FOR THOSE WHO LOVE TO READ, TWO BOOKS:
HARRY BLACKLEY "Love and Death in Cyprus" and "Korean Rose"
'Love and Death in Cyprus' is a novel by Harry Blackley, about a Turkish Cypriot girl, Leyla Özkara and a Scottish pharmacist, Alexander Forbes, who meet and fall in love on Cyprus in 1957. Based on the real events...
* I was delighted when I learned that author Harry Blackley (Love & Death in Cyprus), told me that he was planning another novel, this time set in Australia and the Korean War, especially the contribution of the Turkish Brigade in that “forgotten war”. Like any good storyteller he has blended fiction with some little known facts.
Korean Rose is a great story that I found hard to put down. Call me sentimental but I found the story of Rose McDonald, the Australian nurse, and Kemal Hasol, the Turkish Lieutenant, really moving. The battle scenes and the conditions endured by medical people are brilliantly portrayed. I think this novel will make people sit up and realize how the Turks fought so bravely along side the Australia and New Zealand contingent in a war as bloody as any in history. In recognition of their courage under fire, I was instrumental in the formation of the Victorian Returned Services League Turkish Sub-Branch. It is with pleasure that I recommend people read Korean Rose. You won’t be disappointed.
Bruce Ruxton AM OBE
President of the Victorian Branch of the RSL 1978-2001
* Rose McDonald, a theatre nurse, joins the Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps and volunteers to serve in Korea in October 1950. At the same time, Lieutenant Kemal Hasol arrives in Korea with the 1st Turkish Brigade to fight under the flag of the United Nations. Two people from far away countries and vastly different cultures, but there is an immediate attraction. Their love deepens. Will it survive the separation of war and distance?
A Peace Treaty has never been signed following the armistice in July 1953. Korean Rose will make you laugh and cry and wonder at man’s inhumanity to man. The Korean War was a bloody war with over one million South Korean civilians killed. Over two million UN, South Korean and Communist troops were killed, wounded or reported missing.
All wars end. The dead, wounded and mentally scarred are forgotten. The Generals write their memories. Korean Rose is for those story is never heard.../link
The Autor Harry Blackley PhC BA, born in 1934, Scotland, Blackley graduated as a Pharmacist in 1957. He worked in the National Service Royal Army Medical Corps in Cyprus between 1957-59. He then migrated to Australia in 1965.
* NOTE:
I've read the "Kıbrıs'ta Aşk ve Ölüm (Love and Death in Cyprus)", haven't read the "Korean Rose", but I looked at the contents:
In the "Korean Rose" book, there is a General Yazici... a real person Tahsin Yazıcı (1892-1970), a soldier and politician. Thanks to the Turkish troops, the 8th USA army and other forces of the United Nations, are rescued in the Battle of Kunuri - Korea . Our losses was 734 ... It was not our fight... After the Korean War we became a member of the NATO! - SB
Turks in the Korean War: (in Turkish with photos)
* EXTRA:
HERMES SABOTAGE
The destruction of Skyways' Hermes G-ALDW at Nicosia Airport on March 4th was later found to have been caused by a time-bomb placed in the luggage compartment. The explosion occurred 20 minutes before the aircraft was due to depart for the United Kingdom with 68 passengers, mostly Service personnel. The flight was one of twelve per month operated by Skyways between the United Kingdom and Cyprus under a Government trooping contract. The company also operates through Nicosia to the Far East, together with Airwork. These services are being re-routed via Beirut to avoid night stops in Cyprus, although services terminating there are continuing as usual. .../link / link
A memorial to the 371 British servicemen killed in Cyprus in the 1950s /2009 press link
The memorial, at the British Cemetery in Kyrenia, northern Cyprus, bears the names of every soldier, sailor and airman who died during the Cyprus Emergency, as it was known, which lasted from 1955 to 1959, and involved a series of terrorist attacks by EOKA (the Greek acronym for National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters).
