CHAPTER SIX
(November 1955 to November 1956)
The internal security situation had reached such a dangerous level that Harding had no alternative but to declare a State of Emergency on 26 November. While Grivas regarded EOKA as an insurgency group, Harding regarded them as terrorists. Terrorism is variously defined but in principle it is violence used by a formed organization or loose grouping of individuals who have rejected negotiation and use violence, fear and intimidation in the pursuit of an ideological, political or religious goal.
Henceforth, the military campaign became known as the Cyprus Emergency. Service personnel in Cyprus were now officially on Active Service and qualified for the General Service Medal with the ‘Cyprus’ clasp awarded after a minimum aggregate served of 120 days, but the British Government did not regard the Emergency as a military campaign and consequently most awards for gallantry were of a noncombatant nature. Every man was issued with a pamphlet governing the Rules of Engagement and arrangements were made for off-duty military personnel to carry revolvers as personal protection weapons. Unfortunately, several Servicemen managed to lose their weapons, some by leaving them on the beach, and were court-martialled.
EOKA was outlawed, and henceforth, some church bells, which had sometimes been used as signals between communities that patrols were active, were silenced. Men in several troublesome suburbs and villages that flirted with terrorism were liable to be collectively fined, a measure that caused sectarian tension in mixed communities where Turkish-Cypriots were far from happy in being expected to fork out for disturbances strongly suspected to be the fault of Greek-Cypriots. There is no doubt that collective fines were sometimes counter-productive in terms of winning hearts and minds. Assembly without permission, except for religious congregations and trade union petitions, was already disallowed and the display of Greek flags and the wearing of indentmilitary uniforms were banned. The existing death penalty was extended to those opening fire and throwing bombs and grenades.
Possession of arms and explosive could mean life. Grivas would be condemned for encouraging young children to use weapons that they did not understand and then abandoned, usually because they were frightened. One child died and three others, all aged less than ten years, were maimed playing with a grenade near Lapithos. Youths aged under eighteen years arrested in disturbances were liable to a whipping with a bamboo cane. When Nicolas Demetrios, aged fifteen years, was sentenced to six strokes for taking part in an unlawful assembly, there was selective international outrage. From 1947 to 1974, the birching on the Isle of Man to punish boys aged fifteen years and over convicted of theft attracted little attention, mainly because the practice was considered just desserts and trivial, except to those on the receiving end. The tough measures had been predicted by Grivas and enabled Makarios to enhance international sympathy for Cypriot self-determination.
On the evening that Field Marshal Harding declared the State of Emergency, the great and good of colonial society and their guests ignored the internal security situation to attend the annual Caledonian Society’s St Andrews charity ball at the Ledra Palace Hotel. Harding had been invited as Guest of Honour. For Grivas it was a tempting target, and when he ordered the Nicosia Town Group to attack, Yannis Pafitis, who was employed as a handyman at the hotel, smuggled two US fragmentation grenades concealed in a box of oranges into the hotel. It was then announced that Harding would not be attending because he was finalizing the Emergency measures with London. At about 11.10 pm, while the guests were dancing to the Royal Scots Band after dinner, Pafitis, dressed as a waiter, fused the lights in the ballroom and rolled the grenades towards the Governor’s table, where one exploded, injuring five people, including the wife of Commissioner of Police Robbins, and caused some damage. Captain Peter Macdonald of the RAOC noted that the pin in the second grenade had not been pulled and, to the amazement of a police officer, he calmly picked it up, put it in the pocket of his Mess dress and took it outside. The explosion halted the dancing until the casualties had been evacuated, and then as the band played Glasgow Belongs to Me, the guests returned to a dance floor soaked by fire hoses and defiantly sang the National Anthem. Pafitis was interviewed during the investigation but was released. One of his colleagues was the former plumber turned bomb-maker, Stylianos Lenas, who was using the hotel basement workshop to develop a pipe bomb that was widely used by EOKA. Manufactured from a water pipe junction, filled with sharp metal fragments and fitted with a heavy base plate and screw cap, the fuse was lit by a burning cigarette.
Next day, Mr Sydney Taylor, a British businessman thought by EOKA to be an intelligence officer, was walking along a Famagusta street when Andreas Demetriou fired three shots at him with a revolver but missed. A foot patrol from B Company, 2 Royal Inniskillings commanded by Corporal Smith heard the shots and were racing to the scene when they encountered Demetriou running towards them still carrying his revolver. Fusilier Hobley dropped to one knee and fired a single shot which wounded him in the elbow. In mitigation, Demetriou pleaded that when he attempted to kill Taylor, it was a Monday and he was unaware that the Emergency regulations, which included the death penalty for the possession of a weapon, had came into force the previous Saturday.
