The Intelligent Way
The
author of "Six Campaigns" remembers EOKA. He served with the Intelligence
Corps in Cyprus.
(Edited by David Carter, with added
comments)
Note:
Some images can be clicked on for a larger version.
Basic training
I should have been called up in December 1955 when I reached my eighteenth birthday, but had an automatic deferment to enable me to take my A Levels the following summer. Then there was a lengthy wait, probably due to the upheaval caused by the Suez Crisis in late 1956, so I did not enter the Army until March 1957, joining the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry at Cowley Barracks, Oxford. By a strange coincidence a school friend, Paul Reed, joined the Regiment the same day.
The basic training we underwent consisted mainly of arms and foot drill, interweaved with lectures on Regimental history, telling us how the Battle of Waterloo had been won by the Oxford and Bucks. There was also endless bullshit - scrubbing, polishing and Blancoing. Kit layouts were a nightmare - this was where you had to lay all your equipment out on your bed according to some pre-ordained pattern and this was inspected the following morning. It got to the point where we did this the previous night and then slept on the floor. It was probably suitable training for the ploughboys and gaol sweepings, which constituted Wellington's army who had to be taught to stand in line under fire, but as far as preparing literate and educated men like us for the rigours of guerrilla warfare in Cyprus or Malaya was a complete waste of time. We were at Oxford for about a month and then Paul and I, with one or two others, were selected to attend a potential officer's course at Brigade HQ at Stensall in Yorkshire. The training there consisted of more of the same but it was even more strenuous as we were expected to become leaders of men. It seemed to involve a great deal of staggering through obstacles and roaming about the Yorkshire moors in the middle of the night.
Not Officer Material
After eight weeks, about a dozen of us were sent forward for a WOSB (The War Office Selection Board) to establish if we were 'officer material'. We all failed. Very puzzling as we can't all have been duds. (Indeed several were commissioned the second time around and within a few weeks of my demob. I, myself, was in charge of a prospecting party, roughly the size of an infantry company, deep in the West African bush). Paul and I were sent back to Cowley to be told that we would be joining the battalion in Cyprus, which was engaged in hunting Grivas and his EOKA guerrillas. The official terminology for this was 'Counter Insurgency Operations' (COINOPS), but it was invariably referred to by the troops as 'golly bashing'. I spent three weeks' embarkation leave in Taunton, where my parents lived, and thinking they might never see me again. On returning to Oxford, however, I was called to the Orderly Room and asked if I wanted to transfer to the Intelligence Corps and naturally I said "Yes". So off I went to Maresfield in Sussex to the l. Corps' depot, deep in the middle of a wood, which also surrealistically contained a great number of Russian artillery pieces.
Transferred to
the Intelligence Corps
Our training, which lasted between three and four months, was quite interesting and during this time we were the recipients of much strange data - such as how many mobile bath houses there were in a Red Army Motorised Rifle Division (not many), but the most stimulating part of our training was undoubtedly the interrogator's course, which also involved men from the dreaded SAS, although we didn't realise it at the time because we were simply told they were sergeants from a Territorial Army section.
For 24 hours a small group of us would play the part of captured terrorists and be questioned one by one by these thugs. There were few restraints apart from the fact that we all knew that after the 24 hours roles would be reversed, with us having the advantage of various little tips we might have picked up. As part of my questioning I was made to stand naked next to a very hot coal stove. After a while, getting bored with this, they decided to put me outside on the veranda to cool off. This was in the early hours of an October morning. As they bundled me outside I realised that moving from a brightly lit room into almost total darkness meant that for a few seconds they would effectively be blind and, knowing they couldn't shoot me, I promptly ran away.
The umpire, who was present throughout to make sure no one was actually killed, decided that I had escaped but, being without clothing or shelter, would have died quickly from exposure. I was relegated to playing a corpse, which was much more restful than being mistreated by lunatics. Now, when fictional interrogations are shown on television, I'm amused to see how often the basic rules are broken. The protagonists frequently face each other across narrow and flimsy tables. We were told repeatedly to use a table too wide to reach across and too heavy to overturn.
