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Updated June 2012
T. E. Lawrence to S. L. Newcombe
[aged six]
[Karachi]
11.1.27.
Dear Monster
This letter is to say that I ate four of your toffee chunks on Xmas day. They were the last four in the tin. I kept the tin hidden in my kit-bag, and so none of the other airmen had any. They were very good. It was a most excellent present. Afterwards I brought out the empty tin, and we made it the sugar magazine for our Mess. It was two sorts of a Mess. Mess 68, they called it. They are still using the tin, though I am not now on the ship, but in Karachi. Address
338171 AC2 Shaw, Room 2 E.R.S. R.A.F. Depot, Drigh Road, Karachi, India
A long difficult address: but not a bad place to live in. No trees. Sand and desert, and great store houses full of airmen. We get up in the dark, and work all the morning. I am a sort of messenger: runner they call me, but I do not run: just I waddle like a blue duck. Sometimes I do clerks' work. The officer said 'Can you write?' I replied 'Fluently'. He said 'No, No; is your handwriting good?' I will not tell you what I said then.
About that photograph you asked of me. It is not forgotten, but instead of having one taken out here I am trying to get one from England for you. There are some quite good ones. If there are none left in England I will have one made out here, but it will not be so excellent, as my nose is peeling. Also I am too red. Red comes out black in photographs, and you will not want a photograph of a quite black airman.
Go on being monstrous. Get monstrously long, while I get monstrously thick. Then everybody who sees us together will have fits.
Poof.
M......r
| Source: | DG 504 |
| Checked: | dn/ |
| Last revised: | 9 February 2006 |
T. E. Lawrence chronology
1888 16 August: born at Tremadoc, Wales
1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys
1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909
1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British Museum's excavations at Carchemish
1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo
1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt
1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference
1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office
1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF
1923 January: discharged from the RAF
1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps
1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant
1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom
1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah
1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven Pillars, published
1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey
1929-33: stationed at Plymouth
1931: started working on RAF boats
1932: his translation of the Odyssey published
1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe
1935 February: retired from the RAF
1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May
1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset