“This, after all,” wrote Colonel Stirling, “was the main justification of our existence and of the money and time we had spent on the Arab Revolt. The raid itself was really very dramatic in that we started out, a small regular force of Arabs 400 strong and marched 600 miles in 23 days through unmapped Arabia and came in out of the blue—miles behind the Turkish main armies, and as an absolute surprise. Two days before the British advance in Palestine began we had cut three lines of railways and for five days allowed no trains to get through to the Turkish armies. The result was that when their retreat commenced they found all their advance food depots and ammunition dumps were exhausted. During these days we of course led a somewhat precarious existence, generally shifting camp twice in a night to avoid being surprised. We were only a very weak force then, you see, though by the time we got on and rushed Damascus, something like 11,000 mounted Arabs had joined us.”
Some of the Arab horsemen rode right on that evening into Damascus, where the burning ammunition-dumps turned night into day. Back at Kiswe, just a few miles south of Damascus, and not far from where Saul of Tarsus was dazzled by the light that transformed him into Paul the interpreter of Christianity, the glare of the fires from Damascus and the roar and reverberation of explosions kept Lawrence awake most of the night. He was completely worn out. From September 13 to 30, he had caught only occasional snatches of sleep. Mounted on a racing-camel or dashing about the country on an Arab steed, riding inside the turret of an armored car or flying about in one of the fighting planes, he had led the relentless existence demanded of him in this great emergency of the war. Now the end of the war was in sight in the Land of the Arabian Nights. But sleep was difficult because all night long the Turks and Germans were blowing up their ammunition-dumps eight miles north in Damascus. With each explosion the earth shook, the sky went white, and splashes of red tore great gaps in the night as shells went off in the air. “They are burning Damascus,” Lawrence remarked to Stirling. Then he rolled over in the sand and fell asleep.