British commander honoured for Bosnia duty

THE COMMANDER of British forces in Cyprus has been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for outstanding service while he was posted in Bosnia last year.

Major General Angus Ramsay received the top award for his work commanding 8, 500 troops in the armoured division of the Nato Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia prior to taking up his Cyprus posting earlier this year.

“As Commander last Summer of Nato’s multi-national division (South West) based at Banja Luka, Major General Ramsay was instrumental in restoring calm to a tense stand-off between Serbian hard-liners and moderates,” a British bases announcement stated yesterday.

The bases commander was loathe to take all the credit for the award. “The DSO comes as a great honour. However, it is awarded for the collective efforts of many hard-working and courageous individuals under my command in Bosnia,” he said. “They were tense times, and the muscle of my Nato-led armoured division provided the foundations for a solution.”

This is the second DSO award Ramsay has received during his 34 years of army service. The Major General was awarded the Omani DSO in the 1970s while commanding a rifle company of the Sultan of Oman’s armed forces during the Dhofar War. He has also received a CBE.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.