TE Lawrence liked to keep score

[Cam63]

I checked out the Lawrence of Arabia and the Light Horse exhibition at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra yesterday and found the curators done a pretty good job of it.

It's a collection of paintings, photos, documents, letters, robes worn by Lawrence, his dagger and the Lee Enfield .303 rifle given to him by Emir Feisal ( the guy played by Anthony Quinn in the movie ).

The rifle has an interesting history. It was captured by the Turks at Gallipoli from a British soldier and presented to Feisal who was an ally in the early stages of WW1.

He later had it inscribed in gold and gave it to Lawrence as a gift in 1916 when he joined the British to help kick the Turks out of Palestine.

As it turns out, TE was a pretty decent shot. He carved five notches above the magazine, one large notch for an officer and four smaller ones for enlisted.

I tried finding a larger photo, but this was the best I could do.

http://collections.iwm.org.uk/upload/img_400/FIR_8255.gif

[OzBat!]

It's a pity that virtually all of his achievements were crap or fakes. There was a reason he hated the Australian Light horse, they kept getting there ahead of him. The victory at Damascus especially... the australians got there first, took the city, and then at the pleading of the city leaders went out and acted as a guard when Lawrence and his arab forces came streaming down. Lawrence turned up in his rolls royce expecting the royal treatment but instead General Harry Chauvel had already led his forces on a victory parade through Damascus!

Many people don't realise it, many australians don't realise it, but it's Australian forces in WW1 that made the recreation of the nation of Israel possible. The last successful calvary charge in history, the Light Horse took Beersheba, breaking the German-Turkish line and paving the way to oust the turks from Palestine.

Lawrence did some good things, but he was a media hound and the oh-so-great movie has factual content of about 5% (his outfit he used to wear).

[the4thpip]

At first I thought this was gonna be about Lady Chatterly's Lover scoring. :eek:

[Cam63]

The Aussies were pretty enthusiastic about charging a place with beer in the title, to say the least.