tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28978889001503782552024-03-18T15:42:37.854+01:00In the Shadow of the CrescentThe Life & Times of COLONEL STEWART FRANCIS NEWCOMBE, R.E., D.S.O - Soldier, Explorer, Surveyor, Adventurer and loyal friend to Lawrence of Arabia - by Kerry Webber ©KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.comBlogger68125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-69861812879311708482024-01-12T17:51:00.017+01:002024-03-02T10:29:17.129+01:00Dr. Sterly's - A story of Gazan healthcare<div style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: xx-large;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">"The best place in the whole of this country"</span></i></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In preparation for their secret survey of the region of southern Palestine known as the Wilderness of Zin on behalf of the </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">Palestine Exploration Fund</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (PEF), two archaeologists, Leonard Woolley and T.E. Lawrence, reached Jaffa on 5 January 1914 and travelled down the coast to the old town of Gaza which sat on its round hill two miles inland above the maritime quarter. Here they were surprised to discover that the PEF had failed to provide equipment, stores or money for their expedition. They immediately set about purchasing on credit what could be bought in the town with the assistance of </span><b style="font-family: inherit;">Rev. Dr. Robert B. Sterling, </b><span style="font-family: inherit;">of the</span><b style="font-family: inherit;"> Church Missionary Society</b><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dr. Sterling, who had built what was possibly the first fully functioning hospital in the Holy Land, situated then as now in the south-west corner of the town, was a prominent and important personage in the region, accompanying his treatment of the sick with a liberal dose of Scottish evangelism. </span><span style="text-align: left;">Theodore Dowling, a</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> traveller to the town in 1912 describes his arrival to meet the doctor: "</span><span style="text-align: left;">On reaching Jaffa I </span><span style="text-align: left;">secured a fresh carriage on April 12, for Gaza, reaching that city in </span><span style="text-align: left;">nine and a half hours, an unusually quick journey. During my visit of </span><span style="text-align: left;">ten days there I was the guest of the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Sterling, in </span><span style="text-align: left;">the Church Missionary Society's compound. Nothing could have exceeded </span><span style="text-align: left;">their kind hospitality, and I am greatly indebted to them for valuable </span><span style="text-align: left;">local information." </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Dr. Sterling was also an excellent guide to the region and often accompanied visitors on trips to sites of historical interest throughout the town that was once celebrated as one of the five royal cities of the Philistines. The port area was of particular importance. "</span><span style="text-align: left;">In company with Dr. Sterling </span><span style="text-align: left;">I visited this spot, enveloped in sand, on April 18, where we found </span><span style="text-align: left;">broken pieces of marble, ornamented glazed pottery, and ancient glass </span><span style="text-align: left;">scattered in every direction... </span><span style="text-align: left;">Augustus gave this port to Herod the Great, who rebuilt it, and changed </span><span style="text-align: left;">its name into that of Agrippeion, after his friend Marcus Agrippa." </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: start;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: start;">The same traveller describes the continuing saga of the town which has stood at the crossroads of history for centuries: "Gaza was taken by Alexander the Great after a siege of two months. </span><span style="text-align: start;">When he subdued it, he ordered all the men to be slaughtered without </span><span style="text-align: start;">quarter, and carried away all the women and children into bondage... </span><span style="text-align: start;">Gaza must have been at this time a city of great strength, for </span><span style="text-align: start;">Alexander's Greek engineers acknowledged their inability to invent </span><span style="text-align: start;">engines of sufficient power to batter its massive walls. Alexander </span><span style="text-align: start;">himself was severely wounded in the shoulder during a sortie of this </span><span style="text-align: start;">garrison."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: start;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">A formally recognised health service in Gaza did not start until 1882, the first Church Missionary Society work of its kind in Palestine. Starting as a simple dispensary, funds were raised for establishing a
permanent medical mission which soon became a favourite stopover of General Gordon (of Khartoum) who spent many weeks there in 1883 on his way up to Jerusalem to 'discover' his own preferred site for the garden tomb of Jesus. An interesting relic was the iron bedstead on which Gordon slept and was preserved in his name to show visitors.</div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All this time the medical work was confined to the treatment of out-patients, but in March 1891 a hospital adapted from a native house
was opened. Dr. Sterling arrived in 1893 and expanded the services offered by the hospital to include in-patient care. It's reputation grew and in 1906 the Muslim community presented Dr. Sterling with £100 which they had collected in token of their gratitude for his work among them. The hospital and out-patient hall were now much too small to match its growing reputation and on 1 April 1908 the Bishop of Jerusalem dedicated a new hospital containing forty-six beds followed by the opening of a spacious out-patient block on 22 February 1911.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Patients were drawn from across the community, Muslims, Orthodox Syrians and Jews. They would sit side by side in the out-patient hall waiting patiently to be seen by the doctor, an accomplished Arabic scholar. During 1912 it is recorded that there were 29,581 out-patients, 701 in-patients, 452 visits in town, and 411 major operations. Fees from the in-patients and out-patients during 1912 amounted to just over £326 which went to assist in the upkeep of the hospital.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the eve of the First World War, Woolley and Lawrence had completed their clandestine mission to provide an archaeological cover to Newcombe's military exploration of the Aqaba hinterland but were delayed in their return to England. Newcombe, however, eager to get his maps back to the Geographical Department of the War Office, arrived back in London earlier and presented their account of the archaeological survey of Zin to the 49th Annual General Meeting of the Palestine Exploration Fund held on Tuesday, 16 June 1914.</span></div><div><br /></div><span style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In concluding his talk, Newcombe praised the indomitable Dr. Sterling whose Church Mission Society Hospital was, he considered, "the best place in the whole of this country," and that full value was obtained for every contribution to the Hospital. He described Sterling’s reputation among the Arabs and the townspeople of Gaza as remarkable and "one to make anyone feel proud of his nationality." Sterling’s work among the Palestinians of Gaza had become legendary and his name was synonymous with the hospital he had helped create, so much so that it was known locally as the English Hospital or even Dr. Sterly’s, an Arabic corruption of his name. </span></div></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dr. Sterling spent 20 years in Palestine before his death in 1917. Today, his legacy has been renamed the <b>Al Ahli Arab Hospital </b>and is run by Anglican management, the only Christian hospital in the Gaza Strip and the only centre for cancer treatment. At 6:59 pm on 17 October 2023, a rocket explosion killed and wounded an unknown number of Palestinians who were seeking refuge from Israeli airstrikes in the courtyard in front of the hospital entrance. Palestinian officials blame an Israeli airstrike for the explosion and Israel says the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group, which denies blame. Yet despite these extraordinary setbacks and under extreme circumstances, the hospital and its resilient, heroic staff remain a beacon of hope in today's war-torn Gaza.</div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">Its website states that despite "constant turmoil, Al Ahli has been the sole fully-functional hospital in all of northern Gaza for over six weeks, serving many more patients than the staff is equipped to accommodate. In defiance of extraordinary, temporary setbacks, intermittent military occupation, and terrifying, life-threatening circumstances, the inspirational medical team and staff at Ahli Arab Hospital continue to persevere and work tirelessly for the sick, injured, and others in need. The stress on these brave individuals and the hospital facility is incomprehensible, and their resilience in fulfilling their mission of healing is exemplary." It seems the spirit of the Rev. Dr. Robert Sterling lives on.</div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: trebuchet; font-size: xx-large;"><span style="color: #3d85c6;">"Whoever stays until the end will tell the story. We did what we could. Remember us"</span></i></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: times; font-size: 17px; white-space-collapse: preserve;"></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">These words were written on 20 October 2023 by Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, on a whiteboard normally used for planning surgeries at the <b>Al Awda Hospital</b> situated just a few kilometers north of Al Ahli Hospital.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One month later Dr. Abu Nujaila was killed by an Israeli strike on 21 November. The same strike killed another <b>Médecins Sans Frontières</b> (MSF) doctor, Dr. Ahmad Al Sahar, as well as a third doctor, Dr. Ziad Al-Tatari. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In a text message sent one week before his death, Dr Abu Nujaila described his heartbreak at caring for three patients, children aged eight, seven and four. The only survivors from three different families, the children were brought to the hospital suffering from fractures, burns and deep wounds. Dr Abu Nujaila said in his message: “I take care of them daily. They have become my own children.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“We await at any time the order from the Israeli army to forcefully evacuate to the southern region of Gaza and to leave these children. Tell me, for God’s sake, 'how can I leave them?' I don’t dare even think about it.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dr Abu Nujaila and Dr Al Sahar were treating patients on the third and fourth floors when the hospital was targeted. Other medical staff, including MSF staff, were also severely injured. Along with the Al Ahli, the Al Awda hospital was one of the last remaining partly functional hospitals in northern Gaza.</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">As of December, MSF staff reported that the Israeli Defense Force had surround and seized the hospital and had stripped, bound, and interrogated all men and boys over the age of sixteen. For more than 20 days, no one was able to enter or leave the hospital after it was surrounded by snipers. Medical provision was halted as 170 people trapped inside – staff, patients, and their relatives – fought to survive on increasingly dwindling food and water supplies.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Action Aid, a partner of the hospital, reported that Dr Adnan Radi, head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Al-Awda Hospital, had informed them that six healthcare workers died in the final days of the siege, while pregnant women were killed while attempting to access the hospital. The manager of the hospital, Dr Ahmed Muhanna, who was arrested and taken away, is still being held, his whereabouts unknown. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Following the end of the siege, doctors at Al-Awda have once again resumed treating patients despite experiencing a severe shortage of medical supplies, fuel, food and water. With no electricity, surgery is carried out under headlights.</div><div><br /></div></div></div></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><i style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: times; font-size: xx-large;">"I want to become a doctor, like those who treat us, so that I can treat other children"<br /><span style="text-align: justify;"><br /></span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is the story of 12-year-old <b>Dunia Abu Mohsen</b> who was recovering from losing her leg in an Israeli air strike on 27 October that struck her home in Al-Amal neighbourhood of Khan Yunis. Six of her family members were killed in the air strike, including her parents and two of her siblings. During the seven-day truce, Dunia was interviewed in hospital by the <b>Defense for Children International Palestine</b> (DCIP) and said: “When they shelled us with the second missile, I woke up and was surrounded by rubble,” she calmly tells her interviewer. “I realized that my leg had been cut off because there was blood and I had no leg. My father and mother were martyred, my brother Mohammed and my sister Dahlia, too,” she said calmly. “I want someone to take me abroad, to any country, to install a prosthetic leg, to be able to walk like other people.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Her dream? “I want to become a doctor, like those who treat us, so that I can treat other children. ” But then she added: “I only want one thing: For the war to end.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For Dunia, the war ended on 17 December 2023 when an Israeli tank shell burst through the children's ward of the <b>Nasser Hospital</b> in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, a so-called safe zone where Israel had told people to evacuate to. Miranda Cleland from the DCIP called Dunia's story the distillation of the Palestinian child's experience in Gaza: "Displaced, bombed, orphaned, maimed, and finally killed by the Israeli military."</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">WCNSF</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Wounded Child, No Surviving Family</span></i></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>UNICEF</b>, the UN’s children’s fund, estimates that minors account for at least 40% of the estimated 24,000 people killed so far, with many more suffering life changing injuries. For this reason, many of the patients filling the hospitals have been assigned a new chilling acronym: “WCNSF” – “wounded child, no surviving family”.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“When we speak of a war on children, it’s not to try to be dramatic. It’s rooted in the data,” said <b>James Elder</b>, UNICEF's chief spokesperson, who spent weeks in Gaza under bombardment. “In ‘normal’ past conflicts, the rate was about 20%, so you’re looking at twice the number of children who have been killed and injured compared with previous conflicts.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“That speaks obviously to the severity and the intensity of the bombardment. We believe it also speaks to the indiscriminate nature of the bombardment, and it speaks to a disregard for civilians, particularly children.”</div></div></div><div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><i>"Gaza has become a place of death and despair" </i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Martin Griffiths</b>, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator stated last Friday, 5 January: "Gaza has become a place of death and despair. Tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, have been killed or injured. Families are sleeping in the open as temperatures plummet. Areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety have come under bombardment. Medical facilities are under relentless attack. The few hospitals that are partially functional are overwhelmed with trauma cases, critically short of all supplies and inundated by desperate people seeking safety. </div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A public health disaster is unfolding. Infectious diseases are spreading in overcrowded shelters as sewers spill over. Some 180 women are giving birth daily amidst this chaos. People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded. Famine is around the corner. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For children in particular, the last 12 weeks have been traumatic: no food, no water, no school, nothing but the terrifying sounds of war, day in and day out. Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence, - while the world watches on."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The above was quoted on 11 January 2023, by <b>Blinne Ni Ghralaigh K.C</b>, an Irish lawyer speaking for South Africa at the <b>International Court of Justice</b> (ICJ) in the genocide case against Israel. She closed by calling this: "the first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate so far vain hope that the world might do something."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Healthcare in Gaza, 2024</i></div></span></div><div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">International medical aid groups including the <b>World Health Organization</b> (WHO) and <b>Doctors Without Borders</b> said last week that the Gaza health system is “completely collapsing" with many operations carried out without anesthesia. With only four hospitals partially functioning in northern Gaza, they remain a lifeline for thousands of desperate people seeking medical aid and shelter. On Sunday, 7 January 2024, the WHO said it had called off a planned mission to bring medical supplies to Al-Awda and other hospitals in the north for the fourth time after failing to receive safety guarantees. It has now been almost two weeks since the agency was last able to reach northern Gaza. </div></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I may occasionally diverge from my normal narrative relating to Stewart Newcombe's life and his active involvement in the region, but if I know anything about the man it is that he would want his voice heard at this critical point in the history of Palestine and its people. In 1914, Newcombe announced that Britain should be proud of the achievements of Dr. Sterly's Gaza Hospital; in 2024, we should all be horrified that healthcare in Gaza has become yet one more battleground where more than 300 healthcare workers have been killed during 100 days of Israel's assault on Gaza. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the ICJ on 12 January, during their response to South Africa's case of genocide against Israel, a lawyer representing Israel claimed under oath that hospitals "have not been bombed, rather the IDF sent soldiers to search and dismantle military infrastructure, reducing the damage and destruction." The Indonesian Hospital, Al Shifa Hospital, The International Eye Care Centre, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, The Al Quds Hospital, could all tell a different tale with many more coming under repeated Israeli strikes. Some may never reopen so severe is the damage. The forced closure of many medical facilities stems not just from damage by attacks but from the absence of electricity, fuel and supplies. Ambulances and staff have also been repeatedly targeted. In a rare admission, Israel claimed responsibility for one such attack on an ambulance convey outside the Al Shifa Hospital where at least 15 people were killed and over 50 wounded. According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society all 15 were civilians. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Asymmetrical warfare is messy and lines can be blurred, but there are clear rules of engagement. Article 3 (4) common to the Geneva Convention 1949 stipulates that all parties to an armed conflict must distinguish between persons engaging in hostilities and persons who are not, or
no longer, taking part in them. The latter must be dealt with humanely and, in
particular, they must not be maltreated, taken hostage or summarily sentenced
or executed. The sick and wounded must be cared for. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The resilience of the Gazan people is rooted in history and a deep connection to their land. As Gerald Butt says in his excellent biography of the town, <i>Life at the Crossroads </i>(Rimal Publications, 2009):</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"For those familiar with the history of the region, the Israeli bombardment (2008) evoked echoes of previous ones - the two-month-long siege of Gaza and its ultimate destruction by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE to mention just one example". </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When Gaza finally succumbed to Alexander, its military commander, a stubborn man named Batis, refused to kneel before Alexander and acknowledge him as the new King of Asia nor submit to the rule of the Macedonians. It was a defiant act of resistance that so enraged Alexander that ropes were inserted through Batis' Achilles tendons and he was dragged behind a chariot around the perimeter of the town walls until he died. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlJWdp0AkEBgRIHOC8I02pPvUdVwuuFNfLCQAymfJZ40TLpbclt48HwjV46Q-b6_8ddXuBr0Eo8Ylk0N1aMFuRsk8rs7wqiia1d6KYRQ9ieqewrtOsTo-vtXJvBO_p41cj9voF4Pg4-dcjVftqJey0vu0O1KMtp70L1FimPSpNohii2URgajFCViIqefpE/s640/gaza%20wwi2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="640" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlJWdp0AkEBgRIHOC8I02pPvUdVwuuFNfLCQAymfJZ40TLpbclt48HwjV46Q-b6_8ddXuBr0Eo8Ylk0N1aMFuRsk8rs7wqiia1d6KYRQ9ieqewrtOsTo-vtXJvBO_p41cj9voF4Pg4-dcjVftqJey0vu0O1KMtp70L1FimPSpNohii2URgajFCViIqefpE/s320/gaza%20wwi2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Grand Mosque of Gaza, showing WW1 damage</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Gaza may be in ruins once again, but as Gerald Butt says: "its people have inherited the stubbornness that has allowed the city and the territory to survive so long and under such overwhelming odds." It could be said that the cycle of death and destruction that the Gazans have endured since 1948 - 81% of Gazans are Nakba refugees or their descendants - have shaped their character in a way that has made them tougher and more determined than other Palestinians. They will need those characteristics more than ever in 2024.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Photograph: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA</span></i></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>N</b><b style="text-align: left;">EXT POST:</b><span style="text-align: left;"> Part Two - The Long Road to Collective Dispossession</span></div>KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-75383981337731427872023-11-18T22:04:00.035+01:002024-02-19T11:10:48.057+01:00THE LONG ROAD TO COLLECTIVE DISPOSSESSION – PART ONE<div style="text-align: justify;">The following essay examines the four main British-backed negotiations or agreements produced during WW1 that ultimately led to the 1948 founding of the State of Israel<span style="font-family: inherit;"> and the event known to the Palestinians as the Nakba, or the catastrophe. Special attention is given to Stewart Newcombe’s twin dilemma: his efforts </span>to find a long-term solution that would satisfy the needs of both the Arab and Jewish people while also fulfilling his obligation to safeguard British interests.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As of today (18 November 2023), we are witnessing what is in danger of becoming the second Nakba for the Palestinians following the forced evacuation of 1.5 million citizens of northern Gaza to the south during Israel’s war on Hamas. In an update to my previous post dated 7 November 2023 <a href="https://shadowofthecrescent.blogspot.com/2023/11/newcombe-palestinians-and-long-road-to.html">Newcombe and the Palestinians</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">, Israel has revised the official death toll of its citizens killed during the Hamas attack on 7 October down from 1400 to 1200 (comprising over 800 Israeli and foreign national civilians, along with over 350 army and police personnel). As of 19 November 2023, a conservative estimate of Palestinians killed during Israel’s bombing campaign against Hamas in Gaza stands at more than 11,000, the majority being women and children. The final figure will likely increase due to preventable death from disease and infant mortality. An unknown number of casualties (estimated at 2,700) remain undiscovered under the rubble of the ruined city.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The following framework of pledges and agreements made during World War One clearly demonstrates the diplomatic twists and turns that has led to the present dark chapter in the history of the region and its people, as well as Great Britain's role in it. These are:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="font-weight: bold; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. THE McMAHON-HUSSEIN CORRESPONDENCE 1915- 1916</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-weight: 700;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. THE SYKES-PICOT AGREEMENT - May 1916 </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. THE BALFOUR DECLARATION 1917</span></span><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><b>4. THE DECLARATION TO THE SEVEN - 16 July 1918<br /></b></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Prior to the start of the war, both Stewart Newcombe and T.E. Lawrence carried out extensive exploration of Greater Syria, and Palestine in particular; Newcombe as a Royal Engineer officer extending Kitchener’s survey of Palestine south of Beersheba and into the Sinai, and Lawrence in search of Crusader Castles and later as an archaeologist at Carchemish with Leonard Woolley. It was at a camp south of Beersheba that both archaeologists first met Newcombe in order to provide cover to the secret military survey that was being conducted under the auspices of the Palestine Exploration Fund by several teams in an area known as the <b>Wilderness of Zin</b>. Lawrence was quick to realise why they were there: “We are obviously only meant as red herrings, to give an archaeological colour to a political job.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the most part, their experience of the Biblical landscape was fixed in the present, i.e., in daily relations with an Arab Muslim majority population. Newcombe’s pre-war reports contain detailed assessments of the various Arab and Kurdish tribes and their allegiances or potential for obstructing British imperial aims. Jewish colonies were at this time largely on the periphery of his experience, whether indigenous Palestinian Jews speaking Arabic or early Zionist settlers speaking Yiddish.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Although estimates vary, a variety of sources suggest that approximately 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews made up Ottoman Palestine's population in 1914, the year of Newcombe's survey. During the war, the government deported a large number of Jews who were foreign citizens, and some Jews left Palestine after being offered the choice to become Ottoman citizens. In this way, by December 1915, about 14% of the Jewish population had departed.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite Newcombe's long association with the Palestine Exploration Fund, whose founding principles were based on the archaeological exploration of Palestine as a way of ground-truthing a Biblical narrative, he readily acknowledged the demographic status quo that existed at the time of his surveys, namely a majority Muslim population with a leadership aiming for self-determination after the end of Ottoman rule. While the study of the historical landscape had its place in the survey, his relationships with Arab chiefs, tribal confederations and Turkish officials during this period were clearly more relevant to the aims of his covert military mission, which were to map previously unchartered regions to help defend the lifelines of the British Empire, as well as surveying future battlefields on which he and Lawrence would later fight. His secret reports to the British Embassy in Constantinople show that he was more concerned with Arab nationalist issues than observing a Jewish renaissance.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">THE WAR YEARS</span></b></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the start of the war, Lawrence worked under Newcombe’s direction in Military Intelligence for nine months in Cairo where they gathered information on Turkish troop dispositions and movements and monitored the potential for an Arab uprising in Syria, and the Arabian peninsula.