Under the hammer

Without the personal donation to the Imperial War Museum (IWM) of Major Herbert Garland’s papers by his late daughter, Mena, the latest publications on the 1916 Arab Revolt in the Hejaz, and of T.E. Lawrence’s participation in particular, would have been bereft of fresh and exciting information that has undoubtedly added to our understanding of the minutiae of the war in the desert as well as bringing out of the shadows a little known personality that has since joined the ranks of Lawrence’s desert raiders in his own right. The matter of Colonel Stewart Newcombe’s books and papers going under the hammer at Bonhams on 19 March 2014 has also raised the hope that an academic establishment or library such as the Huntington Library in California or ideally the IWM in London might stump up to purchase the papers in order for future researchers to be able to benefit from their public accessibility. At a list price of somewhere between £20,000 – 30,000 plus buying costs, the collection of papers from two Army Field Service Correspondence Books, incorporating Newcombe’s Hejaz diary as well as carbon copies of letters, does not come cheap.

Like Mena Garland, Lawrence was also keen to support the IWM and personally donated several items during his lifetime. The story behind Lawrence’s photographic collection at the museum is an interesting one and illustrates the complex and often fraught negotiations that he encountered when in the year before he died he attempted to make a donation of prints and negatives taken during the Hejaz campaign. During these final months of his life we also see how Lawrence’s fame continued to be a burden to him in ways that will resonate with the lives of modern celebrities.

A repository for war
In the process of researching and writing the biography, ‘T.E. Lawrence’ In Arabia and After, Captain Basil Liddell Hart had gathered together a large collection of negatives and photographs of the desert campaign in the years leading up to the publication of his book in March 1934. These had been personally donated by Lawrence who also assisted in the content of the book in a series of question and answer letters and in private conversations between subject and writer. Shortly before publication Liddell Hart raised the question of what to do with the collection which had grown in size over a period of sixteen years since the end of the war. Liddell Hart suggested placing them with the Imperial War Museum, which had moved in 1924 from its original site in the Crystal Palace to its then current location in two galleries adjacent to the Imperial Institute on Exhibition Road, South Kensington. Lawrence, who knew the Curator, Charles J. ffoulkes, and had often visited the Museum at its Crystal Palace address, proposed making a final decision after the book went to press.

Lawrence’s earliest meeting with ffoulkes can be traced back to Oxford University when Lawrence was a student attending lectures given by ffoulkes, an acclaimed expert on mediaeval armour and weapons. ffoulkes went on to become Curator of the Tower Armouries in 1913, and in 1917 was appointed the first Curator and Secretary of the National War Museum, established with Cabinet approval in the midst of the Great War as a record of the nation’s effort and sacrifice. By the time the Museum was formally opened in 1920, the ‘National’ element had been dropped in favour of the more far-reaching ‘Imperial’ description in recognition of the supreme contribution to the war by Britain and her Empire.

Lawrence’s friendship with another museum personality, Edward T. Leeds, Assistant Keeper at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, produced a significant collection of letters spanning many years. In a letter to Leeds dated 15 December 1917, written from Cairo, Lawrence exclaimed, ‘Commend me to ffoulkes...I’ve got a trophy he would like for his War Museum.’ This was a regular Lee Enfield .303 rifle (SMLE) that possessed quite a history. It had originally been taken by the Turks from the British at Gallipoli, one of four rifles taken as war booty, as the inlaid gold Turkish lettering damascened onto its receiver chamber indicates. It was subsequently acquired by Prince Feisal – one of the four sons of Sherif Hussein of Mecca who each received a rifle - who in turn presented it to Lawrence. It is inscribed on the stock T.E.L. 4.12.16, presumably the date he received it, and in time he cut five notches near the magazine, each denoting a Turk killed. Originally, he was trying to get Zeid’s rifle for the Museum (Hussein’s fourth son), while Abdullah’s had been presented to Ronald Storrs, the Oriental Secretary of the British Agency in Cairo. After the war, Lawrence presented his rifle to H.M. King George V who in turn gifted it on loan to the Museum, as originally proposed by Lawrence.

A remarkable gilt bronze wreath that Kaiser Wilhelm II had placed on the tomb of Saladin in Damascus and was later ‘looted’ by Lawrence, ‘as Saladin no longer required it’, was also bequeathed to the IWM. It was left to ffoulkes to fend off complaints from anonymous letters threatening Lawrence and himself for this piece of iconoclasm when photos of it appeared in the press.

On the evening of 11 November 1918, on the day the Armistice was signed, Lawrence, Leeds and ffoulkes met for a quiet meal in the Union Club. In nearby Trafalgar Square the crowds kept up their revelry and high-spirits. As Leeds recalled, it was ‘a night of conversation never to be forgotten.’

Images of war
When Liddell Hart’s book was published in March 1934 it generated renewed interest in Lawrence as well as the inevitable intrusion from the ‘press-hounds’. Questions were raised by the title of the book, with the press alerted to a further mystery by the inverted commas placed around Lawrence’s name causing considerable speculation as to what was Lawrence’s ‘real name’. Both author and subject had ridden close to the wind on their decision to make a point out of the fact that ‘Lawrence’ had as much claim on his identity as had Ross or Shaw. It would simply take a determined look through Debrettes to make the connection between Sir Walter Raleigh and the Chapman family of Ireland and thus unravel the family secret. The publicity surrounding the publication of Liddell Hart’s book also renewed interest in a film project based on Revolt in the Desert, adding to Lawrence’s anguish over his impending retirement.

