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Frayed Lifelines: A Siege Survivor's Story

by Frank Leighton

490 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-0204; ISBN 1-55395-841-1; US$37.00, C$42.25, EUR30.50, £21.50

Through dangerous seas to life on besieged Malta, from war-torn Sicily to a love affair in post-war France, FRAYED LIFELINES grippingly relives pivotal WWII events and heartwarming episodes.

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About the Book This is the story of a sensitive youth who grows up during the Great Depression in rural Britain. The reader shares the writer's traumatic experience of losing a mother at an early age, and is later exposed to the youthful influences which mould the transition from youth to manhood. Under the growing threat of war, the writer is exposed to life in Russia, Germany and Spain, each under its own military dictator. These experiences cause him to change his earlier WWI induced pacifist views. With the outbreak of WWII, the story follows the writer into the Royal Air Force, which he joins with the intention of entering the little-known Air-Sea Rescue branch, but the route to that chosen objective involves a number of pitfalls, not least of which is the nation's state of almost total unreadiness for war in 1939 and 1940. Soon after qualifying for the Air Sea Rescue branch, the writer finds himself at sea, deep in the hold of a munition ship, headed for the beleaguered Mediterranean island of Malta, which is reached only after a nerve-wracking convoy battle in the narrow seas between Sicily and North Africa. For the next two years, life on the encircled island is dominated by shrinking supplies of food and water and by incessant bombing from the Luftwaffe's free-roaming dive-bombers. Frayed Lifelines is a unique look at day to day life under siege, where hunger and ill-health exact their own toll while comrades die from the enemies' bombs and bullets. As the island's installations are steadily reduced to rubble, the writer shares with the reader such varied tasks as unloading vital supplies from submarines by night and manning coast defence positions in readiness for an invasion which is miraculously called-off at the last moment. The book takes the reader through the broad sweep of the war in the Mediterranean as Malta's defenders slowly turn the tide of aerial warfare and as the battered remnants of relief convoys, many barely afloat, enter Malta's harbour. Finally, two and a half years after it began, the siege is raised and the island is transformed from defensive bastion to springboard for attack. After the successful Allied invasion of Sicily and southern Italy, the writer finds himself stranded in a Sicilian backwater, while Italy tries to ease itself out of the war. The author recounts some of the confusions and pleasant surprises of the Italian transition from enemy to ally. The writer unexpectedly arrives back in Britain just 24 hours before the launch of the Normandy invasion and is forced to come to terms with the enormous changes which have occured in Britain since his departure in 1941. Later the writer is promoted and sent off to France as a Liaison Officer, just as the war is ending. Congenial post-war life in Bordeaux, and the writer's first serious love affair, make demobilization and a return to civilian life an unwelcome prospect. A return to University after seven years without books present its own special difficulties. These are compounded by a summer working in Switzerland as a young student engineer, which sees the end of his Bordeaux love affair. A disasterous second love affair during the final year of his engineering training in London convinces the author that it is time to abandon Europe for a new life in North America, and the story ends on an upbeat note as the writer turns his face to a new world.

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About the Author Frank Leighton grew up in the city of Norwich, in Britain's East Anglia, as a shy youth with a fascination for history and a desire to right the wrongs of a world in disarray from the devastation of WWI. The failure of the nascent League of Nations troubled him greatly and his youthful excursions into a Europe dominated by military dictators convinced him that a new war was inevitable. WWII broke out just as Frank had completed the first year of studies in civil engineering. He enlisted immediately in the Royal Air Force with the objective of serving in the RAF's Air-Sea-Rescue service. In 1941 he found himself under siege on the Mediterranean island of Malta, where he served for the next two years before following the successful Allied invasion into Sicily. Following his return to Britain in 1944, Frank was promoted to Flying Officer and sent off to the French airfield at Bordeaux to serve in a liason capacity. He remained there until his return to civilian life in 1946. After completeing a civil engineering degree at London's Imperial College of Science, and after working briefly in Switzerland, Frank emigrated to the USA. Shortly thereafter, he ended up in West Vancouver, Canada, where he presently resides with his Canadian wife, Phyllis. From Vancouver he has followed a forty year international career as a consulting engineer on projects throughout the world. During this period, Frank also participated in numerous civic organizations and served on a number of corporate boards. Following his first "retirement" in 1985, Frank returned to work for twelve more years as a Commissioner with the British Columbia Utilities Commission. Although during his career Frank has authored numerous technical articles and quasi-judicial Decisions, it was only following retirement from the Commission, at 80 years of age, that he began to write the memoir, Frayed Lifelines: A Siege Survivor's Story. The book covers the first three decades of his life.

