EYE WITNESS TO THE DEATH OF EMPIRE
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARTIN BELL OBE
The veteran war reporter shares his experiences as a national servicemen
The Cyprus Emergency was one of the biggest military operations by the British armed forces since 1945. 35,000 British soldiers were stationed in Cyprus between 1955-59 to defeat a guerrilla insurgency whose numbers could be counted in their hundreds. Although war was never officially declared, the ‘Emergency’ was a bitter conflict between the colonial authorities and armed Greek Cypriot nationalists (known as ‘EOKA’) who wanted selfdetermination and union with Greece.
The Emergency turned Cyprus into a warzone, and the British introduced unpopular military policies to counter the insurgency, including detention without trial, severe press censorship, roadblocks, anti-riot patrols and the death sentence for bearing arms. Despite these punitive measures and vastly superior numbers of soldiers, Britain failed to defeat EOKA, and Cyprus’s independence was declared on 16 August 1960.
Many of the British troops who served in Cyprus were conscripted national servicemen, including the future war reporter Martin Bell. Bell was 18 years old when he was drafted and served in the Suffolk Regiment during the Emergency. He would go on to become a distinguished BBC war reporter, Independent MP and UNICEF ambassador.
During his career, Bell has visited 121 countries and 18 warzones, but his national service in Cyprus was a formative experience. It is a forgotten story of military incompetence, shameful cover-ups and a unique glimpse into an empire on the brink of collapse.
“IT IS A FORGOTTEN STORY OF MILITARY INCOMPETENCE, SHAMEFUL COVER-UPS AND A UNIQUE GLIMPSE INTO AN EMPIRE ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE”
TRAINING FOR NATIONAL SERVICE HOW DID YOU FEEL WHEN YOU WERE CALLED UP FOR NATIONAL SERVICE ON 13 JUNE 1957?
It’s something that you knew was going to happen, but what I wasn’t aware of was that it was about to be phased out. The chief of the Imperial General Staff had been asked to reduce national service from two years to 18 months on the grounds of military efficiency. The chief, Field Marshal Harding, subsequently became governor of Cyprus during some of my time there.
HOW DID IT FEEL AS A NEW CONSCRIPT TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER?
Something like 12 per cent of national servicemen did active service, which meant that there was some small element of risk. I suppose it was quite exciting. The first flight I ever took was a troop transport in an old Avro from Southend Airport to Malta and then to Cyprus. There must have been about 100 of us.
You went in drafts, maybe 100 at a time, to join the battalion, replacing the national servicemen who had completed their two years and were very joyfully going home. There was definitely a pecking order depending on how long you had been in Cyprus and whether you’d “got your knees brown”.
“THERE WAS DEFINITELY A PECKING ORDER DEPENDING ON HOW LONG YOU HAD BEEN ON CYPRUS AND WHETHER YOU’D ‘GOT YOUR KNEES BROWN’”
IN YOUR MEMOIR ‘THE END OF EMPIRE’, YOU DESCRIBE HOW YOU WERE NOT SELECTED FOR OFFICER TRAINING. HOW DID THAT FEEL? I was a bit mortified at the time. I was what was called a “College Boy” because I’d come straight out of a minor public school. The commanding officer of the depot said I should go to the
War Office Selection Board, which conducted initiative and intelligence tests. I failed my intelligence test, and the presiding brigadier was suspicious of how I could be quite so stupid so I had to take it again. I failed again.
I didn’t mind until I saw the officers who had passed: I didn’t respect them enormously. We actually had one of the most useless commanding officers in the history of the infantry in Cyprus. He would never get past acting major today, but he was supplied with two very able second-in-commands so they essentially ran the battalion. He did the parades and the drills but they did the operational stuff. HOW SIGNIFICANT WAS THE CYPRUS EMERGENCY FOR THE BRITISH ARMED FORCES AT THE TIME? It was huge. It began on 1 April 1955, so the Emergency had already started when the Suez operation happened in 1956, which was a national disaster and humiliation. The headquarters of the Middle East Land Forces were moved from Suez to Nicosia so we had an extra general. There was a substantial force of 35,000 men, something like 19 battalions or battalion-sized formations, and you had field artillery acting as infantry, engineers and so on. I think at one time the island had 19 military bands on it! It was another age.
