CHAPTER NINE
(January to March 1957)
In December 1956, Major General Douglas Kendrew took over Cyprus District from Major General Ricketts and also Director of Operations from Brigadier Baker. Baker remained as Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Harding. Joe Kendrew, as he was better known, was born in 1910 and, as a lieutenant in the Leicesters, had represented England in the scrum at rugby union ten times, touring Australia and New Zealand in 1930 and captaining the team in 1935. During the Second World War, he had the distinction of being awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) three times for leadership and courage in North Africa, Italy and Greece and was then won his fourth DSO while commanding the 29 Independent Infantry Brigade in Korea.
The year 1956 had been a tough one; sixty Service personnel had been killed in action, November being the worst month with sixteen fatalities. Nine UK Unit Police, six Greek-Cypriots and seven Turkish-Cypriots had also been killed as had twelve British civilians, 109 Greek-Cypriots, including several EOKA, and five Turkish-Cypriots. Total for the year was 213. Although the level of terrorism in the urban and rural areas was still high, the drive by Brigadier Baker against the mountain guerrillas was paying dividends, but EOKA was by no means finished, with the activists still willing to take orders from their invisible leader.
After the New Year, 1 HLI returned to Scotland on the troopship Dilwara, and then about a week later 1st Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment (1 Glosters) joined 3 Infantry Brigade from Bahrein and replaced the Somerset Light Infantry which departed on HMT Empire Ken. Unfortunately, the Somersets had not completed 120 days and therefore were not entitled to the Cyprus bar of the 1918 General Service Medal. Several of the Glosters had spent three years in North Korean prison camps, including Major Guy Temple, whose platoon had tackled the Chinese 63rd Army on the banks of the Imjin River before it had overwhelmed the British position. He escaped three times and had his hands so tightly bound after one attempt that they were permamently injured.
In bitterly cold and wet weather in mid-January 1957, 3 Infantry Brigade launched seven battalions in Operation Black Mak on two search operations, the first near Milikouri, where it was still thought that Colonel Grivas was hiding, and the second in the general area of Omodhus in Adelphi Forest aimed at the Guerrilla Groups. As usual, both places were declared prohibited areas, which allowed troops to ignore the rules of engagement of giving a warning before opening fire. At the merest hint of guerrilla activity, Sycamore helicopters were ready to fly in patrols. The Army also knew where Afxentiou was, and in Operation Cordon Bleu the Ox and Bucks captured several important EOKA in the Pakhna area.
Sections of the 1 Suffolk operating in the general area of Evrykhou in the Adelphi Forest patrolled during the day and at night ambushed tracks leading from the pine forests in order to snare guerrillas visiting villages to shelter, collect food and gather intelligence of military operations. Since arriving, the Battalion had experienced a relatively quiet tour although in mid-November the Anti Tank Platoon was ambushed by gunmen firing from the upper floors of a house in Nikitari, not far from Morphou. The Platoon Commander, Lieutenant Trollope, immediately retaliated by leading a charge into the house and chased the gunmen into the back garden where a child was shot dead in the crossfire. One soldier was sufficiently badly wounded to be flown back to Great Britain. During the evening of 18 January, a section commanded by Corporal Brian King from D Company selected an ambush site based around a rocky outcrop overlooking the killing zone of a track that ran from a spur of trees into open ground. Establishing a patrol base 150 yards from the rocks inside the tree line, he divided his section in half and, following the standard tactic that night ambushes remained in position all night without relief, instructed Lance Corporal Henry Fowler and three men to occupy the patrol base while his half-section covered the track for the night. But as darkness fell, the combination of heavy, freezing rain, a biting wind and the danger of non-battle casualties from exposure led to King ignoring ambush drills and deciding that the two groups would change every two hours. At about 7 pm, Fowler was relieving King when there was an exchange of fire in the woods above. At about 11 pm, Fowler was taking over for the second time when Private Sydney Woods saw a figure about ten yards away walk into the killing zone. There being no reply to his challenge, Woods opened fire. The figure then returned fire, which led to the remainder of the section opening fire by shooting at muzzle flashes flickering in the darkness. A man was heard to shout in pain. Even though the ambush had been compromised, King stayed in position for the remainder of the night, and when next morning the section checked the killing zone they found the body of a man hit thirteen times and a Sten gun nearby. So far, Operation Black Mak had been relatively fruitless but when the dead man was identified as Markos Drakos, morale rose throughout the security forces at the news that a dangerous and committed guerrilla had been killed. It seemed the EOKA group were trying to breach the cordon. It later emerged that the engagement heard by King’s section at 7 pm was the Drakos group searching for a route through the Suffolks’ line of ambushes and colliding with a British patrol. They had avoided a second collision before being ambushed by King. The rest of the group, including a wounded man, escaped the ambush. A claim by the Greek-Cypriot historian Doros Alastos that Drakos had committed suicide is nonsense. King, Fowler and Woods were Mentioned in Despatches.
