Previous chapter: Nicosia airfield, Cyprus
Summer 1941
The summer temperatures in and around Nicosia were now climbing over 1000F on most days, 1100F not being unusual. We had become well acclimatised by now, but this was too hot for sustained effort in the afternoons. The afternoon siesta was not published on standing orders, but was observed just the same.
We were also allowed to take four days at a ‘Rest camp’, which was on Mount Olympus, about six thousand feet up, near the village of Troodos.
The drivers were the lucky ones, for although we were the last to have a four-day break, we had the job of driving up there every four days. We took about ten men up, and brought another lot down. It wasn’t a rest cure, bring sixty miles each way, and encountering dozens of hairpin bends, but it certainly made a change.
The roads in Cyprus had been built as cheaply as possible. The tarmac surface was wide enough to take one vehicle, but a wide stony verge on each side allowed for passing. We soon found that the bus drivers were not keen to give up one half of the tarmac to any oncoming army truck, since the drop off the tarmac edge was often six inches or more. This was a challenge that we could not resist, and it was great fun meeting a loaded bus on a long straight stretch. These buses carried luggage on the roof, and if the roof was full a few more crates could be jammed on the front mudguards. We would approach each other, with grim, determined looks on our faces. This look was enhanced on the bus driver’s part by a luxuriant black moustache.
At the very last moment, when it seemed impossible to avoid a head on smash, one vehicle, or both would make a wild swoop to the left, to bounce madly along on the pot holed stony verge. The chicken in the crates on the mudguards entered into the spirit of the thing with protesting squawks and a general distribution of loose feathers. The hairpin bends on the road up the mountain were so acute that some of our trucks could not get round in one turn, but had to stop on the edge of the drop and back up to take a second crack at it. This wasn’t too bad going up, but a bit dodgy when coming down. The fellows in the back didn’t appreciate this very much. From where they sat they could look over the side and see straight down to the next hairpin below. We drivers used to take bets on who would have the greatest number being sick over the side.
Being a mechanic, I often drove other vehicles than my own and the worst of all of them was a 30 cwt Morris commercial. It was a brute. The steering was so heavy that it was all I could do to heave it round some of those bends and the brakes needed more push than most. This was also the one with the worst steering. Every bend needed a reverse half way round it. Being painted desert sand colour it naturally got to be called the Yellow Peril. The regular driver Jack Edwards was husky enough. He was a train driver in London in civvy life. I wonder if he ever longed for the Yellow Peril when he got back home to the monotony of train driving.
My regular truck was an Austin 30 cwt and the steering circle on it was just right. It would go round all the mountain turns in one lock, with one front wing occasionally scraping the rock wall. On one trip, for a bet, I came down the mountain in neutral: some ten miles of steep slopes without once putting it in gear. Good job the chaps in the back didn’t know what was going on. We couldn’t make the trip on a tank of petrol and carried another eight gallons in tins to get us home. These cans were packed in a wooden crate. Both cans and crates had a value we found. We stopped to refill at a village called Kakopetria at the foot of the mountain. The cafe proprietor there gave the drivers a free meal – egg and chips of course – in exchange for the empties.
When Beccy and I went to Cyprus some twenty years later, I was disappointed but not surprised to find that the roads in the mountains had been ‘tamed’, with easier gradients, wider bends and much better surfaces.