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Lawrence learnt many useful desert skills when he lived with the Bedouins. He had traveled
extensively in the Middle East and was fluent in Arabic.
He both admired and understood the Arabs and respected them
for having a strategy of their own. Well-versed in western military
theory, Lawrence suspected the war might be won without engaging in direct
battles. He had his own theory: guerrilla warfare.
Hitting where it hurt
Lacking men and material to engage a regular army in major battle, Lawrence encouraged small-unit
tactics, raids by 100 or 200 tribesmen, against the Turks.
Employing the smallest force, in the quickest time, at the farthest place,
Lawrence's hit-and-run tactics in what he called this "war of detachment" caused maximum disruption to the Turks
with minimum Arab casualties.
Explosives
With the Ottoman army spread thinly across the empty vastness of the Arabian Peninsula, the
Hejaz Arabs found it relatively easy to strike and sabotage Turkish lines of communication and supply.
With the Red Sea firmly in British hands, the Turks had no option but to use the Hejaz railway
to move their men, supplies and munitions.
Lawrence and the Arabs spent much of their two years on the road to Damascus destroying
sections of the railway. Small units of men laid charges on the track. Then as the
Turks defended the track, Lawrence's men formed large moving columns
capable of rapid hit-and-run operations.
It was a war of attrition; Lawrence used fewer people to attack and sabotage than the
Turks had to repair the tracks. He favored complicated explosions that required time-consuming repairs.
A particular favourite was the 'tulip bomb', named for twisting tracks so that they could not be straightened.
An alternative was to 'walk' the track out of service. To cut the line, 20 men walked along
the track, lifted rails and threw them away which they repeated mile after mile.
Bridges were blown up to shatter rather than crumble as they consumed more man-hours to fix.
Drainage holes in the masonry were particularly useful for explosives.
Blowing up trains was a very tricky operation but worked best with ordinary explosives laid
in parallel along the track fired electrically by an observer.
Modern Weapons
Late in the war Lawrence introduced modern war machines to the Arabs. Bi-planes joined the
Revolt and provided wonderful reconnaissance over enemy territory. Rolls Royce armored
cars, the like of which many Bedouin had never seen, were described as "sons and daughters
of trains", motorcycles were believed to be "devil's horses".
Lawrence soon demonstrated that armoured cars could powerfully strike the railway. Late in
1917, he and his commander Colonel Joyce drove at 60 mph to raid a Turkish garrison,
and safely engaged the enemy. Lawrence called this "fighting de luxe".
It was Lawrence's great skill that he combined elements of traditional and modern warfare so
successfully.
The Arabs willingness to assimilate Lawrence's views on irregular warfare with their centuries old
approach to guerrilla operations made them a considerable force, despite their lack of
numbers.
Read Lawrence's Twenty Seven Articles about how to fight with the Arab Bedouin...more
Go back to Lawrence or Background to war.
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Hit and
run techniques wore down the Turks
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