WHAT DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE EMERGENCY BEFORE YOU WERE DEPLOYED?
I knew absolutely nothing. We were briefed of course before we went out and we got another briefing when we got there by the second-in-command. He assured us that the EOKA ‘terrorists”, as he called them, only engaged the British military when they had the advantages of positions and numbers. I thought this was only sensible, but he said it showed how they were “yellow”, meaning cowardly. I don’t think he really understood the nature of the insurgents we were fighting.
KYKKO CAMP WHAT WERE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF CYPRUS WHEN YOU ARRIVED?
I remember the very strange smell. There had just been a rain shower and the island has an interesting, almost acrid smell when the rain falls on hot sand. We were driven to the camp
“HE ASSURED US THAT THE EOKA ‘TERRORISTS’, AS HE CALLED THEM, ONLY ENGAGED THE BRITISH MILITARY WHEN THEY HAD THE ADVANTAGES OF POSITIONS AND NUMBERS”
at Kykko, which was only three miles (five kilometres) away from the airport, onto a rocky plain with tents. There were a few more solid structures, like the cinema, which was used by the band and the armoury, and of course the officers’ and sergeants’ messes, but we were mostly living under canvas for two years.
We stayed at the same camp and never moved during the entire time. I arrived in late September 1957 and left in May 1959, so I was there for about 19 months.
WHAT WERE THE LIVING CONDITIONS LIKE IN KYKKO CAMP AT NICOSIA?
Very primitive, and they became the subject of a parliamentary scandal. Charles Foley, the editor of The Times of Cyprus, was a radical character, and the paper was banned inside our camp because the army said it was PRO-EOKA. Nevertheless, Foley believed that outbreaks of indiscipline were related in some way to the very primitive conditions in which we lived.
Just towards the end of our deployment we suddenly found ourselves receiving a bedside lamp, an armchair and even a wooden door to keep the rain out. But we left Cyprus about two weeks later!
WHO WERE THE ‘CHAR WALLAHS’?
It was unbelievable. They were camp followers from the Indian army. Most of our senior officers in Cyprus seemed to have served in the Indian army on the North West Frontier on the Afghan border. The army had these camp followers, who would have been outside the gates in India. The army didn’t employ them, but they had a quasi-military status. They were allowed inside the wire, and one of my duties was to get their work permits. They made tea –
and very good tea it was. It was carried in great urns on two poles and the ordinary soldiers paid them. They would serve us their mugs of hot sweet tea for about sixpence each and lived frugally. It was from a completely different age and world. DID YOU MAKE YOUR FIRST TELEVISION APPEARANCE DURING THE EMERGENCY?
Yes I did. There was a very fledgling forces broadcasting service, which must have been subsidised by the government. My first ever television appearance was on a spelling bee [competition] because I was quite good at spelling. We, the Suffolks, defeated the Royal Army Service Corps, but we then got beaten by a bunch of apprentice Oxbridge dons who were serving on the staff of the Cyprus district headquarters. It was an interesting introduction to television.
WHAT OTHER BRITISH REGIMENTS WERE SERVING IN CYPRUS DURING THE EMERGENCY?
The quality of the British units was very variable. The paratroopers and marines had quite a reputation, the Scots and the Irish tended to be sent to the mountains, and they used quieter, steadier infantry battalions in Nicosia.
Our brigade comprised of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire regiments (“Beds” and “Herts” we called them), the Suffolks, Lancashire Fusiliers and a Royal Artillery
regiment. We got to know them all because we were forced to play sports against each other. I’m being unnecessarily cynical here, but it seemed that victory over the Beds and Herts at field hockey was more important than defeating EOKA! RIOTS AND ROADBLOCKS WHAT WERE YOUR DUTIES WHEN YOU WERE WORKING IN THE INTELLIGENCE SECTION OF THE SUFFOLK REGIMENT?
The intelligence section was a very small unit. It started with an officer, one sergeant and two private soldiers, and I was one of the privates. ‘Military Intelligence’ is a contradiction in terms anyway because it was mostly just putting pins on maps!
