Remembrances of a Greek soldier, 50 years on
Angelos Vougioukas spent 99 days as a prisoner of war after Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974
With the scars still visible on his body 50 years after Turkey invaded Cyprus, Angelos Vougioukas, a member of the Panhellenic Association of Cyprus Fighters of 1974, looks back on the crucial first hours of the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, and the 99 days he spent as a prisoner of the Turkish forces.
Through a vivid portrayal of events that could fill a book, Vougioukas describes to Kathimerini the torture he suffered at the hands of the Turks, the conditions of detention and the executions of his fellow soldiers.
Vougioukas joined the ranks of the Greek army as a light gunner in October 1972. “After a few months of service on Greek soil, I was posted to Cyprus in January 1974 and transferred with ELDYK,” he says, referring to the Hellenic Force in Cyprus, going on to say that he was then assigned to the 182nd Field Artillery Squadron at Agios Epiktitos in Kyrenia, the coastal town where the Turkish troops made their first landing.
First casualties
“It was around 5.30 in the morning of July 20, first light had just dawned, and we could see military ships in the sea. Before we could get an idea of what was going on, the Turkish Air Force started bombarding us. It dropped two bombs on the company’s command center, which was empty, and the order was given to evacuate. We left the camp and took cover, concealing ourselves under trees and all the military equipment under branches so that it would not be spotted. Until that time, we did not know what the enemy’s intentions were.
“I must mention that the Turkish naval convoy was preceded by destroyers which every now and then fired their cannons towards the coast. So, we ran through the cannon fire as we left Kyrenia and headed in the direction of Pentemili [the beachhead where the Turks landed], to climb higher up Pentadaktylos and the position of Agios Pavlos, where we settled. The whole process took roughly three hours.
“As soon as we arrived, we managed to set up and load the first two guns and started firing blindly, by the naked eye, because we had no coordinates. We corrected the coordinates between shots. Time was running out and the Turks were landing. Just as we started to position the third gun, which was my gun, a 25-pounder, the Turkish Air Force swooped in and hit our positions.
“Everything around us was burning, everything was on fire! As we searched for casualties, a Cypriot soldier, a machine gunner who happened to be in front of me with his Bren machine gun, tried to intercept one of the aircraft. The plane fired back, severing his left arm, which was hanging from the thread of a nerve, and removing his left ear. He was in a deplorable condition. I turned to Lieutenant Commander George Antonakopoulos who was next to me and asked, ‘What do we do?’ ‘He’s gone,’ he replied, and just as we were going to note that he was dead, he moved and shouted, ‘Help! I’m thirsty, bring me water.’”
Arrest
“A car happened to be stopped just two meters away from us, a civilian car, with all four doors open. I placed [the wounded soldier] in the back seat and saw that the engine was running, so, together with another Cypriot soldier, we set off for the hospital. I must mention that we were naked from the waist up. We had dumped our jackets and helmets on the floor of the car.
“As we came down the mountain and reached the landing site, I saw a group of soldiers ahead. I couldn’t tell that they were Turks. I saw an ambulance and thought, ‘I’m going to leave the wounded man and go back.’ As I approached the ambulance, though, I saw the red crescent painted on its side and then I realized that those guys I could see were Turks. I tried to carry on, to drive past them calmly, but a Turkish captain appeared, raised his hand and came over to the car, apologizing for the inconvenience. I had shifted into first gear, ready to go, when he said to me through the window, in English, ‘Where are you going?’ I replied, ‘To the hospital.’ ‘What for?’ he said, as he bent down and saw the wounded man behind me, a man in uniform, covered in blood, shot to pieces. Then he looked at the two of us, saw our fatigues and our weapons and helmets at our feet, and said: ‘Asker’ [soldier]!
“They ordered us out of the car, pulled the wounded man out of the back seat, threw him down on the ground and must have executed him on the spot. As soon as we got out of the car, they put my glasses in my mouth and with one blow they broke them. They took off my pants, took off my boots, left me in my underwear, and forced me naked and barefoot to walk down the path and down to the beach.
“We were marched down to the sand, me in front, my passenger behind me. They put their captives in these cabins in pairs; they were the beach’s changing huts that had been converted into prisoner holding areas. We were tied with our hands behind our backs and blindfolded. They had removed the doors so they could see us and, at some point in the evening, the Cypriots tried to make a coordinated run for it. The man who was with me in the cabin persuaded me to untie him, using my teeth, and then he untied me too. But at some point, I stopped and did not carry on with them. I returned to the cabin. They were spotted just a short distance away and shot.
‘They ordered us out of the car, pulled the wounded man out of the back seat, threw him down on the ground and must have executed him on the spot’
“From there they took us to some adjoining houses and dumped 17 of us into a small storage shed. Half of us were sitting up against the walls, and the other half were standing in the middle of the room. As the hours went by, the temperature rose and because of the asbestos roof, the shed turned into a hothouse. We were nearly bursting with heat and shouted ‘We are thirsty! Water, water!’ They opened the door, produced a bucket of water and threw it on us.
“Every five minutes or so we would take turns at the door where there was a crack to get some air. My turn came up, but this a Cypriot guy called Melis stepped in on my right. I said, ‘Melis, please, I can’t take it anymore, it’s my turn’ and he replied ‘Sorry buddy, can’t do it; I’m going to pass out.’ Desperate and exhausted, I bowed my head and at that very moment the Turks outside stuck a machine gun through the opening and pulled the trigger; the bullets hit Melis and decapitated him. My passenger in the car, Constantine Spaos, was on my left. He took a bullet and lost his jaw.
