UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
A Day of Siege
By A. P. CARTER (Middlesex Hospital Medical School) WAR came to Malta in June, 1940, after nine months of speculation and fear. I was ten, and watched the island I had begun to know join the desperate struggle for survival ; soon accepting it as something normal, something it would be strange to be without. For a year I had enjoyed with increasing interest the perquisites of a Mediterranean island, and now to these was added the spectacle of war. For the next two years I learnt a little of the meaning of war ; but, never having known peace, I was not so much horrified as puzzled. So the siege became part of the fascination and, perhaps, even increased my great pleasure in Malta.
Accurate timing and a reliable enemy were essential to observe the first spectacle of the day. Arriving at the guard-room of St. Andrews, a few miles outside Valetta, with school only two minutes away, just as the last wail of the siren died, my friend John and I would confer, and reach the inevitable conclusion that it was time the exhortations of our parents should be remem- bered, We would shelter at once. We joined the knot of soldiers at the end of the sandbagged porch which looked towards the airfields of Luca and Hal-Far and waited. Soon, guided by the cotton puffs that suddenly sprinkled the sky, we picked out the familiar Stukas as one by one they began their precipitous dive. Some disappeared out of sight behind the Hamrun ridge ; some spilled their load earlier, and, neglecting the plane, we would watch its cargo till it too disappeared. Now was the time for care, for St. Andrews was on the line that joined the airfields of Malta to those of Sicily, and remnants of cargo would be lavished along this route. We would reach school in time to join our fellows as they emerged from school slit trenches, zealously guarded by our teachers.
School didn't last long enough to require much enthusiasm or engender much resentment. Lessons were preferable to ses- sions of grim inactivity in a slit trench, so that any inherent dislike for these few brief hours of morning school could be conveniently and patriotically vented on the enemy. The work of our teachers became increasingly difficult ; not only added responsibility but also the brightest and most intriguing pieces of knowledge they could teach us paled before the happenings of our every day. I was grateful when they succeeded in their task, for when tempted to some unlawful occupation `I had to matchits pleasure against the fact that the headmistress was my- mother. How mistaken were my friends who thought that by this I enjoyed some privileged immunity.
Soon school would be over and then we went home to lunch, which like all our meals- had come to be based mainly on tomato ; whether as soup, stuffed, fried, tinned or fresh it seemed inevitable. Lunch ended better than it began, always with fruit, flaming red-orange prickly pear, pomegranate, grapes (black and white), sugar melon and water melon, fresh figs, medlars or apricots. These last grow best in the more fertile adjacent island of Gozo. Edward Lear described Gozo as " ponskizillious and gromphiberous, being as no words can describe its magnificence." The laden Gozo boats would lazily sail round to the Grand Harbour to sell the island's produce in Valetta.
Finally released, free for the afternoon, allowed to make the most of the glittering sun now at its brilliant highest, we instinctively went down to the sea, .where St. George's Bay formed an extension to our rocky playground. The sides of the bay were of sharp volcanic rock, allowing a quick safe entry into deep water. The small crescent of beach was always covered with black tape-shaped seaweed, which the farmers carted away for their fields. The floor of the bay was a forest of varied green-brown flora, dark spongy moss vying with a tall tangle of light growth with occasional sandy clearings, detectable from the bank by the patches of pale fight green against the background of deep blue. Here for the first hour Mf the afternoon in the still quiet heat we watched the tirelesi inting shoals of fish as they slipped through the water among the tapering weeds or hovered near pink sea anemone rhythmically stretching for its prey. Then we ungracefully took their place, refreshing and cooling ourselves while changing but previous covering of hot dry dust for white sea salt as we dried( in the sun.
On other days. when tired of avoiding stinging jelly-fish trail ing tendrils from a canopy of opaque slime, we watched the grizzled artist who, with double-needled brush like a miniature, sewing-machine, stitched coloured patterns on pink flushed flesh with rapid accuracy. The walls were covered with his repertory of designs, varying from the single coloured dove to the triple tinted dragon. Reluctantly leaving, as the shimmering heat-haze stilled at the end of the afternoon, I always wondered why; unlike all other pictures I had seen, his were never signed or initialled.
The really important work of the day was yet to be done) Once a boy used to come and try to sell us eggs • now I had to go and cajole his mother for this rare expensive food. Where they lived were about six houses, each household farming a few fields, making much money but continuing to live in theitj habitual squalor. They were happy. The one-storied building built of large blocks of sandstone that was their home had a large wooden double door like the front of a barn. In this a small more practical entrance had been made. I would push into a large room, the air heavy with oil-smoke and the smell of a meal in preparation ; the walls, fly-blown and grimy, traik4 off into an indistinguishable murk in the corners. There were no windows of any sort. In one wall was an alcove containing a shrine to the Madonna lighted by a padella.
Balanced on a rickety table by the door was an oil-lamp which was lit when it was dark inside and outside but not when It was dark Inside only. At this table I would politely bargain with the mother, while in the opposite corner a ragged bed piled with dark discoloured bedclothes sheltered at least two children, the elder preventing the other from interrupting thq quiet leisured discussion of the questions as to why there were no eggs and why if there were they would cost much. In the far corner was a doorless opening into the only other room in the house, through which would come a flurried hen, the cause of all our trouble. or a goat be led in to be milked with placid contentment. I never saw the father nor ever knew the family's name ; but with luck the hens would behave, at a shillingi an egg.
At home In the evening I would join my mother on the verandah, and during the long dusk would talk of the events of the day ; and listen to the prisoners of war, at this time mostly German, as, while enjoying their daily glass of beer, they sang the folk-songs of their native land. We would talk of the number of air-raids there had been—four or five ?—the amount of flour that was left on the island and the chances of a convoy reaching safety, whether again tonight we should have to go down to the shelters, our way lit by the ghostly whiteness of the flares, strange heralds of the danger to come. We would stay out till long after the prisoners had finished, and dusk had changed to night and the Milky Way saddled the sky, till final) yi we were driven in by the persistent attention of the mosquitoe. Now the day, we hoped, had ended.
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