Hi my name's Kevin Hicks welcome to my YouTube Channel, the History Squad now today's video
has been voted in by my Patreon members, hey guys thanks a bunch. They've requested some
of my personal stories from when I was in the Army in Cyprus. Now I was in Cyprus 81, 82, 83.
Um, and what a time I had. Now just a little bit of a background, Cyprus,
Eastern Mediterranean, one of the most beautiful islands that you can imagine divided by war. You
have the Turkish Zone which is the northeastern part of Cyprus and then the southern western part
is the Greek Cypriots. It's a sad story if you want to have a read about it, there is a little
bit of an invasion by one side then a massive invasion by the other and right in the middle
of it all there's some very small bases that the British army occupy, some of the ground is owned,
some of it is leased so there's no underhanded Colonial business there. They are the sovereign
base areas and what I was asked when I'd finished my tours in Northern Ireland yeah, where would I
like to go? And I decided I'd like to go to Cyprus, the blue Seas of the Mediterranean,
uh and it's quite an amazing little time because whilst there I volunteered to go and police a very
interesting camp called Pergamos up at the eastern end of the island. I'd come up with a suggestion
that some of the civilians needed policing in Limassol and my officer commanding suggested
that I go to the other end of the island and have a look at a more serious problem, Pergamos.
It's a camp, over 300 people lived in it civilians and military right next to the Turkish line on the
Eastern end of Cyprus the UN line that divides Cyprus came into it and so it was quite a bit
of a unique place. The security is by the Turkish people there and most of my work was with Turkish
Cypriots with a smattering of Greek Cypriots, it was a happy place. So Pergamos camp, my duties,
police the camp, patrol the outside. I had a seven and a half stone, gnashing German Shepherd, Mark
the dog, who was my assistant. I was given a push bike, a motorcycle and the use of a Land Rover. I
was made. There are some things that I got up to in Cyprus around Pergamos that I can't discuss
because it has to do with British intelligence and all that kind of stuff but there was one incident
when a bomb went off outside the camp and blew up our sewage works and I, oh, all of a sudden
I've got extra soldiers, there's more barbed wire and we've got real bullets in the guns and it's
become very, very serious indeed. Ayatollah Khomeini apparently had sent some people,
insurgents over to Cypress to sort the British out. So everything goes on a serious footing and
I get a I get a call to go down to Dhekelia, and they say right this is the job you've got to do.
Um cut a long story short I had to that, night middle of the night, turn up at a grid reference
location on the southern coast and so off I went on me motorbike. That's all my briefing was.
When I arrive there's nobody there, it's pitch black and I've kind of stopped me motor bike and
I've got me torch and I'm looking as and a voice says “Uh Hello” this is an officer coming up,
all camouflaged up, middle of the night he says “We're waiting for a reinforcements to be dropped
off by the Royal Navy. They're bringing in some armor and he's going to drop on the beach down
below”. And I thought there's a beach? I couldn't see anything. “So if you just wait here and then
when the time comes we'll give you instructions of where you to take the packets of armor”. These
were armored cars basically. So I sat there quite bemused um not knowing that all around me there
were dozens and dozens of soldiers but everybody was keeping it quiet because this was a bit of a
secret. I almost started to giggle God this is so exciting and then I heard right out at sea
the heavy throbbing of some marine engines and then there's a flash of light from the horizon
and then down on the beach and I'm going ‘this is just like D-Day this is so exciting’ I don't
think anybody else is excited just Kevin and his motorbike and then lights come on.
Remember it's a secret yeah? And the lights come on and the British army,
bless it, had actually built a jetty going out into the sea and then coming towards the beach,
do do do do do, we're landing crafts. Wow this is fantastic I'm thinking, I'm there I've got all
the brush off me motorbike, I've stood it up, I'm ready and the first one comes in and just as it's
coming in it veers slightly and goes straight into the jetty smashing it to pieces. Another landing
craft hits the second landing craft, tries to drop its board but it's too soon, there's
chaos down there. Then one of the armored fighting vehicles catches fire and I'm watching all of this
thinking to myself oh my goodness me this this is incredible, if I'd have had a camera I'd have
loved to have taken photographs. Well when it was all over and the Navy gone, and the Army had tried
to salvage, an embarrassed officer came up to me and says I will no longer be required. Apparently
what my job was, was to lead this squadron of armored cars off the beach and away to a location
but unfortunately they didn't make it. What I did find out was the next today it was all made
good and the vehicles could find their own way. It was supposed to be a secret operation in the
dead of night to reinforce the British army, well it failed and I thought it was really exciting.
Another story is it's uh, it just shows you how things can happen and you have no idea
what's going on. So I used to patrol my camp, the three mile perimeter, I used to patrol it every
day twice a day with the Mark the dog or on my motorcycle but every Monday I had to go and have
a debrief with the Garrison Commander down at um Dhekelia. Colonel McLeod I think it was his name
if I remember correctly, from the Irish Rangers, what a guy, who used to… “Come in. Come in
Corporal Hicks. Sit down.” and we'd have a coffee and he basically used to say to me so what have
you done this week because I used to get up to one or two interesting things and this one morning
he says he's had a complaint from the Turkish authorities just the other side of the barbed
wire from Pergamos and I says oh what's going on sir? He says, have you built a gun emplacement
at the back of your camp? I went no, no sir. He said an observation post anything where you can
observe the Turks? No sir, nothing. He says um go and investigate. So I go off on my motorbike and I
do a circle of the camp I can't find anything and then I had to think about it, right if the Turks
are observing something it's got to be from this rough area. So off I go still can't see anything
so I park up my motorbike, get the old dog out, old Mark and I walk towards the Turkish line.
