n this immensely readable epic history,

Anthony Mockler presents the definitive

account of one of the most extraordinary
and inglorious episodes of modern times:
the Italian-Ethiopian conflict of the Second
World War.
Dealing largely with the critical years of
1935-1941, Haile Selassie’ War is divided into
three parts. First the scene is set in Ethiopia,
still feudal, and in Italy, newly fascist, where
we meet the principal players in this drama of
unprovoked aggression: the devious and
ambitious Emperor Haile Selassie (described
by a rival as “half-man, half-snake”) and
Mussolini, “Il Duce,’ who began it all but
never troubled to visit the proud nation he’d
so unjustly annexed. The second section,
“The War of the Negus,” describes in vivid
and compelling detail the Italian invasion and
the great battles in the north, ending with the
marauders in undisputed control of their new
Roman Empire, and with Haile Selassie
living in apparently hopeless exile in Bath,
England.
Finally, “The Mills of God” recounts how,
following Italy’s entry into the war, British
Somaliland was invaded and conquered, and
fears of a British debacle spread across the
face of East Africa. But then at last the tide of
battle turned: as Mussolini’s dreams crumbled
into dust and his armies into defeat, the
ex-Emperor, supported by the bold but
amateurish troops of Major Orde Wingate,
fought his way back into complete control of
his empire, despite all attempts to stop him
by Italians, Ethiopians and even by his allies,
the British.
Against the rugged backdrop of this
remarkable land emerges a fascinating array
of unpredictable characters ranging from the
semidemenied \"\ceroy of conquered
(continued
on back flap
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
In 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/haileselassieswa0000mock
 OTHER BOOKS BY

ANE EOUN Y VE @ GREi

OUR ENEMIES THE FRENCH:

THE SYRIAN CAMPAIGN, JUNE-JULY 1941

FRANCIS OF ASSISI: THE WANDERING YEARS

LIONS UNDER THE THRONE:

THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICES OF ENGLAND

CHILDREN’S

KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS

FORTHCOMING

THE NEW MERCENARIES

 HATE
SEAS.EGS
WAR
 3 3503 00039 8036

cvs@ gi
{Se
Br, eOmee oS aae
WAR
THE ITALIAN-

ETHIOPIAN CAMPAIGN,

1935-1941

INT EQ] se
INO)
@ KEES

RANDOM HOUSE

ae state Library or Ohio

SEO Lib Center
40780 SR 821 * Caldwell, OH 43724
 Copyright © 1984 by Anthony Mockler

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Originally published in Great Britain by Oxford University Press,
Oxford.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Mockler, Anthony.
Haile Selassie’s war.

Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-1936. I. Title.
DT387.8.M$3 1985 963'.056 84-45758
ISBN 0-394-54222-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

 89-2'7142

To Christianne
 ms seronaee
+ Gewese oe“ate teh anise A VicesNibgemean
Sie
ba
i
eos Bint, hve Vtectten ame 7 te ham

Rl @ orth ESS Home e

mes sks aioe Be ah ae Te
ae Sox i é€ tem: -

= ae

Var’ esan —
a
7 .
nee & Be Sah ae
= ++e5 + = > wax

_ Meisimgerc toy. a
~~ a aaee

a Praeen
oe Va a:
eee Pe

— en

pina ‘.

y a

os

ae

; Ss.

‘
a ee ee ee

CONTENTS

Preface x1
Note on the Geography, Provinces,
and History of Ethiopia XV

Note on Ethiopian Spelling,

Pronunciation, and Names XV1l
Glossary xix
The Five Major Ethiopian Figures of this History XX1
List of Maps XXIl
Titles XXIl1
Family Tree: The Ruling House of Tigre XXV
Family Tree: The Ruling House of Shoa XXV1
Family Tree: The Ruling House of Gojjam XXVIll
Chronology XX1X
PROLOGUE XXX1X

PART I
ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND
=. Emperor of Ethiopia
~ Fascist Italy and its Colonies 21

PART II
THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
3. The ‘Incident’ at Walwal By
4. Preparations for War 44
5. Invasion OI
6. The Ethiopian Counter-Attack 74
7. The Battles in the North 96
8. Mai Ceu Thiel
9. April 1936 120
10. Nine Days in May 133
11. Africa Orientale Italiana 148
x CONTENTS

12. The Attack on Addis Ababa 156

13. The Hunting Down of the Rases 163
14. Yekatit 12 174
15. The Duke of Aosta 183
16. Edging Towards War 194

PART III
THE MILLS OF GOD
17. Domine Dirige Nos 207
18. The First Days of War 216
19. AOI Attacks 229
20. The Fall of British Somaliland 241
21. To Find a Lawrence pa
22. Failure at Gallabat oD
23. A Lawrence Found 280
24. Success at E] Waq 299
25. The Balance Swings 307
26. Joy in the Morning 314
27. The Battle of Keren 627
28. Gideon Force 338
29. Cunningham’s Coup 360
30. The Return of the Emperor a2

EPILOGUE The Endofthe

War 381

Biographical Index 384

Sources and Chapter Notes 404
Select Bibliography 426
Acknowledgements 433
Index 435
 PREACH

I AM writing this preface in a summer when the long if

intermittent years of work during which this history has been
designed, shaped, and altered are at last drawing to a close. Now
that the book is ended it is clear that it is the Ethiopians who hold
the centre of the stage. When I was writing it I considered (and
planned) that it should be in equal proportions about the Italians,
the British, and the Ethiopians—and probably in statistical
number of pages or paragraphs this is an aim achieved. But
though I hope this ‘tale of blood and war’ is objective and
unslanted, that it is what it purports to be, a true and accurate
narrative drawn from many different sources, yet it is its epic side
that moves me now. Like all genuine epics it has no particular
hero and no particular villain. Yet, as in any epic in which
‘extremes offortune are displayed’, one side must win: and I dare
say that is why I almost instinctively chose the format followed—
leading from one great Ethiopian triumph over the Italians via
total disaster and slow recovery to a satisfying final victory.
There is, as there ought to be, another and more rational
explanation for the way this book is laid out. It seemed to me
when I began my researches that far too many writers, both
English and Italian, treated the central episode ofthis period, the
Italo-Ethiopian War, as basically a European concern, a sort of
dramatized diplomatic history in which the Ethiopians played the
part merely of colourful extras against a picturesque backcloth.
This was obviously unfair. After all it was the Ethiopians’ land
that was being fought over and the Ethiopians who had done
most ofthe fighting and the dying. My original purpose then was
simply to see the story of that notorious invasion from the point
of view of the ignored underdog. But this purpose led me both
backwards and forwards: backwards because it was impossible to
understand the Ethiopian resistance (or in some cases their lack of
resistance) without delving into the complicated internal history
and politics of Ethiopia; and forwards because the story was
clearly only half told if the eventual comeback of the Ethiopians
and the restoration of the Emperor with British help were ignored.
The result is that this is now, as far as I know, the only book
Xi PREFACE

that covers fully and from sources on all sides both the Italian
invasion of Ethiopia and the British counter-invasion five years
later, subjects by so many historians and writers treated
separately. It covers too the intriguing but little-known period of
Italian colonial rule and Ethiopian resistance, though at con-
siderably less length than I intended. For this book has had a
curious publishing history. The original manuscript was over
three times the present length. An Italian translation, published
by Rizzoli under the title I] Mito dell’ Impero, though already much
shortened from the original, is perhaps twice as long as this, and
its existence ought therefore to be mentioned if only for the
benefit of serious students of the period who read Italian. But this
version has been trimmed again and again; in particular the
descriptions of Ethiopia’s pre-invasion politics and of the
five-year-long resistance have been reduced to less than a quarter
of their original length.
As for the Battle of Adowa, this, the first chapter, though also
drastically cut, could not be abandoned. For Adowa is the
essential prologue to the whole story. It is impossible to
understand the fiercely emotional entanglement of the two
antagonists without understanding Adowa—where, as I hope
will become very plain, more was lost by Italy than men and
more was won by Ethiopia than a battle.

A surprising number of people encountered have been very hazy

about the difference between Ethiopia and Abyssinia. It seems as
well to clear up this rather crucial point at the outset. There is no
difference between Ethiopia and Abyssinia. Abyssinia and
Ethiopia are one and the same country. What has caused this
confusion is that from the Middle Ages right up to at least the end
of the Second World War, the country now called Ethiopia was
generally known as Abyssinia.
This posed rather a dilemma with the book’s title. Should the
title refer to Abyssinia as it then was or to Ethiopia as it now is? I
avoided the forked horn, as readers will have noticed, by
side-stepping. The war of course was not Haile Selassie’s
personal possession any more than it was Mussolini’s or a myriad
other Ethiopians’ or Italians’. But Haile Selassie’s is the face—a
memorable face—most often associated with the events de-
scribed; and his personality is perhaps the most fascinating of all
those, of whatever nationality, involved. I find it hard, even now,
 PREFACE xi
to analyse my own opinion ofthe late Emperor. Meeting him, as
I did in Addis Ababa, was of great interest but very little direct
help. Questions had to be submitted in writing via the British
Embassy to the Ministry of Information. From there, twice tact-
fully weeded, they were passed to the Ministry of the Imperial
Court which did the final censoring of anything indiscreet.
What remained was answered briefly, courteously, banally, and
in Amharic at the formal audience by His Imperial Majesty, Haile
Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, King of Kings, and Conquering
Lion of Judah. The translation was even briefer. Supplementaries
were not encouraged. Indirectly, however, the interview was
extraordinarly useful in that, once news of it spread abroad,
doors opened that had previously been held only politely ajar.
For the Ethiopians are a secretive, reserved, and cautious race,
and do not part with information easily. At the time Haile
Selassie seemed frail but his still almost sphinx-like dignity gave
him an air of immortality. Now he is dead. Many of my
informants are also dead and an age-old system has disappeared.
It had its faults but it was certainly unique and I am glad that I was
in Ethiopia in time to see it in action.
‘A long book,’ wrote Winston Churchill in his introduction to
The River War, ‘does not justify a long preface.’ Although this is
now a short book, compared at least to its original length and to
Churchill’s twin volumes (which treat in full military detail of
very similar subject-matter in much the same part of the world),
enough is enough and my readers’ patience is probably not
inexhaustible. So let me end by recommending most strongly, as
Churchill did in that case, continual reference to the maps
without which the military operations cannot possibly be
followed. On these maps are marked the vast majority of the two
hundred and fifty-odd place-names mentioned in the text,
which, though probably confusing at first, will become more and
more familiar as the book progresses. As for the personal names,
the ‘Biographical Notes’ that have been designed to help with
these have been placed, perhaps illogically, at the back of the
book. The object was to avoid a rebarbative accumulation of
non-essential reading matter before battle—in this case the great
battle of Adowa—commences.
Milton Manor A.M.
Summer 1983 ’
 ; - os
- —< seamen
hh erg sue nites
brelian HT le ine [pwns
Lhe oe vie Pa rT Larry nae
a if ‘on +< cid 2 t ‘geet
> De
inee gai 7? eave a) why aie 4a

bp tus batt ly Aas | 7 ai ts ‘tun? tase

ee ; a re cy, a tr mi aks
t , 4
ure gta recast) de q enaghert ree
he Te, vl ; pawon i Bary)
; —— 3
le bngue wba? ui ‘vase Ly Pe “Nada

oa:mien. ¥ fate neon Herth,

i ¢ ‘ x vi mitae i

= i A= b : Ih i on
T oe 7 a oe if yt Tad
‘ ee Wy Sucve err
boii ! Mh a * 12.4% etn =f
= 44ii oF eat @ Pi

vocal _ Sa
i anil! GFOn)h ay AAR
ah ea
|
« ' ’ a

T 4 ta,1s ij

mae
ca

- ' i y tera Sy
_ q

my A

5 1%

t
fy
é ay,

BS | =

}
= ~
. @lited

t y*

q |
NOTE ON THE GEOGRAPHY, PROVINCES,
AND HISTORY OF ETHIOPIA

ETHIOPIA is a vast and mountainous country. To the east the

highlands fall away into the Danakil and Somali deserts, to the
west into the jungles of the Upper Nile drainage basin, and to the
south into the arid wastelands of northern Kenya. But the
heartland of Ethiopia is an immense mountainous plateau, riven
with gorges, defiles, escarpments, and peaks, a titanic land.
By the early years of this century the Empire was divided into a
bewildering kaleidoscope of provinces, districts, and governo-
rates. Five major provinces formed the historic kernel of the
Ethiopian Empire. These five are referred to again and again in
the pages that follow, and the reader would be well advised to fix
the names and the relative position of the five in his mind’s eye.
(See in particular the General Map of Ethiopia and surrounding
countries, on page 4. Though the names ofthe provinces are not
marked on it, each province’s principal town or city, as listed
below, is.)
Tigre, the northernmost province, bordered the Italian colony
of Eritrea; Axum, its original capital, was the religious and
cultural centre of the Empire, and the legendary birthplace of
Ethiopia’s first Emperor, Menelik I, son of King Solomon and
the Queen of Sheba.
Beghemder, the traditional heartland of the Amhara race,
was ruled from Gondar, Ethiopia’s late medieval capital and most
famous city.
Gojjam, lying to the south of Beghemder in the bend of the
Blue Nile, was almost an independent principality, its major
town—like so many towns in Ethiopia at the turn of the century,
little more than a village—being Debra Markos.
Wollo, the buffer state between Tigre and Shoa, was a
traditionally Muhammadan province, much of which was
ranged over by the ferocious Raya and Azebo Galla. The
Emperor Theodore, who razed Gondar in 1866, transferred his
headquarters to the mountain fortress of Magdala in Wollo.
There two years later he committed suicide when faced with an
invading British expeditionary force under Lord Napier. It was
XV1 NOTE ON THE GEOGRAPHY
not till Menelik II’s time that Dessie was founded as Wollo’s
capital. .
Shoa, became the heart and centre of a much-expanded
Empire under the first post-medieval Emperor of the Shoan
ruling house, Menelik II. The Amhara of Shoa, the dominant
group, stemmed from the high mountain plateau of Menz in the
north of the province. Moving south, Menelik changed his
capital five times. Finally he shifted it from the heights of Entotto
to found, in the plain just below, his ‘New Flower’, Addis
Ababa—which then became, and still remains, the capital of the
whole country.

Menelik’s armies swept south and east, subduing various rich

Galla kingdoms in the south-west—K affa, Jimma and Wollega—
and in the south-east the more primitive territories of Sidamo,
Arussi, and Bale. (For the position ofthese, and other provinces,
see Map 3, ‘The Armies of the South’, p. 88.) Most important of
all, the Muhammadan Sultanate of Harar to the east of Shoa was
in 1887 conquered and annexed, to be governed by Menelik’s
cousin Ras Makonnen. Thanks to his skilful diplomacy Ras
Makonnen subsequently added to his governorate a vast portion
of the Somali grazing lands, the Ogaden. Ras Makonnen’s son,
Tafari, the future Emperor Haile Selassie, was born in Harar five
years after its conquest.
On their conquest the Italians rather wisely combined all the
southern provinces into the single governorate of Galla-Sidamo,
in area almost half the country. The most frequent names of
southern provinces that the reader will come across are
Wollega—split into three governorates at the time of the Italian
invasion, its chief town being Lekempti—and IIlubabor lying to
the west of Addis Ababa over against the Sudan, with its capital at
Gore.

In the north the three small but powerful Christian provinces

of Wag, Lasta and Yeggiu—bounded by Tigre to the north and
Wollo to the south—are frequently mentioned. [For their relative
positions see Map 4, “The Battles in the North’, p. 98.]
 NOTE ON ETHIOPIAN SPELLING.
PRONUNCIATION, AND NAMES

IN his preface to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom T. E. Lawrence

wrote: “Arabic names won’t go into English exactly. There are
some “‘scientific systems” of transliteration, helpful to people
who know enough Arabic not to need helping, but a wash-out
for the world.’
Amharic names won’t go into English exactly, either; their
alphabet has too many consonants and vowels. Fortunately,
though, most Amharic names are easier on the eye and the ear
than their Arabic equivalents. I have gone for the most easy and,
where possible, familiar form rather than the most accurate
transliteration; referring, when in two minds, and as a handy
guide-of-thumb, to the Addis Ababa telephone directory.
Amharic names will be found less confusing once it is
appreciated that nearly all of them have a meaning. For instance
Makonnen occurs again and again, particularly in aristocratic
families. Why? Because it means noble.
A few simple guidelines may help. Each individual has
basically one name and one name only. There are no family
names as such. Women do not change their name on marriage.
Each individual’s name is followed by his or her father’s
name—thus Tafari Makonnen is Tafari the son of Makonnen.
Many names are biblical in origin; such as, to take a very
common example, Mariam.
But there are numerous names which consist of one concept
expressed in two words, and in these cases the two parts are
inseparable. Haile Selassie, Power of the Trinity, is an obvious
case in point. Thus Haile Mariam Mammo, the Patriot leader,
was Haile Mariam, Power of Mary, the son of Mammo.
Readers will notice as they read on that I have often written a
two-part name as one word—as for instance in the case of
Fikremariam and Gabremariam. This is merely a personal
preference.
The apparently inconsistent case of Asfa Wossen here and
Asfawossen there is not exactly based on T. E. Lawrence’s
splendid conclusion to his remarks above (‘I spell my names
XV NOTE ON ETHIOPIAN SPELLING

anyhow, to show what rot systems are’) but a simple and, I hope,
helpful way of distinguishing the Emperor’s son from his
namesake and cousin, the son of Ras Kassa.
 GLOSSARY

SOME common Ethiopian words and names.

Ababa Flower
Addis New
Amba Flat-topped mountain
Amhara The ruling ethnic group; Semitic origins
Amharic or
Amharinya Their language. Semitic; with its own distinctive
alphabet
Awaj Decree; official proclamation.
Balabat Literally ‘Son of aFather’. Country squire or nobleman
Chitet The levy; also the summons for war
Egziabher God
Enjerra A sort of bread. With wot, spiced meat, the staple
Ethiopian dish
Ferengi Foreigner
Galla Probably the largest ethnic group; origins obscure;
invaded the Amhara highlands in the sixteenth century
and spread particularly over the south. More negroid in
features. Originally pagan; never structurally united
like the Amhara; now generally known as the Oromo
Gallinya Their language
Gebar A serf
Gebir Traditional feast
Ge’ez Liturgical language of the Coptic Church. As Latin to
Italian, so Ge’ez to Amharic
Ghebbi Often mistranslated ‘palace’. A nobleman’s residence, a
cluster of buildings
Haile Power of
Janhoy Majesty. Used in addressing or referring to the
Emperor
Mahel Safari Army of the Centre; commanded by the Imperial
Fitaurari
Makonnen Noble
Maskal Feast of the Finding of the True Cross. One of the two
great feasts of the liturgical year. Celebrated at the end
XX GLOSSARY

of September, it marks the end of the rains and the

beginning of fine weather
Negaret War drum
Selassie The Trinity
Shamma The light Ethiopian toga, worn by men and women
Shifta Bandit (traditional Robin Hood figure)
Shum Appointed to/Appointed ruler of
Tabot Ark of the Covenant. There is one in every Coptic
church, kept in the central part of the octagon where
only priests are allowed to penetrate
Te} Mead. Fomented honeywine. National drink. Surpri-
singly intoxicating as the author can testify
Tejbeit Low-class inn, drinking den
Tigrinya Language ofthe people of Tigre. Close to but different
from Amharinya—perhaps as Portuguese to Spanish
Tug River/stream (also Wadi/Khor)
Tukul Hut
Yekatit One of the thirteen months of the Ethiopian calendar;
roughly February. The Ethiopian year is six to seven
years behind the Gregorian calendar
Worq Golden. Often part of awoman’s name
Zabagna Watchman; guard. As in Mitraya Z.—machine-gun
guard. (Mitraya from mitraillette. All Ethiopian names
for guns are corruptions of European names: a Lee
Mitford, for example is a dimiphor)
 THE FIVE MAJOR ETHIOPIAN FIGURES OF
7 coHB isBare)BO 8a

Emperor Haile Selassie I, Negus Negusti, King of Kings

Better known before his coronation as Ras Tafari
Ras Kassa
Elder statesman of the Shoan ruling house
Ras Imru
The Emperor’s cousin and right-hand man
Ras Seyum of Tigre
Grandson of the Emperor Johannes; always therefore a potential
rival to Haile Selassie
Ras Hailu of Gojjam
Independent-minded potentate; throughout his life mistrustful of
and mistrusted by the Emperor
Biographical notes on many of the Ethiopians who appear in this book
are to be found at its back, including much fuller notes on the persons
above. But these five all lived through, and played a great part in, the
events about to be described; even a thumbnail phrase may help to fix
their names firmly in the reader’s mind.
 DISTCOP MARS

Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa

The Ogaden at the Time of Walwal
The Armies of the South
The Battles in the North
Shoa and Addis Ababa
The Sudan Frontier on the Outbreak of War
British Somaliland: The Italian Invasion
The Keren Campaign
a Goyam: The Campaign of Gideon Force and the
eee
ee.
ay
a
Return of the Emperor
o The Kenya Frontier
 CEE ES

TITLES were—until the Revolution of 1974—extraordinarily important in

Ethiopian life and politics. Strictly speaking, none were hereditary—
although certain titles went with certain posts and were normally granted to
members of the same family or clan. The Emperor was not the only person
with a right to award titles; but to be appointed Fitaurari by the Emperor
was a far greater honour than to become, for instance, a Fitaurari created by a
Dejaz. Titles originally described functions. By the twentieth century this
was no longer entirely true, particularly with the military titles.
Nevertheless I have divided the titles given below, somewhat arbitrarily,
into categories.

MIPTITARY fIELES

Negus Negusti King of Kings, Emperor

Negus King
Ras Head of an Army
Dejaz Commander of the Threshold
Fitaurari Commander of the Advance Guard
Kenyaz Commander of the Right Wing
Geraz Commander of the Left Wing
Balambaras Commander of the Fort
The above are, in order of descending importance, the most prestigious
titles in Ethiopia. Below are two semi-traditional titles used as equivalent to
military ranks in Europe.
Shallaka Commander of a Thousand; Battalion C.O.
Shambel Commander of Two Hundred and Fifty;
Company C.O.

COURT TITLES

Agefari Superintendent of Banquets

Afanegus Breath of the Negus, Lord Chief Justice
Azaz Master of Ceremonies
Bajirond Guardian of the Royal Property (traditionally two)
Bitwoded Beloved—Chief Counsellor (traditionally two)
Blatta Page
Blattengueta Master of Pages, Chief Administrator of the Palace
XX1V TITLES

Kantiba Mayor
Ligaba Court Chancellor
Li Prince—title given to young nobleman
Liquemaquas King’s Double (traditionally two)
Mered Azmatch — Honorific title given to the Crown Princes
Nagradas Treasury or Customs Overseer
Tsehafe Taezaz Minister of the Pen, Keeper of the Seal
Woizero Lady (title given traditionally to noblewoman)

SEMI-HEREDITARY TITLES

Bahr Ghazal Lord of the Sea (traditional title of the ruler of Eritrea
before the Italian coming)
Jantirar Ruler of Ambasel
Nevraid Ruler of Axum; semi-religious
Shum Agame Lord of Agame (the House of Sabadaugis)
Shum Geralta Lord of Geralta
Shum Tembien Lord of the Tembien
Wagshum Lord of Wag (descendants of the Zagwe dynasty)

CHURCH TITLES

Abba Father (used for a priest or bishop)

Abuna Archbishop (sometimes used for bishop)
Debtera Learned religious man, neither monk nor priest
Echege Administrative head of the Ethiopian Church, tradi-
tionally the Abbot of Debra Libanos.
 (sosadu ays fo essey ellaqy eyewy zelq nyodesellq sssoung JISSEJIS 21Qey Ipnez zeloq

4ajysnvq)
NdaSSOA
vuuddv

ZvVfad~

poaee

CIUEW
==20U)tdico

4a] YSnvppuvsd ‘ MIIULEC] |

eqsaq
soRstPes

sey
Tie
vaSV

Ze[9(]
||
fo
Eas

BREW.

oY
Gl

cc

VSOND
o
yoapaqqa

AISSV
eysesuryy

Z
I

ZVfada
OIIZION\
O19Z10/\

ATIVH

TAS
uinAag

eILTEM\
[oers]
sey

(oJ fo PRIN sNBanyfosaiysnvq) —yDIQeN, OIIZIOA\ co

(1dwanw dnor 0961 ayy ut 1qqayt ary ay) ut payliy) WOAASSVA VAVUV VSOND SVU

VHSVOINVW
(sagoyuy

SISSPTIS

pad]
[sgt
Aavnuv{

poop
eAely
suivya

paid)

VUZE
SVU
‘Lo61

Yo
ut
iv
(vuamajapy fo aj1Vq wads ays JD
Ipypyy ays fo saysiasap ays Aq pajjiy 6ggi—zZgi pany) A] SANNWHO[YOUuddWa
(aay Ajnuvy payfijduig vy)
HAYDILL dO ASNOOH ONITOY AHL
 THE RULING HOUSE OF SHOA
(A Simplified Family Tree)

NEGUS SAHLE SELASSIE

(Negus of Shoa 1813-1847)

a
NEGUS HAILE MELAKOT RAS DARGIE
(Negus of Shoa 1847-1855) |

EMPEROR MENELIK II WOIZERO TESEME ASFAU

(Negus of Shoa 1865-1889)

co EMPRESS TAITU

EMPRESS ZAUDITU WOIZEROSHOAGARAD RASKASSA DEJAZ ZAUDI

ASFAU
The Empress Zauditu (Patriot Leader)
was married to
co NEGUS MIKAEL
(1) Dejaz Araya Selassie of Wollo
Johannes of Tigre
(2) Dejaz Wube Gabrehiwot
of Wollo
(3) Ras Gugsa Wule
of Beghemder

LIJ YASU DEJAZ DEJAZ DEJAZ

WONDOSSEN ABERRA ASFAWOSSEN
(Killed by (Killed by (Killed by
Italians) Italians) Italians)

Lij Girma LIJJOHANNES Li Menelik Li Meleke Tsahai

(The “Little Negus”)

PRINCESS TENAGNE WORQ MEREDAZMATCH ASFA WOSSEN

o RAS DESTA DAMTEW co (1) Woizero Walata Israel

[Killed by (daughter of RAS SEYUM)

Italians] co (2) Woizero Madfarish Worq

(daughter of
DEJAZ ABEBE DAMTEW)

Li Iskander Princesses Aida, Crown Prince Princesses Maryam,

[Killed by the Ruth, Sofia, and Zara Yacob Fihin, Sefrash
Dergue Sebla
November 1974]
So:
a |Geo ee RE
WOIZERO TENAGNE WORQ WOIZERO AYAHILUSH

WOIZERO IHITA RAS MAKONNEN DEJAZ BESHAH NEGUS WOLDE

MARYAM of Harar [Killed at GIORGIS
; pees 104) of Beghemder
1
(Died 1917)
Woizero Mazlekia

RAS IMRU EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE I

0 EMPRESS MENEN
Haile Selassie’s daughter by a previous marriage
LIJ MIKAEL PRINCESS ROMANE WORQ married
(Prime Minister July- DEJAZ BEIENE MERID
peptember 3p 74, approved [Killed by Italians]
by the Dergue)
Haile Selassie’s niece Lilt Yashashaworg married
(1) Ras Gugsa Araya
(2) BITWODED MAKONNEN DEMISSIE
| [Killed by Italians]
Ras Asrate (3) Dejaz Makonnen Endalkatchew
(Killed by the (Their son Dejaz Endalkatchew Makonnen,
Dergue, November Haile Selassie’s last Prime Minister,
1974) was killed by the Dergue in
November, 1974)

PRINCESS ZENABE WORQ PRINCESS TSAHAI Duke ofHarar Prince Sahle Selassie
(died 1933) (died 1942) [died 1957] (died 1962)

«© DEJAZ HAILE oo Lij—later

Lt. General Five Sons One Son
SELASSIE GUGSA
[son of RAS GUGSA ABIYE ABEBE
ARAYA] [Son of Liquemaquas
Abebe Atnaf.
Killed by the
Dergue in November
1974]
 (sapvay joisjvg)
aAUUAIAW VHSVONVWW ZvVfad (£) ©
[supra] AZADIA ZVIA (Z) © (sapvary 101410q)
(sapvary 1011) Aq payin é] NASSOMVASV ZVfad ~ ASVA {fT (1) © HaAdgIZaa
MATAGNIVHSVY MATA aASsassAD Zvfad VNVWOU OUFZION TIONOMATAVS OUIZIOM HSVDIN Zvfad
AddqddaAOUAZIOM
puanyy zvlaq (S$)
wrelloyjo nyrepy sey (F)
(£)
sey
padag
JO
eOYS
[NT
ZVI
UAV)
TAS
FISSV
a131L
(Z)
JO
qe1eHJONINNOWVW VWIIA ZV {ad (1)
oO} polieuw SEM qoeyejessy O1SZIO“N\
(NLIVL SSAMAWA 241fo429815) (o/JM fo TAVHIW SNOANfo 4ajydnvp)
HOV TIVAVSSV OYAZIOM © OUOM ATVNAZ OUAZIOM ~
MATAd ZV{Aa [1861 pp] ATIWH S¥Va HadIZdad SVu
hye © pay a TA eB cd ee
[1061 patp ‘1ggt snBapy poumosD]
LONOWIVH 4TAAL SNOAN
(aaa Ajnuvg payfijduag y)
WV{fO9 JO JSNOH ONITNYA FHL
 CHRONOLOGY

13 APRIL 1868 Suicide of the Emperor Theodore at Magdala.

21 JULY 1883 Birth of Benito Mussolini near Predappio in the
Romagna.
JANUARY 1887 Capture of Harar by the Negus Menelik of Shoa
and by his cousin Ras Makonnen.
9 MARCH 1889 BATTLE OF METEMMA

Death in battle of the Emperor Johannes,

Theodore’s successor, and of over 60,000 warriors
on both sides—leaving, however, victory with the
Ethiopians over the Sudanese.
23 JULY 1892 Birth at Harar of ason to Ras Makonnen: Lij
Tafari.
SUNDAY I MARCH 1896 BATTLE OF ADOWA

1902 Ras Makonnen in London for the coronation of

King Edward VII, Queen Victoria’s son and suc-
cessor, to whom he presents a zebra.
26 FEBRUARY 1903 Birth of Orde Wingate.
22 MARCH 1906 Death of Ras Makonnen, to the Emperor Menelik’s
enormous distress.
JUNE 1908 The ailing Emperor Menelik nominates his grand-
son Li Yasu as his successor.
I9Q09-IQII The Regency of Ras Tessema (who dies poisoned).
12 DECEMBER I9QI2 Death of the Emperor Menelik.
27 SEPTEMBER I916 The Abuna Matteos in Addis Ababa proclaims
Menelik’s daughter Zauditu Empress, and Makon-
nen’s son Ras Tafari Regent.
7 OCTOBER I916 The Negus Mikael, Lij Yasu’s father, sets out from
Wollo to invade Shoa at the head of 80,000 men.
19 OCTOBER I916 The Negus Mikael annihilates the forces of Ras Lul
Seged at Ankober and kills their leader.

27 OCTOBER I916 BAT TLUHORSAGALEE

The Negus Mikael defeated and captured.

Shoa triumphs over Wollo.

23 MARCH I9I9 Mussolini’s followers meet in Piazza San

_Sepolchro, Milan, to found the Fasci di Combatti-
mento.
XXX CHRONOLOGY.

MAY I92I 35 Fascists, including Mussolini, elected to Italy’s

Chamber of Deputies.
28 OCTOBER 1922 The so-called March on Rome begins.
King Vittorio Emmanuele ofItaly calls on Signor
Mussolini to form a government.
SEPTEMBER 1923 Ethiopia, with the support of Italy and despite the
opposition of Great Britain, becomes a member of
the League of Nations.
10 JUNE 1924 Matteotti, the Socialist leader, disappears from the
Chamber—kidnapped and killed by Fascists. Ras
Tafari, Regent of Ethiopia, is visiting Rome and
goes on to visit Paris and London, distributing
lions as gifts.
3 JANUARY 1925 The Fascist dictatorship begins in Italy with a rous-
ing speech by the Duce. The Grand Council of
Fascism is founded and Roberto Farinacci becomes
Secretary of the Partito Nazionale Fascista.
I2 DECEMBER 1926 Death of the Abuna Matteos, the pillar of the tradi-
tionalists in Ethiopia.
1928 Ras Tafari crowned Negus of Ethiopia.
1929 Revolt of the Raya Galla in Wollo.
28 MARCH 1930 The army of Beghemder, 35,000 strong, com-
manded by Ras Gugsa Wule, ex-husband of the
Empress Zauditu, invades Shoa.
31 MARCH 1931 BADILE OER THE PLAINS OFAN CGHIM
Ras Gugsa Wule defeated and killed by the Shoans.
2 APRIL 1930 Sudden death of the Empress Zauditu in Addis
Ababa.
3 APRIL 1930 Negus Tafari proclaimed Negus Negusti (King of
Kings) and Lion of Judah under the throne name of
Haile Selassie.
2 NOVEMBER I930 Coronation of the new Emperor and Empress in
Addis Ababa in a ceremony designed on the lines of
the Coronation of King Edward VII in London, as
witnessed by the Emperor’s father, Ras Makonnen.
MAY 1932 Escape of Lij Yasu—recaptured by the Emperor’s
son-in-law Ras Desta.
JUNE 1932 Trial, condemnation and imprisonment of Ras
Hailu of Gojjam for aiding and abetting Lij Yasu.
30 JANUARY 1933 Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of the German
Reich.
 CHRONOLOGY XXX1
24 MARCH 1933 Death of the Princess Zenabe Worgq, Haile Selassie’s
favourite daughter, married to Haile Selassie Gugsa
of Tigre.
5 DECEMBER 1934 The ‘Incident’ at Walwal in the Ogaden Desert: 107
Ethiopians killed by Captain Cimmaruta and his
Somali Dubats in a border dispute.
9 DECEMBER 1934 Blattengueta Herouy, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister,
sends a telegram to the League of Nations inviting
intervention.
2 OCTOBER 1935 After months of tension, the chitet is beaten; the
Empire mobilizes.
3 OCTOBER 1935 At dawn 100,000 Italian troops commanded by
General de Bono cross the Eritrean frontier.
7 OCTOBER 1935 Adowa is occupied by the Italians without fighting.
17 OCTOBER 1935 The Army of the Centre, the Mahel Safari com-
manded by Ras Mulugueta, sets out from Addis
Ababa for the north.
8 NOVEMBER 1935 Makalle, the capital of the ‘traitor’ Haile Selassie
Gugsa, is occupied by the Italians without fighting.
18 NOVEMBER 1935 The Emperor moves his headquarters and the
Guard north to Dessie, the capital of Wollo.
I9 NOVEMBER 1935 A ‘Black Day’ declared in Italy following the impo-
sition of sanctions by the League of Nations.
26 NOVEMBER 1935 De Bono, created a Marshal, is sent home in dis-
grace for advancing too slowly and is replaced by
Badoglio.
I1§ DECEMBER 1935-— The First Battle of the Tembien. In this mountain
23 JANUARY 1936 range in Tigre the armies of Ras Kassa and Ras
Seyum attempt to break through the Italian
defences.
6-23 JANUARY 1936 On the Southern Front General Graziani defeats
Ras Desta’s attacks and drives back his forces.
IO—1I5 FEBRUARY 1936 After days of bombardment Badoglio launches
four divisions in an attack on Ras Mulugueta and
the Mahel Safari, entrenched on the mountain
stronghold of Amba Aradam. The attack is suc-
cessful though Ras Mulugueta himself escapes the
encircling trap.
27 FEBRUARY 1936 The Raya Galla, harassing the retreating Ethiopi-
ans, kill Ras Mulugueta.
27-30 FEBRUARY 1936 The Second Battle of the Tembien. The Italians
“ scale the mountain peaks and drive back Ras Kassa
and Ras Seyum.
XXXll CHRONOLOGY

I MARCH 1936 The fortieth anniversary ofthe Battle of Adowa.

The Emperor reaches Quoram by foot. In Addis
Ababa the Abuna Cyrillos orders a strict fast of
8 days.
2 MARCH 1936 Ras Imru, on the Ethiopian left in the Shire, nearly
defeats the advancing Italians but is in the end
routed by mustard gas and incendiary bombs.
21 MARCH 1936 The Emperor, now joined by Ras Kassa and Ras
Seyum, sets up his advance headquarters in a cave
overlooking the plain of Lake Ashangi.
TUESDAY, BATTLE OF MAI CEU
31 MARCH 1936. The Emperor and the Guard and many Ethiopian
FEAST OF ST.GEORGE. armies attack six divisions commanded by Badog-
lio in person in the traditional Ethiopian mass
frontal assault.
I APRIL 1936 In the West, Gondar, the historic capital of the
Empire, falls to Party Secretary Starace’s motorized
column without a battle.
2 APRIL 1936 The Emperor at last orders a retreat—which, under
bombardment from Italian planes, and attack by
the horsemen of the Raya Galla, becomes a rout.
14—30 APRIL 1936 Graziani advances in the Ogaden, and turns the
Ethiopians’ ‘Maginot Line,’ entering Dagghabur.
30 APRIL 1936 The Emperor and Ras Kassa return to Addis
Ababa. Ras Seyum submits to Badoglio.
2 MAY 1936 The Emperor leaves Addis Ababa surreptitiously
by train for Dyibuti, the French colony on the Red
Sea.
5 MAY 1936 Badoglio’s columns occupy an anarchic Addis
Ababa as the Emperor sails from Djibuti into exile.
8 MAY 1936 Graziani’s forces occupy Harar.
9 MAY 1936 At 10:30 P.M. Mussolini announces to nearly halfa
million jubilant Italians crowding into Piazza Vene-
zia the conquest and annexation of Ethiopia—and
proclaims King Vittorio Emmanuele the new
King-Emperor.
21 MAY 1936 Graziani reaches Addis Ababa to learn that Badog-
lio has resigned voluntarily and that he has been
appointed by the Duce to rule the conquered coun-
try.
I JUNE 1936 Organic Law promulgated in Rome, reorganizing
the whole of Italy’s possessions in the Horn of
Africa into the five provinces ofAfrica Orientale
 CHRONOLOGY XXXill

Italiana, with Graziani—promoted to Marshal—as

Viceroy.
3 JUNE 1936 Haile Selassie disembarks at Southampton and
receives a tumultuous greeting from Londoners on
arrival at Waterloo station.
30 JUNE 1936 Haile Selassie addresses the Assembly of the League
of Nations in Geneva, appealing in vain for aid.
I§ JULY 1936 Sanctions against Italy officially abandoned by the
League.
28 JULY 1936 Ethiopian resistance leaders inspired by Abba
Petros launch a four-pronged attack on Addis
Ababa that after 3 days of confused fighting fails.
Abba Petros is shot by the Italians.
NOVEMBER 1936 After the rains, Italian columns set out to hunt
down resistance leaders and surviving imperial
armies, particularly in the South.
6 NOVEMBER 1936 Dejaz Balcha, the aged ferocious Galla eunuch,
killed, machine-gun in hand.
18 DECEMBER 1936 Ras Imru, Regent of Ethiopia, surrenders.
19 DECEMBER 1936 Dejaz Wondossen Kassa captured and shot.
21 DECEMBER 1936 His brothers Dejaz Aberra Kassa and Dejaz Asfa-
wossen Kassa surrender and are shot.
IQ FEBRUARY 1937 Final battle of the war at Gogetti. Dejaz Beiene
Merid and Dejaz Gabremariam defeated and shot.
IQ FEBRUARY I1937— Assassination attempt on the Viceroy, Marshal
YEKATIT 12 Graziani, at a public ceremony in Addis Ababa.
This is followed by three days of massacres by
Blackshirts in the capital and by numerous execu-
tions of Ethiopians all over the country.
23 FEBRUARY 1937 Ras Desta, the Emperor’s son-in-law, hunted down
and shot.
20 MAY 1937 297 monks ofDebra Libanos, Ethiopia’s most
famous monastery, shot on Graziani’s orders—an
atrocity that leads, gradually, to uprisings through-
out the hitherto subdued Empire.
NOVEMBER 1937 As revolts spread through Gojjam and Beghemder
after the rains, the Duke of Aosta is appointed
Viceroy to replace Graziani.
28 DECEMBER 1937 The Duke of Aosta reaches Addis Ababa—piloting
his own plane from Massawa—to take up his post.
MARCH-APRIL 1938 Vast military manoeuvres by the Italians in Ethio-
pia, including a 60,000 man ‘invasion’ of Gojjam.
XXXIV CHRONOLOGY

Q MAY 1938 Hitler, on a state visit to Italy, attends in Rome the

parade celebrating the second anniversary of the
Fascist Empire—a parade in which Ras Hailu and
fifty Ethiopian dignitaries take part.
I2 MAY 1938 Haile Selassie addresses the League of Nations for
the second time. His health is so poor after two
English winters that Lorenzo Taezaz, his secretary,
has to read his speech for him.
6 JUNE 1938 The resistance leader, Haile Mariam Mammo,
killed north of Addis Ababa; but ‘Ras’ Abebe Are-
gai evades his pursuers as the rainy season begins.
SEPTEMBER 1938 War threatens in Europe—the Munich crisis.
4 JANUARY 1939 The Minister for Italian Africa, Teruzzi, ‘a hurri-
cane,’ visits Africa Orientale Italiana.
8 MARCH 1939 The Duke of Aosta, recalled to Rome in semi-
disgrace for ‘consultations,’ stops offin Khartoum
to play polo with the Governor General of the
Sudan, Sir Stewart Symes.
AUGUST 1939 A cable from Rome orders the Duke of Aosta,
safely back in Africa Orientale Italiana, to mobilize.
Ten days later British East Africa mobilizes in its
turn. General Wavell takes up his post as British
Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, at Cairo.
3 SEPTEMBER 1939 Britain and France declare war on Germany. Italy,
however, remains neutral. Tension falls in Africa.
27 SEPTEMBER 1939 The Viceroy celebrates the Feast of Maskal in Addis
Ababa in great style, flanked Ras Hailu, Ras Seyum
and ‘Ras’ Haile Selassie Gugsa. But ‘Ras’ Abebe
Aregai holds out in the hills, resisting all Italian
blandishments.
5 MARCH 1940 Abebe Aregai and 20,000 ‘Patriots’ attempt to
ambush the Vice Governor General, General Nasi,
at ‘peace talks’ in the hills.
9 APRIL 1940 German troops invade Norway, ending the ‘phony
war’ in Europe.
IO MAY 1940 The German Blitzkrieg on France and the Low
Countries is launched. Winston Churchill becomes
Prime Minister ofBritain.
28 MAY 1940 The Belgian Army surrenders to Germany. The
British Expeditionary Force retreats towards
Dunkirk.
IO JUNE 1940 Mussolini, condemned by Churchill as ‘the jackal
 CHRONOLOGY XXXV

of Europe,’ declares war on defeated France and

defiant but tottering Britain.
14 JUNE 1940 Bimbashi Hanks looses off from Gallabat Fort the
first, much-delayed, shot of the Ethiopian cam-
paign. After ten minutes’ surprised and shocked
silence, the Italians in Metemma reply.
24 JUNE 1940 The Franco-Italian Armistice is signed in Rome.
France is now officially neutral. But General
LeGentilhomme in Djibuti refuses the Armistice, in
response to the appeal of the obscure General
de Gaulle, launched from London over the BBC six
days earlier.
25 JUNE 1940 Haile Selassie, travelling by flying-boat from
Malta, lands in Alexandria harbour and a week later
reaches Khartoum by train.
JULY 1940 The Italians ‘invade,’ the Sudan and Kenya, captur-
ing the frontier posts of Gallabat, Karora, Kurmuk
and Moyale and the important provincial capital of
Kassala.
AUGUST 1940 The Italians invade British Somaliland and drive—
much to Churchill’s fury—the British forces there
into the sea.
SEPTEMBER 1940 Graziani, commanding the Italian forces in Libya,
invades Egypt but halts at Sidi Barrani.
28 OCTOBER—I Anthony Eden, Britain’s War Minister, together
NOVEMBER I940 with General Wavell, visits Khartoum to stimulate
an offensive spirit there.
6 NOVEMBER 1940 Major Orde Wingate, chosen by Eden and Wavell
as a catalyst for the revolt inside Ethiopia, arrives in
Khartoum with a million pounds and orders to
work in close liaison with Haile Selassie.
6-7 NOVEMBER 1940 Brigadier Slim launches a counter-attack against
Italian forces in Gallabat that fails disastrously.
Despondency settles over Middle East Command.
9 DECEMBER 1940 Wavell’s Army of the Nile counterattacks Gra-
ziani’s forces at Sidi Barrani and wins the first—but
devastating—British success of the war in Africa.
Badoglio is dismissed as head of Italy’s armed
forces and Graziani recalled to Italy in disgrace.
19 JANUARY I94I British forces recapture Kassala without a battle.
20 JANUARY I941 The Emperor with Ras Kassa and Wingate’s
Gideon Force cross the frontier and raise the Ethio-
- pian flag on Ethiopian soil.
XXXV1 CHRONOLOGY

2 FEBRUARY I94I The Battle of Keren begins in Eritrea, with the

Italians holding apparently impregnable mountain
peaks and driving back, in the weeks that follow,
repeated assaults by two British Indian Infantry
Divisions.
II FEBRUARY IQ4I General Cunningham’s forces from Kenya invade
Italian Somaliland.
24 FEBRUARY I94I Cunningham’s forces capture almost without
resistance Mogadishu, Italian Somaliland’s capital
and major port, plus a vast quantity of military
booty.
4 MARCH I94I Gideon Force drives Colonel Natale out of Burie by
a combination of luck, bluff and manoeuvre.
16 MARCH 1941 The Royal Navy recaptures British Somaliland.
The Italian colonel commanding Berbera surren-
ders in tears.
27 MARCH 1941 The fiercely-fought Battle of Keren ends, with the
Italians pulling out during the night.
29 MARCH I9Q4I Cunningham’s forces enter Harar.
I APRIL 1941 British forces occupy Asmara, the capital of Eri-
trea. A few days later the Free French storm the
port of Massawa on the Red Sea.
2 APRIL 1941 Ras Seyum rides into Asmara with 7000 armed
men to offer his services to the British.
3 APRIL 1941 Gideon Force drives Colonel Maraventano out of
Debra Markos, capital of Goyjam. Ras Hailu raises
the Ethiopian flag.
3 APRIL 1941 The Duke ofAosta pulls out of Addis Ababa and
heads north to the great mountain stronghold of
Amba Alagi.
5 APRIL 1941 Cunningham’s troops occupy Addis Ababa with
Italian cooperation.
PALM SUNDAY—6 APRIL Haile Selassie enters Debra Markos where Ras
1941 Hailu gracefully submits to his old enemy.
26 APRIL 1941 Dessie, capital of Wollo, falls to Brigadier Pienaar’s
South Africans, leaving the Duke ofAosta isolated.
5 MAY IQ4I As Abebe Aregai’s followers pour down from the
hills, Haile Selassie returns to his capital amidst
enormous enthusiasm—five years precisely to the
day after he had fled from it.
19 MAY I941 The Duke ofAosta and 5000 Italian troops,
attacked by Ras Seyum’s forces as well as by a
 CHRONOLOGY XXXVIl

British Indian Division and the South Africans,

surrender on Amba Alagi—leaving General Nasi
holding out in Gondar till after the rains when he
too finally surrenders to the Crown Prince and the
British.
MARCH 1942 The Duke of Aosta, POW 1190, dies of tuberculo-
sis in Kenya.
25 JULY 1943 The Fascist Grand Council meets in Rome. Its vote
leads to Mussolini’s fall and (temporary) arrest.
Next day King Vittorio Emmanuele appoints
Marshal Badoglio Head of the Government.
8 SEPTEMBER 1943 Armistice signed between Italy and the Allies. King
Vittorio Emmanuele and Marshal Badoglio flee
from German-occupied Rome.
I2 SEPTEMBER 1943 Mussolini rescued from house arrest by German
paratroops.
II JANUARY 1944 General de Bono, aged 78, and Count Galeazzo
Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, shot on Mussolini’s
orders at Verona in northern Italy for their ‘treason-
able’ vote at the Grand Council meeting six months
earlier.
24 MARCH 1944 Major-General Orde Wingate killed when his plane
crashes in the hills of Northern Assam in India as he
is flying to inspect his Chindit units.
28 APRIL 1945 Mussolini executed by Communist partisans near
the Swiss frontier.
29 APRIL 1945 Mussolini’s body hanged upside down by the heels
in Piazzale Loreto in Milan. Starace executed and
exposed in his turn after being forced to view this
degrading sight.
1945 The ‘Gojjami Patriots’ Plot’ to depose and assassi-
nate Haile Selassie. Several former Resistance lead-
ers publicly hanged in Addis Ababa.
Q MAY 1946 King Vittorio Emmanuele abdicates.
II JANUARY 1955 Death of Marshal Graziani.
I NOVEMBER 1956 Death of Marshal Badoghlio.
1960 The attempted Bodyguard coup in Addis Ababa
during the Emperor’s state visit to Brazil. As it
fails, Ras Seyum and Ras Abebe Aregai, held as
hostages, are machine-gunned to death in the
Green Salon of the Little Ghebbi.
1972 The Emperor’s eightieth birthday. Expectations—
XXXVIll CHRONOLOGY

unfortunately unfulfilled—that he will hand over

power to his eldest son, the Crown Prince.

1973 Famine in Ethiopia—particularly in Wollo.

FEBRUARY—SEPTEMBER The ‘quiet revolution’ in Ethiopia—carried out in
1974 the Emperor’s name and with his apparent acquies-
cence.
12 SEPTEMBER I974 Haile Selassie deposed and arrested. End of the
Empire.
23 NOVEMBER 1974 ‘Bloody Saturday.’ Over sixty members of the
nobility executed in the cellars of the Great Ghebbi
on the orders of the Dergue, the Provisional Mili-
tary Government.
27 AUGUST 1975 Death announced in Addis Ababa of the ex-
Emperor. His body was never seen in public, nor
his burial place revealed. Many of his former sub-
jects do not, it is said, even now believe that Haile
Selassie is really dead but expect him, as a semi-
legendary figure, to “come again.’
 PROLOGUE

THE BATTLE OF ADOWA, 1896

FIVE generals met on a mountain top in Tigre: General Oreste

Baratieri, Governor ofEritrea, a vain man, and his four Brigade
commanders, Generals Albertone, Arimondi, Dabormida, and
Ellena. It was the evening of 28 February 1896.
The five met in General Baratieri’s tent. Around them, on the
heights of Mount Enticcio, lay encamped thousands upon
thousands of Italian soldiers and Italian-officered native aux-
iliaries, the strongest colonial expeditionary force that Africa had
ever known. In front of them lay an ancient Empire, a Christian
Kingdom. Twenty miles away at Adowa were encamped the
armies not only of Ras! Mangasha of Tigre, their old enemy, but
of his overlord the Emperor Menelik and ofthe other lords of the
Empire, the armies of Shoa, Gojjam, Beghemder, and Wollo,
and the levies of the South. In front of them, therefore, lay the
chance of glory. For newly-united Italy, which by the grace of
God, the weakness of Egypt, and the tolerance of England had
installed herself on the borders of the Red Sea, this, if ever, was
the opportunity to inflict her decisive colonial victory on the local
native potentate. The five generals knew it. Victory would mean
a vast new empire for Italy and glory for themselves; defeat was
unthinkable for a European army ofsucha size. General Baratieri
took his decision: to advance on Adowa and attack.
The first of March was not only a Sunday but by the Ethiopian
calendar the Feast of St. George, patron saint of the Empire. In
the Church of St. Gabriel, the Lords of Ethiopia had gathered
before dawn to hear mass. The doors ofthe church were open. At
the moment when the Abuna! Matteos elevated the Host, two
rifle shots rang out—the agreed signal of alarm. Ras! Makonnen
of Harar, the Emperor’s trusted cousin, left the church; within a
1 Fora full list of Ethiopian military, religious, and courtly titles, see p. xviii. The
most important noble titles, ‘Ras’ and ‘Dejaz’, are roughly equivalent to ‘Duke’ and
‘Earl’.
NOOR PROLOGUE

few minutes he was back with the report ofthe Italians advanc-
ing. The Emperor took the news calmly enough. He went up to
the Abuna, whispered a few words, and returned quietly to his
seat. The Abuna lifted up the cross in his right hand and spoke
weakly, sobbing as he spoke. ‘My sons,’ he said, ‘this day the
judgement of God will be fulfilled. Go and defend your faith and
your King. I forgive you all your sins.’
The lords rose and kissed the cross. They then made their way
to their respective camps: Ras Mangasha to the camps of the men
of Tigre to the North, the Imperial Fitaurari! Gabreiehu to the
Army of the Centre, the Mahel Safari on the southern slopes of
Mount Shelloda, Ras Makonnen with him to thetroops of Harar,
Ras Mikael to his Wollo Galla cavalry behind the town, Wag-
shum! Gwangul and Hailu of Lasta and the Jantirar! Asfau to the
levies of Wag and Lasta and Ambasel in the south, Ras Mangasha
Atikim to the men ofIfrata, Ras Wule to the men of Beghemder,
the Dejaz! Beshah, the Emperor’s cousin, and the Liquemaquas!
Abate to the Emperor’s own men from Shoa. It is said that the
Negus! Tekle Haimonot of Gojjam wished to stay and take
communion; but the Emperor reminded him that his sins had
already been forgiven and that delay was dangerous.
Only Menelik remained in the Church of St. Gabriel. Men
said, later, that in his prayers he thanked God for having per-
suaded the Italians to advance. The Empress Taitu meanwhile
had taken up her position on Mount Latsat behind her guns—six
quick-firing Hotchkiss directed by the Commander ofthe Artil-
lery, the young Galla eunuch, Bajirond! Balcha. With her,
gathered under the black umbrella—raised instead ofthe Imperial
Red as a sign of grief at battle against fellow-Christians—were
Woizero! Zauditu, her step-daughter, and their maidservants.
The Nevraid! of Axum joined the Empress with his crosses, his
standards, and his long horns sounding. From the holiest sanctu-
ary in Ethiopia, the Church of Mariam at Axum to which
Menelik I, son of Solomon and Sheba had brought the Ark ofthe
Covenant, the Nevraid had brought the statue of Mariam. The
word spread among the Ethiopians: the Mother of Jesus had
come to help the Empress.
From shortly after dawn till mid-afternoon battle raged among
the mountain passes and valleys overlooking the five churches of
Adowa. In mid-morning the Imperial Fitaurari Gabreiehu was
wounded by a burst of machine-gun fire; an Italian prisoner, Lt.
 PROLOGUE XXXX]
Caruso of the artillery, saw him dying under an oak-tree. With
the death of their leader the lion-maned chieftains of the Mahel
Safari wavered and broke and fled. But by late morning General
Albertone’s battle-hardened Eritrean brigade had been isolated
and in its turn broken, General Arimondi had been killed,
General Ellena’s brigade was disastrously split and General
Baratieri and his staff were galloping off north towards Eritrea
and safety, abandoning the stricken remnants of what three hours
earlier had still been the finest colonial army in Africa, 16,000
men and §2 guns strong.
By mid-afternoon the Emperor sitting on his horse Dagnew
watched the Gojjamis of the Negus Tekle Haimonot put in the
final assault on the one intact enemy formation still in the field,
General Dabormida’s brigade. By five o’clock the Italians had
fired their last round and were breaking up. An old woman said
she saw Dabormida, ‘a chief, a great chief, with the spectacles and
the watch and the gold stars; he asked for water and said he was
the general’. Towards evening, as the Tigrean highlands filled
with thousands of dispersed fugitives fleeing from Ras Mikael’s
red-cloaked Galla horsemen, a Turkbash, commander of 25 men,
rode Dabormida down, shot and killed him, robbing him of his
arms, his wallet, and his scarf—or so at least Ras Makonnen a
month later told General Albertone, his prisoner, giving him the
dead General’s sabre and scarf.
Dabormida was one of 262 Italian officers and nearly 4,000
Italian soldiers who died that day. It was the greatest single
disaster in European colonial history. Nineteen hundred Italians,
including Albertone, and about a thousand Eritrean askaris were
taken prisoner. Infuriated by the death oftheir leader, the men of
Dejaz Beshah, Menelik’s cousin, killed all the prisoners upon
whom they could lay hands—7o Italians and 230 askaris. For this
crime Fitaurari Lemma was exiled by Menelik to an amba, a
mountain-top. The Eritrean prisoners were held to have betrayed
the Emperor and after long debate were punished with the
penalty reserved for traitors. Their right hands and their left feet
were cut off; many died during the night; 400 mutilated survivors
were eventually released. But the Italian prisoners were well
treated. The worst humiliation complained of was that of a
soldier who was led before the Empress Taitu and forced to sing
‘Funiculi, Funicula’ and ‘Dolce Napolt’.
There was no organized pursuit of the routed army. And there
XXXX1l PROLOGUE

were no great rejoicings in the Ethiopian camp. Menelik cut short

the boasting ceremonies and the war-songs in favour of ‘Abba
Dagnew’, his horse-name. Later he told Dr. Neruzzini that he
saw no cause to rejoice over the death ofsomany Christian men.
 PART I

BIreIOPIV AND ETALY: THE BACKGROUND

 eouyy JO WOH oy) pure erdomig “1 dvw
__HSILIY@) ANOTOO) \VANAY 5
d
So “—~ss,
Wy 009 fiopny 2
rd

SS
x
So
auras
i T
Sofi OOb 00€

Se76
199} (00S 19A0 pur [|
AeMley —
sses6
qnios
Ayunogpasaao9d

INaIIVS>;
pue
yo ssaajem
xneejed

YIM
{18}

ie
Oar
is@A
NVIGNI

mop
"~-. NaGV9O

@
ALO).INAV
io..!
Sa
ae

eardo2,
\.JURH

1610}

( j
GNVTITVWOS HSLLIAd 2eePaid esuep jo uoifay
Jesido.)
asuajut
e1aqgiog pue sneajeyd
ise jo Anuno:
’ o1ss9 \_viqoq volley
snouleyunoyw
qa uidtl dW a?
uapy fo fjIny
qnios JEpucy » puv] “7 -;
uapy Ausoy) pue seujaes f
IN
/
wnoVWeuy
 CHAPTER I

EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA

THE early 1920s, so crowded with events in Italy, were an

unusually peaceful and settled period in Ethiopia. In 1923, Ethio-
pia became with Italian support a member of the League of
Nations. Barely more than a quarter of a century after the battle
of Adowa, relations between the two countries had mellowed to
a surprising extent. In the spring ofthe following year, 1924, the
Regent of Ethiopia, Ras Tafari Makonnen, set out on his famous
European tour. With him he took Ras Seyum, Ras Hailu,'a score
of minor nobles, and six lions. The picturesque entourage visited
Jerusalem, Cairo, Alexandria, Brussels, Amsterdam, Stock-
holm, London, Geneva, and Athens. Rarely can a tour have
inspired so many anecdotes, and in the mind of the man-in-the-
street Ethiopia, symbolized by the bevy ofRases with their black
cloaks and oversize hats, took on a certain significance. For the
first time Ras Tafari must have realized how useful and indeed
how vital a weapon publicity could be. It was a tour—and a
lesson—not easily forgotten.
In Rome the visit to Italy’s new ruler, the Duce, preoccupied
by an internal crisis, led to few concrete results.?In Paris, Ras

| All three Rases were sons ofheroes of Adowa. Ras Tafari’s father was Menelik’s
cousin Ras Makonnen of Harar—hence his full name: Ras Tafari Makonnen. Ras
Seyum’s father was Ras Mangasha of Tigre, and Ras Hailu’s the Negus Tekle
Haimonot ofGojjam. For all these personages, see the Biographical Index at the back
of the book.
2 Benito Mussolini, the leader—Duce—of the Partito Nazionale Fascista, had
formed the first Fascist government in Europe on 30 October 1922. On 30 May 1924
Matteoti, the secretary-general of the opposition Socialist Party (of which Mussolini
had once been himself an ardent young leader), rose to address the Chamber of
Deputies in Rome and to condemn the new regime for its violence, in what all agreed
was a brilliant speech. The Duce made threatening noises. On 10 June Matteoti left the
Chamber and was not seen again. Speculation as to his whereabouts was enormous
and the threatening scandal immense. It was not an ideal moment for an official visit,
particularly of an exotic nature. A cartoon appeared in the Italian press showing Ras
Tafari whispering to the Italian Chiefof Police: ‘Tell me, in all confidence, did you eat
him?’
4 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

Tafari presented two of his lions to President Poincaré and two

more to the Jardin Zoologique. In London there was a heatwave,
and the heavily-clothed Ethiopians in their leggings and jodhpurs
and shammas were cheered by the sympathetic London crowds
for the agonies they were believed to be suffering. Throughout
the tour the Regent—tiny, black-bearded, and at thirty-two
surprisingly young for a position of such apparent import-
ance—preserved, as he was always to do throughout his long life,
an impressive dignity.
The remaining pair of lions went to King George V. In return,
the British presented Ras Tafari with an infinitely more import-
ant gift: the imperial crown of the Emperor Theodore which
Lord Napier had brought back to England in 1868 after
Theodore’s defeat and death. News of this chivalrous and diplo-
matic gesture spread with surprising speed to even the remotest
corners of the distant Empire. “The act of King George V,’
reported Hodson, British Consul in the isolated hill-town of Maji
near the Sudanese border, ‘in returning the Ethiopian crown to
the Empress on the occasion of Ras Tafari’s recent visit to
England has created a great impression in the south-west.’
The Empress to whom the imperial crown had been thus
happily returned was the Empress Zauditu, the first woman to
ascend the throne of Ethiopia since the Queen of Sheba. To
understand the relationship between Empress and Regent a brief
excursion backwards into Ethiopian history is necessary. The
Emperor Theodore had been succeeded by the Emperor Johan-
nes, and the Emperor Johannes by the Emperor Menelik—in
each case after a bloody civil-war. None ofthe three were related
to either predecessor or successor. Zauditu succeeded her own
father Menelik four confused, but comparatively unbloody,
years after his death. She was childless, chosen as a figurehead
around whom the country—or at least the Christian Amhara
—could unite. But though she might reign, it was recognized
that she could not rule. Therefore, when the Abuna Matteos,
Archbishop ofEthiopia and the power behind the traditicnalists,
proclaimed Zauditu Empress in the Banqueting Hall of the Great
Ghebbi at Addis Ababa on 27 September 1916, he at the same
time proclaimed the progressive-minded Tafari Makonnen as
heir to the throne and regent. Despite his misgivings he had done
so with traditional panache. Any man who refused to accept the
double proclamation would, the Abuna noted, incur the wrath of
 EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA S
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the anathema of the twelve
Apostles and 318 Fathers of the Council of Nicaea, and be smitten
with the curse of Arius and the reprobation of Judas. ‘And with
my own humble word,’ added Matteos, ‘I excommunicate him.’
In the Empress Zauditu’s case the traditional civil war followed
after rather than before her official succession. It was of fearsome
intensity, though of short duration. Zauditu’s rival for the throne
was her sister’s son, Lij Yasu, Menelik’s grandson and at one
stage his recognized successor—a handsome but very wild young
man whom the Shoan nobles and Abuna Matteos had reluctantly
decided they could never accept on the Imperial throne. Lij
Yasu’s father, however, Negus Mikael of Wollo, had very
different ideas. As Ras Mikael of Wollo he had led the fearsome
red-cloaked Galla cavalry against the Italians at Adowa; and in
October 1917 he led them forth again—but this time south
against Shoa. A murderous day-long battle followed on the
plains of Sagalle where the forces of Wollo and Shoa clashed. It
ended in a decisive victory for the Shoans. At the British Legation
in Addis Ababa the Shoan capital, the Minister’s young son
Wilfred Thesiger watched the ‘wildly exciting’ victory parade.
‘They came past in waves, horsemen half concealed in dust and a
great press of footmen. Screaming out their deeds of valour they
came right up to the steps of the throne . . . I can remember a
small boy who seemed little older then myself being carried past
in triumph. I can remember Negus Mikael, the King of the
North, being led past in chains with a stone upon his shoulders in
token of submission, an old man in a plain black burnous, with
his head wrapped in a white rag.’
Among the Shoan leaders Ras Kassa was the real hero of the
battle of Sagalle, a nobleman in his early forties whose fief of
Salale lay in the north-west of Shoa adjoining the lands of the
great monastery of Debra Libanos. Deeply religious and with a
reputation for theological learning, Ras Kassa was all his life to be
a byword for uprightness and honesty. By birth he had a better
claim to the throne than his younger cousin Ras Tafari; but Ras
Kassa was also to be one of the few Ethiopians with whom
loyalty outweighed ambition. It was to his care rather than to that
of the over-ambitious Regent that the Abuna Matteos and the
Empress Zauditu entrusted the captured Pretender, Lij Yasu,
ostensibly as a reward for the glory that he, Ras Kassa, had won at
Sagalle.
6 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

To be fair, Ras Tafari never claimed to be a warrior. Where he

excelled (like his father Ras Makonnen before him) was as a
diplomat. On his 1924 tour he made a special point ofvisiting the
Coptic Patriarch in Cairo, Cyrillos V. This was much more than
a courtesy call and its delayed results were to help Ras Tafari
towards the goal he had always had in view: supreme power in
Ethiopia. In 1924 between himself and the achievement of that
goal stood two major obstacles: the forces of tradition as
represented by the Church, and the life of the Empress Zauditu.
Since the Council of Nicaea the Patriarch had had the right of
appointing the Abuna and invariably an Egyptian Copt—that is
to say, a figure over whom the Ethiopian Emperors could
exercise no real control—was chosen. In 1926 death removed the
Abuna Matteos, aged 83, from the Regent’s path; but if another
Egyptian Copt had been immediately appointed as a successor,
the progressive faction of the still-youthful Regent would have
been very little better-off. Instead, a long interregnum ensued
during which no Abuna was appointed; Ras Tafari’s visit to the
Patriarch two years earlier had thus borne its fruits. Ras Tafari
was always prepared to play a waiting game; but he was also
skilled at acting immediately when a power vacuum became
apparent. His ability as a political manceuvrer put him head and
shoulders above his more emotional or slower-witted rivals. He
seized this opportunity to increase the powers ofthe Echege in all
administrative church matters. The Echege was by tradition the
Ethiopian counterbalance to the foreign-born Abuna. He was
always a monk, usually head of the famous monastery of Debra
Libanos; and, as head of Debra Libanos, successor to the greatest
of Ethiopia’s holy men, St. Tekle Haimonot. He was a very
important churchman indeed—and yet much more easily
influenced by the executive authority of the state, personified in
this instance by the Regent (though not, as the sequel was to
show, totally amenable in all circumstances).
Therefore, following the death of the Abuna Matteos, a
complex situation—and the Ethiopians by nature rather favour
complex situations—appeared to have become almost alarm-
ingly simplified. The precarious balance between progressives
and traditionalists was broken. The Empress Zauditu appeared
isolated and the Regent an important step nearer to achieving his
eventual and evident aim, that of concentrating all power in his
own hands. Asa first step he summoned the traditional rulers and
 EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA af
provincial governors to the capital to recognize the new situation
and acknowledge his new-found pre-eminence.
They came—all except one, Dejaz Balcha. For years Dejaz
Balcha had ruled the south-westerly province of Sidamo as his
own personal fief, paying no taxes to the central government and
very little respect. In the presence ofa British visitor he had called
Ras Tafari, ‘half-man, half-snake’, and when cautioned about
this indiscretion in front of a number of his household slaves
explained that it was no matter—all their tongues had been cut
out.
Weeks passed. A second, more peremptory summons was sent
down to Sidamo; and it is said that at the same time the Empress
Zauditu sent Balcha her ring asa signal that he should come on his
own terms.
Dejaz Balcha announced that he would be arriving. A month
later he did arrive at Addis Ababa, but with ten thousand men.
He went to his ghebbi three miles south ofthe capital, and there he
and his army encamped.
The court and the populace waited to see how this unexpected
bid for power would end. In his favour Balcha had his reputation
as a great warrior, the loyalty of his men, his own loyalty both to
Menelik and, at the time of Lij Yasu’s deposition, to Shoa, and
the secret support of the Empress. Against him stood the young
Regent, ‘the sly one’, as Balcha always contemptuously called
him.
The first move was made by Ras Tafari: an invitation to a
banquet at the Great Ghebbi. Dejaz Balcha accepted. But might
he, he asked, in order to honour his host bring his own personal
bodyguard? Of course, came a message from the Regent.
Incidentally, of how many men would the bodyguard consist?
Of a mere six hundred, came the reply from Balcha’s ghebbi.
The Regent’s own reply was suspiciously dulcet. Still wary of
treachery, Balcha warned his men that any who ate or drank too
much at the gebir—the traditional feast—would be whipped.
Mounted on his ceremonial mule and escorted by his six hun-
dred, Balcha rode up to Menelik’s Ghebbi. The banquet was
splendid. Tafari was lavish with his praises of the Dejaz, of the
Dejaz’s men, and ofthe Dejaz’s rule. Balcha began to believe that
he had overestimated the youth. He waved at the rifles and
swords which his men had brought into the hall with them and
announced to Tafari that if he was not back by midnight, his
id
8 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

army had orders to march on the capital. As the feasting and

drinking grew heavier, Balcha’s men began the traditional chants
of the boasting ceremony in which all Ethiopian warriors
indulge. They pranced up to the steps of the table at which the
lords were dining, waving their weapons, praising Balcha and
denigrating all the other lords of Ethiopia. Tafari’s men stirred
restlessly and impatiently. With sweet courtesy Ras Tafari told
them to be silent—unless they had any songs to sing in praise of
their guests.
Dejaz Balcha and his men left the Great Ghebbi well before
midnight, well-dined, satisfied, sent on their way with a noble
salute of guns. They rode back—to find the plain around Balcha’s
ghebbi a deserted wasteland. While the banquet was being held at
the Great Ghebbi, Ras Kassa had paid a visit to Dejaz Balcha’s
encampment. With him he had brought many sacks of dollars
and a number of whipping stocks. No reference was made to the
whipping stocks but ten dollars was offered for every rifle handed
in. Within hours Balcha’s army had disintegrated; Ras Kassa
herded the disarmed mob down the Sidamo road and stationed
himself there to cut off Balcha should the Dejaz try to regain his
province.
But Balcha knew that he was beaten—or almost. He paid off
his bodyguard himself; and then with the help of the Echege took
refuge in St. Raguel’s Church on Mount Entotto overlooking the
capital. Ras Tafari did not make the mistake of violating a
sanctuary. Instead he surrounded the Echege’s residence with his
own troops; they drilled, they carried out rifle practice, they
made their presence felt. At the same time he set up machine-
guns around St. Raguel’s and gave Dejaz Balcha a twenty-four-
hours’ ultimatum. The combination of bluff and terror worked.
Dejaz Balcha surrendered. He was imprisoned for two years, and
then forgiven, providing he signed a ‘confession’ and entered a
monastery. He signed and he entered—for two years later there
seemed to be no hope ofoverthrowing Tafari. Dejaz Birru Wolde
Gabriel, who had been brought up by Menelik, was given his
command.