By early May Lawrence was writing, ‘I’m tired. I want to get away and be at peace, so badly. That is what defeat means.’ This state of depression could have easily overwhelmed him if it was not for the solace of Clouds Hill, a ‘hushed green place, noisy with birds only, and fertile only with weeds.’ This is where his books were, twelve hundred of them, each read at least once and worth reading again, and a gramophone to play music on. It was to be his refuge, a sanctuary from fame.

The Lawrence Collection that Liddell Hart was instructed by Lawrence to deposit with the IWM in 1934 consisted mainly of those photographs relating to the war years in the desert campaign spanning the years 1916 to 1918 and originating in the Hejaz in support of the Arab Revolt initiated by Sherif Hussein of Mecca in order to overthrow Ottoman control, with Damascus as its ultimate goal. Other photographs were taken before the war and others during the 1921 Cairo Conference. The complete collection at this time amounted to a little over 1500 negatives and plates.

On 15 March 1934, Captain A.J. Insall, a former RFC officer and latterly Keeper of the IWM Photographic Archive, went personally to Liddell Hart’s London residence at 60 Gloucester Place to collect the photographs. Despite the increasingly cramped conditions of its South Kensington location, the Museum was extremely pleased to take receipt of such a significant and historically important gift. However, before they could plan to do anything with it there were a few points of ownership to consider, at least while Lawrence was still alive. A standardised assignment form drawn up by the Treasury to clarify ownership of gifts and copyright was sent through Liddell Hart to Lawrence for his signature.

The following day, Insall sent Liddell Hart a personal note of thanks ahead of a more formal appreciation from his Trustees adding, ‘If the opportunity offers will you please tell Col. Lawrence how grateful the Trustees are, though he will no doubt not wish to have any fuss made about it’. Before matters could be finalised it seems a clause in the assignment form was causing some confusion - the setting of a value of £500 on the collection with full reproduction rights. As Liddell Hart was quick to point out, there were ‘a number of American millionaire collectors who would be willing to give a sum exceeding £500 for this collection’.

A man called Lawrence
While the conditions of the loan of the photographic collection were being clarified, Lawrence was dealing with the delicate matter of an imposter who was presenting himself as the Colonel around London. This extraordinary story had been brought to Lawrence’s attention by Liddell Hart himself. Lawrence brought up the subject in a letter to Liddell Hart dated 17 May 1934: ‘Now about this other bloke - If you see the blighter do rub into him that I never have signed myself as Lawrence since 19 twenty something. He is years out of date. In fact he doesn't sound the right sort of man at all. Do you feel that I ought to do something?’ 

In fact, an obvious solution had already occurred to Lawrence who realised he could shift the expense of any possible legal action onto the charitable trust he had set up to administer the copyright of his book Revolt in the Desert. One of the Trustees was a solicitor, Edward Eliot, who Lawrence had consulted over changing his name to Shaw. As he explained to Liddell Hart: ‘My trouble is that I cannot well risk legal expenses: but Eliot might feel able to assume that a 'T. E. Lawrence' in being today was an infringement of his trust property, for the Revolt Trust owns the property in that name. If so, he could ask the bloke to stop his games, and charge his trouble to the fund. I'd pay a small bill, up to 3 or 4 pounds, but couldn't risk the promising of more. Will you send on the suggestion (or perhaps this note) to Eliot and see if he can square his conscience to the idea?’ Lawrence’s realisation of his predicament was acute: ‘Failing Eliot, I can't think of anybody else who would do - unless you tell the Daily Express of the existence of a bogus Colonel L.! That would properly boil it.’ 

It seems that this was not the first time that the legend of Lawrence of Arabia had played into the hands of unscrupulous individuals, many of them women, who threatened him in writing to reveal that they had been taken advantage of in some way. Letters of this sort often resulted in Lawrence calling in the police when the accuser grew too urgent in their demands. In this case, however, no letter had been sent, ‘so I can't well do that, now... can I?’ he said.

With Edward Eliot on board and the Trust financially behind the operation, the matter of Lawrence’s imposter resolved itself in less than a month. On the 13 June 1934, a trap was set in the offices of a company on the Strand in London who had been duped into believing the imposter, a commercial traveller named George Henry Rogers, was Lawrence. At a time when it was known Rogers would be there, Lawrence - who had travelled up especially from Southampton - Eliot and a couple of policemen entered and confronted the startled man. The next day, Lawrence informed Liddell Hart of the successful conclusion to his dilemma. ‘I was in London for a few hours yesterday: with Eliot and two Bow Street experts we interviewed Rogers, my imposure, and persuaded him that he was not me. To my relief, he agreed at once.’ With his sense of humour intact, Lawrence added, ‘Had he stuck to his statements I should have begun to question myself.’

Eliot demanded that Rogers list all the people he had deceived. The hapless man reeled off a list and stammered that he had never attempted to do anything dishonest and held Lawrence in the highest respect, always trying to live up to his name. A signed confession ended the matter.

