With the capture of the ancient seaport of Akaba, which transformed the Shereefian revolt into an invasion of Syria, and with the official recognition of the Hedjaz army as the right wing of Allenby’s forces, it became imperative that all Lawrence’s movements should fit in with Allenby’s plans.

Allenby by this time was in possession of all southern Palestine up to a zigzag line extending across the country from the Jordan Valley to the shores of the Mediterranean just south of Mount Carmel, the peak which since earliest times has been known as the Mountain of God. His first drive in the autumn of 1917 had resulted in the liberation of Beersheba, the ancient home of Abraham and Lot, of Gaza, the capital of the Philistines where Samson was betrayed by Delilah, and of Hebron, where Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, and Rebecca were buried in the cave of Machpelah. It had also resulted in the deliverance of Jaffa, the chief port of Palestine since the days of David and Solomon three thousand years ago, of the Plains of Philistia and the Plains of Sharon, and, more important still, had resulted in the liberation of the sacred cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem from the Ottoman yoke. But the ancient land of Samaria, the city of Nazareth and all Galilee, the coastal plain of northern Palestine and all of Syria still remained in the hands of the Turks, so that the campaign was only half completed. There were now two courses open to Allenby, either to push the Turks north by degrees, or to crush Turkish power in the East with one sweeping blow. The commander-in-chief elected to take the big risk, and he chose the latter.

He decided to launch his final attack north of Jaffa and Jerusalem in July, 1918; but in June, when Ludendorff was making his last drive toward Paris and the Channel Ports, the Allies were so hard pressed in Western Europe that they were compelled to call upon Allenby to send many of his divisions to reinforce them in France.

This completely disrupted all Allenby’s plans. It now became necessary for him to create a new army. The unexpected necessity for a complete reconstruction of the forces in the Holy Land was a staggering blow, but England’s modern Coeur de Lion was not in the least disheartened and immediately set to work to form a new army made up largely of Indian divisions from Mesopotamia hitherto untried in the war, and from his veteran Anzac cavalry under Light Horse Harry Chauvel, the Australian general whom he had placed in command of the largest body of mounted troops that ever participated in modern warfare. Instead of attacking the Turks in northern Palestine in June or July, it now seemed impossible for him to launch his final thunderbolt before October or November. Lawrence was convinced that such a long delay would make it difficult for him to give much assistance on the right flank. By then his restive Bedouins would be wanting to migrate with their flocks to their winter pastures on the Central Arabian plateaus, and, in addition, his many years’ experience in the country led him to believe that autumn rains would impede any military operation attempted during that season.

He explained this to the commander-in-chief, who immediately grasped the situation and by super-human effort whipped his new army into shape so that his new divisions were ready to take the field within eight weeks from the date of their arrival from Mesopotamia! Toward the end of August he despatched an aËroplane to Arabia with a welcome message for Lawrence, the announcement that he would be ready for a joint attack early in September instead of October or November.

Allenby, fully aware of the inexperience of most of his new troops, realized that the Turks would have to be defeated by strategy rather than by force. So he decided to dupe the Turks with a colossal hoax, a sort of moving picture of the British Army pushing straight up along the Jordan River from the Dead Sea toward Galilee. But it was to be a bogus army! In preparing this hoax Allenby’s first move was to shift all his camel-hospitals from southern Palestine to the Jordan Valley within fifteen miles of the Turkish lines. Next, he had hundreds of condemned and worn-out tents shipped up over the Milk and Honey Railway from Egypt, and pitched them on the banks of the Jordan. Then he hauled all his captured Turkish cannons down into the Jordan Valley and started them blazing away in the direction of the Turks encamped in the hills of Moab. Ten thousand horse-blankets were thrown over bushes in the valley and tied up to look like horse-lines. Five new pontoon-bridges were flung over the river.

The sacred valley of the Jordan was filled with all the properties for a sham battle of the ages. Never since the Greeks captured Troy with their famous wooden horse has such a remarkable bit of camouflage been put over on a credulous enemy.

When the German reconnaissance aËroplanes flew over the Jordan they buzzed back to Turkish headquarters with the important news that Allenby had placed two new divisions in this sector! This camouflage army, arranged largely by General Bartholomew of Allenby’s staff, was so realistic that the Germans and Turks never dreamed that it might all be a fake; and fortunately the lines were so carefully guarded that not a single German or Turkish spy got through. Lawrence, also, lent a helping hand in duping the Turks. Shortly before the date arranged for the big push three hundred members of the Imperial Camel Corps came down from Palestine to help him. They were under the command of Colonel “Robin” Buxton, a born soldier, who before the war was a prominent Lombard Street banker. Under the guidance of his tent-mate, Major W. E. Marshall, R.A.M.C., “the fighting bacteriologist,” Lawrence sent the camel corps to attack an important Turkish garrison at Mudawara, where a spectacular twenty-minute battle was fought on August 8.

