Page 161 - Who Was Sapper Brown

A Maltese Officer Remembered

There is a single Maltese burial in the Nicosia War Cemetery, namely Captain Francis Angel Attard-

Montalto, Pioneer Corps, who died on 29 March 1943 and is buried in Plot 1, Row A, Grave 8. He is
one of only two Maltese soldiers serving with the British Forces who are now buried in Cyprus, the

other being Lance Corporal E Abela, who died in the First World War and is buried in Limassol Roman
Catholic Cemetery (see Chapter 11).

The family’s historian in Malta, 92 year old Lilian Attard, who is Francis’ niece and the only surviving

relative who knew Francis personally, kindly provided the author with supplementary information about
him in March 2013. He was born in 1895, the youngest of eight sons of Amabile Attard-Montalto and

Luigia dei Conti Sant Fournier. He joined the Pioneer Corps in the First World War, was demobilised

thereafter, during which time he worked in Greece with a petroleum company and married an Austrian
woman, Lucy (they had no children), and then was re-commissioned in the Pioneer Corps on 6 April

1941. He was posted to Cyprus, being employed in a Civil Labour Unit, constructing defences to be used
in the event of a German invasion.15 He died suddenly of natural causes in 1943 at the age of 48. His

funeral was attended by a family friend, who later gave photos of the burial to Lilian, these photos being
preserved with others of Francis in the family archives.

Captain Francis Attard-Montalto’s headstones – then (1943) and now (2013)

15 Some information about Captain Francis Angel Attard-Montalto has been kindly supplied to the author by Lieutenant
Colonel (retired) John Starling, Archivist of the Royal Pioneer Corps.

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