2 ms·

So basically they found one bullet and one railroad sign ... pretty light evidence to prove or disprove anything.

• simonh 11y ago
  Those are just the most obvious evidence they chose to highlight in a brief article. If they examined dozens of sites and found physical evidence that fully supports Lawrence's accounts, and no evidence that is inconsistent with those accounts, that's pretty persuasive. After all if Lawrence made his accounts up, you'd expect it wouldn't take long to find discrepancies between his inventions and the real geography of the locations and physical evidence. I watched a documentary about Lawrence and some journalists visiting some of the sites including the Hallat Ammar attack. In the book Lawrence describes the attack being launched from a ridge (IIRC) 100m from the railway line. They found the ridge, but the railway line was 300m away, too far to be in effective rifle range. But then examining the site more carefully, they found that while the modern railway line was 300m away, the old WW1 era line had become buried with sand and was actually about 100m from the ridge. It's been a very long time since I read SPOW. It's not always an easy read, but full of character and wonderfully evocative. Lawrence clearly loved and appreciated Arab culture. He gave accounts of their camp fire stories and humour for example, but didn't flinch from describing and discussing some of the uncomfortable aspects of the customs and behaviour he encountered.