Next day, acting on information received, a 1st Battalion, The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (1 Duke of Wellington’s) patrol was searching a remote farm owned by a senior Cyprus Police officer near Omodhus. Private John Davis was in the kitchen when he heard an unusual noise from the hearth. The patrol then noted that the hearth had unusual signs of wear and tear. When they moved a slab behind the fireplace, it exposed a chamber and five crouching guerrillas, including Polycarpos Georghadjis and Anargyros Karadymas. Both were high on the wanted list after their dramatic escape from Nicosia Hospital in which Police Sergeant Demmon had been killed. Three others had bounties of £5,000 on their heads. A total of 2,000 rounds of ammunition, a 3.5-inch Bazooka rocket launcher, six Thompson sub machine guns and several revolvers were found during the search of the house and surrounding property. During the night of 21 January, in the glare of parachute flares, a 2 Para company abseiled from Sycamores to several landing zones near Omodhus and captured George Matsis close to his hideout near Kannavia. Highly regarded by Colonel Grivas as a patriot, Radio Athens claimed that with Matsis’ capture ‘the Troodos are not singing; not even the birds are singing’. His main claim to fame was the raid on a British armoury in Famagusta. He was also half-brother to Kyriakos Matsis. The Battalion scored further success when a patrol led by Lieutenant D G Smith were searching the house of the village policeman, a known EOKA collaborator, and noted that in spite of the cold weather, the fire had only recently been lit. Smith kicked aside the embers and, stamping on the hearth, exposed a shaft and three anxious guerrillas gasping for air and surrounded by arms and explosive. The Battalion would claim the elimination of twenty-one guerrillas and the capture of forty-six weapons, including two rocket launchers.
The attrition against the EOKA Mountain Groups again led to Grivas demanding that the Town and Village Groups divert the attention of the Army. The murders of three expatriates in the first ten days of the New Year in Nicosia led on 15 January to 50 Infantry Brigade District again sealing the city centre and confining all males aged between fourteen to forty years into holding cages so that the Cyprus Police could carry out a detailed investigation into the murder of Mr Herbert Pritchard, a Cable and Wireless executive who had been murdered on 9 January. When the information on several murders on Ledra Street were analyzed, the focus of suspicion centred on Nicos Sampson, largely because he often happened to be in the close vicinity of the murders soon afterwards. Tracked to a house at Dhali, at the end of the month, a Royal Horse Guards patrol and Special Branch officers arrested him in possession of a weapon. In Nicosia, two female EOKA suffered serious injuries when a grenade they intended to throw at a 1 Ox and Bucks officer prematurely exploded. At the beginning of February, acting on information that he was providing shelter to EOKA, Special Branch raided a bungalow owned by PC Andreas Houvardos and found in a cache beneath a bed, thirty-eight revolvers, fifty-three grenades, fuses for bombs and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. One .38-inch Webley had been used in fifteen murders and seven attempted murders. Since bomb disposal officers regarded the cache as too dangerous to move, Royal Engineers blew the house up. Houvardos and an accomplice, a police sergeant, received long sentences in May. Within days of the arrests, acting on information received, the Nicosia Group leader, Andreas Chartas, was arrested, as were Evangelos Evangelakis and several couriers. Evangelakis, a gunman, had escaped from Kyrenia Castle in September 1955 and was a close associate of Sampson. Their interrogations revealed more arms and explosive caches in Nicosia.
