Britain
T. E. Lawrence
1888–1935 British liaison officer to Emir Faisal during the Arab Revolt, 1916–1918
Born in Tremadog, Wales, the illegitimate son of an Anglo-Irish landowner, Lawrence read history at Oxford and from 1910 to 1914 worked as an archaeologist at Carchemish in Ottoman Syria. Commissioned in October 1914, he served in intelligence in Cairo, and in late 1916 became liaison to Emir Faisal in the Arab Revolt. He helped plan the overland expedition that took Aqaba on 6 July 1917. The American journalist Lowell Thomas made him famous as "Lawrence of Arabia" through lecture shows, though some scholars, including the Turkish Islam Ansiklopedisi, judge his role more political than military. From 1922 he served as an enlisted man in the Army and Royal Air Force, published Seven Pillars of Wisdom in 1926, and died on 19 May 1935 after a motorcycle crash.