4 December 1914

“Woolley goes E. with me: at least he leaves on Saturday P. & O.; and Newcombe (who salutes you) and I leave on Tuesday going overland. I have been up here for a couple of months overseeing Sinai maps being drawn, & writing Sinai reports. Now it’s Cairo. All goes well, except among the Turks.”

T. E. Lawrence to Winifred Fontana (The Letters of T. E. Lawrence, edited by David Garnett, published by Jonathan Cape, 1938).

So Lawrence announced his departure from the War Office in London. On Turkey’s entry into the war, Intelligence work on enemy-held territory in the Middle East moved to Cairo, where Lawrence was now transferred with his Wilderness
of Zin
colleagues Leonard Woolley and Captain Stewart Newcombe.