He was five feet three inches tall! With his fair hair, slim body and light skin, he looked boyish. He stood before the army medical board volunteering his services as a soldier. That was in early 1914. War had broken out between Britain and Germany and Turkey had sided with Germany. Britain urgently needed soldiers; but it was not prepared to accept boyish volunteers who did not meet the army specifications for soldiers and had refused to accept the services of T.E Lawrence.

When Lawrence walked out of the room, he had almost stepped into the pages of history books. Five years later, he was an army commander. During this time, he had refused the Victoria Cross, knighthood and promotion to the rank of a general. However, his name was mentioned along with the dozen most famous men of Britain, and came to be known throughout the world.

His ancestors were among the oldest families in Britain. The Lawrences had distinguished themselves as soldiers since age-old times. One of them had fought under Richard Coeur de Lion. Another had become famous for his gallantry in the Indian War of Independence fought in 1857. They had all been daring men, eager to seek adventure in different corners of the world.

Thomas Edward Lawrence lived in his ancestral home in County Galway on the West Coast of Ireland. He was the second youngest among his five brothers. At early age he had an opportunity to travel with his family to Channel Islands and from there to Scotland. After studying for three years in a school in France, he had returned back to England and settled down in Oxford.

His love for adventure remained steady during his college years. He explored an underground stream that flowed under Oxford by lying flat in his canoe and guiding himself in the darkness with a bicycle oil lamp. He loved climbing over the dangerously steep roofs of high-rise buildings. One such misadventure had kept him confined to a bed for weeks with a broken leg. At the same time, he read voraciously and his favourite books were Greek Poetry and studying the military campaigns of the great generals in the historic past.

The Middle East fascinated him. Soon after settling in Oxford, he told his family about his intention to travel to Arab lands and his first destination was Syria. His family had purchased for Lawrence a berth on a steamer and gave him two hundred pounds to make his travel easier. Reaching Beirut, Lawrence went into the nearest bank and deposited one hundred and fifty pounds with the cashier, promising him to come back for it later.

Lawrence then went to the local Bazaar. He bought an Arab costume, traded his English shoes for the native sandals of the people of the desert and disappeared into the wild interiors of the Syria bordering the land of Arabia. For two years, he lived with the Arab tribes, eating their food, sleeping in their villages, drinking coffee with the tribal chiefs and braved the harsh desert climate with them. He would sit by the fireside listening eagerly to the experiences of the Bedouins and learning from their wisdom. At the end of his stay, he had returned to Beirut, collected his money from the bank and returned to Oxford with one hundred pounds still left on him!

Three months later, he was back in the Middle East-this time he accompanied a renowned archaeologist from Oxford, Professor Woolley. Lawrence was just twenty years old, and tremendously interested in archaeology. Professor Woolley had noticed the interest of the young man and offered him the job of managing the Arab workmen at the site of an excavation of a prehistoric city on the bank of the old Euphrates River. Lawrence had gladly accepted.

Being able to speak fluent Arabic, Lawrence was liked by the Arab workmen almost immediately. They soon realized that the young man was full of extraordinary wisdom, in spite of his boyish face and youthful appearance. Within a few weeks he had gained their trust so much, that the village elders were inviting him to their council to judge legal cases! Strangely, they never argued against his clever decisions.

Lawrence always dressed in Arab clothes. His command over the Arabic language and the mannerisms of the Arabs was so perfect that it had won him their respect and he was treated as one of them. Lawrence was always careful never to offend them by breaking their elaborate rules of etiquette.

He trusted his workmen completely. Visitors to his camp would always be shocked to see a battered trunk of silver coinage, lying open in the flimsy office. Lawrence would dip into it often to pay off their wages. Near to the site of the excavation, a team of German Engineers was constructing a large steel bridge across the Euphrates. One of the Germans took a strong dislike to a young Arab hanging with his workmen. Enraged, he ordered the Arab whipped.

The Arab was one of Lawrence's servants. That evening, Lawrence walked into the German Camp and firmly demanded that the junior engineer apologize to his servant. The German chief engineer was amazed. Beating the servants was a matter of routine in his camp. To him, one beating more or less was not important.

