Bulwark of Christendom

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A shattered Axis plane fell out of the clear sky, spun a trail of smoke and plummeted into the Mediterranean. Away swooped its killer, Pilot Frederick George Beurling, of Canada. The name of the Axis pilot was not recorded. But he had this distinction: he was the 1,000th to fly to his fall over Malta.

The defenders of Malta chalked up his number last week as they fought off the latest all-out Axis onslaught. For five days swarms of Axis planes had swept over from neighboring Sicily, only 60 miles away. Somewhere in the Mediterranean, during the distraction, an Axis convoy had probably pushed through to North Africa with supplies badly needed by Rommel. But the Axis had paid heavily for the transports' passage. In the five days of almost ceaseless combat, Malta's ack-ack guns and the R.A.F.'s Spitfires had destroyed more than 100 Axis aircraft. This week Malta still stood, battered and bloody, with guns and planes ready for the next Axis raid.

No spot in the wide world has taken such sustained and savage bombing. To defend it the British have paid dearly. But still they cling. If the world wonders, the British have a twofold answer.

Malta is worth the price for strategic reasons. Sixty miles from Sicily, the island is a constant menace to Axis supply routes in the Mediterranean. She is a base for British submarines. She is a potential base for an attack on southern Europe. And deeper than practical reasons, she has become Britain's symbol of resistance, as Stalingrad and Bataan became symbols of valor to Britain's allies.

Knights of Malta. Largest of the five diminutive islands which cluster near the Sicilian Channel, flounder-shaped Malta is about 17 miles long, little more than nine miles wide. Steep cliffs rise out of the surf on her south shore; on her north, rocky boulders tumble into the sea.

Beautiful but arid, she has a strange attraction: almost every dominant power in the history of the world has, at one time or another, possessed her.

The Phoenicians first landed about 1450 B.C. For two centuries she was under Greek domination. Later she fell into the hands of Carthage. For some 700 years she was part of the empire of conquering Rome. After the decline of Rome, army after army crossed Malta, leaving their marks. Her gateway was scuffed by the feet of the world--Arabs, Normans, Sicilians, Germans, French, Spaniards--until Charles V. Holy Roman Emperor, ceded her to the pious, wandering Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

The Maltese Knights held her against the Turks. She became the bulwark of Christendom against the Infidel, grew to be an even stouter bulwark when Grand Master Jean de la Valette Parisot built the fortress city which was named after him and which stands today on the north shore like an amber rock pile in the Mediterranean's sapphire sea.

In 1798 Napoleon arrived to loot the ancient rococo palaces and churches before he rushed on into Egypt. The French garrison held until 1800, when the English Fleet hove into view, anchored in Malta's deep harbors and took over the island.

Faith, Hope and Charity. For the British, Malta was a naval base, a handy coaling station and therefore a bright military jewel which, with Gibraltar and Suez, gave the empire control of the Mediterranean. This was not to say that the Maltese themselves remained altogether satisfied with the latest rulers. The Maltese farmers, descendants of the Phoenicians, illiterate, pious, aloof, tilling the thin crust of soil which lies on the island's rock, did not much care. But the city Maltese, largely descendants of the retinues of the Knights, fervent Roman Catholics, clever and temperamental, felt uneasy under this new and beefy rule.

In their strange language, which is Semitic dashed with the flavors of Europe, they whispered in their cafes while the outrageous Englishmen bounded up & down the narrow, stepped streets of Valletta, sweated at rugger, cricket, swam in the surf. Though there was never any outburst (the warm, damp sirocco was too enervating and the Maltese were too polite), neither did there burn in Britain's amber jewel any flame of devotion to the King. Not even when, in 1921, his Majesty granted self rule (within limits). The Governors and the governed lived in separate worlds, while many a Maltese cast wistful, restless eyes at Rome.

Then, on June 11, 1940, came the first air raid. It was little more than a token to show Malta that Benito Mussolini was now in the war. Maltese looked up from their stony little cotton, wheat and potato fields. Ironworkers, coppersmiths and lacemakers stuck their heads out of their shops for a glimpse of Mussolini's planes. From emplacements in Malta's limestone rock around the Grand Harbour and His Majesty's Dockyards, anti-aircraft guns boomed. A house front was damaged, a few civilians hurt, but most of the bombs fell in the sea.