Slowly Tafari Makonnen had been moving towards supreme

power; cautiously, a step at a time, never risking a false move or
one which really endangered him. From Lij he had risen to Dejaz,
from Dejaz he had risen to Ras. On 27 October 1928 he moved a
 EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA 9
step further towards his ultimate aim. He was crowned Negus by
the Echege, in a silken tent in the Church of the Trinity. Thus
Tafar1 Makonnen became the only Negus in the Empire: for
never in his long reign was he to give this royal title to any other.
The Church was humbled; the Empress had been reduced to a
figurehead; it must have seemed as if Tafari had won his long
struggle. But power in Ethiopia has never easily been attained.
Nor was it to be now.

In the month in which Ras Tafari was crowned Negus, the Raya
Galla rose in revolt in Wollo. The revolt spread first to Lasta, then
to Yeggiu, whose governor Ras Kebbede Mangasha Atikim was
on a visit to Italy. Several half-hearted expeditions sent out from
Wollo’s capital, Dessie, failed. All Wollo was in ferment.! The
neighbouring rulers were ordered to raise their levies and invade:
Ras Seyum from Axum, Ras Gugsa Araya from Makalle, Dejaz
Ayalew Birru from the Simien, and Ras Gugsa Wule from
Beghemder. They moved reluctantly and slowly. At the end of
the summer rains, in October, the Raya Galla ambushed and
wiped out the forces of Lasta. Imru the Regent’s trusted cousin
was made Governor of Wollo; for the revolt looked serious.
But more serious than the revolt were the intrigues of the
nobles who were meant to suppress it. Ras Kebbede was suspec-
ted of supporting the raiders; more important, 1t was known that
Ras Gugsa Wule was intriguing with the Raya Galla leader Irissa
Dangom.
Nephew of the Empress Taitu and divorced husband of the
Empress Zauditu, Ras Gugsa Wule was an ambitious and per-
sonally courageous religious reactionary; but like so many ofhis
kind slow-moving and over-cautious. For centuries Beghemder
which he ruled from the ancient Imperial capital of Gondar had
been the centre of the Christian Empire. Fiercely traditionalist
highlanders, the men of Beghemder and their rulers inevitably
resented—and occasionally challenged—the usurpers of their
own traditional hegemony, whether from Tigre or Shoa. There
was a common beliefin Beghemder, and indeed outside it, that
Ras Gugsa Wule would become Emperor. For years he had been

'! And many other parts of Ethiopia were disturbed. From Maji in the south-west
Consul Hodson reported ‘very unsettled’ political conditions; rumours that Zauditu
was dead, and a desire‘for the return of Lij Yasu. ‘If Lij Yasu is alive’, the local chiefs
were quoted as saying, ‘we want him to be Emperor; if he is dead, show us his grave.’
IO ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

distracted by the rival activities in the north of Beghemder ofhis

young cousin Ayalew Birru: ‘an adolescent’, as he said
indignantly, ‘whom I have brought up at my court’. With
Ayalew absent strenuously fighting the rebel Galla in Lasta, Ras
Gugsa Wule was able to bring most of the Simien, Ayalew’s
territory, under his own control. Given his birth and position, he
represented a far more serious challenge to the new Negus than
Dejaz Balcha had done.
In particular the Ras tried to rally to his side all traditional
Ethiopia by stressing that Tafari was too much under the
influence of the foreigner—so much so, that secretly he had
become a Roman Catholic. Clearly the quarrel with the Echege,
the absence of an Abuna, the difficult negotiations that Tafari was
conducting with the new Patriarch in Cairo, John XIX, all
helped. But Tafari reacted quickly. Anew Abuna, Cyrillos, came
from Egypt; on his arrival he stressed that he had no intention of
interfering in local affairs without consulting the Regent. Four
Ethiopian monks were consecrated as bishops in Cairo. And
finally, in January 1930, the Patriarch himself visited Addis
Ababa and consecrated the Echege as bishop with the title of
Abba Sauiros.
The situation was fluid. Ras Gugsa Wule was not yet in open
rebellion; the Empress Zauditu was sending him message after
message begging her ex-husband to come to the capital and make
his submission. Both sides were raising their armies: ostensibly
still to attack the Raya Galla. But in Shoa the soldiers only
reluctantly obeyed the chitet, the summons to arms.
Elsewhere too there were half-hearted moves of support with
only two or three thousand men: even less in the cases of Ras
Seyum of Tigre and Ras Hailu of Gojjam, who avoided commit-
ting themselves. And there was a still more serious lacuna. Tafari
had allowed the Mahel Safari, the Army of the Centre, to run
down; in his eyes its men were too devoted to the Empress
Zauditu. The new Minister of War, Dejaz Mulugueta, had only
16,000 men in all; and when he marched north to Dessie at the end
of January, he had managed to concentrate only 2,000 of them.
He took five cannon and seven machine-guns; and then moved
on to the plains of Anchim near the Beghemder border. Mean-
while Ras Gugsa Wule was concentrating at Debra Tabor an
army 35,000 strong, and utterly devoted.
Their devotion was slightly shaken by the Imperial Proclama-
 EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA Lh

tion of Yekatit 17 (24 February) issued by the Empress and the

Negus, declaring Ras Gugsa Wule a rebel. Even more important,
attached to this was an anathema signed by the Abuna Cyrillos,
and by the five new bishops, Sauiros, Abraham, Petros, Mikael,
and Isaac and addressed to all the monasteries of Beghemder to be
propagated. ‘And therefore’, it concluded ‘you who may follow
Ras Gugsa Wule, you who may attach yourselfto him, be cursed
and excommunicated; your life and your flesh are outcasts from
Christian society.’
On 28 March the army of Beghemder crossed the border and
moved south towards Shoa. It met with a. novel experience.
Three biplanes flew over and released on the marching army
thousands ofcopies of the Imperial and Episcopal proclamations:
the first use of psychological warfare in Ethiopia, and naturally
devised by the ingenious mind of Tafari.
It was not enough to stop the men of Ras Gugsa Wule. Three
days later battle was joined on the plains of Anchim. Wondossen,
the eldest son of Ras Kassa, led the Shoan advance guard. Ayalew
Birru commanded the right and Fitaurari Fikremariam, Com-
mander of the Wollo troops, led the left. In the rear were the more
aged generals, Dejaz Mulugueta who had been Menelik’s man,
and Dejaz Adafrisau who had been Makonnen’s; both veterans of
Adowa.
The battle began with a more dramatic appearance of the
biplanes, which flew over the Beghemder army at nine o'clock
lobbing small bombs and hand grenades. The armies closed, and
for four hours were locked in struggle. The heroes of the day on
the Shoan side were Wondossen Kassa and Ayalew Birru. The
men of Gondar began to desert. Shortly after midday Ras Gugsa
Wule was surrounded and called upon to surrender. He refused
and died fighting. His second-in-command, Fitaurari Shumye,
continued until he was captured in the late afternoon. The Raya
Galla, on whose help Ras Gugsa Wule had been counting, arrived
a day late. Dejaz Birru Wolde Gabriel and the army of Sidamo
entered Debra Tabor unopposed. The death ofthe leader meant,
as always in Ethiopia, the end of the campaign. The men of
Beghemder resisted no longer. Ras Kassa was given all the
territories of the dead Gugsa Wule; in fact the real ruler was his
son Wondossen who was installed as governor at Debra Tabor.
The other hero ofthe battle, Ayalew Birru, too closely related to
the Empress Taitu’s clan, now indeed its leading survivor, was
12 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

fobbed off with minor appointments and not even given the title
of Ras. His people sang:
‘Ayalew the fool, the innocent
Trusts men, trusts men.’

Two days after the battle on the plains of Anchim the Empress
Zauditu died suddenly in Addis Ababa. On the following day,
3 April, an Awaj, a proclamation, was issued in the capital: by the
common consent of the nobles and people, for the greater good
of the Empire, the Negus Tafari Makonnen was ascending the
Imperial Throne under the rank and style of His Imperial Majesty
Haile Selassie I, Negus Negusti, King of Kings.

The Coronation of the new Emperor took place after the forty-
day period of mourning for the Empress and after the rains, on
2 November 1930. It was a most splendid affair; embarrassingly
successful, for most of the guests from Europe who were invited
came. The Germans sent 800 bottles of hock, signed photographs
of General von Hindenburg, and Baron von Waldthaussen in the
flesh. The Belgians who had already sent a military mission to
train the Imperial Guard were represented by their new Plenipo-
tentiary Minister, M. Janssens; as the first delegations arrived at
the new railway station of Addis Ababa honours were rendered
by the Guard under the six Belgian officers and by the band under
its Swiss bandmaster, Nicoud. From Cairo a number of ambas-
sadors journeyed down to represent their countries: His Excel-
lency M. H. de Bildt, of Sweden, accompanied by Count Eric
von Rosen, a lieutenant in the Royal Horse Guards, and Count
Sten von Rosen; His Excellency Isabaro Yoshida representing
Japan; His Excellency General Muhittin Pasha of Turkey; and as
Egypt’s own representative, His Excellency Mohammed Tewfik
Nessim Pasha with (reported Mr. Evelyn Waugh who voyaged
with the twenty-man Egyptian delegation to Djibuti) tin trunks
galore containing ‘a handsome but unexceptional suite of bed-
room furniture.’
From France came one of her two Marshals, Franchet
d’Esperey, and a Farman aeroplane. From Italy, as representative
of his cousin King Vittorio Emmanuele, came the Prince of
Udine with another aeroplane, a Breda. On his own account the
Duce added a light tank. But by far the most impressive delega-
tion came from the British Empire, led by the Duke of Glouces-
 EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA 13
ter. Its gifts were modest: ‘a pair of elegant sceptres with an
inscription composed, almost correctly, in Amharic’. With the
Duke of Gloucester came—besides the Earl of Airlie and the
young Wilfred Thesiger, personally invited by the Emperor out
of gratitude to his father—a Marine Band under a Major
Simpson, the great scene-stealer of the ten-day round of
ceremonies, and a whole bevy ofproconsuls: Sir John Maffey the
Governor-General of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan; Sir H. Baxter
Kittermaster, Governor of British Somaliland; and Sir Stewart
Symes, Governor of Aden.
The Emperor and Empress were crowned by the Abuna at a
long-drawn-out Coptic ceremony in the Church of the Trinity.
Of the assembled diplomats, Mr. Waugh wrote that their faces
were ‘set and strained. Their clothes made them funnier still.
Marshal d’Esperey alone preserved his dignity, his chest thrown
out, his baton raised on his knee, rigid as a war memorial, and as
far as one could judge wide awake.”!

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s ‘modern’ capital founded by Menelik,

was a ramshackle city; and the screens hastily thrown up to hide
the frightful slums from the gaze of the beribboned and
beplumed visitors were only halfa veil. The Guard was finely
turned out and saluted smartly, but wore no shoes. The cars sent
down to Diredawa with breakfast for the arriving guests
unloaded porridge, kippers, eggs, and champagne. The
unfinished hotel where the Marine Band stayed had rooms
equipped with hairbrushes, clothes-hangers and brand-new
enamelled spitoons.
It was a city laid out haphazardly around theghebbis of Menelik.
and the great nobles, populated at this time by a large and mixed
foreign community. At the top of the social scale came, naturally,
the diplomats. By 1930 six countries had Legations in the capital:
spacious legations, with tukuls and buildings scattered over wide

| Thesiger with the priggishness of ayoung Old Etonian did not approve ofthese
irreverent new intruders—‘During ten hectic days’, he wrote, ‘I took part in
processions, ceremonies and state banquets, and finally I watched while the Patriarch
crowned Haile Selassie King of Kings of Ethiopia . . . I looked on streets thronged
with tribesmen from every part of his empire. I saw again the shields and brilliant
robes which I remembered from my childhood. But the outside world had intruded
and the writing was on the wall. . . . There were journalists who forced themselves
forward to photograph the Emperor on his throne and the priests . . . | was thrust
aside by one of them who shouted “Make room for the Eyes and Ears of the World”.
14 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

parkland on the fringes ofthe capital, in beautiful settings, given

to the various nations by Menelik and his successors.
Sir Sidney Barton was Britain’s Minister, an unabashed
eccentric who for thirty-four years had been in the Consular
Service in China and who, having lived through the Boxer
revolt, knew what it was to have a Legation attacked. Under his
authority a bevy of British consulates existed in the south and
south-west of the country: at Maji where the Consul tried to
control gun-running and ivory smuggling on the ill-defined and
almost unadministered border where Ethiopia, Kenya, and the
Sudan met; at Dangila in Gojjam where Robert Cheeseman the
explorer kept an eye on the Nile waters, Britain’s major imperial
preoccupation; at Moyale in the remote south on the Kenya
border; at Gore and Gambeila in the west and at Harar in the east:
six in all.
By 1932 the Italians (whose Ministers in Addis Ababa were
constantly changing) had also created six consulates: at Adowa,
Gondar, Dessie, Debra Markos, capitals respectively of Tigre,
Beghemder, Wollo, and Gojjam; at Magalo in the province of
Arussi not far from Somalia’s border; and at Harar, the great
trading city of the eastern highlands, walled, white, and gated
where—given the existence of aFrench Consul at Diredawa on
the railway line below—international intrigue flourished, as
indeed it had always done.
Though he was only too well aware that the British Consuls
were virtually District Commissioners within his borders and the
Italian Consuls spent their time intriguing with his nobles, Haile
Selassie’s policy, now that he was in power, was not to limit
foreign influence; on the contrary if his plans to modernize
Ethiopia were to succeed, he needed more and more foreign help.
But he was perfectly well aware of the dangers offoreign aid and
in particular of the dangers of coming to rely too heavily upon the
neighbouring colonial powers, France, Italy, and Britain. There-
fore he chose his advisers wherever possible from the smaller and
more remote nations. That is why, for his major preoccupation,
the formation of amodern army, he had turned to the Belgians.

Belgium admittedly was a colonial power in Africa; but the

Belgian Congo had no frontiers with Ethiopia, and the Belgians
certainly had no ambitions to expand in a territory so jealously
watched over by their larger European neighbours. Moreover,
 EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA TES

Belgian heroism in the First World War had given this little
country’s army a fine reputation. It was not just to train a
ceremonial guard for his Coronation that the Negus Tafari had
invited the Belgian Minister to send a military mission. On the
contrary his aim was to form out of the Guard a small highly-
equipped regular army, trained ina European style, which would
enable him immediately to cow any rebellious Ras.
Unfortunately Major Polet and the five other Belgian officers
had arrived in Addis Ababa just at the moment when Ras Gugsa
Wule was moving into open rebellion; and after Zauditu’s death,
training was interrupted for a further month. Nevertheless, by
5 July 1930 Major Polet had been able to report that one infantry
battalion of almost 600 men, one cavalry squadron of 125 horse,
and one band of 40 men had been formed and trained. An
Armenian, formerly a French NCO, Captain Gurinlian, had
been recruited (for one ofthe difficulties the Belgians found was
that of communicating with the men they were training). All had
been issued with Lebel rifles, and the Negus had come regularly
three times a week to watch their manceuvres, and wanted all his
Guardsmen to be equipped in Belgium. By December 1933
Colonel Stevens, the British Military Attaché at Rome, out ona
visit to Addis Ababa, inspected the Guard and reported to Haile
Selassie that he found them ‘really remarkable’.
~ At the same time Ethiopia had to be given a modern political
facade. This meant not only the granting of aConstitution, the
first in Ethiopia’s history, but a whole new bevy of foreign
advisers: Maitre Auberson, a Swiss constitutional lawyer, Mr. de
Halpert, an Englishman whose task it was to supervise the
abolition of slavery, and most important of all, Mr. Colson, an
American of strong character seconded from the State Depart-
ment who was the real master-mind behind Ethiopia’s foreign
relations, and particularly in its dealings with the League of
Nations.
The Foreign Minister, Blattengueta Herouy Wolde Selassie,
was not, however, a puppet nor was he a negligible figure. In his
early fifties, a Shoan and a writer, he was perhaps the widest-
travelled of all Ethiopians. He had attended the Coronation of
George V, the peace treaty negotiations at Versailles, spent time
at Geneva, and accompanied Ras Tafari on his 1924 tour. ‘He
speaks English’, -said an Italian diplomatic report of 1926, ‘and
deserves our special attention.’ His two sons Fekade Selassie and
16 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

Sirak were sent to study at Cambridge. He had been in his time

President of the Special Tribunal, Kantiba of Addis Ababa, and
editor of Tafari’s progressive newspaper Berhanena Salam.
Immediately after the Coronation he set out on a trip as Ambas-
sador Extraordinary to Japan, officially to congratulate the
Emperor Hirohito on his Coronation in 1928—a courtesy from
one young Emperor to another—unofficially to see whether
Haile Selassie’s latest plan, of modernizing Ethiopia on Japanese
lines, could be carried out. On his return he wrote a book
describing and praising Japan as a model. This alarming notion
was to cause a great deal of ink to flow in Western diplomatic
reports; for already by 1931 Japan’s invasion of Manchuria had
provoked a crisis at the League; Japan was feared by the West, and
the League revealed for the first time its weakness against a
modernized aggressor. The Western Powers had no desire for a
second Japan to rise in Africa. It did not.

The Constitution, announced in July 1931 and modelled on the

Imperial Japanese Constitution of 1889, was formally signed in
November. For this great occasion Haile Selassie invited all the
traditional provincial rulers to come to the capital and to be
installed as the first Senators of the Empire. It was yet another
ruse. For, once installed, the nobles found that their new duties
prevented them from returning to their provinces immediately
and that when they were released, some six months later,
administrators directly attached to the Emperor had been slipped
in as watchdogs.
Two Rases however failed to accept the honour so graciously
conferred upon them. Ras Kassa sent word that he was engaged
in religious penance, and so would be unable to attend. Ras Hailu
also sent word to the same effect. It was thought that Ras Hailu
was aggrieved at not being named Negus by the new Emperor.
This is probable; indeed it was probably Haile Selassie’s greatest
mistake. Menelik, after defeating in battle Ras Hailu’s father the
Negus Tekle Haimonot, one of his three major rivals for the
Imperial succession, had personally re-crowned the then sub-
missive King, and as a result been assured of his loyalty. Had he
been named Negus like his father before him, Ras Hailu would
almost certainly have been satisfied. The honour was ofparticular
importance to him because he was an illegitimate son.
Gojjam, the rich and fertile province of which the Negus Tekle
 EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA 107

Haimonot had been ruler, lies in the bend of the Blue Nile as it
sweeps down and round from its source in Lake Tana. The steep,
unbridged Nile gorge formed a natural barrier between Gojjam,
Shoa to its east, and the Galla kingdoms and districts to the south.
To its north, barred by almost trackless mountains, lay Beghem-
-der, to its west the mountain escarpment that fell suddenly away
to the deserts of the Sudan. Isolated by their geographical
position, the Gojjamis were always semi-independent though
never separatists—the bonds of religion were too strong. In all
Ethiopia there was no region so devoted to its priests and, to the
point of austerity, to its religious practices as Gojjam.
From 1908 onwards Ras Hailu ruled all Gojjam with increasing
splendour and magnificence. European visitors, of whom there
were many, given Ras Hailu’s reputation for generosity and
Gojam’s proximity to the Sudan and to the ever-fascinating
Nile, have left account after account of his lavish hospitality, his
magnificent house ablaze with that rarity in Ethiopia, electricity,
his magnificent banquets where guests of the opposite sex to the
horror ofthe traditionalists danced together, the royal welcomes,
the fanfares of warriors, and his own stately courtesy and
innumerable concubines. After the 1924 tour in Europe he
imported Gojjam’s first motor car, a Rolls Royce, in pieces, and
had a street specially built in Debra Markos along which to drive
it; he enquired of a visitor whether American tractors and
ploughs would be the right thing for Ethiopia. In Addis Ababa he
invested in hotels, cinemas, a car-hire service, and the first night-
club. Like all Ethiopian nobles he was particularly pleased to be
presented with fine rifles and shot-guns. In order to support so
magnificent a court he taxed his people cruelly and cynically, but
there appeared to be little resentment. Enthusiastic for the arts
but above all for the crafts of progress, respecting in form the
religious usages, he was Ethiopia’s equivalent of a Renaissance
Prince.
Politically Ras Hailu had always played a very careful game;
rarely leaving his province except to assure the new rulers in the
capital, whoever they might be, of his firm allegiance—once they
themselves were firmly installed; promising his aid for military
expeditions but always on one pretext or another avoiding
campaigns. In 1910 his daughter Sable Wongel had been ‘mar-
ried’ to Lij Yasu; but Lij Yasu disliked his prospective father-in-
law’s greed and ambition, and was more attracted by less refined
18 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

Muhammadan maidens. Twenty years later Ras Hailu had been

suspected of aiding Ras Gugsa Wule; letters, it was said, were
even found incriminating him. Though he was acquitted by the
new Emperor, an uneasy relationship grew up.
It was therefore with joy that Ras Hailu received, instead ofa
more peremptory order to appear at the capital, a messenger
from Haile Selassie proposing a marriage between the Emperor’s
son and heir Asfa Wossen, now aged sixteen, and his own second
daughter Dinchinese.
In order to conduct the negotiations Ras Hailu came to the
capital. He reached his ghebbi in Addis Ababa late in 1931 only to
find that he had been outmanceuvred. Though the marriage
proposals appear to have been perfectly genuine, they dragged
on. It was easier, Ras Hailu discovered, to reach Addis Ababa
than to leave it. Even his tardy installation as Senator did not
console him: he refused to sign the new Constitution on the
grounds that, contrary to Solomonic tradition, the successor to
the Throne could only be chosen from the direct descendants of
Haile Selassie. This was a clause to which even the loyal Ras
Kassa had objected. The great nobles were prepared to accept the
son of Ras Makonnen as Emperor but saw no reason why their
own sons should not benefit from an equal opportunity eventu-
ally, little suspecting that almost all their own sons would, like
themselves, be dead and gone long before the end of Haile
Selassie’s reign.

‘En 1932’, wrote Henri De Monfreid, ‘le Negus. . . avait prés du

lui un mysterieux conseiller; une figure digne d’ Edgar Allen Poe,
le Dejaz Yigezu, un lepreux fanatique et zenophobe.’ More
moderately described a few years later as ‘a heavy Menelikish
figure .. . a man of immense standing except in the physical
sense, for his legs were old and bandy’, he had married Ras
Hailu’s eldest daughter Woizero Sable Wongel—who had first
been ‘married’ to Li Yasu.
At the end of May 1932, Dejaz Yigezu was taking a cure at the
hot springs of Ambo when a Galla broke into the baths with the
news that Lij Yasu had escaped from Ras Kassa’s stronghold of
Fikke and was nearing Ambo, out both for his wife and for
Yigezu’s blood. Yigezu stopped only to cover his nakedness with
a muslin shamma and fled by car to Addis Ababa. It was typical of
the reactions ofpanic that followed the news of Lij Yasu’s escape.
 EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA 19

For ten years he had been out of sight, though never forgotten,
still the rightful Emperor in the hearts of many, and it now
looked as if the turmoil of civil war might once again embroil the
Empire and shake the new Emperor from his recent throne. A
state of national emergency was proclaimed, the frontiers were
closed, the phones and cables cut off, the passengers on the
Djibuti train held incommunicado.
The Mahel Safari was dispatched to scour the frontier districts
of Tigre and the Danakil country; Maillet and Corriger, the
Emperor’s French pilots, flew out to try and track down the
fugitive from the air; and a trusted nobleman, Ras Desta Dam-
tew, who had married the Emperor’s eldest daughter Tenagne
Worg, was sent off with a party of horsemen to watch the Gojjam
frontier.
-~ Four days after his escape Ly) Yasu, sighted by Maillet, was
arrested on the borders of Gojjam by Fitaurari Gessesse Belew,
Ras Hailu’s nephew. As Ras Desta was riding to take the prisoner
over, he came across one of Ras Hailu’s chiefs, Fitaurari Gindo,
riding in the same direction. ‘Why so many horses?’, he asked
Desta. ‘For Lij Yasu’, Gindo ingenuously replied.
The peril, if peril there had been, was over. Lij Yasu, laden, it
was reported with golden chains, was removed to his final
prison, a high-walled stone house in the mountain village of
Grawa in the Garamalata range in Haile Selassie’s own province
of Harar, where he was watched over by the priest Abba Hanna.
As for Ras Hailu, he was tried and on 30 June condemned to a
fine of 300,000 dollars and life imprisonment. On 11 July he was
entrained in a wagon-salon bound for Diredawa, thence to be
transferred to the remote province of Arussi. The engagement of
the Crown Prince and his daughter was broken off.
From Debra Markos, the Italian Consul Medici had already
reported to the Governor of Eritrea that authority had broken
down and brigandage become rife since the virtual detention of
Ras Hailu in the capital. He now added that, though the Gojjamis
were happy at paying less taxes, the influx of Shoan officials to
inventory Ras Hailu’s goods and chattels before sending them to
Addis Ababa was most unpopular. When in August Imru was
promoted to Ras and nominated as the new governor of Gojjam,
protests redoubled. Some ofthe local chiefs planned a deputation
to Addis Ababa to ask the Emperor to leave Gojjam to the
Gojjamis, others (‘capi che hanno certa confidenza con
20 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

noi’—‘leaders, with whom we have a close relationship’) came to

the consulate to demand Italian support. An eighteen-year-old
son of Ras Hailu, Alem Saguet, rebelled; Bishop Abraham of
Gojjam persuaded him to accept the Emperor’s pardon. He came
to Addis Ababa, was publicly pardoned, stayed in Ras Desta’s
house, was arrested during the night and taken chained to the
prison in Ankober where Ras Mangasha, Seyum’s father, had
died. Even more dissatisfied, though wisely he failed to show it,
was the captor of Lij Yasu, Gessesse Belew. He had expected as a
member of the ruling house to be rewarded with all Goyam.
Instead he was merely promoted to Dejaz and made governor ofa
small district.

After this there were no more plots of any consequence against

the new Emperor. No doubt potential plotters reviewed with
dismay the long list of their predecessors whose plots had been
foiled; whether they were ex-Heirs or ruling Empresses, ancient
warriors or young nobles, provincial warlords or court officials,
all opponents had been outwitted or outmanceuvred by the son of
Ras Makonnen; and the graves and prisons of Ethiopia were the
resting-places of their bones and bodies.
Very quickly two royal marriages were celebrated, though not
as planned earlier. Asfa Wossen was married to Walata Israel, Ras
Seyum’s daughter, and at the end of the year sent to Dessie to
govern in person his own province of Wollo, under the guidance
of his tutor Wodajo Ali. At the same time Haile Selassie’s second
and favourite daughter, Zenabe Worq, was married at the age of
fourteen to a young nobleman by the name of Haile Selassie
Gugsa, son and heir of Ras Gugsa Araya ofeastern Tigre. By this
double alliance the Emperor hoped to assure the loyalty of the
two rulers of Tigre.
With the faithful Ras Imru in Gojjam, the equally loyal Ras
Kassa in Beghemder, his own eldest son in Wollo, and himselfin
Shoa, he could at last feel a certain security. For not only was his
own personal position in the capital assured but the five great
provinces that formed the historic Empire were at last under
control. Haile Selassie, could, in so far as any absolute ruler may,
afford to relax—at least temporarily.
 CHAPTER 2

PASCISTATALY AND ITS COLONIES

IN Italy too there were royal or semi-royal weddings. Amedeo

son of the Duke of Aosta, an extremely handsome and extremely
tall artillery officer, chose, like his father, a bride from France. On
5 November 1927 he married Princess Anne of France, daughter
of the Duc de Guise.
Three years later, the King’s only son and heir, Umberto
Prince of Piedmont, married Princess Marie José, daughter of the
King of the Belgians. The King was much relieved. Vittorio
Emmanuele III, a man of nearly sixty, had always detested the
pretensions of the House of Aosta. Cautious by temperament, he
was no one’s image of an impressive monarch. His legs were
slightly deformed, he was very short. As a young man he had
courted the ambitious and domineering Princess Heléne
d’Orléans, daughter of the exiled Louis Philippe. She had pre-
ferred to marry his first cousin and heir-apparent Emmanuele
Filiberto Duke of Aosta, a fine figure and at least a potential
warrior king. They were married at Kingston on Thames in 1895
and three years later at the Palazzo della Cisterna in Turin a son
was born: Amedeo Umberto Isabella Luigi Filippo Maria
Guiseppe Giovanni. ‘Mon petit roi’ his mother called him affec-
tionately; and her fury was barely concealed when six years later
the new king, whom his cousin referred to jovially as ‘half a
man’, managed to produce a son and heir.
Mussolini owed a great deal to the support of Emmanuele
Filiberto and the Princess Heléne. Indeed, at the time of the so-
called March on Rome in October 1922, it was largely the King’s
fear that he might be forced to abdicate in favour of the
immensely popular Emmanuele Filiberto that led him against all
his instincts to appoint Mussolini Prime Minister.
The young Amedeo played no part in all these manceuvrings
—though Mussolini was not to forget in later years the debt he
owed to the House of Aosta. In the late nineteen twenties, both
22 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

before and after his marriage, Amedeo was commanding the

Meharists of the Sahara, the Italian Camel Corps, in Italian North
Africa.

Italy had seized the two provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica

in 1911, fifteen years after the disastrous attempt to conquer
Ethiopia. This time there had been no resistance—barely a shot
fired. But though the Turks were easily ousted, the tribesmen of
the interior, the Senussi, soon turned against the infidels who had
come as liberators. For years a small but fierce colonial war was
waged, never dangerous for Italy—the Senussi were far too few
in number to inflict anything approaching another Adowa on the
invaders—but with the inevitable victories and defeats a fine
training ground for the Italian Army, for the making and break-
ing of reputations.
General Graziani, Amedeo of Aosta’s commander, had as a
young infantry officer come out to North Africa in 1911 with a
battalion of Eritrean askaris. Unfortunately for him he was bitten
by a snake, fell very ill, developed malaria, and was invalided
back to Rome. His troubles continued. He was gassed in the
Great War—and very nearly lynched in the post-war troubles by
the revolutionary committee of Parma who, like Shakespeare’s
Roman mob with Cinna, took him for an elderly and hated
namesake. It was not till 1921 that he was summoned by the
Minister of War from unhappy and enforced retirement and sent
back to Cyrenaica. There he was to stay for the next thirteen
years, gradually building up a reputation as Italy’s finest colonial
soldier. Like many contentious soldiers and politicians, he had
begun his career as a student for the priesthood, but finding he
had no vocation had left for other and more combative fields. The
law and the police had seen him briefly, but by his very physical
appearance he seemed cut out for a military career. His heavy
sculpted features were again and again compared by admiring
compatriots to those of aRoman emperor or Renaissance condot-
tiere. Because he looked the part and because, unlike so many
other Italian generals, he fought in Africa while they intrigued in
Rome, he was forgiven much by the Italians—and there was to be
much to forgive.
From 1926 to 1929 a white-bearded general almost in his
seventies governed the two provinces of Italian North Africa.
Emilio de Bono, a devout Catholic and a traditionalist, was
 FASCIST ITALY AND ITS COLONIES 23
already retired when, long before the March on Rome, he joined
the Fascists—apparently in the hope of supplementing too
meagre a pension. He had lent Mussolini’s gangs of thugs, the
squadristi, an aura that the Duce valued highly—the aura of
respectability. De Bono had ina sense been the ambassador ofthe
Army to the Fascists and of the Fascists to the Army; he had
preserved the semi-benevolent neutrality of the military in the
days of the March on Rome which would—as Mussolini well
knew—have collapsed entirely at the first whiff of serious
grapeshot; and Mussolini was accordingly grateful. Besides, De
Bono was no potential threat to his own position.
The three years for which De Bono governed the two North
African provinces were a period of renewed guerrilla fighting
during which Graziani’s star rose still higher. His commanding
officer, General Malladra, referred to ‘la sua figura di condottiere
che tanta luce de gloria illumina’.! De Bono more moderately
called him ‘a precious element of politico-military efficiency’. In
1929, thanks largely to Amedeo of Aosta’s Meharists, he defeated
the Auled Suleiman at the Wells of Tagrift.
Later that year there was a general post; what in Ethiopia is
known as a shum-shir, a switching round of appointments. De
Bono went back to Rome to take over as Minister of the
Colonies, and General Pietro Gazzera, a nonentity, replaced the
reforming Cavallero at the Ministry of War. The two provinces
ofItalian North Africa were united into the one colony of Libya,
and Marshal Badoglio was appointed Governor-General with—
against his wishes—General Graziani as Vice-Governor for
Cyrenaica.
Few men had a more curiously successful career than
Badoglio. He had no great reputation as a military leader; on the
contrary he was generally blamed for the disaster at Caporetto.?
He was not and never pretended to be a Fascist; on the contrary it
was he who had been ready to disperse the Fascist mobs with a
whiff of grapeshot. He had been Chief of Staff of the Army,
resigned and been temporarily exiled by the Fascists to the Italian
1 Difficult to translate into reasonable English, like so much Fascist prose. Literally
‘his appearance of condottiere that so much light of glory illuminates’.
2 On 24 October 1917 the Austrians attacked in the North ofItaly inflicting a vast
military defeat on the Italian Army. General Badoglio commanding one of the Second
Army’s two Corps was absent, his 700 cannon were never fired. Only Emmanuele
Filiberto Duke of Aosta commanding the Third Army came out ofthis defeat with
both his army and his reputation intact.
24 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

Embassy in Brazil. He was nota particularly strong or impressive

character. He could not even boast a profile like Graziani, or a
beard like De Bono. Yet somehow, right up to the end, he was
always there: the political general par excellence, hovering in the
background, always ready to be called upon, and in the end
always called upon.
In any case Badoglio’s period as Governor-General was for
him a mere interlude across the seas, often broken by visits to
Rome. The kudos of the campaigns went to Graziani who
occupied the oasis of Kufra, was promoted, thanks to Badoglio,
and finally succeeded in capturing the hero of the Cyrenaican
tribes, Omar el Muktar.
Graziani’s achievements were undeniable. He was the hero of
every Italian schoolboy, and Badoglio seems to have tolerated the
whims, egoism, and suspicious pride ofhis subordinate with a far
greater courtesy then Graziani showed to his nominal comman-
der, whom he considered—by contrast to De Bono—to be a
jealous personal enemy. But Graziani’s methods were
unpleasant: he relied on terror, severity, and overwhelming
force. He sank concrete into the wells his nomad enemies used,
and all down the desert frontier between Cyrenaica and Egypt
ran cordons of barbed wire—achievements much vaunted in the
Fascist press. Omar el Muktar was, on capture, shot out of hand
as a rebel: a precedent that was to be remembered. Indeed the
whole Libyan war was an unwitting rehearsal for a greater
enterprise, a training ground where politicians, generals, and
soldiers tested out the methods they were later to apply mis-
takenly on a far larger scale.
Amedeo of Aosta was there when the oasis of Kufra was
captured. But on the death of his father in July 1931 and his
succession to the title he went back to Italy: and there abandoned
his career as an army officer to join the new and romantic arm
now arousing such enthusiasm among young Italians, the Regia
Aeronautica, Italy’s air force.

It was Balbo, Mussolini’s right-hand man and potential rival,

who had caught the imagination of all Italy, and indeed of the
world, by guiding a squadron of twelve flying-boats across the
Atlantic to a triumphal reception in both North and South
America, where the Italian communities greeted with pride and
enthusiasm this outward sign of Italy’s resurgence—the Duce
 FASCIST ITALY AND ITS COLONIES 25
had no partisans more devoted than those Italians who lived
outside the reach ofhis laws. Balbo had trained himselfas a pilot
and in the general reshuffle of autumn 1929 became Minister of
Aviation. Few Ministers lead their own pilots across an ocean
never before flown over by a massed formation. Balbo did it
again, this time with twenty-two naval bombers, and was
rewarded with the title of Air Marshal, Italy’s first.
So, like many other ambitious young men, the new Duke of
Aosta transferred. He left the army as an artillery major and
joined the air force as a colonel. For the next five years he was
stationed in the north ofItaly, at Gorizia. He lived with his wife
and two young daughters in the Castello di Miramare, popular
with all, joined by former squadristi such as Ettore Muti of
Ravenna who had served in his father’s army, gradually rising in
rank to become commander ofthe air division ‘Aquila’, unaware
ofhis third destiny, of the glory awaiting him in Ethiopia and his
strange, almost tragic end.
Like most Italians of his class, Amedeo of Aosta took little
interest in the internal politics of Italy at this period, largely
because there were none. There were no elections, no strikes, no
political crises, and very little violence. Or rather the violence
was becoming institutionalized. There was one brief year when
the fanatical Farinacci was appointed secretary-general of the
Party, in effect number two ofthe regime, and the squadristi with
their castor oil and their crowbars were once again loosed on the
few of their opponents who dared appear in the streets. But this
was a mere interlude in a period of more organized repression.
Political opponents began to go into exile. The Communists
were imprisoned. A new form of internal banishment, the
confine, an Italian version of the Ethiopian system of confining
dangerous nobles to mountain tops, was instituted—though in
Italy islands replaced ambas.
In Italy the great task was the institutionalization of a Fascist
State. Rules and regulations multiplied from 1931 onwards when
the ascetic Achille Starace became Party Secretary; a man who it
was said even wore the insignia ofhis office on his pyjamas. The
‘Fascist style’ was imposed on daily life: the Fascist salute, for
instance, was not to be given sitting down, but on the other hand
need not necessarily be accompanied by the raising of the hat.
Teachers and civil servants and the rest were put into the
ubiquitous black shirts (strictly buttoned at the neck) and Party
26 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

officials forced to begin the day with military-style gymnastic

exercises.
The framework of the whole system was the Milizia, an
alternative armed force, directly at the service of the Duce,
indirectly of the State. Originally set up to absorb the ill dis-
ciplined squadristi—De Bono had been the Milizia’s first Com-
mandante Generale—its tentacles had spread and spread.

It was a curious structure; half Imperial Roman in terminology,

half technocratic, with a dash of the Boy Scout and even a touch
of the Wolf Cub.
To be a member it was necessary to be a tried and proven
member ofthe Fascist Party: at the outbreak of the Second World
War there were approximately 400,000 members of the Milizia
for one million members of the Party. At first, anyone between
the ages of 17 and 50 was eligible—of ‘proved Fascist faith’ of
course. Later the structure became more baroque. Avanguardisti
were enrolled at the age of 19; and on 21 April at the ‘Solemn
Ceremony of the Fascist Levy—an important annual jamboree
—were presented with a symbolic musket. Later still the Fasci
Giovanili were created: 20 to 22-year-olds who followed obliga-
tory pre-military courses before passing into the Fasci di Combat-
timenti: and the full glory of parading in black shirt, baggy grey-
green trousers, and (for the officers) a tasselled fez-style hat,
carrying heavy sticks or guns behind their gagliardetti to the
jaunty music of the Fascist bands. “Believe, Obey, Fight’, such
was the motto of the Gioventu Fascista, the Fascist Youth.
The structure of the Milizia was hierarchic. Its commander-in-
chief was, naturally, ‘the Head of the Government and Duce of
Fascismo’. Its acting head was a Commandante Generale: under
him came 4 Lieutenant-Generals. Under the Lieutenant-Generals
came 33 Consul-Generals who commanded the various gruppi.
But the real base unit were the Legions—120 Legions each
divided into 3 cohorts, each cohort divided into three centuries.
The commanders of the Legions were known as Consuls—the
equivalent of colonels. The other officers in descending scale of
rank were the Seniore, the Centurione, and the Capo manipolo or
captain. The capi squadri were the NCOs. Generally speaking the
officers came from the army; and one of the sources of friction
between the Milizia and the Army was that an officer transferring
to the Milizia would automatically be promoted one grade. The
 FASCIST ITALY AND ITS COLONIES 27
officers who did transfer were usually, besides being Party
members, those who for one reason or another found their
promotion or careers blocked. The quality of the officers was,
therefore, generally poor.
The militiamen themselves, the Blackshirts, were of course
part-time soldiers—until a levy was decreed and they were called
up for full-time service. But by 1929 most of the employees ofthe
State—railwaymen, postmen, and the rest—had been trans-
figured. There was the Milizia Ferroviaria—14 Legions of rail-
waymen; the Milizia Forestale—g Legions offoresters; the Milizia
Stradale—the road navvies; the Milizia Postelegrafonica—the post
office workers; the Milizia Confinaria—ordinary Legionaries in
the frontier districts; and the Milizia Universitaria—6 Legions of
67,000 students. The Instituto Fascista di Cultura was set up; and if
the intellectual of the Roman Fascists, Giuseppe Bottai, kept up
some pretence of a loyal opposition with his review Critica
Fascista, more and more the seventh commandment of the
militiamen became symbolic of the general atmosphere—‘Il
Duce ha sempre ragione’-—‘The Duce is always right.’
Such was Italy in the decade that ran from January 1925 to
December 1934; secure, fairly prosperous, fairly contented, and
above all stable after the upheavals of the previous thirty years.
The Fascist regime was generally admired, though with a strain
of mockery, by public opinion in the rest of western Europe.
Mussolini himself was admired without mockery. Above all, and
most surprisingly, it was a peaceful regime: the warlike bluster of
the early days appeared to be mere rhetoric, for Mussolini had
made no sustained attempt at expansion outside Italy’s
recognized spheres ofinfluence. Europe was at peace and public
opinion at rest. Yet as early as 1932 the plans were germinating in
Mussolini’s mind of what was to be the prelude to events of
considerable inconvenience and anguish, both for all Europeans
and for himself: the conquest of Ethiopia.

In 1932 King Vittorio Emmanuele and his Minister of Colonies,

the veteran General De Bono, visited Eritrea. They found a
peaceful, loyal, and contented Colony. Ever since the peace
settlement after Adowa the successive Italian governors had
concentrated on building up a stable, model community, on
avoiding trouble, and on entering into friendly relationships with
the Tigrean rulers across the river frontier to their south.
28 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

They had succeeded in all these aims. This was all the more
extraordinary because neighbouring Tigre was always a con-
fused, bloody, violent, and agitated province. Admittedly it
could hardly be otherwise with its proud and warlike moun-
taineers conscious of speaking a language—Tigrinya—which
was close to the Amharic of the ruling Amhara of Shoa, yet
distinctive enough to set them apart; conscious too of possessing
in Axum the holiest city in Ethiopia, the cradle of an ancient
Empire when Shoa was not even named. Ras Seyum’s grand-
father, the Emperor Johannes, had been the most warlike and
renowned of all Ethiopia’s recent rulers; Ras Seyum’s father Ras
Mangasha had, despite fighting side by side with the Shoan
Emperor at Adowa, ended his days as a prisoner in chains in the
Shoan fortress of Ankober; Ras Seyum himself had been
deprived of eastern Tigre, ruled from Makalle by his rival, the
elderly Ras Gugsa Araya. The lords of Tigre, with the Italians on
their northern frontier in Eritrea, and the British on their western
frontier in the Sudan, with the untamed and savage Danakil on
their eastern marches, were subject to greater pressures and more
liable to be influenced by foreign intrigue than the governors of
any other Ethiopian province.
Nevertheless relations with the Italians were good. This was
largely because the heartland of Eritrea, the highlands, was
populated, like Tigre itself, by Christian Tigrinya-speakers. In
their centre lay the Colony’s capital of Asmara, a newly built,
well-laid-out, small Italian city. The western gates of the high-
lands were guarded by the little town of Keren, up to which the
single-track railway from the Red Sea port of Massawa ran.
But the lowlands were Muslim. To the west bordering the
Sudan lived the powerful Beni Amer, followers of the Khatmia
sect, founded by Sayed Mohammed Othman el Mirghani. To the
east, stretching down to the isolated port of Assab, lay the salt
flats of the Danakil desert, the hottest place on earth. Like the
Tigrinya-speakers the Danakil nomads were split by a frontier:
some 33,000 lived in Eritrea, but twice as many lived in Ethiopia.
Unlike the Tigrinya-speakers, they were all Muslims of a sort; a
confederation of loose clans owing allegiance to their Sultan at
Aussa inside Ethiopian territory, probably the fiercest and most
primitive ofall the peoples on the borders of Ethiopia. Their teeth
were filed, their reputation xenophobic, and they had accounted
for more explorers than any other tribe in north-east Africa.
 FASCIST ITALY AND ITS COLONIES 29
Out of this heterogeneous collection of different peoples,
numbering perhaps a million and a halfin all, the Italians had built
almost a nation: to be an Eritrean and to be an Italian subject was a
matter of pride, as later events were to prove. The Eritreans were
surprisingly, though not invariably, loyal to their colonial rulers.
In Libya the Eritrean battalions—which were mainly but not
wholly recruited from the Muslim half of the population
—fought well against their co-religionists. The Christian
Tigrinya-speakers were a touch less trusted; yet many of their
Fitauraris became NCOs in the battalions or led under Italian
command the irregular armed auxiliaries, the bande! which each
district ever since Adowa had provided. In any case the loyalty of
the Tigreans was, if not to the Italians, certainly not to the
Amharic-speakers and the Amhara Emperor; it was to the great
lords descended from the Emperor Johannes. For years these
great lords had had closer personal contacts with the Governor of
Eritrea, Gasperini, than with the Shoan court. They hired Italian
technicians and doctors as a matter of course; and if Ras Gugsa
Araya or Ras Seyum had to visit Addis Ababa, almost invariably
they found it easier and quicker—and safer—to go north by mule
to Massawa, then by sea to French Djibuti, and from there by the
chemin defer Franco-Ethiopien via Diredawa to the capital.
Like many Tigrean nobles, Ras Gugsa Araya used to go to
Eritrea for medical treatment from Italian doctors. And when his
daughter-in-law Princess Zenabe Worq fell ill in the seventh
month of her pregnancy, he suggested that she should go to his
doctor. But the priests refused (for liturgical reasons) and her
young husband Haile Selassie Gugsa (who was rumoured to
maltreat her) also refused. So the Ras sent a message to the
capital. Two days later Haile Selassie’s personal physician and
trusted confidant, Dr Zervos, flew in. It was toc late. The day
before, on 24 March 1933 the young Princess had died. She was
aged sixteen, the Emperor’s favourite daughter and the first ofhis
six children to predecease him. Dr. Zervos flew back to Addis
Ababa with the dead girl’s body—an insult to her widowed
husband which Haile Selassie Gugsa felt very keenly.
Only a month later, on 28 April, Ras Gugsa Araya himself
died. Drink, violence, and debauchery had ruined his health, and
1 These irregulars were often referred to by British officials as banda even when
strictly speaking they“should have been called bande. The author will follow the
example of his compatriots.
30 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

the Emperor had authorized him to go via Eritrea to Switzerland.

If he had set out by stretcher all would probably have been well.
But tradition dictated that a Ras should travel only on his war-
mule. He set out and averaged one hour a day. At Adagamus the
doctor insisted that he should stop, but the priests accompanying
him wished to celebrate Easter at Adigrat. Legend has it that a
corpse rode into Adigrat, upright upon a war-mule. His son
Haile Selassie Gugsa moved into the Italian-built Palace at
Makalle.

To the north-east of the Ethiopian highlands, sweeping along the

top of the Red Sea Coast to the south of the straits of Bab-el-
Mandeb, and down in the east along the Benadir Coast to the
northern districts of Kenya, lay in the horn of Africa the vast
territories of the Somali, carved up after the opening of the Suez
Canal by three colonial powers; or, if Ethiopia is counted, by
four.
The Somalis must be the finest-looking race in Africa. Tall,
thin, with long noses and thin lips, clad in a sort of full-length
kilt, the tobe, they strode over the vast undulating plateaux in
which they lived leading their camel herds from well to well.
Courageous, avaricious, vain, and highly excitable, they were
united by their language, by their nomadic way of life, by their
religion, and by very little else. There was never any sort of
centralized authority among the Somalis, and in their inde-
pendent and egalitarian society very little authority at all. Each of
the four major groupings, the Dir, the Isaak, the Hawiya, and the
Darod, were divided up into anumber ofclans and sub-clans, and
it was by his clan that the Somali nomad felt himself to be
defined. He was first and foremost a Habr Yunis, or a Rer Ali, or
an Issa, or a Mijurtin—one of a hundred clans—and only after-
wards a Darod or a Dir, and only then conscious of being a
Somali. Somali women, almost as independent as their menfolk,
were—and still are—famous for their beauty.
In the year after Adowa the various foreign missions to
Menelik’s court agreed on the carving-up of the Somali lands.
Rennell Rodd and Ras Makonnen signed the Anglo-Ethiopian
boundary agreement theoretically defining the southern boun-
dary of British Somaliland, the north-eastern boundary of the
Empire. Léonce Lagarde the French Envoy defined the
boundaries of the Céte Francaise des Somalis on that difficult
 FASCIST ITALY AND ITS COLONIES 31

territory which the Danakil and the Somali clan of the Issa shared
and fought over. Italy’s peace negotiator Dr. Neruzzini agreed
with the Ethiopians that the future frontier between Italian
Somali and Ethiopia should run at 180 miles from the coast.
Meanwhile far in the south the British of British East Africa
pushed their northern frontier up to the Juba river which
debouched in the little Sultanate of Kismayu.
With the Fascist regime came, in the Somali territories under
Italian control, a new policy and a new governor. In October
1923 one year after the March on Rome, De Vecchi a bald and
heavy regular officer and, like De Bono, an early Fascist member,
came out to Mogadishu. He immediately set about reorganizing,
or rather organizing, the rather messy pre-Fascist system
whereby Italian Somalia had been divided into two protectorates
and one semi-colony. De Vecchi must have had more brains and
ability than he was generally credited with, for by the end of his
period as Governor he had achieved all his aims. With 12,000
troops (including many Eritreans) he moved against Yusuf Ali
the Sultan of Obbia and declared the protectorate a province.
In the north the ageing Bogor Isman, Sultan of the Miyurtin,
held out for two years longer till he too was deposed, exiled
to Mogadishu the capital of the colony, and his sultanate
abolished.
With Jubaland (ceded by the British under the Treaty of
London) incorporated, the Colony of Somalia consisted of seven
provinces divided into 33 districts or ‘Residences’. Its population
was (in 1939) estimated at 1,200,000 natives and 8,000
Europeans, mostly at Mogadishu. When De Vecchi departed to
become Italy’s first Ambassador to the Holy See, he left behind
him a well-administered colony. He had been especially success-
ful in reorganizing the Colony’s armed forces, both regular and
irregular. The regular forces, the Royal Corps, numbered 134
Italian officers and 6,700 men divided into six Arabo-Somali
battalions (‘Arabo’ because many of the men were recruited in the
Yemen). The irregular forces consisted of a number of armed
frontier bands—Bande Armate di Confine—which rose from nine
in 1925 to 40 ten years later; small groups of clansmen led by
Italian officers and popularly known as Dubats (Dub in Somali
means turban, At means white). This was a success. The only fly
in the ointment was the rebellion at El Bur near Obbia of a
Mijurtin clansman, Omar Samanthar, who had murdered a
32 ETHIOPIA AND ITALY: THE BACKGROUND

Residente and by evading his pursuers for over a year gained a

certain reputation.

By 1930 the Italians, the British, and the Ethiopians under their
new Emperor were beginning to feel that it was important to get
the boundaries of their possessions exactly defined. The first
Boundary Commission went to work in September, to mark out
the borders in the north between British Somaliland and Italian
Somalia. Colonel Clifford represented the British, Enrico
Cerulli, the ethnographer and explorer, the Italians. There was
no difficulty, and the boundary was ratified by an Anglo-Italian
agreement signed the following year.
Colonel Clifford was also a member of the Anglo-Ethiopian
Boundary Commission which two years later began the longer,
more exhausting task of defining Ethiopia’s frontier with British
Somaliland. His opposite number was Lorenzo Taezaz, one of
Haile Selassie’s bright young men, an Eritrean and a protégé of
Dejaz Nasibu Emmanuel, used to dealing with foreigners. And if
the work was slower and more exhausting, given Ethiopian
delays and absences, the atmosphere was equally friendly. The
local Italian officials over whose territory the Commission had to
pass were equally helpful, offering the free use of their wells
—none more helpful than a certain Captain Cimmaruta. It was
only the clans who were obstreperous and resisted; one of the
members of the commission was killed, and thereafter the Ethio-
pians provided a large escort.
But it was the third part of the settlement that proved thorny;
the definition of the Italo-Ethiopian frontier. The reason was
probably that the new Italian governor Guido Corni wanted to be
no less successful than his predecessor, and that meant the gaining
ofterritory, a ‘forward policy’. His most powerful ally was Olol
Dinke, leader of the Ajuran and related to the Mozaffar dynasty
which had once ruled Mogadishu. The Ajuran controlled the
vital stretch of the Webbi Shebelli River that ran from Ferfer
(which was definitely inside Italian territory) to Callafo (which
was definitely Ethiopian). The Governor named Olol Dinke
Sultan of the Sciavelli and paid him to raid Ethiopian tax-
gathering expeditions—a pursuit to which he was all the more
attracted by his hatred for the Ethiopians who had imprisoned his
father. The Ethiopians reacted by arming Omar Samanthar. As
tension grew, the anger of the Governor of Harar, Dejaz
 FASCIST ITALY AND ITS COLONIES 33

Gabremariam, in whose province the Ogaden lay, gave way to

exasperation. He led his army down the Webbi Shebelli, cleared
the Italians out of the fort at Mustahil in the heart of Olol Dinke’s
territory, and threatened the Italian Residenza right down the
river at Belethuen. This was in September 1931. Hastily the
Italians mustered reinforcements; but an open clash was avoided
and eventually Dejaz Gabremariam withdrew. Probably neither
he nor the Italian Governor had come so close to open conflict on
the express orders of either of their governments; it was a local,
rather than a national feud, as its peaceful ending showed. It
could, if Mussolini had so wished, been the pretext for war. But
that was before 1932, before the Duce had seriously begun to
consider the conquest of Ethiopia.
 bed I
.

ty oft wprty ye 7
——
be vis lw we Pau ad ‘
ae | RewS J ‘w 6} wt;
_ “
Vv Deteooo>
7
raat
Ly hed be

a nae
7
es _
= bee ———

=< = Neate Bb
; = ~ ep se
RG. ©
a
——"

ci
sf
7,

a
_—_

epee
ora
w ere
eX
~
.
 PART II
Se ee
THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
es
 AGNVIITI
—-— VNOS

aa
HSILIUG

a
Ipeylay®

ee:
‘MeJOYIUS
1eINBY
s0Wsan09
jo ay) uepeig

x
® emer
OpVv
@ 79P19-M uieydey eynewwiy
* indipeuey

0Of

JO
zeleg
epueg
® IqnZo[19H

‘ngisey
omy spseng sn QYo4

sesey
J0UJ8A09)
suoyeneg sesequiejyeg
asajey

N
ZC)
Ivey] ee SOARS ODO enaePoe OE uew

ysomayy
(4)
909 uew
~

nse, {1

a0 peip
sepesbey
eyseg
2 =)

BIBIPUPIED®
90s uaw
~

a19je]

N
SE z

ewal2y

e
sayi0.4°

a
sueurq
®

1o119Udeq
uanylejog
jo) 1S) Q Se =

aq\N
V 7T I

Ag 123) 0099 12A0 purq

A nysipes
O o
so}! OI

OSI 007 WY

dvVW
“7 YT UDPeZO
3e 943 oI]
JO [eMeM
 CHAPTER 3

THE ‘INCIDENT’ AT WALWAL

COLONEL CLIFFORD and the Anglo-Ethiopian Commissioners

moved into the Ogaden in late October 1934, to study the
grazing rights of certain clans that overlapped all borders. Besides
the Colonel himself the British delegation consisted of two other
British Army officers, a corporal and one civilian, a colonial
official named Mr. Alex Curle. As the commissioners and their
retinues moved down towards Walwal, Fitaurari Shifferaw,
who, under, Dejaz Gabremariam, governed the Ogaden from
the little town ofJijiga at the foot of the Harar hills, arrived to take
personal command of the escort.
At Walwal there were over a thousand wells, the biggest
concentration in the Ogaden. In Somalia a well was not just a hole
in the ground with water at the bottom; it was—and is—an
important piece of property. Each well was owned by a group of
families, each group of wells by a clan. Wells that never ran dry
were more valuable than wells that sometimes did; and if a well
did run dry, the families using it would have to go and barter with
their more fortunate neighbours for the jealously—guarded right
to draw water. The thousand wells spread over a wide flat area;
and by each well a group of nomads were camped, with their
camel-skin tents, their camels, and their herds. They belonged to
the Rer Ibrahim and the Myurtin clans: the Rer Ibrahim came
from Ethiopian or British-controlled territory, the Mijurtin from
the former Sultanate annexed by Italy.
On the morning of23November the Commissioners and their
escort arrived at Walwal. They found the wells already half-
occupied by about 200 bande under a native Somali officer.
Fitaurari Shifferaw pitched his camp to the north and stationed
his men across a line that ran roughly through the middle of the
wells facing the bande. Colonel Clifford and the Ethiopian Com-
missioners pitchéd their tents a few hundred yards away, side by
side; and Colonel Clifford raised the Union Jack.

/
38 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
That day a Somali under-officer of Fitaurari Shifferaw’s
crossed the lines and deserted. The Fitaurari sent a threatening
letter across the lines; Lieutenant Mousti, the bande leader, replied
saying that the deserter would be sent back. But his own men
refused: ‘This man has taken refuge under the Italian flag’, they
claimed. ‘Even if we die, he shall not die. He must not return to
the Ethiopians.’ Perplexed, Mousti sent back for instructions to
his base, the little town of Werder some five miles away; and that
night the Italian Frontier Officer, Captain Cimmaruta, arrived to
take over the situation personally, supported by three or four
hundred more irregulars.
At dawn Cimmaruta sent a note across to Clifford asking for
an interview. While waiting for the reply he told his men that
they, the Somalis, were lions. The interview took place at the end
of the morning. Negotiations about the deserter stuck. Clifford
asked Cimmaruta to pull back his men till the Commissioners’
job was done. Cimmaruta refused; he suggested that in order to
avoid clashes the two sides should mark out a provisional
boundary line by scoring trees with knives. The Ethiopians,
fearing that this would be tantamount to admitting that the
Italians had a right to be so far inland, refused—and pointed out
that Cimmaruta was well over 180 miles from the Somali coast.
The interview ended stormily, with threats by Cimmaruta to call
up ‘several hundred more of my men’. In fact he went back to
Werder with almost all, leaving only 100 bande to watch the
Ethiopians.
That afternoon two Italian military planes flew low over the
Commissioners’ tents, and Clifford and the British officers saw
one of the Italian gunners training a machine-gun on them. They
sent another letter of protest to Cimmaruta saying that in view of
the Italian attitude they were unable to fulfil their mission and
would retire to Ado, five miles behind. In the night the comedy
continued; Cimmaruta sent to inform Clifford that the British
and the British alone would be allowed free circulation. Clifford
naturally refused, and next day, 25 November, the two Commis-
sions, British and Ethiopian, retired to Ado. It seemed as if an
unpleasant incident had been avoided.
But the two lines stayed in position facing one another; and the
comedy of communication turned to tragic farce. Cimmaruta’s
letters to Fitaurari Shifferaw had to be taken back to Ado to be
translated into Amharic by the Commissioners, and vice versa.
 THE ‘INCIDENT’ AT WALWAL 39
In one Cimmaruta referred to the Fitaurari as ‘your chief Shifta’,!
causing great offence. In the following days sixteen Mijurtin
bande deserted the Italians to join Omar Samanthar, who was
nearby. But it was not until 5 December that it suddenly all flared
up. The actual occasion was a trivial thing: the tossing of abone
from the campfire by an Ethiopian at a Somali. But, sooner or
later, with two groups of armed and hostile men camping day by
day and night by night face to face, something was bound to
happen. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. A bone, an insult, a
gesture, a rifle raised—according to the Italians it was Fitaurari
Shifferaw who called out ‘Down and fire.’
But the Italians seem to have been the better prepared. Within
ten minutes of the fusillade breaking out, three planes and two
light tanks had appeared. An Ethiopian Fitaurari, Alemayu
Goshu, was killed, and at nightfall when Fitaurari Shifferaw and
his men withdrew to Ado, 107 Ethiopians had been killed and 40
wounded. It was not till a day later that Ali Nur, an ex-King’s
African Rifles soldier and commander ofthe rearguard, cut offby
the armoured cars, managed to get through to Ado. From Ado
the Commissioners pulled hurriedly back to Harradiguit; and
when two days later Ali Nur and Lt. Collingwood followed with
the baggage, they were bombed, though harmlessly, as they left
the village.
That was the famous Walwal crisis, that was to set—as they
say, or said—the chancelleries of Europe alight.
On 9 December Blattengueta Herouy, Ethiopia’s Foreign
Minister, cabled the League of Nations to protest and to demand
that the arbitration clause of the 1928 Treaty of Friendship should
be put into effect. On the 11th the Italian Chargé d’Affaires
presented Italy’s counterdemands. These were (1) that Dejaz
Gabremariam should come to Walwal in person, and formally
present his apologies to the representative of the Italian govern-
ment while the Ethiopian detachment saluted the Italian flag, (2)
that those responsible for the attack should be arrested, demoted,
should also salute the Italian flag, and be punished, (3) that the
Ethiopian Government should hand over ‘the Somali outlaw and
Italian subject Omar Samanthar already guilty of the crime of
murder, the murder of the Italian Captain Carolei’. On the 14th

' Shifta is the Amharic word for bandit. See glossary p. xvi for this and other
Amharic terms.
40 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

Italy rejected the demand for arbitration. On the 15th Lorenzo

Taezaz came back from Jijiga with Fitaurari Shifferaw’s written
report, and Ali Nur was promoted to the rank of Balambaras. On
the 21st an Italian plane reconnoitred the wells of Gerlogubi
where Ethiopian reinforcements were gathering under a leader
named Afework.
And on the 28th as the Italians attacked Gerlogubi with tanks
and planes and the Ethiopians pulled back, M. Gérard reported to
Brussels from the Belgian Legation that troops and munitions
were being sent to the Ogaden, and translated a wall-inscription
in Amharic, typical according to him of many, and symptomatic
of Ethiopian public opinion. It read: ‘When you want to eat
macaroni, don’t delay: chew it while it’s still hot.’

