Lawrence of Arabia and his train-derailing exploits in the Middle East are celebrated in books and film, but the true hero of the tale is TE Lawrence’s mentor, a soldier and metallurgist overlooked by history – until now.
Major Herbert Garland was an officer of the British army in Cairo during the First World War, and a gifted chemist whose practical experience and writings on Egyptian metallurgy earned him a Fellowship of the Chemical Society, which later became the Royal Society of Chemistry.
His knowledge of explosives, and ability to teach others the tricks of the trade, tipped the balance against the Turkish of the Ottoman Empire, leading his more famous junior TE Lawrence to write that “Garland is much more use than I could be.”
Yet it is only after a concerted effort from far-flung relatives in New Zealand and the library of the RSC that the true story has emerged in the Daily Telegraph – the story of a both admirable and tragic figure, whose expertise led the Arabs to victory and himself to a penniless, unnoticed death, and burial in an unmarked grave.
Garland goes to war
Before the war Garland, born in Sheffield, had worked in Cairo as superintendant of a government explosives laboratory and magazines, but was intrigued by metallurgy of ancient artefacts, and on 15 May 1913 he was elected a Fellow of the Chemical Society which later awarded a £10 grant to research ancient Egyptian alloys.
In 1914 after the outbreak of war, he invented the Garland Grenade, 174,000 of which were sent to the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaign.
In 1916 he joined Captain Lawrence organising Arabs into an effective guerrilla force with the aim of destroying Turkish railways; that year he was blown up by gun cotton and suffered severe shock with no medical attention.
In September he made the first trip into the desert with Lawrence to attack the Hejaz railway, later travelling to Cairo dressed as a Bedouin. In February 1917 he became the first allied officer to mine a moving train by using a contact detonating device of his own design.
Lawrence wrote in 1918 to a diplomat in Cairo: “Garland is much more use than I could be. For one thing he is senior to me and he is an expert on explosives and machinery. He digs their trenches, teaches them musketry, machine gun work, signalling, gets on with them exceedingly well and always makes the best of things and they all like him too.”
Garland of Arabia
Lawrence was the object of attention of the journalist Lowell Thomas, whose stories of desert heroism from the charismatic captain subsequently inspired – together with Lawrence’s own book The Seven Pillars of Wisdom – the multi Oscar-winning film Lawrence of Arabia, eclipsed the work of the other soldiers such as Garland.
But he says in the book’s foreword that a group of British officers “could each tell a tale”, and lists Garland as one such soldier.
Lawrence recounts travelling to Yenbo, the base of the Arab army under Prince Feisal, “where Garland single-handed was teaching the Sherifians how to blow up railways with dynamite and how to keep army stores in systematic order. The first activity was the better.”
He goes on to say that Garland “had years of practical knowledge of explosives. He had his own devices for mining trains and felling telegraphs and cutting metals; and his knowledge of Arabic and freedom from the theories of the ordinary sapper-school enabled him to teach the art of demolition to unlettered Bedouin in a quick and ready way. His pupils admired a man who was never at a loss.”
He adds: “Incidentally, he taught me how to be familiar with high explosive. Sappers handled it like a sacrament, but Garland would shove a handful of detonators into his pocket with a string of primers, fuse, and fusees and jump gaily in his camel for a week’s ride to the Hejaz railway.
“His health was poor and the climate made him regularly ill. A weak heart troubled him after any strenuous effort or crisis; but he treated these troubles as if they were detonators and persisted until he had derailed the first train and broken the first culvert in Arabia. Shortly afterwards he died.”
A forgotten hero
After Garland’s death from aneurism his wife, a mother of three, petitioned the government for a war pension to support her family. It was contested on the grounds that he did not die of injuries caused in Arabia, and they received nothing for several years.
A century later, the recognition of the man’s achievements and high regard among his more heralded contemporaries might go some way to honouring his death.
Dr Richard Pike, RSC chief executive, said: “Our Library has drawn out an impressive array of previously unknown detail about a very special individual who had a wide range of interests including chemistry and archaeology.
“Clearly he was a courageous soldier. To be admired by TE Lawrence for cleverness and daring is a terrific compliment and worth recording for posterity.
“I am pleased that we are remembering him now, even if it is nine decades after his rather lonely death, far from the desert where his reputation should have been made, as it was with Lawrence, who had learned so much from him.”
Garland was buried in an unmarked grave in Gravesend. A friend of his only surviving blood relative found the grave a few years ago, and the plot now has a headstone, engraved with the epitaph:
Lost but now Found 2004