Remembrance Day in Cyprus
November 14, 2010
We Don’t Need to Wear a Poppy to Remember the Victims of War.
In each and every town square in the UK there is a war memorial listing the dead from 1939- 45, whole towns full of young men wiped out- a Great War generation. Hearts as well as bodies -dead, a generation of women grieving fathers, brothers, lovers and sons, all lost like their hopes in the muddy trenches on foreign lands.
Many resident Brits may not be aware that Cypriots volunteers were formed into a regiment in 1940. It included infantry, mechanical transport and mule transportation. A total of 25.000 Cypriots enlisted providingessential equipment, food, and support in Dunkirk, Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Crete and Cassino.
We may also be ignorant re the huge role our indigenous an humble mules played in the second world war, they acted as animal transport to carry ammunition and vital supplies to forward positions made impassable to wheeled traffic, making them essential components of the Cypriot war effort.
Cypriot Muleteers were also sent to the UK to be trained and armed and then were sent to Egypt in the company of 800 Cypriot born mules, from there they went by barge to the Eritrean border and in February 1941 these units were able to supply the British troops with arms and food stuffs.
Later they raised a total of 3,200 mules to be taken to the conflict in the middle east, followed by a move to Cassino where they suffered heavy losses of both men and mules to the enemy. They continued their Muleteering through out the war and the Cyprus regiment took a loss of over 2.500 men many were taken as prisoners of war, and around 1000 Cypriot women enlisted in the Auxiliary Territorial service and women Auxiliary Air Force serving in the middle east as drivers and mechanics.
We will also remember today the 600 Cypriot men killed in action,all buried in 56 cemeteries in 16 countries.
I don’t however require to wear a poppy to remember the victims of war, to me its become a bit like Easter eggs and Halloween or Christmas Santa’s atop the Supermarket in mid October, another commercial opportunity from which meaning has largely drained.
There is a pressure to wear poppies and it gets earlier every year, and I worry that the ubiquity of the poppy will be its own downfall. Just wish some of the money raised would go to campaigning against war instead of fund raising for yet more artificial limbs for the next one.
Believe me a trip to Flanders as a teenager in the company of my Black Watch serving Uncle made more of an impact on me than wearing a bit of red paper ever did.
by Jill Campbell-Mackay
Categories: Uncategorised
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Monday 15 November 2010
Remembrance Day in Cyprus | Clinging to the Vine
