T.E. Lawrence And the Mind of An Insurgent

Army, Jul 2005 by Schneider, James J

The biological was the second element in Lawrence's framework. Later he uses the term "bionomics" to capture the idea of the wear and tear and friction within a military system. Lawrence concluded that rather than destroy the Turkish army, the Arab needed merely to wear it down. Exhaustion, not destruction, would bring this about. It would be accomplished through direct attacks on the enemy's materiel: "The death of a Turkish bridge or rail, machine or gun, or high explosive was more profitable to us than the death of a Turk." Thus, the weakness of the irregular-his inability to stand toe to toe with the regular in battle-could be rendered irrelevant provided the Arab went against the enemy's readily accessible materiel. But the key to such a strategy was the possession of nearly perfect intelligence. Lawrence, himself an intelligence officer, noted that knowledge of the enemy had to be "faultless, leaving no room for chance. We took more pains in this service than any other staff I saw."

The final factor of analysis was the psychological. Lawrence understood that in an insurgency, the real battle lay within the minds of the opponents. To be successful the Arabs had "to arrange their [own] minds in order of battle, just as carefully and as formally as other officers arrayed their bodies." This also meant that moral support among the populace had to be mobilized for the rebellion.

In light of his analysis Lawrence developed a basic plan that he adhered to until virtually the end of the war. Its foundation rested upon a realistic assessment of the Arab irregular and his Turkish opponent. The object was to impose upon the Turks the burden of a long, protracted defense that would eventually exhaust them. The means of accomplishing this object was through the employment of small, highly mobile raiding units.

Iawrence recognized that the ratio of troops to space would determine the ultimate character of the war. In practical terms this profound insight meant that "by having [for example] five times the mobility of the Turks we would be on [equal] terms with them with one-fifth their numbers." Thus, Lawrence came increasingly to view desert warfare as more akin to naval warfare.

For Lawrence the camel was indeed a ship of the desert. The camel gave the desert guerrilla an incredible range of operations. In fact, the camel gave Lawrence and his Arab forces operational mobility. With the camel, troops were able to carry a ration lasting six weeks. Even under the hottest conditions, camels could travel three days without water. According to Lawrence this meant that the camels could cover nearly 250 miles between watering at an incredible sustained march rate of nearly 3.5 miles an hour. It also meant that the Arab irregular had the operational range of more than a thousand miles, sufficient to cast a threatening net over the entire Arabian Peninsula-and beyond. Even Lawrence had ridden 1,500 miles in a month without resupply.

Having rejected the necessity to defeat the Turk through decisive battle, Lawrence was able to dispense with the need for maintaining dense, vulnerable field formations that characterized the force structure of conventional armies. The primary maneuver formation that Lawrence exclusively employed was the raiding party, whereas the Turk used the division. Lawrence's aim was to achieve "maximum articulation" of the Arab forces. If his strategic purpose was to expand into the vacant reaches of the Arabian Peninsula, then it only made sense that Lawrence employ clouds of raiders to occupy that vast territory. This approach, however, exploited the innate independence of the Arab irregular, and no one understood this better than Lawrence.