CYPRUS’ remaining Second World War veterans gathered yesterday to mark Remembrance Day for all those who died in the line of duty.
“I served from the very beginning and was there until the end,” said 94-year-old WWII veteran Christos Eliofotou.
Eliofotou was one of 10,000 Cypriot expats who volunteered in WWII along with 20,000 Cypriots from all communities – over seven per cent of the population at the time.
Those were difficult times, 81-year-old WWII veteran Charalambos Paraskevas said.
“I joined the army when I was 17 because times were difficult and we were very poor,” said Paraskevas who ended up serving in Italy.
For Paraskevas, the experience was an education. “We left school after primary education but through joining we saw a different world.”
“We experienced destruction,” Paraskevas said.
Both Paraskevas and Eliofotou returned to Cyprus after the war, grateful that they receive a state pension, transferrable to their spouse in the case of their death.
Eliofotou even served as president of the WWII Veterans’ Association and despite nearing a century of life said he remembers “the whole situation from beginning to end.”
For those with long memories as well as those who were not yet born, one of the evoking poems of World War I was read out.
The poem In Flanders Fields assumes the voice of the dead who describe how they once “lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved.”
The poem ends, “we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.
Among those lying in foreign cemeteries are 600 Cypriots, president of the Cyprus WWII Veterans’ Association Loizos Demetriou said. Their bodies lie in 56 cemeteries across 16 countries.
Yesterday’s event was attended by President Demetris Christofias, government and party officials, former President Glafcos Clerides who was honoured for his contribution at WWII, as well as representatives of diplomatic missions.
Clerides was a gunner during the war and spent some time a prisoner of war.
“It is our obligation to remember and honour those who struggled and sacrificed themselves for the universal ideals of freedom, democracy and human dignity,” Christofias said at the event.
November the 11 marks the official end of the WWI hostilities: at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.
