The Arabs keep the Turks distracted. Allenby launches his final battle to drive the Ottomans out of northern Palestine, with Lawrence and the Arab forces co-operating in a tightly integrated plan. It is a brilliant success, beyond wildest dreams; by 30 September Damascus lay in their grasp.

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Map, quotes and photos: Seven Pillars of Wisdom, published in 1926; Lawrence’s personal account of his role in the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. Bust photo © John Hammond.

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T. E Lawrence in September 1918General Allenby was building up for his great push towards Damascus while Arab activity kept the opposing Ottoman forces focused east, away from his planned assault.

1 September – Aba el Lissan [Abu al-Lissan] Lawrence set out for Azrak by car, where Emir Feisal was to join him with the main Arab force. ‘We were never out of sight of men; of tenuous camel columns of troops and tribesmen and baggage moving slowly northward over the interminable Jefer flat. Past this activity … we roared, my excellent driver, Green, once achieving 67 miles an hour.’

5 September – Bair ‘At Bair we heard … that the Turks, on the preceding day, had launched suddenly westwards from Hesa into Tafileh.’ Lawrence comments that if this had happened four days sooner, the Azrak expedition would have been stopped.

6 September – Azrak, etc. The first night in Azrak was plagued by mosquitoes: ‘at dawn we changed camp to the height of the Mejaber ridge, a mile to the west of the water and a hundred feet above.’ Plans were for ‘a feint against Amman and a real cutting of the Deraa railways.’ ‘Peake, with the Egyptian Camel Corps ... went off to cut the railway by Ifdein. … We, the main body, would be marching north from Azrak for Umtaiye … our advanced base.’ ‘Affairs with Nuri and Feisal held me the whole day in Azrak: but Joyce had left me a tender, the Blue Mist, by which on the following morning I overtook the army [at] the Giaan el Khunna.’

13 September – Gian Khunna [Qa Khanna] Peake rejoined, having failed to reach the line. Lawrence took a camel and pushed on ahead of the force. ‘As soon as our beasts had had a drink we struck off to the railway, … before us were two good bridges.’ He retired to Umtaiye, to come back in the morning ‘to abolish the larger, four-arched bridge.’

14 September – Umtaiye, etc. [Muta’iyah] ‘It was determined that two armoured cars should run down to the bridge and attack it, while the main body continued their march to Tell Arar.’ The cars approached a garrison and took it ‘in five minutes without loss.’ ‘Hastily we set about the bridge … 80 feet long and 15 feet high … of shining white marble.’ The demolition left the bridge intact, but tottering, so the Turks would have to destroy it before rebuilding; a textbook piece of sabotage.

1918: the road to DamascusSeptember: an unexpected triumph

The road to DamascusMarking the extraordinary trials, triumphs and tribulations of T. E. Lawrence in the last year of the First World War, month by month, in the British army alongside the Arabs fighting in the deserts of the Middle East; when the legend of Lawrence of Arabia was born.

Entering Damascus

The British Empire, with support from many Arabs, was fighting against the Turkish Ottoman Empire, allies of the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians. This series of leaflets covers the months leading up to the capture of Damascus from the Turkish army at the beginning of October 1918, which effectively signalled the end of the war in the Middle East: the formal Armistice with the Ottoman Turks was signed at the end of October.Some dramatic reversals of fortune in the final year of the campaign took their toll on Lawrence’s already strained nerves. This, and his feelings of guilt around what he saw as the betrayal of his dreams of a pan-Arab empire during the complex post-war peace negotiations, eventually caused the breakdown that brought him in due course to seek solitude at Clouds Hill.

A Jiddah street scene

Map and quotations are taken from Seven Pillars of Wisdom, chapters 106 to 119.

The dates and places in bold [with modern transliterations where it helps] are taken from Appendix 2 of Seven Pillars, in which Lawrence records from his diary where he was overnight.

Not all places mentioned remain visible today.

Next day, he overtook the Arab Army at 8am as it was attacking the Tell Arar bridge. ‘The southern ten miles of the Damascus line were freely ours by [9am]. … Our soldiers could see Deraa, Mezerib and Ghazale, the three key-stations, with their naked eyes. I was seeing further than this: northwards to Damascus ...’

