Posted on Jul 6, 2020
The Taking of Akaba - 1917 - T.E. Lawrence, Auda abu Tayi, Prince Feisal, Port of Aqaba
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On July 6, 1917, Arabs advised by T. E. Lawrence captured the port of Aqaba from Turks. From the article:
"Captain Thomas Edward Lawrence of the British Military Intelligence Department brought an unusual background to his meetings with Prince Feisal in Arabia: He was an Oxford-trained archeologist who had lived and worked in Arab lands and spoke some Arabic. Some accounts claim that Lawrence brought a bold plan to those meetings: He proposed that a troop of Arabs make their way across the desert and attack Akaba — a port on a gulf of the Red Sea, now part of Jordan — from the land side, not the heavily fortified sea side. A victory would allow the British to ship supplies to the Arab forces and put added pressure on their joint enemy in the region during World War I: the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Arabs were fighting for their freedom from the Turks. The British, mired in this brutal and mostly stalemated world war, were struggling to defeat the Turks and their German and Austrian allies.
Feisal and Lawrence agreed on a desert attack plan. On May 9, 1917, a small band of 50 Arabs left Feisal’s headquarters in Wejh on the Arabian Peninsula. They were led by Auda abu Tayi of the Howeitat tribe, by the Sherif Nasir of Syria and by Lawrence, who was wearing Arab robes, riding a camel and carrying 22,000 British gold sovereigns. Lawrence was the only representative of Britain on this journey. Indeed, by his account, his superiors had not approved his plan.
This Arab army dashed from well to well across some extraordinarily inhospitable territory, stopping occasionally to blow up Turkish railroad tracks or create diversions to confuse the Turks about their ultimate objective. With the help of the British gold, Auda abu Tayi drew fighters from tribes along the way. Approaching Akaba after almost eight weeks in the desert, the band — riding dozens of horses and hundreds of camels — was now more than 500 strong.
The crucial battle was fought on July 2 against a couple of hundred outnumbered and terrified Turkish soldiers at an outpost outside of Akaba, Aba el Lissan. The Arabs had surrounded them and were firing down from the hills — ineffectually. The day was even hotter than usual. An exhausted and discouraged Lawrence, by his own account, lay down to lap up some drops of water from a tiny, muddy stream — either suffering from or feigning heat exhaustion. When Auda came by to scold him, Lawrence sneered that Auda’s warriors “shoot a lot and hit a little.”
That insult, Lawrence explains, inspired Auda abu Tayi and his men to mount their horses and charge down upon the Turks. The Arabs with camels — Lawrence among them — quickly joined in, firing their guns as they galloped. In the charge down the hills, Lawrence felt himself being thrown from the saddle. When he got up, he realized that he had mistakenly shot his own camel in the back of the head. But the Turks had been defeated — killed or, too rarely for Lawrence, taken prisoner.
“On occasions like this Death justified himself and was cheap.”
—T.E. Lawrence
Enlarge
Image: 8 Akaba
T.E. Lawrence, mounted on his camel at Akaba.
The Turks in Akaba soon surrendered and the Arab army rode in and in Lawrence’s words “splashed into the sea” on July 6, 1917. With thousands of mouths to feed and no food, Lawrence realized that he had to move swiftly. Without hesitating, Lawrence then traveled by camel an additional 150 miles across the Sinai desert to bring word of the Arabs’ — and his — triumph to the British in Eygpt, and gain supplies and pay for the Arab forces."
"Captain Thomas Edward Lawrence of the British Military Intelligence Department brought an unusual background to his meetings with Prince Feisal in Arabia: He was an Oxford-trained archeologist who had lived and worked in Arab lands and spoke some Arabic. Some accounts claim that Lawrence brought a bold plan to those meetings: He proposed that a troop of Arabs make their way across the desert and attack Akaba — a port on a gulf of the Red Sea, now part of Jordan — from the land side, not the heavily fortified sea side. A victory would allow the British to ship supplies to the Arab forces and put added pressure on their joint enemy in the region during World War I: the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Arabs were fighting for their freedom from the Turks. The British, mired in this brutal and mostly stalemated world war, were struggling to defeat the Turks and their German and Austrian allies.
Feisal and Lawrence agreed on a desert attack plan. On May 9, 1917, a small band of 50 Arabs left Feisal’s headquarters in Wejh on the Arabian Peninsula. They were led by Auda abu Tayi of the Howeitat tribe, by the Sherif Nasir of Syria and by Lawrence, who was wearing Arab robes, riding a camel and carrying 22,000 British gold sovereigns. Lawrence was the only representative of Britain on this journey. Indeed, by his account, his superiors had not approved his plan.
This Arab army dashed from well to well across some extraordinarily inhospitable territory, stopping occasionally to blow up Turkish railroad tracks or create diversions to confuse the Turks about their ultimate objective. With the help of the British gold, Auda abu Tayi drew fighters from tribes along the way. Approaching Akaba after almost eight weeks in the desert, the band — riding dozens of horses and hundreds of camels — was now more than 500 strong.
The crucial battle was fought on July 2 against a couple of hundred outnumbered and terrified Turkish soldiers at an outpost outside of Akaba, Aba el Lissan. The Arabs had surrounded them and were firing down from the hills — ineffectually. The day was even hotter than usual. An exhausted and discouraged Lawrence, by his own account, lay down to lap up some drops of water from a tiny, muddy stream — either suffering from or feigning heat exhaustion. When Auda came by to scold him, Lawrence sneered that Auda’s warriors “shoot a lot and hit a little.”
That insult, Lawrence explains, inspired Auda abu Tayi and his men to mount their horses and charge down upon the Turks. The Arabs with camels — Lawrence among them — quickly joined in, firing their guns as they galloped. In the charge down the hills, Lawrence felt himself being thrown from the saddle. When he got up, he realized that he had mistakenly shot his own camel in the back of the head. But the Turks had been defeated — killed or, too rarely for Lawrence, taken prisoner.
“On occasions like this Death justified himself and was cheap.”
—T.E. Lawrence
Enlarge
Image: 8 Akaba
T.E. Lawrence, mounted on his camel at Akaba.
The Turks in Akaba soon surrendered and the Arab army rode in and in Lawrence’s words “splashed into the sea” on July 6, 1917. With thousands of mouths to feed and no food, Lawrence realized that he had to move swiftly. Without hesitating, Lawrence then traveled by camel an additional 150 miles across the Sinai desert to bring word of the Arabs’ — and his — triumph to the British in Eygpt, and gain supplies and pay for the Arab forces."
The Taking of Akaba - 1917 - T.E. Lawrence, Auda abu Tayi, Prince Feisal, Port of Aqaba
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LAWRENCE OF ARABIA 1920s NEWSREEL by LOWELL THOMAS WORLD WAR ONE DESERT CAMPAIGN 34694
This silent newsreel was released by Kodak as part of their Kodascope Library in 1927. The contents were shot by veteran journalist Lowell Thomas, who report...
Thank you, my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on July 6, 1917, Arabs advised by Captain Thomas Edward Lawrence captured the port of Aqaba from Turks.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA 1920s NEWSREEL by LOWELL THOMAS WORLD WAR ONE DESERT CAMPAIGN 34694
"This silent newsreel was released by Kodak as part of their Kodascope Library in 1927. The contents were shot by veteran journalist Lowell Thomas, who reported from Egypt during WWI and helped Lawrence of Arabia come to international acclaim. At :17, Port Sudan (on the Red Sea) is shown where supplies for Lawrence are being loaded. At :40 are shots aboard a transport ship bound for the front, where bearers bathe and eat. At 1:20 the ship is unloaded at the Arabian coast. At 1:52, a panoramic shot shows a large cargo ship off the coast as men on horseback speed away. At 1:58, Colonel T.E. Lawrence and Emir Feisal are seen in the "Royal Limo", a small truck which might be a Ford. At 2:15, Lawrence's unit makes an assault on a railway line using armored cars. At 2:29 Emir Feisal is seen posing in front of his tent and at 2:35 Lawrence's army of irregulars is seen. At 3:12 the regular Arab army is seen. At 3:20 they move up to battle.
At 3:50, a second film "With Allenby in Palestine" is shown. This silent newsreel was released by Kodak as part of their Kodascope Library in 1927. The contents were shot by veteran journalist Lowell Thomas, who reported from Egypt during WWI and helped Lawrence of Arabia come to international acclaim. At 3:54 a title card proclaims that "Allenby's army, made up of seventeen nationalities, marched from Egypt to Palestine." A view of the Black Watch is shown. At 4:13 the Australian Camel Corps. is shown. At 4:36 Gaza is bombarded by artillery and at 4:49, mortars. This is probably during the Third Battle of Gaza (31 October – 7 November 1917) in which Allenby won by surprising the defenders with an attack at Beersheba. At 5:15 Jaffa is shown after capture, and at 5:20 supply trucks advance on the road to Jerusalem from Jaffa. At 5:46 local women move water to aid the troops, horses and camels. At 6:03, the infantry is shown advancing up Nabi Samwill, the Turkish stronghold where Samuel was buried. At 6:31 the film proclaims that the "First Christian soldier on guard over Jerusalem" as a sentry arrives to the Mount of Olives. At 6:45, the Duke of Connaught decorates Allenby and his officers after the capture of Jerusalem in December of 1917.
Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, GCB, GCMG, GCVO (23 April 1861 – 14 May 1936) was an English soldier and British Imperial Governor. He fought in the Second Boer War and also in the First World War, in which he led the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the conquest of Palestine.
The British succeeded in capturing Beersheba, Jaffa, and Jerusalem from October to December 1917. His forces occupied the Jordan Valley during the summer of 1918, then went on to capture northern Palestine and defeat the Ottoman Yildirim Army Group's Eighth Army at the Battle of Megiddo, forcing the Fourth and Seventh Army to retreat towards Damascus. Subsequently, the EEF Pursuit by Desert Mounted Corps captured Damascus and advanced into northern Syria.
During this pursuit, he commanded T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), whose campaign with Faisal's Arab Sherifial Forces assisted the EEF's capture of Ottoman Empire territory and fought the Battle of Aleppo, five days before the Armistice of Mudros ended the campaign on 30 October 1918. He continued to serve in the region as High Commissioner for Egypt and Sudan from 1919 until 1925."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussAz7VUxts
Images:
1. T.E. Lawrence, Prince Feisal and others pose after taking Aqaba. July 1917
2. Emir Faisal; Lt. Colonel T.E. Lawrence - early 1918
3. Thomas Edward (of Arabia) Lawrence riding a camel
4. The Arabian Commission to the [1919 Paris] eace Conference and its advisors. In front, Emir Feisal with, from left to right, Mohanned Rustum Bey Haidar of Baalbek, Brigadier General Nuri Pasha Said, Captain Pisani, T.E. Lawrence and Capt. Hassan Bey Kadri
Biographies:
1. spartacus-educational.com/IRQlawrence.htm
2. biographyonline.net/military/t-e-lawrence.html
1. Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/IRQlawrence.htm]}
Thomas Edward Lawrence, the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Chapman (1846–1919), an Anglo-Irish baronet, was born in Tremadoc, Wales on 16th August, 1888. His mother, Sarah Junner (1861–1959), was Chapman's mistress and they assumed the name Lawrence after giving birth to their first child, Robert in 1885.
According to Lawrence James: "Thomas Chapman of South Hill, near Delvin, co. Westmeath, was already married when he began his liaison with Sarah Junner, who was governess to his four daughters. After making a financial settlement on his first family he and Sarah began a peripatetic existence, living successively at Tremadoc, Kirkcudbright, Dinard in Brittany, Langley in Hampshire, and Oxford, where they settled at 2 Polstead Road in 1896. In later years Lawrence liked to present himself as a child brought up in straitened circumstances and engaged in intermittent tussles with his mother. These rows reached such a pitch that he ran away and enlisted in 1905, or so he claimed. No record of his army service or of his father's buying him out has been discovered."
