On 3 September, against all odds, an assault caravan of Arab regulars, together with the French-Algerian artillery battery under Captain Pisani on mules, and a supply column, set out for Azraq. Feisal drove out in his Vauxhall car to review them as the camels strutted out across the grassy downs of the Shirah: ‘As each section saluted Feisal,’ Young wrote, ‘I even felt an absurd lump in my bearded throat at the greatness of the sight.’ 8On the 6th, Lawrence drove to Azraq in a Rolls-Royce tender with Sharif Nasir, who was to lead the Bedu in the final stroke, and Lord Winterton, who had just been transferred to Hedgehog from the disbanded Imperial Camel Corps. Over the next week the assault force began to assemble. On 10 September two aircraft of the recently renamed Royal Air Force landed. Joyce and Stirling – another recent recruit to the Arab mission – came in on 11 September with the armoured cars. Feisal arrived on the 12th with Marshall, the medical officer. Behind him came Nuri as-Said with the 450 Arab regulars, Pisani with his Algerian gunners, the baggage convoy of 1,500 camels with Young, a company of trained demolition-men from the Egyptian Camel Corps under Peake, a section of Gurkha camel-men under Scott-Higgins, and Bedu irregulars of the Rwalla under Nuri ash-Sha’alan, of the Howaytat under Auda and Mohammad adh-Dhaylan, the Bani Sakhr under Fahad, clans of the Seridyyeh and Serahiyyin, Druses, Syrian villagers under Talal al-Haraydhin, Lawrence’s small bodyguard of Hauran peasants and Nasir’s Agayl – a total of almost 1,000 men. As hardware, they had two Bristol aircraft, four quick-firing Napoleon mountain-guns, twenty-four machine-guns, and three armoured cars with their tenders. This was the blade which would carve the victory for which Lawrence had worked so long: the climax of his years of preaching revolt had come. Yet, when the strike force was complete, Lawrence felt despondent. First, he knew that the time of reckoning was near, when the British deception of the Hashemites – and his major role in this charade – would be revealed in all its iniquity. He had raised these ‘tides of men’, he felt, on a sham promise and brought them to worship an ideal of unity in which he could not believe himself. This conflict between the ideal and the prosaic reflected the inner struggle which had been part of Lawrence since childhood. The Arabs themselves were more practicaclass="underline" Auda Abu Tayyi had corresponded with the Turks when the situation had seemed favourable; the Bedu of the Hejaz had retired from the fighting line when it suited them: even Feisal had made overtures to the Turks. Nuri ash-Sha’alan had remained neutral until it seemed that the Hashemites were on the winning side, while many of the tribes, or sections of tribes, of the Hejaz and even of Syria had never joined the Hashemite cause at all. Certainly, Syrian nationalists like Nasib al-Bakri – upon whom Lawrence poured vitriol – were fighting for liberty, but the Hashemites were fighting largely for family patrimony. On their own, they had proved damp squibs: Zayd had lost the Wadi Safra, ‘Ali had almost lost Rabegh. Hussain had sacked his best man, Aziz al-Masri, and almost ruined the final operation by denying that Ja’afar Pasha was his Commander-in-Chief. Zayd had lied to him: Abdallah had rejected his advice. At Azraq he felt a sudden surge of loathing for ‘these petty incarnate Semites’, and for himself who had for two years pretended to be their friend, but had never really become one of them. The terrible fear of being hurt or killed which he had staved off for months, forcing himself to Herculean heights of bravado and self-sacrifice, was reasserting itself with a vengeance. He knew that his nerve was almost at an end, and within a few weeks he must either resign from his position or crack. The old oddness, his sense of inadequacy – absent when he rode with his bodyguard or consorted with Feisal – returned when he found himself among a large crowd. Worst of all, he had heard – perhaps from Syrian recruits – that Dahoum, his pre-war friend, was dead. The boy had been employed as a guard on the Carchemish site until 1916, when almost half the old workforce had perished in a terrible season of sickness and famine. Though Lawrence never mentioned Dahoum by name, he wrote afterwards that one of his main motives in leading the Arabs had been to make a present of freedom to a certain Arab whom he loved. He also wrote that this motive had ceased to exist ‘some weeks’ before the end of the campaign – referring not to the time of Dahoum’s probable death in 1916, but to the moment when he had actually heard of his friend’s demise. Later, composing his dedicatory poem ‘To SA’ while flying between Paris and Lyon in a Handley-Page, he wrote: ‘I wrought for him freedom to lighten his sad eyes: but he had died waiting for me. So I threw my gift away and now not anywhere will I find rest and peace.’ 9In sorrow, anger and apprehension, Lawrence shunned the company at Azraq and walked off alone to ‘Ain al-Assad, where he had, perhaps, spent idle moments in November 1917 with ‘Ali ibn Hussain al-Harithi – another friend he might never see again.