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. THE McMAHON-HUSSEIN CORRESPONDENCE 1915- 1916</span></b></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Between July 1915 and March 1916, Britain had given assurances to the Sharif of Mecca in what became known as the <b>McMahon–Hussein Correspondence </b>(July 1915 to March 1916), a series of ten letters exchanged during World War I between Lieutenant Colonel Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner to Egypt, and Hussein bin Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, agreeing to recognize an independent Arab state in the region that was then under Ottoman rule in exchange for Hussein launching the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The need for such an agreement from the British perspective was partly Arab assistance in the fight against the Turks, but more importantly as a counter to the prospect of an Ottoman call for jihad, or holy war, as well as securing the continued backing of the millions of Muslims in British Indian, where many were supporting the Allies by serving in the Indian Army. The letters remain significant for their role in shaping the future political landscape of the Middle East and the understanding of British promises to various Arab leaders during the war.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However, the exchange of letters was conducted with a degree of ambiguity and left certain key terms, such as the boundaries of the proposed Arab state, open to interpretation. This later led to disputes and conflicting claims about the promises made.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This ambiguity later contributed to the disagreements between the promises made to the Arabs during the war and the agreements and pledges that came into effect afterwards, particularly the <b>Sykes-Picot Agreement</b> and the <b>Balfour Declaration</b>, both of which seemed to contradict the spirit of the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Labels such as <b>‘Perfidious Albion’</b> are often applied by historians in the light of evidence from the very same author of the British promises who did not believe in the strength of his own proposals. In a private letter to India’s Viceroy Charles Hardinge sent on 4 December 1915, McMahon expressed a somewhat different view of what the future of Arabia would be, contrary to what he had led Sherif Hussein to believe:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[I do not take] the idea of a future strong united independent Arab State ... too seriously ... the conditions of Arabia do not and will not for a very long time to come, lend themselves to such a thing ... I do not for one moment go to the length of imagining that the present negotiations will go far to shape the future form of Arabia or to either establish our rights or to bind our hands in that country. The situation and its elements are much too nebulous for that. What we have to arrive at now is to tempt the Arab people into the right path, detach them from the enemy and bring them on to our side. This on our part is at present largely a matter of words, and to succeed we must use persuasive terms and abstain from academic haggling over conditions—whether about Baghdad or elsewhere.</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lawrence saw things differently. “I had dreamed, at the City School of Oxford, of hustling into form, while I lived, the new Asia which time was inexorably bringing upon us. Mecca was to lead to Damascus; Damascus to Anatolia, and afterwards to Baghdad; and then there was Yemen.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lawrence had dreamed big, and the results of his efforts would torment him for the rest of his life. But even Newcombe was not immune from the knowledge that he had deceived the Arabs. Arnold Lawrence, (T.E.’s brother) wrote to Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence’s authorised biographer, in August 1971: “Newcombe’s feeling of guilt persisted to the end of his life and kept him constantly active in furthering Arab political aims.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The secret Hussein-McMahon Correspondence was a pivotal episode within the historical context of the Middle East, shaping the scepticism throughout the political landscape of the region, and highlighting the discrepancy between the promises made and the geopolitical realities that unfolded after the war.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Towards the end of 1915 there was an unexpected announcement within closed government circles that rang alarm bells in Cairo as it threatened to cast aside Anglo-Arab discussions relating to the aspirations for national self-determination coming from Arab leaders in Syria, the Hejaz and Yemen. Following recommendations from the <b>De Bunsen Committee</b>, a British Government report on present and future relations with the Ottomans<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._H._Asquith"></a>, secret negotiations between the British and the French had begun to work towards an agreement on a post-war division of the spoils within greater Syria and Turkey. With discussions between Cairo and Sherif Hussein well under way it was decided that the negotiations between the British and the French must for now be kept secret.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>2. THE SYKES-PICOT AGREEMENT - May 1916</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Enter Sir Mark Sykes of Great Britain and Francois Georges-Picot of France. With an eye on the prize, a secret agreement was drawn up to divide the Ottoman Empire's territories in the Middle East after the war's end between their respective countries.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Named after its negotiators, the agreement established spheres of influence and control in the Middle East for these two European powers. The agreement essentially aimed to split the region into areas of control, mainly to secure their strategic interests and prevent conflict between themselves over these territories.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Sykes-Picot Agreement designated various zones of control, which were divided into areas of direct and indirect influence for both countries within modern-day countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine. However, it is essential to note that the implementation of the agreement was significantly altered by subsequent developments, such as the Balfour Declaration and the eventual collapse of the Ottoman Empire.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Agreement has had a lasting impact on the Middle East, contributing to the drawing of borders that often ignored local ethnic, religious, and tribal divisions. It's seen by many as a prime example of the arbitrary division of territories by colonial powers, often cited for the problems and conflicts in the region that persist to this day. Sykes-Picot remains crucial in understanding the ideology (at least as depicted through its propaganda) of the Islamic State (IS) militant group. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was described by IS as "the breaker of barriers", reinforcing the sentiment that Sykes-Picot was a symbol of foreign interference.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The reality, however, is far more nuanced. One could argue that the agreements made at the <b>1920 San Remo Conference </b>-- attended by leaders from Britain, France, Italy, and Japan -- rather than the Sykes-Picot agreement, are ultimately responsible for the internal borders of many Middle Eastern countries we know today. Sykes and Picot wielded a broad brush in creating the post-war colonial framework of countries out of the old Ottoman Empire; the current geopolitical borders were established over a longer period of time, a process that had a great deal to do with regional power struggles, rather than any foreign imperial meddling.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>3. THE BALFOUR DECLARATION 1917</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whereby <i>“One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third.”</i></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the 2 November 1917, Arthur James Balfour, the United Kingdom's foreign secretary in Lloyd George's new administration, sent the following declaration to Lord Rothschild, a leading member of the British Jewish community:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of his Majesty's government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionists aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As a response to various factors, including lobbying efforts by the Zionist movement and considerations of British imperial interests during World War I, the British government saw strategic advantages in issuing the declaration.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Rothschild was seen as a liaison and representative of the Jewish community, and his involvement in the process was crucial. He worked closely with Chaim Weizmann, a Zionist leader, to advocate for British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration, in part, aimed to win Jewish support for the Allies in World War I and to gain favour among influential Jewish communities, particularly in the United States and Russia. Britain also had considerable strategic interests in the Middle East and the Mediterranean region, in Egypt and the Suez Canal in particular, and an advantage was sought through the declaration in securing control over these territories in any post-war settlement.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This simple statement of intent from the British government, whereby “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third,” as one leading Jewish intellectual put it (Arthur Koestler), was at the heart of the Zionists’ hopes of creating a political homeland. With its announcement coming as the Allies pushed north through Palestine towards the prize of Jerusalem ‘by Christmas’, the hopes of Zionism lay in a total defeat of the German-backed Ottomans and with Palestine coming under a British mandate or protectorate.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite reservations, Stewart Newcombe, operating alongside T.E. Lawrence with Sherif Feisal’s men in the Hejaz, accepted the document with all its stipulations, in particular those that respected the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. After all, this declaration had not just been conjured up in the mind of the British foreign secretary on a whim. Behind the scenes, Zionist leaders Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow and British minister Sir Mark Sykes had been shuttling between allies to secure a common agreement. Sokolow was especially successful in obtaining the <b>Cambon Letter</b> of agreement from France, which ignored the rights of non-Jews, and the support from Pope Benedict XV as the Vatican controlled many of the Christian holy sites in Palestine. His relations with Louis D. Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice under President Wilson, secured support from the USA. With the Allies standing by Britain’s side, Balfour issued his government’s declaration with confidence. Despite his personal reservations, Newcombe was duty bound to accept his government's pledge to the Zionists and to work within its framework.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">While consensus for the declaration on a Jewish homeland was being sought around the world, discussions of a contradictory nature continued to be made between the British and the French causing considerable tension in the dealings between British officers and Arab leaders in the Hejaz.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>ATTITUDE OF THE BRITISH OFFICERS</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The mental agility involved in keeping all the pieces in play was stressful to most of the British officers working with the Arabs. Mark Sykes’ arrival in the Hejaz in May 1917 to sound out his ‘proposals’ with Feisal and Sherif Hussein was an alarming development, especially as his proposal to carve up the region had already been agreed with Francois Georges-Picot, the French representative. Following on the heels of General Murray's failure to break the Turkish line at the First Battle of Gaza, Sykes adopted a policy of deception and was especially careful not to give away details of the division of the spoils lest it threaten Arab cooperation. Within the agreement, Palestine, always the stumbling block, was designated to be governed by an international administration. Sykes felt well satisfied until someone pointed out that the Jews might have a very strong interest in the future of the country and could oppose any agreement or promises. This came as somewhat of a surprise to Sykes who until that moment had not considered the Jews in his deliberations.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Newcombe shared Lawrence’s distress and felt they were being manipulated or exploited by Sykes and Picot. He summed up the feeling when he wrote that Sykes must return and openly and honestly deal with Hussein and his sons, “otherwise we are hoodwinking the Sherif and his people and playing a very false game in which officers attached to the Sherif’s army are inevitably committed and which I know causes anxiety in several officers’ minds: in case we let them down.” Another officer, Colonel Wilson went further: “Is the Sherif living in a fools’ paradise?” he wrote. “If so he will have a very rude awakening and once his trust in Great Britain has gone we will not get it back again.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In Newcombe’s mind the solution was simple: “…he [Faisal] must have a political propaganda which will induce the people to risk their lives. It must be a clear statement, showing that they will be fighting for an Arab Government.”</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lawrence’s anguish was compounded by the fact that he was about to depart on the Aqaba expedition just two days after Sykes’s visit. He would soon be compelling men to fight for freedom and self-government over land that was already assigned. Feisal remained focussed on this aim in his father’s name, but it was also well known by Lawrence and others that the Hashemites remained in secret negotiations with the Turks as an insurance policy to secure their long-term objectives.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Throughout their close association during the war, Lawrence and Newcombe remained convinced of the priority of securing Arab assistance under the leadership of the Hashemites to ‘enable England, while fighting Germany, simultaneously to defeat Turkey’. Newcombe was certain that had any suggestion of a Zionist movement been put forward, the Sherif would have done nothing to help the British. The <b>Bolshevik Revolution </b>late in 1917 was a moment of deep concern when the secret treaties of the allies were revealed to the world’s press. Lawrence’s role had just got harder. Newcombe, meanwhile, was out of the fray having got himself captured during an operation behind enemy lines at the Third Battle of Gaza.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><b><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>4. THE DECLARATION TO THE SEVEN 1918</b></div></b><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On 16 June 1918, Mark Sykes responded to a secret memorandum written by seven anonymous Syrian notables in Cairo requesting a "guarantee of the ultimate independence of Arabia".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The seven Syrians were members of the recently formed Syrian Unity Party which was established in the wake of the Balfour Declaration and the publication by the Bolsheviks of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In what became known as <b>The Declaration to the Seven</b>, Sykes expressed His Majesty’s Government’s great care in considering their requests despite their anonymity which he said, “has not in any way detracted from the importance which His Majesty's Government attribute to the document.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The areas mentioned in Sykes’ response fell into four categories and are worth setting out in full:</div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Areas in Arabia which were free and independent before the outbreak of war.</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Areas emancipated from Turkish control by the action of the Arabs themselves during the present war.</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Areas formerly under Ottoman dominion, occupied by the Allied forces during the present war.</b></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><b>Areas still under Turkish control.</b></li></ol><div><div style="text-align: justify;">In regard to the first two categories, Sykes stated that his government recognised “the complete and sovereign independence of the Arab inhabiting these areas and supported them in their struggle for freedom.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In regard to the areas occupied by Allied forces, the British government drew the attention of the Seven to the texts of the proclamations issued by the General Commanding Officers following the capture of Baghdad and Jerusalem, proclamations that embodied the policy of His Majesty's Government towards the inhabitants of those regions. Namely:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It is the wish and desire of His Majesty's Government that the future government of these regions should be based upon the principle of the consent of the governed and this policy has and will continue to have the support of His Majesty's Government.”</div></div></div></blockquote><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sykes wrote that the government was aware, and would take into consideration, the dangers and difficulties for those who worked for the regeneration of the people in the specified regions, and that all obstacles could and will be overcome with his government’s full support.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Finally, he declared that the government was ready to examine any cooperative plan that aligned with existing military operations and consistent with the political principles of His Majesty's Government and the Allies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Aside from private assurances and promises, the Declaration, written less than five months before the end of the war, was the first statement from the British Government to the Arabs advocating national self-determination. The Declaration was read out to the Seven on behalf of the Foreign Office by an official at the Army headquarters in Egypt and a copy was sent to Sherif Hussein. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On the night of 30 September 1918, Lawrence and the Sherifian Arab Army were poised to enter Damascus aware that under the terms of the Declaration the Arabs had the right to establish a government over all the territory that they liberated. It is unclear who entered Damascus first but Lawrence, who had been detained by a patrol of Bengal Lancers in a mix-up over his identity, recorded the moment he finally entered the city that he had dreamed of helping to conquer since a boy in Oxford:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The streets were nearly impassable with the crowds, who yelled themselves hoarse, danced, cut themselves with swords and daggers and fired volleys into the air. Nasir, Nuri Sha'lan, Auda abu Tayi and myself were cheered by name, covered with flowers, kissed indefinitely and splashed with attar of roses from the house-tops."</div></div></div></blockquote><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Riding his horse at the head of a large possession, Faisal later entered the town to further scenes of wild jubilation and joy. As his biographer, Ali Allawi, wrote: "The flags of the Arab Revolt were everywhere. For now, at least, the city was at his feet." After two years of hard warfare, Faisal was the undisputed leader of the Arabs of Greater Syria. The revolt had triumphed, but with immense difficulties on the horizon the battle for the heart and soul of the Arab cause had just begun. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>POST-WAR PERIOD</b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As agreed in the secret agreements of the Allies, the aftermath of the war saw the division of the Middle East into mandates and colonies controlled by various European powers, with the Arab territories being divided up between Britain and France. These actions led to disillusionment among the Arab population and contributed to a deep-seated mistrust of Western powers due to perceived broken promises.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Throughout his life, Newcombe continued to fight against the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians, as shown in this letter to <i>The Times </i>in 1939:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Being one of the few survivors who made promises on behalf of the British Government to the Arabs in 1917, I state the facts as follows:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1. We made several promises to the Arabs: in 1915 the McMahon letters; in 1916-18 promises by leaflets dropped by aeroplanes, by speeches to prisoners of war, and by any means we could devise, to induce them to desert and rebel against their own Government: we asked them to run the risk of being hanged and to risk the lives of their families: we offered them freedom as a reward; 2,000 deserters and others joined up from Palestine alone, and were at Wadi Musa in 1918.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">2. In November, 1917, we made a vague and qualified promise to the Jews, without asking the Arabs whether it contravened our promises to them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">3. On hearing of the Balfour Declaration the Arabs who were helping us by their revolt stopped fighting in December, 1917. So we sent Commander D. G. Hogarth to explain to King Hussein that the Jewish Settlement would be consistent with the economic and political freedom of the Arab people. On such conditions King Hussein accepted "Jews into an Arab House" and the Arabs went on fighting with us.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">4. For some years we deluded Arabs and ourselves by saying that the National Home was “cultural and spiritual” and non-political. Had we kept to that meaning little trouble would have occurred.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It would be very desirable, from the point of view of honour, that all these various pledges should be set out, side by side, and then consider what is the fair thing to be done. This is all that the Arabs ask…</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For the rest of his life, Newcombe maintained strong views on what he considered were acceptable levels of Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine in the years between the World Wars, based on his long study of the region, its people, infrastructure and resources. Believing the Arabs of Palestine would not vanish like the mist before the sun of Zion he therefore thought it imperative they had fair representation in the contest for the hearts and minds of those in power who would ultimately bring about the </span>fulfillment<span style="font-family: inherit;"> of the Balfour Declaration, with all its stipulations – important provisos which supported his firm belief that only by respecting native interests could you achieve a lasting consensus. He worked tirelessly towards that aim after consulting the opinions of his many Jewish and Moslem friends before reaching proposals for what might be termed a bi-nation state solution. His convictions, once reached, never wavered.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In<b> Part Two </b>I<b> </b>will explore Newcombe’s role in delimiting the boundaries of Palestine and Lebanon, his role as the Honorary Secretary of the Palestine Information Centre in London, his collaboration with Albert Hyamson in seeking a just and sustainable future for both Arabs and Jews in Palestine, known as the Hyamson-Newcombe Proposal, his work with Hyamson and others in drawing up a Constitution for Palestine, and perhaps his most fitting legacy to his Muslim friends, that of helping to establish the first purpose built mosque in London.</span></div></div>KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-44196698456204688792023-11-07T23:54:00.037+01:002024-01-27T17:52:47.950+01:00NEWCOMBE AND THE PALESTINIANS <p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><i>‘</i><b><i>I am angry with myself for not being able to do more’.</i></b></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">STEWART FRANCIS NEWCOMBE<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: medium;">‘Newcombe’s
feeling of guilt persisted to the end of his life and kept him constantly
active in furthering Arab political aims.’</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: black;">ARNOLD LAWRENCE (T. E’s BROTHER) TO JEREMY
WILSON, </span>AUGUST 1971</span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;"><span style="color: red; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">On 7 October 2023, the Al-Qasam Brigade, the military wing of the
Palestinian organisation Hamas, broke out of besieged Gaza and brutally massacred Israeli and
foreign citizens and military personnel, an operation that left around 1200 dead, injuring many
more, and taking approximately 230 hostages. The attack, named </span><span style="background: white; color: #202122; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas,</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> </span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">proved to be the bloodiest
day in Israel’s history. In the aftermath of a huge intelligence, military and security failure,
Israel's retaliation on the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip was immediate, devastating
and driven by a desire for retribution. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Israel asserts its right to self-defence and history shows that it has never refrained from
using disproportionate force in response to attacks coming from Gaza, or
elsewhere. Backed by statements of support from the US, the UK and others, the
Israeli Defense Force has since unleashed a firestorm on the Gazan civilian
population from land, sea, and air. As a result of this ongoing action,
accusations have been made that Israel has violated numerous articles of
international law. Human rights organizations and governments from all over the
world have called for an end to hostilities or, at the very least, a pause to allow
in much needed aid and relief to people caught up in a humanitarian disaster. Israel
counters this by saying a ceasefire will simply give Hamas time to regroup and rearm.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In all the years I have studied the situation in Israel and Palestine, I have never before seen this level of brutality, barbarity and destruction inflicted upon the Palestinian
people in the Gaza Strip. This is unprecedented. With live streaming, it is possible to
witness this in real time. According to different sources (as of 7 November
2023), in excess of 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children, have so far died
in four weeks of relentless bombing that has targeted residential properties, hospitals,
ambulances, schools, UNWRA refugee centres, churches and mosques, bakeries, so-called
safe routes to the south, as well as the only remaining exit out of the Strip at
Rafa on the Egyptian border. Israel claims that Hamas bunkers and tunnels operate
under these buildings and are therefore legitimate targets. In the coming days
and weeks, thousands of bodies will be pulled from under the rubble of Gaza City as well as the eight refugee camps that lie within its encircled
boundary. With no humanitarian pause in sight, it appears Israel is determined to eradicate not only Hamas but also Gaza itself. Soon there will be nothing left for Gazans to return to. <i><span style="color: #3d85c6;">(<b>NOTE:</b> As of 26 January 2024, the number of dead has risen to over <b>30,000</b>).</span></i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Israel has maintained control over Gaza's land, sea, and air since the brutal
blockade of 2007, tightly regulating the supply of water, electricity, fuel, and
other essential goods, and limiting or prohibiting the movement of people. Services
such as desperately needed medical aid and internet connectivity have been
weaponized and are arbitrarily withdrawn. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Gaza has a population of 2.2 million people crowded into what is in effect the world's largest concentration camp. With half of the population under the age of 18, more than 4000
children have been killed so far. Surely the terrible attack by Hamas cannot justify the murder of so many innocent children. Injuries from bomb blasts, full body burns, allegedly from
phosphorous shells according to doctors on the ground, and the mental suffering from seeing loved ones torn to
pieces are wounds that will never heal. While claiming to target Hamas fighters,
entire families are being wiped out by indiscriminate bombing. Israel disputes any numbers coming from the Hamas controlled health authority and claims that many killed will be Hamas fighters. The number of dead women and children will tell another tale. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Among the dead are at least 37 journalists, having
been killed while displaying courage and tenacity in telling their story to the