In one of the first moves to undermine the Church, in The Church and Terrorism in Cyprus, the Cyprus Government accused Archbishop Makarios of being the prime instigator of the violence on the island and implicated the Cyprus Orthodox Church as a conduit for terrorism. Several days later, seven priests with Troodos Mountain parishes were arrested on the instructions of Field Marshal Harding on suspicion of giving shelter to EOKA terrorists and forming EOKA groups. Since 1 April 1955, thirty-seven priests had been taken into custody. At a briefing for Operation Kingfisher that centred on Milikouri and Kykko Monastery, Major General Kendrew thanked Grivas for identifying weaknesses and criticizing the performance of his troops, not that he needed to, and told his brigade commanders to continue the attrition against EOKA. In his hideout in Limassol, Grivas became anxious as he saw EOKA crumble under the pressure. On 17 February in Operation Mailbox B Troop, 40 Commando surrounded Palendria and Potamitissas to smoke out the explosives expert Stylianos Lenas. Lieutenant Marshal, who commanded 9 Section and Lieutenant Michael Haynes, of 8 Section, dispensed with the usual long night approach and early morning cordon by storming the villages in vehicles at first light and trapped several guerrillas trying to break out. The Potamitissas Group leader, Christodoulou Demetrakis, firing an Italian rifle and throwing grenades, was killed, as were two other EOKA. Lenas was captured severely wounded. When three armed men were seen shortly before first light next day, Haynes challenged them in accordance with standing orders and was cut down by a terrorist opening fire with a Sten gun, who was in turn killed in a hail of bullets from angry Royal Marines. Lenas, who with Demetrakis had a £5,000 bounty on his head, died at the British Military Hospital at RAF Akrotiri six weeks later.
In 51 Infantry Brigade District operations, Private Raymond Young, of 1 Leicesters was part of a patrol commanded by Corporal T W James that surrounded a remote farmhouse near Lysi on 10 February. He was about to search an outhouse when he saw, in the shadows, two men aiming shotguns at him. He dived for cover just as they fired at him, then five other EOKA inside also opened up. As the gun battle developed, James, a Regular soldier, ordered his patrol to surround the outhouse. One of the trapped guerrillas then darted out of the building and was chased across a ploughed field by James repeatedly shouting instructions for him to surrender until the gunman turned and fired. James fired back and then watched as 300 yards away, the Cypriot collapsed and died from a bullet wound. The remaining guerrillas were trapped in the outhouse until their ammunition ran out twenty minutes later and they then surrendered with, ‘All right, Johnny, you win!’ Among them was the bomb-maker Dinos Michaelides who specialized in supplying devices to the Limassol and Larnaca Town Groups. The dead EOKA was identified as Andreas Kokkinos, a local farmer. Three weeks later, Corporal Moore was leading three Leicesters through an orange grove near Akhna when they saw an elderly man running towards a house. The patrol took cover and watched, intrigued, as four men tumbled out of the house and ran towards them. When they saw the soldiers, they changed direction and began running across a ploughed field until Moore challenged them to stop, which they did. A search of the house revealed four more terrorists, one hiding underneath a bed. All surrendered, once again without a fight. Operation Black Mak finished at the end of February and was assessed by Major General Kendrew to be the most successful operation so far.
The pressure was kept up by 3 Infantry Brigade launching Operation Whisky Mak specifically to kill or capture Gregoris Afxentiou, Number 2 to Grivas with a £5,000 bounty on his head and known to be controlling EOKA operations in the Pitsilia, Famagusta and Makhearas area. After being wounded at Zoopiyi on New Year’s Eve, Afxentiou and his twenty-five men found sanctuary in the twelfth century Makheras Monastery that dominated the countryside from the slopes of Mount Kionia. Its Abbot Ireneos, a former Second World War RAF Regiment clerk, was independent of Archbishop Makarios. He supported the EOKA while they built hideouts on Mount Kionia.