16 September – Mezerib [Musayrib] A young chief from Tell el Shahab (the location of a key bridge) agreed to get them past the Turks during the night. Lawrence and his bodyguard prepared gelatine, and crept forwards in the dark, but the plan failed, as a train with German officers and Turkish reserves arrived. Next day, on to Nasib. Several hours of artillery attack against the station left it abandoned, and they piled gun-cotton against the great bridge to the north – Lawrence claimed it was his ‘seventy-ninth’.

17 September – Nasib [Nisib] Success at Mezerib and Nasib brought local Arabs streaming in and pledging support and that ‘we were their highest lords and they our deepest servants.’ Lawrence complains they were keeping him awake! After breakfast, Lawrence and Junor took two cars to a makeshift Turkish aerodrome. They disabled one plane, while two others hastily took off. Although these bombed (unsuccessfully) Lawrence and Junor, they had made the aerodrome unusable.

18 September – Umtaiye Strategically, Umtaiye gave them ‘command at will of Deraa’s three railways’, yet tactically Umtaiye ‘was a dangerous place’ due to Turkish aircraft. ‘Clearly our first duty was to get air reinforcement from Allenby.’ Lawrence decided to travel to Azrak, then fly to GHQ to speak with Allenby in person. Never missing an opportunity, on his way to Azrak he helped blow another bridge at Mafrak.

19 September – Ifdein [Mafrak]; 20 September – Azrak The plane arriving to take Lawrence gave them ‘the amazing first chronicle of Allenby’s victory’ at Megiddo launched at dawn, 19 September. At GHQ, Allenby was ‘unmoved, except for the light in his eye, as every fifteen minutes [came] news of some wider success.’ More thrusts were planned across the Jordan: to Amman; to Deraa; and to Kuneitra. Meanwhile, Allenby arranged the air cover.

21 September – Ramleh [GHQ, Bir Salem];

22 September – Um el Surab; 24 September – Umtaiye Allenby assigned to the Arabs the harassment of the Turkish Fourth Army on their retreat from Amman and

then Deraa. In carrying this out, Lawrence and the Arabs moved northwards, to attack the railway at Tell Arar, but were delayed capturing hundreds of Turks.

25 September – Nueime [Nu’aymah] Midday, they found a train on the newly-repaired line. They took great joy in blowing it again. Auda then set out for Ghazala, the next station to the south, while Nuri headed for Deraa to rout straggling Turkish forces, and Lawrence went to the ruined colony of Sheikh Miskin.

26 September – Sheikh Miskin While the Arab columns rested, Lawrence and his bodyguard pressed on to Sheikh Saad (village) by dawn. Later, Auda and Nuri joined them after their successes. That afternoon they rode to Tafas, Tallal’s home village, which 2000 retreating Turks were expected to pass. To their horror, they found the village silent, littered with grotesquely murdered men, women and children. Whether or not Lawrence gave his notorious order for ‘no prisoners’ as he claimed, the Arabs took bloody revenge for Tafas.

27 September – Sheikh Saad Lawrence arrived after midnight, his ‘fourth night of riding; but my mind would not let me feel how tired my body was, so about [2am] I mounted a third camel and splashed out to Deraa.’ Hearing the British were approaching from the west, believing Deraa still in Turkish hands, he rode out to meet General Barrow, who wasn’t pleased to hear that his orders to take the town had been pre-empted. However, Barrow complimented the Arabs by saluting their flag in the town square. Fiesal arrived the next day.

28 September – Deraa Barrow and his men headed for Damascus. ‘I still had much to do, and therefore waited in Deraa another night.’ ‘Before light, I woke Stirling and my drivers, and we four climbed into the Blue Mist, our Rolls tender, and set out for Damascus.’ Ahead, Lawrence saw his bodyguard and Barrow’s troops. Lawrence quickly transferred to a camel, then astonished Barrow: he couldn’t believe Lawrence had travelled that morning from Deraa by camel! Back in the car, they drove on to Kiswe, just outside Damascus, where they paused ‘for … the roads were dangerous, and I had no wish to die stupidly in the dark at the gate of Damascus. I wanted to sleep, but I could not. Damascus was the climax of our two years’ uncertainty, and my mind was distracted.’

30 September – Kiswe [Kiswah]

Mediterranean Sea30 Sept

5 Sept

1 - 4 Sept

21 Sept

Megiddo28-29 Sept

27 Sept 26 Sept25 Sept

16 Sept

17 Sept

19 Sept

6-12, 20 Sept

13 Sept

22 Sept

14-15, 18, 24 Sept