On 4 December, Limassol Customs officers scored a major success when they discovered a consignment of Thompson submachine guns and other weapons concealed in the hold of the Greek ship Aelia. This led to the skipper fingering the well-known bookshop owner and self-styled founder of EOKA in Limassol, Andreas Ionnides. In February 1956 he was brought from prison and, in the glare of Pathe News cameras, married his fiancée, who was also a well known EOKA supporter. Three weeks earlier, following reports from a 188 Search Light and Radar Battery coast detachment, a Middlesex patrol had boarded the Greek ship, the Trias, on intelligence received and escorted it to Dhekelia where it was impounded.
The tension throughout the island increased when four RASC off-duty soldiers were wounded in the back on 7 December by a gunman using a Sten gun firing from a car speeding along Ledra Street. Next day, Harding sent a clear message to Archbishop Makarios and the militant clerics by ordering the searching of twenty-four monasteries in Operation Black Beard, including the one at Ayios Spyridou. It had been named by a Greek-Cypriot forestry worker as the venue of a meeting called by Colonel Grivas to discuss using monasteries and churches to cache weapons. With military chaplains playing a key role as mediators, the troops searched the grounds and buildings and accepted several ancient shotguns handed in. Two new .38 Smith and Wesson revolvers were found hidden in a box in Ayia Varvara Monastery. The operation was not exactly a public relations success and, predictably, Makarios led outraged protest against the violation of the sanctity of holy places by ‘British barbarians’, even though a search of his house had unearthed several letters signed ‘Digenes’ indicating his approval of the ‘execution’ of EOKA who failed to carry out terrorist activities assigned to them. Grivas retaliated by sending gunmen to attack the home of the Major Reverend Benyon, for the second time, which resulted in Mrs Benyon and their small child being hospitalized with cuts. Although Grivas claimed in his Memoirs that EOKA only shot British soldiers, traitors and intelligence agents and that his organization did not strike at random, the reality was that EOKA not infrequently attacked Service dependants and married quarters with grenades and shootings.
During the second week of December, Grivas was suffering from a heavy cold and painful toothache made worse by the winter chill and living in the Castle. Since there had been little military activity in the Spilia area, he felt confident enough to summon the Nicosia dentist, Andreas Lambrou, to treat him. Lambrou was trusted because in January he had smuggled a small consignment of weapons concealed in dental gas cylinders to his house in Nicosia. Escorted by Kyriakos Matsis, Lambrou arrived in Spilia on 9 December and was told by Renos Kyriakides that since it was pouring with rain and Grivas was unwell with his cold, his patient would visit him for treatment next day. Born in 1926 in Lefkosia, Matsis had studied in Thessalonika where he advocated nationalism and ‘the rags of the mother Greece to the stepmother of colonialism’. Returning to Cyprus as an agronomist, he defended the interests of farmers and had become Grivas’ chief courier. Indeed, such was the confidence and expectation of those in the Castle that they would be forewarned of military activity by police informers and local villagers that Afxentiou had left on a combined recce and hunting trip to Kannavia while Christos Chartas was visiting his family in his home village of Polystipos nearby. The Chartas Group overlooked Spilia and the road below running from Kakopetria to Amandios.
Working on information from a forestry worker of EOKA activity near Spilia and Khandria, as part of Operation Fox Hunter, 45 Commando, elements of the Gordon Highlanders and two Metropolitan Police dog handlers, who had arrived in Cyprus three days previously, were instructed by Brigadier Baker to search the area. Details of military operations were now being distributed on a need-to-know basis, which now did not always include the Cyprus Police. At 6.15 am on the 10th, while it was dark, damp and cold, the troops quietly surrounded Spilia and then lorries roared into the villages, taking the inhabitants by surprise. When Grivas heard the commotion below, he was suspicious because, in his opinion, it was unusual for the Army to be on the move so early; nevertheless, he alerted those in the Castle to the military activity in Spilia. In fact, the Army regularly commenced operations at dawn.
Soon after the Gordons had arrested a man trying to dispose of documents relating to EOKA, Lieutenant Robert Otway-Ruthven wounded a man seen climbing a steep ridge behind the village. Quickly identified as Renos Kyriakides and high on the wanted list, he was rushed to Nicosia for interrogation, along with the documents to be analyzed. The Royal Marines Z Troop on the cordon then captured Georghiou Zavlis, who although armed with a .303 rifle and carrying lengths of Cordtex, made an unconvincing effort to appear unconcerned at the sudden appearance of the commandos as he tried to leave the village. Faced with the death penalty, under interrogation in Spilia he betrayed his oath to enosis, as most captured EOKA did, and admitted that there were fifteen EOKA in hideouts in the hills above the village. He agreed to guide the Royal Marines to them.
