Page 35 - QARANC Vol 14 No 12 2016

As we came out of the Museum of Barbarism into the warm December sunshine, we were in a sombre mood. The museum was in the Turkish sector of Nicosia, in the house of a former Turkish family where a mother and three young children had been murdered on 24 December 1963 during the inter-communal violence. The museum was full of explicit photographs of what the Turks described as the ‘Greek genocide’ including pictures of the murdered family, testaments from survivors and newspaper articles describing the horrors. This description accompanied one of the graphic photographs: - ‘In the bathroom, looking like a group of waxworks, were three children piled on top of their murdered mother. In the room next to it we glimpsed the body of a woman shot in the head.’
A couple of hours later we saw a different picture of the Cyprus troubles. We had visited the National Struggle Museum in the Greek sector of Nicosia where the Greeks described their ‘Liberation Struggle’ and had an exhibition of the British atrocities prior to independence. A leaflet picked up in the museum described the Greek view of the 1974 Turkey ‘invasion’ and ‘illegal occupation’ of the north side of the island. It stated: - ‘One quarter of the population (Greek Cypriots) were forcibly expelled from their homes, became refugees in their own country and are still deprived of the right to return to their properties’.
These contrasting views typified our 4 days in Cyprus. 24 personnel from 335 Medical Evacuation Unit were on a Battlefield Study Tour that had been organised by Lt James Johnson, who, along with Maj (Retd) Andrew Lukes, was our guide for the Exercise.
The overall objective was to analyse and evaluate the key events that have contributed to the on-going ‘Cyprus Problem’ within the context of British policy. We looked particularly at the Cyprus emergency between 1955 and 1959; the periods of inter-communal violence between 1955 and 1964; the Turkish invasion of 1974 and the role of the United Nations (UN). We were divided into 4 syndicates and we all had a short presentation to give on work that had been set prior to the Tour.
We stayed in a comfortable hotel in the centre of Nicosia within the old Venetian walls. Our first day was spent on a walking tour of the capital which included visits to the two museums above. We went backwards and forwards across the buffer zone through Nicosia and passed many historical buildings including the Old British Law Court, Ledra Palace, the Archbishop’s Palace and the Liberty Monument. We also visited a mosque. In the late afternoon we went to Nicosia Observatory which has spectacular views over the city and had a presentation on the history of Cyprus whilst watching the sunset. With the scene established we were beginning
THE GAZETTE QARANC 33
Exercise Aphrodite Dawn
A Battlefield Study Tour to Cyprus