His mother later recalled: "He was a big, strong, active child; constantly on the move. He would pull himself up over the nursery gate some months before he could walk....He was never idle - brass-rubbing, wood-carving, putting old pottery together, etc... He was a most loving son and brother, kind and unselfish, always doing kind deeds in a quiet way; everything that was beautiful in nature or art appealed to him."
It has been claimed that Thomas (Ned to the family) was a "wilful child" who often clashed with his mother. At the age of about ten, he uncovered the truth of his parents' relationship and his own and his brothers' illegitimacy. The conflict with his parents was partly resolved by his father agreeing to build Thomas a well-provided bungalow at the bottom of the garden in 1908. Here he spent his time reading and eventually gained a Meyricke Exhibition to read modern history at Jesus College.
Lawrence was always a fairly small man, just over 5 feet 5 inches tall when he arrived at the University of Cambridge, and liked to boast, that rigorous exercise had turned him into a pocket Hercules. He was a good distance runner, but disliked team games. He became close to the writer, Leonard M. Green. He later recalled: "We decided that we would buy a windmill on a headland that was washed by sea. We would set up a printing press in the lowest storey and live over our shop."
Vyvyan Warren Richards, a fellow undergraduate, fell in love with Lawrence. in his book, Portrait of T.E. Lawrence (1936), Richards wrote: "He had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind; he just did not understand. He received my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, eventually my total subservience, as though it was his due. He never gave the slightest sign that he understood my motives or fathomed my desire... I realize now that he was sexless - at least that he was unaware of sex."
In the summers of 1907 and 1908 his father provided the money for him to undertake extended bicycle tours of France in search of castles. The following year he visited Lebanon and Syria. This research into castles provided the basis of a BA dissertation which substantially contributed to his first-class degree in July 1910. His biographer, Lawrence James, points out: "During all his excursions he wrote home regularly with vivid impressions of what he had seen. These letters are not only evidence of his powers of description, but of the warm affection which existed within his family. Past tensions had evaporated, not least because Lawrence had secured the freedom to live on his own terms and pursue his own interests."
On his return to England he began making plans to establish a publishing business with Vyvyan Warren Richards. His biographer, Desmond Stewart has argued: "Lawrence, for once, sees himself as a businessman. While Richards will have contributed energy, inspiration and design, Lawrence will have put up the capital." Lawrence wrote to his parents: We both feel (at present) that printing is the best thing we can do, if we do it the best we can. That means though (as it is an art), that it will be done only when we feel inclined. Very likely sometimes for long periods I will not touch a press at all. Richards, whose other interests are less militant, will probably do the bulk of the work."
In 1911 Lawrence was recruited by David G. Hogarth of Ashmolean Museum, to join an archaeological expedition led by Sir William Finders Petrie at Carchemish, on the Euphrates. Sir Frederic George Kenyon, the director of the British Museum, wrote that Lawrence was selected because he was "an Arabic scholar, acquainted with the country and an expert on the subject of pottery". As the dig was closed down during the summer months he used this time to explore the area. It also gave him the opportunity to learn to speak numerous Arab dialects.
Lawrence worked on the archaeological site until early 1914. His biographer, Lawrence James, argues: "As well as supervising the uncovering and cataloguing of Hittite artefacts Lawrence became immersed in the life of a turbulent region. According to his letters home he acted as a sort of consul, arbitrating disputes among Arabs and Kurds and threw himself into their intermittent squabbles with German engineers, then supervising the construction of the Berlin to Baghdad railway. As well as playing the Hentyesque Englishman, Lawrence cultivated an intimate friendship with an Arab youth, Dahoum, whose natural intelligence impressed him and qualified him for tutelage. Lawrence's enchantment with Dahoum helped convince him of the Arabs' capacity for regeneration, but on their own terms and without repudiating their traditions and culture. What he had seen in Lebanon made Lawrence hostile towards those Arabs who looked to the West for salvation and absorbed European, particularly French, values. Likewise, he despised the far-reaching modernizing projects of the Young Turks, who then controlled the Ottoman empire."
During this period he became infatuated with a 14 year old boy, Selim Ahmed (Dahoum). He decided to teach the boy to read and write: "He is beginning to use his reason as well as his instinct: He taught himself to read a little, so I had very exceptional material to work on but I cannot do much with a piece of stick and scrap of dusty ground as materials. I am going to ask Miss Fareedah for a few simple books, amusing, for him to begin on." Leonard Woolley, another member of the team of archaeologists, remembered Dahoum as "not particularly intelligent.... but beautifully built and remarkably handsome." One historian has pointed out: "Lawrence adopted the boy as a semi-permanent companion and trained him up as his archaeological assistant. They went on expeditions together, worked alongside each other, swapped clothes and were rarely apart.... in 1913 and Dahoum moved in with him."
In July 1913 Lawrence brought Dahoum back to Oxford where the two men stayed at the house in the back of the garden. They visited London where Lawrence showed Dahoum the underground railway before travelling back via the Netherlands, Austria and Alexandria. They were back in Aleppo by 24th August. Soon afterwards he carved a naked sculpture of Dahoum. Desmond Stewart has argued that the work of art proved the epicentre of a local scandal... reared in the Muslim suspicion of all representational art, the villagers took Lawrence's sculpture of a naked youth as proof of a guilty passion."
On the outbreak of the First World War Lawrence was forced to leave Dahoum as custodian to the Carchemish site. In December 1914 Lawrence was recruited by army intelligence in North Africa and worked as a junior officer in Egypt. In October 1916 he was sent to meet important Arab leaders such as Faisal ibn Ali and Nuri es-Said in Jiddah. After negotiations it was agreed to help Lawrence to lead an Arab revolt against the Turkish Army. From November 1916 onwards Lawrence was permanently attached to Feisal's forces as a liaison officer, advising on strategy and supervising among other things the procurement of arms and delivery of Treasury subsidies. Lawrence of Arabia, as he became known, carried out raids on the Damascus-Medina Railway. His men also captured the port of Aqaba in July 1917. Sympathetic to Arab nationalism he helped established local government in captured towns.
In November 1917 Lawrence led a raiding party in southern Syria to harry Turkish communications and to stir up local opposition to France. He was captured in Deraa and identified by a Turkish officer. According to Lawrence he was led to a guard-room, consoled by Turkish soldiers and told he will be released next day "if he fulfils the Bey's pleasures". Lawrence was then taken to the bedroom of Bey (the governor of Hajjim). He has him stripped and has him punished by a Circassian riding whip, described by Lawrence as "a thong of supple black hide, rounded, and tapering from the thickness of a thumb at the grip (which was wrapped in silver) down to a hard point finer than a pencil." Held down by four soldiers, he was then whipped: "At the instant of each stroke a hard white mark like a railway, darkening slowly into crimson, leaped over my skin, and a bead of blood swelled up wherever the ridges crossed... the blows hurt more horribly than I had dreamed of... a delicious warmth, probably sexual, was swelling through me." Lawrence then suffered homosexual rape. He later told Charlotte Shaw: "About that night. I shouldn't tell you, because decent men don't talk about such things. I wanted to put it plain in the book (his autobiography), and wrestled for days with my self-respect... which wouldn't, hasn't let me."
Lawrence claims that the "corporal... the youngest and best looking on the guard had to stay behind while the others carried me down the narrow stairs". The soldier then tells him "that the door into the next room was not locked". In the room hangs a "suit of shoddy clothes". Next morning Lawrence puts them on and escapes back to the British forces. Some biographers, have refused to believe this story. This included Richard Aldington, the author of Lawrence of Arabia: a Biographical Enquiry (1955). According to Lawrence James: "Aldington began his researches with an open mind, but as he trawled through the available sources he found abundant evidence of contradictions, inconsistencies, and fabrications.... Lawrence's defenders insisted that Aldington was not only traducing a national hero, but the values he and his generation had stood for."
By December, 1917 Edmund Allenby and his army had captured Beersheba, Gaza and Jerusalem. The following year the British Army defeated General Otto Liman von Sanders and the Turkish-German Army in Palestine. Lawrence now joined Allenby's forces and entered Damascus on 1st October, 1918.
Lawrence attended Paris Peace Conference with Prince Feisal. He had meetings with Felix Frankfurter. His assistant, Ella Winter, recalled in her autobiography, And Not to Yield (1963): "The young, beautiful Prince Feisal was always followed by his group of tall, imposing, silent Arabs in long white robes and head dress, and by his shadow, Colonel T. E. Lawrence, also in native dress. Lawrence was short and fragile-looking, with a delicate, poetic face, but he appeared as much at home with the desert Bedouins and the prince he seemed so attached to as with European diplomats. Felix was as much intrigued by Lawrence's role in all the Middle Eastern politics as with his romantic appearance."
Lawrence had been converted to the cause of the Arabs and felt they were betrayed by the treaties agreed at the Paris Peace Conference. He was particularly concerned about the decision to give France control over Syria. He later wrote: "We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew."
In 1921 Lawrence joined the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office. He also served as special adviser on Arab affairs to Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary (1921-22). Both men visited the Middle East in an attempt to deal with the growing conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.
After leaving the Colonial Office he changed his name to John Hume Ross and enlisted into the Royal Air Force. After four months reporters from the Daily Express discovered what he had done and he was discharged. In March 1923 he joined the Tank Corps as Private Thomas Shaw. Lawrence became sexually involved with John Bruce. He later told the authors of The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (1969) that Lawrence paid him a regular retainer of £3 a week to birch him on his bare buttocks.
Lawrence served until he was dismissed from the service in 1925. This was partly because he had developed a relationship with a young soldier, R.A.M. Guy, who was described as being "beautiful, like a Greek god." According to Desmond Stewart, the author of T. E. Lawrence (1979), Lawrence dismissed because he was about to be exposed as being involved in a sexual scandal: "Lawrence had unwisely attended flagellation parties in Chelsea conducted by an underworld figure known as Bluebeard, and Bluebeard's impending divorce case threatened to release lubricious details concerning Lawrence and one of his aristocratic friends which had already been hinted at in a German scandal-sheet.... Sacrificing caution, he wrote to the Home Secretary asking for the expulsion of Bluebeard and a ban on the German magazine."
Lawrence purchased Clouds Hill in 1924 and began work on his autobiography. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was published privately in 1926. It included illustrations by his friend, Eric Kennington. Later that year he rejoined the RAF and served for two years on the north-west frontier of India. He continued to write and other books by Lawrence include Revolt in the Desert, The Mint and a new translation of Homer's Odyssey.
On 26th February 1935 Lawrence left the RAF. Soon afterwards he was contacted by Henry Williamson, a member of the British Union of Fascists, suggesting a meeting that "might prevent another war". Williamson later recalled that he obtained "Lawrence of Arabia's name to gather a meeting of ex-Service men in the Albert Hall, with his presence and stimulation to cohere into unassailable logic the authentic mind of the war generation come to power of truth and amity, a whirlwind campaign which would end the old fearful thought of Europe (usuary-based) for-ever. So that the sun should shine on free men."
Lawrence held very nationalistic views. He had said of his experiences in the First World War: "I am proudest of my thirty fights in that I did not have any of our own blood shed. All our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead Englishman." E. M. Forster once said that Lawrence "hated war but liked soldiers". Lawrence also expressed racist views about black people in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "Their faces, being clearly different from our own, were tolerable; but it hurt that they should possess exact counterparts of all our bodies."
