From Kefalovrysos of Lapithos we marched west until we arrived after the Harama in Vasileia where the rest of the battalion had already arrived. At a distance of not more than a kilometer from the coast, a Turkish destroyer (perhaps the one that attacked us the day before?) was coming and going and patrolling with its guns pointed towards the coast to monitor the coastal front from Vasilea to Kyrenia.
I remember I passed a small stone bridge where the soldier Andreas Fantousis from Larnaca, a Material Management clerk, was sitting and he didn't recognize me.... We were all pitch black, smudged from the ashes of the fire. When I spoke to him he looked at me in astonishment telling me that he was sitting there waiting to see if I would come through… It was a nice summer day, it was still morning and it was still cool… I was exhausted and lay down on the ground to rest… I immediately fell asleep…
I woke up later, it must have been close to noon, and wandered the streets and fields, looking for acquaintances – and something to eat. Then I saw from some distance my father – yes my father – walking around and obviously asking about me… I couldn't believe my eyes! In all this hell, where no one knew for sure how far the Turks had gone, which roads were clear, and where our lines were, my father risked everything to come and find me!
I approached him and we hugged... His eyes got teary and with difficulty he told me.... "we are praying for you" ... at the moment when the Turkish destroyer was once again cruising the sea ... I will never forget this moment, and even today I am moved when I remember my tearful father who defied so many dangers to come from Limassol to find me and find out about me. If someone asked me to hold an image of my father, from my whole life, this exact scene will always come to my mind.
Years after the war I learned that she was my father's second attempt to come find me…. He had tried again the day before, but a block of ours on Gerolakkos had turned him back… and yet he did not give up, and tried again the next day, defying many dangers, making it all the way to the Realm where he found me! In the afternoon of the same day we boarded trucks and went out again to Pentadaktylos, to Larnaca in Lapithos this time, at the westernmost end of the ridge of Pentadaktylos, where we stayed until Monday 30/07.
From Larnaca, Lapithos, a reconnaissance patrol started the next day towards the passage of Ag. Pavlou, with some Locatzides and a land-rover driver, the soldier Artemios Andreas. We later learned that the patrol was ambushed and that while the Lokatzides managed to escape, Artemiou was captured alive by the Turks. The Locals had said that they saw Artemiou arrested and tortured on the spot... Forty - two years later the bones of the murdered Artemiou Andreas were identified and buried... officially Artemiou was then registered as missing.
We boarded the "Betford" descending from the south side of Pentadaktylos towards Skylloura. It was the last time I gazed freely at the coast of Kyrenia (or rather part of it), leaving behind us the beautiful Larnaca of Lapithos, smothered in pine trees. I remember on our way down to Skylloura, we passed over the Turkish Cypriot village of Kambyli, and we could clearly see four white armored vehicles of the OIE (UN) lined up at the entrance of the village. We did not go directly to the headquarters of the order in Ag. Vasilei but we camped at the primary school of the nearby Maronite village of Agia Marina Skylloura... I was impressed that in every classroom of the school there was a large photo of the Pope...
The stay at Ag. Marina Skyllouras
The scene I most vividly remember from our short stay in Ag. Marina Skyllouras, it was when the mother and the brothers (a young girl of about 18 years and a young boy of about 10 years) came and asked to find out about the soldier - Land Rover driver Artemiou Andreas... We all knew that Artemiou had been arrested ( and was killed) in Pentadaktylos when the reconnaissance patrol led by Artemios, together with the Locatzides, was ambushed on its way from Larnaca of Lapithos to the passage of Ag. Paul...
The Commander preferred to tell Artemios' mother that she would have to go to the 3rd ATTD in Nicosia to find out about her son... Obviously full of anxiety, the mother turned to leave and at some point she burst into tears and fell flat on her face and was in pain calling out her son's name... She had obviously understood from the Commander's evasions that her son was no longer alive...
Andrea's sister also started crying, as did her little brother who, seeing his mother dying of sleep and hitting the ground with her hands, was also crying heartbreakingly and calling his mother... I was close to the young boy and I hugged him turning his face away from his mother and tried to comfort him... I don't remember what I said to him - what I could say to comfort him on the one hand for the loss of his brother, and on the other for the his mother who by slaughtering fought with the earth that kept her son?
I too trembled before this scene of unspeakable pain... When I bring to my mind images of the human pain of war, I always remember the scene of that heartbroken mother who, on learning of the death of her son, is devastated, beating the ground with her hands her, in unspeakable pain...
Forty-two years later, in 2016, at the gathering of the Association of Warriors of the 231 TP to honor the relatives of the fallen of the battalion at the presentation of the book "The Eagles of the Five Fingers", I met again the sister of Andrea Artemiou, now a woman, and I had told her that I was present at that scene in Ag. Marina Skyllouras where they learned about Andrea's fate and that I was the one who hugged her little brother.... I gave her a copy of some photos of soldiers of the battalion, some of which included the blessed Artemius, and I saw her in tears...
I couldn't help but tear up at the memory of that very painful scene that came back to life in my memory... More recently (June 2019) during the naming ceremony of a street in the Municipality of Strovolos named after Andreas Artemiou, I found myself again with Maria - his sister Andreas Artemiou as well as with his brother Kyriakos (the then ten-year-old boy).
Back at the headquarters of 231 TP in Ag. Kingdom
After a few days' stay in Ag. Marina of Skylloura, we now returned to the headquarters of the battalion in Ag. Vasilei, where the 2nd phase of the Turkish invasion found us, on August 14th... The most important event I remember from this period is the visit of an officer of the 286th MTP (Motorized Infantry Battalion) who had a meeting with our Commander, apparently for coordination between the two units since the 286 MTP (black caps) had deployed a group of BTRs in the village of Skylloura.
The officer was accompanied by Sergeant Michaelidis Alekos of the 286 MTP, an old classmate of mine from elementary school (note that years later Alekos Michaelidis was General Director at the Ministry of Transport). Alekos and I talked for a while and he told me the drama of 286 MTP when their phalanx was hit on July 20 by the Turkish air force in the village of Kontemeno where they had several dead – including their Commander, and he told me about the despair and fruitless counterattack on the Turkish bridgehead on the evening of July 20.. I remember in those days the rumors that were circulating about the Greek help that was arriving so quickly, that the streets in the port of Limassol were "slaughtering" under the tracks of the Greek tanks that allegedly constantly they were disembarking...
Fairytales that we willingly accepted as truths - that we desperately wanted to hear... it is not possible that Greece would leave us alone. At the time, we didn't even know about Karamanlis' "Cyprus lies far away", nor had we heard the shameful "The Turks are beating Cyprus, and we are Greece" by Bonanou (Head of the Greek Armed Forces). We learned all of this much later... Cyprus is idle, a target for "Attila's" appetites. The days until the 14th of August passed calmly without any incident... Three small wheeled armored vehicles of the Oiedes had positioned themselves between ours and the Turkish lines in front of Skylloura.