“Al Aurens” – better known as T.E. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia” - was a hero to his Arab comrades and a thorn in the side of the Turks, to the point where a 20,000 pound bounty was put on his head by the Turks. Yet the Turks themselves captured him, tortured him (possibly sexually assaulted him) and let him go, not realizing who he was. And ultimately Lawrence won.
WWI – Background. By 1916, World War I had been going on for almost three years. The Western Front (Germany on one side of the trenches, France and England on the other) was reduced to stalemate. Could another front be opened to force a strategic victory? Russia was already tied up dealing with Germany (including two brilliant generals, Ludendorff & Hindenburg) and Austria-Hungary. The third Central Power, Turkey (known as the Ottoman Empire at this time) was overextended throughout the Middle East.
Turkey. Long the “sick man of Europe”, the Ottoman Empire had lost the Balkans in the l9th century but still held on to two long stretches of territory running southward from modern-day Turkey: one going southeast into what is now Iraq; and one going due south, including Syria, Lebanon, Israel (aka Palestine), Jordan, and much of Saudi Arabia. The Turks had hitched their star with the Central Powers; Germany provided supplies, Mauser rifles, a small air force, engineers, artillery, machine guns, and some badly needed advisors on how to run a modern war machine. With the exception of fighting off the badly planned Gallipoli campaign (Churchill’s project – which temporarily sidelined his political career) the Turks seemed incapable of doing much more than slaughtering innocent Armenians.
Arabs. Who would oppose the Turks? The Arabs were disorganized, had no national identity or leader. They were decentralized into various tribes, many of whom hated each other more than they hated the Turks (who, though Muslim, are NOT Arabs). The tribal leaders looked out for their own best interests and those of the tribe’s, even to the point of collaborating with the Turks. The closest one to a “leader” among the Arabs was Prince Feisal, but even with his vast skills and wisdom, he could not unite the Arabs by himself.
Lawrence. It took an outsider, an Englishman, to come in and do for the Arabs what they could not do for themselves: unite into a coherent military force (albeit very irregular) and beat the Turks – kicking them out of Arabia, out of Jerusalem, and out of Damascus. Lawrence spoke fluent Arabic, had travelled the region extensively before the war, and above all, understood the Arabs and their tribes. He also understood – far more than any of the Europeans – that any such revolt had to be BY the Arabs, FOR the Arabs. Ultimately British troops were involved, under General Allenby, in the conquest of Palestine and Syria, but the forces which liberated Arabia from the Turks and gave the whole regional campaign its initial force and strength, were Arab tribes recruited and organized by Lawrence. He understood their strengths and weaknesses, and though nominally a British advisor sent only to observe, he became a de facto leader of the guerilla forces not merely terrorizing the Turkish forces, but in several cases – including Akaba – actually driving them out of entire strongpoints. And he did this of his own initiative.
Of course, his most distinguishing feature, which immortalizes him in our imaginations, is wearing Arab dress and riding a camel. In the movie, he even shows up at the officer’s club in Cairo, goes right up to the bar in full Arab dress, and orders a lemonade for himself and his young companion, much to the alarm and surprise of the other British officers. At first an oddity and curiosity, this affectation becomes his trademark and a source of wonder and admiration.
Book & Movie. Lawrence wrote a book about his experiences, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It’s VERY LONG and very verbose. Suffice to say that if you can endure it (as I did) you’ll come away with a much stronger understanding of how difficult it was to raise this army, equip it, play off various tribal leaders against each other, satisfy skeptical British generals back in Cairo, and still keep alive after blowing up trains and thirsting on a camel out in the desert. The movie, with Peter O’Toole as Lawrence, Alec Guiness as Prince Feisal, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quinn, and many others, did a great job of telling the story in a dramatic fashion, although even the movie itself is rather long – almost 4 hours. There were a number of elements in the book which the movie could not address:
* Bisexuality. The two boys, Daud & Farra, who accompanied Lawrence and acted as his “servants”, were more than just friends. Many of these Arabs, off in the desert for weeks on end with no contact with women, facing death, violence, heat, thirst – all the dangers of this hostile environment – ultimately had to turn to each other for their physical needs.
Was Lawrence himself bisexual? I thought O’Toole’s portrayal in the movie made him appear to be. His own book does not delve into that, though it does refer, occasionally, to that of the Arabs (not at length, however). The way he describes his capture in Deraa, the Turkish commander wanted him to come to bed, but had him beaten when he refused; the inference from what was not stated was that Lawrence was sexually assaulted, not merely beaten and tortured. But this is merely an inference.
* Turkish incompetence. The Turkish soldiers were of low morale, the officers were unimaginative and nonaggressive. Any backbone or competence came from Germans in their midst. The one time Lawrence praises the performance of enemy forces, it’s a small nucleus of German machine gunners.
* Arab Tribal Politics and European Duplicity. The movie skims across this, but fairly well. Anthony Quinn (as Auda abu Tayi) and Omar Sharif (as Ali ibn al Kharish) face off against each other more than once. Lawrence goes into the considerable detail about this. Indeed, it appears that between him and Prince Feisal, they have a 24/7 job of keeping the coalition (!) together long enough to succeed at anything beyond blowing up a railroad. Each of the tribes was mainly in it for money or its own interests, NOT any sort of abstract loyalty to a nationalist cause.
Lawrence was also deeply conscious of his own role in inspiring the Arabs to revolt, yet knowing full well that his British superiors back in Cairo – and in London – had no intention of allowing the Arabs to keep any of the territory they fought so hard to take. The British were merely using the Arabs to fight the Turks, who were allied with the Germans – England’s enemy in WWI. So he considered himself a fraud. Yet since so much of his appeal to the tribes had to be for their own self-interests, and since they cared so little for any overall self-determination, his concern was somewhat misplaced. The irony was that he cared more for this ideal than the very Arab tribesmen he was organizing, recruiting and leading – on their behalf for this cause - and yet even he knew it was all a fraud after all. This is part of why Lawrence was extremely embarassed to take any claim, credit, praise, or award for his role in this whole matter. After the war, he attempted to join the RAF as a common private, but had to leave once they figured out who he was.
A great man, Al Aurens, very complex, very brave, a true hero out of history.
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