Funny country, Lebanon. The minute one army packed up and rushed out, another one swaggered in and took its place. There always seemed to be someone knocking on the door to get inâ??and someone inside dying to get out. Unlike the PLO and the Israelis, though, the U.S. Marines came to Beirut as â??peacekeepersâ?; they even had a list of ten rules governing when they could fire their weapons, to prove it.
Whenever I think back on the Marinesâ?? sojourn in Lebanon, which lasted from August 1982 until February 1984, I am reminded of a remarkable scene in Tadeusz Borowskiâ??s book about the Nazi concentration camps, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman. Borowski, a Polish poet and political prisoner of the Nazis, Described how, at the end of World War II, a large group of Auschwitz inmates got hold of a Nazi SS guard and began to rip him apart, just as their concentration camp was being liberated by American GIâ??s.
â??At last they seized [the SS guard] inside the German barracks, just as he was about to climb over the window ledge,â? wrote Borowski. â??In absolute silence they pulled him down to the floor and panting with hate dragged him into a dark alley. Here, closely surrounded by a silent mob, they began tearing at him with greedy hands. Suddenly from the camp gate a whispered warning was passed from one mouth to another. A company of [American] soldiers, their bodies leaning forward, their rifles on the ready, came running down the campâ??s main road, weaving between the cluster of men in stripes standing in the way. The crowd scattered and vanished inside the blocks.â?
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