Margit Johnsen

Margit Johnsen Godø, BEM, nicknamed Malta-Margit, (31 January 1913 – 20 July 1987) was a Norwegian sailor in the merchant navy.

For her service on a merchant vessel in convoy to Malta in 1942 she was awarded the St. Olav's Medal with Oak Branch and several other gallantry decorations.

Her story is told in maritime and wartime history as an example of Norwegian women's effort during World War II.

[2] As the Axis powers laid siege to the strategically important British colony of Malta in 1942, Johnsen was sailing on MV Talabot, a general cargo vessel trading in the Mediterranean Sea.

[5][3] Albert Toft, the captain on MV Talabot, granted Johnsen permission to leave the vessel in Egypt, but she declined the offer and choose to stay with her shipmates on the dangerous voyage.

[3] They were loaded with supplies such as ammunition, gasoline, paraffin, coal and grain as well as other goods that the besieged island needed.

During attacks she went around serving coffee, smiling and seemingly unaffected she showed me a shell fragment she had in her pocket, it had hit the steel helmet that she, like the rest of us, had on our heads.

[5] In the harbour of Valletta MV Talabot met new attacks from German and Italian aircraft while the unloading proceeded.

Some of the crew from the Norwegian merchant ship MV Talabot . The messroom girl Margit Johnsen from Ålesund in centre, receiving British Empire Medal from Rear Admiral J.S.M. Ritchie.
MV Talabot was part of a convoy escorted by a large group of British warships. In this photo, two of the warships, the cruisers HMS Cleopatra and HMS Euryalus have engaged Italian warships on 22 March 1942. Smoke is dispersed between the convoy and the Italian attackers so that the merchant vessels can escape.