world. Despite the horrifying scenes of the Hamas terror
attack on 7 October, known as Israel’s Black Saturday, many major cities in the
world continue to witness incredible scenes of support for </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Palestine. Israel has lost the propaganda war. <o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="color: #3d85c6;">(<i><b>NOTE:</b></i> <i>As of 26 January 2024, there are</i> <i>now over <b>83 Journalists </b>killed according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than in WW2 which lasted four years, and in Vietnam which last two decades.</i>)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Palestine's armed resistance against Israel's colonisation did not start
on 7 October 2023; the long road to the collective dispossession of the
indigenous people of Palestine began much earlier. This was alluded to by <span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">António Guterres, Secretary
General of the UN, who told the security council: “It is important to also
recognise</span><span style="background: white; color: #121212; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> the attacks by Hamas did not
happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of
suffocating occupation.”</span> </span>Guterres was of course referring to the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967 when Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on the opening day of the war designed to destroy the Egyptian Air force and its airfields following the mass mobilisation of an Arab military alliance that had aggressively surrounded Israel on at least two borders. In the ensuing six-day conflict, Israel won territorial gains from Egypt, Jordan and Syria which included the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Sinai, and the Gaza Strip.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Israel immediately called for Guiterres' resignation and
announced that it was withdrawing travel visas for UN officials,
including the UN humanitarian <span style="background: white;">coordinator, Martin Griffiths.</span> As fury grows over its strikes on Gaza, it seems Israel is not afraid to lose friends and support in order to pursue its war aims. Meanwhile, the Israeli hostages
remain in captivity and more than 1.6 million Palestinians have been displaced.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Respected
Israeli and Jewish academics have described Israel as <span style="background: white;">a colonial settler apartheid regime
established in 1948 on the land of Palestine and at the expense and ethnic cleansing
of the Palestinian people following their catastrophe (al-Nakba). </span>For fifty-six years, Israel has held Gaza and the West Bank under strict
military occupation, and in international law has a duty to protect all civilians
under its control. <span style="animation-play-state: running; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; text-align: left;">Francesca Albanese,</span><strong style="animation-play-state: running; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; text-align: left;"> </strong><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, pointed out that Israel "cannot claim the right to self </span>defense<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>against<span style="font-family: inherit;"> a threat that emanates from the </span>territory<span style="font-family: inherit;"> it occupies... from a territory that is kept under belligerent occupation." It is like saying</span></span> that an abuser has the right to defend
himself because his victim struck him. Meanwhile, attacks from armed colonialist settlers and military raids in the West Bank, which is not under Hamas control, complete the stranglehold on Palestinian freedoms and render the possibility of a two state solution null and void. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I cannot guess what the Arabist, Colonel Stewart Newcombe’s reaction
would have been to these events, but I know he would not have stood idly by
while innocent civilians on both sides were slaughtered in their thousands. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But Guterres was reticent in his speech to the United Nations and could have gone back much further, beyond even
the 1948 Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were
forced from their homes at the birth of a nation whose very existence was
predicated on the destruction of another. Today, images of long lines of Gazans fleeing for their lives, waving white flags of surrender out of fear of being targeted, are a stark reminder of a catastrophe that has lasted over 75 years. I</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">n the follow-up to this article, </span></span>I will try to contextualize many of the major events that led to this dark place in the history of the region, paying s<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 107%;">pecial attention to Newcombe's involvement and his steadfast support for the
Palestinian people who were once promised so much in what became known as the twice promised land. </span></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span> </p>KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-86170887037688426082023-10-22T15:30:00.026+02:002023-10-26T16:06:48.960+02:00ARABS AND PALESTINE Daily Telegraph 1945<p>CONTEXT On this day 78 years ago:</p><p>To the Editor of The Daily Telegraph</p><p>Sir, </p><p>The Dowager Countess Lloyd-George implies that we are reversing our policy and going back on our word to the Jews if we do not allow the homeless Jews of Europe to go to Palestine. </p><p>Our policy since 1939 has been that of the White Paper, which was based on the weighing up, for the first time, of promises made to Arabs and of the Balfour Declaration. Lord Maugham's Committee stated that the British Government "were not free to dispose of Palestine without regard for the wishes and interests of the inhabitants of Palestine." The Balfour Declaration was the only promise made to the Jews, and the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine was viewed with favour only so far as it did not prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing population.</p><p>Various statements have been made by the Government that a Jewish State is not promised: various declarations to the Arabs qualify the extent of the Balfour Declaration. If there still be doubt that the latter has not been fulfilled, let an impartial, judicial body examine all the evidence available and let the matter be finally clarified</p><p>The Arabs object to the entry of more Jews into Palestine because they fear political domination if they are outnumbered by Zionists. The Arab League, however, have offered to accept more than their share of Jewish refugees on grounds of humanity into other Arab States where political fears do not arise.</p><p>Yours faithfully,</p><p>S. F. NEWCOMBE, Col.</p><p>London, SW7</p><p>(Dated 22.10.1945)</p>KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-8106215157135610482023-02-07T13:06:00.042+01:002024-01-24T09:55:11.431+01:00The Anglo-Turkish Earthquake Relief Fund 1939<p style="text-align: justify;">Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the earthquake that hit the area around Gaziantep in southern Turkey close to the border with Syria before dawn on Monday, 6 February 2023, was the country’s worst disaster since 1939. The war-ravaged northern border of Syria was also deeply affected by the 7.8 quake where most of the casualties were predominantly in the cities of Aleppo, Hama, Latakia and Tartus.</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ2FCsbjB3D-dgQRKQwgVISfqFd8K7J1fr-60oELMHEkw60Ny5zx7NkibSFVCtVLUCjDxfmsB8HS53dcNQeK_W46CyC63uYhROEF1IhGdQrfhnTIbYzRPr-RhcshM1HdQ8LfM2dd2bear7MLIR49UPwby64zMWrg68C11KH0n6cgFbqlj7VBVTULk9sw/s723/Erzincan%201.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="723" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ2FCsbjB3D-dgQRKQwgVISfqFd8K7J1fr-60oELMHEkw60Ny5zx7NkibSFVCtVLUCjDxfmsB8HS53dcNQeK_W46CyC63uYhROEF1IhGdQrfhnTIbYzRPr-RhcshM1HdQ8LfM2dd2bear7MLIR49UPwby64zMWrg68C11KH0n6cgFbqlj7VBVTULk9sw/s320/Erzincan%201.jpg" width="210" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Erzincan destruction 1939</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The disaster that Erdogan referred to was the 1939 Erzincan earthquake that also struck early in the morning of 26 December while most people slept. Seven violent shocks, the biggest measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale resulted in the loss of nearly 33,000 lives, injuring 100,000 and made several hundred thousand homeless. Ninety villages and 15 cities over an area of 30,000 square kilometres were completely destroyed in what is called the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ). The earthquake created a 360-km-long surface rupture, traces of which are still visible, and produced a strong tsunami wave of up to a metre high that swept across the eastern coast of the Turkish Black Sea in less than an hour. </div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">International response to the unfolding tragedy was prompt. On the British side, Sir Wyndham Deedes, an eminent British Army officer, civil administrator and a Turcophile, travelled to the region accompanied by archaeologist Professor John Garstang to distribute a wide ranging package of relief on behalf of the Anglo-Turkish Earthquake Relief Fund, an appeal initiated by George Lloyd, Lord Lloyd of Dolobran, then chairman of the British Council. His wartime colleague, <b>Stewart Newcombe</b>, was invited to join the executive committee and became its vice-chair. </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1r87qyphjG7ZNI8Ic_ZlKq2fbOJb970vwyCE7v6TKNgVymiS9LduDejCGAAlFyPESa0Gcw1IGlvzDD-CoEtcDcMw8Kzif-Kw_u7VID5SGzxl-gytvgntMqaVhApjSm0F7CPG5qyk_b7XPbAybSNJuybXA0Kr0gInhnPsWRznlWug-TKi1i412wJNmAw/s544/SFN%20by%20John%20Crealock.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="435" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1r87qyphjG7ZNI8Ic_ZlKq2fbOJb970vwyCE7v6TKNgVymiS9LduDejCGAAlFyPESa0Gcw1IGlvzDD-CoEtcDcMw8Kzif-Kw_u7VID5SGzxl-gytvgntMqaVhApjSm0F7CPG5qyk_b7XPbAybSNJuybXA0Kr0gInhnPsWRznlWug-TKi1i412wJNmAw/s320/SFN%20by%20John%20Crealock.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">S.F. Newcombe</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Newcombe knew many of the distinguished members that came forward to help coordinate the appeal for money, clothing, blankets, and medical supplies. Garstang was joined on the committee by fellow archaeologists Leonard Wooley and Max Mallowan and by Newcombe’s old colleagues from Egypt and the Hejaz such as Ronald Storrs, Colonel Buxton, and the Earl Winterton. One name stands out on the list - that of Lady Paul, known to many as the White Lady of Constantinople, an extremely courageous woman who had done much to ease the suffering of allied prisoners-of-war in Turkey, going so far as to facilitate escape and evasion at great personal danger. She had been instrumental in connecting Newcombe to leading Turkish officials seeking an armistice agreement when he was an escaped prisoner living undercover in Constantinople.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">A mountain of aid in the form of clothing, blankets, medical supplies and even a fleet of ambulances were handled by a team of volunteers working day and night at a relief depot set up at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. Clothing sufficient to aid 48,000 survivors were sent out to the affected area in the first month. The British press played up a story that a second-hand clothes depot had donated a quantity of policemen’s uniforms. “Police blue to clothe Turks” ran one of the headlines. Within 48 hours of the appeal reaching Lord Trent, chairman of Boots the Chemist, a donation of drugs was made to the value of £500. Over a two-day period, 27,000 letters were handled by the Post Office, most containing cash or cheques from as little as a halfpenny to £1000. Jewellery was donated to be converted into cash and one woman even sent in her engagement ring as she said her late husband had deep affection for the country. The £77,000 collected from British sympathisers was immediately spent on reconstruction materials such as galvanised iron sheets and roofing felt as well as extra clothing needs. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZa4eorJsDY0HzM8ZSQE1SZ5ZOYqDTvW9ta58Xvkk39OcXk1KgsGTrDWwz2fb0D3-f07E30t3MqDhsoapBMlHE4l9rC4rr1TyDE9kc3A159qD4O0ErKXv33r6IqPBRcWUD5GvC-FnX1qlfIe-lsADoRSnLWi7YWQx5hEPU2JhkschzkcztGDP58fT1OQ/s1267/Anglo%20Turkish%20Relief%20Brochure.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1267" data-original-width="929" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZa4eorJsDY0HzM8ZSQE1SZ5ZOYqDTvW9ta58Xvkk39OcXk1KgsGTrDWwz2fb0D3-f07E30t3MqDhsoapBMlHE4l9rC4rr1TyDE9kc3A159qD4O0ErKXv33r6IqPBRcWUD5GvC-FnX1qlfIe-lsADoRSnLWi7YWQx5hEPU2JhkschzkcztGDP58fT1OQ/s320/Anglo%20Turkish%20Relief%20Brochure.jpg" width="235" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First-hand report from Sir Wyndham Deedes</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">At this point the committee recommended stopping the general appeal due to the prevailing wartime conditions. They thought that the best help that could now be given was the erection of a modern hospital in Erzincan as a permanent token of friendship and so committee members were dispatched across the UK to seek financial contributions from leaders in commerce and industry. With the committee setting the total needed at £50,000, Newcombe travelled with Wyndham Deedes to various parts of the UK to promote the idea. </div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Ultimately, it seems likely that the total destruction of Erzincan and its subsequent abandonment as a city led to the Fund reallocating its assets to other pressing needs. Erzincan was later founded as a new town on a fertile plain to the north. </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3XZysT8kG1EQ5RBEjVEQpj62USz75moD1m11F4710oywlG-MXG5HUxIAvIM2y2h8omcUW5N9eof7TZzHEC2Es1jjg5mxh9LTLNYVp3LqcrElAyuDj5YJrmzpsf6TrHYys5VC6DDT43GUljnNpKmAa2NteDpLb2guZF7vMW6b9wvIRneeqYnMYK0aBg/s1280/Lord%20Lloyd.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3XZysT8kG1EQ5RBEjVEQpj62USz75moD1m11F4710oywlG-MXG5HUxIAvIM2y2h8omcUW5N9eof7TZzHEC2Es1jjg5mxh9LTLNYVp3LqcrElAyuDj5YJrmzpsf6TrHYys5VC6DDT43GUljnNpKmAa2NteDpLb2guZF7vMW6b9wvIRneeqYnMYK0aBg/s320/Lord%20Lloyd.jpeg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Lloyd by William Roberts</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Following the unexpected death of Lord Lloyd on 4 February 1942, the committee held its last meeting on 21 February. The final accounts show how amazingly philanthropic the British public and industry leaders were during those early war years with a total donation of cash and in kind, as well as a significant concession from shipping and railways, amounting to a staggering £82,300 (equivalent to £4,961,152 in 2023 money). The balance of the Fund’s assets were later handed over to the Turkish Red Crescent Society with the proviso that £5,000 shall, in accordance with the wishes of the donors, be spent in Great Britain for the purchase of hospital equipment and medical supplies.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">When the committee closed its books, the Second World War was already into its third year. The work of the Anglo-Turkish Earthquake Relief Fund, the prodigious efforts of a legion of volunteers, and the unbridled generosity of the general public at a time of great personal hardship, stands as a timely reminder of how powerful the cumulative effect of a thousand single acts of compassion to strangers in times of despair can be. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-79861285494764692492023-02-02T11:26:00.010+01:002024-01-24T09:56:30.332+01:00Hard work: Good prospects - the Devon and Cornwall Group Settlement Scheme to Australia <p style="text-align: justify;">Hard work: Good
prospects - that was the philosophy behind the Devon and Cornwall Group Settlement Scheme to Australia initiated
in the early 1920s by Colonel Stewart F. Newcombe.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The Groups Settlement Scheme was a bold idea designed to
encourage families from England’s West Country to settle in Western Australia.
The original programme, set up in 1921 under the direction of the region’s
Premier, Sir James Mitchell, had successfully cleared areas of dense forest in
preparation for dairy farming to make the region self-sufficient in milk, butter,
and cheese. To bring his dream to fruition, Mitchell needed more settlers and
more money. For both, he turned to Britain where unemployment in post-WW1
England was high and especially so in the South-West following a gradual decline
in local industries such as tin and copper mining. Stewart Newcombe’s close
contact with Australian and New Zealand troops (ANZACS) at Gallipoli and on the
Western Front warmed him to the opportunities that this vast continent and its
people could offer. From his military posting at Raglan barracks, Devonport,
he began to explore ways to promote its benefits to families from the local
towns of Devon and Cornwall. <o:p></o:p></p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSDPVGYt9WcoYgenjPjNIh8g9AlJFUr0xFdqCV-Ju8-t9E5ta9ewduqwvRIjAWppiJYFljOTyutP9eeQlETihkwfMcV4v_VF_pb1qBZLlEyi69yITgTlNnoxux0OWkNEHyk5tbHl6NynJGLXLMVVrEQucMjxD6SIt-hrJnW3U1dg_dlAMisi3CtVrZFw" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1284" data-original-width="2242" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSDPVGYt9WcoYgenjPjNIh8g9AlJFUr0xFdqCV-Ju8-t9E5ta9ewduqwvRIjAWppiJYFljOTyutP9eeQlETihkwfMcV4v_VF_pb1qBZLlEyi69yITgTlNnoxux0OWkNEHyk5tbHl6NynJGLXLMVVrEQucMjxD6SIt-hrJnW3U1dg_dlAMisi3CtVrZFw" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clearing trees by chain and snig</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Newcombe proposed a personal initiative that closely fitted
with the scheme run by Sir James. To see its potential for himself, he was
invited by Sir James to conduct a six-week fact-finding tour of the country that
would hopefully result in a considerable flow of candidates to the region. Early
in March 1923, and before a planned relocation to the War Office in London,
Newcombe wasted no time in putting in for leave and informed Sir James that he
and his wife, Elsie, were on their way. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjcdtz2Jmgv8OAYtTwAYuNiaNOY7Z-qMLASKFgEjqCwOQsVkR6pDgAqMauM5BJwZlJvAqGlTmNrYktyWx-qsH4Zcn-9557ymLxJstysWqU81Tq6p4KdXm83b3GMRimCmKADxQrh8hjaeu0s3XRHC9rCf5tw9qaARzwqu3Ms4akBLk-ZXEvxOp3NsFLM2w" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1100" data-original-width="722" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjcdtz2Jmgv8OAYtTwAYuNiaNOY7Z-qMLASKFgEjqCwOQsVkR6pDgAqMauM5BJwZlJvAqGlTmNrYktyWx-qsH4Zcn-9557ymLxJstysWqU81Tq6p4KdXm83b3GMRimCmKADxQrh8hjaeu0s3XRHC9rCf5tw9qaARzwqu3Ms4akBLk-ZXEvxOp3NsFLM2w" width="158" /></a></span></span></div><span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The Newcombe’s arrived in Fremantle,
Western Australia, on 5 April 1923 after a 45-day voyage and were met by their
host Mr. Percy Stewart, the Federal Minister for Works and Railway. After
disembarkation a short reception was hosted by the mayor and other dignitaries.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><o:p></o:p></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Unfortunately, the Newcombe’s fact-finding
mission did not get off to a good start. Soon after the reception they set off
on the short nine-mile drive from Fremantle to Perth, WA’s capital city. The
car in which Newcombe, Elsie and Mr. and Mrs. Stewart was travelling swerved to
avoid a horse and cart on the road. </span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Passing the cart, a piece of
timber struck the upright which held the hood in position forcing the car to collide with an electric light pole with considerable force. Elsie was thrown forward into
the windscreen which smashed over her cutting her face and lips. Suffering
from shock she was treated by a local doctor before </span><span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">the group continued </span></span>their journey to Perth where the
Newcombes were lodged at the Palace Hotel at 108 St. George’s Terrace. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">On Friday 6 April, the day after the
crash, the incident was worthy of a mention in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Argus</i> newspaper, which had been reporting Newcombe’s
forthcoming visit since the beginning of the year. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">After an initial meeting with Sir James there followed two
weeks of meetings and receptions. Newcombe devoted his time to promoting the
merits of his scheme, <span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">assessing the productivity of the
country he passed through, appraising the rainfall and climate, and acquiring
information as to markets and marketing facilities. Questions from the press focussed
on the financial viability of his scheme with one reporter commenting that</span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">
Colonel </span>Newcombe’s<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> scheme </span>“<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">appears to be complex, and it
will require most expert organisation if it is to achieve any measure of
success.</span>”<span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> Newcombe responded by saying: “This is a
draft of the scheme I drew up in England without consultation with your
Premier. He may tear up our proposal, but I feel confident that he will submit
something in its place which will be equally good or better for the people we
wish to serve at home and in the interests of this State, and for the good of
the Empire at large.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">On 18 April 1923, Newcombe and the investigating party
visited two group settlements, Nos. 41 and 42, already successfully operating
just nine miles west of the town of Denmark and close to the railhead. During
the six weeks tour of the region, it was the first and only time he was able to
get close to groups carrying the scheme forward <span class="displayfix"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">where he witnessed
the cooperative process of clearing, and chatted with the settlers and their
wives, learning much of interest from the practical side of the joint
enterprise.</span></span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> Strongly impressed by what </span>he<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">
saw</span> he<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> unhesitatingly predicted </span>success <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">for the venture </span>allowing
for <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">minor mistakes </span>usual during<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> the early stages. He and Elsie then
embarked on a long train journey on the Trans-Australian Railway east to Melbourne
via Adelaide to promote his scheme before the return journey home.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Impressed by the little that he had seen, Newcombe returned
to the UK in June full of enthusiasm for the endeavour: "I consider the
whole world can offer no finer opening for a working man than Australia provided
he goes out under a sound scheme, and now we have got the scheme I think no man
who is willing to work need hesitate a moment, for the prospects are exceedingly
good." Early the following year he formed the <b>Devon and Cornwall
Migration Committee </b>to deal with the promotion, administration, transportation,
reception, and assimilation to the new country. Its members were duly
instructed to tour the region with sophisticated publicity material to present
to prospective pioneers. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Problems would later arise from what was seen as misleading
imagery and statements depicted on lantern slides, films and posters and in
pamphlets donated by the Tourist and Publicity Bureau of the Western Australia
Government, a tone that was replicated in the committee's own locally produced
materials that portrayed a seductive representation of what awaited potential
applicants. The message was simple and unambiguous: "Those desiring
to improve their positions and those of their children in various walks of life
have here an excellent opportunity of working for their own benefit and being
their own masters, provided that they are able and willing to work
hard." <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Widespread publicity and well-attended meetings proved
successful and initial uptake was encouraging; even Elsie was on hand, promoting
the scheme from the women’s point-of-view. A programme of fund-raising was initiated
to provide some families with money for incidental expenses such as the
obligatory £3 per head landing fee, travel expenses to Plymouth, and in a few
cases, even clothing and children’s shoes. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Within less than a year the first group of specially
selected emigrants assembled for embarkation on the S.S. Sophocles at
Plymouth’s Great Western Millbay Docks.<b> </b>Twenty families, comprising
twenty men, twenty women and sixty-one children were gathered together in
preparation to sail into the unknown. Some said it was like the Pilgrim Fathers
304 years before them, only now their journey would take them south towards
what had been described as “God’s own country”. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Speeches were made, bands played and Lady Astor, the local
M.P., distributed gifts - a scarf for each woman, a tie for each man, toys for
the children and two silver cups to be competed for in games during the voyage.
The Mayor, Solomon Stephens, not to be outdone, gave a framed photo of Plymouth
to each family and a pen to each adult "with which to write home". <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjk1fMkStvvGRWgs02dBNYzmhYwBUst68a4GMQqf5Mx8-bkVBM7Z6JhmSq3hbONIxL3VinKrCY9dDOhHqC4nysNMRm9ZhQ2hcy3aY3Wnzi9au6OJoCVInwO8cjqIuU38gdiYx9ywjA0cLwn14vgz1-uB5MuUGUQP6Y711ur9xwTwGtDLJdX7Y0MiH_pQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="702" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjk1fMkStvvGRWgs02dBNYzmhYwBUst68a4GMQqf5Mx8-bkVBM7Z6JhmSq3hbONIxL3VinKrCY9dDOhHqC4nysNMRm9ZhQ2hcy3aY3Wnzi9au6OJoCVInwO8cjqIuU38gdiYx9ywjA0cLwn14vgz1-uB5MuUGUQP6Y711ur9xwTwGtDLJdX7Y0MiH_pQ" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">One speech, out of the many that were given that day, went a
long way to help alleviate some of the anxiety felt by the pioneers. Mr. Hal
Colebatch, Agent-General for Western Australia, was present to oversee the
departure from Plymouth. His words accurately summed up the mood of the
day: </div><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">“I am not so old that I forget the day I left England 45
years ago, and I want you first and foremost to know that you are not in any
way exiles from home,” he went on. “You are merely moving from one room to
another, as it were, in the great house of the British Empire.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">As paper streamers broke the final physical ties to family
and friends, the Sophocles set sail towards what all hoped would be a bright
new future. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>“A land of golden opportunities, but not of feather beds”</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">On 7 March 1924 Albany welcomed the newcomers after their four-week
voyage and provided temporary shelter and immediate needs for two or three days
before the families were assigned to their groups. The Women’s Reception
Committees took the lead in instructing the women in what to expect from farm
life and how to cope in situations far removed from anything they would have
experienced in the UK. Even Sir James Mitchell was on hand to welcome the
families. Their arrival was recorded by the Western Australian newspaper: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">"Substantial ghosts of the Pilgrim Fathers walked the
streets of Albany today. True, they wore no high-crowned wide-brimmed hats, no
knee breeches, and no dour air. But they sailed from Plymouth Hoe a month ago,
their Mayflower - the Sophocles, and their America - Western Australia. This
morning the first 20 of what may be a procession of 1,000 Pilgrim Fathers -
another 20 are already on the water and scores are ready to follow if the
vanguard reports are favourable - descended the gangway of the Sophocles.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The newspaper continued: "Some time ago, it will be remembered,
Lieutenant-Colonel Newcombe visited Western Australia on behalf of the Devon
and Cornwall Association, and inspected group settlement areas. The new
arrivals say they have come because of the story he told, and they regard him
with the highest respect.” The men were described as fine, physical types, many
already acquainted with rural life. Among them were engineers, carpenters,
blacksmiths, and other tradesmen considered useful in settlement life. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Sir James and the people of Albany extended them a hand of
welcome at a meeting in the town hall before the families were due to depart by
train to Denmark. “This is a great country of ours," Sir James told them
in a rousing speech. “There are only 350,000 people here, so you are almost pioneers.
