Feisal
was a fine, hot workman, whole-heartedly doing a thing when he had
agreed to it. He had pledged his word that he would go at once to Wejh;
so he and I sat down together on new-year's day for consideration of
what this move meant to us and to the Turks. Around us, stretching up
and down the Wadi Yenbo for miles, in little groups round palm-gardens,
under the thicker trees, and in all the side tributaries, wherever there
was shelter from the sun and rain, or good grazing for the camels, were
the soldiers of our army. The mountaineers, half-naked footmen, had
grown few. Most of the six thousand present were mounted men of
substance. Their coffee hearths were outlined from afar by the camel
saddles, pitched in circles round the fire as elbow-rests for men
reclining between meals. The Arabs' physical perfection let them lie
relaxed to the stony ground like lizards, moulding themselves to its
roughness in corpse-like abandon.
They were quiet but confident. Some, who had been
serving Feisal for six months or more, had lost that pristine heat of
eagerness which had so thrilled me in Hamra; but they had gained
experience in compensation; and staying-power in the ideal was fatter
and more important for us than an early fierceness. Their patriotism was
now conscious; and their attendance grew more regular as the distance
from their homes increased. Tribal independence of orders was still
maintained; but they had achieved a mild routine in camp life and on the
march. When the Sherif came near they fell into a ragged line, and
together made the bow and sweep of the arm to the lips, which was the
official salute. They did not oil their guns: they said lest the sand
clog them; also they had no oil, and it was better rubbed in to soften
wind-chaps on their skin; but the guns were decently kept, and some of
the owners could shoot at long range.
In mass they were not formidable, since they had no
corporate spirit, nor discipline nor mutual confidence. The smaller the
unit the better its performance. A thousand were a mob, ineffective
against a company of trained Turks: but three or four Arabs in their
hills would stop a dozen Turks. Napoleon remarked this of the Mamelukes.
We were yet too breathless to turn our hasty practice into principle:
our tactics were
empirical snatchings of the first means to escape difficulty. But we
were learning like our men.
From the battle of Nakhl Mubarak we abandoned the
brigading of Egyptian troops with irregulars. We embarked the Egyptian
officers and men, after turning over their complete equipment to Rasim,
Feisal's gunner, and Abdulla el Deleimi, his machine-gun officer. They
built up Arab companies out of local material, with a stiffening of
Turk-trained Syrian and Mesopotamian deserters. Maulud, the fire-eating
A.D.C., begged fifty mules off me, put across them fifty of his trained
infantrymen, and told them they were cavalry. He was a martinet, and a
born mounted officer, and by his spartan exercises the much-beaten
mule-riders grew painfully into excellent soldiers, instantly obedient
and capable of formal attack! They were prodigies in the Arab ranks. We
telegraphed for another fifty mules, to double the dose of mounted
infantry, since the value of so tough a unit for reconnaissance was
obvious.
Feisal suggested taking nearly all the Juheina to
Wejh with him and adding to them enough of the Harb and Billi, Ateiba
and Ageyl to give the mass a many-tribed character. We wanted this
march, which would be in its way a closing act of the war in Northern
Hejaz, to send a rumour through the length and breadth of Western
Arabia. It was to be the biggest operation of the Arabs in their memory;
dismissing those who saw it to their homes, with a sense that their
world had changed indeed; so that there would be no more silly
defections and jealousies of clans behind us in future, to cripple us
with family politics in the middle of our fighting.
Not that we expected immediate opposition. We
bothered to take this unwieldy mob with us to Wejh, in the teeth of
efficiency and experience, just because there was no fighting in the
bill. We had intangible assets on our side. In the first place, the
Turks had now engaged their surplus strength in attacking Rabegh, or
rather in prolonging their occupied area so as to attack Rabegh. It
would take them days to transfer back north. Then the Turks were stupid,
and we reckoned on their not hearing all at once of our move, and on
their not believing its first tale, and not seeing till later what
chances it had given them. If we did our march in three weeks we should
probably take Wejh by surprise. Lastly, we might develop the sporadic
raiding activity of the Harb into conscious operations, to take booty,
if possible, in order to be self-supporting; but primarily to lock up
large numbers of Turks in defence
positions. Zeid agreed to go down to Rabegh to organise similar
pin-pricks in the Turks' rear. I gave him letters to the captain of the
Dufferin, the Yenbo guardship, which would ensure him a quick
passage down: for all who knew of the Wejh scheme were agog to help it.
To exercise my own hand in the raiding genre I took
a test party of thirty-five Mahamid with me from Nakhl Mubarak, on the
second day of 1917, to the old blockhouse-well of my first journey from
Rabegh to Yenbo. When dark came we dismounted, and left our camels with
ten men to guard them against possible Turkish patrols. The rest of us
climbed up Dhifran: a painful climb, for the hills were of knife sharp
strata turned on edge and running in oblique lines from crest to foot.
They gave abundance of broken surface, but no sure grip, for the stone
was so minutely cracked that any segment would come away from its
matrix, in the hand.
The head of Dhifran was cold and misty, and time
dragged till dawn. We disposed ourselves in crevices of the rock, and at
last saw the tips of bell-tents three hundred yards away beneath us to
the right, behind a spur. We could not get a full view, so contented
ourselves with putting bullets through their tops. A crowd of Turks
turned out and leaped like stags into their trenches. They were very
fast targets, and probably suffered little. In return they opened rapid
fire in every direction, and made a terrific row; as if signalling the
Hamra force to turn out in their help. As the enemy were already more
than ten to one, the reinforcements might have prevented our retreat: so
we crawled gently back till we could rush down into the first valley,
where we fell over two scared Turks, unbuttoned, at their morning
exercise. They were ragged, but something to show, and we dragged them
homeward, where their news proved useful.
Feisal was still nervous over abandoning Yenbo,
hitherto his indispensable base, and the second sea-port of Hejaz: and
when casting about for further expedients to distract the Turks from its
occupation we suddenly remembered Sidi Abdulla in Henakiyeh. He had some
five thousand irregulars, and a few guns and machine-guns, and the
reputation of his successful (if too slow) siege of Taif. It seemed a
shame to leave him wasting in the middle of the wilderness. A first idea
was that he might come to Kheibar, to threaten the railway north of
Medina: but Feisal improved my plan vastly, by remembering Wadi Ais, the
historic valley of springs and palm-villages flowing through the
impregnable Juheina
hills from behind Rudhwa eastward to the Hamdh valley near Hedia. It lay
just one hundred kilometres north of Medina, a direct threat on Fakhri's
railway communications with Damascus. From it Abdulla could keep up his
arranged blockade of Medina from the east, against caravans from the
Persian Gulf. Also it was near Yenbo, which could easily feed him there
with munitions and supplies.
The proposal was obviously an inspiration and we
sent off Raja el Khuluwi at once to put it to Abdulla. So sure were we
of his adopting it that we urged Feisal to move away from Wadi Yenbo
northward on the first stage to Wejh, without waiting a reply.
