Malta Magnificent

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Text originally published in 1943 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

MALTA MAGNIFICENT

BY

MAJOR FRANCIS GE´RARD

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

PREFACE 6

Chapter One—RINGSIDE SEAT 8

Chapter Two—THE ROAD TO ROUNDABOUT 16

Chapter Three—SIREN ISLAND 24

Chapter Four—MALTA’S FABULOUS HISTORY 29

Chapter Five—MY INTRODUCTION TO MALTA 35

Chapter Six—INTERLUDE IN WHITEHALL 45

Chapter Seven—NOCTURNE 51

Chapter Eight—NO SINECURE 61

Chapter Nine—THE TREASURES OF THE POOR 66

Chapter Ten—DOBBIE OF MALTA 69

Chapter Eleven—JOHN BULL & SONS, LTD., BUSINESS AS USUAL 73

Chapter Twelve—THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE 78

YOU HAVE JUST HEARD... 78

A WEE, TIMOROUS BEASTIE 80

THE MAN FROM MARS 82

ALL IN THE DAY’S WORK 84

OFFICE GIRL 86

A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT 88

THE WOMAN IN THE CAVE 89

Chapter Thirteen—THE STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF MALTA 91

Chapter Fourteen—STIGMATA 95

Chapter Fifteen—THE GUNNERS AND OTHERS 98

Chapter Sixteen—TOUCH AND GO 103

Chapter Seventeen—OUR SUBMARINERS 108

Chapter Eighteen—THE DAILY ROUND 116

Chapter Nineteen—FAREWELL! 132

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 153

DEDICATION

To honor the brave people I award the George Cross to the island fortress of Malta to bear witness to the heroism and devotion that will long be famous in history.—KING GEORGE VI

PREFACE

A WORD TO THE READER

AT THE TIME OF THE PEAK PERIOD OF THE AIR attack on Malta the London Daily Telegraph wrote: Some day a golden pen will do justice to Malta.

I have no pen with which to inscribe letters of gold. In the days to come, when men again know leisure and ease of mind, golden words may be written. Today we are still too close to the horror and until it is past one’s pen must necessarily be dipped in the harsh black ink of actuality. Yet if, in this most brutal of wars, the or of chivalry be lacking, there is proud color in the argent and gules of Malta’s unbroken shield.

For two years I had the inestimable privilege of sharing the fortune, good or ill, of the garrison and people of that little island fortress. I was more than fortunate in being not only an officer of the General Staff but also the head of a Government Department. I was thus enabled to see not one but every aspect of the defense and was in daily contact with the people responsible for holding Malta, from the Governor and Commander-in-Chief down. Moreover I had a practically all-Maltese staff, and they kept me informed (as was their duty) as to what the people were feeling and saying.

If you would find in these pages a detailed record of each raid on the island, statistics of the weight and numbers of the bombs showered on this devoted fragment of the British Empire, or information concerning the destruction of Junkers 88’s or Stukas by R.A.F. and other defenders, do not read this book. But if you would know something of how we in Malta lived, of what we spoke and feared and hoped, I will try to tell you. In these pages you will, I hope, find some faint echo of the endurance and courage of Maltese and English alike; something, too, of the grand inflexibility of Dobbie’s leadership; a little, maybe, of the determination and faith of the people. I hope, too, to convey just a little of the heart-stopping beauty, both physical and spiritual, that was in Malta at this time.

I have left Malta now. I am writing at the depot of my regiment in England, yet the naked elms beyond the window at which I sit are less real to me than the spilling loveliness of the bougainvillaea in a garden in Malta.

There is a smell of cooking coming up from the mess kitchen, yet it is less pungent to me than that indescribable smell of the Malta dust flung up in clouds by a bursting bomb.

A bugle is blowing somewhere in barracks, yet the sound is less insistent in my ears than the constant wail of the island’s sirens calling upon Malta’s people yet again to endure.

I am writing while memory still holds the door, yet I have no fear of forgetting. Can one forget the place wherein one bade farewell to youth, its arrogance and intolerance, and found, instead, a hard-won humility, a pity, and an understanding?

For two long years I watched the slow crucifixion of a small people on Hitler’s crooked cross, and I saw them survive that crucifixion. Malta now is more than just a British colony turning in a good job of work; she is more than a lonely bastion of the United Nations in the forefront of the battle; she is more, far more, than a besieged fortress giving of her best, to the wonder and admiration of the world. Malta was, is, and will remain, so long as men have memories, a symbol and an idea, an idea for which her men, her women, and her children have died, the idea of fortitude, endurance, and that spirit which knows no surrender.

Chapter One—RINGSIDE SEAT

I TURNED TO THE OPEN WINDOW AND STARED across Valletta’s flat roofs to the tower of the Governor’s palace. Floating limply in the light air the sinister piece of red bunting that spelled imminent danger was a gay note of color against the blue of a cloudless sky.

The alarm bell in the outer offices had not been rung and I pressed a buzzer beside the desk. A hand bell sounded, followed in a few moments by the noise of swift feet as those of my staff who wished went down to the shelter. They had to hurry. There were seventy-five stairs to the ground floor and a further thirty-nine steps (significant number) to the actual shelter.

