Posted to Malta

We got on this carrier and it seemed like a short, well we had about an 8 knot breeze and the carrier could do 22 knots and so with 30 knots we could get airborne just before we got to the end. As soon as we got airborne, we just climbed up a little and we could see the Atlas Mountains to the south of Africa. That’s all we could see and we headed towards getting closer to the African Coast and we crossed, I think it was Bizerte or some place and passed right over the town of Tunis. We were up about 20,000 feet or something, right over Tunis Town, all white and then we turned a little bit left pointing for Malta and a beautiful day as I say and we carried right on and then finally we arrived over Malta. And I sort of envisioned a little Mediterranean Island with palm trees or something, you know, and shepherds and goats around or something or other. Hell, here it was a city with a quarter of a million people on it and it was 17 miles long and 9 miles wide. And, of course, I knew Valletta was the big harbor there and so on. But the countryside, you know, there was lots of little towns over it and three aerodromes on it and it was pockmarked with bombs just like craters on the moon, a bomb hole, you know, bomb craters everywhere, particularly around the aerodromes.