
Bullet indicates Lawrence of Arabia was no liar - Mz
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-bullet-lawrence-arabia-liar.html
======
chx
This is one of the roots of the Middle East conflict: the British offered
Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca Arab self governance if they would revolt
against the Ottomans -- and gave them help in the person of T.E. Lawrence.
Then agreed with their French buddies (Sykes-Picot) on how they will split up
the region. The Syrian civil war can easily be traced back to this agreement.
Then, to crown this all, the British issued the Balfour Declaration where they
promised Palestine to the Zionist movement.

~~~
freyr
For anyone interested in learning more, Lawerence in Arabia by Scott Anderson
is a pretty good book.

~~~
chx
And [http://www.amazon.com/The-Balfour-Declaration-Arab-
Israeli-C...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Balfour-Declaration-Arab-Israeli-
Conflict/dp/0812976037) is even better :)

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danielvf
Go read Lawrence's book, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom!

If it were only a travelogue, it would be worth reading. But it's also the
personal story of a low ranking man saw the solution to the impossible, and
got nations and cultures working together to bring down an empire. The book
has more derring-do and adventure than could fit into a summer blockbuster.
And everything seen through with, Lawrence's quiet, reflective, selfless,
"strange" personality.

I'm going to go read a chapter now...

~~~
knughit
Can I watch Lawrence of Arabia to start?

~~~
schwarrrtz
Such an incredible film. Well worth the 3.5hr running time.

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Snowflame
The headline is a tad hyperbolic. Notably, there was one area where Lawrence
proooobably was, uh, stretching the truth (for good reason): he insisted that
the Arabs had sneaked some ninja division into taking Damascus "first." This
account isn't shared by anyone else and would imply these Arabs took the city,
then retreated, then came back later or something.

Why would Lawrence fudge here? Well, this will seem very quaint to modern
eyes, but apparently there was a bias toward "whoever did the work gets the
spoils" back then. If the British army took Damascus then it was theirs to
distribute as they saw fit, if it was a combined British/Arab force then it'd
be a little different. This is ludicrous since there's a unified commander-in-
chief who is British who can pick whichever army they like to have the honor
of entering the city first. Anyway, Lawrence was exaggerating the date where
the Arab troops arrived to try and get them some of the glory & responsibility
afterward, since he was considerably more pro-Arab independence than some of
the other Brits.

It's a silly issue since the Turks had basically lost regardless and who cares
which army enters first, of course.

~~~
fit2rule
> .. of course.

Its a matter of course that the nature of covert action is that you must lie
about it, even after the fact.

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wtbob
Ninety-nine years later and no-one's rebuilt the railroad? That seems
wasteful.

~~~
HillRat
Less than you'd think; it was a non-standard gauge railroad that didn't go
anywhere the Sa'udis cared about -- they needed railways connecting their
ports to the interior, so spending the money on a Madinah to Jordan line
didn't make sense. KSA has invested a massive amount of money on rail lines,
but the north-south track is a recent development. Plus, Land Rovers don't
care if you have to go over a few kilometers of damaged road, and fuel is
unsurprisingly cheap. And if you don't want to drive, there's a lot of
airports.

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jmnicolas
So basically they found one bullet and one railroad sign ... pretty light
evidence to prove or disprove anything.

~~~
simonh
Those are just the most obvious evidence they chose to highlight in a brief
article.

If they examined dozens of sites and found physical evidence that fully
supports Lawrence's accounts, and no evidence that is inconsistent with those
accounts, that's pretty persuasive. After all if Lawrence made his accounts
up, you'd expect it wouldn't take long to find discrepancies between his
inventions and the real geography of the locations and physical evidence.

I watched a documentary about Lawrence and some journalists visiting some of
the sites including the Hallat Ammar attack. In the book Lawrence describes
the attack being launched from a ridge (IIRC) 100m from the railway line. They
found the ridge, but the railway line was 300m away, too far to be in
effective rifle range. But then examining the site more carefully, they found
that while the modern railway line was 300m away, the old WW1 era line had
become buried with sand and was actually about 100m from the ridge.

It's been a very long time since I read SPOW. It's not always an easy read,
but full of character and wonderfully evocative. Lawrence clearly loved and
appreciated Arab culture. He gave accounts of their camp fire stories and
humour for example, but didn't flinch from describing and discussing some of
the uncomfortable aspects of the customs and behaviour he encountered.

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bootload
_" Professor Nicholas Saunders said: "The bullet we found came from a Colt
automatic pistol, the type of gun known to be carried by Lawrence and almost
certainly not used by any of the ambush's other participants."_

M1911?

~~~
gozur88
Most likely, yes. An excerpt from a letter by his brother Frank:

"The Colt is a lovely pistol. The more I examine it the more I like it. There
is a vast gulf between it and the ordinary revolver.

If you want anything in connection with it which you don’t want to write for I
could get it for you. They keep two weights of bullets, I think 200 and 230
grains. The lighter weight has considerably higher velocity and penetrating
power, though I suppose less shock."

>This would indicate that both Frank and T. E. had Colt automatics that used
the 200 or 230 grain bullets. In 1914 this would have been the .45 caliber
Model 1911. (The British also used the Colt 1911 in .455 caliber, but this
chambering was not introduced until 1915.)

[http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/history/telawrence.htm](http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/history/telawrence.htm)

~~~
bootload
interesting quotes. what tipped me off was what appears to be .45 ACP HP (flat
tip) in the article. cf
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.45_ACP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.45_ACP)

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gozur88
That's a lot of sand sifting to find a bit of lead.

It's some support for Lawrence's version of events, but I think the idea
nobody else would be using an automatic is kind of a stretch.

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terravion
Amazing! Forensics after a century.

~~~
manachar
You should see what they've done in Olduvai and Pompeii!

