PREVIEW： Epochs #204 ｜ Lawrence of Arabia with Luca Johnson： Part III
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
181.23874
Summary
In this episode of the Lawrence of Arabia series, I talk about the life and adventures of the famous Arab general, Lawrence of Aqaba, and how he went about his mission to liberate the Arab world from the Turks.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello and welcome to part three of this series about Lawrence of Arabia with Luca Johnson
00:00:04.340
I hope you enjoy it. Okay so he decides that even though Aqaba seems impenetrable
00:00:11.240
what if though you attacked it from the other side the landward side then it would be complete
00:00:19.320
it's almost defenseless we could we we might be able to take Aqaba if we attacked it from the
00:00:24.740
other side however the other side is open barren pitiless desert right so right so the only people
00:00:33.680
that could possibly attack that are like a Bedouin camel army well that's exactly what
00:00:39.800
Lawrence has got or what Faisal or Abdullah or Zaid are able to give him you know what is it a
00:00:46.640
couple hundred is it a couple hundred odd with Alda yes I think so so they go way behind enemy
00:00:54.140
lines way deep into the desert to come all the way around I'll put the maps up again once again
00:00:58.440
so people can see to come around to attack Aqaba from the desert where the Turks would never dream
00:01:03.200
that that's a possibility even it had never been done before yeah tactical genius yeah genuine
00:01:10.320
really incredible but also again that thing that yeah only Lawrence with no fear no understanding of
00:01:19.100
fear would that you know would dare to lead such an expedition it's remarkable that that that did
00:01:27.060
happen and also what's more before because when that when they show it in the film of course they go
00:01:32.680
yeah they go through the Nefu desert and they are crowned into Aqaba but historically Lawrence also
00:01:38.340
went on almost like a solo reconnaissance mission as well just before Aqaba around near Damascus and
00:01:46.420
around Dera and you know just you know in order to get a feel for the Syrian tribes and whether or
00:01:53.520
not they'd be likely to join in the revolt and you know just get a an understanding of the
00:01:58.860
circumstances for the upcoming campaign as well to prepare for the next step in all of it
00:02:04.420
and that is almost stupidly fearless suicidally fearless because he's not just behind enemy lines
00:02:11.160
he's way way way in pro-turkish territory where anyone could dob him in to the Turks right and he
00:02:18.260
would definitely be tortured and hung if he was caught yeah but he just does that um so the thing
00:02:25.960
i want to say at this point is worth mentioning is like how guilty Lawrence felt about his the
00:02:31.300
duplicitous nature of what the French and the British had in mind against what he's telling the Arabs
00:02:37.040
is that he he doesn't even ask permission to do this Aqaba raid no he just sends a letter i think
00:02:44.020
to is it stores again he sends a letter to Clayton i think he sends a letter to Clayton yeah and in it
00:02:49.480
he says he just says right i've decided to do this he doesn't ask for permission he says it's happening
00:02:53.960
i'm doing this and he says um quote hoping to get killed on the way
00:02:58.960
like he's very saying far but also um you can tell this is a man that doesn't care anymore no if
00:03:07.960
he dies then just so be it because he's so unhappy with the position he's found himself in politically
00:03:15.740
so yeah the idea that he's like this worm tongue type it's not it's not the case he uh no it's not he
00:03:24.420
uh it profoundly affected him um and over the years and the years after the war it looks like
00:03:32.700
maybe maybe it won't be as bad as he thought it might be and it ebbs and flows like the politics
00:03:39.300
of it but anyway he was hoping is like he really is sort of suicidally doing suicidally brave things
00:03:45.880
at this point so there's this lot with alder and a few i think a couple hundred maybe it's a few more
00:03:52.080
uh camel bedouin arab warriors go way out into the desert to come around the back of akaba
00:03:58.920
and on the way there's one event there um which they show in the movie um where this random nobody
00:04:07.640
gasim gets lost in the desert yeah so they leave one morning the big long camel train and at some
00:04:15.080
point lawrence just realized that one of their guys is missing and let's say it's a complete
00:04:18.500
nobody it's a guy that was actually um a bit of a troublemaker lawrence didn't even like him he
00:04:23.580
didn't like him no the plan was after akaba if he lived they were going to get rid of him because
00:04:28.260
he was just a bit of a pain and wasn't quite pulling his way he wasn't a real bad guy but he
00:04:31.900
was just no he wasn't of any value yes right and he's lost in the desert apparently that totally happens
00:04:37.980
and nobody's obliged apparently it's like the way it is that you're not obliged to go back
00:04:45.080
and try and find him it's up to each man to keep yourself alive in the desert that's the way it is
00:04:50.200
right and um but lawrence because he's lawrence and a christian i suppose uh well they say that in