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Sample Excerpts

The first day after passing Gibraltar was so uneventful that we began to relax again in the deceptively peaceful Mediterranean sunshine. We began to hope that our stealthy midnight transit of the Gibraltar Straits had indeed escaped the prying eyes of Axis spies, ensconced in neutral Spain for the express purpose of reporting on the comings and goings of Allied ships. On the second day, we knew that our hope was in vain. Intermittent anti-aircraft fire from far out on the perimeter of the destroyer screen told us that we were being shadowed by enemy aircraft. At noon that day, as the group from No. 2 hold sat on the hatch cover eating lunch, the same ship's officer who had addressed us earlier sat beside us and addressed us again.

"We are going to need some help with our machine gun defences for the next thirty six hours," he said, indicating the two small machine gun posts we could see high up above the navigation bridge, one on each side. "I'll need four volunteers for each post," he went on. "A gunner and a loader for each one and a second pair to spell them off."

I am sure my hand was the first to go up. I had already visualized the hellish pandemonium which would prevail down in the iron-bound hold when the two Bofors guns on the deck above began firing. I had no desire to be contained below, like a rat in a reverberating iron trap. The prospect of being high up on the "monkey island," as the area above the bridge was known, immediately appealed to me. I would be up there in God's good fresh air and, even if the arsenal deep in the ship's hold blew up, there would be a fighting chance of ending up in the water. Thus I became a proud member of the four man crew of the starboard machine gun post above the "Clan McDonald's" navigation bridge.

That afternoon, we began a crash course to familiarize ourselves with a weapon we had never seen before - and were unlikely ever to see again. The machine gun was mounted on a swivel, at the top of a short post which in turn was welded to the deck. A neat grey painted canvas cover protected the weapon from the elements and was tightly secured around the gun mount. The whole assembly was located within a protective cell about six or eight feet square and three or four feet high. The latter was designed to provide some protection for the gun crews; it comprised thin precast concrete planks supported by metal posts at the corners. I immediately had my doubts about its protective properties, but at least it kept the wind off.

As we stripped the cover off the gun, I was amazed to see a device which I had seen before only in those vivid World War I illustrations in the "History of the Great War" which had so fascinated me as a child. Closer examination revealed that this was a pre-World War I, Belgian-made, Hotchkiss gun. Boxes stacked in one corner of the gun position contained several "combs" and stocks of small arms ammunition. The Hotchkiss gun did not use an ammunition belt but employed a rigid comb-like clip about 18 inches or two feet long.

With some difficulty, we taught ourselves how to load the comb-like clips and how to ready the gun for firing. We estimated each clip would give us ten to fifteen seconds of fire and, because there were so few of the comb-like clips available, loaders were going to be kept very busy recharging them. There and then we decided that, instead of spelling each other off in pairs, we would all four somehow fit ourselves into the cramped gun position so that three persons could share the loading duties. The four of us were in total agreement that once the action began, none of us wanted to spend one minute down in the rat-trap of a hold, if we could possibly avoid it.