By appealing to the League the Ethiopian government created a

European crisis: an appeal meant debates at Geneva, open diplo-
matic warfare, and above all, publicity. The actual issue of
Walwal, of the interpretation of the grazing rights of the Mijurtin
under the 1908 agreement, the question of whether the frontier of
Somalia was 180 nautical miles or 180 statute miles from the sea,
of the fulfilment or not of the 1928 Treaty, and of the responsi-
bility for the deaths on 5 December were debated endlessly and
fruitlessly. Innumerable commissions sat, innumerable articles
were written, and innumerable speeches were made. And the
benefits of Haile Selassie’s visit to Europe appeared. People
remembered the dignified little man with his famous cape and
collection of hats. Public opinion all over Europe stood on guard
and the political leaders of Europe were dragged along—or on
occasions abruptly dismissed if they could not follow where
public opinion led.
But was the appeal to the League a mistake? It meant an open
crisis in which Italy inevitably appeared as the bullying aggres-
sor. It meant therefore that Mussolini’s prestige was at stake. Not
only for Mussolini but for all Italians it became a question offace.
Politically, it was a wise move by Haile Selassie; psychologically
it was disastrous. A dictator can rarely admit to his fellow-rulers
when accused by foreign opinion that he has been wrong; he
must threaten and bluster and justify his actions, and in the end he
may be carried along by the tidal wave he has himself aroused.
From the incident at Walwal events moved slowly though not
inexorably to war. There were the two absolute rulers, Haile
 THE ‘INCIDENT’ AT WALWAL 4I
Selassie in Addis Ababa and Mussolini in Rome, making diplo-
matic move and countermove, strengthening their forces hastily
but both apparently ready to negotiate, listening to suggestions
for compromise, hesitating, almost accepting this or that plan,
neither really convinced that an armed conflict could not be
avoided. Did they study each other’s psychology? They must
have done; they must have been watching each other very
closely, trying to anticipate the other’s intentions and foresee his
next action. But each misjudged the other badly. From Walwal to
the outbreak of war and even afterwards it was a poker game
played at a distance by two men who had only seen each other
once—and were never to meet again. Perhaps each judged the
other by what he had seemed to be in 1924. Then Haile Selassie
had observed a rattled political leader whose power was tottering
in the wake of the Matteoti crisis, and Mussolini had seen a
young, quiet, physically tiny Ethiopian, not even the ruler ofhis
country, a sort of Ambassador Extraordinary, surrounded by a
cohort ofhis peers just as impressive in personality and style. Did
either of them realize how much the other’s position had changed
in the intervening eleven years, and how important it was for the
other not to lose face in the eyes of his own countrymen?
By appealing to the League of Nations, the Ethiopian Govern-
ment gambled. Walwal was only a frontier incident. It was
admittedly a serious frontier incident but there had been other
serious frontier incidents—for instance the killing only a month
earlier of aFrench officer Captain Bertrand and his guard on the
Djibuti frontier—and they had been settled quietly and without
much fuss. Admittedly if the gamble had succeded and Italy had
backed down, Ethiopia would have gained an important asset:
the definition ofall her frontiers. But if the gamble went wrong,
as it did go wrong, the risks were very great. In fact the gamble
was only justified if the Ethiopians were convinced at the time
that Mussolini meant war. If he did, they had nothing to lose and
possibly everything to gain by creating a crisis in Europe.
But did Mussolini at the time of Walwal intend to invade and
conquer Ethiopia? The answer must be a qualified no. Admit-
tedly he had made plans for war with Ethiopia; as early as 1932,
De Bono tells us, Mussolini had mentioned in strict confidence
these plans, and De Bono’s two visits to Eritrea in 1932 were
more ofamilitary reconnaissance than a simple tour ofinspection
by the Minister for the Colonies. According to De Bono, 1933

‘
42 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
was ‘the year in which we began to think in concrete terms of the
measures to be taken in the case of conflict with Ethiopia’. The
Duce had talked to no one else of the operation. “Only he and I
were au courant.’ The Duce had asked De Bono what he would
need. ‘Money, chief’, De Bono had replied, ‘lots of money.’
‘Money will not be lacking,’ Mussolini said.
But although all the evidence goes to show that Mussolini was
making plans for war with Ethiopia as early as 1932-3, it does not
show that he had definitely decided on it. In a sense every Italian
political leader since Adowa had made plans for war. The
conquest of Ethiopia, or at any rate its transformation into an
Italian protectorate, was always at the back ofItalian minds, and
at certain periods—in 1906 and 1926 for instance—it came to the
forefront. But the drawing up ofplans for war does not prove the
intention to wage war. Even the fact that Mussolini circulated on
30 December his ‘Directive and plan of action to resolve the
Ethiopian question’ does not prove that from Walwal onwards he
was set on it. A close study ofhis diplomatic moves in the months
that followed indicates how very undecided he was.
Still, the main question remains: why did the war break out at
this ume? Italy could have chosen many a better moment: for
instance during Ras Gugsa Wule’s revolt in 1930, or even when
Gojjam was so unsettled two years later. As it was, Italy invaded
Ethiopia at one of the rare moments when there was no internal
crisis, and furthermore chose to wait till Ethiopia’s army was if
not modernized at least beginning to be retrained and re-equip-
ped. Technically Mussolini could hardly have chosen a worse
moment.
On 30 January 1933 Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor and
the framework of Europe began to crack. For Mussolini the
situation was a challenge, a danger, and an opportunity. It was
dangerous because a false move outside Italy might endanger his
own position—as he found when the scandal following the
murder of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and the French Foreign
Minister Barthou by ustachis trained in Italy caused him to draw
in his horns. It was an opportunity in the sense that the rise of a
German threat meant that for France and England Mussolini’s
alliance was most important. Hence in order to preserve the
status quo in Europe they were the more likely to give him a free
hand in Africa. It was above all a challenge: let Europe see that
Fascist Italy under the Duce was untamed and more dangerous
 THE ‘INCIDENT’ AT WALWAL 43
than any upstart to the north. As A. J. P. Taylor says: ‘Probably
he was merely intoxicated out of his senses by the militaristic
blustering which he had started and in which Hitler was now
outbidding him.’
It would be ridiculous to explain a war merely on the grounds
of a dictator’s psychology. The causes ofthe Italo—Ethiopian war
lay in history; the pretext was a minor frontier incident; but the
timing can only be explained by the working of Mussolini’s
imagination.
 CHAPTER 4

PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

For almost ten months after the incident at Walwal, two ques-
tions agitated opinion in Europe: was Mussolini going to invade
Ethiopia and, if he did, how should the League of Nations react?
Implied in the second question was a third: would there be war in
Europe? It was this possibility that really kept the tension so high,
not concern over Ethiopia. In terms of realpolitik the League was
the instrument by which England and France preserved the
peace, the balance of power in Europe, and their own colonial
empires abroad. A challenge to the League was therefore a
challenge to its two most powerful backers, and if Italy defied the
League, England and France would necessarily try to bring Italy
to heel—either by persuasion or by force. In January 1935 there
was therefore hope of a negotiated compromise between Italy
and Ethiopia, danger of a war in Africa if the compromise failed,
and a barely concealed expectation felt by many in both England
and France that a war in Africa would lead to a war in Europe. Ina
European war Italy would almost certainly be defeated and Italy’s
Fascist regime overthrown; the prospect of war, though
dangerous, was not therefore entirely displeasing. The Ethiopian
crisis came totally to dominate the political scene. The statesmen
and diplomats who favoured a compromise were themselves
caught up by the swell of moral indignation that swept over
northern, central, and western Europe, isolating Italy and her
little group ofclient states. But though public opinion among the
Swedes, the Belgians, and even the Germans was strongly
against Italy, the feelings that counted were the feelings of the
British and the French.
The French were preoccupied by the rising German threat. In
the first week in January, while the Crown Prince of Sweden was
paying Europe’s first state visit to Addis Ababa, France’s Foreign
Minister Laval went to Rome. The results were two: a Franco-
Italian alliance the published terms of which were enough to
 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR 4$
infuriate the Ethiopians; and, far more important, a private
understanding that in return for Italian support against Germany
France would allow Italy a free hand in Ethiopia. If any single
event reinforced Mussolini’s determination to put his plans for an
invasion into action it was this. Public opinion in France was
evenly divided on the rights ofthe situation.
In England there was minority support for Mussolini on the
extreme right wing and among a group of vociferous Catholic
journalists and MPs. But public opinion was almost entirely
against Fascist Italy. Among its most formidable leaders was
Sylvia Pankhurst; behind her lay that fine Victorian tradition of
public-spirited agitation by ladies of the upper middle class that
from Florence Nightingale onwards had made them the bane of
British officialdom. Like Stalin’s Pope, she could not muster
many divisions but when moral fervour moved her she was
England’s greatest agitator, as her mother had been before her.
For the anti-Fascists in England the Ethiopian crisis was a
godsend: for Sylvia Pankhurst it replaced her earlier fervours
for the ‘flapper vote’, women’s sexual liberation, and even the
poems of Eminescu. Aided and advised by her great friend Silvio
Corio, a left-wing journalist and refugee who remembered
seeing the soldiers return from Adowa, she bombarded the
newspapers—particularly the pro-Mussolini press, the Daily
Mail, the Morning Post, and the Observer—and public figures, civil
servants, and politicians with volleys of letters. She formed
committees, organized rallies, was a moving spirit behind the
Peace Ballot, and generally a thorn in the flesh of the diplo-
mats.
The diplomats on the other hand were only too friendly to the
Fascist regime. In Rome the British government had refused,
despite Mussolini’s special request, to prolong the stay of Sir
Ronald Graham. But Mussolini must have been even more
content with Graham’s successor, Sir Eric Drummond, later Earl
of Perth, of whom Ciano was to write: ‘almost one of us in his
love for Fascism’—another example of the power of the Fascist
ideology to fascinate certain strata of the British upper classes.
Furthermore Drummond had the convenient foible of trusting
his domestic servants: what the valet-spy ‘Cicero’ got from
Knatchbull-Hugessen in Turkey was as nothing compared to the
dispatches purloined by the Italians from Drummond. The
Comte de Chambrun, Laval’s son-in-law, was France’s Ambas-
46 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
sador. With the interests of the Powers guaranteed by two such
antagonists the Italian Foreign Ministry hardly had need ofallies.

History, unkindly, has not drawn a veil over the months of

diplomatic manceuvring designed to prevent Italy from invading
Ethiopia or to punish her when she had done so. Never has so
much human energy been expended in such futile attempts; or if
it has, never has it been so well documented. Yet, for all it
achieved, the League might as well never have met, passed no
resolutions, set up no committees, heard no speeches, decided on
no sanctions. It is a depressing story; and in the end marginal to
the story of the Italo-Ethiopian conflict.
The little powers had no desire at all to be dragged into a
European conflict. The Belgians, for instance, were on the side of
the League, of France, and England. They were pleased with
their important new position as advisers in Ethiopia. But on the
other hand the daughter oftheir King had married Italy’s Crown
Prince. It was all most awkward. While there was a fence they
wanted to go on sitting on it. But for how long would there be a
fence available? Nervously in January 1935 Belgium’s ambas-
sadors took soundings throughout Europe. From Rome Prince
Albert de Ligne reported that the Italians, at least for the moment,
did not want a real colonial war. On the other hand they had
never forgotten Adowa. ‘C’est la’, wrote the Prince, ‘un mot que
l’étranger doit bannir de son vocabulaire en Italie, 4 peu prés au
méme titre que Caporetto.’ But it was aname that was echoing all
round Europe. In Berlin a high official told the Baron Kerchove
de Dantighem that ‘Mussolini n’a jamais oublié Adowa’. In
Berlin’s opinion Mussolini was preparing a blitzkrieg without a
declaration of war—which would, however, be foiled by a
British intervention from Egypt. In Stockholm, according to the
Baron Villefagne de Sorinnes, the feeling was that though the
Italians did not want war, France had given them scope.
On 12 February, Italy announced the mobilization of two
divisions, the Gavinana in Tuscany, and the Peloritana in Sicily.
The news ‘exploded like a bomb’ in Stockholm. But the Swedes
still considered war unlikely: the difficulties of acampaign and of
the terrain were too great, and Ethiopia could mobilize two
million men. The Germans on the other hand thought Ethiopia
could be conquered but that it would need two years. In Italy
itself public opinion was, reported the Prince de Ligne, still
 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR 47

against war. From Addis Ababa, M. Janssens, solitary roturier,

who had reported earlier that there had been talk of ‘throwing the
Italians in Somalia back into the sea’, informed his government
that ‘les milieux abyssiniens sont trés pessimistes. On est con-
vaincu qu’une guerre ne peut étre évitée.’
On 22 February Graziani embarked at Naples with the
Peloritana for Somalia. That same week the Gavinana division
sailed for Eritrea. De Bono was interviewed by Henri de Mon-
fried in Eritrea. On the one hand he mentioned the ten million
‘poor underfed brutes’ of the Ethiopian Empire whom Italy must
be prepared to liberate from the Amhara; on the other he
expressed the hope that they would not see the catastrophe of
war. It looked as if the dispute might be settled. But Mussolini
made a warlike speech to the Chamber on Walwal; the deputies
rose to their feet and sang the Fascist anthem ‘Giovinezza’. Haile
Selassie made an equally warlike speech to Ethiopia’s parliament.
Count Vinci, the Italian Minister in Addis Ababa, objecting to
such phrases as ‘criminal intention’ and ‘cowardly aggression’,
did not attend the Emperor’s forty-second birthday party. Eden,
the Lord Privy Seal, visited Rome and suggested Ethiopia should
surrender part of the Ogaden. When Mussolini declined the
offer, Britain stopped the export of arms—not only to Italy but to
Ethiopia as well. The League of Nations passed resolutions, there
were tripartite talks in Paris, four arbiters reported, five arbiters
were appointed, Haile Selassie demanded the immediate con-
vocation of the League. The League met and adjourned; and all
the time in Ethiopia, in Eritrea, and Somalia there were increas-
ing preparations for war.

Haile Selassie had wisely spent much of the previous year

improving his army. On 15 March 1934, nine months before
Walwal, a military parade had been held at Addis Ababa, on
Janhoy Meda, the base of Ethiopia’s fledgling air force which
—with the acquisition of six more planes—numbered twelve
planes in all at the outbreak ofwar. Haile Selassie escorted by Ras
Kassa of Salale and Beghemder and Ras Mulugueta ofIllubabor
presented a flag to the Imperial Fitaurari Birru Wolde Gabriel for
the Mahel Safari: it portrayed St. George slaying the dragon. He
then presented a second flag to the Commander of the Guard,
Balambaras Mokria depicting the Lion of Judah. Three thousand
Guards paraded, with their Belgian officers. There were three

/
48 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

battalions, three machine-gun companies, two batteries, and a

squadron mounted on big horses just imported from Australia.
The Belgian officers were proud of their work. The under-
officers were being taught to read and write. The soldiers were
fine material, well-disciplined, and within limits well-turned-out
(the Emperor himself had forbidden the wearing of boots and
shoes in order not to weaken their native marching powers);
characterized, according to a report of the time, by the desire for
instruction, a lively but quickly exhausted curiosity, an extra-
ordinary ability to imitate, and an ebullient offensive spirit.
It was Haile Selassie’s aim, now that he had three battalions of
what amounted to a regular army in the capital, to extend the
system to the provinces. On 12 September 1934 a third batch of
Belgian officers arrived, led by a strong-minded major named
Dothée. Dothée and two of his officers, Captain Listray and a
cavalry lieutenant with the imposing name of le Chevalier de
Dieudonné de Corbeek Overloo, set up a new centre at Harar.
Dothée’s task was to form two infantry battalions, plus extras:
I cavalry squadron, 1 camel squadron, and 1 armoured car
squadron.
Captain Motte was sent to organize a battalion for the Crown
Prince at Dessie; Lt. Cambier to do the same for Ras Desta at
Yirgalem in Sidamo, and three other lieutenants were reallocated
to the capital of the province of Bale, Goba.
At Bale Haile Selassie had been trying a new administrative
experiment, this time on the French model. Powers were split
between the civil governor Dejaz Nasibu and a military gov-
ernor. An even greater innovation was that the governor and his
officials no longer had to live off the taxes they could collect: they
were paid a salary. Only with a man as loyal as Dejaz Nasibu
could Haile Selassie dare to risk such an experiment. But before
the ‘model province’ could really become a model the crisis
intervened. In Harar, after Walwal, the Emperor needed a cool
head and a trusted friend. He recalled the too-warlike Dejaz
Gabremariam—the province’s governor—to become Minister of
the Interior and replaced him with the loyal and progressive
Dejaz Nasibu. To Bale he appointed Dejaz Beiene Merid, the son
of an agafari of Menelik’s, who in his turn was replaced in his
remote southern province by Ras Desta’s brother Dejaz Abebe
Damtew. Thus the situation on the southern and eastern frontiers
in 1935 was this: the Kenya frontier was held by the two sons of
 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR 49

Fitaurari Damtew, Abebe and Desta; Abebe governed the smal-

ler and remoter provinces, Desta the adjoining and extended
areas of Sidamo and Borana from the little capital he himself had
founded, Yirgalem. Desta was married to the eldest of the
Emperor's daughters by Menen, Tenagne Worg, The next prov-
ince, equally large, bounded by two rivers, the Ganale Doria and
the Webbi Shebelli, was ruled from Goba by another of the
Emperor's sons-in-law, Beiene Merid, Thus a ring of loyal
governors, generally in their forties, and clearly attached to the
Court, was set up in the South, In the south too the Emperor was
concentrating his military strength.

But Haile Selassie did not intend to rely on the Belgians alone. In
January 1934 a Swedish military adviser had arrived to replace
Dr. Kolmodin, the previous political adviser, dead of astroke the
year before, General Virgin, a discreet man, joined Colson and
Maitre Auberson at the Foreign Ministry. One of his first tasks
was to design livery and uniforms for all the palace staff,
including huntsmen, Another was to prepare for the visit of the
Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Sweden in January 1935.’
More seriously, he and the other two members of the triumvirate
drew up the dossiers to present to the League, negotiated with Sir
Sidney Barton on Eden’s proposals, and eventually drafted plans
for the deployment of forces and for guerrilla warfare.
In the summer of 1934 General Virgin and the Emperor agreed
on a project for an officers’ cadet school to be opened at Oletta at
one of the Emperor’s summer residences, about 25 miles outside
the capital. Just before Christmas a military mission consisting of
five Swedish officers arrived to run it. Their leader Captain
Viking Tamm of the crack 6th Regiment, Svea Life Guards, had
simply answered an advertisement in a Swedish newspaper: “The
Emperor of Ethiopia. . . has applied for Swedish officers as chief
instructors.’ As a Stockholm official explained to the worried
Belgian Ambassador in February, the officers were not, unlike
! A visit to which Haile Selassie attached the greatest importance. He reconstructed
his father’s ghebbi to house the royal) visitors, entirely remodelling it on the lines of
Lord Noel-Buxton’s house in Norfolk which he had visited on his 1924 tour. The
furniture was imported from Waring and Gillow, and all the Guard in Addis Ababa
were put to work on the building, Only days before Sweden's Crown Prince arrived
was the new palace—known as the Prince's Pleasure or the Little Ghebbi—ready.
When the Crown Prince Gustav Adolf Jeft, the Emperor moved into it from
Menelik’s Great Ghebbi,
Bie) THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

the Belgians, seconded officially. Therefore the Swedish govern-

ment were taking no measures to protect them, or to avoid
incidents involving them. He did not mention that the Swedish
government were paying half their salary. In the strict sense they
were less mercenaries than the Belgian officers, who were
entirely on the Ethiopian payroll.
In any event the Oletta school was set up in January 1935 and
solemnly inaugurated by the Emperor in mid-April. There were
120 cadets only, chosen from French-speaking pupils of the
Tafari Makonnen and Menelik schools, aged 16-20. ‘On aver-
age’, wrote Tamm, ‘more intelligent than Swedish boys of the
same age’, physically weak—no gym or sport at school and too
much syphilis—impulsive, not shy, not gifted mechanics, unable
to stand criticism, neither truthful nor puritanical nor tidy, ‘very
dramatic’, and sometimes inclined to overestimate themselves.
One of the boys was already a balambaras, and more than half
were the sons of nobles. Many brought their servants with them
to Oletta. ‘Not the most intelligent nor the strongest but a born
leader’ was Kifle Nasibu, the son of Dejaz Nasibu Emmanuel,
aged twenty-one. Educated in France and Egypt, he was, in
Tamm’s opinion, mature, relaxed, serious, an organizer—in fact
an ideal head boy.
It seems difficult in retrospect to take the Cadet School
seriously as an instrument for war, but the Swedish officers did,
the cadets did, and later the Italians had to. There were 45 infantry
cadets, plus 25 each for the engineers, the cavalry and the
artillery. The course was planned for sixteen months. History
interrupted the programme, no cadet passed out, and as the real
officers’ training only began in the second half of the course, the
cadets had very little. But the very institution ofa cadet school for
teenagers indicates that Haile Selassie was hoping for a long
period of peace. These cadets were designed eventually to replace
the officers of the Guard. The Guard had been taken over as it was
and polished by the Belgians. The Emperor however must have
known that its officers, already long installed, would abandon
only superficially their traditional ideas of warfare and of the
tactics of battle. And so it was to prove. The Guard battalions,
particularly the three Addis Ababa battalions, were longer
trained and therefore better disciplined than the traditional Ethio-
pian levies; but basically they were still the Guard of Menelik’s
day. Had the cadets finished their course, graduated and taken
 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR Syl!

over, Ethiopia would have had a small but modern army with
which to confront the Italians.
As it was, Haile Selassie was forced to seek help wherever he
could hire it. As the crisis grew in the early months of1935, every
train from Djibuti disgorged its quota of adventurers, journalists,
frauds, and mercenaries. Despite embargoes and difficulties arms
and munitions poured in. In March the German Embassy in
London denied ‘categorically’ having offered Haile Selassie army
and air force instructors, plus 300 armoured cars on credit. A
Junker monoplane with a German pilot, Ludwig Weber, did
arrive, though—on standby as the Emperor’s personal transport.
Among the new arrivals who were to play a role was an
electrical expert, a Russian officer who had served in Turkey and
Egypt, Theodore Konovaloff. He seems quickly to have gained
the Emperor’s confidence. In July he was sent up to Tigre to
inspect Ras Seyum’s forces, and remained in Tigre as Ras
Seyum’s European adviser—and watcher.
Also from Istanbul came three Turkish officers. They were
sent down to Harar to replace Dothée, the Belgian officer (who
was recalled to Addis Ababa), as advisers to Dejaz Nasibu.
George Steer, The Times correspondent, was later to describe the
trio vividly: Wehib Pasha, the chief adviser, ‘an elderly stout
short man in off-white trousers and gym shoes. . . a romantic’;
Farouk Bey, ‘a tall thin man, facially a martinet’, in charge of
administration; and Tarik Bey, ‘a black man with a short
moustache. . . a pure Sudanese. . . well over fifty’. From Harar
they studied the moves that had already been made in the
Ogaden.

In the six weeks following the by-now world-famous ‘incident’

fighting had flared up at the various waterholes around Walwal.
But on 1 March a local ceasefire was successfully agreed: proof, if
proof were needed, of the unimportance of the Walwal affair.
Both sides seem tacitly to have abandoned Walwal itself. The
Italians had pulled back to Werder, the Ethiopians to Gerlogubi.
In August the Ethiopian commander Afework moved back
still further from the wells of Gerlogubi to the wells of Gorrahei,
a little oasis with a stone fort. Gorrahei, at the southern end ofthe
Tug Fafan, one of those dry desert river-beds that in the
Ogaden’s rainy season suddenly became torrential, was the
Ethiopians’ main advance post manned by a garrison of 600 men.
§2 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

Jijiga where the base headquarters and government of the

Ogaden were installed, lay far away, on the edge of the Ethiopian
highlands below Harar, at the other end ofa tributary of the Tug
Fafan, the Tug Jerrer. In the walled city of Harar, Steer found
Dejaz Nasibu ‘tall and well-built with a hard handsome face’,
already planning—for lack of machine-guns—a defensive cam-
paign. At dusty Jijiga was Fitaurari Shifferaw, ‘a nice old boy’.
Between Jijiga and Gorrahei, on the Tug Jerrer and the Tug
Fafan, were two posts. The first, Dagghabur, a white-washed
town right in the middle of the Ogaden, was held by Kenyaz
Malion with 300 men—“a fine-looking tall man with a Words-
worthian stride but a more pleasant smile’. The next, the village
of Gebredar, was also held by 300 men. Finally, Steer visited the
oasis of Gorrahei where he no sooner arrived than he was put
under arrest—‘with great courtesy I must admit’—by its com-
mander, Afework.
Afework, though xenophobic, impressed all the foreigners
who met him. He was technically subordinate to Fitaurari Shif-
feraw, but in effect the real commander of the Ogaden, a man of
weight and force of character, of African features, energetic,
suspicious, much loved by his men, known throughout the
Ogaden since his capture of some Italians in the recent skirm-
ishes, and, a rarer quality in Ethiopia, an administrator oftalent.
The Italians, only too aware of the threat posed by Afework,
had offered Hussein Ali of the Rer Naib, leader of an irregular
banda also six hundred strong, machine-guns and ‘perhaps a tank’
if he would occupy the oasis of Gorrahei and the Mullah’s fort.
But neither Hussein Ali nor the Italians had in fact appeared.
There was, technically, peace in the Ogaden. Afework, though,
was digging his 600 men in, and had set up his Oerlikon anti-
aircraft gun and his two machine-guns by the Mullah’s stone fort,
the Garesa, at the centre of his position.
Released, Steer moved on to the two ‘frontier’ posts. At Tafere
Ketema on the Webbi Shebelli 500 Ethiopians under the Nagradas
Basha, ‘a stout man who was always in need of advice’, were
facing the Italian fort of Mustahil held by 700 Dubats and two
white officers, with a 15-pounder cannon and a wireless. Gerlo-
gubi itself was held by Balambaras Tafere plus 300 men left by
Afework. A few miles away at Werder were 3,000 Dubats and
fifty Italian officers. In between the scattered Ethiopian posts the
Somali clans, nominally loyal, wandered.
 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR $3

This was the position in the Ogaden a few weeks before war
broke out. It was a shifting situation where war was to be largely
a matter of manceuvre, fought as if on a chequer board, by moves
from square to square, from waterhole to river to well, and
where numbers were, because of the difficulties of food and
water, often more of a hindrance than a help.
As Steer returned to Harar, he passed reinforcements moving
down to Gorrahei: one of the two Guards Battalions at Harar,
with its Commander, Fitaurari Simu. In Harar itself athousand
men ofthe Dejaz Hapte Mikael from a remote southern province
were passing through to Jijiga. The Empire, slowly and rather
ponderously, was beginning to mobilize.

On the Italian side an enormous camp was being built around

Mogadishu where Graziani installed himself with the Governor,
Maurizio Rava. Graziani’s feelings were mixed. On the one hand
he was happy to have an active command again; he had been
dismissed from Libya by Balbo and had spent two inactive years
on garrison duties in northern Italy. On the other hand, as Italy’s
best-known colonial general he was aggrieved at being put in
charge of the second and minor front, with strict orders to stay on
the defensive and hold Somalia at all costs. To a man ofhis vanity
it seemed, inevitably, a plot to ruin his reputation. If he were to
obey orders when war broke out, he would be blamed by Italian
public opinion for inactivity. If he were to advance, he would be
blamed by higher authority for disobeying orders. He himself
blamed not De Bono, towards whom he had always had ‘the
feelings almost of a son’, but the Italian General Staff—by
implication Badoglio, his second Governor in Libya.
On his own initiative, therefore, using money from the Col-
onial Ministry, and without informing the Ministry of War, he
began buying lorries and ‘caterpillar’ diesels directly from the
United States, and importing petrol from South Africa, India,
even Japan, in preparation for a possible offensive. He was soon
reinforced by another division formed in Libya and commanded
by General Nasi: 870 Italian officers and NCOs plus 8,000
askaris, mostly Eritreans with a sprinkling of Yemenis and
Libyans. These, unlike the young Sicilians of the Peloritana, were
experienced fighting troops.
Two divisions, then, were in position on Italy’s southern
front—plus of course the roving frontier and irregular bande, and
54 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
plus also the regular troops of Somalia, the six Arab-Somali
battalions commanded by Colonel Frusci. It was reckoned to be
enough at any rate to hold the Ethiopians if, as Italian reports
said, the Ethiopian plan was to pin the Italians down in the north
and invade Somalia. The Italian Consul at Harar, Giardini, was
much more optimistic: within two weeks of war being declared,
he was boasting openly, the Italian armies would be in that city.

It was in the north that the Italians were assembling what was to
be the largest expeditionary force ever brought together for a
colonial campaign. In the spring and summer of 1935 tens of
thousands ofofficers and men sailed from Italy through the Suez
Canal to Massawa. All over the Mediterranean there was feverish
buying of supplies. Italian officers crossed over via Kassala into
the Sudan and amazed the British District Commissioners by
their camel-buying methods: if the camels’ withers touched a
yardstick, then the camels were bought. In Aden, Egypt, and
Kenya Italian agents were buying up mule fodder and placing
orders for khaki-drill uniforms.
In Eritrea itself the native battalions were raised to their full
strength and formed into two highly efficient divisions—the Ist
and 2nd Eritreans—under the overall command ofGeneral Pirzio-
Biroli. The bande were assembled—the Banda Scimenzana, the
Banda Seraie, the Banda Altopiano and the rest. Balbo was
ordered to send down one Libyan battalion and a group of Libyan
volunteers. But the great mass ofthe troops were Italians: young
men ofthe 1911 class called up for two years in the regular army,
and Blackshirt ‘volunteers’.
General Villa Santa’s Gavinana division was followed in Febru-
ary by the ‘1st Gruppo Blackshirt Battalions of Eritrea’ (motto:
‘The Life of Heroes Begins after Death’) commanded by Consul
General Filippo Diamanti, with Chaplain the Centurion Father
Reginaldo Giuliani in attendance. But it was not till the autumn
that the Blackshirt Legions really started pouring in. Five Divi-
sions of Blackshirts were formed, each named after a famous date
in Fascist history: the ‘23rd March’—also known as the ‘Impla-
cable’—the ‘28th October’, the ‘21st April’, the ‘3rd January’, and
the ‘1st February’.
The regular army balanced, division for division, the Black-
shirts. After the Gavinana came General Somma’s Sabauda Divi-
sion, and then the Gran Sasso, the Sila, the Assietta, and the
 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR SS
Cosseria. Independent battalions were sent to represent the
Alpini, the Savoy Grenadiers, and the Frontier guard. A little
later two more Divisions arrived. The crack Valpusteria Alpini of
the regular army sailed into Eritrea, while the Tevere Blackshirt
Division was sent down to join Graziani’s forces in Somalia. The
Tevere was probably Europe’s strangest military unit. It com-
prised one Legion of veterans from the pre-1900 years ofItaly’s
first colonial adventures, one Legion of ‘war-wounded’ from the
Great War, D’Annunzio’s Fiume adventure, or ‘in the Fascist
cause’ (this last category included 179 ex-squadristi who had taken
part in the March on Rome), and one Legion of Italians living
abroad—recruits came from places as far apart as South America
and Australia. It also included a juvenile battalion of university
students known as I Goliardi, fifteen hundred strong, members of
the university militia. It was not so much an expeditionary force
as a representative parade of Fascist Italy in uniform.

There was scarcely a well-known Fascist leader who did not

appear in Eritrea. The older came on tours of inspection, the
younger joined one or other ofthe services. The aviation was the
most popular; two sons of Mussolini, Bruno and Vittorio, and
Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law, flew Caproni bombers
in a squadron named La Disperata. Marinetti, the Futurist poet,
joined the air force too; and so did Farinacci and Muti, ‘Gin ofthe
Green Eyes’, 2 former and a future secretary-general ofthe Party.
The current secretary-general, Achille Starace, was given com-
mand of a special motorized column. The ‘Ist February’ Black-
shirt Division was commanded, not as was normal by a regular
army officer with a Blackshirt Consul-General as second-in-
command, but by the actual Commandant of the Milizia, the
Minister Attilio Teruzzi, with a regular army officer as second-
in-command. The House of Savoy was represented by two
younger brothers of the Prince of Udine, who had attended Haile
Selassie’s Coronation, both regular cavalry officers: Filiberto
Ludovico, Duke of Pistoia, commanding the Blackshirts of the
‘23rd March’ Division and Adalberto Duke of Bergamo, second-
in-command of the regular Division ‘Gran Sasso’.!

1 Filiberto di Savoia, fanatically pro-Mussolini, used to have sweets embossed with

his family crest distributed every day. Despite a reputation for effeminacy he led his
troops from the front, almost in Ethiopian style.
56 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
Two hundred special correspondents from Italy and forty
from abroad ensured publicity for this great gathering. Henri de
Monfreid, whose immensely popular novels had made the Red
Sea so famous in France, represented Le Petit Soir; and Raoul
Salan, under a false name, Le Temps and the Deuxiéme Bureau.
Captain Von Strunk, a German Staff Officer, was sent by the
Volkischer Beobachter; General Fuller represented the Morning Post,
and Herbert Matthews the New York Times.
All this needed a monstrous effort of organization. The docks
at Massawa had to be rebuilt, camps constructed, supply dumps
and bases built up, and above all roads constructed. The Black-
shirt legionaries were allotted most of these tasks; it was hardly
the glory which they had come out for, but morale was high.
They were in any case better paid and better fed than the regular
troops, though even the regulars were paid in a day as much as an
Italian peasant could expect to earn in a week.

A million silver Maria Theresa dollars were minted in Italy (on

the original press which after 1896 the Italian government had
bought from the Imperial mint) and sent out to Eritrea. They
were intended to be used by the Expeditionary Force to pay the
peasants of the lands through which they marched. But many
were handed over to the Political Office set up by De Bono under
Colonel Ruggero of the Bersaglieri.
The purpose ofthe Political Office was to prepare the political
terrain; or, more crudely, by a combination ofbribes, promises,
and threats, to win over as many Ethiopian potentates as possible
to the Italian cause. The difficulty was that the alliance of one
would almost automatically mean the enmity of the others, so
bitterly did the lords of Tigre, where naturally the Italians
concentrated their efforts, pursue their traditional rivalry.
In March the Political Office weighed the pros and cons of
trying to win over Ras Seyum, only to reject the idea. Firstly ‘he
had never been a warrior’; secondly he was on suspiciously good
terms with the British at Kassala and Khartoum; thirdly ‘his will
never be a true, real absolute dedication but a constant veering
between treachery and trickiness, as was the case with his father
Ras Mangasha.’ It was decided that if Ras Seyum should
approach the Italians, the policy would be ‘to play him, not to
reject him’. Instead, some of his sub-chiefs could be corrupted
with promises of money and possessions, though with others, in
 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR $7
particular with the Wagshum Kebbede of Wag and the Nevraid
Aregai of Axum, it would be necessary to move very carefully.
The Italians were not approached by Ras Seyum. But they
were approached in May, by Haile Selassie Gugsa of Makalle.
After the death of his young wife, Princess Zenabe Worg, Haile
Selassie Gugsa had become increasingly discontented. Even
when on 11 May his territories were increased by Imperial
decree, he ruled an area less extensive than that previously
governed by his father Ras Gugsa Araya. While still in Addis
Ababa, he paid a friendly visit to the Italian Minister, Count
Vinci. Back in Tigre he visited Asmara where on 28 May he
assured the Governor of Eritrea, Gasperini, of his desire for an
alliance with Italy. It needed little brains, he said, to understand
the tyrant Haile Selassie’s plans for Tigre, his aim being to stir up
a quarrel between himself, Ras Seyum and the Shum Agame,
Dejaz Kassa Sebhat, in order to have a pretext to impose a Shoan
ruler.
Three days later Haile Selassie Gugsa put forward a precise
plan. The Italians should invade now while Ras Seyum was
absent in the capital, and move down to Quoram on the borders
of his own territory, which ‘can be defended with stones alone’.
This would be ‘the spark that would set all Ethiopia aflame’. The
Emperor’s only way of escaping death would be to flee by
aeroplane, ‘and enjoy in Europe the wealth which he has dis-
honestly accumulated and deposited in European banks’. At
Quoram the Italians would be defended by a double screen: the
malaria of the surrounding lowlands, and ‘my Azebo Galla’. If
operations had to be delayed till October, he would himself
attack Adowa and kill Ras Seyum. Italy should meanwhile move
troops forward to face Ayalew Birru and Wondossen Kassa in
Beghemder.
Haile Selassie Gugsa added his estimate of the balance of power
in the North. He himself could raise 30,000 men, half with rifles,
plus one cannon and 14 machine-guns. Ras Seyum only had
5,000 real followers. Ayalew Birru (whose son was married to
Haile Selassie Gugsa’s sister) might support a revolt against the
Emperor out ofboth personal ambition and disgust at not having
been created a Ras. Wondossen Kassa in northern Beghemder
had only his ‘soft and unwarlike Amhara’ to pit against the ‘fierce
and bellicose warriors of Tigre’. The same was true of Ras Imru
of Gojjam.
58 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

The Italians found this enthusiasm almost embarrassing. Haile

Selassie Gugsa was only twenty-seven years old; and although
cunning, seemed already to be following in his father’s footsteps
as far as drink and debauchery were concerned. De Bono was
later to put him down as ‘of much less intelligence and influence
than his father’-—but that was after the event.
As it was, Gasperini sent him away with a million lire, a plea
for discretion, and the promise of two Eritrean ‘deserters’ to
teach him Italian and ofan Italian engineer to survey Quoram. He
would be called upon when the moment came. He was, the
Italians felt, ‘loyal’ to Italy. Like his father he coveted Ras
Seyum’s territory. What was to be done with him eventually?
Possibly he should be made Negus of Tigre?
The Emperor, inevitably, learnt of this treachery. Wodajo Ali,
the Crown Prince’s tutor and adviser at Dessie, visited the
Ethiopian Consulate in Asmara and flew to the capital in mid-
September with copies of bank receipts of the money paid to
Haile Selassie Gugsa by the Italians. But the Emperor refused to
take it seriously. “Most of my chiefs’, he is reported to have said,
‘take money from the Italians. It is bribery without corruption.
They pocket Italian money and remain steadfast to Ethiopia.’ It
was one of Haile Selassie’s few errors as a judge of men.

By mid-September, however, the Emperor had other, more

serious preoccupations. Events were rapidly moving to a head.
Meanwhile, however, the formalities were preserved. On 3
September a memorial service for Queen Astrid of the Belgians
was held in Addis Ababa. For the last time the diplomatic corps
assembled in full strength. Ras Mulugueta and Count Vinci
exchanged greetings. Janssens reported that the Emperor’s rifle-
bearer was now always by his side.
On 4 September the League reconvened to study ‘the threat of
war’; a committee of five was appointed. On 6 September
Janssens told Blattengueta Herouy that the Belgian Military
Mission would be withdrawn in case of war; five officers might
however remain to organize a police force (this was Sir Sidney
Barton’s idea) provided France, Britain and Italy agreed. On 9
September Haile Selassie sent a note to the League offering
concessions to Italy and the adjustment of frontiers. On 11
September, Sir Samuel Hoare, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, made
a strong speech in Geneva warning that aggression would be met
 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR 59
with force; Laval, more moderately, supported him. Sylvia
Pankhurst cabled her congratulations. On 13 September the
Home Fleet was mobilized and sent to the Mediterranean. The
Italian Fleet moved out to the Dodecanese and up to La Spezia.
Europe trembled on the brink of war. On 15 September ten
Belgian ex-officers recruited directly by the Ethiopian Minister in
Paris arrived at the railway station in Addis Ababa to be greeted
by Tasfai Tagagne, director-general of the Foreign Ministry, and
by hordes of excited journalists.!On 18 September the commit-
tee of five reported to the League suggesting rectifications of
frontiers and a virtual economic protectorate of Ethiopia. On 21
September Rome declared the committee’s report ‘unaccept-
able’. On 25 September Haile Selassie asked that neutral
observers should be stationed on Ethiopia’s frontiers, and the
Foreign Office instructed Sir Sidney Barton to tergiversate. On
26 September the League set up a committee of fifteen. On 27
September the great feast of Maskal that marks the end of the
rains was celebrated all over Ethiopia. At Adowa Ras Seyum’s
troops, armed with new Mausers and machine-guns, paraded. At
Addis Ababa the King’s Maskal was celebrated with the tradi-
tional Dance of the Priests and boasting ceremonies of the
warriors.
Ras Mulugueta, now Minister of War in place ofthe disgraced
Fitaurari Birru Wolde Gabriel, dressed in the finery and lion’s
mane of the traditional warrior lord, used the traditional licence
of the day to give the Emperor some frank and open advice.
‘Janhoy’, he proclaimed, “you take too much notice offoreigners
and their worries. This is foolish and against tradition. Rely on
your own countrymen!’ .
On 28 September Haile Selassie gave a farewell audience to
General Virgin, who had been suffering like his predecessor from
altitude sickness. Next day the Emperor showed himself to

' They wore khaki and decorations but no Belgian army flashes, Janssens noted.
Van Zeeland, the Belgian Foreign Minister, outwitted by Haile Selassie in this
unexpected way, reacted furiously: they were at once to be sent back to Belgium, he
demanded, and to leave from Djibuti not later than 30 September. His demands were,
naturally, ignored.
These mercenaries, led by a fifty-three-year-old Colonel, called themselves the
Unofficial Belgian Mission. Major Dothée complained that their members did not
salute him. Colonel Reul retorted that he himselfhad not been saluted at the station by
Dothée’s officers. ‘Les annales militaires de la camaraderie ne comportent aucun
exemple de ce genre.’
60 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
wildly enthusiastic Shoan levies, but still delayed issuing the
order for mobilization. On 30 September Ras Seyum gave a
dinner in his ghebbi at Adowa; his own ‘adviser’, the White
Russian Theodore Konovaloff attended, also Dr. Franca, the
Italian Consul at Adowa, and the old Dejaz Gabremedhin, the
Shum Tembien.
On 1 October banda from Eritrea occupied Moussa Ahi, a
mountain in Danakil territory just inside Ethiopian territory.
Sultan Mohammed Yayo of Aussa had no way of informing
Addis Ababa, but a French plane from Dyibuti spotted the
incursion, and M. Bodard, the French Minister at Addis Ababa,
took the news to the palace. Dr. Franca left his Consulate at
Adowa early that morning, burning his papers, but was arrested
near the frontier by Kenyaz Abbai Kassa. In the evening, Haile
Selassie sent orders for his release and promoted Abbai Kassa to
Fitaurari. On 2 October the Emperor spent much of the day in
prayer at the Church of Mariam on Mount Entotto. At eleven the
courtyard of the Ghebbi was thronged with soldiers. Four
servants carried in the Negaret of the Negus Negusti; two jet-
black flag-bearers stood on either side as a fifth servant struck it
repeatedly with a wooden staff. And when the Ligaba Tassa had
finished reading out the Imperial Awaj proclaiming mobilization,
thousands of waving swords flashed above the heads of
thousands ofyelling swordsmen. That night at 9 p.m. the church
bells were rung all through Italian Eritrea: the gaily sinister
sounds of Christian nations at war.
 CHAPTER §

INVASION

IN the early hours of 3October a hundred thousand Italian troops

crossed the frontier. Yet the first stage of this particular invasion
was surprisingly peaceful, almost idyllic. Under the mild aegis of
De Bono it was a most traditional affair. Irregular skirmishers on
horse and foot cleared the way as long columns ofinfantry and
mules trailed behind. Behind them in their turn followed the
road-builders and the lorries. A hundred thousand men did not
goose-step across the frontier like a single man. They wended
their way slowly forward in three columns.
On the right General Maravigna’s Second Corps headed
directly for Adowa. On the left General Santini’s First Corps
followed the so-called ‘Imperial Road’, the track that led south
across the frontier to Makalle, Dessie, and eventually Addis
Ababa. Their immediate objective was Adigrat. In the centre
General Pirzio-Biroli’s Eritrean Corps advanced towards Entic-
cio, the mountain base where Baratieri’s troops had camped for
weeks before moving down upon Adowa. ‘We have been patient
for forty years,’ announced Mussolini to the vast excited crowds
that filled Piazza Venezia. ‘Now we too want our place in the
sun.
Four days later Adowa, Enticcio, and Adigrat had been
occupied by three columns—without battle and almost without
incident. As the invading forces crossed the Mareb, the nine
planes of La Disperata had taken off and dropped their bombs and
leaflets on Ras Seyum’s capital. Fourteen people and many cows
were killed. Ras Seyum, Abba Isaac, the Bishop of Tigre, and the
Ras’s men moved out to caves in the mountains near by. Next
day a few hundred men under Dejaz Sahle skirmished with the
vanguard of Second Corps. Proudly the Dejaz brought back to
Ras Seyum the uniform of Lt. Morgantini of the Banda Serae, the
first Italian officer to be killed in the war and the only Italian
officer to die in the actual invasion. No other fighting occurred.
Ma
62 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
As General Villa Santa, commander of the Gavinana Division,
rode into the hovels of Adowa on 6 October, Ras Seyum
dispatched his war-leaders east and west, and decided himself to
fall back on the Tembien mountain range one week’s march
away.
The Italian troops advancing into ‘hostile’ territory, fraterniz-
ing with the Tigreans, singing gaily and interminably their
favourite song ‘Faccetta Nera’, were pleasantly surprised by the
lack of resistance. De Bono and the Italian commanders were less
surprised. As early as July they had learnt from their informers
that Ras Seyum had planned to abandon Adowa and then encircle
them. They knew too that Haile Selassie had issued strict orders
to the lords of Tigre not to resist the Italian advance: his purpose
was to show the world who was the aggressor. It was more
amazing that his orders had been so nearly followed.
So Adowa fell, and General Santini rehoisted the flag that he
had seen hauled down as a lieutenant. Even though the Italian
press could hardly boast a great military victory, the stain of the
great disaster suffered forty years before was to some extent
erased, honour vindicated, and defeat avenged. The priors ofthe
six convents of Adowa submitted a few days later. The Cathedral
Chapter of Axum, less the Nevraid, came to offer their respects,
and on 15 October De Bono entered on horseback amid polite
ululations the holy city of Axum, seat of the Queen of Sheba and
the descendants of Solomon. On the western flank it was a happy
and triumphant time.

On the far eastern flank, though, there had been an unexpected

hold-up. The Italian armoured column which on 2 October had
taken Mt. Moussa Ali set out boldly across the low-lying Danakil
desert towards Sardo and the Awash valley. On the first day,
only twenty-two miles out, the little Fiat-Ansaldo tanks hotted
up to 120 degrees. On the following day the tanks and their crews
collapsed completely.
It was, however, on the eastern prong of the main advance that
a really worrying delay occurred. The First Corps had admittedly
occupied Adigrat without resistance. But this was just a stage in
the first bound that was to lead them to Makalle, the capital of
eastern Tigre and to Haile Selassie Gugsa.
If all had gone according to plan, there would have been at
Adigrat a message from Haile Selassie Gugsa to announce that he
 INVASION 63
had declared for Italy and that the road to Makalle lay open.
Instead, on 8 October, came a frantic appeal from the young Ras
for Italian help to fend off Dejaz Haile Kebbede of Wag and seven
thousand of his men. There was no second messenger. Three
days later Haile Selassie Gugsa himself appeared at Adigrat with
only 1,200 men instead ofthe tens of thousands he had promised.
Santini found him ‘uncertain and fearful’ and though Rome
received the news well, swelling his troops in press reports to ten
times their number, something had clearly gone very awry.
Santini should have been with Haile Selassie Gugsa forward in
Makalle. Instead Haile Selassie Gugsa was with Santini back in
Adigrat. The spark that was to have set the Empire aflame with
revolt had damply fizzled out. A half-furious, half-alarmed
Mussolini immediately decided to send Badoglio and his under-
secretary at the Colonial Ministry, Lessona, out on a ‘tour of
inspection’.
Back in the safety of Asmara, Haile Selassie Gugsa was given a
smart uniform with red-striped trousers and high-laced boots
and appointed Governor of all Tigre, which De Bono had rather
prematurely annexed. Though the Italians in their disappoint-
ment were to treat the princeling-traitor with barely concealed
contempt, his defection was a serious blow for the Ethiopian
cause. As news of it spread, the Ethiopian peasants wondered and
the Ethiopian lords looked with suspicion at their fellow peers,
calculating who would be the next to change sides. At the time of
Adowa the Italian invasion had caused the only Italian-supported
rebels, Ras Sebhat and his men, to rally, patriotically, to the
Emperor. This time the opposite had occurred.
Yet, as it happened, this was the first and last open defection to
the Italians ofan important noble and his men. There were in the
following months to be revolts and plots, but never, till defeat, an
open changing of sides. The Italians, deceived by the known
rivalries, had under-estimated the inner cohesion of Ethiopia’s
ruling class when threatened by outsiders.

Badoglio and Lessona arrived at Massawa on 17 October, exactly

a fortnight after the invasion had been launched, to find the Italian
armies still halted on the Adowa-Enticcio—Adigrat line. Techni-
cally the object of their ten-day tour was ‘to study the possibilities
of operations towards the Sudan’. Relations with England were
tense, sanctions were about to be imposed, and there was fear that
64 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

the British would, illegally, close the Suez Canal, thereby cutting
off Italy’s expeditionary force and almost inevitably precipitating
at least a local colonial war between the European powers.
But there were undertones to the tour which posed a more
immediate threat to De Bono. The usual bitter and unsavoury
personal intrigues which lay concealed under the apparently
smooth surface of the Fascist hierarchy, and which were years
later to break out and destroy the whole edifice, smouldered
viciously away.
De Bono knew of course that his appointment had been
controversial. He was already verging on seventy, more a figure
of fun than respect to his soldiers and young officers, whom he
would address as Figlioli, and hardly the dynamic conqueror of a
new Empire. His plans were to advance by slow and easy stages,
building roads and supply-bases before each new bound, win-
ning territory by threats and promises where possible, treating
the native population well, fighting only when fighting was
unavoidable. ‘Go out to Ethiopia’, Mussolini had said ten months
earlier, ‘with an olive branch in your cap’. De Bono was almost
the ideal leader for the slow and peaceful conquest of an Empire.
But unfortunately for De Bono, and perhaps for Ethiopia too,
Italy did not have time of the sort De Bono had mentioned—two
or three years. Where Badoglio and Lessona toured the front,
they were greeted with cries of ‘Long live the General! We want
to make war!’
When Badoglio returned to Italy, he submitted a long written
report to Mussolini. Santini’s First Corps he found most satisfac-
tory, and its commanders full of decision. Maravigna was, in his
opinion, too keen on winning medals; and Second Corps’s mules
were in bad shape. As for the Eritrean Corps, it was the best of the
lot. Pirzio Biroli was ‘extraordinarily popular with everyone,
very active and a master oftactics’—“a hell of a swell egg’ in the
more informal expression of Mortimer Durand, an American
journalist attached to the Expeditionary Corps.
Only at the end of his report did Badoglio turn to the vital
question, the question of the commander. He judged De Bono to
be suffering from a bad case of what he tactfully called ‘Eritrean
psychology’—any open reference to Adowa was still, it seems,
anathema in all circumstances—and to be avoiding battle. He
contrasted De Bono, ‘a tired, almost totally exhausted man’ with
the ‘energetic, highly active’ Baldissera, the Governor who
 INVASION 65
replaced Baratieri after Adowa and under whom Badoglio had
served forty years before.
As the armies paused, cables lew between Asmara and Rome.
On 20 October Mussolini cabled ‘We will have no complications
in Europe till the British elections in mid-November.! But by
that date all Tigre up to and beyond Makalle must be in our hands
. . with the ending of the arms embargo time is working against
us.
On 2 November, under pressure to advance, De Bono moved
his headquarters forward to Adigrat. On 3 November Pirzio-
Biroli’s Eritreans and Santini’s First Corps advanced to meet a
few miles north of Makalle. On the 8th the Italians were in sight
of the town. Haile Selassie Gugsa’s men raised the cry ‘Makalle,
Makalle’. There was no resistance. It seems that Dejaz Haile
Kebbede had sacked the town—the Ghebbi constructed by the
Italian Negretti for the Emperor Johannes was in ruins—and then
the Army of Wag had fallen back into the interior. Santini and
Haile Selassie Gugsa entered the town together.
There were headlines in the Italian press, and articles recalling
‘the desperate resistance of Galliano’ at the time of the Adowa
campaign. Whereas the press remembered Galliano, Mussolini,
his imagination always a bound ahead, remembered Toselli.2On
11 November he cabled De Bono ‘to continue the march to
Amba Alagi without delay’. De Bono cabled back the same day:
‘Apart sorrowful historical memory which in my opinion needs
no vengeance, position of Amba Alagi has no strategic import-
ance and is tactically useless since can be turned on all sides.’ It
was De Bono’s last cable as commander ofthe Italian Expedition-
arysEOrce.

Meanwhile the first serious fighting was about to occur on the left
flank of the main Italian thrust. Two native battalions and the
Libyan battalion sent by Balbo had been detached to form the
‘Eastern Lowlands Column’. With three bande this formed a
column 2,500 strong that moved forward on 3 November
1 Mussolini feared that the Labour Party, more belligerent and anti-Italian than
Baldwin’s National Government, might sweep into power and, at the very least, close
the Suez Canal [see below p. 67].
2 Just before the Adowa campaign Captain Toselli and a handful ofItalians had been
overrun by the hordes ofthe Imperial Fitaurari at Amba Alagi after a heroic last stand.
Major Galliano had subsequently escaped, much less heroically, from Makalle—only
to be killed at Adowa.
66 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

through the Danakil desert to protect the flank of Santini’s corps

as it advanced from Adigrat to Makalle.
The column was commanded by General Oreste Marriotti.
One of the thirty-odd Italian officers with him was a young
lieutenant-colonel, Raimondo Lorenzini, who would later
become Italian Ethiopia’s most famous soldier. Thirty camels
carried four mountain pack-guns, four chests containing 10,000
Maria Theresa dollars, and 10,000 rifles to be distributed to a
group of Danakil whom the Political Office expected to join the
column before they reached the wells of Elefan.
For three-and-a-half days they marched across the salt plains,
trying to trace the route from their inaccurate maps, setting up
the pack-guns and mounting sentinels at night. It was only after
they reached Elefan that any Danakil appeared and then a mere
200. They trekked slowly forward to Damalle and Au; at Au the
local chiefs coming in to submit informed them that the Shum
Agame, Dejaz Kassa Sebhat, with 400 trained men and 100
regulars was preparing to attack them. Marriotti dispatched a
letter to Dejaz Kassa, reminding him of the long friendship
between the Italians and his father Ras Sebhat. There was no
reply.
At dawn on 12 November, Marriotti’s column, already
behind-hand (for Makalle—as they knew by wireless—had been
occupied four days earlier) left Au. Four hours later they reached
a small gorge half a mile long, the dry bed of the Enda river.
For three long hours more they toiled up through the gorge in
the great heat. Their flank guards, the Banda Massawa, were only
thirty yards up the mountainside on either side of the winding
column. On the left flank there were clear bird-calls, two notes,
insistently repeated. The column straggled. The advance guard,
of 200 Danakils under Colonel Belly, was almost at the far end of
the gorge, and the supply column and rearguard still had not
entered it. Marriotti in the centre, suddenly unquiet, sent a
runner forward to halt the van and a runner back to order up the
guns.
As the camels came forward and the battery was being
unloaded and set up to cover the ridge in front, the Ethiopian
ambush was sprung. Firing broke out from three sides. The
artillery officer fell with a bullet in his ankle, twenty-three of the
camels were killed, and an entire gun crew was wiped out.
Colonel Belly, a sixty-two-year-old veteran, wounded in the
 INVASION 67
hand and knee, led a charge up the ridge in front. But five
machine-guns were playing on the column, and the charge was
halted. For a few minutes it looked as if even the Eritrean askaris
would break and run. They were rallied by their lion-skin-clad
NCOs.
Firing continued spasmodically all day. But even worse than
the firing were the mocking notes of the Ethiopian trumpeters.
On a distant hill-top Dejaz Kassa Sebhat with his staff and his
field-glasses could be seen directing the battle. Twice a recce
plane flew over but saw nothing. The 26th Colonial Battalion
tried a flank attack from the rear but was pinned down.
As night fell, the situation seemed almost hopeless. The Italian
troops slept where they had gone to ground—no fires, no
smoking, no shots. Radio contact with base had been lost. Just
before dawn Marriotti sent a small band of scouts up the hillside
in single file in a desperate attempt to gain the heights before
another day brought destruction. They found, to their joyful
amazement, that the Ethiopians had vanished in the night; and
the chance, the near certainty, of annihilating an Italian column
had vanished with them. Four days later the starving column
limped into Makalle—having watched during those four days
aeroplanes dropping supplies half aday’s march behind them.

Meanwhile, on 14 November, the British General Election had

been held, and by 17 November Mussolini had had time to digest
the result and the reports from his various embassies in Europe.
In a sense the result were a relief. The Labour Party, which was
ready to close the Suez Canal and go to war, had won only 184
seats, and the National Government under Baldwin was returned
to power with 430 seats. But it was only the lesser of two evils.
Baldwin had campaigned on the slogan of‘All sanctions short of
war’, and on 18 November sanctions, which had been voted a
month earlier by the League of Nations, were imposed. The 19th
of November was proclaimed a Black Day in Italy. The Italian
people, embittered by their sudden status as Europe's outcasts,
which they neither understood nor felt they deserved, united in
sullen resentment and wounded pride around their leader. Their
leader, embittered by the failure of French promises—Laval had
told Chambrun that he would be forced to support the British at
Geneva—needed, and needed urgently, a quick advance and if
possible a quick victory.
68 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
This was all the more urgent because oil sanctions had not yet
been imposed. Mussolini had made it clear that oil sanctions, the
only sanctions that could literally bring his invasion grinding to a
halt, would be viewed by Italy as a casus belli. The powers had
hesitated, unwilling to call what might not be a bluff. But from
all sides pressure was mounting on the politicians. Oil sanctions
were due to be debated at Geneva on 12 December, and it seemed
likely that Britain’s favourite young politician, Anthony Eden,
now Minister of League Affairs, would press for their imposi-
tion. If oil sanctions were voted and imposed, Italy would
probably have to accept a peace based on the ceasefire line—
wherever that might then be.
It was therefore in Mussolini’s eyes vital to gain as much
territory as possible by 12 December. De Bono would not, even
when prodded, advance, and De Bono therefore had to be
replaced. Of the generals available the Chief of the General Staff
was the obvious choice. He had visited the ground, studied the
troops, had his hands on the reins of the organization, and above
all knew Mussolini’s mind. Badoglio sailed out from Italy again
barely a fortnight after he had sailed back from Massawa.
De Bono had returned from Makalle on the 17th to find
Telegrama di Stato 13181 awaiting him. It announced that with the
fall of Makalle his ‘Mission’ had been completed and that Mus-
solini greeted him with unchanged cordiality. ‘I replied at once,’
he wrote. ‘Among other things I said in my telegram that my
recall was in any event a pleasant surprise. But that was a huge
lie.” Next day he learnt that he had been named a Marshal ofItaly.
On 26 November he went to meet Badoglio on his arrival at
Massawa, and passed out of the history of Ethiopia, and indeed
almost out of the history of Italy till his fatal vote against
Mussolini at the Grand Council of Fascism on the night of 8
September, nine years later.

On the southern front, there had been no solid advance but a

series of skirmishes and one major event: the death of Afework.
Two days after war was declared the Italians attacked Gerlogubi
near Walwal and the Ethiopian post of Dolo down by the Kenyan
border. At Gerlogubi, a desert crossroads used by the Rer
Ibrahim, the Mijurtin, and four other clans, the Italians lost ten
men, and Balambaras Tefere twice as many before he fell back on
Gorrahei. At Dolo where the two garrisons lived side by side,
 INVASION 69
Italian emissaries crossed to warn the local commander Mukria to
evacuate before hostilities began. ‘I am Fitaurari’, he replied, ‘that
is: Chiefof theAdvance Guard. I shall do my duty. Every square
metre and every tukul will be defended to the last drop of our
blood.’ He was buried where he fell. The Italians raised a cross,
and saved his wife and children.
Ten days later, they attacked the third frontier post, that of
Tafere Ketemma on the Webbi Shebelli. Olol Dinke meanwhile
raided north and captured Dagnerrei, where his own cousin
Hamil Badel had been appointed district governor by the
Emperor. Hamil Badel was taken prisoner, and offered a
sumptuous tent, a fine dinner, and women. That night he was
strangled on Olol Dinke’s order by his own brother.
More seriously, the Italians prepared to move against Gorrahei
where Afework’s forces had now been joined by the second
Guards battalion from Harar. There were three thousand men,
with mortars and machine-guns, led by Afework, Ali Nur,
Omar Samanthar, Fitaurari Baade, and by the two Guards
battalion commanders, Fitauraris Simu and Kebbede.
Colonel Frusci prepared an operation on a large scale, using all
his six Arabo-Somali battalions, 150 lorries, 9 tanks, and 20
armoured cars. They were not to be needed. On 2 November
twenty Italian planes bombed the Mullah’s stone fort. Afework
was badly wounded in the hand and the leg. Two days later he
lapsed into a coma. Before he died he told his men to bury him on
the spot. ‘Do not take me back,’ he said. ‘Even my body should
fight the Italians.’ But his men disobeyed him, for it was unthink-
able that they should not give their leader Christian burial. With
one of the few motor-trucks that supplied them they took his
body back to the nearest burial ground, the Church ofSt. George
at Dagghabur.
When the Italian columns setting out from Gerlogubi and
Ferfer reached Gorrahei on 7 November, they found a deserted
camp, huts burnt, and $00 rifles abandoned. Afework’s death and
the continued bombings had demoralized the whole force. Even
the Guards battalions had fled, and the efforts of Fitaurari Baade
to rally a few men further back were barely successful. The
Italians motored forward to the village beyond Gorrahei,
Gebredar, and having captured the enemy rearguard pushed on
fast eighty-one miles to the north, to the junction of the Tug
Fafan, now in flood, and its tributary the Tug Jerrer. There they
70 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
were halted by a large and well-armed Ethiopian force;
whereupon they retreated to their new bases at Gorrahei and
Gebredar. The chiefs of the Rer Dalal and of the Abdallahi came
in to submit—and also Abdel Krim ibn Mohammed, the only
surviving son of the Mullah, with 1,000 rifles.
With a touch more dash and daring Frusci could have pushed
on to Dagghabur, Jijiga, and even Harar. The Ethiopians were
demoralized and disorganized, and the Somali clans were ready
to take part in what was from their point of view another round,
Italian-officered, of the centuries-old struggle against the
Christians of Ethiopia.
Two events steadied the shaky Ethiopian position. On II
November Colonel Maletti’s column fell into an ambush. Three
of his little Fiat-Ansaldo tanks were trapped and dismantled. The
victor Fitaurari Gongol was himself badly wounded and taken
back to Harar. It was only a half-victory—both sides ran back for
thirty miles after the encounter—but nevertheless it was
encouraging.
The second event was a sudden and unexpected visit by the
Emperor in person. On 11 November he flew down toJijiga and
drove out at dawn to the picturesque town of Dagghabur, a town
of afew thousand inhabitants that lies flat in the heart of the desert
on the Tug Jerrer, dominated by its white mosque, the most
important in the Ogaden. There he distributed rewards and
punishments: medals for those who had captured the tanks,
which were exhibited to him complete with their twin machine-
guns; a wreath for the tomb of Afework, promoted posthu-
mously to the title of Dejaz of the Ogaden; thirty lashes and two
stabs of the bayonet to Fitaurari Simu, condemned to death by
Nasibu for cowardice; and a flogging to the other Guards
Battalion commander, Fitaurari Kebbede. Thus, having in his
own fashion steadied the morale of his troops in the Ogaden,
Haile Selassie flew back to his capital to consider his next move.

In the six weeks that had passed since the war had begun the
Emperor had divided his attention between military and diplo-
matic matters. For hours on end he would preside over the gebirs,
the traditional feasts in the banqueting hall of the Great Ghebbi
where his warriors expected to be entertained as they passed
through on their way north or east or south. There they would
feast on raw meat, get drunk on fej and entertain their Emperor
 INVASION val
and their lion-maned chiefs with their dances and boasting songs.
From such feasts Europeans were excluded. In order to avoid the
incidents that might arise when the wilder of these levies mistook
any white-skinned ferengis for the Italian enemy, the warriors
were confined, except for their one visit to the Ghebbi, to camps
on the outskirts of the city.
For much ofthe rest of the time the Emperor was closeted with
his foreign advisers and the various diplomats, planning Ethio-
pia’s tactics at Geneva, and resolving the thousand-and-one
problems that the vast influx of foreigners had created. There
were scores of impatient journalists crowding the bars complain-
ing at the censorship imposed by a barely literate Belgian officer
of the Reul group, kept in check—just—with never-fulfilled
promises of visits to the front by Lorenzo Taezaz, head of the
Press bureau, and fed with wildly optimistic and inaccurate
accounts of Ethiopian victories in the North. There were the
problems posed by Count Vinci and the Italian military attaché,
Colonel Calderini, who refused to leave the Embassy for Djibuti
until their last consular agent was safely in from Arussi. There
were the problems of the two Belgian military missions and the
policing of the city which Sir Sidney Barton, mistrusting the
capabilities of the young police chief Balambaras Abebe Aregai,
was continually harping upon. There were the difficulties of
dealing with adventurers such as the ‘Black Eagle of Harlem’,
Colonel Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, a would-be pilot who suc-
ceeded in crashing almost immediately one of the Ethiopians’ few
planes. And then there were the pleasanter tasks of apportioning
the assistance that had begun to flow in. Some of the assistance
was military and needed no apportioning. Sir Sidney Barton,
always wary of the natives, had had his Embassy guard streng-
thened by two companies of the $/14th Punjabis from Aden.
Lady Barton meanwhile organized the Ethiopian ladies as
bandage-makers for her medical unit. “They, though this is not
the custom of the country, responded splendidly’, an observer
noted. And the French were, as Mr. Evelyn Waugh, back again,
reported, ‘firmly entrenched at Diredawa; half the town was a
French fort’—100 Tirailleurs Sénégalais had been imported from
Djibuti. But most aid was medical. As the Ethiopian army had
only a rudimentary medical service of its own, the various
volunteer units of the Red Cross coming from Europe stepped in
to fill the gap.
72 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
The volunteers were a heterogeneous lot: missionaries; a local
Greek doctor, Dassios; a pair of Irish adventurers, Brophil and
Hickey; a sixty-two-year-old Englishman, a Master of Fox-
hounds, Major Gerald Burgoyne (who gave his age as §2); and a
young Swedish stunt pilot, the black sheep of his family, Count
Carl von Rosen, who flew out a two-seater plane, the first plane
ever marked and recognized by the Red Cross. With such
volunteers as these, Sweden, Britain, Holland, Egypt, and Fin-
land organized their own Red Cross Units, while the Swiss
doctor in overall charge tried to control the rest and appease the
wounded pride of the Ethiopian Medical Corps.
It was chaotic, and the organization of mules and supplies and
escorts and contacts was chaotic, but in the end the different units
did set off for the different fronts. It was just another example of
the difficulties and delay that struck all Europeans so strongly but
which in Ethiopian eyes, were normal. The Pothez fighter for
instance, had no bullets, and the smaller monoplanes no spare
parts. Still the Emperor had never really intended to launch
Mischa Babitchev and his twelve planes against the 400 Italian
bombers. They were used for carrying messages and personages
from place to place, and though there were various accidents, not
one of them was shot down in the air by the enemy. Communica-
tions were always shaky. There were not enough wireless sets or
telephone lines, and this problem was to grow more and more
serious.
Then there were the politico-administrative difficulties. What,
for instance, to do with the restless young cadets of Oletta? Send
them as military advisers to the Rases, as the Emperor suggested?
Teenagers to advise greybeards: fortunately the scheme fell
through. On 15 November Tamm suggested that a special
brigade officered by the cadets should be organized. The
Emperor accepted the plan, and left Tamm to work out the
details with Makonnen Haptewold. It was not a satisfactory
arrangement, for Tamm found the Director of Commerce ‘inef-
ficient and lazy’ and guilty of ‘what in Europe would be called
sabotage’. Nevertheless it kept the four remaining Swedish
officers and the cadets, ‘Tamm’s boys’, busy.
Meanwhile the armies had mobilized. On 17 October Ras
Mulugueta and the Mahel Safari, seventy-thousand strong, had
jogged for four hours past the Emperor before moving out by
foot along the ‘Imperial Highway’, the only road in the central
 INVASION 73
Empire fit for motor-traffic, that went from Addis Ababa to
Dessie. From Dessie Ras Mulugueta moved slowly north, halt-
ing to burn and raze the villages and flog the chiefs of the
recalcitrant Azebo and Raya Galla. In Gondar Ras Kassa had
called the chitet and raised 160,000 men. With a third of this
number he too moved north.
On the left, Ras Imru was moving up from Debra Markos, the
capital of Gojjam, with 25,000 men. Dejaz Ayalew Birru had
raised 10,000 mountaineers in the Wolkait and Simien and was
threatening the Eritrean frontier.
Great events were impending in the North. A week after his
return from the Ogaden the Emperor left for Dessie by motor-
car accompanied by Colonel Reul—‘trés en faveur 4 ce moment’
reported Janssens—and Captain Viseur, his secretary Wolde
Giorgis, the former Minister of War, Fitaurari Birru, and fol-
lowed by the three battalions of the Guard. Before leaving he
appointed Dejaz Yigezu “Deputy for overall home affairs’,
almost Regent, and under him Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat, a
young and extremely bright favourite of the Emperor, as Direc-
tor-General of the city of Addis Ababa.
 CHAPTER 6

THE-ETHIOPIAN COUNREREARDACK

ALMOST simultaneously then, at the end of November 1935,

the two rival war-leaders reached their new headquarters
in the North, Dessie for Haile Selassie and Makalle for
Badoghio.
Badoglio was not particularly happy with the situation he
found. South at Makalle, Santini’s First Corps was out ona limb.
North-east at Adowa, Maravigna’s Second Corps was equally
isolated. Between the two, as the crow flies, lay the almost
trackless mountains of the Tembien behind which Pirzio Biroli’s
Eritreans were loosely linking the two ends ofthe Italian front. It
was too reminiscent of Adowa on a large scale: divisions this
time, not brigades, strung out in a long line with sketchy
communications between them and the Ethiopians massing in
front, ready to pounce on first one and then another isolated
group. For Badoglio had no doubt that the Ethiopians were
massing. All the air-reconnaissance reports brought news of
approaching armies. It seemed hardly the moment for the great
push forward from Makalle, which would only lengthen his lines
of communication and leave an even greater gap in the Italian
centre through which the Ethiopians might drive. Badoglio
hesitated, went on a tour ofinspection, had the Tigreans of Haile
Selassie Gugsa disarmed, confined all journalists to Asmara, and
ordered his air force to bomb Dessie.

