Interesting passage on Lawrence of Arabia, desert codes, telegraph wires and railways on page 249 in Codebreakers, the highly readable book on Room 40 and WW1 Codebreaking by James Willie and Michael McKinley (published by Ebury, 2015).
Pulling down telegraph poles? This of course makes sense as often the telegraph poles followed railways, so it was easy to cut these wires or pull these poles down (by camel!) under the guise of Lawrence attacking the railway again. All part of the annoyance and disruption value of guerrilla warfare but with a higher aim, reading the enemy’s codes.
A clever way to force the Turks to rely on wireless, much easier to intercept at a safe distance and then decrypt or decode than tapping telegraph wires.
Overall Codebreakers is a very interesting book on WW1, picked up in my local branch library (childhood habits die hard!) but certainly worth buying in paperback. It covers naval and submarine warfare, Zeppelin raids, the Western Front, Ireland, German espionage and sabotage in America and its legacy, the seeds of WW2 codebreaking and breaking the Enigma codes at Bletchley Park.
More on WW1 Wireless and Telegraph and SIG INT at my post https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2017/10/09/innovation-in-combat-ww1-wireless-and-telegraph-blog/
More on Lawrence and desert train gaming scenarios – next time I need to add some Telegraph poles alongside the railtrack!
https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/2017/08/03/blowing-up-desert-trains-part-1/
Blogposted by Mark Man of TIN, 3 February 2019.
Sidetracked 