Meanwhile, Grivas instructed Afxentiou and his men to form the rearguard with the Chartas Group and to open fire should the British appear. Afxentiou reported increased activity in the village and that some lorries were leaving Spilia. At about 10.30 am, two lorries containing forty-four Royal Marines drawn from Headquarters and Support Troops and the two dog handlers led by Lieutenant Colonel Norman Tailyour, the 45 Commando Commanding Officer, stopped on the road below the Castle. Guided by Zavlis, the Royal Marines shook out into two columns and scrambled through thick mountain mist up the woody steep slopes made slippery and treacherous by rain-soaked moss, grass and shale. When a guerrilla opened fire and the Royal Marines deployed a 2-inch mortar, two were wounded when the first bomb burst in the trees. As the columns converged on the Castle, the guerrillas collected their emergency belongings and, covered by Afxentiou, began trekking through the mist north-west toward Kakopetria; however, in the confusion of an unrehearsed withdrawal and pursued by Royal Marines for the rest of the day, some EOKA were captured as they crossed a main road and ran into a patrol accompanied by a dog. Grivas sprained his ankle in a fall. After a long night march across high mountain peaks, during which Grivas and three men formed the rearguard, the surviving EOKA reached a ridge above Kakopetria. Soon after dawn Grivas sent a scout to fetch food, and then that evening, after they had crept into the village, he was sheltered in the house owned by Ioannis Katsoullis, the Greek Army reservist. Kyriakides was sentenced to life and served his sentence in Wakefield Prison where he became friendly with an IRA terrorist named Seamus Murphy. He later told Grivas that the Castle had been attacked by 700 men who had fired on each other, causing over fifty casualties from friendly fire and that the commanding officer had lost control. It was nonsense.
Grivas needed to regain command and control and during the evening of 15 December he collected a guide to take him to Galata, about three miles to the north, where he intended to form a Guerrilla Group south of the village. This information was soon leaked to the British. Grivas and five men reached Galata at midnight but soon after they had left at dawn troops surrounded Evrykhou, the next village north. The group immediately withdrew from the area and, in heavy rain, marched deep into the mountains where, after constructing a temporary lair, Grivas began to receive and despatch couriers. The informant was later executed by EOKA, as was the forestry worker who had betrayed the hideout near Spilia.
On the same day, Major Brian Coombe, who commanded 37 Field Squadron, visited Mount Troodos where Lieutenant Jimmy Knobbs’s Troop was constructing a radar site. His Squadron had recently lost Sappers Percevale and Melson. Coombe left in a Champ and was driving with Lance Corporal Brian Morun, his driver, in the passenger seat. By about 12.15 pm, Coombe had passed through Kykko and was negotiating a bend on the road that led north to Prygos, when they were ambushed by the Markos Drakos group. The windscreen shattered and Morun was killed. Coombe stopped the Champ in a ditch underneath a rocky overhang and found cover as two grenades exploded nearby. Identifying the EOKA position, he scrambled up the hill and, outflanking four gunmen in a gully, opened fire with his Sten from above and behind them until he ran out of ammunition. He ran back to the Champ, collected Morun’s Sten, clambered back up the gully and opened fire on the four as they emerged from some trees and invited them to surrender. Three did, but Kharalambus Mouskas, who was a cousin of Archbishop Makarios, opened fire with an automatic weapon. Coombe suspected trickery and returned fire, killing him and wounding Andreas Zakos and Harilaos Michael. The fourth man, Drakos, ran off but not before Coombe had wounded him with his revolver. Coombe rounded up the prisoners and waited for an hour near the Champ until a Gordon Highlanders patrol appeared. Mouskas had been acquitted of terrorist offences in July but had a £5,000 bounty on his head.
In a decision that caused some concern to the Nicosia authorities, Field Marshal Harding agreed that Mouskas could be buried publicly – on the proviso that the mourners did not exceed fifty. However, the Greek-Cypriots were in no mood to compromise and a large crowd followed the hearse into Metaxas Square. Despite heavy rain, Archbishop Makarios conducted the service at Nicosia’s Phaneromeni Church. But after Mouskas had been buried the 1 South Staffords saw that the hearse was empty and, believing the procession to be unauthorized, they ordered the mourners to disperse. They refused and a confrontation developed during which soldiers fired several tear gas canisters until a thunderstorm dispersed the soaked crowd. The soldiers were unaware that in Cypriot funerals the pall-bearers and the coffin follow the hearse to the wake. Makarios protested that the action was ‘sacrilege’ and ‘a dark stain on the history of the British occupation of Cyprus’, a sentiment that was largely rejected.
