“I lay down under the rocks and rested. My body was very sore with headache and high fever, the accompaniments of a sharp attack of dysentery which had troubled me along the march and had laid me out twice that day in short fainting fits, when the more difficult parts of the climb had asked too much of my strength …

“… while I was lying near the rocks a shot was fired.”

Events of 12 March 1917 as recounted by T. E. Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).

Lawrence’s journey to Wadi Ais proved hard going when he was
beset by attacks of dysentery, malaria and boils. There was also much quarrelling among his Arab travelling companions – an odd lot thrown together in haste by the urgency of Clayton’s orders.

Overnight at Wadi Kitan, the eruption of tensions between the Arabs would result in one of the most terrible experiences in his life.