Lawrence loved riding his motor-bike. George Brough, who manufactured his bikes, described him as: "One of the finest riders I have ever met. In the several runs I took with him, I am able to state with conviction that T.E.L. was most considerate to every other road user. I never saw him take a single risk nor put any other rider or driver to the slightest inconvenience."
On 13th May, he went for a ride on his Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle when he swerved to miss two 14 year-old, cyclists, Frank Fletcher and Albert Hargreaves. Corporal Ernest Catchpole of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, was the first to reach the site of the accident. He later claimed that he was passed by a black motor car just before the crash: "I saw the bike twisting and turning over and over along the road. I saw nothing of the driver (of the black car). I ran to the scene and found the motor-cyclist on the road. His face was covered with blood which I tried to wipe away with my handkerchief". Lawrence never regained consciousness and died on 19th May 1935.
Desmond Stewart has argued: "Bovington Camp reacted to this as something more than an ordinary traffic accident. All ranks were warned that they came under the Official Secrets Act. The boys' fathers were told to keep them silent. Catchpole was cautioned that, since he had not seen the accident, he should not confuse matters by mentioning the black car. Two plain clothes detectives were posted on Lawrence duty: one sat by his bed, while the other rested on a cot outside the door... His brother, Arnold Lawrence, returned from a holiday in Spain to hear reports that officials from the Air Ministry had removed secret papers from Clouds Hill." Arnold Lawrence later told the Dorset Daily Echo that a "special guard" had been sent to Clouds Hill to "protect my brother's valuable books".
Frank Fletcher told a reporter of a local newspaper: "We were riding in single file. I was leading.... I heard the noise of the motorcycle and then the crash.... The man who had gone over the handle bars had landed with his feet about 5 yards in front of the motor cycle which was about five yards ahead of where I fell." According to the newspaper: "The boy said there was no motor car or other vehicle on the road at the time.
After his death rumours circulated that Lawrence had been murdered by foreign agents. Desmond Stewart believes that Catchpole's evidence is of vital importance and that the black car was involved in the death of Lawrence. "If Catchpole was right and the black car existed, the failure of its driver to come forward (the news of the accident was in every newspaper and every news bulletin) suggests that he was involved, either accidentally or deliberately, in Lawrence's crash. Everyone who has ridden a motor cycle knows how easily a sudden swerve can be induced; harmless to the driver of a car, on a narrow road it could be fatal to a cyclist without a helmet."
Another story emerged that the secret service faked his death so as to allow him to undertake, incognito, important work in the Middle East. The supporters of this story believed he died in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1968.
By John Simkin ( [login to see] ) © September 1997 (updated January 2020).
Primary Sources
(1) Sarah Junner Lawrence, T. E. Lawrence by his Friends (1937)
He (T. E. Lawrence) was a big, strong, active child; constantly on the move. He would pull himself up over the nursery gate some months before he could walk....He was never idle - brass-rubbing, wood-carving, putting old pottery together, etc... He was a most loving son and brother, kind and unselfish, always doing kind deeds in a quiet way; everything that was beautiful in nature or art appealed to him.
(2) Vyvyan Warren Richards, Portrait of T.E. Lawrence (1936)
He had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind; he just did not understand. He received my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, eventually my total subservience, as though it was his due. He never gave the slightest sign that he understood my motives or fathomed my desire... I realize now that he was sexless - at least that he was unaware of sex.
(3) T. E. Lawrence, letter to Charlotte Shaw (26th March, 1924)
About that night. I shouldn't tell you, because decent men don't talk about such things. I wanted to put it plain in the book, and wrestled for days with my self-respect... which wouldn't, hasn't let me. For fear of being hurt, or rather, to earn five minutes' respite from a pain which drove me mad, I gave away the only possession we are born into the world with - our bodily integrity... You may call this morbid: but think of the offence, and the intensity of my brooding over it for these years. It will hang about me while I live, and afterwards if our personality survives.
2. Background from {[https://www.biographyonline.net/military/t-e-lawrence.html]}
T.E. Lawrence Biography
T.E. Lawrence gained fame as a British leader of an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War One. A charismatic figure, Lawrence threw himself into Arabic culture to befriend and sympathise with his Arab partners. It was this ability to identify with the Arab peoples which made him a successful military leader in the guerrilla warfare of the 1917 Arab revolt.
His life and adventures have become popularised – most famously in the film starring Peter O’Toole – Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
“I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time… We shall never see his like again. His name will live in history. It will live in the annals of war… It will live in the legends of Arabia.”
– Winston Churchill on T.E. Lawrence
Short Biography of T.E.Lawrence
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesoses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.”
– T.E.Lawrence – Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)
Lawrence was born at Gorphwysfa in Tremadog, Caernarfonshire (now Gwynedd), Wales. 16 August 1888.
At an early age, his family moved to Polstead Road, Oxford , where he attended the local Oxford high school for boys. In 1907, he went up to Oxford University, studying at Jesus College.
From an early age, Lawrence was fascinated with the culture of medieval knights and ancient chivalry. He most probably nursed ambitions to follow in the footsteps of these ancient heroes. As a young boy, he loved to travel around English churches, making etchings of notable figures. During his university time, he travelled extensively around France on bicycle; in particular, visiting the Crusader temples and castles which fascinated him.
After graduating with a first class bachelors degree, Lawrence began studying medieval pottery at Magdalen College, but given a chance to become an archaeologist in the Middle East, Lawrence jumped at the opportunity and sailed for Beirut in 1910.
In the Middle East, Lawrence continued his studies of languages; he learnt languages easily and could speak fluently French, German, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkish and Syriac.
Important influences for Lawrence during his time in the Middle East included the Arabist and archaeologist – Gertrude Bell, and D.G. Hogarth of the British Museum in Jerablus.
During his archaeology trips in the Middle East, Lawrence took the opportunity to learn about Arabic culture. But, as well as learning about their culture, he wanted to identify himself with the locals. He took to wearing a native costume and learning the different customs and aspects of local life. His empathy and adoption of local customs helped to bring out the native Arabic friendliness. He often won the loyalty and admiration of locals who he visited on his travels. Lawrence also became aware of the Arab resentment against the occupation of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Ottoman Empire was Islamic, it wasn’t Arabic and the occupation had become increasingly brutal and resented.
When war broke out in 1914, Lawrence had one a unique first-hand knowledge of Arabic culture in the region. This was to prove of vital importance as the Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany, and so became Britain’s enemy.
In 1914, Lawrence helped to map the Negev Desert which might be used by the Ottoman Empire. It was surveyed under a smokescreen of ‘archaeology’ but was actually a purely military exercise.
At the start of the war, Lawrence was posted to Cairo where he worked for British Intelligence in the Middle East.
The Arab Bureau of the Foreign Office was aware that an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire would help the British war effort with minimal cost. In Lawrence, the Foreign Office felt they had the ideal individual to try and unite the various Arabic tribes. Lawrence seemed naturally at home with Arabic culture.
“Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. “
– T.E.Lawrence
The main leader of the Arabs was Emir Faisal, son of Sheriff Hussein of Mecca, whom Lawrence was able to make an alliance. Under Lawrence’s leadership, they began a classic guerrilla campaign – successfully attacking Ottoman supply lines – especially the Hejaz railway running through the desert from Medina.
The troops Lawrence worked with were often a disparate band; it was a complex network of alliances and different tribes. They were also relatively lightly armed, relying on speed and surprise and avoiding full frontal confrontation with a superior enemy. They did prove successful in upsetting the Ottoman army in the region.
In 1917, Lawrence directed an attack on the strategic port of Aqaba. From the rear, the city was lightly defended because the Ottomans didn’t feel it realistic for an army to cross the barren desert. Lawrence initiated the attack without even informing his superiors. Lawrence was given a free hand by his commander General Sir Edmund Allenby. Allenby was full of praise for Lawrence.
“There is no other man I know who could have achieved what Lawrence did. As for taking undue credit for himself, my own personal experience with Lawrence is that he was utterly unconcerned whether any kudos was awarded him or not.”
– Edmund Allenby, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force to Lowell Thomas.
Lawrence led a small force travelling on camel and picking up volunteers along the way. The attack was a great success but, after capturing the city, there was no way to communicate the victory. Lawrence undertook the mission himself and rode all the way back to British Command to tell Allenby in person.
The victory was a major morale boost for the Allies and propelled Lawrence into an important position. He had the confidence of the Arab leader Emir Faisal and also the British. In fact, this dual loyalty to both the British Empire and the Arabs were to prove a testing dilemma for Lawrence.
In 1918, Lawrence was involved in the capture of Damascus in Syria. He helped to install Faisal as King of a provisional Arab government. But, this was to prove short-lived as French forces brought the provisional government to an end in 1920. The British French plan later split up Arabia in two with a line. This later created the states of Syria and Iraq.
Lawrence was appalled at what appeared to be the broken promises of the British. He had worked with the Arab revolt with promises of a free Arab state, but now, the allies seemed to go back on their promise. Using his newly gained fame, Lawrence tried with mixed success to change British policy towards Arab independence. For a time, Lawrence served Winston Churchill in the colonial office.
The new era in Palestine. The arrival at the 1920 Cairo Conference of Sir Herbert Samuel, H.B.M. high commissioner, etc. Col. Lawrence, Emir Abdullah, Air Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond and Sir Wyndham Deedes.
Lawrence’s deeds were popularised by war correspondents such as Lowell Thomas. His story made him a romantic military hero – adopting a foreign culture to lead poorly equipped locals against a much more powerful occupier. However, Lawrence disliked the attention, fame and publicity that the newspapers gave him.
“To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one’s tail.”
Letter (1 April 1935); published in The Letters of T.E. Lawrence (1988), edited by Malcolm Brown.
In 1922, Lawrence enlisted in the RAF under a false name, but after being exposed, he changed his name again before spending time in a remote base in India.
Throughout his life, Lawrence was a prolific writer. These included his famous short works on guerrilla warfare. His Seven Pillars of Wisdom is read even now by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1927, he published Revolt in the Desert to help pay off the debt from Seven Pillars. Lawrence took no income from the sale of the book but put it into a trust run by his friend, D.G.Hogarth. The Revolt in the Desert was a bestseller and earned for Lawrence more unwelcome publicity. He also corresponded to many of the leading intellectuals of the day such as George Bernard Shaw, Robert Graves, and John Buchan.
Lawrence continued serving in the RAF until March 1935, when his term of service ended. Outside of the military and his interests in archaeology and Arabic culture, Lawrence loved motorbikes. He had seven Superior motorcycles and, tragically, his life was cut short in a motorcycle accident aged only 46.
Even after his death, Lawrence managed to have far-reaching consequences. His head injuries were treated by neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns. Cairns was profoundly influenced by the seemingly unnecessary loss of life. He made further research into the use of crash helmets, and through this research, the use of crash helmets for motorcyclists became compulsory saving the lives of many motorcyclists.
Lawrence was buried at Moreton Church, Dorset. His funeral was attended by Winston Churchill. A stone effigy of Lawrence was placed in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Lawrence was awarded the Companion of the Order of the Bath, the DSO. But, in October 1918, refused to be made a Knight Commander of the British Empire. He was always modest about his achievements
“I’ve been & am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen & I’m quite ordinary, & will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I’m one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.”
T.E.Lawrence
Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “Biography of T.E. Lawrence”, Oxford, UK http://www.biographyonline.net, 1st Feb 2010. Last updated 22 February 2018."
