Crossing the border

Don't quite know where to put this but as I'm off to France for a week I suppose it counts as crossing the border.

La Rochelle, here we come. See you all in a weeks time.

jim wrote:

Don't quite know where to put this but as I'm off to France for a week I suppose it counts as crossing the border.

La Rochelle, here we come. See you all in a weeks time.

Same old same old RHIP.

I was travelling one sunday afternoon from Amsterdam to Roermond on the train. Soon after leaving Amsterdam the ticket collector came round and I showed my ID to prove I qualified for the discount. A Dutch girl sitting opposite, with her mother, realising I was English asked if we could talk all the way to their destination, Eindhoven, in order to help improve her English. She did not need much practise, she was almost word perfect and she was only just 14.

brian beckett wrote:

I was travelling one sunday afternoon from Amsterdam to Roermond on the train. Soon after leaving Amsterdam the ticket collector came round and I showed my ID to prove I qualified for the discount. A Dutch girl sitting opposite, with her mother, realising I was English asked if we could talk all the way to their destination, Eindhoven, in order to help improve her English. She did not need much practise, she was almost word perfect and she was only just 14.

One Saturday afternoon in Amsterdam,back in the late'60's ,we found out how good the Dutch can speak English. We found ourselves in a pub, and after a while realised that there was only one female present, and there were signs reading things like 'Gents to let''. This lady was sitting at a table across from us.One of the lads made the remark in what he thought was a hushed tone, " she is either a queer or a lezzie." A few minutes later the lass looked our way and said, "Listen ! You are not as tough as you think you are. I am a lesbian."
Red faced, we beat a hasty retreat.

When we lived in Germany circa 1959-62 and again 1969-72 we traveled quite a bit (Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Denmark, Berlin (those two just my parents), Switzerland, Cyprus) and I never recall any problems whatsoever.

Part of it was Dad having Canadian military plates on the car and our passports, although he may have also had NATO ID or some such but I don't think so. Who paid attention to such things as a youth? :-)

The only time there was even remotely an issue, and even at that it wasn't in the end, was when we were in Cyprus and dad drove from Kyrenia on the north across the Troodos Mountains to Nicosia, Limasol, and the south coast.

The return trip he decided to go up along the western coast and swing over to Kyrenia that way rather than going back the same route we had originally taken.

Up around Pathos (?) he got lost. It was dark and the roads were not the best, to say nothing of the signage, and we ended up high on the cliff face gawd knows where.

We saw a checkpoint up ahead and got waved over and told to leave the car and come into a guard shack. Turns out they were not Greek Cypriots but Turkish Cypriots and, not only that, but some sort of guerilla or milita outfit, not regular Turkish Army at all! There were about 4 or 5 of them, with Uzis or whatever it was the Turks carried.

As Mom and I sat there, having tea with their commander, who spoke some English and had a brother in Toronto! Dad was asked to go back outside to turn off his lights or some such thing. He was gone for 20 minutes easily.

At one point Mom reached down into her purse and the two young Turks hold their guns on us tensed up....she was going for her cigarettes and had the presence of mind to offer them all one as well; the international sign of comraderie and friendship.

I forget now how long we were detained but eventually, I suppose, our papers panned out or we were seen as non-threatening or whatever (just dumb lost tourists, even though they must have been aware Dad was NATO. I forget if Turkey was a member of NATO at the time (1970-ish)). They directed us down the narrow bumpy and rather treacherous mountain road to another check stop that took one look at us and waved us on through, so clearly the original bunch had phoned ahead.

We eventually got into a fairly large town on the western coast and were stopped by Greek regular army and an officer came and spoke with Dad and Mom. Checked papers etc.

Dad asked him how we could get to Kyrenia from there.

"Well....you can't go back that way," the young officer said, indicating the road we had turned off of "That is completely Turkish held. Very dangerous...."

Mom pipes up with "But we just came from that direction. In fact, we had tea with some Turkish soldiers up in the hills...."

"Madam! I shouldn't even be talking to you!!!" he exclaimed, stepping back a few steps. "Those are not even regular Turkish Army, they are renegades and bandits. You are lucky to be alive as what they often do is have the man go out to the car for some reason, rape and kill the wife and then shoot the man and toss the bodies down the cliff to the sea...."

Nice...

"Well," Mom said "All I know is they were quite pleasant to us and directed us to the right road and here we are...."

We got back to Kyrenia quite late that night, about 10 or so, and went for supper at the old Bishop's Palace (then a quite nice restaurant if one didn't mind 50,000 cats circling around begging for food; well-kept and certainly well-fed cats, mind you!) and realized we had just had ourselves quite the adventure....

Stephen,that trip sounds as though you went through the Irish Contingent's area down into the British,when I was there in 67 they were both no go areas,with murder and mayhem occuring,not daily, but often enough to cause notice.Paphos was definitely off limits.

