Life was rather quiet for the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (Unficyp) in early 1974. The high levels of intercommunal violence that defined its establishment a decade earlier had largely receded to a relatively peaceful coexistence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Part of Unficyp’s civilian police component since 1964, the Australian civilian police – known as Austcivpol – with its headquarters in Limassol, smaller substations at Ktima and Polis, and men attached to Unficyp headquarters in Nicosia, had settled into a daily routine of village patrols and liaising with local police in the Limassol Zone, their south-western portion of the island.