By the end of the week Malta had had its 30th raid. All the air force the British had was four Gladiator planes. One fell. The others, nicknamed "Faith," "Hope" and "Charity," carried on, fighting daily against 10-to-1 odds. Chief defense was the anti-aircraft guns. Even when the British acquired some Hurricane planes, air defense was not much. But the Italians were bad shots and frequently too sporting to be dangerous enemies.

Then the Germans came.

With Sword and Prayer. The British carrier Illustrious had limped into Malta after a hot time in the narrow passage off Sicily. Stukas pounced on her, turned their destruction loose on harbor shipping and dockyards. German planes filled the blue Mediterranean sky. The sporting days of war were over.

The British defenders fought back. Some reinforcements had arrived. Hurricanes took to the air from pocket-size airdromes, even carried the fight to the raiders' nests on Sicily.

The native Royal Malta Artillery and the Royal Artillery, raised a curtain of flame that was fearful to behold. Even Moscow never lifted such an ack-ack barrage. Captured German pilots admitted that they had been unnerved by it. It probably saved the island from devastation, saved many a British warship and transport as she lay in the harbors or squatted helplessly in drydock.

Occasionally the British dashed west from Alexandria with reinforcements and supplies. Governor Lieut. General Sir William G. S. ("Old Dob Dob") Dobbie, deeply religious, ruddy-faced and hulking, made the defense of Christendom's old fortress a crusade, fought the Axis with sword and prayer. He hated to fight on Sundays but he did it. "Malta will triumph over the powers of darkness," he declared firmly. Malta's war rose to a crescendo. Day in, day out, Axis planes pounded away.

By June, 1941, ornate Valletta was slowly tumbling down. Tragic enough but surprisingly low were the casualties among the quarter of a million people. With picks turned out by the thousands by naval blacksmiths, the Maltese had carved out thousands of holes in the soft limestone rock, which has the virtue of hardening when exposed to the air, and there had taken refuge when the bombs came. A new order had emerged. Old antagonisms, ancient Maltese taboos and genteel English traditions, had collapsed like the buildings of Valletta. The islanders were all in this together.

Christmas 1941 was a somber day. Raids that began on Christmas Eve kept the people underground for 38 hours out of three days. The Maltese celebrated the birth of Christ in their catacombs and caves. There was no trace of sympathy for Italy left now.

Routine, in agonized Malta, became weird and terrible.

"We Trust in God." In Santa Vennera Hospital, Nurse Frances Manduca watched over 500 orphaned children under her care, quieted them when they leaped convulsively from bed. Explained Nurse Manduca, whose own home had been destroyed: "They dream that they are hearing the concussion of bombs."

Remarkable was the stoicism of the civilians. In the most perilous areas, near dockyards and airdromes, families took up permanent dwelling in the rock shelters. Between attacks, between clearing the rubble and recovering bodies after the raids, the islanders excavated more holes into which they could crawl. Maltese women timed their household work to the raids. Britons cleared the shell fragments from their playing fields and went on with their games. English women, dreaming of a day when they could take a hot bath, picked their way over mountainous piles of debris to shops which had lost their roofs and half their walls.

A British officer, later transferred, recalled a little girl who stood beside him occasionally when he was watching the approaching planes. "I would say: I think that is a Ju-88.' She would say: 'No, I think it is a Ju-87.' We would see the bombs drop out of the plane. I would say: 'That looks like a thousand-pounder.' She would say: 'No, I believe it is only 500 pounds.' Then we would dive for shelter."

He recalled the Maltese boatman who was ferrying him across the harbor when--"I heard the old scream and a heavy hit in the water about 100 yards from us. I wanted to run like hell for the shore and shelter as the others started to come down. You know what this fool did? He put about and started following up the bomb pattern in the water, hauling in the fish killed by the explosion."

Their philosophy: "We trust in God."

