Anyone know who this is?
I'm dusting off the cobwebs in my mind surrounding T.E. Lawrence. It's been a busy month, but it will not end before I tell you a little more about Hero by Michael Korda. I already posted something about the book, but I didn't get to talking about the man himself. So, today: T.E. Lawrence (via Michael Korda).
Warning: It's been a while since I finished the book, and I'm working mostly from memory here.....so I don't suggest you use this as a source for that Lawrence of Arabia history report due on Monday.
I'm going to be boring and give it to you from the beginning. Lawrence's father, Sir Thomas Chapman, was an Anglo-Irish baronet who abandoned his wife and ran off with his daughters' governess, Sarah Lawrence, to live in relative poverty. They left Ireland behind, moving to Wales (where their second son, to be known one day as "Lawrence of Arabia," was born in 1888), eventually settling in Oxford. The family, Sarah and Thomas and their four sons, took on the name Lawrence. Sarah and Thomas hid their past from their sons. The children did not know their parents were unmarried or that their father was Sir Thomas Chapman, 7th Baronet of Killua Castle in Ireland.
Korda believes that Lawrence was the first of the children to suspect that they were illegitimate. He believes Lawrence knew the truth for years (during the volatile teenage years) before his parents' past eventually came to light. Korda argues that Lawrence was greatly affected by his illegitimacy--that he was deeply ashamed, that it caused him to feel alienated from, well, everyone, and that he continually was driven to "prove" himself in order to compensate for the shame. I suppose all biographers play the role of psychologist, but it did get a little tiresome how often Korda used the illigetimacy to account for Lawrence's actions.
But it was even more tiresome how much Korda blamed Lawrence's opinionated, strong-willed mother for seemingly everything. I started to get the impression that Korda would attribute the entire Arab Revolt to T.E. Lawrence's attempt to escape his mother's apron strings. It was a little too much cliched Freud for my taste. Or maybe I'm just worried about the lengths my own children will go to in order to escape me. (Hmmm. Perhaps I shouldn't have forced them to pose for Easter pictures after all! Oh no--and I forced David to have his shirt tucked in for five minutes! Well, if he ever takes off across the desert alone, we'll all know why.)
From an early age, Lawrence was drawn to a life of adventure. It is interesting to see how one experience led to another, how one adventure prepared him for the next. Notice the progression. It's like perfect stepping stones.
As a child, his father introduced him to bicycles, which led him to spend hours as a teenager exploring the countryside. Then, as an undergraduate, he spent the summers bicycling across France photographing medieval castles. He soon found himself in search of more medieval castles, and in the summer of 1909 he embarked alone on a three-month walking tour of Ottoman Syria to study crusader castles. (Do you know how crazy this was?? He went alone in the summer to places seldom if ever seen by outsiders and covered over a thousand miles by foot. In case you're wondering, he did almost die. More than once.) A year and a half later, he was working as a field archaeologist at Carchemish in Northen Syria, where he was well-suited to the climate and culture. (Hey, Incirik friends, anyone remember seeing the turn off for Carchemish on the way to Sanliurfa?) He worked there for several seasons, perfecting his language skills and learning how to resolve the tribal disputes that erupted among his workers. The site was also near to where the Germans were building an important railway for the Turks. As such, he had regular contact with German technical advisers, as well as with members of the Ottoman bureaucracy. A few months before the outbreak of World War I, the British military sent Lawrence and a colleague from Carchemish on an archaeological survey of the Negev Desert, which would be of strategic importance should war ever break out between Britain and the Ottoman Empire. Of course, the archaeological work was merely a cover for their real mission of intelligence gathering and mapping the area, with special attention to anything of military importance.
After the war broke out, his previous experiences led him to be posted to Britain's Middle Eastern headquarters in Cairo on the Intelligence Staff. His first-hand knowledge of Syria and the surrounding areas, his earlier work at intelligence gathering, and his language skills, as well as his familiarity with the German-built Turkish railroads, were invaluable. Throughout his life, Lawrence, who was something of an odd duck, had the ability to impress people in positions of power and authority (while simultaneously annoying his lowly immediate supervisors). It is not surprising that Lawrence was soon chosen for several special missions. And that is when his life gets really interesting.
