I hasten to reply to the letter by Brain N. Tarpey who is totally wrong in his conclusions as to why the names were removed from the Floriana War Memorial when it was relocated after the war. The Maltese who were buried in foreign lands were listed, contrary to what he wrote, including those with the Labour Corps in Gallipoli and Salonika, with British regiments on all the various fronts, with Commonwealth regiments including the Anzacs and Canadians, in the Merchant Navy and in Royal Navy warships, including Jutland, and the entire draft lost in Louvain - it was a very comprehensive and accurate list totalling 600 names.

The reason these were not recorded again was quite a simple, even if a hasty, one. The authorities during the premiership of the Labour government under Paul Boffa were keen for the Princess Elizabeth, who was living in Malta towards the end of 1949, to perform the unveiling and there was no time to carve all the names. As this was being rededicated to the two world wars there was, of course, no space for the thousands of names on the tall slender stone cross. Other countries who know how to honour their dead built memorial walls with all the names - some I remember being impressed with are the Plymouth Naval Memorial, where all the Maltese sailors in the Royal Navy are listed, the Merchant Navy Memorial on Tower Hill, London, which carries the names of the Maltese (mainly Gozitan) merchant seamen, the Argentine Falklands Memorial in Buenos Aires, and especially the Vietnam Memorial in Washington.

Some amends have been made with the erection of war memorials in the various towns and villages and to Maltese regiments several years after the end of the war. Perhaps the most hallowed is the RAF Memorial at Floriana which carries the names of airmen from all parts of the Commonwealth who were lost mainly operating from Malta and have no known grave.