T.E. Lawrence: The Enigmatic Lawrence of Arabia

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The Arabian heat rose up in shimmering waves, blurring the Bedouins’ vision and parching their throats. They were deployed along the crest of a hill, taking shots at Turkish soldiers who fired back at them from their post below. Suddenly, there erupted a thundering sound as about 50 camel riders, led by the fierce Howeitat warrior Auda abu Tayi, galloped downhill into the rear of the terrified Turks. Then a tribal leader among the motley collection of Bedouins sniping from the hill looked over at the lone British officer among them and yelled, ‘Come on!’ Both men rushed downward, followed by 400 camel-mounted Bedouins, robes and headdresses flowing about them as they smashed into the flank of the Turkish force.

Now in the enemy’s midst, the British officer was firing with his service revolver into the fleeing khaki shapes around him when all at once his camel dropped like a lead shot. Hurled to the ground, he lay stunned, waiting to be killed by the Turks or trampled by his own men. When the dazed Briton sat up, he saw that the battle was over. It had lasted only a few bloody moments. The Bedouins were finishing off the Turks with rifle and sword. In the end, 300 of the enemy lay dead, for the loss of only two Arabs. It was a brutally efficient battle, fought with surprise, fury, courage and a fine tactical sense, qualities that would become emblematic for the campaigns of T.E. Lawrence, ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ one of the 20th century’s most brilliant and fascinating military minds.

Born in North Wales on August 16, 1888, Thomas Edward Lawrence had always been unique, his complex character shaped by several forces. One was his height. Standing only 5 feet 5 inches, he felt different from his four brothers and the boys at school. Another determining factor was his discovery that he was the illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Chapman and his Scottish-born mistress, Sarah Lawrence. Lawrence’s independent nature was thus formed by an acute sense of his otherness, his knowledge that whatever he achieved in life would be due to his own efforts. He was bright and strong-willed, and as a boy he began physically and mentally testing himself, as if for some inevitable future ordeal. A fine student, Lawrence went to Oxford to study history and wrote his thesis on Crusader castles. During a three-week research tour in the Levant, he became enchanted by the Arabs. Back in Britain, he completed his studies with a First Class Honors degree, and then, burning to return to the Middle East, he joined a British Museum excavation at the Hittite site of Carchemish in northern Syria, as an archeological assistant. He worked on and off at that important dig from 1910 to 1914, learning Arabic and how to deal with the Arabs. Then the war broke out.

Lawrence was commissioned a lieutenant in the British army and, with his specialized knowledge of the region, detailed in 1915 to the Military Intelligence Department in Cairo, under the direction of Colonel Gilbert Clayton. The atmosphere at the office was relaxed, with little concern for military etiquette. Lawrence was soon recognized as an invaluable member of the staff, with a quick and agile mind. He collected geographical data for mapmaking, interviewed prisoners and worked on a reference book, the Turkish Army Handbook. The war in the Middle East was often derided as a’sideshow of a sideshow’ by war planners with a West-centric viewpoint, but Lawrence knew that it was of enormous importance for the millions of Arabs living under Ottoman rule.

Although promoted to captain in March 1916, Lawrence found office work dull and longed for action. His brothers Will and Frank had been killed on the Western Front, which filled him with guilt as he sat in the comfort of colonial Cairo. He also dreamed of leading an uprising of Arabs against their Turkish oppressors. His desires were soon fulfilled when he and two other British officers were dispatched on a secret mission to secure the escape of an Anglo-Indian force led by Maj. Gen. Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, which had been surrounded by Turks at Kut al-Amara in Mesopotamia. Lawrence and his fellow officers met with their Turkish counterparts, but all they could obtain was the release of some of the wounded. It was a sad and frustrating business. Townshend and 12,000 of his surviving men surrendered on April 29, 1916. Lawrence’s finely written reports on Kut and Arab nationalism, however, impressed his superiors so much that they sent him on another important mission.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

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