Sir Herbert Baker let me live and work in his Westminster houses. The book so written passed in into proof; where it was fortunate in the friends who criticized it. Particularly it owes its thanks to Mr. Bernard Shaw for countless suggestions of great value and diversity: and for all the present semicolons. It does not pretend to be impartial. I was fighting for my hand, upon my own midden. Please take it as a personal narrative piece out of memory.
I could not make proper notes: indeed it would have been a breach of my duty to the Arabs if I had picked such flowers while they fought. And there were many other leaders or lonely fighters to whom this self-regardant picture is not fair. It is still less fair, of course, like all war-stories, to the un-named rank and file: who miss their share of credit, as they must do, until they can write the despatches. Raymond Savage The wells at Wejh.
Imperial War Museum Ghadir Osman, on the return journey from Ais to Wejh. Yenbo, with T. Lawrence's house on the right. Sgt Perry, A. From left to right: An unknown tribesman, Mohamed el Dheilan, Auda abu Tayi, an unknown with a moustache, Auda's young son Mohamed, aged eleven, two unknown tribesmen Feisal and Ageyl bodyguard.
Lt-Col S. Newcombe, March Lawrence in Arab dress General Sir Edmund Allenby, K. Sir Ronald Storrs. Walter Stoneman Remains of Lt Junor's B. Imperial War Museum. The story which follows was first written out in Paris during the Peace Conference, from notes jotted daily on the march, strengthened by some reports sent to my chiefs in Cairo.
Afterwards, in the autumn of , this first draft and some of the notes were lost. It seemed to me historically needful to reproduce the tale, as perhaps no one but myself in Feisal's army had thought of writing down at the time what we felt, what we hoped, what we tried. So it was built again with heavy repugnance in London in the winter of from memory and my surviving notes.