Although the planning of Operation Whisky Mak was on strict need-to-know, it was compromised by a trusted Special Branch inspector based at Police HQ, who was tape-recording the daily operational meetings between senior Army and police officers and relaying the details to Grivas. During the night of 27 February, Afxentiou and four EOKA moved into a hide a mile north of the monastery. With an entrance no more than eighteen inches square, it was expertly concealed in thick scrub in between a path that led to the summit and a lower track that also led from the monastery and skirted the hill. At the bottom of the hill was a stream bordered by terraced fields.
When two EOKA suspects were captured by a special operations group at Omodhus next day and were taken to the Platres interrogation centre, one turned out to be a member of Afxentiou Group. When he confirmed that Afxentiou often used the Forest Rest House complex about three miles from the monastery, two 1 Duke of Wellington’s platoons deployed to the vicinity. The suspect also said that supplies for Afxentiou were delivered by mules led by a slow-witted shepherd employed at the monastery named Petros. With Afxentiou now confirmed to be in the area, Brigadier FitzGeorge-Balfour ordered Lieutenant Colonel Laing, the Duke of Wellington’s Commanding Officer, to find him. On 1 March Petros was arrested by a patrol and under interrogation at HQ 3 Infantry Brigade said that two pistols were buried outside the monastery walls. Soon after Captain Newton had been ordered to assemble a patrol, Major Rodick and Petros arrived from Platres with the news that the shepherd had been tempted by a reward to guide the patrol to the EOKA hideout. However, as the plan developed, it soon became apparent the patrol was too small, and Laing instructed Major D M Harris, whose D Company was patrolling the area, to attack the hide on 3 March. During the late evening, a platoon raided the monastery and arrested Abbot Ireneos on suspicion that he was harbouring Afxentiou; in spite of his protestions and denials, the monks and novices were confined to a single room. Battalion HQ set up in the cloisters. Next day, soldiers thoroughly searched the monastery and the surrounding slopes but found nothing. Ireneos refused to answer any questions, but Petros was more forthcoming and indicated the general location of the hide.
Laing rejected a night attack and opted for a first-light assault next day, but Harris was anxious because his men would be advancing over broken terrain, potentially against a defended position, somewhere, on a dark, moonless night. After a difficult march in pouring rain, by 5 am D Company were high on the western slopes of Mount Kionia before dawn and divided into four elements. Party ‘D’ were 150 yards north of the suspected hideout astride an obvious escape route along the lower path and stream. Regimental Sergeant Major Randall and a small party were in a second cut-off position about 300 yards across the valley to the east in a position to view the hillside opposite. There were no cut-offs to the south and the monastery because B Company was in the vicinity. A Sycamore was ready to fly an officer and a signaller to track anyone escaping the net.
By about 5.30 am D Company had advanced through the soaking undergrowth until it was about 200 yards above the upper track, but there was no evidence of the hideout until Petros, in the increasing grey, rainy dawn, timidly pointed it out 300 yards down the slope in between the two tracks. Covered by Company HQ beefed up with two Bren guns of Party ‘C’, Snatch Party ‘A’ and a Bren gun commanded by Lieutenant Dasent swung to the north while Snatch Party ‘B’ commanded by Captain Newton moved south in a pincer movement; but by 6 am there was still no sign of the hideout. As Harris then moved down the slope with Party ‘C’, the decidedly anxious Petros refused to go any further and pointed where he thought the hideout was. The two Snatch Parties were quietly searching ground between the two paths when Corporal Trinder, from Party ‘B’, followed a trail up a slope from the lower path until, after about ten yards he spotted bootprints and then noticed that the branches of a bush on the right of the path had been tied down to form a canopy about 4 feet high. Investigating inside, he shifted some large stones and found a 40-gallon oil drum containing a 2-inch mortar wrapped in brown paper. It was a sure sign of an EOKA hideout. Captain Newton then joined Trinder and while they were following the track they both sensed that the ground below was hollow. Moving aside another large stone, they found the entrance and peering inside, saw some clothing but, hearing nothing, concluded the hideout was empty. More soldiers arrived, including Second Lieutenant Grant, the Battalion interpreter, and when voices were heard from underground, he speculatively shouted to the guerrillas to surrender.