Recently I heard a good story from an ex-officer who was on the same course a few months later. In this case the SAS sergeants were interrogated first and the Intelligence Corps trainees went into town, lifted them and took them back to the camp. There they did all the usual things, half drowning the poor sods in oil drums, etc. But, as my informant said, "these guys were good and we couldn't crack their cover". After about an hour of this a phone call came through: "This is Sgt Jones of 21 SAS, where the fuck have you guys been? We're still waiting to be snatched." The trainees had kidnapped a bunch of complete strangers and couldn't break cover because they didn't have a 'secret' identity. Of course this didn't go down too well with the press and public, especially as not too long before, during a NATO exercise in the highlands, Intelligence Corps interrogators had mistreated a group of Belgian pilots by hanging them in chains in a deserted barn.
By the end of October 1957, our training was complete and we were ready to be posted. There were only four postings to Cyprus and 40 of us. Other possible destinations were in the UK or with the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR). Nobody wanted to go there. It was considered as boring as to be based in Britain, but much less convenient.
Our staff sergeant said we should draw lots. I got Cyprus at odds of ten to one against. Off I went for another three weeks' embarkation leave. After the last time, nobody believed I was really going. Nonetheless in early November 1957, with my three companions, I left Southampton on the troopship Dunera, which was extremely crowded. Just lying in my bunk I could reach out and touch about 10 other men. From the Tannoy system came the strains of a popular tune of the time, "Why must I be alone?" After calling at Gibraltar and Malta, we reached Cyprus after a voyage of 12 days and went ashore at Limassol. I was sent to Wayne's Keep, the transit camp at Nicosia for a couple of days and then posted to the 44th Port Security Section at Larnaca where I was to spend the rest of my service. It was a small unit consisting of six or seven ORs, a regular staff sergeant and a 2nd Lieutenant, all commanded by an ex-ranker, promoted to Captain.
EOKA targets
I was greeted with a disturbing piece of news: apparently EOKA had just threatened to kill all I. Corps personnel, so we were ordered to remove the identifying shoulder flashes from our uniforms. Then someone pointed out that this meant we were the only troops on the island with no shoulder flashes and, therefore, about three times more conspicuous than before. So the following day we sewed them back on. Joseph Heller would have loved it. Our duties were to keep the port secure, to patrol Larnaca Bay in a high speed launch, to search incoming passengers and cargo for arms and seditious literature and also to check parcels in the post office next to the police station compound. Here we lived four to a tent, until the last few days of my service when we moved into abandoned quarantine kennels! We were a hybrid unit, part soldier, part customs official and part policeman. The most interesting part of our duties took place at sea. Almost every night one of us with a four-man crew would patrol the bay looking for gunrunners, but we never caught any. We also had to board incoming vessels anchored some distance offshore - the port itself had silted up - and give them a check before the customs and medical people did. In rough weather getting off the launch onto a rope ladder dangling from a ship's side was an interesting experience, particularly as I cannot swim. We had a tanker go aground in broad daylight and over the succeeding three days with the radio on the launch, we provided a ship-to-shore link. Years later I was astonished to receive a £3 cheque from the improbably titled 'Divorce Probate and Maritime Department'. This was my share for helping in the salvaging of the Clyde Guardian. Naturally I cashed it and now I wish I had kept it as a souvenir. There can't be many National Service soldiers who have received salvage money.
Under fire
My first few months in Cyprus were relatively quiet, but from about March '58, things hotted up and we weren't allowed out except armed and on duty. (I was astonished when I heard of troops in Ulster - professional soldiers not conscripts - getting themselves killed on 'fun runs' and the like. Either you are fighting a war or you are not). Being behind the wire was boring, but boredom was better than being dead. I never saw a recognisable enemy, but I was involved in a number of 'incidents'. Returning from a short trip to deliver 2nd Lt. Graham Howes to his billet, we came upon two dead policemen in the road. Some time later it occurred to me that the enemy must have been in position during our outward journey, but had rejected us in favour of a softer target.
On another occasion, coming back from a similar trip, we ran into a mob of teenage boys who forced our vehicle to a slow crawl. I cocked my Sten gun and stood up, trying to look ferocious. They got the message that if they rushed us, some of them would die. They must have had more faith in the Sten than I did. Towards the end of my service I found myself on the fringe of another ambush.
Late one night, two of us were on duty at the port's gatehouse, when a couple of Land Rovers crossed the junction about a hundred yards away. This was a patrol led by my friend Gerry Mortimer of the Royal Artillery. Suddenly there was an explosion. Just as I was about to record the incident in our logbook, we heard a burst of small arms fire. My companion and I dashed out the door and took up a position behind the low wall that marked the entrance of the port. As suddenly as it had begun, the incident was over. Gerry Mortimer told me that EOKA had chucked a 'Mills' bomb at them and that his men had fired back blindly, a kind of reflex action on their part. Thankfully there were no injuries.
