‘There wasn’t time to think about defeat’

As three elderly men gently tease each other in an Qawra hotel suite, their minds drift back 70 years to the days and nights when death stalked them across the Mediterranean Sea. In Malta as part of a group of 66 former HMS Kenya and Ganges personnel for the 70th anniversary of the award of the George Cross to the island, all three men are full of admiration for the Maltese, who suffered horrific bombing raids that reduced much of the island to rubble. These old warriors served together aboard HMS Kenya during Operation Pedestal, the legendary convoy which managed to sustain Malta in its darkest hours of World War II, with the SS Ohio famously limping into Grand Harbour carrying vital supplies on August 15, 1942, the feast of Santa Marija. “Pedestal was absolute hell,” said 89-year-old Norman Coxall, known to his old shipmates as ‘Lofty’. Fourteen merchant ships were loaded with vital supplies for a besieged Malta on the brink of starvation and running perilously low on fuel – required among other things for the aircraft defending the island. The ships passed the Straits of Gibraltar on August 10, 1942, guarded by 64 British warships, one of which was the Kenya. They were met by...