We have ways of making you talk presents One Man's Window, an illustrated account of

10 weeks of war, Malta April 13th to June 21st, 1942 by Dennis Barnum.

Chapter 5.

First Day

After the AOC's talk, our airman driver plunged our dilapidated bus, without lights,

down for the Medina hilltop, through a night's cape of peculiar silhouettes and delivered

us outside the palace of another hilltop town called Naxar.

By the light of hastily struck matches, we groaked around for our luggage in the square

hall which smelt a cooking fat and drains.

We felt our way up the stone staircase before Scotty made a discovery half a burnt candle.

In an oasis of light, we moved as a body through shadowed state rooms, picking our way

carefully between the huddled sleeping shapes that covered the floor.

As empty beds were found, the CO allocated them to individual pilots, until finally,

there were only three of us left.

The dreaded hue and eye as the two flight commanders were accommodated in a small room in the outside

corner of the palace, before the CO, wishing us a silent good night, took the candle and

crept away, searching for a bed for himself.

Amongst the bedclothes, I lay horizontally vulnerable, wearing my tin hat.

All night long, it went on.

I tried to control myself as stick after stick of bombs shrieked overhead.

A abrupt and terrible crash has tossed the palace.

Silence was of exquisite purity between avalanches of sound.

...