Although Major Coombe had displayed extreme gallantry in a military setting, the recommendation for a Military Cross was converted to the George Medal. Unusually for the period, he attended a press conference and, emphasizing that he should not be celebrated as a hero for killing ‘a frightened young Cypriot’, said, ‘Do not deepen the rift between the Cypriots and the British. Do not encourage the Cypriots to build up a hero by producing a British hero; do not force them to make a hero of a murderer. I ask that there should be no jubilation, no exulting over the affair.’ His noble gesture helped reduce EOKA’s lead in propaganda.
The day after the ambush, Lieutenant John Kelly of 40 Field Regiment was the first officer to be killed in action when he was shot dead as he threw a grenade at a group of EOKA attacking Yialousa Police Station in the Panhandle. The attackers left in several stolen cars. The Gunners pursued them and captured several EOKA within about six hours, after forcing their car off the road near Dhavlos at the eastern end of the Pentadactylos range. Ten days earlier, Marine David Walker of 45 Commando was driving a Land Rover escorting an ambulance when the convoy was ambushed near Amiandos and Marine Terrance Roberts was killed. Walker rescued two other wounded Royal Marines and took up defensive positions until a Gordons patrol arrived. The recommendation that he be awarded the George Medal was downgraded to the British Empire Medal for gallantry.
Although the communists had stood up to EOKA and were providing most of the workforce building the bases at Episkopi and Dhekelia, Harding, concerned at the deterioration of internal security, accused AKEL of promoting a ‘consistently harmful role in Cypriot politics in order to silence opponents of Archbishop Makarios’ and proscribed it. The Royal Scots arrested 128 leading members and took them to the ‘Lobster Pot’ detention compound at Alma Camp, Dhekelia. Several printing presses were confiscated. AKEL protested that they always acted within the law, and the arrests prompted widespread strikes across Cyprus, including at Dhekelia. Potentially, the security forces were now in danger of facing two major subversive threats.
The year 1955 had seen twelve members of the Armed Forces killed, all in the last three months of the year. Five police officers and seven Greek-Cypriots had also lost their lives and about 300 people had been injured, most in riots. Several seriously wounded Servicemen had been flown back to England for specialist treatment. A total of 1,260 buildings had been damaged during riots or by fire and the courts had sentenced 600 people. With EOKA riding high and the Army still adjusting its strategies, tactics and developing its intelligence collection, there was no respite from the violence. On 3 January 1956, EOKA attempted to assassinate a female patient who Grivas believed to be a Government informant in Nicosia General Hospital, the first of several terrorist incidents involving the hospital. Three days later, another Service family was attacked when a grenade thrown into a married quarter seriously wounded the infant child of a soldier. In mid-February in Larnaca, the wife of Sergeant Smith of the REME attached to 1 Middlesex, lost a foot when she threw herself across her two children after a schoolboy had thrown a grenade through the open window of their bedroom while she was putting them to bed.
The Troodos Mountains usually have about four months of winter snow that provides some fine ski-ing. When 45 Commando trained X Troop in cross-country military ski-ing to help deliver dynamite to Amiandos Mine, it was in many respects, a precursor to the 3 Commando Brigade’s contribution to the winter defence of NATO’s Northern Flank in Norway from the 1970s. The Royal Marines and 1 Gordon Highlanders celebrated Hogmanay in the usual manner and then a day later in Operation Mangel Wurzel raided several hideouts near Kakopetria, capturing three armed EOKA, and roused five suspects from their beds in Pano Amiandos, among them Kyriakos Matsis. When asked by Harding to divulge the location of the EOKA leader, he replied ‘The struggle is not for money, but for virtue’, a response that resulted him being sent to the Omorphita Interrogation Centre and then Camp K. In another operation at the same time, the Leicesters, South Staffords and Middlesexes supported by the Life Guards and frigates from the 6th Destroyer Squadron swept the coast region from Phlamoudhi to Dhavlos, found several caches and arrested a number of suspects.
