Posted on 02/04/2003 6:25:46 AM PST by johnny7
The Japanese demanded the unconditional surrender of Singapore. King Farouk, 22, of Egypt was pro-German.
The young king wanted to greet Rommel in Cairo. Ali Mahir Pasha was the German contact.
Well, things didn't work out that way.
A small force of Brits seized the royal palace. The boy-king was removed... thanks to Sir Miles Lampson.
At 9 o’clock precisely Lampson’s Rolls arrived at the gates, and the Ambassador, accompanied by the commander of the British troops in Egypt and followed by a specially picked posse of armed officers, entered the palace. True to his code even then, Farouk kept him waiting for five minutes in an ante-room, but once inside the royal chamber, with the general glowering at his back, Lampson allowed no nonsense. He was the last in the domineering line of Clive or Cromer, with an oriental monarch in his power before him (‘it doesn’t often come one’s way,’ as he wrote in his diary next day, ‘to be pushing a Monarch off a Throne.’)-- James (Jan) Morris, Farewell the Trumpets.
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