Dessie was bombed for the first time on 6 December. The

Emperor who had installed himselfin the only modern building,
the Italian Consulate, was photographed personally machine-
gunning the raiders, and great indignation was aroused in Europe
by the bombs the Italians dropped on the American Hospital
where Dr. Dassios’s Red Cross units were housed. The Italian
bombs could hardly have fallen at a better time or on a better
place from the Ethiopian point of view. This incident and the
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK US
photographs of Ethiopia’s fighting Emperor help to explain the
immense tide ofindignation that swept Europe when only three
days later the Hoare—Laval proposals were leaked by a Paris
newspaper L’Echo.
It was not only Mussolini who was worried about the decisive
oil sanctions debate due to be held on 12 December. The British
and the French were equally nervous, and disinclined even to risk
war with Italy. Since the Tripartite talks in Paris in August,
Maurice Peterson, the Foreign Office East Africa expert, had
been in touch with Comte Alexis de St. Quentin of the Quai
d’Orsay. Between them they had drawn up a plan which was
approved by the French and needed only the approval of the
British government. At Laval’s urgent request Sir Samuel Hoare,
on holiday in Switzerland, came secretly to Paris. The plan was
approved. Secret copies of it were sent simultaneously to Rome
and Addis Ababa—the only mishap being that the following day
the secrets were published in the French press and almost
immediately reproduced all over the world.
Under the Hoare—Laval proposals, Ethiopia was to cede two
belts of territory to Italy. These were more or less the two belts
which the invading Italians then controlled: basically the Ogaden
on a line east of Dagghabur, and most of Tigre apart from the
holy city of Axum. But, furthermore, Italy was to have
‘economic rights’—a virtual protectorate—over most of the
south of the Empire excluding I|lubabor and the Baro Salient. In
return Ethiopia was to be allowed an outlet to the sea at Assab,
and a corridor through the Danakil desert leading to it—a
‘corridor for camels’, as The Times put it.
The plan was not all that different from the numerous compro-
mise proposals already put forward, such as those made by Eden
on his June visit to Rome. But the situation, and feelings, had
changed so dramatically that, when the Emperor rejected it as ‘a
prize offered to the aggressors’, he exactly echoed what Europe
was thinking. The British public were particularly indignant
because it was Hoare who only a few weeks earlier had made a
thumpingly warlike speech warning Italy off at Geneva.
‘Rumours were rife’, wrote Duff Cooper, then a backbencher,
‘of the terrible strength ofthe Italian navy and of the “‘mad-dog
act’ to which further irritation might drive the Duce. But before
the Duce had timetto declare himself {i.e. on the plan] there arose
a howl of indignation from the people of Britain. During my

7
76 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
experience of politics I have never witnessed so devastating a
wave of public opinion. That outburst swept Sir Samuel Hoare
from office.’ Amidst a flurry of cabinet meetings, leading articles,
public meetings, and debates in the House of Commons, the plan
was rejected and Hoare forced to resign. Laval and his Ministry
fell a week or two later. Unfortunately, amidst the flurry the oil
sanctions debate passed almost unnoticed. No firm decisions
were taken, and it became obvious that oil sanctions would not be
imposed. The Duce breathed a sigh of relief, made a rousing
speech on the ‘war of the poor, of the disinherited, of the
proletariat—and returned to his office to consider whom he
could find to replace the dilatory Badoglio. For Badoglio was
proving as slow if not slower than De Bono, covering his
hesitations with cables on the great virtues, indeed necessity, ofa
‘strategic defensive battle’. On the other hand with the threat of
oil sanctions removed, the urgent need for an advance had, from
Mussolini’s point of view, vanished. In any case a ‘strategic
defensive battle’ did seem to be about to occur.
THE NORTHERN FRONT

The first of the armies to reach the north had been the army of
Beghemder. In early November, Ras Kassa and his two sons
Wondossen and Aberra Kassa, accompanied by Bajirond
Latibelu Gabre, had swarmed up into the mountain stronghold of
Amba Alagi. On 17 November marching across from the Tem-
bien with 15,000 men Ras Seyum reached Ras Kassa’s camp. He
prostrated himself and kissed Ras Kassa’s feet. Ras Kassa raised
him, and kissed him on the cheeks.
The two leaders stayed by the great pass of Amba Alagi, the
gates of central Ethiopia, and planned their strategy. The levies of
Beghemder and Tigre were joined by the armies of the three
small but warlike provinces that lay north of Wollo and just
behind them; the forces of Wag under Dejaz Haile Kebbede, of
Lasta under Fitaurari Andarge, and of Yeggiu under Dejaz
Admassu Birru, Ayalew’s brother.
But though the Emperor was by now in Dessie, it was not till
the second week in December that the army of Ras Mulugueta at
last arrived. The Mahel Safari camped on the right side of the
mountain on Gerak Sadek, the feature that the British were later
to name the Triangle. Thus the vast Ethiopian forces under the
three Rases on and around the stronghold of Amba Alagi faced
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 77
the sixty battalions and 350 guns which Badoglio was concentrat-
ing at Makalle some thirty miles to the north.
But it was not here that the armies were to clash. For over at the
other end of the Italian front, as Ras Mulugueta’s armies were
moving on to the mountain, the Ethiopians struck their first
blow.

Ras Imru had marched north from Gojjam with 25,000 men, a
long and difficult march of over six hundred miles. By early
December his column, his own Shoan troops in front and the
Gojjam levies behind, were north of Gondar approaching Dabat.
There on 4 December they were bombed for the first time. When
the panic was over Ras Imru found that his army had been almost
halved in strength. Dejaz Gessesse Belew, Lij Yasu’s captor and
Ras Hailu’s nephew, had deserted and was heading back to Debra
Markos with most of the Gojjam levies. ae
By now Ras Imru was in the territory of Dejaz Ayalew Birru
and in touch with this chief. Ayalew Birru had been ordered to
harass and if possible to invade the western Eritrean lowlands,
which were guarded on the Italian side only by two native
battalions and irregular bande. His men had been raiding up to
Om Ager but Maravigna had sent his bande down from Adowa
and Axum, and thereafter the fords of the Takazze were closely
guarded. Ayalew Birru fell ill, and, in the words of a Swedish
doctor flown up to look at him, ‘underwent a cure, abiding his
time’.
Though indeed he was no longer young and active, but a stout
almost corpulent man in his fifties, Ayalew’s illness verged on the
diplomatic. After the fall of Makalle his son had sent a message
offering to come over to the Italians. De Bono had sent a personal
letter back in reply addressed not only to the son but also to the
father—a letter which he considered so important that he had
mentioned it only to the Duce. For Ayalew Birru was no callow
and untried princeling. Unlike Haile Selassie Gugsa, he was a
war-leader of great reputation. If he had gone over to the Italians
it would have been a major triumph.
He did not go over. But he was careful not to press his attacks
too hard and to restrain as far as possible his more warlike
Fitauraris. Ras Imru and his leaders may not have had proof; but
they suspected that they could hardly count on the 10,000 men of
Ayalew Birru. It was a difficult situation for the Ras—in the
78 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
territory of a doubtful ally, nearing the frontier of a superior
enemy, half his army gone, his men shaken by a bombing raid,
and with Dejaz Gessesse Belew hurrying back to Gojjam
presumably to try and seize power there in his absence.
At this stage a Pothez flew in to Dabat, with orders from the
Emperor at Dessie. Ayalew was to halt his attacks along the Setit,
join his forces with those of Imru, and the two together were to
march on the Takazze. Imru immediately sent off a column in
broad daylight in the opposite direction, to the north-west. The
ruse worked, the column was spotted and bombed by the
Italians, and its direction reported. Thereupon Ayalew Birru and
Imru moved north-east by night.
The valley of the Takazze marked the boundary between
western Tigre, now held by the Italians, and Beghemder—a
swift-flowing river in a deep gorge. At this time of year in the
middle ofthe dry season the river was low. Just before dawn on
15 December the Ethiopians after an all-night march forded the
Takazze at two places. Imru’s advance guard, 2,000 strong,
found their ford unguarded. Nine miles upstream, the ford at
Mai Timchet, on the main Gondar—Adowa mule-track, was
protected by a small stone fort. Fitaurari Shifferaw, the comman-
der of Ayalew Birru’s advance guard, crossed the river, wiped
out the post in the darkness, and pressed rapidly up the mountain
trail that led to the main Italian position on the pass of Dembe-
guina above. Shortly after dawn they met an Italian patrol riding
out: the leading Ethiopians fired too early, the horsemen fled, the
Ethiopians charged wildly, but Fitaurari Shifferaw, himself
mounted, stopped them.
Major Criniti, commander of the Gruppo Bande Altopiani
garrisoning the pass, called up Axum for air support and was
reinforced on the ground by a squadron oflight tanks. One tank
was sent out to reconnoitre below the pass. The men of Fitaurari
Shifferaw clamoured to be allowed to shoot it through the heart
and, despite his orders to let it pass, opened fire. The tank’s twin
machine-guns fired back, and most of Shifferaw’s men turned
and ran. But Balambaras Tashemma crept round behind the
tank, jumped onto it, and started hammering on the turret
shouting ‘Open’. The stupefied Italian gunners opened as the
driver tried to reverse. With sweeping sword the Balambaras
beheaded them.
Criniti’s men, horrified, had watched the scene from their post
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 79
above. They attempted to break out, led by nine tanks and Major
Criniti on horseback. They nearly succeeded. Two thousand of
Shifferaw’s men immediately turned tail. ‘Are you women?’,
yelled the Fitaurari. “Can’t you see that I am here?’ He blew his
war-horn. The fugitives rallied. Major Criniti was wounded and
two Italian officers killed. The column retreated back into the
shelter of the pass.
Now totally encircled, the Italians drove their baggage train
out in a wily attempt to distract their enemy with hopes of
plunder. There was a short sharp furious fight as this plan failed,
and the Ethiopians pursued the confused mules back into the
Italian camp, killing the wounded, looting and slaying. The
Italian troops rallied on a hill, but most of their officers had been
killed and they decided to surrender. They raised their hands—a
gesture the Ethiopians did not understand, finding in it an
unusually favourable opportunity to kill all they could.
Realizing their mistake, by now desperate, the Italians rushed
downhill rallying round the almost static tanks. Fitaurari Shif-
feraw was killed; his eighty-year-old father Fitaurari Negash
stood over his body crying ‘My son!’; Shifferaw’s confessor, who
had followed him into the fight, called over to the father: ‘I will
take care of your son but you will be damned if you don’t avenge
his death.’ The old man wiped his tears away, drew his sword,
and rallied the Ethiopians who were hesitating, falling back,
letting the Italians through. ‘Youngsters,’ he shouted, ‘Shifferaw
is not dead. He orders you: do not let the enemy escape. Follow
me.’ The Italians were overrun by their raging enemies. The
lorries into which they were piling were overturned and burnt.
One tank swivelled round. The Ethiopians leapt on it and killed
the crew inside. Two more were overturned and burnt. Another
was abandoned by its crew as they tried to cross a small river; as
they leapt out, they were shot. Two more were captured, another
turned over and destroyed. ‘Cristos, Cristos’ called the crew of
one tank as they came out. They were almost the only prisoners
to be taken that day. The bande were hiding behind overturned
tanks and trees: ‘Don’t let these dogs escape,’ cried Negash.
It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon when Imru’s men, led by
Fitaurari Teshegger, appeared in a cloud of dust from the west,
chanting their war-songs. The two remaining tanks were cap-
tured and their crews killed. The disorganized fugitives were
chased by the two columns almost at spear’s length up the road
/
80 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
that led to the town of Enda Selassie five miles away. Enda
Selassie was cleared at the point of the sword, and there the
Ethiopians, exhausted and victorious, halted their pursuit.
At Enda Selassie the Ethiopians were only thirty miles from
Axum. As they advanced a lorried Blackshirt column and ten
more tanks were sent out to counter-attack. They were
ambushed two or three miles down the road. Big stones were
rolled across their path. The driver ofthe leading tank was killed
and the others jammed behind. The whole column was a sitting
target. Two tanks slipped sideways and stuck. Another two had
lighted torches hurled under them by Ras Imru’s men and burst
into flames. Two more prisoners were taken. The Italian column
retreated as best it could; and next day the Ethiopians pressed on
till they were only twelve miles from Axum. There on the ridge
of the Shire range they took up their positions. Behind their
victorious advance guards Ras Imru and Ayalew Birru’s men
moved massively across the Takazze into Tigre.
It had not been a very bloody battle—even the Ethiopians
claimed only to have killed 500 of the enemy. But it had shown
the Ethiopians that in open fight they with their swords and rifles
were a match for Italian-trained troops. Italian officers had been
killed. The little Italian tanks with their fifteen-degree traverse
had been proved almost useless. In hand-to-hand fighting the air
force could not intervene, and morale was enormously high.
Only Dejaz Ayalew Birru, who had given Fitaurari Shifferaw
strict orders not to advance beyond the fords, was discontented.
Ras Imru was happy both with the capture offifty machine-guns
—alone of all the armies, his had had none—and of the large
town of Enda Selassie which controlled the Takazze fords.
He moved forward to the Shire ridge and considered a direct
attack on the Axum-Adowa area. But there were thirty Italian
battalions there, and 193 guns; it was too powerful a force to
attack directly.
Instead, Ras Imru decided on a long, bold thrust. He sent out
raiding parties, left his advance guard on the Shire ridge, with the
mass of his men in the Takazze valley behind, and set out across
the waterless rock desert of Adi Abo with only a few thousand
men, heading for the almost-undefended supply depot of
Maravigna’s Second Corps at Adi Quala, in Eritrea, on the other
side of the Mareb. The Mareb was no obstacle, even lower than
the Takazze, a mere trickle. Badoglio, far more worried than his
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 8I
prosaic later account might seem to imply, gave orders for two
counter-measures.
The first was conventional: an attack by 12,000 men on the Af
Gaga pass that led through the Shire ridge. It was put in on 25
December. The Ethiopian vanguard numbered some 8,000.
There was bitter fighting for a day and a night, both sides pulled
back, and the Italian column eventually rejoined Second Corps
having lost under two hundred men. If the attack had been
intended as a show of strength and a diversionary thrust it was
successful. But if Maravigna had hoped—as seems probable—to
break through the Ethiopians on Shire and drive them back to the
Takazze, it was a failure.
The other counter-measure was drastic and decisive. Ras Imru
had to be halted at all costs before he invaded Eritrea, destroyed
the supply depot, and cut Second Corps’ lines of communication.
It was the morning of 23 December. Italian planes flew over
Ras Imru’s column which scattered and took cover, used by now
to daily bombings. But that day strange cylinders fell from the
sky, which broke as soon as they hit the ground, and gave offa
colourless liquid that spread all around. When the colourless
liquid touched the exposed limbs of the Ethiopians, it burnt.
Several hundreds had their hands, their feet, and their faces
scalded. Some were blinded. ‘It was a terrifying sight,’ said Ras
Imru. ‘I myself fled as if death was on my heels.’ The effect on
morale was even more terrible. The Italian pilots flew on to drop
the rest of their cylinders on the Ethiopians in the Takazze valley,
and Imru’s damaged and demoralized troops fell back to the
Shire. The first and best-led Ethiopian offensive was over, halted
by the use of gas—mustard gas.

On 15 December, as Ras Imru and Ayalew Birru’s men crossed

the Takazze, the army of Wag attacked in the Tembien. The little
town of Abbi Addi, the centre round which the battles in the
Tembien were to rage, lay about half-way between Makalle and
Adowa, half-way along the 150-mile-long Italian front. For most
of those 150 miles the wild mountain gorges are impassable; only
at the centre did the mule tracks heading north from Socota, the
capital of Wag, wind through Abbi Addi and over the Warieu
Pass towards the centre of Tigre.
When Ras Seyum shifted his men to Amba Alagi, the advance
guard of the Eritrean Corps, Consul-General Diamanti’s rst

J
82 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
Blackshirt Gruppo, had moved forward and occupied Abbi Addi,
setting up its headquarters on the precipitous heights of Worq
Amba, the ‘Golden Mountain’ that flanked the pass to the north.
On the 15th, Dejaz Haile Kebbede led his army, now 10,000
strong, across the Gheva to recapture Abbi Addi. Their morale
was high, though only one man in six had a rifle and the whole
force had only two or three machine-guns. Haile Kebbede, who
had been brought up at his uncle Wagshum Gwangul’s court and
taught, like all the nobles, to ride, to swim, and above all to
shoot, told his men that as the Wagshum Gwangul had fought
and won for Menelik at Adowa, so he and they would fight and
win or fight and die for Haile Selassie. On the 18th the men of
Wag attacked fiercely, but they were confronted with guns and
tanks and on the following day with four Eritrean battalions of
the I Brigade hastily pushed up by a worried Pirzio Biroli. Their
attack was held. At dawn on the 22nd the Eritreans counter-
attacked and captured Amba Tsellere, the mountain that over-
looked the town, driving the enemy on to the plain. But then
unexpectedly and inexplicably, Diamanti retreated.!
The army of Wag reoccupied Amba Tsellere and, moving
down into the little town, prepared despite their heavy casualties
(they had lost one man in ten and had no means of caring for the
wounded) to attack the Pass. This was the crucial moment. Had
they moved forward and captured the Pass, the whole of Tigre
would have been opened up to a swarm of Ethiopian invaders.
But orders reached them by runner from Ras Kassa on Amba
Alagi halting them where they were. And while they halted,
Badoglio reversed the movement ofthe Eritrean Corps which he
had been concentrating at Makalle and sent battalions back to
reinforce the ten already in the Tembien.
From Dessie the Emperor had been watching the development of
the situation. His planning had been hampered by his lack of
contact with Ras Imru and Ayalew Birru—it took four days for
their runners to reach the telephones at Dabat—and with the
Tembien. But he now sent orders up to the three Rases which
' ‘In spite of the success of the action’, wrote Badoglio, ‘the commander judged it
necessary to withdraw his victorious troops from Mt. Tsellere to Abbi Addi. This
decision, founded on an entirely personal appreciation ofthe local situation did not
enable us to attain from the engagement the result which the heroic conduct ofthe
units concerned should have given us.’ It was of course a Blackshirt, not a regular
army, unit.
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 83
changed the whole shape ofthe battles to come. The armies had
been concentrating on one stronghold, Amba Alagi—the
prelude, it seemed, to a single enormous battle with the Italians at
Makalle. But now they were spread out sideways and in depth.
Ras Mulugueta and his 70,000 men were sent forward to hold the
vast mountain plateau of Amba Aradam, thirty miles to the north
of Amba Alagi, while Ras Kebbede with the Shoan levies of Ifrata
marched up from Dessie to take over Amba Alagi. Ras Kassa,
Ras Seyum with the armies of Beghemder and Tigre, plus those
of Lasta and Yeggiu were ordered down into the Tembien to
reinforce the decimated army of Wag.
Thus a vast encirclement threatened the Italians. On their right
Adowa and Axum were threatened by Ras Imru and Dejaz
Ayalew Birru. On their left Ras Mulugueta on Amba Aradam
blocked any possibility of an advance south and menaced the
entrenched camp at Makalle. In the centre, the most vulnerable
point, Ras Kassa and Ras Seyum had by 9January reached Abbi
Addi and were building up their forces ready to thrust through
and split the Italian line. If Badoglio weakened Makalle to
reinforce the Tembien, Ras Mulugueta might move forward; if
he pushed Maravigna forward on his right, Ras Imru would
again circle round to attack his lines of communication.
Badoglio concentrated his guns, over 300 of them, back at
Makalle, reinforced the Tembien with some of the troops
gathered at Makalle, formed a Fourth Corps out of the newly-
arrived Cosseria division and the ‘3rd February’ to protect his lines
of communication north of Adowa from another excursion of
Ras Imru, loosed his bombers against Ras Mulugueta on Amba
Aradam—and cabled Mussolini on 11 January informing him
that he would have to hold up the long-promised offensive in
order to face an Ethiopian attack.
In fact it was the Italians who attacked first in the Tembien,
perhaps unaware that there was now not just the little army of
Wag but over 100,000 Ethiopians opposing them. Pirzio Biroli’s
Eritreans sallied out from the Warieu Pass on the morning of 20
January, outflanking the main Ethiopian position, only to be
halted by Wondossen Kassa. Next day the Eritreans attacked
again, and the Blackshirts—Diamanti’s four battalions reinforced
by the three legions of the ‘28th October’—poured down from
the Pass to assault the mountain slopes. To Konovaloff, who had
withdrawn with Ras Seyum to watch the attack from a hill-top it
84 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
seemed that the Italian tactics had barely altered since Adowa:
foot-soldiers in line and in column, their officers on mules
commanding the attack, pack-batteries and machine-guns sup-
porting. There was stiff fighting in the east as there had been the
day before. In the centre Diamanti’s battalions managed to reach
the west slopes of Debra Amba by the early afternoon. But as
they fell back they were heavily attacked, and half the officers of
the 2nd and 4th Blackshirt battalions were killed. The chaplain,
Centurion Father Giuliani, was speared as he was giving the last
sacrament. The ‘28th October’ led the chaotic withdrawal to the
Warieu Pass: yet another Blackshirt débacle.
All next day the battle raged even more fiercely below the
Warieu Pass, where the Blackshirts of General Somma’s
‘October 28th’ wavered under the attacks of Dejaz Admassu
Birru. When dusk fell, the attacks were continuing and the
Blackshirts near to breaking. To Badoglio, anxiously awaiting
the next radio messages at Makalle it looked as if the Pass would
fall.! If the Pass fell and the Ethiopian armies poured through, the
whole Italian front would be split wide open, Eritrea exposed,
Makalle open to attack from the rear, Maravigna’s Corps cut off.
That night was for the Italians the worst of the campaign. At
Badoglio’s staff headquarters in Makalle no one slept. Orders
went out—to the Intendant General, to remove or if necessary to
destroy all supply depots north of Adowa and of Makalle; to
General Aimone Cat, of the air force, to bombard the Tembien
with mustard gas; and to his own staff, to draw up immediate
plans for evacuating Makalle, for the retreat of 70,000 men and
14,000 animals. Those who saw the General said that they had
never seen a man so obviously worried and so close to almost
irrational panic as Badoglio that night.
By dawn, much to Badoglio’s relief, the radio brought better
news. The Blackshirts had held through the night, and a relief
column of real soldiers, Vaccarisi’s 2nd Eritrean Division, was
arriving. All day Ras Kassa pressed his attacks but by the evening
of the 23rd the Ethiopians were withdrawing to their original
positions. Next day they spent mourning their thousand dead
and tending the wounded, twice that number. On the Ethiopian
side the expectations of asecond Adowa were beginning to fade.
' Lessona in his memoirs surpassed himself in the art of understatement. ‘A
division of Blackshirts, commanded by General Somma, passed a moment of crisis
when faced by enemy attacks.’
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 85
These Italians, unlike their fathers, were brave men, gobos, their
artillery was powerful, and their planes piloted by ‘Mussolini
Lij’ flew low and boldly. The second Ethiopian offensive was
over.

Badoglio cancelled his orders, and remained at Makalle, weigh-

ing up the lessons of the battle. He concluded that though the
Ethiopian army had been modernized, the progress made had
been ‘superficial rather than profound’. The leadership was still in
the hands of the Rases, of ‘churchmen’ like Ras Kassa and
‘irresolute leaders’ like Ras Seyum. The tactics were the tradi-
tional Ethiopian mass attack, not the more dangerous guerrilla
warfare for which Ras Imru alone had shown the slightest
aptitude. The staff organization was of the most elementary kind,
with ‘only a very few wireless sets which, most obligingly, were
of more use to me with my admirably working interception and
decoding service’. Badoglio concluded that the ‘vast and well-
conceived plans’ of the enemy had been foiled and that Ras Imru
would not ‘water his mules at the sea’.
At Dessie Haile Selassie reflected bitterly on the way his orders
were disobeyed. Time and again he had ordered the Rases not to
mass their men, but to use guerrilla tactics and to harass rather
than confront the Italians. It had been hopelessly unrealistic. By
all their traditions and training the Ethiopians, men and leaders
alike, were opposed to the idea of guerrilla warfare. ‘A
descendant of the Negus Negusti Johannes’, Ras Seyum had
declared, ‘makes war but cannot carry on guerrilla warfare like a
shifta chief.’ The Emperor would have agreed with Badoglio’s
comments on his staff organization, particularly on his inability
to contact Ras Imru. On the other hand even ifthe Italian line had
not been broken, the Ethiopian line had been held—and there
were good points. Firstly, though the Italian officers were brave,
their men were poor. The enemy had had to rely on their native
troops to rescue them from a sticky position, and there was
already a slow trickle of Eritrean deserters, indignant at being
given the hardest and most dangerous tasks. Secondly,
mechanized warfare was less decisive than had been feared. The
small Italian tanks were oflittle use in mountainous country, and
the Ethiopians had quickly adapted themselves to bombing raids,
which now caused few casualties. The gas was a problem, but
more frightening than dangerous; it tended to settle in the valleys
86 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
and the Ethiopians soon got into the habit of taking to the heights
when it was dropped. Even when it touched them, burns could
be stopped. ‘You men must always be washing,’ Ras Imru told
his troops. Thirdly, the feared desertions had not occurred.
There was even news that Haile Selassie Gugsa’s men were
deserting him, peeved at being disarmed on Badoglio’s orders.
Admittedly the Wollo army was of doubtful loyalty—Ras
Mulugueta had used it mainly to escort the vast herds of cattle
needed to feed his men—and Gojjam was in revolt. But the
Emperor himself was at Dessie to keep Wollo under control, and
he had sent the Nevraid Aregai with a thousand men over from
Wollo and Dejaz Hapte Mariam Gabre Egziabher up from
Lekempti with another thousand to relieve the small Shoan
garrison at Debra Markos, now being besieged by Dejaz Gessesse
Belew. Meanwhile he had liberated almost all his political
prisoners including Fitaurari Birru and the veteran Dejaz Balcha,
and had even brought Ras Hailu from his remote prison to the
Little Ghebbi, where he was later interviewed by a number of
journalists to scotch rumours of his death.
For their part, faced with a common enemy, the nobles, even
those who had stood in the way of Tafari1 Makonnen’s rise to
power, seemed to be forgetting their feuds and rallying around
the Lion of Judah. There was one old enemy who was,
fortunately for the Emperor, no longer there to rally round. Li
Yasu had died in 1935 in the village where he had lived for three
years in the Garamalata mountains. What exactly was the cause of
his death and at what point in the year it occurred is uncertain.
Possibly as late as November, that is well after the invasion had
been launched. There were the inevitable rumours of murder.

It was not on either side a chivalrous war. The Italian frightful-

ness in the air was equalled by the Ethiopian frightfulness on the
ground. Lt. Minnetti of the air force was beheaded publicly in
Dagghabur which he had bombed and strafed. It was to avenge
his death that the Italians first used mustard gas. From then on
atrocity followed atrocity, inevitably exaggerated by the side that
suffered it, denied by the side that inflicted it. On 15 December
Major Burgoyne wrote from Dessie:
Four planes did a lot of damage here unfortunately all around and
through the Swedish Hospital and among the Press. Of course 6000 ft.
up it was impossible for the planes to see the Red Cross on the roof and
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 87
anyway no doubt their firing is erratic, however no excuses taken and
before the planes had disappeared the Emperor had sent a protest to
Geneva and then all wires were cleared for the Press and Europe was
inundated with descriptions of the damage to the hospital.
But only three weeks later at Waldia he was bombed again.
‘Your tent’s gone’ said the vet. It had too. A real good shot. The Eytie
seeing the red roof put six big bombs carefully around it. . . fortunately
beyond covering everything with earth and breaking my medical chest
it did not do me any harm. The Eytie dropped three or four big bombs
on the town but mostly let them have incendiary bombs—little things
which did small harm beyond burning down the houses and chucking
splinters about. But it was too evident that he deliberately bombed my
tent. He never dropped one ofany sort near my men’s tents forty yards
away. Can’t understand the idea.
and a few days later after tending the wounded of Waldia bombed
heavily the day before:
‘Most of my patients were women and girls wounded in back, stomach,
thighs, breasts, arms and ankles. It’s tragic that we can’t raise a couple of
fighting planes against this ‘“walk-over”’ the Italians are having, one
fighter might set them back! I wonder they aren’t sickened at just
dropping death on the population, they are supposed to be soldiers but
this is like taking the cat’s milk.’
‘I fight sitting,’ Galeazzo Ciano had joked. Vittorio Mussolini
in his book Flights over the Amba wrote lyrically of the beauty of
the red flower ofblood spreading beneath him. This was the path
that led first to Guernica, and then to Rotterdam, London,
Dresden, and Cologne.
Neither side took many prisoners. Menelik had taken nearly
two thousand at Adowa but in the whole campaign the Ethio-
pians took only five—four of them at Dembeguina. They were
well enough treated, sent to Dessie where the Emperor used
them as gardeners. But five was an unbelievably small total.
There were this time no half-regrets on either side at shedding the
blood of fellow-Christians.
THE SOUTHERN FRONT

Badoglio subsequently claimed to have held and broken a great

Ethiopian offensive in the north—a dubious claim. For what little
evidence there is goes to show that the Emperor’s original plan
had been simply to contain the Italian invasion in the north with
 yinosg Jo 94)
satuliy sy dvW“€
puemsoy
‘DH

001

os
S1ueize19 jeseuag ® vopieg 0O0T Wy OSI

So[IW
QS]
SOMALILAND

00
ITALIAN

_-—" Ipuat|tys
ewe]
ae |
~

ee bee S
>

! SOM
Nas x
&

vy ad aivay ee
MAHOVLID SVE Sc \.
Qiong & esuog
oe
. OS Jaauney sole,
Yoavean Ls
See Ne ynsuog ysinwig
7

/eyides
ay)

=)
2
eae NNNOX zvr30
_—
& nn didva zvraq.«« VHSVONVW
0
GNVTIT
smespuy-uewdeyg | J \ 3 N3NNONYW NICOMLIa
yjnsuog ysnug >,
HSILIUG
sjeqes jsuiebe i)
wellog pyoy oy I S
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 89
the traditional forces of the Northern Provinces bolstered by Ras
Mulugueta. Meanwhile his own more modern troops would
invade Somalia in the south where the Italians were so much
weaker, and sweep them into the sea.
It was this rather than the evenly-balanced situation in the
north that was on the Emperor’s mind in the third week of
January. For much had been happening in the south.
In the Ogaden, after the death of Afework, the Italians had
halted while the Ethiopians were rapidly building up their
strength. The levies of Arussi, 3,000 strong, were established at
the base headquarters, Jijiga. The Dejaz Abebe Damtew had led
his army, 3,000 more, over from his remote southern provinces
of Gemu and Gofa on the Kenya border to Dagghabur. There he
had been joined by the far stronger army of Illubabor, 12,000
men led right across the Empire from Gore by the giant Dejaz
Makonnen Endalkachew.
Steer went down to tour the Ogaden again and brought back
his usual vivid impressions ofthese three leaders and their troops.
The Dejaz Amde Mikael of Arussi was a ‘nice elderly man’. . .
seen ‘in a supreme moment of drunkenness’; Abebe Damtew ‘a
typical good Amhara officer . . . but his province was wretch-
edly poor with scarcely a modern rifle’; Dejaz Makonnen
Endalkachew was ‘much more wooden, less soldierly and less
spirited than Abebe’. What most impressed Steer was the fan-
tastic ochre and pink head-dresses of Abebe’s levies plus the two
Adowa cannon and the three young lions he had brought with
him. He did not appreciate—he probably did not know—the
importance of Dejaz Amde Mikael’s position as head of the Moja,
the second of the two aristocratic clans of Menz. With Dejaz
Makonnen Endalkachew, head of the Addisge there too, in
Ethiopian eyes the finest and most prestigious fighting lords of
Shoa had taken the field in the south.
Meanwhile the Turks and the Belgians were organizing a
strong defensive position in the low mountains south of Dag-
ghabur where the Tug Jerrer joined the Tug Fafan: Ethiopia’s
‘Maginot Line’ as Wehib Pasha baptized it. Not that there was
much co-operation between the three Turks and the three
Belgians of Reul’s mission; ‘parmi ces types-la’, said Farouk Bey,
‘il y avait des avocats, il y avait des commergants, il y avait des
comédiens d’ailleurs.’
But militarily the Ogaden was quiet. While Dejaz Nasibu
go THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
dispersed his troops to right and left, and prepared to move his
own headquarters down to Dagghabur, there were only skirm-
ishes here and there—a successful night raid, the first of its kind
carried out by the Ethiopians when 150 men captured the wells of
Harradiguit—but no major operations.

It was in the southern half

of his sector that Graziani realized that
he would have to meet a threat. The forces of Bale led by Dejaz
Beiene Merid were moving down the Webbi Shebelli. More
dangerous still, the forces of Ras Desta were assembling in
Sidamo to move down the Juba and turn Graziani’s left flank.
Ras Desta Damtew, then forty-three years old, was something
of an eccentric among Ethiopian nobles, with a curiously mixed
reputation (for one who in his twenties had run away to become a
monk at Debra Libanos) as an entrepreneur and an enfant terrible.
His family was ofthe old Shoan nobility—he would hardly have
been permitted to marry the Emperor’s eldest daughter if it had
been otherwise—but he had as little taste as the young progress-
ives of inferior birth for the traditional amusements of the
Amhara aristocracy, the feasting, the horsemanship, the boast-
ing, and the drunkenness. In consequence he was less popular
than his brother Abebe, particularly among the Amharo-Galla
nobles and soldiers, the barud-lets and melkegnas who had settled in
Sidamo with Dejaz Balcha and who had lived an independent and
almost tax-free life, their land worked by the native serfs of the
Sidancho tribes under the gebar system. They looked back
nostalgically to the severity of their old governor, who had
instituted hanging even for minor offences, and with suspicion
on their new one. Had not his father Fitaurari Damtew visited
Russia? Was he himself not founding towns, Yirgalem and
Wondo, a strange and un-Ethiopian habit, centres of administra-
tion and bureaucracy, where Dejaz Balcha had been content with
the old traditional nomadic camp? Was he not another ferengi-
lover like Tafar1 Makonnen? Had he not arrived in the province
with aferengi officer, who was presuming to reorganize their tried
military habits?
The ferengi officer in question was a young Belgian, Lt.
Cambier, born by a mere coincidence in Odessa, and a member
of the official Belgian Military Mission. Three weeks after the
declaration of war when Ras Desta was already calling the chitet at
Yirgalem, and Major Dothée had already summoned his scat-
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK OI
tered officers back to Addis Ababa, news came to the capital that
Cambier was dead. A plane left Addis Ababa next day, his body
was flown back and he was buried with military honours in the
European cemetery at Addis Ababa. ‘Pleurisy’, said one official
report; ‘acute infectious poliomyelitis’, said another. But there
were suspicions of suicide—and of murder by a Sidamo chief. In
any event Cambier died, and one of Reul’s mercenaries, Lt.
Frére, was sent to replace him.
By November the Sidamo army, at least 20,000 strong, had
reached Magallo, north of Neghelli. It was a well-armed and
well-equipped force, so well-armed indeed that the Italians were
convinced that Ras Desta had been receiving rifles from the
British in Kenya. The troops were led by two Fitauraris, Ademe
Anbassu and Tademme Zelleka, and the half-trained Guards
battalion was commanded by Kenyaz Bezibeh Sileshi. They were
in touch, via Ras Desta’s precious wireless, with the Emperor at
Dessie and protected from the air by Oerlikon anti-aircraft guns.
They were moreover working in close co-operation with the
forces of Bale, the adjoining province to the north. It looked to
Graziani like a well co-ordinated movement, particularly diffi-
cult to counter because Ras Desta’s right flank was protected by
the Kenya border. It would become particularly threatening if it
was combined with an offensive in the Ogaden. It was in any case
particularly dangerous because only fractions of the Tevere
Blackshirts and of General Nasi’s Libyan Division had arrived,
and Graziani had therefore only General Pavone’s Peloritana
Division and the native troops of Somalia to count on. On 13
November Graziani moved his headquarters forward to Baidoa
and personally assumed command ofthe Juba sector.
Fortunately for Graziani’s peace of mind Ras Desta’s advance
through the almost trackless forests and mountains of Southern
Sidamo was slow. This meant that it was Dejaz Beiene Merid of
Bale, 200 miles further forward on the Webbi Shebelli, who was
first into battle. The action that ensued was decisive: not because
of its importance—Dejaz Beiene’s men attacked a raiding party of
1,000 Dubats sent forward under Olol Dinke—but because Dejaz
Beiene was badly wounded. With their leader out of action, the
Ethiopians’ morale cracked: a presage of what was invariably to
happen in this war. Both sides fell back.
At the same time Graziani intercepted a panicky wireless
message from Dejaz Nasibu to the Emperor predicting that Olol

d
g2 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
Dinke’s force was Graziani’s advance guard and putting it at
5,000 strong. So, Graziani could calculate, the Ogaden was no
threat after all—on the contrary he now knew that the Ogaden’s
commander was all nerves. Indeed it would be hard to exaggerate
the importance of these wireless interceptions. Thanks to these
both Graziani and Badoglio knew exactly what was going on in
the minds of their rival commanders. They knew not only how
the Ethiopians were judging their own plans but also how they
were planning to react. There was not a major move or a major
attack made, therefore, by any of the Ethiopian commanders
who possessed a wireless that was not known in advance by the
Italian generals. If there was one single factor that more than any
other helped the Italians to win the war it was this.

Graziani was now confident that the centre of the Ethiopian

prong, the advance down the Webbi Shebelli, was broken, and
that therefore the whole Ethiopian offensive had gone badly
wrong. He ordered Olol Dinke to move north of the Webbi
Shebelli up into Ogaden; there he would be in a position to hold
off any sudden move southwards by Dejaz Nasibu—in the
unlikely event that such a move should occur. On 4 January
Graziani cabled Mussolini, ‘On the Juba front I consider grand
strategic offensive Ras Desta Damtew paralysed and broken up.’
By 6 January Ras Desta’s forces, hammered continually by the
Italian bombers as they advanced down the palm-shaded valley
of the Juba, were in a semicircle about sixty miles from Dolo.
Their left flank rested on Lama Shillendi which was still held by
the two Ethiopian guards battalions of Bale. The whole force was
over 250 miles from its base.
On g January Graziani’s wireless interceptors tuned in on Ras
Desta’s wavelength and started transmitting their own messages
and orders, causing for three days immense confusion.
On 10 January Graziani seized the initiative. He moved his
troops up to the Dolo area and prepared to attack on both sides of
the Juba which was in flood. On 12 January his troops were in
position and next day they moved forward in three columns. The
central column, with tanks, armoured cars, and the motorized
machine-gun detachments of the Aosta Lancers, commanded by
General Bergonzoli, drove up the right bank of the Juba.
Ras Desta’s men were not, it seems, expecting the attack. Their
morale had been very high but the continued daily air raids,
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 93
culminating on the day before the attack by a massive bombing
raid of 50 Capronis, had sapped their spirit. The main Italian
column fell on the Sidamo advance guard commanded by
Fitauraris Ademe Anbassu and Tademme Zelleka. It broke
through and confused fighting spread for twenty miles around,
lasting all day. But in the flat plains by the river the Italian tanks
and the armoured cars and the motorized lorries were able to
manceuvre with an ease impossible in the rocky mountainous
defiles of the North. By the following morning when the Italians
advanced again, the army of Sidamo was an almost disorganized
rabble, fleeing back along the tracks down which they had so
confidently advanced, bombed and machine-gunned as they fled.
Only the rearguard on the left of the river held up a flanking
column for another day and a half. Lt. Frére sent a cable back to
Reul’s headquarters. ‘Situation désespérée. Télégraphier femme
tout va bien.’ The advancing Italians found a copy of the cable
with Frére’s papers at Ras Desta’s hastily abandoned head-
quarters where they captured the Ras’s luggage, his negarit, and
his flag—as well as an enormous quantity of cattle, stores, and
material. By the 19th the Aosta Lancers, Bergonzoli’s advance
guard, were in Neghelli. On the 23rd columns were sent out
north of Neghelli into the thick forest of the Wadara where Ras
Desta’s men were rallying, and south towards the Kenyan
frontier. The reports were that 3,000 of Ras Desta’s men had been
killed, and the Ras himself and Lt. Frére were fleeing back to
Yirgalem. The Digolia Somali ofthe lowlands cameinto submit at
Dolo and the Galla Borana ofthe highlands at Neghelli. Graziani
issued a proclamation abolishing the gebar system, and received
the congratulations of aMussolini happy both that supplies from
Kenya into Ethiopia had been cut off, and that the Italian armies
had penetrated as ‘liberators’ into ‘the territory of the Gallas’.
It had been a highly successful operation, the first real defeat
that the Italians had inflicted on the enemy. Not everything had
gone entirely smoothly, however. For one thing the Italian
advance was halted in the Wadara forests. The column sent out
from Neghelli met stiff resistance, and the Aosta Lancers had 47
casualties. That was not too serious in itself. For ofall the ways of
invading Ethiopia the southern route was the slowest and most
arduous; and Graziani had never had any real intention, still less
any orders, to push up through the wilds of Sidamo towards the
central Lakes and then on to Addis Ababa.

‘f
94 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
But there had been a much more serious incident about which
not a murmur was allowed to escape: a mutiny of the Eritrean
troops. Some of the Eritreans of the Libyan Division had been
fighting for over twenty years round Tripoli and Benghazi.
When the division was formed, they were told that they would be
going home to Massawa. Instead, the steamers carrying them
touched at Massawa and sailed on round the Horn to Mogadishu,
to another land of deserts and more fighting.
The 4th Gruppo of General Nasi’s Libyan Division, comman-
ded by Colonel Maramarcio, was moved up into the Dolo
section ready for the attack on Ras Desta. Before the attack
twelve men under Geraz Gebrai deserted; and then at night
several hundred more under Fitaurari Tegai Negussie, all from
the four battalions of the 4th Gruppo. They took with them forty
machine-guns.
What followed was very confused. The deserters planned to
join Ras Desta but only two or three hundred of them in fact
managed to do so. The rest wandered around lost, attacked by
the Borana Somalis, and pursued by armoured cars and bombers.
At one point a large group walked through General Agostini’s
lines on the Dawa at midnight, as tense as the troops that woke up
all round and stood to arms, but by one of those curious
spontaneous truces that occur in all wars, not attacking and not
attacked. It was extremely awkward for General Nasi who could
threaten and pursue but could hardly shoot, for fear that the
mutiny might spread to his other three regiments. In the end
nearly 600 of the deserters were picked up in Kenya by a strong
KAR force under a disagreeable British officer, who disarmed
them and threatened to take them back to General Graziani’s
headquarters in Baidoa.
It was almost as embarrassing for the Kenya government as it
had been for Graziani. In fact the Eritreans were interned at ‘No 1
Eritrean Deserters Camp’ at Isiolo just north of Mt. Kenya.
General Nasi sent the 4th Gruppo back to Mogadishu and there
disbanded it, scattering the askaris he considered trustworthy
among his other battalions. It had been a serious incident, but it
was to have no immediate consequences; the deserters’ example
was not contagious.

The news of Ras Desta’s defeat caused near despair at Dessie.

The Emperor had been counting on his better-armed and better-
 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK 95
trained forces in the south and in particular on his son-in-law.
Although the Italian advance had been held and a line was being
fortified at Wadara, there were grave reports of dissension among
the Sidamo leaders. There were the usual rumours of treachery,
and the mutual accusations that are flung about in a defeated
army. Fitaurari Ademe Anbassu was flogged for having lost fifty
machine-guns; there was talk that he had revealed Ras Desta’s
plans to the Italians. With desertions and dismissals the total
strength of the army was down to under 10,000 men, and many
of the Sidamo leaders were requesting a stronger leader. The
Emperor saw that he would have to intervene. He sent two ofhis
aeroplanes flying over central Sidamo, dropping leaflets request-
ing the army to obey Ras Desta until Dejaz Balcha and Dejaz
Gabremariam should arrive. There was probably never any real
intention of allowing Dejaz Balcha back into his feudal ter-
ritories; even at his age he could still be dangerous once Ethiopia
had won the war. But Gabremariam had been Balcha’s Fitaurari
before he became governor of Harar, and everyone remembered
his 1931 expedition when he had chased the Italians down the
Webbi Shebelli.
So the Emperor sent Dejaz Gabremariam down from Dessie
with orders to reconcile the quarrelling leaders and restore
morale in Sidamo. It was a victory for the old Ethiopia of
Menelik over the new Ethiopia of Haile Selassie.
At the same time the Emperor ordered Dejaz Makonnen
Wossene, Governor of the heavily populated central southern
province of Wollamo across the Lakes, to reinforce Ras Desta.
Dejaz Mangasha Wolde, Governor of the other heavily
populated province of Kambata, just to the north of Wollamo,
had already moved up to Amba Alagi with tens of thousands of
his levies. By now all the levies of the south-east and the central
southern provinces had joined or were moving towards one of
the fronts. The only reserves of the Empire lay at Dessie in Wollo
and in the south-west.
 CHAPTER 7

THE BATTEESINGHEINOGRTH

In the North Badoglio now had eleven complete divisions—two

Eritrean and nine Italian, organized into four Army Corps and
reserves. Seven of these eleven divisions were concentrated at
Makalle; an imposing force. On 4 February Badoglio issued
operation orders to their commanders. The same day Ras Mulu-
gueta reported to the Emperor at Dessie that ‘an attack in force is
imminent’.
Dessie, the capital of Wollo, had been the Emperor’s head-
quarters for over two months. His sons, the Crown Prince Asfa
Wossen and the child Duke of Harar, were with him. So were the
battalions of the Guard from Addis Ababa—protection, if need
be, against the half-trusted levies of Wollo. Thousands of road-
builders were busy widening and improving the track that ran
north through the highlands of Wollo for eighty miles to the little
town of Waldia.
There the track went down into a low and dusty plain that to
the east melted into the Danakil desert. This was the no man’s
land that stretched for fifty miles between the highlands of Wollo
and the highlands ofTigre, shifta country. In its centre lay Cobbo,
a market for the Azebo Galla and a village of evil repute. Only
large and heavily-armed parties could safely traverse this plain.
From the foot of the Tigre highlands a mule-track with
seventeen hairpin bends led up to Quoram on the plateau, where
the British Field Hospital under Dr. Melly was established. Mule
and foot were the only form of transport in the Tigre highlands;
but by anear-miracle Dr. Melly had managed to get his 18 lorries
up the escarpment. There on 4 February at Quoram he was joined
by Major Burgoyne and the 200 mules of Burgoyne’s Red Cross
unit. All around them were encamped the 12,000 well-armed
men of the Bitwoded Makonnen Demissie, the army of
Wollega-Ardjo.!
' This was one of the three armies of Wollega. The Bitwoded Makonnen was a
 THE BATTLES IN THE NORTH 97
Dessie, the Imperial headquarters, lay about 280 miles by road
and track from Makalle in the northern highlands of Tigre where
the invaders were massing their forces. Up the roads and over the
tracks army after army had gone tramping. Up and down these
tracks the Italian aeroplanes ranged, bombing—almost unop-
posed—the columns of marching Ethiopians and the towns and
villages and encampments that lay along the route. By 4 February
the Ethiopian forces were strung out over 250 miles from south
to north, from Dessie to the mountain plateau of Amba Aradam.

Six miles long and two to three miles wide, Amba Aradam rose
high above the surrounding countryside, facing Makalle and
blocking any possible move south. It was real amba, flat-topped,
covered with crevices and canyons and caves, impregnable on the
north and north-east where the Tug Gabat ran round its flanks
through precipitous ravines, falling steeply away in the rear to the
spur of Antalo, behind which lay the broad plain of Mahera. For
five weeks Ras Mulugueta had been encamped on this mountain;
with him were Dejaz Auraris the Shoan governor of Menz,
Wodajo Ali the Crown Prince’s tutor, and two powerful nobles
of Wollo, Ras Gabre Hiwot Mikael, son of the Negus Mikael,
and Dejaz Amde Ali. Half of Ras Mulugueta’s 70-80,000 men
were on Amba Aradam’s top, half spread out around its flanks.
He had 400 machine-guns, ten cannon, and a few anti-aircraft
Oerlikons. Behind him the plain of Mahera was alive with the
cattle gathered en route and herded up to feed his vast army. At
the village of Antalo the Tigrean peasants held markets every
day, pushing the prices of their honey and sweetmeats up
exorbitantly. The telegraph line ran from Imperial headquarters
at Dessie to the port of Buie in the Mahera plain; from there a
runner had to take messages up to the Ras on the mountain.
On 5 February the Emperor ordered the Bitwoded Makon-
nen’s 12,000 men forward from Quoram. They marched out
across the wide and fertile plateau of Lake Ashangi. At the far end
of the plateau lay the town of Mai Ceu, the only sizeable town
between Dessie and Makalle, governed by Dejaz Aberra Tedla, a
Shoan chosen for his vigour and loyalty to the Emperor, posted

highly-respected potentate, famed for his hospitality, his amours—he had eloped
with the Emperor’s favourite niece—and for hisability to take machine-guns to pieces
and reassemble them blindfold. According to foreign observers his army, equipped
with ten Oerlikons by the Emperor, was the most modern in the North.
 RED SEA
\
ERITREA SAsmara g

Starace’s L @ Gen Maravigna

Motorized column yf eed ear
Om Ager

ADI ABO
DESERT i
past pages Selaclaca \j a7
Vo “eo Cr)

eth MEses Axum@pstage General Pirzio

Wo y i DEMBEGUINA Selassie ’ ZL ® Biroli, Eritrean
« |Corps
Alr E :
p| General Santini
Y |ist Corps, 60
a ZA_A Battalions, 350 guns
Abbi Addi%, #7 General Badoglio
AMBA TSELLERE® @ Z H.Q.

Ras Mulugveta and

Army of the Centre
&. ley ‘ - Adi
AdiAkeite
/ o g Haile Kebbede and & Bitwoded Makonnen Demissie
> 3 Army of Wag 11360 “20d Army of Wollega
“| Gessesse Belew and Ras Seyum and Alem
fo Army of Gojjam desert, Army of Tigre
Gondar and head south Ras Kassa and
Army of Beghemder
"THE GATES OF THE NORTH
W orahei
G Battle of Maileu XP vj. Dejaz Aberra Tedla
L. Ashangi @/RAYA L809 Shoan Garrison
Quoram
y Dr. Melly and the
British Field Hospital’

‘ ° \

Ras Getachew
a and Army of Kaffa

Magdala
e

A AMBASEL
Dessie
The Imperial Guard
The Crown Prince and
ey Army of Wollo
\
|
|
\
_&
Zr italian forces
@=)> Ethiopian forces

Land over 10000 ft

50 miles
Land over 6500ft
to 10000ft

MAP 4. The Battles in the North

 THE BATTLES IN THE NORTH 99

with a Shoan garrison in the heart of the territory of the Raya

Galla.
They marched through Mai Ceu. To the north of the town the
heights of the vast mountain stronghold of Amba Alagi towered
above the whole of the Tigrean highlands, dominating the
narrow twisting track both to the north and the south. This was
both the pivot and the assembly-point of the whole Ethiopian
line. Bitwoded Makonnen found the forces of Ras Kebbede
encamped on the heights of Amba Alagi, on the spur to the
north-east of the track. Below Amba Alagi to the north lay the
little village of Enda Medhane Alem; almost thirty miles further
on was the mountain plateau of Amba Aradam where Ras
Mulugueta faced Badoglio and awaited the Italian attack.

On Sunday 9 February Badoglio called forward the journalists

from Asmara to Makalle and held a confident, almost boastful
press conference. On Monday 10 February four divisions began
moving forward before dawn. Badoglio’s plan was simple
enough; not to attack Amba Aradam frontally, an impossible
task, but to carry out a double encircling movement. Two
Blackshirt divisions were to squeeze Amba Aradam in the centre,
occupying Ras Mulugueta’s attention, while two regular divi-
sions were to sweep round in a wider encircling movement and
pinch the mountain off at its rear, meeting at Antalo. Thus Ras
Mulugueta and his whole army would be trapped.
Into the preparation of the battle Badoglio had poured all his
experience as a commander in the Great War. This time no one
could accuse him of failing to use his guns. For weeks his 280
cannon had shelled the amba from Makalle; 170 aeroplanes had
bombed it again and again. The barrage and the bombing reached
a climax as the attack began. Carried to their starting point by
hundreds oflorries along specially prepared roads, First Corps,
Santini’s Sabauda, and the ‘23rd January’ moved forward on the
Italian left and Third Corps, the Sila and the ‘23rd March’, on the
right. On the roth they crossed the Tug Gabat. The next day,
under torrential rain, they advanced without meeting opposi-
tion. It was not till the third day, Wednesday 12 February, that
the Blackshirts of ‘3rd January’ were pinned down on the side of
Enda Gabor. There they lost 47 men killed, not a high figure, but
Badoglio mistrusted the Blackshirts after the near disaster at the
Warieu Pass. He quickly pulled them out and replaced them with
100 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

the best of his reserve divisions, the Valpusteria Alpini. On both

flanks the Italian encircling movement was well under way. It
was at this moment that the army of Wollega intervened.
On the Tuesday the Bitwoded Makonnen from the foot of
Amba Alagi at Enda Medhane Alem had seen the bombing and
the shelling that meant an Italian advance was in progress. He got
through to Ras Mulugueta by cable, and was ordered to remain at
Amba Alagi and prepare its defences. Ras Kebbede had even
before this appealed to the Bitwoded Makonnen to draw up his
army alongside his own on the heights of Amba Alagi. In Ras
Kebbede’s opinion Amba Aradam was doomed.
But the Bitwoded Makonnen had, as he reminded his chiefs,
been specifically ordered by the Emperor to support Ras Mulu-
gueta. ‘How then shall we meet the Emperor’, he asked, ‘offering
him only bad news when we ourselves have not even tasted the
bitterness of battle?’ In any case, ignoring Ras Kebbede’s advice
and Ras Mulugueta’s orders, he led the men of Wollega forward
and after a long night’s march reached the plain of Mahera behind
Amba Aradam next day.
For the last time he exchanged messages with Ras Mulugueta.
He proposed that Ras Mulugueta should withdraw before the net
had closed. Ras Mulugueta flatly rejected the idea. Adding that
Amba Aradam was about to be outflanked from the east he gave
strange but laconic instructions: ‘Fight if you want to—where
and when you like.’
That night the Bitwoded Makonnen left the bulk of his army
on the Mahera plain and moved off to the east with a small picked
force, to halt the encircling left claw of the Sabauda division. It
was a ten-mile march across craggy ground swept in parts by
Italian searchlights. The objective was a group’ of Italian
machine-gun positions set up the afternoon before and sweeping
the plains in front. In the half-light before dawn the Ethiopians
crept down a long ravine past the deserted stone huts of the
village of Adi Akeite. A dog barked. The Bitwoded Makonnen
divided his men into three parties, himself to lead the centre.
Fitaurari Gete, his veteran commander protested: ‘Are not the
professional soldiers to lead?’ Makonnen lost patience and raged
at him, accusing him oflack of confidence in his leadership. ‘I
have lived my life under your roof and served your father’,
replied the Fitaurari, ‘and I will follow you now and you will see
that I shall fall before you.’
 THE BATTLES IN THE NORTH IOI

As they slipped up through the candelabra trees the alarm was

given; and the desperate assault began. By 10 a.m. the Wollegas
had captured all the advanced machine-gun positions but half
their force were killed or wounded, exposed on a stony ridge to
the Italian guns behind and the bombers which the Italians now
called up. The Bitwoded Makonnen Demissie had been hit in the
first assault, machine-gunned from the side through the hips. His
men got him off the ridge and carried him back mortally
wounded to the cave on the plains of Mahera where his army lay.
He lived for another night, and died in the cave in the morning of
14 February. His chiefs kept his death a secret. Their one aim now
was to get his body back to his own part of the country and bury
it there. It was a matter of honour. But at the same time his death
had to be concealed.
Major Burgoyne was still with the Wollega army. That even-
ing the chiefs called him to the cave and with one assistant he
performed possibly the most macabre operation that an amateur
surgeon has ever been called upon to do. The body of the
Bitwoded Makonnen was carved in two and sealed in a pair of
war-drums.
Friday night was a night of violent rainstorms and winds. The
Wollega army, believing its chief to be wounded but alive,
followed the closely-guarded Negarits back to the foothills of
Amba Alagi. There they were met by Ras Kebbede who had
heard the news of Makonnen’s death and had had a grave dug for
him. ‘I told him so’, he said gazing at the war-drums. But the
chiefs of Wollega would not use his grave.
For Badoglio this had been one of‘two brief counter-attacks’
which had held up the final assault he was now preparing. On
Saturday, 15 February, the mists surrounding the mountain
cleared by 10 a.m. and the four Italian divisions pressed forward
to close their pincer. It was a day offierce and desperate hand-to-
hand struggle. But Ras Mulugueta’s men were demoralized by
weeks ofinactivity, of being hit without being able to hit back,
cooped up in caves and ravines, bombed and gassed and shelled,
barely daring to move in the hours of daylight. Casualties had
been increasing from day to day, the small medical unit under a
Pole, Dr. Belau, had become completely swamped. But even
though the Wollega army had retreated, the Sabauda and the Sila
failed to join up at Antalo that day. In the twilight Ras Mulu-
gueta, his Cuban machine-gunner Del Valle, and his staff slipped

/
102 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

out through the gap. All around the remnants of the Army ofthe
Centre died in caves or desperately tried to escape. The Alpini
scaled the sheer eastern flank of the mountain; but it was the
Blackshirts of the ‘23rd March’ who were allowed the credit of
being the first to hoist the Italian flag in the centre of Amba
Aradam. This took place to the accompaniment of the accepted
Fascist cry of their enthusiastic commander, Filiberto Duke of
Pistoia: ‘Per il Re, per il Duce, eja eja eja alala!’
It had been the biggest colonial battle ever fought, and it was
hardly Ras Mulugueta’s fault if his mountain stronghold fell so
comparatively easily. It was not the sort of battle for which the
Ethiopians had been prepared, and they can hardly be blamed for
failing to imagine the effects ofa blitz that lay totally outside their
experience. If Ras Mulugueta had withdrawn he would have left
the armies of the Tembien exposed. To advance with his ten guns
against the massed batteries and divisions that for weeks had been
fortifying the perimeter of Makalle would have been suicidal. Yet
even a suicidal attack would have been more in the spirit of the
Ethiopian fighters than a passive, demoralizing, defensive stance.
Ras Mulugueta missed his chance ofattacking three weeks earlier
when the battle in the Tembien was in the balance. Even so, and
all allowances made, it was a pitiful defence. Badoglio’s troops
“advanced like Baratieri’s at Adowa in four separate and discon-
nected columns. If Ras Mulugueta had concentrated on halting
and if possible destroying one of the enemy’s divisions, rather
than feebly opposing all four, the Italian offensive must have been
thrown into confusion and Badoglio’s nerves, always taut, might
have broken. But perhaps by the time the attack developed Ras
Mulugueta knew in his heart of hearts that defeat was inevitable.
His last orders to the Bitwoded Makonnen Demissie were orders
that only a totally incompetent or an utterly despairing military
leader could have given.
It is said that the Italians found 8,000 bodies on Amba Aradam.
They burnt the bodies and for months afterwards the plains
around smelt of charred flesh.
At 2 a.m. on the Sunday morning Ras Mulugueta and the
people with him, only 50 armed men in all, reached the little
village of Enda Medane Alem at the foot of Amba Alagi.
The narrow pass back over Amba Alagi, bombed and strafed,
became a death-trap for the survivors of the Mahel Safari, raided
according to Badoglio’s account $46 times in the days that
 THE BATTLES IN THE NORTH 103

followed. For four days Ras Mulugueta tried vainly to halt and
rally the fugitives. On the night of Wednesday the 19th he sent
word to Ras Kebbede over on the north-east spur of Gerak Sadek
telling him that the position was being abandoned. Yet Amba
Alagi was a far stronger position than Amba Aradam and more
difficult to bypass or encircle. Ras Kebbede protested: his army
was still untried, and to abandon Amba Alagi was to throw the
road to Dessie open. But he, unlike so many of the other
commanders, obeyed orders.
It took many days for Ras Mulugueta, Ras Kebbede, and the
rearguard of the army of Wollega to straggle back to Mai Ceu.
All around the Raya Galla were in revolt; and when on the 24th
Ras Mulugueta and his men crossed the hump ofthe Dubai pass,
they saw in front of them a town in flames, mercilessly bombed,
its inhabitants fleeing to the mountains.
The Rases camped in the plain. Next day the shiftas of the Raya
Galla attacked Aberra Tedla’s compound inside what remained
of Mai Ceu and set his residence on fire. It was then that Ras
Kebbede’s men intervened, sending swift parties up and driving
the raiders off. They had won only a brief pause, however; news
came that the shiftas were massing on the road to Quoram to cut
them off. But the news was also that the Emperor was now
moving up with his army from Dessie. The last and best-trained
of the Empire’s armies was moving to the North.
On the morning ofthe 27th loose and barely organized groups
left Mai Ceu retreating south across the plateau of Lake Ashangi;
the wounded on muleback and litters with Major Burgoyne, the
Wollega rearguard still escorting the body of the Bitwoded
Makonnen. Ras Mulugueta and his red-turbanned drummers
and his son Shallaka Tadessa Mulugueta followed, a little ahead
of the scattered army of Ras Kebbede. In the first bombing raids
one of the two mules carrying the Wollega negarits was hit
directly, and the war-drum shattered. The Wollegas buried the
remnants hastily by the side of the road under an acacia tree, and
dragged the surviving mule up to the nearby church of St.
George. There the second negarit was buried by the priests with
Christian funeral rites, to the roll of RasMulugueta’s war-drums.
It was past ten o’clock in the morning. Ras Mulugueta hurried
on with the vanguard through the continual crackle ofshifta rifle
fire. Three Capronis came over as Tadessa Mulugueta and Major
Burgoyne reached the ford of Ahayo. A bomb fell between them.

/
104 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

It killed them both instantly. As the planes circled and returned,

machine-gunning the bodies, a servant ran to tell Ras Mulugueta
of his son’s death. He hurried back through the shiftas’ fire.
Hordes of Raya Galla seized their chance of revenge on the hated
Shoans, poured out of the woods, and in the confusion engaged
Ras Kebbede’s army. Probably they never realized, when an old
lion-maned warrior fell straddling his son’s body, that they had
just succeeded in killing Ras Mulugueta, Minister of War,
Imperial Fitaurari and Commander of the Army of the Centre.

On the morning Ras Mulugueta died, Badoglio launched his

second attack—in the Tembien. Rumours of the great battle at
Amba Aradam had already spread, and were confirmed, first by
Dejaz Aberra Kassa (who had headed for the Tembien on
abandoning Mai Ceu) and then by Italian leaflets dropped from
the air. The Bitwoded Makonnen’s death was more ofa blow to
the morale of the Ethiopians than the defeat of Ras Mulugueta,
unpopular with all for his severity. It was a demoralized and
much reduced army that the Italians had to attack. There were
50,000 armed men or less facing the Italians instead of the 150,000
that had attacked them a month before. It was always difficult to
keep any large Ethiopian army in the field. After a month or two
the levies, badly fed and inactive, would start to trickle back to
their homes; and though a smaller army was certainly more
manageable and more easily supplied, the sight of their comrades
leaving was bound to demoralize those who remained behind.
Ras Kassa knew that an Italian attack was imminent and that a
large force ofItalians was moving down the Gheva valley to cut
him off from the rear.' But his was a strong defensive position;
the mountains were almost impregnable. Ras Kassa ordered his
men to prepare torches to use against the enemy’s tanks as Ras
Imru had done, and waited almost with confidence for the Italians
to break themselves on the lower slopes of the mountains, as they
had done before. What Ras Kassa had failed to allow for was
Italian mountaineering skill. To climb the sheer cliffs of the
Golden Mountain, Worq Amba, would have been an exploit
even by daylight. To climb it by night and when it was occupied
by the enemy was a heroic feat.
' This was the Third Corps, the Sila and the ‘23rd March’, which Badoglio had
swung round from Amba Alagi. Pirzio Biroli’s Eritrean Corps in full strength was to
put in the main attack from the Warieu Pass.
 THE BATTLES IN THE NORTH 10§

At I.a.m. on 27 February sixty men reached the northern foot

of the mountain. Each carried besides his climbing kit and two
days’ supplies a musket, 120 cartridges, and 5 hand grenades; the
group also had three light-machine-guns. Over half were Black-
shirts of the 114th Legion; twenty-five were askaris of the 12th
native battalion; all volunteers. Their commander was a twenty-
six-year-old Alpini lieutenant, Tito Polo. For an hour and a half
their climb was held up as they filed, one by one and silently, past
an advanced enemy outpost. The sentries were asleep and slept
on, undisturbed. It was not till 5 o’clock, dangerously near first
light, that the climbers were under the peak. Twelve men were
sent to the right, twelve to the left. An hour later, just before
dawn, they crept out on to the top of the mountain guarded by
thirty sleeping Ethiopians. Stealthily, two machine-guns with
their crews were roped up, then another group ofeight with their
grenades ready. No watcher gave the alarm, no sleeper stirred.
An order, shots, grenades—it was all over in a few minutes. The
Italians held the top of the mountain.
Or rather they held the northern peak. Another group that
tried to scale the southern peak were pinned down half-way. At
dawn Pirzio-Biroli’s battalions advanced from the Warieu Pass to
encircle Worg Amba, and to attack Debra Hansa on the other side
of the Pass. Fighting raged all day in the north. Fourteen times the
Ethiopians counter-attacked up the steep slopes against the little
band ofItalians and Eritreans on the peak. But the machine-guns
beat them back time and again. ‘Come, come’, shouted the
Eritreans ironically. ‘We too are the slaves of Menelik!’ In the late
afternoon Dejaz Beiene Abba Seqsib leading the last attack was
killed. From Debra Hansa, Dejaz Mangasha Yilma led an attack
against the Pass. His army, at first successful, was cut in two, and
Mangasha Yilma only escaped by playing dead.
When night fell, Fitaurari Zaudi Abba Korra still held the
southern peak of Debra Amba; while at Debra Hansa the men of
Kambata under Dejaz Mashasha Wolde had driven back the
Eritreans and were convinced that victory would be theirs on the
morrow. But by noon the next day the Italian guns were
hammering the southern peak, the Italian bombers were out, and
six battalions were encircling Aberra Kassa on Debra Amba from
the west. Dejaz Mashasha Wolde had appealed for help to Aberra
Kassa, and when no help came, he indignantly retreated. There
was general confusion, and to add to it reports of the Italians
106 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

closing in from the south. Ras Seyum was sent back to stop them
in the Gheva valley; Ras Kassa reinforced his son on Debra
Amba. At dusk there was firing in Abbi Addi itself, and the
Europeans with Ras Kassa were told to leave for Quoram. By the
early afternoon ofthe 28th another Italian victory was in the air,
and resistance only sporadic. Once again, however, the Italians
failed to close the trap. Ras Kassa and his two sons, with Ras
Seyum, and an advance guard under Dejaz Mashasha Wolde and
Fitaurari Zaudi Abba Korra crossed the Gheva. Mangasha Yilma
went a different way. What was left of the armies of Wag, Lasta,
and Yeggiu had made their own escape already.
Dejaz Haile Kebbede had led their breakthrough. There was a
running night battle, during which the men of Wag suffered the
worst casualties they had known against the advance guard ofthe
Third Corps in the valley of the Gheva. Flares dropped by Italian
planes lit up the whole area. For the Ethiopians it was as if the
night had turned to day.
Bombed all the way, the relics of the armies reassembled at
Socota, where the aged Wagshum Kebbede supplied them all
with food and reinforced them with fresh troops. They had
thought Ras Mulugueta would hold Amba Alagi, but the rumour
was that Amba Alagi too had been abandoned. They waited to
learn where the Emperor was and what were his plans and his
commands. And while they were there Dejaz Mashasha Wolde of
Kambata died of his wounds.

On the evening of the fortieth anniversary of the battle of

Adowa, 1 March, the Emperor reached Quoram by mule,
having left his car at the foot of the Tigrean highlands. There he
met Ras Kebbede and Captain del Valle and heard ofthe deaths of
Ras Mulugueta, of Mulugueta’s son, and of Major Burgoyne. In
Addis Ababa the Abuna Cyrillos ordered a fast of eight days, a
strict fast, bread and water, no meat, no eggs, no tej, to be
observed by men and women alike. And on the Italian side
Badoglio had shifted his headquarters to a tent at Adi Quala from
which he was directing against Ras Imru the third phase of his
‘battle of annihilation.’

Ras Imru had known very little of what was going on at the main
battlefields to his west. Messages and orders via the cable office at
Gondar, or the telephone post at Dabat, took five to eleven days
 THE BATTLES IN THE NORTH 107
to reach him; and when they did, they were often out of date. In
early February a message from Dessie had arrived announcing
a planned Italian advance on Gondar—‘at that time quite
premature’, as Badoglio put it—and ordering Ras Imru to remain
on the defensive. Ras Imru had a marked tendency to obey orders
and so he confined himselfto sending out raiding parties behind
the Italian lines and building up his defences around Amba
Coletza on the Shire range.
Badoglio was confident of success not only because some
reports put Ras Imru’s total strength at only 25,000 men, ‘in a
poor moral and material state’, but also because ofthe ‘attitude of
Dejaz Ayalew Birru who had shown in various ways that he was
not averse to submitting to our rule.’ Nevertheless Ras Imru had
been Italy’s most dangerous opponent, the only Ethiopian com-
mander who had attempted to manceuvre, to cut communica-
tions, to threaten a counter-invasion, and to raise revolts in the
Italian rear. Badoglio was taking no risks. Three reinforced
divisions of Maravigna’s Second Corps were to move west from
their Adowa-Axum base. At the same time two divisions of
Babbini’s Fourth Corps would cross the Mareb from the north
and cut off the Ethiopians in the rear.
Second Corps was only sixteen miles from Ras Imru’s position
by road and track. Fourth Corps was fifty miles away and had a
waterless and trackless desert to cross. So Babbini’s two divisions
from the North did not arrive until the day the battle was over.
But even without their help the three divisions of Second Corps
outnumbered and outgunned Ras Imru, already confused by
long and contradictory orders arriving from the Emperor. What
was surprising was not that the Italians won, it was that they met
with any opposition at all.
On 29 February Maravigna’s Corps advanced in an enor-
mously long column that moved forward on both sides of the
motor road: first the ‘April 21st’, then the Gavinana, the Gran
Sasso, plus the Eritrean Brigade and the camel corps. It was more
of aprocession than a military advance. No scouts were thrown
out and no special precautions taken. At a fork in the road the
Blackshirt division branched off towards its objective, the
heights of Acab Saat, and the Gavinana marched straight on
towards Selaclaca.
The advance guard of the Gavinana—two battalions and an
artillery group—was ambushed and almost surrounded by 6,000
108 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
of Ras Imru’s men who had crept up over broken ground. Most
of the rest of the Division was sent up to the rescue, and
Maravigna, in great alarm, halted the whole advance and stood
on the defensive all that night and the following day, much to
Badoglio’s disgust.
By 2 March Maravigna had rearranged his line in a more
military fashion. His three divisions advanced in parallel col-
umns, the ‘April 21st’ on the left, the Gavinana in the centre, and
the Gran Sasso on the right. The guns and bombers had given the
Ethiopian positions a pounding in the morning. But, instead of
sitting under the enemy fire, Ras Imru, reinforced on the right by
4,000 of Dejaz Ayalew’s men led by Fitaurari Teshagger and his
own son Fitaurari Zaudi, ordered his men out to the attack. The
fiercest fighting took place in the early afternoon, as both sides
moved forward. Often the Italian guns had to fire at point-blank
range. On their right the Gran Sasso was in difficulties, and had to
be rallied by the Duke of Bergamo.
As Badoglio put it: ‘the Corps again failed to reach its assigned
objectives and in the evening after slow progress it consolidated
its position on the heights . . . retaining its original formation.’
In fact this was the bitterest day’s fighting the Italians ever had
to face in the North. In the morning in ferocious hand-to-hand
fighting the Ethiopians had driven the Italians back several
hundred yards. But in the afternoon Fitaurari Zaudi Ayalew was
caught by machine-gun fire as he led half his father’s forces across
to help the wavering troops of Ras Imru and lost 1,000 men. Ras
Imru’s personal guard fought desperately. But by dusk over half
had been killed and the cave from which Ayalew and Imru were
together directing the afternoon’s battle had been spotted and
bombed. By evening the Ethiopians, except for the remnants of
Ras Imru’s personal guard, had only 20 rounds left per man.
Their casualties had been heavy, and their fierce counter-attacks
had failed. Maravigna’s Corps had fired 10 million cartridges and
50,000 shells—‘as much’, noted Steer, ‘as the whole Ethiopian
northern line possessed at the beginning of the war.’
Next morning when the three Italian divisions advanced again,
they found an ‘absolute void’ in front of them. The Ethiopians
had disengaged during the night, and were retreating to the
Takazze—a manceuvre that might have succeeded, as it deserved
to succeed, had it not been for the Italian command ofthe skies. In
Badoglio’s words ‘under the constant onslaught ofour aircraft it
 THE BATTLES IN THE NORTH 109g

very quickly turned into a disorderly riot’. The fords of the

Takazze were difficult, steep, and—what should normally have
given Ras Imru’s men shelter and cover—thickly wooded. But
‘in addition to the usual effective bombing and machine-gun fire
small incendiary bombs had been used to set on fire the whole
region about the fords, rendering utterly tragic the plight of the
fleeing enemy.’

Badoglio immediately set about exploiting his success. Within

days he had two columns organized and heading for the ancient
capital of the Empire, the city of Gondar. The III Brigade of
Eritreans moved straight down across the Takazze fords to mop
up what was left of Ras Imru’s forces. In fact these had virtually
disintegrated. Ras Imru himself had barely managed to hold
together a few thousand men in his hasty retreat, and south ofthe
Takazze the whole countryside was full of demoralized fugitives
from Ras Kassa’s armies in the Tembien.
As the Eritrean Brigade followed the main caravan route into
Beghemder, a motorized column was sent out from Asmara way
over to their right along the safer, because emptier, edges ofthe
frontier with the Sudan. Its commander Achille Starace, Sec-
retary-General of the Fascist Party, was not a man to miss an
occasion for bombast. When the column of433 lorries and 3,400
men reached Om Ager, just before crossing from Italian territory
and ‘invading’ Ethiopia, their commander halted and harangued
his men. ‘We area poor nation,’ cried Starace. “That is good, for it
keeps our muscles firm and our shapes trim.’ It was Starace’s pet
theme—a fitness fanatic himself, he had Party Secretaries in all
Italian towns cycling to work and beginning the day with press-
ups. He proceeded to elaborate. ‘Rich nations eat too much, get
fat and their digestions become upset. That is what’s the matter
with most Englishmen. Moreover upset digestive systems addle
the brains. This is the only way we can explain their attitude to
us. They thought Mussolini would take off his hat and humbly
bow submission. How wrong they were!’
As the column drove cautiously down through Beghemder,
there were rumours of British troops massing at Gallabat on the
Sudanese frontier, ready to march to the protection of Gondar.
No doubt inspired by their leader, Starace’s men declared them-
selves ‘ugly and pugnacious’ and talked of shooting on sight any
British or Sudanese who might dare cross their path. None did.
TIO THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

Indeed they met with no opposition at all. Nor did the Eritrean
column. By mid-March Ras Imru had been deserted by all but his
own personal bodyguard of 300 men. He managed to telegraph a
message through from Dabat north of Gondar to Dessie just
before the Eritrean column arrived and cut the line. It read:
The greater part of the Gojjam troops have deserted and refused to fight
except in their own province. The few who remain have been corrupt-
ing even our own personal following. We have not been able to carry
out our projects. The local clans have not only deserted but have shown
little respect for their overlord Dejaz Ayalew Birru, replying to him
with rifle fire.
This last rather poignant sentence may have been Ras Imru’s
tactful way of excusing Ayalew Birru. Ras Imru had put forward
a plan to organize guerrilla warfare in Ayalew’s own moun-
tainous territory of the Simien but the Dejaz would not hear ofit,
and the plan was dropped. Far to the Ras’s rear, south of
Beghemder, Italian planes were dropping leaflets and ammuni-
tion to the rebels in Gojjam, the province of which he was still
theoretically governor. The outlook for Imru and his isolated
band of followers appeared at this juncture to be poor indeed
 CHAPTER 8

MAI CEU

Tuus by mid-March the north of Ethiopia was in Italian hands,

the enemy’s armies were disintegrating, dissidence and open
revolt were spreading, and Italian columns were moving out in
all directions.
In the centre Santini’s First Corps occupied Amba Alagi
without resistance, nine days after Ras Mulugueta had
abandoned it. From the ‘Gates of Alagi—Alagi Ber (which was
renamed ‘Passo Toselli’ almost immediately)—the Italians could
look down at Mai Ceu and across the plain of Lake Ashangi
towards the heights of Quoram where the Emperor was assemb-
ling his forces. All around and behind Quoram, down in the hot
plains below, the countryside was in open revolt. Bands ofGalla,
hundreds sometimes thousands strong,' were snapping at the
flanks of the Imperial armies, roaming like wolf-packs,
dangerous, scenting blood, loot, and ruin, barely kept at bay.
Parallel with the main Italian advance Bastico’s Third Corps
had turned south from the Gheva valley and was moving through
the northern highlands of Wag towards Socota, more slowly
because their advance was held up by the aged Shum Tembien,
Gabremedhin.
Over in the East, on the Italian left, a column had at long last
crossed the Danakil desert. On 11 March its vanguard of
irregulars after sixteen days marching across the salt-pans ofthis
sunken sea, supplied by twenty-five aircraft en route, reached the
fertile oasis of Sardo, capital of the Sultan Mohammed Yayo and
the only place of importance in the whole Danakil desert. Sardo
was only 120 miles from Dessie—technically Mohammed Yayo
owed allegiance to the Crown Prince—and only 150 miles from
the railway at Diredawa. An airfield was organized, and within

1 The Political Office had distributed over six thousand rifles to the Azebo and the
Raya bands.
id
II2 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

two weeks 12 Italian aeroplanes were at Sardo, a threat to the

Dessie~Addis Ababa road and more important still, a threat to
the railway and a first step to the linking of Badoglio’s and
Graziani’s forces.

The Emperor meanwhile remained at Quoram, with his court

officials and his Guards, Ras Kebbede’s army from Amba Alagi,
and very little else. Italian propaganda was having its effect. A
series of communiqués had to be issued from Dessie and Addis
Ababa. The first denied that the Emperor was ill or had been
wounded. The next denied that a villa was being prepared at
Djibuti and that the Emperor was getting ready to leave his
Empire, ‘which is more devoted to him than ever’. The third
denied categorically that Ras Kassa had been in contact with the
enemy. More communiqués followed, denying once again that
Haile Selassie was planning to leave, denying that direct negotia-
tions had been opened with the Italians, denying that Ras Desta
was in disgrace, even claiming that 5,000 Azebo Galla, though
bribed to revolt, had rallied to the Imperial cause. A penultimate
communiqué denied that the Crown Prince Asfa Wossen had
been wounded and taken to the capital. A final communiqué
denied the most serious report of all, that of a revolt in Wollo.
The Crown Prince had not been wounded. But there had been
if not a revolt at least a serious plot at Dessie. The ringleader
appears to have been the sixty-seven-year-old Ras Gabre Hiwot
Mikael, Governor of the district where his mother Woizero
Zennabish, widow of the Negus Mikael, still lived. Also
involved were a cousin of the Empress Menen, Dejaz Amde Alli
of Lagagora; and, curiously, one of the most respected Shoan
nobles, Dejaz Auraris, the Governor of Menz. All three had been
with Ras Mulugueta on Amba Aradam. These were all leaders of
the older generation. In the eyes of many Wollo people Ras Gabre
Hiwot was their rightful ruler, and outside the town ofDessie his
word carried more weight than that of Wollo’s official governor,
the Crown Prince. Nothing is known ofthe details or aims ofthis
plot. It seems unlikely, though, that it was pro-Italian. More
probably, there were the beginnings ofa conspiracy to depose the
Crown Prince and possibly the Emperor, or in any event to put
the direction of the war, now that Ras Mulugueta was dead, in
more soldierly hands—that is to say, in the hands of the tradi-
tional warlike nobles. As it turned out Ras Gabre Hiwot, Dejaz
 MAI CEU 113
Amde Ali, Dejaz Auraris, and another Shoan noble were arrested
and sent in chains to Addis Ababa. Almost at the same time as Ras
Imru was cabling his pessimistic message from Dabat, the
Emperor sent an equally despairing letter by runner to Ras Imru.!
‘Our army’, wrote Haile Selassie,
famous throughout Europe for its valour has lost it name, brought to
ruin by a few traitors, to this pass it is reduced.
You will certainly have heard of the brave deaths of Dejaz Mashasha
Wolde, of the Dejaz Beiene and of the Bitwoded Makonnen. Since death
is an inevitable thing, it is well to be able to die after performing such
deeds as theirs.
Those who were the first to betray us and those who afterwards
followed their example, namely the chiefs of the forces of Wollo such as
Ras Gabre Hiwot, Dejaz Amde Ali, and others also of the army ofShoa,
namely Dejaz Auraris. . . have all been arrested.
. . . For yourself if you think that with your troops and with such ofthe
local inhabitants as you can collect together you can do anything where
you are, do it. Ifon the other hand, your position is difficult and you are
convinced ofthe impossibility of fighting, having lost all hope in your
front, and if you think it better to come here and die with us, let us know
of your decision by telephone from Dabat.
From the League we have so far derived no hope or benefit.
Yet Haile Selassie’s situation was not entirely hopeless. He
under-estimated the effect his own presence would have. From
Socota the capital of Wag, Haile Kebbede at first sent only his
Fitaurari, Tafere, to join the Emperor. But when Haile Selassie
summoned him and his army as well, they went willingly,
confident because Janhoy himself was there. An entirely fresh
army came up from the south-west: the levies ofthe rich province
of Kaffa, commanded by Ras Getachew Abate. The other leaders
who had fought at Amba Aradam and the Tembien came
in—except for Admassu Birru who had retreated south-west
towards the borders of Beghemder with his men from Yeggiu.
The greatest of the surviving potentates, Ras Kassa and Ras
Seyum, reached Quoram from Socota at midday on 19 March.
The Emperor had seen neither of them since the war had begun,
and their arrival, with their troops, understandably boosted his
morale. Next day he moved up to the position of Aia on the

1 Which Ras Imru never read. The runner was intercepted by the Italians and it was
Badoglio who received the letter.
I14 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
forward slopes overlooking the plain of Lake Ashangi and in a
cavern hollowed out ofthe rock set up his advance headquarters,
facing the enemy’s positions at Mai Ceu. On the 21st he sent a
radio message, very different in tone from his despairing letter to
Ras Imru, to the Empress Menen:

Since our trust is in our Creator and in the hope of His help and as we
have decided to advance and enter the fortifications and since God is our
only help, confide this decision of ours in secret to the Abuna, to the
ministers and to the dignitaries and offer unto God your fervent prayers.

The Emperor of Ethiopia had decided to follow the millenial

tradition of his predecessors and lead his own troops into battle.
Badoglio’s wireless messengers intercepted the message. He
immediately cancelled the orders for his proposed advance, and
disposed his forces to await the Imperial attack.

It was fitting that the great battle of the war should be fought not
between subordinates but between the Commander-in-Chief of
the Italian armies and the Emperor in person. The two protagon-
ists of the armed conflict were now facing each other in the central
highlands half-way between Magdala which had seen the death
and defeat of one Emperor and Adowa which had seen the
glorious victory of another. The subordinate commanders had
made their moves, won or lost, and been swept aside. The stage
was cleared. Both the Emperor and the Marshal must have
realized that the impending battle would decide the fate of an
Empire, and neither of them, in his heart of hearts, could have
wished it otherwise.
For this decisive action Badoglio had called up his best troops;
soldiers from the northern valleys at the foot of the Alps, the
levies of Savoy loyal to the dynasty and proud of the historic
traditions of the army of Piedmont, three divisions of regular
infantry from the North of Italy, three Legions of Blackshirts,
and almost the whole of the Eritrean army, Christians and
Mohammedans mixed, ready to fight as they had for fifty years
past for the flag of Italy against the central Empire. With the
Marshal were two senior generals, Pirzio-Biroli of the Eritrean
Corps and Santini of the First; six divisional commanders; and
under them many more generals commanding brigade after
brigade ofItalian troops, and battery after battery ofItalian guns,
 MAI CEU 115
many times the strength of the army that had perished under
Baratieri at Adowa.

On the Ethiopian side could be found most ofthe greatest names

of the Empire. Their fathers—Ras Makonnen, father of the
Emperor himself, Ras Mangasha father of Ras Seyum, Ras
Mangasha Atikim father of Ras Kebbede, the Liquemaquas
Abate, father of Ras Getachew—had led their armies to victory at
Adowa. As for Ras Kassa, he had himself fought at Adowa as a
boy offifteen beside his father while his grandfather defended the
western marches of Shoa against the rebel Galla. Ethiopia’s
history since Adowa had been shaped by these men and their
families. In the eyes of their followers they stood as symbols of
the Christian Empire and its independence.
With the four Rases and the Emperor and Dejaz Haile Keb-
bede, the heir to the Zagwe Dynasty and nephew of the Wag-
shum Gwangul, were nobles of the court and war-leaders of the
provinces. The Emperor had brought with him his former
Minister of War, the Imperial Fitaurari Birru Wolde Giorgis.
There were courtiers of the old type, veterans who had them-
selves like Ras Kassa fought as youngsters at Adowa, and officers
of the new army—notably Shallaka Mesfin Sileshi, himself one
day to be the most powerful man in Ethiopia after the Emperor.
There were priests and bishops and even women fighters. There
were British-trained officers, ex-King’s African Rifles, French-
trained officers from St. Cyr, and Belgian-trained officers. But
apart from the Russian Konavoloff there were very few
foreigners still with the Emperor. It was an almost purely
Ethiopian army, though the best-equipped of all, with 400
machine-guns, a battery or two of 75 pounders, six mortars and
enough Oerlikons to make the Italian pilots wary.
Above all morale was high in the Ethiopian camp because the
Emperor was with them and because they were going in to the
attack.

On the afternoon of 24 March the Emperor held a great feast, the

traditional gebir with raw meat and tej in the cavern at Aia, sitting
on an improvised throne flanked by Ras Seyum and Ras Kassa.
Konavoloff had been sent off the day before disguised as a Coptic
deacon to spy out the enemy lines, and the Emperor had spent the
morning studying the Italian camp through his binoculars. After

/
116 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

the feast there was an improvised council of war, confused and

long-lasting. The Emperor wanted to attack that night. Some of
his chiefs on the other hand were for retreating to Waldia or even
to Dessie. The debate went on for hours. Sarcasms were hurled at
those who suggested a retreat but the attack was postponed—as
Badoglio learnt from a wireless message—till Saturday the 28th
or Monday the 30th. It was unthinkable for the Ethiopians to
attack on a Sunday.
Hour after hour over the next few days the Azebo Galla
trooped into the cave at Aia, receiving—often from the
Emperor’s own hands—ten or fifteen dollars, long striped silk
shirts, or black satin capes. The hope of winning them over had
been one of the main reasons for delaying the attack. They
promised their support and were told to harry the Italian
flanks.
Tuesday 31 March was, finally, the day decided on for battle
—it was St. George’s Day. Many of the Ethiopian troops, half
believing that St. George their patron saint had fought with them
at the battle of Adowa, thought it a day of great hope and good
omen.
Badoglio knew that the enemy would attack as ferociously as
they had done at Adowa. He planned his defence accordingly.
His three best divisions manned his front line, where the passes
that led back to Mai Ceu debouched on to the plain of Lake
Ashangi. On the Italian right he placed the crack Valpusteria
Alpini; in the centre the 2nd Eritrean Division; and on the left the
ist Eritreans. Then in the second line lay three more, the Sabauda,
the Blackshirts of the ‘23rd January’ and, drawn far back to the
north to prevent an enveloping movement on the Italian left, the
Assietta.
The Italians, knowing in advance ofthe attack, had had time to
tortify their positions, put up thorn zeriba hedges, site their guns,
and bring up by pack mules all the supplies they needed from
their motor-transport base twenty hours away by mule. They
knew not only that an attack was imminent but almost certainly
when it was coming. The radio messages of the enemy were
being intercepted, and many of the Azebo Galla had come in to
obtain more dollars and better weapons from the Italians and to
warn them that the attack was planned for the Monday. Finally
on Monday evening an officer of the Guard deserted and warned
the Italians to keep their eyes well open that night.
 MAI CEU It]
At 3 a.m. on St. George’s Day the Italian front line was woken
and askaris were sent out to patrol no man’s land. At 5.45 two
Mauser shots broke the silence and two red Verey lights flared up
into the sky, as the alarm was given simultaneously on the front
of the Alpini and the 2nd Eritreans. From the slopes of Quoram
the Ethiopian guns and mortars opened fire, playing upon the
front line of the Alpini, held by the Piedmontese of the Intra
battalion, the Ligurians of the Feltre, and the Veronese of the
Pieve di Teco. The rattle of machine-guns joined in. Many Italians
were killed. A battery of Schneider 75s directed by an ex-St. Cyr
cadet, Kenyaz Chifli, was particularly effective, and the Ethio-
pian mortars wiped out all the officers of the opposing 8th
Battery. As the first Ethiopian assault went in, their artillery fire
switched towards the slopes of the eastern Mecan pass in front of
which lay the 2nd Eritrean Division. Though surprise had been
lost, the battle was, for the Ethiopians, beginning well.
It was a simple enough battle as battles go; almost a textbook
affair. Again and again that morning the Ethiopians hurled
themselves forward with ferocious courage against the static lines
of the three Italian Divisions. Again and again the Italian guns and
riflemen, well-situated and beautifully protected by the thorn
zeribas to their front, cut swathes through the advancing ranks of
the Ethiopians and drove them back. Only once did they have to
use the bayonet. The discipline of the defenders was such that
they never rashly ventured out in pursuit of the retreating enemy.
What pursuit there was was done, as always, by the Italian planes.
And all through that long long morning the rival commanders
nervously eyed the hordes of Azebo Galla gathering at Warahei
on the eastern flank ofthe battlefield, aware of their treacherous
instincts and their conflicting promises.
In the half-light before the sun rose the first wave of Ethiopians
had broken itself on the zeribas and had been driven back. The
second column, 15,000 strong, under Ras Kassa’s command,
plunged furiously for the weakest point in the Italian line.
Driving through the 3rd Gruppo ofEritreans, they nearly opened
up a fatal gap between the Alpini division on the right and the 2nd
Eritreans in the centre. By 8 a.m. however the air overhead was
filled with the sound the Ethiopians had come to dread: sixty
planes machine-gunned and bombed the rear of Ras Kassa’s
column (and of Ras Seyum’s diversionary attack on the far right
too) before flying on to strafe the Emperor’s headquarters.
118 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

After a brief pause Haile Selassie launched his third and what he
hoped would be his decisive assault. The Imperial Guard under
Ras Getachew moved forward against the already wobbly Italian
centre. This time the battle lasted a wearying three hours; passing
through the crumbling 2nd Eritreans, the Guard turned on the
comparatively fresh 1st Eritreans, was met with withering fire,
halted, was attacked by the bayonet, and then by the combined
artillery of both divisions. Finally, sullenly, they gave ground.
By midday the great assault had been beaten off, and the Guard in
their turn fell back to lick their wounds.
A long lull ensued. It was still anybody’s victory. For the
Ethiopians, though beaten back, had not been pursued, still less
routed. All three divisions in the Italian front line had been badly
mauled and were running low on ammunition.
By early afternoon the sky was overcast and intermittent rain
was falling. The attacks of the Italian planes were slackening.
Haile Selassie reinforced his columns and ordered a general
assault all along the front in a last attempt to break the Italian lines
before nightfall. This time his lion-maned chieftains and
uniformed captains moved forward together. Hand to hand
fighting raged all along the line, particularly fierce at the junction
between the two Eritrean divisions and on the far edge of the
Italian right, held by the Alpini, where the Ethiopians were
desperately trying to turn the flank.
It was at this moment that the horsemen of the Azebo Galla at
last intervened. It must have been with despair that in the
confusion of the battlefield Haile Selassie watched them moving
forward from over on his right, not—as he was surely hoping
until the very last moment—to roll up the 1st Eritreans and sweep
the whole Italian line away in confusion, but instead to fall upon
the rear of his own embattled warriors. Pursued by the Galla,
machine-gunned by the enemy, bombed from the air, the Ethio-
pians fell grimly back once again to the slopes of Quoram.

With dusk the danger of another major assault that day had
disappeared. But all that night the Italians worked feverishly to
repair their fortifications and collect munitions, fully expecting a
further attack the next day. The 1st Eritreans who had taken least
part in the battle, had only 15 cartridges per rifle, and 2 magazines
per machine-gun. The mules bringing up munitions and supplies
did not arrive till the following evening.
 MAI CEU 119
Haile Selassie, as the Italians suspected, was indeed planning to
attack again the next day. Had he done so, it might have been as
decisive a victory as Adowa. Behind the three frontline divisions
of the Italians were three more, but they were not so good and
above all not nearly so experienced. If the Italian front had
cracked, their second line might not have held in the face of
fleeing troops oftheir own side. The élan of the Ethiopian onrush
that had carried them through to victory at Adowa could have
carried them through to a second and greater victory at Mai Ceu.
Furthermore the Eritreans, their traditional opponents, had suf-
fered severely, losing almost a thousand killed that day, roughly
decimation of the line—casualties severe enough to demoralize
any army.
But the Ethiopian leaders met in council and rejected the
Emperor’s plans. Despite their courage all their assaults, even the
assault of the Guard, had failed. The Azebo Galla had betrayed
them once more and therefore the route back to the safety of Shoa
promised to be difficult and dangerous. There were many dead
and more wounded. Heavy rains were beginning to fall. Faint
counsels prevailed. .
The rains fell all next day. The Ethiopians collected their dead
and, amidst the wailing of their women and the chanting oftheir
priests, buried them on the plain of Lake Ashangi. Among the
dead were two Fitauraris and three Dejaz: Dejaz Wanderat, who
had been wounded at Adowa; the Emperor’s own nephew, Dejaz
Mangasha Yilma, son of Ras Makonnen’s eldest son; and Dejaz
Aberra Tedia, the governor of Mai Ceu.
But it was not till the following night that the Emperor finally
agreed to order a retreat.
 CHAPTER 9

ARRIG1I36

ApRIL was for the Ethiopians a month of almost unrelieved

disaster and for the Italians of almost uninterrupted success. It
could hardly have been otherwise in the North. One after the
other the Ethiopian armies had been defeated and, with the
Imperial army itself battered and withdrawing, it seemed to the
Ethiopians that only God who had so often before saved their
Empire from the invaders could save it again. Divine interven-
tion apart, the Ethiopians could count on only two assets: the
person of the Emperor, miraculously unharmed, and the Army
of the South.

On 1 April, the day after Mai Ceu, Gondar, the historic capital of
Beghemder and, until Theodore’s reign, the Imperial capital as
well, had fallen without resistance. Starace raised the Italian flag
at 10 a.m.; two hours later General Kubeddu, who had been
tactfully camping outside Gondar for almost a week, led his
Eritreans into the city. There the two columns halted. There
were rumours of Ras Imru in the east, of 40,000 men gathering at
Ifag to the south, of 8,000 with Ras Kassa at Debra Tabor, all
concentrating to advance—with British help—and recapture
Gondar.
In fact there were no concentrations, no plan, and no British
help. Ras Imru had nearly been cut off in Gondar by the Italian
advance. He had made his get-away through shifta-infested
country and was heading for Gojjam and Debra Markos. The
Italians met no resistance at all in Beghemder—all the more
extraordinary because this was the heart of the Amhara high-
lands, the traditional last bastion of the Empire, and it was only to
be expected that their advance would be contested step by step by
the local chiefs and peasants alike. There had been in Beghemder
no open revolt against the Emperor, as had happened in Gojjam,
but there was no resistance to the Italians either, and this can only
 APRIL 1936 121
be explained by the events of 1930. Then the chiefs and people of
Beghemder led by Ras Gugsa Wule had been defeated and
bombed by Haile Selassie and his Shoans; five years later Haile
Selassie and the Shoans were themselves being defeated and
bombed by the Italians. The Amhara of Beghemder had followed
their imposed rulers, Ras Kassa and his son Wondossen, to the
north. They had done their duty, dispersed or been dispersed,
seen Ras Kassa and Wondossen defeated, and themselves
returned to their homes and farms. They did not fight for the
Italians, but they would no longer fight against them.

On the night of2 April Ethiopian GHQ issued what was to be its
final war communiqué—announcing a great victory at Mai
Ceu—and the Emperor finally ordered a retreat. The retreating
columns set off before dawn the next day; the Emperor in
uniform with a pith helmet was riding a white horse. It was a fine
morning, and the retreat was, if not orderly, at least as unchaotic
as could be expected in the circumstances. The circumstances
however changed in the early morning, as the two latent threats
materialized. The Azebo Galla began harassing the army’s flanks
and the Italian planes appeared. From then on it was carnage and
confusion. Flight after flight of Capronis dropped bombs and
mustard gas on the retreating Ethiopians: 159 planes flew out, of
which only one was shot down, though 28 were damaged. All
that day and the following day the pounding from the air
continued as the armies attempted to cross the Golgola plain. The
rivers were full of corpses. The rearguard commanded by Ras
Getachew was savagely attacked by the Azebo Galla. In those
two nightmarish days the Imperial army lost more men than had
died at the battle of Mai Ceu itself. By the evening of the 4th the
Emperor had decided in near desperation that it was impossible
to continue the retreat. The columns turned wearily and clam-
bered back up to Quoram. There in the comparative safety ofthe
highlands they dispersed, heading west across country, moving
only by night, all semblance of order or organization lost.
Men made for their own lands. Haile Kebbede, badly
wounded by a bullet in the neck at Mai Ceu, was taken back
towards Wag; not however to Socota which had been occupied a
week earlier by Bastico’s Third Corps. Wondossen Kassa headed
not to his governorate at Debra Tabor in Beghemder but to
Lasta, south of Wag, his grandfather’s country, where the
122 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

inhabitants were both warlike and loyal to the Shoan Emperor.

Aberra Kassa his brother made for the Kassa fief of Salale in
northern Shoa. Ras Seyum, now aged nearly 50, was ordered by
the Emperor to go north and wage guerrilla warfare in Tigre; Ras
Kebbede went back to Ifrata probably with similar orders—
orders Haile Selassie must have known were almost impossible
to carry out. Inconsistent, too—for the Emperor, despite his
early insistence on the merits of guerrilla warfare for others, had
himself in the end fought the traditional large-scale battle for
which all Ethiopians were physically and above all mentally
trained. Ras Kassa and Ras Getachew with the remnants of their
forces and of the Guard accompanied Haile Selassie as he moved
off, away from the snarling Azebo Galla of the plains into the
friendly highlands of Wag and Lasta.
Three days later a decree for general mobilization was issued in
the capital. All able-bodied men were to rally, with or without
arms, all citizens were immediately to report suspicious activities
to the authorities, and so forth—the last pathetic symptoms of
imminent collapse in any regime. More to the point, the very last
army was summoned from the south-west, the levies of Wol-
lega-Saio led by the governor of that province Dejaz Mangasha
Wube, to defend the capital. Captain Tamm and his two remain-
ing co-officers started planning to use the cadets and their
‘brigade’; and Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat to collect arms.
On the oth the Eritrean Corps moved from the battlefield at
Mai Ceu, at first encountering ‘slight remnants of resistance’ but
soon ‘amidst displays of jubilation and homage on the part ofthe
local inhabitants’—in fact, though Badoglio neglects to mention
it, the Azebo Galla. But even past the dusty plains and into the
Wollo highlands there was no resistance. As cavalry patrols of the
advance guard ofPirzio-Biroli’s corps entered Dessie, the Crown
Prince and his entourage, Wodajo Ali, his tutor and the real
governor of Wollo, Fikremariam the commander of the Guard
and of the Shoan garrison, left without a fight. ‘On great strips of
cloth stretched across the decorated streets of the town’, noted
Badoglio, ‘the population had written in the local language “‘The
Hawk has flown’”’.’
Where was the Emperor meanwhile? The answer strikes the
outsider strangely. The Emperor had not been reorganizing his
army or falling back hastily to the capital or contacting the
Powers ina last, desperate, appeal for aid. The Emperor had been
 APRIL 1936 £23
at Lalibela praying. He had lost a battle and almost lost an
Empire, so he made a pilgrimage. The record ofthose three days
belonged to him and his thoughts alone; Badoglio intercepted no
messages, earthly or celestial. He may not even have known at
the time where his opponent was; and when, a year or two later,
he published his own account he made no comment either as a
general or as a Christian upon Haile Selassie’s ‘lost days’. And yet
it would be interesting to know ifthe Italians were impressed by a
gesture that they must in their bones have understood, though
one which they would no longer have imitated.
The famous rock churches of Lalibela had themselves been
constructed by the Zagwe kings as a fortress. It must have
crossed Haile Selassie’s mind that it would be fitting for an
Emperor to die there. If it did, it was a passing thought. He, his
Rases, and his escort after three days of prayer headed south-east
towards Dessie, only to find as they neared the town that it,
together with the province of Wollo, had been abandoned. Shoa —
now lay open to the invaders.

Rumours of the fall of Dessie had reached Addis Ababa on 16

April. The Emperor’s whereabouts were unknown except to a
few, and there was an atmosphere of impending catastrophe.
From Dessie a road of sorts—the ‘Imperial Highway’—led to
Addis Ababa, and between Dessie and Addis Ababa there were
no organized defences, virtually no troops, no real reason in fact
why the Italians should not drive straight down the road into the
capital.
Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat, the governor of Addis Ababa,
did his best. He hired 70 men to spread contradictory and
optimistic rumours in the bars and tej beits, and a young Canadian
to set up a training camp on his own land at Sabata west of Addis
Ababa where a few Shoans were instructed in the elements of
guerrilla warfare. He formed a Patriotic Association and gathered
800 volunteers in St. George’s Cathedral to swear that they
would never betray their country. He assured the foreign embas-
sies that they would be defended. But the diplomats, aware both
of his patriotic xenophobia and ofthe difficulties of ensuring that
such a promise be kept, strengthened the defences of their
enclaves and started warning their nationals to be ready to leave
their homes and move bag and baggage into the safety of the
embassy compounds.
124 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
The Belgian officers insisted upon leaving for Djibuti. They
were mercenaries, unprotected by their government, and it is
possible that the Italians might have been hard, indeed savage,
with any who fell into their hands. The three remaining Swedish
officers, however, were still officers in their country’s regular
armed forces, and felt no such fears for their own personal safety
if captured. Captain Tamm’s immediate reaction therefore was
to gather his cadets together and attempt to defend the capital.
The cadets responded enthusiastically. So it came about that
the last Ethiopian ‘army’ to move out to the north to stem the
rolling Italian advance was a group of half-trained teenagers
advised and encouraged by three barely more experienced
Swedish officers.
How and where was the enemy advance to be stemmed? 116
cadets were not by themselves a force sufficient for the defence of
more than the school in which they were being trained, and in
any case Addis Ababa, lying at the foot of the mountains of
Entotto, was not a city that could ever be defended in itself. But
as the road snaked between Dessie and Addis Ababa, it rose at one
point to a pass even higher than that of Amba Alagi. It was here at
the Pass of Ad Termaber that Tamm decided to stage his
Thermopylae.
By this time Tamm did not merely have his cadets to count on.
Months before, with the Emperor’s approval, he had set about
forming a brigade, and by mid-March the Brigade was ready to
move. It consisted of 870 NCOs, 4,100 men, 117 riding mules,
and 1,298 pack mules. The numbers were impressive, but the
troops were ofpoor quality, the last of the levies, old men ofsixty
who had been at Adowa and boys of fifteen, enthusiastic but
already deserting through disappointment at not having been
immediately sent to the front.
Over this ragged half-armed and half-trained band the young
cadets reigned with intoxicating titles: Kifle Nasibu, Colonel and
Brigade Commander, Negga Haile Selassie, Chief of Staff and
Second in Command, and as Battalion commanders two cadets
later to become famous, Essayas Gabre Selassie and Mulugueta
Bulli, one of the few Galla officers (and therefore invaluable, as a
third of the troops were Gallinya-speaking peasants with whom
the cadets, their officers, could communicate only by gesture).
The two machine-gun companies—which had only 30 machine-
guns—were commanded by Abebe Tafari and Assefa Araya.
 APRIL 1936 125
There were six cannon, without shells, and rifles for only 2,000
men.
On 17 April Tamm went to the Great Ghebbi and berated the
assembled Ministers for having refused to listen to his continual
pleas for proper equipment for his brigade. ‘It was with a feeling
of bitter satisfaction that I told them what I thought.’ Now—at
once—they needed mules, ammunition, uniforms, and money
—no more promises from Makonnen Haptewold, but immedi-
ate proof of goodwill. Tamm was told that the Tsehafe Taezaz
(Minister of the Pen) Haile was already at the Pass with 300 men,
and the veteran Dejaz Metafaria covering a track to the west with
another 1,000. He left the Great Ghebbi with written confirma-
tion of the promises made. At the Oletta school when Tamm
reported the good news, the soldiers and cadets danced with joy.
At dusk on 19 April the Brigade Staff, Kifle Nasibu, Negga
Haile Selassie, one rifle company, and Assefa’s machine-gun
company were ready to depart. Twenty lorries, machine guns,
and money had been promised. By I a.m. sixteen lorries and the
machine-guns had arrived; as the journey could only be made by
night for fear ofItalian planes it was late. Tamm took his convoy
into the capital, routed out Makonnen Haptewold and demanded
the money within an hour. Within an hour, and for once he had
it\—a sign that even the Ministers in the capital realized how
dangerous the situation was. The 30,000 dollars weighed 840
kilos. When Tamm got back to his convoy, he was met by a very
upset young Chief of Staff. “Two lorries have escaped,’ said
Negga. ‘Which direction?’ ‘To the Front.’
For another day Tamm waited vainly for more lorries. Next
evening the convoy at last set out, in the middle of the night
passing the Crown Prince and his escort as they entered the
outskirts of Addis Ababa. At Debra Brehan 80 miles north they
stopped for petrol and met heading in the other direction Lij
Legesse Gabremariam, son of the Dejaz, with the five Italian
prisoners from Dessie and some cannon which he refused point-
blank to hand over.
They were forced to stay at Debra Brehan that day. The lorry
drivers, Hindis and therefore British subjects, went on strike: so
far and no further. None of Tamm’s cadets or their men knew

' ‘Les Ethiopiens sont des trés braves gens’, Major Dotheé had often commented,
‘mais il est malheureux qu’ils soient si difficiles 4 se separer de leur argent.’
126 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

how to drive. It was a depressing day in every way. (It was an

equally depressing day in the capital. 21 April was the 2,6g9oth
anniversary of the Founding of Rome, and an occasion for
panicking as the rumour spread that Mussolini would choose this
day to occupy Addis Ababa.) A group ofjournalists driving back
from Dessie told the cadets the Wollo army was retreating.
Tamm, Kifle, and Negga decided to halt the army and rally it.
But when during the day the fugitives drifted in, without food,
begging for bread, leaderless and refusing to return, the cadets
realized it was useless; it was no longer an army but a rabble.
Their first contact with war was the depressing vision of a
defeated army.
That night they finally found drivers and reached Ad
Termaber. The following morning Tamm and Kifle visited
Tsehafe Taezaz Haile: red-eyed, a beard, a coat, a raincoat, and
black shoes with holes cut for the small toes, a detail which
confirmed the Swede in his judgement—a bureaucrat. The posi-
tion was not as strong as Tamm had foreseen; the slopes were
steep but not impassable. The Tsehafe Taezaz had dug the road
up but, ignorant of the most elementary military rules, was
unable to cover the ‘obstacle’ he had created with fire. Below, the
local village chief, a Geraz, had refused to allow the road to be
blown, alleging that this would cause a local revolt. There was no
news of Dejaz Metaferia and his thousand men meant to be
covering the caravan track from Worra Ilu. Sending out patrols
Tamm discovered five more tracks that came up from below and
could be used to outflank his position. He cabled back to the
Crown Prince and Makonnen Haptewold informing them that
instead of barring a narrow mountain pass he would have to
cover a front of 25 miles.
Badoglio had arrived with his staff at Dessie, apparently
unaware that 75 miles to the south a Swedish officer and two
companies were preparing to bar the advance of his two Army
Corps into Addis Ababa. He was preoccupied not with opposi-
tion but with triumph and the correct way to exploit it. For
weeks he had been planning the final triumphal march. A spendid
mechanized column would sweep down from Dessie upon Addis
Ababa and occupy the capital, impressing the natives, cowing
any opposition, strong enough to occupy the capital, the suburbs
and the railway. It would be more a question ofengineering than
of military art—repairing the 250-mile Imperial Highway which
 APRIL 1936 127
Badoglio scathingly called ‘a bad cart-track’. The lorried col-
umns, escorted by a squadron of tanks, and three groups of
mechanized artillery, were already moving across the plain of
Mai Ceu towards Dessie. The colonna de ferrea volonta—the
‘column of iron will’—Badoglio christened the column; a bril-
liantly chosen phrase for the Italian press to fasten on, as indeed it
did.
But Badoglio at the same time took, though he did not
publicize, his precautions. The flanks of the ‘iron-will column’
were to be protected by two parallel columns advancing on foot:
the I (Eritrean) Brigade on one side and the detached Group of
Eritrean Battalions which had fought at Mai Ceu on the other.
As these columns gathered at Dessie and as Tamm feverishly
tried to organize the defences of Ad Termaber, Kubeddu’s III
(Eritrean) Brigade occupied the town of Bahr Dar on the
southern side of Lake Tana. They had crossed the Blue Nile and
were now in Gojjam. They met no opposition.

Meanwhile the war in the Ogaden had after a long lull flared up
again. Prodded both by Mussolini and Badoglio, Graziani at last
resumed, or prepared to resume, his advance on Harar. Dag-
ghabur had been bombed, Harar had been bombed, Jijiga, the
base of Nasibu’s operations had been honoured with a personal
and flying visit from General Ranza, the air force commander on
the southern front, and ‘reduced to a mass of ruins’.
On the ground, in the desert interspersed with wells and
fortified posts, the two masters had been moving their knights
and their pawns forward. In the centre of the chequer board
Colonel Frusci and his mechanized Arabo-Somali battalions
were based at Gorrahei, now the Italian forward airbase. There
they faced the main Ethiopian defensive position in the hills of
Sasabeneh, in front of the town of Dagghabur, Nasibu’s head-
quarters. In the upper Ogaden General Agostini, with a mixed
group of Blackshirts of the Forest Militia, Carabinieri and other
elements was concentrating forward of Walwal at Gerlogubi. In
the lower Ogaden, between the Webbi Shebelli and the Tug
Fafan, were Graziani’s most experienced troops, the Libyan
Division of General Nasi. They were concentrating around
Danane which Olol Dinke had in January occupied without
Opposition. -
The two Italian Divisions, the Peloritana and the Tevere Black-
128 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
shirts were, significantly, held back in reserve by Graziani. Less
preoccupied by politics than Badoglio, or possibly less
experienced and less astute, he had failed to realize the importance
of allowing both units at least a symbolic presence in the front
line. A general of colonial experience, he was fighting a colonial
war with the colonial troops he knew and trusted.
The Italian plan was clear; a three-pronged attack with, as the
biggest thrust, a lightning attack on the left designed to cut off the
fortifications at Sasabeneh rather than to assault them frontally.
But the Ethiopians did not wait to be surprised and attacked.
For the last time in the war by attacking first they attempted to
disrupt a proposed offensive, to break up a concentration and to
pursue a beaten army.
In the lower Ogaden Abebe Damtew with his 3,000—4,000
levies from the south, reinforced by Makonnen Endalkatchew
and his Wollegas, led the attack. With them came the wife of
Dejaz Hapte Mikael, the first arrival at Harar, governor of asmall
southern province; her husband was sick back in Jiyiga and she
was commanding his troops. The total Ethiopian strength was
about 10,000. They hada tank, plenty of ammunition brought by
mule, and their morale was high. Dejaz Abebe had always had a
better reputation as a war-leader and fighter than his brother Ras
Desta, and his men were keen to show that they could succeed
where the Sidamo army had failed.
Dejaz Abebe and Dejaz Makonnen advanced against General
Nasi on 14 April. Nasi advanced at the same time, and for three
days fighting spread over the whole area betweén Birkat and
Danane. This was the major battle of the Ogaden, the only large-
scale fighting that took place there, confused as it must be when
the ground 1s such that it is impossible to talk ofa front, only ofa
series of separate combats, and when the climate is such that
fighting has to halt while both sides seek water and rest.
In the end Nasi’s Eritreans and Olol Dinke’s Ajurans and
Hussein Ali’s Rer Naib beat the men of Wollega, and of Gemu-
Gofa, and of Kulu who had travelled so far to fight. Where men
on foot fought with men on foot, the battle swayed homerically
first to one side, then to another. But Nasi had formed two
mechanized columns on the right, and as these columns encircled
their rear Dejaz Abebe and Dejaz Makonnen pulled back. The
gamble had failed.
By the 23rd the Italians were advancing on all fronts in the
 APRIL 1936 129
South, and Graziani could congratulate himself that, despite an
unexpected incident in the lower Ogaden, his moves were being
made according to plan.
In the centre of the Ethiopian defences at Sasabeneh opposite
Frusci and his mechanized battalions the three Turks inspected
their half-prepared trenches and gun-sites, considered anxiously
the morale of the two Guards battalions that had fled from
Gorrahei six months before, thanked the stars or their Gods that
the Belgians had gone and that they could count on some stout
defenders such as Omar Samanthar and Fitaurari Baade, and
hoped for a second Dardanelles.
Graziani launched his attack on the following day, 24 April.
There was little hand-to-hand fighting in this ‘Battle of
Manceuvre’ that followed in the next four days. The very concept
of a fortified position isolated in the desert and easily outflanked
was a bluff, as the Turks must have known and the Ethiopians
soon realized. The clans south of Dagghabur led by the Ugaz
Mohammed Othman ofthe Ogaden Malinga came in to submit,
and when the Italians put in their textbook attack on Sasabeneh
itself on 28 April, there was only sporadic resistance. Dejaz
Nasibu and the other leaders were back in Harar, their levies
disintegrating, as had happened in the North, thinking only of
returning to their own lands while the leaders debated. Only
Fitaurari Malion and his 2,500 men, more or less intact, were in
position at Jijiga covering the mountain gates, the Marda Pass,
that led up from the Ogaden desert into the highlands at Harar.
Thus on 30 April, six days after the final action had been started,
Graziani’s advanced columns entered the town of Dagghabur,
‘capital’ of the Ogaden. At Dagghabur it was reported that a
platoon ofItalian soldiers rendered military honours at the grave
of Afework, an opponent whom even they had respected. The
route to Harar lay almost open.

Far over on the other side of the Empire Debra Tabor had been
occupied. On the day that the Italians put in the final attack on
Sasabeneh two battalions from Starace’s column, the ‘Mussolini’
Blackshirt Battalion and the rrth Native, put in a surprise attack
that met with no resistance at all. Ras Kassa and Dejaz Ayalew
Birru had been reported there, but Ras Kassa was many miles
away and Dejaz Ayalew Birru had left as the Italians approached.
Over in the centre however there was a leader, unfitted for
130 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

guerrilla warfare, who was already negotiating. Ras Seyum had

sent a letter to General Bastico at Socota, the substance of which
was: ‘I have done my duty. What are your terms?’ Both
diplomatically and on the ground, it had been a week of move-
ment for the Italians on the now vastly extended northern and
southern fronts.

For the last Ethiopian defenders ofthe capital, Tamm’s cadets, it

had on the other hand been a static time in a confined position. In
those six days the situation had, if anything, deteriorated on Ad
Termaber. Italian planes had flown over but had not shown much
interest. That was encouraging. But then 45 men and all the
sentinels had deserted during the night, and the Tsehafe Taezaz
Haile had left to ‘inspect’ Ankober in the rear. When would the
rest of the Brigade come? Two battalions under Lt. Bouveng had
been due to set out on foot the same night as Tamm and his
advance guard left by lorry. The rest of the Brigade had been
ordered to follow a week later under the third remaining Swedish
officer Thornburn. But there was no news. Bouveng and the two
vital battalions had not arrived, and the only way of contacting
Addis Ababa was by the telephone office at Debra Brehan, 45
miles back, the line to which functioned only intermittently.
On 28 April there were reports of two enemy columns only 40
miles away. At noon after a morning of heated but unrewarded
effort Tamm and Kifle had to admit that the line to Debra Brehan
was totally useless. In the evening there was shooting in the
foothills below. Negga Haile Selassie from his advanced post in
the valley reported that Italians in 100 lorries were making a
bridge over the little river, and away in the Awasa desert the
enemy’s camp-fires were burning.
Next morning the Italians had bridged the stream, and the
Geraz in the village down below, whom Tamm suspected of
treachery, had locked himselfin his house. Clearly an assault on
Ad Termaber was only a matter of hours away. To hold the Pass
there were only a handful of cadets, two companies badly
reduced both in numbers and morale by desertion, and two or
three hundred peasants commanded by Tsehafe Taezaz Haile’s
son, Lij Ayele. Tamm was faced with a dilemma: to stay, hoping
that Bouveng would arrive like Bliicher at Waterloo, and to
direct the defence; or to go and find out what was happening and
where and why. Both decisions were dubious. He took the more
 APRIL 1936 134
dubious of the two, he went. Abandoned by their two seniors,
the young Ethiopians, Lij Ayele and Kifle Nasibu, prepared to
face the attack.
Half-way to Debra Brehan, Tamm met the lorries of Dr.
Melly’s British Ambulance Unit and advised them to turn back.
They did so. At Debra Brehan the phone was out oforder, so that
night Tamm drove 25 miles further back still. As Bouveng later
related, his sentinels had seen his car pass at 3 a.m.—in other
words Bouveng’s two battalions were still over 80 miles from Ad
Termaber. They had left Addis Ababa four days earlier and had
therefore covered a highly creditable forty miles a day. But they
had left three days too late.
On the night of 29 April Tamm finally got through on the
phone to the Crown Prince and asked him to send out a plane to
find Bouveng’s battalions and drop orders urging them to push
forward. The plane was sent out, but the pilot dropped his orders
from 5,000 feet up, and not surprisingly Bouveng never received
them.
Even if he had, it would have been too late. Badoglio’s
mechanized column had halted at the foot of Ad Termaber, the
10,000 foot-high pass. Gallina and his veteran askaris of the III
Brigade were ordered to put in the attack. The inhabitants of the
village down below guided them up the different mule tracks. It
was quickly over; no Thermopylae, for the lorries were there
ready for the retreat, and the handful of cadets were at their first
battle, not their last. One cadet and fifty men were lost, and so the
Italians occupied, almost without resistance, the second of the
great mountain passes that stood between Asmara and Addis
Ababa. If the first, Amba Alagi, had been seriously defended or
even if Bouveng’s mere two battalions had arrived in time at the
second, the results of the invasion might perhaps have been
different; for in war a tiny event can lead to the most unexpected
results, and a won skirmish be of more importance than a lost
battle.
As they drove back toward Debra Brehan, the cadets met
Bouveng and his men marching northwards. It seems that there
were no further thoughts of resistance, that they took Bouveng
and their fellow cadets and what arms they could on the lorries
and drove back towards the capital. What became oftheir troops
is unknown. Presumably they were ordered to disperse or
dispersed of their own accord, abandoned by their young offi-
132 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

cers. At Debra Brehan a white flag was already flying, and the
inhabitants were hostile.
It was the afternoon ofthe last day of April. Tamm was already
back in the capital. After telephoning the Crown Prince, he had
decided only too humanly to drive on back. At the outskirts of
the city he met Thornburn: the main body ofthe brigade, with no
lorries and few mules, had not even departed. When he reached
the Ghebbi he learnt from Makonnen Haptewold that Kifle
Nasibu had phoned through from Debra Brehan: the Pass had
been given up, and there was nothing between the Italians and the
capital except 175-odd miles of undefended tracks. He was asked
to help defend Addis Ababa and refused immediately. He saw the
Crown Prince and said that he and his fellow Swedish officers
would have to resign forthwith.
On the way into Addis Ababa, before seeing Thornburn,
Tamm had passed another returning cortége: the cortége ofthe
Emperor.
 * CHAPTER 10

NINE DAYS IN MAY

FINDING Dessie occupied, Haile Selassie and his escort had veered
off far from the path of the invading armies to the town ofFikke
in Salale, the Kassa stronghold. The Emperor finally reached
Addis Ababa, a month exactly after the battle of Mai Ceu, to find
a city near to panic and expecting the arrival ofItalian columns
from one moment to the next. A council was held at the Ghebbi
on that, the Thursday afternoon. The Emperor, Ras Kassa, and
Ras Getachew who were still with him, and the other survivors
of Mai Ceu, were depressed and hesitant. But those who had
stayed in the capital were not prepared to abandon the struggle.
One man spoke out firmly, Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat, the
young Director-General of the City. His plan was that the
government should move to the south-west, to Gore in
Illubabor. The rains were already beginning and the Italians
would not be able to cross the Blue Nile or to move down the
tracks to the west that led through Wollega-Lekempti, governed
by the loyal Dejaz Hapte Mariam Gabre Egziabher. Addis Ababa
would fall, but Ras Imru would wage guerrilla warfare in
Gojjam, Ras Seyum in Tigre, and Wondossen Kassa and Haile
Kebbede in Wag and the provinces north of Wollo. At Gore,
moreover, the government would have a supply route open from
the neighbouring Sudan via Gambeila. Without much
enthusiasm the plan was accepted. That evening a few lorry-
loads of papers and files left the capital for the West.
Friday 1 May was a confused day. Even at this last minute
Haile Selassie had been hoping for a miraculous solution in
Europe. There is evidence that he had sent a message from Fikke
to Sir Sidney Barton asking whether Britain would propose
extensive sanctions. As the day wore on, the decision to go and
fight in the remote south-west, cut off from Europe and all
diplomatic contacts except that ofa minor British consul, came to
appear more and more hopeless. The only way to stop the Italians
134 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
was to bring pressure upon them in Europe. The idea of a direct
and dramatic appeal by the Emperor to the League of Nations
germinated.
But Haile Selassie wavered. There was a fighting spirit abroad
that morning. The Negarit was beaten at the Great Ghebbi, and an
Imperial Decree, an Awaj, was issued ordering that the capital
itself should be defended. The plan was for 5,000 men to march
north and meet the Italians: the men of Dejaz Mangasha Wube,
freshly arrived from Wollega-Saio, the last unused army, and the
men of Ras Getachew who had escorted the Emperor and their
commander back from Mai Ceu. Probably it was Blatta Takele
who inspired the Emperor to issue this decree. It was certainly
Blatta Takele who assembled his 800 sworn volunteers, armed
with new rifles which he had deliberately held back from the
northern front, on Janhoy Meda. “They are prepared to die for
you’, said Blatta Takele. “They shout like this’, replied Haile
Selassie, ‘with your machine-guns behind them but none would
fight for us. The masses would betray us.’ By this time it must
have been apparent that neither Mangasha Wube’s nor
Getachew’s men were going to obey the Awaj. The stage had
been reached when orders, even Imperial orders, were only half-
obeyed if at all.
Another council was held that afternoon at the Little Ghebbi, a
disjointed affair that went on for hours as arguments swayed back-
wards and forwards. At one point Ras Kassa took the Emperor
aside; when that happened the rest of his council knew that the
Ras would monopolize the Emperor for hours. The Empress
followed Ras Kassa, lecturing her husband on his duty to go to
Europe, while Ras Getachew and the Crown Prince stayed
joking in the room next door. At another point, Blatta Takele
marched dramatically into the Green Salon with a pistol barrel in
his mouth. ‘Janhoy’, he said, ‘are you not the son of Theodore?”!
Later Lorenzo Taezaz told Tamm of the arguments that were
put forward at that council. There was no point in continuing the
armed struggle. In any case it was too dangerous to go to the
west, for the inhabitants of Jimma were hostile. The League of
Nations was the only hope. His Majesty must go himself and the
sooner the better. For at any moment the Italians might cut the
' Implying that suicide was better than flight or capture. The Emperor Theodore
had shot himself at Magdala rather than fall into the hands of the British. A gesture
that Blatta Takele must have remembered when the day of his own death came.
 NINE DAYS IN MAY 135
railway and as the journey took the best part of two days, every
minute lost was dangerous.
It seems that there was a vote, and that the council voted 21 :31n
favour of the Emperor leaving the country. The three who voted
against: Blatta Takele, Dejaz Yigezu, and—rather surpris-
ingly—the Foreign Minister Blattengueta Herouy had all spent
the war in the capital.
That night was wet and windy. Tamm passed the evening at
Dr. Hanner’s house and, much to his relief, Bouveng finally
appeared—with Kifle and the other young officers. ‘This is the
end of Ethiopia. This is thanks to our own chiefs. Go, God bless
you. Save yourselves,’ the cadets, weeping, told the embarrassed
Swedish officers. Late that night as they went back to their hotel,
the Swedes heard shooting. It was rumoured that the Italians had
reached the railway at Awash. It was rumoured also that the
Emperor told his servants to pillage ‘this accursed town’ but
asked them to spare the Ghebbi. It does not seem very true to
character, though in moments of despair it is always difficult to
say how even great men will react. And at that moment Haile
Selassie must have been very close to despair indeed, aware that
he was about to take a decision that in the eyes of most of the
Amhara race would brand him a fugitive if not a coward. No
Emperor, however unfortunate, not even Li Yasu, had fled from
the Empire and his defeated followers to appeal to foreigners
abroad. Even the young Crown Prince had been suggesting to his
own followers—to Fikremariam, the commander of his troops,
and Gurassu Duke a captain in his bodyguard—that he should
abandon his father and go with them as a shifta to the hills.
To both these men as well as to Balambaras Abebe Aregai, the
chief of police, Blatta Takele had already handed out some ofthe
rifles that he had held back in the city. ‘If the Emperor should
flee,’ Fikremariam was reported to have said that evening to
Blatta Takele, ‘our honour demands that we should ambush the
train at Akaki and that he die at our hands.’
The Emperor did flee, and the fact that among his subjects
were armed, violent, and determined leaders such as Dejaz
Fikremariam and Blatta Takele whose emotions were as tense as
their nationalism was extreme perhaps explains the method ofhis
departure. A train was made ready that night, and the Empress
and the Imperial family and the household with the household
goods and many of the nobles and courtiers boarded it. But the
136 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
watchers in the city would have noted that the Emperor was not
on the train when it puffed out of the station an hour or two
before dawn. In fact the Emperor and his immediate suite left the
Little Ghebbi surreptitiously and rode out to join the train at its
second halt, Akaki, ten miles down the road. Haile Selassie
brought with him a ‘house-guest’ whom he must have judged
too dangerous to leave behind in Addis Ababa: Ras Hailu. So
there was no ambush at Akaki. The train chugged eastwards into
the rising sun, heading towards the Awash bridge, half-way to
Diredawa—which might for all the train’s occupants knew
already be in the hands ofthe Italians.
Blatta Kidane Mariam brought the news of the Emperor’s de-
parture to Blatta Takele and Fikremariam. They drove out hastily
to Akaki to find the news was true, and the train had already
gone. It seems that they could hardly believe that an Ethiopian
Emperor had really decided to leave his people. ‘My country’,
cried Blatta Takele, ‘there is no-one to defend your cause.’
At 8 a.m. a second train left the station for Djibuti; this was the
usual service—the only unusual thing about it being its sudden
popularity. The three Swedish officers were on it and Lorenzo
Taezaz and most of the Ministers and notables of the court. In one
or other of the two trains eighty-odd nobles or personalities,
sometimes with, sometimes without their families, were heading
for Djibuti, and exile: Ras Kassa, Ras Getachew, and even the
two who had voted against departure, Blattengueta Herouy and
Dejaz Yigezu. But it was not entirely a débandade, though it must
have seemed very like one to the crowds ofwailing relatives at the
station. The evening before, the Emperor had sent three radio
messages out: the first to Ras Imru at Debra Markos (where Ras
Imru had at long last met up with his wireless operator Gabre
Maskal and the wireless unit) appointing him Regent, the second
to the Bitwoded Wolde Tsaddik down in the south-west
nominating him as President of the Provisional Government at
Gore, and the third to the remnants of the Guard ordering them
to rally to Aberra Kassa at Fikke. The triangle in the West
—Debra Markos, Fikke, Gore—would hold: symbol of Ethio-
pia’s independence while her Emperor made a last appeal in
person to the assembled nations.

In the capital these finer considerations ofstrategy and diplomacy

were lost on those who remained. Crowds began gathering in the
 NINE DAYS IN MAY 137

streets, at first good-humoured, as if on a public holiday. But as

the morning wore on, and more and more ofthe foreign residents
were summoned to the safety of the embassy enclaves, the
remnants ofthe various armies drifted into the centre swelling the
mass of those already there and began to eye with increasing
interest the deserted houses of the lords and the ferengi and the
stores of the nervous Indian shopkeepers.
Pillaging was mild at first, but at some stage that day Blatta
Takele, the only remaining authority, suggested that the city be
fired. ‘Are you mad?’ asked Blatta Kidane Mariam. ‘The world
will say that Tafari was the only stabilising force.’ Blatta Takele
was not mad but he was—and was to remain until his death—a
man of violent emotions. He must have seen it as a ritual
purification, the burning of a city that was built by Europeans,
infected by European influence, and about to fall into the hands of
Europeans. He rode through the city with Balambaras Abebe
Aregai, setting an example. ‘From the departure of the Emperor,’
the Belgian Minister reported, ‘the town was systematically put
to the sack and one could even note at the head of the rioters the
presence of the chief of police.’
It is not easy to sack a city, particularly when the tukuls of the
ordinary inhabitants and the churches have to be respected, the
foreign embassies are guarded, and even the Indians have bar-
ricaded themselves in their stores. Mischa Babitchev flew off in
the early afternoon; he landed at Awash—not in fact yet in Italian
hands—where Tamm saw him and heard only that looting had
begun. But by evening pillaging and burning had spread. Rifles,
if possible machine-guns, were what every able-bodied Ethio-
pian was after. Negga, one of the Crown Prince’s guards, who
has left an account of those days, went into the railway station to
get arms. He was fired at—probably, though he did not realize it,
by a group ofFrench railway employees who, led by the military
attaché Colonel Guillon, were quickly converting the station into
a fort. There was fighting all around the station. As Dr. Hanner
drove his car away from it, he was fired on. So Negga went up to
the Great Ghebbi and looted the palace and found Menelik’s
sword and saw the torn Negarit; and then with his band went to
the market at Arada and took 10,000 dollars from the shop at
Kerkos and divided them among his men and had himself
photographed: he ‘was about to engage in battle when those with
me deserted me.’
138 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
Where Negga and his like failed, Blatta Takele was better
prepared. He had been planning for guerrilla warfare and had
cached machine-guns on his own land at Sabata on the western
outskirts of the city. But before he led his volunteers out he had a
violent quarrel with Abebe Aregai whom he knew to have
contacted an official at the French Embassy. He threatened to
machine-gun him unless he left immediately for Jiru in eastern
Shoa where he had his own lands and people. As the refugees
crowded into the embassies—the French Embassy underneath
Mt. Entotto that night had 2,000 of 16 nationalities, including
300 children camped in their grounds—Abebe Aregai and his ten
men left for the North-east and Blatta Takele for the West. Of the
young administrators only Blatta Kidane Mariam remained in
Addis Ababa, with Blatta Takele’s approval, to organize a
‘Youth movement’ and a ‘Women’s movement’ inside the city.

In the early hours of Sunday 3 May, the first train, that carrying
the Emperor and his family, stopped at the half-way station of
Diredawa. Here in a French enclave, already surrounded by
French officers and Senegalese troops, the Emperor was almost in
safety. There was little danger of finding the railway cut in the
Danakil desert that lay ahead, and not much more of being
bombed or strafed. By the time he reached Diredawa, however,
the Emperor had changed his mind yet again and was determined
not to leave his country. The British Consul at Harar, Chapman-
Andrews, had come down with his escort of 40 British Somali-
land policemen to meet him. The Emperor’s latest plan was to
join Ras Desta in Sidamo, presumably together with his daughter
Tenagne Worq, Ras Desta’s wife. ‘It took me some time to
dissuade him but it had to be done’, said Chapman-Andrews
afterwards. ‘The military situation was quite hopeless.’
An event that was to prove ofthe greatest importance, though
the details of exactly what occurred are obscure, happened during
that halt at Diredawa. When the second train arrived, two hours
after the Emperor’s train had left, a third train passed it heading in
the opposite direction back towards Addis Ababa. This train was
carrying Ras Hailu.
Some say that Ras Hailu simply walked out of the carriage
where he was ‘guarded’ and none dared stop him. It is possible
that he ‘escaped’ in this way. It is possible that Haile Selassie
released him as an act of clemency. It is possible too that he had
 NINE DAYS IN MAY 139
come to a secret agreement with the Emperor to return to Addis
Ababa and to act as a clandestine representative of Ethiopia with
the Italians. But it is more likely that both the British and the
French representatives, well aware of the importance and the
position of Ras Hailu, explained firmly to the Emperor that while
they were willing to accommodate the Imperial family and the
Imperial household and indeed the Imperial court they could
hardly accept Imperial prisoners, however eminent, as well.
Thus, as the Emperor left the Ethiopian scene, Ras Hailu stepped
back on to it. What his feelings were at this dramatic reversal of
his fortunes after four long years in the shadows are
unfortunately unknown, as are the feelings of the nobles in the
second train as they saw him passing them and heading back
towards the capital which they had left so hastily, and towards a
fate which—if uncertain—was likely to be more dramatic and
more attractive than the life of exile that faced them.
In Harar the news of the Emperor’s departure hastened the
final débacle. The five Dejaz gathered there left the city—three,
Nasibu, Makonnen Endalkatchew, and Amde Mikael, heading
for the safety of the coast, two—Abebe Damtew and the ailing
Hapte Mikael—back towards their far southern provinces. In the
Ogaden, Omar Samanthar fought a final rearguard action
between Dagghabur and Jiyiga, in which he was badly wounded
but escaped capture. It was enough to stop Graziani pressing
forward as he could have done—and was being urged to do.

Meanwhile, in the capital the looters and pillagers, now armed,

were beginning to attack the embassies. At midday the Turkish
Legation was assaulted, then the US Legation over on the far side
of the city. Sir Sidney Barton who had long foreseen and planned
for this situation sent out armed lorries to rescue the Turks and to
bring in the women from the US compound. He sent a note
round to Janssens at the Belgian Embassy almost next door
advising him to abandon it and come over. But the Belgians had
10 Europeans, 15 Congolese askaris, 20 Mausers and 2,000
cartridges. They decided to hold on.
All over the city the ferengi in their enclaves were being
besieged. The British Consul, Mr. Hope Gill, went out to join
Mohammed Ali and the Indians who had barricaded themselves
in at their famous stores. Three French diplomats made a sortie
down to the station four miles away where they were relieved to
140 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

find Colonel Guillon well-armed. But there was almost a disaster

at the French Embassy itself where the local zabagnas, or guards,
suddenly turned their three machine-guns on the Europeans.
Fortunately M. Bodard had prepared underground bunkers in
the cellars and after a strategic withdrawal the French re-
established order inside this perimeter. There was a disaster for
the British. The Red Cross Unit was quartered in the Menelik
School, about half a mile from the Embassy just above the
crossroads of Arat Kilo. Dr. Melly went out bravely with his
lorries collecting wounded in the city. He was shot and killed
—the second British leader of aRed Cross Unit to die in the war.
In the minds of the excited populace, intoxicated with tej,
looting, and freedom from any restraint, a white skin meant an
Italian and an Italian meant an enemy. Ludwig Weber, the
Emperor’s German pilot, wearing his Richthofen cap, took three
other armed Germans with him to the Junker on Janhoy Meda. ‘I
am the Government’, he told the guards who wanted some
authorization to let him and the plane go. There was one thought
in the mind of all the Europeans, and of most of Western Europe
as the messages from the Embassies were reported on the radio
and in the press: a paradoxical but understandable thought—how
soon could the invading enemy, the Italians, reach the capital?
Not that there was any real danger in the British enclave with
its 150 well-armed and well-trained Punjabis, or at the Japanese
and German Legations, two fortresses that supported each other.
As for the French, next day Monday 4 May, the Quai d’Orsay
ordered another company of Senegalese to be sent up from
Djibuti by rail while in the city French lorries went out to pick up
Lazarist missionaries (who refused to come in) and reported that
the Little Ghebbi was being sacked and was surrounded by
flames. At dusk the Belgian Embassy was attacked—by 150
shiftas and the Imperial Guard according to Belgian reports—but
a swift appeal to Sir Sidney Barton brought a patrol of Sikhs
round in the rear, and two more attacks later that night were
easily repulsed.
There was shooting too at the station where Dejaz Yigezu’s
men opposed Ras Hailu’s arrival.

As Ras Hailu arrived in Addis Ababa, the Emperor and his suite
were setting sail from Dyibuti. On his arrival at Dyibuti, Haile
Selassie had been received with military honours and before
 NINE DAYS IN MAY I4I
embarking on the British cruiser HMS Enterprise that was to take
him and his suite to Haifa, had seen ‘his’ foreigners for a few
moments. Tamm found him ‘a broken man’. ‘With a few words
he thanked us and wished us success and happiness.’ Before the
Enterprise sailed, Nasibu and Makonnen Endalkatchew and
Wehib Pasha arrived, after rocambolesque adventures involving
a taxi-ride all the way from British Somaliland. ‘C’est fini’, was
Nasibu’s only and uninspiring comment. But Wehib Pasha was
very proud because his men had held on till the propaganda, the
news of the Emperor’s defeat and rumours ofhis departure, had
broken their spirit. There was last-minute trouble with the
British authorities who refused to take all the Ethiopians on
board. Forty-seven of the 80-odd were eventually embarked,
though Nasibu and Makonnen Endalkatchew were allowed on
only to say farewell to their Emperor and tell the story of the
Ogaden front. On land the forlorn bystanders heard the cry of
wailing rising from the ship, and the Imperial salute for the last
time, as the Enterprise sailed away.

By then, in Addis Ababa the danger was almost over. The Italians
were nearby. There was even an attempt by Ciano, Mussolini’s
son-in-law, to land his plane on Janhoy Meda: he wisely veered
off again as he was fired on. In the evening the I (Eritrean)
Brigade, the foot column, had reached the outskirts of the city.
Lt. Toselli came to the French Embassy, presented Marshal
Badoglio’s compliments, thanked M. Bodard for saving the lives
of the five Italian prisoners and obtained from him the keys of
‘Villa Italia’, the Italian Embassy. It was almost a social occasion:
polite Europeans rescuing besieged Europeans from a savage
horde. But both must have felt a false note in the ceremony, for
the besieged Europeans had until only sixty hours before been on
the side of the savage horde.
So it was with mixed feelings of relief and a certain bitterness
that the refugees and the staff of the British Legation lined up at
the gates and fences the following afternoon when Badoglio’s
column finally made its triumphant entry into the capital. The
British compound, on the outskirts of the town, was the first
major group ofbuildings on the road along which the ‘column of
iron-will’, rather curiously preceded by a string ofjournalists’
cars, had to drive..There were 2,000 vehicles, tanks and lorries
included, and 25,000 men. The Eritreans marched by with
142 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

flowers on their rifles, brandishing the swords they had captured.

