With the Highland Light Infantry in Cyprus

By Jim Dunlop

I was the oldest child in an Edinburgh middle-class family and enjoyed a privileged childhood, despite less than prosperous circumstances. My father, a brilliant man, was a school teacher with a wife and 4 children. I was fortunate to attend George Watson’s College in Edinburgh, where my father taught French and Spanish. On leaving school in 1954 I entered the Civil Service. After National Service from 1955 – 1957, I resumed my Civil Service career. Several years later I trained as a computer systems analyst. I left Scotland with a wife and 3 young children in 1967 to immigrate to Canada, where I worked in government, university and business for the next 35 years. Now retired, I live in Hamilton, Ontario with my wife of 46 years. To date we have been blessed with three grandchildren.

The rituals of basic training at that time are well-known to most readers of this reminiscence – the shorn heads, the drilling in the parade square, the shouting, the bulling of boots and shoes, the blancoing of webbing, the cleaning and re-cleaning of rifles, the pressing of uniforms, the fatigues and of course, jankers.  The extra wrinkle in the HLI was the full-dress uniform of kilt, sporran, brogues, diced hose, white spats, blue bonnet and hackle.  I enjoyed the times when we could escape the barracks – cross-country runs in the hills north of the city and shooting practice at the range.

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I was pretty fit but the marching got to me. I remember writhing in the agonies of cramping muscles after sessions on the parade square. I was a bit of a smart-mouth, I suppose, but it did not take me long to learn that I should hide any facility of thought and language, lest I incur the wrath of our platoon sergeants. After 12 weeks our basic training was over. Then I attended a War Office Selection Board, to determine if I was suitable officer material. I failed miserably and returned to the barracks to await posting to Cyprus.

The rectangular eight-man tents we slept and lived in were arranged in long lines. Each tent was surrounded by a low sandbag wall with the tent sides rolled up to let in the breeze. Outside one could see socks and underwear hanging out to dry. Inside the camp we were not required to wear shirts, at least not after our skin had acquired a sufficient tan to afford protection from the sun.  On arrival we were threatened with severe consequences if we reported sick due to sunburn or sunstroke. In consequence I put up with bad sunburn for several weeks before my skin healed. We also found that the sun did a number on well-polished boots if they were left out. One of our sergeants lost a pair he had brought to a mirror-like finish when they were placed on the top of the sandbag wall of his tent.

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My daily duties consisted of toiling in the MT office under the supervision of a cretinous lance-corporal who was totally resistant to any suggestions I had for improving the efficiency of our operation! I don’t remember exactly what we did but it consisted largely of filling in forms and reports. Relations between us deteriorated until I was forced to ask for a transfer to another section, whereupon I found myself a Signals Clerk doing much the same kind of work, the tedium occasionally relieved by opportunities to use the wireless equipment. I could not understand why I was not allowed to escape clerical work for the more interesting world of the signaler, but later I realised it was because most of the lads were functionally illiterate.

We were required to carry arms at all times. Most of us had regular issue .303 rifles, corporals had Sten guns, some sergeants had the new light FN semi-automatic rifles and officers had their pistols. Our ammunition pouches were supposed to be filled with full magazines. However, this made them pretty heavy and we got into the habit of only inserting enough rounds to make it seem like the magazine was full. As a result, most of us had about 3 rounds on our person at all times. This became a problem on the day that some EOKA fellow fired a weapon over the camp and succeeded in holing the elevated water tank, to our great inconvenience. The whole HQ was quickly assembled on the road that ran through the camp and we were marched up to the village to conduct a search for the culprit. I was detailed to escort the padre as he spoke to the local priest and then searched the church buildings. No trace of the marksman was ever found. After that episode most of us resolved to carry a few more rounds in our pouches.

Guard duty was a regular feature of our routine. Every few weeks I would report at 6 p.m. to the guard house (tent) for 12 hours of 2 hours on and four off. There were two guard posts at either end of the camp road and two pairs of two men each would walk slowly around the camp perimeter in an anti-clockwise direction. I can still conjure up the sights and smells of it – sun-warmed rocks and vegetation exuding that unique Cyprus scent, sharp black shadows cast by a brilliant moon, low murmurs of conversation among the jocks at the guard posts, the disgusted tones of the guard sergeant ordering us to stop lounging on the sandbag walls. In my experience these times were entirely uneventful, with one exception. One night, to my great apprehension, I was paired with a soldier who had been returned to HQ from one of the companies following an incident of “friendly fire” – he had managed to wound a fellow soldier while on guard duty. Why he was doing any more guard duty is still a mystery to me. He was very nervous and he made me nervous. At one point on our rounds he called out “Whassat!” in an urgent, frightened fashion. I froze, and saw about 30 yards away what looked at first glance, in the dark, like a person wearing a hat. The figure was very still. On further examination I could see that it was an abandoned stove with a flue and a little cowl on top. I told him to settle down, although my heart was racing. In a few days he was on his way back to the UK for psychiatric evaluation, or so rumour had it.

From time to time we would act as escorts for a small convoy of trucks and Land Rovers going to Famagusta for supplies or personnel. Because this meant getting out of the camp, we usually enjoyed these trips along the bumpy, dusty, country roads, sitting in the back of an open Land Rover with our weapons in our hands. On returning, we would invariably head for the beach and wash off the dust in the warm, salty waters of the Med.

It was a wonderful bonus to have the sea so close to the camp, with either a wide, shallow bay or a series of rocky ledges to choose from for swimming and horseplay. From time to time the lads from the outlying companies would be trucked in for a day of fun at the beach. Then we would hear all the stories about life “at the pointed end” of the battalion – the sweeps, the patrols, the searches for EOKA terrorists, the reprisals. Because I was a competent swimmer, unlike most of my fellow jocks who had grown up in deepest Glasgow, I was recruited for the battalion swim team and a competition in Famagusta. Amazingly, we were put on special rations for several weeks beforehand. This consisted of steak and other quality food we could only dream about. After the swim meet I returned to the regular diet of spam in all its many guises.

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I had never been away from home for more than a couple of weeks at a time before, so I always looked forward to when the mail was handed out. Letters were precious and in return we wrote home and sent photographs as often as we could.
Occasionally a concert party would come through and put on a show on the camp stage. Glasgow folk are famous for their patter and quick wit and the best part of the show was when the battalion wits would engage in extended periods of repartee with the stage comics.

As the summer ended and the strength of the sun waned, we had the first rain in six months. We rushed out of our tents and just stood in it, revelling in the cool wetness, and the unaccustomed smell of wet dust. Swimming too ended as the sea became rough and colder. Now we began to look forward to going home. We had heard that we would be back for Christmas and New Year. At last the day came and we boarded the trucks that were to take us to Famagusta. On arrival, the battalion marched with pipes playing through the town to the harbour.

We embarked on the troopship Dilwara and were allotted a bunk somewhere in the ship’s innards. It was packed as densely as possible. Each night there were muffled sounds as scores were settled. Some guy next to me was dragged out of his bunk and given a kicking. Luckily for him, we all wore runners on board ship as our boots were packed away for the duration. Many whiled away the days with cards as the ship churned through the Med, round the south of Spain, through the Bay of Biscay and into the port of Southampton. We were not spared by Customs. Kitbags were unceremoniously dumped out on the long tables in the Customs shed and hundreds of cartons of cigarettes were confiscated. Eventually we boarded the train for the journey to Glasgow, and our temporary home in Maryhill until we left in February for Luneburg in Germany. Before that, there was to be several weeks of glorious freedom and Christmas and Hogmanay to be enjoyed among our families and friends.