Alfred Conti Borda: Malta’s Unsung Heroes, Vols 1 & 2
Wise Owl Publications, 95 pp., €2.99.
Alfred Conti Borda, a retired school head and former language teacher, was inspired by his father John, his grandfather Alfred, and a couple of great-uncles who all served in the Royal Navy to write about the wartime experiences of 18 Maltese servicemen, most of whom were in the Navy, two British RAF pilots, four Jesuit priests, two Christian Brothers, and a seven-year-old Maltese girl.
Most of these experiences Conti Borda had written about in The Sunday Times of Malta, but in these two slim volumes, Malta’s Unsung Heroes, which are profusely illustrated, he goes into greater detail recounting harrowing, if not heroic, experiences and close brushes with death.
A good number of these Royal Navy veterans served as stewards and cooks, but this does not mean that they did not see any action; indeed, quite a few survived direct hits on their vessels and their destruction, while many other Maltese servicemen lost their lives.
Take the case of Chief Petty Officer Salvatore Baldacchino of Senglea, who served on the destroyer HMS Kelly, under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten. On May 9, 1940, Kelly was hit by a torpedo fired from a German U-boat off Norway. A good number of men died, and the destroyer was about to be abandoned, but miraculously it was hauled back and reached the River Tyne four days later. Mountbatten had carried out a magnificent salvage operation.
Only 27 crew, including Baldacchino and another Maltese, Joe Micallef, survived. He returned to Malta two weeks later. (A separate chapter deals with Micallef, who was seriously injured and invalided out of the Navy in 1942 but joined the Royal Air Force after the war as a civilian employee).
However, he was to survive another fierce attack while serving on HMS Calcutta, a light anti-aircraft cruiser. On June 1, 1941, while escorting other destroyers in the evacuation of Allied troops from Greece, she was hit by two bombs dropped by German fighters. Orders came to abandon ship and Salvo took a two-storey high leap over the side. He was just in time, as the vessel sank a few minutes later. He and 224 of the ship’s company were rescued by the other AA cruiser HMS Calcutta.
In 1952, Baldacchino, who in the meantime had married and returned to Malta, was appointed personal chief steward to Lord Mountbatten at Admiralty House in Valletta. Mountbatten, who was the last Viceroy of India, was then Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet based in Malta.
Baldacchino went on to serve on other ships, including Mountbatten’s flag frigate HMS Surprise. He retired from the Navy in 1960 but then joined the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, where he served until 1972. On March 17, 1977, Mountbatten called on Baldacchino at his home where they reminisced about their unforgettable experience aboard Kelly.
Carmelo Bonnici of Valletta saw action in another theatre of war, but was not so lucky. He was aboard the cruiser HMS Cornwall in the Indian Ocean, when on Easter Sunday, April 5, 1942, she was attacked by Japanese warplanes and repeatedly hit. Cornwall started listing to port and the order came to abandon ship. Many seamen, including Maltese, jumped overboard, holding on to some flotsam, but Bonnici stayed on board as he didn’t know how to swim. Cornwall sank within minutes, taking with her 10 officers and men of her 780-strong crew, including six of her ten Maltese seamen, among them Bonnici.
The books are replete with Maltese servicemen’s similar heroic wartime experiences. In May 1941, Anthony Buhagiar of Vittoriosa, serving on the destroyer HMS Bulldog, was detailed to guard three German prisoners-of-war and the code books captured from a U-boat which had been forced to surface after being hit by depth charges. Buhagiar later served on the submarine depot ship HMS Medway, which on June 30, 1942, was hit by a torpedo fired by a German U-boat off Alexandria. Buhagiar jumped overboard and swam to the nearest destroyer, HMS Zulu.
Paul Camilleri of Rabat served on board a Polish submarine, the Sokol (as HMS Urchin had been renamed) and saw plenty of action in the Arctic Sea, the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
The author understandably devotes the longest chapter to his father, John Conti Borda, who served as a steward on various Royal Navy ships. His is a fascinating story indeed. He was on the cruiser HMS Devonshire, which evacuated King Haakon VII and the Norwegian royal family from Trömsö after the German invasion of Norway in April 1940. Devonshire came under repeated German attacks but managed to avoid being hit.
Harrowing, if not heroic, experiences and close brushes with death
The king and his family eventually landed in England in June. While aboard Devonshire, they were well looked after by John and the six other Maltese stewards. In October 1945, after the Norwegian royals returned home, they received a special memento from King Haakon (the author devotes a separate chapter to the Norwegian royal family’s escape).
