Ninety years ago, on 23 October 1916, the momentous first encounter took place between Captain TE Lawrence, a relatively junior British intelligence officer from Cairo, and Emir Feisal, the 33 year old third son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca.

Earlier that year, in June, Hussein had initiated a revolt of the Arabs living in the Hejaz against Turkish rule. Early operations had gone well, with both Mecca and Jidda quickly secured. But momentum waned when the Arabs failed to capture Medina and concerns rose among the British authorities in Egypt and the Sudan about the state of the revolt.

On 13 October Lawrence and Ronald Storrs, the Oriental Secretary to the British civilian administration in Cairo, left to visit the Hejaz and report back on how things were progressing. Lawrence’s position was curious. He still worked for the Military Intelligence Department in Cairo and technically took leave to go to Arabia. Foremost in his mind was the desire to establish which of Hussein’s four sons was likely to prove the most capable and dynamic leader of the Arab forces during the revolt.

Lawrence and Storrs arrived in Jidda on 16 October and had a meeting with Emir Adbullah, Hussein’s second son. Three days later Lawrence travelled north to Rabegh and spoke to Emir Ali, the Sherif’s oldest son, and to Emir Zeid, the youngest brother. None of them appeared to Lawrence to possess the right combination of personality and insight to lead the Arabs to victory. Already he had a vision of an independent, post-war Arabian state and to achieve this he knew it was essential to find precisely the right man. read on

Leslie Cecil Maygar VC took over command of the 8th Light Horse Regiment at Gallipoli some weeks

after the disastrous charge at the Nek. He led the regiment through the fighting in Sinai in 1916 and at Gaza in the spring of 1917.

On 31 October 1917, for the battle of Beersheba, the 8th Light Horse was placed in reserve. Towards the end of the afternoon, around the time of the 4th Light Horse Brigade’s famous charge, the 8th was ordered back to Chauvel’s Desert Mounted Corps Headquarters where, according to an unpublished history of the regiment held in the Memorial’s Research Centre, it arrived around 5.30pm.

Just then 2 enemy aeroplanes swooped down and as there were very many troops and transport vehicles concentrated there a good target presented itself to them and of which they took full toll. At a very low altitude they bombed and machine gunned men and horses, causing a large number of casualties to our side. Lieutenant Colonel Maygar was seriously wounded by a bomb bursting almost under him, and his horse, also wounded, bolted into the darkness and confusion and we never saw the Colonel again. After much searching his horse was found covered in blood and news was obtained that the Colonel had been got safely to hospital.

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Lawrence worked for the Military Intelligence Department in Cairo as an intelligence officer from December

1914 to November 1916. His knowledge of the Middle East gained through his pre-war studies and work as an archaeologist in Syria and Sinai, were put to good use in Cairo gathering and collating intelligence on enemy troops throughout the Turkish Empire and producing maps in association with the civilian Survey of Egypt.

In a letter to Charles Francis Bell in April 1915* he wrote:

Maps, maps, maps, hundreds of thousands of them, to be drawn, & printed, & packed up & sent off: – my job: – also in keeping track of Turkish Army movements.

According to Lawrence, intelligence was collated in Cairo from various sources including telegrams from Sofia, Belgrade, Petrograd, Athens, Basra and Tiflis. In his letter to Bell, Lawrence mentions that new information was also written into a book called the Handbook of the Turkish Army. The handbook was designed for extensive circulation and Lawrence, who also organised the printing of the book, mentions in his letter to Bell that thousands of copies were printed.

The principal authority on the handbook was Philip Graves. He was a former correspondent for The Times in the Middle East and from 1910, regularly passed information to British Intelligence about terrain, roads and railroad development in the Ottoman Empire. He was also the half brother of the poet Robert Graves.

Lawrence and other staff in the Cairo intelligence department contributed information to the handbook which required constant updating to take into account the latest reports they received. There were eight Cairo editions published between January 1915 and February 1916. Graves based these Cairo editions on a 1912 edition of the handbook which was produced by the War Office in London. Changes to the Turkish Army as a result of the outbreak of war were embodied in Graves’ first 1915 Cairo edition. read on

In 2005 we knew the Imperial War Museum was putting together a large exhibition on the whole life of T.E. Lawrence and at one stage we thought it may have been possible to ask for the exhibition to come to Australia after it had finished at the IWM. This of course proved to be impossible due to the large number of loans negotiated especially for the exhibition by the IWM. We decided to run our own exhibition, focussed more tightly on Lawrence’s wartime service and linking this to the operations of Australian forces in Egypt, Palestine and Syria at the same time. Our initial audience evaluation told us that Lawrence did not have much recognition with Australians, particularly those under 35, so from the outset we were aware of the need to raise Lawrence’s profile and strongly market this as our major exhibition for summer 2007-08.