It is this part of his life--the "Lawrence of Arabia" part--that makes picking up the book worthwhile.
The British decided to help the Arabs rise up against the Ottoman Empire. It was Lawrence who saw in Emir Feisal, a son of the Sharif of Mecca, the face of the Arab Revolt. And oh, what a face...
Feisal is the guy in front. Does he not ooze leadership and honor? (By the way, Lawrence is the one to his right.)
So it was Lawrence who criss crossed the dangerous desert with Feisal. Nonstop adventure. Nitty, gritty, dirty, bloody, smelly, sweaty adventure---
He and small groups of Arabs dynamited trains, the blood and limbs of Turkish military and civilian passengers raining down on them after the blast. He returned alone (which is insane) into the desert wilderness to rescue a lost Arab fighter. He resolved disputes among rivaling tribes. He procured from the British modernized weapons for the Arabs, and he also distributed bags and bags and BAGS of gold to local tribesmen. In fact, he sometimes traveled with so many bags of gold that finding enough camels to carry it all could be a problem. (He was marvelous at working with--and bribing--the local tribes. He respected their tribal culture. He understood, and so was comfortable with, their ever shifting loyalties. It's too bad he's not around to help us in Afghanistan.) He would ride on a camel for days at a time without stopping to sleep. He disguised himself as a woman for reconnaissance missions, sneaking into towns behind enemy lines. He and Feisal took their army across an uncrossable desert in order to inflict a surprise attack on the port of Aqaba (proving that the Arab irregulars weren't a waste of those bags of gold). He lived off dates and the filthy but precious water of desert wells. He suffered attacks of dysentery, malaria, boils, and countless other illnesses.
And he loved it. Rather, he thrived in it. To say he loved it would be wrong--because he felt conflicted, sometimes ashamed, about what war requires of human beings. But it is fair to say that he thrived in the Arab desert and the chaos of the Arab Revolt. He was the kind of man who did what had to be done. Here is an example, from early on in his involvement with the Revolt.
Lawrence and a small ill-assorted traveling party set out on a march of more than a hundred miles through the desert so that Lawrence could relay important information to another Arab leader. Unfortunately, Lawrence was deathly ill with dysentery and in no position to travel. He was exhausted and barely conscious, but onward he pushed, his companions lifting him onto his camel. When they stopped for the night, Lawrence lay down and slipped into a feverish unconsciousness. Soon he awakened to discover that one of his men had been shot--by another one of his men, named Hamed, from a different tribe. The ethics of blood feuds required that the killer be killed--the victim's tribesmen demanded justice. Lawrence, even in his fevered state, could see that Hamed would have to be killed to avenge the death. But Lawrence could also see that this would be the beginning of a never-ending blood feud. Once Hamed had been killed, Hamed's tribe would be compelled to avenge Hamed's death, and so on and forever. The allegiance of both tribes to the Arab cause was important, and Lawrence knew the movement could not tolerate the blood feud that would inevitably ripple throughout the army. Still in his near-delirium, Lawrence saw that the solution was for he himself, as a stranger and non-Muslim, to execute Hamed. So Lawrence, who barely had the strength to stand, shot Hamed in the chest. Still alive, Hamed dropped to the ground howling, blood spewing from his wound. Lawrence, his hand shaking badly, shot him again, but this time he only got him in the wrist. Lawrence tried to compose himself, moved closer, put the pistol under Hamed's jaw, and pulled the trigger. Then Lawrence collapsed into bed for a fitful, sleepless night.
As Korda explains, "Hamed's death marks the point at which Lawrence gave up the moral comfort of . . . observing events from a distance." A reader of Lawrence's life sees him grappling with the realities of war, struggling to maintain a sense of morality. (Does morality even exist in war? Where is the line? Who decides where the line is...if there is one?) It is remarkable to read about Lawrence because he not only had an understanding of the bigger pictures of the conflicts in the Middle East, but he was on the ground, aside the troops, at the front line (or hidden behind them with dynamite),experiencing the daily physical and moral challenges of war. And he was an excellent, prolific writer, so we have access to his observations, thoughts, and feelings--about the big picture and the small.
This post is long enough. Tomorrow I will tell you why I think he is a hero. And then I will return to posting happy mommy-bloggy things.
