A childhood friend lived not far away just across the Boyne in Co Meath. His parents had generously and compassionately asked a cousin to come and live with them. She was Miss Chapman, a spinster whose half-brother is TE Lawrence.
My grandfather met Lawrence in the desert in WW I. He, my grandfather, was an ADC to one of Field Marshall Allenby’s Generals based in Cairo; rather a cushy number actually but only after being nearly killed at the Somme where he got a scar and an MC. Anyway, he was sent out into the desert with a chest of Sovereigns for TEL. The strangest part of this story is that he found him. TEL was debonair as he signed for the gold. He dismissed my grandfather who had to remind him that he needed to account for the previous chest. TEL’s confidence evaporated as he had no idea how he had handed it out. My grandfather sat on the chest with a notebook and coaxed some names out of him. TEL would say, “maybe I gave him two or three handfuls” and so on. In the best traditions of Fleet Street and City expense accounts some sort of reckoning was cooked up.
Now, where were we? Of course I was forbidden to mention TEL to Miss Chapman, of whom I was very fond. She introduced me to The Irish Times cryptic crossword. At the time I was baffled but she laid the ground for an abiding love of crosswords. Other neighbours, Molly and Henry, had a place across the road from Barmeath. Her brother, Bill, and his wife came to stay and would come to Barmeath. I overheard that Bill worked for MI5 and was longing to have a chat about this. Again it was a completely forbidden topic, jolly frustrating for an eight year old. Years later I read Spy Catcher in which he gets a mention as Director of E Branch (Colonial Affairs) planning operation Sunshine in Cyprus with Peter Wright.
I was reminded of him when I read the July 2017 issue of Asian Affairs. It is an extract from a lecture Dr Adrian O’Sullivan gave to the RSAA last year.
Informally, DSO (Defence Security Office) became known as “The Ratcatchers” because their principal task was to identify and deactivate anyone, Germans, Persians, Armenians or Azeris, supporting the Nazi cause or working against Allied interests. The nickname “ratcatchers” was created by Major William Magan, an Indian Intelligence Bureau officer attached permanently by Delhi to DSO. Bill Magan wrote after the war in his memoirs: “Mopping up the well-concealed German was not a task for conventional military forces. It was a rat-catching operation, and our little group were the ratcatchers.”
I haven’t read his memoirs but in 1983 he sent me this book about the Magans. It starts with a chapter on the Pre-Celtic Irish and concludes:
Who, a century ago, could have forecast NATO, the EEC, the European Parliament, and so on? But we can, with some confidence, forecast accommodations between Northern and Southern Ireland, and with Britain, that will be a great deal better than today.
Prophetic words written by a man who could have been an academic, a diplomat or earned a lot in the City. Instead he chose to serve Britain.
I enjoyed reading of your grandfather’s role in taking the gold to Lawrence, still then known, I believe, as the golden cavalry of St. George.
I have always enjoyed what Robert Graves had to say about Lawrence in Goodbye to All That, including this exchange as Lawrence returned to All Souls from London. Professor Edgeworth asked him, “Was it very caliginous in the metropolis?” to which he replied “Somewhat caliginous but not altogether inspissated”.
Thank you and now I must fetch a dictionary.
Lawrence commandeered my Grandmother’s (your Great Aunt’s?) Rolls Royce in Cairo, 1916. He had in modified for desert warfare (‘tooled up’ in today’s parlance) and drove it for the next two years before before using it to make his famous entry into Damascus. My grandmother had purchased it from the The Earl of Clonmell, for £20, in a nightclub (as one did in those days).
Lawrence had the good grace to leave the ‘Blue Mist’ nameplate and The spirit of Ecstasy both of which my brother still has. Over the years there has been some very concerted attempts to trace this car with, as yet, no success.