Lawrence thanked Liddell Hart for his help in bringing the matter to his notice. ‘He was a little worm of a man,’ he recalled. ‘Comically enough, he has been under observation as a case by the specialists of a mental institution, still under my former name. We arranged for him to write to his various victims, and explain that there had been a personation.’ Clearly, Lawrence was not in the least impressed by his imposter: ‘I am not flattered at the thought that he got away with it successfully. An obviously feeble creature with the wrinkling face of a chimpanzee.’

During the run-up to unmasking the imposter, Liddell Hart had visited Lawrence who was seeing out the last few months of his RAF service based at the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment, Felixstowe, although in reality he was never there for very long, having a roving brief to oversee the construction and testing of high speed rescue vessels. Among other matters, Liddell Hart discussed the assignment form. After Lawrence read the copyright clause he flatly refused to sign anything that would give away his rights to the collection and further would not allow any photographs to be reproduced during his lifetime without his specific permission, although he was quite willing for the Trustees to deal unreservedly with the collection after his death. There the matter lay for the time being.

Meanwhile, Insall pushed ahead with the collection in hand and on 10 July 1934, he was at last able to inform Liddell Hart that he had had the bulk of the Lawrence prints mounted and they were now ready for inspection. He hoped that both Liddell Hart and Lawrence could spare the time to amplify some of the pencil notes on the back of the prints into accurate photo captions, especially as some of them were in Arabic. Aware of Lawrence’s self-imposed exile from the public gaze he promised to undertake ‘not to make any fuss of him’. With Lawrence’s workload and impending exit from the RAF it was unlikely he would put in an appearance, especially as his closest friends had been waiting patiently in line to catch a glimpse of the Mystery Man of Arabia, of Southampton, of Bridlington, of anywhere for a little while.

A change of mind
With the copyright clause remaining unresolved, it was a letter to the Museum from a representative of the German educational publishing company, B.G. Teubner of Leipzig, which threw up the question of reproduction rights once again. At the end of November, Teubner were seeking permission to obtain illustrations for use in their new edition of the short publication, ‘With Colonel Lawrence in the Arab Revolt’, first published in 1932. Johanna von Giehrl approached the Museum to seek permission from Lawrence through his intermediary Liddell Hart to reproduce up to six of his photographs. ‘We, of course, would be ready to pay a fee of the usual amount,’ she wrote. Anticipating problems, she asked if it was at least possible to obtain prints so that their own illustrator could use them to get some idea of desert scenery. Lawrence’s reply to Insall was quick and decisive: ‘I see no useful purpose in making it any more attractive for German children to read about my supposed exploits, and so I have asked Captain Liddell Hart to tell the lady that I do not wish any of my photographs to be used in the ways she suggests. Perhaps it will save further correspondence if you take this as my attitude in every case, without submission? I have no wish that anyone should use any of these photographs, at any rate during my lifetime. I regret their being ever shown to enquirers.’ It seems that Lawrence was having second thoughts.

The Curator of the Museum responded in the only way he could under the circumstances, although he was clearly aggrieved by the way the whole matter had escalated: ‘Our only wish is to carry out your instructions,’ he wrote to Lawrence, ‘...we have consulted Captain Liddell Hart throughout.’ After agreeing that the Museum will permit no further use of the photographs or show them to anyone without Lawrence’s express permission, Insall was further irritated by the next letter that landed on his desk directly from Lawrence dated 13 December 1934. Lawrence expressed his gratitude for the Museum’s assurances but went on to say: ‘I’ve kept those photographs quiet for some years, and what with film companies and things, the need for quiet continues!’ Lawrence gave Insall his permanent address at Clouds Hill, ‘which you should probably note in case questions arise,’ before delivering the final blow with a typical Lawrentian flourish: ‘and I shall confidently hope that you’ll never have occasion to write to me.’

If his reply to the Museum was a little terse then undoubtedly Lawrence was feeling the strain now that the end of his RAF service was looming. With only a few weeks to go until he retired, the thought of cutting himself adrift was playing heavily on his mind. Insall wrote to Liddell Hart explaining Lawrence’s decision but was clearly frustrated himself and proposed to place ‘the whole box of trick in the strong-room.’ Before such drastic action further clarification was needed and Liddell Hart was asked once again to seek a definitive ruling as to the ultimate disposal of the collection. Even he was unclear as to Lawrence’s intentions and batted the question back to Insall: ‘Is it merely that he does not want them used, or that he does not even want them shown?’ The question hung in the air until the last day of the year when Insall replied that he had locked them away and would not let anybody see them unless they come with very clear instructions from Liddell Hart or Lawrence himself. As to the ownership of the collection, Insall felt that the only way forward was to sit tight and let the future look after itself. Rather presciently he wrote: ‘The point that had occurred to me was the possibility of some relation claiming them in the event T.E.S. blowing himself up in one of his motor launches.’

Liddell Hart, rising to his role as intermediary, wrote to the museum saying that he would contact Lawrence again to clarify the sticking point as he understood that the last thing the Museum wanted was to have a largely unusable goldmine on its hands, especially as Lawrence-related items had proven to be a big draw in the years following the Armistice. However, the problem would soon solve itself, although not in the manner Insall had imagined.