Some of the European refugees clapped politely as the first
Italians drove by but stopped when the Blackshirts in the column
began hissing and jeering at the Union Jack.
At Buckingham Palace that day, Tuesday 5 May, Baron de
Cartier presented his letters of accreditation to the new monarch,
Edward VIII. Eden came across to tell him that the Belgians
besieged in their Legation had been rescued by Sikhs. The Italian
Ambassador, close behind, explained that the delay in the arrival
of the troops had been due to the roads being blown up and the
deluge of rains. But at the US Embassy that evening Churchill
told the Baron that ‘Mr. Mussolini must be only too glad at the
present spectacle. It throws a rather vivid light on the reactions of
a people which is today turning on even the Powers which
imposed sanctions.’
Churchill’s suspicions—the the Italians had deliberately
delayed their advance in order to allow the world to see the
barbarity of the Ethiopians and appreciate at its real worth their
own famous slogan of the ‘civilizing mission’—appeared to be
confirmed indirectly by Badoglio’s comments: ‘If any doubts had
still remained’, he was to write, ‘as to the state of barbarism of
these people, the condition in which we found Addis, destroyed
and sacked by the express order of the Negus before he left, was
quite enough to dispel them.’
What with the rains, the roads and an ambush,! it is quite
possible that the Italian mechanized column could not have
reached Addis Ababa before the afternoon ofthe sth. But what is
equally certain is that the Eritrean Brigade on foot were there
before them, and perfectly capable of occupying the city centre.
Probably Badoglio did not deliberately plan the spectacle of
desolation, but he certainly did plan that the triumphant entry
into the enemy capital should be reserved for his already famous
column and that its thunder should not be stolen by the
unmechanized Eritreans who had arrived nore quickly and more
efficiently on foot.
In Rome where the occupation had not been expected till the
following day the officials and the people were caught a little off
' The rains had been heavy, the gap in the road blown by the Tsehafe Taezaz Haile
much more effective than Tamm had allowed for; and on its final stage the column had
been ambushed—an entirely spontaneous effort—by a local balabat, Haile Mariam
Mammo who had fought at Mai Ceu.
 NINE DAYS IN MAY 143
stride. But as the church bells rang and the loud speakers
summoned the uncertain populace to Piazza Venezia, the Duce
appeared on the balcony and announced to the ‘Blackshirts ofthe
Revolution, Men and Women of Italy’, that Addis Ababa had
fallen to the glorious troops of Marshal Badoglio. The news, and
general enthusiasm for it, spread throughout Italy as the troops of
Badoglio spread throughout Addis Ababa.
Badoglio himself and his staff, plus Lessona and Bottai out
from Italy for the occasion, went straight to ‘Villa Italia’, the
empty Embassy. They spent a quiet, calm, and sober evening,
for Badoglio was always self-controlled and cool if not cold in
temperament.
As for the mass of half-armed and disbanded soldiers, the
looters and the shiftas of Addis Ababa, they—like many of the
ordinary population—took to the hills as the Italians approached.
Negga, more ingenious than most, disguised himself as a monk
and wearing the monk’s qub or cape ‘took a cross and went down
the hill. I watched the Italians marching into Addis Ababa on
Tuesday’—‘and’, his account adds, ‘began killing them on
Thursday. I killed by night and in the daytime I again became a
monk, calling myself Memhir Haile Mikael.’ It was symptomatic.
Though the capital was occupied, the war was only half-won.
On Wednesday Italian patrols occupied all the important
points in the city, and started setting up control posts and
disarming stragglers. Bottai was appointed Governor ofthe City
and moved into the Little Ghebbi. The Legations were officially
informed that the Italians had now assumed the Government of
Ethiopia and were warned to have no dealings with any other so-
called authorities. Uncertain how to proceed vis-d-vis Badoglio,
M. Janssens cabled Brussels for advice: ‘Dois-je faire visite ou
simplement laisser ma carte?’
As the Italians started moving from the city outskirts towards
the surrounding villages, various groups of armed Ethiopians
took to the hills. Those with Blatta Takele were fortunate; they
had a leader who both knew his own mind and possessed arms.
Blatta Takele went to the church of Meta Abo at Sabata where his
father was buried and produced 60 Czech machine-guns hidden
under the altar. He sent 15 to Gurassu Duke (who had fallen back
to his own lands at Wolisso, thirty miles south-west of Addis
Ababa on the Jimma Road) and set off, slowly, towards the seat
of the provisional government, Gore.
TAa THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
At Oletta the small group of remaining cadets—about 4o, with
40 machine-guns, mules, and a few camp-followers—moved out
into the hills as the Italians approached, uncertain what to do and
where to go. Most of them, like the senior in rank, Essayas, were
from Tigre or the North. There were stories of the Gallas to the
west of Addis Ababa in the Mecha and Ginderabat districts
rebelling, but nevertheless a small group set off to try to get to
Gore. Two days later a smaller group led by Mengistu Neway
returned to report that it was impossible to cross the Galla lands.
Any group of the Amhara however large would risk being
massacred, and the rest of their companions including Tekle
Gabre Hiwot had been killed.
The state of mind of the cadets was typical of that of all the
disbanded groups of ex-soldiers, large or small, moving back
into the hills as the Italians approached. They were torn between
a feeling that they should go back to their homes and lands, for
any further struggle was useless, and the natural reluctance ofthe
armed Ethiopian to submit to a foreign invader and, even more
humiliating, hand in his weapon. Everywhere they were looking
for leaders, but as their natural leaders had left, they were
uncertain where to turn. More and more, and not only in the
districts around the capital, they tended to group around the
balabats, the country landowners; or the shifta bandit leaders, or
indeed men who played both roles, like Haile Mariam Mammo
who had been imprisoned for murder before he was released to
fight at Mai Ceu.
Such natural leaders, however, that remained, that is to say
high officials of the court or the army, or relatives of the Imperial
family or the Rases, were the focus around which the uncertain
groups tended almost automatically to gather. Thus the cadets
were joined by Desta Tana, a nephew of Dejaz Yigezu, who
advised them to join Mesfin Sileshi at Wormara. The bandsmen
of the Imperial Guard, who had been left to guard the Empress
when the battalions went north to Mai Ceu, sent a man to Zaudi
Asfau to ask if they could join him. Zaudi Asfau Darghie was one
of those imperial cousins who had been exiled or imprisoned—in
his case for twelve years—until Haile Selassie declared a general
amnesty before moving north. The son of Menelik’s first cousin,
he already had 100 men with him before he was joined by Wolde
Johannes the bandmaster and his well-armed men. Another
group, also in the West, formed around another released
 NINE DAYS IN MAY 145
prisoner, a revenant from another age, Dejaz Balcha, whose
ferocity and hate for the Italians appeared to have been dimmed
neither by old age nor by his enforced monastic life. As for the
individualist Negga he slept in the Church of Abbo on Entotto,
and went down by day to the city in his disguise. He shot—ac-
cording to his own account—two Italian soldiers plundering,
then an Italian commandant at Janhoy Meda. ‘I shot him, his wife
came out. I shot her too’, then he tried to stop the Italians
bringing back the head of Fitaurari Bantyergew—'I failed in this
because I could not pierce their car with my bullets’, and finally
attempted a major coup. ‘I gave 3,000 dollars toa woman to catch
Badoglio for me, but she betrayed me. Another woman was too
soft for the job.’ Finally, however, Negga, like the rest, went to
join a chief: in his case Dejaz Fikremariam, who had already been
his commander in the Crown Prince’s guard, and around whom
a guerrilla band was forming south-east of the capital.
From the Italian point of view the occasional act of terrorism or
even assassination was irrelevant. They were so firmly in control
of the capital that by Friday 8 May 50,000 refugees had come
down from the hills and the life of the city was beginning to
function normally.

On the same day Graziani’s forces at last entered Harar. Nasi’s

Libyan division had come up from the south across a muletrack,
and simultaneously Frusci’s mechanized columns moved
through the Marda Pass and the Babile gap. The pincer move-
ment was unnecessary. There was little resistance, and none
organized, though Fitaurari Malion commanding the rearguard
had been in Harar only the day before. Two hundred Amhara
were killed by Frusci’s dubats in the exhilaration of reoccupying
the second city of the Empire, and then order was restored.
‘Graziani’, Badoglio had told Lessona, ‘will find a Marshal’s
baton waiting for him in Harar.’ Not that day. Graziani had had
an accident at Jijiga. When the ruins of the little town were
occupied, he visited its Coptic church, and inside the church fell
into a deep concealed hole which he was convinced had been
prepared for him as a sort of mantrap. From that incident it is
possible to date what was to become a paranoiac hatred of and
suspicion towards the Coptic clergy.!
1 To be fair, the Italians had their grounds. When ‘monks’ like Negga were
shooting down their officers or bribing potential Judiths to seduce their Holofernes,
146 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
Saturday 9 May was a great day for the Italians. They learnt to
their satisfaction that Haile Selassie on his arrival at Haifa had
been greeted only by the Mayor and a District Commissioner,
Mr. C. Pirie Gordon, and that at Jerusalem he had been installed
at the King David Hotel, not as had generally been expected as an
honoured guest at the residence of the High Commissioner,
General Sir Arthur Wauchope. The official British attitude was
clearly cool.
In the west of Ethiopia the Gojjami rebels had come in to
submit to Starace at Bahr Dar and to ask him for arms. Three
columns, one $,000 strong led by Gessesse Belew, were setting
out for Debra Markos with Italian air support. It looked as if at
last the population of awhole Amhara region was siding openly
and in arms with the Italians, and as if Ras Imru would be trapped
by the rebellious subjects of hisown province, now enthused by
the news of the release of their ‘rightful’ ruler, Ras Hailu.
In the centre Ras Seyum submitted formally to General Bastico
at Socota, offering him his sword which was symbolically
accepted and then returned. The oath he swore was worded as
follows: ‘I swear to be loyal to you, your mighty King, your just
leader, and your victorious general, Marshal Badoglio. Hence-
forth your King is my King, your commanders are the comman-
ders of my people.’ And in the East a column oflorried Black-
shirts of the Tevere Division commanded by Colonel Navarra
motored down from Harar to Diredawa where the French
officers of the Senegalese battalion formally handed over the
public buildings—the customs house, railway station, and ghebbi
—to them. The Italian flag was raised at 7 a.m., and just after
midday the 4sth Infantry Battalion arrived by rail and was
received at the station by a guard of honour of Consul General
Parini’s 221st Legion. The armies of the North and the South had
linked up, and the Blackshirts, symbolically and suitably first
present, had welcomed their comrades-in-arms of the regular
army.
But the climax of a great day for Italy occurred, as was fitting,
in Rome. This time the Party had warning, and the enthusiasm of
the Italian people, intoxicated by the joys ofvictory, was given a
chance to express itself. Never, before or after, were Fascism and

when Czech maching-guns were cached in altars, and holes in churches were
concealed like elephant-traps, it was understandable that the spirit of ecumenism
should not have been widespread.
 NINE DAYS IN MAY 147

Mussolini as popular as in that period and at that hour. At 8 p.m.

that spring evening, heralded by the blaze of trumpets, the Duce
stepped on to the balcony of Palazzo Venezia to announce to a
wildly excited crowd that stretched down the Corso and over to
the Colosseum, the annexation of Ethiopia. In every Italian city,
town and village, loudspeakers relayed his speech. As he pro-
claimed Vittorio Emmanuele III Emperor of Ethiopia and an
imperial salute of 101 guns boomed out over the capital, Rome
echoed to the massed chant that had last been heard centuries
before in the dying days of the falling Caesars—‘Imperatore!
Imperatore!’
 CHSUAMPICLEN. IE TI

AERICGA ORIENJLALE I LALIANA

Frew statesmen in Europe had expected the outright annexation

of Ethiopia. But once the policy of annexation was decided on, it
was applied wholeheartedly by the Minister for the Colonies,
Lessona. By the Organic Law of 1 June 1936 the whole of the
Horn of Africa was reorganized as Africa Orientale Italiana—
AOI —to be ruled by a Viceroy who was at the same time
Governor General. The man appointed was, logically enough,
Marshal Badoglio.
Africa Orientale Italiana was divided into five provinces, each
with a military Governor. The administration was closely con-
trolled by Rome. The five Governors, though under the general
authority of the Viceroy, were to correspond directly with the
Ministry of Colonies on ‘the ordinary affairs of government’ and
could appeal over the Viceroy’s head to Rome. On the other hand
there was a certain military unity; the Viceroy was ex officio
commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Under the Governor were Commissars—equivalent to the
District Commissioners in British colonies—installed in all the
major towns and under the Commissars Residents and Vice-
Residents. The plan was for a very tight system of control,
uniform throughout the whole vast Dominion, and clearly there
was no place in it for the native rulers. ‘No power to the Rases’
was the slogan on which Lessona based his policy of direct rule.
This meant that after a brief period of hope during which Ras
Hailu may have dreamt of the title of Negus of Gojjam and both
Ras Seyum and Haile Selassie Gugsa of that of Negus of Tigre,
they were relegated to the shadows.
In any case Gojjam and Tigre no longer existed as such. Tigre
was incorporated in the province of Eritrea, and Gojjam (with
Beghemder) in the province of Amhara. The province of Harar
extended almost up to the outskirts of Addis Ababa, and all the
 AFRICA ORIENTALE ITALIANA 149

&
v
Ad Temata
b ; : sf
an — 0f
onastery i J ~~ oe >
Debra ie ‘\\_-£6 Debre Brehan
e
MULU 7, Ankober

(*)
Addis Ababa

—-—- Minor roads

+++ Railway

MAP §. Shoa and Addis Ababa

provinces of the South—eastern, western, and central—were

united to form the one vast province of Galla—Sidamo. !
These administrative divisions were, of course, applicable only
on paper. On I June, far from being at the seat of his governorate
of Galla-Sidamo in Jimma, General Geloso was forming a
‘Special Lakes Division’ to face Ras Desta at Yirgalem. But even
the mere paper division of the country into governorates and
residencies helped to convince both Italian and European public
opinion that the war was won, the Empire conquered, and the
Italian administration almost in place. This impression, totally

| The fifth province of AOI was Somalia. The capital, Addis Ababa, was the seat of
the Viceroy and with its surrounding districts formed a separate entity ofits own.
1§0O THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

false, was furthered by two linked events: the return of Marshal

Badoglio to Italy and the repatriation of most of the Italian
troops.
The first of the three Viceroys of Africa Orientale Italiana was
Viceroy for less than two weeks. When on 21 May Graziani, still
bruised from his fall, arrived in Addis Ababa, at Villa Italia he
found a euphoric Marshal Badoglio chain-smoking as always.
The relations between the two had never been good. Graziani,
always touchy, aware that half Italy’s schoolboys had been
betting on his reaching Addis Ababa before Badoglio, suspected
the commander-in-chief of deliberately keeping him in the
shadows, and Badoglio knew it. It was therefore with surprise
that Graziani read a copy of a telegram of resignation that
Badoglio had sent to the Duce and learnt that he had been
recommended as Badoglio’s successor.

At the beginning of June Graziani, promoted to Marshal,

installed himself and his team of collaborators at the Little
Ghebbi. The Emperor—the ex-Emperor as the Italians now
called him—was en route to London. He had sailed from Haifa on
23 May ina cruiser—HMS Capetown—specially sent by Baldwin
to carry him safely across the Italian-infested Mediterranean,
reached Gibraltar on 29 May, lunched at Government House,
and embarked on the Orient Line Steamer Orford for
Southampton. On 3June he received a tumultuous welcome at
Waterloo Station in London. Among the thousands there to greet
him were the Ethiopian Minister, Dr. Martin, with whom he
drove to the Legation in Prince’s Gate, George Steer, The Times
correspondent who had stayed to the end and been expelled by
the Italians, Von Rosen the young Swedish pilot, and a new and
devoted admirer, whom he had never met until then but had
often heard of—Sylvia Pankhurst. ‘We have been very happy
here’, said Haile Selassie, much moved, ‘in the way we have
been received by the British people.’ Quiet modesty was never
to the taste of the Pankhursts. ‘In those irresistible eyes’, wrote
Sylvia, ‘burns the quenchless fire of the hero who never fails his
cause.’
In the days that followed Haile Selassie was visited privately by
Eden, and by the Duke of Gloucester, attended a Foyle’s literary
luncheon, and was joined by Blattengueta Herouy and Dejaz
Makonnen Endalkatchew from Jerusalem. But though an
 AUV
FUNALOld
UT

SMAN
NOCUNOT
C3ALVULSATI
FHL

Above left: The much-bemedalled General Oreste Baratieri, Governor of Eritrea, who commanded
the Italian troops at Adowa and fled from the field. Above centre: Eight of the fifteen Italian officers
posing here were killed at the Battle of Adowa; 262 officers and nearly 4,000 Italian soldiers died on that
March Ist, 1896, on the mountain slopes overlooking the capital of western Tigre. Above right: Gen-
eral Albertone surrendered to become one of the Emperor Menelik’s 1,900 Italian prisoners. Before
the end of the year they were released and returned to Italy in good health. Below: The Battle of
Adowa was—and is—a favourite subject for Ethiopia’s stylized artists. The pith-helmeted Italians and
their black Eritrean troops are on the right, the Ethiopians on the left—with above in the centre Saint
Michael, on the side, of course, of the Ethiopians. On the bottom left the Empress Taitu is conspicuous
commanding the Hotchkiss cannon; almost directly above her can be seen the figure of the bearded
Emperor Menelik; with, in the rear, under the ceremonial umbrellas, the church dignitaries, the
Abuna and the Nevraid. Chieftains with lion-mane headdresses and scimitar-wielding Mohamme-
dans are prominent in the Ethiopian ranks. Italian casualties seem to be particularly heavy under the
Archangel’s lances. The Ethiopian technique of grabbing an opponent by the throat ready for the
beheading swing is prominently emphasized.
RICKLI
 ITO

Left: Dejaz Tafari, Governor of Harar as his father

had been before him, with his wife Menen [for-
merly married to Ras Lul Seged], a formidable
lady, whom he married there in 1912. Below left:
Haile Selassie I under his red-and-gold canopy at
his coronation in 1930. The little boy in front of
him is his second and favourite son, Prince
Makonnen—later created Duke of Harar. The
splendid figure beside him is the Liquemaquas
Haile Mariam Wolde Gabriel—the two Liquema-
quas by tradition simulated the Emperor in battle
in order to draw the enemy’s fire. Dejaz
Mangasha Wossene is on the Emperor’s other
side.

ITO!

ITAOM

Top, right: Ras Tafari, at the time Regent of Ethiopia, in Rome with the
Italian Prime Minister, Signor Benito Mussolini, during his famous
European tour of 1924—the only time the two men were ever to
meet. Right: Haile Selassie in his coronation robes, looking exactly
—as Irene Ravensdale commented at the time—like a processional
statue from Seville. Below: Harar, the Arab city-state in the eastern
highlands, conquered by the Shoans in 1887. Here in 1892 a son, Lij COLLECTION
KER
Tafari, was born to the Governor, Menelik’s cousin, Ras Makonnen.
The Governor’s palace can be seen at the rear of the town. The Shoans
burnt the mosque and built on its site a Christian church—just visible THE
BEC
at the back left.

AUV
FUALOId
UAT

CALVULSATI
NOCNOT
SMAN
FHL
 Ras Mulugueta, Minister of War and
Commander of the Mahel Safari, the
Army of the Centre. ‘A mountain of
a man with grey beard and blood-
YET
AUV
FUNLOld
NOCGNOT
SMAN
GALVULSNTII
FHI shot eyes. In full-dress uniform with
scarlet-and-gold cloak and lion’s
mane busby, he looked hardly
human,’ wrote Evelyn Waugh of the
Ras in 1931, Great Ethiopian noble-
men were invariably followed by
servants carrying their rifles.

@
: :
- |

UIT
AUV
FUNLOId
SMIN
NOUNOT
GALVULSATIH
IHL

The Imperial family in the year after Haile Selassie’s coronation. The Empress Menen is seated beside
her husband. Standing behind (left to right): Princess Zenabe Worq (daughter), Mered Azmatch
Asfa Wossen (eldest son), Princess Tenagne Worq (eldest daughter), her husband Ras Desta (son-in-
law), Woizero Walata Israel, Ras Seyum’s daughter married to Asta Wossen (daughter-in-law), Prin-
cess Tsahai (daughter), and Prince Makonnen (son).
For some reason the youngest son, Prince Sahle Selassie, is not in the photograph. The little girl 1s
Aida and the little boy her brother Amaha, children of Ras Desta and Tenagne Worq, and therefore
Imperial grandchildren. The Emperor’s favorite dogs (which he later brought with him into exile in
England) were chihuahuas. This one, General Negga Haile Selassie has told the author, was called
Rosa.
THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS PICTURE LIBRARY

Above: Sir Sidney Barton, the eccentric British envoy in Addis Ababa (Evelyn Waugh’s model for Sir
Samson Courteney in “Black Mischief”) drives through a guard of honour of the Imperial guard to
the Emperor’s birthday reception on the eve of war. The Italian envoy, Count Vinci, was noticeably
absent. Below: Haile Selassie in his throne-room for his birthday reception on July 23rd, 1935. He is
wearing the gold chain of Solomon, an order he had just conferred on King George V, from whom Sir
Sidney Barton brought him birthday greetings. On the left is the Abuna; standing beside the bed-
throne, the Liquemaquas; standing on the right is Tasfai Tagagne, number two in the Ministry of For-
eign Affairs.
el Ee TED LONDON NEWS PICTURE LIBRARY
LO NaieereDAP Rte epssabesmnarOmtner reanern rate

MEAS AORN BOAR DLLALE ALR BRADEA LRA AP DT

scsiaeasiis OE
 NOLLOITIOO
MOT
Ud
FHL

ANITA, 6
VAIN

Far from running to paratroops, as this naively optimistic reportage—Ethiopia’s own form of painted
propaganda—suggests, the Imperial Air Force could only muster a handful of pilots (including the
Emperor’s personal pilot, Ludwig Weber) to fly their six planes. Below: The Imperial Guard, on the
other hand, could boast comparatively modern weapons—including a handful of Oerlikons (though
the machine-gunner here is noticeable for his personal back-up armoury of a rifle, a revolver and a
scimitar).

AUVUAIT
TUNLO!d

SMAIN
NOCNOT
GALVULsSATI
FHL
 MORI TTAORI ITAOREI

ori
TTHORI 11

Top left: Bitwoded Makonnen Demissie, the much-admired war leader of the Wollega levies, who came
to such a bizarre end at Amba Aradam. Top center: Ras Seyum, the ruler of Tigre, grandson of the
Emperor Johannes—and as such always viewed with suspicion by Haile Selassie. Top right: Deajaz
Gabremariam, a heroic figure of the older generation, who defeated an Italian incursion into the Ogaden
in 1931 and died in the last battle of the war. Above left: Dejaz Nasibu (standing), Haile Selassie’s pro-
gressive right-hand man; and the Imperial Fitaurari Birru Wolde Gabriel (sitting), reputedly both the
richest landowner in Ethiopia and Menelik’s illegitimate son—therefore always mistrusted by Haile
Selassie. Above right: Blattengueta Herouy, Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister, who accompanied the
Emperor into exile and died at ‘Fairfield.’ Below: Members of the Ethiopian Cabinet before the out-
break of war—men whose splendid outfits rather suit their splendid faces. On the extreme right is the
Agafari, Ligaba Hapte Mikael, later a war-leader on the southern front. The smaller man in the centre is
Blattengueta Herouy, the Foreign Minister. Next to him on the left is Tsehafe Taezaz, Minister ofthe
Pen, Haile—who was to play a fairly ignominious part both in the last stages ofthe resistance to the Ital-
ian invasion and in the early stages of the British counter-invasion five years later.

IUNLO!d
AUVUAIT

TI
C4ALVULSN
NOCNOT
FHL
SMAN
 FHL
AOA
Ud
NOILLOAT1IOO at < NOILOI1109
HOA
Ud
JHL
we SA CS 3

we? ta

AOE
Ud
NOILOATIOO
¢ NOILOATIOO
AHL
WANA

Top left: Captain Cimmaruta, the ‘hero’ of Walwal, with one of his Somali dubats. Top right: General
De Bono, one of Fascism’s Quadrumviri, but for all that a comparatively decent old boy. He commanded
the first stages of the invasion from Eritrea. Above left: Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law
and Foreign Minister, who flew as a pilot in Ethiopia. Above center: General Graziani, who com-
manded the invasion from Somalia—a bad general, despite his rugged looks, and a worse Viceroy.
‘Butcher’ Graziani, his enemies called him. Above right: General Pirzio Biroli, probably the best of the
Italian generals—‘one hell of a swell egg’ according to an American journalist who accompanied the
invading force. Below: On the right is Bruno Mussolini, the Duce’s son, who, like Ciano, flew in La

(
Disperata air squadron. The total Italian superiority in the air virtually won them the war.

OUTNOA
IHL

NOLLOATIO
Below: As war loomed, black-shirted leaders of the Fascist Militia gathered expectantly in Rome—pic-
tured here in-the Foro Mussolini in which giant naked male statues symbolized Italy’s chief cities. The
bald-headed civilian is Renato Ricci, once a squadrista, now a typically arrogant Cabinet Minister.

THE BECKER COLLECTION

 In the late summer of 1935, troopship after troopship of young, enthusiastic Italian conscripts sailed
either to Massawa in Eritrea to join De Bono’s forces or to Mogadishu in Somalia to join Graziani’s.
This happy crowd is pictured on the troopship Saturnia sailing out from Naples that September.
s

THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS PICTURE LIBRARY

COLLECTION
BECKER
THE
RICKLI
 Uda
NOILOFTIOO
IHL
AOA

Above left: Ethiopia mobilized on October 2nd.

Here, in the Emperor’s own city of Harar, his
officials are beating the negaret, the war drum—
the traditional means of mobilization. Below left:
From Eritrea the (mainly Mohammedan, scimi-
tar-carrying) banda, the irregulars, led the Italian
armies across the border—only too eager to get to
grips with their old enemies, the Ethiopians.
Above right: While, back in Italy, recruiting post-
ers—featuring a face very similar to that of the
Duce himself—plastered, pugnaciously, the
walls. Below right: On their side Ethiopian war-
leaders (like Fitaurari Haile Abba Mersa from
Bale, pictured here) led their retainers to the capi-
tal—armed, beside the traditional round shields,
with old-fashioned rifles: in this instance a Lebel
or possibly a Fusil Gras. Haile Abba Mersa was
later to be killed by the Italians in the last stages of
the war as Ethiopia’s armies disintegrated.
 FHL
Ad

Ua
NOILOFTIOO

Above; When the League of Nations imposed sanctions on Italy in November 1935, the Duce appealed to
the married women ofItaly to sacrifice their wedding rings for the Fascist cause. Here the ‘certmonia della
fede’ is taking place with due formality on the steps of the hideous Vittorio Emmanucle Monument in
the centre of Rome. The response from Italian women of all classes was tremendous. — Below left: As the
slow conquest of Tigre proceeded in the last months of 1935, lorries often proved ofless use to Italy’s vast
invasion forces than far more traditional modes of transport—given the almost total lack of roads in
Ethiopia. Below right: Italy’s demand for camels created a boom in the camel market throughout the
Middle East and particularly in Eritrea’s British-ruled neighbour, the Sudan.

FHL
AOA
Wd
NOILLOIT109 NOILOdAT1IOO
IHL
AOA
Ud
 NOILOIT1IOO
AOA
Ud
FHL

NOILLOAT1IOO
MOI
Ud
FHL

ie Neen
Se

Above: Roads were constructed by Italian engineers and Blackshirt battalions as the
invasion progressed through the spectacular countryside—here at Senafe in Tigre.
Indeed the Italian road-network was one of the boons their conquest bestowed upon
Ethiopia. Middle: But infantry attacks were an old-fashioned affair tactically—with
Italy’s fez-wearing Eritrean troops usually taking the lead. Below: Italian troops lay-
ing down a smoke-screen, not a barrage of mustard-gas as it mught at first seem. Gas
was dropped only from the air, initially in bombs, then—much more lethally—
sprayed from canisters.

NOILOFTIOO
UIAOTA
FHL
 Below: A solitary Italian plane bombing or spraying a valley in the vast mountain stronghold of Amba
Aradam, where Ras Mulugueta and the Army ofthe Centre awaited the Italian attack. Far right: At the
same time the Regia Aeronautica was bombing the Emperor’s headquarters at Dessie. Here Haile Selassie
poses proudly for the foreign press (who were never allowed, to their extreme frustration, any nearer the
front) with his foot on an Italian UXB.

2 4 i #

THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS PICTURE LIBRARY

FHL
4d

Yaa
NOILOATIOO

Above: On the southern front, in the Ogaden and along the banks of the Ganale Doria
Grazian1’s troops, Italian and native, “dug in’ before launching their successful assaults
against Ras Desta and Dejaz Nasibu in early 1936. Below: On April 1st, 1936, Gon-
dar, the historic capital of the Empire, fell without resistance. Here its ‘pugnacious’
captor, Starace, the Fascist Party Secretary, relaxes on nearby Lake Tana, the source of
the Blue Nile—with a semi-imperial lion-cub symbolically on his lap. By then the
war was as good as won.

AOA
Ud
NOLLOFTIOO
FHL
 AFRICA ORIENTALE ITALIANA IESyil

honoured, he was very clearly in official eyes an unofficial guest.

Edward VIII refused to invite him to Buckingham Palace; and
when Haile Selassie lunched at the House of Commons, the
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin hid behind a table to avoid
meeting him. There was intense diplomatic activity in London,
Rome, and at Geneva as Haile Selassie and his advisers prepared
their appeal to the conscience of the civilized world. But on to
June the Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain, in a
speech outside the House, called the continuation of sanctions
‘the very midsummer of madness’ since there was no way of
restoring the Emperor short of military action.
At last on 30 June, in Geneva, the Emperor fulfilled the purpose
for which he had fled abroad and arose to address the Assembly of
the League of Nations. A small picturesque figure with his
famous cape and beard—dignified as always, sadder than
before—he could be sure of asympathetic audience, all the more
emotional because their collective conscience was pricking. To
the general amazement and outrage, as he rose a group ofItalian
journalists hissed and barracked. ‘A les portes ces sauvages,’ cried
Tiatulescu, the Roumanian delegate, and only their prompt ex-
pulsion saved these rash journalists from a near lynching. Haile
Selassie spoke in Amharic, quietly and reasonably. If force was
allowed to triumph over the Covenant, then the collective
security of small states was threatened. Emotion came only at the
end of the speech with the Emperor’s final question: ‘What reply
shall I have to take back to my people?’
None. Sanctions were in fact, as Eden said, serving ‘no useful
purpose’—if indeed they ever had. One after another the
representatives of the three Great Powers—Eden, Blum,
Litvinov—called for their abandonment. Only the South African
delegate was for continuing them. On 15 July they were officially
lifted. By then the Emperor had returned to London and was
preparing for the bitter life ofan exile. He went to Worthing fora
holiday, then down to Bath where he stayed with his three oldest
children at the Spa Hotel and later, preparing for the arrival of the
rest of his family, bought a small villa, ‘Fairfield’, that was to be
his home for the next miserable years.
The Empress Menen and the two youngest children, Princess
Tsahai and Prince Sahle, arrived on 20 September. By the end of
the year the most depressing of problems that afflicts ex—
monarchs was afflicting her husband: the imperial silver plate was
I§2 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

sold off by auction—16,000 ounces, by Messrs Puthick and

Simpsons. For the next year-and-a-half money and the climate
were the Emperor’s greatest worries. Haile Selassie was involved
in a series of legal actions. The Empress fell ill as the English
winter drew on and had to return to Jerusalem. The children were
split, and spent much of their time travelling from England to
Palestine. There the nobles of the Empire, previously so great,
were concentrated in Jerusalem living miserably and poorly at or
near the Ethiopian convent and church in the Street of the
Abyssinians—the Rechov Habashim. A few had scattered; Makon-
nen Haptewold, for instance, had gone to Paris where he helped
to run a small pension. The Emperor sent what money he could to
the nobles. It must almost have been a relief when in October the
news came that Dejaz Nasibu, who was being treated for
tuberculosis in a Swiss clinic, had died in Davos. So finished the
life of Haile Selassie’s chief collaborator in modernizing Ethiopia,
miserably and far from his country but at least with the view of
mountains to console him a little at the end.

By mid-June, in what was now Africa Orientale Italiana, the rains

had set in and movement on any scale, particularly by motorized
columns, had become impossible. There was nothing to be done
until Maskal, the celebration of the Finding of the True Cross by
St. Helena, that marked the end of the rainy season. Then
Graziani would have to plan for two separate military campaigns
in the South, in the new province of Galla-Sidamo; one against
Ras Imru who had reached Gore in the south-west and the other
against Ras Desta, whose forces were being reorganized in
Sidamo in the south-east by Dejaz Gabremariam. Graziani was
well aware that there was no contact between the two Rases and
saw no immediate or potential menace there.
In the North and around Addis Ababa there were no coherent
or undefeated armies left. The Political Office was busily nego-
tiating with all the minor and major war-leaders who had not yet
formally submitted.
For submission was a very formal affair. On 24 June a
ceremony was held at the Little Ghebbi to mark the submission of
Ras Kebbede Mangasha Atikim and of the Muslim notable,
Sultan Abba Jobir II of Jimma. Fortunately a French journalist
was present and has left a vivid description of this extraordinary
affair.
 AFRICA ORIENTALE ITALIANA 1§3

Sixty Ethiopian dignitaries were seated in front of the throne in

the Salle d’Honneur on red leather chairs—in the front rank, Ras
Hailu, with his rich embroidered cape and bare head resembling
‘a figure of the wars of religion, a bird of prey, powerful and
dangerous’. Behind him sat the two Wollo nobles who had been
sent in chains by Haile Selassie to the capital after the failed Dessie
conspiracy, Dejaz Amde Ali, balding, and Ras Gabre Hiwot, ‘his
face marked by his captivity’. The black gold-embroidered capes
of the nobles contrasted with the blue red-lined capes of the
clergy. At midday the cannon sounded. An hour later, an hour
late, the Viceroy, bareheaded, wearing a grey uniform, made his
entrance. All rose and raised their right arms in the Fascist salute
as the Fascist hymn ‘Giovinezza’ was sung.
Graziani took his seat on the dias facing the two chiefs due to
submit with General Magliocco, commander of the Aviation:
Colonel Calderini,! known to many of those present, and the
Federal Secretary of the Party, Guido Cortese.
‘In the name of God’, said Graziani (‘Bismillah’ interpreted an Arab-
speaking Italian; “Egziabher’, added the Amharic interpeter) ‘I speak in
the name of the King of Italy, Emperor of Ethiopia (all rose to salute)
and of the Duce of Fascism Benito Mussolini (all rose to salute again).
To you, Ras Kebbede Mangasha. To you Abba Jobir of Jimma. . . here
is the act of submission to the great and powerful Italian government.
For our friends justice and generosity. For our enemies force and the law
depo Ga eee ATH:
More Fascist salutes, and all chorused Amen. Ras Kebbede
mounted the dais to take the oath—a small, leathery man, with
lively eyes and a black beard. It seems that he had not come back
to the capital with the Emperor but had gone to his governorate
of Ifrata in northern Shoa; probably Ras Hailu’s friendship with
his dead father had been decisive, though possibly (as was
rumoured) he had been offered a gratuity of 172,000 lire payable
on submission. He was followed by Abba Jobir, a fat young man
‘smiling with a curious rictus’, wearing ‘large granny spectacles
and a turban’.
Graziani rose to speak again. Where were their roads and ports?
‘Where is your Negus who had denied his race, hoarded in his
banks the gold which is the blood of his people, chained Hailu

| The ex-military attaché at the Italian Embassy—his absence from Addis Ababa
had therefore lasted less then seven months.
1$4 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
and Gabre Hiwot who are of the blood of your Rases? Here 1s
the Duce of Fascismo. Let the past die! Attention!’ All rose:
three salutes to the King ‘A noi!’ Three salutes to the Duce: ‘A
vol!’
Graziani looked round the assembly and picked out a white-
turbaned priest. ‘Wait’, he said, ‘the old man wants to speak. Iam
ready to hear everybody.’ The priest came up to the dais and
mumbled inaudibly. Only half-satisfied, Graziani wound up by
explaining: ‘You must not always say yes to me. Tell me my
errors. Give me your confidence.’ The Fascist hymn again, a final
bevy of extended arms and the ceremony was over.
Such was the atmosphere ofthe new regime: semi-farcical, and
semi-military, marked by an almost total incomprehension ofthe
nature of Ethiopian society by the Italian military rulers and
presumably, underneath their polite ambiguity, by an equally
total incomprehension of the nature of Fascist society by the
leading Ethiopians—with the language barrier making com-
munication even more impossible.
What is striking is the extent to which it was not just a military-
colonial but a specifically Fascist regime. As in any Italian region
the Federal Secretary was already installed, with a position and
powers parallel to that of the civil and military authorities, and
responsible not to the Ministry of the Colonies but to the Party
Secretary in Rome. Very soon the whole apparatus of the Party
was in place. A Casa del Fascio and a Militia headquarters were set
up in the centre of Addis Ababa and Fascist federations and
federal secretaries in each ofthe five governorates. More import-
ant from the military point of view was the Blackshirt organiza-
tion, though the Blackshirt battalions were, generally speaking,
used as garrison troops in the large towns and their rdéle was
confined to keeping order.
The submission ceremony was also symptomatic of the
importance ofRas Hailu. ‘He was the man’, wrote Graziani later,
‘in whom] put my confidence. He became my councillorand. . .
I authorized him to form a banda over a thousand strong.’ Thus,
though Graziani emphasizes there was no special post or position
given to Ras Hailu and his title was purely honorific, he was in the
eyes at any rate of the Ethiopians the most important figure in the
new regime. He used his influence with varying success to
persuade the remaining nobles to submit and the Italians to treat
them humanely. He was not however allowed to set foot in his
 AFRICA ORIENTALE ITALIANA TSS

own lands of Gojjam; in whichever direction he and his banda

were sent out, it was not to be across the Blue Nile.
The other Rases, less trusted, were it seems kept in their ghebbis
at Addis Ababa under a form ofmild house arrest such as most of
them had at one time or another known under Haile Selassie
—Ras Seyum, Ras Kebbede, Ras Gabre Hiwot, and, soon, Ras
Getachew who for obscure reasons came back from Palestine to
submit. They and the other famous war-leaders such as Dejaz
Ayalew Birru and his brother Admassu who had also submitted
fade away into obscurity under the rule of the Viceroys. They had
no place in the new and confident life of a Fascist capital city.
 CHAPTER I2

THE ATTACK ON ADDIS ABABA

Tue history of the Ethiopians in the months and years that

followed Haile Selassie’s departure is the history ofarace that was
searching desperately to apply the imperial principle in almost
unprecedented circumstances: that is to say, in the presence of a
foreign conqueror, and in the absence, more and more marked,
as death, exile and submission made their inroads, of members of
the Imperial blood. Even in a period of peace the Emperors had
found it difficult to extend their authority over the whole
country. Ina period of occupation, it was impossible for a leader,
however powerful, to command or even to co-ordinate activities
outside his own zone ofinfluence. Yet if the events ofthis period
are to be understood, the unity of principle underlying the
rivalries, violence, and confusion of the surface must be grasped:
the principle is that of acontinual quest for an Emperor, even if
only an Emperor at a local level. The practice is that of the rise and
fall of a series of what it would be accurate to call pretenders to the
Imperial privileges, if not to the Imperial throne.
The outward signs of Imperial privilege were known to all the
Amhara. As word spread throughout Shoa that Aberra Kassa
was riding on a golden saddle under a red umbrella, men flocked
to the Kassa lands near the monastery of Debra Libanos. Aberra
Kassa had of course more than a colourful paraphernalia; he had,
as was also known, money. His position was very strong.
Appointed head ofthe Kassa family by his father and governor of
the district of Salale, he was by far the greatest lord in Shoa, in
blood, prestige, and actual power. Himself of the Imperial blood,
he was married to a daughter of Ras Seyum, Woizero Keb-
bedech, and his younger brother Asfawossen was married to a
daughter of Ras Hailu. Though young, he had won a reputation
as a war-leader in the Tembien; the remnants of the Guard that
had followed his father and the Emperor from Mai Ceu had been
placed under his orders. Perhaps most important ofall, he had the
 THE ATTACK ON ADDIS ABABA tS7
support of the Church. The Bishop of Dessie, Abba Petros, had
joined him at Fikke.
The position of the Coptic Church at this time was ambivalent.
The Echege had fled to his old convent at Jerusalem, but the
Abuna Cyrillos had submitted in the capital. The Abuna Cyrillos
had however neither the power nor the prestige of his prede-
cessor, Matteos. He was too recent an arrival for it to be forgotten
that as an Egyptian he was a foreigner. Of the four Ethiopian
bishops only Abba Abraham of Gojjam had submitted; he had
followed, as was inevitable, the lord to whom he was in a certain
sense chaplain, Ras Hailu. But Abba Mikael of Gore was in the
south-west with the provisional government of Ras Imru, and
Abba Isaac of Tigre was thought to be with Wondossen Kassa
near holy Lalibela. Abba Petros as Bishop of Dessie represented
the Crown Prince; and so, by joining the sons of Ras Kassa at
Fikke, he conferred on them a semi-imperial status as well as the
support of the Church. The implication was that these were now
the heirs to the throne.
With Aberra Kassa was his young cousin, Lij Abiye Abebe.
Shallaka Mesfin Sileshi, another cousin, brought with him his
own stepson, Lij Merid Mangasha. It was a different generation
that now prepared to take up and direct the struggle that their
fathers had abandoned. It was as if the board had been swept
clean, leaving full scope for men in their teens and early twenties,
exhilarated by their unexpected power, though still very con-
scious not only oftheir heritage but also oftheir relative rank. It is
indicative that the Oletta cadets Essayas and Abebe Tafari gave
twenty oftheir precious machine-guns to Aberra Kassa, and only
two to Mesfin Sileshi. Machine-guns were a more effective mark
of rank even than red umbrellas. Aberra and Asfawossen Kassa
now conceived the boldest project of the war: a combined
counter-attack on the Italians and the recapture of Addis Ababa.
It was not so fantastic and aberrant a project as it might at first
have seemed. If the Italians had captured Addis Ababa so easily, it
was because as a city Addis Ababa, lying at the foot of the
mountains, surrounded by eucalyptus forests, sprawling
shapelessly over an enormous area, was almost impossible to
defend, at least against an attacking army possessing artillery.
The Ethiopians no longer possessed any artillery. But the other
disadvantages which had made any defence impossible for them
now made it just as difficult for the Italians.

/
158 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
Although the Italians were firmly in control of the city itself
and officially of high morale, less officially their morale was low.
The weather was bad, the city was by Italian standards a hovel,
the natives unfriendly, the troops going home, supplies scarce,
and the immediate future uncertain.
In those first weeks of the occupation following the departure
of Badoglio and of most of the troops of the ‘iron-will column’
the Italians lived in the unreal atmosphere ofthe half-besieged. If
they raised their eyes, they could see hills and mountains
occupied by roaming bands of armed and hostile Ethiopians. If
they lowered their eyes, they could find no trace ofthose habitual
and psychologically reassuring features of every Italian town, a
wall running round the town centre and a dominating fortress.
Shapeless, without exits or entrances, Addis Ababa was open to
infiltration everywhere. Throughout the month of May and the
first weeks of June there were continual rumours of impending
Ethiopian attacks. The fact that these rumours were never sub-
stantiated did nothing to reassure the nervous garrison and the
still more nervous civilians. The existence of the railway seemed
to be their only link with a civilized life; by the railway supplies
came in and troops went out. The other lifeline, the road to
Dessie and the North, was uncertain and, particularly in the rainy
season, most difficult.
There was an especially bad period from mid-June to mid-July
when the city was almost denuded of troops, and Graziani was
anxiously waiting the arrival of the Tessitore column from
Dessie, and more reinforcements from Somalia. With their safe
arrival, the strength of the garrison rose to just over 10,000
men—not an enormous number for the perimeter they had to
cover, which Graziani estimated at 25 miles. General Gariboldi,
the Military Governor, adopted the only possible solution: he
built little forts round the perimeter ofthe city, covering as far as
possible the roads and tracks that led in and out ofthe tukuls, and
concentrated the rest of his troops in various tented camps and
temporary barracks in different points of the city.
By June the railway, the capital’s lifeline, was under continual
attack. There was, however, more letter-writing than fighting in
those weeks. The hills and paths of Shoa were criss-crossed with
messengers: from the Viceroy with greetings and demands for
submission to the balabats: from the balabats and local leaders to
each other; from Ras Hailu and Ras Seyum on the prompting of
 THE ATTACK ON ADDIS ABABA 1$9
the Political Office to their sons-in-law; and from Aberra and
Asfawossen Kassa, juggling with many possibilities, to the
Viceroy, to their fathers-in-law, to the balabats and to the war-
leaders now established all around the outskirts of Addis Ababa.

Early in July a council was held at Debra Libanos presided over

by Abba Petros. Zaudi Asfau, Haile Mariam Mammo, Abebe
Aregai and many ofthe local balabats attended. Dejaz Balcha and
Dejaz Fikremariam, whose men had been raiding the railway,
were unable to come in person but sent representatives. Abba
Petros appears to have been the moving force in the five-day-
long discussion, the man who really co-ordinated the plans and
lifted the morale of the young leaders, by prophesying to them
that victory was certain if they attacked the capital.
Plans were drawn up for a combined attack to be Min eheds ase
before dawn on 28 July, Hamle 21 by the Ethiopian calendar.
They were carefully drawn up and well-prepared; Aberra Kassa
with Mesfin Sileshi, the cadets and the main force were to attack
from the north, through the northern suburb of Gulele. Their
objective was the market area of Arada, the heart ofthe city, and
St. George’s Cathedral, its centre. Abebe Aregai from the north-
west was to move past the French Embassy and seize the Little
Ghebbi. From the west Fikremariam, moving in south of the
road along which Badoglio’s column had entered the capital, was
to pass the British Embassy and occupy the Great Ghebbi. The
southern half of the city was allotted to the weaker forces of
Dejaz Balcha and Zaudi Asfau. Their task would be to isolate the
railway station and the new Italian airbase in the Bole area. Priests
were sent with letters hidden in their turbans to Blatta Takele and
Gurassu Duke in the south-west, ordering them to move up in
support and cut off the Italian garrison recently installed in
Ambo.
It was a bold plan, particularly for leaders who had no means of
direct communication with each other except by messenger. Its
success would depend on co-ordination, and timing—always
difficult in the best-planned military operations, never a strong
point of the Ethiopians but more likely to be achieved now that
there was a sprinkling of European-trained cadets in positions of
influence. As regards the opposition, the planners seem to have
been well-informed. They knew that the overall strength of the
Italians was not great; they had precise information about the
160 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
artillery brigade on Mount Entotto and the cavalry squadron in
Gulele; more important, with the rains there was less danger of
attack from the air. Above all, the rewards of success were greater
than the penalties of failure. The recapture of Addis Ababa, the
destruction of the Italian garrison, possibly the death of the
Viceroy Graziani—it would mean renewed fighting everywhere,
attacks on isolated and weakened Italian garrisons or columns;
with the rains the impossibility of any reinforcements for or
retaliation by the Italians; the end of submissions and the return of
the submitted; almost certainly confusion in Italy, rejoicing in
Europe, drama at the League, and the end of the war.
Aberra Kassa, with Mesfin Sileshi and the Salale levies, spent
the Sunday night encamped on Entotto and attacked as planned
before dawn on the Monday morning, Hamle 21, the day of
Mariam. They poured straight down the road through the
market area towards St. George’s Cathedral. Apparently it was a
complete surprise. Italian civilians were walking in the streets,
and at first there was no resistance at all as the leading Ethiopians
reached the Giorgis bridge and approached the Cathedral and the
city centre. The first Italians they came across and attacked were
engineers working on a well. But when the alarm was given,
General Gariboldi reacted quickly. Presumably the Italians had
had plans ready to repulse the often-rumoured assault, and it was
merely a question of putting these plans into operation. Two
battalions, a Blackshirt battalion of the 221st Legion, and the 8th
Native, were sent to the Little Ghebbi where Abebe Aregai’s men
were infiltrating and threatening Graziani in person. Regular
infantry and armoured cars, soon reinforced by two more
Eritrean battalions and a group of carabinieri all under the com-
mand of General Tessitore, moved up to St. George’s Square.
On the Tuesday morning serious fighting began as the Italians
attempted to cut off the northern invaders in their rear and attack
them from the front. Though Gariboldi did not know it, this was
the only column that had reached its objective, or very nearly
done so. Abebe Aregai was being beaten back from the Little
Ghebbi. Fikremariam, held up by the river Qebana, had not even
attacked the Great Ghebbi. Balcha had not arrived. Zaudi Asfau,
arriving but isolated, refused to attack in the south on his own.
Gurassu Duke, further away still on the southern outskirts of the
city and without any real hope of success, hesitated and finally
withdrew when no messengers came to him.
 THE ATTACK ON ADDIS ABABA 161

It was Abba Petros who rallied the Ethiopians and led them in
person back towards the city centre, joking with the high-
spirited cadets, telling them to die and being told that they
wanted to live and fight first. Aberra Kassa sent men to bring him
back to safety, but Abba Petros said that he in any case had come
to die. Carrying his cross, wearing his bishop’s robes, he
marched straight forward into St. George’s Square in front of the
Cathedral where the Italians and the banda were massed, followed
with understandable hesitancy by a group of young men.
By then Graziani and Gariboldi were confident that the situa-
tion was under control. There was still fighting in the outskirts,
and General Tessitore had orders to prepare an attack on
Fikremariam for the following day, Wednesday. But Aberra and
Asfawossen Kassa were retreating. Their men had dispersed in
small groups all over the city, and the main fighting was in the
eucalyptus trees all round the northern and north-eastern
outskirts of the city where the banda were hunting and being
hunted by men most of whom had been their comrades-in-arms a
few weeks earlier.
By the time Dejaz Balcha with his few hundred men finally
arrived and attacked the Bole airport district, Tessitore and his
Eritreans were mopping up the only remaining organized group,
the men of Fikremariam, in the area of Ras Getachew’s ghebbi.
The main attacking force had already retreated during the night
to Mesfin Sileshi and Haile Mariam Mammo’s lands near Mulu.
Although two days later two columns commanded by Gallina
and Tessitore set out in pursuit, it was too late. For once the
Ethiopians lost fewer men in retreat than they had in battle.
Lack of co-ordination, the rains, Italian superiority in
weapons, hesitancy by the leaders, indiscipline among the men,
indifference among the population and particularly among the
Gurage ofthe market-place, the dubious tactics of amass advance
down a main road—there are a dozen reasons why the attack on
Addis Ababa failed. Probably however if more documents were
available it would become clear that the decisive element was the
attitude of Ras Hailu: both the Italians and the Ethiopians have
played down his importance subsequently for similar though
contrasting reasons. It was he who at that time held the balance of
power in the capital; not so much via his thousand armed
men—an important but not decisive element—as through the
influence and prestige he possessed. A sudden attack by him on
162 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
the Italians would have roused the city and shaken even their
faithful Eritrean troops. Whether it was distaste for treachery,
innate caution, love of Italy, fear of the long-term results of
success by Ras Kassa’s sons, or the genuine desire to avoid
bloodshed and play a moderating role that restrained him is
uncertain, and probably always will be.
On 1 August, back in Salale, Aberra Kassa wrote to Graziani
announcing that ‘I have stopped all fighting’. The danger of a
mass assault on the city was over and Graziani settled down to
issuing orders that his car should be saluted ‘fasciamente—cioe
alzando il braccio’—‘in the Fascist manner, that is to say by
raising the arm’—and planning his autumn campaigns for the end
of the rains.
 CHAPTER 13

THE HUNTING DOWN OF THE RASES

Ras Imru, Regent of Ethiopia, had reached Gore in mid-June

nearly six weeks after the Emperor’s departure. Gore in the
south-west had the advantage of having a British Consulate and
therefore a means of communication with the world outside and
in particular with London. It had the disadvantage ofbeing, as the
British Consul put it, ‘stranded in a sea of Gallas’. Its further
disadvantage was the character of the then British Consul.
Captain Erskine was young, highly ambitious, prejudiced
against the Amhara, and extremely pro-Galla.! His reports were
larded with references to ‘the despotic Tafari regime’, condemna-
tions of the ‘never-ending intrigues of Ethiopian officials which
are the breath of life to them’, and the ‘supineness of the
self-seeking treacherous smooth-spoken and bigoted Amhara
officials.” He dreamed of becoming Ethiopia’s Lugard, of pro-
claiming a British Mandate over the south-west and creating
what would be in effect a logical extension to the British East
African Empire. Economically the south-west was already a
British protectorate; and from the Galla point of view a British
mandate would have been preferable to Shoan or Italian rule. Just
before Ras Imru’s arrival Galla potentates had indeed formed a
‘Western Galla Confederation’ and were appealing to Eden for
recognition and protection. In the opinion of infuriated Sudan
Civil Service officials (who rather welcomed the prospects of an
Italian administration) Captain Erskine was ‘impetuous to the
point ofirresponsibility.’
A further complication was the presence at Gore of Bitwoded
Wolde Tsaddik, described by Erskine as “a pleasant old gent of 68

| Deeper in the south-west, at Maji, Colonel Sandford, an older man and an adviser
to the governor, was in total contrast devoted to Haile Selassie and an admirer ofthe
Amhara. Sandford had been in the Consular Service in Addis Ababa himself but had
resigned in Lij Yasu’s time to try his hand at a series of enterprises which had added to
his experience and knowledge ofthe country though not noticeably to his fortunes.
164 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
who had been sent to the south-west the year before as the
Emperor’s representative.’ He had been appointed President of
the Provisional Government at Gore by Haile Selassie just before
the Emperor’s departure for Djibuti. But though ‘an ineffective
leader’ he was not entirely helpless. He had with him a fairly large
body of Shoan troops. There were several other smaller Shoan
garrisons scattered throughout the south-west—the largest of
them, at Jimma, already under attack by the people of that city.
Six hundred regulars sent out by the Bitwoded Wolde Tsaddik to
relieve that siege deserted on the way and became shiftas. It was
symptomatic of the confused and demoralizing situation in the
south-west.
Ras Imru was no more optimistic of his eventual chances of
holding out than was to be expected of a leader who had been
bombed, harried, and pursued for over a thousand miles. On
arrival in Gore he sent a cable to Haile Selassie via Erskine asking
him to open negotiations for surrender with the Italians and
warning that if the Emperor were to refuse he would approach
Ras Kassa in Jerusalem as an intermediary. He himself was
thinking ofsettling in Uganda and, once again via Erskine, asked
the British Government for permission. Erskine was delighted
with Ras Imru’s plan to surrender or, better still, to leave.
Unfortunately for the gallant Captain, however, at the beginning
ofJuly first the British government (though tempted) rejected the
idea of amandate; and secondly a group of warlike Oletta cadets
arrived at Gore.
With their followers (who included 50 Eritrean deserters) the
cadets numbered only 350-odd but the young men such as Kifle
Nasibu, Belai Haileab, and the two sons of the Ethiopian Minis-
ter in London, Joseph and Benjamin Martin, were cock-a-hoop.
They had just succeeded in ambushing and killing in Wollega
a group of high-ranking Italian officers, including General
Magliocco the Commander of the air force and Colonel
Calderini, the former Military Attaché who had flown in
unescorted in an attempt to win over the Galla leaders. It looked
as if an efficient and modern armed force might be organized
under the leadership of the high-spirited cadets.!
Unfortunately, there was a further complication. Ras Imru

' Who, Erskine reported to Eden in mid-July, suffered from ‘socialistic ideas, one
oftheir ideas being to shoot the Emperor’.
 THE HUNTING DOWN OF THE RASES 165

depended for money on the tribute of the gold-mines of Asosa,

controlled by the aged but loyal Sheikh Hojali of the Beni
Shangul. But in July Sheikh Hojali was attacked by traditional
rivals from the Wollega Galla and forced to flee to the little post of
Kurmuk on the Sudan border. This blow almost finished off the
provisional government in the south-west. In mid-September,
Ras Imru and the Bitwoded Wolde Tsaddik held a council: Imru
stated that he would catch the steamer from Gambeila in the
lowlands of the Baro Salient to Malakal in the Sudan and Wolde
Tsaddik that he would submit to the Italians after the rains.
On 29 September the British Consulate at Gore was officially
closed. The date of departure for the last steamer from Gambeila
(where there was also a British Consulate, run by Major Maurice,
a bachelor long-installed in his own little trading kingdom of the
Baro Salient) had been fixed: 14 October. But when the last
steamer arrived, chugging up the Baro river from the opposite
direction, from the Sudan, it carried an unexpected passenger.
This was George Herouy, son of Blattenguetta Herouy. He had
been with his father and the Emperor at ‘Fairfield’ near Bath and
he had persuaded the British authorities in the Sudan to allow him
through for humanitarian reasons. His ostensible purpose was to
collect his wife, Ras Imru’s daughter, who was with her father in
Gore.
George Herouy brought with him a series ofletters from Haile
Selassie and most encouraging, though entirely fictitious, news:
the Emperor would shortly be landing at Gore escorted by fifteen
British fighters; Eden in a personal interview had promised
British military intervention; and much more of this sort.
Erskine was taken aside personally by the Bishop of Gore, Abba
Mikael, and asked if it was true that the Duke of Harar—Haile
Selassie’s second and favourite son, then aged twelve—was about
to marry a British Princess. “The false hopes thus raised’, he later
reported furiously to Eden, ‘have now started a wave of
resistance which up to the end of September had practically
subsided, and now the return ofthis insignificant lying individual
George Herouy has led the remnants of the Amhara to believe
that powerful help from Europe is forthcoming.’
Justified or not, Haile Selassie had once more outwitted his
allies and enemies, and succeeded in raising the morale of his
supporters. He had made sure that an independent Ethiopia,
however reduced in size and power, fought on. The last steamer
166 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
sailed from Gambeila on 14 October carrying an ex-British
Consul to six months’ leave and subsequent obscurity, but
leaving the Regent at Gore to face the inevitable Italian attack.
Ten days later on 24 October an Italian column occupied
Lekempti, the capital of the Wollega lands, pre-empting an attack
planned by the cadets against Ras Hailu at Ambo. This was one
prong of a two-pronged Italian movement, of which the second
prong was designed to open up Jimma. Abba Jobir, the Muslim
Sultan of Jimma, had already set out with a thousand men armed
by the Italians to recapture his ancestral territory. It is said that he
offered three dollars for the head of every Amhara Christian
brought to him and that the Italians had to step in and stop the
killing that followed. Meanwhile, however, Blatta Takele Wolde
Hawariat had moved down from Shoa and_ reinforced—
temporarily—Jimma’s Shoan garrison. As Abba Jobir and his
column halted, Ras Imru and the cadets and the Shoan troops that
remained loyal to him moved out of Gore, Attacked by the
Wollega Galla, they headed south-east towards Jimma and Maji
where the remaining Shoan garrisons lay.
It now became essential for the Italians to drive their second
prong home. On 3 November Graziani sent out a mechanized
column under Colonel Princivalle down the Jimma road. The
Colonel’s orders were to link up with Abba Jobir en route; that
done, to move on and seize Jimma.
It took the column three days to cover thirty miles, and on the
third day they were attacked by an almost forgotten enemy,
Dejaz Balcha.
The old Galla had a lifetime of blood and cruelty behind him.
As a boy he had lain on his first battlefield castrated by the
conquering Amhara; as a young man he had fought under the
Empress Taitu at Adowa and seen the Eritreans of Albertone’s
brigade waver and break under his guns. He had led the armies of
Shoa against Lij Yasu at Harar and the armies of Sidamo against
Ras Tafari in Addis Ababa. His loyalties were not to Tafari the
son of Makonnen but to Menelik his master and the old Empire.
Not for Balcha Abba Nefso the defeat, exile, or submission that
had shamed the sons ofthe generation of Menelik. He must have
foreseen that this would be his last battlefield, as with his
miserable band of two or three hundred men he opposed the
mechanized columns of his old enemies from Europe, he who
had once commanded the Imperial cannon and led armies
 THE HUNTING DOWN OF THE RASES 167
thousands strong. Perhaps he repeated to himself with ironic
bitterness the phrase with which the warriors of Ethiopia often
went to meet certain death: ‘Come, this night is our wedding
night’.
According to one version this is how Dejaz Balcha died. When
the fighting and the firing were over, he sent word to the Italians
that he wished to surrender. Two Italian officers and a priest
whom he had known went, with an escort, to receive his
surrender. They found him sitting alone. Unsuspectingly, they
went forward, only to see in the last moments of their own lives
the ferocious old man draw a machine-gun from the folds of his
shamma—dying as he had lived in a hail ofbullets and a welter of
blood, taking to Hell or Heaven with him three of the hated
ferengi invaders: treacherous, impressive, almost heroic.
In the last fortnight of November the Italian columns occupied
Jimma and Gore, where the Bitwoded Wolde Tsaddik submit-
ted. The Bishop of Gore, Abba Mikael, not only refused to
collaborate but excommunicated those who had. He was first
imprisoned, then publicly shot—the second Bishop to be
executed by the Italians.
Meanwhile, Blatta Takele had at last reached Ras Imru’s
encampment in the forests between Gore and Jimma. He put
forward plans for guerrilla warfare and for cutting down Ras
Imru’s army (which with its camp followers had swollen to a
total of over twenty thousand: men, women, and children) to
three thousand well-armed men. When his proposals were rejec-
ted, he invited the cadets to join his own forces—nearly all
refused—and left blowing his war trumpet, predicting Ras
Imru’s capture or death within fifteen days.

November had been a month ofextensive manceuvring by both

sides all over the south-west of Ethiopia. The impression is of a
hunt rather than a war, with the Italians as huntsmen harassing
their still-dangerous enemies, driving them from covert to covert
while the Ethiopians twisted and turned, changing their plans
almost daily as they tried to break through the net tightening
around them. In December the net closed. On the 13th, Colonel
Princivalle and Abba Jobir caught Ras Imru on the banks of the
River Naso. There was fierce day-long fighting between the
Jimma army and the Shoans, unexpectedly surprised in a stretch
of open country. By nightfall Ras Imru had broken away but his
168 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
ammunition was almost exhausted. At the end he and his men
were fighting with swords and knives and he had learnt that a
third column under Tessitore was moving down to cut him offin
the north.
Five days later, heading towards Maji, pursued by Tessitore,
Princivalle, and their Galla allies, Ras Imru and his men tried to
cross the river Gogeb only to find its fords held by Colonel
Minniti of Malta’s column and—cruellest cut of all—by the last of
the local Shoan garrisons. Imru sent three of his own officers to
negotiate with Colonel Minniti. The Italians demanded uncondi-
tional surrender; Ras Imru said no negotiations were possible till
the people with him had been evacuated from the firing zone. It
was agreed: the women, children, and the old men were led
through the firing lines. Still Ras Imru procrastinated. As the day
drew on, the Italians threatened to use mortars and planes and
warned that they had orders from Graziani to gas the camp unless
Imru surrendered within a few hours, and to kill the civilian
hostages. ‘That’, said Ras Imru, ‘will be their wedding day!’ It
seems that his main reason for delay was to give the fifty Eritrean
deserters with him a chance to escape under cover of night. All
that night the discussions, courteously conducted, went on. By
dawn when the Ethiopians assembled and laid down their arms,
the Eritreans had slipped through the enemy lines, avoiding the
inevitable punishment of death, and were heading for the Kenya
border.
Having ordered his men to destroy their weapons, himself
having thrown into the stream a pistol given to him by his cousin
the Emperor, Ras Imru mounted a mule and rode unarmed into
the Italian camp, escorted by a Kenyaz Dejene wearing—
unwisely—the uniform of a senior Italian officer with its
gorgeous decorations. With Ras Imru surrendered Kifle Nasibu,
Belai Haileab, and many others of the surviving cadets, also
Yilma Deressa, Joseph and Benjamin the two sons of Dr. Martin,
George Herouy, Ras Imru’s son-in-law, and Haddis Alemayu
who had been with him in the Shire—the élite of the youngest
generation of arms-bearing Ethiopians. They had been promised
their lives and—except for Kenyaz Dejene who even more
unwisely boasted of how he had obtained his uniform—the
promise was at the time kept.
So ended the Regency, the Provisional Government, and the
flickering independence of the Empire of Ethiopia kept alive in
 THE HUNTING DOWN OF THE RASES 169
the south-west for six months after the departure of the Emperor.
It had been a weak flame at best, a desperate expedient designed
by Haile Selassie to give him some legal and territorial basis on
which to plead for the help ofBritain and ofthe League. It seems
unlikely, whatever the embittered cadets might have thought,
that the Emperor’s own presence in the south-west, or indeed
anywhere else in Ethiopia would have changed by an iota the
result.
The Italians flew Ras Imru to Addis Ababa where Graziani
himself courteously welcomed him at the airport with many of
the submitted lords. From Addis Ababa he was flown to Italy.
Mussolini had the good taste not to parade him in Rome. Ras
Imru was confined on the island of Ponza in the little house where
seven years later Mussolini himself was to be imprisoned.

On 19 December, the day following Ras Imru’s surrender, Ras

Kassa’s eldest son Wondossen Kassa was killed. He was caught in
the caves near the source of the Takazze by the Wollo banda of
Captain Farello and shot as a rebel on the orders of General
Tracchia, Graziani’s right-hand man. In this strange way the
death of Ras Gugsa Wule six years earlier was avenged by the
Wollo Galla who had then arrived on the plains of Anchim too
late to save him.
Wondossen’s younger brothers, Aberra and Asfawossen
Kassa, were by then ready to submit. After the failure of the
attack on the capital they had fallen back on Fikke and in the quiet
months of the rains reopened negotiations with their fathers-in-
law Ras Hailu and Ras Seyum and directly with the Italians.
Towards the end of November, Aberra Kassa refused an appeal
from Abebe Aregai for a hundred men and a cannon to block a
predicted advance by General Tracchia from Debra Brehan. ‘It is
not now the time for us to fight’, wrote Dejaz Aberra to Abebe
Aregai, ‘for at present we cannot completely defeat the Italians.
For every attempted battle they will retaliate by burning our
houses, crops and cattle.’ The group of cadets at Fikke—twenty
or thirty, now including Essayas, Abebe Tafari, Negga Haile
Selassie, Mulugueta Bulli and Mengistu Neway—had been try-
ing to persuade Aberra Kassa and his brother to join Ras Imru at
Gore. As the signs of submission became more and more
evident—five Italian prisoners were sent back with gifts, Abebe
Aregai’s war-tribute was refused, it was known that the Italians
170 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

had promised Dejaz Aberra land—the cadets decided to leave

Salale and join Haile Mariam Mammo on the lands around Mulu.
Dejaz Aberra got wind oftheir plans and tried to disarm them;
even when they were safely with Haile Mariam Mammo, Dejaz
Aberra sent Mesfin Sileshi to beg them—unsuccessfully—to
return. They were determined to stay with a leader whom they
knew would fight, even if he were not a great nobleman.
In the second week of December, four Italian columns started
moving in menacingly towards Fikke. The fifth column was that
of Ras Hailu from Ambo. It was he who right until the last
minute carried on negotiations with his son-in-law and guaran-
teed him life and lands. On 16 December as the five columns were
closing in messengers from Ras Hailu brought to Fikke the final
ultimatum: a letter from Graziani to Dejaz Aberra Kassa dated
five days earlier: ‘Now I tell you to surrender’, wrote Graziani,
‘and I assure you nothing will happen to you. Why do you want
to die uselessly?’
Only his cousins had remained with Dejaz Aberra: Mesfin
Sileshi and the two younger men, Lij Merid Mangasha and Li
Abiye Abebe. They suspected Italian treachery. ‘If you want to
be killed’, said Mesfin, ‘shall I kill you?’ But Aberra had decided
to take Ras Hailu’s advice. More hesitantly, his brother Asfawos-
sen—who had also received a letter, but from Ras Seyum writing
‘as a father-in-law to a son-in-law’—agreed with him.
The exact sequence of the events that followed is difficult to
disentangle. Messengers on horseback went to and fro between
Fikke and the two closest columns of the enemy, General
Tracchia’s and Ras Hailu’s. An aeroplane flew low over Fikke,
word came that General Tracchia’s advance guard was only a
mile away to the north, and Dejaz Aberra, still undecided, took
his men out of the town to the lowlands. That evening Colonel
Belly, who was with Ras Hailu, came—apparently in person—to
the camp, and Aberra and Asfawossen finally decided to submit.
Aberra however sent his wife and baby son away with Mesfin and
the two cousins, a last-minute concession to their pleas and
threats.
A letter was sent up to General Tracchia who had now
occupied Fikke:

“To General Tracchia

As you have assured me in your letter to me that our lives
 THE HUNTING DOWN OF THE RASES Li
will be spared, we shall assemble our armies and receive you by
peaceful parade in a place called Bidigon.
Aberra Kassa’

Ras Hailu in person led Aberra and Asfawossen to General

Tracchia’s camp. While they were in the tent drinking coffee with
the General, the men of their escort were disarmed, apparently
without difficulty, and taken away (they were released the next
morning). A group ofcarabinieri entered the tent and arrested the
two brothers. It was 21 December, three days after Ras Imru had
surrendered. At 7 p.m. the men in the escort heard a volley of
shots in the centre of the town.
Tracchia sent a laconic cable to Graziani: ‘Dejaz Aberra and
brother shot dusk in piazza of Fikke’. Graziani sent a cable to
Lessona repeating Tracchia’s message and adding ‘Situation
Salale liquidated’.