Inside the hideout, the five EOKA had been asleep and unaware of the search until dislodged stones tumbled down the slope. Knowing the game was up, Afxentiou said it was pointless everyone sacrificing their lives and ordered his four colleagues to leave, insisting that he alone would die for the cause. The four scrambled out and were captured without trouble. And then a sudden Sten gun burst from the hideout took everyone by surprise. Grant again invited Afxentiou to surrender and then Corporal Peter Brown, who was with Snatch Party ‘A’, leant over the entrance and shouted that it was all over, but Afxentiou fired again and Brown fell back mortally wounded. Newton managed to get close enough to throw the only hand grenade possessed by the attacking force into the hide. Meanwhile Second Lieutenant Middleton of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, who commanded a detachment of interpreters, persuaded one of the four prisoners, Augustis Efstathiou, to tell Afxentiou to surrender. A very reluctant Efstathiou returned to the hide and found his chief bleeding badly from grenade splinter wounds to his neck and knee. After a brief conversation, Afxentiou fired a single shot and shouted in English that there were now two in the hide and to ‘Come and get us’, citing the spirit of Leonidas of Sparta challenging the Persian surrender terms at the Battle of Thermopylae.
In between firing the occasional shot to keep the troops at bay, the pair discussed their part in EOKA, with Afxentiou convinced that they had contributed to lighting the flames of liberation. They plotted to escape by rushing out, guns blazing, under cover of a phosphorus grenade, and disappearing into the forest until night. But when Afxentiou threw the grenade, it was yellow smoke not phosphorus, and as Efstathiou stood up to give covering fire, he forgot to release the safety catch of his Sten. Both men slunk back into the hideout, trapped. Aided by lingering yellow smoke pinpointing the hideout, Major Rodick, Corporal Trinder and Lance Corporal Martin laced its entrance with fire while Lance Corporal Dowdall tried to recover the body of Corporal Brown, but he was driven back after dragging it a few yards. Harris then assembled the four Brens onto a spur overlooking the hide about forty yards to the south. Overhead, the Sycamore hovered.
At about 7.15 am Brigadier Hopwood and Lieutenant Colonel Laing arrived and, ordering that needless casualties were to be avoided, then instructed that the two EOKA should be burnt out or buried by a heavy charge. Fearing that Grivas would order a rescue, 10 Platoon, D Company supported by two Brens formed an inner cordon while four patrols from 3 Company, 3 Grenadier Guards reinforced the Duke of Wellington’s. 1 Company was in reserve. Royal Engineers used a Second World War tactic of bouncing powerful search light beams off low lying clouds to illuminate the hide. Meanwhile, Major Harris had learnt from the prisoners that Afxentiou and Efstathiou had two Thompsons, two pistols, several hundred rounds of ammunition and some grenades.
At about 9 am a donkey train laden with petrol jerry cans arrived, but when the fuel was poured around the hide entrance, rain and hailstones prevented the soaking bushes from catching fire. Captain Dennis Shuttleworth, a Royal Engineer and former English rugby international, then tried to collapse the roof with a 6lb Plastic Explosive satchel charge, but this only induced the two trapped EOKA to reply with more grenades. For the remainder of the morning, apart from occasional, short exchanges of harassing gunfire and explosion of grenades as vegetation around the entrance was pruned, it was eerily silent. Inside, Afxentiou was weakening from loss of blood. At midday, several jerry cans of highly inflammable aviation fuel arrived by Sycamore and were delivered to Captain Hoppe, another Royal Engineer officer. Located above the hideout, he slowly poured the fuel down the slope, allowed it to seep into nooks and crannies and then ignited it with a match. As the fuel exploded with a sizeable ‘whump’ and the four Brens opened fire, a figure burst through the flames and stumbled into some smouldering bushes. Shuttleworth and a small group of soldiers armed with Sten guns were then directed by Captain Newton to the entrance and Shuttleworth slid down the steep slope, placed a beehive charge over the hide and hauled himself back up the slope trailing a fuse behind him. At 1.30 pm the resulting explosion was heard several miles away. One of his men then threw a tear gas grenade into the wreckage while others sprayed the entrance with their Stens. There was no reply. It was 2 pm.