That night, we slept fitfully in the near darkness of the hold. We had been told that the machine gun post had to be manned from first light the next morning as the convoy would then be in the dangerous triangle between Tunisia, Sardinia and Sicily. These waters of "bomb alley" were heavily mined by the Axis powers and were within easy range of the Italian airfields on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily. All night long we kept waking and checking our watches in the dim light of the hold, afraid that we might oversleep. Eventually, daylight did arrive and we, all four, took up our positions in the machine gun post above the bridge. At that early hour, the air was surprisingly chilly - or perhaps we were just shivering from a combination of fear and anticipation. At any rate, we were glad of the mess tins of hot porridge which we were able to fetch, in turn, from the ship's galley before the rising sun began to warm our bodies. It was the only meal we would have that day.

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After this nerve-wracking day, I decided that, from now on, I had to find a better place to spend my off-duty hours. Going off into other parts of the island was out of the question. Transportation was simply unavailable and Me109s now flew patrols over the island's roads almost continuously from dawn to dusk, secure in the knowledge that anti-aircraft ammunition was so depleted that the batteries were unlikely to fire on them. What ammunition was available was reserved almost exclusively to knock marauding bombers from the sky.

It was at this point that I decided to explore the cliff top some distance behind Kalafrana, where the sea cliffs were a hundred feet or more in height. Perhaps there I could find a place where, in my off-duty hours, I could get away from the bombs - perhaps even find a place where I could sleep peacefully. As I walked, my eyes searched the cliff top, not really knowing what I was looking for. And then, suddenly, I saw it - and felt sure I had found the perfect eyrie.

Eight or ten feet below the cliff top was a level ledge, more than wide enough to accommodate a reclining body. Nor was that all; a large flat slab of rock at one end of the ledge lay like a lean-to against the rock face. Here was not only a resting place, but a sheltered resting place!

The hideaway I had just discovered was not in the quietest location. It was almost directly under the guns of the Benghaisa battery and the surface of the ground on the cliff top was littered with jagged shards of anti-aircraft shrapnel. Even this did not concern me; the leaning rock would provide the perfect roof over my head - far better than any tin hat! It also meant that I could go to sleep in total safety, in the shade of the leaning rock, without any fear of rolling off the ledge in my sleep, into the ocean below. An easy scramble down from the cliff top put me on the ledge without any difficulty, and I was convinced I had found exactly what I was looking for.

For the next several months, that ledge became my private refuge. On each free day, I would draw my full day's ration of bread and bully beef from the cookhouse at breakfast time. Now that we were on a very strictly controlled ration, provision was made to allow us to take our full day's supply of food if we were going out of camp for the day. Thus, on each off-duty day, I would ask to draw my full day's ration. This happened so often I am sure the cookhouse staff became convinced I had a steady Maltese girlfriend down the road in the village of Birzebbuga, with whom I was spending my time, and I said nothing to disillusion them.

Back at the barrack block, I would throw a few key items into a small haversack. These included the day's ration of bread and bully beef; a service water bottle freshly filled whenever water was available; my precious sunglasses; whatever reading material I could lay my hands on and perhaps letters from home if there had recently been mail. Finally, a handful of .303 small arms ammunition went into the bag as I now began a personal vendetta with the marauding Me109s. Rifle in hand, I would then head off up the steep slope towards Benghaisa.

For the first few weeks, I told no one of my private refuge. I was like a little boy, guarding the secret of his tree-fort from anyone who might disturb its solitude. Eventually, I revealed the location to Roy Isbell, my travelling companion on some of those early explorations of the island. Roy was a quiet chap and a voracious reader who would occasionally share the solitude with me. I never regretted taking him into my confidence.

Most days, when I reached the rocky perch I had selected for myself, I would sit, back against the warm rock of the cliff face, and read whatever I had brought with me. At other times, I would simply gaze out over the ocean or watch the crystal clear Mediterranean waves break against the cliff face a hundred feet below me. On these occasions, I would let the solitude wash over me until I could feel my whole body begin to relax. Later in the day, as the sun grew hotter, I would crawl under my rocky lean-to and sleep as I had rarely been able to do in the Kalafrana barrack block.

