By Saul Cooke-Black

A MUCH-LOVED former airman who passed away in January is a key character in a dramatic new account of the Siege of Malta.

Jack Vowles, who passed away in Minchinhampton, was interviewed by author Paul McDonald to provide a first-hand testimony to a story serving as a poignant memorial to Malta’s gallant defenders.

The book, Malta’s Greater Siege & Adrian Warburton, is available from Pen and Sword and Amazon.

At the age of seventeen Jack Vowles volunteered for the RAF three months before the Second World War began.

He trained as an engine and airframe fitter and served on a fighter station in Norfolk throughout the Battle of Britain.

He then found himself on a convoy to a secret destination - Malta - where he met and also flew with Warburton who left an impression on Jack that lasted throughout his life.

During two years in Malta, Jack slept in tents, barrack blocks, schools, and hotels and he was bombed out of all of them.

He was hospitalised twice, while bombs fell all around and ended up living somewhere he thought entirely appropriate: a former poor house and lunatic asylum.

It was said that Jack had nine lives and used up eight of them in some of the most extraordinary and harrowing circumstances imaginable.

In early 1944, Warburton was in England at RAF Mount Farm near Oxford.

He then disappeared on a mysterious mission in an American P-38 Lightning.

Jack’s words, and those of others, bring this Malta story to life and illustrate how real the situation was and how harrowing a time it was for all. The author was also a recce pilot in Malta but thirty years after the events described in this book.

He embarks on a quest to establish the importance of Malta to the man behind the medals, Adrian Warburton, and the truth about his relationship with ‘Christina of George Cross Island’.

The story begins in a cemetery in Bavaria and ends in another in Malta.

In between the reader is taken on a journey full of drama to wartime Malta, then forward to present day locations, all closely linked with characters met on the way.

Adrian Warburton went missing in 1944 having taken part in more than 395 operational missions.

He lay undiscovered for nearly 60 years before being buried with full military honours in Germany in 2003 at a service attended by Jack.

For more information see www.wingedwarriors.co.uk