Ted Saunders
RAF Airframe fitter, Ted Saunders, better known amongst his comrades-in-arms as 'Sandy', recalls a few separate incidents that occured on his tour of duty at Malta during World War Two.
"As you can imagine, there was a lot of bad feeling towards the Italians and Germans. On one occasion, a Junker 88 crashed on Takali Airfield near a trench we were in, and the pilot was still alive. At this stage we had a Polish Commanding Officer and he said he would 'shoot anyone who would rescue him' and we believed he would have done it."
this photo was probably taken from the walls of the old city, Mdina
Another of Ted's wartime memories relates to a famous name: "Lord David Douglas Hamilton was sent to Malta by Churchill becuase Hess wanted to meet with Hamilton and Churchill stopped this meeting.
Ted recalled, "When he got off the 'Ark Royal' he flew to the Airfield in one of the new Spitfires and went to go to his quarters where you home is. He started to walk and I told him he should wear his helmet, but he shrugged this off, but within 3-4 minutes it was on his head because of all the shrapnel form the guns shooting at the planes."
Referring to the photo below, Ted had this to say: "A bomb went right through the Cathedral (Musta Dome) and didn't explode. The Air Force disarmed the bomb." Reliable sources say that this German bomb was made in Czechoslovakia (slave labour) and its fuse was intentionally faulted. This incident is considered to be one of the miracles of Wartime Malta as the Church was crowded at the time and no one was hurt.
this photo marks the Mosta Dome (church), which was later hit during an air attack.
British by birth, Ted Sandy Saunders eventually moved to Australia with his wife, Muriel (Woodhouse), whom he married in Chasetown, England, on the 21st December, 1940, before being stationed at Malta.
When Ted wrote to us, he spoke of the hardships that everyone on the Island endured: "Food was so scarce in Malta, even for the servicemen, that we stole some tomatoes early one morning, but my aversion to tomatoes was so great that I couldn't eat them. And we got caught. We used to get our breakfast ration in such a small container it was like a matchbox, even water was rationed."
A final anecdote brought back some more dark memories: "Once, when the Germans straffed the [Takali] air field I was in a spitfire cockpit and jumped out for cover by the tail unit, but the fabric of the aircraft gave no cover as I was hit in the back. I didn't even know until the C.O. asked if I was alright, and when I put my hand on my back there was alot of blood. I spent some time in the 90th General Hospital."
