CHAPTER SEVEN
(March to September 1956)
For several days after the deportation of Makarios Cyprus was tense, even after Michael Georghiou was shot dead by 40 Commando near Ktima after he had thrown a grenade at a patrol. He had often used his truck to ferry the Afxentiou Group around their Trikomo area of operations. Militarily, the troops were developing tactics to tackle terrorism in most urban areas, in spite of having lost twenty-three men in the seven months since September 1955. Two major problems were the EOKA groups known to exist among the workforce building the garrisons at Episkopi and Dhekelia and the risks to families living in Cypriot hirings. Even though he believed that key to the future of Cyprus was an international solution, probably with NATO taking the lead, Field Marshal Harding could now concentrate on defeating EOKA. To examine constitutional affairs and self-determination, Prime Minister Eden sent Lord Cyril Radcliffe, a career civil servant and jurist, as the Commissioner for Constitutional Reform.
The deportation of Makarios angered Colonel Grivas, because his intelligence sources had been kept in the dark, however he now had unrestricted control of operations, except for the influence exercised from Athens dictated through the Greek Consulate-General in Nicosia. Responsibility for mobilizing and promoting enosis also sat squarely on his shoulders and while he could count on the poorer Greek-Cypriots, because they were heavily influenced by their clerics and had strong family ties that focused on their children, over whom Grivas had close control, the middle class were not so convinced because the terrorism was affecting politics, business and their personal interests. However, without the influence of Makarios, they were inextricably drawn into the EOKA campaign, and as internal security restrictions bit they began to resent the infringements and limitations on civil liberties. Grivas opened the next phase of Operation Forward to Victory by ambushing a 45 Commando patrol of two Land Rovers and an interpreter in his car on a track between Khandria and Argos, wounding five Royal Marines, including Sergeant Arthur Robinson, who had been injured in the serious riot in Vouni in mid-November 1955. The patrol returned fire and claimed one EOKA killed.
Radio Athens took advantage of the vacuum to spout vicious propaganda likening Harding to Genghis Khan and Hitler and accusing him of being a ‘bloodstained ogre whose hands drip with the blood of his victim’. When Harding asked Major General Morrison to use 2 Wireless Regiment to jam the broadcasts, Morrison declined because the jamming of civil broadcasts was not a military job. A former naval officer with the Cyprus Broadcasting Service had some success, even though he lacked equipment. When Grivas warned Harding in a leaflet that EOKA would kill him ‘even in your bed’, Harding retorted that if he attempted to do so, he would then have to deal with his soldiers. In looking for opportunities to assassinate the Governor, Grivas first considered placing a sniper on the roof of the Greek Consulate opposite the Anglican Church to shoot him as he left Sunday morning service until he warmed to a plan suggested by Neophytes Sofocleos.
Aged twenty years, Sofocleos had been employed by Sir Robert Armitage to look after his two cats, Benji and Poo. By the time he was appointed to be a valet to Field Marshal Harding, he had joined EOKA. His resentment against the British surfaced and when he believed that he was about to be dismissed for being slack, he suggested placing a bomb in Harding’s bed. Grivas agreed, and Theodoulou Katelaris, a carpenter and one of EOKA’s top bomb makers, constructed a sophisticated device filled with gelignite whose detonation relied on room temperature reaching 67F. This was the estimated temperature in Harding’s bedroom at 2. 30 am. Iakovos Patsatsos, a deeply religious printer and member of the Nicosia Town Group, gave Sofocleos the device in a package and showed him how to set the time pencil. On 20 March Sofocleus cycled past the Main Gate sentries to Government House carrying the parcel strapped inside his raincoat. The previous day sectarian violence had broken out in Visalia, near Kyrenia, after several drunken Greek-Cypriots had attacked a Turkish-Cypriot wedding. The disturbance spilled over into Nicosia and troops from 1 Warwicks had made several baton charges and fired tear gas at a large Turkish-Cypriot mob that had burned a church. At 2. 30 am next morning, Sofocleos woke up and set the fuse. At lunchtime, he greeted guests invited for lunch by Lady Harding and then suggested to his Armenian female supervisor that he should hoover the bedroom of the Governor, a request that she later thought strange because he usually had to be told what to do. In the dining room, the lunch was well underway. A short time later, she saw Sofocleos sweeping the carpet in the hall and then heard him enter the twin-bedded bedroom. Sofocleos placed the device under the mattress on Harding’s bed nearest the window. The supervisor became suspicious when she did not hear Sofocleos hoovering, and when she checked on him he was standing between the two beds declaring that he had finished. She noted that the hoover cable was coiled. Sofocleos left Government House at about the same time as the lunch guests were bidding Lady Harding farewell, and after cycling into Nicosia he was driven to the Troodos Mountains where he joined the Marathassa Guerrilla Group.
