Anchored very carefully on the archives belonging to the dark years of World War II, Admiral Samir El-Khadem provides for you the other side issues that the history did not mention. Apart from all discrimination, the sequence of the events in Beirut has been mentioned and in particular the activities of the French Naval Division in the Levant especially the miserable fate of the submarine ” Souffleur”, sunk off shore of Khaldé on June 25.
This book portrays for you accurately and fairly Beirut on the eve of the Independence and takes you to the legendary landmarks, moreover this book bring you closer from its military and civilian characters as if we are living with them in their happiness, sorrows and aspirations in a short and difficult period where the French mandate authority moved in Lebanon from the French forces that affiliate to the Vichy government led by Marshal Pétain and supported by the Nazi Germany to the Free French forces that is led by General de Gaulle and supported by Great Britain.
It is very difficult to describe and study an extinct era through a point of view of another era having its specific interests and goals.
Beirut, August 2014
Admiral (R) Samir El-Khadem
