Malta: A Childhood Under Siege

“Air raid warning, air raid warning. Shut your doors and windows.”

The Rediffusion blared out in English and then in Maltese, at 6:55am on the morning of 11 June 1940.

This was the first of many times we would hear that warning. The day our lives changed.

Margaret Staples was nine years old at the beginning of 1939 when her father was posted to the British colony of Malta with the Royal Engineers. Swimming every day, with blue skies and balmy weather; Margaret and her siblings thought they were in paradise.

Everything changed when the Second World War broke out. Hitler wanted to take control of Malta for its strategic position, right in the middle of the Mediterranean. To this end, the Axis powers dropped more bombs on this tiny island than anywhere else on the planet. When that didn’t work, they decided to sink all the supply ships going to the island and force capitulation through starvation.

This is Margaret’s story of survival, told by her daughter Linda.