The conversation went something like this.
"Morning, George."
"Morning, Adrian. You okay?"
"Yeah, fine. By the way, George, you're under arrest."
There was laughter all round, until the truth dawned on them. We kept them locked up all day in the baggage shed. Christ knows what we were expected to do with them. Before the operation began, our OC had ordered us to shoot to kill if any of our prisoners attempted to escape. Tactically this made no sense, as corpses can't tell you anything. By evening none had tried to break out and so we released them all. Next morning I received a bollocking from my boss for allowing our 'prisoners' to call me by my first name.
The Psychology of Terror
I don't think I was ever really in much danger in Cyprus. Most of our causalities came from what now is called 'friendly fire' and road accidents. A tent mate of mine went off his head. He developed 'the thousand yard stare'. He was shipped home. Nevertheless the enemy were quite skilled at keeping us on the hop. At moments when everything seemed to be getting back to normal, there would be a killing or a bomb explosion, raising the level of tension once more.
This is the quintessence of guerrilla tactics: a few moments' work by them designed to engage the security forces in many hours of stressful labour
The Cutliffe Killing
In October 1958 the situation took a further turn for the worse. Mrs. Catherine Cutliffe , the wife of a Royal Artillery sergeant, was killed in Famagusta. This represented a considerable escalation in the conflict, as EOKA had not targeted British women before. That night men from the widower's unit - plus others from an Irish battalion (the Royal Ulster Rifles) went on the rampage in the city. Civilians were forced to lie in the back of trucks, with second and third layers ordered on top. There was an official inquiry afterwards. It established that three civilians had died, one a 10-year-old girl, presumably all by suffocation. There were persistent rumours of many more deaths and of bodies being buried secretly in the quarries behind the town. But that's what a war is like - a spiral of atrocity and counter-atrocity.
Torture
There is no doubt that torture of suspects was endemic. A certain amount of casual brutality against the 'enemy' by soldiers is inescapable, but some units, as a matter of routine, placed metal buckets on the heads of their prisoners and banged them with rifle barrels until he or she confessed. The Turkish Special Branch, with whom my unit worked, was something else. Its officers were filled with a profound hatred of anything Greek and quite ready to frame suspects.
In a very minor way I got caught up in this kind of thing, too, albeit to a lesser extent. Every third day I would go to the post office, accompanied by two armed Turkish policemen as bodyguards (we called them Laurel and Hardy because of some real or imagined resemblance). I would be dressed in civilian clothes, as we were for the most of our duties, but with pistol in a shoulder holster. My job was to open and check the contents of parcels mailed from abroad in case they carried prohibited items. Shortly before Christmas 1957, I found a couple of water pistols, part of a consignment of presents. I ordered Laurel and Hardy to destroy them, which they did with unseemly enthusiasm. I'm still disturbed by this - by smashing up toys you're not many steps away from smashing up children. But it's worth remembering that we were 'the servants of the Crown' and a democratically elected government, so whatever we did we did for you.
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(David Carter: Magistrates
in the civil courts
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Nobody,
Greek, Turk or Brit, seemed to pay any attention to international law or
even the dictates of human decency. I recall a member of a Welsh regiment
indignantly telling me that EOKA had fired on an ambulance in which he
and several other soldiers were travelling, fully armed. It didn't cross
his mind that transporting troops under cover of the Red Cross was itself
a breach of the Geneva Convention. It would be dishonest for us to gloss
over the fact that torture was used extensively in Cyprus to extract information
from suspected terrorists or their sympathisers. It was an open secret
and very well known to those of us who served there during the EOKA conflict.
Interrogations
were often carried out by the Special Branch of the Cyprus police, largely
made up from the Turkish community, but with British officers in charge.
The Turks had a vested interest in obtaining 'confessions'
as did their superiors, who often allowed their teams to carry out their
duties with great 'enthusiasm'. The results were often calamitous.
Ruthlessness
became a habit on both sides. It was about this time that a photograph
appeared in the world's leading newspapers that came to symbolise the erosion
of human values throughout the island.
