Well; I suppose it would only be fair to say that things had
gone up a pace. Everything in Germany
was so different, as I said before I was now in the real air force. I had managed to pick up some KD uniform (Khaki
Drill) for Cyprus. I was worried as
having the loveliest legs in Ireland, wearing short trousers to work might send
some of the girls over the edge, some of the chaps too if I were to tell the
truth. I was under a huge amount of pressure
to get on top of the job. If you can
imagine we actually patrolled, taking it in turn with 19 Squadron, the East West
border and a fully armed aircraft and crew was always on standby.
Luckily for me Chris Baily had decided to take me under his
wing and show me the ropes. It was party
time. An advance party had been sent to
Cyprus to prepare for the squadrons arrival.
A forward party had been sent to Gioia del Colle, in Italy, where our
aircraft would land and refuel before flying on to Cyprus and the main party,
the bulk of the squadron, was flying out that night from Germany. Baily assured me that there was only one way
to prepare for the long flight to Cyprus and that was to get blind drunk.
The squadron had their own accommodation block for single
personnel so we gathered there and had our own party. It was great fun and I remember that the
moment I sat down on the VC10 I passed out and didn’t wake until the doors
opened in Cyprus. Many of the guys had
been there before so it was quite easy to follow along. I soon learned that on the first morning, that
the squadron was complete, would be a defaulter’s parade. There would be a line of miscreants outside the
Wing Commanders office ready for a bollocking.
I wandered over to have a look and laughed my head off as the first
person in the line was a Squadron Leader.
Squadron Leader Keith Mac Burney was a lovely Scottish gentleman. He was a navigator and had just been
promoted and arrived on 92 about the same time as myself. Keith, like many of us, was unaccustomed to
the local hooch and late in the previous evening had gone to the bar in the officer’s
mess for some more drinks. The bar was
closed so Keith, as you do when you are drunk, kicked the door in, took a couple
of bottles of brandy and left a note with his name, rank and number on, stating
that he would return the following day to pay for the damage and the booze.
The national drink in Cyprus was bandy sour, a lovely
refreshing drink and the measures were liberal enough that after half a dozen
your knees would melt. As we were stationed
in Germany, a great wine producing country, we were all wine experts and of all
the available wines in Cyprus had two favourites. That would be the red and the white. Actually the local rot-gut red wine was known
as Kokinelli and was produced from a second pressing of the grape. It was normally given away free in the local restaurants
and was about two pounds for a gallon.
The white wine was Saint Panteleimon which we knew as Saint
Pandemonium as it was basically a hand grenade in a bottle. For our first weekend Chris Baily took me to
Limassol on the Saturday morning. He showed
me, what was in his opinion, the best place to buy wine or brandy. It was a dirty, dusty, converted archway
under a bridge. The fellow in charge gave
us both a glass and invited us to taste whatever we wanted, and we did. Well; it would have been ignorant not to, wouldn’t
it? I couldn’t believe that a gallon of
five star brandy was five pounds. We bought
a gallon each and wandered off. We saw
some other squadron members milling about and a group of about eight of us decided
to go to one of the hotels, along the front in Limassol, for afternoon tea.
I think it was the previous year that one of our guys had
been killed by three soldiers from the Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, so
we knew it was safer to travel in groups.
Limassol was full of soldiers and sailors and of course the accompanying
military police and shore patrols. It
was still a sore point among many of the chaps on the squadron as the soldier, who
actually delivered the fatal blow, got off lightly by claiming he wasn’t aware
dropping a concrete paving slab on someone’s head would kill them.
Afternoon tea of course was wine by the bucket load. There were some people dotted around actually
having tea and scones but we had a constant supply of wine delivered to the table,
both red and white. I remember the
waiter coming along and opening a bottle.
He was using a device, new to many of us, to extract the cork. It was a pump action cork extractor. Like a needle and syringe. He stabbed the needle into, and through, the
cork then pumped air in and the cork popped out of the bottle. Chris Baily decided that he wanted to have a go
at this so, with guidance from the waiter, held a bottle of wine in his left hand
and brought the cork extractor, as instructed, down and into the cork with one
smooth, positive, motion.
I think the other hotel guests were quite shocked to hear
someone screaming during afternoon tea.
I mean the scones couldn’t have been that bad, but Chris had missed the
cork and having set the bottle on the table was holding his hand up, showing us
all that the cork extractor was now firmly jammed into his hand. We continued laughing and drinking till it
was close to midnight and ended up visiting the clubs in Hero’s Square, another
new experience for me. The bars were
stocked with miniatures and the clubs were stocked with prostitutes.
It was really interesting meeting and talking to these
girls. Most of them were Asian and told
us that they had to work and pay for their families back at home. I was amazed
as what they were talking about was basically slavery. It certainly opened my eyes. Whatever club you went in to you would be
approached by at least half a dozen girls and if you looked at their eyes,
despite all the makeup and smiles, and bravado, you could see real loneliness
and pain. It was very sad.
Chris had informed me that I couldn’t say I had been to
Cyprus unless I ‘had done Hero’s Square’
this meant sitting at the base of the monument in the centre of Hero’s Square
drinking wine as the sun came up. About
an hour before dawn we found a sort of restaurant and had some chicken soup and
bread for breakfast. We thought it was
chicken soup but there was no meat in it so we asked for some meat for the soup. When the fellow brought the meat over we
could see that these things were far too small to be chicken, so asked what
they were. Seems he made the chicken
soup from a packet and then added sparrow meat.
We waited at the monument for dawn to arrive and it did so and
on time. We saluted the sun with a drink
of brandy and went off to get a taxi back to Akrotiri camp. Chris Baily was sitting up front with the driver
and had fallen asleep. The other fellow
beside me, in the rear of the taxi, was fast asleep too. The driver didn’t hold back on the speed so
it didn’t take long to get to Akrotiri.
As he braked, at the guard post, Chris Baily slipped forward, with his
head falling down to his knees. I showed
my ID card and we were waved through.
One small problem was that the change in Chris’s posture now encouraged
his body to release a certain amount of gas that had built up inside him. The driver stopped and the pair of us leapt
out, gasping for fresh air. The driver,
who was quite unhappy about this, opened all four doors on the taxi to help
clear the foul smelling air. Once safe
we jumped back in and I directed him to the block. I had survived and could now actually say
that I had been to Cyprus.
I was aware that I would probably have much more to
experience and learn, but I decided to put into practice some of what I had learned
already. I got out of the taxi at our
block and began to walk away. The driver
jumped out and was shouting after me for payment. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “He’s paying!” I shouted, pointing at the
sleeping Chris, hoping as I walked away that he had some money. But I knew that it was the right thing to do
because that is what he would have done to me had the roles been reversed.
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