00:04:58.440
seven pillars he says no i felt obliged that i couldn't just let this guy die i couldn't just leave
00:05:03.200
him to die so even though it's again almost a suicidal thing he goes off on his own back
00:05:08.980
into the desert alone on the off chance that he can find this gazim and he luckily does yes he comes
00:05:17.020
across him in the desert sort of half delirious close to death really and he just picks him up puts
00:05:22.620
him on the back of his camel and manages to ride back and catch up with the camel train again just
00:05:28.680
about but that was crazy and when alder finds out alder's like at first pissed off with him
00:05:33.600
saying i wouldn't i would not have let you don't do that if i'd if i'd have known you yes because he
00:05:38.060
goes off without saying doesn't he yeah he says this guy he's not even worth the price of a camel
00:05:42.600
like what are you doing like for guessing yeah for this guy really and um but then soon it becomes a
00:05:51.240
joke and i'll just telling anyone that will listen the joke of when lawrence right his life to save a
00:05:55.120
nobody and it apparently it totally adds to the the the legend of orens that the arabs love him a bit
00:06:02.600
more uh because he saved a nobody and when he was completely not obliged to yeah um it's one of my
00:06:09.760
favorite parts of the film actually i love obviously i don't think historical lawrence is quoted as say
00:06:14.800
as saying it but when lawrence in the film says you know nothing is written i feel like that line
00:06:20.460
just really encapsulates lawrence like that line just says everything about him you know going back
00:06:27.700
to what it's saying about his will you know that he could just will things into happening through
00:06:33.560
tenacity and endurance yeah yeah just the sheer force of will yeah yeah i wouldn't want to uh i wouldn't
00:06:43.000
want to um have a battle of wills with t lawrence because you're not going to win no simple as that
00:06:48.580
he will die before giving up on anything almost anything when he decides it um okay so then i
00:06:58.160
suppose the attack on akaba is sort of the big thing arguably i would say it's sort of the most
00:07:03.320
important uh military movement sort of the most important um single event in terms of sort of
00:07:13.420
battlefield success yes because before they've taken akaba and after from the arab point of view
00:07:20.940
the arab revolt is just night and day before it's just an uphill struggle against the odds probably
00:07:26.680
going to lose if the turks try hard enough they'll they'll win to oh no we're going to probably win
00:07:32.680
if we keep pushing this and the brits keep helping and giving us money and flour and ammo
00:07:37.480
and um and if the brits push again in palestine um then all the momentum is with us now right there's
00:07:46.240
a game changer a real big game changer even though akaba is quite a small place yeah relatively small
00:07:50.440
but its location is is vital right on the map yeah it is key key key key key key um so one thing that
00:07:58.460
the film changes from the book is the attack itself on akaba where it is right so in the film they show you
00:08:06.100
this like glorious camel charge on akaba itself yes that's not how right to the coast but and that's
00:08:12.620
not how it's described in seven pillars though no so the way it plays out in seven pillars is that
00:08:17.120
there's there is a an engagement with the turks but it's outside so abba el listen i think yeah
00:08:23.940
down to a track of a few miles away yeah it's a few miles away from akaba itself
00:08:29.380
and that's where there's a camel charge right and you know the oh yeah yeah brace it well i actually
00:08:37.520
i've bookmarked it because it was just one of my favorite uh moments because lawrence is a bit pissed
00:08:44.220
off that alder and his men aren't doing it fast enough right right but one one thing i'll just say
00:08:49.240
about this as well is so the the turks are um stationed at abe el listen which is like an oasis
00:08:55.120
it's in the water water point but the thing is as well by this point it's uh 90 is it 1917 at this
00:09:02.660
point yeah yeah it's a height of summer right lawrence talks about in seven pillars he talks about the
00:09:08.420
fact it's so hot they can barely hold their rifles because of how hot the rifles are from the sun
00:09:15.320
and from them firing again and again and um you know the arabs are running from one direction to
00:09:21.440
another trying to you know shoot the turks from different sides and they're absolutely exhausted
00:09:27.440
you know they'll they'll they'll be hours where they'll just have to sit out because they'll get
00:09:32.900
heat stroke lawrence says you know for the majority of the battle he just found the coolest place he
00:09:37.760
could find and could hear the battle going over you know in the distance until alder finds him who's
00:09:43.600
like you know i've been fighting all day what are you doing and so yeah lawrence is like right well
00:09:49.340
okay we'll get the camels and then 120 in the shade isn't it yeah and people are dying like it's so
00:09:54.460
baking hot that even a native arab like that his retinas are burnt out this is a slightly different
00:10:01.680