The third drama was meanwhile moving more slowly to its

inevitable conclusion. The figure who really inspired the
resistance in the south-east was one of the Italians’ oldest and
fiercest enemies, Dejaz Gabremariam. Sent down from Dessie by
the Emperor to reconcile Ras Desta and his Fitauraris, he had
only half-succeeded in that but had wholly succeeded in restoring
a fighting spirit and a coherent front against the enemy. It was
Gabremariam to whom the Sidamo nobles looked for leadership;
and though Ras Desta’s personal courage was never doubted, it
was Gabremariam who with 4,000 men had barred the Italian
advance throughout the rainy season.
On 14 October General Geloso launched the by-now tradi-
tional three-column attack on the enemy who had been facing his
positions only a mile or two away and keeping him from his
rightful honours as Governor of the new Italian province of
Galla-Sidamo. The advance Ethiopian position was outflanked
and the leader who held it killed. Six days later Gabremariam’s
main body was attacked, the old Dejaz wounded, and his army
forced back. But Geloso’s advance was slow and difficult, his
flanks and his supply-line (of mules) continually threatened, and
by the end of October the Lakes Division had not moved forward
very far or very effectively. Ras Desta and Dejaz Beiene Merid
were still, though cut off almost entirely from contact with the
outer world, at their respective capitals, Yirgalem and Goba,

4
172 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
still both in control of their respective provinces, Sidamo and
Bale.
A month later the situation had changed drastically. Another
Italian column had at last pushed up through the Wadara Forest
from Neghelli and was threatening to cut Sidamo off from Bale.
Simultaneously a third, inevitable, thrust came down from
Addis. A lorried column commanded by Captain Tucci and
consisting mainly of Dejaz Toclu Meshesha’s Tigrean banda left
the capital on 23 November and a week later had wound down
through the Lakes. En route, Tucci recruited and armed 5,000 of
the Arussi Galla. In Sidamo the Sidanchos rose and started killing
the Shoan settlers. Yirgalem was occupied without resistance on
1 December. Gabremariam, abandoned by many of his men,
joined Ras Desta in the rugged mountains on the borders ofBale.
On 7 January Graziani flew down to Yirgalem to direct
operations in person. But despite bombing raids and encircling
movements Ras Desta and Dejaz Gabremariam escaped south.
The Viceroy, frustrated, flew on to tour the provinces of Harar
and Somalia while, doubling back towards the north-east, Ras
Desta and Dejaz Gabremariam crossed into Bale and finally
joined forces with Dejaz Beiene Merid. Beiene Merid had about
3,000 men and the reduced army of Sidamo cannot have num-
bered many more.
General Nasi now took overall command of operations and
ordered down a fresh column of three Libyan Battalions under
General Kubeddu. The combined armies of the Ethiopians once
again broke out of the net encircling them and headed north,
though not until the comparatively fresh troops of Bale had been
defeated and dispersed. In the first week in February two more
columns joined in the chase. Nasi, with the skill that was always
to distinguish his manceuvres, ordered a deliberate pause to allow
the Ethiopians to regroup and form a compact body. The Italians
waited while the scattered bands drew together again under their
leaders and moved wearily back towards Lake Shela, perhaps
2,000 strong. On 17 February Captain Tucci and his swollen
banda made contact; on the 18th they attacked and on the next day
were reinforced and moved in for the kill.
This time there were no negotiations held and little chivalry
shown. The final battle of the Ethiopian war was fought, bitterly,
at Gogetti. The relics of the armies of Sidamo and Bale were
outnumbered even by the forces facing them, and outside the
 THE HUNTING DOWN OF THE RASES L738

immediate area of the battle stood column after column of

encircling troops ready to fall on them if necessary. It was not
necessary. That day Dejaz Beiene Merid and Dejaz Gabremariam
died. Old and mortally wounded, Gabremariam asked an
Eritrean under-officer to give him the coup-de-grace to avoid
falling prisoner to the Italians. The Eritrean’s was the only
honourable act of that day. Beiene Merid was taken prisoner and
shot. Four months later an Italian lieutenant, Cesare Alberini,
was paid 10,000 dollars’ reward for their deaths. By this stage the
war had become no more than a meretricious man-hunt.
But Ras Desta escaped. Wounded, with one servant, he headed
for his birthplace in Gurage, the village of Maskan. Tucci’s bande
pursued him; on 23 February Tucci reached Maskan only to find
Ras Desta had passed through and fled further to the south-west.
Even the people ofhis birthplace had abandoned him. The bande
marched all that night, and at dawn in the hamlet of Egia
surrounded the tukul in which Ras Desta had taken refuge. It was
the last day ofhis life. The hours dragged wearily by while Tucci
waited for the inevitable instructions; in the late afternoon, an
hour before sunset, Dejaz Toclu Meshesha’s Tigreans tied him to
a tree and shot him. So died the Emperor’s son-in-law, husband
of his eldest child, the Princess Tenagne Worq. Colonel Natale
pronounced an ungracious funeral oration: ‘He was not worth
more than the slave who followed him from hedgerow to
hedgerow.’
The war was over; the conquest of Ethiopia was complete.
 CHAPTER14

YEKATPBR 12

On 17 February 1937 it was announced that to celebrate the birth

of the Prince of Naples the Viceroy in person would distribute
alms to the poor at the Little Ghebbi. The ceremony was fixed for
forty-eight hours later. On the evening of 18 February there was
a reception at the French Consulate-General. It went on till the
early hours of the morning. Graziani had a satisfactory talk with
the railway chief, M. Gerard, but noticed that both the Consul-
General M. Bodard and his wife Pierrette were nervy; a nervous-
ness he put down to “dissapore coniugale’. He himself appears to
have been in the best of humours, looking forward to good news
from Ras Desta’s hunters at any moment.
19 February, Yekatit 12 in the Ethiopian calendar, was a
Friday. Notables and people rose early to flock to the ceremony at
the Little Ghebbi: among them two young Eritreans, Abraha
Deboch and Mogus Asgedom. Before they left his house Abraha
Deboch laid an Italian flag on the wooden floor and pinned it
there with a bayonet; to the handle of the bayonet he tied an
Ethiopian flag.
‘Raise all of your arm well’, proclaimed the Viceroy at the
Ghebbi as the ceremony began, ‘extend it high towards the sky
and towards the sun to salute the resplendent Majesty of King
Vittorio Emmanuele III, your and our sovereign; and also in
salute of the Duce of Fascimo and creator of a new Italy, Benito
Mussolini.’ Submissions ofnotables were made, planes flew past,
and at eleven o'clock officials started distributing coins as alms for
the priests and the people.
Among the notables who had arrived that day was Haile
Selassie Gugsa. An Eritrean interpreter, Rosario Gileazgi, who
for years had been working for the Italians, was introducing him
to Major Pallavicino ofthe Political Office as Abraha Deboch and
Mogus Asgedom slipped forward through the crowd towards
the colourful group of clergy, nobles, and officials gathered on
the steps in front of the Ghebbi.
 YEKATIT 12 175
All assassination attempts at public ceremonies follow roughly
the same pattern: incredulity and half-awareness, followed by
confusion, shock, and the beginnings of panic. Abraha Deboch
and Mogus Asgedom managed to lob as many as ten hand-
grenades that exploded on or around the steps of the Little
Ghebbi before themselves escaping in the chaos that followed,
leaving a group of wounded and dying men behind them.
The Abuna Cyrillos’s umbrella-bearer was killed and the
Abuna wounded; as were the Vice Governor-General, Armando
Petretti, the Viceroy’s chef de cabinet, and over thirty others.
Graziani himself was rushed to the Italian hospital; the third
grenade had exploded on his right and 365 fragments had
penetrated his body. At the hospital he was operated on immedi-
ately and soon declared out of danger. The most seriously injured
was General Liotta, the Commander ofthe Air Force, whose leg
had to be amputated.
The news soon spread through the city. In the panic following
what appeared to them to be the signal for a general massacre the
Italian carabinieri had fired into the crowds of beggars and poor
assembled for the distribution of alms; and it is said that the
_ Federal Secretary, Guido Cortese, even fired his revolver into the
group of Ethiopian dignitaries standing around him. ‘Cars were
going here and there’, Rosario Gileazgi recorded, ‘people run-
ning, machine-guns firing. . . it was a big disorder, Ethiopians
running from Italians, Italians from Ethiopians. . . it was said
before that Ras Desta would menace the city and that Ethiopian
patriots would come and kill every Italian.’
Rosario Gileazgi followed his chief to the Casa del Fascio in the
centre ofthe city to which all the Blackshirts were rallying. There
he heard the Federal Secretary give the orders that set the city
aflame. ‘Comrades’, proclaimed Guido Cortese, ‘today is the day
when we should show our devotion to our Viceroy by reacting
and destroying the Ethiopians for three days. For three days |
give you carte blanche to destroy and kill and do what you want to
the Ethiopians.’
The emotions of the months oftension and actual fear in which
the Italian population had lived, cut off, insecure, threatened
continually with invasion or infiltration from the surrounding
hills, forced to control themselves and to treat distantly with a
suspicious native population who barely responded to their first
natural gestures of friendliness, exploded. Protected legally and

4
176 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
psychologically by their black shirts, the labourers and minor
officials and lorry drivers and first settlers let loose all their hatred
and frustration. It was back to the days ofthe squadristi in Italy but
on a larger scale. Most of the burning was done with oil and
petrol, most of the killing with daggers and truncheons to the
crys of ‘Duce! Duce!’ and ‘Civilta Italiana!’ “These men are
barbarians’, the horrified Petretti is reported to have said, ‘and
nothing can be done’.
The killings and the burnings spread all over the city on Friday
night, and the arrests on Saturday morning. There was blood in
the streams, and dead bodies over and under the bridges. It is not
clear whether the regular Blackshirts of the garrison—the
‘Diamanti’ group—took part in the killings and burnings, but it is
certain that the Italian officers of the regular army and the
Eritreans took no part at all, and that the carabinieri tried where
possible to control if not to stop the Blackshirts. On the Saturday
lorries toured the streets, some picking up the bodies, others
collecting prisoners. The Blackshirts were burning the smaller
houses now, on ‘hygienic’ grounds, and writing their names on
the bigger houses as a form of personal annexation. They were
tripping up running Ethiopians in the streets with their trun-
cheons and beating out their brains, going to the Bank ofItaly to
change the dollars they had looted during the night, raiding the
houses of Armenians and Greeks and lynching their servants,
raking in corpses and throwing them on lorries, even posing for
photographs with the bodies of those they had killed. On
Saturday evening a group armed with jerry-cans tried unsuccess-
fully to burn down St. George’s Cathedral.

‘A second night of massacre followed’, wrote a Hungarian doctor, Dr.

Ladislas Rava. ‘I was again in my room. Since the beginning of the
massacre I had kept my Ethiopian servant there with me, forbidding
him even to show himself at the window, as any sight of him by an
Italian might have meant his death. He had a little house beside mine
which was spared on the first night but burned on the second. He sat
during those terrible hours quite speechless and with his head in his
hands. I dared not ask him what he thought.’

On Sunday, the 21st, there were no Ethiopians in the streets.

The smell of burning and death hung over the city as groups of
Blackshirts circulated in their cars and lorries. In the afternoon
the authorities stepped in firmly. A plan to bomb the Cathedral
 YEKATIT 12 Mg AgL

from the air was halted, Graziani issued a proclamation from his
hospital bed, and the Federal Secretary sent out orders from the
Casa del Fascio to his section commanders instructing them ‘to
end the hostilities’.
In the three days of killing how many people had been killed?
The Ethiopians later put the figure at 30,000; the Italians admitted
a few hundred. Probably somewhere around 3,000 would be an
accurate estimate—not a vast massacre as racial massacres ZO,
though peculiarly horrifying because committed by a people
normally so humane. But this figure would only cover the
victims of the half-organized massacre in the capital; not the
scores who were tried and shot there in the days that followed or
the hundreds if not thousands that were killed as a result of
Yekatit 12 all over Ethiopia.
In the capital a military tribunal was set up immediately after
the assassination attempt; on the Friday afternoon sixty-two
Ethiopians were tried and in the evening shot.
In the wake of the assassination attempt the Italian authorities
decided to make a clean sweep of all Ethiopian notables, young
and old. In the week immediately following Yekatit 12 many
more were summarily tried and shot; particularly the young men
who had surrendered with Ras Imru and who were suspected,
probably justifiably, of plotting against the regime. Among those
executed were Kifle Nasibu, Belai Haileab, Benjamin and Joseph
Martin, and George Herouy. Then with the first reactions
—whether ofpanic or deliberate ‘frightfulness’-—over, and as the
investigations into the assassination attempt proceeded more
calmly, the executions were stopped and the remaining prisoners
packed off to different destinations: the most important to
internment in Italy, another more numerous group of several
hundreds to the Dahlac islands in the Red Sea, and finally several
thousand across the Ogaden to a particularly unpleasant con-
centration camp set up at Danane.
It seems that it was at this time or shortly afterwards that even
the leading Rases who had submitted were sent to confinement in
Italy: Ras Seyum and Ras Gabre Hiwot certainly, the others
possibly, but Ras Hailu not. The capital was thus cleared of all
possible or potential conspirators against Italian rule.
Meanwhile the killings spread to the provinces; specially
directed against the Amharas as an exchange of telegrams with
the reluctant Governor of Harar, General Nasi, indicates.
178 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
On 1 March Graziani cabled to Nasi ordering him to shoot all
Amhara notables and ex-officers ‘according to the directions of
the Duce repeated 1000 times yet little observed by many... .
Give assurance with the word “‘shot”’ but let the assurance be
serious.’ Two days later, having received a (presumably) dilatory
reply from Nasi, Graziani cabled with, if less hysteria, even more
cold ferocity. ‘Shoot all—I say all—rebels, notables, chiefs,
followers either captured in action or giving themselves up or
isolated fugitives or intriguing elements. . . and any suspected of
bad faith or of being guilty of helping the rebels or only intending
to and any who hide arms. Women are ofcourse excluded except
in particular cases, and children.’ On 21 March he cabled to
Mussolini who was visiting Balbo in Libya to say that since 19
February there had been 324 summary executions, ‘of course
without including in that figure the repressions of the 19 and 20
February’, and that 1,100 Amhara men, women, and children
had been sent to Danane. On 31 March he cabled to Lessona to
give the total of summary executions carried out by 28 March all
over the country: 1,469.
By the end ofApril the ferocity of the Viceroy appears to have
been diminishing. On the 23rd Nasi reported in a long cable that
600 chiefs who had surrendered or abandoned Fitaurari Baade or
had submitted had been executed in accordance with instruc-
tions; would it be permissible to offer clemency and life to
Fitaurari Baade! if he handed over his rifles and captured
weapons? Four thousand persons, including 200 chiefs with
2,000 rifles, had surrendered with Fitaurari Malion; many had
relatives in the Pelizzari Banda and among the Amhara battalions;
furthermore if they had passed into British Somaliland what
trouble they would have caused! Would his Excellency the
Viceroy therefore please rescind his order to shoot fifty-four
chiefs, which would create panic in the Chercher area? Two days
later Graziani cabled his reply repeating his general directives but
adding a saving clause: ‘Anyhow since in these questions it is

' In fact at the end of March Fitaurari Baade crossed into British Somaliland with
1,200 men, women and children. They were interned in a refugee camp near
Hargeisha. All around the border ofAfrica Orientale Italiana the same sort ofthing was
happening. In July, no less than 6,000 men, women, and children (including Negga,
who became a monk) crossed into Kenya. They were taken down to Isiolo where a
camp was set up six miles away from the more closely guarded Eritrean Deserters’
Camp.
 YEKATIT 12 179
shades ofopinion that count I leave your Excellency to settle the
matter as you think best. Graziani.’
The month of May, however, was to see one more bloody and
atrocious massacre.

The May killings were the direct and in a sense the logical result
not only ofItalian policy at this time but more precisely of the
Italian investigations into the assassination attempt.
The more that became known about the two escaped terrorists
the more paradoxical their action appeared. Not only were they
both Eritreans but the ringleader Abraha Deboch had in fact been
an Italian informer. During the war he had been imprisoned by
the Ethiopians and after his release by the Italians he had been
employed by Major Pallavicino to work for the Political Office.
Furthermore it appeared that Abraha Deboch and Mogus
Asgedom had always met at the German Consulate-General
where the man with whom Mogus Asgedom shared a house was
employed. A priori it would have been hard to imagine a more
unlikely pair of would-be assassins in a city pullulating with
bitter and reckless ex-soldiers of the Ethiopian armies than two
Eritreans of whom one was employed by the Italian Political
Office and the other had links with the German diplomatic
envoy.
Naturally enough, the Italians suspected that there was more to
the assassination attempt than met the eye; and thinking back to
the evening of 18 February Graziani was less inclined to put down
the Bodards’s display of nerves to marital disputes. The first
logical suspect would have been Dr. Strum, the German Consul-
General: a worrying line of investigation which the authorities
appear quickly to have dropped. ‘Character and origin European
without a doubt’, Mussolini commented when he had studied the
details of the assassination attempt. And apparently he added
‘Intelligence Service or Comintern’.
The British almost immediately became the chief suspects. As
early as Saturday 20 February the parties ofItalians breaking into
Ethiopian houses were, Dr. Ladislas Rava mentions en passant,
searching for British-made hand-grenades. Tafere Worg Kidane
Wold, the interpreter at the British Consulate-General, was
arrested and interrogated, presumably despite British protests. A
certain Mr. Lee, a consular official, left Addis Ababa the day after
the assassination attempt; as he was thought to be the resident
180 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
Director of the Intelligence Service, his sudden departure was
taken as yet another proof of British complicity. Suspicion fell
not only on the Indian trader Mohammed Ally—in whose shops
all over the Empire plots were hatched, Graziani recorded, ‘under
the guidance of expert foreign elements’—but even on Major
Pallavicino and his English wife.
The investigations of the Military Advocate Francheschino
revealed, however, anew fact and oriented the inquiry in a totally
new direction. Abraha Deboch had ten days before the ceremony
left Addis Ababa with his wife and had taken her—and here the
Ethiopian accounts confirm the results of the Italian enquiry—to
the monastery of Debra Libanos.
Graziani remembered that at the ceremony the Abuna Cyrillos
had appeared ‘pale’. Further investigations proved that the
monks of Debra Libanos had been in Addis Ababa in the first
week of February, to apply to the government for financial
grants. They had left on their return journey twenty-four hours
before Abraha Deboch, with whom they had clearly therefore
been in contact during their week in the capital. It was also
discovered that on his escape from the city Abraha Deboch had
gone back to Debra Libanos to collect or warn his wife, and it was
suspected that he might still be there, hidden by the monks.
Francheschino’s report was sent in eight weeks after the assas-
sination attempt, in mid-May. Graziani, who was still in
hospital, studied it and took his decision. On 19 May he cabled
the conclusion of the report and his orders to General Maletti.
After reference to ‘a nest of murderers under the guise of monks’
it ended with the chilling instructions: ‘Therefore execute sum-
marily all monks without distinction including the Vice-Prior..’
On 20 May the monks assembled for the feast ofthe greatest of
the Seven Holy Men and founder of their monastery, St. Tekle
Haimonot. Colonel Garelli, the local commander, attended—
reluctantly, according to the post-war evidence ofhis interpreter,
but all the same attended. After the ceremony the monks were
arrested on his orders and by his men. Some were taken by lorry
to Shinkurst, others to Debra Brehan. 297 were shot, plus 23
laymen, considered to be their accomplices; the young deacons
attached to the monastery were kept in custody at Debra Brehan.
A week later, another telegram followed: their ‘complicity hav-
ing also been proved’ the 129 deacons at Debra Brehan were also
shot. Of the whole population of Ethiopia’s most famous reli-
 YEKATIT 12 181
gious centre, only 30 schoolboys being educated at the monastery
and possibly the Prior, Tekle Giorgis, survived. General Maletti
reproached Colonel Garelli for not having caught Abraha
Deboch. And Graziani cabled to Rome: ‘In this way . . . of the
monastery of Debra Libanos. . . there remains not a trace.’
Graziani’s increasing paranoia was alarming even the colonial
officers for whom he had been a hero ever since the Libyan
campaign. Orders went out to arrest and execute all soothsayers,
fortune-tellers, bards, and suspicious vagabonds. The com-
muniqué which was issued on the death of Ras Desta and
circulated to all commands was couched in the language used by
those who regard themselves as the chosen instruments of
destiny: ‘Dopo attentato ignobile del giorno di 19 la guistizia di
Dio habet indicato palesemente sua condanna colpendo uno dei
capi ancora rebelli . . . oggi catturato e ucciso Ras Desta da
colonna Tucci. Dare massima diffusione.’! Rumours spread that
Graziani, tortured by the pain ofhis scarred body—‘this tunic of
blood that I have been wearing for the last ten years’, as he called
it at his trial after the war—lay awake at night planning revenge
and focusing his hatred on the nobility of Amhara and the Coptic
clergy, remembering the hole in the church at Jiyjiga. He lay for
seventy-eight days in hospital, and when he came out, more
rumours spread: that ever afterwards he surrounded his sleeping
quarters with barbed wire and a battalion of armed men, living in
perpetual fear of another assassination attempt.
In this way was the birth of the baby prince Vittorio Emman-
uele, heir to the thrones of the House of Savoy, bloodily
celebrated in Italian East Africa.

In Europe, however, and particularly in England the sufferings of

Ethiopia did not go unnoticed. A month after the Italian occupa-
tion Sylvia Pankhurst had published the first number of abroad-
sheet that was to survive for many years: the ‘New Times and
Ethiopia News’. Month after month her editorials attacked the
pusillanimity of British governments and officialdom. Her
principal reporter, an Indian named Wazir Bey who had taken
refuge in Djibuti, was in close touch with the Ethiopian Consul

| ‘After the ignoble assassination attempt on the day of the 19th thejustice of the
Lord has clearly shewn His displeasure, striking down one of the leaders still in
rebellion. . . This day Ras Desta has been captured and killed by the Tucci column.
Give maximum publicity.’
182 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

there, Lij Andergatchew Messai. His reports brought news of

great Ethiopian victories and enormous Italian casualties to the
liberal middle-classes who were curious to know what really was
going on in Ethiopia. At the time of the Yekatit massacres of
which only garbled rumours reached the free press of Europe, the
circulation of the ‘NTEN’ climbed to 25,000. It published in full
Haile Selassie’s appeal to all Christian Churches after Yekatit 12
condemning the Italians for their crimes, an appeal which led the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, one of the Emperor’s
most loyal defenders, to raise the topic in the House of Lords.
Thanks to Sylvia Pankhurst-and other devoted supporters of the
Emperor—such as Sir Sidney Barton, now retired, George Steer
in these years of exile a personal friend of Haile Selassie, and
Colonel ‘Dan’ Sandford, who had found a niche as treasurer of
Guildford Cathedral—Ethiopia and its fate remained, at least
sporadically, in the public eye.
 CHAPTER I§

LEED KE OF AOS TA

THE previous October Mussolini had made his famous ‘olives

and bayonets’ speech in Rome, announcing a new era of pros-
perity for the second Roman Empire. ‘In seven months’, he had
said, ‘we have conquered the Empire but we will need even less
time to pacify and occupy it.’ Seven months later, a year after
Haile Selassie’s flight, his forecast seemed astoundingly accurate.
The new Empire appeared solidly established and its future
prosperity—based on fine communications, Italian administra-
tion, and a powerful native army—in theory assured. The
nobility and intelligentsia of the old Empire had been liquidated
or imprisoned; the last of its war-leaders defeated. The rank and
file of its troops were either disarmed or enrolling—it was the
Duce’s own scheme, as intelligent as it was grandiose—in the
armata nera, which was planned to become at 300,000 strong by
far the largest black army in Africa. Calm was established almost
everywhere except for a few scattered rebel bands in the outlying
regions of Shoa.!
Graziani spent the summer of 1937, the rainy season,
recuperating from his wounds in the pleasant Italian-style col-
onial town of Asmara. Gradually however, to the amazement
and alarm of Italian officials, serious though unconnected
incidents began to occur in regions which had been considered
not so much pacified as naturally peaceful. In the last days of
August there were almost simultaneous but apparently
uncoordinated attacks by shifta on garrisons near Debra Tabor
and near Bahr Dar. By 1 September all garrisons in Gojjam
! In the spring of 1937 Abebe Aregai had only 40 men with him, and Mesfin Sileshi
only 30. They and four surviving Shoan leaders attempted to set up a co-ordinated
resistance movement in Shoa but failed. Mesfin Sileshi headed for the Sudanese border
with Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat and Zaudi Asfau. Abebe Aregai, Haile Mariam
Mammo, and Dejaz Auraris of Menz stayed in the mountain highlands to the north of
Addis Ababa, the heartland of Shoa which the Italians and the bande could penetrate
but never control.
184 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
—Gojjam which had welcomed the Italian invaders almost as
liberators—were threatened. By Maskal the revolt had spread
north to the Wolkait and to the lowlands of Armachecho on the
Sudan border. Columns en route to Gojjam were attacked and
surrounded. In Wollo rebels sacked Quoram. In Beghemder a
strong column offive battalions sent out from Gondar to rescue a
besieged garrison was itself attacked and cut in two, with one
battalion, the 6th Arabo-Somali, almost annihilated. There was
no denying the evidence. What had at first been put down to the
isolated activities of shiftas could no longer be minimized. By the
end ofthe rains the former provinces of Gojjam and Beghemder,
the new governate of Amhara, so easily conquered and so
peacefully held, were aflame with revolt.
Bewildered, baffled, and enraged by the totally unexpected
and daily worsening situation in an Empire which he and his
officials had considered pacified, Graziani directed his first fury
against the only rebel whose name and reputation were known,
the leader of the bands who had attacked and sacked Quoram,
Dejaz Haile Kebbede of Wag. The bande of the Wollo Galla were
reinforced, rearmed, and let loose on Wag and Lasta. Their
savagery was, in the words of an Italian officer, ‘horrendous’.
Haile Kebbede was captured and beheaded. His head was
exposed on a pike in Socota. Certain ofhis relatives reported that
his head was packed in ice and sent to Italy afterwards, though it
is hard to believe Italians capable ofsuch pointless barbarity. But
his son Lij) Wossene and his wife Woizero Shoanish escaped
across the Takazze into Beghemder, and from that time on raids
and bitter fighting never ceased in Wag.
Killings and atrocities, however, no longer acted as a deterrent,
for the Amhara had been driven to desperation. The internal
feuds and quarrels which had made so many of them accept, ifnot
welcome, an alternative to their Shoan rulers were submerged in
the face of acommon enemy. Their leaders had been treacher-
ously killed. Their clergy had been treacherously massacred. Like
any race faced with extermination they instinctively rebelled.
The rebellion began spontaneously, in local uprisings and
under local leaders whose names were almost unknown outside
their immediate areas of influence. In Bircutan it was Fitaurari
Mesfin Redda who with forty shepherds attacked the local banda.
Elsewhere it was banda leaders themselves such as Dejaz
Mangasha Jimbirre of Faguta who suddenly took to the hills with
 THE DUKE OF AOSTA 185
their men. In Armachecho the rebellion started at a wedding-
feast. As the bridegroom and his friends sang war-songs, their
fathers grew furious and asked what brave deeds they had done
that entitled them to sing so boldly. One greybeard said that he
had fought the dervishes with a sword alone, whereas the
younger generation, even though they had rifles and ammuni-
tion, permitted their enemies to live as neighbours, peacefully.
The wedding feast ended with all the guests, bridegroom in the
lead, marching out to attack the local fort.
In Goyam the killing of the clergy and of the monks of Debra
Libanos, news of which travelled slowly, was at first hardly
believed. Gojjam was the most orthodox, the most traditionally
religious, of all Ethiopia’s provinces. Horror when the news was
confirmed led instinctively to rebellion. At the end of November
the Italian authorities hastily summoned Church officials at
Addis Ababa and had the aged half-blind Bishop of Gojjam,
Abraham, elected as Abuna. But by then it was too late. The
delegation from Gojjam even refused, with considerable
courage, to take part in the vote. The anathemas launched against
the rebels by the new Abuna had much less effect than the
excommunication launched against Abraham by the Coptic
Patriarch in Cairo. By then a change of policy was in the air; by
then it had been officially announced that the Viceroy would be
replaced.

Lessona, one of the most incessant intriguers in the Duce’s

entourage, can at least claim credit for having written Memoirs
which reveal with frankness the poisonous atmosphere of the
Fascist hierarchy and his own distasteful personality. He made no
secret of hiscontempt for Graziani. It was he who in the summer
of 1937 spread the rumours in Rome that Graziani was
deliberately lingering in his hospital bed out of fear and, later,
that Graziani had taken refuge in the safety of Asmara, where ‘he
slept at night barricaded in the governor’s palace, surrounded by
barbed-wire, machine guns, armoured cars and a battalion of
guards’. He therefore seized upon reports of the outbreak ofthe
revolt as a legitimate tool for disposing of the Viceroy.
Mussolini, who knew his man, did not take all Lessona’s
reports at their face value. Nevertheless it was obvious that a
serious revolt had broken out and that Graziani’s methods
—which, the Duce did not forget, were also Lessona’s methods

id
186 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
—had failed. Mussolini’s attitude towards Ethiopia was strange.
Neither he—nor for that matter the new King-Emperor—ever
visited Africa Orientale Italiana; and once the conquest was
achieved he seems to have felt a profound indifference to the
Empire. His only object was that it should become prosperous in
peace and self-sufficient in war. For this he was prepared to invest
enormous sums of money, but clearly total pacification was the
sine qua non. The moral question of the rights and wrongs of
Graziani’s policy of repression was not ofthe least interest to him.
The policy had failed; and as it had failed both the policy and its
executors would have to be changed. On 15 November the
Minister for Africa Italiana, Lessona, was called to Palazzo
Venezia with the commander of the air force division ‘Aquila’:
Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, who left the meeting as Viceroy-
designate.
What prompted Mussolini to select the Duke of Aosta can only
be guessed. Thirty-nine years old, very popular with the armed
forces and in Italy generally, he was nevertheless a minor figure
who had had little chance of distinguishing himselfin any way.
Perhaps it was precisely his easy-going insignificance that
appealed to Mussolini, perhaps also a sense of gratitude to
Amedeo’s dead father, Emmanuele Filiberto. And though the
King, Vittorio Emmanuele, had objected to this putative revival
of the fortunes and possibly the ambitions of the House of Aosta,
his objections, which can hardly have been convincing even to
himself, were overruled.
So inexperienced a Viceroy could not be expected to direct the
military operations against the rebels: the question of who was to
be ‘troop commander’ under the Duke of Aosta in AOI became a
matter of almost farcical intrigue. Lessona had his own can-
didate—General Cavallero—but Cavallero’s enemies in Rome
included among many others the Chief of the General Staff,
Badoglio; the Foreign Secretary, Ciano; and the Party Secretary,
Starace.
Nevertheless when he went to see Mussolini a week after his
previous interview, Lessona heard to his pleasure that his can-
didate Cavallero had indeed been chosen. With considerably less
pleasure he saw that the Duce had a further decision to announce.
Embarrassed and nervously twiddling his fingers! Mussolini
' According to Lessona’s account. Probably however the Duce was enjoying
himself.
 THE DUKE OF AOSTA 187
informed Lessona that ‘naturally’ the Minister would have to be
changed at the same time as the Viceroy, and that as a Prince of
the royal blood was taking over as Viceroy, he himself would
have to resume the office of Minister of the Colonies—or rather,
as it now was, Minister for Africa Italiana. Exit Lessona. His had
been a brief and fatal Ministry: the three corner-stones of his
policy, direct rule, racial separation, frigidity towards the
Church, being the basic causes of all the disasters in Italian East
Africa, present and to come. Enter Teruzzi: for though Mussolini
took over the nominal direction of the Ministry, Teruzzi, ex-
Commandant-General of the Milizia, ex-commander ofthe only
Blackshirt Division in the Ethiopian war never to fire a shot, was
as Under-Secretary (and subsequently as Minister) the real direc-
tor of colonial affairs in Africa—for as long as there remained any
colonial affairs to direct.

With the final departure of Graziani? Italian East Africa got off to
what Mr. Helm ofthe British Consulate-General called ‘virtually
a fresh start’. New personalities replaced old in all the key
positions. Of the five governors of provinces, the only one who
remained in place was General Nasi at Harar. With the new
personalities there appeared an entirely new policy. The military
tribunals which had been ordering summary executions up and
down the country were suppressed, and the Duke of Aosta
liberated 1,000 of the detainees at Danane. Even Teruzzi’s first
visit, marked by the opening of the magnificent engineering
tunnel under Ad Termaber, the ‘Mussolini pass’, went off
without a hitch. Serfdom was officially abolished and 400,000
gebars given their own land in Galla—Sidamo. The Duke of Aosta
was ‘indefatigable’. A ‘better class of administrator’ appeared. All
in all it was the sort of regime the British could both recognize
and approve. From the beginning of 1938 till the autumn crisis in
Europe, relations between the Italians and the British improved
dramatically—much to the dismay ofthe exiled Emperor and his

2 Graziani instead ofleaving at once (as dignity required) stayed on in Eritrea much
to the general embarrassment, attempted to oust Cavallero in his own favour and only
then, when he had failed, went back to semi-disgrace and a retirement that at the time
seemed permanent. In the summer of 1939 just before the outbreak of World War II he
had an audience with Mussolini in which he asked melodramatically to be allowed to
return to Somalia as a simple colonist. Mussolini most graciously gave his permission
and recommended the former Viceroy to grow bananas. ‘Our market always needs
them’, said the Duce, apparently straight-faced.
188 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
little band of friends and supporters, for whom 1938 was to be a
dismal year indeed.

General Cavallero, the new troop commander, took up his

command on 12 January 1938. He wasted no time. On 14 January
he flew up to Gondar to confer with the new Governor of
Amhara, General Mezzetti; and on 29 January Italian columns
started marching out against the rebels.
It was the beginning of a year of marching and counter-
marching, manceuvring and fort-building over lands of almost
inconceivable grandeur where mountain range after mountain
range stretched away unendingly to unseen horizons. With the
disappearance of that centralized authority represented by an
Emperor, a vast number ofleaders, small and large, emerged all
over the central highlands, the traditional heartland of the
Amhara race. They all tended to act independently, which meant
that their internal alliances and enmities were often shifting. To
some extent they all considered as their real enemies their
neighbours and rivals, so that lives were as likely to be lost in
skirmishes against rival Dejaz as against the Italians. And they
were all in diplomatic contact with the ‘enemy’. Families and
clans were divided, but through the ‘loyal’ members contact
could be kept with the Italian-officered bande from whom rifles
and ammunition could be bought or ‘stolen’.
In Beghemder most ofthe rebel leaders were men ofthe balabat
class, the squirearchy, the gentry, who had fought the Italians
half-heartedly under the leadership of Ayalew Birru. Returning
to their own lands, they had at first submitted—to ‘revolt’ later
and seize what power and authority they could. There were no
dominant war-leaders or men of particularly noble birth or
descent among them. This was in many ways an advantage; if
one leader was eliminated or defected to the Italians, the
resistance was not seriously weakened. Furthermore no strong
rival blocs formed. At times, too, the Beghemder balabats
showed themselves surprisingly capable of united action. For
instance they set up a more or less systematic taxation system; the
countryside was under their control; food supplies were well-
organized; and in the hills their letters and messengers circulated
freely. Men, as always, carried arms; and watchers on the hilltops
warned of any important Italian movement.
The Italians were understandably confused by the situation in
 THE DUKE OF AOSTA * 189
Beghemder, which offered no precise objective at which they
could strike. In neighbouring Gojjam however, the situation was
both more threatening and ‘yet in a sense easier to get to grips
with. Four powerful rebel leaders had emerged, of whom three
were connected with the ruling house of the Negus Tekle
Haimonot. These three were Dejaz Negash Bezibeh, grandson of
Ras Hailu’s eldest brother; Dejaz Mangasha Jimbirre married to
Ras Hailu’s daughter, Woizero Sable Wongel; and Dejaz Hailu
Belew, brother to Dejaz Gessesse Belew (now dead, generally
believed to have been treacherously poisoned by the Italians)
whose revolt against Ras Imru and aid to Starace’s column had
opened up all Gojjam to the invaders. The fourth rebel leader,
‘Liy’ Belai Zelleka, was of a very different type. Energetic,
young, vain, and aggressive he was the ideal shifta leader,
controlling the forests of south-eastern Gojjam. In moments of
boasting he adopted a title or rather an honorific form of address
reserved (like Janhoy) for Emperors alone and called himself Atse
‘“Begolbetu’-—Majesty ‘By my own power’.
Around these four leaders gathered many others, the great
chiefs, the Arbenya Alekas, the smaller chiefs, the Gobaz Alekas,
and the young guerrilla groups of the Kamoniche (a word which
means, rather appealingly, ‘I am not less than the others’.) But
between the four, though there was contact, there was no co-
operation. To the west of Debra Markos, Negash Bezibeh and
Mangasha Jimbirre were open rivals and often on the verge of
attacking each other; in the east the respected Hailu Belew
resented both the airs and the activities of the vainglorious self-
styled ‘Lij’, Belai Zelleka.
Yet, despite these rivalries, in the short space of afew months
the rebellion in Gojjam had become by far the most serious ofall
the rebellions in Italian East Africa. On 15 March 1938 the British
Consulate General reported that Debra Markos, the capital, was
surrounded by rebels and cut off; and a fortnight later added that
all available troops, including cavalry with only a few weeks’
training, were being sent into Gojjam; that petrol rationing had
been imposed in Addis Ababa; and that General Cavallero was
personally directing a veritable invasion.
On this last point the Consul-General did not exaggerate. No
less than sixty thousand men, supported by aeroplanes and tanks,
took part in the ‘invasion’ of Gojjam. While columns fanned out
in all directions, Cavallero himself flew from fort to fort planning
190 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

a new network of garrisons. By mid-May operations were over,

and on 31 May the Viceroy’s government announced in Addis
Ababa that Gojjam was officially pacified.
Meanwhile, however, a new menace had appeared in the
mountains to the north of the capital. News filtered out that a
new Pretender had arisen, a sixteen-year-old son of Lij Yasu,
Meleke Tsahai. The Tabot, the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of
St. George which had accompanied Menelik to Adowa, had been
smuggled out from St. George’s Cathedral in the capital after
Yekatit, and it was now said that Meleke Tsahai had been
crowned Emperor at the Three Ambas by Abebe Aregai, on
whom he had bestowed the title of ‘Ras’.
The appearance of anew Emperor, the ‘Little Negus’, was a
threat the Italians could not ignore. Three other sons of Lij Yasu
had already attracted support—Li Girma (fortunately in the
remote southern province of Gemu-Gofa), Lij Menelik (a half-
Danakil whom the French were grooming as a possible
pretender), and Liy Johannes in Beghemder with whom the
Italians were busily negotiating. But a properly consecrated
Emperor in the Shoan heartlands and under the control of the
best-known of all the rebel leaders was a much more formidable
affair. On 1 June, General Cavallero, back from Gojjam, moved
columns hastily into position around the Ankober mountains.
The object was to trap Abebe Aregai and stop him slipping across
the Imperial Highway into the almost impenetrable heartland of
Menz.
The only leader rash enough to attack was Haile Mariam
Mammo. He attempted to break through the cordon with 500
men but was mortally wounded on 6June, and his band dissolved
into little groups. His death looked like the beginning of the end
for Abebe Aregai, who attempted—for the third time—-to cross
the Highway on 18 June and for the third time failed. On 24 June,
however, the rains began to fall. With the rains, movement in the
roadless mountains became impossible, and the hunt was called
off for the season.
Operations resumed smartly on 1 October, with the Italians
employing rather different tactics. Three Gruppo Bande—
Criniti’s, Farello’s, and Rolle’s—moved into the Ankoberino.
This meant fighting on roughly equal terms between opposing
groups of irregulars. But by the third week in October, the
disheartening news reached General Cavallero that Abebe Aregai
 THE DUKE OF AOSTA I9I
and all his men had finally succeeded in crossing the Highway and
had joined Dejaz Auraris.
Dejaz Auraris, the Nestor of the Resistance, was not only a
respected Shoan noble but governor of the heartland of Shoan
traditions and of the Shoan kingdom, Menz. Ten thousand feet
above sea level, bounded on all sides by steep mountains, cold
and invigorating, Menz covered 850 square miles of upland
plateaux. Cavallero flew up on 30 October to direct operations in
person, and desperate fighting followed on both sides. Rolle’s
Bande meanwhile was sent down to Shoa’s ‘western sector’ which
had suddenly become troublesome. Two rival rebel leaders were
operating around Wolisso on the Jimma Road, Gurassu Duke
and Olona Dinkel. Gurassu Duke was in the end the better-
known—and the longer-lived—but in his day Olona Dinkel was
as legendary. The Italians put a price of 50,000 lire on his head and
the Viceroy by special order doubled the price already put on
Gurassu Duke’s head.!
The fighting in November was hand-to-hand and many were
killed on both sides, but it was inconclusive. Indeed, despite all
Cavallero’s campaigns (and more large-scale attacks had been
launched in Goyjam, particularly against Mangasha Jimbirre on
Mount Faguta), the fact remained that the whole year’s operation
had been inconclusive. By December the exhausted Italian troops
had been withdrawn from Menz. It was said later that there was
hardly a stone village in Menz where the Eritreans or the bande
had passed that had not been plundered and as far as possible
destroyed. But ‘Ras’ Abebe Aregai and Dejaz Auraris were still
alive. Admittedly the ‘Little Negus’, Meleke Tsahai Yasu, had
died ofillness—a happier event from the Italian viewpoint, but
hardly an achievement. The four major rebel leaders in Gojjam,
and the two minor rebel leaders in Wolisso were still in control of
their territories. Menz was totally unconquered. The only lasting
benefit of all the operations had been the killing of Haile Mariam
Mammo.? Very little had been effected or even attempted in the

' Gurassu Duke had been a member of the Crown Prince’s bodyguard under the
orders of Dejaz Fikremariam (Fikremariam had disappeared, presumed dead, soon
after the attack on Addis Ababa). Olona Dinkel by contrast was a Wollega Galla. The
reason the Duke of Aosta doubled the price on Gurassu’s head was that Gurassu had
hanged an Italian emissary, the engineer Sebastiano Castagna. Graziani had already
used Castagna in abortive negotiations with Ras Desta; so Gurassu’s suspicions can be
excused.
2 And, though only incidentally, the dispersal of the three remaining Shoan leaders
192 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
vast areas between Debra Tabor and Gondar, or between Gondar
and Armachecho, or to the north of Gondar towards Tigre.
‘The Duce’, noted Ciano in his diary entry for 1 January 1939,
‘returned to Rome yesterday and we had a long discussion. He is
very displeased with the situation in the AOI and pronounces a
severe judgement on the work of the Duke of Aosta. Amhara is in
fact still in full revolt and the 65 battalions that are garrisoning it
are forced to live inside their forts.’ The same day Mussolini sent
an angry cable to Amedeo of Aosta which ended: ‘We still have
six months before the rainy season to liquidate Aregai, Mangasha
and Gurassu, names which are already appearing in the European
press as leaders of the increasingly successful resistance against
Italy. MUSSOLINI.’ The year 1938 had, for the Italians, ended
badly.

On 4 January hard on the heels of Mussolini’s telegram and

Ciano’s comments the Minister Teruzzi was sent out on a tour of
inspection. The Italians called him a ‘ouragan’. ‘He has roared
around upsetting everything and everyone,’ reported the British
Consul General. ‘... His arrogant and pompous attitude
towards all with whom he came in contact has rendered him
intensely unpopular. ... The local Italian joke is ““Why does
Teruzzi prefer brunettes?’’ Answer “‘Because gentlemen prefer
blondes?” ’ ‘General Teruzzi sounds a nasty man’, minuted the
Foreign Office, ‘even for a Fascist dignitary.’
During Teruzzi’s visit the Duke of Aosta sent a long and secret
report to Mussolini, playing down the extent of the revolt. He
reported that Abebe Aregai was ill and tired and had only one
thousand armed followers, that Gurassu Duke was a fugitive,
and that only Mangasha Jimbirre remained a threat. But at the
same time General Cavallero was criticizing to his crony the
Minister the Viceroy’s ‘lack of maturity’ and suggesting that until
the country was properly pacified the Duke of Aosta should be
limited mainly to a ceremonial role. This suggestion eventually
became a demand for ‘full powers’ for himself, Ugo Cavallero.
A month later the Duke of Aosta was recalled for ‘talks’. On 10
March he flew to Rome. Ciano noted in his diary on 14 March
in the West. On 3 June Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat and Mesfin Sileshi had crossed
the border into the Sudan, with 175 Amhara, 36 Galla, 25 women and 13 machine-
guns. Zaudi Asfau and the bandleader Wolde Johannes had trekked back towards
Shoa, but failed to reach their goal and submitted.
 THE DUKE OF AOSTA 193
that ‘The Duke of Aosta speaks with notable optimism of the
situation in the Empire. I must however add that ofall the people
coming from there he is the only optimist.’ The future looked
dark for Aosta. In the fortnight he spent in Rome the lights were
dimming in Europe too. Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia; and the
British and the French braced themselves for war.
 CHAPTER 16

EDGING TOWARDS WAR

At the beginning of 1939 the French had quadrupled their

garrison and strengthened their defences around Dyibuti. Five
thousand highly professional soldiers under the command of the
energetic General LeGentilhomme (whom a British colleague
described as ‘a very live wire aged §5 or 56’) posed a serious threat
to the Italians in case of war. In January the Duke of Aosta had
cabled Rome announcing that a ‘surprise operation’ had been
prepared against Djibuti, ‘to be carried out by 15 motorized
battalions plus a horde of 6,000 Azebo Galla and another horde of
6,000 Danakil who are already in position near the frontier’. The
French and the Italians, in Africa as in Europe, were almost eager
to be at each other’s throats.
But despite the war-clouds in Europe the British and the
Italians, at least in Africa, were still extremely friendly. On his
way back from Rome, still to all appearances Viceroy, Amedeo
of Aosta stopped off in Cairo. Britain’s proconsul in Egypt, Sir
Miles Lampson (who stood well over six feet and was married to
an Italian wife), found the Duke ‘tall, good-looking, athletic and
very affable and friendly’ with—even more important—‘never a
fault in his sense of humour’. On 28 March Mr. Bateman, a High
Commission official, dined with him and was no less impres-
sed—as much with what he spoke (‘English, French, Spanish,
German and possibly Amharic’) as with what he said. On
Europe, Aosta was hopeful: “Thank God that idiotic Spanish
venture is over. I don’t see perpetual peace in the offing yet. But
don’t take too literally all that Mr. Brown (i.e. Mussolini) says.’
On Ethiopia he was almost apologetic: ‘Supposing you had
shoved all the scum of London’s East End into Ethiopia and let
them run wild, you can imagine the sort of thing that would have
happened. That’s just what we did and I have to clean it up
somehow.’ The following day the Viceroy flew on to the Sudan
 EDGING TOWARDS WAR 195
where for two nights he was the guest of the Governor-General at
the Palace in Khartoum.

In his previous role as Governor of Aden the Governor-General,

Sir Stewart Symes, had attended the Emperor’s Coronation in
1930. But he does not appear to have been favourably impressed
by Ethiopia, its people, or its rulers. He was all for peace and
quiet and good relations with the neighbouring colonial power.
Under Sir Stewart’s aegis the real administrator of the Sudan
was the Civil Secretary, Douglas Newbold, a very conscientious,
rather harassed, and much-loved bachelor. At the age of 19, fresh
out from Oxford and Perthshire, he had taken part in a British
expedition sent to help the Italians against the Senussi and had
been in at the capture by Graziani of Omar El Muktar. His
sympathies were basically pro-Italian. Later he had joined the
Sudan Civil Service and become District Commissioner at
Gedarefin Kassala Province, supervising the 10,000 square miles,
the territory of the principal Beja tribe, the Hadendoa, that ran
along the Ethiopian border. At the end of those seven years of
countering the cattle-raiders and the ivory-smugglers he had
written, ‘No wonder Isaiah said ““Woe unto the Ethiopians!”’ ’ It
was a typical Sudan Civil Service attitude. Newbold’s diaries and
letters are a running commentary on relations between the
Italians of Africa Orientale Italiana and the British of the Anglo-
Egyptian Sudan.
The other power in the Sudan was the commander of the
Sudan Defence Force, ‘a wiry little terrier of aman’, as Newbold
called him. General Sir William Platt, CBE, died only in 1977,
though for the previous thirty-eight years he had been living in
retirement. His life spans what are now almost mythical epochs
of Britain’s military history. He was born eleven years before
Adowa and fought on the North-West Frontier and in the First
World War. Just before coming out to the Sudan he had spent a
year as ADC to the King. He was a martinet and a distinctly
crusty martinet. He was also, if orthodox, a very good soldier.
But in March 1939 he was just settling in to his job—he had
arrived in January—and was almost totally ignorant of Ethiopia.
The Sudan Defence Force, which he commanded, had been
formed in 1925 by General Hudleston. Later described as ‘a
curious organization, unique in the annals of British arms and
typical of them’, its British officers used the traditional titles of
196 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
the Egyptian Army. General Platt was the Kaid; the four units,
grandiosely named the Western Arab Corps, the Eastern Arab
Corps, the Equatorial Corps, and the Camel Corps (which
included the Sudan Horse), were each commanded by a Miralai,
Commander of aThousand. Under them came Bimbashis, com-
mander of an Idara of two hundred and fifty men, and a whole
series of native ranks running from Uzbashi down via Ombashi to
the simple private or Nafar. The whole force was barely 5,000
strong.
The Duke of Aosta was not the only man craftily planning
surprise attacks on colonial neighbours. Captain Whalley, Dick
Whalley, had been British Consul in Maji before the Italians took
over. Thereafter the Sudan government had pulled him back and
left him to stew at Towoth Post on the Boma Plateau, a little
police post down in the deep south among the ‘bog barons’. He
was one ofthe few colonial officers positively antagonistic to his
Italian opposite number who, according to Whalley, had been
forbidden by the Viceroy to carry a revolver ‘owing to an
incurable habit offiring it in the face of any native who gets in his
way.
From the autumn of 1938, certain that war would come,
Whalley had been mulling over a scheme to foment revolt in AOI
with two of his cronies, Captain Erskine, the former British
kingmaker at Gore and El Miralai Cave Bey. Cave commanded
the Equatorial Corps which kept the peace in the lands of the
Shilluk, the Nuer, the Dinka, and the Anuak as far as the borders
of Uganda and the bad lands of the Karamoja and the Turkana. In
February 1939. with the approval of both of them, Whalley
presented his scheme to the new Kaid.
All that Whalley asked for was the thousand men of the
Equatorial Corps, 4,000 rifles, and 200,000 rounds to arm the
rebels who were expected to flock in, a few planes to drop
leaflets, and the use of the Eritrean deserters from the Maji area,
most of whom had wound up in the Kenya camps. Or rather that
was not all; he also asked for a gentleman to whom in accordance
with the rules of military security he referred rather coyly as
"Hes: Esa.’
This was the first time that the suggestion had been aired that
the Emperor should be brought back into play. For good
measure, Whalley threw in a further idea: that another friend of
his, another young Assistant District Commissioner, should
 EDGING TOWARDS WAR 197
‘invade’ Italian East Africa further north at Kassala with the
Crown Prince. This was Wilf Thesiger, ex-Danakil explorer,
whose father, as Whalley had no doubt heard, had sheltered the
young Asfa Wossen in the days of Lij Yasu.
‘Utterly fantastic’, commented Sir Stewart Symes before
forwarding the scheme on to the Foreign Office at the end of
February 1939, and he added some disparaging remarks about
those who saw themselves as second Lawrences. But Cave Bey
had taken the precaution of mentioning the scheme to El Lewa
Stone Pasha (Brigadier Stone) in Khartoum, and so the Gov-
ernor-General was unable to suppress it entirely—as he would
almost certainly have liked to have done, particularly because he
was on such good terms with the Duke of Aosta.

It was understandable that Sir Stewart Symes and company, who

were charmed by the very anglophile, polo-playing Duke, found
it almost impossible to envisage him as a potential enemy, and
thought it most distasteful that their own subordinates should be
drawing up wild schemes for invading the territories which he
was trying, much in the spirit of the best British colonial
governors, to administer. There was a positive vogue for Aosta
in British circles. Lennox-Boyd and Lady William Percy came
out to Italian East Africa to pay him a ‘delightful’ visit. Dodds-
Parker of the Sudan Civil Service followed them, was invited to
‘Villa Italia’ as a personal guest of the Viceroy and felt an
inclination to resign his post and join The Times as a special
correspondent in Addis Ababa. The Governor of Kenya was
positively jealous of Sir Stewart and wrote to the Consulate-
General in Addis pleading for a private visit by the Duke to
Nairobi.
Inside Ethiopia too the Viceroy’s star was in the ascendant. He
flew back from Khartoum to Addis Ababa on 1 April. After a
tense fortnight of waiting and wondering it became clear that in
the local struggle for power he had won what the British
Consulate-General described as ‘a minor but gratifying victory’.
General Ugo Cavallero was recalled to Italy en disponibilité. The
Viceroy himself took over command ofthe armed forces, with a
comparative nonentity, General Luigi De Biase, as his Chief of
Staff.
But there was no repetition in the spring of 1939 of the vast
military operations of the previous year. The difficulty was, as
198 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS
the Foreign Office pointed out to Lord Halifax, that ‘the East
African Empire is for the moment a bankrupt concern’. In
millions of lire the cost for organization and administration of
AOI had been 3,000 for 1936-7, 4,100 for 1937-8 and 3,500 for
1938-9. But this was nothing compared to the military opera-
tions, which had cost 17,519 for the 1936-7 season and 9,000 for
the 1937-8 campaigns, vast sums of which the first had brought
results but the second had not. The Italians did not suffer from the
British complex that colonies must be self-supporting and were
prepared to invest huge sums of money in road-building,
schools, hospitals, and administration. But to spend three times
this amount on futile military operations year after year was
clearly impossible. If the liquidation of Mangasha, Aregai, and
Gurassu had not been achieved by major operations, it was
unlikely to be achieved by minor ones. As the columns sent out
became fewer, the negotiators became more numerous.
General Nasi, known to get on well with the Duke of Aosta,
was moved from Harar to Addis Ababa as Vice Governor-
General and ex-officio Governor ofthe reconstituted governorate
of Shoa. With the arrival of a civilian governor in Harar in his
place it was understood that the project of a surprise attack on
Djibuti (which had inevitably leaked out) had been called off,
though the ‘Danakil horde’ continued to keep a close watch all
around the French colony’s frontiers.
At the same time General Platt submitted his report on Whal-
ley’s plan. ‘I do not consider’, wrote the Kaid, ‘it a reasonable
proposition to launch a mere 1000 soldiers armed with rifles and
one or two machine-guns into the mountains of Ethiopia against
a European-led army vastly superior in the air, in ground
numbers and in armament, on nebulous information with no
known local chieftains to rely on for support and insurrection.’
So much for Dick Whalley—a fly crushed by the logic of a
sledge-hammer. But General Platt’s report was not at all to the
taste of the Foreign Office. ‘I don’t much like the Khartoum
attitude of always cold-douching the enthusiastic Captain Whal-
ley,’ noted one official. The Foreign Office returned to the attack,
asking for the Sudan Defence Force to be doubled in strength. On
3 May Sir Stewart Symes rushed to the defence; there was no
money, there were no men, it was all too late. ‘There’, wrote Sir
Miles Lampson to the Foreign Office, ‘we at last have Symes’s
real opinion. It exposes the dangerous inadequacy ofour military
 EDGING TOWARDS WAR 199
strength in the Sudan.’ Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-
Secretary at the Foreign Office, was more forthright. ‘I urged
Symes’, he noted, ‘to increase the SDF in 1936. He said it was
adequate. For this lack of prescience I have not forgiven him
because it is unpardonable. ... Will anything be done even
now?’ Nothing was. Inertia prevailed. General Platt went up to
Djibuti with Brigadier Stone in May for staff talks with the
French. The conclusions reached were entirely to the taste of all
the neighbouring British governors. In the event of war the three
British territories bordering on Italian East Africa—the Sudan,
British Somaliland, and Kenya—would stand on the defensive
while General LeGentilhomme and the fire-eating French boldly
attacked down the railway line towards Addis Ababa. Platt seems
to have felt no sense of shame at this inglorious role. In mid-June
Sir Stewart Symes was summoned to London. Strong with the
joint staff plans, he insisted that any aggressive action would have
to come from Djibuti, that he had no confidence in Whalley or
Erskine, and that the SDF could not be increased. He requested
Egyptian anti-aircraft gunners—hardly a sign, as the Foreign
Office wearily noted, of an offensive spirit. ‘It is too late,’
minuted a depressed Vansittart, ‘our favourite and if Imay say so
unfailing failing.’

Tension grew again in Europe. In mid-August 1939 a cable came

from Rome ordering the Duke of Aosta to mobilize. Ten days
later British East Africa mobilized in its turn. Hitler invaded
Poland and on 3 September Britain and France declared war on
Germany. Churchill and Eden became, once again, Ministers of
the Crown. In Addis Ababa restrictions were placed on the use of
motor cars and the sale ofpetrol. No persons ofmilitary age were
allowed to leave the country.
‘I didn’t expect’, wrote Douglas Newbold in the first circular
letter he as Civil Secretary sent out to the nine governors of
provinces in the Sudan, ‘that the writing of my first monthly
letter would be interrupted as it was yesterday by a declaration of
war. So far Italy has not come in. . . but the dangers is by no
means past. We have had repeated instructions from H.M.G. to
avoid any sort of provocation to Italy.’
Nevertheless General Wavell, who had just taken over as
Commander-in-Chief Middle East, rescued ‘Dan’ Sandford
from his cathedral close at Guildford and called him out to Cairo
200 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

to organize Middle East Command’s plan for a rising in Ethiopia.

There, after various tussles with local officials in the Sudan,
Gabre Maskal, a man of many talents! who had been Ras Imru’s
wireless operator and was a devoted supporter of the Emperor,
joined him. And though in East Africa the brouhaha quickly died
down on both sides ofthe border as it became apparent that Italy
was not going to enter the war, in London a cluster of generals
and diplomats gathered to devise a leaflet designed to ferment
revolt in its event. It was agreed that it should be printed in
Gallinya and Tigrinya as well as in Amharic. The suggested
themes were: ‘The Suez Canal is closed. The Italians are sur-
rounded and in any case are no fighters. Remember Adowa!’

Inside Africa Orientale Italiana the restrictions were lifted as the

war-clouds passed, and on 27 September 1939 the dignitaries of
the Empire celebrated Maskal in great style in the capital. Silver
sabres glittered peacefully and ornate umbrellas flowered.
Adowa might almost have been forgotten.
Flanked by his new Deputy Governor-General, General Nasi,
the Viceroy conferred the style and title of Ras on Dejaz Ayalew
Birru who had led the levies of Beghemder and Simien into battle
against the Italians and had fought by the side of Ras Imru till the
fall of Gondar. Three great Ethiopian lords assisted at this
ceremony: Ras Hailu of Gojjam, naturally enough; another
Italian-created ‘Ras’, Haile Selassie Gugsa, the traitor whom both
camps despised; and with them a newcomer, Ras Seyum. For Ras
Seyum had finally returned from his prolonged ‘visit’ to Italy.
What they thought as they watched a non-Ethiopian confer the
dignities that for hundreds ofyears had been conferred by the line
of Solomon and Sheba can be imagined. There they-stood, those
great lords who half a decade earlier had led armies and ruled
lands and intrigued against each other, conscious now only of
their servitude.
But the very fact that the traditional ruling houses of Gojjam,
of both parts of Tigre, of Beghemder, and of Wollo were
honoured by the Italian Viceroy marked a significant change in
the direction ofItalian policy. This gathering of Maskal 1939 was
' Gabre Maskal, who spoke French, Italian, English, Arabic, and Amharic, had
crossed the border near Gallabat in the autumn of 1938 and spent 18 months travelling
as the Emperor’s emissary around Gojjam. In almost Welsh fashion he was known as
‘Nifas Silk’ —‘The Wireless’.
 EDGING TOWARDS WAR 201
the outward sign of the first steps towards the policy of‘indirect
rule’ on British lines which was known to be favoured both by
the Duke of Aosta and by General Nasi. As the rains ended and a
new campaigning season came round, the Viceroy and _ his
military advisers viewed their domain with a mixture ofsatisfac-
tion and discontent.
They had reason to be satisfied; for their changed policies
already appeared to be having a positive effect. The new Abuna
Johannes had sent out a pastoral letter ordering all priests and
heads of churches not to bless the corpses of those who died as
rebels nor to bury them within church precincts. The rebel bands
were nowhere on the offensive. To the south ofthe capital, in the
area between Addis Ababa and Jimma the feared Olona Dinkel
had been killed, trapped by a woman who added poison to his
kosso; and to make doubly sure her husband fired on him and
killed him. It seems they claimed the 50,000 lire reward and that
when the Italians exposed his dead body in public, his long hair
ruffled by the wind made it look as if he were still alive so that all
fled in horror.
General Nasi seized the opportunity to issue proclamations in
May, June, and July asking the local population to advise the
remaining rebels to submit, and promising pardon, liberty, the
restoration of goods, and, interestingly enough, the opportunity
of enrolling in the army. “The pardon of the government is as
generous as the pardon of God. All know this to be so.’ The times
had certainly changed since Nasi himself had, although unwill-
ingly, executed all eminent Amhara who came in to submit near
Hefar,
A copy ofone ofhis proclamations reached the Foreign Office.
Its peroration read: ‘Let then those dreamers (illuminati) fade from
the scene, those who have been awaiting “‘tomorrow’”’ aid from
abroad even though that “tomorrow” has now lasted four years
and will never come, not even when infants who are still in the
wombs of their mothers will have seen their beards turn white
with age.’
‘General Nasi has a fine obstetric style of eloquence’, noted a
Foreign Office official. Even so Gurassu Duke, the only surviv-
ing rebel of importance in these parts, did not come in. But what
was worrying Nasi was not the situation to the south of the
capital but the situation to the north. In Shoa itself Abebe Aregai
was more powerful than ever. His followers had resisted all the
202 THE WAR OF THE NEGUS

columns sent to eliminate them the year before, and were now
equally impervious to all Nasi’s blandishments. Abebe Aregai
was becoming the very symbol of resistance to the Italians.
It was not just Nasi who was bewildered by the phenomenon
of Abebe Aregai. So was Haile Selassie. Shoa was for practical
purposes out of reach of his emissaries, such as Gabre Maskal in
the Sudan, and he must have been intensely mistrustful of Abebe
Aregai. For the episode of the ‘Little Negus’ proved that Abebe
Aregai had no particular loyalty to the exiled emperor; indeed it
was thought at one stage that the French from Dyibuti were
grooming Abebe Aregai himself for the throne. Nor can Haile
Selassie have been unaware that Abebe Aregai’s relations with the
Italians were ambivalent.
It was this ambivalence that both infuriated and encouraged the
Italians. Again and again it seemed that Abebe Aregai in return
for money, arms, honours, or power was on the point of
submitting to the Italian regime. It became an obsession with the
Italians and particularly with General Nasi who as Vice Gov-
ernor-General was ex-officio Governor of Shoa; and General Nasi
devoted all his intelligence, all his powers of persuasion, all his
goodwill, to winning over this rebel on the capital’s threshold. It
became in the end more than a personal battle of wills, almost a
symbolic contest in which victory for the Italians would have
been a symbol not so much ofthe final pacification of Ethiopia as
of the final acceptance oftheir rule by the Ethiopians.
For months Nasi (and finally Teruzzi too on his third and last
visit to Africa Italiana) concentrated on winning Abebe Aregai
over. Negotiations only ended on 15 March 1940 when ‘some
traitor’ (the Ethiopian term) warned General Nasi that Abebe
Aregai, who had promised to take an oath ofallegiance that day,
was laying an ambush for him with 20,000 men. Mussolini
appears to have been more relieved than disappointed. He sent a
telegram out to Teruzzi the following afternoon in which he gave
vent to his feelings and called for immediate military action, ‘not
excluding the use of gas’. Not a day, Mussolini added, was to be
lost—for many reasons, including the situation in Europe.

And yet the situation in Europe, in mid-March 1940 appeared to

be stabilized. Poland had been conquered by the Germans. There
was calm and quiet on the Western Front. Italy was at peace, a
neutral state, and apparently likely to remain so.
 EDGING TOWARDS WAR 203

On the lands bordering the Italian Empire this was the general
opinion, too. In Kenya, after ‘wargames’ in January, Barland
versus Fowkland (for the uninitiated, a series of mock battles
between friendly troops fighting for ‘countries’ named after their
respective commanders—in this case Brigadier Barchard’s ist
East African Brigade versus Brigadier Fowkes’s 2nd East African
Brigade), the six battalions of the King’s African Rifles had been
sent back to peace stations; and when three Italian deserters and a
lorry arrived at Wajir in the Northern Frontier District, the new
Governor, Sir Henry Monk-Mason-Moore, prepared to hand
them back to the Italian authorities and was only stopped from
doing so by the Foreign Office. In the Sudan, Newbold informed
his nine governors that it was ‘time you had some more news
about the Sudan Cultural centre’. Only in Cairo did the British
military authorities take some steps. Sandford had Gabre Maskal
select eight Ethiopian refugees in Khartoum and bring them up to
Cairo to train them as wireless operators. But it was all very
hush-hush. Lest the Italian Legation at Cairo, already alarmed by
the February visit of the new Dominions Minister (‘I have never
seen expressions ofincredulity, horror and polite enquiry chase
themselves so rapidly across the features of a diplomat’, wrote
Eden of his meeting with the Italian Minister there, Count
Mazzolini), should catch wind of the move, Gabre Maskal and
his trainees were topped off with tarbooshes—a wily disguise by
which to pass them off as members of the Egyptian army, and
thus avoid ‘provocation’ of the Italians, whose continued
neutrality was so important.
By mid-April however the war in Europe had begun in
earnest. On g April the Germans invaded Norway, and a month
and a day later they invaded the West. As the German armies
poured into France and allied resistance crumbled, Mussolini
prepared vulture-like to enter the war on victorious Germany's
side.
 CAG ty Aa ab
RO
ae irs APieuite ors
: a Wye Piette! witht, eee
dig hy
ésLate
Mee:
ret shat Ava
aeaiel
ine
MOBSTIEA 3 ye hike tote
“aria Pdeet it Seah RS
4eea we rae 4 *.

