Robert Fisk: In the shadow of the Second World War

Robert Fisk: In the shadow of the Second World War
Bush and Blair try to dress up in the waistcoats of Churchill and Roosevelt
Published: 02 June 2007
Independent UK

Not far from my balcony overlooking the Mediterranean lies a sunken French submarine. It sits on the bottom of the sea just to the left of the blossoming purple jacaranda tree which stands opposite my bedroom window. It was sunk in 1941 when a disguised Royal Navy vessel slunk up the coast of Lebanon from Palestine and discovered two U-boats of the Vichy French fleet trying to make it home after the Anglo-Free French invasion of Lebanon.

The French embassy in Beirut regularly reminds divers that this is a war grave, but the Lebanese still swim inside the hull. The gentle Mediterranean tides rock the vessel from time to time, and the skeletons inside - still in the remnants of their uniforms - rock with it. The Second World War will never go away.

There are war cemeteries in Sidon and Beirut - British and French dead from this extraordinary, largely unknown exploit of the war - and I often drive through the village of Damour where a Jewish Palestinian soldier, a certain Moshe Dayan, was hit in the eye by a French sniper.

At home, I have an album of Lebanese Second World War photographs which depict the choice made by the French army in Lebanon when told that they could either sail home to Vichy France or stay in the Middle East and fight for de Gaulle. Almost all chose to return to Marseilles and a two-page spread in my photographic book shows thousands of French troops sailing out of Beirut port with a huge French flag upon which are embroidered the words "Vive Pétain."

Well, there you go. 1941 was a bad year to back the Allies and Stalingrad was still 18 months away, final proof that Hitler's power could be broken. But I am reminded of that French submarine every time I see a Lebanese diver friend of mine who sails out of the Riviera hotel and regularly visits the wreck. For the Second World War, I believe, remains the foundation of our modern history, the bedrock upon which all our narrative rests - the United Nations, the International Red Cross protocols, international humanitarian law.

I am outraged by the way in which the midgets Blair and Bush try to dress up in the waistcoats of Churchill and Roosevelt. I look at Blair poncing about in Basra and remember that Josif Broz Tito, the only man to liberate his country from Nazi tyranny from within an occupied nation, was the only Allied leader to be wounded in action during the war. What wounds has Blair sustained?

A few months ago, I had the delight of participating in the BBC's Desert Island Discs, in which you can select eight records to bore - or entertain - the listener. One of my records was Winston Churchill's address to the British people (hardly music, I acknowledge) in the spring of 1940. I chose it because I wanted to prove that Blair and Bush were no Winston Churchills.

"Hitler knows that he must break us in this island or lose the war," Churchill began. What a wondrous feat of words. Bush would have said "defeat". Blair would have said "beat". But Churchill said "break". If we stood up to Hitler, Churchill said, "all Europe may be free and the light of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands." Compare that to the "I am absolutely and totally convinced that I was right" of Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara when pontificating on Iraq.

Two days ago, I had lunch at the Spaggheteria restaurant in Beirut with Adrien Jaulmes of Le Figaro newspaper, an immensely well-read French journalist who even knew the fate of my great hero Georges Guynemer, a French pilot who was blasted down over Ypres in 1917 after destroying a total of 53 German aircraft. So ferocious was the German bombardment at the time of his crash that when the poilus - the French infantry - reached the scene, there was nothing left of Guynemer or his plane.

Guyenemer gave his name to a beautiful street that runs up one side of the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, and Jaulmes and I talked of Verdun and the Somme and, of course, the second great conflict of "our" generation in which 60 million souls perished.So how come our midgets still pretend they are fighting the Second World War, that Saddam was Hitler on the Tigris, that Nasser was the Mussolini of the Nile (this really was Anthony Eden's description!), that they are standing up to appeasement, and al-Qa'ida "fascism"? Is there not some way of switching this nonsense off?

Adrien and I talked of the fall of Berlin (watch the movie Downfall if you have not done so - you will sit in silence for minutes afterwards) and he made a remarkable comment towards the end of our meal. Adrien was a French foreign legionnaire - based in Corsica - before he (wisely) became a journalist.

"You know, there is something extraordinary, Robert," he said. "You can tell a soldier to burn a village and he will do it and commit a war crime. Or you can tell him to rescue people and he will do that and he is a humanitarian hero. Isn't that extraordinary?"

Yes, Adrien, it is.