A perfect freedom
As the clock ran down on his RAF duties, Lawrence sent off a flurry of letters on 31 December from his room at the Ozone Hotel in Bridlington including this to Liddell Hart: ‘For myself, I am going to taste the flavour of true leisure. For 46 years have I worked and been worked. Remaineth 23 years (of expectancy). May they be like Flecker’s, ‘a great Sunday that goes on and on.’ If I like this leisure when it comes, do me the favour of hoping that I may be able to afford its prolongation for ever and ever.’

On 13 May 1935, after enjoying an all too brief period of leisure, Lawrence flew over the handlebars of his powerful Brough motorbike after narrowly avoiding a full-scale collision with two errand boys on bicycles who he suddenly encountered upon entering a dip in the road leading to his cottage. He died six days later.

A Legacy
The T.E. Lawrence Photographic Collection at the Imperial War Museum is a goldmine of images not just from the war in the desert but of Ottoman and Arabian life in general. Eighty years after it was first donated to the museum it continues to be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history of the war and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the development of the region and the preservation of its traditions and customs. Today the collection includes photographs taken not just by Lawrence but also by many of his colleagues, including Clayton, Newcombe and Garland, as well as professional photographers from Palestine and the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. Many of the images depict the fellowship of the revolt - what Lawrence described as ‘the sweep of the open places, the taste of the wide winds, the sunlight, and the hopes in which we worked’. In image after image there is depicted the morning freshness of the world-to-be, while history reminds us that there was a greater force waiting in the wings to thank them kindly and take their victory to remake in their own kind of peace, a peace that continues to echo down the ages with the message that ‘youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age’. But even the peacemakers of 1919 could not have foreseen the future, nor control it if they had.

LINKS
For information on the Lawrence and Newcombe related items going under the hammer at Bonhams on 19 March 2014 see: Lawrence and Newcombe at auction

Or go to: www.bonhams.com

The Imperial War Museum London is currently closed to visitors until 19 July 2014 when a transformed IWM London will reopen in time for the Centenary of the First World War. Research facilities remain open.

Mena Garland 1919 - 2013

Mena Garland on her 90th birthday

I have received news that Major Herbert Garland's daughter Mena Garland (married surname O'Connor) passed away in Newport, Rhode Island, at 4am on Saturday morning aged 93. 

Mena was Herbert's sixth child and was born in Cairo on 17 November 1919 during his brief tenure as the Director of the Arab Bureau and editor of the final issues of the Arab Bulletin. See: Bimbashi (Major) Herbert Garland's story in An Oriental Assembly 

After long periods of ill-health brought on by the rigours of desert warfare Herbert Garland died from an aortic aneurism less than sixteen months after Mena was born, leaving scant record of the circumstances of his death. Remarkably, it took his daughter more than 80 years to discover her father's final resting place in an unmarked grave in the English town of Gravesend on the south bank of the Thames. Today that grave has the following inscription: “LOST BUT FOUND IN 2004”, a poignant reminder of the long journey taken by Mena to find the father she barely knew but who she wished to restore to his rightful place in the history of the desert campaigns of the First World War alongside Stewart Newcombe and T.E. Lawrence. It was a journey that ultimately helped reconnect the various strands of Herbert's family and renew worldwide interest in the career of the man recently called Lawrence's brother-in-arms. 

Bimbashi Herbert Garland

Regrettably, Mena was unable to read my entry on Herbert Garland for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography which is due to be published later this year, but she always showed a deep interest and appreciation of the entries in this blog that mentioned his exploits. 

See also: A young man's near miss!

A young man's near miss!

Herbert Garland's "providential escape” 

Workers arriving at the Woolwich Arsenal

The grandson of Major Herbert Garland, Chris Mitchell of New Zealand, sent in this interesting footnote to the life of Stewart Newcombe's colleague in the Hejaz (see my blog on Garland's fascinating life story dated Saturday, September 17, 2011). It seems that Garland very nearly didn't make it to the desert as many years earlier, under very different circumstances, he found himself less than half an hour away from almost certain death. On Thursday 19 June 1903, when aged 20 years old and a student of munitions, he was due to attend a class to learn how to handle lyddite explosive as part of his army training at the Royal Woolwich Arsenal ammunitions factory in South London. Since 1888, Britain had been manufacturing picric acid as a chemical compound for use in Army and Navy shells under the name lyddite, a highly unstable compound when allowed to over-dry. The shell packers at Woolwich had started work that morning at 7am checking the shells in the “danger buildings”, known as the “islands”, situated on Plumstead marshes about 1.5 miles from the main gate of the arsenal and far removed from the main town. These shells had been filled two days previously with liquid lyddite and left to gradually solidify. The men wore special clothing and felt-soled shoes against contaminating the compound which became highly volatile if salt picrates formed near exposed shell casings. At 8:11am Garland’s classroom hut and outlying buildings were completely destroyed by an enormous explosion that killed sixteen men and injured twice as many more. Windows were shattered up to a mile away and the noise could be heard three miles distant. Garland had been due to arrive at 8:30am to witness the manufacturing process and storage requirements. For him it was a very lucky escape.