After the battle of Mudawara, Lawrence led a combined force of camel corps and Arabs against Amman, just east of the Jordan. This was merely a feint, but it confirmed the Turks in the belief that the valley of the historic Jordan River was swarming with the bulk of Allenby’s forces. Lawrence sent one of the most prominent chiefs of the Beni Sakr toward Damascus with £7000 in gold to buy barley. The sheik bought recklessly in every town and village on the eastern border of Syria. The Turks, knowing well that Emir Feisal’s Bedouin cavalry could not use such vast quantities of grain, immediately decided that the barley must be intended for Allenby’s forces in the Jordan Valley. Lawrence also started the rumor through the Arab army that Emir Feisal’s host intended to launch its main attack against Deraa railway junction between Amman and Damascus.

“As a matter of fact,” Lawrence remarked, “we had every intention of attacking Deraa, but we spread the news so far and wide that the Turks refused to believe it. Then in deadly secrecy we confided to a chosen few in the inner circle that we really were going to concentrate all of our forces against Amman. But we were not.”

This “secret,” of course, leaked out and was betrayed to the Turks, who immediately shifted the greater part of their forces to the vicinity of Amman, exactly as Allenby and Lawrence had planned.

When the advance of the Arab army actually started, none but Emir Feisal, Colonel Joyce, and Colonel Lawrence knew that the attack was to center on Deraa. Early in September Lawrence started north from the head of the Gulf of Akaba to help Allenby in his historic final drive. But instead of taking his Bedouin followers from the Hedjaz, with the exception of his personal body-guard Lawrence recruited a new army from the tribes of the North Arabian Desert, and Joyce kept adding to his rapidly increasing mob of deserters from the Turkish ranks. When it started up the Wadi Araba from the head of the Gulf of Akaba, Lawrence’s caravan consisted of two thousand baggage-camels, four hundred and fifty Arab regulars mounted on racing-camels, four Arab machine-gun units, two aËroplanes, three Rolls-Royce armored cars, a demolition company of picked men from the Egyptian camel corps, a battalion of Gurkhas from India mounted on tall camels from the Sind Desert, and four mountain-guns manned by French Algerians. In addition he had his resplendent private body-guard of one hundred picked Bedouins. His total force amounted to one thousand men mounted on camels. Lawrence’s motto on this expedition, as on all others, was, “No margin!” He faced a march of five hundred miles across unmapped desert under stupendous transport difficulties. During one stage they marched four days from one water-hole to another, carrying their entire water-supply with them and suffering from thirst. When they reached the new water-hole they drank copiously, only to discover that the water was filled with leeches. These leeches fastened themselves on the inside of their nasal membranes and proved most painful. But the column made the trek in a fortnight. They were hurrying north to cut three Turkish railway lines and all the telegraph-wires around Deraa, Lawrence’s primary mission being to prevent the Turks from communicating with Damascus, Aleppo, and Constantinople when Allenby started his advance.

The camouflage army of the Jordan was a complete success. As a matter of fact, there were only three battalions of able-bodied troops in that part of the Holy Land, two of which were made up of newly arrived Jewish troops from the British Isles and the United States.

If the Turks had known the truth they might have sent down one brigade, pushed up behind Allenby’s lines, and recaptured Jerusalem!

Allenby was taking enormous chances, but great men usually do.

The commander-in-chief supplied his troops in the Jordan Valley with but three weeks’ rations in order that they might use all of the transport for his main army. His supply people were frantic; they said the troops along the Jordan must be given eight weeks’ food; but Allenby knew he was perfectly safe so long as his plan for one smash went through without a hitch.

Allenby felt that it would not be safe to engage the Turks in a pitched battle with his small and inadequately trained army, and so his sole object was to lure all the Turkish reserves to the wrong place, the Jordan Valley.

Allenby’s sham attack down near Jericho had been scheduled for September 18. The British Intelligence Corps carefully allowed this “secret” to get out, and of course the Turks were ready to meet it. Allenby’s real attack was made not on the eighteenth but on the nineteenth, and when they woke up and discovered how they had been fooled, the war in the Near East was over, and most of them were British or Arab prisoners. Furthermore, it was not made in the Jordan Valley but away on the other side of Palestine to the north of Jaffa on the Mediterranean coast! He had transferred nearly all his infantry and cavalry there by night, and they remained concealed in the orange-groves until the day of the real battle, the battle that broke the backbone of the Ottoman Empire.