By early 2006, a number of senior staff from the Memorial had seen the IWM exhibition whilst in London or passing through for various reasons. All were impressed with the exhibition’s scale and content, and it was decided that I should see it, as the curator of our own exhibition, and decide what items we’d like to try to borrow from various institutions and private owners in the UK.

In April 2006 I visited IWM London in Lambeth to see Lawrence of Arabia: the life, the legend. It took about three hours to get through the exhibition. It was due to close after Easter, only a couple of weeks later, and was pretty crowded. I took extensive notes about certain objects in the display that related to the focus of our own exhibition (the years 1914-18 and specifically the war in the desert). After this I spent quite a lot of time with Becky Wakeford, from the IWM’s exhibition design team, and then with Mark Whitmore (the IWM’s Director of Collections and my former boss in Australia). Having the IWM keen to assist our exhibition from the start was a big advantage.

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Rania MacPhillamy, born in 1889, was the daughter of a wealthy squatter from Forbes NSW. In 1915 she trained as a VAD and went to Egypt to help nurse the wounded from Gallipoli. After the death of her sweetheart, Ronnie MacDonald of the 1st Light Horse Regiment,  Rania stayed on in Egypt and formed a remarkable partnership with an older Australian, Mrs Alice Chisholm. Together they set up a canteen for the Light Horsemen at Port Said, and in early 1917 took over the running of another canteen at Kantara, a busy railway junction on the Suez Canal. Known as the ‘Empire Soldiers Club’, this became one of the best-known and best-loved institutions in Egypt. Thousands of soldiers were able to enjoy low-cost meals and friendly hospitality on their journeys to and from the front line: the club was open 24 hours a day and operated without a break from early 1917 until after demobilisation.

TE Lawrence visited the club at least once on his travels, and a number of Arab delegations also passed through. At one stage in 1917 the two women were hosts to 17 Arab dignitaries, including Nasib al Bakri, a wealthy merchant from Damascus and one of the key players in the fight for Arab independence. In June 1918, Rania set up another club in Jerusalem, which became a haven for the ANZACs on leave from the terrible conditions that summer in the Jordan Valley. Rania’s work for the Light Horse was recognised with the award of an OBE; her older friend, Alice Chisholm, received a DBE.

The images used in this post are courtesy of Christopher and Elizabeth Murray.

Jenny Horsfield

If you’ve managed to subscribe to this blog or if you’ve been looking at it for a few days since we went live, you’ll have noticed that it has not had a lot of content added since Day #1. Chris, our technical developer has been been fixing and improving things, like the link into our museum catalogue for some of the images we will use. Now you can select these images and most will open up in a new window that shows you the museum catalogue entry containing all the descriptive data in that system. We’ve also added a few plug-ins that will help us to manage this blog better.

As the blog covers the development of our exhibition, we will also need to add some posts that cover events from months ago as the blog birthday is some distance into our exhibition development process. We think you’ll find at least some of that process interesting, particularly as we will cover the somewhat complex procedure involved in borrowing exhibition items from overseas institutions. Happy reading!

Mal Booth

More than 70 years after his death, T E Lawrence remains one of the most compelling and intriguing figures of the Twentieth Century. His enigmatic personality, his intimate involvement in the emergence of the modern Middle East and the achievements of his extraordinary life, ranging from the guidance of the Arab revolt through the meticulous writing of Seven pillars of wisdom to the development of high speed air-sea rescue boats for the Royal Air Force, have secured him a place as one of the world’s most famous men. Yet so much of what we know about him is uncertain. Many facets of what he did remain overshadowed by nagging doubts of misrepresentation and obfuscation. He, himself, deliberately laid trails to confuse and confound people whom he knew one day would be re-examining his life. As an intensively private individual, he struggled daily with the overwhelming power of his celebrity. Yet, he did much to enhance this and regularly used it to advance his own agenda.

But, apart from the universal appeal of his unique personality, what has Lawrence got to do with Australia? Why should the Memorial consider him sufficiently important to focus a major, special exhibition on his wartime achievements?

