Lawrence then broke away from the main force and embarked on an extraordinary 300-mile trip into Lebanon and Syria, talking with clan leaders to enroll their support for the revolt. With the help of local tribes, he blew up bridges and rode to the outskirts of Damascus to meet with resistance leaders. ‘At the time,’ he recalled, ‘I was in a reckless mood, not caring very much what I did….A bodily wound would have been a grateful vent for my internal perplexities….’ For that exploit, Lawrence was recommended for Britain’s highest award for bravery, the Victoria Cross. He was ineligible, however, because no other British officer had witnessed his deed.

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Back again with Auda, Lawrence and the Arabs made a large semicircular trek through the desert and fell on Aqaba from behind on July 6. The surprised Turkish garrison quickly surrendered. With that astonishing, almost bloodless victory, the Arab revolt became a force to be reckoned with. ‘After the capture of Aqaba,’ he wrote in 1927, ‘things changed so much that I was no longer a witness of the Revolt, but a protagonist in the Revolt.’

Lawrence was being modest, for he played a major role. The Turks were offering a reward for his capture, and a report on the situation in Arabia, sent to Cairo in February 1917, said that ‘Lawrence with Feisal is of inestimable value….’ After Aqaba, Lawrence was awarded the Companionship of the Bath and promoted to major. He then had an important meeting with the new commander in chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, General Sir Edmund Allenby, who agreed to Lawrence’s strategy for the revolt. ‘I gave him a free hand,’ Allenby said after the war. ‘His cooperation was marked by the utmost loyalty, and I never had anything but praise for his work, which, indeed, was invaluable throughout the campaign.’ Lawrence now held a powerful position, as an adviser to Feisal and a person who had Allenby’s confidence.

The attacks on the railway continued throughout 1917. During one, Lawrence blew up a locomotive with an electric mine. ‘We had a Lewis [machine gun],’ he wrote in a letter to a friend, ‘and flung bullets through the sides. So they hopped out and took cover behind the embankment, and shot at us between the wheels at 50 yards.’ The Arabs brought up a Stokes mortar, and the Turks fled across open ground. ‘Unfortunately for them,’ Lawrence continued, ‘the Lewis covered the open stretch. The whole job took ten minutes, and they lost 70 killed, 30 wounded and 80 prisoners,’ for the loss of only one Arab. While the Arabs looted the train, another Turkish force arrived, nearly cutting off the Bedouins. ‘I lost some baggage, and nearly myself,’ Lawrence added nonchalantly. In another letter about that same’show,’ Lawrence confided, ‘I’m not going to last out this game much longer: nerves going and temper wearing thin….This killing and killing of Turks is horrible.’

Lawrence’s exhaustion was heightened when he and a raiding party of about 60 Arabs failed to blow up an important railway bridge over the Yarmuk River. Allenby had requested the raid, and Lawrence was wracked with guilt over its failure. Later, while reconnoitering the important railway junction at Deraa, Lawrence, trying to pass himself off as a light-skinned Circassian, was arrested by the Turks, brought to their commander and severely beaten before being ‘dragged about by two men, each disputing over a leg as though to split me apart: while a third man rode me astride.’ Lawrence escaped, but the torment of that night was seared upon his consciousness and his soul, emotionally maiming him.

Although those personal tragedies were immense, global events were sweeping away the old order and remaking the world. In November, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, publishing secret documents discovered in Tsar Nicholas II’s files. One of them was the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The embarrassed British government hurriedly reassured the Arabs that the terms of the agreement had not yet been ratified, which Feisal and other Arab leaders only partially believed. Later, the Balfour Declaration was published, stating that the British government favorably viewed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in largely Arab-populated Palestine. Both of those events would have an enormous impact on the region and the world after the war, up to the present day. Then, after a brilliant series of battles fought by Allenby, British forces entered Jerusalem on December 11. Allenby invited Lawrence to enter with him on foot. An official uniform was borrowed for Lawrence, who was delighted by it. ‘For me,’ he later wrote, ‘it was the supreme moment of the war.’ But now the race was on to Damascus, the intellectual and political heart of the Arab world.

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