A contemporary newspaper reported the gruesome details of the disaster and was quick to highlight the dangerous conditions experienced by the Arsenal workers on a daily basis: “The British Government pays from £1 to £1 10/ a week to work in the shell-filling sheds at Woolwich Arsenal. The pay is less than that of London County Council road-sweepers, and to earn it men must face death every minute of their working day.” To further illustrate the point, the newspaper stated, “The real cause of the latest disaster at the arsenal will probably always remain a mystery, for not one of the men implicated lives to tell the tale.” 

The following day a Sheffield newspaper reported that a local man, Herbert Garland, had “a providential escape” and a telegram had been received containing assurances of his safety. 

Lyddite Memorial

The incident was discussed in parliament and reported as far afield as the New York Times. Months later, a pink granite obelisk was erected over the mass grave of the victims in nearby Plumstead Cemetery.

But for those twenty minutes, Garland's future contribution to the war in the east would certainly have been sorely missed. The assault of Gallipoli, the defence of the Suez Canal and his contribution to the British Military Mission to the Hejaz in support of the Arab Revolt would each have been denied Garland's unique talents, as well as the undeniable bravery of a man who knew only too well the devastating effects of the tools of his trade. A further consequence of those missing minutes was pointed out by Garland's grandson who wrote, “If he had been a few minutes early on this particular day our Garland family branch would have ended there!”

My thanks once again go to Chris Mitchell for drawing the news item to my attention.

An Oriental Assembly - Bimbashi (Major) Herbert Garland

‘In loving memory of Major Herbert Garland OBE MC FCS 1880-1921 lost but found in 2004’ 

Herbert Garland

Behind this simple and enigmatic gravestone inscription lies the compelling and fascinating story of Major Herbert Garland, R.E., O.B.E., Military Cross, F.C.S., a gifted chemist and metallurgist who trained the Sherifian Arab Army in the use of explosives and demolitions during the Arab Revolt.  He had been a captain in the British Army in Cairo, having seen service in Sudan, and before the war he worked in Cairo as superintendant of a government explosives laboratory. Fascinated by the metallurgy of ancient artefacts, he was elected a Fellow of the Chemical Society (now the Royal Society of Chemistry) on 15 May 1913 and was later awarded a £10 grant to research ancient Egyptian alloys. During the first year of the war he invented a grenade and 174,000 were sent for use in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns. Photos in the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London show ‘Garland and Natives experimenting on Garland grenades.’ These short-barreled floor-mounted howitzers were approximately three feet in length and set at an appropriate angle to fire the missile at the enemy. Experiments with this type of weapon were conducted by Garland and native handlers over the safety of the Nile, the resulting splash giving a fairly accurate estimate of distance.

At the beginning of his service in the Hejaz he was promoted from Sergeant to Major (known as ‘Bimbashi’ in the Egyptian Army) and worked alongside Stewart Newcombe and T.E. Lawrence until he retired from the field of operations through illness and exhaustion. His arrival in the Hejaz can be said to be when the active war against the Ottomans in the region truly started.

An Uninsurable Occupation 

It was as an explosives expert that Garland had been sent out to the unforgiving environment of the Hejaz to train irregular troops, preceding both Newcombe and Lawrence in attacking the Hejaz Railway, and it was in this role that Lawrence was to write that Garland's "knowledge of Arabic" enabled him "to teach the art of demolition to unlettered Bedouin in a quick and ready way. His pupils admired a man who was never at a loss", adding: "Incidentally, he taught me how to be familiar with high explosive.” In fact, Garland was to be the first allied rail-breaker to derail a moving troop-train in February 1917 near Toweira Station using a contact detonating device of his own design soon after he and Newcombe had commenced long-range attacks to the interior accompanied by Bedouin forces.

Garland developed what became known as the ‘Garland Mine’, an explosive device which soon became the preferred method for attacking the line as it was virtually impossible to detect when laid properly. Lawrence reported back that he observed eleven men searching for twenty minutes for one he had buried beneath the rails before they eventually gave up. He was equally impressed by the way Garland worked with high explosives and the tools of his trade: "Sappers handled it like a sacrament, but Garland would shove a handful of detonators into his pocket with a string of primers, fuse, and fusees and jump gaily on his camel for a week's ride to the Hejaz railway." This is also Lawrence’s description of working with a Garland mine: “Laying a Garland mine was shaky work, but scrabbling in pitch darkness up and down a hundred yards of railway, feeling for a hair-trigger buried in the ballast, seemed, at the time, an almost uninsurable occupation. The two charges connected with it were so powerful that they would have rooted out seventy yards of track; and I saw visions of suddenly blowing up, not only myself, but my whole force, every moment. To be sure, such a feat would have properly completed the bewilderment of the Turks!”

Diverse observations 

Garland’s observations on Bedu culture during his time in the region provide an interesting alternative to Lawrence’s narrative in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. His comments on slavery, medical matters, camels, Arab clothing, the conduct and behaviour of the Bedu, as well as his own frustrations regarding the conduct and progress of the campaign against the Ottoman Army, contain many light-hearted but perceptive observations designed to inform and entertain a post-war audience. He wrote up his observations and later lectured on the desert campaign and it is these lecture notes that now form the bulk of the Garland Papers held at the IMW, a gift of his last surviving daughter Mena who aged 92 lives in the USA. The notes are full of interest for those interested in the minutiae of the Arab campaign.

