Lawrence of Arabia

During his two years of desert warfare, Lawrence became a folk hero to the British. A nation sickened by the slaughter of the French trenches seized on the romantic picture of "al-Orens" (as his Arab followers called him), galloping at the head of his Bedouin troops in their revolt against their Turkish overlords. Few, least of all the Arabs, were aware that he was far more interested in gaining British dependencies than freedom for the Arabs. But whatever his motives, no one questioned his military skill: he swooped on Turkish troop trains supplying the southern territories along the Hejaz railway, organized an attack on the Turks' Red Sea port of Aqaba and marched triumphantly into the city of Damascus.