Word: valletta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their strange language, which is Semitic dashed with the flavors of Europe, they whispered in their cafés while the outrageous Englishmen bounded up & down the narrow, stepped streets of Valletta, sweated at rugger, cricket, swam in the surf. Though there was never any outburst (the warm, damp sirocco was too enervating and the Maltese were too polite), neither did there burn in Britain's amber jewel any flame of devotion to the King. Not even when, in 1921, his Majesty granted self rule (within limits). The Governors and the governed lived in separate worlds, while many...
...only does Malta straddle the Axis supply route to Libya; it also threatens the left flank of any Axis drive along the African coast toward Egypt. Submarines glide in & out of the harbor at Valletta. The dockyard repairs surface ships up to cruiser size. Bombers and fighters come out of hiding in hangars dug deep in the limestone and take off from rocky fields in the hills. The British believe that Malta's concentration of anti-aircraft guns is the heaviest in the world, not even excepting Moscow...
Last week I Disperati had not yet shown their sacrificial heads, but for the first time Italy employed a new dive-bomber formation. Near Valletta Harbor, Malta, and later the same day about 30 miles to the southeast of Malta, Italian dive bombers engaged units of the British Fleet. Said the Italian communique: "Violent anti-aircraft reaction and bitter combat with enemy chasers could not prevent our formations of bombers in horizontal flight and Picchiatelli-new formations of dive bombers-from achieving with dash and daring the obvious results...
...false colors sailed boldly past the British war boats guarding Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. There, still flying the French flag whenever it suited his purposes. Lieutenant Niemoller became "The Scourge of Malta," daringly sank two troopships and a British manofwar, even laid German mines in the very harbor of Valletta...
Maltese rejoicings at the narrow escape of Prime Minister Baron Strickland from a would-be-assassin who fired at pointblank range (TIME, June 2) were about to culminate in the singing of a glad Te Deum in St. John's Cathedral at Valletta last week, when suddenly this hymn in praise of God for what he had done was countermanded by Archbishop Caruana...