Read Online Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Michael Korda
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promised to return, if he was allowed to, after he had seen to Feisal’s needs, and requested from Feisal an escort to take him to Yenbo, rather than back to Rabegh. This was an interesting decision, since it shows how Lawrence’s mind worked. The port of Yenbo was in Arab hands, though lightly and precariously held, but it was more than 100 miles north of Rabegh, and in fact actually behind Medina. The ride to Yenbo was considerably longer and more difficult than the ride back to Rabegh, but it was at Yenbo that he had arranged to be picked up by the Royal Navy.
He left Hamra at sunset, accompanied by an escort of fourteen handpicked tribesmen; rode down the Wadi Safra back to the village of Kharma in the darkness; then turned right and climbed up a steep “side valley,” full of thorn and brushwood, onto an ancient stone causeway, an old pilgrim route, until they reached a well and a ruined fort, where they rested. At daylight they moved on again through a lunar landscape of hardened lava, “huge crags of flowing surface but with a bent and twisted texture, as though it had been played with oddly while soft,” set in a sea of shifting sand dunes. They began riding quickly—to Lawrence’s great discomfort, for he was not yet accustomed to the motions of a swiftly moving camel—onward into the intense heat of the day over “glassy sand mixed with shingle,” where the reflected sunlight soon became unbearable, and each drop of sweat coursing down his face was a torture.
From there they traveled on to Wadi Yenbo, a deep, wide valley, scoured by flash floods, where heat mirages shimmered before their eyes. They rested during the worst heat of the day under the sparse branches ofan acacia tree, then rode on through sand and shingle until they halted for the night, and felt at last like a balm “a salt wind from the sea blowing over our chafed faces.” After baking bread and boiling coffee, they rested until two in the morning, then moved on over rough country—hard, slow going until they arrived at a salt flat, which they raced over, reaching the gates of Yenbo, perched high above the salt flat on a coral cliff, at six in the morning.
Here Lawrence spent four days in the “picturesque, rambling house” of Sheikh Abd el Kader el Abdo, Feisal’s “agent” here—at this point Yenbo was by no means safe, since the local sharif and emir was known to be pro-Turk. While waiting for the Royal Navy to appear, Lawrence wrote down everything he had seen. His reports were remarkable documents, long (in this case 17,000 words), detailed, full of trenchant and well-expressed military and political opinions, and containing a wealth of invaluable information and observations on everything from the position of wells to the most minute topographical observations. This was to be an important factor in Lawrence’s swift rise—even those who did not much like him, or agree with him about the importance and the direction of the Arab Revolt, were often persuaded by his written reports, which reached the very highest levels of the War Office and even the war cabinet, and confirmed that here, at any rate, was a uniquely well informed and self-confident young officer, with strong opinions formed on the spot, rather than in an office in Cairo 800 miles from the fighting.
However, when Captain William (“Ginger”) Boyle, RN, appeared at last with HMS Suva, a former Australian freighter, on November 1, Lawrence failed to make a good initial impression; he was “travel-stained,” he had abandoned his luggage, and he wore a native head cloth instead of his uniform cap, which he had lost during his arduous days of desert travel. Boyle, the senior officer of the Red Sea Naval Patrol, was a large, bluff, hearty, quick-tempered naval type (he would go on to a long career, ending as Admiral of the Fleet the Twelfth Earl of Cork and Orrery, GCB, GCVO). He had been a fervent supporter of the Arab Revolt from its beginning—and generous
He left Hamra at sunset, accompanied by an escort of fourteen handpicked tribesmen; rode down the Wadi Safra back to the village of Kharma in the darkness; then turned right and climbed up a steep “side valley,” full of thorn and brushwood, onto an ancient stone causeway, an old pilgrim route, until they reached a well and a ruined fort, where they rested. At daylight they moved on again through a lunar landscape of hardened lava, “huge crags of flowing surface but with a bent and twisted texture, as though it had been played with oddly while soft,” set in a sea of shifting sand dunes. They began riding quickly—to Lawrence’s great discomfort, for he was not yet accustomed to the motions of a swiftly moving camel—onward into the intense heat of the day over “glassy sand mixed with shingle,” where the reflected sunlight soon became unbearable, and each drop of sweat coursing down his face was a torture.
From there they traveled on to Wadi Yenbo, a deep, wide valley, scoured by flash floods, where heat mirages shimmered before their eyes. They rested during the worst heat of the day under the sparse branches ofan acacia tree, then rode on through sand and shingle until they halted for the night, and felt at last like a balm “a salt wind from the sea blowing over our chafed faces.” After baking bread and boiling coffee, they rested until two in the morning, then moved on over rough country—hard, slow going until they arrived at a salt flat, which they raced over, reaching the gates of Yenbo, perched high above the salt flat on a coral cliff, at six in the morning.
Here Lawrence spent four days in the “picturesque, rambling house” of Sheikh Abd el Kader el Abdo, Feisal’s “agent” here—at this point Yenbo was by no means safe, since the local sharif and emir was known to be pro-Turk. While waiting for the Royal Navy to appear, Lawrence wrote down everything he had seen. His reports were remarkable documents, long (in this case 17,000 words), detailed, full of trenchant and well-expressed military and political opinions, and containing a wealth of invaluable information and observations on everything from the position of wells to the most minute topographical observations. This was to be an important factor in Lawrence’s swift rise—even those who did not much like him, or agree with him about the importance and the direction of the Arab Revolt, were often persuaded by his written reports, which reached the very highest levels of the War Office and even the war cabinet, and confirmed that here, at any rate, was a uniquely well informed and self-confident young officer, with strong opinions formed on the spot, rather than in an office in Cairo 800 miles from the fighting.
However, when Captain William (“Ginger”) Boyle, RN, appeared at last with HMS Suva, a former Australian freighter, on November 1, Lawrence failed to make a good initial impression; he was “travel-stained,” he had abandoned his luggage, and he wore a native head cloth instead of his uniform cap, which he had lost during his arduous days of desert travel. Boyle, the senior officer of the Red Sea Naval Patrol, was a large, bluff, hearty, quick-tempered naval type (he would go on to a long career, ending as Admiral of the Fleet the Twelfth Earl of Cork and Orrery, GCB, GCVO). He had been a fervent supporter of the Arab Revolt from its beginning—and generous
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