MALTA: BLITZED BUT NOT BEATEN

Philip Vella’s comprehensive account of the Second World War siege of Malta was published in 1985; my copy was the third edition, 1989. In the 1970s a group of Maltese enthusiasts formed The National War Museum Association and over the years they have collected and collated documents, photographs, first-hand reports, interviews and eye-witness testimonies about the Battle for Malta. This large-format book is a result of those endeavours.

Besides relating in detail from the outset of hostilities, it also contains almost a hundred pages of appendices recording convoys, daily rations, buildings destroyed or damaged, honours and awards. There are also dozens of illustrations, maps and black-and-white photographs. It is a treasure-trove for any writer or student of history.

In the summer of 1939, when it seemed that war was imminent, the Admiralty pressed to strengthen the island against air attack by installing 122 heavy AA guns, 60 light AA guns and 24 searchlights. Inertia hampered this process. On June 10, 1940 Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. Malta was in the firing line and by this time the islands only had 34 heavy anti-aircraft guns and 8 Bofors; the number of searchlights was up to strength, however.

‘... Malta’s loss would have denied the Allies of a staging post to the Middle East, jeopardised the fate of the British Army fighting in North Africa, and turned the Mediterranean into an Axis lake’ (p163).

The air-raid sirens sounded to warn of the first raid on June 11, 1940. ‘... ten Savoia Marchetti 79s crossed the 60 mile channel on their way to their target Hal Far airfield’ (p6). Other targets were the dockyard and forts. There were seven bombing sorties that first day, with no planes lost on either side.

That year, Malta suffered 211 air raids. Succeeding years increased in number, 963 and 2,031 for 1941 and 1942 respectively. The devastation was horrendous (as many photographs attest); ‘the Royal Opera House was demolished along with several other buildings in Valletta on April 7, 1942’ (p111); the ruins of the opera house are still there, concrete yet mute testimony to the siege. Two days after that, a bomb penetrated the dome of Mosta Church but instead of exploding merely bounced among the congregation. In the first weeks of 1942 ‘the number of unexploded bombs from heavy daylight raids by German aircraft rose from 6 to 143 per week’ (p128).

Civilians sought refuge in ‘the old railway tunnels in Valletta and Floriana, as well as in the Hypogeum, a prehistoric underground burial place, and also the Catacombs at Rabat’ (p15).

The Royal Malta Artillery recruited ‘a motley crowd of clerks and farmers, shop assistants and masons, intellectuals and illiterates’ (p34). In fact, as early as September 1938, ‘3,000 volunteers enrolled in the Women’s Auxiliary Reserve set up by Lady Bonham-Carter, the wife of the then Governor of Malta’ (p73). The native RMA and the Royal Artillery raised a curtain of flame that was fearful to behold... Captured German pilots admitted that they had been unnerved by it. It probably saved the Island from devastation, saved many a British warship... Remarkable was the stoicism of the civilians’ (p173).

Supplies came by seagoing convoy, the first in September 1940 from Alexandria. Subsequent convoys sailed from Gibraltar as well. Freight was also transported by RN submarines, among them HM Submarines Porpoise, Rorqual, Cachalot, Osiris and Otus [While in SM drafting in the 1970s I sent men to submarines that bore these names, but newer boats of the Porpoise and Oberon class, launched 1958 to the 1960s]. Submarines based in Malta attacked German convoys destined for Rommel’s Afrika Korps, sending to the bottom of the sea some 400,000 tons of supplies. In April 1942 HM Submarine Upholder was lost on her twenty-fifth patrol.

Shortages meant that improvisation was the order of the day; ‘men found fig and vine leaves a substitute, albeit a distasteful one, for tobacco... women made coats from blankets and dresses from curtains’ (p77). By September 1941 the only unrationed items were bread, pasta, cheese, rice and tea. At this stage of the war, the Enigma codes had been cracked and warnings of imminent attacks on convoys could be countered. ‘Cigarette-smokers took a deep breath when, on October 30, 1942, after many months of enforced abstinence, an issue of 30 cigarettes a week was introduced on a ration basis, to be increased to 50 with effect from January 15, 1943’ (p172).

‘Radar... is regarded as one of the main contributors to Malta’s defeat of the enemy. Radio Direction Finding was first brought to Malta in Marsh 1939 when the Air ministry Experimental Station was set up at Dingli Cliffs, one of the highest spots on the Island’ (p83).

Allied aircraft were transported by convoy but many were lost during the air-raids on Ta’ Qali, Hal Far and Luqa airfields. ‘In answer to the 200-240 daily Axis sorties, Malta could seldom muster more than six fighters at one time’ (p101).

In September, 1942, even while conflict still raged, the King presented the George Cross to the Island Fortress and its people, acknowledging the ‘gallant service’ the Maltese people had already rendered in the fight for freedom (p120). On June 20, 1943 the King visited the Island, ‘sailing through a hostile sea, with enemy air bases a mere 60 miles away’ (p184). He was given a rapturous reception by civilians and the armed forces; he toured much of the Island all day, witnessing the destruction and speaking to the Maltese. Prime Minister Churchill visited the Island on November 17 for two days and President Roosevelt arrived on December 8 and presented the people with a citation concerning their ‘valorous service above and beyond the call of duty’ (p197).

