March to Damascus
With the occupation of Aqaba, the Arabs expelled the Turkish army from the Red Sea coast, opening the door to Syria, and the Hejaz War was over. Faisal was ready to continue his march north and realize his grand plan to establish an Arab state. But at this moment, rumors of the Sykes-Pico Agreement loomed from the side of the Turks. In the McMahon-Hussein Memorandum, the British had pledged to Hussein in support of the creation of a large Arab state, including the Turkish Arabs, but now they had secretly carved up the region with France.
The Arabs, whose reputation was their life, first refused to believe the rumor, and then turned to Lawrence for confirmation. For the Arabs of that time, the credibility of a friend was always higher than that of an organization or country.
Lawrence was pleased with the flourishing of the Arab uprisings, and had no prior knowledge of the McMahon-Hussein Memorandum and the Sykes-Picot Agreement, but he was by no means a fool. With his brilliant mind and sensitivity to Middle Eastern politics, Lawrence in 1917 already knew a thing or two about the sharp axe that the British *** had secretly sharpened. From the signs he had witnessed in Cairo and Ismailia, he could see that if Britain won the war, the promises made to the Arabs would be a dead letter.
Lawrence recalls feeling this way: "If I were a man of honor, I should have sent my Arab friends home a long time ago and not let them risk their lives for that thing [the Sykes-Picot Agreement]." However, the passion of the Arabs is the backbone of winning this war in the Middle East. For this, I had to convince them that Britain had kept its word, at least on paper and in name. They accepted my comfort and did a great job. But I'm not proud of what we've accomplished. The shame and bitterness of this behavior occupied ...... my heart"。
In retaliation for the British authorities' treachery to his Arab friends, Lawrence decided to turn the Arab revolt into an engine that proppelled it forward, vowing to do whatever it took to lead it to final victory, so that the Great Powers could give the Arab demands a just solution. From the first time he met Faisal, Lawrence instilled in him the notion that Arab countries needed to be won by themselves, not by handouts. However, without British money and support, Faisal would also be unsustainable.
As the arena of the Arab Wars shifted northward, Allenby decided to launch a general offensive against Palestine in October and November 1917. Faisal appealed to the Arabs in Syria in Aqaba in the name of "liberating all Arabs", calling on them not to cooperate with the Turks, and calling on the Arab fighters in the Turkish army to turn their guns and carry out an anti-Turkish uprising. Faisal wanted to unite the Arab nationalist forces in Syria, with the cooperation of the British army, to take Syria directly, overthrow the Turks, and establish the proposed Arab state. However, this is not in line with the strategic plan and political intentions of the United Kingdom. According to Allenby's arrangement, Faisal's army was reorganized into a regular army and became an integral part of the right flank of the British army, and its military operations were subject to the strategic deployment of the Entente.
At this time, the Turkish army was undersupplied and demoralized, and many Arab soldiers fled to the Turkish army, either to join the Allied forces or to form guerrilla groups to harass the Turks. In October, the British launched a full-front offensive against the Shang Army on the Western and Eastern Fronts in the Middle East theater. On 31 October, the British on the Western Front broke through the Turkish defenses in southern Palestine and marched on Jaffa and Bethlehem. In November, the British army on the western front captured Gaza, and the British army on the eastern front occupied Tikrit on the Tigris River, and the whole of Mesopotamia fell into British hands ......On 9 December, the British army on the Western Front entered Jerusalem.
In the Battle of Palestine, in order to protect the right flank of the British army from the Turkish army, the Arab army surrounded Ma'an, an important military station northeast of Aqaba, and attacked the railway line in the Palestinian area. Lawrence organized the assault force according to his own principles of war. He believes that the war of the Arab forces in Palestine should continue to take the form of guerrilla warfare, regardless of the area of operation, without having a fixed direction or place, and adopting the tactics of hitting and running as they please. War in the desert is like a naval war, and whoever controls the sea controls the initiative in the war. The camel cavalry was their **, they controlled the desert and, after a short but fierce attack on the Turks, were able to flee unhindered into the desert where the Turks did not dare to penetrate.
Lawrence's raiding party consisted mainly of Chief Oda and his Howittat warriors, each carrying 45 pounds of flour (about six weeks' ration for a person), hard-working camels providing spare meat, and wells scattered across the desert providing drinking water. The heaviest armament of the assault team was the Haggaeus and Lewis light machine guns, which were thrown away when they were broken, and continued to fight with rifles, not wasting time on repairs. The team carried high-efficiency explosives with them to destroy railways and bridges. Their methods of warfare are varied, and no tactics are exactly the same twice. They left the Turks scratching their heads and did not know when and where the Arabs would attack.
During these attacks, Lawrence and Chief Oda led the unrestrained tribal warriors and charged with them to dodge the hail of bullets. Since he did not belong to any Arab tribe, he was seen as impartial and was often invited to settle minor disputes. During one attack that lasted six days, "there were 12 fights with **, 4 camel thefts, 1 wedding, 2 thefts, 1 divorce, 14 family quarrels, 2 evil eyes (the local tribal custom considers it bad luck to gaze at others and bring bad luck to the stared), and 1 witch Gu, all of which I finally settled ......."”