You men and women from Devon and Cornwall have reached port today. You will
arrive on your land tomorrow and, two days later will be at work on your
holdings. No man can do anything for you unless you are willing to work. There
is nothing in Australia we will not do for those who will work. There is
nothing we can do for the man who will not work.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Sir James then described the land that awaited the group: “Of
course, it is a wilderness today, but you are good enough to conquer a
wilderness. The average Englishman very readily takes to the bush in this
country and very soon learns to love it.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">"More of you are coming naturally," continued Sir
James, “and I hope that before long we will be able to adopt a British county
name for all this country you enter.” Encouraged by his words the group cheered
loudly. "Good luck to you all," said the Premier. "May you
prosper and multiply: may you enjoy your lives in Western Australia, and may
the work you do be amply rewarded."<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAJSyLyhhxfuyNvcl4-VkSEReN0TTlfST-IbLBgMs19H5jgd-ZCtjpIiuuktmXX7YN5Ni3ECsPeIY5wGpB8Rtd2LgBBNtXzTf1-pI4qWs0zsiszWEpKhgurZHFS4auLkciCLVv6KTbbshAKK5ivxAY6-ZKwiVkqRp77zDsFxrC7fGe6YhBmjDo4F8gwA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1789" data-original-width="2592" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAJSyLyhhxfuyNvcl4-VkSEReN0TTlfST-IbLBgMs19H5jgd-ZCtjpIiuuktmXX7YN5Ni3ECsPeIY5wGpB8Rtd2LgBBNtXzTf1-pI4qWs0zsiszWEpKhgurZHFS4auLkciCLVv6KTbbshAKK5ivxAY6-ZKwiVkqRp77zDsFxrC7fGe6YhBmjDo4F8gwA" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">After being transported by train from Albany to Denmark the
families were taken eleven miles west along the unmade Nornalup road by Reo trucks
or horse-drawn carriages out into the forests where they had been assigned land
on blocks that were described as containing “good swamp land, near to the sea,
and embrace a commonage where fine pasture permits the immediate keeping of
dairy cattle." Then, for the first time, the families understood the
reality of their situation when they first caught sight of inadequate shelters
of galvanised iron sheeting without windows or a floor. Eileen Croxford (née
Cross), then a young girl, later recalled the moment they arrived at the camp
of twenty shacks set up to receive the first of Newcombe’s groups known as
Group 113: “Mum sat on her luggage, looked around and then said to Dad, ‘Do we
have to live here? They wouldn’t put a cow in a byre like this at home’” For
some, perhaps the dream died a little at that moment. The rest, buoyed up by
the stirring words of the Premier, packed away their suits and ties, rolled up
their shirt sleeves and got on with the job.</div><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Initially, work consisted of back-breaking land clearance and
by the mid-Thirties about 100,000 acres of dense forest had been cleared mostly
by handsaw and fire. For those determined to make it work, and even before the
stubborn-rooted Karri and Jarrah trees were felled, the hardy pioneer could
already see in his mind’s eye a vision of lush pastures, fat grazing cattle
and, above all, a prosperous future. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But what started out as a 'sound scheme' soon ran into
difficulties. A Royal Commission in 1926 found that land unsuitable for dairy farming had been included in the allocations and that a herd of fewer than 23 to 30 cows would not provide a farmer with a livelihood, but most settlers had fewer than ten. Unaware of the difficulties that awaited them, the 'Groupies', as they were known, made significant inroads into clearing the land, and then looked on helpless as their cattle inexplicably deteriorated
into emaciated and infertile wrecks. As one settler, Fred Osborne, remembered:
"After the enormous hardship of clearing the land, the care taken in
establishing pastures and the excitement of stocking the new land, the animals
just starved and died. In lush green pastures they simply lay down and died -
bags of bones." It was not until the mid-Thirties that soil tests
revealed a deficiency in the trace element cobalt. The cure was simple – with
the addition of cobalt enriched Cow Lick into their feed healthy cattle once
again grazed the Karri hills. But a second blow to the farmers’
endeavours was about to fall.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When the Great Depression sweeping around the world reached
Australia the country’s dependence on agricultural and industrial exports meant
it became one of the hardest-hit countries in the Western world. Having
conquered the land and solved the Denmark Cattle Wasting Disease the settlers
were finally crushed by mounting debts as the price of butter fat plummeted and
interest rates on their loans rose. After years of struggling most settlers
were forced to walk off their land and abandon their efforts to a later
generation. Fred Osborne’s family is one of the very few who managed to stay on,
and the farm is still in their ownership today.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Group 113 member Eileen Croxford also stayed in the area.
This is how she summed her time as a Groupie and what happened to her after:
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">"We just lived in these shacks - no floor, no doors, no
windows. I was out to work by the time I was 12. I was 20 when I got married
and then I proceeded to have a family. Then the war came, my husband went away
to Japan and didn't come back again". <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>Newcombe's families </b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Newcombe and his fellow committee members have been accused
of being seduced by the imagined landscapes projected by Western Australia’s publicity
material while officials in Australia responded forcefully to the claim that
blocks had been “window dressed” by insisting that all inspection trips were
shown “as much as their time permits, and no attempt is made to conceal the
sore spots”. Despite the criticisms, key values underpinning the enterprise
were clear and unambiguous - hard work was at the heart of a scheme designed to
appeal to anyone having difficulty in making a decent living at home, and were
not afraid of getting stuck in. Newcombe never shied away from pressing this
point home and never pretended that this was a land of feather beds. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Fifteen groups were eventually established in the Denmark
area. They were identified by numbers. Newcombe’s groups were 113 (Parryville),
114 (Tealedale), 116 (Tingledale) and 139 (Hazeldale) – 136 families in all.
They mostly arrived during 1924 and then a trickle until 1926 on the following
ships of the Aberdeen Line: the Sophocles, Themistocles, Demosthenes, and the Diogenes. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRMiiV_8xQerCmZE7Wf7K_P8wCIOHDxGTPIn76OgtAY0_fzXrHa9Wxc4STYNZhgcKIZvL7MjeqrHdGkFyVzf4zyuAV7LEA-4skBUxF5RL2sj9Kpbsf5J1NRqde96wMD597Sqb2nEdgX2y7y3J6YLzMjuiOrXYVpAzCEQV74uma8YaUIcKzcIBynZNjww" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1694" data-original-width="2592" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRMiiV_8xQerCmZE7Wf7K_P8wCIOHDxGTPIn76OgtAY0_fzXrHa9Wxc4STYNZhgcKIZvL7MjeqrHdGkFyVzf4zyuAV7LEA-4skBUxF5RL2sj9Kpbsf5J1NRqde96wMD597Sqb2nEdgX2y7y3J6YLzMjuiOrXYVpAzCEQV74uma8YaUIcKzcIBynZNjww" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Group 116 Tingledale</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The remarkable story of the Group Settlement Scheme forms a
small part of the history of the development of Western Australia, but it is a
story of how migration can help forge the identity of a new country. Today, the
legacy of those pioneers reveals itself in unexpected ways. Although the project
was declared a ‘glorious failure’ – for reasons far removed from the prodigious
efforts of those involved – descendants of many of those early settlers<span style="color: red;"> </span>are still in evidence across the region, and are
thriving and prosperous. </div><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><b>The legacy</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The land that was assigned to the Groupies in Western
Australia is breathtakingly beautiful, with a shoreline that contains some of
the best beaches in Australia and where the might of the Southern Ocean crashes
against dramatic cliffs and rock formations that seems to pre-date history
itself. West of Denmark, 90-metre-high Karri and tingle trees – among the
tallest in the world - are a tourist attraction in a national park that today
embraces the term ‘Valley of the Giants’ as a marketing tool. In between this
wonderland there exists successful farms that produce award-winning wines,
succulent olives, and peppery virgin oil, complimented by honey and cheese – a
not insignificant shift in economy from the 1920s and a world away from the
privations experienced by the original settlers as they laid the foundation of
today’s success. Self-catering accommodation located within many of the old
block boundaries, now promoted as idyllic weekend retreats, completes the
evolution from hardship and struggle to pleasure and relaxation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Backed by a strong economy and a robust tourist industry,
today these are the things worth striving for on land that was once toiled with
such stubborn<span style="color: red;"> </span>determination and courage by a
diverse group of individuals far from familiar comforts. Today, these farms
form the backbone of modern Western Australia’s tourist industry, occupying the
very same land that once broke the health, the spirits and the hearts of the
men, women and their children who came to create new colonies on the far side
of the world through sheer determination, endeavour and hope. This is their
legacy.<o:p></o:p></p>KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-57997841808633587542020-03-17T13:46:00.000+01:002020-03-17T13:46:06.057+01:00The Boy in the Mask - a suitable Lock Down read!<div style="text-align: justify;">
Being locked down in a small Spanish town due to the Coronavirus pandemic with restricted movement outside of the home gives me the opportunity to read a book that I have only briefly delved into when looking for a specific item relevant to my own research. Now it's time to start at the beginning of the aptly named <i>The Boy in the Mask</i>. This is Dick Benson-Gyles' look into the 'hidden world of Lawrence of Arabia', from his Anglo-Irish heritage, his enduring fame as a leader of a Bedouin army, through to his quest for obscurity as a humble aircraftman; a book that author and television producer, the late Malcolm Brown, described as both moving and enlightened. In his Foreword, Brown wrote: "Dick Benson-Gyles has achieved something rather remarkable." </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
So a good choice as today it is St. Patrick's Day. Time to explore Lawrence's Irish connections. Sláinte! </div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xFIdoFl0dz8/XnC95qLNl8I/AAAAAAAABik/3le0yyR7GXAehzSnqIOkpqPw1S6KafKfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Dick%2BBenson-Gyles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="843" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xFIdoFl0dz8/XnC95qLNl8I/AAAAAAAABik/3le0yyR7GXAehzSnqIOkpqPw1S6KafKfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Dick%2BBenson-Gyles.jpg" width="262" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fresh light on a reluctant hero</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-70147776383513379172020-01-08T12:32:00.001+01:002020-01-24T18:24:32.804+01:00'Beyond Arabia' - in the Journal of the T.E. Lawrence Society<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Journal of the T.E. Lawrence Society has recently published my article entitled <b>'S.F. Newcombe and T.E. Lawrence: Beyond Arabia'</b>, looking at the distinguished and eventful career of Stewart Newcombe. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Journal Vol. 29, No. 1</td></tr>
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Journal Editor, Ian Heritage, writes in the Notes on the Articles: 'Newcombe is already well known to us through his association with Lawrence. It was Newcombe who led the clandestine mission, on the eve of the First World War, to survey and map the 'Wilderness of Zin', a hitherto uncharted area of southern Palestine and then part of the Ottoman Empire.<br />
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Lawrence and Leonard Woolley provided cover for the mission by undertaking an archaeological survey of the region. Lawrence later worked alongside Newcombe during the subsequent conflict, firstly in Cairo in military intelligence and then blowing up sections of the Hejaz Railway. However, as with many other personalities associated with Lawrence, the rest of Newcombe's career has been eclipsed by this famous association.'</div>
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The Journal was set up in 1991 as a serious research publication and forms one of the prime resources for anyone seriously interested in Lawrence.</div>
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All contributions are reviewed by an editorial committee. Editorial policy is to publish articles relating to all aspects of Lawrence’s life, including some based on papers presented at the Society’s meetings, as well as material from obscure published or unpublished sources.</div>
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A limited number of back-issues are available for purchase by non-members from the <b><a href="https://telsociety.org.uk/journal-newsletter/">Society's website</a></b></div>
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<b>ABOUT THE SOCIETY</b></div>
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The T. E. Lawrence Society (Registered Charity No. 297940) was born at the Red Lion Hotel, in Wareham, Dorset, on 29 June 1985, in the presence of around 30 founder members. Its foundation coincided with the 50th anniversary of the death of T.E. Lawrence. </div>
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The Society is a non-profit organisation registered under British law as an educational charity. By the terms of its Constitution, the Society exists: </div>
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<i>‘to advance the education of the public in the life and works of T. E. Lawrence and to promote research (and to publish the useful results thereof) into his life and works’.</i></div>
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The most important gathering organised by the Society in the UK is the Symposium, held every two years. The Society also maintains a research collection which is kept at Wareham
Library in Dorset. It can be consulted by arrangement with the library
by any member of the public.</div>
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For enquiries or to join the Society, you can contact them <b><a href="https://telsociety.org.uk/about-the-society/contact-us/" target="_blank">here</a></b></div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-46361566715926926002019-12-08T01:17:00.000+01:002020-01-13T08:41:24.506+01:00Endangered archaeology<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">After all the years I've spent researching the life of Stewart Newcombe he remains a fascinating and absorbing character, still able to surprise and still surprisingly relevant. Recently, one of his many diverse interests overlapped with a contemporary research project run by three leading British universities which has at its core the protection of endangered archaeological sites across a study area of 7000 kilometers and in more than twenty countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The <b>EAMENA Project</b>, a five-year Arcadia Foundation funded project (2015-2020), was set up to record
and make available information about archaeological sites and
landscapes which are unde<span class="text_exposed_show">r threat across
the Middle East and North Africa. The project is based in the
Universities of Oxford, Leicester and Durham. The archaeological
heritage of the region, which is of international
significance for all periods, is under increasing threat from massive
and sustained population explosion, agricultural development, urban
expansion, warfare, and looting.<br /> <br /> The project uses aerial
photography and satellite imagery to map unrecorded and endangered
archaeological sites, to a uniform standard, and evaluates and
monitors their condition. The information provided will assist with the
effective protection of these sites by the relevant authorities. The use
of satellite and aerial imagery is especially important for those
countries where access on the ground is currently either impossible or
severely restricted (e.g. Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen). </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Michael Fradley, an archaeologist at Oxford University who manages the project, contacted me seeking information on Newcombe who was an important early advocate for
the use of aerial photography for photogrammetric mapping. After the end of the war Newcombe remained very vocal about the
potential of the technique. In 1920 he pushed for an experimental air survey by the Royal Air Force of the Nile flood
region from the old Aswan Dam to the Cairo Barrage for water management purposes but for other projects he came up against significant opposition, not least </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span id="OLK_SRC_BODY_SECTION">an unwillingness among the Corps of Royal Engineers to move beyond</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> their traditional ground survey methods. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cyg3McyMGtI/Xew3x3D75LI/AAAAAAAABeY/coPCe8X8qXkVc7C5jzwFmTeGvTNlbeLhQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Newcombe%2Bat%2BWoodstock%2BRoad%2BOxford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="419" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Cyg3McyMGtI/Xew3x3D75LI/AAAAAAAABeY/coPCe8X8qXkVc7C5jzwFmTeGvTNlbeLhQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Newcombe%2Bat%2BWoodstock%2BRoad%2BOxford.JPG" width="218" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Newcombe at his Oxford house. Courtesy of Joseph Berton</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Fradley, during a visit to the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad, wrote to ask: "Just out of interest, do you know which house Newcombe lived in on
the Woodstock Road in Oxford. I find myself trying to guess every time I
get the bus in to work." </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dmzzd682nko/Xewz1cu39VI/AAAAAAAABeM/-zK3SI8V_aw_HR_BZaWi1VMfmWa2OlVHACEwYBhgL/s1600/Newcombe%2BCourt.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="979" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dmzzd682nko/Xewz1cu39VI/AAAAAAAABeM/-zK3SI8V_aw_HR_BZaWi1VMfmWa2OlVHACEwYBhgL/s320/Newcombe%2BCourt.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Today: The site of Newcombe's former home</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It is easy to see why Fradley missed it. The house at number 300 has been long gone, demolished to make way for a rather unremarkable estate of flats, which by a strange twist of irony is just a few streets away from the EAMENA Project's office. Woodstock Road is a major road running through the leafy suburb of North Oxford but the clue is obvious as Newcombe was credited when they built the current development and a prominent sign was placed at the entrance. It is doubtful if the residents of Newcombe Court are aware of the connection. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hJd92nH1xnM/Xew0D1vs_1I/AAAAAAAABeQ/y1IiHe2Ip4ADCb32zbv69rGV6Mtyxka6ACEwYBhgL/s1600/Newcombe%2BCourt%2Bsignage.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="612" data-original-width="794" height="244" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hJd92nH1xnM/Xew0D1vs_1I/AAAAAAAABeQ/y1IiHe2Ip4ADCb32zbv69rGV6Mtyxka6ACEwYBhgL/s320/Newcombe%2BCourt%2Bsignage.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Newcombe's air survey of the Nile in September 1920 produced 1200 glass plates of overlapping photographs but only a section of one plate was used in his 1921 paper 'Contouring by the Stereoscope on air photos' (RE Journal
Vol. XXXIV July-Dec 1921). It is not known if this photographic archive exists. "If the full series of 1200 photographs survives and could be located," Fradley reflects, "it could be of major value to archaeologists to identify and document sites destroyed or eroded by the modern occupation of the Nile valley, which has increased significantly in intensity over the past 100 years." </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GJpK5imeH5U/Xewx20zgn3I/AAAAAAAABd8/qbJvt90vAOIv9I0le7hDKaN1f_Vvz5-nACEwYBhgL/s1600/Cairo%2Bsurvey.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="456" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GJpK5imeH5U/Xewx20zgn3I/AAAAAAAABd8/qbJvt90vAOIv9I0le7hDKaN1f_Vvz5-nACEwYBhgL/s320/Cairo%2Bsurvey.PNG" width="238" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Contoured hills east of Cairo</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Newcombe's paper won him the Royal Engineers’ prestigious Montgomerie Prize in recognition of his
contribution to exploration and surveying and he continues to achieve recognition in academic journals over one hundred years later. There is a natural
evolution from </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">when a plate
camera was first strapped </span></span>to the wings of a wood and canvas aeroplane to the use of equipment like
drones or satellites. Newcombe’s reputation was built on surveying by horse, camel or by foot across inhospitable lands often in the most appalling of conditions. At
heart he was an adventurer and loved nothing better than to ride
off to see what was over the next hill. But without doubt the technique of mapping the world
by aeroplane and camera had begun to expose much more of its unknown and
unknowable parts, more than could ever be achieved by land surveying. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For many years Newcombe enjoyed
the connectivity to the environment, and more importantly to its inhabitants, yet
at the same time he recognised the need to explore ways to break free from the
rigours and difficulties of those journeys and to see the world from new and
exciting perspectives through the utilisation of emerging technologies that he helped develop and promote. As such he was
clearly a man of his time who lived to enjoy the best of both worlds. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show">For more information about the work of EAMENA, go to <a href="http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/">eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk</a></span></span></span>KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-37303844652242483932019-05-13T15:31:00.000+02:002019-05-13T15:31:21.504+02:00A ten shot discovery<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", "sans-serif";">Maynard
Owen Williams paid a second and equally memorable visit to the ancient Hittite
site at Carchemish (see my previous article dated 02 May 2019) on the day when the
excavators struck a rich find. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", "sans-serif";">As
the excavations progressed and 3000-year-old Hittite remains began to reveal themselves
the great game of rewarding the fellows by allowing them to announce new
discoveries by firing off their pistol was abandoned and a more ritualised
format was devised. The site headman, Hamoudi, his title in this role being the
<i>chawish</i>, was given the prerogative to
fire his revolver as a signal to the archaeologists and the far-flung teams to
down picks and join in with the celebrations, but first he had to judge the
quality of the find - one shot for a fair-sized fragment of basalt rising to
seven or eight for a complete slab with figures and inscriptions, and so on. In
time, the men were vying with each other for the most cartridges expended for
their discoveries and would complain to Hamoudi: “Oh, but six shots, ya
chawish, six shots: was it not five for the chariot yonder? And here there are
three sons of Adam; by God, they deserve two rounds apiece.” This practice
acted as baksheesh to the finder, valued just as much as any monetary reward
that was added to their wages, and encouraged the men to aspire to the honour
of being able to say, “That is the stone of Yasin Hussein for which he had
eight shots.” In this way, the find not only benefited the finder, but also his
immediate team which typically comprised four men – a pick-man, a shoveller and
two basket-men. They were each paid a proportionate bonus. To many believers it
also paid homage to the stone and to the good fortune that put it in their
path.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", "sans-serif";">One
day in October 1913 the excavators struck a rich find. Working beyond the
King’s Gate the men found a return buttress that was only 6 inches away from
the limit of their excavations the previous season. This new direction led them
to discover enormous decorative slabs of basalt and white limestone depicting
drums and trumpets heralding a seated goddess followed by 15 servants carrying
percussion instruments and mirrors. Then more slabs showing men carrying
gazelles on their shoulders until a break which revealed a door flanked by huge
panels of Hittite inscriptions. Lawrence called it a great find, “the greatest
we have ever made.” </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", "sans-serif";">If
patience was the archaeologist’s most important virtue then theirs had paid
off. Campbell Thompson recalled how week after week of digging would reveal
nothing; “a weary and indefinite time of waiting” he called it. And then... “on
a sudden the most glorious treasures will be revealed, tasking your time from
dawn to sunset.” Having been drawn into the seductive world of the
archaeologist, Maynard Williams had returned in time to bear witness to this
momentous occasion. “I was at Carchemish on the day the greatest Hittite find
ever unearthed was revealed to the eye of man for the first time in three
thousand years. I have never had a more exciting time in my life.” </span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", "sans-serif";">It
was hoped that their patience and efforts might reveal something of real significance
– perhaps a find as rewarding as a Hittite version of the Rosetta Stone from
which they could decipher the lost language of the Hittites. Williams describes
the moment the find was revealed to the team: </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", "sans-serif";">"When
the enthusiastic labourers had carefully uncovered the precious dolerite slab,
and the overseer, bending over it like some near-sighted Silas Marner caressing
his gold, had discovered that it bore the longest Hittite inscription ever
found, ten shots from a big Colt revolver, fired as a baksheesh to the stone,
echoed and re-echoed across the Euphrates, and workmen and directors knew that
a big find had been made. Pandemonium was let loose. Labourers came running
from all directions to share the joy of discovery. I also shared in that joy. I
shouted congratulations to Khalil, the giant pickman. “Praise be to God!” I
cried. He grinned so I could see all his teeth, and answered, “God’s blessing
return to you!”<span> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", "sans-serif";">The
find was important but it was not the key to the language they were hoping for.
