12. Excavating and Exploring in Future Enemy Lands Came in Handy for T.E. Lawrence
After graduating from Oxford, T.E. Lawrence secured a traveling fellowship and went to get some hands-on experience in the field. From 1911 to 1914, he was part of an archaeological expedition that excavated Hittite settlements near the Euphrates River. During his free time, he traipsed around the Middle East and got to know the region and its people. The lands in which he worked and traveled were part of the Ottoman Empire, of whose leanings in case of a general European war the British were unsure.
Because of that uncertainty Lawrence, under the guise of scholarly pursuits, also undertook map-making reconnaissance missions in Ottoman territories. The resultant maps and experience of the local ground and peoples came in handy during Lawrence’s adventurous WWI years. When that conflict began in 1914, he joined the British War Office as a civilian employee, and was tasked with preparing militarily useful maps of the Middle East. He was sent to Cairo, where his knowledge of the region and fluency in Arabic proved valuable to the war effort. Lawrence interviewed Turkish prisoners of war, and agents operating behind enemy lines. He thus became highly knowledgeable of Turkish military positions and strengths.