The next morning, October 3, he went back to the Turkish barracks and found that conditions were improving. The dead were buried; lime had been spread everywhere; the living were being washed, put into clean shirts, and given water—it was still a charnel house, but a measure of order and humanity was being restored. Just as Lawrence was leaving, a major of the Royal Army Medical Corps, an Englishman, strode up to him and “asked [him] shortly if he spoke English.” Lawrence said he did, and “with a glance of disgust at my skirts and sandals” the major asked whether Lawrence was in charge. Lawrence said that in a way he was, and the major began to shout at him indignantly and almost incoherently: “scandalous, disgraceful, outrageous, ought to be shot.” Taken aback by this onslaught, just as he was about to congratulate himself on having taken care of a hopeless situation, Lawrence involuntarily laughed, “cackled like a duck, with the wild laughter that often took me at moments of strain.” He was unable to stop laughing, and the major, wild with anger, slapped him hard across the face “and stalked off, leaving me more ashamed than angry, for in my heart I felt that he was right, and that anyone who had, like me, pushed through to success a rebellion of the weak against their master, must come out of it so stained that nothing in the world would make him clean again.”

In essence this was the feeling that would motivate Lawrence throughout the rest of his life: the belief not just that he had failed the Arabs by not getting them the state and the independence they had fought for, but that he was rendered, by what he had done, seen, and experienced, permanently unclean, unfit for the society of decent people, a kind of moral leper. It is important to realize that while Lawrence’s behavior after the war seemed strange to many people, it is not at all unfamiliar to those who have fought in a war.

Lawrence was always able to function; indeed in many respects his greatest achievements were still ahead of him—but in some way he took on the guilt and the shame of everything he, and millions of others, had done. His wild, manic laughter in Damascus took place, perhaps appropriately, on the day he would leave behind the role of “Colonel Lawrence,” which he had come to despise, and begin, with halting steps, a new life, under a variety of new names.

Early the same morning, Allenby arrived in Damascus at last, and stopped briefly at the Victoria Hotel with his staff. Feisal was due to arrive the same day by train, and at first there was some doubt about whether he and Allenby, who was anxious to push on and take Aleppo and Beirut, could meet. Feisal was planning a “triumphal entry” into Damascus, and the streets were already packed with people anticipating his arrival. Allenby was not interested in ceremonies, and ordered Major Young to find Feisal and tell him “to come and see me at once.” Young went off to intercept Feisal in General Liman von Sanders’s huge red Mercedes Roi des Belgeslimousine, which had been captured in Nazareth. By the time Young found him, Feisal had already left the train and mounted his horse, ready to ride into the city at the head of the mounted Arab regulars. When Young told Feisal that Allenby had only a few minutes and wished to see him, he rode off at the canter at once, so Young was obliged to trail after him in the big car. We have no way of knowing what Feisal thought at having his plans disrupted, but whatever his feelings were, Feisal must have realized that meeting Allenby was more important. Young took him up to Allenby’s suite; Allenby and Lawrence were on the balcony awaiting Feisal’s arrival, and when Allenby walked back into the room he and Feisal met for the first time.

Allenby’s mood was far from cheerful; he had hoped to avoid the meeting until he received definite instructions from London about the political arrangements for Syria, and after the polite greetings, it was his unwelcome task to give Feisal the bad news that the Sykes-Picot agreement was by no means dead. Using Lawrence as his interpreter—though it appears likely that Feisal understood a good deal more English and a lot more French than he thought it politic to admit—Allenby plunged right in with the bad news: France “was to be the Protecting Power over Syria"; Feisal was to have “the Administration of Syria” on behalf of his father, but under French “guidance,” and was not “to have anything to do” with Lebanon, which was reserved to France; and perhaps most unwelcome of all, Feisal was to exchange Lawrence as his liaison officer for “a French Liaison Officer at once.”

Feisal objected “very strongly.” He said that he preferred British to French assistance; that if Lebanon was not joined to Syria, “a country without a port was no good to him"; and that he “declined to have a French Liaison Officer or to recognize French guidance in any way.”

Allenby then “turned to Lawrence and said: ‘But did you not tell him that the French were to have the Protectorate over Syria?’ Lawrence said: ‘No Sir, I know nothing about it.’ [Allenby] then said: ‘But you knew definitely that he, Feisal, was to have nothing to do with the Lebanon?’ Lawrence said: ‘No Sir, I did not.’ ”

After this embarrassing exchange, Allenby laid down the law. Feisal, he pointed out, was a lieutenant-general under his command, and would have to obey his orders. After some further discussion, Feisal took his leave. It is possible that he and Lawrence may not have known of some of the more humiliating details of the French “protectorate,” but Lawrence certainly knew all about the Sykes-Picot agreement and had passed on what he knew to Feisal. Indeed Feisal could have read the agreement for himself, once the Bolsheviks had published the document. Feisal understandably found it more diplomatic to deny any knowledge of a document which he had supposed was a “dead letter,” and whose legitimacy he was bound to oppose. Given his admiration for Allenby, Lawrence must have found it difficult to say with a straight face that he knew nothing of the terms, which differed so dramatically from promises made to the Arabs.

That perhaps explains the bluntness of his dismissal. After Feisal’s departure, Lawrence told Allenby that “he would not work with a French Liaison Officer and that since he was due for leave and thought he had better take it now and go off to England. [Allenby] said, ‘Yes! I think you had!’ and Lawrence left the room.”

The next evening, Lawrence left Damascus, driven, for the last time, in the Blue Mist. His ambitions for the Arabs would have to be fought out in London and Paris now.

By October 24, he was home in Oxford, for the first time since 1914.

*The Army Service Corps (ASC) dealt with transport, supply, and vehicles; it became the royal Army Service Corps (rASC) in 1918.

*Lawrence spells it Tafileh; Liddell Hart spells it Tafila.

*About 35,000 today.

*“one attacks, then waits to see what happens.”

*Lawrence measured the distance at 3,100 yards by counting his paces; some of his critics have objected that the sights of a British Vickers machine gun were calibrated only up to 2,000 yards, but this ignores the fact that the Vickers was “effective” up to 4,500 yards, and like the British SMLE rifle of World War I, was designed to provide “long range volley firing” (also known as “indirect” or “plunging” fire) when needed. That is, the Vickers could be aimed and fired high in the air, so that the rounds would cover a great distance in an arc or parabola and plunge down on the enemy from directly above. Lawrence’s text makes it clear that this was what he had in mind, and did.

*Scipio’s decisive victory over Hasdrubal’s Carthaginians in Spain.

*Thirty thousand gold sovereigns would be worth about $9.6 million today.

*By the time the Kaiserschlact, as Field Marshal Hindenberg and General Ludendorff had named their offensive (thus shrewdly saddling the kaiser with the responsibility for it), ground to an end in June, it had cost the Germans nearly 700,000 casualties, and the British and French almost 500,000 each.