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Occasionally the British dashed west from Alexandria with reinforcements and supplies. Governor Lieut. General Sir William G. S. ("Old Dob Dob") Dobbie, deeply religious, ruddy-faced and hulking, made the defense of Christendom's old fortress a crusade, fought the Axis with sword and prayer. He hated to fight on Sundays but he did it. "Malta will triumph over the powers of darkness," he declared firmly. Malta's war rose to a crescendo. Day in, day out, Axis planes pounded away.
By June, 1941, ornate Valletta was slowly tumbling down. Tragic enough but surprisingly low were the casualties among the quarter of a million people. With picks turned out by the thousands by naval blacksmiths, the Maltese had carved out thousands of holes in the soft limestone rock, which has the virtue of hardening when exposed to the air, and there had taken refuge when the bombs came. A new order had emerged. Old antagonisms, ancient Maltese taboos and genteel English traditions, had collapsed like the buildings of Valletta. The islanders were all in this together.
Christmas 1941 was a somber day. Raids that began on Christmas Eve kept the people underground for 38 hours out of three days. The Maltese celebrated the birth of Christ in their catacombs and caves. There was no trace of sympathy for Italy left now.
Routine, in agonized Malta, became weird and terrible.
"We Trust in God." In Santa Vennera Hospital, Nurse Frances Manduca watched over 500 orphaned children under her care, quieted them when they leaped convulsively from bed. Explained Nurse Manduca, whose own home had been destroyed: "They dream that they are hearing the concussion of bombs."
Remarkable was the stoicism of the civilians. In the most perilous areas, near dockyards and airdromes, families took up permanent dwelling in the rock shelters. Between attacks, between clearing the rubble and recovering bodies after the raids, the islanders excavated more holes into which they could crawl. Maltese women timed their household work to the raids. Britons cleared the shell fragments from their playing fields and went on with their games. English women, dreaming of a day when they could take a hot bath, picked their way over mountainous piles of debris to shops which had lost their roofs and half their walls.
A British officer, later transferred, recalled a little girl who stood beside him occasionally when he was watching the approaching planes. "I would say: I think that is a Ju-88.' She would say: 'No, I think it is a Ju-87.' We would see the bombs drop out of the plane. I would say: 'That looks like a thousand-pounder.' She would say: 'No, I believe it is only 500 pounds.' Then we would dive for shelter."
He recalled the Maltese boatman who was ferrying him across the harbor when—"I heard the old scream and a heavy hit in the water about 100 yards from us. I wanted to run like hell for the shore and shelter as the others started to come down. You know what this fool did? He put about and started following up the bomb pattern in the water, hauling in the fish killed by the explosion."
Their philosophy: "We trust in God."