With the retreat of the Germans from Italy in 1944, few air-raids occurred and none resulted in any further damage or deaths. The last alert sounded on August 28.

‘... looking back across the years, serving at Malta in spite of the hardships, hunger and the constant presence of danger and death, is curiously one of these parts of one’s life, which if given the chance, one would do all over again’ – Leo Nomis, an American pilot flying from Ta’Qali (p154).

THE INFORMATION OFFICER - Book review

 

This is the third book by Mark Mills – each one different in place and time. The Information Officer was published in 2009. It’s set in Malta in 1942 during the second great siege (the first being against the Turks in 1565). [The book brought back memories of the time my wife Jen and I lived in Rabat in 1974-75].

There are two maps – one of the Maltese islands with significant places shown; and a second of the Grand Harbour – which will prove helpful if you’re unfamiliar with Malta.

It begins (mistakenly in my opinion) in London, May 1951 with a viewpoint by a restaurant’s maître d’ with the hint of a spoiler. The real story begins in Malta, April 1942 when a young woman is murdered.

Major Max Chadwick is the Information Officer in Malta, responsible for reporting to the populace with suitable material to maintain morale. Max has a number of friends, among them Freddie, the medic who works out of Mtarfa hospital [I worked there in the 1970s; it’s now a school and apartments]; Elliott, an American serviceman; and Ralph, a cavalier pilot.

When Max is told that there have been three young women murdered yet the authorities seem to be hushing it up, he decides to do some private investigating himself. Digging around for clues is not easy for an amateur, granted, and it is made more difficult by the wartime conditions, notably the constant air raids.

The submarine base on Manoel Island, the Tenth Submarine Flotilla, was one of several targets for Italian and German bombers; inevitably, the airfields were prime targets too: Ta’ Qali, Hal Far and Luqa; and of course the many quaysides and docks of the Grand Harbour and its inlets. [Jen learned to drive in Malta and took her driving-test on the old airfield at Ta’ Qali].

Mills quickly immerses the reader in the place and period. ‘It was typical of many Maltese homes in that the unassuming façade gave no indication of the treasures that lay behind it’ (p21). [When living there we’d seen many examples of this.] He also has a fine turn of phrase: I liked his ‘bewilderment of bastions’ when describing Valletta.

‘…he accompanied her and her mangy dog to the Blessing of the Animals at the church of Santa Maria Vittoriosa’ (p130). [We’d seen these ceremonies in Malta and Spain].

‘… he’d been forced to crash-land in a field – a near-impossible thing to do on Malta without hitting a stone wall’ (p191). [Not much has changed with this overbuilt island].

‘The Point de Vue Hotel stood on the south side of the Saqqija, the leafy square separating Mdina and Rabat’ (p230). The hotel ‘took a direct hit during an afternoon raid, killing six’ (p230). [We enjoyed a splendid meal here].

He mentions the megalithic temples of Hagar Qim and Mnajdra (p243) and on the same page on Dingli Cliffs the primary Radio Direction Finding station is found there; [even now, though the spying is somewhat more sophisticated].

He conveys the absolute terror of living through intense bombing day after day. ‘The ground beneath him had bucked like a living thing, and all around him the air had rung to the tune of flying splinters, a lethal symphony of rock and metal overlaid by more obvious notes: the whistle and shriek of falling bombs, the thump and crump of explosions, the staccato bark of the Bofors firing back blind, and the screams of the diving Stukas’ (p43).

Intermittently, we are privy to the male murderer’s thoughts, jotted down in his notebook, though he remains faceless; a man without empathy, a thoroughly unpleasant specimen. The mystery of his identity is maintained almost to the end.

It was obvious that Mills did a lot of research for the story and highlights two of the many books he consulted: Malta Magnificent by Francis Gerard and Fortress Malta by James Holland. ‘Twice the tonnage of bombs dropped on London during the worst twelve months of the Blitz had rained down on their heads in the last two months alone’ (p61).

There are a couple of interesting choices of character names he has used:

Chadwick lakes are formed behind a number of dams constructed by Sir Osbert Chadwick, a British engineer, in the late 19th century.

Mabel Edeline Strickland was the editor of The Times of Malta before and during the war. Mills’s book The Savage Garden has a main character called Adam Strickland…

If you have any interest in wartime skulduggery or Malta, you should find the book a fascinating read.

I’d also recommend Malta: Blitzed but not Beaten by Philip Vella. And of course Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Kappillan of Malta.

Editorial comment.

Two characters go to see a film at the Rabat Plaza (p229). Jen and I often went to the Adelphi cinema in Rabat (sometimes twice a week!); according to the Old Cinemas in Malta Facebook group, Rabat has only ever had two cinemas – the Adelphi and the Astoria.