Next morning, Sofocleos and two other Greek-Cypriots failed to turn up for work at 11 am, and when the remainder refused to prepare the bedrooms for guests expected that afternoon, soldiers at Government House were instructed to carry out a detailed search of every bedroom and every piece of furniture. Lance Corporal Peter Welch of the King’s Royal Rifles Corps, who was Harding’s orderly, and Guardsman Ball of the Grenadier Guards were checking the Hardings’ bedroom when they discovered the bomb. Lady Harding, who was writing in her boudoir, ignored their warning to leave. The Guard Commander, Second Lieutenant Michael Buckley of the Norfolks, then arrived and after carefully edging the device on to a dustpan, he deposited it in a sandbagged slit trench. About three seconds later, the bomb exploded with such force that it ‘would have demolished half of Government House’. The explosion was heard five miles away. A bomb disposal officer later confirmed that the device was the same design as the one that had damaged the Hermes on 4 March and had probably been made by the same person. The attempted assassination was a well-planned operation that foundered because Sofocleos had not noticed that Harding invariably slept with his bedroom window open. Furthermore, the night of 21/22 March was also chillier than usual. It was another major breach of security attributable only to a Greek-Cypriot employee, so Harding had little alternative but dismiss the twelve Greek-Cypriot staff, some with decades of service at Government House behind them. Buckley was awarded the MBE ‘for the calm and gallant way’ in which he had disposed of the bomb.
Attacks on patrols continued. On 29 March a Leicesters vehicle patrol was ambushed in the village of Prelates and the driver of the leading vehicle, Private Ronald Bowman, killed instantly. Out of control, the Land Rover careered into a coffee shop where it burst into flames, killing Lieutenant Jim Walker. An intelligence operation in the area two days later unearthed six illegal shotguns, dozens of Molotov cocktail bombs and Italian ‘Red Devil’ grenades and artillery ammunition that had been recovered from sunken ships. Sixteen suspects were arrested and the village fined £1, 500. Another intelligence operation targeting Kykko Monastery found subversive literature, memos signed by Grivas confirming the link between EOKA and the Cypriot Orthodox Church, a printing press and a quantity of explosives. On 16 April the Larnaca Town Group seized Private Ronnie Shilton of the Leicesters, although the circumstances remain something of a mystery. A week later on the 23rd, Turkey’s National Independence Day celebrations descended into sectarian riots in which shops were set alight. In spite of 21 Army Fire Brigade RASC assisting civilian fire crews, a serious confrontation developed in a bonded tobacco warehouse and a Turkish-Cypriot employee was shot dead by a Turkish policeman. A few hours later, Iakovos Patsatsos was one of two gunmen who attempted to murder a Greek-Cypriot policeman outside Nicosia Central Police and then shot Constable Nihat Basif as he ran to help his colleague; but as the two gunmen were leaving the scene on their bicycles, several Turkish-Cypriot women pushed them off and seized Patsatsos. He was beaten up by an angry crowd before being handed over to the police. He had been involved in the plot to kill Harding. The situation deteriorated when angry Turkish-Cypriots marched to the Greek-Cypriot quarter of Goldsmith Street, and Assistant Superintendent Willis placed himself in front of the mob. A Royal Horse Guard troop then arrived and marshalled about 400 rioters into a temporary cage at Metaxas Square. A twelve-hour curfew in the area was maintained by 1 Warwicks. Over the next two days there were further sectarian clashes, and several bombs were thrown at the cage.
Still chased by the jamming, Radio Athens accused the British of beatings, whipping, administering drugs, rape and tearing out the finger nails of those selected for interrogation and implied that ‘Field-Marshal Harding commits tyranny, vandalism, cowardice and incites treachery.’ The accusations were potentially damaging because interrogation for military information had become critical, particularly as the Cypriot Police could not be trusted. Harding moved quickly, and of six allegations against the police, three were dismissed and one policeman was sentenced to three years for wounding two Cypriots with a gun. The one case against the Army resulted in two captains, one each from the Intelligence Corps and the Gordon Highlanders, being cashiered in April after being convicted of actual bodily harm and conspiracy to distract the course of justice. Although some felt that they were sacrificial lambs to political pressures, Lieutenant General Keightley rejected the sentence imposed on the Intelligence Corps captain; nevertheless, both officers were dismissed from the Army.
Throughout the Emergency, Grivas was ruthless with anyone who criticized EOKA and any Greek-Cypriot inclined to support the British. Of 238 Cypriots killed between April 1955 and March 1959, 203 were Greek-Cypriots, of whom at least twelve were EOKA. Some were killed by bombs, most of which were planted by EOKA. Solon Pittarides, a former member of the Markos Drakos Group and now in command of the Larnaca Town Group, specialized in hunting informers. One of the most brutal murders happened in Kythrea when four hooded gunmen burst into St George’s Church during a service and ordered the forty worshippers, ‘Stand up and face the wall!’ A gunman then singled out the lay reader Manoli Pierides and shot him in front of two of his four children. During the evening of 15 April, Assistant Superintendent Kyriakos Aristotelous was visiting his wife and new baby son in a private maternity home in Nicosia when three hooded gunmen armed with two pistols and a Sten gun murdered him in the doctor’s office and wounded the doctor, all within earshot of his wife.