Can Cyprus overcome its bloody history? / 2009 press link
Several civilians were also killed, including Catherine Cutliffe and her daughter Margaret who were shot while buying a wedding dress in Famagusta, although Eoka denied responsibility for that attack. (*)
(*) But, it was done by EOKA terrorists. - SB
"EOKA gets his supply from GREECE.... There were several explosions at Police installations in Nicosia and Kyrenia. On 21 June the front of the Divisional Police Headquarters in Ataturk Square was blown in, injuring five persons and killing one; this brought EOKA violence into the Turkish quarter of the city for the first time...
...Terror, ofcourse, never strikes quite when or where it is expected. Surprise is its biggest attribute. Grivas issued instructions for a staggered build-up of incidents towards 1 October, and only progressive acceleration thereafter. It was in line with EOKA's history as an organization essentially aimed at the British that Turks were explicitly ruled out as targets. Two soldiers were gravely wounded by one of the mines which EOKA was now adept at manufacturing. Then on 3 October there occured an inciednt which imprinted itself on expatriate minds more than any other in the whole course of the Emergency. That morning an english woman, Mrs Margaret Cutliffe and her daughter Catherine, went shopping in Famagusta for Catherine's wedding dress. Miss Cutliffe recalled at the inquest that as they entered Hermes Street from Edward VII Avenue (the names themselves convey the different worlds the island straddled), her mother had commented on the "peculiar atmosphere" in the town, and the number of people waiting on street corners. They had met a female friend (a German lady married to an English resident) before disappearing into a shop. After browsing Catherine led the way out, heard a commotion, and looked round to see the wto older women fall to the ground. Mrs Cutliffe died instantly from gunfire; the friend was scriously wounded. A man was nearby with a pistol on the recoil. After firing a single shot at the daughter, he ran off. Vatherine also had the recollection of a Greek passer-by observing, with a grin, the dreadful scene.
Amongst the victims of terror, truth is not the least significant. Was it a grin or a grimace that this unidentified witness wore on their face? Who could tell one from the other? Yet the remembrance fixed in most British eyes a general comlicity in the crime on the part of the Greeks of Famagusta. Similarly, the reference to a "peculiar atmosphere" in the town underpinned an assumption that on that Friday morning, in the words of the Times of Cyprus (10 Oct.1958), 'everyone knew something momentous was going to happen'. But as that newspaper also pointed out, the peculiar atmosphere really stemmed from the Macmillan Plan itself. Nor would ordinary citizens be milling about if they had known such a crime was imminent. The Mayor of Nicosia issued a statement taht 'nobody but a lunatic' might suppose EOKA would hand the British such a propaganda coup as the murder of a defenceless woman. Indeed, there is the further twist that Catherine Cutliffe remembered the killer as having blonde hair. Blonde Greek-Cypriots are a rare breed. This led to the supposition on the Greek side that Mrs Cutliffe had been killed bu some other nationality, as an agent provovateur, or as a crime of passion. Some months later Foreign Minister Averoff was to assure Selwyn Lloyd that his Government had solid evidence that the culprit had not, indeed, been Greek.This is hardly convincing on its own, though his persistence on the point is interesting. Grivas was a 'lunatic' for violence, and he had killed enough people not to draw the line at a middle-aged English lady. Yet the Cutliffe killing both symbolized and intensified the wedge driven between Greek and British feelings in Cyprus... " (page 286)
book: Robert Holland - Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus,1954-1959
EOKA killed his own "Greek Cypriot" citizens to! The terrorist organisation EOKA was headed by Georgios Grivas, but the orders were given by archbishop Makarios III.
Greek Cypriot researcher and filmmaker Antonis Angastiniotis (docu of Missing Bus-Cyprus) reported to the Greek Cypriot English-language daily Cyprus Mail on Nov. 4, 2004 that: “All Turkish Cypriots know what happened in the villages of Aloa (Atlılar),Maratha (Muratağa) and Sandalari (Sandallar). It is the Greek Cypriots who do not. ... The Greek Cypriots of the neighboring villages, along with army personnel, attacked these villages. They shot the children, the mothers and any old people left in the villages.… For me this became a nightmare because all these years I had been convinced that everything we had done was right.” / link
We must read to know the past...
Kore Cephesinde bulunmuş askerlerimiz, Dr. Fazıl Küçük ile Rauf Denktaş'tan
isimsiz kahramanlara....
