The abandoned Trident, sacrificed for parts so its sibling aircraft could escape CY P R US ransacked interiors, their tow onto the apron was designed to appear a function of runway repairs to the watching Turkish. Least damaged and with clear ownership, the BAC 1-11 was first to leave that year. Resolving the split liability, ownership and damage to the Tridents took another two years. Lightly damaged, 5B-DAC and 5B-DAD were returned to airworthiness between March and May 1977. With holes patched and engines swapped, they were Nicosias last departures under special UN authorisation. Both flew in BA colours for several years, 5B-DAD ultimately scrapped and 5B-DAC retired to Duxford. Only donor Trident 5B-DAB remains at Nicosia, its bleached colours and bullet holes hinting at the slow passage of time since the airport gun battle. Permanently rooted, the aircrafts historic nickname The Gripper, for its reluctance to leave the ground, is doubly apt. The airport remaining strictly off-limits, its ironic the innovative design (Doppler moving map display, autoland pioneering) has been reduced to a hidden shell. The brutalist concrete terminal could be any Soviet-bloc edifice, but for the intermittent airport lettering on its roof and vintage adverts behind broken glass. Boots on the ground Named for the chinagraph used by General Peter Young to mark the ceasefire line after the intercommunal violence of Bloody Christmas 1963, the Green Line bisects Nicosia into Turkish Lefkosa and Greek Lefkosia. So many Nicosia issues come back to that chinagraph pencil, says Sam LewisBlanc, inaugural Turkish Liaison Officer for the UN in Cyprus, 2019-2021. He now hosts the Cyprus Untold podcast, unpicking the thorny Cyprus Problem. I loved it and was fascinated by it all, he says. I think Im unique in holding the middle ground, conscious of my Western and British Army viewpoint. He continues: If you take a line on a 1960s paper map and turn it into a digital one in 2000, the scale doesnt add up. Why is the line 200m wide when the street is only a couple of metres? Suddenly the reality on the ground doesnt match whats presented and there wasnt enough detail in writing at the time the lines were drawn in the 1960s and 1970s. 42 THE LOG Autumn 24 pp40-43 Nicosia.indd 42 You cant get away from being bombarded about the atrocities of 1974 when living in Nicosia. And if you dont do the research, or speak to Cypriots themselves, youll struggle to understand, because of the 10 years prior and why Turkey invaded in the first place Cypriots, in my view, are Cypriots not Turkish or Greek, theyre just lovely people, so welcoming. The rumour mill says you shouldnt go to the north: its dangerous or the food is unsafe. Whereas in my experience it was the opposite. Because I was engaging with them, I experienced that, learnt the history and so did my family, Lewis-Blanc says. On the idea that 1974 will soon pass from living memory, giving younger generations a chance to drive their own resolution, Lewis-Blanc suggests most empathy amongst the youngest and oldest. The checkpoints only opened in 2003, so they didnt know each other. Now they realise: That guy over there, were both Cypriots. He describes an organised, bi-communal area in Nicosia. Older gentlemen visit this neutral ground to play chequers, drink lemonade and, when I would chat with them, theyd explain: This is my schoolfriend, we had to fight each other, and now were friends again. Towed to obstruct the runway a silhouette of a burned out tail against UN tanks For a 20 per cent Turkish population in 1974, Turkey seized (and retains) a third of Cyprus, making some 200,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots refugees overnight. It took until EU accession in 2003 before they could see their shattered or repossessed homes and businesses again. For the hundreds dead and thousands wounded on both sides, Nicosias Green Line marking its porous, but still guarded, buffer zone 13/11/2024 14:39