Ever since the Privy Council had dismissed the appeals of Charilaos Michael against his conviction for the murder of Special Branch PC Poullis in August 1955 and Andreas Demetriou for his attack on Sydney Taylor, tension in Cyprus and Greece had increased and the resolve of the security forces was again tested with illegal strikes, Greek flags flown at half mast and attacks on the British. Demetriou had become something of a cult hero as part of the EOKA group that had raided the 625 Ordnance Depot warehouse. A bomb that exploded near a family medical clinic in Kyrenia severely wounded Captain Dulson RAMC, the Wiltshires Medical Officer. When the two men were executed on 10 May, four people died and over 200 people were injured in subsequent disturbances in Athens. Grivas retaliated by ordering that the two captured Leicesters, Lance Corporal Hill and Private Shilton, should be executed. The problem for Michael Rossides, the Larnaca District Leader, and his colleagues was that they liked the personable Irish/American Shilton and suggested that killing him would harm enosis, however, their pleas were rejected. Grivas blamed Harding for forcing him to execute the soldiers as a reprisal for the executions of Poullis and Demetriou, but the integrity of his first statement was doubted when it was found to have several inaccuracies, for instance stating that Hill was a corporal and that he had been captured in December 1955, whereas he had been reported missing in November. On 11 May Grivas issued a second statement correcting the errors and described the identity dog tags worn by Hill. In relation to Shilton, he corrected his rank to Private and suggested that the soldier had said he had been demoted. Grivas had executed communist hostages in the Greek Civil War, but the executions of the soldiers mimicked the strangulation and booby-trapping found on the bodies of two Intelligence Corps sergeants captured by the Jewish Stern Gang in Palestine in July 1947 in retaliation for the execution of three Jewish terrorists. The brutality of these murders caused such public outrage that it affected the British will to maintain the Palestine Mandate. The murders of the Leicesters were rejected as morally reprehensible by most Greek-Cypriots, showing they were not natural rebels and the British were not natural oppressors. There was disquiet in Great Britain. The rejection led to Grivas not repeating the tactic.
During the morning of 16 May, Corporal Patrick Hale and Leading Aircraftman (LAC) John Hollis were in the Homer Hut at RAF Nicosia manning ground-to-air Direction Finding navigational radar. Since the equipment needed to be isolated from metal objects, such as hangars and moving vehicles, the Hut was situated at the southern edge of the main runway and was adjacent to several corn fields and a track that ran east and west. It was customary for the Hut to share its drinking water with travellers, farm workers and shepherds tending flocks of goats, but in spite of the deteriorating internal security and the Hut’s isolation, none of the RAF radar operators were armed. At about 8 am Hale supplied glasses of water to three youths scything corn. An hour later, they again asked for water and then sat in the shade of the Hut for about half an hour before returning to the fields. At about 10. 45 am LAC Hollis returned from pay parade at the Flight offices and was in the Hut when, at about 11. 30, two of the youths asked for more water. Corporal Hale gave them a glass each, but as he returned to the radar they shot him with a revolver and fired at Hollis who had taken cover behind the radar and was reporting the attack to the Control Tower. Several RAF signallers working about 100 yards from the Hut then arrived and a soldier chased three men he saw running away. Meanwhile, Flight Sergeant Tony Harrison and Master Pilot Jim McCorkle in a Sycamore were scrambled and followed the men along a track until they gave up through exhaustion. Harrison landed his helicopter while McCorkle arrested the third man hiding in an acacia tree and waited until an 11 Field Squadron, RAF Regiment patrol arrived. A search by soldiers, RAF and the police led to two . 38-inch pistols used in the attack being found the following day. At the trial of the three youths, identified as Andreas Panaghides, Michael Koutsoftas and Paraskevas Hiropoulis, Mr Justice Shaw commented that the murder had been cold-blooded, since the airmen were unarmed and the youths had exploited their kindness in supplying water. Koutsoftas and Panaghides, who had shot Hale, were executed, along with Stelios Mavromatis who had been convicted of the attempted murders of a Service wife and her daughter and a RAF storeman in March. Hiropoulis, aged eighteen years, was sentenced to life because of his youth. Corporal Hale, who had served in the Second World War, was the father of a boy aged three and left a widow expecting their second child within the month. There was the usual retaliation, with three soldiers injured when three grenades were thrown at a convoy, and Leicesters Company Sergeant Major Roy Crisell murdered in front of his wife and two others wounded when his car was blown up.
At the end of April, a Gordon Highlander patrol commanded by Second Lieutenant Henderson was escorting Royal Signals technicians tapping local telephone lines in the Paphos Forest when they intercepted three men hiding in bushes. Patrols had discovered that EOKA were exploiting the ringing mechanism of the Forestry Telephone network to alert guerrillas groups to military activity. The Royal Signals had developed a counter measure of stripping the insulation from a length of cable and shorting the circuit; by throwing the cable over the wires and earthing to pins, the use of telephones could be restored easily. The stories of the three men differed, and when Henderson handed them to the Platres interrogation centre, they divulged the location of several EOKA hideouts and suggested that ‘Digenes’ was based in the Kykko area.
