Guerrilla Leader Read online

  As regards Arabic spelling, I have used Lawrence’s usage unless superseded by a more common convention.

  Dramatis Personae

  Abdullah ibn Hussein (1882–1951): King Hussein’s middle son and initial spark plug of the Arab Revolt. His great political instincts made him a natural revolutionary, though he was less successful at conventional military operations. He was appointed emir of the Trans-Jordan in 1923 and later assassinated in Jerusalem.

  Ali ibn Hussein (1879–1935): Hussein’s eldest son, though the least capable leader. More on the bookish side, he was studied in Muslim law and found combat a bitter experience. After his father was deposed in 1926 by ibn Saud, Hussein’s titles fell to Ali.

  Allenby, Edmund Henry Hynman (1861–1936): A consummate cavalryman, Allenby commanded British forces in Palestine from June 1917 until the end of World War I. He developed a close working relationship with Lawrence and found the Arab insurgency readily adaptable to his long-term strategic designs aimed at defeating the Turks. His name, Allenby, transliterated into Arabic as “the Prophet of God,” making his dramatic entry into Jerusalem in December 1917 a harbinger for Arab victory.

  Auda abu Tayi (1874?–1924): The quintessential tactician of the Arab Revolt. Skilled in raiding, tracking, ambush, and deep strikes, the sheikh commanded the eastern Howeitat, the abu Tayi. Auda was essentially the tactical linchpin during the raid on Aqaba. His skill and determination exploited the natural fighting abilities of the Arab raider. Auda was prominent again during the final drive on Damascus in September 1918 that sealed the fate of the Ottoman Empire.

  Brémond, Eduard (1868–1948): A French artilleryman, wounded in France, sent to Palestine to command the French military mission in August 1916. He arrived in the Hejaz a few months before Lawrence, who immediately realized his purpose was to spy on the Arab Revolt for the French, ever wary of their interests in Syria. He was sent home in December 1917.

  Clayton, Gilbert Falkingham (1875–1929): An artilleryman by training, Clayton made his successful career as an intelligence officer commanding military intelligence at British Army headquarters in Cairo during the early stages of the war. He worked very closely with Lawrence in developing a robust intelligence picture of the Arab Revolt. Clayton ended the war as chief political officer of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force from 1917 to 1918.

  Fakhreddin “Fakhri” Pasha (1868–1948): Turkish commander sent down in late spring 1916 to defend Medina. He became a tenacious foe of Lawrence and the Arabs during their struggle to claim the Hejaz.

  Feisal ibn Hussein (1883–1933): Youngest son of King Hussein, Feisal became the national leader of the Arab Revolt when his leadership potential was first identified by Lawrence in late 1916. Feisal’s motivational talents quickly emerged on the national level as he sought to harmonize the various and disparate factions of the Bedouin toward a common Arab undertaking. Feisal was with Lawrence during their triumphal entry in Damascus and the subsequent efforts to establish a national government.

  Georges-Picot, François Marie Denis (1870–1951): A French diplomat who signed an agreement with the British Mark Sykes that carved up the Ottoman Empire into French and English spheres of influence. Later, Russia and Italy were brought into the compact.

  Hussein ibn Ali (1854–1931): Sherif of Mecca from 1908 to 1917, when he was proclaimed king of the Hejaz and assumed nominal leadership of the Arab Revolt. Crafty, ambitious, and jealous, he became the international figurehead of the Arab Revolt.

  Kitchener, Horatio Herbert (1850–1916): Became secretary of state for war at the beginning of World War I. He was killed by a German naval mine near the Orkneys while aboard a battleship traveling to Russia. His initial strategic vision shaped the early dynamics in the Middle East.

  Liman von Sanders, Otto (1855–1929): German officer who received command of combined Turkish and German forces in Palestine, replacing Erich von Falkenhayn in February 1918. Understood well the Turkish soldier, but his appointment came too late to overcome his desperate odds.

