Page 167 - Who Was Sapper Brown

Troodos Forest Fire, 1956

The single greatest loss of life in the Cyprus Emergency occurred on 17 June 1956, during the hottest

summer in Cyprus for many years, as British troops were closing in on Grivas, holed up in a 25-square-
mile area of dense tinder-dry woodland in the mountains around Mount Olympus, in an operation

ironically called ‘LUCKY ALPHONSE’:

‘When the net finally closed in on Grivas, disaster struck the operation. A fire broke out in the trees behind
him, and the flames streaked through the wood and up the nearby slopes, setting ablaze an army lorry.

Nineteen soldiers died and 18 others were injured. Helicopters buzzed in to rescue the injured, and in the
commotion the guerrilla leader vanished.’
21

At the start of the Cyprus Emergency, there had been only one British military hospital on the island,
BMH Nicosia,22 originally opened in 1941, and which rapidly expanded to 300 beds to cope with the

crisis. In February 1956 it received a welcome ally when the new RAF (Temporary) Hospital Akrotiri
opened its doors to patients at the new RAF base at Akrotiri, with staff freshly arrived from Egypt.23

This new hospital had its baptism of fire dealing with the human cost of the Troodos Forest Fire, as is
cryptically documented in its archives of 17 June 1956:

‘Troodos Forest Fire. Six lying cases, nine sitting cases admitted to this hosp.

Two died of burns.’
24

The 17 soldiers who died that day in the Troodos Forest Fire, and the two who died subsequently in the
RAF hospital, were almost all young national service conscripts of 21 years of age or less, mainly serving

with the Gordon Highlanders and The Royal Norfolk Regiment. They were buried in a mass grave in Plot

21 at Wayne’s Keep.

Lament at Burial of Troodos Forest Fire Victims

21 Barker, Dudley (1959), Grivas, Portrait of a Terrorist (London: The Cresset Press)
22 BMH Nicosia: This was built in 1941 as a temporary 200-bed wartime hutted hospital, on a ‘kopje’ east of Nicosia, and
was originally known as 57 General Hospital. It was renamed British Military Hospital, Cyprus in 1947, when it housed a 100-

bed Jewish Wing following detention of illegal Jewish immigrants intercepted en route for Israel, until their transfer to Israel in
1948. With the outbreak of the EOKA campaign in 1955, the hospital expanded to 300 beds. It cared for the majority of EOKA
victims during the Emergency. Following the opening of BMH Dhekelia in 1958 BMH Nicosia was re-designated Nicosia

Military Hospital. Following the cessation of the EOKA campaign in 1959 and the withdrawal of British units from most of
Cyprus, Nicosia Military Hospital discharged its last patient on 15 December 1959. Details from Army Medical Services Maga-
zine (April 1960), p. 52.
23 Vassallo D J, (2012), A History of The Princess Mary’s Hospital Royal Air Force Akrotiri 1963 – 2013 (Limassol: Cyprint)

24 The Operational Record Books for the RAF (Temporary) Hospital Akrotiri for the first five years of its existence are pub-
lically accessible. (The National Archives: AIR/29/2789 TPMH January 1956 – December 1960)

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