Word: paget
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Pride and Frustration. Then the British moved in. They cut French General Oliva Roget's line of communication with his base at Beirut. Into Damascus clanked a column of Sherman tanks on which Union Jacks had been freshly painted. Up from Cairo flew General Sir Bernard Paget, British commander in chief in the Middle East, who had several hundred thousand men on call. Paget ordered Roget to "cease fire." The Frenchman said that he would not take orders from a Britisher. Paget suggested that Roget call his French superior, General Humbolt, at Beirut. Roget pointed out that the British...
...helpless. British tanks had nuzzled up to the French positions. While the city rang with welcome to the British, and Paget's red, handsome face beamed, Roget angrily ordered his men back to barracks. He raged that the British had shown up only after he had "restored order," and he told a Syrian journalist: "You are replacing the easygoing French with the brutal British." Unimpressed, Syrians killed what stray Frenchmen and Senegalese they could find. After curfew, the humiliated French had to accept British escort to places of safety...
...Paget brought General Humbolt up from Beirut to show him what the French Army had done to Damascus. After touring the streets in a British staff car, Humbolt sacked Roget. The Arabs had neither forgotten nor forgiven the shelling of Damascus by the French in 1925. Now they recalled that the French Government removed General Maurice Sarrail for that atrocity-and that the city was shelled again the following year...
...desert camp mutiny flared. The disgruntled Greeks swiftly took control from officers loyal to the Cairo regime. Sternly British General Sir Bernard Paget ordered the mutineers to lay down their arms, submit to authority. The Greeks argued that they were merely staging a political demonstration. The British said that mixing politics with soldiering was a breach of discipline. When words failed, General Paget moved up a British armored force, issued an ultimatum...
...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...