Their first attack on the railroad in September 1917 was to destroy a Turkish troop transport train near the Amar station in Hailat. To Lawrence's surprise, the train had two locomotives in front. The assault team had planted explosives under the railroad tracks, and Lawrence decided to detonate them as the second locomotive passed, so that the remaining locomotive could not retreat against the wagon and escape. As soon as the fighters of the assault team pressed the detonation handle, they heard a terrible loud bang, and the railway disappeared from view, followed by a puff of black dust and smoke, 60 meters high and 60 meters wide. A huge locomotive wheel spun over the heads of the raiding party lying behind the dunes, slamming heavily into the desert behind them. Immediately after the gunfire erupted, the stuffy tank car in which the Turkish soldiers were riding was torn apart by machine gun fire. The surviving soldiers threw down their ** and ran desperately into the desert, but they were all shot down by the Arab gunners.
At this time, the Turkish troops at the station in the distance spotted them, so they gathered their team and walked slowly towards the accident site. The soldiers were undoubtedly frustrated by the loss of their precious lunch break, a sacred principle that the Turks adhered to during the hot Arab summer. Lawrence, estimating that it would take them about two hours to get here, approached the train himself to inspect the attack. He was very satisfied with this **: the second front was scrapped, and the first one was in better condition, but it was also derailed. In order to prevent the Turks from repairing it and using it again, Lawrence blew up the cylinders and axles of the locomotive with cotton wool explosives and detonators, derailed all 10 stuffy tank cars, and the Turkish soldiers inside were either killed or wounded, and the two passenger cars were also damaged, including the families of Turkish officers and refugees returning to Damascus, and two Austrian servicemen who trained the Turks to use the new Škoda howitzer. Outside the carriage, a few carpets, more than a dozen mattresses and flower quilts, piles of bed sheets, a wide variety of men's and women's clothing, clocks, woks, food, decorations and **, gold and silver are piled up softly. More than 30 Turkish women stood by and cried and screamed hysterically, and their Arab attackers did not pay any attention to it, but were busy plundering the spoils and loading them onto camels. Lawrence was busy putting away the precious detonating wires (the only roll of the raiding party) and withdrawing before the Turkish pursuers arrived.
Over the next four months, Lawrence's assault team destroyed 17 trains in Palestine and Syria, and even blew up and killed the special train of Mehmid Gemalpasha, the commander of the Turkish Eighth Army, who was scheduled to command the defense of Jerusalem. Traveling becomes an unsafe, terrifying thing for the enemy. In Damascus and Aleppo, people scramble for seats in the back of the train, even paying several times the cost for it. Train drivers in Syria quit their jobs. Rail traffic throughout Syria and Palestine is almost paralyzed. The authorities of the Ten Ear began to offer a reward of £20,000 for the capture of an Englishman named Lawrence, and £10,000 for death.
However, in the attack, Lawrence also paid a painful price. In December 1917, in order to attack the junction of the Hejaz Railway and the Palestinian Railway (Haifa-Jerusalem-Dara'a), he decided to conduct a reconnaissance of Dara'a (in present-day southern Syria). Disguised as Arabs, he infiltrated the city and was caught by a Turkish patrol searching for young men, who did not know that he was Lawrence, but was puzzled by his fair skin (Lawrence claimed to be a Caucasian Circassian from the Caucasus). The nation is known for its beauty, and most of the harem concubines of the Ottoman Sultan are from this), and they actually planned to implement it**. When Lawrence resisted, the Turkish commander stabbed him and ordered his men to whip him and throw him into the street.
Prior to this humiliation, Lawrence appreciated the central role he had played in "history in progress." It was the kind of epic war he had dreamed of since he was 9 years old. He was reincarnated by comparing himself to the Messiah, the savior of the Bible, but after this event, his self-deification and heroism collapsed. After the Della incident, Lawrence almost ran out of spiritual fuel. "My perfect fortress", he wrote, "irretrievably lost." Lawrence's sense of mission is gone, and all that remains is ambition and the desire for power. He became murderous, but felt only greater emptiness and pity after the killing.
After his reconnaissance at Dara'a, Lawrence dragged his tired body back to Aqaba and was sent to Jerusalem, where he took part in General Allenby's "grand and spirited" ceremony of the city of men on 11 December. After the occupation of Jerusalem, the British army was stagnant on the Jericho line of Jericho in Ramallah due to the ** issue, and confronted the Turkish army. Allenby, in order to remove the threat from the right flank, ordered Lawrence to carry out dilitionist operations against the Turkish army at the Dead Sea and in the mountains of northern Jordan, sabotaged the Damascus-Amman-Ma'an railway, and generously provided 300,000 pounds of money to the Arab forces.
By this time, the Arab forces had developed into a regular army with commanders, staff officers, and logistical baggage. When Allenby launched an offensive the following year, the Turks found that their railroad had been cut off by Lawrence, the military station had been wiped out by Lawrence, and the supplies had been destroyed by Lawrence, so they had to retreat north and retreat again.
