Part 3 of our fascinating story of Vicky Rylance’s childhood experiences in Malta during WWII.
I was born in the town of Senglea, in the Cottonera area, and had a brother and two sisters. Parish records, which were taken to safety during the Air Raids, show that generation after generation of my family had lived and died there. Our house was situated on the bastions overlooking the Dockyard, with fantastic views of Floriana and Valletta across the Grand Harbour, a very dangerous position indeed during the Blitz.
In the weeks prior to the declaration of War, my Father decided that the area would be dangerous if war broke out. He searched inland for a safer house and found one in Birkirkara, a large village in the centre of the Island. This was an old, rambling house without electricity or water connections. In May 1940 the family, that is my parents, my Aunt Teresa and us, three very small children and a newborn baby, moved in, just a few weeks before Italy declared war on Britain. There was no bathroom; just a WC inside a cupboard under the stairs, no backyard but stairs went right up to the flat roof. Before water and electricity were installed soon after we moved in, water had to be fetched in buckets and enamel jugs from a pump at one end of the street, and even then, there was only one water tap in the house, and that was in the kitchen area. After dark the house was lit by oil lamps, especially during the ‘Black Out’ hours. Cooking was also done on paraffin stoves in a corner of the kitchen.
When the rest of the extended family moved in after the first raid, the house became very crowded. My immediate family all slept together in one very large room on the first floor, as well as my two aunts, while more relatives slept in an adjoining room. I remember lots of beds close together, like in a hospital. There was very little privacy. This state of affairs lasted throughout the war. Downstairs consisted of a large room immediately off the street and this was our living room cum dining room. In the middle of this room there was a very large table where the whole family gathered in the evenings, to eat, read, listen to the Redifusion, chat and pray the Rosary. Later on as we grew older, we children did our school homework here.
There was an inner room which had no windows. When the raids started, it was considered the safest room in the house. As in most houses, the ceilings of similar rooms were shored up with beams and rafters by the authorities, to strengthen them against a bomb hit. These of course, proved utterly inadequate. When the bombing of the Island started in earnest the authorities realized that proper air raid shelters had to be built to protect the population. These were dug out in the soft limestone earth of Malta, going deep in the ground. Long corridors were dug out and more corridors fanned out from the main ones. Individual families dug out their own ‘private’ rooms often living down there for months on end during the height of the blitz. The authorities had trucks ready at each street corner to take the rubble being brought up. There was an air raid shelter in nearly every street in the land, especially in the densely populated areas.
To be continued …….
Written by Vicky Rylance, Hon. Secretary Mellieha Group