FYI MSG Felipe De Leon BrownCW2 James Hughes PO2 (Join to see)GySgt Gary CordeiroSPC Nancy GreeneSSG Franklin Briant1stsgt Glenn Brackin Sgt Kelli Mays Lt Col Charlie Brown Lt Col John (Jack) ChristensenTSgt George Rodriguez SPC Matthew Lamb SSG Chad Henning COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj Robert Thornton SFC (Join to see) SGT Steve McFarland
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA 1920s NEWSREEL by LOWELL THOMAS WORLD WAR ONE DESERT CAMPAIGN 34694
"This silent newsreel was released by Kodak as part of their Kodascope Library in 1927. The contents were shot by veteran journalist Lowell Thomas, who reported from Egypt during WWI and helped Lawrence of Arabia come to international acclaim. At :17, Port Sudan (on the Red Sea) is shown where supplies for Lawrence are being loaded. At :40 are shots aboard a transport ship bound for the front, where bearers bathe and eat. At 1:20 the ship is unloaded at the Arabian coast. At 1:52, a panoramic shot shows a large cargo ship off the coast as men on horseback speed away. At 1:58, Colonel T.E. Lawrence and Emir Feisal are seen in the "Royal Limo", a small truck which might be a Ford. At 2:15, Lawrence's unit makes an assault on a railway line using armored cars. At 2:29 Emir Feisal is seen posing in front of his tent and at 2:35 Lawrence's army of irregulars is seen. At 3:12 the regular Arab army is seen. At 3:20 they move up to battle.
At 3:50, a second film "With Allenby in Palestine" is shown. This silent newsreel was released by Kodak as part of their Kodascope Library in 1927. The contents were shot by veteran journalist Lowell Thomas, who reported from Egypt during WWI and helped Lawrence of Arabia come to international acclaim. At 3:54 a title card proclaims that "Allenby's army, made up of seventeen nationalities, marched from Egypt to Palestine." A view of the Black Watch is shown. At 4:13 the Australian Camel Corps. is shown. At 4:36 Gaza is bombarded by artillery and at 4:49, mortars. This is probably during the Third Battle of Gaza (31 October – 7 November 1917) in which Allenby won by surprising the defenders with an attack at Beersheba. At 5:15 Jaffa is shown after capture, and at 5:20 supply trucks advance on the road to Jerusalem from Jaffa. At 5:46 local women move water to aid the troops, horses and camels. At 6:03, the infantry is shown advancing up Nabi Samwill, the Turkish stronghold where Samuel was buried. At 6:31 the film proclaims that the "First Christian soldier on guard over Jerusalem" as a sentry arrives to the Mount of Olives. At 6:45, the Duke of Connaught decorates Allenby and his officers after the capture of Jerusalem in December of 1917.
Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, GCB, GCMG, GCVO (23 April 1861 – 14 May 1936) was an English soldier and British Imperial Governor. He fought in the Second Boer War and also in the First World War, in which he led the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the conquest of Palestine.
The British succeeded in capturing Beersheba, Jaffa, and Jerusalem from October to December 1917. His forces occupied the Jordan Valley during the summer of 1918, then went on to capture northern Palestine and defeat the Ottoman Yildirim Army Group's Eighth Army at the Battle of Megiddo, forcing the Fourth and Seventh Army to retreat towards Damascus. Subsequently, the EEF Pursuit by Desert Mounted Corps captured Damascus and advanced into northern Syria.
During this pursuit, he commanded T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), whose campaign with Faisal's Arab Sherifial Forces assisted the EEF's capture of Ottoman Empire territory and fought the Battle of Aleppo, five days before the Armistice of Mudros ended the campaign on 30 October 1918. He continued to serve in the region as High Commissioner for Egypt and Sudan from 1919 until 1925."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussAz7VUxts
Images:
1. T.E. Lawrence, Prince Feisal and others pose after taking Aqaba. July 1917
2. Emir Faisal; Lt. Colonel T.E. Lawrence - early 1918
3. Thomas Edward (of Arabia) Lawrence riding a camel
4. The Arabian Commission to the [1919 Paris] eace Conference and its advisors. In front, Emir Feisal with, from left to right, Mohanned Rustum Bey Haidar of Baalbek, Brigadier General Nuri Pasha Said, Captain Pisani, T.E. Lawrence and Capt. Hassan Bey Kadri
Biographies:
1. spartacus-educational.com/IRQlawrence.htm
2. biographyonline.net/military/t-e-lawrence.html
1. Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/IRQlawrence.htm]}
Thomas Edward Lawrence, the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Chapman (1846–1919), an Anglo-Irish baronet, was born in Tremadoc, Wales on 16th August, 1888. His mother, Sarah Junner (1861–1959), was Chapman's mistress and they assumed the name Lawrence after giving birth to their first child, Robert in 1885.
According to Lawrence James: "Thomas Chapman of South Hill, near Delvin, co. Westmeath, was already married when he began his liaison with Sarah Junner, who was governess to his four daughters. After making a financial settlement on his first family he and Sarah began a peripatetic existence, living successively at Tremadoc, Kirkcudbright, Dinard in Brittany, Langley in Hampshire, and Oxford, where they settled at 2 Polstead Road in 1896. In later years Lawrence liked to present himself as a child brought up in straitened circumstances and engaged in intermittent tussles with his mother. These rows reached such a pitch that he ran away and enlisted in 1905, or so he claimed. No record of his army service or of his father's buying him out has been discovered."
His mother later recalled: "He was a big, strong, active child; constantly on the move. He would pull himself up over the nursery gate some months before he could walk....He was never idle - brass-rubbing, wood-carving, putting old pottery together, etc... He was a most loving son and brother, kind and unselfish, always doing kind deeds in a quiet way; everything that was beautiful in nature or art appealed to him."
It has been claimed that Thomas (Ned to the family) was a "wilful child" who often clashed with his mother. At the age of about ten, he uncovered the truth of his parents' relationship and his own and his brothers' illegitimacy. The conflict with his parents was partly resolved by his father agreeing to build Thomas a well-provided bungalow at the bottom of the garden in 1908. Here he spent his time reading and eventually gained a Meyricke Exhibition to read modern history at Jesus College.
Lawrence was always a fairly small man, just over 5 feet 5 inches tall when he arrived at the University of Cambridge, and liked to boast, that rigorous exercise had turned him into a pocket Hercules. He was a good distance runner, but disliked team games. He became close to the writer, Leonard M. Green. He later recalled: "We decided that we would buy a windmill on a headland that was washed by sea. We would set up a printing press in the lowest storey and live over our shop."
Vyvyan Warren Richards, a fellow undergraduate, fell in love with Lawrence. in his book, Portrait of T.E. Lawrence (1936), Richards wrote: "He had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind; he just did not understand. He received my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, eventually my total subservience, as though it was his due. He never gave the slightest sign that he understood my motives or fathomed my desire... I realize now that he was sexless - at least that he was unaware of sex."
In the summers of 1907 and 1908 his father provided the money for him to undertake extended bicycle tours of France in search of castles. The following year he visited Lebanon and Syria. This research into castles provided the basis of a BA dissertation which substantially contributed to his first-class degree in July 1910. His biographer, Lawrence James, points out: "During all his excursions he wrote home regularly with vivid impressions of what he had seen. These letters are not only evidence of his powers of description, but of the warm affection which existed within his family. Past tensions had evaporated, not least because Lawrence had secured the freedom to live on his own terms and pursue his own interests."
On his return to England he began making plans to establish a publishing business with Vyvyan Warren Richards. His biographer, Desmond Stewart has argued: "Lawrence, for once, sees himself as a businessman. While Richards will have contributed energy, inspiration and design, Lawrence will have put up the capital." Lawrence wrote to his parents: We both feel (at present) that printing is the best thing we can do, if we do it the best we can. That means though (as it is an art), that it will be done only when we feel inclined. Very likely sometimes for long periods I will not touch a press at all. Richards, whose other interests are less militant, will probably do the bulk of the work."
In 1911 Lawrence was recruited by David G. Hogarth of Ashmolean Museum, to join an archaeological expedition led by Sir William Finders Petrie at Carchemish, on the Euphrates. Sir Frederic George Kenyon, the director of the British Museum, wrote that Lawrence was selected because he was "an Arabic scholar, acquainted with the country and an expert on the subject of pottery". As the dig was closed down during the summer months he used this time to explore the area. It also gave him the opportunity to learn to speak numerous Arab dialects.
Lawrence worked on the archaeological site until early 1914. His biographer, Lawrence James, argues: "As well as supervising the uncovering and cataloguing of Hittite artefacts Lawrence became immersed in the life of a turbulent region. According to his letters home he acted as a sort of consul, arbitrating disputes among Arabs and Kurds and threw himself into their intermittent squabbles with German engineers, then supervising the construction of the Berlin to Baghdad railway. As well as playing the Hentyesque Englishman, Lawrence cultivated an intimate friendship with an Arab youth, Dahoum, whose natural intelligence impressed him and qualified him for tutelage. Lawrence's enchantment with Dahoum helped convince him of the Arabs' capacity for regeneration, but on their own terms and without repudiating their traditions and culture. What he had seen in Lebanon made Lawrence hostile towards those Arabs who looked to the West for salvation and absorbed European, particularly French, values. Likewise, he despised the far-reaching modernizing projects of the Young Turks, who then controlled the Ottoman empire."
During this period he became infatuated with a 14 year old boy, Selim Ahmed (Dahoum). He decided to teach the boy to read and write: "He is beginning to use his reason as well as his instinct: He taught himself to read a little, so I had very exceptional material to work on but I cannot do much with a piece of stick and scrap of dusty ground as materials. I am going to ask Miss Fareedah for a few simple books, amusing, for him to begin on." Leonard Woolley, another member of the team of archaeologists, remembered Dahoum as "not particularly intelligent.... but beautifully built and remarkably handsome." One historian has pointed out: "Lawrence adopted the boy as a semi-permanent companion and trained him up as his archaeological assistant. They went on expeditions together, worked alongside each other, swapped clothes and were rarely apart.... in 1913 and Dahoum moved in with him."
In July 1913 Lawrence brought Dahoum back to Oxford where the two men stayed at the house in the back of the garden. They visited London where Lawrence showed Dahoum the underground railway before travelling back via the Netherlands, Austria and Alexandria. They were back in Aleppo by 24th August. Soon afterwards he carved a naked sculpture of Dahoum. Desmond Stewart has argued that the work of art proved the epicentre of a local scandal... reared in the Muslim suspicion of all representational art, the villagers took Lawrence's sculpture of a naked youth as proof of a guilty passion."
On the outbreak of the First World War Lawrence was forced to leave Dahoum as custodian to the Carchemish site. In December 1914 Lawrence was recruited by army intelligence in North Africa and worked as a junior officer in Egypt. In October 1916 he was sent to meet important Arab leaders such as Faisal ibn Ali and Nuri es-Said in Jiddah. After negotiations it was agreed to help Lawrence to lead an Arab revolt against the Turkish Army. From November 1916 onwards Lawrence was permanently attached to Feisal's forces as a liaison officer, advising on strategy and supervising among other things the procurement of arms and delivery of Treasury subsidies. Lawrence of Arabia, as he became known, carried out raids on the Damascus-Medina Railway. His men also captured the port of Aqaba in July 1917. Sympathetic to Arab nationalism he helped established local government in captured towns.