  Lloyd George, David (1863–1945): The first strategist and war leader since Abraham Lincoln who understood the nature and dynamics of modern protracted war. Elected prime minister in December 1916, he laid the grand strategic groundwork for the ultimate success in Palestine and the overthrow of the Ottoman Empire.

  Murray, Archibald James (1860–1945): An infantryman, Murray was given command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in January 1916. Initially skeptical of the Arab Revolt, Murray became a supporter after considerable urging by Lawrence, Clayton, and others. His fate was sealed after several tactical defeats in Palestine near Gaza.

  Robertson, William Robert (1860–1933): Appointed chief of the Imperial General Staff in January 1915, Robertson was a vigorous advocate for a victory on the western front. He saw efforts in the Middle East as a waste of strategic resources that only delayed the end of the war.

  Shaalan, Nuri (1845?–1927?): Led the large contingent of Ruwalla in the northern Arabian Peninsula. Shaalan rode the fence until well into the Arab Revolt, trying to convince both the British and the Turkish of his loyalty. By the middle of 1918, he threw off all pretenses and moved decisively against the Turks. After ibn Saud and King Hussein, Shaalan was the most powerful Arab sheikh.

  Storrs, Ronald Henry Amherst (1881–1955): Regarded by Lawrence as “the most brilliant Englishman in the Near East, and subtly efficient, despite his diversion of energy in love of music and letters, of sculpture, painting, of whatever was beautiful in the world’s fruit.… Storrs was always first, and the great man among us.” He played the key role in persuading Hussein to initiate the Arab Revolt.

  Sykes, T. B. Mark (1879–1919): British diplomat who was primary signatory to the Sykes-Picot Agreement. He died later in Paris of the Spanish influenza during the peace negotiations following World War I.

  Wemyss, Rosslyn Erskine (1864–1933): British naval commander who as head of the East Indies and Egyptian Squadron supported Lawrence’s Arab Revolt in the Hejaz. Wemyss became first sea lord in December 1917. He was noted for his creative use of naval forces in support of an insurgency.

  Wingate, Francis Reginald (1861–1953): British general who administered Egypt and the Sudan through World War I. Wingate was constant in his support of an Arab uprising offering logistical aid often beyond his means to deliver.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Arrival

  All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. This I did.

  —T. E. LAWRENCE, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

  In the fall of 1946, two men sat facing each other across a green, felt-clad library table.1 The location was Hanoi, in French Indochina. The first man was General Raoul Salan, sent as part of a diplomatic mission to negotiate the return of French authority to the land that would be known to history as Vietnam. The other man gazing across from Salan was the wily Vietnamese guerrilla leader Vo Nguyen Giap. The leaders conducted a wide-ranging discourse that lasted several hours into the waning afternoon. Toward the end of the meeting, discussion turned toward Giap’s success in resisting the Japanese occupation of Indochina since 1940. Salan wanted to know the source and inspiration of Giap’s success. Without hesitation, Giap reached behind his seat and withdrew from a shelf a heavy book and laid it before Salan, who recognized the author immediately. Giap gestured toward the book, saying, “My fighting gospel is T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I am never without it.”

  Salan became intrigued and wondered aloud how a book about guerrilla warfare in the desert could possibly find expression in the jungles of Vietnam. “Ah,” Giap replied. “Is that your assessment of Lawrence?” Salan nodded a casual affirmation: “Of course.” “Then you have missed the whole point of Lawrence,” said Giap. “He is less about fighting a guerrilla war than leading one. And leadership,” Gia
p emphasized, “is applicable in any context: desert or jungle, military or civil.” Perhaps, thought Salan … but the hour was growing late and there was much work to be done. In parting, the two vowed to continue the dialogue about Lawrence and his leadership at the next opportune time, but that time would never arrive. In the end, Giap would continue his application of Lawrence’s methods against an even more implacable foe than the French; the United States would learn—and forget—many of the same lessons as the French, though the outcome would be the same.

