A Memento

Audio dramatisation adapted from the memoirs of POW, Phylactis Aristokleous.

"A Cypriot prisoner was idly wandering near the buffer zone. [A] guard without any warning, fired at him. We were all left speechless, and, miraculously, the Cypriot did not fall dead. He turned back, while everyone was saying that he must have had a blessing from his mother. 

The next day, as [he] sat beside me, he searched for his military knife, which he kept in the upper left pocket of his military jacket. [He] wondered how his knife had turned into a lump of iron. And here’s exactly what had happened: the German guard who had shot him the previous day had not missed. The bullet had struck the pocket on the chest of his jacket, on the side of his heart. It hit the knife inside the pocket and ricocheted. His knife was completely destroyed, and there was even a hole in the pocket of his jacket. I told him to keep it as a memento because it had saved his life. "