The early Mass was interrupted as what must have been a personal prayer was taken up and spread like wildfire as a chant through the frightened congregation, ‘Gesu, Guzeppi, Marija, Itfghu l-bombi fil-hamrija’, ‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary, make the bombs drop in soil’.
Not far away from the parish church in ancient Birgu, in the dockyard a group of British women were taking shelter in an old boathouse.
‘In June, 1940, when Italy first came into the war, no one quite knew what to expect,’ recalled Queenie Lee, some years later.
Our first raid was six hours after war was declared – at dawn on June 11th. There was what seemed like a terrific amount of noise. I didn’t know the difference between guns and bombs, as I sat in an old boathouse under some fortifications with other women on war work. We felt comparatively safe as we’d been told that it was an air raid shelter and we could sleep there. We were later to learn what safety is – that it’s perhaps to be had under sixty feet of rock, but not in an old boathouse . . .1
Queenie Lee and her companions wouldn’t have been so relaxed had they realized that in the months to come, her boathouse would be buried under rubble!
Outside, in the now deserted streets, the headlines of the newspapers on the newsstands told the story. The front pages of the four daily newspapers offered no comfort to the reader. ‘Mussolini Cowardly Act’ proclaimed the front page headline of The Times of Malta, while a glance at the front page of the other English language newspaper, The Malta Chronicle, showed ‘Rash and Foolhardy Decision – Italy Plunges into Horrors of War’. The Maltese-language newspapers told the same story. Il-Berqa, the Maltese stablemate of The Times of Malta, had a front page headline reading ‘L-Italja Tiddikkjara Gwerra’, ‘Italy declares war’, while its rival Lehen is-Sewwa’s front page ran ‘Mussolini jixhet l-Italja fil-Gwerra’, ‘Mussolini throws Italy into war’.
Italy had entered the Second World War the previous day, Monday, 10 June, 1940, as France reeled under the overwhelming might of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. An ultimatum to surrender by midnight had been issued to Malta. The terror and anxiety of those on the receiving end of this first air raid was intensified by the fear that the Italians would not simply use high explosive, but would also use gas, just as they had in Abyssinia, present-day Ethiopia, when they had invaded that country just five years earlier.
Many had spent a sleepless night, expecting an air raid as soon as the ultimatum had expired. Even those who had heard the engines of the aircraft had been caught by surprise, most had assumed that the aircraft were British so their first warning had been when the anti-aircraft defences surrounding the dockyard had opened up. ‘I thought they were ours . . .’ as one Maltese put it. At 06.00, a population not yet used to the horrors of war were shaken first by the heavy roar of the barrage from the anti-aircraft defences ringing the Grand Harbour, described by one observer as ‘terrific and frightening – never heard before’, and then the scream of bombs falling, followed by the crump of exploding bombs and collapsing buildings, the ground shaking under the feet, and the screams and prayers of those caught in the open in the streets and alleyways below. Those who could hid under stairs, under tables or in alcoves, as the bombs rained down. One man, worried about being hit by shrapnel in the street, or being buried alive if his house receive a direct hit, tried to compromise by seeking shelter under the arch of a window.
The raid had not been a complete surprise. Some distance away from the crowded cities surrounding the Grand Harbour on the empty cliff top of Dingli, the highest point on Malta, the duty operator at the RAF radar station installed only the previous year had noticed the small formation of aircraft gathering over Sicily before heading in the direction of Malta. He realized that they could only be Italian bombers. The warning had been quickly passed on. In the dockyard, an air raid siren began its dismal wail, but elsewhere across Malta, the warning of attack was given by the Rediffusion cable radio service. The more affluent amongst those living in Valletta and some of the towns close to the capital had the luxury of a Rediffusion receiver in their homes, but away from the capital, the warning was given by public speakers placed in the main squares of the towns and villages. Many didn’t hear these warnings. A number of special constables had arrived in the streets of the capital and of the other towns and cities bordering the Grand Harbour, hastily directing people to whatever shelter was available.
Those living in Gozo and Comino, the two sister islands to the north of the island of Malta itself, saw the enemy aircraft first, the Savoia-Marchetti SM79 trimotor bombers’ engines throbbing as they passed high overhead on their way to Valletta and the Grand Harbour. These were large aircraft by the standards of the day, but there were just ten of them in two waves, seven in the first and three in the second. Above them flew an escort of nine Macchi C200 fighters.
The air raid was over within minutes. It ended even as a terrified crowd in Valletta headed for the largest shelter readily available, the disused railway tunnel running from the old railway station in Valletta and through Floriana to the Porte des Bombes. The tunnel had been part of the one-time Malta railway that had operated a single line out across the Maltese plain to Rabat. The attacking aircraft continued on their way, turning north and heading for home, safe in the knowledge that Malta had no fighter aircraft with which to strike back.
As that morning passed, other raids followed, none of them heavy, but with few places to hide, a huge exodus of people started away from the worst affected areas, the lower part of Valletta, Floriana and Pieta, where the marina had been hit.
This was a day with a difference. Generations of naval personnel, used to seeing Grand Harbour, for so long the main base for the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, crowded with grey warships, would have hardly recognized it on this morning. It was empty. The previous day, just three smaller warships had been in port, the elderly monitor HMS Terror, and two gunboats, Aphis and Ladybird, remnants of the Royal Navy’s second largest fleet. They too were now gone.
This was war.
Mussolini’s declaration of war had come over the radio during the previous evening. It was greeted with shock and anger by the Maltese, and in Valletta there was almost a breakdown in public order as the police attempted to stop large groups of angry men from attacking the offices and houses of people suspected of having sympathy with Fascism.
Crowds, many of them consisting of young men who had come from the surrounding villages, gathered on many street corners that first evening. The largest crowd was opposite the Police Station in Valletta’s Kingsway, watching as Italians resident in Malta arrived having been rounded up, ready to be sent to an internment camp. The more thoughtful sought refuge against whatever the night might bring in some recently re-opened tunnels in the walls of Valletta and the three cities across the Grand Harbour, or in the old railway tunnel running from Valletta under most of Floriana.
Before the outbreak of hostilities, Italian propaganda had attempted to arouse the sympathies of the Maltese. A small number of Maltese did support Italy, but the numbers have been estimated at being around eighty of those actually on the island. As with the Japanese in Asia, Italian propaganda played on nationalist feelings amongst the Maltese. In the hours following the declaration of war, a wall plaque to Fortunato Mizzi, a nationalist who had been known in his lifetime for his pro-Italian sympathies, was defaced. Some time before, many Maltese had been offended when Mussolini had unveiled a bust of Mizzi in the so-called ‘garden of heroes’ in Rome.
Members of the Special Constabulary were summoned to police stations across Malta and Gozo for briefings. Many were expecting a gas raid, possibly after midnight. This reflected official advice; gas, rather than high explosive, was expected to be the weapon of choice. Their fears were shared by the air raid wardens, and by those who left the harbour districts and moved to shelter with families in less crowded parts of the island. Most just stayed put and waited.
The authorities knew as little about what fate had in store for Malta as did any of the Maltese. All that was certain was that Italy had now joined Germany, which had so recently thrust northwards into Denmark and Norway, and then westwards through the Netherlands and Belgium and across northern France, and that Malta was now part of this war.