Scenes of Unspeakable Violence,

Women and Children Unspared.

Massacre Begets Massacre.

Special to The Great War Project

(8 October) Horrible developments these days a century ago in the Middle East.

In the last days of September a century ago, scenes of horrific violence.

The British General Edmund Allenby is leading his cavalry forces out of  Palestine, across the Golan Heights, into Syria, “Turkish and German forces murdered several hundred Arab women and children,” according to historian Martin Gilbert, “in an act of cruel defiance for the successful harassment by the forces of the Arab Revolt.”

“On the following day,” reports Gilbert, “September 28^th at Dera’a in central Syria, where thousands of Bedouin had joined the Arab forces, wounded Turkish soldiers and prisoners were murdered as a reprisal, arousing violent anti-Arab feeling.”

Indian troops fighting under the British entered the town while the massacres were taking place.

According to historian Gilbert, “Arabs murdered in cold blood every Turk they came across,” was the brief note in the 4^th Cavalry Division’s summary of events.”

Slowly the real details of the massacre emerge.

The scenes are in the village of Tafas. British soldiers reach the village and discover the violence, still fresh.

“Everywhere were bodies,” reports historian Scott Anderson. “many hideously mutilated, girls and women obviously raped before being killed.”

Among the British soldiers who arrive in Tafas is the British officer and leader of the Arab Revolt, T.E. Lawrence. “In particular,” reported Lawrence, “he was to remember the sight of a naked pregnant woman.”

The details are too gruesome to report.

Not surprisingly, Arab leaders who come from Tafas are with the British and are shocked by the scenes of horror. One, the headman from Tafas, at the sight of his ruined village, “gave a horrible cry,” reports Lawrence, “wrapped his head cloth about his face, put spurs to his horse, and galloped at full speed into the midst of the retiring Turkish column and fell, his self and his mare, riddled with machine gun bullets among their lance points.”

Lawrence “instructs his lieutenants to take no prisoners.”

“The best of you brings me the most Turkish dead.”

Massacre begets massacre, and it’s not clear where the cycles of killing will stop.

“What ensued over that long day of September 27^th,” reports historian Anderson, “was a merciless and one-sided slaughter. “Quite quickly, the attacking Arabs separated the fleeing Turkish column of two-thousand into three isolated sections, then set to annihilating them one by one. Any Turkish or German who fell out wounded or tried to surrender was swiftly cut down.”

“Soon the pursuing Arabs were joined by villagers along the way, eager to strike against their oppressors of the past four years.”

Writes Lawrence just days after the massacres: “Then we turned our Hotchkiss [machine gun] on the prisoners that were taken, and made an end of them.”