Lawrence’s Corps of Camel Raiders

As long as the corps kept to the desert and out of sight of the Turkish fortified posts along the frontiers of Palestine and Syria, they were as safe as though they were on another planet.

Continuing Lawrence Launches Arab Desert Campaign,
our selection from With Lawrence in Arabia by Lowell Thomas published in 1924. The selection is presented in fifteen easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Lawrence Launches Arab Desert Campaign.

Time: 1917
Place: Along the Hejaz Railway

Simultaneously with Feisal’s attack on the small Red Sea ports of Yenbo and El Wejh, his brother Abdulla appeared out of the desert several miles to the east, near Medina. He was accompanied by a riding-party mounted on she racing-camels. These raiders wiped out a few enemy patrols, blew up several sections of track, and left a formal letter tacked, in full view, on one of the sleepers, and addressed to the Turkish commander-in-chief, describing in redundant and lurid detail what his fate would be if he lingered longer in Arabia.

The Turkish forces advancing on Mecca received news of the fall of Yenbo and El Wejh, more than a hundred miles to the northwest of them, and of Shereef Abdulla’s raids a hundred miles to the northeast, at almost the same moment. They were amazed and bewildered, for a few days previously the Arab army had been sitting in front of them at Rabegh.

Thanks to the sniping of Emir Zeid’s handful of followers by day and to small raids by night, the Turks had been tricked into thinking the main Hedjaz army still there, but now there appeared to be Arab armies on all sides of them. The relentless rays of the sun, beating down with blistering ferocity on the parched region where they encamped, not only increased their thirst but stimulated their imagination as well. To their feverish, sunken eyes, every mirage now seemed to be a cloud of Bedouin horsemen. Each hour brought camel couriers with news of raids on El Ula, Medain Saleh, and other stations north of Medina and of the capture of two more of their Red Sea garrisons at Dhaba and Moweilah. Thoroughly frightened by the news of these unexpected reverses, as well as by the rumors of fictitious Arab victories circulated purposely among them by Lawrence’s secret agents, the Turks, panic-stricken, fled back to defend their base at Medina and to defend the railway, which was their sole line of communication with Syria and Turkey.

In the north of Holy Arabia, near the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, the Turks had another garrison far more important than any as yet taken in the campaign except the garrisons at Mecca and Jeddah. Before Feisal’s followers could hope to sweep their ancient enemy out of all the Hedjaz, excepting Medina, this important stronghold at the head of the gulf must be accounted for. This accomplished, Lawrence had in mind a far bolder and vaster plan which he hoped to execute.

Of all the strategic places along the west coast of Arabia north of Aden, the most important from a military standpoint is the ancient seaport of Aqaba, once the chief naval base of King Solomon’s fleet, and also one of the first places where the Prophet Mohammed preached and made his headquarters. For any army attempting to invade Egypt or strike at the Suez Canal from the east, Aqaba must be the left flank, as it must be the right flank for any army setting out from Egypt to invade Palestine and Syria. From the beginning of the war the Turks had maintained a large garrison there, both because they intended to wrest Egypt from the British, and because it was essential to the security of the Hedjaz Railway.

It was Lawrence’s intention to capture Aqaba and make it the base for an Arab invasion of Syria! This was a truly ambitious and portentous plan.

On June 18, 1917, with only eight hundred Bedouins of the Toweiha tribe, two hundred of the Sherart, and ninety of the Kawachiba, he set out from El Wejh for the head of the Gulf of Akaba, three hundred miles farther north. This force was headed by Shereef Nasir, a remote descendant of Mohammed and one of Feisal’s ablest lieutenants. As usual, Lawrence went along to advise the Arab commander; he always made it a point to act through one of the native leaders, and much of his success may be attributed to his tact in making the Arabs believe that they were conducting the campaign themselves.

The advance on Akaba is an illustration of how ably Lawrence handled Feisal’s army, in spite of his complete lack of military training and experience. In order to outwit the Turkish commander at Medina he led a flying column nearly one thousand miles to the north of El Wejh; but instead of going right up the coast toward Akaba, he led them far into the interior, across the Hedjaz Railway not far from Medina, where they blew up several miles of track on the way, then through the Wadi Sirhan, famous for its venomous reptiles, where some of his men died of snake-bite, then across the territory of the Howeitat tribe east of the Dead Sea, and still on, north into the land of Moab. He even led a party of picked men through the Turkish lines by night, dynamited a train near Amman (the ancient Greek city of Philadelphia), blew up a bridge near Deraa, the most important railway junction just south of Damascus, and mined another several hundred miles behind the Turkish front-line trenches, near the Syrian industrial city of Homs.

It was possible for Lawrence to conduct raids on such a grand scale only because of the extra ordinary mobility of his forces. With his camel corps he could cruise across the desert for six weeks without returning to his supply base. As long as the members of his party kept to the desert and out of sight of the Turkish fortified posts along the frontiers of Palestine and Syria, they were as safe as though they were on another planet. When they saw an opportunity to dash in and make a surprise attack, they would do so, and then dash back into the desert where the Turks dared not follow because they neither had the camels, the intimate knowledge of the desert, nor the phenomenal powers of endurance which the Bedouins possessed. During a six weeks’ expedition, Lawrence’s followers would live on nothing but unleavened bread. Each man carried a half-sack of flour weighing forty-five pounds, enough to enable him to trek two thousand miles without obtaining fresh supplies. They could get along comfortably on a mouthful of water a day when on the march, but wells were rarely more than two or three days’ march apart, so that they seldom suffered from thirst.