As a consequence of the intelligence gained over the past few weeks, Brigadier Baker launched Operations Mustard Pot and Pepper Pot in a co-ordinated box sweep of a 400 square mile area that stretched along the coast from Lefka to Polis and then branched inland toward Kambos, Kykko Monastery and the nearby village of Milikouri, in order to strangle the area where several EOKA Groups were reported to have hideouts, isolate them from their supplies and supporters in the villages and block escape routes to the coast. The general tactic was to advance to contact and swamp an area if something incriminating was found. The ground was difficult, with thick woods, deep ravines and steep cliffs. As usual, the area of operations was placed out of bounds and all routes controlled by the Royal Military Police and Cyprus Police. Units involved included the Norfolks, Gordon Highlanders and KOYLI, which had arrived from Aden and took over from 1 Warwicks in April. Warships patrolled the coast. The RAMC and Royal Engineers were tasked to hold surgeries and carry out repairs in the villages. Grivas learnt about the operations from his police contacts and, as usual, instructed the Town Groups to carry out diversionary attacks.
In Operation Pepper Pot, a 40 Commando convoy advanced from the south up the winding roads from Paphos until it arrived at the Kykko Bridge, only to find that it had been damaged by a bomb and there was some doubt that it would take the full weight of the Bedford lorries. The Royal Marines took up positions around the bridge and the lorries were gingerly guided over the damage. In the meantime, a lieutenant was reconnoitring the place where the troops would begin their advance, but a mine hurled his Champ upside down against a cliff on the final curve of several hairpins. It was fortunate that the explosion was misdirected otherwise the vehicle would have been thrown 600 feet into a valley. The wreck gave some shelter from guerrillas shooting across the valley until the lorries arrived. Kykko Monastery was isolated and its close association with EOKA confirmed when a detailed search revealed military equipment in the cell of one monk. The operations also undermined its use as a key hub in the Troodos courier network. Grivas was a compulsive recorder of events, and a hefty reward ensured that two coffee pots containing EOKA documents and his diaries that had been buried in nearby fields fell into the hands of Special Branch. These again undermined any suggestion that Archbishop Makarios was not involved in EOKA and proved that he controlled EOKA finances and the supply of equipment. Other influential figures in Cyprus and Greece were also named. A 45 Commando ambush then resulted in the capture of reels of film and a dossier of the Troodos mountain groups. Some of those named faced long prison sentences while others became informers. After a captured EOKA taken aloft in a Sycamore had indicated to his interrogators the location of several hideouts north of Kykko and patrols converged on the area, Grivas thinned the Guerrilla Groups by ordering Pittarides to join Eleftheriou at Stavros Psokas; but the group walked into a Royal Marines patrol and surrendered without a shot being fired. Another Group made it to Pyrgos on the north coast. Grivas rebuilt the courier network to Nicosia but when British patrols began searching the immediate area, Grivas abandoned his hideout and headed south, guided by Antonis Georgiades, who commanded the Milikouri group. The march turned to be a hazardous cross-country night trek, made more difficult because a member of his command group had earlier been wounded in the leg taking messages to a Guerrilla Group. After seventeen hours they reached safety in the area of the Mavron Kremas (Black Chasm), deep, lonely and high in the Cedar Valley, but Grivas was unable to find a suitable lair.
In the diversionary operations, sectarian violence in Nicosia led, at the end of May, to the Nicosia District Officer separating the two communities with the Mason-Dixon line of a 6-foot high barricade erected by Royal Engineers from Famagusta Gate to Paphos Gates in Old Nicosia. On 30 May two soldiers of the Leicesters were killed and eighteen others wounded when a grenade was lobbed into their lorry while they were travelling back to Golden Sands Leave Camp from Famagusta, where they had been rehearsing the Queen’s Birthday Parade. Two days later, work was halted at the new garrison at Episkopi and at RAF Akrotiri when a dozen devices were found, and then a week later, Flight Lieutenant William Parker, of the RAF Regiment, saved several Meteor and Venom jets from destruction when he towed a bomb found in a hangar to a patch of grass. Five days later, Private George Garrett, of 625 Ordnance Park, survived torture and being shot in the back when the lorry in which he had been travelling ran over a mine between Dhekelia and Panayia. His colleague Private George Isbell was killed. Three Royal Engineers were killed by an electrically detonated mine on the road to Berengaria married quarters in mid-June.
With the reform of the Cyprus Police critical to restoring normality to the island, visits by several senior Colonial and British police officers resulted in the publication of a report by the Cyprus Police Commission, which included three British Chief Constables. The Commission recognized that the Cyprus Police could not be allowed to be defeated, and although instilling British constabulary traditions and culture was the ultimate goal, it was impractical during internal security instability. The establishment of better relations with the community was critical to success. Recommendations included improving employment terms and conditions, decent pay and training. By mid-1956 Harding had lost confidence in Commissioner of Police Robbins and invited Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey White, who had been part of the Police Commission, to take his place. By now, a threefold strategy had developed.
Firstly, it was acknowledged that since the Greek-Cypriots could not be trusted, more reliance would fall on the Turkish-Cypriot police officers. This had already resulted in the establishment of the 569-strong Mobile Reserve Police and 1, 417 Auxiliary Police.