but yeah it's so bakingly hot um yeah so yeah lawrence says to him uh get it done right basically
00:10:11.400
my camel the sharia lancer namah stretched herself out and hurled downhill with such might that we
00:10:20.120
uh we soon outdistanced the others the turks fired a few shots but mostly only shrieked and turned to
00:10:26.600
rum the bullets they did send to at us were not very harmful for it took much to bring a charging
00:10:33.400
camel down in a dead heap i had got amongst the first of them and was shooting with a pistol of course
00:10:39.960
for only an expert could fire uh could use a rifle from such plunging beasts when suddenly my camel
00:10:48.020
tripped and went down emptily under her face as though poleaxed i was torn completely from the saddle
00:10:55.000
sailed grandly through the air for a great distance and landed with a crash which seemed to drive all the
00:11:01.940
power and feeling out of me i lay there passively waiting for the turks to kill me continuing to hum
00:11:08.640
over the verses of a half forgotten poem whose rhythm something perhaps the prolonged stride of
00:11:15.460
the camel had brought back to my memory as we uh leaped down the hillside and um it goes on and on but
00:11:22.680
the point was that actually even though it sounds like oh well there'd been the volley of fire and you
00:11:28.360
know they brought lawrence's camel down no he he'd accidentally shot his own camel through the back of
00:11:33.920
the head the camel had obviously dipped its head in front of his revolver and it just just yeeted him
00:11:39.640
into the sand yeah you know and it's just an incredible story yeah that is a great bit and yeah
00:11:46.800
he's you can imagine sort of he's lying there in the sand just being thrown to his head he's in the
00:11:51.060
middle of a or at the front of a camel charge yeah he's expecting all the other camels to if the
00:11:55.700
turks don't shoot him or the his own camel men will trample him yeah but uh they sort of he
00:12:01.580
describes that the the rest of the camel charge sort of splits like a sea around him or they could
00:12:06.780
try and go around the body of the camel and therefore don't trample him the picture he paints
00:12:11.000
there is just like humming on the ground just going just expecting to die any moment gonna die now
00:12:16.020
yeah um but yeah he actually shot his own camel in the back of the head by accident um so um but just
00:12:24.000
before that another little bit that i think is great is that there's this this gun play between
00:12:29.380
the arabs and the turks outside of akaba or a few miles from akaba um and alder comes up to lawrence
00:12:36.640
who's trying to take a little bit of comfort in some shade yes and um and lawrence says to him
00:12:43.600
something i can't remember the exact words but he said something to along the lines of
00:12:47.800
like your men aren't all that after all are they like oh yes it's only a few turks like basically
00:12:54.620
i'm paraphrasing but it's only a few turks just like what's the problem just get it done like are
00:12:59.120
you not brave you're not honestly he says like they're not great shots though are they but alder's
00:13:02.700
like check out my men they're doing a good job right and it's like yeah they're not very good
00:13:05.120
shots and so alder you know extremely proud a battle veteran is like apparently just goes livid in
00:13:14.140
the face and it's basically like right watch this then doesn't say those goading him into
00:13:18.720
i was like right and then he just immediately march apparently rips off his headdress which
00:13:24.240
arabs never do throws it on the ground like right and he immediately gets a small camel
00:13:30.700
core together and charges the turkish lions when lawrence sees this he's like okay i'll get my guys
00:13:38.080
to get my camel right together and charges at the same time as well and um well the upshot is they
00:13:44.020
take the turkish positions and they only lose i think two guys yeah it's incredible and and then
00:13:49.980
after that and and that's when lawrence shoots lawrence shoots his camel his own camel in the back
00:13:54.120
of the head after that apparently alder comes up to him sort of wild-eyed and he's saying something
00:14:01.000
like work work all his work where are your words now something like that and he's like been shot
00:14:05.520
through like uh like his his clothes uh what is it like his belt or he's got like like multiple bullet
00:14:12.020
grazes and holes in his clothes where he's very very very nearly killed in that charge right
00:14:16.560
uh but wasn't again it's like this aura around alder it's impossible not to like alder yeah yeah yeah
00:14:22.920
he dies hard yeah does alder abutai um and so after that engagement um there's still akaba itself but
00:14:31.880
it's effectively uh undefended from the from the desert side yes so they then approach akaba i think
00:14:39.820
there might be a small there's some sort of uh diplomacy going on where the arabs say look
00:14:44.560
surrender we've got you surrender and they they do and so um lawrence and the arabs take akaba this
00:14:52.700
strategically super super key port yeah um so that's like a masterstroke that's that's like
00:15:01.060
that's no that's not a small thing no that changes the war in the east
00:15:05.840