For these expeditions, far to the north and within territory occupied by the Turks, Lawrence divided his men into several different raiding-parties, in order to confuse and bewilder the enemy. After annoying them in the hills of Moab, to the east of Jericho, and then a day or two later away up around Damascus, he swept south again. It is sixty miles from Akaba to the Hedjaz Railway; and in order to prevent the Turks from guessing that Akaba was his real objective, he made a feint against Maan, the most important fortified town on the railway between Medina and the Dead Sea. At the same time, seventeen miles southwest of Maan, he swooped down upon Fuweilah station and wiped out its garrison. When news of this reached the Turks at Maan they dispatched one of their crack mounted regiments in pursuit, but when the regiment reached the station only the vultures were found in possession; Lawrence and his raiders had disappeared into the blue again and, so far as the Turks knew, had been swallowed up by the desert. But, lest they should be forgotten, on the evening of the following day they reappeared out of the mist many miles distant. There they merrily planted more mines, demolished a mile of track, and destroyed a relief train. The heat during these July days was intense. In describing it, Lawrence remarked that the burning ground seared the skin from the forearms of the snipers, and the camels went as lame as the men did, with agony from the sunburned flints.

By this time Lawrence and Shereef Nasir had been joined by the Beni Atiyeh tribe, who supplied them with four thousand fresh fighting men, and also by the Abu Tayi section of the Howeitat tribe, made up of some of the finest warriors in Arabia, under the leadership of Auda, a veritable human tiger who was Lawrence’s intimate companion from then onward.

The pursuing Turkish column decided to spend the night in the bottom of a valley near some wells at Abu el Lissal, fourteen miles from Maan, where I camped with Lawrence and Feisal some months later. Lawrence, in the meantime, left his column and galloped off across the desert, to see if he could locate the Turkish battalion. As soon as he found it he hurried back for his men, brought them on to the heights around Abu el Lissal, and by dawn had the Turks completely surrounded.

For twelve hours the Arabs sniped at the Turks from their positions on the hills around the wells, picking off many of them. The sultan’s forces were indeed in a tight corner, but Lawrence knew full well that if they were under capable and daring leaders they could easily fight their way out through his thin line of Bedouins. The Turk commander, however, lacked the necessary courage. So at sunset Auda Abu Tayi, with fifty of his fellow-tribesmen, crept up to within three hundred yards of the Turks and after a moment’s rest boldly pushed out from under cover and galloped straight into the enemy camp. So surprised were the Turks by this audacity that when the old Bedouin chieftain crashed into their midst their ranks broke, but not before bullets had smashed Auda Abu Tayi’s field-glasses, pierced his revolver-holster, nicked the sword he was holding in his hand, and killed two horses under him. In spite of these incidents the old Arab was delighted and maintained afterward that it was the best scrap he had had since Ramadan.

Lawrence, who was watching from the hill on the opposite side of the basin, dashed down the slope as fast as his dromedary could carry him and charged into the midst of the now demoralized Turks, followed by four hundred other Bedouins on camels. For twenty minutes a thousand Turks and Arabs were mixed together in a wild, frenzied mass, all shooting madly. In the charge Lawrence accidentally shot his own camel through the head with his automatic; it dropped dead, and he was hurled from his saddle and lay stunned in front of it, while his followers charged right over him. Had he not been thrown directly in front of his mount he would have been trampled to death by the onrushing camels.

The Turks made their fatal error in scattering, just as Lawrence had surmised they would do, and the battle ended in massacre. Although many escaped in the darkness, the Arabs killed and captured more than the total number of their own force. The next morning more than three hundred dead were counted around the water-hole. Most of the prisoners taken were rounded up by Shereef Nasir and Lawrence, because the rest of the Bedouins dashed off to the Turkish tents, as usual thinking of nothing but loot. The desire to loot is an all-consuming passion with the Bedouins and is not considered a form of stealing by them but is listed among the cardinal virtues.

So bitter were the Arabs that they wanted to kill their prisoners in retaliation for the atrocities the Turks had been committing against their women and children. They were also aching to avenge the death of Sheik Belgawiya of Kerak, one of their leaders, whom the Turks had harnessed between four mules and torn apart limb from limb. The sheik’s tragic death had been the climax of a series of executions by torture which had so enraged the Arabs that they swore never to give quarter to another Turk. But Lawrence had other ideas. He wanted the rumor spread far and wide through the Turkish army that the Arabs were not only accepting prisoners but were treating them well, and so he finally prevailed upon his revengeful followers to treat these captives with special consideration. Just as he had hoped, this propaganda brought immediate results, and in the days following the battle of Abu el Lissal groups were constantly coming in holding their weapons above their heads and crying “Moslem! Moslem!” in imitation of the German cry of “Kamerad.”

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