Naval operations were preventing the smuggling of weapons to Cyprus, the Greek Government was being pressurized into taking measures to stop the supply of arms to Grivas and military operations were beginning to make inroads into the EOKA arsenal. So when a high-ranking priest learnt that Field Marshal Harding intended to end a firearms amnesty on 23 January and this was passed to Grivas by Gregoris Afxentiou, Grivas saw an opportunity to raid every village for firearms. However, his plan was leaked to the police and on the 22nd he instructed EOKA to seize as many weapons as possible. In one instance, gunmen seized guns from a queue outside a police station. Grivas claimed EOKA acquired over 800 shotguns and these he distributed among the mountain Guerrilla Groups and newly-created town and village Shotgun Commandos. His armourers worked on increasing their range to about 100 yards by manufacturing heavier calibre pellets.
The murder of Police Sergeant Abdullah Ali Riza outside his home near Paphos on 11 January by four EOKA gunmen led to sectarian disturbances escalating in Turkish-Cypriot enclaves. Their leader, Dr Fazil Kutchuk, played a key role in calming the tension, but Radio Athens was mischievous in claiming that British Intelligence had murdered Riza in an effort to stir up the minority. In fact, Riza had been an effective police officer responsible for the conviction of about six EOKA. He was also the first Turkish-Cypriot to be murdered during the Emergency.
Grivas continued to encourage youthful civil disturbances. The South Staffords endured a pelting in Nicosia when 300 rioters egged on by two priests protested at the conditions at Camp K. About thirty people were injured. Such was the deterioration in public order that Harding closed the Nicosia Pan Cyprian Gymnasium at the end of the month. Three weeks later, students throughout the island were whipped in to fresh rage after a Leicesters sniper had been ordered by police to shoot a ringleader refusing to respect a restricted zone near the Famagusta Pan Cyprian Gymnasium. Two days later, the Norfolks in Limassol were stoned by girls waving a Greek flag and protesting against the shooting. Although the troops found confronting schoolgirls disturbing, discipline held. When a mob of thirty youths persistently refused to disperse, a platoon advanced from behind them with fixed bayonets and shepherded them into an Army lorry, which was then driven to the foothills of the Troodos Mountains where it stopped and the captives were ordered out. Some imagined that the great moment of martyrdom was at hand until an officer then smiled, ‘Don’t look so anxious. It’s a lovely afternoon for a walk. Cheerio’, and left. This method of displacing rioters several miles from the scene of a disturbance was widely used as a measure to defuse tempers and give rioters an opportunity to cool down, particularly if police officers were reluctant to arrest for breach of the peace and lock rioters in cells. The Army recognized that it was probably unlawful to enforce these compulsory walks, however it was felt that they would make rioters tired and less willing to engage in disturbances. By mid-February, although the education authorities had done their best to maintain order in schools, intimidation and violence resulted in eighty being closed. The Teacher’s Union was accused of supporting the violence.
Meanwhile, Grivas centralized his Guerrilla Groups around Kykko Monastery and marched with his command group through pouring rain from Kakopetria to Kalopanagiotis in the middle of the Paphos Forest, whence he was taken by car to Vassiliki where he set up his headquarters. Nearby were Marcos Drakos and his Kyrenia Castle escapers in a hideout being supported with supplies and shelter by the Abbot. The area was wild, wooded and isolated. In spite of Operations Turkey Trot and Fox Hunter and the loss of several loyal EOKA, the Guerrilla Groups generally had not been particularly troubled by military operations. Grivas estimated that his front-line strength stood at 750 men and women divided thus:
Troodos Mountains
Kykko District
Vassiliki Marcos Drakos Group (12 men)
Tyllira Solon Pittarides Group (8 men)
Milikouri Antonis Georgiades Group (5 men)
Stavros Posokas Christakis Eleftheriou Group (6 men)
Pitsillia District
Makheras Afxentiou Group (10 men)
Pitsillia Area Eleven village Groups
Paphos District
Lysos Yannakis Droushiotis Group (5 men)
Paphos Area Ten village Groups
Pentadytclos Mountains
Kalogrea/AmvrosiosTassos Sofocleus (10 men)
Towns and Villages
Nicosia District Fifteen groups (80 people)
Nicosia Area Eleven village Groups
Larnaca District Two groups (6 men)
Larnaca Area Seven village Groups
Famagusta District Fourteen groups (76 men)
Famagusta Area Twelve village and Dhekelia Base Groups
Limassol District Eleven Groups (34 people)
Limassol Area Thirteen village and Episkopi Base Groups
Paphos District Three Groups (34 men)
Paphos Area Ten village Groups
Kyrenia District Two groups (3 men)
Pentadactylos/Karpas Five village Groups
The crucial courier system remained largely intact. Only the Guerrilla Groups and town leaders were full-time and paid an allowance; the remainder were either in employment or subsidized locally. The shortage of weapons had been resolved to some extent by thefts from police stations, and a military depot, smuggling and the seizure during the amnesty. The biggest problem was that those who had been arrested tended to divulge information and thereby expose EOKA. Along with those identified by Grivas to be traitors from the list that he had brought with him in November 1955, arrestees were no longer totally trusted and were to be intimidated and marked for execution.
