OCR Text |
Show :P I KNEW THE' REAL A current movie depicts him was an epic hero of desert warfare 45 years ago or was he just a "myth" and "a is ! t ' as an epic hero and a recent book as a faker; here is the OF ARABIA figment of Lowell Thomas' imagination," as some have claimed? i I t T. E. Lawrence has been dead 27 years now, victim of a motorcycle accident in which he swerved to save the life of a young boy. Or did he commit suicide to escape a fame-ridde- n life he could no longer bear? All the years have not settled, these questions. The controversial man I believe will become a legend is still a disputed figure. Soon a spectacular movie, "Law-renc- e of Arabia," will fill the screen, presumably portraying Lawrence as one of the towering figures of World War I. Yet not long ago, a biography and a drama depicted him as an emotionally crippled fake, anim-postto greatness. Who is the real Lawren6? I was the first to tell the world about him in the early 20s. 1 went unchal lenged then by the men who knew him personally, but he has been s t 4 er " J t It t. " .: 1""' , ," . t (t subsequently besmirched by s." Let's set the record straight again. I first saw Lawrence on Christian Street in Jerusalem shortly after the city had been captured (Dec. 9, 1917) by the British from the Turkish allies of Germany. In the seething cowd of exotic' figures from East and West, this small man (he was only 5 feet, 3 inches) was the most imposing! It was not his V-- '. r Johnny-come-latelie- X'"'-'"'- -' magnificent robes, worn only by a Prince of Islam, that attracted, att ' tention, nor the fairness of his skin in a land of. sun- - and wind-burpeoples. Most striking was the man himself, the authority in his stride, the deep contemplation in his blue eyes, the serene yet commanding nt i. i cast to his expression. . v , ;u - . , J. - Peter O'Toole has the title role in the . new movie, "Lawrence of Arabia." Top jpkotos 'show the strong fesemblance 6f O'Toole (lefty to real Lawrence, , 10 Family Weekly, December IS, 1962 , I had to know who this stranger was. I went to Col. Ronald Storrs, governor of the Holy City, and began to describe him. Storrs heard only a few of my words, then opened a' door to the adjoining room. There sat. the Bedouin. "Meet Colonel Lawrence, the uncrowned king of Arabia," said Storrs. This was the beginning of my,, association with the serious scholar from, Oxford. Four years before the war, Lawrence had visited Arabia as a stu-dearcheologist. He had vanished into the desert for months at a time and become Arab in dress, language, custom even thought. When his beloved England went .to war against the Central Powers, his knowledge of Turkey's subjugated Lawrence waited until the engine's front wheels crossed the mine before sending current into the gelatin. The blast reverberated through the dry air, and the locomotive sprang upward, breaking in two. From derailed coaches came a nt people proved history-makinBritish forces in the Near East could stop Turkey from capturing the S uez Canal and successfully counterattack inv the Holy Lnd only by fomenting a revolt of the Arabs which, in turn, would divert Turkish forces. Lawrence, painfully shy and adamantly nonmilitary, was the one man in the world with the genius for uniting the feuding tribes. The measure of this genius was that a "infidel" not only harangued Moslem warriors, out of five centuries of disunity but in less than a yearTallied up to 100,000 men to his banner. g. - 29-year-- with Lawrence and his in those glorious days and recall pressing across a desert as desolate as a valley of the moon. Behind us rode a thousand tribesmen on camels, their voices raised in improvised songs describing the valor of the blond shereef. And Lawrence? Why, he ignored them and discussed ancient civilizations with me! He did, that is, until warx darkened his thoughts, and he broke off with: "The most glorious sight I have ever seen is a trainload of Turkish soldiers ascending skyward after the explosion of a tulip!" A tulip was Lawrence's descrip-tio- n IxjROiE of a charge of blasting gelatin, which he delighted in placing under Turkish railroads. I recall him mining one desert stretch, carefully sweeping away his footprints and leveling the railroad bed, then stringing 200 yards of wire up the side of a hill. There he sat like a drowsing shepherd as1 a train roared over the horizon. 50-pou- nd . surprise 400 Turks, stunned but ready for battle. Lawrence, however, had placed machine guns around the dunes and these raked the enemy as they tried unsuccessfully to take pover. A Turkish officer apparently guessed who the shepherd really was. With a small detachment, he rushed up the hill. The Englishman n pulled a Colt frontier from his robes and killed him with one shot, then routed the others. When the battle ended in virtual annihilation of the Turks, Lawrence carved a deep notch in his old Enfield rifle to denote killing an officer. (He grooved only shallow notches f or the soldiers he had brought down.) By the time Lawrence's brilliant campaign climaxed in the capture of Damascus and the end of the Turkish Empire, he personally had blown up 25 trains, 15,000 rails, and 57 bridges and culverts, virtually isolating enemy garrisons. No wonder the Turks dubbed him "Wrecker of Railroads' and put "a price on his head. ' six-gu- Lawrence wanted After the WAB, more than to retire to his books in a quiet country cottage. Conceivably he could have passed from greatness to obscurity : the public knew little of his heroics the government had soft- pedaled the desert campaign, not wanting the Arab revolt to seem British-inspireBut a journalist told the world the truth about Lawrence. That journalist was I. be-cau- se d. With an assistant, Harry Chase, I had filmed most of the theaters of war and, after the Armistice, went on a U. S. tour with our pictorial record. But people were tired of war, and the showings were not popular except my "With Lawrence in Arabia" and "With Allenby in Palestine." This was high adventoture, romance, and derring-d- o tally unknown, and the show even- - -- |