T. E. Lawrence to S. L. Newcombe

Karachi

9.ix.27.

Dear Monster,

Yes: you shall have your R.A.F. badge: not just yet, for our Q.M. Store is stocktaking. (Your father will tell you the limping one-eyed measly beast a Q.M. is: and what a fuss it makes over stocktaking).

I am glad you like Alexandria. The poor thing about it, I found, was that the 'Groppie' in Alexandria had no great tree-filled garden at the back of the shop: so there seemed no place in Alexandria where an officer in uniform could drink his iced coffee in peaceful comfort. Whereas Cairo was just invented and furnished for people such as I used to be. It would not do now, though. I have not enough piastres to satisfy my thirst with coffee. So I drink water, always. That would be all right if an ass didn't keep on putting overdoses of chlorine in it. So little chlorine goes so long a way with me. The other day I got dysentery too, in spite of all their drugs! One to me, I think.

The Air Force are going to let me come home in the spring of 1930. You will be at Oxford then, off and on, won't you? Expect a loud roaring outside the school gates. That will be my motor bike. The school-masters will not let you talk to ordinary men in uniform: but when they hear the roaring of my bike they will say 'That is not an ordinary airman: that is an extraordinary machine'. So it will be all right.

Otherwise nothing happens: nothing will happen till 1930, probably. Perfect peace.

Loud snores to you, Monster, especially at night. Wake the whole place up.

Yours

MONSTER