Garland, who as a young man had written a short romantic novel set in Guernsey entitled Diverse Affections, included in his lecture notes fascinating information often omitted from official reports, recording items of daily existence in the Hejaz with all its distractions and amusements. Here is Garland on an encounter with a hungry tribesman: “A certain Bedu told me that if I would pay for a sheep, he would eat the whole of it at one sitting. I did not think such a feat was possible until I watched him do it and had to pay one pound for the animal as I had promised. In addition to the sheep he devoured about three lbs of rice which he boiled inside it.” He was equally impressed by the agility of the Bedu and of their hunting prowess, especially in their simple but effective method of catching hares: “An Arab explained to me that a hare, when pursued, runs in circles, and that, after chasing the animal several times circumferentially, the huntsman catches it by darting across the diameter.” 

He also described life in camp at Wejh, the coastal town that had been occupied by Sherifian troops since January 1917. Wejh was strategically and psychologically significant to the future of the campaign, allowing the Arabs, with their British and French allies, to attack almost at will along the line and able to keep the Ottoman troops pinned down in their garrisons, “strung like beads on the long thread of the Hejaz Railway.”  While Emir Feisal was preoccupied with politics, labouring day and night in his counsel tent, the Bedu entertained themselves with boisterous parades and exhibitions of joy-shooting, often for no reason at all or to accompany victory parades. Inevitably there were accidents. One such incident occurred when a group, playful behind the tents occupied by Newcombe and Lawrence, became a little too inquisitive with a dud bomb from one of the seaplanes, a dangerous relic from when the town was first captured. The ensuing explosion sent limbs scattering among the tents whose canvas sides immediately became crimson stained. Those tents that could be washed were exchanged while the rest were destroyed as unfit habitation. Throughout the camp, spread out like a new town, guests were billeted according to status, rank and tribal association at varying distances away from Feisal’s hearth. One day a guest tent went up in flames and almost roasted its inhabitants alive. The crowd went wild and roared heartily with laughter until the fire extinguished itself and the injured could be attended to. 

Joy-shooting could also be extremely hazardous and a mare was seriously wounded by a falling bullet, along with many tents pierced during the hailstorm of metal. Garland was one officer who was appalled by the Arabs love for this sort of exhibition and noted that at the end of a successful raid on the railway the return journey always took less time than going out to the line. As the triumphant Bedouin raiders approached the Sherif’s tent they would set off an erratic feu de joie in which every member of the party would fire off into the air as many rounds of ammunition as he could spare, creating “a joyous and spectacular affair.” The resulting cascade of falling bullets went largely ignored except among many of the accompanying British officers who thought the display was wasteful and dangerous. Garland thought that he should have been provided with a shrapnel helmet while in the camps, “for a bullet fired vertically into the air descends with a very uncomfortable velocity, as I observed personally when one dropped beside me during a Bedouin demonstration.”  

Such were the amusements and diversions in the scattered camp now settled happily in the gulleys and sandy valleys which ran back from the land-locked harbour of Wejh. This low lying valley was edged by a steep coral shelf, below which Feisal had pitched his numerous tents, those for living and receiving visitors, and more for the accommodation of guests, staff and servants. Newcombe and Lawrence had been honoured with a spot on some heights looking down on the plain and where in the evening they benefitted from a refreshing sea breeze. Lawrence also thought he could detect a sea murmur that reminded him of the echo of traffic that can be heard drifting up from a London side-street. Below them were located the Ageyl tribesmen, colourful but fierce warriors who had entered the fight for Wejh half naked so as to not damage their precious clothes. On a more practical level they explained that it was to ensure a clean wound. 

Garland described his own desert attire as a frustrating encumbrance: “Except for a uniform jacket, (which I deemed wise to have with me in case of capture), I had discarded my uniform and was dressed in cotton pantaloons, a long white shirt with expansive, drooping, sleeves, a black mantle, and the Arab head-dress consisting of a shawl, with a head-rope, which fits on the head over the shawl. I wore European boots.” He later expands on his dislike of the Arab garments. “I have said that on this journey I wore a complete outfit of Arab clothing and I may as well add at once that it is impossible to conceive any form of raiment less suitable for the work I had before me. The outer cloak, which has two holes for the arms but no sleeves, is not fitted with fastenings of any kind and so has a most unpleasant way of slipping down one’s back especially when the camel is trotting. The ends of the headshawl, instead of lying in a seemly manner over the shoulders, answer to every little breeze, and have a playful habit of knocking the cigarette out of one’s mouth....” He ends his heartfelt complaint with the claim that: “Many a time during that journey I was reduced almost to sobs by the impeding behaviour of my Arab dress.”

His descriptions of Bedu medical practices and beliefs form a remarkable record of a lost world: “The Bedouin have their own forms of treatment for disease, the chief of which are bloodletting and branding. I saw a sheikh who had burnt huge patches on the soles of his feet as a cure for dysentery.” 