In November 1917 Lawrence led a raiding party in southern Syria to harry Turkish communications and to stir up local opposition to France. He was captured in Deraa and identified by a Turkish officer. According to Lawrence he was led to a guard-room, consoled by Turkish soldiers and told he will be released next day "if he fulfils the Bey's pleasures". Lawrence was then taken to the bedroom of Bey (the governor of Hajjim). He has him stripped and has him punished by a Circassian riding whip, described by Lawrence as "a thong of supple black hide, rounded, and tapering from the thickness of a thumb at the grip (which was wrapped in silver) down to a hard point finer than a pencil." Held down by four soldiers, he was then whipped: "At the instant of each stroke a hard white mark like a railway, darkening slowly into crimson, leaped over my skin, and a bead of blood swelled up wherever the ridges crossed... the blows hurt more horribly than I had dreamed of... a delicious warmth, probably sexual, was swelling through me." Lawrence then suffered homosexual rape. He later told Charlotte Shaw: "About that night. I shouldn't tell you, because decent men don't talk about such things. I wanted to put it plain in the book (his autobiography), and wrestled for days with my self-respect... which wouldn't, hasn't let me."
Lawrence claims that the "corporal... the youngest and best looking on the guard had to stay behind while the others carried me down the narrow stairs". The soldier then tells him "that the door into the next room was not locked". In the room hangs a "suit of shoddy clothes". Next morning Lawrence puts them on and escapes back to the British forces. Some biographers, have refused to believe this story. This included Richard Aldington, the author of Lawrence of Arabia: a Biographical Enquiry (1955). According to Lawrence James: "Aldington began his researches with an open mind, but as he trawled through the available sources he found abundant evidence of contradictions, inconsistencies, and fabrications.... Lawrence's defenders insisted that Aldington was not only traducing a national hero, but the values he and his generation had stood for."
By December, 1917 Edmund Allenby and his army had captured Beersheba, Gaza and Jerusalem. The following year the British Army defeated General Otto Liman von Sanders and the Turkish-German Army in Palestine. Lawrence now joined Allenby's forces and entered Damascus on 1st October, 1918.
Lawrence attended Paris Peace Conference with Prince Feisal. He had meetings with Felix Frankfurter. His assistant, Ella Winter, recalled in her autobiography, And Not to Yield (1963): "The young, beautiful Prince Feisal was always followed by his group of tall, imposing, silent Arabs in long white robes and head dress, and by his shadow, Colonel T. E. Lawrence, also in native dress. Lawrence was short and fragile-looking, with a delicate, poetic face, but he appeared as much at home with the desert Bedouins and the prince he seemed so attached to as with European diplomats. Felix was as much intrigued by Lawrence's role in all the Middle Eastern politics as with his romantic appearance."
Lawrence had been converted to the cause of the Arabs and felt they were betrayed by the treaties agreed at the Paris Peace Conference. He was particularly concerned about the decision to give France control over Syria. He later wrote: "We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves: yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake in the likeness of the former world they knew."
In 1921 Lawrence joined the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office. He also served as special adviser on Arab affairs to Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary (1921-22). Both men visited the Middle East in an attempt to deal with the growing conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.
After leaving the Colonial Office he changed his name to John Hume Ross and enlisted into the Royal Air Force. After four months reporters from the Daily Express discovered what he had done and he was discharged. In March 1923 he joined the Tank Corps as Private Thomas Shaw. Lawrence became sexually involved with John Bruce. He later told the authors of The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia (1969) that Lawrence paid him a regular retainer of £3 a week to birch him on his bare buttocks.
Lawrence served until he was dismissed from the service in 1925. This was partly because he had developed a relationship with a young soldier, R.A.M. Guy, who was described as being "beautiful, like a Greek god." According to Desmond Stewart, the author of T. E. Lawrence (1979), Lawrence dismissed because he was about to be exposed as being involved in a sexual scandal: "Lawrence had unwisely attended flagellation parties in Chelsea conducted by an underworld figure known as Bluebeard, and Bluebeard's impending divorce case threatened to release lubricious details concerning Lawrence and one of his aristocratic friends which had already been hinted at in a German scandal-sheet.... Sacrificing caution, he wrote to the Home Secretary asking for the expulsion of Bluebeard and a ban on the German magazine."
Lawrence purchased Clouds Hill in 1924 and began work on his autobiography. The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was published privately in 1926. It included illustrations by his friend, Eric Kennington. Later that year he rejoined the RAF and served for two years on the north-west frontier of India. He continued to write and other books by Lawrence include Revolt in the Desert, The Mint and a new translation of Homer's Odyssey.
On 26th February 1935 Lawrence left the RAF. Soon afterwards he was contacted by Henry Williamson, a member of the British Union of Fascists, suggesting a meeting that "might prevent another war". Williamson later recalled that he obtained "Lawrence of Arabia's name to gather a meeting of ex-Service men in the Albert Hall, with his presence and stimulation to cohere into unassailable logic the authentic mind of the war generation come to power of truth and amity, a whirlwind campaign which would end the old fearful thought of Europe (usuary-based) for-ever. So that the sun should shine on free men."
Lawrence held very nationalistic views. He had said of his experiences in the First World War: "I am proudest of my thirty fights in that I did not have any of our own blood shed. All our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead Englishman." E. M. Forster once said that Lawrence "hated war but liked soldiers". Lawrence also expressed racist views about black people in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: "Their faces, being clearly different from our own, were tolerable; but it hurt that they should possess exact counterparts of all our bodies."
Lawrence loved riding his motor-bike. George Brough, who manufactured his bikes, described him as: "One of the finest riders I have ever met. In the several runs I took with him, I am able to state with conviction that T.E.L. was most considerate to every other road user. I never saw him take a single risk nor put any other rider or driver to the slightest inconvenience."
On 13th May, he went for a ride on his Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle when he swerved to miss two 14 year-old, cyclists, Frank Fletcher and Albert Hargreaves. Corporal Ernest Catchpole of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, was the first to reach the site of the accident. He later claimed that he was passed by a black motor car just before the crash: "I saw the bike twisting and turning over and over along the road. I saw nothing of the driver (of the black car). I ran to the scene and found the motor-cyclist on the road. His face was covered with blood which I tried to wipe away with my handkerchief". Lawrence never regained consciousness and died on 19th May 1935.
Desmond Stewart has argued: "Bovington Camp reacted to this as something more than an ordinary traffic accident. All ranks were warned that they came under the Official Secrets Act. The boys' fathers were told to keep them silent. Catchpole was cautioned that, since he had not seen the accident, he should not confuse matters by mentioning the black car. Two plain clothes detectives were posted on Lawrence duty: one sat by his bed, while the other rested on a cot outside the door... His brother, Arnold Lawrence, returned from a holiday in Spain to hear reports that officials from the Air Ministry had removed secret papers from Clouds Hill." Arnold Lawrence later told the Dorset Daily Echo that a "special guard" had been sent to Clouds Hill to "protect my brother's valuable books".
Frank Fletcher told a reporter of a local newspaper: "We were riding in single file. I was leading.... I heard the noise of the motorcycle and then the crash.... The man who had gone over the handle bars had landed with his feet about 5 yards in front of the motor cycle which was about five yards ahead of where I fell." According to the newspaper: "The boy said there was no motor car or other vehicle on the road at the time.
After his death rumours circulated that Lawrence had been murdered by foreign agents. Desmond Stewart believes that Catchpole's evidence is of vital importance and that the black car was involved in the death of Lawrence. "If Catchpole was right and the black car existed, the failure of its driver to come forward (the news of the accident was in every newspaper and every news bulletin) suggests that he was involved, either accidentally or deliberately, in Lawrence's crash. Everyone who has ridden a motor cycle knows how easily a sudden swerve can be induced; harmless to the driver of a car, on a narrow road it could be fatal to a cyclist without a helmet."
Another story emerged that the secret service faked his death so as to allow him to undertake, incognito, important work in the Middle East. The supporters of this story believed he died in Tangiers, Morocco, in 1968.
By John Simkin ( [login to see] ) © September 1997 (updated January 2020).
Primary Sources
(1) Sarah Junner Lawrence, T. E. Lawrence by his Friends (1937)
He (T. E. Lawrence) was a big, strong, active child; constantly on the move. He would pull himself up over the nursery gate some months before he could walk....He was never idle - brass-rubbing, wood-carving, putting old pottery together, etc... He was a most loving son and brother, kind and unselfish, always doing kind deeds in a quiet way; everything that was beautiful in nature or art appealed to him.
(2) Vyvyan Warren Richards, Portrait of T.E. Lawrence (1936)
He had neither flesh nor carnality of any kind; he just did not understand. He received my affection, my sacrifice, in fact, eventually my total subservience, as though it was his due. He never gave the slightest sign that he understood my motives or fathomed my desire... I realize now that he was sexless - at least that he was unaware of sex.
(3) T. E. Lawrence, letter to Charlotte Shaw (26th March, 1924)
About that night. I shouldn't tell you, because decent men don't talk about such things. I wanted to put it plain in the book, and wrestled for days with my self-respect... which wouldn't, hasn't let me. For fear of being hurt, or rather, to earn five minutes' respite from a pain which drove me mad, I gave away the only possession we are born into the world with - our bodily integrity... You may call this morbid: but think of the offence, and the intensity of my brooding over it for these years. It will hang about me while I live, and afterwards if our personality survives.
2. Background from {[https://www.biographyonline.net/military/t-e-lawrence.html]}
T.E. Lawrence Biography
T.E. Lawrence gained fame as a British leader of an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War One. A charismatic figure, Lawrence threw himself into Arabic culture to befriend and sympathise with his Arab partners. It was this ability to identify with the Arab peoples which made him a successful military leader in the guerrilla warfare of the 1917 Arab revolt.
His life and adventures have become popularised – most famously in the film starring Peter O’Toole – Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
“I deem him one of the greatest beings alive in our time… We shall never see his like again. His name will live in history. It will live in the annals of war… It will live in the legends of Arabia.”
– Winston Churchill on T.E. Lawrence
Short Biography of T.E.Lawrence
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesoses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.”
– T.E.Lawrence – Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)
Lawrence was born at Gorphwysfa in Tremadog, Caernarfonshire (now Gwynedd), Wales. 16 August 1888.
At an early age, his family moved to Polstead Road, Oxford , where he attended the local Oxford high school for boys. In 1907, he went up to Oxford University, studying at Jesus College.
From an early age, Lawrence was fascinated with the culture of medieval knights and ancient chivalry. He most probably nursed ambitions to follow in the footsteps of these ancient heroes. As a young boy, he loved to travel around English churches, making etchings of notable figures. During his university time, he travelled extensively around France on bicycle; in particular, visiting the Crusader temples and castles which fascinated him.
After graduating with a first class bachelors degree, Lawrence began studying medieval pottery at Magdalen College, but given a chance to become an archaeologist in the Middle East, Lawrence jumped at the opportunity and sailed for Beirut in 1910.
In the Middle East, Lawrence continued his studies of languages; he learnt languages easily and could speak fluently French, German, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Turkish and Syriac.
Important influences for Lawrence during his time in the Middle East included the Arabist and archaeologist – Gertrude Bell, and D.G. Hogarth of the British Museum in Jerablus.
During his archaeology trips in the Middle East, Lawrence took the opportunity to learn about Arabic culture. But, as well as learning about their culture, he wanted to identify himself with the locals. He took to wearing a native costume and learning the different customs and aspects of local life. His empathy and adoption of local customs helped to bring out the native Arabic friendliness. He often won the loyalty and admiration of locals who he visited on his travels. Lawrence also became aware of the Arab resentment against the occupation of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Ottoman Empire was Islamic, it wasn’t Arabic and the occupation had become increasingly brutal and resented.
When war broke out in 1914, Lawrence had one a unique first-hand knowledge of Arabic culture in the region. This was to prove of vital importance as the Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany, and so became Britain’s enemy.
In 1914, Lawrence helped to map the Negev Desert which might be used by the Ottoman Empire. It was surveyed under a smokescreen of ‘archaeology’ but was actually a purely military exercise.