In spite of the necessity for Britain to maintain its contribution to BAOR and support operations in Malaya and Kenya, the Cyprus Emergency sucked in troops. On 13 January the British Government announced that in response to the growth of Arab nationalism engineered by Colonel Gamal Nasser of Egypt, and the increased tension between Israel and Egypt and the destabilization of British interests in Jordan, 16 indentchute Brigade was being deployed to Middle East Command as the embryonic Middle East Strategic Reserve. Consequently, 1st and 3rd indentchute Battalions, The indentchute Regiment (1 and 3 indents), each made up of a third each Regulars, Reservists and National Servicemen, then began arriving in an assortment of aircraft, including Shackletons and Transport Command Hastings, and were driven by 17 Company RASC to the tented Camp Kykko near RAF Nicosia where moving into tents in the chill of a Cypriot winter was not entirely welcome. In order to keep the troops fit and effective, Lieutenant General Keightley made the Brigade available to Field Marshal Harding as the Island Reserve, thus freeing the Royal Norfolks to take over from 40 Commando in Limassol, on the proviso that it would not be under direct command of one of three Brigade Districts. Harding immediately placed the Brigade under the direct operational command of Brigadier Baker for special operations. To replace 2 indent left in England, the Brigade inherited the 1st Battalion, The Highland Light Infantry (1 HLI), which arrived by air from England ten days later. Within three weeks of arriving, a indent patrol unearthed a communist cell in a cave near Kykko Camp. On the same day that the Brigade arrived, the increase in motor transport was reflected by the transport elements of the RASC being assembled into the regimental-sized 1 Transport Column. Toward the end of January, the troopship Lancashire disembarked 1st Battalion, The Wiltshire Regiment (1 Wiltshires) at Famagusta for a three-year accompanied tour. Previously the Demonstration Battalion at the School of Infantry, Warminster, the Battalion relieved 2 Royal Inniskillings in 51 Infantry Brigade District, who, like the departed 2 Green Howards, were due to be disbanded. The Royal Horse Guards (The Blues) landed from the same ship and immediately expressed concern that the Second World War-era Daimler armoured cars they inherited from the Life Guards were hardly roadworthy. In due course, the force would be re-equipped with Ferret Scout Cars. On the 24th, 1st Battalion, The Royal Warwickshire Regiment (1 Warwicks) arrived by troopship from Egypt and, joining 50 Infantry Brigade District, eventually moved into Normandy Camp after taking over from 1 Royal Norfolks in Nicosia. The Norfolks moved to Paphos and relieved the Royal Scots, who returned to Scotland. There were now about 20,000 troops and fourteen battalions in Cyprus. On 31 January RAF Akrotiri was declared operational and by the end of February the 13 Squadron air photo-recce Meteors had deployed, followed by 208 Squadron and its Hawker Hunter fighters. An increasing number of Valettas, Pembrokes and Hastings were bringing in general stores and personnel. No. 3 Light Anti-Aircraft Wing, RAF Regiment, which consisted of Nos 27 and 37 Squadrons equipped with L40/L60 Bofors guns, was responsible for Low Level Air Defence and base security.
At the end of January, very heavy snow engulfed the Troodos Mountains, resulting in elements of 749 (Air Despatch) Company RASC dropping supplies to isolated communities from Hastings aircraft; however, this expression of humanity did not stop EOKA gunmen murdering two airmen and seriously wounding SAC John Beresford. His father complained to journalists in England that while the RAF could spare aircraft to drop aid to villages sympathetic to EOKA in the mountains, no arrangements were in place for parents and families to visit wounded husbands and sons; consequently, he was financing a flight for him and his wife to Cyprus. On chilly night shortly after midnight, when several airmen had gone to RAF Episkopi for a film show and a visit to the NAAFI, the tented camp near Khato Khivides in the Troodos occupied by 751 Signals Unit, a radar unit, was raked by automatic fire from several points. Such was the intensity that the Bren Gun Group of the twelve-man RAF Regiment defence section was unable to reach its sangar near the Guard Tent and set up near the barrier. Meanwhile, a lorry containing the off-duty party negotiating the icy Troodos hairpins had stopped to pick up an airman who had fallen out of the back, but as it then approached the camp the firing stopped, probably because the EOKA guerrillas believed that it was bringing reinforcements. In fact, the lorry was unescorted and only one airman was armed.
