Mark Mills - The Information Officer

Had Malta been blanketed with forests, had the Maltese chosen to build their homes of wood, then the island would surely have capitulated by now. Stone buildings might crumble and pulverize beneath bombs, but they didn’t catch fire. And it was fire that did the real damage, spreading like quicksilver through densely populated districts, of which there were many on Malta. The island was small—seventeen miles from top to toe, and only nine at its widest point—but its teeming population numbered more than a quarter of a million. Towns and villages bled into one another to form sprawling conurbations ripe for ruin, and while they had suffered terribly, the devastation had always remained localized.

In the end, though, it was the underground shelters—some of them huge, as big as barracks—that had kept the casualty rates so low. The Maltese simply descended into the earth at the first sign of danger, taking their prayers and a few prized possessions with them. Max liked to think of it as an inborn urge. The island was honeycombed with grottoes, caves, and catacombs where their ancestors had sought refuge in much the same way long before Christ walked the earth or the Egyptians raised their pyramids. The threat might now be of a different nature, but the impulse remained the same.

He could remember running this theory past Mitzi on their first meeting. And he could remember her response.

“Once a troglodyte, always a troglodyte.”

She had said it in that mildly mocking way of hers, which he had misread at the time as haughtiness.

“Have I offended you?” she asked.

“Not at all.”

“I’m sorry. It’s a lovely theory. I’ve always loved it.”

The subtext was plain: don’t think for a moment that you’re the first person to whom it has occurred.

He knew now that she had been sparring with him, playfully batting his pretentiousness straight back at him to see how he reacted. He had failed that first test, lapsing into silence, obliging her to end his suffering.

“But to tell you the truth, I’d love it more if I didn’t spring from a long line of Irish potato pickers.”

The memory of her words brought a smile to his face.

“We’re about to have seven kinds of shit knocked out of us, and you’re smiling?” Elliott remarked.

“I think we’re safe.”

Everyone else did too, judging from the number of people abandoning the garden for the grandstand view of the crow’s nest. Max spotted young Pemberton among the stream of souls pouring onto the roof. Too polite to question the behavior of the other guests, he nevertheless looked very ill at ease. Who could blame him? Common sense dictated that they all seek shelter. A year back they would have done so, but somehow they were beyond that now. Exhaustion had blunted their fear, replacing it with a kind of resigned apathy, a weary fatalism that you were aware of only when you saw it reflected back at you in the shifty expression of a newcomer.

Max caught Pemberton’s nervous eye and waved him over.

“Who’s that?” Freddie inquired.

“Our latest recruit, bound for Gib when we snapped him up.”

“Handsome bastard,” said Elliott. “There’ll be flutterings in the dovecote.”

“Go easy on him. He’s all right.”

“Sure thing,” said the American, not entirely convincingly.

Max made the introductions, with Pemberton saluting Freddie and Elliott in turn.

“So what’s the gen, Captain?” Elliott demanded with exaggerated martial authority.

“The gen, sir?”

“On the raid, Captain, the goddamn air raid.”

“I’m afraid I’m new here, sir.”

“New! What the hell good is new with Jerry and Johnny Eye-tie on the warpath?”

“Ignore him,” said Max. “He’s having you on.”

“Yank humor,” chipped in Freddie.

“And that’s the last time you salute him.”

Elliott stabbed a finger at his rank tabs. “Hey, these are the real deal.”

“Elliott’s a liaison officer with the American military,” Max explained. “Whatever that means.”

“None of us has ever figured out quite what it means.”

Tilting his head at Pemberton, Elliott said in a conspiratorial voice, “And if you do, be sure to let me know.”

Max’s laugh was laced with admiration, and maybe a touch of jealousy. Anyone who knew Elliott had felt the pull of his boisterous American charm. It was easy to think you’d been singled out for special attention, until you saw him work his effortless way into the affections of another.

“Freddie here’s a medical officer,” said Max.

“Never call him a doctor. He hates it when you call him a doctor,” Elliott put in.

“He spends his time stitching people like us back together.”

Freddie waggled his pink gin at Pemberton. “Well, not all my time.”

“Don’t be fooled by the handsome boyish looks. If you’re ever in need of a quick amputation, this is your man.” Elliott clamped a hand on Freddie’s shoulder. “Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Lambert, a whiz with both saw and scalpel. His motto: What’s an Arm or a Leg Between Friends?”

Freddie was used to Elliott presenting him as some medieval butcher, and he smiled indulgently, confident of his reputation, his renown.

Pemberton acquitted himself admirably during the brief interrogation that ensued. He judged his audience well, painting an amusing and self-deprecating portrait of his time in Alexandria, his meagre contribution to the war effort to date.

It was then that the first arms started to be raised, fingers pointing toward the north, toward Saint Julian’s Bay, Saint George’s Bay, and beyond.

An unnatural silence descended upon the terrace, everyone’s ears straining for the discordant drone of approaching aircraft.

“You’re about to witness a very one-sided show,” said Freddie. “Try not to let it get you down.”

He wasn’t joking. The artillery had just been rationed to fifteen rounds per gun per day. A Bofors could fire off its quota in all of seven seconds.

The enemy seemed to know this. There was something uncharacteristically loose about the first wave of fighters staining the sky, a lack of the usual German rigor when it came to formation flying. Like a boxer in his prime swaggering toward the ring, the adversary was confident.

A couple of the big guns barked an early defiance, and a few desultory puff-balls of flak appeared around the Me109Fs, which had already begun to break for their preordained targets. They swooped in flocks, birds of ill omen, the real danger following close behind them.

A great staircase of Junker 88 bombers came out of the north, fringed with a covering force of yet more fighters.

“Christ,” muttered Freddie.

“Holy shit,” said Elliott.

Poor sods , thought Max.

It was clear now that the airfields had been singled out for attention: Ta’ Qali, Luqa, Hal Far, maybe even the new strips at Safi and Qrendi. They all lay some way inland, beyond Valetta and the Three Cities, strung out in a broken line, their runways forming a twisted spine to the southern half of the island.

The 88s shaped up for their shallow bombing runs, and a token splatter of shell bursts smudged the sky. Arcing lines of tracer fire from a few Bofors joined the fray. From this distance the Bofors appeared to be doing little more than tickling the underbellies of the bombers, but a shout suddenly went up.

“Look, a flamer!”

Sure enough, an 88 was deviating from its course, streaming black smoke. It climbed uncertainly toward the north, heading for home. This would normally have been the cue for a Spitfire to pounce on the stricken aircraft and finish it off, but the handful of fighters they had seen clawing for height just minutes before had probably been vectored away from the island for their own safety. It was easy to see why. The carpet bombing was well under way now, great pillars of smoke and dust rising into the sky, reaching for the lowering sun.