profile
Photo of the Gibraltar Defence Force 12th Intake, 1, 2 & 3 Squads, which served from February to July 1951. Victor is in the rear row, 2nd from the left (circled). In the front row you have Lt Pepe Fabre, Lt Col JFG Gurney RA (CO 54 AA Regt RA), Capt Charles Norton, and 2/Lt Peter R. Gray RA
Victor Risso’s Gibraltar Past Victor Risso is a multi-talented Gibraltararian who left the Rock at the start of the “15th economic siege” to start a new life in the UK. He is a wit, raconteur, bon viveur, vocalist, pianist, actor, restorer of old beautiful objects, cook, and restaurateur. Victor was born in 1931, which was a good year for vintage Gibraltarians. In those days things were different and he was born at home under the care of Mrs Spitzer, the legendary local midwife. He has two sisters and a brother. Primary education was at a Catholic private school in Bomb House Lane run by Mrs Silva and her sister Miss Meme. This is where he discovered an aversion to being in an enclosed space. After investigation it was discovered he could just about tolerate sitting at a desk in a corner next to an open window. At the age of seven his education was disrupted by the World War II evacuation and his family went the circuitous route to Ballymena in Northern Ireland via Casablanca, Bloomsbury and Kensington. He has vivid memories of the small hotel in Gower Street in which the family was billeted. His grandmother and aunt, not noted for feminist views, enrolled as ARP wardens and were responsible for the hotel’s blackout. They returned to the Rock with the glint of future female emancipation in their eyes. His aunt, strangely, used to enjoy watching the dogfights in the skies over London when the other residents in the hotel took cover in the bomb proof shelter. She was fearless and became enthralled, watching and praying that the boys in blue would be victorious. On one occasion fate saved the lives of those in the hotel when a German bomb fell on top of it, passing through all the floors without exploding. Victor remembers coming out of his room, looking down and seeing the unexploded bomb. Needless to say the evacuees were swiftly moved to a hotel on Bedford Walk in safe Kensington. Shortly afterwards deadly V2 bombers started
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to attack London and so there was another move, to a camp in Ballymena. This time home was a Nissen hut. Victor and his sister, Viola, used to venture across the border into Eire to buy essential food supplies to be cooked by their mother. Charles Caruana, who went on to be appointed Bishop of Gibraltar, was a close friend and the two used to leave the camp and go into the fields where they would find turnips which they would uproot, wash in the waters of a clear stream, cut into strips and eat. To this day his passion for eating turnips has remained. After a few months the family returned to Gibraltar where his sister, Irma, met and married the dashing Robert Peliza. Victor, with the connivance of his father, somehow escaped being sent to school and so was never subjected to the rigorous discipline of the formidable Christian Brothers. Instead he had a succession of private tutors who included Elisa Carboni, John Sciacaluga and Joseph Reyes. For a short time he attended a small private school in Irish Town run by Lourdes Dotto who was also the Commissioner of Girl Guides, and where he eventually ended up as a general factotum and occasional teacher. He left this schooling at the age of 16 to learn “in the university of life where no academic requirements are necessary”.
His time as a reluctant soldier had given him more experience in cleaning lavatories than firing guns
His first job was as a book-keeper for a firm of building contractors followed by a stint as librarian running the Catholic bookshop in the Cathedral of St Mary the Crowned. The years crept by and at 21 he was called up for National Service in the Gibraltar Defence Force then part of the Royal Artillery. Due to some administrative oversight the authorities had to call up two intakes that year and as it was not possible to complete both, so his National Service was reduced to four and a half months. The officers responsible were Major Charlie Norton, Captain Bob Peliza (his brotherin-law which came in useful as Victor was not inclined to matters military), Lt Pepe Fabre, 2/Lt Peter Gray RA (who subsequently married Muriel Hume) and 2/Lt Terry Monaghan RA. The most memorable members of the intake were two Triay brothers JE and JJ. He remembers them being the barrack room lawyers always attached to their law tomes and ready to give advice should any of the intake get into trouble either militarily or civil. JE and JJ together with their medical student brother Sergio formed a group, the Trio Triay, who played once a week in a Nissen hut on Zoca flank battery. Victor was fine piano player who would always oblige when asked. At the time of the RFA Bedenham explosion (27th April 1951) Victor was being drilled by the intake Sergeant Major. As soon as the explosion was heard the squad was ordered to lie face down on the parade ground. Victor, on seeing a huge mushroom cloud above the dockyard, could not resist peering over the parapet. Incredibly the intake was rushed down to the explosion site to pick up stray ammunition and load it into a three
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • MARCH 2010