When 45 Commando were searching Amiandos in the middle of a snowstorm they entertained the village men waiting to be screened with a performance by the 3 Commando Brigade band, but the inevitable accusation from Greek newspapers was that the music was to drown the cries of torture. Heavy snow brought tragedy in mid-February when a 3 Commando Brigade Light Air Detachment recovery lorry skidded into a deep snowdrift. When Marine Benet Blakeway injured his ankle, the patrol commander, Warrant Officer 1 Mark Wheeler, stayed with him and two others while two Royal Marines then walked to Platres to seek help. But when a rescue patrol arrived the next day, Blakeway and Wheeler had died in the sub-zero temperatures and the other two were suffering from extreme exposure.
On 7 February the Norfolks searched the village of Pakhna in Operation Little Chicago on the basis of Special Branch informant information that it had a bad reputation. More significantly, the village was near the Kissousa Reservoir pipeline to Episkopi. It already had been blown up. At about 2.30 am, thirty lorries delivered the Battalion to a point two miles from Pakna, and over the next two hours troops surrounded the village. At about 5.20 am in the gloom of dawn, three figures approached the B Company cordon stretched along a track and offered Lance Corporal Jay cash to let them through. Jay offered them a five yard start, and when he arrested them it turned out that one was wanted for attempted murder. A daylight search of the track revealed a pistol, a Breda carbine, two Sten guns, ammunition and parts of a uniform ditched by the three men. Meanwhile in the village, search teams that included WRAC attached to the RMP, tracker dogs and a Royal Engineer troop, found incriminating documents and equipment suitable for making ammunition. By 11.30 am the troops had left the area. At the end of the month, the village Police Station was attacked by EOKA and its records destroyed. The Battalion mounted four more operations in the area, with very little success.
By the New Year the situation had generated sufficient concern from the US and UN for the British Government to despatch MI6 agents to the island to counter the EOKA propaganda campaign. In Operation Tea Party its most experienced propagandists were assembled in Cyprus as the Information Research Department, with the aim of blackening the name of EOKA by accusing it of being in league with the communist AKEL and by feeding black propaganda to eager journalists, for instance that schoolgirls involved in civil disturbances had been forced into sexual relationships with the guerrillas. However, the plot was flawed because the AKEL link with EOKA was very weak at best and the Greek influence on the struggle for enosis was largely ignored.
Further negotiations on Cypriot self-determination and another meeting between Harding and Makarios on 24 February resulted in Grivas declaring a temporary truce, demanding an amnesty from prosecution for EOKA, Greek-Cypriot control of public security during the transition period and the reduction of the British garrison to the Cyprus District levels in early 1955 of about 1,800 all ranks, should there be agreement. Makarios was still being prodded by Athens and hardliners on the Ethnarchy Council, and although the talks remained a stalemate, London again emphasized that once internal security had stabilised, constitutional matters would be discussed, including self-determination – provided that it satisfied the entire Cypriot community. Although Makarios implied that he was not entirely happy with the violence and was critical of Grivas, the confirmation of the death sentences of Andreas Zakos and Charilaos Michael in late February for their part in the ambush that killed Lance Corporal Morun led to further violence, with the detonation of twenty-one bombs in Nicosia and more casualties among Service families; another mother was injured in the face while protecting her son from an explosion. The English School was severely damaged. Two EOKA transporting a bomb arrested by the South Staffords near the US Consulate was a significant development which showed the willingness of Grivas to widen his targets by attacking London’s closest ally. On 4 March, in the second aviation security incident worldwide since 1945, Grivas ordered the Afxentiou Group to place a bomb on a Hermes airliner that had been chartered from Skyways to fly sixty-eight Servicemen and families from Nicosia to England; it would be timed to explode after take off. However, embarkation fell behind schedule and the device, which had been smuggled into a luggage rack by a police officer working in the Immigration Department, exploded as the passengers lined up to embark and badly damaged the aircraft. Eight weeks later on 27 April, EOKA carried out the third aviation attack by blowing up a Cyprus Airways DC-3 Dakota, also at Nicosia Airport.