  LIKE MANY NOTABLE leaders, T. E. Lawrence appears to have been a child prodigy. He could read before he was five. Recollections of family and friends describe an active boy who enjoyed running and climbing trees. He was also “frightfully bossy; he used to order us about, but in a very nice way.” There was also a sense of aloofness, another leadership quality: of being in a group, but also above it. Lawrence was never good at group games, not because he disdained their irrelevance, but because he had to be the leader in all things. The element of aloofness was perhaps reinforced by a pervasive aura that “there was always something he was not satisfied with, even as a child … a secret something of unhappiness.”

  When the family relocated to Oxford, they moved into a redbrick, typically Victorian home at 2 Polstead Road in a middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of town. In this new environment, Lawrence began to develop and demonstrate key qualities of a dynamic military leader: extraordinary energy, personal courage, profound curiosity, keen powers of observation, and an aptitude for novelty and innovation.

  The powerful amalgam of energy, courage, and curiosity became the lifelong source of Lawrence’s leadership abilities. Since leadership is fundamentally a careful blend of character and competence, energy, courage, and curiosity as character attributes bear especially on a leader’s competence, because they generate the desire and need to learn in order to overcome incompetence. For Lawrence, an initial curiosity about the Middle Ages led him to delve deeply into the military art, architecture, and organization of the period. He also used the character and qualities of the medieval knight as a kind of role model that continued to evolve with his learning and practical understanding.

  Psychologically, the energy and curiosity served his appetite for excitement in the discovery of new things. It also served his sense of humor, as his exploring curiosity directed him into corners of mischief. In Lawrence’s day, the chief outlet for the curious mind was found in books. From about the age of sixteen, Lawrence unharnessed his voracious reading appetite on the broader study of military history. Here he began a more formal and systematic study of not only the Middle Ages—castles, armor, uniforms, heraldry, religion, original manuscripts, artifacts, coins, and the languages of the period, Latin and Greek—but also the lives of the great generals, especially Belisarius, Maurice de Saxe, and Napoleon. Placed in a larger military context, the investigation led to his deeper understanding of the feudal, romantic, and chivalric traditions and outlook of the culture that would lead to his particular fascination with the Crusades and the heroic leader. Out of these early studies grew a self-motivating desire to “free a people.”

  The great gear that drove Lawrence’s personal motivation began to turn during his formative adolescence. “I had dreamed at the City [High] School in Oxford, of hustling into form, while I lived, the new Asia which time was irreparably bringing upon us.” The “new Asia” was the emergence of what we now know as the Middle East. The development of such a yearning in most people would merely have remained a curious fantasy, but with Lawrence this fantasy became a motivational reality.

  Lawrence’s progression as a military leader began with what we might term “the militarization” of his mind. By the time he completed studies at Oxford, he had written a highly original contribution to the history of medieval military architecture entitled “Crusading Castles.” Lawrence’s development during the period can be understood as two interrelated phases. The first concerned his three-year immersion into the literature and culture of the medieval period; the second phase embraced his periodic research travels that culminated with his journeys through the Middle East before the war. During these years, Lawrence developed the rarest of leadership skills: the ability to lead people from another culture. He developed a capability to use his knowledge and understanding of other peoples to move beyond his own cultural framework and biases and embrace an alien reality.

  For Lawrence, medieval (mostly French) literature opened a whole new vista. As a form of interest it also became a means of escape, a kind of epic fantasy world that would be the wellspring for such post–World War I writers as J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and E. R. Eddison. His interest in the material was intense. From his study of the medieval knight culture, Lawrence developed a portrait of courtly society where romantic interests could flourish, refinements of life could emerge, and the embodied martial character could grow. After three years of extended study, Lawrence’s interests began to disrupt his university work in general. He confronted the reality of having to complete his degree, and since his field was history that meant a substantial research project. And the topic was obvious and simply a continuation of his chief military interests.

