Lebanon
I am reading a book by Sandra Mackey entitled
“Lebanon, a House Divided”, which is of particular interest to me, since I
lived in Southern Lebanon in the 1960’s, and evacuated my family from Beirut during
the Six Day Arab-Israeli war.
Ms. Mackey’s book delves into the formation of
Lebanon as a country, explores the country’s internal schisms, and comments on
some of the leaders of the various factions in Lebanon.
While I lived south of Sidon, Lebanon in 1966-67,
Charles Helou, a Christian, was President, Rashid Karami, a Muslim, was Prime
Minister, Sabri Hamadé, a Shia was Speaker of Pariament and Kamal Jumblatt was
the Druze leader. Names like Camille
Chamoun, Suleiman Frangieh, Pierre Gemayel, Saeb Salam, were not unfamiliar in
Lebanese politics during this time.
Mackey’s book is a historical review of the
politics and factions that led to the formation of Lebanon after the Sykes-Picot
agreement carving up the Ottoman Empire, that had the misfortune to be on the
losing side of the Central Powers during the first world war. Mackey describes the patchwork of Lebanese
factions that formed the country, and the events leading up to the Lebanese
civil war of 1975-90.
My write-up of our interrupted stay in Lebanon follows:
Six Day War, Lebanon, Trip from
Athens to Rotterdam
We were living in Zahrani, about 5
km south of Sidon, Lebanon in June, 1967.
I was Technical Service Superintendent at the small (20,000 bpcd)
Medreco (Mediterranean Refining Company) refinery, a joint venture of Chevron
Texaco, Exxon and Mobil, operated by Caltex.
We had been there since mid 1966. John Creecy was refinery manager. Len Rayburn was Operating manager and Dick Doyle
was Engineering/Maintenance Manager.
Life was idyllic. We had a large house in a lemon grove
overlooking the refinery, and about 1 km from the Zahrani Country Club and 18
hole, (alternate tees), golf course. Swimming
in the Mediterranean was also available about 1 km away. We had a young maid who also served as nanny
and baby sitter for the kids. The kids went
to local English language schools, but who were also learning French and
Arabic. Our daughter Suzanne acted as
interpreter for our maid, whose only full language was Arabic.
My wife Eileen called me at about
noon at the refinery on June 6, 1967 and advised that war had started between
Israel and the surrounding Arab countries.
Refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-Day_War.
At about 2 AM the following morning, we were advised to pack travel bags
and to car pool to Beirut to the apartment of Bob Benkiser, who was the Caltex
Marketing Manager for the area. We did
that and congregated at the apartment, where Ms Benkiser served breakfast and
snacks to about 25 men, women and children.
David Wessel and I drove to the
Medreco office in the eastern part of Beirut on personal business with no
problem. We returned and had some
breakfast, and at that point I heard a popping sound, like popcorn
popping. The 3rd floor
apartment we were in was on the Corniche, about midway between the U.S. and
British embassies. The popping was the
sound of gunfire & we later learned that U.S. Marines fired over the heads
of rioters that were storming the embassy.
Note that this is the same embassy that was later bombed by terrorists
in 1983, killing 63 people. Beirut
link
A riot was in progress in the street
below us, with burning cars and a lot of shouting and noise. There was no gunfire or explosives, other
than the warning gunfire by the marines.
We had anxious hours throughout the day as our management sought to find
air passage for our dependents out of Lebanon.
The rioting abated and we moved en mass to the American University of
Beirut campus and waited several long hours there for finalization of the
flight. It turns out that our dependents
were able to get on the last flight out of Beirut. They evacuated safely to Rome, while several
of us stayed back to run the refinery and other Caltex interests in Lebanon.
We had no particular issues running
the refinery. Len Rayburn and I stopped
in Sidon on the way back to the refinery after getting our dependents off. We got a few stares, but nothing more. We were told later by several Lebanese refinery
employees, who apparently were members on the Christian right wing, that they
would offer protection in case of any real trouble.
The worse thing that happened to me
during our several week stay in South Lebanon involved golf. I was playing particularly well on one
Saturday and was on the way to winning many golf balls in a Nassau round when
we heard a rumor that the Israeli forces had invaded Lebanon from the
south. We curtailed our round after nine
holes and I did not win as many golf balls as I would have liked.
As time progressed, I arranged for
wife and children to go from Rome to Athens, where I later joined them by
loading our 1964 VW Beetle on a small Yugoslav cruise ship/freighter out of
Beirut and wending my way through the Mediterranean toward Piraeus/Athens. We stopped at Rhodes for an evening, and at
Crete for a full day. Most of the
passengers were Soviet Bloc, which made for interesting cocktail conversation at
the ship’s bar in the evenings.
While in Athens we saw some of
Greece, particularly Athens and Delphi, and later drove with our fully loaded VW
Beetle and three children, from Delphi to Rotterdam, where we had once resided.
While the family was in Athens, my son
Craig learned to swim in the pool at the Athens Hilton.
We tarried along the way in what was
then un-balkanized Yugoslavia for about three weeks, and vacationed primarily
along the Adriatic Coast. I retraced our
route recently. We could not enter
Albania at that time, so our route took us through what is now Macedonia
(Skopje); Kosovo(Pristina, Peja); over “the top” of Albania to Montenegro
(Podgorica, Petrovac on the Adriatic).
The drive from Skopje, Macedonia to Petrovac, Montenegro was a 15 hour
ordeal. For part of the trip we sat on
mud roads behind donkey carts on the way to market.
Over the rest of the three-week period, we continued
along the Adriatic coast through what is now Montenegro, Bosnia/Herzegovina,
Croatia and Slovenia. We stopped for
several days in Zadar, Croatia, where we saw a marionette show and a real
European circus, among other things. We
continued through the Austrian Alps into Austria and Germany, stopping at
Salzburg, Austria and Munich. We also visited
Dachau, near Munich.
I shipped the Volkswagen from
Rotterdam to New York, the family sailed to New York on the Holland America
line, and I flew on ahead to prepare for our resettlement in Peekskill, NY.
Ray Gruszecki/
January, 2016, May 2021
No comments:
Post a Comment