Word: levante
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General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson becomes Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean theater. Hulking (6 ft., 260 lb.), happy-natured "Jumbo" Wilson will merge his old Middle East command with all operations between Gibraltar and the Levant. Crisp, experienced General Sir Harold Alexander, who had been General Eisenhower's No. 1 deputy, remains in Italy as top commander there. With General Sir Bernard Paget, who modernized the British Army's battle training at home, as Jumbo Wilson's deputy in the Middle East, the Mediterranean thus becomes an all-British theater (although U.S. units may remain there...
...hills of Lebanon, some 35 miles from Beirut, a Lebanese rump government sat tight last week and awaited developments in its struggle for independence with the French Mandate authorities (TIME, Nov. 22), Its best game was to wait, to let the pressure of a general strike, uneasiness throughout the Levant and the Arab world, powerful influence from Britain and the U.S. force the French Committee of National Liberation to come to terms...
...negotiated. General Georges Catroux, rushed in as trouble shooter for General Charles de Gaulle and the French Committee, worked late, his sunken cheeks grey with fatigue, his deep-sunk eyes blazing with anger at "the plot." The existence of "the plot"-to build up British influence in the Levant at French expense-was taken for granted even by sobersided Frenchmen, although any such sinister motives were hotly denied by British Minister Sir Edward Spears and U.S. Diplomatic Agent George Wadsworth...
...nothing was said about reinstating him. Negotiations were to be opened at once to restore "constitutional life in Lebanon." After that, broader negotiations would be held in Damascus for the "harmonizing of the French Mandate with the regime of independence promised by France to the States of the Levant [Syria and Lebanon] in the proclamations of 1941." Whether this would calm the troubled waters of Levantine nationalism remained to be seen. Plot or no plot, the British in Cairo had their doubts...
...hidden rifles, homemade grenades, knives and stones, spewed out upon the streets. The French colonials went into action. Shots were traded, blood spilled. In the Place des Canons-the capital's Times Square-demonstrators cried: "A bas la France!" Nothing so menacing had been heard in the French Levant since 1925-27, when the Druses ran riot...