But on seeing the determined look on Lawrence's face, the German relented. The apology was made and Lawrence's popularity among the villagers grew.

Soon after this incident the Germans managed to infuriate the Arab workmen working under them. The Arabs mutinied and surrounded the German engineers armed with stones, knives, hammers and clubs. The Germans locked themselves in their offices with rifles loaded and their pistols cocked aiming them at the Arab workmen surrounding their camp. Trouble would start within a very short time.

The news reached Lawrence. Accompanied by Professor Woolley, he rushed to the spot. He talked to the angry Arabs, joked with them, and quoted a few passages from the Holy Qur'an that spoke about the virtues of forgiving the wrongdoers. He managed to soothe their frayed tempers. For this act of bravery, he was received an award from the Turkish Government to whom the bridge belonged.

The First World War was fully underway and Lawrence continued to dig around the ruins of the city on the bank of the River Euphrates. The high Commanders in the British Military learned about his knowledge of old caravan routes in Palestine, Iraq and Arabia. They also knew that he spoke Arabic fluently and was familiar with the Arab deserts as most Englishmen were with their tea gardens. Lawrence would be a great source of help to the British Army planning to attack Turkey and he was asked to report to Cairo.

Commissioned immediately to the rank of a lieutenant, Lawrence was soon advising the military planners about the best desert routes they could follow during their military campaign.

Turkey had held the land of Arabia for the past four hundred years. The Turks had stationed garrisons of soldiers in strong forts all over the land, guarding desert towns and they had been put on high alert to be ready for battle along the eastern coast of the Red Sea with the British troops in Egypt.

The British high commanders in Cairo ware worried. They brainstormed to find out a way to attack the Turks, but Lawrence always vetoed their plans. He would always give excellent reasons why their plans would not work in the land of Arabia. Pointing to the map, he would tell them about the loose sand along a particular route where their wheeled vehicles would get stuck. During other sessions he would tell them about the harbours where the entrances were silted up making the passage of supply ships impossible in water, which was only a couple of feet high inside the harbour walls. A whole year went past without any action and the generals began to grumble about Lieutenant Lawrence.

The desert Arabs had always hated the Turkish occupation of their land and they had revolted against the Turks under the command of Amir Hussain and his son Amir Faisal in June 1915. Many of the Bedouin tribes living in the Red Sea Coast from Makkah to Sinai had joined the rebellion with their rusty rifles and racing camels, but they were beaten off with disastrous losses in the city of Madinah.

The Arab warriors were running short of ammunition and Amir Faisal appealed to the British forces in Cairo for help.

The British Commanders in Cairo reacted swiftly. They sent Lawrence at the head of a large caravan of camels carrying a load of excellent army rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Lawrence, leading the caravan rode his camel like a true son of the desert. Soon after his arrival, he was invited into Amir Faisal's tent.

"My name is Lawrence," he said introducing himself to Faisal. "Perhaps, I may be able to assist your Highness in various small matters."

Faisal was a shrewd leader and an excellent judge of men. For a moment, he gazed into the visitor's wonderfully clear blue eyes and liked what he saw.

"All Praise be to Allah", he said, " I see that you have great wisdom in your head. You shall stay with me and presently we will talk together of many things."

In the meantime, the Turkish army was on the move. Guns, men and ammunition along with airplanes, heavy cannons and armoured cars were headed towards Madinah to launch a final assault against the Arab rebels. Faisal's lightly armed and untrained men on camels would not stand a chance against the modern equipment of a disciplined Turkish army.

Lawrence, however, had other ideas.

"A hawk can slay a small bird", he said to Faisal, "but small birds in company can drive a fierce enemy away. We cannot fight the Turks in an open battle, but we can strike and escape, and strike again."

Lawrence organized a small striking force. He handpicked a number of Arabs known for their daring and fighting skills. After arming them with rifles and ammunition, he placed himself at their head. Riding on their camels, they ventured deep, into the desert, each among them carrying their own supplies. Soon they were attacking the Turkish garrisons in small isolated towns and in a matter of weeks a number of small ports along the Red Sea coast were under their control.