Caught in the Middle
The increasing intercommunal strife effectively became a civil war between the Greeks and Turks and it reached its zenith in August1958. That month, late one night, I was in the Larnaca police station and saw a crowd of policemen gathered round a car (a Ford Consul) with dark liquid leaking from under its doors. We went to have a look and promptly wished we hadn't. The liquid was blood, coming from the remains of three Greek Cypriots who had been caught by Turks. The Turks had hacked them to pieces, cutting off their penises and stuffing them in their mouths in the course of the frenzied attack. Apparently this was part of some religious rite to prevent the victims entering heaven. I hope God was pleased.
About this time there were disquieting rumours that the mainland Turks were planning to invade Cyprus and we were faced with the prospect of fighting battle-hardened regulars as well as conducting a counter insurgency campaign. Luckily nothing came of the rumours, but our lords and masters began to have doubts about the loyalty of the Turkish police, and there we were locked in a fortified compound with hundreds of the buggers. We were told to sleep with our pistols tied to our wrists and this we did for some three or four weeks, until the problem resolved itself. In fact, I unloaded my pistol, fearing that I was more likely to shoot myself during a nightmare and that in any case the Turks could easily overpower us before we woke up and could use our weapons. It wasn't all doom and gloom, however. We had a few humorous interludes - amounting to about a laugh a fortnight. Our seniors gave us a few laughs.
On one occasion our staff sergeant actually said, "Walker, you're not in the Intelligence Corps to think." Then there was our OC who always said at the start of a journey in his Land Rover, "Now, when we're ambushed..." He never said "if", always "when". We joked he had made a deal with EOKA to toughen us up. Breakfast in our canteen left much to be desired. For six bloody months we were served Spam every morning and then one day, the cook switched to corned beef. Some smart ass (not me) glanced at the cook and quipped, "Hey, why do you keep fucking about with the menu, Nick?" The next morning Nick replied. We were back to Spam once more.
Convenient lies
Even today that period in the history of Cyprus is obscured, as is so often the case, by a fog of propaganda, half-truths and downright lies. We need only look at Grivas's alleged log of the events of 28 October 1958, published in his autobiography. He purports that the list of terrorist attacks on the security forces for that day are absolutely accurate. He claims that nine soldiers were killed in these attacks island-wide, with an undisclosed number of fatalities in a further series of incidents. As probably there were less than 400 military fatalities during the entire four-year-long campaign - and no more than a third caused directly by EOKA - the Grivas figure constitutes an unbelievable percentage for one day's activities. Equally the official figures for civilian casualties can be misleading. Just as in Northern Ireland later, many murders that occurred had nothing to do with terrorism. They were simple criminal acts.
In Larnaca, while I was there, several deaths were labelled as 'intercommunal acts', although they bore all the hallmarks of privately motivated murder. It was automatically assumed that if a Greek was killed, the Turks were responsible and vice versa. The police were too stretched to mount full-scale murder enquiries. It was easier and quicker to list these killings as 'political'. A morally grey triangle develops where security forces, 'freedom fighters' and common criminals interface. It becomes an area for study by social historians and political scientists, rather than soldiers.
Welcome home
I arranged to be demobbed in Cyprus in February 1959. With Gerry Mortimer of the Gunners, I made my way back to Britain via Israel, Greece, Italy and then by train across France. It was good fun and very different to what we had recently experienced. It was raining at Dover when we arrived back in Britain and the customs searched Gerry's kit. Welcome home brave lads. Three years later the War Office sent my campaign medal, but not a demob suit on which to hang it. Because we had been in different units, Gerry and I hardly knew each other and yet we spent about three weeks in each other's company without any friction. Perhaps the army had taught us the valuable art of rubbing along with others. We parted at Victoria Station and exchanged Christmas cards for a while, but we never saw each other again.
Today I remember my National Service with a rueful affection. It made me tough and self-reliant and was instrumental in my getting my first job in West Africa. And if someone said I would have to start over again and gave me the choice of a cushy job in the UK, a commission or the job I had in Cyprus in the ranks, I think I would settle for the latter. Conventional wisdom suggests that National Service made us grow up, but we mature anyway between the age of 18 and 21. I think those who advocate its return have got it wrong. It is a cumbersome way of disciplining young men. National Service was simply a product of its time. My generation was brought up during World War 2 and its aftermath. We were born cannon fodder. Those of us who survived undoubtedly benefited from the experience, but how many of us were willing conscripts?
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