“In Nineteen Fourteen young Lawrence, just out of Oxford was excavating Hittite ruins in the Valley of the Euphrates near ancient Babylon in Mesopotamia. He was then 26 years of age, and his two chief interests in life were poetry and archaeology. When the war broke out, along with other scientists, he was called over to headquarters at Cairo and made a Second Lieutenant in the Map Department. He didn't get along very well with some of his superior officers because he never saluted them and paid no attention to difference in rank. One day he asked for a two weeks leave. They gave him a fortnight's furlough — and he has been on that furlough ever since. ”

-Lowell Thomas
“With Lawrence in Arabia” (1919)