GLUBB THE IRREPLACEABLE
General Sir John Bagot Glubb, desert soldier, who died last week
TO ANY Briton with a deep and long- standing association with the Middle East and the Arab world in general (and there are still a good many of us around) the scene without Glubb is difficult to take in. When he died last week aged 88 he had been away from the centre of the stage for 30 years but to those who knew him, and something of the significance of the part he played, his withdrawal into the wings had always left an incompleteness, a hole that could never be filled. He was a great man and like all great men unique, a shy and sensitive person who communicated little of himself but bound others to him by the power of a selfless example and deep dedication to a chosen end.
I reflect on how I came to know him, starting off with that interest in Arab affairs which has long been so striking a feature of the British outlook, and which in my generation was so often triggered off by fascination with the career of T. E. Lawr- ence. As a schoolboy in Australia Revolt in the Desert was the first book I ever read straight through twice, though it would be several years before I was able, in Cairo, to get hold of the Seven Pillars. I was then completing an Oxford research thesis on a campaign of Saladin, while serving in the Cairo Cavalry Brigade, and beginning to learn Arabic. Palestine troubles in 1936 drew my regiment from Cairo into the Geza-Beersheba area where, as a local intelligence officer, I first began to hear about Glubb. The following year I was accepted for a four-year secondment to the Transjordan Frontier Force, the imperial force of largely Arab troops under British officers responsible for the security of what was soon to become the Emirate of Trans- jordan, its internal policing being the task of the Arab Legion under Peake Pasha.
Glubb, whom I first met in 1937, had not found soldiering in the peacetime Royal Engineers greatly to his taste after a war in which he had been wounded three times and awarded the MC. He therefore found his way to Iraq, then in a state of unrest, and began his apprenticeship to the Arabic language and the desert way of life. In 1926 he resigned his commission in the British Army and joined the mandatory adminis- tration in Iraq where he stayed for three years, achieving notable successes in the control, without fighting, of Bedouin raid- ing out of the Hejaz. He used to regard those years as some of the happiest and most productive of his life. They also brought him some depth of experience with desert Arabs, which was to be further deepened when he joined the administra- tion of Transjordan in 1930.
Serving under Peake Pasha (whom he was to succeed in command of the Arab Legion in 1939), Glubb brought about the removal of responsibility for desert secur- ity from the Transjordan Frontier Force (who then lost their camels) and their replacement by the Desert Patrols of the Arab Legion, the Badieh, who with their long hair in ringlets, flowing garments and Arab head-dresses (which as a matter of fact in summer the TJFF wore too) were known by irreverent Britons as `Glubb's girls'. Glubb's prestige among desert Arabs (to whom he was known from a facial war wound as Abu Huneik, 'the Father of a Little Jaw') was high and growing. Men of some consequence in tribal affairs would send their sons to serve under him, rather as mediaeval potentates would further the education of offspring by a term of service as a page in another noble household.
I used to see something of him in those days, full of admiration for his command of Arabic, for his intimate knowledge of Arab history and culture and for his deep under- standing of the Bedouin way of life. He was a gentle and charming person, always a little withdrawn, with a strength of will quite surprising to those who made the mistake of underestimating someone whose physical presence was scarcely im- posing. We were both involved in the allied invasion of Syria in 1941, Glubb and his `girls' having already had a dart into Iraq during the rebellion a few months earlier. Wounded in that campaign, I was soon to go off to the Western Desert to rejoin my own regiment and did not see Glubb again until I went back in 1947 to command the Transjordan Frontier Force and, sadly, to disband it on the surrender of the mandate in the following year.
We remained in touch, with Glubb now commanding a greatly expanded force in what was rapidly becoming the Jordan army. I marvelled at how he managed. In the years following the British withdrawal, particularly in the confrontation with Israel and the troubles in 1955 over Jordan's adherence to the Baghdad pact, he was trying to achieve, it seemed to me, the impossible. He was at one and the same time acting as minister of defence, chief of the general staff and commander-in-chief in the field. He was also true to Bedouin practice in being personally accessible to any petitioner. It was an intolerable load and after King Abdullah was assassinated in 1951, and Sir Alec Kirkbride, High Commissioner and then Minister, was moved elsewhere from Amman in the same year, his position was weakened. There is no doubt that much has still to be said and written about his relations with the young King who, at 19 years of age, could easily have chafed at the magnitude of the influence wielded by this aging Englishman. There were also political per- sonalities in Amman who would have the King's ear and may also have contributed advice not wholly in Glubb's favour. The abruptness with which the pilot was drop- ped and his summary expulsion in 1956 may have owed something to rumours reported to have been rife in Bedouin regiments, that something of the sort was imminent, and to the danger of action on their part to prevent it. Hence, it was `It's all right Vicar, I'm not divorced. 1 murdered my wife.' thought, his removal in swift hugger- mugger at a few hours' notice to leave. Glubb kept his own thoughts about all these matters to himself. He always re- mained devoted to Arab interests and in particular to those of the Hashemite King- dom. This was a good and faithful servant. What is not easy to explain is the attitude of HMG to the position of the man who had long been Britain's most influential representative in the Arab Middle East. On his return to England he was given a KCB and then ignored. He was never used and never even, as far as I know, asked for advice. The policy in the Middle East of the United States was not at that time running on a course at all favourable to Britain. Its increasingly hard pro-Zionist and anti-Arab line, and the dominance of oil interests over politics in the area, combined to set up differences in which it may not have seemed wholly tactful to make a public exhibition of approval of Glubb Pasha. He was after all, notwith- standing any other interests, an English- man devoted to his country and dedicated to the pursuit of her advantage. He was, in fact, an imperialist of an early and admir- able school, and there will never be another like him.
He was a very good professional soldier and, with Arabs, knew exactly how to avoid exposing them to what they did less well (like standing up to continuous shell- fire) and exploiting, in the use of their mobility for example, what they did best- Like many other outstanding soldiers he was also devoutly religious. Towards the end of a literary career of some distinction, in which his extensive writing on Arab culture and Arab history is outstanding, he was also exploring the Christian condition and writing of what he found. Like marl good fighting men he was essentially a sensitive and compassionate person and a man of peace. It has been impossible to escape com- parison between Glubb Pasha and T. E: Lawrence. Starting out in early youth under the spell of the latter, I was myself to discover in later years that Glubb was la several ways much more what Lawrence was made out to be than Lawrence was himself. He was a far better Arabist, for example, an object of envy and admiration to those of us who plodded along behind' He had not Lawrence's immense erudition and certainly paraded what he had (which was very considerable) with less ostenta- tion. He was without any doubt a better handler of Bedu than Lawrence ever was. Glubb was also almost certainly the better man, modest, devout and unassuming, hiding a powerful will behind a gentle appearance. There is room for both in rite, Pantheon. As we have now moved out °AI the time-frame in which such men caul' still exist we shall not see the like of either again. Scar tissue may grow over the hole left by the departure of John Bagot Glubb. The gap will never be filled.
Previous page
