‘It’s usually my satisfaction to purr along gently about 60 m.p.h. drinking in the air and the general view. I lose detail even at such moderate speeds but gain comprehension. When I open out a little more, as for instance across Salisbury Plain at 80 or so, I feel the earth moulding herself under me. It is me piling up this hill, hollowing this valley, stretching out this level place. Almost the earth comes alive, heaving and tossing on each side like a sea. That’s a thing that the slow coach will never feel. It is the reward of speed. I could write you pages on the lustfulness of moving swiftly.’
He had at least one serious conflict with authority in the Royal Tank Corps, when he was brought up on the charge of insubordination towards a corporal. (Probably more. But none of them seem to have had unfortunate sequels, for when he left the Tank Corps his character-sheet was free of major entries.)
Of this occasion a comrade, Private Palmer, writes:
‘The corporal was a Scotsman of the old school, an ex-officer, overbearing, with a wonderful idea of his own importance. T.E. used to rag him unmercifully. The corporal had a habit of laying the dust in the hut with a bowl of water sprinkled on the floor. This performance annoyed T.E. and everybody else, so one day T.E. got up early and swamped the hut with I forget now how many bowls of water. We all paddled. Later a man in the hut received a few days “Confined to Barracks” unfairly, through the Corporal. T.E. simply slung the corporal’s suit-case into the sanitary bin.’
Private Palmer has very kindly given me further amusing if slight details of Lawrence’s life in the Tank Corps:
‘He did the normal work of a private soldier even to receiving “three days confined to barracks” for leaving overalls on his bed. After “passing off the square” he did fatigues. That is how I met him. We began talking about Thomas Hardy. I was employed in the quartermaster’s stores and T.E. joined me there. He did his work well; he had to mark recruits’ kits with their numbers, fit them with clothing, boots, etc. In the afternoons sometimes, we used to solve cross-word puzzles together. Generally, however, T.E. would work on sections of the Seven Pillars. He did correcting, etc., in the Quartermaster’s office, of an evening, and sometimes early morning.
‘One day I “pulled his leg” and he beat me with a slipper—after a struggle, mind you. The Quartermaster walked in and wanted to know whether the store was a gymnasium. “No, sir,” said T.E., “I’m sorry; I was only correcting Private Palmer with this slipper!” The Quartermaster laughed and said “Carry on!”
‘When rumours started in the camp as to who he was, it was amusing to see the troops studying photographs of him in the Daily ... and comparing them with the original. “It’s not him!” “I bet you a dollar it is him”; these were the sort of remarks that passed between the troops. T.E. appeared to be indifferent as to what they thought and said about him. This stage of excitement soon passed and he was treated as one of ourselves again. The tradespeople were more polite to him, however.
‘His recreations were gramophone music—he loved the Bach concerto for two violins in D minor—and Brough-riding. Most Sundays he used to take me, pillion, to breakfast at Corfe: order breakfast first and look at the castle while it was being prepared: he never tired of the castle. Sometimes he took me to cathedrals—Salisbury, Winchester, Wells. Of course we passed everything we met on the road: T.E. couldn’t resist a race.
‘His passing from the Tank Corps made a nine-days’ wonder: I was bombarded with questions. As the people who knew him are scattered now, his name has passed into the legend stage. Strangely enough, he is remembered, not for anything he did during the War, but for his performances on that wonderful motor-cycle.’