Bombs continued to fall on Kalafrana for most of the rest of April, and the guns of Benghaisa would regularly thunder above the cliff top, but in my private citadel I felt secure. At this time, every bombing raid was accompanied by Me109 fighters which would stay long after the bombers had left, harassing the anti-aircraft gunners and strafing anything which they spotted moving. Singly, and in small groups, they loved to fly around the island just below the cliff tops, where it was difficult for gunners to depress the anti-aircraft guns enough to fire on them. It was this tactic which so infuriated me that I launched my own personal vendetta.

When I could no longer put up with the sight of the circling Messerschmitts, I would stand behind one end of the sloping rock slab. In this position, I was virtually invisible from seaward and was well protected from retaliation. From this vantage point, I took pot-shots at the circling Me109s with the Ross rifle which had been issued to me earlier. With the target crossing the bullet's path at 200 miles an hour or more, it was highly unlikely I would ever succeed in bringing one down, even though, in aiming, I did my best to allow sufficient deflection. But somehow, the simple fact that I was able to do something to strike back at my tormentors made me feel much better. I often wondered if any German pilot, on returning to his Sicilian airfield, scratched his head in bewilderment over a single bullet hole through the fuselage of his machine. I fervently hoped so.

As the end of April neared, the Luftwaffe's tactics changed again. Having done their best to flatten all their other targets, the dive bombers now turned their attention to the heavy anti-aircraft gun batteries. One of these now-prime targets was the powerful Benghaisa battery at the crest of the hill a few hundred feet from the cliff top above my refuge.

It was during an attack on this target that an incident occurred that convinced me of the invulnerability of my cliff top perch. As I watched from the rocky ledge, a group of some dozen Ju88s came in over the ocean. I knew as soon as they began their shallow dive that, this time, Benghaisa was the target. Often in the past, as fellow crew members and I lounged around the crew room on the quayside at Kalafrana, we had debated the question: "What exactly does a Ju88 look like to its victim as it releases its bombs? Would you be able to tell if your number was up?" Of course, few survived to pass on the information but today I was destined to learn the answer.

The lead bomber was at about eight hundred or a thousand feet and still diving. It appeared to my transfixed eyes as a single horizontal line broken only by the three round blobs formed by the fuselage and the two engines. I continued to watch, mesmerized, as half a dozen bombs separated from the fuselage and the aircraft began to pull out of its dive. Instinctively, I knew that I was at ground zero this time; equally instinctively, I threw myself flat on the surface of the rocky ledge.

It seemed like an eternity before the first bomb exploded. It struck the base of the cliff below me, just above the waterline. Almost simultaneously, the second bomb of the stick exploded directly above my head, a few feet beyond the lip of the cliff. For a moment, as the shock wave transmitted itself to my prostrate body, I feared that the whole ledge might be shaken loose and plunge into the sea below. Then, as one explosion followed another up the hill towards the battery, and I realised that my ledge was still attached to the cliff, I exhaled slowly. After that, I never again doubted the safety of my cliff top refuge.

Looking back, almost sixty years later, from the perspective of a relatively peaceful world, my strange attachment to that dramatic ledge seems a little bizarre - almost juvenile. In reality, I believe it was simply a way of coping with the unrelenting pressure of being under attack month after month. I think we all developed our own ways of coping, that spring of 1942. Being, by nature, a somewhat solitary individual, my way was to seek the rejuvenating solitude of isolation on an otherwise crowded island.

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Christiane was the first to break the silence. She turned her head to look at me. Even though it was difficult to see her eyes in the shadows, I sensed they were fixed on where she believed my own eyes to be. As always, she was straight forward and direct. "Frank, I had to see you again this weekend. I didn't want to wait until the end of the summer." Peering intently at my face, as if she were trying to read my reaction despite the darkness, she went on. "I have met someone who says he is in love with me and I have become quite fond of him." Hurriedly, she went on, "But I have given him no encouragement - I felt I could not do so until you and I had met again."

Ah Christiane, I was thinking, that honesty and directness, that ability to look a person straight in the eye; those were the very characteristics which drew me to you in the first place. This night, in the darkness, they brought the moisture of unshed tears to my eyes. For a full minute I said nothing, simply holding Christiane tighter against my body as I tried to muster the right French words.

