TRAINING IN CYPRUS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 October 1943, Page 4

TRAINING IN CYPRUS

STRENUOUS & EXACTING FRIENDLY PEASANT POPULATION “The island is one of the most strenuous and exacting and varied training grounds in the world. You don’t have to make hazardous assault courses, they’re there —difficult country of almost every conceivable kind. I saw the troops and the Cyprus volunteer force in camps and in villages. Our soldiers seem to get on well with the Cypriots. The peasant people in the country places have a slow, pleasant charm. The Tommies used to go through the olive groves and the vines to cottages where, incongruously, the old eggs-and-chips were served to them. Inside mud-brick houses, little vases of flowers were set on rough kitchen tables for the soldiers who came to visit. There was a glass of wine ready, and the “V” sign on the kitchen wall. Very pleasant visits, these, but only interludes. The troops aren’t there to gossip and drink and slack. A pleasant island, yes, but the army manoeuvres and the training that go on there are as stern and as exacting as anything you could find anywhere—Godfrey Talbot, giving “News from Cyprus” in a 8.8. C. broadcast.