  During his early adolescence, Lawrence began touring English castles and churches with his father by bicycle. Later he would often travel alone or with a friend or family member in tow. By the end of the year, Lawrence had seen all the English castles of note, including the great twelfth-century fortresses built by Edward I in Wales. He soon decided to carry his explorations to France. A summer month was spent in 1906 as an initial excursion that included visits to old family friends in France but ended up with visits to castles in Brittany, at Saint-Malo, and in Dinant. During Easter 1907, Lawrence went back to north Wales to visit castles like Conwy and Caernarvon. Around his nineteenth birthday, he went along with his father to photograph and sketch the castles of the Loire Valley in France. The following year he began his first exploration of French medieval architecture with the express purpose of gathering research material for his undergraduate thesis. Here he covered most of southern France by bicycle in one great circle. He contracted malaria when he reached the Mediterranean Sea. During the course of his touring through France, Lawrence logged several hundreds of hard miles by bike. The toughening process that molds any good leader would continue its work throughout the rest of Lawrence’s life. He was less spartan than some kind of fighting monk—for Lawrence, like the Crusading monk, valued the role of learning and intellect as central to his avocation as a leader.

  In letters from France, he began to display the great descriptive powers that he would later express in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He married his literary qualities with highly developed photographic and graphic skills: all three would place him well in advance of most staff officers in his day. The conjunction of Lawrence’s creative qualities was drawn together in France through his keen focus on the stone and mortar of military architecture. He saw the strengths—and weaknesses—of fortifications as well as the importance of geography and logistics in the conduct of military operations. He would carry all these insights with him as a leader through an exquisite realization of his self-motivation.

  IT IS NOT precisely certain when Lawrence chose his thesis topic. Certainly by the end of 1908 at the age of twenty, he decided to study the role the Crusades played in influencing Western European military architecture. It had generally been accepted that the Crusades carried architectural influence back to Europe from the Middle East. Lawrence challenged the accepted view by arguing that the Europeans modeled their castles on preexisting, pre-Crusade Norman structures that evolved simply to suit the needs of the designers. Lawrence found little marked influence from the Crusading East, where the builders simply carried the Norman designs with them to the Holy Land and made basic modifications accordingly. The thesis, however, meant a difficult comparative study. It further entailed that Lawrence, who had already surpassed most standards of undergraduate field r
esearch, must now go to the Middle East to study the Crusader castles as well.

  Lawrence’s journey began in the middle of June 1909 aboard the steamship Mongolia, taking him through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean and the ports of Said, Jaffa, and Beirut. He would spend the next four months traveling on foot through the region he had long dreamed and fantasized about. Although ostensibly studying the area for its Crusader architecture, Lawrence for the first time became acquainted with an alien yet romantic culture that in many ways remained unchanged since the days of Richard the Lion-Hearted and Saladin. The Arabs, especially the desert Bedouin, captured Lawrence’s imagination completely.

  He arrived in the Middle East at Port Said around July 4, also visiting Beirut before heading south by foot on July 6 to Sidon and across the Jordan to Banias. Upon reaching Safed, he headed south along the Sea of Galilee to Tiberias. After a short rest, he headed west to Nazareth and tracked across Mount Carmel to the sea. A brief stop on the coast placed Lawrence on his way again north through the great Crusading towns of Haifa, Acre, and Tyre and on to Beirut, where he completed the circle in early August. The swing through Palestine was a prelude to the next and most ambitious leg of his journey as he plied his way ever northward into Syria and visits to the famous military sites at Tripoli, Latakia, and Antioch. He reached the strategic fortress of Aleppo at the beginning of September. After a short break, Lawrence headed by car to Urfa and the gateway into Mesopotamia. On September 30, he was on his way to Beirut by train. A few days later, he was back on board ship for the long journey home. During his travels, Lawrence logged over eleven hundred miles alone and mostly by foot.