In the early hours of the 14th September the 1/4th Londons disembarked, and being allotted quarters under canvas in Ghain Tuffieha Camp, was introduced to the ardours of a sub-tropical summer by undertaking the longest march it is possible to make in the island—a very trying experience indeed.
Ghain Tuffieha is a summer station on the west coast of the island about eleven miles from Valetta, and is an important outpost of the main defences of the Fortress. It lies in a broad, fertile valley known as the Wied Tal Paules, which traverses the island from east to west, its eastern limit being the coast at St Paul's Bay. To the north of this valley lie the Melleha and the Marfa Ridges, two of the northernmost barriers against invasion. The coast round these two ranges of hills possesses a considerable number of sandy landing-places in well-sheltered bays, which, as they face Sicily at about three hours' passage from that island, required special guarding at this period.
The Battalion now settled down seriously to its training, and it was found necessary to deal with some 250 men as recruits. These, however, were passed through the Barrack Square stage of their training as expeditiously as possible in view of the heavy duties which fell to the Battalion in guarding the northern coast.
The guards found from the main body of the Battalion at Ghain Tuffieha were mostly night guards at the landing-places, at St Paul's Bay on the east coast, and at Ghain Tuffieha Bay, Karraba Ridge, and Gneina Bay on the west coast. In addition to these, G and H companies were immediately despatched on detachment, the former to Selmun Palace (which commands the promontory between the shores of Melleha and St Paul's Bays), the latter to Melleha (which dominates the head of Melleha Bay and the Marfa Ridge beyond it). The latter detachment was subsequently moved down the ridge to the coast near the head of Melleha Bay. The guards found by these detached companies were at Cala Mistra Fort (at the foot of Kalkara Ravine), Ir Razzet tal Blata, L'Imgiebah, and Ghain Zeituna by the Selmun force; and at Melleha Bay, Torri L'Ahmar cross roads, and Marfa Palace by the Melleha force.
The duties of the detached companies were found to be particularly onerous, and the proportion of N.C.O.'s and men employed not only on guards, but also on such necessary duties as signals, look-outs, and water-carrying fatigues, continuously totalled rather more than a third of the total strength of the detachments. Arrangements were therefore made for the relief of the detachment companies every seven or eight days, and this procedure was maintained throughout the Battalion's duty on the island.
The training of the Battalion proceeded smoothly but under conditions of some difficulty, partly owing to the number of men constantly engaged in coastal defence duties, and partly owing to the unfavourable conditions of terrain. Every square yard of the rocky hillsides which is covered with soil is devoted to some sort of cultivation by the thrifty inhabitants, and the walling up of the soil on the hillsides, which has already been alluded to, converts every hill into a series of steps, over which manœuvres are both laborious and painful. In spite of these obstacles, however, a good deal of useful work was achieved, and the Battalion rapidly began to take shape as a useful and well-disciplined unit. There can be no doubt that the experience gained by all ranks in taking their share in ordinary garrison duties at so early a stage in their embodied career proved of infinite value later when the 1/4th Londons ultimately took their place in the fighting line; and, moreover, the knowledge that they were subject to the critical—and at that period not always sympathetic—surveillance of the regular staff of the Fortress provided the strongest possible incentive to all ranks to conduct themselves with credit to their Regiment and to the Territorial Force.
Early in October a very thorough course of musketry instruction under Fortress arrangements was begun, firing taking place on the Naval ranges of Ghain Tuffieha. The companies were thus employed as follows:—2 on detachment, 2 on musketry course, 3 on company training, and 1 finding all the duties at Battalion Headquarters, the whole being worked on a roster so that each company was kept for training and detachment purposes at its greatest possible strength.
During the early days of the Battalion in Malta a few changes of distribution took place among officers as follows:
Major R. J. J. Jackson was evacuated to Cottonera Hospital sick. He unfortunately remained in hospital until early in December 1914, when he was invalided to England. Command of F Company was taken by Lieut. F. C. Grimwade, and the Machine-Gun Section was taken over by 2/Lieut. T. I. Walker, Lieut. S. Elliott transferring to E Company. The Battalion was also joined by 2/Lieut. R. C. Kelly who, however, remained with the unit for a few weeks only, at the end of which time he was appointed to the Secret Service, and with this he remained until the end of the War.
The middle of September, when the Battalion landed in Malta, found the hot season waning, and although the temperature remained high for some weeks the full intensity of the sub-tropical summer was not experienced. In the early part of October, however, the scirocco, a warm south-westerly wind which originates in the Sahara, followed, with all its usual enervating effects, which were indeed quite as trying as the intense heat of the sun had been. Towards the end of the same month the wet season set in in earnest, and from that time until the early part of December the camping ground at Ghain Tuffieha was swept by tropical rains and sand storms of considerable violence, which from time to time caused a certain amount of material damage and not a little discomfort to the troops. The memory of suddenly having to turn out and clear blocked drainage trenches and lay on to straining tent ropes in the—sometimes—vain endeavour to prevent one's temporary home from vanishing into thin air, and to rescue one's kit from a mud bath, is now sufficiently remote to be contemplated without acute distress, but the feelings which these encounters which the elements evoked at the time were by no means so calm!