Great Britain. Royal Air Force. - The mint: Lawrence after Arabia

The Mint

Lawrence after Arabia

T. E. Lawrence

Newpaperbackeditionpublishedin2016by
TaurisParkePaperbacks
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Firstpublishedinalimitededitionof50copiesfromaposthumoustranscriptionofanunrevisedtypescriptbyDoubleday,Doran,NewYork,in1936.ThisrevisedtextwasfirstpublishedinGreatBritainfromafinaltypescriptbyJonathanCapeLtdin1955.

Textusedforthiseditionpublishedin1978byPenguinBooks

CopyrightIntroductiontotheNewEdition2016AnthonySattin

Coverimage:T.E.LawrenceintheRAFc.1930BridgemanImages(front);RAFBristolF.2bFighters,publicdomain(spineandback)

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ISBN:9781784535414
eISBN:9781786720160
ePDF:9781786730169

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O n the morning of Wednesday 30 August 1922, a 34-year-oldman by the name of John Hume Ross paced uneasily outsidethe door of 4 Henrietta Street in Londons Covent Garden.Short and fair-haired, with a long jaw and tough, wiry body,Ross had applied to enlist in the Royal Air Force: the 10.30appointment was to process his application and assess hismedical condition. This was standard procedure for any newrecruit wanting to enlist. But Ross was not just any newrecruit.

For one thing, he had spent two hours pacing upand down a filthy street, lips and hands and kneestremulously out of control, my heart pounding in fearof that little door through which I must go to join up.

Ross was to write a two-page description of the interviewduring which he was told to make himself as tall as he could presumably standing on tiptoes to reach the minimum heightrequirement for new recruits of five foot six inches. He also revealedthat his body was scarred, that he had nerves like a rabbit andwas suffering from malnutrition. I thought I was fitter, Ross laterwrote to Swann by way of an apology for the mess he had madeof the interview. My teeth were never any good, so the doctorsthrew me straight downstairs again. There Dexter caught me, andlent me what was no doubt his right hand to steer me past themedicalIfI had known I was such a wreck Id have gone off and recovered beforejoining up.But with the help of the Air Vice-Marshal, Ross was acceptedas an aircraftsman, given a service number of 352087 andsent to the RAF Depot at Uxbridge for training.

The wreck of a man who enlisted as Ross had beenchristened Thomas Edward Lawrence. He had been brought upin Brittany, the New Forest and then Oxford, where he attendedthe High School and Jesus College, graduating in 1909 witha First Class degree in medieval history. The following year hejoined the British Museums archaeological dig of the ancientHittite city at Carchemish on the Euphrates, on what is now theborder between Turkey and Syria. During four formative years,between the ages of 22 and 26, he lived at the dig, where he builtand furnished a large house, travelled through the region downto Cairo, across the Sinai Desert to Aqaba, up to the Ottomancapital of Constantinople, and over the mountains to Beirutand Damascus. Aleppo had been his closest place of repose andhe was a regular visitor to the citys Barons Hotel and to theBritish Consulate, where he became close friends with the Consul,Raphael Fontana and his wife Winifred. As well as acquiring anunderstanding of the landscape and how best to travel across it,he also learned Arabic (although exactly how fluent he becameremains unclear), developed a rapport with Arabs and Kurdsin the region, had a fascination for the past and fed dreams forhis immediate future. Writing to one of his university friends atthe end of 1913, he admitted that he had become a lotus-eater:I have got to like this place very much: and the people here five or six of them and the whole manner of living pleasesme.He had also become extremely close to one young Syrianin particular, a teenager named Dahoum, whom he hadadopted as his protg, helping to educate him. UnderLawrences tutelage, Dahoum rose from being the most juniorof the workforce in 1910 to one of the four headmen in 1913.

The war changed everything. Lawrence had been watchingthe gradual crumbling of the Ottoman Empire, and the viewfrom one of its more remote provinces allowed him to indulgethe hope that he might be able to help Dahoum and hispeople, the Arabs, towards some sort of independence.Later, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom , his account of the ArabRevolt, Lawrence claimed that I had dreamed, at theCity School in Oxford, of hustling into form, while I lived,the new Asia which time was inexorably bringing uponus.