The increased regional tension and the possibility of Cyprus being used as a strategic forward operating base and airhead for operations led to Harding advising London, on 3 March, that Makarios should be deported on the grounds that he was subverting influential Greek-Cypriot clerics and was involved in EOKA. He accepted that deportation would probably cause a deterioration of internal security, however Makarios’ removal would isolate the EOKA leadership. London agreed and began navigating the legal arrangements to send Makarios and several other clerics to the Seychelles Islands, which were thought to be sufficiently isolated to keep the exiles incommunicado. Although the Seychelles Legislature had enacted laws prohibiting the detention of political activitists during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, these were repealed and a detachment of Seychelles Police was formed to guard the exiles. Since it was important that delays be kept to a minimum, Harding appointed the one-eyed, Anglo-Irish Group Captain Norman de W Boult DFC AFC to organize the deportation in Operation Airborne and asked that a Transport Command Hasting be in Cyprus by 6 March. Boult had trained Greek pilots during World War Two and had been awarded the Royal Hellenic Air Force Cross.
Harding entrusted the moving of Makarios from his Palace to RAF Nicosia without attracting undue attention to Lieutenant Colonel John Commings, the Commanding Officer of 1 South Staffords. Commings ordered Major Jos Jones to develop a plan, codenamed Operation Apollo, and reinforced his C Company with 1 Platoon, B Company. He also placed 3 indent on readiness for an unspecified special operation. Commings and Jones juggled several options in the knowledge that the deportation would be a political hot potato. In the meantime, Squadron Leader Wilfred Pink, commanding a Hastings, arrived on 7 March. When Makarios then announced that he and the hardline Bishop of Kyrenia intended to fly to Athens on 9 March to meet Greek political leaders, the British saw this as a window of opportunity to intercept him; and during the evening of the 8th, a British official visited the Archbishop and suggested that, for his personal safety, only he and his driver-bodyguard should go to the airport. During the day, the violence had seen a police officer killed, several people injured and Mrs Plumb, the wife of a 1 Middlesex corporal, injured in the face protecting her son. Interestingly, the Bishop of Kyrenia and EOKA recruiter Father Papagantheiou, the fanatical leader of PEON had denounced EOKA as being senseless if it believed its objectives could be achieved by violence.
Major Jones planned to intercept Makarios as he arrived at Nicosia Airport, and by 2.30 pm on the 9th his three platoons, in apparently broken down Army lorries, were deployed covering the roads to the airport, waiting for a signal from a RAF policeman that the Archbishop’s car was approaching. The fourth platoon he held in reserve. At 3 pm, as Makarios and his driver left his Palace, they were surrounded by crowds wishing him good fortune in Athens. Lieutenant Peter Lee, who commanded the B Company platoon, was peering into the engine of his lorry when he saw an RAF policeman salute a black car and intercepted it, only to find that it contained Air Vice Marshal Joseph Crisham, the Air Officer Commanding Levant, whose presence was unexpected. A few minutes later, Makarios was intercepted, the only hint of trouble coming from his driver declaring that he would protect Makarios with his life. Company Sergeant Major Martin raised his Sten and invited him to do so. Makarios was then escorted to the RAF Nicosia dispersal area where Brigadier Baker watched a British police officer read the Deportation Order issued under Regulation VII of the Emergency Powers (Public Safety and Order) Regulations. With Major Jones’ men hovering in the background, Makarios was seindentted from his driver and marshalled to the Hastings. In spite of reports circulating in Athens suggesting the British intended to arrest Makarios, to what extent he predicted British subterfuge is unclear; however, it was noted that he had packed more clothes than necessary for a short trip, including extra ecclesiastical robes and a Greek-English dictionary. Meanwhile, 1 Wiltshires had detained the Bishop of Kyrenia and Polycarpos Ioannides, personal assistant to Makarios and propagandist, and conveyed them to the airbase. Papagantheiou had also been arrested. Makarios thought they had arrived to bid him farewell. At about 4.15 am, Squadron Leader Pink rolled along the runway, headed south-east to RAF Aden to refuel and then flew through the night to Nairobi. That night, Harding broadcast that Makarios had been deported because:
‘[He] has remained silent while policemen and soldiers have been murdered in cold blood, while women and children have been killed and maimed by bombs, while a Cypriot woman was shot and wounded for the second time as she lay in hospital, recovering from a previous terrorist attack, and even while he stood by the coffin of an Abbot in his own church who was brutally murdered in his own monastery. His silence has understandably been accepted among his community as not merely condoning but even as approving assassination and bomb-throwing.’
Since a hostile reaction was expected from the large Greek community in Kenya, a military convoy quickly transferred the deportees to Mombasa where they boarded the East African Naval Vessel Rosalind and were escorted by frigate HMS Loch Fada for the final leg to Mahe, the principal island of the Seychelles. A twist in the story was that Makarios enjoyed travel and knew that the British would not harm him. Two days later, 3 indent carried out an extensive search of the Archbishop’s Palace but found little of value except documents implying connections between Grivas and Makarios – and a skeleton several hundred years old.