The answer to this particular mystery would come just two years later in 1915 when
a Czech Orientalist and cryptographer named Bedřich (Frederich) Hrozný was
conscripted into the Austrian Army as a clerk and in the midst of war found he
had plenty of time to study a set of tablets he had the foresight to copy in
Istanbul before war commenced. Recognising the single Babylonian sign for bread
set him on the path of unlocking the ancient riddle. With knowledge,
perseverance and a few lucky assumptions he was able to decipher just one
sentence, but it was enough. It read: “Now you will eat bread and drink water.”
</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;">
</span><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", "sans-serif";">It
was not until 1919 that Woolley was able to return to their old site on the
banks of the Euphrates which was now in an area of post-Ottoman Syria controlled
by French forces. Despite enquiries to Frederic Kenyon, the Director of the British Museum, Lawrence found
it impossible to return to his old life. In fact, his immense fame would
prohibit him from ever being able to continue with his archaeological career in
a post-Versailles world riddled with a suspicion of king-makers. “Woe’s me,” he
once wrote, “I suppose I’ll never dig anything again.”</span></span></div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-40233741996364575202019-05-02T11:27:00.000+02:002019-05-09T19:46:34.807+02:00Carchemish - A Kurdish Glee Club with college trimmings<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Thomas Edward Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) attended the City of Oxford High School for Boys during the
years 1896-1907 before studying history at Jesus College, Oxford, where in 1910
he gained a First Class Honours degree largely based on an outstanding thesis
on Crusader castles which had involved a lengthy walking tour in Palestine and
Syria. He then joined the British Museum’s excavations of the ancient Hittite
capital at Carchemish on the River Euphrates under the direction of D.G.
Hogarth who would become his mentor and of whom he once said, ‘I owe every good job ... I've
ever had in my life.’</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">The digging season of 1911 was the first to be carried out
at the site for thirty-years. Having set up the digs in March, Hogarth handed
over to Reginald Campbell Thompson, previously an assistant in the Egyptian and
Assyrian Department of the British Museum, who ran the site with Lawrence as
his assistant until July of 1911. The field campaigns of years two, three and
four were under the directorship of C. Leonard Woolley, an experienced
archaeologist who became best known after the war for his work at the ancient
Sumerian city of Ur in present day Iraq. Looking back from beyond the war
years, Lawrence remembered the time spent digging at Carchemish as a golden
age, with a young Syrian Arab assistant named Dahoum as his almost constant
companion. “We were there for four years,” he recalled, “and it was the best
life I ever lived.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ja4GoTA9_Jg/XMq148WQcKI/AAAAAAAABZs/JkYWCtsa5EsBFJizwOQQGaQwzdtTW7e6gCLcBGAs/s1600/carchemish-team.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="317" data-original-width="972" height="104" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ja4GoTA9_Jg/XMq148WQcKI/AAAAAAAABZs/JkYWCtsa5EsBFJizwOQQGaQwzdtTW7e6gCLcBGAs/s320/carchemish-team.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lawrence and Woolley with Dahoum seated to the far right next to Hamoudi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Throughout the four years that the site was excavated
before war interrupted diggings Carchemish attracted attention from scholars
and serious travellers from Europe and America. Among them were engineers,
archaeologists, soldiers and diplomats, all requiring hospitality and usually
a tour of the site, prompting Lawrence to describe them as worse than fleas. One such flea was a young missionary teacher from the Syrian Protestant College (later the American
University of Beirut), Maynard Owen Williams, who arrived in 1913 and wrote an
account of the British Museum’s excavations where Lawrence makes one of his
earliest appearances in print in the popular and widely-read newspaper, the <i>New York
Sun</i> (21 September 1913). Williams, a 25-year-old graduate of Kalamazoo College,
Michigan, was a keen observer and recorder in both the written word and as an
early pioneer of travel photography. For the next fifty years he would make a
significant contribution to the <i>National Geographic</i> <i>Magazine </i>as its first foreign correspondent. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">His
coverage provides a picturesque and unique insight into the lifestyle of the
archaeologists at Carchemish. “‘Both Woolley and Lawrence are disappointing
archaeologists,” he wrote. “I expected to find grey-haired old men with
spectacles and a scholarly stoop.” Williams, writing in the year prior to the
Zin survey, described Lawrence as: “...apparently in his early twenties, a
clean-cut blond with peaches and cream complexion which the dry heat of the
Euphrates Valley seemed powerless to spoil. He wore a wide-brimmed Panama, a
soft white shirt open at the throat, and Oxford blazer bearing the Magdalene
College emblem on the pocket, short white flannel ‘knickers’, partly obscured
by Scotch decoration hanging from the belt, which did not, however, obscure his
bare knees, below which he wore heavy grey hose and red Arab slippers.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Williams
continued with his theme of mock denigration: “Woolley is hopeless as an
archaeologist. He is young and friendly and as companionable as a college
chum. Surely not the stuff of which archaeologists are made.” The author,
though, was only teasing his readers and had not been fooled by the perceived
‘romance’ of the trade. “But I fancy,” he wrote, having already guessed the
truth, “that these two young men are competent to hold down the Carchemish
'digs' for a while at least; for better than their years of excavating and
their skill in using French, German, ancient and modern Greek, Turkish and
Arabic, is their remarkable knowledge of men. I cannot give a correct estimate
of their worth as archaeologists, but I do say that they know more about
handling Orientals than any man I have met during my two years in Syria.” It
was a pertinent observation and the key to why Lawrence would later be so
successful in waging unconventional warfare in the deserts of southern Arabia
with an irregular native force. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lT9S0hUf_34/XMq3KwNAFeI/AAAAAAAABaA/3yfWWtsurVcaoCB7FEIcAZ1rTmQiwsKHwCLcBGAs/s1600/Carchemish%2Btwo%2Bbulls%2Binsitu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="840" data-original-width="1200" height="140" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lT9S0hUf_34/XMq3KwNAFeI/AAAAAAAABaA/3yfWWtsurVcaoCB7FEIcAZ1rTmQiwsKHwCLcBGAs/s200/Carchemish%2Btwo%2Bbulls%2Binsitu.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carchemish (Karkemis) with part of the workforce</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Williams then went on to describe a memorable
evening spent with the archaeologists as their guest at what he called ‘A
Kurdish Glee Club with college trimmings’. He had walked for miles
through a pitch black night as a thunderstorm raged, one of those severe
weather fronts that from time to time swept across the valley of the Euphrates
lighting up the landscape with electrically charged flashes and filling the
warm night air with booming cracks of thunder. One such illumination showed
Williams that he was standing on the very precipice of a test shaft some 20
feet deep that the archaeologists had sunk a short distance from the house. He
was hugely relieved when Hamoudi, the site foreman, answered his hammered arrival and ushered him
into the excavators’ cosy residence. He was heartily welcomed by the occupants
of the house who in a show of international solidarity graciously accepted this
young American in his college football sweater, emblazoned with a big orange K.
Sartorially, he had stiff competition that night as Lawrence was sporting a
white Magdalen blazer trimmed with red and Woolley one of bright green, trimmed
with white. “It was,” Williams wrote, “if one overlooked the Kurdish musicians
huddled at the far end of the room, a most ‘collegey’ looking group. The
air was thick with smoke from Hogarth's pipe and Woolley’s cigar, and the wind
outside could whistle chilling tunes without detracting from the cosiness of
the low room and its dark, rich hangings.” </span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_E4Z16zNQh8/XMq2dd-16qI/AAAAAAAABZ0/_8nL5VMUneEUES5HCTnHb427Y1x7KvgqgCLcBGAs/s1600/carchemish%2Binterior%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="354" height="146" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_E4Z16zNQh8/XMq2dd-16qI/AAAAAAAABZ0/_8nL5VMUneEUES5HCTnHb427Y1x7KvgqgCLcBGAs/s200/carchemish%2Binterior%2B1.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Carchemish Expedition house interior</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Williams had seen much on his
travels to inspire him to write or photograph but the scene he was about to
witness was unlike no other. Even before the music started the hushed room was
charged with an electric atmosphere that complemented the atrocious conditions
outside the shuttered windows where a wind was howling around the house like a
fury. A grizzled Kurd sat quietly awaiting his turn to sing with his shepherd's
pipe across his lap. In his deep-set eyes there was a far-away look. The
Kurd seated beside him was a true man of the desert who Williams describes as
“swarthy of skin and clear of eyes, his thin lips compressed to a narrow line,
his sun scarf draped gracefully around his head and neck.” The musical
instruments that the men carried were of particular interest to Williams. He
had even seen one of them illustrated on a three-thousand year-old Hittite
carving. When the first man began to pluck at his instrument it was with the
skill of a hundred generations animating his fingers. “Certainly it was no
modern music that came from the mandolin-like affair with the long neck and the
small body,” recalled Williams. “It was a spirit of the ancient days returned
to play for the men who had rediscovered the site of the brilliant Hittite
capital.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">What happened
next is best described by Williams himself: </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">“Hogarth rapped the ashes from his pipe and threw his leg over the arm of
the easy chair. Lawrence, the blond Oxonian, curled down into the
throne-like seat, in which his white suit stood out from the soft-toned
background of a Persian rug. Woolley motioned the musicians to
begin. The accompaniment seemed to be the echo of the winds that swept
across the Euphrates and moaned as they passed on across the city of ruins. But
it was something different when the old singer blew a few notes on his
pipe. The windy wastes were now inhabited. The spirit of man animated the
scene with the sad, shrill cry of a creature in pain... The figures of the room
were blotted out. This was no concert music, designed for bright lights and
well-dressed audiences. A soul was stirring in that flute, an out-of-door
spirit communing with its God across vast distances, but with a sense of
sympathetic nearness. He began to sing. I started at the first note. It
was a protest against the wrongs of the Angel of Death, a plea for mercy at the
hands of a determined despot. Each note was wrung from the heart of a
despondent soul, fearing, pleading, crying out for a relief that would never
come... The eyes of the singer were fixed; the cords of his throat were visible
under his swarthy skin. The veins of his forehead stood out under his dark
kaffiyeh, and with each line he seemed to swallow, to choke back a sob that was
springing to his lips. For some time I could not turn my head. I had
forgotten the others. I could not understand the words of the singer, but
the music wrenched my heart. I turned to Woolley and asked what the man
was singing. It was the lament of a Kurdish woman whose husband, Said
Ahmed, the greatest of warriors, had been brought home dead. I understood
the sorrow of the song, its harrowing complaint against an unkind Fate. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Then, in
an instant, the music changed. The notes were the same; the rhythm was
unaltered. The singer was as still as if he were carved out of rock, but
the soul-stirring complaint of the bereaved wife at the death of her loved one
was changing to the cunning, low, tense song of a Jael at the side of
Sisera. Revenge was taking place of despair. Hatred was blotting out
womanly love. The funeral chant was fast becoming a battle-song, in which
the hatred of a race was stirring murder in the hearts of her hearers. This
woman, after kneeling by the side of her husband's dead body, had raised
herself to a proud height, and with outflung arms like Davidson's “France” was
praying that his tribe would avenge her husband's death. A Fury, with
ghastly face and disordered hair, was hurling Death back upon itself, was
already sucking sweetness from the thought of pillage and bloodshed. A
note of victory crept into the awful chant. Then Deborah's song of
conquest and thankfulness burst forth - cruel, menacing, exultant. In a moment
it was over. Only the shrill sound of the pipes remained. The woman,
having seen her tribe depart on its mission of revenge, was once more at the
side of her loved one, whose cold lips would not respond to her long,
passionate kiss." </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">Other than Lawrence's own letters home to his family, I think there is no better contemporary description of a day in the lives of the Carchemish team in their expedition house. It was certainly an evening that Williams would not forget. Some
twenty years later and after Lawrence had achieved worldwide fame he made a point of writing to remind Lawrence of the
occasion and the fond memories it still held for him. It was 1932 and Williams had long been a key <i>National Geographic</i> contributor. In his letter to Lawrence he asked if he would like to write an article, "one that would lend itself to photographic illustration and related to geography or some other non-political phase of your life and travels". Unfortunately, nothing came of his enquiry and Lawrence continued with his boat development work for the Royal Air Force until his retirement on 25 February 1935 and subsequent death in a motorcycle accident less than three months later. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">"Be sure my kindest regards, linked with happy memories, are yours," Williams wrote. Those last poignant words written to the 'clean-cut blond' of Carchemish recall a simpler time when desert </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">winds swept
across the city of ruins like a Kurdish lament carrying the dreams of two young men beyond Arabia to a world as yet undiscovered. </span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif";">The life and work of Maynard Owen Williams needs further exposure than this brief article can provide. Be sure to check out his work which can be found on the web and in the archives of the <i>National Geographic Society</i> and the Kalamazoo College. As a pioneer of travel photography he was more than just a self-described "camera-coolie and a roughneck". Having travelled by his own estimate 25,000 miles per year for more than a quarter of a century his efforts produced more than 2,250 self-illustrated pages in the Society's prestigious magazine. His secret to staying out of danger in some of the most dangerous of situations was in meticulous advance planning. As he put it: "Helter-skelter adventure and work of solid scientific worth do not go together as a rule." </span></span></span></span></div>
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<![endif]--><span style="color: #660000;"><b>THE INTER-ALLIED GAMES - 22 June to 6 July 1919</b></span></div>
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The recent announcement that Paris had been awarded the 2024 XXXIII Olympiad brought to mind an unusual event that took place in the shadow of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. </div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3v5AU1wWTUE/WcOarw5uCcI/AAAAAAAABTM/zHCFpuH_8OMFUVDmPY74npHoNtOl7ss5wCLcBGAs/s1600/InteralliedGamesPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="341" data-original-width="230" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3v5AU1wWTUE/WcOarw5uCcI/AAAAAAAABTM/zHCFpuH_8OMFUVDmPY74npHoNtOl7ss5wCLcBGAs/s200/InteralliedGamesPoster.jpg" width="134" /></a>While the details of peace were being discussed the victors devised what they considered a useful diversion for the millions of troops on the Eastern and Western fronts waiting for demobilisation and a return to a home and family that many had not seen for several months. For Dominion and Imperial forces, the long periods of separation had been much longer as ‘home’ leave was virtually impossible. Repatriation took time and indeed many troops would not see their homeland until 1922. To keep the troops occupied and to replace fighting as the stimulus for a united effort an Inter-Allied Games – otherwise known as the Military “Olympics” – were set up with the very best intentions. The Games were described by the Official History as “important in themselves because of their magnitude, unparalleled in the annals of sport by reason of the circumstances under which they were held.” It went on to say: “ These Games signalized to a vast number of soldiers of the various Armies of the Allies the end of the Great War and the beginning, in this unique love feast of divers races and nationalities, of a greater and more hopeful peace than the world had yet known.” <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Feisal, Lawrence and Nuri Said</td></tr>
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Many countries would participate for reasons of celebration or in continuation of friendly relations created under wartime conditions. In other cases countries such as Romania and Czechoslovakia, whose very existence was still in political doubt, saw the games as a further opportunity to raise their visibility on a world stage. <br />
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The idea of a ‘unique love feast’ of sport was first conceived by Elwood Brown less than two months after the end of hostilities. Brown was a leading advocate of a so-called ‘Muscular’ form of Christianity which he promoted throughout South-East Asia under the auspices of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). His approach was especially successful in the Philippines where as Director of Athletics he proposed and implemented the Far-Eastern Olympic Games from 1913 onwards. His concept of an Inter-Allied Games was quickly taken up by the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) who convinced France and the International Olympic Committee to agree to the Games being placed under sole US control without interference. The Americans took their role very seriously and constructed a dedicated stadium east of Paris close to the Bois de Vincennes where the 1900 Olympics had taken place. It was named the Stade Pershing after the Commander of the AEF, General John J. Pershing who had been an acquaintance of Brown from the Philippines. The two men became the driving force behind the competition. <br />
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Feisal, fighting for the very existence of some form of Arab nationhood, must have been more than a little bemused to receive a letter of invitation from Pershing himself and may well have sought Lawrence’s advice on a matter he would not have anticipated but which might present wider political implications in the future. This was one more opportunity to reinforce an Arab presence on the world stage and the decision to attend was not taken lightly. His response was both cordial and humble. </div>
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Paris, 20 March, 1919. <br />
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My dear General: <br />
I am deeply sensible of the honour you paid the troops under my command in inviting us to take part in the Inter-Allied Athletic Meeting to be held shortly in Paris. It will give us the greatest pleasure to participate. I have sent General Nuri Pacha Said of my staff to Damascus to choose such team as we can supply, and will send you details of our entry as soon as possible. <br />
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I have the honour to be, sir <br />
Yours very faithfully, <br />
Faisal. <br />
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The only problem now for Feisal was who to pick to represent the budding nation of Arabs? With Nuri tasked with finding suitable representatives of the Hejaz contingent it quickly became apparent that with American and French supremacy in numbers perhaps a more symbolic involvement should be sought. Britain, for the same reasons, had declined full participation and contented itself to an advisory role and in sending a golf team and rowing crews. <br />
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Twenty-nine letters of invitation were sent and eighteen allied nations and territories accepted. The Games were well attended throughout commencing with the inauguration of the Pershing Stadium which attracted more than 90,000 spectators, although urgent business meant that President Wilson and M. Clemenceau were unable to attend. With 76 events across a dozen sports it was an ambitious programme not dissimilar to that of the 1916 Berlin Olympics which had been cancelled due to war. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stade Pershing under construction</td></tr>
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Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, had initially locked horns over Brown’s plans to hold the Games which he perceived as an intrusion into Olympic affairs. Fortunately, they came to a mutual understanding based on a shared vision for stimulating sport and its ideals at a truly world level. Perhaps on no other occasion had there been a more poignant time for games and where the spirit of the Baron’s creed was felt more strongly: "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well." </div>
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Nuri returned to France with fifteen contestants, although only three of them were pitted in open competition. Of the rest, eight took part in a performance of Arabian Sword dancing while four riders were chosen from among the best in the two camel-mounted regiments in the Hejaz Regular Army for a demonstration of camel-racing. These were meant to represent the type of competition most popular in Arabia and were well received. Horse riding is normally a particularly well represented event across most competing nations but many were prevented by the post-war difficulty of finding the necessary mounts and of transporting them to Paris. The Hejaz team was able to put up three riders but could only muster one horse, a little gray Arabian named Masoud. This mount, however, caused the greatest sensation during a long-distance race when its rider, Captain Fowzi, came from the back of the field and passed opponent after opponent finally finishing in seventh place. The next part of the competition consisted of jumps which the untrained Masoud was unable to complete and was therefore eliminated from the contest although it finished out the ride with much acclaim for its gallant efforts against a stronger field. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Tug-of-war</td></tr>
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If the British contingent was largely absent the Official History of the
Games was fulsome in its explanation, recording: ‘wherever the sport
world foregathers, the Englishman is a welcome competitor and one whose
chances of winning must be minutely calculated by his adversaries. Old
England, however, if absent in the flesh, was present in the spirit, and
indeed in the blood, for Australia, Canada and New Zealand played an
important part in the competitions. The Dominions gave a good account of
themselves, too?’<br />
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Among the more unusual events was hand-grenade throwing, which took place in the knowledge that most of the contestants had been practising for at least four years. However, first place with a new world record was surprisingly taken by an American army chaplain, Fred Thompson, with a toss of 245 feet, 11 inches, who although not a regular soldier was an accomplished collegiate athlete before the war. The irony of including a Tug-of-War competition in a town where so many new nations were fighting for recognition was perhaps lost on the organisers. As predicted, America and France swept the board with the most points gained from the largest pool of competitors. </div>
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The Games were deemed a great success, not least in strengthening combatant morale and in bringing together men that had been bound “by strong ties of sympathy in the common ideals for which they were fighting”. Elwood Brown’s vision was to “lay the foundations for those enduring friendships which can come only from personal contact and which, in this case, were of such fundamental importance to the future welfare of the world.” It was a noble cause but the real work of forging a new world order had just concluded not on the playing fields but in the halls of Versailles and as Clemenceau complained: “It was much easier to make war than peace.” </div>
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Feisal, Lawrence and the Arab delegation, having taken every opportunity to promote the need to break the Arab movement out of the confines of the Hejaz in the name of the King were under no illusion as to the difficulties that lay ahead. </div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-1437942098159493842017-06-01T15:26:00.003+02:002017-08-14T12:08:38.266+02:00Forthcoming lecture - 'Lawrence of Arabia and the Revolt in the Desert' - University of Southampton - Saturday 1 July 2017<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Lifelong Learning programme run by the University of Southampton will be holding a study day entitled: Lawrence of Arabia and the Revolt in the Desert on Saturday 1 July 2017. </div>
