Brave children of the war

At every historical commemoration, the media lauds the valour of those adult personnel involved in wartime events. Various military regiments, both Maltese and British, well deserved such praise. The cohorts of children who bravely survived the tribulations of their times were never mentioned.

Children born in the early 1930s faced the rigours of the worst time in history. Their lives were in constant jeopardy of imminent death. They faced the atrocities of poverty, bombardment and starvation. Daily they struggled to survive. Many were the sons and daughters of broken marriages and of illegitimate ‘fathers’ who were posted abroad and never heard of again. Others were imprisoned in orphanages. Many endured exile to foreign lands. They were all doomed to destruction. Nobody was fit enough to survive. Their sufferings affected their health, their education, their freedom…

Their health mirrored their pallid faces, lean stature, Belsen-like bodies and physical deformities. Lack of sleep and nightly air-raid interruptions played havoc with their erratic upbringing. They faced ravishes of contagious diseases. They succumbed to inadequate nutrition. All their life they carried the marks of prevalent diseases: the scars of scabies, poliomyelitis, typhoid, scarlet fever, whooping cough – all these and more. Schooling was erratic: schools were closed on the appearance of a new disease. Attendance deteriorated as weak children were easy prey to ill-health.

Their education was sporadic. Incessant air-raids drove staff and pupils into shelters. School premises as in Floriana were completely requisitioned by the Public Works, the air raid wardens, the Protection Office and others. Classes moved into underground tunnels, into club premises and even to charabancs no longer in use. Above all boys had to share school time with girls. They alternated: one week in the morning; one week in the afternoon. Many felt incompetent in sitting for examinations to secondary schools.

Evacuation to distant villages disrupted friendships, split related families, destroyed the closeness of the extended family unit. They missed their mutual help. Others stayed in the danger zones of the harbour area, enduring the vandalism of the Luftwaffe in imminent danger of losing life and limb: many were blown up by unexpected and unexploded bombs; others were buried under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

The valiant ones shed their fear; the open skies were their cinemas. They watched aerial combats of Stukas, Messerschmitts and Hurricanes. They scurried away to escape the blast of whistling bombs, the deafening sounds of guns on ancient bastions.

One day, their fear turned into joy. They applauded their salvation. Barefooted and in tattered clothes they ran down Crucifix Hill to the marina to welcome brave sailors who ran the gauntlet in convoys.

Very few authors have recorded our reminiscences of childhood; no elegy was ever written to commemorate our deaths; no sculptor ever sketched a stone monument in recognition of our existence. We, octogenarians, are the remnants of our historical past. Our wartime sacrifices, exploits and adventures slipped unnoticed into the unknown future. There were few unsung heroes among us but certainly we all lived heroic lives.