The Battle for Malta Page #2

---

when, um... she was bombed

pretty heavily.

We watched these aeroplanes come in

and saw the bombs coming

down over our heads,

and all we had was a little Lewis Gun,

which wasn't much good.

We knew they were aiming at Illustrious,

but we knew that some

might miss Illustrious

and, um... come fairly close to us.

Lots of things were hammering away,

but the Stukas got through all right.

The Luftwaffe struck hard,

but Illustrious had been well

protected by British reinforcements.

Six months in, Malta's anti-aircraft

guns were formidable.

With Britain now safe from invasion,

Malta continued to be rearmed.

Among the reinforcements was

Battle of Britain ace Tom Neil,

leading a flight of

Hurricanes from Gibraltar.

Following a guide from an aircraft carrier,

but still over water, fuel was running low.

We'd been going for almost six hours,

and I said to the bloke in front,

"If you don't get us down within ten

minutes, we're all in the water. "

And then, magically,

Malta appeared by my left elbow.

It suddenly appeared out of the cloud.

And as we crossed the cliffs,

all the ack-ack guns began to fire at us.

But I didn't give a damn,

I just wanted to get my

wheels on the ground.

And as I approached Luqa,

suddenly the airfield erupted.

Aircraft were bombed and burst into flames,

and for the first time I looked up,

and above me were 50,

60, 70 Germans bombing.

They knew what we were

doing long before we did.

We landed eventually, the air

raid was still in progress.

Aircraft were burning

all the way around us.

And then a man appeared, smoking a pipe.

And he came, and he jumped

on board my aircraft.

He said, "There's an air raid on!"

I said, "I know it, mate I've

just landed in the middle of it. "

With Malta's defenders

still greatly outnumbered,

new pilots were thrown

straight into the action.

We'd been there about 20 minutes

when three Germans appeared over the hill

and wrote off what was

left of the squadron.

And before we'd even taken off,

we were reduced to impotence

with three aeroplanes.

And quarter of an hour

later, I was scrambled.

I remember climbing up

above Malta, thinking,

"What on earth has happened to us?"

The infrastructure of the island

was being reduced to rubble.

Thousands lost their homes.

Electricity and water mains were damaged,

and distribution of goods became harder.

These events were recorded each

day by the Times of Malta.

It was run by Mabel Strickland.

We publish seven days a week.

And by the way, tremendous

credit goes to the newsboys.

It would have been useless to have printed

if we hadn't been able to distribute.

Were your printing machines underground?

No, that wasn't possible,

but they were sited around a deep

shelter my father had prepared.

Despite huge bomb damage,

the Times was printed on every

single day of the siege.

Each edition is kept here, at the

National Library in Valletta.

On Friday 10th April,

there's a piece about the

problems facing the island

and distribution of food and so on

and how they're proposing to tackle them.

And it's interesting,

because it reassures them

that that it's the breakdown of

communication that's the problem,

not the shortage of food.

'These editions also give an

insight into the public mood. '

There's a lovely advert

on the back page of the

Thursday June 12th 1941 edition

by CH Bernard and Sons,

who are military tailors.

And it says, "We were blasted well out.

"But we have blasted well started again. "

Nobody escaped the hardship.

Margaret Crawford had

remained on the island

while her father served with the Navy.

One snatched food when you

could, and water, of course.

The shortage of water was a terrible thing.

You had a bucket of water,

which had to do everything for the day.

And do you remember reading

the Times of Malta?

Oh, yes.

- We couldn't do without the Times of Malta.

- Yes!

- I know.

- It...

- It was used for everything!

- Yeah, I...

- Not only reading!

- Yes.

Although the suffering was

shared, for Anne Agius Ferrante,

there was a marked divide

between British and Maltese.

My father was really

very fond of the British

but disapproved certain things,

like us girls during the war

going a bit wild with the...

.. RAF and others.

But there was this colonialism,

and we were treated as colonials.

But there was no ill feeling as such.

It was just that they

felt we were inferior,

rather than that we were no good.

But as historian Simon Cozens has found,

it's a sentiment that could cut both ways.

This is a diary for the whole of 1941.

This belonged to a Maltese

civilian who lived in Sliema.

"25th of October 1941.

"Today is the worst day of my life.

"At noon, Italian planes

bombed a petrol dump

"which blazed fiercely indeed.

"In the afternoon,

"we discovered that Gemma

"has been carrying on with an airman.

"With the atrocious name of Clive!

"She told us a packet of lies

"and has indeed disgraced us. "

The relationship between

the Maltese and British

may have been uneasy at times,

but most accepted they were

fighting for a common cause.

In a very real sense, they

were all in it together.

But each had their own set of problems.

Malta was a very difficult

place to fly from,

because the island itself was just

a series of very small fields

with rock barriers everywhere.

And if you had an engine failure in

Malta, you usually killed yourself,

because flying into a rock barrier,

er... the aircraft burst into flames.

But one of our great problems was

the aircraft weren't up to it,

and a lot of people were killed

as a result of engine failures.

Britain regarded Malta as a base

from which to attack Axis shipping.

It meant her defenders were neglected

in favour of strike forces.

This is the lazaretto on Manoel Island.

During the war it was home

to the 10th Flotilla,

Malta's submarine force.

Although never more than 12 submarines,

they sank half a million tonnes of

Axis shipping in just 18 months.

Tubby Crawford was second-in-command

of Britain's most successful submarine,

HMS Upholder.

Well, at that stage, it wasn't too bad.

Food and drink were there.

Each submarine had a cabin area,

the captain had his own cabin.

There was a big veranda

all round the lazaretto,

where armchairs and things were available

so you could relax out there.

At the lazaretto, the submariners

lived in some comfort,

a necessity for morale after the

appalling conditions at sea.

Operating on Malta was an intensely

claustrophobic experience.

You're on a tiny island

with no chance of escape,

being bombed to hell day in, day out.

But imagine being on a submarine,

which is even more cramped.

Whatever they were feeling on the island,

it was a hundred times

worse for the submariners.

Well, they are very cramped,

and the ship's company

live amongst the torpedoes

up in the front end.

We all got a bit stinky, so you

Rate this script:3.0 / 1 vote