British High Commission pays tribute to Cyprus’ WWII veterans

“Those were the days”, said Loizos Demetriou, a 93-year-old remembering his days serving in the Cyprus Regiment during the Second World War.
He is one of the ever reducing number of Cypriot veterans who made such a valued contribution to the Allied efforts and to whom we all owe a great debt. British High Commissioner Ric Todd, with Defence Advisor Colonel Seb Pollington, visited him in his Strovolos apartment as part of the UK activities in view of Remembrance Sunday this weekend – also paying tribute to the scores of other Cypriots who made such great sacrifices.
According to a Tuesday announcement from the British High Commission, Demetriou’s wartime service took him to Egypt, Palestine, Iraq and to Britain where, selected from among his peers for officer training, he was stationed in North Wales. Evidently proud of his service, he reflected upon the virtues of military service; and he lacked none of the youthful sharpness which his books (including the latest published in 2014) conveyed about his experiences.
The Cyprus Regiment was formed by the British Government during the Second World War (12/04/1940. It was made part of the British Army structure. It was mostly made up of volunteers from Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but also included other Commonwealth nationalities. It included Infantry, Mechanical, Transport, and Pack Transport Companies. Cypriot mule drivers were the first colonial troops sent to the Western Front. They served in France, Ethiopia and Italy carrying equipment to areas inaccessible to vehicles.
On a brief visit to Cyprus in 1943, Winston Churchill praised the “soldiers of the Cyprus Regiment who have served honourably on many fields from Libya to Dunkirk.”
About 30,000 Cypriots served in the Cyprus Regiment. The regiment was involved in action from the very start and served in the Battle of France, in the Greek Campaign (Battle of Greece) (about 600 soldiers were captured in Kalamata in 1941), North Africa (Operation Compass), France, the Middle East and Italy. Many soldiers were taken prisoner especially at the beginning of the war and were interned in various POW camps, including Stalag VIII-B Lamsdorf, Stalag IV-C at Wistritz near Teplitz (now in the Czech Republic), and Stalag IV-B near Dresden. The soldiers captured in Kalamata were transported by train to prisoner of war camps.
In the post-war years the regiment served in Cyprus and the Middle East, including Palestine during the 1945-1948 period. The regiment was disbanded on March 31, 1950.
Cyprus Weekly