Posted on 05/14/2006 10:17:59 AM PDT by wagglebee
The most controversial incident in the colourful life of Lawrence of Arabia was made up by the celebrated hero, according to new forensic evidence.
The brutal sex attack on Lt Col T E Lawrence by Turkish soldiers, which allegedly took place while he was serving as the British liaison officer during the Arab revolt, was considered so contentious that it was covered up by the British Army.
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But now, a new history of the Arab revolt is to claim that Lawrence invented the attack in order to smear political opponents and fulfil his own sado-masochistic urges.
The supposed rape on November 20, 1917, at the Syrian fortress town at Deraa has been the subject of much speculation over the years.
Although he recounted some detail of the attack in his 1922 memoir, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the pages of Lawrence's diary covering the period when the incident is meant to have taken place, have been ripped out.
Until now, scholars have been unable to ascertain Lawrence's whereabouts during those crucial days from November 15-21, when he claimed that he had been captured by the Turkish governor, Hajim Bey, then whipped and raped by guards.
The incident was graphically depicted in David Lean's classic 1962 film, Lawrence of Arabia, directed by David Lean and starring Peter O'Toole.
Yet evidence uncovered by James Barr, the author of Setting the Desert on Fire: T E Lawrence and Britain's Secret War in Arabia 1916-1918, suggests that Lawrence never went to Deraa.
In order to discern what might have been written on the missing pages, Barr submitted Lawrence's diary for electrostatic data analysis.
The technique uses static electricity and fine carbon powder to reveal indentations made by a pen or pencil through an absent page on a surviving sheet of paper below.
The tests revealed the imprint of a capitalised "A" on November 18 - almost certainly the A of Azrak, a tumbledown castle in a wild oasis 60 miles south-east of Deraa, where Lawrence had already spent several days.
Barr suggests that, instead of setting off to Deraa, Lawrence stayed put - a contention supported by a letter he wrote to his mother on November 14 1917, in which he claimed to be "staying here (at Azraq) a few days".
Lawrence first mentioned the alleged rape in June 1919, midway through writing his memoirs and Barr argues that he fabricated the event in order to discredit Arab militants in the precarious post-war climate.
The French government had, by 1919, offered to recognise the Arab leader, Feisal, as king of Syria if he accepted French influence in return. Feisal, however, was under pressure from Arab militants, who refused to bow to French pressure.
Barr said: "It was one of these most prominent militants whom Lawrence claimed had betrayed him to the Turks at Deraa.
"Lawrence's biographers have argued over whether or not he was raped at Deraa. But until now no one has been able to produce evidence from his diary, which is an accurate, contemporary record of what he did.
"The tests produced three grey transparent films which didn't look promising. When I got them home I noticed there was a faint capital letter 'A' in Lawrence's handwriting, in the entry for November 18. I realised I had found significant new evidence.
"The 'A' from the missing page provides strong evidence from Lawrence that he did not leave Azraq until November 19 at the earliest. It suggests Lawrence removed that page because its contents did not tally with the story he would later tell the world."
The evidence resurrects the claim, made by some Lawrence scholars, that he had sado-masochistic urges and elaborated on the rape scene for his own delectation.
Signs of Lawrence's alleged sexual deviancy first emerged when he admitted in letters to a friend that he paid a man to beat him with birches, to the backdrop of Beethoven playing on a gramophone.
The electrostatic data films will now be passed onto the British Library, for examination by other scholars.
The Arab revolt was a joke, which did nothing but tie down a few Torkish battalions in an otherwise inactive theater of war. Rafael de Nogales, a mercenary officer who commanded a Turkish cavalry division in Palestine encountered Lawrence's men on a number of occasions. In his memoirs "Four Years Beneath the Crescent", he expresses little but contempt for the Arab raiders. So long as any Turkish unit maintained a semblance of order, the Arabs would run away. They were bandits, nothing more. This is evident even in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom", as most of the serious battles are not fought by Arabs, but by Muslim troops of the British Army brought to Aqaba from India.
In the movie, Lawrence seemed to enjoy it more than Jose Ferrer.
Excellent deduction.
And your tagline means, "who loves me, loves me and canes me".
Just kidding.
But Auda was an incredible character in real life as in film. To me the most unforgettable parts of the book are descriptions of the feasts and of the taste of water wells, ranging from delicious to drinking water into which the Turks had thrown dead camels to decay.
Some of us cane. Some of us cane't...;-)
If it was consensual, then it wasn't really rape.
So much of what is written today is inaccurate.
Ah, yes... "A" stands for Azrak.
The evidence sounds really flimsy to me. You should need a little more than that to go on to discredit Lawrence.
As none have represented a threat to the borders of this nation of states, frankly I wouldn't care. Another side effect may also have been a concerted search and drilling effort in other parts of the world.
True, Arabs are cowards.
On the other hand, Ferrer retired the trophy for looking dissipated and evil in that one. In comparison, Emperor Palpatine just looked like he had a really rotten cold.
I have been reading "Backing Into The Limelight".....it is an amazing biography and it would not surprise me in the least if T.E. made up the rape. He was known to fabricate things for his own amusement.
Hmmm... except Lawrence was on the side of the Arabs, claiming to have been the victim of buggery by Turks.
I'm with Clint on this... the Film Actors Guild is on the march. Well, the prance.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Hey, sick, but could you have broken up the Ottoman Empire yourself?
http://www.simplyottomans.com/
That said, they've been trying to discredit him for years...
And it clearly means, "I'm still in Azrak"
Definitely NOT, "Thank Allah, I'm not still in that dump, Azrak"
Read Seven Pillars. It's a masterpiece. Also, The Mint, one of the strangest military books ever written.
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