and what's more it changes the value that cairo put on the arab forces they now think it's a
00:15:13.300
right brilliant they think it's better than it actually is yes unfortunately yes they think it's
00:15:18.440
like okay this is some sort of professional outfit that we can task with doing all sorts of things
00:15:22.680
like no yeah because that's the thing lawrence knows if he is going to push the arabs into syria
00:15:28.780
he needs the arab forces to be in the good graces of the efp the egyptian expeditionary force
00:15:36.840
you know who murray is in charge of or at least uh lawrence thinks is in charge of obviously until he
00:15:43.640
gets back to cairo but um replaced by allenby we've mentioned the name allenby a number of times so
00:15:49.320
the overall commander of british forces in the east basically anyway basically yeah was uh archibald
00:15:56.660
murray general or field marshal archibald murray and where he's failed in garza a couple of times
00:16:01.840
and sort of stalling and failing really he gets replaced yeah record london replacing by allenby
00:16:07.900
and there's a great picture of allenby there's a big portrait in the national gallery and and so he's
00:16:13.940
like a bull of a man he's a cavalry officer and he would been he'd been um fighting on the western
00:16:19.220
front um and he was appalled by the the frontal attacks endless frontal attacks of the western
00:16:26.040
front and um just decided that he wasn't going to do things that way in the east and uh so anyway
00:16:34.880
we'll get on to allenby in a moment i just want to say so remember lawrence hadn't asked permission
00:16:40.880
to do this akaba raid no he just said i'm doing this and then went and did it and it was a success
00:16:45.680
it's like whoa what really the balls yeah balls on this kid um so what he does after that is he
00:16:54.100
decides oh okay what i think i'm going to do is just take a small number of men i don't know like
00:16:59.740
half a dozen men 10 guys right and just ride a camel straight across the sinai straight to the
00:17:05.900
swiss canal and get word back to cairo as quickly as possible i mean like do that journey in like two
00:17:14.020
days or three days or something to tell them what success in order that we can get uh some royal
00:17:19.660
navy presence into akaba and start fortifying it start building so the turks can't immediately
00:17:25.360
retake it exactly garrison it with at least some british regulars and stuff and and make sure we
00:17:31.900
consolidate that and keep it and uh so that's what he does so that just that that's a tiny tiny
00:17:39.400
bit of the story but that's like death defying to do that to just ride across the sinai um love it
00:17:47.840
in the film where it's like well moses did it's like like as if like lawrence himself is some sort
00:17:52.440
of prophet you know that could just and you can imagine when he turns up well when he gets to the
00:17:57.900
suiz canal uh the the british garrison there is actually all cleared out so it's like an outbreak
00:18:02.300
of plague or something he gets and it's all deserted but there is still a telephone and he rings up and
00:18:07.280
he says um yeah can you get me over to headquarters or whatever and he does and of course everyone uh
00:18:13.480
back at hq uh surprised to say the least that this this second lieutenant or sort of acting captain or
00:18:22.600
something at that point yeah um dress like an arab yeah dress like an arab turns up without any shoes
00:18:28.940
on he um lawrence took to going barefoot in order to build up the bottoms of his feet so he could walk
00:18:34.840
over any terrain without shoes so he turns up um and people are aghast and anyway is it at that point
00:18:42.360
when he discovers that murray has been replaced yes and so he gets to the train station because suiz
00:18:48.200
isn't suiz and cairo aren't you still have to train and uh and there it just so happens just
00:18:54.660
by pure happenstance he bumps into i think hogarth and allenby right and he'd never met allenby before
00:19:01.480
no he's a famous general we would have known the name but he'd never met him before and once again a
00:19:06.480
bit like fiesel and a bit like alder he sort of immediately falls in love with allenby again nothing
00:19:11.540
sexual but he's like here is a leader of men here is um my sort of almost platonic perfect example of
00:19:20.680
what a field marshal should yeah yeah right and it seems like allenby again it lives up he's like
00:19:26.940
exudes authority right i love his portrayal in the film by jack hawkins it's one of my favorite
00:19:32.960
performances in the film he just brings such gravitas to to the performance um and i really
00:19:40.880
like as well the fact that allenby very quickly uh takes on board what lawrence is saying you know
00:19:50.940
he treats him with like okay it was very unorthodox and you shouldn't have just dictated that you were
00:19:57.060
going to go do this thing however i can tell you're brilliant and i'm going to use you you know
00:20:03.140
he's not so by the book he's he's got some spontaneity about him to be able to to press with
00:20:09.480
the advantages that he's got at his disposal if you would like to see the full version of this
00:20:14.240
premium video please head over to lotus eaters.com and subscribe to gain full access to all of our