大象传媒

[This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by an Elgin High School pupil on behalf of Rene MacDonald and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.]

I was a civilian assistant with the Royal Air Force in Malta when my best friend was Killed. 'Pat' Cameron worked in the pharmacy in Strada Reale in the city of Valletta. She was a very pretty girl with brown hair and a lovely figure and we were both seventeen. She was engaged to Tommy Carter an Army Warrant Officer who was a super chap, tall dark and handsome.

Thanks to Radar the island usually had early warning of raids I know because it was my job to receive the bearings from the Radar operators and to place the incoming fighters and bombers on the air map in the R.A.F. Control Room table. But on this occasion the Germans managed to sweep in low and undetected and dropped their bombs on Valletta before an alert was sounded. Pat was walking to work. She sheltered behind a wall but was killed by the blast. Tommy searched the ruins and found her crouched with her hands over her face, covered in stone dust. She looked uninjured, Tommy said, but she was dead. He was terribly upset, poor lad, and so was I. But in those awful years death was always with us and somehow we just got on with our jobs. I will never forget Pat, or Tommy - or Michael Malone. He was a fair-haired Fleet Air Arm pilot and he and I were 'going out' together. Then he was reported missing presumed killed, and Tommy and I were left alone to dance and visit the cinemas. Soon he and his Regiment left the island.

That was life in Malta in the war. Later I met John, a Naval doctor, who married me - and we have lived happily ever after.

Rene MacDonald has also written another story which can be found at: A2659692

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