Cyprus 1974, I was 16. I did not want to go but was obliged to by my parents. It was an ‘opportunity that I should be grateful for.’
I flew out with my twin cousins to join my aunt. Uncle, a known drunken sleaze, arrived a few days later. Their marriage was imploding and they drank A LOT. My uncle sexually assaulted me, in front of my aunt and cousins. Most shockingly my cousins didn’t turn a hair, and carried on reading their books.
We had been aware of the unstable political situation on the island before we arrived. However, things deteriorated markedly, and there was a Turkish invasion.
We spent several days sheltering in garages behind a block of apartments, with a group of about 20 others, listening to gunfire and bombs. Greek Cypriots in the apartments firing out, Turks firing in. At one point we could see bullets dancing in the dust just yards away.
Eventually UN soldiers found us and we were subsequently helicoptered off to a Royal Navy warship which took us, and lots of others, to a RAF basis in the south of the island. We were flown back to the UK from there.
Aunt and uncle subsequently divorced. I told my parents a tiny, heavily edited bit of what had happened, leaving out the sexual assault. My father, god knows why, reported some of it to another aunt who then told drunk, sad holiday aunt. And I was then obliged by my mother to apologise to sad aunt. Out of the all sorry mess, the betrayal by my parents was the thing that caused me most hurt.