CYPRUS: Buildup

Tension in Cyprus took a new turn last weekwhen a grimy little two-stack transport flying the French tricolor putinto Limassol harbor. Moody Cypriots stared with astonishment as 1,400 blue-bereted paratroopers and 1,300 airmen moved without armed protection towards the tent city hastily built for them by theBritish near World War II Tymbou air base. If that did not give a clue to what was happening, the dispatch of another ship did. It was a 3,226-ton tanker named Bacchus, and it gurgled toward Cyprus with a full cargo of wine. The French had arrived in force on Cyprus.

The French soldiers evidently thought that they were immune from the terrorist attacks that last week, after a brief armistice, erupted into a series of bombings and assassinations, resulting in the wounding of four British soldiers and the death of four civilians. Cypriot terrorism was still the main preoccupation of the British, whose troops traveled armed and only in groups. But the French acted like amiable sightseers and thought about the other business that had, ostensibly, brought them to Cyprus. “When do we leave for Egypt?” cried one cheerful French voice. That night, however, the Tenez la Gauche (Keep to the Left) and other road signs put up for the convenience of the French were torn down, and the next day EOKA gunmen fired on a French army truck. The French returned the fire.

By week’s end the number of French combat troops on Cyprus was expected to be around 6,000. Added to the 25,000 professional British soldiers and airmen estimated to be on the island, this made a sizable striking force for airborne action should a lunge toward Suez or Cairo be ordered. The British maintained a tight security shutdown, and it was impossible for correspondents to judge the degree of activity at Akrotiri air base. Middle East headquarters of the Royal Air Force, which sits on an arid, dusty plain on the southernmost peninsula of the island. But at the east coast port of Famagusta ten ships were quietly and efficiently unloaded, their cargoes quickly moved out of the dock area. The French, less security-minded than the British, let it be known that a fleet of eight transports, with a capacity of 10,000 troops per trip, had been mobilized in Marseille and Algerian ports, while a task force of one cruiser and six destroyers was already at sea, escorting troop convoys from the Algerian port of Sidi-Ferruch to Cyprus.

Despite this activity, few soldiers on Cyprus seemed to expect action. Said a battle-seasoned British paratroop officer: “It’s hard for us to tell out here, that’s true, but I’d say the thinking is about ten to one against a war.”