The Peril. In May 1942, the battle of Malta suddenly took on a new phase. Governor Dobbie was relieved. To fill his place came John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker, better known as General the Viscount Gort. He arrived in the midst of an air raid, was greeted by Chief Justice George Borg, who gave him a cut and bloodied hand to shake. Almost simultaneously there arrived reinforcements: more Spitfire planes. They hopped ashore from aircraft carriers. The U.S. carrier Wasp ferried in more. London had decided that the glory that was now Malta's must be maintained.

On the second anniversary of the raids, Malta chalked up these grim statistics: 2,537 alarms; 1,183 persons killed; 1,265 seriously injured; 18,498 buildings destroyed or damaged, including 112 churches, hospitals and schools. But a token of Malta's growing power was the swelling total of 590 Axis planes shot down, 231 probably destroyed, 546 damaged. British losses were at the ratio of about one to eight. Malta's determination to resist soared.

How Malta's resistance increased is shown by the rise in Axis losses since last May. Operating from the island, which is now a veritable aircraft carrier anchored off Sicily, the defenders have destroyed over two-thirds as many Axis planes in the past four months as they had destroyed in two years.

But Malta's peril is not ended; rather it has been enhanced. The stronger she becomes, the more the Axis is determined to flatten her into the sea. Today the center of Valletta is a ruin, in the midst of which, at last reports, a statue of Queen Victoria ("Old Ma") alone sits unscathed.

Power lines are now gone. Little or no sanitary facilities are left. Pollution rate is high and the danger from disease is great and constant. Judging by the heavy losses to two convoys last summer, convoying of supplies in quantity has become too costly to repeat, though the Royal Navy may try it. An increasingly serious problem, therefore, is the shortage of food and water. The riverless island has always depended for her water supply on rain.

In their wrath the Germans are using a rocket bomb designed to penetrate into Malta's deep shelters.

The Defender. When Gort took over, he turned his attention to community kitchens, which supplied 8,000 islanders last July, now supply 100,000. He set an example of frugal living by serving only civilian rations at Government House. The islanders approved.

He is an Old School Tie, but he is a tough Tie and a professional soldier. He entered the army at the age of 19, in 1905. In World War I, as commander of the First Grenadier Guards, he won the Victoria Cross. Among fellow officers, who declared that his battalions were "too bloody dangerous," Gort was considered mad as a hatter, though respected all around.

In post-war days he proceeded through China and India, as became a British officer, and returned to England to head the staff college at Camberley. In 1935 Gort was made a major general. On a sojourn in Switzerland, on skis, he collided with Transport Minister Hore-Belisha, who barked: "Who the hell are you?" Said Gort: "Gort."

Hore-Belisha became War Secretary. He made Gort his military secretary, later lifted him over the heads of 50 others to the office of Chief of the Imperial General Staff. He was a part of Hore-Belisha's "rejuvenation" of the army. A big man with a square face, whose hats generally looked too small for him, he was known to his men as the "Fat Boy." Actually muscular and fit as a fiddle, he expected his subordinates to keep the same way, would often give an aide a strenuous tour of duty just to get the flesh off him. Mounted on a white charger, Gort was a heroic figure as Commander in Chief of the British Army on the disastrous field of France. He shone as a systematic organizer rather than as a brilliant tactician. When he returned to England from the shambles of Dunkirk he was given the job of organizing England for the defense of her soil from the invasion that appeared about to engulf her.

When that danger was past, Gort was sent to Gibraltar, where attack again appeared to be impending. It was from Gibraltar that he was moved to beleaguered Malta. A nonsmoker, an austere man, Gort is nevertheless a sherry connoisseur. Regretfully he left behind him at Gib a decorated sherry cask presented by his staff.

Where Gort is now he will have no use for decorated casks. His white charger is now a bicycle on which he wheels himself around rubble-strewn streets where busses no longer run. Petrol is too precious to use even in a general's automobile. Gort's post will require all his attention, all his talents, all the fortitude of his quarter of a million people.

In September, on behalf of his King, Gort presented the Maltese with the George Cross. The citation: for gallant endurance. Chief Justice Borg accepted the medal and deposited it under a plinth in the main square opposite an old palace of the Grand Masters of the Knights of St. John. Over the plinth the King's Own Malta Regiment took up solemn sentry duty. Stoically the Maltese burrowed into their ancient island. Grimly, for the power and the glory and for Christendom, the island of the Knights fought on.

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