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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 0984.PDF
FLIGHT, 25 May 1951 615 T. E. LAWRENCE AND THE R.A.F. Individualist Under Discipline: Thoughts Prompted by Books by and about him By Wing Commander R. C. O. LOVELOCK, D.F.C. "Aircraftman Shaw" on one of his powerful 1,000 c.c. Rrough Superior motor cycles, a succession of which he owned. Note the uniform of the period, with high collar and puttees. IT is, perhaps, a truism to say that the name of T. E.Lawrence ("Aircraftman Shaw") has become almost legendary in British politico-military history; yet to toomany of the younger generation it remains as little more than a name. We feel that our publication of this articlewill not be unrewarded if it serves to arouse in readers a new curiosity as to the life of Lawrence and an inclinationto seek out and read the works which W/C. Lovelock quotes; a bibliography appears at the end of bis contribution. THOSE admirers of T. E. Lawrence in both literatureand action who have had R.A.F. experience them-selves have been disappointed that The Mint, origin- ally expected in 1950, cannot yet be generally published; but some extracts from it have recently been included in a first anthology called The Essential T. E. Lawrence. If these extracts are read with the better known Letters of T. E. Law- rence, they give us an interesting view of hi& reactions to peace-time service in the much-less-complicated R.A.F. of nearly thirty years ago, more especially when seen in con- junction with his many remarks on regular armies in the unabridged version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Lawrence served in the ranks of the R.A.F. from 1922 to I935J with the exception of two years (1923-25) spent in the Royal Tank Corps. He enlisted under the assumed names of Ross and later Shaw, formally adopting the second by deed poll in 1927. On completion of the recruits' course at Uxbridge, about which The Mint was written, he was posted to Farnborough; but undesirable publicity then caused his discharge, so that he turned to the ranks of the R.T.C. at Bovingdon, Dorset. After reinstatement in the R.A.F., he was posted first to Cranwell and then to British India, serving at Karachi for eighteen months and at Miranshah, a fort in Waziristan on the North-west Frontier. Whilst he was at Miranshah in 1929, some internal strife in Afghani- stan prompted the Soviet government to make protests (which were quite unfounded) that he was engaged on Secret Service work in that area, so Lawrence was posted home to dispel the rumours. He spent the rest of his service among flying boats and marine craft, at Mount Batten, Plymouth, and in shipwrights' yards. It had been hoped that after his discharge he might be prevailed upon, as a civilian, to undertake some work of national importance more in keeping with his great gifts, but in May I935> during his forty-seventh year, he was killed in a motor- cycle accident only a few weeks after his release. No doubt the glib jargon of psychology, with its facile conclusions, could be freely used to "analyse" the perver- sity which caused Lawrence to submerge his fine intellect in the ranks, but there are many simpler reasons which are quite logical and probable. It seems to have been as a refuge from exhaustion and responsibility that he embraced the inexorable determinism of an aircrafthand's life, for in the Arab Revolt and the years immediately following it he had spent himself to the utmost, physically, spiritually, and mentally. During those two years in the desert the un- believable privations he had endured were set amid seasonal and climatic extremes more severe in their contrasts than anywhere in the world; to the known strains of guerrilla war, with a price of £20,000 upon his head, and of being wounded in action many times, had been added the lasting effects of fever, disease, and of hideous maltreatment. Spiritually, the survival of the Revolt had depended so much upon his own faith in the destiny of the Arabs.l In his own words he had meant to make a new nation, to restore to the world a lost influence; and to do it he had gone down into the dust and noise of the Eastern market-places and made others see his visions coming true. His heart had been broken when the growing suspicion that he had unknow- ingly deceived the Arabs in the British name was confirmed by the publication, whilst the fighting was still going on, of two plans for the disposal of Arab territory after the war. The first was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, prematurely and deliberately exposed by revolutionary Moscow in 1917, by which the more desirable parts of Arab Asia were to be divided into French and British spheres of influence; and the second was the Balfour Declaration, offering the Jews a national home in Palestine. Although he had not lost his power to win men's hearts, his disillusionment had been deepened by his inability, as Feisal's advocate, to sway the subsequent peace conferences on Arab independence. Being then determined that the aims and achievements of the Arab Revolt should not be lost to history and the world, he had set them down at white heat, with all the immensity and grandeur of his prose, in Seven Pillars of Wisdom; when the first manuscript was stolen, he had re-written the enor- mous work of 330,000 words from memory, driving that fine brain in great surges of creative and recoUective effort from which it had never properly recovered. Perhaps, too, a private grief concerning the mysterious personal loss which forms the theme of dedication, in verse, to Seven Pillars may have contributed to his desire for renunciation, as might also his admiration for the Arab ability to eschew privilege, about which he had written: "they taught me that no man could be their leader except he ate the ranks' food, wore their clothes, lived level with them, and yet appeared better in himself." 2 It seems that the dictates of his con- science, which made him refuse all honours or payment for his service in Arabia or profit from his writings thereon, may
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