The Story of Bogdanovitch, GCD

By
David Carter
With acknowledgements to James Hope

His dinner was late. As usual he was expecting his meal to be delivered to his house at exactly six o’clock from the Greek Cypriot café across the Xeros-Lefke road, where he lived alone in ‘Miners’ Row’." Bog", as he was known, was the security officer of the American-owned Cyprus Mining Corporation.

He glanced at his watch again. It was ten minutes past the hour and still there was no sign of his meal. Not good enough, Bog thought, and decided to find out why. He strode across his tidy garden, his two boxer dogs at his heels. Reaching the wire fence of his property, he shouted in Greek in the direction of the café. There was no reply. The street was empty. Nothing moved.

Suddenly Bog was thrown backwards from a punch to his chest, followed by another as he heard the first shotgun blast to be echoed by a second in rapid succession.

Theodore Costa Bogdanovitch, GC

As he fell to the ground, his white jacket turned red with his blood. Now a burst of machine-gun bullets tore through his body. His dogs crouched next to him, barking at first and then whimpering over their master. The gunshots and the dogs" cries brought a platoon of the Gordon Highlanders rushing to the scene. They were based at the nearby Aberdeen Camp. But the soldiers were too late to save Bog's life. His last words were: "Why? They were my friends." The time was 18.15.

Unique funeral

Two thousand local CMC employees - Greeks and Turks - saw Bog's murder as a personal tragedy. They mourned because he had a reputation for treating both communities fairly. His acts of kindness were proverbial.

"We were a sad and angry Regiment after that," recalled James Hope, a former Gordon Highland officer. "But there was one final courtesy we could pay him. He was buried with full military honours in the English Cemetery in Nicosia. Four Highland and two Cyprus Police officers carried him to his final resting place. Buglers sounded the Last Post. Men of all nationalities mourned him."

A senior employee of the CMC, who wished to remain anonymous, told me: "I remember being impressed by the funeral put on by the 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders. All the traditions of the Regiment were there with the slow march, muffled drums and the laments and dirges played by the pipers." He continued: "All this was due to the well-deserved respect he had earned from the Regiment in the short time he had worked with them."

From the Pinewood Valley Hotel in Pedhoulas, where officers were accommodated, 2nd Lt Jamie Henderson of 1 Gordons wrote home on 22 April 1956: "The day before yesterday the security officer of the CMC, a Yugoslav naturalised British, Mr. Bogdanovic (sic) GC, was shot dead in Xeros, we are all very sad, as he was a very memorable and likeable old boy." Uniquely priests of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Muslim faith took part in the funeral service. Although Bog was highly respected, only a rare few knew him as a person or much about his roots. Superintendent Duncan, a British Cyprus Police officer, described him as "a gentlemen in every sense of the word and the straightest man I"ve ever met. Extremely modest, he was deeply religious and generous to a fault, but he simply could not tolerate anything that was dishonest."

Another CMC employee, who lives today in Nevada, remembered Bog as "smart in the extreme". He added: "I believe he waxed the ends of his moustache. He came over as a totally military man with a clipped and precise way of speaking. He was always the perfect gentleman."

To most, Bog was a man of mystery. Despite his knowledge of local affairs and who was doing what and where, he consistently refused to reveal information to British Special Branch officers. He would only deal with the intelligence team of the locally based regiments and only then if he felt soldiers" lives were at risk from EOKA activity.

The CMC mines at Xeros

"In the mine," Bog explained, "we have Greek and Turkish. Both have good people in their ranks, both have bad. All must work, all have families, - children, old folk, who must eat. I have seen too much suffering in my life, this is now my home and I want peace for all. Both Turks and Greeks are my friends. It is better so." He encouraged Greek Cypriot employees at the mining company not to get involved with the terrorists. And they listened. For Eoka, he was an anathema, somebody who had to be eliminated.

A quiet man

But who was Bog? I put the question to another former CMC employee. "About his background, I know very little, but, at the time of his death he was living in what had been a CMC clinic across the road from the Englezos canteen and virtually next door to the police station. This was for security reasons," he replied. "Prior to that I remember he lived in a CMC house near the old Assay office on the road leading up to where other CMC staff members lived, near the entrance to Aberdeen Camp. This enabled him to walk his nightly check around Xeros Plant area and surprise sleepy watchmen."

