The Cypriot (name witheld)

1975. I was in the army in Cyprus. And. We had. Just been. Asked to leave the army camp by our superiors and go back to our villages. And to our towns. And the reason for this was that ah we couldn't do anything about the invasion of the Turkish army. Ah. We couldn't stop them taking half the island but we could try and stop them taking our, our towns. So I went back with fifteen other chaps who. Were also from our town. And we got into the town and, and the next day ahm the Turkish army was advancing towards it and this is a town very near to Nicosia, the capital city. And at, and the Turkish army was well....organised and tanks and pretty much everything ahm. We. On the other hand. Were just. With our army gear really. Rifles, machine guns, pretty much that was it, few grenades. And we had to hold our town. So in order for the Turkish army not to take the town. What we did was set up four posts to one side of the town which is the only way that the army could come in and we would fire all the time. Constantly at the, uh at the army and this is. Not firing close range this is firing probably half a mile to three quarters of a mile away. So as for them not to know who we were. Ahm. How many of us there was. And in the evening, my what I thought I would do would. Turned out to be a good idea. we. Myself and another guy had ripped off an exhaust off a car. Uhm. And got the people to that owned the car to drive it up and down the road. And we did that to three different cars in three different parts of the town. And at night. The town is actually surrounded by fields, it's a very small town it's, it's almost a big village and at night that noise travels. And there's no street lights. And the lights were all out in the centre of the town as well. It sounded like we had tanks in the town. The next day. The army moved on. And went around our, our town and took the foll-, ah took the village that was about two miles away from us. So we actually sa- saved the town. It's a true story. I've got better ones than that.