When the Siren Wailed: Memoirs of Wartime Gozo

by Charles Bezzina,

translated by Alfred Palma

Originally published in 2003 under the title Meta Karbet is-Sirena and translated into English by Alfred Palma in 2012, the newly published and updated third edition of Charles Bezzina’s When the Siren Wailed is a colourful picture of 20 people from every village in Gozo during World War II.

With Malta being one of the most bombed places during World War II, it is no wonder that the subject of the war attracted many a writer and researcher; in fact, dozens of books have been written about the subject by both local and foreign authors and in both the Maltese and the English language.

Charles Bezzina, partly inspired by his late father Frank, and himself being a historian as well as Gozo’s most renowned poet, dedicated much of his time to delve deeper into the subject of Gozo during the Second World War.

He wrote various books about the subject, the latest one entitled When the Siren Wailed: Memories of Wartime Gozo, which he wrote in Maltese, and it was then translated into English by Alfred Palma.

The book can be divided into two parts. The first part of the book, entitled ‘A look at Gozo during the war’, is a collection of original writings focused on different aspects of the war experience in Gozo.

Bezzina writes about the geographical position of Gozo and its relevance during the war and then moves on to provide the reader with material about the main air-raids, the airplanes that fell on the island and information about the Maltese refugees.

The book's cover

Gozo being the furthest area from the Grand Harbour was considered the safest, and many Maltese families made it a point to move to Gozo and settle there during the war.

Education on the island, its administration, the Protection Office, and the Black Market are all chapters that make for interesting reading.

The role of the Church, the importance of the various hospitals, as well as the project of the collection of grain, also feature in the book.

Air and space are two very important factors during a war; both themes were studied by Bezzina and have various pages dedicated to them in the last chapters of the first part of the book.

The second part of Bezzina’s opus is no less interesting. Entitled simply as ‘Reminiscences’, the reader who finds himself going through this part of the book will probably not stop reading until he finds himself at the end of the book.

This is probably due to the autobiographical aspect of these writings which makes them all the more engaging and interesting. We have here individuals who lived the war as a personal experience, and these pages provide them with enough space to narrate the main contact with the war.

Each sketch is interesting in its own way, and the writings in this section are a living witness of the effects of the war on Malta’s second largest island.

Gozo at war comes alive once again as one reads these experiences, one after the other. It is thanks to Bezzina that the reader can come across such first-hand descriptions of the war from men and women, some of whom have since passed on to a better life.

With this publication, Bezzina has definitely confirmed himself as the most authoritative researcher on World War II in Gozo.

His meticulous research and attention to detail render this book, and the previous others, the best monographs on war-time Gozo, a theme that still attracts much attention among both professional historians and the general public alike.