A while back, one of our regular readers was talking to me about what we were doing and expressed some surprise at what effort is going into this exhibition. He said that he thought we just went out the back and grabbed things to put into cabinets and presto, an exhibition is born. Well, words to that effect. Others have emailed me recently about being interested in what goes into putting our exhibitions together.

The process isn’t actually that simple and with about half of this exhibition being devoted to international loans regarding Lawrence, it is even more complex than our normal temporary exhibition process. So, for those of you who might be interested, I will now attempt to outline the key elements of our process thus far. I suspect that it’ll take a few posts, based just on my rough notes and there won’t be too many relevant images, so if you don’t have a deep abiding interest in our process, I suggest you turn away very quickly now and do a crossword puzzle or look at one of our other blogs. My colleagues working on the To Flanders Fields, 1917 exhibition are doing a great job with excellent content, so maybe check that one out. read on

A while back, actually a long while back, I promised to enlighten you about a couple of inspiring things that I saw in London in 2006 during my visits to view the IWM’s Lawrence of Arabia, the Life, the Legend exhibition and to negotiate our UK loans. So after a long delay and absolutely no requests to read the second part of my story, here it is. I must tell you that what I’ve written below were my impressions, recorded in London over Easter 2006. Since then, I’ve worked on the challenges presented by our exhibition and I’ve developed an even deeper appreciation of the work that went into these exhibitions.

Firstly, I found the IWM’s relatively new Churchill Museum absolutely stunning. Located with the Cabinet War Rooms, it is visually splendid and makes full use of modern exhibition technology to educate visitors about Churchill’s amazing life by very clever use of sound, documents, images, film footage, interactives and the display of selected objects. I went for a quick visit, just to breeze through and found myself there for some hours. You get a very good sense of the man and his achievements without being confused or overwhelmed by too much content or context.

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I normally reside in the Research Centre, working with Mal and Robyn, but for the past five months I have been working in the Memorial’s Military Heraldry and Technology section (MHT). MHT’s collection includes uniforms, medals, souvenirs, trench art, weaponry, vehicles and other interesting items. Some items from the MHT collection have been selected for display in Lawrence exhibition. Of the items selected, my favourites are the beadwork items made by Ottoman Prisoners of War in British POW camps.

Ottoman prisoners made many items whilst in captivity. It kept them occupied and was an avenue for them to earn money to supplement their rations and purchase items they required. Some prisoners even sent them home as gifts for family members or used them to barter with other prisoners. read on

In September 1914 Charles Reginald Yells, a 24 year old labourer from Kapunda, South Australia enlisted with the AIF. Joining the 9th Light Horse Regiment, he trained at Broadmeadows in Victoria before embarking on the HMAT Karroo for Egypt in February 1915. In July 1915, he was promoted to Temporary Sergeant to teach at the Imperial School of Instruction at Zeitoun, Egypt. He worked as an instructor at the school until assigned for “special duty” to the Red Sea Ports on 10 August 1917.

The special duty assigned to Yells was to instruct Lawrence and his Arab squads in the use of the Lewis gun. Throughout 1916 and 1917 Lawrence and his Arabs regularly mined the Hejaz railway as a means of diverting Turkish resources and disrupting their lines of communication. Lawrence had acquired Lewis guns and trench mortars to secure the trains and provide cover during their attacks. Yells was assigned to instruct on the use of Lewis guns and a British Servicemen, Lance Corporal Walter Herbert Brooke of the 25th Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers was to instruct on the use of trench mortars. In Seven Pillars Lawrence wrote:

Their names may have been Yells and Brooke, but became Lewis and Stokes after their jealously-loved tools.

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Among the literature and sources of the Palestine campaign appear two prominent and highly decorated Light Horse officers by the name of Donald Cameron: Lieutenant Colonel Sir Donald Charles Cameron of the 5th Light Horse Regiment and Lieutenant Colonel Donald Cameron of the 12th Light Horse Regiment.

