ARAB LEGION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 July 1939, Page 3

ARAB LEGION

WORLD’S STRANGEST POLICE FORCE ENGLISHMAN’S ICE-COLD NERVE. SAVED FROM ASSASSINATION. Strangest police force in the world — the Arab Legion which keeps watch and ward over the deserts of Transjordan—recently farewell ed its foun der. “Peake Pasha,’’ who has resigned and is exchanging a life of desert thrill and adventure for the peace of the Scottish Lowlands. He has just returned to Britain. Throughout the Near East “Peake Pasha’’ —Colonel Frederick Gerard Peake —has been regarded as the Second Lawrence of Arabia. Among the desert tribesmen he has been a legendary figure. Probably no Englishman living knows the»Arab mind better or has been held in higher esteem. Around desert camp fires a thousand legends are told about him and his exploits; of his shrewdness and his icecold nerve; of his laughing blue eyes which miss nothing; of his Solomon - like wisdom and fairness to all men. Peake, now 52, stands 6ft, is lean and lithe, with a grizzled moustache and a face tanned deeply by more than half a lifetime spent under hot desert suns. RODE WITH LAWRENCE.. He has always been an Army man his father was one before him. When the war broke out he was serving as an officer with the Egyptian Army, but he soon joined in one of the greatest adventures of the Great War or any other war. He rode with Lawrence of Arabia, and played a part that has yet to be recorded in amazing epics of desert fighting. It was a couple of years after the war that he formed “the world’s most amazing police force.’’ Emir Abdullah had been made ruler of Transjordan, a land of desert and mountains, preyed upon by many marauding bands of warlike Bedouins. Attacks on peaceful caravans were only half the trouble. There were incessant tribal fights. There was smuggling, both of guns and of drugs. “Peake Pasha,” more or less at a loose end in the Middle East, had a way to deal with these troubles, and he put forward his plan to form a special police force —the Arab Legion. He was told to go ahead. And never was a police force formed and outfitted in queerer circumstances. There were practically no funds, but that did not deter Peake. He started with a nucleus of Arab ex-officers who had been through the desert war with Feisul and, like himself, were now at a loose end. Then he speedilv recruited others who had seen desert action and understood the meaning of discipline. Those first Legionaries were a mixed crowd, including Cfrcassians, Kurds, and Turks. Some fortunately had their own mounts, and the others were somehow fitted out with camels or horses. Coming across an old stock -of khaki and red uniforms, Peake put his men into them. Then he solved in typical fashion the problem of arming these desert policemen. He heard there was; a store of old swords in the Citadel at Cairo. They had been there for generations, and legend had it that they had been left by Napoleon. These swords were just what Peake wanted. Going prepared to bargain, to his delight he obtained them for nothing—two truck loads.' He carried them back to his desert headquarters —two rooms in a little wayside inn in triumph. But he wanted rifles as well. Luck was with him again. He unearthed a discarded store of captured German Mausers. And there was his Arab Legion, uniformed, mounted and armed. It was small to start with, but under its founder’s drive and magnetic personality it speedily became mightily efficient. It rode into the desert, and rounded up bad men of all sorts without fear or favour, and its deeds began to be told about. Today the force numbers about 1400 picked and seasoned men, among them 400 crack horsemen. There is an armoured car section, and one of the smartest camel corps in existence. Wherever the Arab Legion's uniform appears there is peace and observance of the law. Some idea of the moral force uniform wields may be gained from an incident which occurred some time ago. “KILL! KILL!” A patrol, consisting of a sergeant and three men, went off in search of a little group of badly-wanted criminals reported to have taken refuge with a band of wandering Bedouins a thou-, sand strong. Coming up with the band late one afternoon, the sergeant said at once what he wanted, and without hesitation he and his men singled out and handcuffed the criminals they were after. The Arabs, who in other circumstances might have resisted fiercely, looked on admiringly. As the patrol set out with their prisoners, the nomads’ leader requested gravely that his salutations might be conveyed to “Peake Pasha.” Of Peake himself the story is told how, when out alone in the desert one day, he saw a cloud of dust approaching, and quickly found himself surrounded by a band of 300 hostile Bedouins who had slipped across the frontier from Syria. They knew Peake, and neither liked nor feared him. The cry. “Kill, kill!” arose, and it seemed that Peake, pulled from horse, was lost. One towering Arab, swearing that his brothers’ death lay at the Englishman’s door, levelled a long-barrelled rifle at his chest, and had his finger on the trigger when he chanced to look into the Englishman’s blue eyes. To his amazement they were sparkling happily. Then, with death staring him in the face, Peake cracked a joke in the language of the desert. It was a good joke. Smiles spread from face to face and soon the smiles gave way to roars of laughter. The man with the rifle laughed loudest of all. He was in earnest when he expressed the hope that Peake would overlook the “unfortunate misunderstanding.” Peake, who was entirely unarmed--he never carries any weapon other than a slight cane—rode out of the band with an escort pressed upon him “for safety" and knowing he had made 300 new friends. Two years ago Peake married a Border society girl—Miss Elspeth Ritchie, of St Boswells, Roxburghshire. They have been living in the desert outpost of Amman, where the blonde Scots girl

became known as “Queen of the Dfesert.” Now they have said good-bye to the adventurous life of the desert. Colonel and Mrs Peake are to live at St Boswe^s - _____