The answers, as befits Lawrence, are complex but persuasive. For many Australians the war against the Ottoman Turks

after Gallipoli revolves around the actions and adventures of the Australian Light Horse (ALH). The self-sufficient, bush-hardened Light Horseman sitting astride his waler, seeking battle and relentlessly pursuing the Turks through the unforgiving landscape of Palestine and Syria is one of the central images of the Australian history of the First World War. It is an integral part of the national character that Australia took away from the events of 1914-18 and absorbed into its emerging national self-consciousness. In stark contrast to the stasis and agony of the Western Front, the war of the ALH appeared to be fast-paced, action-packed and demanded personal initiative and self-reliance as the new Crusaders finally liberated the Holy Land. The Light Horsemen were distinctively Australian and, after their story was laid down in a remarkably evocative official history published by Sir Henry Gullet in 1923, they developed a legendary reputation.

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The following interesting exchange between C. E. W. Bean (Australia’s Official Historian for the First World War) and TE Lawrence was found a while ago when we started researching our exhibition.

It was found in an official record series: AWM 43 ‘Official History, 1914-18 War, biographical and other research files’.

Bean intended to show biographical details (eg. the dates and places of birth and a connection to a town or district to which they belonged) for all those mentioned in the 12 volumes of the history. (These are now fully digitised and available on our website here for anyone interested.) So, on 29 March 1922, Bean sent Lawrence the usual form letter requesting his details. The request was sent to ‘Lieut-Colonel T. E. Lawrence, C.B., D.S.O., All Souls College, Oxford, England’. 

Lawrence replied with the following note hand-written on the bottom of the form:

Dear Bean

I do not think I belong to any special town or district, though I have a house in Essex (England). This entry is no doubt meant specially for Australians, who may be more domiciled than we are. The two decorations which you put after my name were not conferred upon me – except by the Strand Magazine!

22.5.22                                                  TEL.

On the returned form, Lawrence has also written in ‘Wales’ for place of birth and just ‘1888′ for the date. For profession or calling he has written ‘Historian’. He circled the C.B. and D.S.O. post-nominals and noted after the rank Lieut-Colonel ‘in 1918 only’.  

In July 1922, Bean wrote to an officer of the Australian War Museum, then located in the Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne, Victoria seeking the London Gazette information for Lawrence’s CB and DSO awards. He was informed that the CB was gazetted in the Third Supplement to the London Gazette on 7/8/1917 (p. 8163) and the DSO on 13/5/1918 (p. 5694), along with the citations for these awards. The officer (Mr A. G. Pretty) also informed Bean that in the British Who’s Who of 1920 and 1921 the CB and DSO are shown in Lawrence’s biography, but in the 1922 issue they are deleted, noting that this was ‘probably at Lawrence’s own request. By then he was disillusioned.’ I have no idea how he came upon that information, other than by reading press reports in Melbourne.

Mal Booth

One strong connection between Lawrence and the Light Horse is evident in our books collection. We have a very rare edition of TE Lawrence’s memoir of the Arab Revolt, Seven pillars of wisdom. Only a very limited, but lavish edition was produced while Lawrence was still alive (in 1926). An abridged version The Revolt in the Desert was produced in 1927, but the full trade edition was not published until after his death in 1935.

The 1926 subscriber’s edition was purchased by the Memorial using funds donated to the Memorial by the Australian Light Horse Association (raised through the sale of the book Australia in Palestine) to acquire records relating to military operations in Palestine. At the time this edition was the only version of Lawrence’s fuller account that was available. After much consultation, the Memorial’s Board of Trustees offered to purchase the book soon after Lawrence’s death in 1935 as it was seen as an important addition to the Australian Light Horse records held in the collection. It is one of only 170 full copies ever produced.

The production of the 1926 subscriber’s edition reflects Lawrence’s love of exquisitely produced books. Each copy had its own individual binding. The Memorial’s copy has a gold-tooled, Oxford blue morocco leather binding with raised cords. The index page to the illustrations is hand-annotated by Lawrence ‘Complete Copy’ and initialled ‘T.E.S.’ (He had adopted the pseudonym ‘T.E. Shaw’ in February 1923 when he joined the Tank Corps as a private.) Each new chapter within the book begins with an illuminated first letter. The text was printed on high quality paper and laid out with much consideration given to balance on the page. Respected contemporary artists were commissioned, and their works, which include landscapes and portraits of the main Arab and British participants, give the book a modernist feel.

You can hear a recent Memorial podcast by subscribing to the Exhibitions feed on our Podcasts page.

Mal Booth