WHAT WERE YOUR OTHER DUTIES, AND HOW DID THE SUFFOLKS OPERATE DURING THE CYPRUS EMERGENCY?
It’s what I would call “asymmetric warfare”, and we had our successes. We killed a man called Markos Drakos, who was EOKA’S ‘number two’, but I don’t have a very high opinion of the army mindset in dealing with an insurgency. We were using brute force and alienating the people we were trying to win over. I spent a lot of my life as a war reporter being stuck at roadblocks, but in Cyprus I was putting them up.
The men of the Royal Horse Guards, who were very posh and never wanted to get dust
“THE PARATROOPERS AND MARINES HAD QUITE A REPUTATION, THE SCOTS AND THE IRISH TENDED TO BE SENT TO THE MOUNTAINS, AND THEY USED QUIETER, STEADIER INFANTRY BATTALIONS IN NICOSIA”
on their boots, had the Suffolks go around with them. They had an armoured vehicle and would command us while I, as a corporal, would be in charge of the Suffolks putting up the roadblocks. We would have a trestle table and chair and sit there checking everyone’s identity, because they all had identity cards.
We actually crippled the island’s transport system with these roadblocks. We also benighted the towns and villages with our curfews, cordons and searches. All we did was alienate the Cypriots and rally them to the EOKA ‘freedom fighters’.
WHAT WERE THE BRITISH SOLDIERS’ TASKS WHEN THEY WENT ON ANTI-RIOT PATROLS?
You had a platoon of 24-25 men, some of whom were unarmed except for batons and shields so they could charge the crowd of rioters. I carried a rifle and my job was to shoot the rooftop bombers, because if somebody throws a bomb you need to have some people with rifles. There was also a stretcher party and even two squaddies who carried a banner, which said in two or three languages, “Disperse or we fire”. These were exactly the same kind of banners and techniques that were later used in Londonderry in Northern Ireland, such as the baton charges and snatch squads.
WHAT WAS OPERATION MATCHBOX?
Matchbox was the ‘big push’ in July 1958. It lasted for at least 48 hours and the whole island was in total lockdown. The import of British newspapers was even banned for a while. All the telephone communications were interrupted so there could be no tip-offs, and Special Branch had spent more than a year assembling its list of suspects.
The idea was that we’d lift all the principle EOKA sympathisers, and I think we detained about 3,000 young men. There were no women, just the men, who were detained without charge and herded into detention camps.
Most of them were released when the new governor arrived as a Christmas goodwill gesture, but it achieved absolutely nothing. General Sir Kenneth Darling wrote the final report and said honestly, “A campaign of this sort cannot be won by an attack on the common people.” However, that’s what we were doing.
“THE CHIEF JUSTICE HAD A COURT OF INQUIRY, BUT THE ARMY OBJECTED TO HIS FINDINGS SO THEY WERE TAKEN OUT OF HIS REPORT. IT WAS A TOTAL COVER-UP”
WOULD YOU COME UNDER FIRE DURING OPERATIONS LIKE THIS?
The first time I heard a shot fired in anger was actually during Operation Matchbox. We had been cordoning and searching a village called Kythrea and we had to help the farmers get their vegetables to market. We actually escorted them, but the convoy came under fire and a Greek Cypriot was wounded in the knee. I think that’s the only time I ever used my field dressing to patch anybody up, but it’s a fairly light encounter with danger compared to what happened later in my life.
MASSACRES, COVER-UPS AND EOKA DID THE PARTITION OF CYPRUS BETWEEN GREEK AND TURKISH CYPRIOTS BEGIN DURING THE EMERGENCY?
There was no formal partition until the Turkish invasion of 1974, but there was an outbreak of violence on both sides against people in outlying communities. Turks in mainly Greek areas and vice versa tended to withdraw to the safety of their own areas, and it was during this period that the Gönyeli Massacre happened. This was in June 1958, when a group of 35 Greek Cypriots was intercepted by the Royal Horse Guards.
There was nowhere to send them and the police stations were dealing with riots at the time, so the officer commanding the squadron decided to use a technique called ‘Walking Home’. They would take them to a place 30 miles (48 kilometres) from their village and say, “Find your own way home.” The unfortunate thing was there was a Turkish hamlet on their way and they were attacked. About a quarter of all the Greeks were killed and others were badly wounded, so it was a huge issue.
