Books: Tortured Hero

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA: THE MAN AND THE MOTIVE (256 pp.)—Anthony Nutting—Clarkson N. Potter ($5).

No more romantic figure emerged from World War I than the shadowy desert raider in flowing white burnoose known as Lawrence of Arabia. Here was a pint-sized Oxford archaeologist who could outride the fiercest Bedouin warrior, a galloping ghost who had blown up 79 bridges along the Turkish-held Hejaz Railway (and mourned he had not made it 80), an Englishman hailed by the Arabs as El Aurens, who in 2½ years had led the revolt in the desert from the Red Sea port of Jidda to the gates of Damascus. Then, with his chosen prophet, Emir Feisal, about to be crowned king of Syria, Lawrence disappeared as suddenly as he came, in what seemed a superb gesture of modesty and abdication.

Compared to the lumpen, grimy men who emerged in a state of shock from the blood-soaked trenches of the Western front, Thomas Edward Lawrence was an irresistible figure, cut to the bias of every romantic schoolboy's fantasy. His apotheosis was not long in coming. It occurred one night in September 1919, when an audience studded with Cabinet members and ambassadors jammed London's Covent Garden to hear Lowell Thomas lecture on Lawrence, the Uncrowned King of Arabia. It was a rousing occasion; the Welsh Guards played background music, and an Irish tenor rendered the Moslem call to prayer. The lecture, repeated round the world over the next four years by Commentator Thomas, was seen and heard by over a million. Lurking in the darkened rear of the auditorium on several occasions was Lawrence himself, blushing to the roots of his hair, some thought with pleasure.

Down to the Ranks. Probably no man can use a myth as a mask in this probing century. Lawrence, having finished the private edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom in 1922, tried to lose his identity. Though he had been a colonel at war's end, he enlisted in the R.A.F. as a private soldier under the assumed name of John Hume Ross. In four months the secret was out, and Lawrence was booted out of the service. The next year he was allowed to enlist in the Tank Corps as T. E. Shaw, later transferring to the R.A.F.

As Aircraftman Shaw, he spent ten years in uniform, recording the unending obscenity of barracks life in The Mint, racing motorcycles for relaxation, developing high-speed crash boats for air-sea rescue operations. In 1935 he left the service. "I would not take any job at all," he wrote Lady Astor. "There is something broken in the works, as I told you: my will, I think." Five days later, on May 13, 1935, Lawrence swerved his motorcycle to avoid two boys, fatally crashed into a ditch. Lawrence's bust was put beside that of Nelson and Wellington in the crypt of London's St. Paul's Cathedral.