At 14, Lawrence lied about his age so that he could join the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, and killed a man on his first night to save himself. He served for two years, until in 1938 he found himself outnumbered in the Pyrenees and fled to France. He soon traveled to Britain to rejoin his family, and during the summer of 1939 he worked on the "Queen Mary". With the arrival of World War II, he enlisted with the British and spent another five years at war, beginning in September 1939. He was a tank gunner in Dunkirk and North Africa, and participated in D-Day at Normandy, where he was seriously injured in August 1944. His leg was full of shrapnel, but he refused to have it amputated; instead, doctors removed 37 of 39 pieces of shrapnel, and Lawrence determinedly exercised the limb until he no longer walked with a limp. His war experiences scarred him, and are recounted in his 1994 autobiography, which he wrote reluctantly but at the encouragement of his publisher.