At the start of the war, Lawrence was posted to Cairo where he worked for British Intelligence in the Middle East.
The Arab Bureau of the Foreign Office was aware that an Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire would help the British war effort with minimal cost. In Lawrence, the Foreign Office felt they had the ideal individual to try and unite the various Arabic tribes. Lawrence seemed naturally at home with Arabic culture.
“Feisal asked me if I would wear Arab clothes like his own while in the camp. I should find it better for my own part, since it was a comfortable dress in which to live Arab-fashion as we must do. “
– T.E.Lawrence
The main leader of the Arabs was Emir Faisal, son of Sheriff Hussein of Mecca, whom Lawrence was able to make an alliance. Under Lawrence’s leadership, they began a classic guerrilla campaign – successfully attacking Ottoman supply lines – especially the Hejaz railway running through the desert from Medina.
The troops Lawrence worked with were often a disparate band; it was a complex network of alliances and different tribes. They were also relatively lightly armed, relying on speed and surprise and avoiding full frontal confrontation with a superior enemy. They did prove successful in upsetting the Ottoman army in the region.
In 1917, Lawrence directed an attack on the strategic port of Aqaba. From the rear, the city was lightly defended because the Ottomans didn’t feel it realistic for an army to cross the barren desert. Lawrence initiated the attack without even informing his superiors. Lawrence was given a free hand by his commander General Sir Edmund Allenby. Allenby was full of praise for Lawrence.
“There is no other man I know who could have achieved what Lawrence did. As for taking undue credit for himself, my own personal experience with Lawrence is that he was utterly unconcerned whether any kudos was awarded him or not.”
– Edmund Allenby, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force to Lowell Thomas.
Lawrence led a small force travelling on camel and picking up volunteers along the way. The attack was a great success but, after capturing the city, there was no way to communicate the victory. Lawrence undertook the mission himself and rode all the way back to British Command to tell Allenby in person.
The victory was a major morale boost for the Allies and propelled Lawrence into an important position. He had the confidence of the Arab leader Emir Faisal and also the British. In fact, this dual loyalty to both the British Empire and the Arabs were to prove a testing dilemma for Lawrence.
In 1918, Lawrence was involved in the capture of Damascus in Syria. He helped to install Faisal as King of a provisional Arab government. But, this was to prove short-lived as French forces brought the provisional government to an end in 1920. The British French plan later split up Arabia in two with a line. This later created the states of Syria and Iraq.
Lawrence was appalled at what appeared to be the broken promises of the British. He had worked with the Arab revolt with promises of a free Arab state, but now, the allies seemed to go back on their promise. Using his newly gained fame, Lawrence tried with mixed success to change British policy towards Arab independence. For a time, Lawrence served Winston Churchill in the colonial office.
The new era in Palestine. The arrival at the 1920 Cairo Conference of Sir Herbert Samuel, H.B.M. high commissioner, etc. Col. Lawrence, Emir Abdullah, Air Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond and Sir Wyndham Deedes.
Lawrence’s deeds were popularised by war correspondents such as Lowell Thomas. His story made him a romantic military hero – adopting a foreign culture to lead poorly equipped locals against a much more powerful occupier. However, Lawrence disliked the attention, fame and publicity that the newspapers gave him.
“To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one’s tail.”
Letter (1 April 1935); published in The Letters of T.E. Lawrence (1988), edited by Malcolm Brown.
In 1922, Lawrence enlisted in the RAF under a false name, but after being exposed, he changed his name again before spending time in a remote base in India.
Throughout his life, Lawrence was a prolific writer. These included his famous short works on guerrilla warfare. His Seven Pillars of Wisdom is read even now by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1927, he published Revolt in the Desert to help pay off the debt from Seven Pillars. Lawrence took no income from the sale of the book but put it into a trust run by his friend, D.G.Hogarth. The Revolt in the Desert was a bestseller and earned for Lawrence more unwelcome publicity. He also corresponded to many of the leading intellectuals of the day such as George Bernard Shaw, Robert Graves, and John Buchan.
Lawrence continued serving in the RAF until March 1935, when his term of service ended. Outside of the military and his interests in archaeology and Arabic culture, Lawrence loved motorbikes. He had seven Superior motorcycles and, tragically, his life was cut short in a motorcycle accident aged only 46.
Even after his death, Lawrence managed to have far-reaching consequences. His head injuries were treated by neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns. Cairns was profoundly influenced by the seemingly unnecessary loss of life. He made further research into the use of crash helmets, and through this research, the use of crash helmets for motorcyclists became compulsory saving the lives of many motorcyclists.
Lawrence was buried at Moreton Church, Dorset. His funeral was attended by Winston Churchill. A stone effigy of Lawrence was placed in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Lawrence was awarded the Companion of the Order of the Bath, the DSO. But, in October 1918, refused to be made a Knight Commander of the British Empire. He was always modest about his achievements
“I’ve been & am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen & I’m quite ordinary, & will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I’m one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.”
T.E.Lawrence
Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “Biography of T.E. Lawrence”, Oxford, UK http://www.biographyonline.net, 1st Feb 2010. Last updated 22 February 2018."
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Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence) And His Legacy
This video is combination of two episodes of a Documentary called "The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia" Episode 1 : 00:00 - 58:20 Episode 2 : 58:21 - 01:56:35 -...
Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence) And His Legacy
This video is combination of two episodes of a Documentary called "The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia"
Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, military officer, diplomat, and writer. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia—a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxFTLtDCSA
Images
1. T.E. Lawrence and archaeological director Leonard Woolley at the British Museum excavations of Hittite city of Carchemish with a Hittite slab [near Aleppo]
2. RAF Lt Colonel T.E. Lawrence circa 1925
3. Lawrence in 1918
4. George Brough and Thomas Edward Lawrence AKA 'Lawrence of Arabia' seated on his Superior SS100 in 1930
Biographies
1. telsociety.org.uk/about-lawrence/
2. pef.org.uk/profiles/lt-col-te-lawrence-lawrence-of-arabia-cb-dso-1888-1935]
1. Background from {[https://telsociety.org.uk/about-lawrence/]}
"A Brief Biography of T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)
August 16 1888
Thomas Edward Lawrence was born at Tremadog, in North Wales. He was the second of five boys to be born to Thomas Robert Tighe Chapman, of the Anglo-Irish landowning class, and Sarah Junner.
In the mid 1880s, Lawrence’s father had left behind his wife, Edith, and four daughters at the family estate in County Westmeath, Ireland, to set up home with Sarah, who was the family’s governess. Thomas Chapman was never divorced from Edith, and the stigma that surrounded living out of wedlock at the time caused Thomas and Sarah to move many times over the next few years to avoid detection. Lawrence was an assumed name. Their first child, Montague Robert (Bob), was born in Dublin in 1885.
The port of Porthmadog in North Wales was the landing point for the ferry from Ireland, and it was in a rented house in nearby Tremadog that Thomas Edward (Ned) was born.
1889-96
The Lawrences continued to move around as more sons arrived. William George (Will) was born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, in 1889. The family lived in Dinard, on the coast of Brittany, France, from 1891, moving temporarily to St Helier, Jersey, for the birth of Frank Helier in 1893. In 1894 they returned to England to live in the New Forest.
1896-1907
In 1896 the family moved to Oxford so that the boys could attend the fee-paying City of Oxford High School, which had recently been opened, primarily to serve the needs of the sons of University lecturers. A fifth son, Arnold Walter, was born in 1900. Although Lawrence’s parents were devout Christians, they were ‘living in sin’ as it would have been called at the time. Yet there is ample evidence that they were a happy, united family. They were regular worshippers at St Aldate’s Church where an evangelical brand of Christianity was practised. During his boyhood, Lawrence became increasingly absorbed in the medieval world, and began to undertake a series of ambitious bicycle journeys around England, Wales and France to further his studies.
1907-10
Lawrence read history at Jesus College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. In summer 1909, he undertook an arduous 1,000-mile walking tour of Syria to study Crusader castles for his thesis, The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture—to the End of the XIIth Century.
1910-14
Lawrence was awarded a Senior Demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. Under the influence of David Hogarth, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, he spent four
seasons working as an archaeologist on the British Museum’s excavations of the Hittite city of Carchemish, on what is now the border between Turkey and Syria. It was at Carchemish that he met Dahoum, a young Arab boy working as an assistant on the site, who became his great friend and is widely assumed to be the ‘S.A.’ in Lawrence’s dedication in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In January 1914, Lawrence and his fellow archaeologist Leonard Woolley assisted in a survey of the Sinai Desert funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund, publishing their findings as The Wilderness of Zin.
1914-16
Lawrence left Carchemish for the last time in June 1914. Following the outbreak of war, he spent a short time working in London in the Geographical Section of the War Office. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and moved to Cairo where he worked in the Military Intelligence Department. In 1915, Lawrence learned of the deaths of his brothers Frank, killed in action in France on May 9, and Will, missing in action in an observation plane over France on October 23 and presumed dead. In April 1916, Lawrence went to Basra in Mesopotamia to take part in negotiations for the release of Allied soldiers besieged in Kut.
1916-18
From October 1916, Lawrence worked as Liaison Officer to the Emir Feisal, whose Arab irregular troops became engaged in a series of guerrilla operations against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire, known as the Arab Revolt. It was these turbulent two years which provided the material for his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom and were the basis for his eventual fame as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Lawrence’s involvement in the Arab Revolt came to an end with the fall of Damascus in October 1918. He returned to England and commenced lobbying politicians to fulfil promises for independence made to the Arabs.
1919
Along with Emir Feisal, Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference which resulted in the Arabs being denied the freedom to the lands over which they had fought. He wrote the first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was in this year that the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’
legend was created by an American journalist, Lowell Thomas, who presented an ‘illustrated travelogue’ to huge audiences, first in New York, then in London and finally worldwide.
1920
After his first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom was lost at Reading Station in November 1919, Lawrence spent the first weeks of the year rewriting the book from memory while ensconced in the attic of the architect Herbert Baker’s office in Barton Street, London.
1921-22
Winston Churchill approached Lawrence and, despite his initial reluctance, he accepted an appointment as Adviser on Arab Affairs at the Colonial Office. Lawrence attended a new peace conference in Cairo, which resulted in the establishment of the map of the Middle East which largely remains to this day.
1922
By summer 1922, Lawrence had completed a third draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom – the so-called Oxford Text. In August he enlisted in the ranks of the RAF under the assumed name of John Hume Ross.
It was his early service in the training depot at Uxbridge which provided much of the material for his book The Mint, which was not to be publicly available until 1955. It was in late 1922 that Lawrence embarked on his passion for Brough Superior motorcycles which provided him not just with transport, but with a mental escape.
1923
In January, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF after his real identity was revealed in the press. In March he enlisted in the Tank Corps in Bovington, Dorset, as a private soldier under the assumed name of Thomas Edward Shaw. It was while here that he continued to establish many important friendships including that of Thomas Hardy who lived nearby in Dorchester. Lawrence took a lease on a semi-derelict cottage near Bovington Camp – Clouds Hill – which was to become his refuge and, following its purchase, eventually his home. During this year he made his translation of Adrien Le
Corbeau’s Le Gigantesque (Forest Giant).
1924-26
Lawrence spent much of his free time during these years preparing the Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which enabled him to indulge his passion for fine printed books. Offered at a price of 30 guineas, each copy was individually bound for the subscriber. The text of this version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the one best known throughout the world today. However, the effort exhausted him. He was also deeply unhappy in the Tank Corps. Following pressure on the government from his friends, concerned about his health, in 1925 he was readmitted to the RAF, stationed at Cranwell.