Secondly, the need was to energize the UK Police Unit as a reliable and credible organization. Its original role as a ‘hit squad’ and ‘a model force’ independent of the Cyprus Police had proven unworkable, particularly as none of those seconded had any experience of the culture and people of Cyprus and some officers tended to be aloof and disinclined to set examples to local officers. The discipline of some officers was below that expected of British police and the force had thus acquired a reputation not dissimilar to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The Unit had suffered its first casualty when Sergeant Gerald Rooney (Kent Constabulary) was shot dead on 14 March, and a Turkish-Cypriot policeman was wounded while on patrol in Hippocrates Street, Nicosia. The reluctance of the Greek-Cypriot residents to share information about his murder and the twenty-one other murders and attempted murders that had happened in the district led a to four-day curfew in which the South Staffords and Warwicks controlled the access points of the barbed wire cordon while 3 Para helped police officers carry out a rigorous house-by-house search. As a further punishment, ten suspect families were evicted from their houses. Two days later there was another attack on a Service wife and her young son in Nicosia, however two airmen captured the gunman, Stelios Mavromatis, after he had shot another airman entering Wolseley Barracks.
In spite of the its shortcomings, the UK Police Unit had played a key role in filling the gap left by disloyal Greek-Cypriots and ensured that routine police patrols, criminal detection and Special Branch investigation survived during a period when the Cyprus Police was on its knees. The decision to reinforce it with a further 100 officers seconded from British constabularies led the way for fewer than ten non-Cypriot police officers listed in November 1955 to rise to 600 in 1958, most of the remainder being intelligence and communication specialists. By 1958 the Cyprus Police strength had rising from 1, 397 in 1954 to 3, 014, most taken up by the recruitment of 900 Turkish-Cypriots, with the UK Unit officers deployed in police stations throughout Cyprus and accommodated in requisitioned hotels. All were armed.
The third element of the new strategy was to mesh police intelligence with Army intelligence. The persistent leakage of information from within the Cyprus Police was resolved when Harding insisted that the Head of Special Branch, who was an Assistant Chief Constable, should report direct to the Chief of Intelligence at HQ Middle East Command, and not to the Commissioner of Police. The practice of allying Special Branch with military intelligence was being used successfully in Malaya and would be adopted in Aden and Northern Ireland. Known unreliable Greek-Cypriot officers were kept separate, as far as possible, from counter-terrorist operations. The nature of EOKA meant that its cell structure was difficult to penetrate, but it was informant information that had compromised the Castle and had led to seizure of Grivas’s diaries, photographs and documents and had given the Police and Army a much-needed boost in understanding the culture, organization and structure of EOKA. Strenuous efforts were made to improve the collation of information and intelligence, with surveillance of known EOKA sympathizers and the exploitation of informants. To his credit, Harding did not shrink from the use of interrogation as a vital intelligence asset, as London would do in the early years of Operation Banner in Northern Ireland. Capturing Grivas remained Target Number One throughout.
When the intelligence from Operations Mustard Pot and Pepper Pot suggested that the Army was making inroads into EOKA, in early June, Brigadier Baker instructed 16 Parachute Brigade to plan Operation Lucky Alphonse to search the Troodos Mountains for guerrilla groups. As darkness fell on 7 June, the Royal Military Police and Cyprus Police set up control points on the main roads and selected minor roads, while the Royal Horse Guards patrolled roads and tracks. A naval gunfire support team landed from HMS Diamond, one of several ships patrolling the Cyprus coast. Meanwhile, 45 Commando, the Gordon Highlanders, 1st KOYLI, the South Staffords, Norfolks and C Company, 1 HLI and the RAF Regiment advanced to contact up and down the steep mountain slopes thick with forest and scrub and over rocky outcrops split by deep re-entrants and shallow gorges. Summer had arrived early, it was hot and the forest tinder dry.
At about 2 am on the 8th, Grivas was woken in his lair by a village dog barking and alerted his men. Suspicious that the Army had mounted another operation and not wishing to invite the near disaster of evacuating the Castle, in order to take the pressure off the guerrillas, he despatched orders to the Town Sabotage Groups to escalate civil disturbance, but most of the couriers had difficulty breaching the cordons. At dawn, his men watched as Army lorries full of troops moved up from Milikouri and noted that several captured EOKA were accompanying patrols. Again guided by Antonis Georgiades, Grivas and the three men of his command team headed south until at about 10 pm, after a long day in the mid-summer heat, they reached high ground overlooking a main road junction in a valley with forks leading to Limassol and Paphos. After two of his men reported there were troops to the east, Grivas led his men across the road and climbed to high ground. He later claimed that he knew there were troops nearby when he saw fresh boot prints and an empty English cigarette pack. Next day, Grivas moved east and slipped through the cordon between a military post and a helicopter landing site and laid up until dark. Padding along tracks through the dark woods, they headed north-east and continued marching through the morning, without seeing any troops, until at about 1. 30 pm, after an exhausting seventeen hours, Grivas and his men reached a cool, wooded valley where they rested and ate the last of their food beside a stream that in winter was a torrent of fresh cold water bounding over rocks and large stones, but in summer was a trickle with a few clear pools. Controversy surrounds the question of whether his group were ambushed during the morning near a wayside chapel on the hairpin of a road at Ayios Ayia. Grivas denies the contact. At about 3 pm a C Company, 3 Para patrol, with a tracker dog, led by Sergeant Scott was following the stream when they saw Grivas and his men replenishing their water bottles. When one of the men slipped on some rocks, Scott attacked. The shocked guerrillas fled into the woods, abandoning most of their equipment, including spectacles, a camp bed, a small radio, binoculars, the Sam Browne belt and boots used by Grivas and, again, detailed diaries made up to 9 June. For the second time, Grivas, the man who executed traitors, compromised EOKA in a detailed manner and gave the British another intelligence coup. Grivas skips over the loss of his diaries in his autobiography and his embarrassment when, in September, they were sold to the public by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Pinned down by Sycamores hovering overhead and 3 Para patrols beating the area, the EOKA hid in the dense undergrowth until dark and then made their way to the road that ran through the River Platres valley. Creeping across it, they climbed yet another peak until by about 3. 30 am they were south-east of Kaminaria in the foothills of the Troodos Mountains, hungry, tired and thirsty. Two days later, using the information in the diaries, 1 Norfolks destroyed a District Group in the Paphos area and captured two EOKA with £5, 000 bounties on their heads. The men guided troops to a cache containing a Bren gun, three shotguns, two rifles and two Sten guns.