Winterton worried about security: almost as soon as they had arrived at Azraq a Turkish plane had appeared, though it seemed unlikely that they had been spotted. Lawrence knew that the assembly of the raiding force in Azraq could not go unreported to the Turks, but he was confident that the enemy would never venture across the desert to attack them there. Neither could the Turks be sure where they would strike or when it would be. Lawrence had cleverly sent cash to Mithqal of the Bani Sakhr with ‘top secret’ instructions to buy barley for a combined British and Arab surprise attack on as-Salt and Amman on 18 September. He knew that word would instantly be leaked to the Turks, who would spread their defensive resources thinly from Amman to Dara’a. The idea of a direct attack on Dara’a had been abandoned because of the paucity of Rwalla levies, and replaced by a strategy of encirclement in which the strike force would cut the railway to the north, south and west. Without its railway, the Dara’a garrison – only 500 strong – would choke to death. At dawn on 13 September, Peake and Scott-Higgins mounted their camels and led their combined troops of Egyptian sappers and Gurkhas silently through the maze of basalt boulders and across the glistening slicks of the Gian al-Khunna. Two armoured cars rumbled after them in support. Their task was to demolish the tracks and bridges south of Mafraq – a raid which the Turks would probably interpret as a prelude to a strike at Amman. The Gurkhas were to assault the station, while Peake’s sappers cut the railway, and the entire force was to pull out at first light, covered by the armoured cars.
Next day the main body – almost 1,000 strong – set off into the lava, the camels grumbling and stumbling their way through the stones. Nuri as-Sa id rode a horse at the head of the Arab regulars, while Joyce commanded the remaining armoured car and tenders which bounced over the harrabehind. Young, riding a mule, fell into line with Pisani’s mule-mounted gunners, whose Napoleons were stripped and lashed to the broad backs of their mounts. ‘I tried to forget that we were absolutely in the air,’ he wrote, ‘with no communications and no possible way of getting back.’ 10Nuri was more at ease, and recalled that Lawrence’s ‘Plan B’ was to hide out in the lava maze of Jabal Druze for the winter if the mission failed, living off the land. A cavalry screen of Nuri’ash-Sha’alan’s picked riders trotted swiftly about their flanks, and a Bristol fighter flown by Lieutenant Murphy soared out of the clear blue bell of the desert sky, heading for Umm al-Jamal where it later took on a German plane and sent it crashing into the desert in flames. That night they camped amid pickets on the Gian, and the following morning ran into Peake’s assault team, returning disconsolately from Mafraq. The railway strike had failed – indeed, it had not been put in at all. Peake’s force had run into a band of Bedu whom the Turks paid to defend the railway, and while a political officer might easily have managed to turn them, Lawrence had neglected to attach one to the group. Peake and Scott-Higgins had been chary of fighting Arabs, and had turned back. When Lawrence arrived that morning from Azraq in his Rolls-Royce tender ‘Blue Mist’, driven by S. C. Rolls, he was absolutely furious that the job had not been completed, and instead of sending Peake back for a second go, decided to take the armoured cars and do it himself.