I later found in the Kew archives what actually happened. The chief justice had a court of inquiry, but the army objected to his findings so they were taken out of his report. It was a total cover-up.
DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE GÖNYELI MASSACRE AT THE TIME?
We absolutely knew about the massacre, but we were dealing with Turkish Cypriot riots in Nicosia at that time. Although it was very public what had happened, we didn’t know the extent of the government’s complicity in the cover-up.
It was a disastrous period in our colonial history, and I think a lot of the blame lies with the then-colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-boyd. The governorship changed towards the end of 1957, shortly after I arrived in Cyprus, when Sir Hugh Foot came in. He was a conciliator and peace-seeker, but he and Lennox-boyd were not on the same wavelength at all. At one point Foot cabled Whitehall and said, “I told you I couldn’t hold the troops.”
WHAT DID YOU THINK OF SIR HUGH FOOT’S POLICIES DURING THE EMERGENCY?
I think he was an honourable man. He was trying to extricate Britain from an expensive colonial commitment and an extraordinarily difficult situation. This was because the EOKA objective of union with Greece was obviously not possible at that time and 18-20 per cent of Cypriots were Turkish. He cobbled together a plan as we sailed home. We got a telegram of congratulations from him, but I don’t think it was ever going to last.
WHAT WAS YOUR VIEW OF THE CYPRIOTS AT THE TIME?
Today I’m embarrassed by myself because I was a thoughtless young Tory to begin with. In my very first letter home there is a crude map of the camp with one sign that says, “To the Airport” and the other going the other way that says, “To the Wogs”.
We were racist and I was a completely mindless young man, but over the space of about 16 months I began to see the light. I later wrote to my parents that all we were engaged in was a policy of armed repression – which it was – and that it would never work.
This was the way we thought and operated at the time, but not all of us. I later discovered that some of the national service officers were critical of our tactics. Similarly, our interpreters, who tended to be in the Intelligence Corps, were trained in Greek and understood the insurgency much better than the generals.
WHAT WAS YOUR OPINION OF EOKA’S FIGHTING ABILITY?
I think they were very brave men. One of the heroes was Grigoris Afxentiou. He was spotted, his hideaway was found and he sent out some of the other EOKA people who were with him with their hands raised. They were arrested, but he just wouldn’t come out, so the British poured petrol into the hideout and burned him to death. There’s now a big statue of him.
However, they were also variable. Nikos Sampson was just a common assassin. He worked as a photographer for The Times of Cyprus and covered murder scenes suspiciously often. Special Branch eventually cottoned on and he was arrested, but after the settlement in 1959 he was released and came home a hero. When there was the attempt to overthrow Makarios III (first president and archbishop of Cyprus), which led to the Turkish invasion in 1974, he was declared president of Cyprus for about six days.
WHAT DID EOKA’S WEAPONS CONSIST OF?
They were lightly armed, and many of them were escapees from British custody. They hid in caves and mineshafts or were sheltered by friendly people. Their weapons were also mostly captured from the British. Occasionally they would break into armouries or ambush a small number of soldiers so we mostly supplied their weapons, but they had nothing heavy. They had a Bren gun but no ammunition for it. They also had shotguns, they were plentiful on the island.
WHAT WERE YOUR INTERACTIONS LIKE WITH BOTH GREEK AND TURKISH CYPRIOTS?
We had some trouble with the Turks, because in the Turkish quarter of Nicosia we were on
“HE JUST WOULDN’T COME OUT SO THE BRITISH POURED PETROL INTO THE HIDEOUT AND BURNED HIM TO DEATH. THERE’S NOW A BIG STATUE OF HIM”
immediate standby. We had to deal with rioting Turks and had great difficulty because they were very brave and fearless. The danger was that you’d be outnumbered and they’d take some of your weapons from you.
However, on the roadblocks, I noted in my letters home how patient the Cypriots were with us while waiting to be checked in the heat of the day. I became more and more critical and did start to think a little bit, towards the end, that this really was not working.
DEPARTURE FROM CYPRUS HOW DID IT FEEL TO LEAVE CYPRUS AT THE END OF YOUR NATIONAL SERVICE?