1927-8
The Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom appeared at the end of 1926, followed in March 1927 by Revolt in the Desert, an abridged version made available to the general public. In late 1926 he was posted to Karachi, which was then part of India, and then
Miranshah near the Afghan border. During this time he completed The Mint and began translating Homer’s Odyssey.
1929
In January, Lawrence returned to England following press stories that he had been involved in an insurrection in Afghanistan. He was stationed at RAF Cattewater (later Mount Batten) in Plymouth, from where he resumed his friendships with artists, politicians and writers. During the summer, he acted as personal assistant to his commanding officer, Wing Commander Sydney Smith, during the preparations for the prestigious Schneider Trophy seaplane race over the Solent.
1931-35
Lawrence started work on the development of high-speed rescue boats for the RAF, after witnessing the fatal crash of an RAF flying boat in Plymouth Sound. It was this work that occupied most of his final years in the RAF, taking him to postings in Hythe, Southampton and Bridlington. 1932 saw the publication of his translation of the Odyssey.
February 1935
Lawrence retired from the RAF and cycled from his last posting in Bridlington to Clouds Hill.
May 13, 1935
Lawrence fell from his Brough Superior motorcycle when he was in collision with two boys on bicycles on the road between Bovington Camp and Clouds Hill. He never regained consciousness.
May 19, 1935
Lawrence died as a result of his injuries.
May 21, 1935
Lawrence was buried at Moreton, Dorset. His funeral was attended by a large crowd including Winston Churchill, writers and artists including Augustus John, Eric Kennington and Siegfried Sassoon, and friends from his service days. Lawrence’s mother Sarah and brother Bob were travelling along the Yangtze river on their return from China, where Bob had been working as a medical missionary, when they received the news of his death; his brother Arnold was the only family member present at the funeral.
2. Background from {[https://www.pef.org.uk/profiles/lt-col-te-lawrence-lawrence-of-arabia-cb-dso-1888-1935]}
"Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), C.B., D.S.O., 1888-1935
T.E. Lawrence, 1919After an initial career as an archaeologist Thomas Edward Lawrence emerged from the carnage and horrors of the First World War as the famous youthful ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Following his role as intelligence officer and military adviser in the Middle East during the war, and peace-maker and diplomat afterwards, Lawrence went to extraordinary efforts to escape his fame and retreated into the obscurity of the military ‘ranks’ under various pseudonyms. A legend in his own lifetime, a complex and brilliant man with a ‘genius for friendship’ and a gifted writer, he remains to this day a person of particular fascination who attracts a variety of opinion.
The second of five brothers, Lawrence was born 16 August 1888 in Caernarvonshire, Wales. His father, Thomas Chapman, was an Anglo-Irish gentleman landowner and his mother, Sarah Junner, was of Scottish origins. She became governess to the Chapman household in Ireland but after eloping with Chapman they adopted the family name of Sarah’s father, John Lawrence. After a peripatetic early period the family settled in Oxford where Lawrence attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys and Jesus College, University of Oxford. His B.A. dissertation research on Crusader castles led him to travel for the first time to the Middle East in 1909, especially within Ottoman Syria.
After university, with the help of his Oxford mentor, D.G. Hogarth (Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and member of the PEF Committee) Lawrence became an archaeologist and spent several seasons (1910-14) working with Leonard Woolley on the British Museum excavations at the Neo-Hittite site of Carchemish near Jerablus in North Syria (now on the Turkish/Syrian border).
In early 1914 Woolley and Lawrence, at the request of the British Museum, accompanied a survey party making maps in the Sinai Desert. While Lawrence undertook an archaeological survey (which he described as providing ‘archaeological colour to a political job’ as permission was required from the Turks who controlled this area) the topographical work was carried out by Captain Newcombe who later worked with Lawrence during the Arab Revolt. This survey, sponsored by the PEF, was tasked with extending southwards the previous PEF Survey of Western Palestine carried out in the 1870s. The 1914 survey (published by Woolley and Lawrence as The Wilderness of Zin, PEF Annual III, 1915) later greatly assisted Lawrence because of the surveying and map-making skills he learnt and also the first-hand knowledge he gained of the terrain, especially in the Aqaba area.
In August 1914 Lawrence joined the Geographical Section of the General Staff in London but following Turkey's entry into the war he was transferred (December 1914) to the Intelligence Department in Cairo where he joined the Arab Bureau (with D.G. Hogarth as its head). In seeking Arab support for the British war effort Lawrence and the Bureau became increasingly involved with Arab nationalist movements and politics but had to contend with French colonial rivalry and ambitions.
In June 1916 Sherif Hussein of Mecca started the Arab Revolt and in October Lawrence first visited the Hejaz. From 1916-1918 Lawrence greatly influenced the military and political strategy of the revolt and acted as principal liaison officer between the British (General Allenby) and Arab Forces (Prince Faisal). He famously led raids on the Hejaz railway, helped capture the vital seaport of Aqaba(July 1917), and conducted important military and political reconnaissance expeditions. Lawrence accompanied the Arabs in reaching Damascus (October 1918) and helped set up a provisional, but short-lived, Arab government.
In January 1919 Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference and argued vigorously, but unsuccessfully, for Arab freedom. During this period he began to write his monumental book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom – privately published in 1926. After the Conference Lawrence took up a Research Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From February 1921 to March 1922 Lawrence worked for Churchill in the Colonial Office and attended the Cairo Conference in March 1921 and was British representative in Transjordan, October – December 1921.
In August 1922 Lawrence joined the Royal Air Force as an Aircraftsman under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. However press publicity caused him to be dismissed in January 1923 and two months later he joined the Royal Tank Corps at Bovington, Dorset as a private under the name of Thomas Edward Shaw (legally adopted by deed poll in 1927). In 1925 he succeeded in returning to the RAF and in January 1927 he took up a posting in India (Karachi) where he started to draft a book about his early period in the RAF (The Mint published 1955). Due to false press reports about spying he was hurriedly brought back to England in January 1929 and went to RAF Mount Batten, Plymouth.
From 1929 – 1935 Lawrence was engaged in the development of RAF high speed boats (RAF 200 Class), which played an important role in rescuing airmen from the English Channel during the Battle of Britain. In February 1935 he retired from the RAF and died on 19 May 1935 after a motorcycle accident near his cottage (Clouds Hill, now National Trust) near Wareham in Dorset. He is buried in St Nicholas' Church, Moreton, Dorset.
Recommended reading
Brown, M. (ed.) 2005. Lawrence of Arabia –The Selected Letters. London: Little Books.
Lawrence, T.E. 1935. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. London: Jonathan Cape (many subsequent reprintings and editions).
Mack, J.E. 1998 (1976). A Prince of Our Disorder – The Life of T.E. Lawrence Harvard University Press.
Wilson, J. 1989 Lawrence of Arabia – The Authorised Biography of T.E. Lawrence. London: William Heinemann.
Woolley, C.L. and Lawrence, T.E. 2003. The Wilderness of Zin (PEF Annual III, revised 3rd edition). London: Stacey International."
TE Lawrence Poem Seven Pillars
"I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.
Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near
and saw you waiting:
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me
and took you apart:
Into his quietness.
Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, our brief wage
ours for the moment
Before earth's soft hand explored your shape, and the blind
worms grew fat upon
Your substance.
Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house,
as a memory of you.
But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now
The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels
in the marred shadow
Of your gift."
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This video is combination of two episodes of a Documentary called "The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia"
Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, military officer, diplomat, and writer. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia—a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxFTLtDCSA
Images
1. T.E. Lawrence and archaeological director Leonard Woolley at the British Museum excavations of Hittite city of Carchemish with a Hittite slab [near Aleppo]
2. RAF Lt Colonel T.E. Lawrence circa 1925
3. Lawrence in 1918
4. George Brough and Thomas Edward Lawrence AKA 'Lawrence of Arabia' seated on his Superior SS100 in 1930
Biographies
1. telsociety.org.uk/about-lawrence/
2. pef.org.uk/profiles/lt-col-te-lawrence-lawrence-of-arabia-cb-dso-1888-1935]
1. Background from {[https://telsociety.org.uk/about-lawrence/]}
"A Brief Biography of T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)
August 16 1888
Thomas Edward Lawrence was born at Tremadog, in North Wales. He was the second of five boys to be born to Thomas Robert Tighe Chapman, of the Anglo-Irish landowning class, and Sarah Junner.
In the mid 1880s, Lawrence’s father had left behind his wife, Edith, and four daughters at the family estate in County Westmeath, Ireland, to set up home with Sarah, who was the family’s governess. Thomas Chapman was never divorced from Edith, and the stigma that surrounded living out of wedlock at the time caused Thomas and Sarah to move many times over the next few years to avoid detection. Lawrence was an assumed name. Their first child, Montague Robert (Bob), was born in Dublin in 1885.
The port of Porthmadog in North Wales was the landing point for the ferry from Ireland, and it was in a rented house in nearby Tremadog that Thomas Edward (Ned) was born.
1889-96
The Lawrences continued to move around as more sons arrived. William George (Will) was born in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, in 1889. The family lived in Dinard, on the coast of Brittany, France, from 1891, moving temporarily to St Helier, Jersey, for the birth of Frank Helier in 1893. In 1894 they returned to England to live in the New Forest.
1896-1907
In 1896 the family moved to Oxford so that the boys could attend the fee-paying City of Oxford High School, which had recently been opened, primarily to serve the needs of the sons of University lecturers. A fifth son, Arnold Walter, was born in 1900. Although Lawrence’s parents were devout Christians, they were ‘living in sin’ as it would have been called at the time. Yet there is ample evidence that they were a happy, united family. They were regular worshippers at St Aldate’s Church where an evangelical brand of Christianity was practised. During his boyhood, Lawrence became increasingly absorbed in the medieval world, and began to undertake a series of ambitious bicycle journeys around England, Wales and France to further his studies.
1907-10
Lawrence read history at Jesus College, Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours. In summer 1909, he undertook an arduous 1,000-mile walking tour of Syria to study Crusader castles for his thesis, The Influence of the Crusades on European Military Architecture—to the End of the XIIth Century.
1910-14
Lawrence was awarded a Senior Demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. Under the influence of David Hogarth, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, he spent four
seasons working as an archaeologist on the British Museum’s excavations of the Hittite city of Carchemish, on what is now the border between Turkey and Syria. It was at Carchemish that he met Dahoum, a young Arab boy working as an assistant on the site, who became his great friend and is widely assumed to be the ‘S.A.’ in Lawrence’s dedication in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. In January 1914, Lawrence and his fellow archaeologist Leonard Woolley assisted in a survey of the Sinai Desert funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund, publishing their findings as The Wilderness of Zin.
1914-16
Lawrence left Carchemish for the last time in June 1914. Following the outbreak of war, he spent a short time working in London in the Geographical Section of the War Office. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and moved to Cairo where he worked in the Military Intelligence Department. In 1915, Lawrence learned of the deaths of his brothers Frank, killed in action in France on May 9, and Will, missing in action in an observation plane over France on October 23 and presumed dead. In April 1916, Lawrence went to Basra in Mesopotamia to take part in negotiations for the release of Allied soldiers besieged in Kut.
1916-18
From October 1916, Lawrence worked as Liaison Officer to the Emir Feisal, whose Arab irregular troops became engaged in a series of guerrilla operations against the armed forces of the Ottoman Empire, known as the Arab Revolt. It was these turbulent two years which provided the material for his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom and were the basis for his eventual fame as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Lawrence’s involvement in the Arab Revolt came to an end with the fall of Damascus in October 1918. He returned to England and commenced lobbying politicians to fulfil promises for independence made to the Arabs.