The mood changes 

Future operations against the line would not always be so full of that sense of optimism and confidence that had driven Lawrence to write, “The Arabs had passed from doubt to violent optimism, and were promising exemplary service.” An Intelligence Report written by Garland in mid May 1917 from Abu Markha highlighted the increasing frustration of some officers when working with Bedouin: “I am not sure that the taking of Bedouin parties is a white man’s job. They always leave you in the lurch. When laying my last mine, for instance, the instantaneous fuse accidentally went off in my hands and the whole party ran away and left me with Sherif Abdullah.”

Garland on camel

Over time, rail-raiding was to prove an arduous occupation. Garland was soon suffering from exhaustion and had become dangerously ill with dysentery. His commanding officer described him as ‘entirely broken down’, explaining he was unable to eat food and looked ‘a wreck.’ He was duly relieved of his duties and was pulled out of the theatre of operations for a period of rest in Cairo. Not yet fully recovered, he returned too soon to the field and immediately undertook a one hundred miles camel march in less than two days to deliver an important message. When he reached his destination he was once again in a very exhausted state. His description of camel riding is a delightfully amusing vignette, belying the true rigors of such a journey, as well as a warning to any newcomer to the harsh environment of the Arabian hinterland: ‘The camel’s gallop is not a thing for the novice to experiment with. A galloping camel with its immense stride gets over the ground very quickly, but to the rider it is a sort of cup-and-ball game in which he takes the part of the ball and spends most of the time in mid-air wondering whether he will land in the cup when he comes down.’

Before he retired from the field for good, Garland had successfully passed on sufficient knowledge to his Bedu pupils to give them the freedom to carry out demolitions on the line, and especially the line near Medina, without European assistance. For this outstanding work he was duly awarded the Order of the Nile, Egypt's highest honour. 

“Shortly afterwards he died.” 

Immediately after the armistice Garland was deemed fit enough to be sent to Medina, the last place to be surrendered by the Ottomans, with responsibility for overseeing the surrender of the town to the allies. The garrison’s commander, the redoubtable and stubborn Fakhri Pasha, refused to acknowledge that his advisor Captain Garland was an “Allied commander”, as stipulated in the negotiated terms of the Armistice signed at Mudros, and therefore ignored the order. Should Fakhri Pasha, the last knight of the last Sultan, a General of a Division and guardian of the Sacred Tomb of the Prophet, give his sword to a mere Captain, especially one that apparently held a political post? He held out too long for the sake of personal honour and was eventually lured to his capture by his own faltering subordinates who immediately contacted Garland to formalise the surrender.

Finally in 1919, Garland was appointed Director of the Arab Bureau in Cairo with the task of winding up its affairs long after its more illustrious members had departed. Palestine was now the centre of attention and with Ibn Saud’s Ikhwan warriors threatening the Hejaz from the east, Garland’s task soon became an onerous one. He still had plenty of bite and on 4 June 1919 he fired off a searing report, ‘The Khurma Dispute between King Hussein and Ibn Saud', but you feel he was more at ease in his simultaneous post as Superintendent of the laboratories at the Cairo Citadel Museum.

Garland returned to England in March 1921 and died of an aneurism after only six days in the country, leaving scant records of the circumstances of his death or of his last resting place.

After his death, his wife May fought bureaucracy to have a war pension awarded to her to support her family but the British government invoked obfuscation and a bewildering entanglement of red tape to avoid an obvious and compassionate decision. Colleagues would be enlisted to give their testimonies on Garland’s involvement in the war. Major W.A. Davenport wrote in 1923 that Garland’s death “if not caused by service in the Hedjaz, was certainly precipitated by this.” He added, “Only those who served there can realise the filthy unsanitary conditions we had to live under, the filthy water that had to be drunk, and frequently the Arab food that had to be eaten.” The government merely reiterated that Garland did not die of injuries caused in Arabia. It would take two and a half years before a pension was forthcoming, a fitting result supporting the final endorsement of his colleague Davenport who wrote: “No man worked harder for the success of the operations than Major Garland, and it was only due to dogged pluck that he worked on as long as he did in the Hedjaz.”   

Garland in the Hejaz

There the story would have ended but for the determination of a few surviving relatives and friends scattered around the world, utilising the internet and good old-fashioned detective work to unearth the whereabouts of a long-forgotten hero of a long-forgotten desert war, yet one more remarkable personality eclipsed by Lawrence’s legend. For nearly ninety years Garland had languished in an unmarked grave located near to the eastern wall of the old part of the appropriately named Gravesend Cemetery, 22 miles east of the City of London on the south bank of the Thames estuary. He was 38 when he returned to England from Egypt, seriously ill and with an already weakened heart put under further stain by recurring bouts of dysentery picked up in the desert campaigns. A friend of his daughter Mena found his grave in 2004, a discovery that would eventually unite far-flung family members and friends, and finally bring to public attention this remarkable untold story.  

Stewart Newcombe rode on many rail-breaking operations with Garland and shared many of his frustrations and disappointments. Lawrence was quick to praise Garland’s efforts but saw the weakness that eventually forced his removal from the region: “His health was poor and the climate made him regularly ill. A weak heart troubled him after any strenuous effort or crisis; but he treated these troubles as if they were detonators and persisted until he had derailed the first train and broken the first culvert in Arabia. Shortly afterwards he died.”

