On this day in 1960, details emerged of three soldiers of the Suffolk Regiment and their audacious plan to flee to Turkey in a rowing boat.
The scheme unfolded when the left their duties at Luna Park on December 13 1959, and decided to try to row a boat to Turkey because they were “absolutely fed up” with conditions in Cyрrus, an Army court martial at Kykko Camp, Nicosia, was told.
The three soldiers – Corporal John Butler, 22, Private Brian Frederick Collins, 22, and Private David Ernest Irvine, 20 pleaded guilty to two charges of desertion and housebreaking and larceny.
Prosecuting, Major R Parry, told the Court the three men left their duties at Luna Park on December 13, went to their camp for clothing, and ducked under the wires of their camp dressed in civilian clothes, one of them carrying a Sterling gun and three clips of ammunition.They were captured again on December 21, after eight days of searching for a boat.
The three went first to the Astoria Hotel where they stayed the first night.
Then they went to Kyrenia, and finally set off for Xeros. On the way there, looking for a place to sleep they broke into an unoccupied house at Ayios Georghios, three miles from Kyrenia.
The larceny with which they were charged concerned amounts of rice and tea in that house which they had prepared for themselves. Before leaving the house one of the soldiers scribbled ‘EOKA’ on the walls of rooms.
They were finally captured by two policemen in Ayios Georghios, unshaven and muddy, as one of them tried to conceal a Sterling gun and a flick knife beneath his coat.
Major R M Holman, Company Commander of all three soldiers, gave evidence of their Army character.
Cpl Butler, he said, was “an above-average NCO, strong-willed, strong-minded, perhaps a little headstrong” who fulfilled his duties in a first class fashion.He had been considered for promotion to Sergeant, and if it had not been for these offences he would probably hold that acting rank now.
Collins was “a useful little soldier; but he does get into trouble over niggly little things he upsets the Sergeant Major, and so on.”
Irvine, he said, “struck me as a smart, keen soldier. I know they have had a very difficult time. All three have a very unhappy family background.”
Mr Griffith Jones, in mitigation of “this lunatic offence,” dwelt at some length on the conditions under which soldiers have had to live in Cyprus, and said that all three had told him, when he asked what had made them desert, that they were “absolutely fed up.”
It was “sheer folly”, he said, for them to imagine that they could have rowed across to Turkey, and they might consider themselves lucky that they had been unable to find a boat to make “this lunatic attempt.”