The Battle of the Pine is the name given in Greek Cypriot sources to an attack on a British army vehicle by the EOKA on 24th November 1955, two days before the declaration of the Cyprus Emergency. A team of EOKA guerrillas ambushed the vehicles on the road from Kyperounda to Chandria killing one soldier, Sapper Robert Melson. The next day British troops shot dead a Cypriot who approached the vehicle in which Downing died and failed to answer challenges from British soldiers.