Meanwhile, a burnt, terrified Efstathiou, no longer the valiant guerrilla, had been hauled from the bushes, and, after being patched up, was driven to the military hospital at Akrotiri. The hide burned for most of the afternoon and it was not until the following day that a search party found the charred body of Afxentiou surrounded by two burnt-out Thompsons, two pistols and a revolver, three grenades, ammunition and a US bayonet. One leg was severed and underneath his body was a copy of Christ Recrucified signed by Abbot Ireneos and lent to Afxentiou. With the monastery now confirmed to have links with EOKA, it was taken over by the Army as a detention centre for priests. Journalists had been invited to the battle, in the hope that they would conclude that EOKA was finished; instead, they portrayed Afxentiou to be a hero. There was some civil unrest in Lysi.
Although a coroner concluded that Afxentiou had died when he was hit in the head by a bullet cooking off in the inferno, Greek-Cypriot nationalists claimed that he had been shot and have now commemorated him by restoring the hide. In front is a large statue of Afxentiou. His is also the image on a 2005 Greek-Cypriot medal commemorating the Emergency. Over 21,000 applied for the medal, although EOKA actually numbered only several hundred activists. So far as the British soldiers were concerned, the battle was short of the Greek epic claimed by nationalists. Although Grivas knew that Afxentiou would fight, his reaction was to ask, ‘Why so sad? People get killed in a war, and that is what we are fighting for. We shall have as many more as brave as he’. But the fact remains that many guerrillas did not live up to the courage displayed by Afxentiou; however, in the absence of mysterious ‘Digenes’ in his bunker, the Greek-Cypriots badly needed a local hero, and a legend evolved around Afxentiou. In spite of assurances by Grivas that he would look after the welfare of families of EOKA casualties, Vasilia Afxentiou lived in poverty for several years, scratching a living in the fields until she remarried. When it emerged in 2000 that the sculptor of the Afxentiou monument planned to exhibit in Newark, Nottinghamshire, the local British Legion protested sufficiently for the project to be abandoned. Alan Meale, a Labour MP, then claimed the Turkish Embassy had engineered the row, until it emerged that he was associated with the nationalist Greek-Cypriot Brotherhood.
The pressure was maintained in early March by 3 Infantry Brigade launching Operation Blackbird with 40 Commando and the Suffolks reinforced by two 1st Battalion, The Lancashire Fusilier companies (1 Lancashire) sweeping through the broken ground in the Kakopetria area; although no EOKA were found, the troops were becoming more skilful at finding caches. The Battalion had landed at Limassol from HMT Asturia and had been absorbed into 1 AGRA battle group. As the winter snows melted and gave way to warmer days, spring flowers and green trees, it was clear that Operations Black Mak and Whisky Mak had badly damaged EOKA. During the nine-month offensive since June 1956, a significant number of guerrillas had been killed or arrested. Grivas was thought to be somewhere in the mountains, and although morale had risen with the successes, it was disappointing that he had not been found. Isolated in his Limassol bunker, Grivas reeled from the successive disasters of losing several reliable officers and was finding it increasingly difficult to motivate the Town Groups because they were under considerable pressure. Murders committed by EOKA had been reduced to twenty in January and February compared to forty-nine in the last two months of 1956. Grivas later wrote,
If it was possible for one man, a man fatigued in body and mind by long years of harsh struggle, to make decisions which were so consistently right. Napoleon said that it was not God that inspired him at difficult moments, but prudence. I cannot believe that, in my case, it was solely my personal abilities which brought me success and supplied me always with correct decision; this I ascribe rather to divine providence. (Memoirs of George Grivas)
In spite of the damage, Grivas was determined to fight on but was warned by the Greek Government that if he did not declare a ceasefire, the British would seize the political high ground and that Turkey would inevitably be included in any negotiations. Although Greece regarded NATO as nothing more than ‘a bunch of colonial powers’, negotiations were underway within the alliance to change its terms of reference to allow for solutions to be negotiated in disputes between member states. Even though Evagorus Pallikarides and another EOKA were hanged on 12 March, Grivas heeded the warning and issued orders next day later that as soon as negotiations between London and Archbishop Makarios began, EOKA would suspend operations. Field Marshal Harding was sceptical because the offer did not refer to the cessation of hostilities and ordered that operations should continue.