Hailing from rural backgrounds, the two men had similar military career paths. They were both veterans of the Boer War. Donald Charles Cameron saw service in the South African War with the Queensland Imperial Bushmen and Donald Cameron served with the 1st Australian Horse.

The men enlisted early in the First World War and fought at Gallipoli where Donald Charles was wounded. Serving in the Middle East, both were promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1917. In October 1917 they led their units in the battle of Beersheba. Donald Cameron of the 12th led his unit in the charge and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order “For the conspicuously able and determined manner in which he directed the attack by his Regiment . . . on the defences of Beersheba”. He earned a Bar to his Distinguished Service Order on 30 September 1918, when at Kaukab he attacked the enemy’s cavalry driving them in “disorder towards Damascus”. Donald Charles Cameron was awarded a Distinguished Service Order at Gaza on 26 March 1917 where he led his Squadron in a bayonet charge against enemy held trenches. Donald Charles is also well known as the commanding officer at Ziza where he arranged for the surrender and protection of retreating Turks on 29 September 1918. read on

Recently, I had one of those marvellous moments of discovery connecting T E Lawrence to C E W Bean . . . well, in a small way.

I was researching captions for the exhibition items on loan from various UK institutions when I came across some information about the lintel on the door to Lawrence’s Clouds Hill home in Dorset. I had visited Cloud’s Hill with Jeremy Wilson in 2006 when I was in the UK researching and negotiating our loans.

In their exhibition, the Imperial War Museum included  a copy of the lintel from the entrance door to Clouds Hill. Lawrence and one or two friends serving with him in the RAF or Royal Tank Corps carved the Greek inscription “Ou Phrontis” (or Why worry?) above his door. The words come from a story in Herodotus VI, 129. Lawrence explained this in a letter dated 18 October 1932 to Mrs Eric Kennington: “It means that nothing in Clouds Hill is to be a care upon its inhabitant”.

There is an image of the lintel here.

I remembered that among the more interesting items in Bean’s own library – held in our ‘vault’ collection as a formed collection and not usually for public access, are his own volumes of Herodotus. Bean had acquired copies of Herodotus that he has dis-bound and then rebound with larger plain pages around each printed page for his notes, drawings and translations.

So, I had a look for the above quote to see whether Bean too had noted it. It is indeed underlined and his notation reads ‘What does H. care? The proverb arose’.

A force of nearly 5,000 from the Turkish Maan garrison was encountered by elements of the 5th Australian Light Horse Regiment at Ziza on 29 September 1918. This dramatic painting, Ziza by H. Septimus Power, depicts the unique event where members the Australian Light Horse for one night shared food and fire with soldiers of the Turkish Army and joined forces with the Turks against Arabs from the Beni Sakhr tribes.

H Septimus Power’s Ziza 1935 oil on canvas

The extraordinary event at Ziza occurred towards the end of Major General Chaytor’s successful campaign east of the Jordan. The Maan garrison was hopelessly cut off and had been fleeing northwards to Amman. On the morning of the 29 September 1918, their hasty defensive position at Ziza station was contacted by two squadrons of the 5th Light Horse Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel Donald Cameron. Thousands of Beni Sakhr tribesmen had gathered in the hills surrounding the Turkish Garrison, threatening to strike against them. The Turkish commander wanted to surrender but was unwilling to lay down their arms to the small Australian force since that might mean their annihilation by the Arabs. General Chaytor himself came forward late in the afternoon to consult with Cameron about the situation and decided that the Turks should remain in their trenches and keep their arms until stronger reinforcements arrived the following morning. The 7th Light Horse Regiment assisted in the defence of the position overnight and this unlikely coupling of Turkish and Australian troops stood guard until daylight. By the next morning the New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade had arrived and it was safe to disarm the Turks and formally take them prisoner.