In 1941 Conti Borda was transferred to HMS Stag, which was stationed in Ismailia, Egypt. There he met his future wife Georgette, and they married in October 1942 (their son Alfred was born a year later) – when the tide of war turned with Montgomery’s victory over Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein.
Conti Borda served on other warships and naval stations in his 26-year career in the Royal Navy. He later joined the Royal Air Force as civilian manager at the officers’ mess in Luqa, where he served for another 16 years. Though he retired in 1976, he became the very active president of the Royal Navy Association’s Malta branch, a post he again occupied in 1996 till his death two years later.
Carmelo D’Agostino, who had joined the Royal Navy in 1919, became a prisoner-of-war when the ammunition steamer he and 17 other men were serving on was taken over by a boarding party from the German battle cruiser Admiral von Scheer. The POWs were taken to a camp at Marlag, between Hamburg and Bremen, where D’Agostino went through some memorable experiences, including a failed escape. On April 10, 1945, they were moved to another camp near Lübeck, 137km to the east. However, on arriving there 13 days later, they were liberated by the British Army, after which D’Agostino returned to Malta, where his wife had presumed him dead.
On November 22, 1939, Andrew Micallef managed to survive when his ship HMS Gipsy hit a mine dropped in Harwich harbour. Thirty-one men, including the captain, were killed in the explosion. Micallef and another Maltese serviceman, Charles Paris, later served on the heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, which was sunk by Japanese surface raiders in the Battle of the Java Sea in February 1942.
Micallef and Paris survived by jumping overboard and were later rescued by a Japanese destroyer and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp at Makassar on the Indonesian island of Celebes. They were to join other Allied prisoners-of-war, including a few Maltese.
Their description of the camp as “hell on earth” was no exaggeration. They were made to undergo hard labour and reduced to living skeletons. Their gruesome experience – which the author recounts in harrowing detail – ended in the summer of 1945, when they were liberated by Australian troops.
Before serving on Exeter Charles Paris had a narrow escape in September 1940 when his ship, HMS Sussex, was hit by an enemy bomb, caught fire and partially capsized. Paris suffered second-degree burns and was hospitalised for three months. Both Micallef and Paris continued to serve in the Royal Navy until their retirement.
As an Old Boy of the Jesuit-run St Aloysius College in Birkirkara, the author felt he had to include the danger-filled wartime experiences of four Jesuit Fathers ‒ Salvino Darmanin, Maurice Eminyan, Joseph Orr and Maurice Naudi. Except for Fr Naudi, they and others, including Fr Anton Caruana (Il-Mons), Fr John Vella, Fr Franz Wirth, and Fr Edward Camilleri, were studying in Italy when Mussolini declared war on June 10, 1940.
As holders of British passports, they were all interned. On the whole they were well treated by the Italian authorities, but when Italy surrendered on September 8, 1943 and the Germans occupied the central and northern part of the peninsula, their lives were in danger.
Fr Darmanin ended up in prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, barely avoiding being sent to a concentration camp, and was only rescued by Allied troops when the war ended in May 1945. Frs Eminyan, Vella, Caruana and Wirth miraculously managed to escape to Switzerland.
After Italy’s surrender, Fr Orr, together with his colleagues Fr Borg, Fr Alfred Pitrè and Fr John Camilleri, made their way from Milan to Rome, then still occupied by the Germans. Fr Orr’s story is reminiscent of the best cloak-and-dagger fiction. Rome was liberated on June 4, 1944, and a month later, Fr Orr together with fellow Jesuits Frs Magro, Pitrè and Laferla were ordained there.
Fr Naudi was studying in Malta when war with Italy broke out. He played an important role in turning St Aloysius College into a hospital and a shelter for displaced persons, while still functioning as a school, even as air raids raged around it.
The story of two Christian Brothers – Edward Galea, a student in Vichy France, later occupied by the Germans, and James Calleja, studying in Vichy French North Africa, which was invaded by Allied forces in November 1942 – makes for equally fascinating reading.
Three Army officers – Stanley Clews, Joe Bartolo Parnis and Baron Edward von Brockdorff, distinguished themselves during the Malta blitz. RAF pilots Douglas Cady and John Francis Hughes had their planes shot down over Germany.
Conti Borda also includes the experiences of two civilians – Francis Lauri, who narrowly escaped death when a bomb fell on the Regent Cinema in Valletta, killing 100 people, and seven-year-old Lucy Farrugia (later Camilleri), whose ringing of an alarm bell saved hundreds of students and refugees when the Qormi primary school came under air attack.
Conti Borda is to be commended for recounting these heroic deeds which should serve as a reminder of the cruelty of war, and instil appreciation for those who sacrificed so much so that we could live in peace and freedom.