Hmmmm....not sure about the contingent areas but that may well be true. I do know in 1971 when we were in Cyprus, 2nd Bn Irish Rangers were down in Limasol. We visited with the father of one of my mates back in Hemer, who was glad to see a 'bit of home' even if it was Canadian!

To this day, I have no idea who or what the Turks were that detained us, but I am pretty sure they were, in fact, renegades because, as I recall, their uniforms were a bit shoddy, first of all, and appeared to be a mishmash of different styles, as if they threw together whatever they could to appear at least somewhat "military." Nice tea set, though! Glass with gold filigree and, of course, very very sweet. We were even shown the proper etiquette of holding a sugar cube between one's front teeth and sipping the tea through it.

Even our landlord back in Kyrenia paled when he learned where we had been and what had happened. As I think of it, he was the one who told us about the man being taken out to the car under some pretense, shot, and the wife being raped and killed as well -- and, in all likelihood, the son (in this case) or daughter, if any. I have no idea how we lucked out....but luck out we did. I think part of it was the CO, or whatever he was, having a cousin in Toronto and us being Canadian coupled with Mom being friendly and courteous and offering cigarettes all round.

Now that was a tradition we learned while living in Germany; sharing cigarettes was absolutely a social easer, a way to get a conversation going. They try ours out, we try theirs out and everyone discusses the pros and cons (mainly pros) of each others ciggies! For Canadians, Export 'A' was the favourite and most easily identifiable. I smoked Export 'A' for a while but, gack, I can't handle them now! Give me a helluva nicotine headache, although I still smoke (my one remaining bad habit, believe me; I've given up all the rest or they've given me up LOL)

Stephen's experience in Cyprus jogged my memory.
On a UN tour in '69 we were Force Reserve and one of our tasks was to visit the various contingents around Cyprus. (FINCON was always memorable!).
Tourism hadn't taken off back then, the only tourist destination of any note was in Famagusta. Most of the island was bleak and inhospitable.
One day we visited IRCON and were sitting around, waiting for the NCOs to finish their socialising. The Irish army unit was under canvas then and we were watching them dropping their tents.
When somebody jokingly asked where the Paddys were going we got the reply-"We're away home to fight you fellers".
We had no media in those days and news of the aggro in Ulster was only just starting to trickle through
Years later I learned that the Republic was planning to invade the North to save the Catholics.
Now THAT would've been interesting!

I'd forgotten about Famagusta! Talk about bleak....as I remember it, it was a typically dusty, grimy, ramshackle, decrepit, hot, g-dforsaken place, typical of so many cities in the region (i.e. eastern Mediterranean, Middle East). About the only thing of interest there was the tomb of The Prophet's brother or cousin or something and even that was in bit of a state.

Kyrenia, where we were staying, was not large but it was pleasant. Overlooking it was a ruined Crusader castle, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It's claim to fame, apart from being Crusader and some association with Richard The Lionhearted, was it was the model used for the Evil Queen's lair in Walt Disney's Snow White. It certainly suited it, perched up on the cliff, silhouheted (sp!) against the sky; all it lacked was rolling black clouds swirling around it and lightning flashes over it!

The harbour at Kyrenia was very picturesque, right out of a 'Visit Greece' postcard, with fantastic cafes and restaurants along the embarcadero.

Nicosia was not bad. The Patriarch at the time, or maybe he had "just" died, was -- ahhh hell, now I forget his name too (age)...but he was instrumental in the uprisings against the British but seen as a hero by the Greek Cypriots (not so much by Turkish Cypriots, go figure). His palace was by then a museum.

One of the displays was of EOK (?) insurgents, a sort of "wanted" poster. Some of the photos had red 'X's through them, signifying they had been killed.

Our taxi driver, a rather sweaty, greasy, fat balding Greek, pointed to one photo of a young man and said to my mom "Do you recognize him?" Mom said "No....oh! Wait....is that you??" He nodded, flashing a grin. It made me suddenly realize that today's "revolutionary" can be tomorrow's struggling, aging, actually rather sad, taxi driver driving Western tourists around the city he helped liberate (depending on one's point of view here, of course). It also struck me that one culture's "freedom fighter" is probably another's "terrorist". He was a nice man, but back in the day the British would hardly have viewed him that way!

Limasol....I don't remember much of it apart from the hotel we stayed in, quite popular with UN soldiers so we figured it'd be an okay place. It wasn't bad, but we soon understood why it was so popular with soldiers....over on the balcony next to us were some lacey, black, 'dainties' (and I seriously doubt they belonged to any of the soldiers!!!) and there did seem to be a lot of "working girls" entering and exiting. Oh well, it was all part of the experience! LOL

Paphos, we saw it too (although TonyE mentions how it was off-limits) and the rock that supposedly marked the spot Aphrodite arose from the waves. Quite scenic with beautiful beaches.