1919
Along with Emir Feisal, Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference which resulted in the Arabs being denied the freedom to the lands over which they had fought. He wrote the first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It was in this year that the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’
legend was created by an American journalist, Lowell Thomas, who presented an ‘illustrated travelogue’ to huge audiences, first in New York, then in London and finally worldwide.
1920
After his first draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom was lost at Reading Station in November 1919, Lawrence spent the first weeks of the year rewriting the book from memory while ensconced in the attic of the architect Herbert Baker’s office in Barton Street, London.
1921-22
Winston Churchill approached Lawrence and, despite his initial reluctance, he accepted an appointment as Adviser on Arab Affairs at the Colonial Office. Lawrence attended a new peace conference in Cairo, which resulted in the establishment of the map of the Middle East which largely remains to this day.
1922
By summer 1922, Lawrence had completed a third draft of Seven Pillars of Wisdom – the so-called Oxford Text. In August he enlisted in the ranks of the RAF under the assumed name of John Hume Ross.
It was his early service in the training depot at Uxbridge which provided much of the material for his book The Mint, which was not to be publicly available until 1955. It was in late 1922 that Lawrence embarked on his passion for Brough Superior motorcycles which provided him not just with transport, but with a mental escape.
1923
In January, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF after his real identity was revealed in the press. In March he enlisted in the Tank Corps in Bovington, Dorset, as a private soldier under the assumed name of Thomas Edward Shaw. It was while here that he continued to establish many important friendships including that of Thomas Hardy who lived nearby in Dorchester. Lawrence took a lease on a semi-derelict cottage near Bovington Camp – Clouds Hill – which was to become his refuge and, following its purchase, eventually his home. During this year he made his translation of Adrien Le
Corbeau’s Le Gigantesque (Forest Giant).
1924-26
Lawrence spent much of his free time during these years preparing the Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which enabled him to indulge his passion for fine printed books. Offered at a price of 30 guineas, each copy was individually bound for the subscriber. The text of this version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the one best known throughout the world today. However, the effort exhausted him. He was also deeply unhappy in the Tank Corps. Following pressure on the government from his friends, concerned about his health, in 1925 he was readmitted to the RAF, stationed at Cranwell.
1927-8
The Subscribers’ Edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom appeared at the end of 1926, followed in March 1927 by Revolt in the Desert, an abridged version made available to the general public. In late 1926 he was posted to Karachi, which was then part of India, and then
Miranshah near the Afghan border. During this time he completed The Mint and began translating Homer’s Odyssey.
1929
In January, Lawrence returned to England following press stories that he had been involved in an insurrection in Afghanistan. He was stationed at RAF Cattewater (later Mount Batten) in Plymouth, from where he resumed his friendships with artists, politicians and writers. During the summer, he acted as personal assistant to his commanding officer, Wing Commander Sydney Smith, during the preparations for the prestigious Schneider Trophy seaplane race over the Solent.
1931-35
Lawrence started work on the development of high-speed rescue boats for the RAF, after witnessing the fatal crash of an RAF flying boat in Plymouth Sound. It was this work that occupied most of his final years in the RAF, taking him to postings in Hythe, Southampton and Bridlington. 1932 saw the publication of his translation of the Odyssey.
February 1935
Lawrence retired from the RAF and cycled from his last posting in Bridlington to Clouds Hill.
May 13, 1935
Lawrence fell from his Brough Superior motorcycle when he was in collision with two boys on bicycles on the road between Bovington Camp and Clouds Hill. He never regained consciousness.
May 19, 1935
Lawrence died as a result of his injuries.
May 21, 1935
Lawrence was buried at Moreton, Dorset. His funeral was attended by a large crowd including Winston Churchill, writers and artists including Augustus John, Eric Kennington and Siegfried Sassoon, and friends from his service days. Lawrence’s mother Sarah and brother Bob were travelling along the Yangtze river on their return from China, where Bob had been working as a medical missionary, when they received the news of his death; his brother Arnold was the only family member present at the funeral.
2. Background from {[https://www.pef.org.uk/profiles/lt-col-te-lawrence-lawrence-of-arabia-cb-dso-1888-1935]}
"Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), C.B., D.S.O., 1888-1935
T.E. Lawrence, 1919After an initial career as an archaeologist Thomas Edward Lawrence emerged from the carnage and horrors of the First World War as the famous youthful ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Following his role as intelligence officer and military adviser in the Middle East during the war, and peace-maker and diplomat afterwards, Lawrence went to extraordinary efforts to escape his fame and retreated into the obscurity of the military ‘ranks’ under various pseudonyms. A legend in his own lifetime, a complex and brilliant man with a ‘genius for friendship’ and a gifted writer, he remains to this day a person of particular fascination who attracts a variety of opinion.
The second of five brothers, Lawrence was born 16 August 1888 in Caernarvonshire, Wales. His father, Thomas Chapman, was an Anglo-Irish gentleman landowner and his mother, Sarah Junner, was of Scottish origins. She became governess to the Chapman household in Ireland but after eloping with Chapman they adopted the family name of Sarah’s father, John Lawrence. After a peripatetic early period the family settled in Oxford where Lawrence attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys and Jesus College, University of Oxford. His B.A. dissertation research on Crusader castles led him to travel for the first time to the Middle East in 1909, especially within Ottoman Syria.
After university, with the help of his Oxford mentor, D.G. Hogarth (Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum and member of the PEF Committee) Lawrence became an archaeologist and spent several seasons (1910-14) working with Leonard Woolley on the British Museum excavations at the Neo-Hittite site of Carchemish near Jerablus in North Syria (now on the Turkish/Syrian border).
In early 1914 Woolley and Lawrence, at the request of the British Museum, accompanied a survey party making maps in the Sinai Desert. While Lawrence undertook an archaeological survey (which he described as providing ‘archaeological colour to a political job’ as permission was required from the Turks who controlled this area) the topographical work was carried out by Captain Newcombe who later worked with Lawrence during the Arab Revolt. This survey, sponsored by the PEF, was tasked with extending southwards the previous PEF Survey of Western Palestine carried out in the 1870s. The 1914 survey (published by Woolley and Lawrence as The Wilderness of Zin, PEF Annual III, 1915) later greatly assisted Lawrence because of the surveying and map-making skills he learnt and also the first-hand knowledge he gained of the terrain, especially in the Aqaba area.
In August 1914 Lawrence joined the Geographical Section of the General Staff in London but following Turkey's entry into the war he was transferred (December 1914) to the Intelligence Department in Cairo where he joined the Arab Bureau (with D.G. Hogarth as its head). In seeking Arab support for the British war effort Lawrence and the Bureau became increasingly involved with Arab nationalist movements and politics but had to contend with French colonial rivalry and ambitions.
In June 1916 Sherif Hussein of Mecca started the Arab Revolt and in October Lawrence first visited the Hejaz. From 1916-1918 Lawrence greatly influenced the military and political strategy of the revolt and acted as principal liaison officer between the British (General Allenby) and Arab Forces (Prince Faisal). He famously led raids on the Hejaz railway, helped capture the vital seaport of Aqaba(July 1917), and conducted important military and political reconnaissance expeditions. Lawrence accompanied the Arabs in reaching Damascus (October 1918) and helped set up a provisional, but short-lived, Arab government.
In January 1919 Lawrence attended the Paris Peace Conference and argued vigorously, but unsuccessfully, for Arab freedom. During this period he began to write his monumental book, Seven Pillars of Wisdom – privately published in 1926. After the Conference Lawrence took up a Research Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From February 1921 to March 1922 Lawrence worked for Churchill in the Colonial Office and attended the Cairo Conference in March 1921 and was British representative in Transjordan, October – December 1921.
In August 1922 Lawrence joined the Royal Air Force as an Aircraftsman under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. However press publicity caused him to be dismissed in January 1923 and two months later he joined the Royal Tank Corps at Bovington, Dorset as a private under the name of Thomas Edward Shaw (legally adopted by deed poll in 1927). In 1925 he succeeded in returning to the RAF and in January 1927 he took up a posting in India (Karachi) where he started to draft a book about his early period in the RAF (The Mint published 1955). Due to false press reports about spying he was hurriedly brought back to England in January 1929 and went to RAF Mount Batten, Plymouth.
From 1929 – 1935 Lawrence was engaged in the development of RAF high speed boats (RAF 200 Class), which played an important role in rescuing airmen from the English Channel during the Battle of Britain. In February 1935 he retired from the RAF and died on 19 May 1935 after a motorcycle accident near his cottage (Clouds Hill, now National Trust) near Wareham in Dorset. He is buried in St Nicholas' Church, Moreton, Dorset.
Recommended reading
Brown, M. (ed.) 2005. Lawrence of Arabia –The Selected Letters. London: Little Books.
Lawrence, T.E. 1935. Seven Pillars of Wisdom. London: Jonathan Cape (many subsequent reprintings and editions).
Mack, J.E. 1998 (1976). A Prince of Our Disorder – The Life of T.E. Lawrence Harvard University Press.
Wilson, J. 1989 Lawrence of Arabia – The Authorised Biography of T.E. Lawrence. London: William Heinemann.
Woolley, C.L. and Lawrence, T.E. 2003. The Wilderness of Zin (PEF Annual III, revised 3rd edition). London: Stacey International."
TE Lawrence Poem Seven Pillars
"I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To earn you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When we came.
Death seemed my servant on the road, till we were near
and saw you waiting:
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me
and took you apart:
Into his quietness.
Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, our brief wage
ours for the moment
Before earth's soft hand explored your shape, and the blind
worms grew fat upon
Your substance.
Men prayed me that I set our work, the inviolate house,
as a memory of you.
But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now
The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels
in the marred shadow
Of your gift."
FYI SGT Mark Anderson SGT Jim Arnold SSgt Terry P. MSG Andrew WhiteMSG (Join to see) SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL LTC Greg Henning SGT Gregory Lawritson SP5 Mark Kuzinski CWO3 (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC (Join to see)SGT Robert R.CPT Tommy CurtisCol Carl Whicker SPC Margaret HigginsSPC Chris Bayner-Cwik TSgt David L.PO1 Robert GeorgeSSG Robert Mark Odom
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LTC Stephen F.
Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence) And His Legacy
This video is combination of two episodes of a Documentary called "The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia" Episode 1 : 00:00 - 58:20 Episode 2 : 58:21 - 01:56:35 -...
Lawrence of Arabia (T. E. Lawrence) And His Legacy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxFTLtDCSA
FYI Cpl James R. " Jim" Gossett JrLTC Jeff Shearer SGT Philip RoncariCWO3 Dennis M. SFC William Farrell SP5 Jeannie CarleSGT (Join to see) PO3 Bob McCord [~655611:spc-douglas-bolton Cynthia Croft SSG Donald H "Don" Bates SSG William JonesSP5 Jesse EngelSPC Matthew LambSSG Robert "Rob" WentworthCapt Rich BuckleyCW4 G.L. SmithSPC Russ BoltonSFC Terry WilcoxPO2 Roger Lafarlette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxFTLtDCSA
FYI Cpl James R. " Jim" Gossett JrLTC Jeff Shearer SGT Philip RoncariCWO3 Dennis M. SFC William Farrell SP5 Jeannie CarleSGT (Join to see) PO3 Bob McCord [~655611:spc-douglas-bolton Cynthia Croft SSG Donald H "Don" Bates SSG William JonesSP5 Jesse EngelSPC Matthew LambSSG Robert "Rob" WentworthCapt Rich BuckleyCW4 G.L. SmithSPC Russ BoltonSFC Terry WilcoxPO2 Roger Lafarlette
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