ARMY IN MALTA
All
aspects of Malta’s defences were ill-equipped to tackle a sustained enemy
attack and this was as true of the Army as any of the other services. When
Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940, there were only five trained
infantry battalions on the island: the 2nd Devons, the 1st
Dorsets, the 2nd Royal Irish Fusiliers, the 2nd
Queen’s Own Royal West Kents, and the recently arrived 8th
Manchesters – less than four thousand men in total. In addition there was
the King’s Own Malta Regiment, but these were entirely locally based
territorials, of which one whole company was made up of Boy Scouts.
They were
there to defend the island against invasion and so were kept busy building
pill-boxes and defensive posts, wiring the beaches and keeping vigil along
Malta’s coast. Soon after hostilities began, however, the Army found
themselves toiling each day with a variety of other roles: filling in bomb
craters on the airfields, clearing rubble and helping to unload precious
cargoes newly arrived in port. Later on they were also roped in to help
to refuel and rearm the fighter aircraft. Without the ceaseless efforts
of the island’s infantry battalions, the RAF would not have been able to
function.
While the
infantry were carrying out the kind of duties they had never trained for
before the war, it was left to the island’s gunners to work alongside the
RAF in defending the skies. Malta began the siege with just 34 heavy
anti-guns and 22 light anti-aircraft guns, which was hopelessly short of
the number needed. However, more soon arrived and by the time of the
first German blitz in January 1941, they were able to send up a formidable
‘box’ barrage over the harbours and three airfields.
During
the worst months of the siege in January-April 1942, the gunners never
wavered. While civilians and the majority of servicemen could take cover
during an air raid, the gunners had to brazen it out, firing shell after
shell and praying they would be lucky and survive the falling bombs. For
many, however, luck escaped them. In fact, during the first enemy raid on
11 June, 1940, six Maltese gunners were killed at Fort St Elmo, including
Philip Busuttil, just sixteen years old. Ken Griffiths, a young gunner
with the 32nd Light Ack-Ack Regiment, quite openly confessed to
feeling ‘terrified’ most of the time – an entirely understandable
reaction, but he, like all his colleagues, valiantly stuck to the task in
hand.
April
1942 was a notable month for many reasons, but it was also the gunners’
finest hour. In January they had fired 28,788 rounds; in April 160,829
rounds – a staggering amount, which says as much about the grim
determination of those firing as it does about the hordes of enemy
aircraft flying over from Sicily every day. Gun barrels were worn out
through over-use and mountains of empty shell cases soon piled high, but
by the last day of the month, Malta’s gunners had shot down no fewer than
102 enemy planes, a considerable tally and a heavy loss for the Axis air
forces.
The RAF’s
great aerial victory on 10 May helped relieve the pressure on the gunners
– after April’s efforts they had all but used up their arsenal of shells -
but by October, when the final Axis blitz on the island was launched, the
number of shells available had once again been substantially increased,
and they were able to put up another fearsome barrage. One German Junkers
88 for example, flying over Malta on 15 October, was hit by no less than
four separate Bofors shells.
The
contribution of the Army – infantry and gunners alike – cannot be
underestimated and, working in tandem with the RAF, proved that
inter-service co-operation could pay dividends in times of peril.
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