We also visited a small monastery up in the Troodos. I forget the connection but it seems to me it had something to do with St. Barnabas. in fact, I think the monastery was called St. Barnabas. The only monks left, Greek Orthodox of course, was a plump little old man and his brother...who actually was his brother not just his "brother" as in monk. They did icons for tourists (we didn't buy one; not sure why) and oil paintings, one of which we did buy of a bearded Orthodox priest...quite nice actually.

In the two weeks we were on Cyprus we covered most of the island, except for the panhandle which was Turkish, first off, and off limits to dad since he was NATO....I guess this was before Turkey joined NATO.

I found Cyprus to be fascinating with an interesting mix of Roman, Crusader, Greek, Turkish/Ottoman culture and architecture, the people, both Greek and Turkish Cypriot, friendly and hospitable.

Stephen Lock wrote:

Nicosia was not bad. The Patriarch at the time, or maybe he had "just" died, was -- ahhh hell, now I forget his name too (age)...but he was instrumental in the uprisings against the British but seen as a hero by the Greek Cypriots (not so much by Turkish Cypriots, go figure). His palace was by then a museum.

One of the displays was of EOK (?) insurgents, a sort of "wanted" poster. Some of the photos had red 'X's through them, signifying they had been killed.

Makarios? Grivas?

EOKA. One of their aims, apart from getting rid of the British, was union with Greece. That's why the Turkish Cypriots didn't support them.

Mike

We were supposed to salute "Black Mak" when we saw him in his limo, back in '69. Allways found some reason to be looking the other way though.
Murdering bastards never did achieve ENOSIS, did they?
I was with a bloke in '92, who got into a conversation with a Greek who'd got in the way when the Turks invaded. He said, "how could we stop them, we were only militia? The Breetish, they no help us".
My question as to why EOKA didn't help did not go down well.

Has anybody noticed the "Number of posts" has stuck ? I'll never get my Colonelcy at this rate !

I took the opportunity recently to visit Russia, St Petersburg. After all the indoctrination received in BAOR on the then Soviet Union, I could not help but harbour a constant feeling for the first day that I was there, of a big burly Russian hand tappinng me on the shoulder.

""Madam! I shouldn't even be talking to you!!!" he exclaimed, stepping back a few steps. "Those are not even regular Turkish Army, they are renegades and bandits. You are lucky to be alive as what they often do is have the man go out to the car for some reason, rape and kill the wife and then shoot the man and toss the bodies down the cliff to the sea...."

Was this prior to the Invasion Stephen? I didn't realise there were no go areas at that time.

mjm34 wrote:

Stephen Lock wrote:

Nicosia was not bad. The Patriarch at the time, or maybe he had "just" died, was -- ahhh hell, now I forget his name too (age)...but he was instrumental in the uprisings against the British but seen as a hero by the Greek Cypriots (not so much by Turkish Cypriots, go figure). His palace was by then a museum.

One of the displays was of EOK (?) insurgents, a sort of "wanted" poster. Some of the photos had red 'X's through them, signifying they had been killed.

Makarios? Grivas?

EOKA. One of their aims, apart from getting rid of the British, was union with Greece. That's why the Turkish Cypriots didn't support them.

Mike

Makarios I believe. And yes, EOKA....I understood one of their aims was union with the Greek mainland. Little wonder the Turkish Cypriots took exception to that. As would Greek Cypriots to any move to unite with Turkey and be ruled by Ankara.

Odd that neither faction focused on Cypriot independence with a bi-lingual/bi-cultural mandate like Belgium and Canada (not a perfect solution as any Flemish or Walloon Belgian will tell you or any Anglo or Francophone Canadian will!)

jim wrote:

""Madam! I shouldn't even be talking to you!!!" he exclaimed, stepping back a few steps. "Those are not even regular Turkish Army, they are renegades and bandits. You are lucky to be alive as what they often do is have the man go out to the car for some reason, rape and kill the wife and then shoot the man and toss the bodies down the cliff to the sea...."

Was this prior to the Invasion Stephen? I didn't realise there were no go areas at that time.

You have me on that one Jim....I don't know if was prior to the Invasion. It was 1970-71, if that's of any assistance. There was also a large UN presence and Nicosia was a divided city between Turk and Greek. Our taxi driver (former EOKA) could not drive us past the Green Line into a Turkish neighbourhood for fear of being shot at.

Likewise the island itself was divided between the Greek North and the Turkish South (I believe the panhandle was 'up for grabs' with both factions laying claim to it. Dad was not able to go there and it was the only part of Cyprus we didn't/couldn't see).

Wasn't it the other way around, Turks holding the Northern one third, the Greeks the Southern two thirds.
My time in Cyprus (1954 - 56) was spent watching the Greeks and not trusting one of them, the Turks on the other hand paid a major part in our security force and we utilized them as addition camp guards.

