Eighty years ago to the day, the walls of the Sliema police station were sprayed with blood and pieces of flesh when a bomb was dropped in front of the Prince of Wales Road junction with Strada Ridolfo just after 7.45am.

Beneath the splatters, a row of corpses lined the pavement all the way to the corner of St James’ Street. Some had half of their head blown off altogether, while one man’s intestines were visible from a hole in his abdomen.

A karozzin horse lay dead in a pool of blood. Half of the cab driver was lying on the pavement and the other half on the road with his head blown off by a splinter.

This is the horrifying scene that met Charles B Grech moments before discovering that his friend Albert Mifsud, who had just helped serve 6.30am mass with him, had been killed on his way to Stella Maris College in Gżira.

“His face was livid, and his eyes were wide open, in a frozen gaze. I could not recognise him because of his unusual colour,” he wrote in Raiders Passed.

It was only when Fr Diego kneeled down to make the sign of the cross on the corpse’s forehead that they recognised the 14-year-old.

Not far away from where the two were standing, the entrance to the locality’s largest underground shelter was “awash with the blood of dead men, women and children, lying on top of each other”.

The bomb had exploded right in the middle of the road, damaging the police station and several other buildings. Grech says in his book that 20 people were killed including a police sergeant and two constables. Another 22 were injured.

The locality’s council this week remembered the tragedy by laying a wreath beneath the small memorial on the police station and marked the anniversary on Facebook with a post penned by architect Edward Said. 

Among social media users who commented under the post, Anna Grech identified her grandfather Sergeant Peter Cordina who was killed while ushering people into the shelter. He was the last one to go in when the bomb exploded leaving behind a wife and eight children, she said.

Doris Caruana meanwhile noted that her grandfather Joseph Bartolo was killed on site aged 38, leaving behind him seven children. He was on duty as an air-raid precaution officer. 

And Maryanne Hurley's parents' house was also badly damaged by the explosion, but luckily no one died. 

Others lamented the atrocity, noting that people have learnt nothing since as war is still raging on elsewhere, including in Ukraine. 

 

That bombing, at the height of World War Two, was one of three that devastated Sliema in just one year. Two weeks later, 22 were killed in the same locality when the Franciscan friary and Sacro Cuor church were hit.

In March of the previous year, another bomb had been dropped on the quiet residential St Rita Street killing 21 people with the youngest being only six weeks old. Ten houses were completely demolished and 25 others badly damaged in the blast. Another 70 people were left homeless.

Architect Edward Said, who shared Grech’s horrific account on Thursday, told Times of Malta that Sliema was primarily bombed during the war as the enemy targeted destroyers in the locality’s creek, and military establishments in Tigne point and Manoel Island.

On March 17 there were heavy raids all across Malta, with casualties recorded in Birkirkara, Ħamrun, Lija, Paola, Qormi, Rabat, Siġġiewi, Sliema, Valletta, Żebbuġ , Żejtun  and Żurrieq.

Michael Galea identifies the following among the Sliema casualties in his Malta Diary of War 1940 – 1945: Eddie Bartolo (38), Joseph Bartolo (38), Alfred Calapai (54), Antonio Fava (20), Paul Formosa (50), Giuseppa Micallef (54), Joseph Micallef (11), Albert Mifsud (14), Joseph Mifsud (66), Anthony Pisani (38), Carmela Sghendo (15), Francis Spiteri (14) and Alfred Vella PC547 (45).