I picked up the War Headquarters telephone and twirled the handle. General Staff, please, I said. General Staff? Duty Officer.

Duty Officer, G

I recognized the voice of the man who was answering from Combined Operations Room sixty feet under solid rock.

Peter? Francis, here. What’s the plot doing? I asked.

Coming in now, replied Captain Read-Davies. Big party. JU-87’s followed by 88’s. I should get your people under cover.

Where’s the Hun at the moment? I asked.

Plus thirty just coming in for Grand Harbor. A further forty-five plus orbiting ten miles north with some more building up and just leaving Sicily.

We got anything up?

Nine Hurricanes air-borne.

My God! I said. Thanks, Peter. Ring you later.

I hung up. Marie-Louise, my secretary, regarded me quizzically as I lit a cigarette. It’s a big show, I told her. Would you like to go down?

Her eyes were anxious. Please, Major Gerard, may I stay up here?

I looked at her curiously and marveled for the umpteenth time.

She was a small slip of a thing—she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds—with fine, well-modeled bones. There was breeding there and an oddly touching pride. She held her head well. She looked very much like one of the women Winterhalter painted so charmingly, and I recalled that she had French blood in her. But she was Maltese all right—one hundred pounds of Maltese pluck.

The swing doors opened and Steve wandered into the room. On paper, Captain D. R. Stephens was my assistant. Verbally, he was just Steve.

He was stuffing that small section of a sewer he referred to as his pipe. What he smoked in it only Steve himself, and possibly the Sanitary Corporal (who was bound to be a friend of his), could tell.

From long experience I held out a box of matches. He affected surprise.

Oh, thanks, Francis. What’s the plot?

Plus seventy-five and more building up. Thanks, I’ll have the box back.

I retrieved my matches and went to the window.

It was midday. The hot Mediterranean sun shone down on the capital city of the island. From where I stood, on the top floor of the palace that once had sheltered Napoleon, Valletta was at my feet. To my right, a stone’s throw away, was the deep anchorage of Grand Harbor. Beyond lay the tumbled wilderness of stone and white dust that once had been the most densely populated area in the world, the bombed and martyred cities of Senglea, Cospicua, and Vittoriosa.

A convoy was still coming in. Even as I watched, a battered old tanker, her bow plates twisted and part of her superstructure missing, was rounding Ricasoli Point into the harbor. She’d been hit and hit hard, but somehow through the grace of God and the sheer guts of her master and crew she had made it.

Poor old cow, she’s caught a packet, exclaimed Steve at my elbow.

There was a sudden snarling roar in the sky and the nine Hurricanes swept overhead in the direction of Pawla.

That all we got up? asked Steve, and I nodded. Poor devils! It’s just bloody murder. And socking great fighter sweeps going on all the time over northern France. Bags of Spitfires, too.

The convoy, or rather that part of it which had got through, had reached us but only half the battle was over, as we knew only too well.

That morning a charming voice from the B.B.C. had announced to a gratified world that yet another convoy had been safely delivered to Malta. And that was that—apparently. Another smack in the eye for Hitler and his tattered lackey with his jolly little mare nostrum! Unfortunately that was only half the story. We still had to unload the ships and this under the very nose of the Luftwaffe based a brief twenty minutes away.

What’s coming in? asked a voice from the door, and Bobbie Burns appeared.

He was a long drink of water, dark to the point of swarthiness. He had a nose like Jack Doyle’s and lots of humor in his pleasantly ugly face. His speaking voice was half his charm. He was a gunner, lent by the Commander Royal Artillery to do a job of work for me. He had wit and a ribald sense of fun that were a tonic to me in those days when to laugh was to retain one’s balance.

I told him the plot and he whistled.

This, I suppose? he suggested, pointing to Grand Harbor with its shipping.

Nothing else but.

We waited. Blue sky and blue sea were serene. The streets were deserted—with cause. All Malta seemed to doze in the noonday heat.

To anyone suddenly transported on a magic carpet from Brooklyn or Buenos Aires it would have seemed incredible that this hush was but the lull before the storm. But we knew. We’d had it before. We rather wished the thing would start. Waiting is always bad.

They’ll come out of the sun, nodded Steve sapiently as he craned out of the window and solemnly stared at the sun until his eyes watered.

Wrong, said Bobbie.

His observation followed immediately on the distant boom of a gun. We stared where he pointed. High in the sky a dirty brownish stain had suddenly appeared to mar the perfect blue. Then another gun spoke, then another and another. The face of the firmament was suddenly pock-marked with puffs of smoke.

Over St. Paul’s Bay, I said wonderingly. I suppose it is Grand Harbor.

Bound to be, said Steve, knocking the dottle from his pipe into the empty street far below.

Look! There they come. Bobbie was pointing. "One, two...five, six...eight, twelve...fifteen...He went on counting—monotonously.

Oh, may I see? cried Marie-Louise.

We made room for her. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. The face she lifted to that growing menace was eager. There was excitement in it, but no fear. It struck me again how small she was, like her native island.

