Preface

The Nahr al-Kalb, or 'Dog River', meets the Mediterranean Sea just north of Beirut, after meandering thirty kilometres downstream from its wellspring in the Lebanon range. A four-lane highway overpass runs along this stretch of coast, and tentacles of concrete obscure the river mouth. The strip of land to the north and south has been reclaimed from the sea. It's a flat, featureless stretch of windblown sand and garbage. In ancient times, though, the view was very different. The steep riverbanks dropped straight into the ocean, and the Lycus, as the river was then known, was a significant obstacle to conquering armies. Ramases II carved a monument into the rock when he passed this way, as did Nebuchadnezzar, Marcus Aurelius, and various Assyrian kings. When Napoleon III sent an army to the Levant, his soldiers also carved an impressive memorial to their emperor—right over the top of Ramases' inscription which, until then, had stood proudly for two-and-a-half millennia.

A modern-day tourist, after dodging traffic from an off-ramp and pulling away a few weeds, can still view these glorious engravings. The history they tell is of an ancient and war-scarred land. The British continued the tradition when General Edmund Allenby conquered Ottoman-ruled Syria and Lebanon during the Great War. That inscription pays homage to the Australian Light Horse, who routed the Turks at Beersheba and pushed on to capture Damascus and Aleppo, paving the way for the French mandate and ending Syria's four centuries under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. Those horsemen are now an Australian legend; and the mystique, if not the detail, of their exploits is part of our nation's consciousness. But another nearby monument makes mention of a conflict that is not so well recalled:

JUNE–JULY 1941FIRST AUSTRALIAN CORPS CAPTURED DAMOUR WHILE BRITISH, INDIAN, AUSTRALIAN AND FREE FRENCH TROOPS CAPTURED DAMASCUS BRINGING FREEDOM TO SYRIA AND LEBANON

It has almost been forgotten that our soldiers were back here again a generation later, once again at the behest of the United Kingdom, fighting a strange war against confused Frenchmen who were not supposed to be our enemy. France had been defeated and subjugated by the Germans. The new French government, installed at Vichy, was answerable to the Führer. With France vanquished, the fate of the mandate in Syria and Lebanon became uncertain. The British—urged on by Charles de Gaulle, whose Free French movement had received British sponsorship—sent in the Australian 7th Division to seize it, not expecting that the French Army of the Levant, in defence of its military honour, would put up a fight. The Australians won the war, but at the price of more than 400 young men, sons of Anzacs who had fought to defend France in the trenches of the Western Front. The British were embarrassed, the campaign was forgotten, and the Australians who fought were dubbed the 'silent men'.

For the Syrians and Lebanese, though, this was a chance for liberation. The Gaullists clung to a stale notion of French colonial glory, but the British—whose guns kept the peace—knew that change was inevitable, and independence came to both Syria and Lebanon in 1943. By that time the men of the 7th Division had long since returned home and had fought a new war—on the Kokoda Track, against the Japanese—which sealed their own place in history. Even that recognition was late in coming, and the story of Australia's involvement in the Levant in 1941 remains largely untold. Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart's History of the Second World War does not mention it. Antony Beevor's The Second World War only devotes half a page to it. In Australia, a comprehensive account of the military campaign can be found in the battalion histories, as well as in the series Australia in the War of 1939–1945 edited by Gavin Long. But the geopolitical causes of the conflict, and the motivations of the enemy, are not well understood. To Australians, the 'Vichy French' who fought in the Levant were 'not really French, but . . . a separate species, now extinct in the incomprehensible meanderings of time.'

I had come to Lebanon to find out more about this strange, neglected campaign. From the Dog River we headed south, through the suburbs of Beirut itself and further on down the coast, along the modern highway traversing the narrow strip between the ocean and the mountain foothills. The country was pleasant; to the east, the hazel-coloured spurs of the Lebanon range rose up towards the clouds, flecked with the orange terracotta of apartment roofs. To the west, the Mediterranean sparkled, and colourful beach-resort parasols lined the sand. The atmosphere changed as the Israeli border drew closer. We passed through ragged banana plantations and empty stretches of rubble-strewn wasteland, as well as Palestinian refugee camps, hidden behind high concrete walls and watchtowers. In the last few years the Palestinians have been joined by a million new refugees from Syria, driven across the border into Lebanon by the neighbouring civil war.

At the Litani River, south of Sidon, a soldier from the United Nations waved us through a checkpoint. Blue-uniformed troops with riot-shields patrolled the roadside. Israel has a tendency to blast this part of the coast with short, intense displays of force. The pretext is to weaken Hezbollah, but locals will tell you that the real objective is to destroy Lebanese infrastructure. Conflict recurs so frequently here that the Second World War seems irrelevant—about as significant as those antiquated inscriptions above the Dog River. I knew that the Australians had fought a fierce battle at the Litani River in 1941, but no-one around here remembered it, and there was no battlefield guide to show the way. All that I had was a hand-drawn sketch from an old battalion diary, and a black-and-white photo from the archives, showing the point where the Australians crossed the river. Alan Haddy, a corporal from the West Australian goldfields, had volunteered to swim across and secure a rope on the opposite bank, under intense fire from Vichy French machine guns and mortars. The Australians were then able to haul canvas boats through the swift current and ford the river.

We took a secondary road leading inland from the coast, and were soon lost among the banana groves. A lone building rose above the foliage in the flat river valley, and we pulled in to the gravel drive. It was a grand, multi-storeyed hotel. There were no other guests. The car park was quiet, the elaborate swimming pool had been drained, and the grass grew long in the garden beds. The interior was dim, and the proprietor, bored-looking, sat behind the desk with a cigarette. A decade ago, the place was apparently a bustling holiday resort, but the 2006 war with Israel had killed the tourism industry here.

The hotel backed onto the river, and I walked around to the function deck, where creeper vines sprung through cracks in the tiles. The Litani, bright and blue-green, gurgled below. I pulled out the old photograph, and realised that I was standing, by chance, on the very spot where it had been taken in 1941. The bend in the river and the aspect of the distant hill were the same. This was the place where Haddy had gone across. It was easy to imagine the Vichy stronghold, on the brown ridge to the north, commanding the surrounding countryside and raining fire down on the Australians. There were no memorials; no signs. Reeds and bulrushes had reclaimed the riverbanks, and it was silent except for the buzzing of insects. The proprietor sidled up to the railing and thrust a hotel brochure into my hand. 'Tell your friends,' he said. 'Everyone has forgotten about this place.'