Wartime myths, misconceptions and reality

In a typically well written and well researched article (The Sunday Times, October 13), Lino Bugeja rightly gives thanks and expresses gratitude, on behalf of the Maltese people, to the servicemen and civilians who made Operation Pedestal possible, but berates the British Government's "mistaken policies" for the "unnecessary carnage" deriving from the failure to adequately prepare the island for war.

Mr Bugeja reiterates the matter of the strategic importance of Malta, not unlike many who have written in connection with the 60th anniversary of what we have come to refer to as the Santa Marija Convoy. But how valuable was Malta to the Allied war effort?

In his Malta Convoys 1940-1943 (London, 2000), Richard Woodman sets out only too clearly the enormous sacrifices undertaken by both the Royal Navy and the merchant navy to sustain Malta as a potential base but does nothing to rebut the renowned military historian Martin Van Creveld's telling critique of Malta's importance as a base for the interdiction of Axis trans-Mediterranean supplies. For most of the time, Van Creveld claims, there were more supplies in the Libyan ports than the limited number of trucks could carry to the front.

The University of Hull's Eric Grove has gone even further and has suggested that by 1942 Mediterranean strategy had been turned on its head, with the North African campaign being fought to maintain the island rather than vice versa.

All this, in my view, should cause us to increase rather than diminish our regard for the heroic sacrifices of those who strove to keep our islands supplied. It should also enhance our appreciation of Churchill's determination, even obstinacy, to sustain Malta and what it represented against those who suggested other, more pressing priorities.

As for the lack of preparation, it is easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to criticise interwar policy-makers who were faced with making difficult choices with inadequate resources. The fact is that historians have suggested that, in overall terms, official policy was skewed, if anything, in favour of the Mediterranean at the expense of Imperial needs in the Far East, and not the reverse.

Myths are an essential ingredient of the process of nation-building, but let us not lose touch entirely with reality. Malta is important to those of us who live here and Churchill described it as "a gem in the King's Crown" but we must not lose sight of the fact that it was a very, very small one.