In February 2011, a packet from the UK reached Malta. It was addressed to the author from a notary in the UK, containing the last will and testament of Cikku, the uncle of the author.

Among the personal effects left to the author by Cikku, there was a box, containing a series of copybooks held together by a string. On the cover, faint with age, there was a quotation from Karl Marx: "Men make their own history ... but they do not make it as they choose."

This collection of exercise books had been given to Cikku by his father Turu, the author's grandfather, who had obtained them from his brother Ganmari, who, like Turu, was the brother of the author, Kustanz Magro.

The exercise books and the many letters that came with them were written by Kustanz who was a soldier in the First Great War.

He had enrolled in the British Army to alleviate the poverty of his family in Malta but he never expected to find himself in the centre of the War in Flanders.

By keeping a diary, he was running a big risk, for that was forbidden. All letters were censored so as not to give away details of the situation in the British Army.

Now I do not know if this story is real or invented for as far as I can see the author does not feature in the family tree he draws up at the beginning of the book.

But this question is rather irrelevant.

The book presents us with an inside view of World War I as seen not just by a soldier who fought in the notorious Flanders Field (and probably died there) but also as seen by the wife he left in Malta (amazing such wives were literate) and his brother.

It tells us not just of what happened in Flanders but also what was the situation in Malta, where poverty abounded.

Although, as said, Kustanz was always wary of the strict censorship, he still finds a way of telling us about the atrocious conditions the soldiers had to fight in, the mud, the rats, the dead bodies, the cold and damp.

In his diary Kustanz reveals everything, from what were his emotions when he fought and killed, to when he visited a brothel in Le Havre.

He also writes his intimate thoughts, his pain at being separated from his wife, his concern about his children and also about what his Christian faith meant to him in those atrocious circumstances.

He writes about the Battle of the Somme and also about that magical Christmas night of 1914 when all fighting ceased and the British and the German soldiers came out of their trenches and for a short while fraternalised while singing Christmas carols. The enemy they kept shooting at became a human being with a wife and children at home. Nevertheless, after this interlude, the war continued.

 

 

BOX

Joseph Vella

L-Eroj li ma kienx

Self-published

2014

246pp