His colleague added: "I was told that he had served the British in Palestine and was awarded an Empire Gallantry medal for the actions he took when communications were lost between his group and headquarters during a battle with the local Arabs. The story was that whilst under fire, he climbed telegraph poles, replaced and repaired wires and restored communications, thereby saving the day." Armed with those few clues, I began my search to discover Bog's history.

He was born in 1899 in the Serb town of Bogdans, named after his family who founded the place. They were Royalists. "In childhood it was a happy time. My mother was a very beautiful woman and we had dogs, many dogs," he wrote a friend. When his homeland was invaded at the outbreak of the First World War, Bog enlisted in the Serbian Army at the age of 15. He was twice wounded in battle and decorated for gallantry. Because of his knowledge of English, he was posted to the British Forces as an interpreter. He remained with them throughout the Salonika campaign and on to Constantinople, which the British occupied at the end of World War I. There he was placed in charge of the Serbian Guard outside British Army HQ. Eventually the British withdrew from Turkey and the Serbian Guard was disbanded.

Bog (extreme left) on parade with the
Palestine Police

By now there was no reason for Bog to return to his country, enveloped in political turmoil. His father had been killed and his mother was missing. He chose to head east, a stateless refugee. In March 1924, he joined the Palestine Gendarmerie and became Trooper Bogdanovitch, a servant of the British who had been mandated to govern Palestine. On his travels Bog had learned to speak Greek, Turkish, French, and Arabic in addition to his own language and English.

Eventually the Gendarmerie was divided into the Palestine Police and the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force. He opted for the latter and was commissioned as a Mulazim or Lieutenant. For the British, life in Palestine was far from peaceful with Arabs and Jews trying to take over the region. An Arab revolt broke out, led by a charismatic leader called Ferzi Quakji.

Awarded the GC

In March 1939, Quakji's brother entered Jordan with a large force trained at bases in Syria. A vigorous battle began between them and units of Frontier Force with Arab Legion troops in the frontline. Almost immediately Lieutenant Macadam, the Legion's young commander was killed. Bogs immediately took charge of both military groups and their armoured cars. Outnumbered and short of ammunition, he ordered his men into hand-to-hand combat and won the day, personally killing Quakji"s brother in the fighting. Three months later, the British Government awarded Bogs the Empire Gallantry Medal, which, in 1940, was converted to the George Cross, ranking second only to a VC.

The George Cross, designed by Percy Metcalfe, is made of silver by the Royal Mint. The colour of the ribbon is officially described as "Garter" blue. The inscription on the obverse is: "For Gallantry". The recipient"s title, full name, rank and, where appropriate, unit, are inscribed on the reverse of the cross together with the date. The date inscribed on the GC is the date of the award and not the date, or dates, of the deed.

Copper ore about to be loaded for export
from the Xeros mines

The citation of Bog's GC said that it was for his "complete contempt of personal danger and the tactical skill he displayed were an inspiration to his men, and contributed in no small measure to the success of the action". It was not until 1944 that Bog became a naturalized British citizen. He only visited the UK once to watch the Coronation celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II. In 1947, he retired from the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force with the rank of Kaimakam (Major) and came to Cyprus.

A year later he was offered the job of Security Officer with the CMC. His employers knew few details of his past. "Bog was hired in 1948 by the resident manager R J Hendricks," says a CMC source, "but even though my job was to administer any and all confidential matters, Hendricks kept Bog's activities to himself and I rarely saw him. He never came to my office and he never mingled with senior staff at our club in Skouriotissa."

EOKA confesses

Three years after Bog's murder, as the British were pulling out of Cyprus after independence, the same CMC manager met the EOKA commander for Xeros at a Queen's Birthday function in Nicosia. "The EOKA man told me that Bog's assassination had been planned to take place at the entrance to Pendayia Hospital where Bog visited at 4pm each afternoon as part of his security round," says my source. An ambush was set up, but Bog failed to appear. The EOKA man in question had worked for me prior to the trouble and remarked that the ambush was also cancelled because I had turned up at Pendayia in a company pick-up truck and I could have been shot, too, had he not recognized me. So the EOKA men proceeded to Xeros, where they killed Bog two hours later."

Today, thanks to James Hope, all Theodore Costa Bogdanovitch's service medals and George Cross are held in a place of honour in the Gordon Highlanders' Regimental Museum in Scotland.

"Bog, we think, would have liked that," Hope believes.

The Gordon Highlanders' Museum in Aberdeen

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