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I have been asked to present a paper entitled: 'A Yahoo Life' - T.E. Lawrence and the British Military Mission in the Hejaz.</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The following description of the event is from the University's <a href="http://www.southampton.ac.uk/lifelonglearning/news/events/2017/07/07-lawrence-of-arabia.page?">website </a>where you can find details of the programme and an application form for places.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To mark the centenary of Sharif Hussein’s forces seizing the Ottoman port of Aqaba on 6 July 1917, this Great War study day focuses upon the Arab revolt against Turkish rule, and the role of archaeologist turned soldier, T.E. Lawrence. The ‘revolt in the desert’ is placed in the context of French and British intervention in the Middle East, notably the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Balfour Declaration; the consequences of which still resonate throughout the region known then as the Levant. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Recreated in spectacular style by David Lean in the epic Lawrence of Arabia, the capture of Aqaba opened supply lines from Egypt to Allied forces operating further north in Transjordan and Greater Palestine. This effectively ended any lingering threat of a Turkish attack on the Suez Canal. By examining General Allenby’s successful offensive east of Suez in 1917-18, we can assess the military significance of Lawrence’s contribution – to what extent does the legend match reality? </div>
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Before convincing Prince Feisal and other tribal chieftains to rise up Lawrence’s involvement in the Middle East was primarily as a scholar, prompting consideration of how pre-war archaeology disguised great power interest in the crumbling Ottoman empire. </div>
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Examining Lawrence before and after the First World War offers an additional perspective on continuing conflict in the Middle East and his close connection with Southampton Water. In the 1920s and 1930s, a very public retreat from fame saw the writer of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom assume a fresh identity not once but twice, as a ranker in the Army and then the Royal Air Force. Extended service in the RAF led to a final posting in Hythe, where Lawrence worked on the British Powerboat Company’s latest rescue launches; weekends were spent at Cloud’s Hill, his Dorset cottage, or socialising in London with the likes of Churchill or Shaw. Since his death in 1935 popular interest in Lawrence and the revolt in the desert has never waned; fuelled by fresh revelations about his private life, and an urgent need to comprehend the creation myth upon which Saudi Arabia’s unbending monarchy claims its legitimacy. </div>
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<br /></div>
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This study day recognises our continuing fascination with ‘El Laurens’, and his place in the violent and crisis-ridden history of the Middle East over the past one hundred years.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Adrian Smith</b>, Emeritus Professor of Modern History, University of Southampton</div>
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- Welcome/introduction: the Solent, childhood home and workplace of T.E. Lawrence</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Dr Christopher Prior</b>, Lecturer in 20th Century History, University of Southampton</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- "Immortality I cannot judge": Lawrence, the Middle East and the British Empire in the early twentieth century.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Tim Champion</b>, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology</div>
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- 'Archaeologists and great power rivalry in the Middle East prior to the First world War</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Anthony Sattin</b>, travel writer, broadcaster, and author of Young Lawrence: a Portrait of the Legend as a Young Man (2014)</div>
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- From Carchemish to Cairo: the making of Major Lawrence</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Kerry Webber</b>, writer, photographer and designer, currently writing the biography of Colonel Stewart Newcombe</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- "A Yahoo Life": T.E. Lawrence and the British Military Mission to the Hejaz</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Professor Adrian Smith</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- The post war Lawrence: Aircraftman Shaw and the British Power Boat Company</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>Dr Mark Levene</b>, Reader in History, Southampton University, and author of The Crises of Genocide Volumes I and II</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- Conclusion: Thinking beyond Lawrence - the British, their role in Ottoman dissolution and the long-term consequences for the modern 'Middle East'</div>
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<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-42996528485807374252017-04-18T11:52:00.000+02:002017-04-20T11:34:51.549+02:00All things Lawrentian<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--FF9fe0ao4U/WPXb-4RDk-I/AAAAAAAABSw/yBFJMMte0U4B18AVMKcM6E6KGKVU3wVGACLcB/s1600/J.M.%2BWilson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/--FF9fe0ao4U/WPXb-4RDk-I/AAAAAAAABSw/yBFJMMte0U4B18AVMKcM6E6KGKVU3wVGACLcB/s320/J.M.%2BWilson.jpg" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the track bed of the Hejaz Railway, Wadi Rumm, Jordan</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Yesterday
was a sad day for members of the Lawrence fellowship with an announcement for the T.E. Lawrence Society that Lawrence's authorised biographer, Jeremy Wilson, had passed away. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I last saw
Jeremy talking to Professor Ali Alawi at the Society’s symposium held at St. John's College, Oxford, last
September and failed to find an opportunity to talk to him, so busy was he
meeting old friends and colleagues. But I have happy memories of working with him
on the committee of the Society many years ago under the chairmanship of Philip
Kerrigan when Jeremy had been co-opted back onto the committee, this time as website
coordinator, but of course he was much more than that. Minutes of our meetings are
peppered with comments regarding assistance from Jeremy on items outside of his
role: "Jeremy offered assistance with this, should Pat need it",
"Jeremy advised that there was probably an example of her [Sarah Lawrence]
handwriting in the Bodleian Library", "Jeremy stated...",
"Jeremy circulated copies...", "Jeremy suggested...", and
so on. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Even
Lawrence had to step back from the leadership of the Arab Revolt lest his presence
hinder their development and soon the Society was left to find its feet and
direction in a new millennium. And a good job they have made of it too, if the
last well-attended symposium is anything to go by. The breadth of knowledge in
the speakers and the enthusiasm for facts presented in a scholarly and
professional way was an encouraging sign for the future of the Society and
in Lawrence studies in general. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-right: 6.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Over sixty years ago Richard Aldington wrote a highly contentious
biography of Lawrence whose subtitle was <i>A Biographical Enquiry</i>. Its
publication was accompanied by marketing material that asked the question: ‘Is
this the end of a legend?’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-right: 6.8pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Jeremy and
his wife Nicole have made an enormous contribution to furthering the knowledge and
appreciation of the man behind the legend, a man who continues to fascinate and
intrigue us and whose words and actions are just as relevant today as they were
one hundred years ago when that legend was born. This is in no small part to
Jeremy's guidance, wisdom and influence on all things Lawrentian. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Vale,
Jeremy.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "sans-serif"; font-size: small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Photo courtesy of Jeremy's website: <a href="http://www.telstudies.org/" target="_blank">www.telstudies.org</a> </span>KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-36123333245390842042017-04-17T16:45:00.001+02:002017-04-17T17:23:05.655+02:00JEREMY WILSON (1944 - 2 April 2017)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">It was with sadness that I read today of Jeremy's passing in a message sent out by the committee of the T.E. Lawrence Society following an announcement in the Daily Telegraph:</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">We very much regret to inform you that Jeremy Wilson, the Authorised Biographer of T. E. Lawrence, has died following a period of illness.<br />
<br />
Jeremy was widely regarded and respected as the leading scholar and authority on Lawrence. Together with his wife Nicole, he established Castle Hill Press which has published fine-print editions of many of Lawrence's manuscripts and letters.<br />
<br />
Jeremy was a former Chairman of the T. E. Lawrence Society and a major instigator and influence on the Society's activities, notably the Journal and the biennial Symposia.<br />
<br />
The Society will be represented at his funeral in Oxford next week. We intend to publish a tribute to Jeremy in a commemorative edition of the Newsletter. We would welcome contributions which may be sent to us at <br />
newsletter@telsociety.org.uk.<br />
<br />
The T. E. Lawrence Society Committee</span></span></div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-14188812855099817002016-10-23T00:04:00.002+02:002016-11-05T14:47:51.887+01:00"The important thing is GROPPI's"<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TNLDsXO5lcQ/WAtkA4JTDvI/AAAAAAAAA3g/QhM37FBO2fkgk118LVXPyL9YNGaIfi6YQCLcB/s1600/Garden%2BGroppi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TNLDsXO5lcQ/WAtkA4JTDvI/AAAAAAAAA3g/QhM37FBO2fkgk118LVXPyL9YNGaIfi6YQCLcB/s320/Garden%2BGroppi.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Garden Groppi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Not so long ago Groppi's Café was once 'the place' to go in Cairo for
tea, pastries and chocolate. When Cairo was the place to be seen, Groppi's was
the café to be seen in. Such was its place in the social merry-go-round that
everyone from Kings and Queens to politicians and members of the social
elite passed through its doors to sample its legendary delights. Today, the café still
occupies two sites in downtown Cairo. The first opened for business on 23 December
1909 on Sharia al-Maghrabi (today: Adly Street) and was generally known as
Garden Groppi's. </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tcJ6raOkjUU/WBC98Cjz7rI/AAAAAAAABMg/L02xTcJDBtgXgNgUMBZ5jp65qllzHGXnQCLcB/s1600/Groppi%2BCastaman%2Bmosaics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tcJ6raOkjUU/WBC98Cjz7rI/AAAAAAAABMg/L02xTcJDBtgXgNgUMBZ5jp65qllzHGXnQCLcB/s320/Groppi%2BCastaman%2Bmosaics.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mosaics by the Venetian, Antonio Castaman</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The second followed on its success and opened in March
1925 on a corner of Midan Soliman Pasha (today: Talaat Harb
Square) opposite the Savoy Hotel, long after the British Military had
vacated its war-time headquarters in the requisitioned hotel. This branch has
become a downtown landmark with its art deco tiled exterior and
neon signage, with distinctive multi-coloured mosaics in the entrance executed by the Venetian artist, Antonio Castaman, and an eclectic interior by leading designers of the day. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P-CV4q0dFgg/WAuLvbQ5yoI/AAAAAAAABHM/wb20jtxiHIA_IL0QSeeoc19ZT4AqwdZEgCLcB/s1600/Groppi%2BWW1%2BGarden.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P-CV4q0dFgg/WAuLvbQ5yoI/AAAAAAAABHM/wb20jtxiHIA_IL0QSeeoc19ZT4AqwdZEgCLcB/s320/Groppi%2BWW1%2BGarden.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Groppi in WW1</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Adly Street premises became a favourite haunt of T.E. Lawrence
long before he was sent out to the Hejaz as an advisor to the Emir Feisal. Every day for nine
months, he and Stewart Newcombe would have passed the café on their way by
bicycle to-and-from their lodgings at the Grand Continental Hotel to the
Military Intelligence offices based in the Savoy, a short journey of
some five minutes. With breakfast taken in the sumptuous dining room of the
Continental, the two men would undoubtedly have frequented the café during the
day, the cool enclosed garden offering a peaceful sanctuary from the hustle and
bustle of the Savoy offices. Conveniently, the café provided two exits, one
through the shop and one through a door set in the wall of the garden. For
operatives with secrets to divulge and enemies to evade, this was an added advantage.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">At some time in late 1925 - the letter is undated - Lawrence wrote
to his biographer, Robert Graves who was en route to Egypt, explaining that he
had spent three magnificent years in Cairo and only ever went twice into a
club. But what stood out for him most was Groppi's: "The important thing
is GROPPI's, the Tea-garden shop," he wrote, emphasising its significance
by the use of capital letters, "and the drink is iced coffee.
Straws the process. 2 piastres the means. The children will love Groppi's.
Chocolate all right, too: but not in summer." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Based on Lawrence's recommendation Graves' children would probably
have enjoyed Groppi's but Egypt did not appeal to Graves and he left his
posting as Professor of English Literature at the Egyptian University at Cairo
at the end of the first academic year. In March 1925, Groppi
opened its second branch opposite the Savoy Hotel. One suspects that
Lawrence's abhorrence of 'clubs' held no sympathy for Newcombe who would have
felt most at home in either the Gezira Sporting Club or the Turf Club - those
two great institutions beloved by staff officers wearing suede desert boots and
brandishing fly whisks and swagger sticks. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1vrn4AcHYBk/WAx3Fp_l4jI/AAAAAAAABIQ/1YDRbnhrvVojEGKrxWsug9kwLlqygnNBACLcB/s1600/Groppi%2Bsignage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1vrn4AcHYBk/WAx3Fp_l4jI/AAAAAAAABIQ/1YDRbnhrvVojEGKrxWsug9kwLlqygnNBACLcB/s320/Groppi%2Bsignage.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Soliman Pasha branch signage</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Further evidence of Lawrence’s fondness for Groppi’s is shown in the
introduction to Clare Sydney Smith’s story of her friendship with him, entitled
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Golden Reign</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“Early in 1920,” she wrote, “I went out to Egypt where my husband was in
command of the Royal Air Force Station at Heliopolis. The Cairo Conference was
held in spring of 1921 and there was, of course, much coming and going of
important people. The Conference had been summoned by Mr. Winston Churchill,
the Secretary of State for the Colonies, for the purpose of attempting to
settle the Arab question...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">During the Conference we did our share of entertaining in our Cairo flat
and I was used to my husband bringing people in with him at odd times of the
day. So there seemed nothing out of the ordinary when one hot March afternoon
he came in as usual at tea-time accompanied by a small and, I thought, not
particularly distinguished-looking man in a blue suit, carrying a white topee...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">I remember he was quiet and withdrawn and had a shock of untidy-looking
hair, but beyond that he made no impression on me at all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">After tea Sydney drove him home, and when he came back he said: "Do
you realize who that was?"</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">"No."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">"It was Lawrence of Arabia!"</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">"Good gracious!"</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">"And what's more, he's asked us to go to tea with him
to-morrow."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">That was our first meeting.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The next day the Sydney Smiths made their way to Groppi's where they had
arranged to meet. “Now that I knew who he was,” Clare recalled, “I was looking
forward to getting to know our visitor better, but it was not until long
afterwards that I realised what an unusual event - almost unknown, in fact - it
was for him to invite anyone to tea. Usually he shunned all social occasions,
even the simplest, and never took the initiative in arranging them.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The couple arrived first and sat at a table in the garden facing the restaurant
he would have to come through to join them. Looking back through the years,
Clare remembered the moment Lawrence first walked into the gardens:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“There was a stir of interest when he appeared as everybody knew him by
sight, but he took no notice as he walked straight across to us in the
peculiarly springy walk he had. A quiet dignity surrounded his small, modest
figure, dressed as yesterday in a dark blue suit and holding his white topee
with both hands in front of him - a dignity which put the bare-faced curiosity
of the public to shame.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The event may have been unusual but the choice of venue was perhaps not
so surprising. Clare does not tell us if Lawrence did in fact drink tea that
day or whether her infatuation with him began over a glass of iced coffee drunk
through straws. But one thing is obvious; for Lawrence, Groppi’s was infinitely
preferable to the usual haunts like the great pavement-side terraces of Shepheards
and the Continental which served as both stage and auditorium and were
therefore anathema to his unique predicament of having a “craving to be famous;
and a horror of being known to like being known.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ihKSOXUCkKQ/WAuJSLG344I/AAAAAAAABG8/xw_TuHtas9s7gG8B9pi--TSkP_4r25fSQCEw/s1600/Groppi%2Bchocolate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ihKSOXUCkKQ/WAuJSLG344I/AAAAAAAABG8/xw_TuHtas9s7gG8B9pi--TSkP_4r25fSQCEw/s320/Groppi%2Bchocolate.jpg" width="219" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Groppi chocolate wrapper</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">During the Second World War, Groppi’s retained its reputation as one of
the few smart places open to everyone regardless of rank, although its
exorbitant prices tended to mostly attract the officer class. It was said the garden was a favourite of General Montgomerie who came to enjoy the regular jazz evenings. Stage shows were a regular feature throughout the Forties. When the musicians stopped playing well into the evening and the dancers had returned to their tables, the floor would then be hydraulically raised two feet to become a stage for the floor show which often featured some very accomplished performers. An officer in the Special Boat Service, Colonel David Sutherland, famously entertained two German prisoners to ice-cream sodas in Groppi's before handing them over for interrogation. It was said his act of hospitality was unappreciated in certain quarters but in his defence he pointed out to an exasperated brigadier that as it was so rare for the SBS to take prisoners alive during missions in enemy territory he saw no harm, especially as one of the men had been captured with the Wehrmacht's new self-loading rifle, a weapon years ahead of its time and of particular interest to the boffins in Cairo. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">No matter how
full, the flowering creepers that had by now been trained up the garden walls
created an illusion of intimacy and a haven of peace in the midst of the
bustling city. Such an atmosphere gave rise to more than just the promise of
welcome refreshment. The writer, Artemis Cooper, who taught English at the
University of Alexandria, recalls how pashas came to sip freshly roasted coffee
and eat cream cakes with their Levantine mistresses who draped their furs over
the chairs while discreet waiters shuffled silently on the sandy floor wearing
long white galabiehs topped with red tarbushes. “Officers on leave,” she
revealed, “looked out for female companionship, and envied the man at the
opposite table who suddenly rose to his feet with a smile, and pulled out a
chair for the woman who had just joined him.” Then, as dusk fell, strings of
coloured light-bulbs illuminated the garden adding to the possibility of intrigue
and romance for the clientele who at that time in Egypt was mostly under the
age of thirty. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-saSJF2F4kLU/WAuMpUyxGeI/AAAAAAAABHU/1qbW9IBwdbAjJkcH2lFZyIdswHizB2ZGQCLcB/s1600/Rebecca-1st-edition.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-saSJF2F4kLU/WAuMpUyxGeI/AAAAAAAABHU/1qbW9IBwdbAjJkcH2lFZyIdswHizB2ZGQCLcB/s200/Rebecca-1st-edition.jpg" width="138" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The key to Rebecca</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">While the 1920s witnessed the ultimately unsuccessful hunt for the lost
oasis of Zerzura in the Western Desert - a mythical city </span>that had long
excited the imagination with tales of verdant palms, a ruined city and lost
treasure -<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> it at least alerted one of
the region’s most famous explorers, Count Laszlo Almásy, to a way of smuggling
two German spies into Cairo. Almásy may have known the ways of the desert but
he clearly underestimated the British spy-master, Major A.W. Sansom, of the
British Security Services in Cairo. Sansom’s interest was first aroused when a
copy of Daphne de Maurier’s novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rebecca
</i>was found among the belongings of two German wireless operators in a remote
desert W/T station which had been captured in May 1942, the significance being
that the men could not read English. A rubbed out price mark of ’50 escudos’
indicated the book had been bought in Portugal and Sansom’s network of agents
soon discovered that six copies of the book had been bought on the same day in
a Lisbon bookshop by the wife of a staff member from the German Embassy. The
book was clearly being used to encode and decode wireless messages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MD9REUuxBBg/WAuPMTFhodI/AAAAAAAABHg/ASyKL0_q6AY5CEE5YSI7pGzDeA-Bbx8bwCLcB/s1600/Hekmat%2BFahmi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MD9REUuxBBg/WAuPMTFhodI/AAAAAAAABHg/ASyKL0_q6AY5CEE5YSI7pGzDeA-Bbx8bwCLcB/s1600/Hekmat%2BFahmi.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hekmat Fahmy</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Almásy’s two hapless spies, Hans Eppler and Gerd Sandstede, were finally
undone when their Egyptian money ran out and they began to off-load forged five
pound notes onto the black market in the belief that their value would plummet
the closer Rommel approached Cairo. Their dissolute and desultory lifestyle was
funded by over 3,600 pounds worth of dud fivers lavishly spent not just in the
usual fleshpots like the Kit Kat Club, the legendary cabaret venue, but in more
sedate establishments like Groppi’s where suspicions were raised and brought to
Sansom’s attention. Their friendship with the sultry Hekmat Fahmy, known as the
belly dancer spy, further sealed their fate and the three were surrounded in a
dawn raid on their luxurious houseboats on the Nile. Eppler contrived a getaway by rolling up his socks and throwing them like hand grenades to slow down Sansom's men. But the game was up and they were apprehended.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">During the infamous Cairo riots that took place on 26 January 1952, both
the Gezira Sporting Club and the Turf Club – the latter situated almost
opposite Groppi's garden entrance on al-Maghrabi Street – were firebombed and
totally destroyed. On what has been called Black Saturday, a series of
anti-British and anti-Western riots spread throughout the city targeting banks,
shops, theatres and hotels. Even the iconic Shepheard’s Hotel was not spared,
along with the destruction of 12 other hotels, almost 300 shops and department
stores, 40 cinemas and even the Cairo Opera House. Within a few hours thousands
of local workers were displaced while the perceived symbols of seventy-years of
British rule were razed to the ground as the incendiary fervour of revolution
swept throughout the capital. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QBP9XdmtPWo/WAyDq9CWPGI/AAAAAAAABIg/xOetuSnDAj8wFEfx2_gJJMllVJ2FDQWhACLcB/s1600/Shepheards%2Bterrace2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QBP9XdmtPWo/WAyDq9CWPGI/AAAAAAAABIg/xOetuSnDAj8wFEfx2_gJJMllVJ2FDQWhACLcB/s320/Shepheards%2Bterrace2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shepheard's Hotel Terrace</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GXOHaW7_jTc/WAyD0Sv31wI/AAAAAAAABIo/IJemcV9uYWARcTzT35OB5Q3jtFLyjwFzACLcB/s1600/Shepheards%2BHotel%2Bruins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="227" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GXOHaW7_jTc/WAyD0Sv31wI/AAAAAAAABIo/IJemcV9uYWARcTzT35OB5Q3jtFLyjwFzACLcB/s320/Shepheards%2BHotel%2Bruins.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shepheard's in ruins 1952</td></tr>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Despite President Nasser’s attempts to nationalise foreign owned businesses
the restaurant remained Swiss-owned and enjoyed something of a revival during
the next two decades, becoming the caterer of choice for presidents and kings
and thereby escaping the rigid hand of privatisation. The window displays at the Talaat Harb branch were famed for their creativity during Christmas and Easter festivities, earning praise for the restaurant as Cairo's answer to London's Fortnum and Mason's. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In 1971, the café provided the catering at the inauguration of the Aswan
High Dam, an enormously ambitious project at the heart of Nasser’s economic
vision. Five-hundred guests attended an extravagant party that included heads
of state from other Arab countries as well as soviet leaders, since the Soviet
Union had funded the project. </span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gzULHQXX1So/WAuJ0HHoIpI/AAAAAAAABG8/cqm6rgjkm48zc5UKOcwtu0t-ZuNr9x4TwCEw/s1600/Groppi%2Bnight%2Btime.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gzULHQXX1So/WAuJ0HHoIpI/AAAAAAAABG8/cqm6rgjkm48zc5UKOcwtu0t-ZuNr9x4TwCEw/s200/Groppi%2Bnight%2Btime.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Talaat Harb Square branch</td></tr>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But already the trends in catering had shifted and competition came from
an unexpected direction. With the opening of the first Wimpey’s in Cairo in the
mid-70s, the burger restaurant quickly became the place of choice for young modern
Cairenes and was where you took your girlfriend if you wanted to treat her. The
old world charm of Groppi’s, with its ice-cream smothered in Chantilly créme, marrons glacés </span><span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">and chocolate covered dates, gave way to the brash
plastic and bright lights of the first of the fast food giants to hit the town.