We could hear it now, the steady throbbing drone of the German challenge. I knew again that sudden sick feeling in the stomach, but only momentarily. I was growing used to it, thank goodness, with raids day and night. The guns’ reply was louder, too. Suddenly the heavy battery at Spinola, near where I lived, opened up.

D’you see the ME’s?

Weaving about like mosquitoes above the bombers we could see the enemy fighter escort. They looked tiny—and very busy.

Look out, that fellow’s diving, cried Steve.

Diving, my foot! yelled Bobbie. The swine’s hit. Oh, lov-er-ly!

One of the JU-87’s had suddenly lurched out of formation and dropped. It appeared to recover and hover for an instant. The next moment a vivid orange glow appeared in the fuselage.

He’s on fire, I shouted.

The Stuka raced toward the ground, writing a terrible sign in the sky. Two small white objects appeared suddenly in the smoke of its wake. Little and round, they shone charmingly in the sun. The crew had bailed out.

More and more guns joined the ever-growing chorus until the very air shivered with the full-throated bay of the Grand Harbor barrage. The sky was plastered with shell-bursts. Nothing, surely, could live in that torn inferno which a few moments back had been a serene summer sky. Yet the Stukas came on, bent upon the destruction of those gallant ships whose precious cargoes spelled life and continued resistance to Malta.

Steve, standing next to me, shouted something. I shook my head, I couldn’t hear a word. He pointed and mouthed, Diving! I nodded.

The menace was at hand. The four of us stared at the bomber in the lead. The dive bomber was coming straight in our direction. His target, as the bomb falls, was only two hundred yards away. I wished I’d had the sense—or the courage—to go down to the shelter.

To the shattering cacophony of the heavy artillery was now added the staccato bark of the Bofors. Ships’ guns, Oerlikons, joined their stammer to the frightful crescendo of sound. The savage whine of the dive bomber played a shrill treble to the deep bass of their opponents. Then the sickening scream and whistle of the bombs moved further up the scale in this appalling symphony to an accompaniment of the lunatic chatter of Bren and Lewis guns.

Noise had become a living thing that plucked without mercy at already vibrating nerves. It was ghastly. It was insufferable. It was superb.

Here was a little two-by-four island taking everything Göring’s Luftwaffe could dish out and handing it back at the point of a gun. Working like devoted demons in some incredible hell the gunners, those true heroes of the defense of Malta, the Royal Artillery and the Royal Malta Artillery, slammed a solid sheet of metal into the sky that the ships might live. It was the ordinary bombardier and the crew of his gun against Air Marshal Albert von Kesselring and a whole German air fleet; Kesselring, whom Hitler had chosen to break Britain, who had failed, and who now sought smaller game in an island fortress only one-seventh the size of London; Kesselring, sneering with the pride, contempt, and confidence of Lucifer, from his vast bases in Sicily.

Bobbie caught me by the shoulder and pointed with shaking hand. He had no need to; even across Grand Harbor we felt the vibration of the thud. A stick of bombs overshooting the mark crashed onto Senglea, hurling the fine dust of this already shattered city into the air. Great cumulus clouds rose, billowing, from the ground in lovely and unexpected color—brown, black, gray, sepia, yellow, orange, slate, and white—against the unstained azure of the sky beyond and crisscrossed in sudden and ever-changing pattern by the vivid scarlet of tracer shells from the Bofors. Fear was gone, only fascination remained. I stood petrified, entranced by the terrible beauty attendant on man’s destruction of man and the works of man.

I was wrenched suddenly from my semi-stupefaction by something nearer at hand. A JU-87, coming down almost to roof level and not fifty yards from where we stood bunched in my window, screamed past. We saw the bombs released and started on their downward plunge. There was no doubt as to their objective. It was the battered old tanker still steaming into Grand Harbor and now abreast of Fort St. Angelo.

We watched, scarcely breathing. There came the thunder of the explosions and the tanker disappeared from sight in a solid sheet of water. It was uncanny. One moment she was there; the next, there was nothing but a curtain thrown up from the waters of the harbor.

It must, of course, have been only a matter of seconds, but to us, watching with a full realization of what her cargo of aviation gasoline meant to the Royal Air Force, it seemed an age before she reappeared beyond the bomb splashes, untouched, unbeaten, her every gun spitting a vicious defiance at her attackers.

Marie-Louise was jumping about at my side. She discovered to her astonishment that she had hold of my wrist. Even in the midst of these chaotic happenings she looked suddenly shy, remembered her manners, and drew away.

Oh, look, Major Gerard.

I couldn’t hear her but I read her lips. I glanced back to the scene of action so close to us. The Stuka that had at-tacked the tanker was pulling out of its dive over Rinella. It seemed as though it must strike one of the great wireless masts that stabbed the sky. It was going out low, banking toward the north, where lay Sicily and the safety that it was never to know.

Out of the sun, perfectly positioned by the Controller in the Combined Operations Room some sixty feet below Valletta’s solid rock, came a small black speck. It came nearer. It was a Hurricane. It was followed by others. Swooping like hawks came the Royal Air Force, going in to the kill.