In the middle of March, 3 Infantry Brigade launched Operation Lucky Dip with five infantry battalions to root out hideouts and caches reported to be in south-west Cyprus. When Aristidou Droushot was quickly captured without the expected struggle, Grivas lost another senior officer. Thought to be EOKA third-in-command, Grivas was sufficiently concerned that Droushot would compromise his bunker under interrogation that he asked Deacon Anthimos to circulate disinformation that he himself was hiding in the area between Milikouri and Kykko Monastery. The information inevitably reached 3 Infantry Brigade, and Brigadier Hopwood launched Operation Lucky Mac in which the area was systematically searched with the troops concentrating on looking for caches and hideouts in the unlikeliest places in houses, outbuildings and farmyards. Milikouri, with the brooding Kykko Monastery two miles to the north, had been strongly suspected of providing succour to EOKA for months and it was singled out for an indeterminate 24-hour curfew in which villagers were escorted by troops to and from the fields, vineyards, woods and grazing areas between 7 am and 7 pm. If there were not enough soldiers, the farmers had to wait until a patrol became available. Inevitably, there were complaints of lost business, particularly when the petals for rose water production had to be collected when the plants were in bloom and soaked by the early morning dew. Vines could not be pruned because the escorting soldiers would have been isolated some distance from the village. During the evenings, the bars lost business. Inevitably, ubiquitous journalists became frantic at being prevented from entering the village, and consequently the longer the block on information lasted, the greater the speculation. Wild reports from Greece claiming that the troops were torturing villagers and starving them and their animals led to food parcels being sent to the village, but when the curfew was lifted on 13 May, fifty-four days after it began, and eager journalists rushed to the village for a scoop, they found the claims unfounded. The reality was that the soldiers had bartered their bland Compo rations for fresh eggs, fruit and vegetables, medical officers had treated the sick and injured, Royal Engineers had carried out repairs and children scrounged chocolate and boiled sweets; the village economy was not significantly affected.
After being briefed at 1 am on 23 March, by 5 am a Middlesex company had silently surrounded Lysi, west of Larnaca, where an informant claimed that Michaelakis Rossides was hiding. After escaping from Kyrenia Castle in September 1955 and from the Trimithia Detention Centre in January 1956, Rossides was appointed by Grivas to be the Larnaca District Group Leader. As dawn broke, the first person who walked into the cordon was Rossides. Later in the day, the body of Private Ronnie Shilton was found in a shallow grave not far from Prastio, about six miles east of Lysi. At his trial, claims by Rossides that his two confessions to the Cyprus Police for the murder of Shilton were made under duress were rejected. He claimed that when he was told by the Larnaca Group Leader in May 1956 that Grivas had instructed that Shilton should be executed, Rossides appealed against the directive because he had grown to like the soldier. However, he had little choice, it was his life or Shilton’s; nevertheless, it was with some regret, he said, that he hit the soldier with a shovel and then shot him three or four times with an automatic. He claimed remorse by claiming ‘Be sure that as from that day I continually lost my sleep and I used to see Ronnie’s ghost in front of me’. Rossides was sentenced to death, although this was later commuted to life.
In his final assessment before handing over his appointment as Chief of Staff to Brigadier Sir Victor FitzGeorge-Balfour, Brigadier Baker concluded that critical to the military success since January 1956 had been information from interrogations and informants. Since the commencement of Operation Turkey Trot and Fox Hunter in November 1955, at least seventeen major hideouts had being found, the sixteen Guerrilla Groups had been reduced to five, a substantial amount of equipment had been seized and several key EOKA had been killed or captured; the detention camps were full of men and women now out of circulation known to have been, or strongly suspected of being, EOKA. Grivas had been reduced to executing suspected traitors and attacking soft civilian targets in order to keep EOKA in the headlines. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, FitzGeorge-Balfour was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards in 1934. Five years later, he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in Palestine and then served in North Africa, Sicily and North West Europe mainly in key staff appointments, reaching Acting Brigadier in 1942. In 1948, he reverted to Major and had commanded 2 Coldstream Guards in Malaya.