Egypt had changed and Groppi’s was just one of its anachronistic casualties.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Groppi's fortunes have been mixed during the past one hundred years
of trading and having survived social upheavals, riots, bomb blasts and financial
downturns it survives today by reputation only. The current owners are
fighting back and are using social media sites to promote its
history and products to a younger generation while older clients remain
steadfastly loyal, sometimes against all the odds. But if you are strolling in
Cairo and want to soak up some of the atmosphere of a bygone era, Egypt's Belle Époque, then take a table
at Garden Groppi’s and let your imagination wander. You’ll have plenty of time.
Your waiter, no longer wearing the galabieh and tarbush, will not rush to serve
you. Having seen off revolutions and fast food establishments, life moves at a
different pace at Groppi’s and you would be wise to sit back, relax, and wonder who
might next come through those famous doors. </span></div>
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<br />KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-31651984877017673452016-09-29T14:14:00.000+02:002016-10-03T09:53:33.210+02:00Lawrence Symposium, Oxford 2016<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kerry presenting his paper 'Beyond Arabia' to the symposium</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The 14th T.E. Lawrence Symposium at St. John's College, Oxford University, which ended on Sunday 25 September 2016, was a great success with interesting and entertaining papers presented by a diverse range of speakers from around the world. Attendance was, I understand, the highest ever for such an event - about 150 per session - and thanks must go to the hard working group of volunteers that form the committee of the society. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CrsimThiLoU/V-0D9ExltsI/AAAAAAAAA18/pyyfk1lsbv4JhXT0ZtoPgLA4ROBpNW4aACLcB/s1600/St.%2BJohn%2527s%2BCollege%2BOxford.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CrsimThiLoU/V-0D9ExltsI/AAAAAAAAA18/pyyfk1lsbv4JhXT0ZtoPgLA4ROBpNW4aACLcB/s320/St.%2BJohn%2527s%2BCollege%2BOxford.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. John's College, Oxford University</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Once again, thanks to the chairman of the society, <b>Philip Neale</b>, and his committee for inviting me. It is always a pleasure meeting old friends and making new contacts in such convivial surroundings. I would also like to especially thank <b>Joe Berton </b>and <b>Philip Walker</b> to allow me to use previously unseen photos of Newcombe in my presentation. </span></div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-49901733023599306942016-02-07T12:26:00.000+01:002016-02-13T10:54:17.460+01:00Kennington's Lawrence effigy at Wareham<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ad3TEXOAE3s/VrRnQmdjtqI/AAAAAAAAAwY/aYgt5CdqsfU/s1600/Kennington6.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ad3TEXOAE3s/VrRnQmdjtqI/AAAAAAAAAwY/aYgt5CdqsfU/s400/Kennington6.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div align="center">
Lawrence effigy in repose</div>
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"The shock of T.E.'s death. Yes, when we were getting over it I had a letter from Buxton asking me to attend a committee which would plan a National Memorial." </div>
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The artist and sculptor Eric Kennington was among a select group of people brought together to discuss a fitting memorial following the death of T.E. Lawrence in 1935. "As far as I can remember," Kennington recalled many years later, "the other members were Buxton 'in the chair', Lady Astor, who soon elbowed him out of it and was in it herself, Newcombe, Storrs, Bernard Shaw, Lionel Curtis, Sir Herbert Baker." </div>
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Robin Buxton was Lawrence's banker and former colleague in the desert war. Lionel Curtis was an old friend and advocate of Imperial Federalism, which after its rejection in 1937 gave way to the idea of a Commonwealth of Nations. Sir Herbert Baker was an influential architect who with Edwin Lutyens had created New Delhi which became the capital of the British Raj in India. Baker had given Lawrence sanctuary in an upstairs attic room above his studios in Barton Street, Westminster, allowing Lawrence to work undisturbed on his book <em>Seven Pillars of Wisdom</em>. </div>
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The committee was slow to come up with suitable ideas. "Then Baker said he had asked T.E. once what his idea was for a monument to himself," Kennington recalled, "and his reply - "The largest mountain in Arabia carved into a likeness of himself!" This amused Sir Ronald Storrs who interjected, "What a fine target for the Arabs - they'd get his nose first shot." Storrs, formerly assistant to the High Commissioner in Egypt followed by spells as Governor of Jerusalem and Cyprus, was an old friend of Lawrence and was instrumental in inviting him to assess the situation in the Hejaz at the start of the Arab Revolt. He knew that no grand ideas were ever formed by committees, but a lot of foolish ideas died there. Then Baker said, "What about an effigy? We have a distinguished sculptor here." Kennington had been lying low throughout the proceedings but quickly produced some sketches which were generally accepted. Then the matter went very quiet for several months. Kennington turned to the one man he could trust to give him a straight answer. He wrote to Stewart Newcombe who replied, "Nothing doing - it's all off. They aren't going on with a National Memorial." This was a blow especially as leaflets had gone out requesting donations and had been signed by the committee members which now included Churchill, Allenby and Augustus John. The idea was quietly dropped.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jUOFCR_2HDc/VrSNytNn_KI/AAAAAAAAAw4/cosynn8nei8/s1600/Kennington7.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jUOFCR_2HDc/VrSNytNn_KI/AAAAAAAAAw4/cosynn8nei8/s400/Kennington7.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hand on Arabian khanjar dagger</td></tr>
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Two years passed when a chance encounter at Oxford railway station between Kennington and Curtis reinvigorated the idea of an effigy. Curtis remembered their previous association and said it was a pity that the scheme for an effigy had fallen through, adding, "I wonder what it would have looked like?" "You'd better come and see it," Kennington replied. "It's almost finished."</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jEvfgLz4Yyc/VrRnGevEtmI/AAAAAAAAAwU/3QZ8Y5fQB6s/s1600/Kennington3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jEvfgLz4Yyc/VrRnGevEtmI/AAAAAAAAAwU/3QZ8Y5fQB6s/s400/Kennington3.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Legs crossed at the ankles</td></tr>
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Lawrence's brother, Arnold, came to see it and immediately offered to buy it from Kennington. "What's this worth to you?" he asked bluntly. Kennington gave a price of two thousand pounds and a cheque was drawn up there and then. But where to place it? It is not clear who first suggested the tiny parish church of St. Martin's-on-the-walls, Wareham in Dorset, but when seen today Kennington's effigy rests in the most wonderful example of a 1000 years old Anglo-Saxon church, accessible to all and in perfect harmony with its surroundings.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St. Martin's-on-the-walls, Wareham</td></tr>
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Kennington sculpted the effigy in the style of a recumbent figure with one hand resting on the hilt of a curved Arabian khanjar dagger and one resting loosely at his side and with legs crossed at the ankles in the style of a thirteenth-century knight. Cross-legs and sword handling were features of effigies during this period, created to depict an image of repose and peace which complemented further characteristics which represented military vigour and alertness. This style persisted until the middle of the fourteenth-century when it fell out of favour to be replaced by the praying, straight-legged effigy. The meaning of the cross-legged feature was generally thought to have originated from Knights Templars or Crusaders who had died in the Holy Land, had died during the journey home, or had simply travelled east as a pilgrim or soldier. The romance of the pilgrim soldier persisted and was especially strong in the sixteenth-century, long after the period of the Crusades, reinforcing the theory. However, this crossed-legged Crusader connection has since been refuted by historians. Kennington, in reproducing the image of a 13th-century knight, was tapping into the popular beliefs held at the time.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iG7xhKodw1U/VrSN-38pz7I/AAAAAAAAAw4/wOx0nyH-6cs/s1600/Kennington10.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iG7xhKodw1U/VrSN-38pz7I/AAAAAAAAAw4/wOx0nyH-6cs/s400/Kennington10.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lawrence's crossed feet rest upon a piece of Hittite sculpture</td></tr>
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Kennington was aided in his work by photos of the progress of the sculpture made by Wing Commander Reginald Simms, an amateur photographer and a former colleague of Lawrence at Bridlington during his RAF service. These undoubtedly helped Kennington during the development of the effigy, highlighting any errors. This ultimately resulted in a fine piece of work with an exquisite likeness of Lawrence in repose but also with an alertness and readiness for further action as depicted by his resting hand ready to un-sheath the curved blade. This feature was particularly pertinent when the effigy was finally placed in St. Martin's in September 1939. </div>
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Two years earlier, Churchill had contributed a piece to <em>T.E. Lawrence By His Friends</em>, a collection of reminiscences or impressions of Lawrence by those who knew him or had worked with him - a 'gallery of partial portraits', as Arnold Lawrence, the editor, put it. Churchill submitted a revision of an earlier obituary article published on 26 May 1935 in the <em>News of the World</em> newspaper, only seven days after Lawrence's death. He wrote, 'I fear whatever our need we shall never see his like again'. Churchill used much of this article at the unveiling of a memorial plaque by Kennington at the Oxford High School for Boys on 3 October 1936, an event at which Colonel and Mrs Newcombe attended and where Elsie Newcombe confessed to a bemused E.M. Forster that "Mrs Lawrence [T.E.'s mother] <u>lovs</u> me so much that I may kiss her <u>here</u> here with my rouged lips and leave spots on her face and still she doesn't mind." </div>
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Churchill included the Oxford text with further amendments in his 1937 opus <em>Great Contemporaries</em> where he made significant changes in both words and tone at a time when he was languishing in a political wilderness. With ominous world events pointing to another world war - in March 1936 Germany had reoccupied the Rhineland and four months later saw the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War - he used the occasion to highlight a pressing need for political effect. "All feel the poorer that he has gone from us. In these days dangers and difficulties gather upon Britain and her Empire, and we are also conscious of a lack of outstanding figures with which to overcome them." This was not just about Lawrence. If Churchill had been side-lined at least he was able to remind his audience he was still available. </div>
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Even Lawrence's role in the RAF was utilised for Churchill's own political aims. In <em>Friends</em>, Churchill wrote simply that Lawrence experienced twelve years of "honourable service" in the RAF as an air-mechanic, concerned with the "mechanism of aeroplane engines, the design of flying boats." Two years later this employment was set aside in favour of a more far-reaching role that was used to bolster Churchill's own arguments for the strengthening of the aerial defence of Britain in line with the growth of the Luftwaffe. "Those who knew him best miss him most; but our country misses him most of all. For this is a time when the great problems upon which his thought and work had so long centred, problems of aerial defence, problems of our relations with the Arab peoples, fill an even larger space in our affairs." </div>
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With the spectre of war with Germany looming on the horizon, the tone of Churchill's revised portrait of Lawrence in <em>Great Contemporaries</em> became elegiac and inspirational to stir the emotions of the British public about to face their finest hour and in need of an Arthurian figure who was merely waiting for the call to arms once again. Kennington's effigy fitted the bill exactly. It would also not be long before Churchill was recalled from exile. </div>
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<strong>NOTE</strong></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Photographs of Eric Kennington's effigy of T.E. Lawrence by Kerry Webber (December 2015), courtesy of the Rector and Churchwardens of St. Martin's-on-the-walls, Wareham.</div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-29202833015824087622016-02-02T17:54:00.000+01:002016-03-07T15:31:02.726+01:00Fragmentary notes from a diary<br />
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Slightly off topic but I was searching through some papers recently when I came across an old hotel bill. The name of the hotel was sufficiently interesting to warrant further research which revealed that the establishment was to have a dramatic and somewhat explosive future ahead of it years after I had left. At the time of my travels in the region Jerusalem was experiencing attacks on tourists and my diary records a particularly close shave in the narrow lanes of the Old City. Thirty-five years have passed since I wandered the Holy Land with youthful bravado. Today, the security environment in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza remains complex and volatile despite efforts by the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to police tourist destinations. The events recorded in my diary did not put me off from returning time and again and indeed millions of tourists - 3.3 million in 2014 - over half of whom are Christian pilgrims, continue to make the journey with over 80% visiting Jerusalem. <br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">6 September 1981 - Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv</span></b><br />
I landed at Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, at 9.15pm and after collecting my bag I exchanged coins for telephone tokens and phoned to confirm my hotel reservation. Outside the air-conditioned terminal a delicious warmth hit me as soon as I pushed through the doors. I was hustled towards a taxi but I insisted on a sherut (a shared taxi of six people from TA to Jerusalem) with a cost of 75 shekels for the hour journey to the Old City. After dropping off the other occupants I eventually arrived at the Rivoli Hotel at 3 Salah Eddin Street in East Jerusalem at 11.15pm and was given room 102. This was to be a one night stay so after a quick wash I threw open the windows and began to sort through hotels for the next morning. That night I slept on top of the sheets as the heat seemed unbearable after London.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">7 September (Monday) 1981 - Jerusalem</span></b><br />
After what seemed like only a couple of hours of fitful sleep I was woken by a cacophony of sounds from the window which increased in volume until 7 o’clock when I could take no more and went down to a breakfast of fried eggs and plenty of coffee. I was out by 8.45am. I had a couple of hours yet until 11am when I had to vacate the Rivoli so I left the hotel armed with a list of other hotels to look at, all close to Salah Eddin Street. I didn’t have to look very far when I spotted the Lawrence Hotel. I went in and reserved a room for two nights. Happy now that my next couple of days were secure I headed for the Old City. I wanted to enter by the Jaffa Gate so walked up alongside the walls and round until I came to the Citadel of David. Inside the gate the road, David’s Road, had just been dug up and was thick with dust, thrown up by passing cars and the occasional tourist camel. I sought refuge in the souq with its familiar pungent smells of spices, meat and incense. After soaking up the atmosphere for a while I worked my way through the labyrinth of alleyways to the Via Dolorosa and left by the Damascus Gate to pick up my case and move on. The bill for room and breakfast came to 19.25 US Dollars. They accepted £10 and I paid in Travellers cheques. I need only to cross the road to check into the Lawrence Hotel at 18 Salah Eddin Street where I took room 26. I spent the rest of that day and evening exploring the Old City, trying to become familiar with the twists and turns of its lanes in the hope that I might begin to understand its layout. An impossible but enjoyable task.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lawrence Hotel, Jerusalem, Room 26</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">8 September (Tuesday) 1981</span></b><br />
Breakfasted on sesame-seeded bread, cheese, figs, honey and sweet black coffee, then refreshed I threw myself back into the Old City to visit the Dome of the Rock. It took some time as the souqs were reluctant to give up the prize without a few wrong turns. When I eventually found it I bought a ticket for 10 Shekels for admittance to the El Aqsa Mosque and the Dome. I entered the Mosque first, barefoot as custom demands, and padded softly on the richly coloured Persian carpets that were scattered throughout. To the left as I entered was the spot where King Abdullah was murdered in 1951 and on the right was where in 1969 an Australian Christian pyromaniac set fire to the interior causing considerable damage that is still being repaired all these years later. It was cool and peaceful inside now and a welcome relief from the increasing heat that had seemed to follow me through the city to this upper platform of the Haram al´Sharif, or Temple Mount. On my way across the platform towards the Dome I was beckoned by a man sitting in the shade of a palm tree. I felt inclined to nod and pass on but I dimly recognised the man as the mosque guide I had met the year before. His name was Ali and he remembered me and even said I had been accompanied by a girl last year. We talked for a while then I said I wanted to visit the Dome alone this time and we said goodbye, he added “until next year, Inshallah”. The Dome inside is quite beautiful and is where guides point to a hoof print of el-Burak, the legendary horse of the Prophet Mohammed, from where Mohammed returned to Mecca after the Night Journey to the Seventh Heaven to receive the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses and Jesus to become the last prophet of God. It is the centre piece and focus of the Moslem pilgrimage. Beneath this is the cavern known as the Well of Souls where some say is the traditional hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant containing the stone Tablets of the Ten Commandments. The Hebrew faith considers the Temple Mount to be its holiest site as God's divine presence is felt here more than any other place. For Sunni Moslems this is the third holiest site after Mecca and Medina. I finished my visit by descending to the Western or Wailing Wall to take some interesting photos. I wasn't completely happy at the Lawrence Hotel, the room being quite stuffy, so my search for something more suitable continued. Retracing my steps back to the Jaffa Gate I saw a sign for the Knights Palace Hotel. A name to conjure up images! I was not disappointed and booked myself in for the remainder of my stay in Jerusalem - four nights until my journey to the Galilee and Lake Tiberius. The Knights Palace is part of the Latin Patriarchate and a former theological seminary and has great charm. It is located in the north-western corner of the Old City and forms part of the city walls. As I spend so much of my time here it made sense to relocate again.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">12 September (Saturday) 1981</span></b><br />
Today my decision to relocate nearly proved costly. I was walking back to the Knights Palace Hotel this evening through the New Gate when I narrowly missed an explosion by hand grenade which killed one and badly injured 28 others. I saw the 47 strong group of Italian Catholic pilgrims about to enter the narrow lane that led to my hotel and as I was not feeling too well – a stomach cramp that I thought might get worse - I decided not to buy fruit from the hole-in-the-wall fruit shop which was my normal routine whenever I came through this way. Instead I rushed through to get ahead of the slow-moving crowd and reached the hotel. The grenade was thrown immediately after I had passed by and landed in the centre of the group just as I reached the entrance to the hotel. A sickening metallic thud was followed by screams as the explosion caught the pilgrims in the narrow lane, intensifying the effect. Until the ambulances arrived many of the injured were carried into the hotel and through to the refractory where they were placed on the tables to receive medical first aid. Blood flowed through the lobby and the situation was made worse by a staff member attempting to wash down the flagstones with a bucket of water, turning the corridors into a river of blood. The area was locked down for several hours so later that evening we were forced to dine in the same refractory that had served as a temporary medical centre. Not surprising, some people had lost their appetite. One young couple, Paul and Charlotte, were visibly shaken up by the incident. After dinner security was relaxed and I convinced them to come out with me to a restaurant in New Jerusalem for coffee and rumbaba-style pastries, mixing with the post-Shabbat crowd, all in good humour and seemingly oblivious to the carnage that had taken place earlier. Later we learned that a second victim had died of his wounds. And this after a German tourist had been shot dead while walking in the Via Dolorosa only three weeks earlier. <br />
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<b><span style="color: #660000;">FOOTNOTE</span></b><br />
On the morning of 12 April 1996, room 27 of the Lawrence Hotel was completely destroyed by a bomb that went off prematurely after a Lebanese operative from Hezbollah, Hussein Mikdad, misjudged the procedure for assembling the crude explosive device made from a Sony radio and military-grade C4 explosives. At first police suspected a gas leak but a deep crater in the room pointed to a more sinister cause. Mikdad had entered through Israel's front door, using a stolen British passport in the name of Andrew Newman to fly from Zurich to Tel Aviv on Swissair. He lost his sight and the lower parts of both legs and a hand in the explosion and after spending two years in the Ayalon Prison in Ramla he was released as part of a prisoner swap in 1998. My old room, number 26, was also destroyed in the explosion.<br />
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<br />KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-80083869113997216702016-01-29T12:29:00.000+01:002016-02-13T10:55:33.483+01:00Life on Mars - Bagnold Dunes<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BAGNOLD DUNES, MARS</td></tr>
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Further to my post <a href="http://shadowofthecrescent.blogspot.com.es/2015/03/newcombe-bagnold-and-hunt-for-lost.html" target="_blank"><strong>Newcombe, Bagnold and the hunt for the lost oasis of Zerzura</strong></a> (22 March 2015) NASA reports that the Curiosity Mars rover has recently reached a field of dark dunes along the north-western flank of Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater that has been informally named <strong>"Bagnold Dunes"</strong>, further proof of the importance placed by NASA on the intrepid exploits and academic research carried out by desert explorer Ralph Bagnold and his colleagues. </div>
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Bagnold's seminal work, <em>The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes </em>(1941)<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">, was an invaluable aid to understanding dune formation and wind erosion prior to the first fully successful soft landing on Mars by a probe in 1976 from NASA's Viking programme. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Observations of this dune field from orbit indicate that edges of individual dunes move about 3 feet (1 meter) per Earth year. This photograph (taken in December 2015) of the rippled surface of the first Martian sand dune ever studied up close was taken from Curiosity's mast camera and is an image that would have been familiar to Bagnold's own studies carried out in the Libyan Desert (Eastern Sahara).</span></span></div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-2073212730751761472016-01-27T12:46:00.002+01:002016-01-29T13:03:23.706+01:00The Man with the Gold<br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><strong>T.E. Lawrence Society Announcement</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Following on from the success of <em>The Oxford Roof Climber’s Rebellion</em> at the 2014 Symposium, the Society is pleased to bring a new play to the stage at the 2016 Symposium. <strong>The Man with the Gold</strong> has been written by distinguished author Jan Woolf. The performance at St John’s College on the evening of Friday September 23 will be the world premiere. <br /><br />The British government is at war again in the Middle East and never before has an understanding of the historical dynamic linking the Sykes-Picot treaty at the end of WWI to the present day been so vital. This new play, started by Jan Woolf on an archaeological dig in Jordan in 2013, has been completed for the centenary of the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule during WWI. Its intention is to unravel the complex “hero” it produced in T. E. Lawrence. Set in the present, it centres on two archaeologists as they prepare a centenary exhibition in a war museum. As they unravel their own personal connections, ghosts are unwittingly summoned and the myth of “Lawrence of Arabia” excavated. <br /><br />“It’s terrific: witty, unusual, and timely, and it’s going to be very watch-able. Bringing Lawrence to life through the preparation for an exhibition is a riveting device. You feel he is being dug out of the desert sand in front of you to rise up like a scrap of desert mist. A wraith with a message who blasts his way into the present to deliver it.” Heathcote Williams</span></div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-74396350501043940382016-01-27T10:12:00.000+01:002016-02-13T10:56:25.456+01:0014th Biennial T.E. Lawrence Symposium, St. John's College, Oxford, 23-25 September 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
The <strong>T.E. Lawrence Society</strong> will be returning to St John’s College, Oxford, for its 14th Symposium in September 2016. Coinciding with the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1916, a special programme of lectures is being planned to mark this very special centenary, plus the world premiere of a new play by Jan Woolf, The Man with the Gold. Booking forms are included with this Newsletter, and will be downloadable from the Society’s website at <a href="http://www.telsociety.org.uk/">www.telsociety.org.uk</a>. <br />
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<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="color: black;"><strong>Friday September 23</strong> </span></span><strong></strong></div>
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<strong>Roger Holehouse: The Strategic Context to the Arab Revolt</strong> <br />
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Roger Holehouse OBE is a former Royal Navy officer and Foreign and Common-wealth Office civil servant. He is also a National Trust volunteer at Clouds Hill. Roger will examine the shifts in British policy towards the Ottoman Empire from the middle of the 19th century until its dissolution in 1922. He will examine the reasons behind Britain moving away from supporting the Ottomans, as a buffer against Russian expansion, in the Crimean War, to a position of fighting against them, as an ally of Russia, and supporting the Arab Revolt, in the 1914-18 war. <br />