The original official surrender document, signed by “Ottoman Company Commander at Djezir, Ali Housain,” Commander of the Ziza Garrison, ceding troops, guns and other stores to the Australian Forces, is held at the Australian War Memorial and will be on display in the exhibition.

A detailed narrative account of the surrender at Ziza written by Donald Cameron can be read in the appendices of the war diaries for the 5th Australian Light Horse here. Cameron notes in the war diary that the Turkish forces, although having great superiority of numbers, were terrified of the Bedouins and seemed “worn out”.

Further reading:

Damien Fenton, ‘Standoff at Ziza’ Wartime, 2003, Issue 24. View PDF file here.

H S Gullett, The Australian Imperial Force in Sinai and Palestine, 1914–1918 Volume VII – (10th edition, 1941). Chapter 42, pp 724-727.

Jeremy Wilson will be coming out to Canberra for the opening of our exhibition, with support from the British High Commission in Canberra. He will give a public talk in our Telstra Theatre on Sunday, 9 December 2007. Jeremy who wrote Lawrence of Arabia – the Authorised Biography (1989) is recognised as the world’s leading scholar on Lawrence. He also wrote the catalogue for the 1988 National Portrait Gallery exhibition in London which marked the centenary of Lawrence’s birth. The catalogue has proved extremely useful for our own research into Lawrence.

Jeremy’s lecture will focus on Lawrence’s role in the capture of Akaba on 6 July 1917. Akaba became an important Red Sea base from which Lawrence and the Arab Revolt were able to launch attacks against the northern sections of the Hejaz Railway. Jeremy believes that Lawrence had a hand in the use of aerial photography to produce this map of Akaba that he identified in the Memorial’s collection. More details will follow closer to the event.

Mal

John Lafferty from the Memorial’s Information Technology section has taken himself and his trusty camera to Gallipoli on our annual Battlefield Tour. John is a gifted photographer and he is maintaining a blog from the tour while they are all in Gallipoli. You can find the Gallipoli Battlefield Tour blog here.

The Dardanelles campaign is not covered by our exhibition, but both Lawrence and the Light Horse were involved. 

Many members of the Light Horse who were later involved in the defence of the Sinai and Allenby’s advance through Palestine had earlier served on Gallipoli. Sir Harry Chauvel and his 1st Light Horse Brigade landed at Gallipoli on 12 May 1915.

During the Dardanelles campaign Lawrence worked for the Cairo Intelligence Department and provided maps and intelligence for the forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula. He was also keenly involved in pioneering work done to use aerial photography taken over Gallipoli to produce maps.

This post is a bit of a stretch, but I think the link is there and it is interesting enough, so here it goes. Recently, I have been reading up on the actions of our Light Horse in Palestine, particularly in late 1917 and 1918. This has all been related to the development of the exhibition text or storyline. Earlier, our efforts had concentrated on selecting items for the exhibition and then negotiating loans for those items that have to be borrowed. There’ll be more about that soon. Currently, we are trying to finalise the text and all the captions and then get a designer on board.

So, now back to “Hooky” Walker . . . One of the loans we have negotiated from the UK is a sketch map that was drawn by Lawrence. It covers part of the route taken by Sharif Nasir’s expedition from Wejh to Akaba in July 1917 to capture the Red Sea port from the Ottomans. This map is owned by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs in London and my negotiations for this loan were greatly assisted by Sir Harold “Hooky” Walker, their Chairman. Sir Harold told me that his grandfather was Lieutenant General Sir Harold “Hooky” Walker, who as an English regular officer had commanded the 1st Australian Division. General Walker took command of the 1st Australian Division temporarily on Gallipoli in May 1915 after Major General Sir William Throsby Bridges was mortally wounded.  After being wounded himself, General Walker left Gallipoli, but returned to command the Division as a Major General in France from March 1916 until July 1918 when he relinquished command “to the deep regret of his officers and men” according to Bean. read on