Air-raid shelter tragedy

I would like to refer to the Hal-Far air-raid shelter story (September 28).

I showed the article to my brother-in-law, Tony Calleja, now 80. Tony worked as a carpenter with the RAF 137 MU at Kalafrana, Tal-Handaq and at Marsaxlokk before leaving Malta for Melbourne in March, 1958. He and his family of seven happened to be on the migrant ship SS Skaubryn when it caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean on April 1, 1958.

Tony remembers the air-raid shelter disaster at Hal-Far very well. Before WWII started, he was living in Zurrieq Road, Birzebbuga and worked as a carpenter in a woodworking shop, also in Zurrieq Road, that belonged to the Francalanza family.

When war broke out he got a job working in the officers' mess at Ta' Qali with the RAF air crew. Some months later he was transferred to the Kalafrana base.

When preparations were being made to exhume the bodies from the air-raid shelter, the officer in charge instructed the workshop foreman where Tony worked to make a large number of coffins. When Tony was working at the Francalanza workshop in Birzebbuga he was making coffins and his RAF foreman knew about it.

So Tony and some of his mates were given the job to make the coffins. Tony made 14 coffins that were used to bury the unfortunate victims of that tragedy.