Celebrities in Malta
Heroes Remember
Celebrities in Malta
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The days that we weren't flying of course you spent most of the
time with liquid lunch. So this day we were in the barracks and
there was a noise outside on the street. We were in the
second floor. Our room was on the second floor of this noise
and looked down and kids were poundin' on pots and pans.
And this car drove by eh. Not too many cars in Malta
that weren't military. This car drove by and I
looked down and I raised the glass, "George" and had a drink.
The King and Queen were goin' by. The next day we're out flight
shack, waiting around and see if we're gonna fly that night where
they put your name of the board. This guy came over from the
operations room and he said, "I just saw Roosevelt going by in
the car." Somebody said, "You had a little too much sand.
You better have another drink. You'll be alright."
I didn't believe the guy when he said he saw Roosevelt.
I picked up the Saturday Evening Post after the war and they were
in and they were heading for this. They got the aircraft stopped,
but they were headin' for this hundred foot
drop at the other end of the runway. Then the next night, or
two nights later I guess, we were called out to do a patrol and
they said, "You're gonna have a fighter escort
so don't be scared if you see an aircraft above you." So
the next you know we're out there and we're goin' from Malta to
North Africa and you look down and there's a battleship and four
destroyers. Two here and two at the back. And they were goin' so
fast that now you see them, now you don't, the destroyers because
every so often you'd see a whoppin' great splash. So when we,
in the morning it came dawn, and sure enough we got a Mosquito
fighter bomber goin' around above us. Our escort, fighter escort.
When we got back to Malta and debriefing, which they always do
after every flight, we said, "What was in that thing and how fast
was it goin'? He said, "About 32, 35 knots". "Why?" He said,
"Some fella by the name of Churchill was aboard."
Churchill, Roosevelt, he had seen them, Montgomery, were
all in Malta at that time just before the invasion of Sicily.
They had a double of Montgomery, making himself seen in
Gibraltar while this conference was going on in Malta.
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