1 This work examines the processes whereby SOE was created, including how its doctrine was formulated and subsequently disseminated, both to its own agents and to its American counterpart, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Many of the lessons the SOE applied were first learned when British soldiers acted not as insurgents but counterinsurgents; only later were those lessons turned on their heads.

SOE placed its emphasis on training and organization, empowering resistance movements to carry out the other tasks, particularly offensive action, on their own.

By 1938 two infantry divisions, composed of some twenty-five thousand men, were deployed to put down the rebellion, which lasted until 1939.40

As the Arab Revolt broke out in Palestine in 1936 (see chapter 4), the RAF coordinated with police and army forces, once more conducting reconnaissance, distributing propaganda, and carrying out strafing and light bombing against Arab mobs, criminal gangs, and Arab and Jewish terrorist groups. It was in Palestine that the RAF began the tactic of

Arguably, other individuals might also stand in as incarnations of this process. William E. Fairbairn, discussed in chapter 6, had more than his share of high adventure abroad and certainly molded a great many individual agents. At the doctrinal and organizational level, however, it becomes harder to assess his influence.

Lawrence not only helped lead the Arab Revolt but he also reflected on this group of irregular soldiers and their guerrilla campaign.166 Whereas other campaigns, such as those fought by the Irish or Boers, are remembered through a variety of memoirs, government reports, and histories both official and scholarly, Lawrence’s own writings were—and in

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and the Schutztruppe

The Second Anglo-Boer War