Although it was hot, tiring and thirsty work, throughout the days the troops probed the ravines and climbed hills, forcing guerrillas to abandon hideouts and risk long marches along rough tracks in broad daylight. Each night before last light, the troops covered potential escape routes using Vickers machine guns and Bren guns on fixed lines of fire. The difficulties of command and control of inexperienced young soldiers patrolling in the confines of wooded, hilly terrain and forest inevitably led to ‘friendly fire’ incidents. During the evening of 10 June, 1 and 3 Paras were setting ambushes covering the boundary between their areas of tactical responsibility near Kykko Monastery when Sergeant Major Jimmy Foster of C Company, 1 Para was killed and two Paras seriously wounded when they were ambushed at the bend of a track in thickly wooded country. Only when an NCO of Foster’s patrol returned to Company HQ to report the incident did it emerge that 3 Para had reported a contact at the same time and place as Foster’s patrol had been ambushed, and the tragedy became apparent. Four days later another 3 Para patrol mistook a Norfolks’ ambush for an EOKA hideout and killed Lance Corporal Peter Elliott. Next day, a 40 Commando patrol commanded by Corporal Robert Benbow, aged nineteen years, captured an entire EOKA group in their hideout without a shot being fired, along with weapons, equipment and 3, 000 rounds of ammunition. The Lyso Group was attacked by Royal Marines and Demitrakis Constantinides was captured on 12 June. HQ and Support Companies, 1 KOYLI searching ruined buildings high in the Troodos found a bomb factory and logistic centre, and then Lieutenant Charlesworth and Private Richardson, of 2 Platoon, detained an EOKA suspect in possession of weapons, food, medical supplies and bomb-making equipment. His death sentence for possession was later commuted.
Grivas and his group remained above Kaminaria until sunset on 12 June and then crept to a stream on the outskirts to refill their water bottles. Meanwhile, Georgiades had entered the village to find food and reported that it and the immediate area was crawling with troops. For the next twenty-four hours Grivas remained near the stream, during which they were disturbed by a child and her goat and by an elderly woman cutting reeds. That night Georgiades and Pavlos Nikitas, one of the Kyrenia Castle escapers, entered the village but came under fire from soldiers. Hungry and exhausted, the group began walking the five miles to Trooditissa, but with every step risking an ambush, it took until 1 pm on the 13th for them to arrive and sit down to a meal in the nearby monastery. After sending a monk to deliver a message to the Nicosia Town Group that he was safe, Grivas and his four companions crossed the Troodos to Platres road after dark and next evening were overlooking Saittas in the southern foothills of the Troodos. When Grivas sent Georgiades and Lambros Kafkallides to contact the Limassol Town Group, its leader, Demos Hadjimiltis, said that preparations were underway to shelter Grivas in his house in the town but it would not be ready until the 18 June. Grivas decided to split up his group and he, Georgiades and a guide from Limassol, masquerading as farmers and keeping to tracks headed towards Yerasa, on one occasion exchanging pleasantries with an Army patrol that had left the main road to look for water. When the soldiers rejoined their main body and reported the exchange, 3 Commando Brigade District concluded that Grivas had left the mountains, and the search for him now focused on the general area between Paphos and Limassol. Meanwhile, tragedy blighted Operation Lucky Alphonse.
