By Margaret Sheard ……
A while ago our friends Chris Schubert and Fred Katzenberger spent many hours trying to locate the Canakkale POW cave in North Cyprus, and although they were very close, they did not actually get there. Following their article, we had a comment from Mark Miller with some photographs of the elusive cave Chris and Fred were looking for. To see the article written by Chris and Fred click here
In 1915 Turkish prisoners of war were captured in the Canakkale (Gallipoli) battles by the British forces, they were transported to Cyprus and kept in a POW camp (Caraolos) near Famagusta. Some of them escaped and were hidden by Turkish Cypriots in the so called POW cave.
To read a previous article about the camps “Exodus to Where? – the missing camps of Cyprus” click here
We received quite a few comments about the cave at the time the article was published, including the one from Mark Miller, who we had met at the Vouni King Restaurant at the time of a Strawberry Trek in Yesilirmak, and he sent us some great photographs.
Mark and his friends are great “cavers” and he has made the following comment about their other adventures.
I attach some photos from the ‘Hot cave’ – Sicak magarasi in Turkish, which is high in the St Hilarion mountains near Agirdag (North of Pinarbasi). We found this one in March this year. It goes down about 70 metres I believe, we missed the deepest chamber first time but Jim found it later.
Our friends Jim and Bren Kenyon are the cave brains behind our various exploits. They were with us at Yesilirmak. They have discovered (uncovered) many caves here. We have photos for the hot cave at Agirdag and one beyond the famous cave at Cinarli. Jim really deserves much of the credit for all our great caving days.
Great! guys! although one of the photos have the banner that is Gallipoli POW Cave at the cave site. I am bıt confused about the location, I am not sure if the Ağıradağ cave is the Çanakkale POW cave. I thought the POW one was closer to Alevkayası as Prof Ulvi Keser explains in an article about the dıfferent caves. I will send the article ın a Private msg to Margaret.
Hi Sermen. Sorry about this, unfortunately Facebook brought up the wrong photo which was of a cave at Agirdag and mentioned at the end of the article. It has confused things a bit but I did put a comment saying what the picture was and that Facebook had pulled in the wrong one. I think the actual article is ok though.