My thanks go to Herbert Garland’s grandson, Chris Mitchell, who has actively pursued the remarkable story of his grandfather from his home in New Zealand and sent the results out to the world. He generously paid this tribute to Newcombe in reply to my enquiries: "Stewart Newcombe saw so much more service than Herbert and it is a tribute to his fortitude that he came through relatively intact." 

Lost but found

I am especially grateful to Mena Garland, Herbert’s daughter whose friend was instrumental in helping to discover a long-lost grave, for donating her father's papers to the Imperial War Museum and allowing researchers access to the thoughts and actions of a forgotten hero whose newly erected headstone conveys the poignant epitaph: “LOST BUT FOUND IN 2004”.

This is the first in a series of occasional portraits of personalities from the desert campaigns of the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918.

See also this update on Garland's remarkable story: A young man's near miss 

Every uniform tells a story

Stewart Newcombe's Dress Uniform

This photograph of Stewart Newcombe’s Royal Engineers dress uniform represents one of those memorable moments in research when you come that little bit closer to your subject. Often it's through coming into contact for the first time with something they have written in their own hand, perhaps a letter, a report or a diary. There’s something about the condition of the paper, the stains, the creases and of course the style of the handwriting itself; small clues which might give you some idea of the circumstances in which it was written or of the writer's frame of mind. Without being an expert it's possible to sense all kinds of emotions within the controlled and measured field reports, such as urgency, frustration and anger, as increasingly became the case with Newcombe. But when he once wrote: 'I am told I'm not so popular as I was,' his words were clear and unambiguous, realising he had crossed the line in his dealing with the Bedouin tribesmen he had overworked in prosecuting the attacks on the Hejaz railway. ‘Nekoom’, as he was called by the Bedu, was not alone in his frustrations which were shared by other British military staff attached to the Sherif of Mecca's forces, officers such as Captain Henry Hornby and Bimbashi (Major) Herbert Garland. 

Newcombe’s desert campaign had started off well. After racing across a broad flat scrubland on a fast horse from the small coastal port of Um Lejj, where he had just landed, he caught up with Sherif Feisal's troops during their march north to take the town of Wejh. Lawrence offered him his spare camel and introduced him to Feisal who greeted him like an old school chum. As Lawrence later wrote, ‘at once they plunged into the midst of things, suggesting, debating, planning at lightning speed. Newcombe's initial velocity was enormous, and the freshness of the day and the life and happiness of the Army gave inspiration to the march and brought the future bubbling out of us without pain.'  But very soon Newcombe's war became a record of missed opportunities and disappointments. The frustrations he shared with other British officers led almost inevitably to Lawrence composing the Twenty-Seven Articles, handed down like commandments and giving instructions on how to work alongside the Sharifs and Bedu of the Hejaz. Lawrence's respect and friendship for Newcombe prevented him from openly criticising the senior officer but the inference is clear throughout the 27 points and in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Newcombe was ‘family’; when Lawrence wanted to criticise ‘outsiders’ he did so, but family affairs were kept within the family.

Col. Newcombe with medals

Newcombe’s dress jacket could tell its own story with its creases, stains and signs of age, from the missing regimental button to the frayed cotton bands that once secured the bar holding his medals, including his Gallipoli Distinguished Service Order, South African medals, the Mons Star, British War and Victory medals, the French Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur, and Italian and Turkish awards. Below these there is a small reinforced thread that held in place the much larger Order of Nahda of the Kingdom of the Hejaz, second class, when worn without the neck ribbons. The jacket was smaller in size than I had imagined, considering that Newcombe has been described as rangy and even lanky, but perhaps for his time these were valid observations. His chest size was possibly no more than 38 inches (96.5 centimetres).   

Newcombe’s uniform and dress sword, laid out for me on the table of the library while I researched his involvement in the Second Boer War, added tangible evidence, if any was needed, of a life well spent in the service of his country – a life that has been overshadowed by an even more remarkable legend. It also reminded me of an extraordinary footnote to Newcombe's life.

On the death of Newcombe’s daughter, Baroness Elles, her obituary was carried by most of the leading newspapers. This resulted in a letter being sent in to The Times on 9 November 2009 by a member of staff from the London auction house that had handled the sale of Colonel Newcombe’s campaign medals in 1992, the very set that had been reported stolen during a burglary at the family home in 1955. Publicity for the auction had included a glossy house catalogue where the medals were described as ‘an important Gallipoli group’ and mentioning the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ connection, along with a full and largely accurate biography of Newcombe comprising several pieces previously written by Liddell Hart. The writer of the letter stated that soon after the sale of the medals he received a phone call from Baroness Elles from her holiday home in Lucca, Italy, where the high-profile publicity of the Lawrence connection had alerted the family to an account of the sale carried by The Times. ‘I see from this morning’s Times you have just sold Daddy’s medals,’ she said to the startled auctioneer. When she disclosed details of the burglary, backed up by police reports, the deal had to be unravelled and the medals were finally returned to the Newcombe family thirty-seven years after they had disappeared. It was subsequently found that the widow of the police constable who originally came to investigate the robbery had put the medals up for auction, leading to the inevitable assumption that it was in fact the policeman who had taken them himself some time during his enquiries. 

As the auctioneer poignantly observed in reply to my enquiries, ‘It was a pity Col. Newcombe lived to see his medals stolen, but not recovered.’