While the story of Malta in World War II has been extensively recorded to the extent that the island’s ordeal is one of the most written about of the many battles of those bitter years, one book recounts in detail the part played by this bastion of the British Empire in World War I.
When issued in 1991, Gallipoli – The Malta Connection, by John A. Mizzi, proved to be very popular both in Malta and abroad. In view of requests for copies of the book, the author has reprinted a limited number of copies, adding some pages of photographs never published before.
Anzac Day, today, marks the 96th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli, nine months after the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914. The British and French forces combined to attack the Gallipoli peninsula, considered the gateway to Constantinople (now Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.
The author sets the picture as early as 1912 when the British government decided to withdraw the capital ships from Malta to the great dismay of the Maltese for many of whom the presence of the Mediterranean fleet provided their livelihood. The situation was reviewed after strong protests, with British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith visiting Malta, together with Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, to confer with Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, then HM Agent and Consul General in Egypt – the latter also being asked to inaugurate the water supply to Mellieħa when the pipe burst and drenched him!
Wiser counsel prevailed and when it appeared that war with imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary was inevitable and the French were moving their major naval units to the Mediterranean, Churchill told the French admirals: “Use Malta as if it were Toulon”. Within days of the outbreak of the war, 11 French battleships and several other naval units arrived in Malta.
One German battle-cruiser, Goeben Harbour, in 1912 on her first commission, eluded the British squadron from Malta on the eve of the outbreak of war and, together with the light cruiser Breslau, sailed through the Dardanelles to Constantinople, a clever move by the Germans to ensure Turkey entered the war on their side.
The Allied reaction was to send the combined British and French fleets to the Aegean to bombard the Turkish forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles. This action alerted the Turks while the Allied naval squadron failed to achieve any results and the joint naval commander, Vice Admiral Sackville Carden, who had been appointed in command while Superintendent of Malta dockyard, lost his nerve and was replaced by Vice Admiral John de Robeck. The decision was taken to force the Dardanelles with the ships and, when they attacked on March 18, 1915, they ran into a minefield with the loss of two Royal Navy battleships and one French battleship, Bouvet, which sank in three minutes with the loss of 639 lives, only 35 surviving.
It was then decided to attack the peninsula with troops in an amphibious landing on April 25 in what was to stalemate into one of the great tragedies of World War I.
In his note, the author writes: “Few episodes in the battle annals of the British Empire can match the nine-month Gallipoli campaign for waste of life of the rank and file, for valour, suffering, endurance and loyalty on land, sea and, for the first time, in the air and for the indecision and incompetence in the leadership and ill-luck in the military sphere. The two contending sides fought face to face and chest to chest and died like the flies that fed on their unburied bodies.”
A number of Maltese died in the naval ships. The first to die with the Australian troops in the initial landings was a Maltese and so was the last to die with the British army on January 8, 1916, hours before the final evacuation, which had been decided by Kitchener who, as Minister of War, had, by his indecisions and hesitant support of the overall operation, prejudiced its success. The withdrawal was carried out, to the surprise of all, without a single loss.
The submarine introduced a new form of warfare in this campaign. The German and Austrian U-boats had a field day sinking Allied merchant ships, transports and warships by torpedo and mine often by waiting for them in the vicinity of Malta, including two battleships just off Grand Harbour. One of the U-boats was sunk off Valletta and her captain, Karl Donitz, while in prison on the island, conceived the strategy of U-boats operating as a pack, which he adopted during World War II while Grand Admiral of Hitler’s navy.
During the campaign, the sick and wounded were cared for in over 30 hospital and convalescent camps spread throughout the island.
In all, over 150,000 sick and wounded passed through these centres in less than a year, having been brought over in a fleet of hospital ships, and of these, the many who died were buried in the various British military cemeteries, at the Addolorata, and at the Turkish cemetery. Also cared for were the hundreds of merchant seamen and passengers rescued from sunken ships.
The campaign cost 115,000 British killed and wounded –10,000 of the dead being Australians and New Zealanders – and 47,000 French, comprising 10,000 dead.
The Turks were estimated to have had 400,000 dead and wounded.
There are 31 cemeteries cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and five major memorials on the peninsula and one French cemetery and various Turkish cemeteries and individual graves and memorials.
Mr Mizzi has visited all these cemeteries, memorials and battle sites.