It was a huge relief and I loved going home on the troop ship. When I left the army back at home I had a haircut because I knew I had to go in for a final session with the adjutant on the eve of my demob. I knew my appearance was critical, but the barber in town thought I was an officer and gave me an officer’s haircut. The regiment sergeant major gave me the biggest bollocking of my life, but the adjutant then tried to get me to sign on again! It was strange, but it was part of a whole imperial tradition.
TO WHAT EXTENT DID YOUR NATIONAL SERVICE INFORM YOUR CAREER AS A WAR REPORTER?
I understood the military well, so when it came to identifying weapons in war I was wellplaced. The army taught me field craft, which is how to stay alive in dangerous places, such as battlefield first aid and how to tie up your mate if he’s hit, so that’s all useful. It was an advantage and I’ve described it as the best education I ever had. It was better than three years at Kings College, Cambridge, because it was the real world.
IS THERE AN ARGUMENT FOR BRINGING BACK NATIONAL SERVICE TODAY?
No. It was very good for us but very bad for the army. The army became a huge training establishment, and by the time you were a halfway proficient soldier you were nearly gone. It’s also not good for any army to have a majority of people in its ranks who are there by compulsion and not voluntarily.
A FORGOTTEN IMPERIAL LEGACY TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU THINK THE CYPRUS EMERGENCY REFLECTED THE OVERALL DECLINE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE?
It happened at a very peculiar time because of the humiliation of Suez, and Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government said there could be no more retreats. The theory was that Cyprus was as British as Gibraltar, which is how we ended up with sovereign base areas that are still there.
Cyprus was a huge issue at the time and Labour MPS used to come and give speeches in some of the villages. In fact, Barbara
Castle was once arrested and detained by the Suffolks. Richard Crossman and Jim Callaghan (the future prime minister), were also critical.
Of course this was the height of the Cold
War. We still had a substantial empire and behaved as if we had an even bigger one. However, Macmillan saw the way it was going, hence the ‘Winds of Change’ speech. The African colonies all became independent quite quickly, and the process of de-colonisation took about ten years.
DO YOU THINK MODERN BRITAIN IS ADVERSELY AFFECTED BY NOT KNOWING ENOUGH ABOUT ITS COLONIAL PAST?
We have not attended to the lessons of our own history. Britain does not know about its own imperial past because one of the difficulties is that it’s very controversial. We can take a certain amount of pride in some aspects of empire and we kept the peace in Cyprus, but we didn’t do much to develop it. Similarly, there are two schools of thought concerning the British influence in India – where Britain was either a benign influence or a catastrophe.
However, we have recently come out of our fourth Afghan war and we didn’t win the other three. If we knew enough about our imperial history we wouldn’t embark on military expeditions where we had nearly always been beaten before. I think our interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have been equally futile and not served the purpose. The Royal United Services Institute described them both as strategic failures, but I was first aware of this type of application of force in Cyprus.
SINCE YOUR NATIONAL SERVICE AND LONG CAREER AS A WAR REPORTER, HOW HAS CONFLICT CHANGED OVER THE DECADES?
It has changed in many ways. It seldom involves main force units manoeuvring in battle space now. It is not classic warfare, and the war is wherever the insurgent wants it to be. This is what we found in Afghanistan.
And of course war reporting has changed beyond belief because after the 9/11 attacks you lost your freedom of movement. Reporters are often at risk of being kidnapped, ransomed or even executed, so most wars now are unreported or are reported in a very fragmentary way.
HOW IMPORTANT IS THE STUDY OF HISTORY?
Kids ask me in schools, “What is the most important subject to study?” I tell them there are a dozen countries in the world where the most important subject is landmine recognition, but after that it’s history, history and more history.
Martin Bell is the author of the end Of empire. the Cyprus emergency: A soldier’s story, which is published by pen & sword Military. for more information and a review turn to page 93.
“REPORTERS ARE OFTEN AT RISK OF BEING KIDNAPPED, RANSOMED OR EVEN EXECUTED, SO MOST WARS ARE UNREPORTED OR ARE REPORTED IN A VERY FRAGMENTARY WAY”