“I looked around and saw two bodies; one, Melis’, without a head, and the other without a lower jaw. Just then, the Turks came in carrying three stretchers and blankets to collect the bodies. There were three bodies, they thought. I was covered in flesh, skull fragments and blood, and I was on the floor so they counted me as dead, but after a while, they realized that I was not.
“A truck for building materials came later and we were transferred to a village outside Agirta and put in an animal pen. The pen was full of manure and the bars were covered in chicken wire and barbed wire. They brought another 150 prisoners from the 181st Field Artillery Squadron that night. They had been marched barefoot over a distance of 14 kilometers, tied in threes with lengths of reed. From there we were taken to the police station in Agirta for questioning. I had been using a false name the entire time so they would not know I was Greek. They called me in for questioning, I answered and they took me downstairs.
“There were four of us lying in the yard, with four Turks guarding us. One of them must have been a non-commissioned officer, and, speaking broken Greek, he said to us: ‘Is there a commando here among you, giaour [infidels]?’ Nobody answered. ‘Who is a commando?’, he repeated, showing us a piece of bread and a canteen of water. And up pops a Greek Cypriot in uniform who had identified me as a Greek, and pointed at me, saying ‘He is!’ He got up to get the bread and water but the Turkish Cypriot kicked him and then raised his gun and came straight at me with the bayonet. I lifted my leg and he stabbed me. He wanted to kill me. And then the other Turkish guy said to me, in Greek, ‘See who you came to save? This is what the Cypriots are.’
“I asked for another hearing with their commander and they took me upstairs to him. Even though I was injured, I stood tall, saluted and reported: ‘Sergeant Vougioukas Angelos, son of Ioannis, from Volos in Magnisia, Greece, light gunner. Military registration number 146/132474/73. That is all I have to say and nothing more. I await orders.’ He got up from his desk, put on his jacket and cap, and saluted me. After the interrogation was over and a few days had passed – it must have been around July 28 to 30 – we were taken away to be taken to Turkey.
Transportation
“We were tied up and blindfolded and two Turks put us on an open-deck ferry that was heading to a Turkish boat off the coast. The hatch was closed and there were 500-600 of us in the garage. We were the first [batch of prisoners] to make the crossing. We reached Mersina and were loaded into pickup trucks and driven towards Adana prison. There were no highways on the way to the prison; people threw stones at the trucks as we passed through villages. We were separated and placed in different parts of the prison as soon as we got there. There was a lot of beating going on there. I got kicked and punched, but I was one of the ‘lucky’ ones because others had it much worse.
“We were given something to eat and drink before we were placed in our cells. I was in a bloody pair of briefs; my bottom was covered in wounds and I could not sit down, only lie on my stomach and kneel. We were given food in the courtyard from a large bucket of beans, chickpeas, lentils and peppers all mixed together. They brought in some people who spoke Greek so the Turks could communicate with us. They were of Pontian origin and they were being exploited. It is worth noting that the colonel who interrogated me spoke perfect Greek; he had been born in Thessaloniki and studied law at Aristotle University.
“To give you an idea of the conditions, we did not know how a Turkish toilet worked and we asked for paper, they replied: ‘Use your hand. Open the water and use your hand.’ On the eve of the [August 15] Dormition of the Virgin holiday, we heard aircraft taking off. There’s a big airfield near Adana, from which the planes set out to bomb Cyprus [for operation Attila II]. The Turks came into our cells and said: ‘Now we’re going to take all of Cyprus.’”
POW exchange
“It was around August 18-19 when we were loaded onto trains heading for Amasya. Around 100 kilometers before Amasya, a group of locals sabotaged the tracks and tried to derail the train; they wanted to slaughter us. They knew that the train was carrying ‘giaour’ prisoners and they removed a section of the tracks, so the first wagons came off the rails and the train stopped. The police came and dispersed the mob. From there they put us on buses and with an army escort took us to Amasya. It was night by the time we arrived.
“The first messages of liberation started to reach us around October 20. I remember that we were taken every other day to get bathed, shaved and given clean clothes – a pair of trousers, a shirt and a pair of new shoes. And indeed one morning, around October 24, we were put into civilian buses and taken to the station. From there we were taken by train down to Mersin and by ferry to Cyprus. In Cyprus, we were taken to Nicosia to the Pavlidis garage.
“A tall man appeared, with a Swiss flag on his uniform; he found a crate, climbed onto it and shouted out nine names. Mine was among them. Holding each other’s hands we moved through the crowd to the yard where there was a Volkswagen minibus waiting. He loaded us into it and shut the doors and we were taken to the Ledra Palace pass. That’s where the bargaining was taking place. Another minibus was parked across the street and eventually, nine Greeks were exchanged for 23 Turks.
“I was released from Turkish captivity on October 26 and, after a 20-day ordeal, set foot in Greece again on the night of the November 17 elections.”
Fifty years after the tragedy, Vougioukas is still bitter about how the invasion played out and the Greek forces on the ground were caught unawares.
“It was a betrayal,” he says. “We could have been throwing stones and still had the advantage over them. We were on land and they were at sea.”
