The recent announcement that the government is about to lease or sell the huts at il-Beżbiżija (limits of Mosta) brought back some wartime memories.

Originally, there were only six huts plus the officers’ mess closer to the guns. More were added after the war as the site had been retained by the British Army for storage. This saved the huts from being dismantled by looters.

During World War II, its official name was XHD18 Tarġa HAA gun position. The rest of the gun site is now occupied by GO plc and the concrete emplacements for the guns, the command post and accommodation for their crews, apparently intact, have now been covered up by soil.

A very tall mast now stands exactly where the officer taking the shoot used to stand.

I know all this because I had served as its troop commander from April 15, 1942 until early September of that same year.

Of course, the huge bombing raids on Ta’ Qali airfield while we fired barrages make up the main memories. However, there are also other memories, such as that of an enemy plane losing its right wing and crashing close to the airfield with one of its crew hanging by his parachute that had got entangled in the plane’s tail; an enemy bomber flying very low over the gun position and dropping a canister of anti-personnel bombs (butterfly bombs) and, among many others, firing a pre-planned shoot over Salina gun-position that was being dive-bombed – my brother was its troop commander.

A much more pleasant memory was watching some 30 Spitfires rapidly taking off from ta’ Qali, three abreast, to meet a huge enemy plot 20 miles north of Malta. The RAF had a field day and from that day maintained air superiority over Malta.

The huts do not have much historical value but the intact gun and command post emplacements do.