January 5

A memorandum from the Cairo Intelligence Office urges a military landing at Alexandretta, a town of great strategic importance. This would distract the Turks from a large-scale attack on the Suez Canal. It would also, Lawrence hoped, provide the trigger for an uprising in the Arab provinces of the Turkish Empire. The proposal meets with approval in London. Lawrence would later claim that the Alexandretta scheme 'was, from beginning to end, my invention, put forward necessarily through my chiefs'. In fact, the idea had been canvassed before his arrival in Cairo, although he undoubtedly gave it new impetus.

March 1915

Lawrence composes Syria: the Raw Material, a perceptive analysis of what was then known as Syria (including modern Syria, Jordan, and Israel) in political, social, and religious terms. It would later provide the basis for several chapters in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He wrote: 'the only imposed government that will find, in Moslem Syria, any really prepared groundwork or large body of adherents is a Sunni one, speaking Arabic, and pretending to revive the Abbasides or Ayubides.'

April 1915

The Intelligence Department begins to issue daily Intelligence Bulletins, 'for the edification of twenty-eight generals' [Lawrence]. His duties now include work on maps, examining aerial photographs, preparing Intelligence Bulletins, and interrogating prisoners.

May 9

Lawrence's youngest brother, Frank, is killed in action at Richebourg l'Avoué on the Western Front.

August 1915

Lawrence goes to Athens for a week in order to improve liaison with the Levant branch of British Intelligence.

September 1915

Lawrence's brother Will is killed, having served as an RFC observer in France for less than a week.