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<strong>Dr Steve Mills, Professor Paul T. Nicholson and Hilary Rees: Views of An Antique Land: Egypt and Palestine During the First World War</strong> <br />
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Dr Steve Mills is a lecturer in archaeology at the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University and a specialist in auditory and sensory archaeology. He has worked in Egypt and has an established interest in landscape archaeology. <br />
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Professor Paul T. Nicholson is also at the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University where he teaches Egyptian archaeology and early technology. He regularly directs projects in Egypt and has an established interest in early archaeological photography. <br />
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Hilary Rees is the project officer for Views of an Antique Land. She is secretary to the Gwent branch of the Western Front Association.<br />
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This paper looks at the background to, and some of the results of, a Heritage Lottery-funded project based at Cardiff University which is examining images of Egypt and Palestine taken during the First World War. The project will provide a website which descendants of those who served in the conflict can use to better understand the landscape and societies in which their ancestors served, but will go further by providing images of the archaeological sites and settlements as well as photographs of military subjects. These, often dated, images give what is, quite literally, a snapshot of Egypt and Palestine at this important period and should prove useful to archaeologists, historians and film makers as well as to those researching military or family history. <br />
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Accompanied by a small exhibition of ephemera from the project<br />
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<strong><span style="color: black;">Saturday September 24</span></strong> <br />
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<strong>Philip Walker: New Light on the Arab Revolt and the Forgotten Few Who Shaped It</strong> <br />
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Philip Walker is a retired archaeologist who spent many years as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments with English Heritage. He is writing a book on his research, which grew out of a paper he presented at the Society’s 2010 Symposium. He has travelled in Libya, Palestine, Morocco, Xinjiang (the Muslim far west of China) and other parts of Central Asia. He has a particular interest in the relationship between British Intelligence and the Arab Revolt. <br />
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New research into a key group of British officers based at Jeddah demonstrates that they saved the Arab Revolt from likely collapse before and during T. E. Lawrence’s indispensable involvement. In particular, the influence of one officer over the Revolt’s leader, Sherif Hussein of Mecca, was at least as important as that of Lawrence over Emir Feisal. Without these forgotten efforts, the world would not have heard of “Lawrence of Arabia”. This paper draws on archival research including extraordinary unknown private collections of Arab Revolt photographs, letters, diaries, memoirs and other documents. Philip discovered this material by tracking down the descendants of British officers in Panama, Jamaica, the USA, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Denmark and various parts of the UK. A fresh interpretation of the Revolt will be complemented by a selection from hundreds of stunning photographs, to be shown for the first time.<br />
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<strong>Professor Ali Allawi: Feisal and the Arab Revolt</strong> <br />
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Born in Baghdad, Ali Allawi graduated in 1968 with a BSc in Civil Engineering. He continued his postgraduate studies in regional planning at the London School of Economics, and went on to obtain an MBA from Harvard University in 1971. He worked in finance and investment during the 1970s, and following an academic period at St Antony’s College, Oxford, he was appointed Minister of Trade of Iraq in 2004. In the same year he was appointed to be Iraq’s first post-war Minister of Defence. In 2005 he was elected to Iraq’s Transitional National Assembly and became Minister of Finance. Since 2006 he has been elected to different academic appointments around the world, appeared on many Western TV programmes and delivered numerous lectures related to Iraq. He has published many books on Iraq and the Islamic civilisation and in 2014 his major political biography of Feisal appeared to great acclaim. He continues to lecture and present programmes on the politics and history of the Middle East. <br />
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This paper looks at the type of states or confederation of states and political organisations that Feisal expected as an outcome of the Arab Revolt, Lawrence’s perspectives on this, and the final pattern of states that did in fact emerge. One contention is that Feisal’s vision was far more conducive to stability, security and prosperity in the post-Ottoman world than the failed mandate system.<br />
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<strong>George Thompson: Seeing Arabia: The Personal Photographs of T. E. Lawrence taken between 1916 and 1918</strong> <br />
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George Thompson lives in the United States where he devotes his time to lecturing, writing and developing programmes on the First World War. After more than 25 years in higher education, as a university professor and assistant dean, he returned to academia as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the History and Philosophy of Medicine Department at the University of Kansas Medical Centre. Professor Thompson’s knowledge of the war and his skill in programme development resulted in his being elected President of the World War Historical Association, Chair of the Midwest Chapter of the Western Front Association, US Branch, and serving as a member of the Academic Advisory Committee for the National World War One Museum and Memorial. <br />
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<strong>Seeing Arabia</strong> will examine a selection of wartime photographs taken by T. E. Lawrence. The images will be viewed from several contexts: geographical, chronological, historical, and as photographic objects. These approaches will reveal to us the man, his values and his photographic motives, and allow us to evaluate his effectiveness as a photographer. The presentation will place Lawrence in a larger context which was his era’s use of photography as a tool to document one’s perceptions and experiences. <br />
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Seeing Arabia will describe how Lawrence’s pre-war life established his aesthetic and historical views that would influence his future choice of photo-graphic content and techniques. It will also reveal why his images are not just a significant historical record but are elegant visual statements.<br />
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<strong>John Johnson-Allen: T. E. Lawrence and the Red Sea Patrol</strong> <br />
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John Johnson-Allen went to sea in 1961 with the BP Tanker Company and spent nearly nine years at sea, rising to the rank of Second Officer. He then pursued a career in the property industry. Since retiring 10 years ago, he has gained an MA in maritime history and been elected a Liveryman of the Honourable Company of Master Mariners. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Institute of Navigation, Chairman of the Institute of Seamanship and a member of the Society for Nautical Research. He has written two previous books: Voices from the Bridge (with David Smith) and They Couldn’t Have Done It Without Us; The Merchant Navy in the Falklands War. He lectures on maritime subjects and is researching for a fourth book. <br />
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Following extensive research into the activities of the ships of the Red Sea Patrol, it has become evident that without the work of those ships, the Arab Revolt would have failed and Lawrence would have remained an obscure officer in the military bureaucracy of Cairo. This paper looks at the work of the Royal Navy, largely unreported at the time for political reasons, using primary source material from the ships’ logs and other early sources. Lawrence was aware of the importance and relevance of the Royal Navy in their Red Sea operations and commented on it on many occasions. He reported in 1918 that “the naval side of the … operations, when the time comes to tell of it, will provide a most interesting case of the value of command of the sea …” Until now, nobody has investigated what was behind those comments. This paper uncovers a new angle on the Lawrence legend.<br />
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<span style="color: black;"><strong>Sunday September 25</strong> </span></div>
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<strong>Group Captain John Alexander: “Aeroplanes and Arabs”: T. E. Lawrence as Proponent of Air Power and the British Way in</strong> <strong>Warfare</strong> <br />
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John Alexander is a Group Captain in the RAF Regiment, the successor to the RAF armoured car companies formed to help garrison Iraq following the 1921 Cairo Conference, in which Trenchard offered Lawrence a commission. A specialist in air/land integration and an Arabic speaker, he served in the Falkland Islands in 1982; on secondment to the Sultan of Oman; at Tabuk on the Hejaz Railway in the 1990/91 Gulf War; in Iraq from 2003 to 2005; and in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 2011. He has conceptualised warfare in appointments in think-tanks at the RAF, Luftwaffe and the MOD. A graduate of Newcastle, the Open, Cambridge (as a Chief of the Air Staff Fellow) and Pakistan National Defence Universities, he was recently a Chief of the Air Staff Visiting Research Fellow at the Changing Character of War programme at Pembroke College, Oxford. He has published in the Royal United Services Institute Journal (based on his work on Taliban outreach), Air Power Review and Asian Affairs. T. E. Lawrence’s fame derived from the contrast between the warfare of the Arab Revolt and the attrition of the Western Front. His conception of guerrilla warfare influenced Basil Liddell Hart’s theory of the “Indirect Approach” and his cultural understanding is now a totem for contemporary counter-insurgents. Yet in the ever growing Lawrence literature there is little linking his concept of war-fare and his choice of Service for post-war enlistment. This paper uses archival research to argue that Lawrence and his colleagues employed a strikingly modern British “way in warfare”, using armoured cars, machine guns and aeroplanes to avoid Arab attrition and minimise British presence, and Britain’s economic and maritime strength to subsidise proxies and provide operational mobility. The paper concludes that this example of liberal militarism throws light on Lawrence’s subsequent support for air control in Iraq, and enlistment in the RAF.<br />
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<strong>Kerry Webber: Colonel Newcombe and Lawrence: Beyond Arabia</strong> <br />
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Kerry Webber is a British writer, photographer and designer who has spent many years travelling and working in the Middle East. He became interested in the Arab Revolt and the Palestine Campaigns of the First World War which inevitably brought him into contact with the legend of “Lawrence of Arabia”. Intrigued by Lawrence’s claim that fellow officers could “each tell a like tale”, he began to explore those peripheral figures and decided to research the life of Stewart Newcombe, eventually publishing articles and giving lectures on his findings. In 2000 he joined the T. E. Lawrence Society and was elected to its Committee, sitting on its editorial panel under the chairmanship of the late Philip Kerrigan. Kerry also contributes biographies to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies. He now lives in Spain and his book on Newcombe will be published in 2016. <br />
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Colonel Newcombe of the Royal Engineers was already a legend in the deserts of Arabia before he was joined in Cairo during the early months of the First World War by a group of extraordinary specialists in Middle Eastern affairs. One member of this group was T. E. Lawrence. Newcombe’s story, like those of other unsung figures in the Anglo-Arabian theatre of war, has been eclipsed by the legend of “Lawrence of Arabia”, and has languished in the dusty recesses of regimental records, government files or in the words of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. <br />
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<strong>Colonel Newcombe and Lawrence: Beyond Arabia</strong> explores the unique friendship between the two men, that began in a pre-war desert meeting south of Beersheba and endured for more than 20 years until Newcombe was at last able to describe Lawrence as being like a younger brother. At Lawrence’s funeral, history records Newcombe as representing the Arabian years as one of the six pall bearers; this paper shows how much more this relationship meant to both men.<br />
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<strong>Dr Neil Faulkner: Lawrence of Arabia’s War</strong> <br />
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Neil is an archaeologist and historian who works as a lecturer, writer, editor and broadcaster. He is co-director of the Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project in Norfolk and the Great Arab Revolt Project in Jordan. Educated at King’s College, Cambridge, and the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, he is a Research Fellow at the University of Bristol and Editor of Military History Monthly. The author of countless magazine articles and academic papers, his books include: Apocalypse: The Great Jewish Revolt against Rome, AD 66-73; Rome: Empire of the Eagles; and A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics. Lawrence of Arabia’s War will be published by Yale University Press in Spring 2016. <br />
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Neil Faulkner was joint academic director of the decade-long Great Arab Revolt Project in Jordan. The discovery and interpretation of the archaeological remains have transformed understanding of the war in the desert in 1916-18. Neil will address four of the key themes: 1). The way in which Lawrence’s character as a Romantic and an Orientalist equipped him to play a unique role in the Arab Revolt. 2) The rich interaction of tradition and modernity, symbolised by the camel and the train, during the war. 3) The seminal contribution of Lawrence and the Sherifian Arabs to the development of modern guerrilla warfare. 4) The way in which the evidence on the ground has confirmed the scale of the insurgency and the essential veracity of Lawrence’s account in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. <br />
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<strong> </strong><em>Accompanied by an exhibition related to the Great Arab Revolt Project in Jordan</em><br />
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<strong>Dick Benson-Gyles: The Boy in the Mask</strong> <br />
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Dick Benson-Gyles was educated at Marlborough College and is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. A professional editor and freelance writer, who has been writing for the Western Morning News for 25 years, he has also been an archaeologist in Iraq and TV documentary presenter. His new book, The Boy in the Mask: The Hidden World of Lawrence of Arabia, is due to be published in Spring 2016. <br />
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This presentation will explore Dick Benson-Gyles’ quest to uncover previously unexplained areas in the life of Lawrence. The talk will explore a personal mission to reveal the man behind the mask: the secret Lawrence. Lawrence’s lost Irish heritage will be explored - his father’s real family (the aristocratic, Anglo-Irish Chapmans), his abandoned half-sisters (with evocative interviews), his illegitimacy, and his mother’s obscure forebears. His concealment from his titled and wealthy Irish family affected Lawrence more deeply than thought. We will also have an insight into some of the mysteries and questions still remaining around Lawrence and his life. The presentation will be supported by a wide range of unseen family and documentary photographs, never before published.<br />
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<em>Please note that this is a provisional programme and may be subject to change.</em> </div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-37290749900423687822015-10-22T14:20:00.000+02:002015-10-22T14:20:27.696+02:00Lawrence Symposium - Update on Speakers <div style="text-align: justify;">
The T.E. Lawrence Society have now published a provisional list of guest speakers for their <b>14th T.E. Lawrence Society Symposium</b> to be held at St. John's College, Oxford, on 23-25 September 2016.</div>
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A special programme of lectures will mark the centenary of the start of the Arab Revolt: The planned line-up of speakers is as follows:</div>
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<b>John Alexander - </b>Lawrence as a Proponent of Air Power </div>
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<b>Professor Ali Allawi - </b>Feisal and the Arab Revolt </div>
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<b>Philip Walker - </b>Army Colleagues of Lawrence in the Arab Revolt </div>
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<b>Marilyn Holehouse - </b>Lawrence's Family </div>
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<b>Dr. Neil Faulkner - </b>Archaeology of the Arab Revolt </div>
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<b>John Johnson-Allen - </b>T.E. Lawrence and the Red Sea Patrol </div>
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<b>Dr. David Murphy - </b>Colonel Joyce and Lawrence </div>
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<b>Kerry Webber - </b>Colonel Newcombe and Lawrence </div>
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<b>Roger Holehouse - </b>Diplomatic Background to the Arab Revolt </div>
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<b>Professor Paul Nicholson - </b>Images of Egypt Project</div>
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Accommodation for the two day event will be in the rooms of the historic Oxford college. A splendid formal dinner will be held in the Great Hall on the Saturday. To reserve your place - non-members welcome - contact Harriet Coates on <b>hon.secretary@telsociety.org </b></div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-75854637476503671872015-09-29T13:41:00.000+02:002016-02-13T10:57:14.506+01:00The Lawrence Symposium, St. John's College, Oxford, 23-25 September 2016<div style="text-align: justify;">
Next year the T.E. Lawrence Society holds its <b>14th Society Symposium</b> at St. John's College, Oxford. It is also the centenary anniversary for the Arab Revolt. In recognition of the role played by Stewart Newcombe in the campaign I have been invited as a guest speaker to discuss the fascinating relationship between Lawrence and Newcombe before, during and after the Revolt. </div>
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Also speaking will be <b>Professor Ali Alawi</b>, from Iraq, to talk about <i>King Feisal and the Fall of the Ottoman Empire</i>. His recent book on Feisal is the first complete biography of the man and the monarch who was a central player in the Revolt and the development of the Middle East after the war. </div>
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<b>Philip Walker</b> will share his research on the <i>Service and Intelligence Colleagues of Lawrence</i> with many new insights into the Arab Revolt. A past speaker at the 2012 Symposium, Philip has recently written a book on those officers who slipped below the radar of historians, and whose role in helping safeguard and shape the Arab Revolt deserves to be celebrated as its centenary year in 2016 approaches.</div>
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Another speaker, <b>Dr. David Murphy</b>, also a speaker from past symposia, will present <i>Colonel Joyce and Lawrence</i>. </div>
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<b>John Alexander</b>, from the RAF, will speak on<i> T.E. Lawrence as a Proponent of Air Power</i>.</div>
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<b>Dr. Neil Faulkner</b> from the <i><b>Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP) military archaeological programme</b></i>, which ended last year, will share the exciting discoveries and conclusions reached from many years' work on this project. </div>
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With a few names still to be confirmed and announced it looks set to be a very interesting couple of days, with many new insights and research discoveries about Lawrence and his wartime activities and relationships. </div>
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Members and non-members alike can attend the Symposium. If you wish to book a place contact the Society from their website at <b><a href="http://www.telsociety.org.uk/" target="_blank">www.telsociety.org.uk</a></b> </div>
KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2897888900150378255.post-59727345487661956732015-06-05T18:30:00.000+02:002016-02-13T10:57:49.820+01:00T.E. Lawrence and the Hejaz Postage Stamps 1916-1917<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One piastre Hejaz stamp</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ronald Storrs, Oriental Secretary to the Arab Bureau,
explained the thinking behind the simple but highly effective and visible means
of proclaiming the independence of the Hejaz from the Ottoman Empire in 1916 in
his memoir <i>Orientations</i> (1937): </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“Shortly after the Arab Revolution we found that its success
was being denied or blanketed by Enemy Press (which was of course quoted by
neutrals), and we decided that the best proof that it had taken place would be
provided by an issue of Hejaz postage stamps, which would carry the Arab
propaganda, self-paying and incontrovertible, to the four corners of the
earth.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">(Storrs,
Ronald, <i>Orientations</i>, 1937)</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Storrs, an aesthete with exquisite good taste, took Lawrence
off to the Arab Museum in Cairo to collect suitable motifs “in order that the design in wording, spirit and
ornament, might be as far as possible representative and reminiscent of a
purely Arab source of inspiration. Pictures and views were avoided, for these
never formed part of Arab decoration, and are foreign to its art; so also
was European lettering.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In this,
their first joint endeavour, Lawrence and Storrs found agreement in the
creative direction of the project and thereafter Lawrence was given a free hand
in completing the design and production of the stamps to this format. The result was a
series of arabesque designs taken from a number of sources which were worked up
by two Cairo designers, Agami Effendi Ali and Mustafa Effendi Gozlan, and were soon
put into production at the Survey of Egypt’s printing department located at
Giza, some two miles from the Savoy Hotel in which G.H.Q. was housed. From the
outset, Storrs was happy to let Lawrence – whom he called his ‘super cerebral
companion’ - take over the running of the production, planning every detail from
the design concept to print. As Storrs said:</span></span></div>
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"It was quickly apparent that Lawrence already possessed or had
immediately assimilated a complete working technique of philatelic and
three-color reproduction, so that he was able to supervise the issue from start
to finish." </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In fact, Lawrence had long experience of liaising with government
printers with his work on map reproduction at the War Office in London and for Military
Intelligence in Cairo so he was perfectly suited to the task. He even had his
own ideas, long held it seems, on what constituted good philatelic design and
production. ‘It’s rather amusing,’ he wrote to his brother, Arnie, ‘because one
has long had ideas as to what a stamp should look like, and now one can put
them roughly into practice...I’m going to have flavoured gum on the back, so
that one may lick without unpleasantness.’ This became a running joke and
although it was never put into action he used to like to tell an apocryphal
story that the Arabs enjoyed the flavours so much – strawberry essence for the
red, pineapple for the green - that they would lick the gum clean away so that
the stamps fell off the envelopes in the post and then postage could be charged
double to make a very good profit for the Revolt. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>THE STAMPS </b></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The <b>1 piastre stamp</b>
in blue (shown above) depicts as a central motif the phrase ‘Makkah al-Mukarramah’
(Mecca the Blessed, or the Honoured), a phrase that is used whenever Mecca is
mentioned, and above are the words ‘Hejaz Post’ in a lozenge which is mirrored
below showing the price as ‘1 piastre’. The date of 1334 in two side panels
corresponds to the launch of the Arab Revolt according to the Arabic calendar
which differed slightly to the Ottoman one. The design elements were taken from
an ancient prayer niche in the al-Amri mosque at Qus in Upper Egypt. Lawrence
was particularly pleased with the design of this stamp as he said it was pure
Arabic in style while the <b>quarter-piastre</b>
in green (shown below) was Egyptian and showed the carved door panels of the
al-Salih Tala'i mosque on Shari’ Qasabet Radwan in Cairo. He thought the <b>half-piastre</b> in red looked Chinese
although its central design was taken from a page of a Holy Quran in the 14<sup>th</sup>
Century mosque of Sultan <i><span style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">Al</span></i><span class="st"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">-</span></i></span><span class="st"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Malik
Az-Zahir Sayf ad-Din </span></span><i><span style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">Barquq</span></i>
on <i><span style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">Shari</span></i><span class="st"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">' </span></i></span><span class="st"><span style="line-height: 115%;">al<i>-</i><wbr></wbr></span></span><i><span style="font-style: normal; line-height: 115%;">Nahhasin </span></i>in Cairo. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">More postage stamps followed (6 in total) plus a set of three tax stamps but by then Lawrence had changed from being ‘Lawrence of Carchemish, of
Cairo - of any place for a little while - and became permanently Lawrence of
Arabia,’ as Storrs so accurately described the transformation.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Quarter-piastre Hejaz stamp</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lawrence’s connection to the Hejaz stamps issue of 1916-1917
was acknowledged by Mr. (later Sir) Ernest Dowson, Surveyor-General of Egypt, in a coded reference in the introduction to a booklet entitled <i>A
Short Note on the Design and Issue of Postage Stamps Prepared by the Survey of
Egypt for His Highness Husein Emir & Sherif of Mecca & King of the
Hejaz</i>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">‘It is desired to take this opportunity to express the
obligation due to all those who gave assistance or counsel, in particular to<b> El Emir ‘Awrunis</b> of the Northern
Armies of His Highness the King of the Hejaz, at whose suggestion the work was
undertaken, and to whose critical acumen the success met with must largely be ascribed.’
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KERRY WEBBERhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652029439739931461noreply@blogger.com0