"Christiane, thank you for remembering the promises we made and for being so honest with me. I love you for that." And then, I went on to try to put into words the thoughts which had been forming in the back of my mind throughout the day, while we had talked and as I had watched Christiane over dinner.

I told her, in my halting French, that I had come to realise that the two of us inhabited different worlds. Her "Frenchness," one of the things which had attracted me in those early days at Bordeaux, would, I had come to realise, in the long term be incompatible with the kind of lifestyle I expected to follow in the years ahead as a young engineer. I simply could not imagine her by my side in the rural hinterland of some third world country.

I told her that, as I looked back on the past two years, and the letters we had exchanged, I believed we had both been in love with a dream, with the memory of our love, rather than with the reality of a future shared life. I let it all pour out, the raw thoughts unrefined by contemplation. As I did so, I was almost certain that, in the darkness, I saw Christiane's head nod in affirmation. As we continued to talk, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that our relationship had changed. We were now old friends; no longer young lovers.

Christiane told me, as she squeezed my hand for emphasis, that above all she wanted to avoid hurting me. I was glad that I was able to tell her that I too had, within the past few months, met someone to whom I felt strangely drawn and, like Christiane, I had held the relationship at a distance, unwilling to advance it until she and I had held the meeting which we each knew we owed the other.

In retrospect, I think Christiane also wanted to reassure herself that she was not making a mistake. I believe our day together in Baden told her as clearly as it told me, that the fire of young love was beyond re-kindling. Too much time and too many circumstances had intervened.

As we walked back to the little house where Christiane's aunt lived, I remember taking off my jacket and placing it around Christiane's shoulders to help ward off the evening chill, holding it there with my arm as we walked. We walked largely in silence, each deep in our own thoughts. At the door of her aunt's home, Christiane asked me at what time my train left in the morning for the return to Sion. When I told her it was due to depart at 5:30 a.m., she said she felt badly that I would get so little sleep that night. Then she kissed me warmly, as she had done on so many earlier occasions on the steps of the house in Bordeaux's Rue Sullivan, turned, slipped her key in the lock and was gone.

I slept fitfully that night, overcome by an all-enveloping sense of loneliness. The empty hotel lobby in the early hours of the morning only exacerbated the problem. There is nothing more forlorn than a hotel lobby at 4:30 a.m., with the sole clerk on duty telephoning for a taxi cab. The railway station was only marginally more cheerful. At least there were half a dozen men on the platform, waiting as I was for the next train.

Suddenly, I heard the click of a woman's heels coming down the platform behind me. Surprised that there would be a woman among the few blue-collar workers who were obviously heading off to an early shift, I turned to look. There, striding towards me down the platform, was Christiane. Faithful to the end, she had set her alarm clock and had come to the station to say goodbye. As she came up to me, the loneliness vanished and I had the greatest difficulty suppressing the moisture which involuntarily filled my eyes.

A few minutes later, the train rolled into the station. After boarding, I stood leaning out of the window, unwilling to give up the last precious minutes with Christiane. As the signal for the train to leave the station sounded, we shared one last kiss, and Christiane dabbed at her eyes with a white handkerchief. The last I saw of her, as the train pulled away from the station and rounded a slight curve, was her slender figure, standing alone on the platform, still waving the white handkerchief with which she had been keeping the tears at bay.

As I turned to take my seat on the nearly empty train, my own eyes could no longer contain the moisture which had rimmed them earlier, and I felt the drops run down my cheeks. Today, more than half a century later, I prefer to think of them not as tears of sorrow but as tears of gratitude for the months of love and friendship the two of us had shared.

I heard from Christiane just once more, later that year. Her letter told me that she was about to be married. I wrote and wished the couple well, and never have I wished it more sincerely. I only hope that life brought them the joy and fulfillment which my own eventual marriage brought me. I like to think that the two of them are out there somewhere, still together, and living happily in a France where I would have always been a stranger.

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Catalogue Information

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