Eoka had its own hands full with the Turkish equivalent named Vulcan as well as us Brits of course.

Quote ...

Cyprus has undergone many ups and downs before and even after independence because of the tension between the turks and the Greeks. The country gained independence from United Kingdom in 1960. But UK retained some power in Cyprus. Political Division in Cyprus is a result of the clashes between the Greece and Turks.

Cyprus political division took place in 1974. Following a Greek military sponsored coup the country witnessed the Turkish invasion. They formally set up their institutes. A separate president and a separate prime minister was also elected. After getting divided the southern two-thirds of Cyprus came under the control of the Greek Cypriot. The northern third was occupied by the Turkish power.

After the political division of Cyprus the sovereignty of the Republic of Cyprus (the southern two-third) over the whole island is recognized. It is also the internationally accepted government of the island.

However the rule of the Republic of Cyprus is not recognized by the northern third that is ruled by the administration of the Turkish Cypriot . They refer to it as “Greek Authority of Southern Cyprus”. In 1975 the north proclaimed independence. They declared an independent “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” in 1983. They adopted their constitution in 1985. The election was held the same year.

'unquote'

Len (Ciphers)

Cyprus and EOKA long way from BAOR I know but brings back memories we landed at Limasol stowed our kitbags on the coach, on the way to Dhkelia there was a load bang which we all assumed a rear tyre blowout but the driver would not stop, when we got to our destination we descovered why, there was a bullet hole right though the coach under the floor line, my first time under fire, another memory is doing guard duty wearing welli boots and those striped pyjamas under my uniform because it was so cold and snowing, I though Germany was cols but so could Cyprus be in the winter on top of the cliffs.

Yes as Ciphers says it was '74 and the green line and stuff didn't happen until then. So it must have been later that you went Stephen.

As a Reme VM, I have been in charge of a mixture of three Workshops/LADs/URS...

Of the Greeks and Turkish staff who worked for me, I much prefered the Turkish. In the Sovereign Bases, both communities worked side by side without any problem. I had much dialogue with the both communities, and heard just how much property, land and goods had been lost.

I never really got to know any Turkish Cypriots Alan, I went there after the invasion and only met greeks, then on later trips it was all greeks by then

I too had a spell in Cyprus in 1980 with UNFICYP.

The joke then was that the Force was commanded by Maj Gen James Quinn, a Southern Irishman. Troops under his command included the Recce Squadron provided by the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars.

Regarding relationships with the locals I, and I suspect, many had a greater sympathy with the Turkish Cypriots than the Greek Cypriots for the reasons outlined by others. The one thing that appeared to unite them was their common distrust of the small Maronite Christian community formerly centred on the Morphou area.

Based with the UN we were encouraged to cross in to the Turkish Sector as often as possible. There was a very good Tailor in North Nicosia (a Spurs fan) who would always advise his clients to go and see his mate in South Nicosia (an Arsenal fan) for the best deals on cloth. Sadly they had not met face to face for over 6 years but passed regular messages through their military clients

There was a BAOR connection that in my time the REME UNFICYP Workshop was formed mainly of individuals on 6 month emergency tours rather than formed units or subunits provided by other capbadges. In later years too I believe BAOR Armoured Regiments acting in the Infantry role provided the British presence in Sector 2 Perhaps someone else can confirm?

I don't know about the REME but there was a permanent RAOC Stores Section as part of UNFICYP.

Stephen Lock wrote:

Kyrenia, where we were staying, was not large but it was pleasant. Overlooking it was a ruined Crusader castle, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

Re-reading this the name occurred to me....St. Hilarion's. Don't know much about who St. Hilarion was or what the saint's area of influence was/is, however.

ciphers wrote:

Wasn't it the other way around, Turks holding the Northern one third, the Greeks the Southern two thirds.

Oh, it may it have been. I don't know. It was almost 40 years ago after all!!! But as I think of it, yes, Turks in the North, Greeks in the South. And of course Nicosia divided between them.

ciphers wrote:

My time in Cyprus (1954 - 56) was spent watching the Greeks and not trusting one of them, the Turks on the other hand paid a major part in our security force and we utilized them as addition camp guards.

Interesting....in memory, the Turkish areas did seem a bit more pleasant. The Greek Cypriots not so much....one would assume it'd be the Turks one wouldn't/couldn't trust and the Greeks, being more "European", and so more like us dontcha know, would be more on side. Just goes to show ya what assumptions do, huh?

ciphers wrote:

Eoka had its own hands full with the Turkish equivalent named Vulcan as well as us Brits of course.

Vulcan? Who knew the Turks got Star Trek going? LOL LOL Hmmm, Spock doesn't look Turkish! One can't help but wonder where the Klingons and Romulans fit in to all this!

Sorry.....