News of his victories travelled with surprising rapidity across the desert of Arabia. Strange stories were now being told in lonely Bedouin camps about a strange young man, but one who spoke Arabic like the Faithful was leading the Arab warriors to victory. From far across the deserts, fresh bands of young fighting Arabs started heading towards Amir Faisal's camp and soon, there were thousands of new recruits eager to liberate Arabia from the burden of Turkish occupation.

The Turks and Germans learned quickly that the Arabs had a new leader, who has led them on a raid on the tiny seaport town of Aqabah in a manner that indicated careful military preparations. A reward of 50.000 pounds was offered to capture Lawrence dead or alive. When Lawrence heard that, he smiled. It was the best proof that his plans ware hurting the Turkish government.

After the fall of Aqabah, Lawrence led his raiding army northwards across the desert and he had decided to target the Turkish railway lines that ran northwards through Palestine, Syria and Turkey from the Arabian Desert. The trains had carried men and the weapons of war to fortify the Turkish garrisons on the route to Madinah. During his stay in Arabia, Lawrence blew up trains, bridges, embankments and lengths of track on seventy-nine different occasions.

To the north of the Aqabah seaport was the wonderful old city of Petra, surrounded by towering sharp-ridged mountains, from which a single rocky trail that led to the railway town of Maan, some twenty-five miles away. The Turks decided to occupy Petra and use it as a base to recapture Aqabah.

Lawrence saw a wonderful opportunity to ambush the advancing troops marching along the trail from the surrounding mountains of Petra. Unfortunately, he had only a couple of hundred men under his command. Many more would be needed to make the ambush a complete success. He rode of on his camel to visit the nearby villages exhorting the Bedouins to fight on his side and they responded eagerly to his call.
The ambush that followed was a complete success. Turkish fighter and bomber planes flew over the mountaintops, machine gunning and bombing continuously at the Arabs. But, so well were the Arabs hidden that the losses suffered by them were very small. The Turco-German force was utterly defeated and lost all their machine guns and armoured cars. However, a thousand among them survived and succeeded in fighting their way back to Maan.

Amid the ambushes and train wrecking adventures, Lawrence worked as a spy behind the enemy lines. He entered the Turkish held towns disguised as an Arab and collected valuable military secrets, which were promptly, dispatched to Field Marshal Allenby, the Commander of the British troops in the Middle East. During one such spying mission, Lawrence was arrested by a Turkish military patrol believing him to be one of the deserters from their own army. He was taken to the nearby barracks and thrashed with a heavy leather whip until he fainted. The Turks then threw him into a dusty street where Lawrence managed to pick himself up and stumble out of town.

In the autumn of 1917, General Allenby's troops marched through Palestine. Its right flank was made up of Lawrence's Arabs: two hundred and fifty thousand of them, the world's finest desert fighters. Throughout the summer of 1918, the army rolled on capturing the enemy's depots and garrisons. Until the final collapse of the Turkish armies, Lawrence continued to operate behind Turkish army lines sabotaging their supply lines. His existence among the Arabs came to an end with the Armistice. Quietly, he left Arabia for Cairo, and from there he made his way to England.

Soon, the nation came to know about his exploits in the desert and everyone in Britain wanted to know about the extraordinary young man. However, Lawrence was publicity shy and refused almost all invitations and retired into the privacy of his home in the Epping Forest. His longing for anonymity made him join the Royal Air Force with a very modest rank and an assumed name.

Apart from his love for books, archaeology, and ancient poetry, Lawrence was fascinated by speed. He had bought a powerful motorbike, which he drove fiercely in the countryside. One Sunday morning he had a fatal accident and died in a hospital on 19 May 1935 as a result of his injuries.

The life and career of Lawrence of Arabia had come to an end. But he continues to live with the millions of his readers, fascinated by his adventures in the Arabian deserts, through his books and will always remain as a source of inspiration to adventure seekers all over the world.