. For a second time in his career, Lawrence was obliged to shoot a man in cold blood: ‘Farraj’ had only hours to live, but could not be left for the Turks, who were already scooting towards them on a railway trolley. He held his pistol low so that the boy would not see it, but ‘Farraj’ understood his intention and said, ‘Da’ud will be angry with you.’
‘Salute him from me,’ Lawrence said.
‘God will give you peace,’ the ‘Agayli answered. Lawrence shot him in the head. 12