Why is Malta famous?

Is it about the Maltese Terrier? Nice dog, but no that’s not it…

Is it the delicious Maltese Pastizzi? We enjoyed a couple of the cheese filled pastries today (50c each), but no, not that either…

Perhaps the Maltese Falcon? A great book and Humphrey Bogart film, but not enough to make the place famous…

1940. The toughest time for the allies during the Second World War. Threats of invasion by Germany. Around the clock bombing from Italy. Rations. Air raid shelters. Hunger. Illness. Deaths.

The George Cross, the civilian equivalent of the Victoria Cross, was awarded to the entire country of Malta by King George V on April 15, 1942 to “bear witness to the heroism and devotion of its people” during the early parts of World War II.

It is the only time such an award has been given to  entire country. We saw the medal  today, and the letter penned by King George V, in the Malta War Museum at Fort St Elmo’s.

So you are all probably guessing this is why Dave wanted to visit Malta. It is one of the reasons.

The main one however, was to visit the grave of RAAF airman LAC Max Hennessy, who was killed here in 1954.

As most of you will know, Dave is a reporter for Army Newspaper. He writes lots of stories for the fortnightly Defence force papers. Dave has a reputation for writing some very interesting articles for all three service papers. He gets first pick of any historical pieces, as that is his particular interest. While undergoing treatment this year he still managed to pull together a twelve-page lift out covering the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, containing over 25 articles based on many, many hours of research and personal interviews.

In 2013, Max Hennessy’s name was one of 48 added to the Australian War Memorial’s Roll of Honour. All 48 had died in non-warlike operations since the end of the Second World War. This particular story caught Dave’s eye and he wrote a short article for Air Force News. (Read it by clicking here if you’re interested).

So today, we visited Max’s grave.

As discussed on previous posts, we like to visit supermarkets when travelling. Well, actually, we like to visit cemeteries too. Sounds a bit morbid, but in fact they can be the most fascinating of places, and today was no exception.

But first we had to get there, and that was not as easy as you might think it should have been in a country of only 245 square kilometres.

Michael. Our Croatian guide who drove us into Bosnia. Warm, friendly and knowledgeable. An excellent grasp of English practiced over his 49 years.

Stephan. Our guide in Montenegro. 29, young and keen. Intelligent and well-educated. An excellent ability to both speak and write English.

‘What’s his name’. Our guide in Malta. Terrible driver. Inability to successfully use his mobile phone and change gears. Barely a word of English. “You speak Maltese please?” his first words on our arrival. Oh oh.  (We called him what’s his name because he never introduced himself, or if he did we didn’t understand him!)

As we wound our way through the streets of the capital, Valetta, and then out into the countryside we became more concerned. The young man in the newsagency responding to our driver’s ever increasing horn volume did eventually come out of his shop, spent some time in what seemed to be an argument with him and was still yelling abuse as we sped off, or attempted to in third rather than first gear.

The parents watching their young son at the Saturday morning school soccer game were slightly more helpful when he shouted at them through the passenger window across Dave. “Englissee Touristico” “Where is graveyard”, or something similar!

Whilst he was making phone calls, swerving across the road and asking more bystanders, I decided to use Google maps! Thanks Dad for the recommendation to download the maps for offline use before we left.

We found the grave quite easily. It was amongst a number of other Commonwealth graves and those of their family members, including quite a number of small children. You can learn quite a lot about what was going on in a place by reading gravestones’ epitaphs.

When we had finished, he asked “Where you wanna go?”. Like we knew! Our attempt to explain that he was supposed to show us things just caused more confusion. “Markets” took us to a shopping centre. No thanks. Somehow we ended up at a seaside town and enjoyed a stroll around, laughing while walking, at our adventure to date!

We did eventually manage to get him to take us back into Valetta, to the old walled town, the St Elmo’s Fort, to the War Rooms and to the Saluting Battery. It was all fascinating and very much enjoyed on this bright, warm sunny day.

At one point as we were squeezing past parked cars Dave leaned over and said to me “That was close to the mirror”, then lo and behold, CRACK, the passenger mirror hit another and bits went flying. We also had a few other near misses. Can you guess what is wrong in this picture…Now don’t worry those of you who worry about us… nothing was life-threatening today and we came away unscathed! But yes, he was driving the wrong way down a one way street.

We decided we’d let him go after that and spent a few hours walking around the area near the ship, enjoyed a nice coffee frappe and yes, Dave had Burger King again!PS: We had lots of fun today. There’s a lesson in that for me as a preparation perfectionist. Sometimes things don’t need to be perfect to be good. Sometimes things go wrong and often that makes things both fun and funny. We had lots of laughs today.

Tomorrow is another day at sea. Time for us to research Mallorca and download the Mallorca map on Google maps.

A little bit of planning, but not too much! Remember Sara, keep things simple 😉

Ciao!

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