Lawrence had used Aqaba as a base for repeated attacks on the Hejaz railway until the winter, when there was a lull in the fighting. Allenby’s progress towards Damascus was delayed, too, as two of his divisions (around 25,000 men) were redeployed to the Western Front. In the spring, when the drive to Damascus finally began, the policy towards the railway changed. It was imperative to cut off the line up from the Hejaz so that the Turks could not use it to bring reinforcements from Madinah against Allenby’s forces. Consequently, Lawrence’s group attacked the railway in various places, having developed a more sophisticated type of mine inappropriately called “tulip”. This was a much smaller charge, a mere 2lb of dynamite compared with the 40lb or 50lb ones used previously, and involved placing the charge underneath the sleepers, which would blow the metal upwards “into a tulip-like shape without breaking; by doing so it distored the two rails to which its ends were attached”, which was impossible to repair and consequently forced the Turks to replace the whole section of track. In early April 1918, the last train between Madinah and Damascus made it through but after that the line was blocked by successive attacks which left more Turkish troops stuck in the Hejaz protecting a line that was now of no strategic use than were facing Allenby in Palestine. In the decisvie attack at Tel Shahm, led by General Dawnay, Lawrence showed his regard for the railway by claiming the station bell, a fine piece of Damascus brass work: “the next man took the ticket punch and the third the office stamp, while the bewildered Turks stared at us with a growing indignation that their importance should be merely secondary”. The Turks had clearly never met any British trainspotters with their obsession for railway memorabilia.
Christian Wolmar, Engines of War: How Wars Were Won & Lost on the Railways, 2010.