During the summer, the dry forest and scrub of Cyprus is prone to fires; indeed, Cypriots by law were expected to help the mostly Turkish-Cypriot foresters fight fires. During the afternoon of 16 June, a fire broke out on the slopes not far from the village of Vroisia, which lies at the end of a three-mile narrow, twisting road edged by cliffs and ravines that meets the secondary road to Galini and the main road from Kykko Monastery north to Kampos. There are no other roads or tracks suitable for vehicles. By the following morning, the embers had been whipped into full fires by a strong easterly wind funnelling up ravines, leaving exploding trees, burning charcoal and ash carpeting the ground a foot deep in places. Behind the wall of flames plodded the troops, but suddenly the wind changed to a westerly and the fire sped toward them. Captain Wallace, who was the HQ 3 Commando Brigade Administrative Officer in Limassol, had assembled a composite Troop of cooks, drivers and clerks and was under command of the Norfolks. As the flames spread, Wallace was instructed by a Gordon Highlander major commanding a fire-fighting party from his Battalion and from B and D Companies, 1 Norfolks to help several foresters while he sought reinforcements. When the reinforcements did not arrive, Wallace walked down the road hoping to meet the major and met a Gordons platoon and some foresters assembled by three Bedford lorries; he learnt from a lieutenant that the speed of the fire had cut him off from his rendezvous further down the hill. Wallace and his batman abandoned their Land Rover and, taking the advice of the foresters, climbed to the top of a hill. Below them, the soldiers had climbed into the trucks. Wallace was sheltering in a patch of burnt ground when he suddenly heard explosions, gunfire and screams and watched as two men supporting each other, one with his clothes burnt off, staggered up the road. Running down the hill to the road, Wallace saw that the lorries had been trapped by an abandoned Ferret blocking the road and then engulfed by a tunnel of flames. The smouldering bodies of the dead and injured lay where they had attempted to escape the inferno. It then dawned on him that the explosions were exploding fuel tanks and the firing was ammunition cooking off in the pouches of the soldiers. A Norfolks sergeant was organizing the collection of the dead and wounded and the Ferret was pushed off the road. When Wallace later rejoined his Troop having a smoke half a mile up the road, one of the Royal Marines casually remarked, ‘We thought you were a goner, sir.’ Second Lieutenant Bruce Kynoch and nine Gordon Highlanders died in the inferno. Three others would die of their injuries in hospital. Kynoch had arrived in Cyprus just three weeks earlier.
Lieutenant Stanley Sutton, the Norfolks Medical Officer, was driving towards Vroisia in his Land Rover when he was forced to shelter from the flames in a ditch; when he and his driver emerged, his right arm was badly burned and his vehicle a smoking wreck. Seeing that most of the casualties required greater medical care than he could provide and attempts to evacuate them was being thwarted by fickle winds, he made them as comfortable as he could. Sutton was awarded the MBE for his conduct. Lieutenant Shardlow of 23 Parachute Field Ambulance RAMC was lowered from a Sycamore to help the injured and was assisted by Private Ross RAMC attached to the Gordon Highlanders. For two days a military police section played a key role in regulating traffic and keeping the narrow road to Vroisia open by ensuring reliable communications.
At about midnight on the 19 June, Grivas and Georghiades arrived on the outskirts of Palodia but, hearing dogs, they believed the village to be occupied by troops and decided to walk the five miles back to Yerasa. Early next morning, Chief Inspector Costas Efstathiou, who was not aware of the identity of his passenger, drove the exhausted Grivas to the house in Limassol owned by Dafnis Panayides. Henceforth, Grivas would control EOKA from hideouts, occasionally travelling to Nicosia to receive medical treatment, usually from his brother, a doctor. He reorganized the EOKA Guerrilla Groups and instructed Markos Drakos to create a new group from his decimated Vassiliki Group and the disbanded Milikouri Group. Its leader, Antonis Georgiades, remained with Grivas as his personal assistant. Other surviving EOKA he sent to the Omodhus, Pakhna and Pitsillia Groups, the latter led by Afxentiou and still undamaged. Meanwhile, the terrorism continued.
In every campaign, an army has a low point. For the Army in Northern Ireland, it was probably Bloody Sunday. In Cyprus, it was probably Operation Lucky Alphonse, which concluded on 23 June. Strategically it had been a success, with several EOKA groups destroyed and seventeen guerrillas captured and handed over to 16 Parachute Brigade Provost Unit, but at the cost of twenty-five British soldiers dead, seven of them in road accidents. The operation had highlighted deficiencies in command and control and tactics, in particular that urban patrols, roadblocks and searches were not ideal preparations for operations against an enemy lodged in rugged mountains where physical fitness and stamina were essential. Unlike the Regular Army that emerged in the early 1960s of men with a minimum of six years service and several weeks training before deployment, the inexperienced National Servicemen in Cyprus were limited to a few weeks after basic training. Colonel Grivas commented that Operations Pepper Pot and Lucky Alphonse were the first time that EOKA Guerrilla Groups had faced the combination of infantry patrols supported by helicopters covering a large area. He was critical of the tactics, in particular the friendly fire incidents and the poor track discipline of discarded cigarette packets and rubbish from ration packs which left clues. When there were clashes, his view was that the responses were ‘lamentable’. Nevertheless, the Operations had dealt EOKA a serious blow from which they never recovered.
In addition to the thirteen mourned by the Gordon Highlanders, the Norfolks grieved for five. One RASC was killed. As the bodies of the two 3 Para trapped in their vehicle were being escorted to Wayne’s Keep cemetery on 19 June, a bomb thrown at the cortege near the US Consulate narrowly missed Captain Horace McClelland, the Battalion Chaplain, but injured three Greek-Cypriots on bicycles. Escorting troops leapt from an armoured car, vaulted a wall and raced into a nearby garden, firing at the fleeing bomber. The area was immediately cordoned, houses searched and four suspects arrested.