On March 21, 1918, under the command of General Ludendorff, the German army launched the last large-scale offensive against the Entente on the Western Front in Europe, codenamed "Battle of the Kaiser". Allenby's troops were transferred to the European front, thus losing their superiority over the Turkish army in the Palestinian areas. Allenby had to temporarily halt the planned general offensive and order Lawrence to continue his assault behind enemy lines, destroying valley tunnels and bridges in northern Jordan. At the same time, Allenby seized the time to transfer troops from Mesopotamia and India to Palestine. On 15 June, the British army in Palestine decided to launch a full-scale offensive against the Turkish army in September. When Lawrence learned of this, he led the Arab forces into Dara'a two months ahead of schedule, striving to occupy Damascus before the British arrived, quickly forming an Arab state, and bankrupting the Sykes-Picot Agreement as a fait accompli. They evaded heavily Turkish garrisoned Amman and made a detour east to Azraq. Faisal's regular troops, personal guards, armoured units, and aircraft squadrons all rushed to Azraq to assemble. The Arab forces, which had completed their build-up, reached the city of Dara'a on 17 September. On 19 September, the British Autumn Offensive in Palestine began, and the main Anglo-Australian forces on the left flank broke through the Turkish front south of Nablus and entered Nazareth, destroying the joint German-Turkish headquarters in the city. The Arab units on the right flank went around the back of Dara'a and, with the help of the cover of aircraft and artillery, intercepted the Turkish units withdrawn from there.
During the retreat, the Turkish army ravaged and destroyed the Arab villages passing by, houses were burned, property and livestock were looted, women were contaminated and stuffed into wells or nailed to the ground with swords, and babies and children were killed. These atrocities infuriated Lawrence and his 1,000 Arab warriors. In tribal warfare in Arabia, women were considered inviolable, and minor children should not be killed. Enraged, the Arab soldiers overtook the Turkish force, twice as numerous as themselves, and annihilated them all, leaving not a single prisoner.
The Turkish army, which had been brutally defeated in Palestine, withdrew to northern Syria, and the Turkish army stationed in Ma'an, Medina and Amman was also ordered to withdraw north. On 22 September, British forces occupied Ma'an and Amman and inflicted heavy losses on the evacuating forces in Ma'an. On 30 September, the vanguard of the Arab army entered Damascus and seized the city hall and important buildings such as the power plant, post office, and station, and the Arab flag was raised over the city. On 3 October, Lawrence, Oda and their troops entered Damascus to the enthusiastic cheers of 250,000 Arab citizens. Over the next two days, Lawrence became the de facto military governor of Damascus.
By this time, the Turkish army had completely collapsed. Arab soldiers fled the army in droves, and Syrian peasants, cornered by the Turks' exorbitant taxes and brutal plunder, revolted. Under the fierce attack of the Anglo-Afghan army and the heavy blow of the Syrian uprising, the Turkish army was vulnerable and retreated. On 8 October, British forces occupied Beirut, followed by Tripoli and Homs. On 26 October, Anglo-Afghan forces captured Aleppo, the largest city and railway hub in northern Syria, and subsequently occupied all of Syria.
At this moment, Germany was also facing defeat on the Western Front, and the country was on the verge of revolution and insurrection, and it was difficult to provide any assistance to the Turkish allies. Losing the German ** and money, the Turks could no longer fight. On 29 October, Turkish Admiral Lauf boarded the British battleship Agamemnon on the Greek island of Lemnos, and signed an armistice with Admiral Casseop, commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, the next day. Article 16 of the armistice agreement provided for the complete abolition of the Ottoman administrations in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, the Hejaz, Yasir (in the southern part of the Hejaz, which became independent after World War I and is now part of Saudi Arabia) and Yemen. The 400-year rule of the Turks in the Arab countries came to an end.
At this point, Lawrence's noble cause suffered another blow. ** After the October Revolution, the Soviet regime published a number of Tsarist diplomatic archives, including the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Although British Foreign Secretary Balfour assured Hussein that it was a "Bolshevik fabrication", on September 30, 1918, the day the Arab troops entered Damascus, Britain and France signed an agreement in London on the regime of Arab occupation in the East. The supreme power in the occupied Arab territories was given to Allenbi, and the civil administration of the occupied territories was shared between the Entente, Lebanon and Western Syria were administered by France, Eastern Syria and Transjordan were administered by Faisal, and the rest of the territory, including Palestine, was administered by the British. These actions by the United Kingdom undoubtedly amount to formal recognition of the existence of the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Lawrence's foreboding became a reality.
Even so, Lawrence considered the agreement outdated, or at least negotiable. Lawrence hoped and persuaded Faisal that the unexpected success of the Arab Revolution would certainly abrogate the agreement. But they were all wrong. Allenby told Lawrence in Damascus that he had been ordered to enforce the rule.
Although Lawrence's Arab friends were not angry with him, he felt betrayed by his own ** and felt guilty that he had misdirected his friends and thousands of followers in the wrong direction.
To be continued).