Can't see anything so I turn around as I'm coming back to camp I just caught
the lip of a row of sandbags and I thought what on earth is that? Nothing should be there.
So I patrol up to it and sure enough there is an emplacement, sandbags all camouflaged up, a fire
step, a deeper part and they’d started to dig into the bank there and then I noticed behind it right
in our barbed wire some planks had been laid into the barbed wire so people could crawl in and out
and I was absolutely stunned by this because it was perfect. Then I noticed that there was some
paper on a board where somebody been observing what the Turks were doing and what their movements
were and I thought well there's no operation here, there's no, there's nothing going on, what on
earth has happened? So I climbed through and found where the boards ended up, it was in the back
garden of an 11 year old young boy and it was the local kids, a little bit of a gang of kids, they
were no trouble they were fine kids but they'd been playing war so I fed the intel back to the
garrison commander and he fed it back to the Turks who then sent a reply and said you frightened us
to death because they look as if they got guns, which they had, plastic ones and their dad's steel
helmets they were playing war. Nicely though the Turks said as long as we know what they're doing,
we know it's the kids that's great, let them play and it was just one of those wonderful
incidents that we had at Pergamos camp. But now I have a rather sad story. Now we all knew that
there'd been massacres and atrocities committed in Cyprus over the years especially in 1974
but I didn't realize it had been quite so close to home. One of the little Villages near where I
lived I'd noticed that there's never any kids out playing and no women there and I found out later
that there'd been a massacre in that village and it's, it's kind of a reality check isn't
it when somebody said well the reason there are no women or children here is because of this.
So I was unaware that I actually had a victim working for us in the camp we'll call him
Suleiman. He didn't speak very good English and he came to my attention that he spent most of his
off-duty time sleeping rough behind the cookhouse even in the wintertime close to the ovens,
so I see what's going on and the foreman who was a Turkish Cypriot came with Suleiman to answer some
questions and basically what had happened was this Suleiman used to be a shepherd in in the local
village and he'd taken all the sheep and goats or whatever, we used to call them geep because
we got confused was it a sheep was it a goat, we just never found out. They'd take them out and it
was rough terrain so they'd be out for quite some time but as this chap was taking the sheep out,
he heard gunfire from the village and when he turned around there’s smoke. As he ran
back to the village it had been attacked and I don't want to get into the the arguments
of the Greeks did this the Turks did this, it was a civil war and it was horrible. Suleiman
saw what they were doing because he lost his family in that attack and he was gunned down.
As he lay there badly wounded he saw that these people were coming to finish him off so holding
his wound it was in his lower right side he ran and he ran through the gorse bushes of what's
called the bondu in Cyprus, it's basically the scrubland desert of the middle part of Cyprus
and his flesh was torn to pieces. Now he showed me the bullet hole in his side and uh
he said ‘I was found by a British Army patrol and they, they took care of me and they brought me to
Pergamos Camp eventually and this is where I've been ever since. You, you, you are my
family that's basically what he was saying. And I checked all of this out and yeah, yeah it's true.
Poor Suleiman had lost everything, house, home and family and his family was the British army.
A lovely little story to finish on. I'm out on a long patrol, going out on my motorcycle and I got
off my bike and I've got my binoculars I'm having a look around and I heard somebody playing a flute
and what I discovered, it was almost like a scene from the Bible you know, just over the bluff there
or some rocks and there was two or three hundred geep, sheep or goats and there's a shepherd boy
11, 12, 13. He turned around, he’d got an old rifle over his shoulder. I said to him “Merhaba”
“Merhaba umbashid” He stood up and then straight away shook my hand and I recognized him as one
of the local kids and he was there looking after the sheep and he plays his flute to keep them calm
and I'm looking around and thinking to myself this could be a thousand years ago, two thousand years
ago and we sat down together. I got some rations out of my pannier on my bike and some water and he
had a like a handkerchief parcel on a stick like Dick Whittington kind of thing and he opens it and
he has some sheftalia sausage, he has some cheese, halloumi and and various bits of bread and some
olives and a boiled egg. I remember it, and he cut everything in half pushed half off towards me, so
I divided my rations and we sat just in beautiful silence looking over the bondu of Cyprus, looking
at these geep as it were, and when we finished I turned around to him shook his hand “Tesekkur
ederim” thank you very much and he waved me goodbye and as I'm going away I thought to myself
what a wonderful place Cyprus is. What a beautiful place, how peaceful
and yet torn apart by war, so sad really, beautiful at the same time. Well,
I hope you enjoyed that video, my stories of being a brave British soldier in Cyprus if you did, like
share and subscribe and please, remember to put on the all notification button so you know what's
coming down the line. Now before I go a quick call out to some of my PATREON members, now JD
nice to see you the other day we had a splendid beer in in the l
Legion there. Sebastian Bender and Sandy Higgins are the other two,
hey guys without you I wouldn't be able to make these videos and I'll tell you I've got dozens of
soldiers that I'm painting for the next phase of the Hundred Years War but for now bye-bye.