Millions of pounds worth of vehicles and equipment were lost in the operations. A Norfolks officer noted that those who attempted to outrun the fire had perished while those who ran at an acute angle to its path and who had sheltered in fire breaks and patches of smouldering ground survived. While opinions about the origins of the fire differ, the consensus generally is that exploding mortar bombs were the cause. Between about 9 am and 10. 20 am on 16 June, a sustained mortar barrage had bombarded the valleys near Vroisia while machine-gunners raked the high ground. Mortar Troop, 45 Commando were horrified when 3-inch bombs dropped short among A Troop, who were firing their 2-inch mortars, and wounded five Royal Marines. Checks on unused mortar bombs showed they were out of date. A member of the Parachute Regiment watching the barrages saw whirlwinds suck up flames from the explosions and rush at the speed of an express train at treetop height from one of side of the valley to the other. A claim by Elenitsa Seraphim, the EOKA Larnaca Area Commander, that the British had deliberately set the forest alight as part of the operation to capture Grivas is rejected, as were her claims that Greek-Cypriots had helped extinguish fires. At the inquiry, the Turkish-Cypriot foresters, who had been accused by Greek-Cypriots of deserting the troops and starting fires, were widely praised for their determination and commitment. The fact is that no one knows who started the fire but most agree that it was caused by mortar bomb detonations.
Meanwhile, the diversionary terrorism ordered by Grivas continued. In June, Mr Justice Bernard Shaw, a senior judge who had sentenced several EOKA to death and long terms of imprisonment, was seriously wounded by two gunmen in Nicosia. Limassol reeled after being collectively fined £35, 000 for its complicity in supporting EOKA, the money being placed in a fund for victims and their families. When a bomb thrown into the stylish Little Soho restaurant killed US Vice-Consul William Botelor on 16 June in Nicosia, Grivas, while insisting it was a ‘tragic mistake’, warned foreigners not to frequent places used by British officials. On the 21st, Sergeant Reginald Tipple, a Metropolitan Policeman attached to the Pyla Detention Camp, was murdered while shopping in Larnaca for a present for his young daughter. The camp was about ten miles north-east of the town. In July, eleven Greek-Cypriots were killed, including a young girl caught in an explosion in Yialousa targeting a Highland Light Infantry patrol. Five more Servicemen died, including RAF Sergeant Ernest Allen shot after being caught in a honeytrap.
When Andreas Zakos and Charilaos Michael had been sentenced to death for their part in the ambush that had killed Lance Corporal Morun in December 1955 and Iakovos Patsatsos had been convicted of the murder of the Turkish-Cypriot PC Nihat Basif, Grivas, while not wishing to affect their appeals, again ordered that hostages be taken against the lives of the three EOKA. In the first attempt, Nitsa Hadjigeorghiou, one of the more militant female EOKA, developed a plan to invite some soldiers to the Baths of Aphrodite near Polis and then seize them while they were helpless from drugged drinks at a café. However, the information haemorrhaged and the Polis area was placed under curfew. In her next attempt, she lured Sergeant Allen to her house at Ayios Demitos and shortly after she invited him into her bedroom, three masked gunmen rushed from the bathroom. Allen fought back but was shot dead. With the body in her house and his car outside, Georghiou coolly reported to the police that two gunmen had followed her and Allen home where they had murdered him. But her story was not believed, and because she was suspect EOKA and in case she associated with other soldiers, she was detained in Nicosia Prison for four months. Re-detained after being released and sent to the Omorphita Interrogation Centre, she admitted her association with Georghiou Afxentiou and Kyriakos Matsis and was again imprisoned. When Field Marshal Harding commuted the death sentence of her friend Nicos Xenophontos to life, as a measure of good will, Grivas believed, as he invariably did, that she had collaborated and ordered that she was to be ostracized. In spite of her commitment to EOKA, she died in poverty in 1958. Xenophontos had been captured during Operation Lucky Alphonse by a KOYLI patrol in an EOKA logistic base and bomb factory.
On 8 July, Mr Garth Karberry, a Customs and Excise officer, and his pregnant wife were ambushed in their car by a Group led by Tassos Sofocleus on the lonely Kantara Pass near Akanthou, north of Lefkoniko, and savagely murdered. On the same day, Sergeant Alan Smith, of the Gordon Highlanders was leading a patrol along a dried-up riverbed near Morphou Greek Elementary School when he challenged three armed men at a distance of about twenty-five yards. They fired and, although mortally wounded, Smith emptied his Sten gun magazine and forced the men to abandon their shotguns as they fled. Morphou was thoroughly searched by the Battalion and a 1 Wiltshires company. Greek-Cypriot councillors refused to contribute to an inquiry into the clash. In mid-July, the arrival of 2 Para, the Guards Independent Parachute Company and its artillery, engineer and field ambulance brought 16 Parachute Brigade to near full strength. Although warned by EOKA not to return to the Troodos, the Brigade launched Operation Golden Eagle using 40 Commando, the Norfolks and Gordon Highlanders in another drive in 400 square miles of the western Troodos Mountains; within three days they had captured seventeen guerrillas and wounded several others trying to breach the cordons.