: ‘Da PGR |
Ear & 2%) i ae 1

=Tegal oy alg ame Stet ae Lye Pi

al: ion ey ye Pree ve eo) an hs
2 A f ; ew a A
7 Challe ieee al av Ltathour
vv M at
Wy ad | Phi | Sone wal:
Py ee rites rs’

apo
i. ~ PE Fe, 7
idcoe iv. Geet very ayi relay”

ee ih ceed , nes
Dag NaS o k SPR eee Ea
TR aw n AT idles ” heh
f AR a! esCeme. M (<, hy ap:mn= refs
rey m saudi Marys Pa BW ( erg ats
tk ‘ah a
ica Hed oie Bee ere chia s
AW “ten 4inih * epiltaid hide Me a . hese ta
ue Seay rei hirkal* Fa aif
Say
—
i) a r af Thy tal iy if id rrwaeh 4 ir ry
; + COoiab vile aaahWe) ree fiear
"BH Ovi wival @ a as eee) As Fa
Nauti he nea il"rf “He ue “na
: Ee “ij Mog Hy.
At dei ’ i oy of eck ss iwi
ia iG cebe’ iptv o ht
“i wide ie WI ey SP an ig Oe
| ¥ ite See eay©Wie eee re
mn) Ui eh a
as ais 7;AL

y
ie iam nar Hii
95 niente j
pot taal
 PART Il
ae es Ae S| a ae ee
THE MILLS OF GOD
ee eee
 Port Sudan©
WORCESTERS
District Commissioner
lea
Meadowforce

Karora
:
e
cr
-o

e |
% {
© | Nazir of the }
Hadendoa |
Frostyforce /

\,Khartoum Kassala/
Butana bridge Gash Delta
Sudanese MMG Coys C \
) ,Om
R.Takazze
Ss
£. WEST YORKS
“= | Hussey de Burgh Bey\e
Z. Eastern Arab Corps

Bimbashi Thesiger
< No 3 Coy,
Eastern Arab Corps
=
~ v
Boustead Bey /KWARA
n Frontier Battalion
; oO
(Vea
Worku
Roseires <
) <4
ENGESSANA
HILLS hd, sour, OR TENN TALE
Fp Wisko Geisgen
J j
Kurmuk ef \*/ Shogali
Bluey,
[oiePot
Crossing
fo

|
i ®
Asosa ~SHANGUL

( Rolle Bande
~ Malakal
\
Kigillel Major Praga

eae traci I T A L I A N A
R ;

s SALIENT
Pibor Post, >)
“,
\
Cave Bey, i e Maji
Captain Whalley Towoth \ Major Gobatto
Gil
AUN
ASN
TI
PP
O-EVG.)
Equatorial Corps | Post N 2nd Gruppo
BOMA 5 Bande Frontiere
PEAT EAUS Ga

150 miles

MAP 6. The Sudan Frontier on the Outbreak of War

 CHAPTER 17

DOMINE DIRIGE NOS

Down at Gallabat on the Sudan—Ethiopian frontier the local

garrison, No. 3 Company of the Eastern Arab Corps of the
Sudan Defence Force, set up operational headquarters. It was
April 1940. They started strengthening the hill-top fort and
planning trenches. All this they did, however, without much
conviction, gazing over at their friends in the rather larger Italian
post at Metemma on the other side ofthe frontier, marked by the
dried river-bed of a khor.
‘To be on visiting terms with one’s probable enemies of
tomorrow must be all too familiar an experience for those
garrisoning the land frontiers of Europe,’ noted one of the
officers, ‘but it is fairly rare for the insular British!’ He thought
back to the ‘overwhelming hospitality’ of the Italians, to the
friendliness of the garrison commander, Colonel Castagnola, ‘a
small, fat, swarthy, but genial individual, very astute and quite a
good game shot’; and to the previous Christmas which Major
Saroldi, the second-in-command, had spent with the Eastern
Arab Corps officers in their base mess at Gedaref. Saroldi was
liked by all, invariably wore ‘immaculate breeches and riding
boots’, and in his turn was ‘genuinely fond’ of the British he had
met in the Eastern Sudan.
As war drew nearer, visiting ceased by mutual consent. But
only a week before the declaration of war Major Saroldi sent a
letter over to his friend Bimbashi Cousens: ‘Although things are
looking black,’ wrote the Major, ‘I hope my country will be
spared the shame of fighting alongside the barbarians whom I
myself was fighting as a boy ofeighteen.’ No wonder that what
was known locally as ‘the Gallabat-Metemma Axis’ seemed to
symbolize the real relationship between the officials who
administered the neighbouring Italian and British colonies in
Africa. :
In Khartoum, however, a month later the British authorities
208 THE MILLS OF GOD
had lost almost all their earlier hopes of a peaceful settlement.
‘Mussolini’s antics’, Newbold wrote to Margery Perham, ‘seem
to have brought him near the precipice . . . though I hope the
views ofthe Pope, King and Ciano will prevail.’ In his personal
diary he was more explicit and less cheery. “Yesterday May 18’,
he wrote, ‘was the most anxious day of my life.’ It seemed
from the BBC news of the war that France was on the verge of
defeat:

Here in Khartoum we have received warnings from the Foreign Office

and the War Office that war with Italy was imminent. The Italians in
East Africa have about 250,000 troops and over 200 aircraft. Our forces
are under 10,000 and our aircraft one tenth of theirs. We have no AA
guns or in fact guns. Kassala is theirs for the asking. Port Sudan
probably, Khartoum perhaps. Bang goes 40 years patient work in the
Sudan and we abandon the trusting Sudanese to a totalitarian conqueror.
Yesterday morning I was attacked. . . about lack of defence policy in
the Sudan Government, lack of coordination between Army and civil,
lack of‘direction’ in times ofdanger. I agreed with much ofthe criticism
but I am not Governor-General or Kaid. . . I never knew till yesterday
what real anxiety meant. . . Platt is courageous and works like a hero
but is not very approachable. The civil [European] population is
amorphous and leaderless and responds to every windy current of
rumour. The Sudanese are blissfully unconscious of the danger, are
convinced of Allied might, and consider Italy beneath contempt. They
may have a ghastly shock . . . I can only say ‘Domine dirige nos!’

At about the same time as ‘the Gallabat-Metemma Axis’ crum-

bled, the Viceroy ofItalian East Africa, the Duke of Aosta, was
summoned to Rome. During his stay of three weeks the final
Italian contingency plans for war in East Africa were drawn up.
But there was no question of marching into the Sudan or Kenya,
as Newbold had feared. Quite the contrary. Ciano the Foreign
Minister, had a meeting with the Duce shortly after his arrival.
‘I saw the Duke ofAosta this morning,’ he wrote in his Diary for April
6. ‘He tells me that for him it is not only impossible to take the offensive
but will also be extremely difficult to hold his actual positions because
the Anglo-French are now well-equipped and ready for battle and the
population, among whom rebellion is still smouldering, will rise as
soon as they have the sensation that we are in trouble.’

The Duke of Aosta was not alone in this unjustified pessi-

 DOMINE DIRIGE NOS 209
mism.! The Blackshirt Inspector-General of the Milizia
circulated a report prophesying a generalized revolt in the event
of war. Badoglio and Graziani, the Chief of the General Staff and
Chief of the Army Staff respectively, had no positive proposals.
Only one major change was made. General De Biase resigned,
and by a royal decree of 27 April General Claudio Trezzani was
appointed Chief of Staffin Africa Orientale Italiana in his place.
Cold, scholastic, and almost universally disliked by his brother
officers, this new military overlord had as his main task to
restrain the more impetuous impulses of the Italian generals on
the spot and effectively to take over control of the armed forces
from the inexperienced Viceroy. He was one of the few Italian
senior officers who had never served in a colonial campaign, or
indeed in the colonies at all. His career had been that ofa professor
at the School of War. His interests were in tactics, his approach
one of detached calculation. He was Badoglio’s man—imbued
with scepticism before he ever set foot in Africa. At his first staff
meeting in Addis Ababa, which he called on 15 May, he stressed
it as a principle that the Empire was on its own, totally discon-
nected from the general strategic plan, and reduced therefore
despite its apparent overwhelming superiority to a defensive
role. If the Italians had deliberately decided to choose a general
whose prime characteristic was his capacity for lowering the
morale of the troops he was to command, their choice could
hardly have fallen on a better man.

Trezzani’s opposite number, the General Officer Commander-

in-chief Middle East, Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Wavell,
had taken up his post in Cairo in August 1939, a month before
war broke out in Europe. Wavell was aged fifty-seven. He knew
the Middle East very well. In the First World War he had acted as
liaison officer to General Allenby, and in 1937 he had succeeded
Dill as GOC Palestine.
Wavell never allowed himself to get flustered. He was a man
who played golf every day, calm, solid, famous for his silences,
| The Italian forces in East Africa, as Newbold had pointed out, but Aosta had not,
vastly outnumbered the tiny British and French forces ‘encircling’ AOI. By August
1940, after mobilization, there were 92,371 Italian soldiers and over a quarter of a
million native troops under arms. Armour consisted of 24 medium tanks, 39 light
tanks, and 126 Fiat Ansaldo armoured cars. The air force numbered 323 planes, of
which 286 were bombers. By contrast the ‘allied’ forces amounted to less than 40,000
troops, almost all native, with over 100 aircraft in support.
270 THE MILLS OF GOD

better at expressing himselfon paper than in discussion. “War is a

wasteful, boring, muddled affair,’ he had written. He had learnt
about it at Ypres, where he had lost an eye. Practical experience
had made him in his own way almost as cautious as Trezzani.
In the months following his appointment he had spent much of
his time visiting various parts of his far-flung command and
getting to know his commanders. One visit however had taken
him very far afield. Shortly before the Duke of Aosta visited
Rome, Wavell had spent a week in South Africa. In the event of
war on the African continent it was essential to know how far the
South Africans, with their manpower and their resources, would
be prepared to help. The man Wavell had seen was General
Smuts.
Smuts was seventy years old in 1940, and one of the most
distinguished figures on the Continent. In his youth he had led
Boer guerrillas against the British but unlike many Boers he had
accepted whole-heartedly the peace settlement. Indeed he had
fought with the British against Von Lettow-Vorbeck in the
famous campaign in German East Africa in the First World War.
He had been in and out of power in the Union ever since. He was
out of power in September 1939 when the South Africans
debated the question of war: should they, like the Australians and
New Zealanders, follow Britain’s lead and declare war on Ger-
many? When the vote was taken, it was found that the pro-
British Smuts had won. By the narrow margin of 80 votes to 67
the Union of South Africa’s Assembly voted for war. Smuts
became Prime Minister and Minister of Defence.
Smuts offered Wavell a volunteer force. The Union would
equip and maintain a brigade for war in Africa north of the
Equator. In addition Smuts agreed to send an anti-aircraft brig-
ade and three squadrons of air force pilots—if Britain could
provide the guns for the brigade and the planes for the pilots. On
20 May the 1st South African Brigade was mobilized: The Duke
of Edinburgh’s Own Rifles from Capetown, the rst Transvaal
Scottish from Johannesburg, and the Royal Natal Carbineers.
The Brigade Commander was Dan Pienaar, a Boer whose
favourite topic of conversation with the British was his sojourn as
a prisoner of war in the British concentration camps.
Wavell earmarked the South African forces for the defence of
Kenya; and returned to Cairo satisfied. East Africa Force—
Kenya’s defenders—consisted of two brigades of the King’s
 DOMINE DIRIGE NOS PsUAL

African Rifles, six battalions, plus, as armour, a squadron of

trucks with bren guns on swivels. There were about fifty aircraft.
With a South African brigade, and above all, with trained South
African pilots, Nairobiand Mombasa should, Wavell felt, be safe
from invasion. Most important ofall, Wavell had found in Smuts
a friend and adviser who was later to help him immensely in his
problems and particularly in his main problem, his relations with
the new Prime Minister, Churchill.
In mid-May Wavell had his first taste of onslaughts to come.
He resisted, successfully, Churchill’s plan to arm the Jews in
Palestine and thus release for offensive operations the large forces
of Empire troops gathering there. Churchill, baulked in one
direction, turned elsewhere. On 28 May he fired the following
barrage at General Ismay:
Pray bring the following before the Chiefs of Staff Committee. What
measures have been taken, in the event ofItaly’s going to war, to attack
Italian forces in Ethiopia, sending rifles and money to the Ethiopian
insurgents and generally to disturb the country? I understand General
Smuts has sent a Union brigade to East Africa. Is it there yet? When will
it be? What other arrangements are made? What is the strength of the
Khartoum garrison, including troops in the Blue Nile Province? This is
the opportunity for the Ethiopians to liberate themselves, with Allied
help.
Churchill knew Africa too well not to interfere. He remem-
bered Smuts, now a personal friend, as a personal enemy. He
remembered also his own trip down the Nile nearly half'a century
earlier and how, outside Khartoum, he had charged against the
dervishes of the Mahdi at the battle of Omdurman. He was
nostalgic for the great days of the wars of his youth.
He obtained little satisfaction on the Khartoum garrison or the
South African brigade, but much more on the question of the
‘insurgents’—for the Allies, and in particular Brigadier Sandford,
were in fact by now almost ready to help the Ethiopians to
liberate themselves. Sandford had drawn up a plan, which was to
be the basis of all future plans, for helping the rebels. It involved
first the opening of an Intelligence Bureau at Khartoum, secondly
a census of Ethiopian refugees in the Sudan with a view to
forming them into a refugee battalion, thirdly the establishment
of arsenals on the frontier, and fourthly the formation of a
Sudanese Frontier Battalion to pass arms and supplies to the
rebels.
712 THE MILLS OF GOD
All this was bitterly opposed in Cairo. It was even more
bitterly opposed in Khartoum where both Sir Steward Symes
and General Platt disapproved of rebels and refugees both in
practice and as a matter of principle. They considered efforts to
help the former and to organize the latter a waste of time, money,
arms, and British officers. Nevertheless Colonel Elphinstone, the
liaison officer between the War Office and Middle East Com-
mand, managed to push the plans through—after all opposition
meant opposing, in the end, both Wavell and Churchill. Arms
were dumped, Ethiopian refugees listed, and an Intelligence
Bureau set up in Khartoum under Robert Cheeseman, who years
before had been British Consul at Dangila and whose books on
Lake Tana had already become classics—-a middle-aged gentle-
man, recalled from his hop gardens in Kent.
The Frontier Battalion was formed. A company was taken
from each of the units of the Sudan Defence Force,! and the
command was given to an officer called in from the Political
Service, Hugh Boustead, thus transmogrified into El Kaim
Boustead Bey.
From the other side of the frontier Italian intelligence officers
kept a worried eye on what was going on, and spread the news
that the new battalion was composed of five different companies
offour different races, black Nuba, very light-coloured Baggara,
chocolate-coloured Kabalise with—a sinister touch—two upper
and two lower teeth missing, and ebony-coloured troops of an
unknown tribe wearing ear-rings and a dangerous iron bracelet
below the elbow—a nasty collection indeed. The Italian
administration made its own rather half-hearted efforts to
prepare the ground for a Muhammadan rebellion in the Sudan by
inviting a member of the Mirghani clan to tour the Empire—a
coup, in the sense that this, in the Muhammadan world, was a
personality, indeed the rarest of personalities, a fire-eating lady,
Sharifat Alaoui el Mirghani, known as ‘the fighting Alaoui’.
The really controversial element in Sandford’s plan, however,
was his insistence that for the rebellion inside Ethiopia to become
dangerous the ex-Emperor would have to be brought back into
play. War with Italy was Haile Selassie’s opportunity, indeed his
only hope of ever recovering his throne. But there was also the
' In view of the tension, a number of Ford vans were converted into ‘armoured
cars’ by mounting Vickers machine-guns on their roofs. This was the sole ‘armour’ of
the Sudan.
 DOMINE DIRIGE NOS 213

danger that the ex-Emperor might be edged out in favour of

leaders already on the spot, either at Khartoum or inside the
country; and the further danger that the European ‘liberators’ of
Ethiopia might subsequently take over the ‘liberated’ Empire.
Indeed it was by playing on this second fear, which was shared by
all Ethiopians, that Haile Selassie succeeded in avoiding the first
danger: he was the symbol in the eyes of the world of Ethiopia’s
freedom, and the Ethiopians who wished to reconquer that
freedom could not afford to jettison the symbol. But before his
aim was finally achieved, Haile Selassie still had many difficulties
to overcome and many injuries and indeed insults to submit to,
more at the hands ofhis official allies than ofhis official enemies.
For a start he wrote to remind both the French and the British
governments of his existence and to put himself formally at their
disposal. It took three weeks for this letter to receive a bare
acknowledgement from Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, to
whom it had been addressed. But it had not gone unnoted in the
Foreign Office. On 20 May a high official minuted as follows:
We have no indications that there is any demand among the rebel natives
in Ethiopia for the return of the Emperor. . . . If war breaks out and we
proceed actively to assist the rebel leaders in Ethiopia we shall require to
be quite certain as to their attitude towards the Emperor before any
decision is taken to inject him once more into the troubled arena of
Ethiopian politics.

At least the official did not refer to him as the ex-Emperor. But
it was not an encouraging attitude.
On 8 June Haile Selassie visited London to attend a christening.
He had agreed to be godfather to the newly-born son of George
Steer and his wife Esmé. The christening was attended by the
proud grandfather, Sir Sidney Barton, and by a friendly Socialist
MP, Philip Noel Baker. It took place, in style, at St. Paul’s: after
the christening the gentlemen retired to the Canon’s study where
Haile Selassie explained to them how he had written a letter to
Halifax but received no reply. What did his friends suggest he
should do? They recommended that he should write again to
Lord Halifax and told him, cautiously, that he did have many
supporters. This was not particularly encouraging, either.
None of the Emperor’s advisers, however, were aware that the
situation was just about to change drastically. They could not
know that a few days earlier, on 29 May, Mussolini had sum-
214 THE MILLS OF GOD

moned the Italian military leaders to Palazzo Venezia and had

announced his final and definitive decision. Italy was going to
enter the war, and any day after 5 June would be ‘suitable’.
On 8 June Newbold sent out his usual morale-boosting
circular from Khartoum.
‘Throughout this month’, he wrote, ‘Mussolini has been crying
‘“Havoc’’ but has not, (as I write) unloosed the dogs of war. He may do
so however at any hour—perhaps before you receive this letter—and
our official information is that we must assume war with Italy to be
imminent and inevitable. . . . We have no information where or how
Italy will strike. . . . Here in Khartoum we are enlisting about 200 extra
police. . . . I should like to counter talk, which I have heard, that the
Sudan is comparatively undefended or does not propose to make any
serious attempt at defence. The Sudan ofcourse is not an easy country to
defend. . . but the troops in the country and the police are by no means
negligible.
‘It may be that the more recent minutes of the Sudan Defence
Committee with their mention of “evacuation” and implications of
Italian “occupation” of places have given the impression that if the
Italians come in we are ready to hand them towns and villages ona plate.
This, of course, is not so, and especially not so in the case of possible
attacks by parachute or airborne troops. Apart from the regular forces,
the Sudan Auxiliary Defence Forces and the police will resist any attack
to which there is a reasonable chance of resistance. It is the casual franc-
tireur or the useless last-ditch defence of an undefended town against
overwhelming force which may provoke a massacre and against which
we wish to guard. . . but this does not spell “defeatism’’. Some dismal
conclusions have been drawn from the preponderance ofItalian air and
ground strength in Italian East Africa. It is undeniable that they can
strike hard blows and cause damage but their preponderance is more
apparent then real. The Italians in Ethiopia are in a large zeriba in a
hostile continent where Allied forces, though scattered, are consider-
able. They may be cut off from Italy, they have to face outwards to
French and British Somaliland, Kenya, Sudan and the sea, and inwards
to rebels who await the word. Some oftheir own native troops may be
untrustworthy, the economic state of the country is bad, and food
scarce. Many of them don’t want a war...
‘In case war with Italy breaks out before my next letter, good luck
to the Provinces!’

There was a last-minute addendum to this circular:

P.S. 11/6/40. This letter had just been roneo’d when Mussolini decided
yesterday evening to take the plunge. ... All male Italians were
 DOMINE DIRIGE NOS 215

interned last night. The scuttling of the Umbria at Port Said yesterday
with apparently a large amount of aerial bombs was a good start.
‘Popolo Italiano, abbiamo dato la nostra parola.. .’. Mus-
solini had unloosed the dogs of war, for the second time. This
time they were to hound him to the end.
 CHAPTER I8

DHE-PIRS DAY SO RoW AK

In Cairo, Gabre Maskal picked up Mussolini’s speech announc-

ing the declaration of war on the Italian radio. That night he went
out and spent £18 on celebrating, a fortune.
‘Proletarian and Fascist Italy is on her feet, strong, proud and
united as never before,’ declared the Duce. In England, Churchill
casting courtesies aside proclaimed his fellow-heir to Christian
civilization ‘the jackal of Europe’. Haile Selassie, as delighted as
Gabre Maskal, immediately caught a train up to Paddington and
installed himselfat the Great Western Hotel. After dinner, he met
his friends, much more hopeful than they had been two days
Garlter.. at George Steers shouse coAtolast=. wrote (Sylvia
Pankhurst, ‘the long agonizing vigil is over’.
But in Khartoum—and very nearly everywhere else in Africa
—they only learnt that Italy and Britain were at war when they
heard the news on the BBC at a quarter past eight that Monday
evening. Code cables were immediately sent out to Gedaref and
Kassala; but, typically enough, the cable and the phone links with
Kassala had broken down. Not that it mattered—the feared
Italian ‘strike’ did not materialize.
Unfortunately, the BBC news came too late for some. At
Moyale two British officials had dined the previous evening with
the Italian Residente on the other side of the Kenya frontier. They
strolled over the frontier again at dusk on Io June, and were
promptly, justifiably, but rather unchivalrously, arrested. Thus
Assistant Superintendent Carter and Sergeant Bulstrode became
the first prisoners of the new war.
At Gambeila Major Praga called on his old friend Major
Maurice at lunchtime, informed him of the declaration of war,
unofficially, and gave him six hours to get clear and away. The
only proviso he made was that the rifles and the powerful
transmitter at the British Consulate should be left behind—and
intact. So Maurice set off by the only means available, by canoe
 THE FIRST DAYS OF WAR PHU

down the Baro. He was stopped at the frontier two days later at
Jokau Post, but eventually let through. He paddled up to Nasir
and then went on to Khartoum. So ended—temporarily—the
reign of ‘the King of Gambeila’.
At Gallabat the cable-system was working; the code message
was uncoded to reveal the declaration of war. On hearing it ‘the
exuberance of Wilf Thesiger expressed itself in a savage war-
dance’, noted the war diarist of the Eastern Arab Corps which
Thesiger had joined a few days earlier, before war was actually
declared, as a new recruit. The diarist had noted previously,

Bimbashi W.P. Thesiger, a former Assistant DC, came to No. 3,

accompanied by his personal servant who was a reprieved murderer and
quite a charming chap if a shade wilful. Thesiger had accounted for over
70 lion during his Sudan career, was a boxing Blue, and altogether a
useful man to have about the place.

They had made use of him shortly after his arrival. The first
arms had, finally, come for the rebels: a batch of 300 single shot
Martini rifles followed by 400 more. On 2 June, ‘the Gallabat—
Metemma Axis’ was formally annulled by the closing of the
frontier. Two days later one-eyed Fitaurari Worku arrived from
Kwara with 200 men, impatient for rifles. The following day
Colonel Castagnola demanded a meeting with his British
‘friends’.
They met, formally, at the Sudan Customs shed down by the
Khor; the round little Colonel Castagnola, with the Prince de
Bourbon-Siciles as his interpreter, and, for the British, not
Castagnola’s old acquaintance Bimbashi Wreford-Brown but this
extremely tall, rather formidable newcomer, Bimbashi Thesiger.
Behind them on the fort of Gallabat the Union Jack and the green
flag of Egypt floated side by side.
The Colonel complained about rebel activities and British
support for them. War, he remarked, had not yet been declared.
The Bimbashi rejected the complaint. Ending the interview on a
more cordial but at the same time more sinister note, he regretted
that he was unable to invite the Colonel and the Prince back for
lunch owing to ‘the maneeuvres’ planned for that afternoon.
On the rebels themselves Thesiger had had to exercise a very
different style of diplomacy: for with the rifles had come very
strict instructions not to issue them till war was declared. So by 9
June Fitaurari Worku and his men, disgusted, had decided to go
218 THE MILLS OF GOD

back to their hills again. Fortunately, wheedled by Thesiger they

waited a day. Even then further contradictory cables arrived
saying that no arms or ammunition were to be issued until further
instructions. These were ignored on Nelsonian principles by the
men on the spot; and the Fitaurari acquired both renewed faith in
the British and the long-coveted weapons.
Thesiger’s exuberance on that evening of 10 June was,
however, short-lived. Two hours later came further messages
from HQ at Gedaref: according to information received an attack
on Gallabat fort by the Italians was due to be put in an hour before
dawn the following morning. Furthermore, reinforcements of 3
native battalions and 31 tanks had reached Metemma. Four hours
after midnight the two Bimbashis, Thesiger and Hanks, charged
with defending the fort, were woken up and had ‘a rather solemn
cup of tea’, before setting off with their platoons to take up
positions on the Fort and the surrounding ridges. But dawn came
unheralded by gunfire—they gazed out at a ‘typical peaceful
African morning’ in Metemma: cows being driven to pasture,
and women going down to the Khor to collect water. That was
how the war began on the frontier.

At midday the following day the Governor-General Sir Steward

Symes summoned to the Palace in Khartoun the leading
Sudanese, including the three leaders of the three great Muslim
sects; El] Shereef Yusuf el Hindi, El Sayed Sir Ali el Mirghani
Pasha, and El Sayed Sir Abdul Rahman el Mahdi.
Sir Steward read out in English a ‘Proclamation to the People
of the Sudan’. The Shereef and the Sayeds made short and loyal
speeches expressing faith in the victory of Great Britain. Sir Abdul
recalled the similar meeting called in 1914, at which he, the son of
the Mahdi, had expressed so fervently his loyalty to the British. He
did not mention that the then Governor-General, Sir Reginald
Wingate, had addressed the Ulema in Arabic; but perhaps he
recalled Wingate’s words: “God is my witness that we have never
interfered with any man in the exercise ofhis religion’. This was
still true, and it meant that Italian attempts to stir up Muham-
madan opinion in the Sudan were almost bound to fail. The British
could count, up to a point, on the loyalty of the Sudanese.

Three of the Sudan’s nine provinces marched with Italian East

Africa: in the north Kassala Province, in the centre the Blue Nile
 THE FIRST DAYS OF WAR 219
Province, and in the south the Province of the Upper Nile. The
danger lay in the north, in Kassala Province, where the only
strategic objective in the Sudan, the railway linking Port Sudan
on the Red Sea with the capital passed over the River Atbara. At
this point stood the vulnerable Butana bridge—nearly 400 yards
long with a span of seven arches. It was along this line that the
Kaid, General Platt, distributed his best troops. One of his British
battalions, the Worcesters, he placed at Port Sudan, the other, the
Essex, at Khartoum. At the Butana Bridge itself, he stationed a
group of the newly-formed motor machine-gun companies
(MMG Coys) of the Sudan Defence Force.
The rest of Kassala Province lying between the railway and the
frontier was expendable, and particularly the three places that lay
within hailing distance of the Italians across the border. These
were the tiny police post of Karora on the Red Sea, the fort and
settlement at Gallabat, and between them the town of Kassala.
Instructions were issued that in the event of invasion Kassala was
to be declared an open town and evacuated. Gedaref and its
outpost Gallabat were not to be given up quite so easily. Even
though Hussey de Burgh Bey, rejoicing in the new title of
‘Commander of Troops Gedaref and Gallabat’ had told his
outlying Bimbashis not to hold the fort till the last man and the last
round, he had added a more traditional rider: ‘But blood must be
spilt!’
Titles and forces proliferated. All the District Commissioners
—Lea at Port Sudan, Sandison at Kassala, Trevor Blackley at
Gedaref, and Hancock,' at steamy Roseires—were drafted into
the Sudan Auxiliary Defence Force. This was a sort of Home
Guard whose job inter alia was to deal with ‘enemy parachutists
or airborne troops’. Anyone with a Sudanese, British, or Egyp-
tian passport was eligible; and even passers-by were enrolled
—such as Evans-Pritchard the anthropologist who happened to
be working with the Nuer and the Anuak. The DCs in their new
military glory set to work forming what they themselves called,
stealing the Italian term, their own local banda.
Gedaref had been chosen as the centre from which rebel
activity would be if not co-ordinated at least encouraged.
Cheeseman’s Intelligence Bureau swung into action. On II June,
the day after war was declared, six messengers left Gedaref
! ‘Honcok’ to the Italian intelligence officers across the border. They invariably had
equal trouble with General ‘Wawel’.
220 THE MILLS OF GOD

to cross the frontier, bearing letters on linen parchment to six

rebel chiefs. They were followed a few days later by six more
messengers bearing six more letters. These letters, identical, read
as follows:

May.it reach yocitwtcet nore gets

Peace be unto you
Now the British and the Italians are at war. In order to crush our mutual
enemy we need all the help we can get. If you need rifles, ammunition,
food or money, send to us men and pack animals, as many as you can, to
the place where the messenger will show you. Whatever you want, we
can help you. Also it would be better if you would send us your own
representative to speak with us and to consult as to how we can best
injure the enemy.

The letters were signed by the Kaid. They were sent to most of
the major rebel leaders in Goyjam, Armachecho, the Wolkait, the
Simien, and Beghemder proper—the only surprising exceptions
being Dagnew Tessema and Li Johannes in Beghemder, and
Hailu Belew, in Gojjam.
All was still surprisingly quiet on the frontier. Finally, unable
to bear the peaceful pastoral scene any longer, Bimbashi Hanks
loosed off from Gallabat Fort the opening round ofthe Ethiopian
campaign. It was dusk on the evening of 14 June. His men,
sparked by his example, fired with enthusiasm, and managed to
expend 8,000 rounds. There was ten minutes’ surprised and
shocked silence. Then the Italian garrison opened up and fired
continuously back for two hours. The only casualty, unfairly, of
this noisy exchange, was a Greek merchant in Metemma. Hussey
de Burgh Bey was furious at the waste of ammunition and cabled
from Gedaref forbidding any offensive action whatsoever over
the frontier. The following day Colonel Castagnola’s men
managed to shoot down the Union Jack flying over Gallabat fort.
This was considered an outrage. The war on the Sudan—Ethio-
pian frontier had begun in earnest.

In the air by way of contrast the Italians had taken the initiative.
On the day after war was declared they bombed Kassala. One
bomb killed the uncle of the Omda. The Omda was extremely
annoyed and demanded that the Sudan counter-attack. More
important, the infuriated garrison had fired on the offending
planes, and therefore it had become impossible to stick to the plan
 THE FIRST DAYS OF WAR 221

of declaring Kassala an open town in the event of invasion.

Emboldened, the Regia Aeronautica bombed Khartoum, causing
considerable panic among car-drivers. Thereafter Khartoum was
blacked out every night and, despite the heat, doors, windows,
and shutters had to be closed.
The RAF retaliated. ‘In mid-June nine Wellesleys flew majesti-
cally abreast over Gedaref on the way to bomb Gondar. From
that day on everyone was satisfied that we were winning the
war, wrote the Governor ofKassala Province, Kennedy-Cooke.
But the Wellesleys were old-fashioned and out of date, and so
were the planes in Kenya piloted by the white Southern
Rhodesians of No. 237 Squadron. Wavell hastily accepted
Smuts’s offer of an anti-aircraft unit, found the guns, and set up
the unit at Mombasa, the port which would be used for supply
—or for evacuation.
The air war became hottest in the Red Sea area where the RAF,
at its Aden base, was strongest. Fortunately a document survives
which gives a vivid picture of this war in the air from the Italian
side—a diary written by an Italian airman, and eventually cap-
tured by the British, translated, and despatched to England to
sleep in the War Office files. Or rather the translation was
despatched—the original has been lost or discarded and, with it,
the name of the diarist. All that we know of him comes from
stray remarks in the diary: that he was unmarried, had been at
training school at Elmas, had fought in Spain, and was (probably)
a sergeant-pilot; that he had a sister called Gina. He may be living
still. Just before war broke out he and his squadron were posted
to the airfield outside Assab. This was Italy’s original trading
station on the Red Sea, on the borders of the Danakil country. !
1 A little town which he described vividly even lyrically: ‘Sometimes we would go
into Assab.. . . The houses were white and in Oriental style, and the streets lined with
date palms, the sweet fruit of which small boys would offer to the passers-by.
Standing apart from the village was the native quarter, stretching down to the sea,
with small white houses interspersed with hundreds of tukuls. In the narrow streets
where one breathed the acreous smell of the native, one came across types ofvarious
races and religions: Yemenis from the Asiatic shore, Indians in a thousand different
coloured turbans and sarongs, Somalis half naked, and Ethiopians dressed just in rags.
There were many Somali women, well-made, backs erect and proud, with round bare
shoulders, carrying on their heads bulging water-skins; and their hips covered by
ample red and black sarongs. Around their necks, on their wrists and ankles pretty
yellow necklaces, bracelets and anklets. The Amhara women in contrast dressed in a
simple white flowing robe down to the ankles, tied around the waist with a belt, also
white, heads covered in a thick bush of hair, shining, oily with grease, having a vile
smell.’
222 THE MILLS OF GOD
On 12 June three Blenheims from Aden raided Assab,
‘destroying sacks of rice, macaroni, and about 20,000 flasks of
wine’. The Italian pilots leapt into their Capronis; and ‘we follow
them out to sea but they have a greater turn of speed and
skimming the water are lost to sight in the haze’. The RAF were
back that night. ‘The moment the plane was heard Colonel Fedeli
gave the order to turn off the lights from the main and the man in
charge in his agitation instead ofturning off the lights illuminated
the landing-ground. The plane only waited for this, for him
fortunate, incident to start the funfair.’ And later in the night the
Blenheims were back in force.
The airport had a sinister and desolated appearance [wrote Gina’s
brother. |‘Firemen gone, our officers gone, the fire, which was burning
more fiercely, and the explosion of cartridges which got worse and
worse. But the greatest torture ofall was to see us running out from the
airport with mattresses over our heads. I and a few others, taken by
surprise, completely nude, sweating from the exertion of running with
the weight of the mattresses, walking and running across the scrub,
thorn, tree stumps, and behind us the glare ofthe fire and the explosions
one by one of 3000 cartridges destroyed in a little less than an hour.
Midnight was past when with mattresses and sheets on the ground in
that hot night full of eruptions we tried to find a little peace and sleep
after a day of bombardment, ofchasing them in our fighters, of heat and
thirst. And tomorrow it will start all over again.

So, demoralized and very, very hot, he and his fellow pilots
camped under a solitary pine. The only thing they found work-
ing in the morning was, fortunately, the ice-box. The
temperature was 104 degrees. This went up the following week,
varying between 122 and 130. ‘Terrific, indescribable heat,’
wrote Gina’s brother. ‘Brain numbed, the head heavy, limbs
aching. If one could only take a refreshing shower of cool water
or rest at night!’ Luckily they did not stay long—a week later the
squadron was posted to Diredawa: ‘With our transfer to
Diredawa ends our vile life at Assab.’ At Diredawa they were
given a target of their own: the other enemy, the enemy at
Djibuti.

A week after Mussolini had declared war on the Allies Weygand’s

armies had collapsed, the Germans were in Paris, and Marshal
Pétain had taken over the government ofFrance and appealed for
an armistice. The following day, 18 June, General de Gaulle
 THE FIRST DAYS OF WAR 223
broadcast from London to the French people his appeal for
resistance. The appeal went largely unheard. On 22 June the
French and the Germans signed the armistice outside Paris.
The Italian army, commanded by Crown Prince Umberto,
had invaded, or rather attempted to invade an apparently pros-
trate France. They were held in the mountains and the foothills of
the Riviera. Nevertheless, inevitably, an armistice followed. The
Franco-Italian armistice was signed two days later at the Villa
Incisa in Rome.
These confusing, rapid, and turbulent events totally upset the
balance ofmilitary advantage, particularly in the Middle East and
Africa. With the French armies and navies out of the war, the
British were left on their own. They faced in Libya an immensely
more powerful Italian army! and in the Mediterranean an Italian
fleet which was now almost as strong as their own Mediterranean
fleet. It was a complete and, from the point ofview ofthe British
in Africa, disastrous reversal of fortune—only slightly mitigated
by the fact that of the two high colonial officials who responded
to De Gaulle’s appeal, one was General LeGentilhomme in
Djibuti.

LeGentilhomme, though not Governor of Djibuti, was military

commander not only of the now 10,000-strong Djibuti garrison,
the most formidable force on Italian East Africa’s borders, but of
the British troops in British Somaliland as well. He was pugna-
cious and a fire-eater. British officers had always found him
pleasant, loyal—and impressively aggressive. The British and
French staffs had planned that on the declaration of war LeGen-
tilhomme and his troops would invade AOI and thrust boldly
down the railway line for Addis Ababa. It was unthinkable, even
at this crisis that a tiger like LeGentilhomme would tamely accept
the armistice and thereby expose his comrades in British Somali-
land to invasion. Indeed he had been ordered on 11 June to resist
‘jusqu’au bout’ and to stir up a ‘general uprising’ within Italian
territory. On 18 June the Italians had attacked towards Dyibuti

| The bulk of Italy’s vast white army in Libya had been concentrated on Libya’s
western border, facing the powerful French Army of North Africa, 120,000 strong.
The real protectors ofthe British in Africa had been the overseas armies of France. But
with France neutralized, there seemed little to stop the Italians from Libya invading
Egypt or the Italians from-East Africa invading Kenya, and both linking up in a pincer
movement that would easily eliminate the Sudan.
224 THE MILLS OF GOD

along the main road, only to be bloodily repulsed by LeGen-

tilhomme’s troops. Three days later four Savoia bombers had
crashed. The following day Gina’s brother took off from
Diredawa, escorting a further group of bombers. “The anti-
aircraft defence is very poor,’ he wrote. ‘We make another turn to
see whether any French fighters will have the courage to take off.
Not one!’
But when his squadron had returned to Diredawa, they had an
unpleasant shock. At lunchtime ‘3 French planes attack us by
surprise—one of our planes is destroyed on the ground’.
Forty-eight hours later the Franco-Italian armistice was signed
in Europe. Djibuti was declared a demilitarized zone under
French control but with port and railway open to the Italians. But
when on 28June the local Italian Armistice Commission tried to
drive in to Djibuti, General LeGentilhomme halted them on the
frontier. He refused even to receive the emissary sent out from
Vichy as the French member of the Armistice Commission, his
fellow-general, General Germain. The 10,000 troops in Djibuti
were still, apparently, in the war, a great comfort to General
Wavell and a great threat to the Italians.

So the first fortnight of the war in East Africa passed, without any
great events or upheavals, without any changes offrontiers, and
with the death of only two, innocent people—the uncle of the
Omda of Kassala, and the Greek merchant in Metemma.It was a
very half-hearted war. Indeed there was more than apathy, there
was sympathy between the two sides. When the Governor-
General of Libya, Balbo, was shot down apparently accidently by
his own side on 28 June, the ‘Sudanese Herald’ lined its account of
his death with a heavy black border even though the two nations
were at war. Mussolini on the other hand did not seem ‘ecces-
sivamente adolorato’—‘excessively saddened’—when one of his
military staff brought the news to him. Balbo’s place was taken
by Marshal Graziani. Thus Graziani returned again to the power
and high military command in Africa, of which he had been
deprived thirty months earlier at the end ofhis disastrous term as
Viceroy in Addis Ababa. Although people in Khartoum referred
with distaste to ‘Butcher’ Graziani and contrasted him with the
‘gentleman’ they ignorantly believed Balbo to have been, vast
expanses of almost waterless desert stretched for hundreds of
miles between the inhabited centres of Libya and the Sudan. Even
 THE FIRST DAYS OF WAR 225
Graziani’s appointment did not seem to threaten Khartoum. It
was not enough to stir the apathy of Sudanese officialdom.
Nor was the arrival of Brigadier Sandford commanding the
obscurely-entitled ror Mission and eager to stir up the rebels
across the frontier; and even less the appearance at the frontier of
three rebel leaders from Armachecho in response to the Kaid’s
letter, Wubneh Amoraw, Ayane Chekol, and Birre Zagaye. It
took the threat of the arrival of a much more distinguished
personage to upset the dovecot and provoke a screech of
anguished cables. That distinguished personage was the exile
from Bath.

For two weeks the ex-Emperor waited restlessly in London while

his friends made their various démarches. Then with sudden
speed, the decision was taken. Precisely a fortnight after Italy’s
declaration of war a plane took off from the Wiltshire Downs
carrying Haile Selassie, his second and favourite son the Duke of
Harar, his two secretaries Lorenzo Taezaz and Wolde Giorgis,
and George Steer, promoted to Captain and appointed ADC, on
the first stage of the long trip back from exile to the throne.
They flew, dangerously, through the night over armisticed
and neutral France, touched down at Malta, and took off again in
a flying-boat. At tea-time the following day the flying-boat
landed in Alexandria harbour, and a launch came out to meet it.
Aboard was another old acquaintance, Chapman-Andrews,
Oriental Secretary at the Cairo Embassy, who had last seen the
Emperor at the dramatic halt at Diredawa where, the capital
abandoned, the Imperial train had pulled in. Now, as always, we
know nothing of Haile Selassie’s inner feelings: we can only
imagine the mixed sentiments he must have experienced as, in
these days, he saw again so many faces that recalled to him his
past, with its glories and its mistakes, but certainly with its
importance. We know though that at this stage he was optimistic:
with, at last, official British support all seemed possible.
On the spot, though, that support proved to be non-existent.
Sir Miles Lampson had been horrified by the cable announcing
the flying-boat’s imminent arrival. Chapman-Andrews was
therefore given the unpleasant task ofgreeting Haile Selassie with
one breath and informing him with the next that he would have
to stay incognito in the harbour. Next morning Sir Miles had him
flown down to Wadi-Halfa on the Egyptian—Sudanese frontier. It
226 THE MILLS OF GOD
was only, cunningly, after the plane was well on its way that the
Embassy at Cairo sent a coded cable to the Palace at Khartoum to
inform Sir Stewart Symes and General Platt that Haile Selassie
was on his way.
If there had been embarrassment at Cairo, there was conster-
nation at Khartoum. Symes’s first reaction was to refuse to have
the ex-Emperor in his territory at all. He sent offa cable to Wadi-
Halfa giving express orders that the flying boat should on no
account be allowed further south. Meanwhile the Governor of
Kenya, appealed to by both Symes and Lampson, also refused to
receive the unwelcome guest.
The ex-Emperor and his staff were thus suspended in a sort of
no man’s land ona hot and remote frontier, while governors and
proconsuls tried to shuffle off the responsibility between them-
selves. It was a situation that oviously could not last; and Wavell,
finding it quite rightly ‘absurd’, took a hand. He sent offa sharp
cable to the Foreign Office, telling them to sort it out.
The result was that the hapless Chapman-Andrews was sent
down to Khartoum for another mauvais quart d’heure. There he
was faced with Platt who talked angrily about ‘provocation’ and
said that the Emperor’s presence would ‘invite reprisals’ and ‘stir
up a hornet’s nest’. Symes was just as worried about the reaction
of the Italians. In the end of course they had to give way. Their
position was too untenable; for the Sudan was after all at war, and
the Italians were enemies, not allies. But they gave way reluc-
tantly, with pique, and only when Chapman-Andrews had
explained what ‘a hell of arow’ there would be if Haile Selassie
was flown back to England.
Chapman-Andrews was sent back to Wadi-Halfa, and this
time Brigadier Sandford was sent with him, another old friend of
the ex-Emperor. They reached Wadi-Halfa on 28 June and
almost immediately went into conference. Chapman-Andrews
for a change had good news to announce: that Haile Selassie and
his suite would be welcome at Khartoum—and also that a
number of prominent exiles had arrived that day from Jerusalem:
the Echege Gabre Giorgis, Fitaurari Birru Wolde Gabriel, Dejaz
Abebe Damtew, and Dejaz Adafrisau. Sandford however had to
explain that there was no expeditionary force waiting; that the
British would be able to make no offensive move for months, and
certainly not during the rainy season, and that he himself, though
head of ro1 Mission, had, apart from light weapons, only 4
 THE FIRST DAYS OF WAR 227
mortars and 400 shells at his disposal. Haile Selassie sat subdued,
making notes, and after dinner commented sadly how distressed
he was by the apparent lack of preparation for a revolt inside
Ethiopia. Sandford could only reply that the situation might have
changed for the better while they were talking: for, a week
earlier, he and Boustead Bey and Trevor Blackley had motored
down from Gedaref to meet the incoming rebels, and with their
help the first British offensive had been planned for that very
day—an attack on Metemma. Then Sandford took his leave; for
he himself was due to fly back early next morning to see how the
‘offensive’ had gone.

It had, in fact, not gone too well. The plan had been simple
enough: a night march by Bimbashi Thesiger and his men to a hill
on the far side of Metemma, there a rendezvous with the rebels,
and the setting up of an ambush—a trap into which the Italians
would be provoked to fall by sporadic sniper-shots coming from
the hill.
Thesiger took up position successfully enough, and fired off
his sniper-shots. But then in the confusion of the night things
began to go wrong. The men ofBirre Zagaye and Ayane Chekol
set up their ambush on the wrong side ofthe hill. As for Wubneh
Amoraw, ‘the Eagle’, he had refused to take part at all. At dawn
Thesiger and his platoon, supported by only about eighty Ethio-
pians found themselves being attacked by the whole 27th Col-
onial Battalion of the Beni Amer, the main force of Colonel
Castagnola’s garrison. They ‘withdrew’ hastily, Thesiger’s per-
sonal servant, the reprieved murderer, running down the hill
with his rifle on his shoulder, muzzle to the rear, and without
turning his head firing the rifle from this position as he ran.!
Though casualties were few—five wounded, four missing-
—this attempt had proved a fiasco. Very clearly much more
thought and much more planning were needed before any further
combined operations with the rebels were tried out.

| ‘He did not claim any hits.’ This was the first encounter in which the British came
up against the Italian bomba-a-manos, the little red and blue ‘money-box’ hand-
grenades which could be lobbed for about sixty yards. ‘They explode on impact’,
noted the British, ‘and make a most impressive noise but rarely cause more than a
superficial peppering of the skin with shot-gun pellets and pieces of the metal.’ The
Mills bombs the British used were more lethal but could be thrown only a short way.
Their disadvantage, was, therefore, great: they could be very dangerous to the
throwers.
228 THE MILLS OF GOD
So when Haile Selassie eventually reached Khartoum by train at
the beginning ofJuly it was to be greeted with news not of a
success but of a discomfiture. He was taken out to be lodged,
discreetly and still anonymously, a few miles outside the city, at
Jebel Aulia where he found his reconstituted ‘court’, the exiles
from Jerusalem. It must have been another and even more
moving reunion; for these, unlike his British friends, were men
of his own race, who looked upon him not as an unfortunate exile
but as a consecrated Emperor.
 CHAPTER
IQ

AQWAT TAGES

IN the first weeks ofJuly five Wellesleys bombed Metemma.

One, peppered, skimmed back over the fort and crashed near the
khor. Thesiger and his men dashed out to rescue the crew. They
found the aircraftsman, Davidson, still alive. They dragged him
away and to safety. “We did a good job, didn’t we, sir?’ he said to
Thesiger. ‘I could do with a nice cold pint of beer now. How I'd
love to be lying in one of those cool Yorkshire streams.’ He died
the next morning; he and his pilot, Bush, were the first two
British servicemen to be killed in this war.
Next morning just before dawn Italian bombers retaliated.
One Sudanese was killed by a splinter; and a few minutes later,
sweeping in from both flanks, the Beni Amer of the 27th
launched a full-scale attack on Gallabat Fort. It was defended only
by one platoon. After a few minutes’ brisk exchange of fire the
defenders abandoned the fort, as planned, and fell back to the Pass
at Khor el Otrub. But though Gallabat had fallen, blood had been
shed; another Sudanese was killed and four wounded. The
defenders claimed, perhaps extravagantly, that they had killed
twenty-seven of the Beni Amer in exchange.
Back at the Pass, woken by the bombs and the gunfire, in the
half-light of dawn Bimbashis Thesiger and Hanks tried to rally
their scattered men and contact the rebel leaders—only to find
that the rebels had discreetly disappeared. They sent a message
off to Khartoum. Expecting an attack any minute, they burnt in
approved military style the ‘highly-inflammable’ code and cipher
wires to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy, and so
at the same time were rid of that particular incubus. Khartoum
decided that the situation was ‘desperate’, and sent offa company
of the Camel Corps as reinforcements. But by the time the Camel
Corps arrived several days later ‘fully expecting to march straight
into battle’, the scare was, much to their disappointment, over.
Colonel Castagnola’s men had made no further move along the
230 THE MILLS OF GOD

road to Gedaref, not even to attack the miserable two platoons

remaining at the Pass.
Simultaneously, further to the north, the Italians attacked
Kassala. This was not a one-battalion affair but, comparatively
speaking, a massive expedition. Frusci had gathered 12,000 men
and 40 guns before launching his attack. But though the town
was no longer undefended, its defenders numbered under 600, of
whom only six were Englishmen. The issue was never in doubt.
The town was bombed, shelled, outflanked by cavalry
squadrons, entered by armoured cars, and occupied by bussed
infantry and their commander, General Tessitore. The District
Commissioner had already moved out to the Gash, the
Hadendoa tribal area. The Assistant District Commissioner,
Blaikie, blew up the Post Office before leaving and blew it up so
effectively that he blew himself out of the door with it. The
garrison withdrew; the invaders captured 61 police.
Simultaneously, still further to the north, the Italians attacked
Karora—despite the habub, the oven-like wind of the plains that
made any effort painful. As this post was defended by only nine
policemen, they met with even less resistance. So by midday on 4
July General Frusci had successfully captured the three enemy
posts that lay on the frontier ofhis Sector. It looked to the British
as if the long-feared invasion of the Sudan had begun in earnest,
and as if their postion was indeed desperate.
From Cairo, General Wavell, somewhat shaken, cabled to
Eden the same day pointing out his weakness not only in the
Sudan but also in Egypt. He appealed for more armour, more
anti-tank guns, more artillery. Clearly he feared that the invasion
of the Sudan from Italian East Africa was timed to coincide with
the invasion of Egypt from Italian North Africa, the vast move-
ment to pinch out ‘the wasp waist of the British Empire’. Short of
troops though he was, he sent down a third British battalion, the
2nd West Yorks, to replace a ‘neutral’ Egyptian battalion in
Khartoum.
In London there were alarmed recriminations. Churchill
deplored the failure to double the Sudan Defence Force in time
and told Eden, his new War Minister: ‘If you lose Khartoum your
name will live in history.’! A few days later he set up the Middle
East Committee, consisting of the Under-Secretaries of State for
' Later when reminded ofthis by Eden he denied it: ‘My dear, I would never have
said that to you.’
 AOI ATTACKS 231
War, India and the Colonies, to co-ordinate the war effort in the
Middle East. There was very little else they could do in London.
Almost all the British Army’s equipment, artillery, tanks, even
guns, had been lost at Dunkirk, and with invasion threatening
England, they had no reinforcements to send.
Eden cabled back what must have seemed to Wavell a very
misplaced message: ‘You will share our keen desire to strike out
at the Italians, especially if they should attempt to advance from
Kassala to Khartoum.’ He added, unnecessarily, ‘An insurrection
in Ethiopia would greatly assist your task.’ This could hardly be
denied. The question, though, was how to arrange it. For as
Wavell was vainly pestering London, so Haile Selassie was
pestering, with almost equally fruitless results, Khartoum.

Asa first step, with the support of the Mahdi’s son, Haile Selassie
had installed himself nearer the centre of power, in the ‘Pink
Palace’, a small country house belonging to Shareef Yusuf el
Hindi on the outskirts of Khartoum. From there he had set about
improving his political position—only to find it almost wrecked
at the outset.
Blatta Takele had been away skirmishing and making contacts
on the borders of Armachecho, sending word to the chiefs to be
very cautious in their dealings with the British; for he knew from
his own dealings with them how British officials regarded the
Ethiopians, and he feared that Ethiopia’s new allies would if
successful liberate Italian East Africa only to impose their own
rule upon it. His theories, and his fears, were to be much
discussed throughout Beghemder. But as soon as he heard that
notables from Jerusalem were arriving, he hurried back to
Khartoum to try and influence them. There—and he does not
seem to have expected it—he found the ex-Emperor, the man
who had attempted to have him hanged, ' also installed. The only
figure ofinfluence he managed to win over to his views was the
youngest of the exiled leaders, Dejaz Abebe Damtew, Ras
Desta’s brother and a member of the Menz nobility.
Haile Selassie, confronted, informed the pair of them that the
British had promised to reinstate him by force of arms. They
demanded to know what sort of a constitution he would impose
if and when he was reinstated. Haile Selassie temporized. Mesfin
©

! See chapter notes, pages 417-18.

232 THE MILLS OF GOD

Sileshi, present at the council, defended the ancien régime as a loyal

Bodyguard officer should. Blatta Takele, changing his point of
attack, suggested that the loyal Bodyguard officer should, pre-
cisely because ofhis loyalty and rank, advise his Emperor to form
his own army, and not to rely on the imperialist British. The
meeting ended inconclusively. But Haile Selassie, faced with this
open challenge to his authority clearly decided that he must
surreptitiously edge Blatta Takele and the disloyal Abebe Dam-
tew aside. It is equally clear that he, and Mesfin, thought very
hard about Blatta Takele’s advice.!
For the moment, however, Haile Selassie was totally
dependent on his protectors. So for the Ethiopians inside his
country he set about drafting, with the help of Lorenzo Taezaz,
an Awaj, an imperial proclamation. In it he announced his return,
invited those who had submitted, and Eritreans too, to desert and
openly countered Blatta Takele’s anti-British warnings. The
Awaj, stamped with the Imperial Seal of the Lion of Judah, was
printed by George Steer who had been placed in charge of a
Propaganda Unit. Soon thousands of copies were being dropped
by plane over military camps and the countryside of Ethiopia,
over occupied Kassala too where Eritreans were seen to kiss the
Seal, press it to their foreheads and weep. The carabinieri
instituted (in theory) the death penalty for any askari found
reading it, and paraded whole battalions to search them. From
that time onwards a trickle of deserters began to cross into the
Sudan—living proof of the emotion the Emperor’s name could
still, despite years of exile, arouse.
At the same time Haile Selassie turned, at first mildly and semi-
privately, on the British. He addressed a letter to Churchill to put
his queries and his suggestions. First, why were not troops or at
least rifles offered to him from all the reserves in Kenya, the
Sudan, and South Africa? Why could he not be equipped with
mortars and anti-tank guns? He suggested secondly, that the
Ethiopian refugees should be brought to the Sudan from both
Somaliland and Kenya, and the Eritrean deserters as well. There
they should be given military training, formed into battalions,
and put under his command. Thirdly, he wanted his Awaj
dropped everywhere. Fourthly, he proposed that Italian outposts
be attacked. It was the sort of letter Churchill himself might have

' See below pages 233, 234, 372-7.

 AOI ATTACKS 233
written, though more courteous in tone. Though addressed to
the Prime Minister, it had of course by etiquette to go to the
Governor-General first. And the Governor-General, on 9 July,
passed it on to London with his comments.
Sir Stewart Symes, taking up Haile Selassie’s four points,
confirmed that the first was being acted on, ignored the second
and third, but agreed with the fourth in so far as this meant
‘minor guerrilla warfare’. He then complained angrily at Haile
Selassie’s arrival—the Foreign Office comment here was ‘We
were deluged with destructive telegrams from Khartoum and
Cairo.’ He ended up by saying that though the Emperor was
temperamentally cautious, he appeared to be both dejected and
eager for immediate action, and that there was the risk of a
sudden, desperate venture.!
It seems clear that Haile Selassie must have composed his letter
to Churchill in concert with Brigadier Sandford, for it contained
all the elements of Sandford’s plan, Plan X. It seems equally clear,
that both were influenced by Blatta Takele’s main point: that the
restoration should be seen to be an Ethiopian, not a British
achievement. Briefly, the culminating point ofthe plan was to be
the Emperor’s triumphant return into Ethiopia leading an Ethio-
pian army composed of ‘Refugee Battalions’ trained, equipped,
and advised by the British. On crossing the frontier this army
would bejoined by rebel bands, also equipped and to some extent
trained by British infiltrators. Swelling in numbers and size as it
moved forward into Amhara, it would finally drive the terror-
stricken Italian usurpers from the capital. The long-term basis of
the plan was the assumption that all Ethiopians were loyal to the
Emperor. The short-term basis was the need to assemble, train,
and arm Refugee Battalions; it was this that Haile Selassie’s letter
was obviously designed to achieve.
Wavell descended on Khartoum and called an urgent con-
ference with the Kaid, Chapman-Andrews and the Emperor.
Haile Selassie brought in his two secretaries and read out a
prepared statement. This was much stronger stuff. Haile Selassie
complained that on arrival in the Sudan not only had he found no
properly prepared plan of action but he had met with veiled

| ‘Bunk!’, annotated one Foreign Office official. This was in fact slightly unfair.
‘The kindest thing to do would be to forget about Sir SS’ despatch’, annotated
another. It was probably not forgotten about. Sir SS was moving very quickly
towards retirement and sweet oblivion.
234 DHEMIELSFOrRCoOD

hostility from the Khartoum government. He complained also

that the Crown Prince had not been sent out. He demanded that
his status as Emperor should be recognized in the Sudan—a
carefully-calculated limitation here—that arms and ammunition
should be supplied, that 600 refugees should be brought to
Khartoum from Kenya and another 400 from Somaliland, and
that Dejaz Abebe Damtew and Blatta Takele should be sent
down to Kenya and given a command there in the remote border
zone. He paused only to add a coup de grace: seeing that his
suggestions were not being met he had decided to form his own
Government and to enter Ethiopia—in a month’s time, on 15
August.
This last threat was not perhaps entirely bluff but there was
certainly an element of‘bunk’ in it. Wavell calmed Haile Selassie
down. Wavell explained that with the French surrender upsetting
everything it was extremely difficult to make plans. It would be
wrong to venture suicidally into Ethiopia but Mission 101 would
certainly go in to prepare the ground within the month. The
other points would be seen to. The British would do their best.
The two men seem to have got on rather well with one
another, with Wavell more amused than annoyed at Haile Selas-
sie’s techniques of interview-conducting. For the Emperor had
insisted on speaking in Amharic, which an Arabic-speaking
interpreter translated into French, which a French-speaking
interpreter finally translated into English—which His Imperial
Majesty in fact spoke with reasonable fluency.
Shortly afterwards Chapman-Andrews was able to reverse his
usual role and tell the Emperor much of what he wanted to hear.
The Crown Prince Asfa Wossen had left England and was en
route. Abebe Damtew and Blatta Takele had been sent down to
Kenya, to the Taveta Camp;! fifty of the refugees in Somaliland
would be brought to Khartoum to form a Bodyguard, and the
rest would be sent down to Kenya where two Refugee Battalions
destined for the Sudan would be formed. So, by combining a
mild letter to the British Prime Minister with an outraged protest
to the British Commander-in-Chief, Haile Selassie had won
almost all along the diplomatic line. Full satisfaction of his more
' Probably the British knew quite as much as the Emperor about Blatta Takele’s
activities and were quite glad, though for different reasons, to have this pretext for
getting him out of the way. As regards the Crown Prince, he eventually reached
Khartoum on 7 October.
 AOTATEACKS 235

aggressive demands came, however, in only one particular case:

Kassala was showered with 15,000 copies of his Awaj, mingled
with 21 tons of bombs on the Italian Commissariato.

By the end of the month the panic was over in the Sudan. It
became apparent that the Italians were not going to move
forward, not at any rate till the end of the rainy season in the
highlands. On both sides of the ‘new’ Sudan-Ethiopian frontier
the ‘war’ therefore died down, enlivened only by reports such as
that announcing the creation of‘Frostyforce’ in the Gash,!and the
‘great jubilation’ in the province after the bombing of Kassala.2
On the other side what is absolutely clear is that the Italians had
no idea of how panicky their moves had made the British. And
yet by the use of overwhelming force they had captured three
posts, including one province capital, in a matter of minutes
rather than hours. They ought to have realized how merely by
continuing on the same lines they could have taken the Butana
Bridge, Gedaref, Port Sudan, and, eventually, Khartoum. They
had the men, and they no longer overestimated the enemy
(‘enemy forces’, noted their intelligence office on the frontier,
‘less than we thought’). But all that they did was to set up a
Military Administration in Kassala, impose a curfew, release all
prisoners, including lunatics, and set about winning over the
Khatmia sect. To counter the Emperor’s Awaj, Italian planes
dropped leaflets over the Sudan stressing Italy’s mild administra-
tion of Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, Mussolini’s love of Muham-
madans and keenness on such progressive schemes as cattle-
breeding. Italy’s war was against the English, not the
Sudanese—though all who resisted were warned that they would
be severely dealt with.
The British were more worried by these leaflets than they were
1 One hundred and fifty tribesmen ofthe ‘usually taciturn’ Hadendoa, named after
the Nazir of the Hadendoa, Sheikh Mohammed el Amin Tirih, and raised, to raid
around Kassala, mainly among his retainers, by the District Commissioner of the
Beja, Bimbashi Haseldon. It was he who had bestowed on the Nazir the nickname of
‘Frosty’.
2 But the instructions to the locals on what to do about bombs caused less
jubilation. One tribesman walking in the bush came across an unexploded bomb. He
had heard instructions to lie down when bombs were about, so he lay down as per
instructions near the bomb and, slightly exceeding instructions, hit it with his stick.
The bomb exploded and he was blown to bits. His small son lived to tell the tale,
having been sent some way away because his father did not think that he could be
trusted to lie still.
236 THE MILLS OF GOD
afterwards to admit. District Commissioners were sent around
collecting expressions of obvious loyalty from local Nazirs and
Omdas, more to reassure themselves that they were still loved
than as proofs of genuine intent. The authorities were both
reassured and worried by the news that there had been very little
looting and no ‘atrocities’ in Kassala. Reassured because this
indicated that the Italians if they conquered the Sudan would
behave well. Worried because this very fact undermined their
own will to resist. As Newbold put it, ‘people were rather
despondent and some falsely aggressive’. The Governor-
General, symptomatically, authorized a broadcast on 18July ‘to
steady Sudanese opinion’. And General Platt, as a precautionary
measure, moved the West Yorks forward to Gedaref.

There had meanwhile been one further incursion on the frontier.

But as this took place on a different ‘front’, south of the Blue
Nile, it represented no real threat.
A little war had already been developing on the edge of the
Baro Salient. There, with the help of Evans-Pritchard and his
Anuak, the District Commissioner at Akobo had boldly seized
the initiative, crossed the Gilo and driven in two small outposts of
Major Praga’s banda. The Italians retaliated much further north
by attacking Kurmuk. Once again they attacked in overwhelm-
ing force, two battalions and bombers against a police post
manned by an Assistant DC and seventy police. A visiting
missionary had dinner there on Saturday. He woke up on the
Sunday morning to find himself wounded by a bomb splinter and
to witness a general sauve qui peut which included Bell, the
Assistant DC, ‘a wonderful game-shot’. One policeman was
killed; and Mr. Hancock, at Roseires on the Blue Nile, mildly
threatened, was mildly reinforced. Bell, burning for revenge,
made plans to attack Kurmuk with bows and arrows and flaming
javelins. For many of the young men in the Sudan the war was
still a light-hearted sport, especially south of the Blue Nile.

This attack on Kurmuk was significant only because it came from

the Galla-Sidamo Sector and was therefore taken, rightly, as
being the herald of amove south by General Gazzera: the dreaded
invasion of Kenya. Moyale straddling the frontier was the first
target. On 1 July the Italians tried a probing attack, with air and
 AOT ATTACKS 237

artillery support, which was driven off. This was clearly only a
curtain-raiser. Brigadier ‘Fluffy’ Fowkes came up to inspect and
deploy his forces on 9 July, a day on which ‘the enemy was
ominously quiet’. He left one company ofthe rst KAR in Moyale
itself, and placed the rest of the Battalion on the hills around. The
6th KAR was brought up in support.
The next day the Italians attacked Moyale at dawn. The
defenders panicked. The counter-attack went wrong. ‘Fluffy’
brought up his reserve battalion only to have his whole brigade
dispersed and almost surrounded. The KAR withdrew, chaoti-
cally, under cover of darkness. Orrigo’s victorious IX Brigade
were rewarded inside Moyale with a great deal of loot—equip-
ment, clothing, stores, and ammunition that had not been
destroyed. Moyale was of no importance in itself: a low, red fort-
like building, and a souk with a few Indian traders, set by a dry
brook in thick thorn-bush, patronized by blood-sucking ticks
and surrounded by rock, sand, hyenas, and border brigands—on
the southern edge of the Ethiopian escarpment. Its loss was no
great loss. But what was significant was that for the first time a
British brigade and an Italian brigade had clashed on almost equal
terms and the British brigade had lost out and been forced,
ignominiously, to retreat.
KAR officers analysed the affair despondently. “Though
enemy troops have shown no eagerness to engage in hand-to-
hand fighting they have certainly displayed coolness under fire
and the ability to creep up to close quarters with their rifles,’
observed one. They were ‘undoubtedly experienced in bush
warfare,’ noted a second. And ‘they were extremely efficient
troops knowing well the value of withholding fire,’ according to
a third.
All this was an extremely bad omen, a far cry from the war-
games ofBarland v Fowland the year before. The KAR, who had
always had a very high opinion of themselves, even began to
wonder whether their training methods were right. ‘Judging by
these troops and allowing for the fact that they must have had
considerable experience in native service, it seems that Italian
methods of training, which are probably not so tempered with
kindness as our own, are the more effective in producing fighting
forces.’ In other words the KAR recognized that they were soft
and inexperienced.. This was self-criticism with a vengeance.
238 THE MILLS OF GOD
Morale became even lower towards the end of the month when
a battalion of newly arrived West African troops—the Ist
Nigerians—attacked a group of banda at Dobel, 2,000 camels
strong, lost two officers and retreated, disorganized, through the
almost equally demoralized 6th KAR, whose standard was cap-
tured. If even the Hausas of northern Nigeria, well-trained
regulars, could be defeated by a group ofirregular Somali dubats,
what hope was there for Kenya and for its defenders?
General Dickinson hastily tried a rather desperate diversionary
attack. On the principle ofsetting a thief to catch a thief, he gave
the Ethiopian refugees their head. The ‘1st Ethiopian Battalion’
was hastily formed at Taveta, divided into five companies of a
hundred men and issued with old rifles and a hundred rounds per
man. It was then launched at the other end of the Galla—Sidamo
front beyond Lake Rudolf, towards Maji.
For years the refugees had been languishing in their camps,
vainly demanding arms and ammunition and the authorization to
attack the Italians. They had after all originally crossed the border
in order to ask for British assistance. At long last they had it.
Their old chiefs, Dejaz Wolde Mariam, Dejaz Zaudi Ayalew, and
Fitaurari Tademme Zelleka took command. They were given
three days’ rations and escorted to the frontier by two platoons of
the KAR. There, just over the frontier, on Ethiopian soil, they
raised the Ethiopian flag. The KAR platoons saluted. It was the
first time that the Ethiopian flag had been raised over Ethiopia by
an invading Ethiopian force since the flight of the Emperor.
It was the best and most romantic moment ofthis ‘invasion’.
The little force, 510 strong, set off into the hostile and unknown
lands of the Merille aiming to cross to the territory they knew on
the far side of the Omo. But the Omo was in-flood and
impassable, and the land harsh, bare, hostile, and foodless. For
thirteen days they straggled along after they had exhausted their
rations. A brief skirmish with a banda post was enough to halt
them and turn them aside. They crawled back along the frontier
till they were picked up on 7 August by a KAR patrol and
brought back to food and to rest. They had lost only four men but
their expedition had been a total failure. They had been launched
too hastily at the wrong part of the country. The British authori-
ties in Kenya however blamed not themselves but the refugees.
Thereafter they had very little use for Ethiopian fighters whom
they usually referred to, deprecatingly, as shifta.
 AOITATIAGKS 239

The ‘1st Ethiopians’ were reformed at Lodwar, and put under

the command of a Kenya settler, Captain Angus Buchanan. At
the same time the ’2nd Ethiopians’ were formed out of the
remainder of the refugees at Taveta, also under a British com-
manding officer, Captain Boyle. There was to be no question in
future of allowing the refugees a free rein under their own
leaders. Meanwhile the outmanceuvred duo, Blatta Takele
and Dejaz Abebe, had reached Taveta. They were officially
appointed Staff and Liaison officers, but watched very carefully.
Blatta Takele, forbidden to address his countrymen on political
matters, spoke much on the texts of Ezekial. It must have been an
odd camp at Taveta.

General Dickinson’s attempt at creating a diversion had been an

absurd fiasco. Yet still General Gazzera made no serious move
forward from Moyale; and Nairobi breathed again, and with
much relief, when the 1st South African Brigade finally disem-
barked at Mombasa. They were paraded at Gilgit on 31 July. This
meant that there were now in Kenya five brigades where weeks
before there had been only two, and many more supporting
arms—including soon, three squadrons of the South Africa Air
Force equipped with modern Hurricanes by the British. Kenya
was no longer naked.
Even so the ‘invasion’, coming on top ofthe ‘invasion’ of the
Sudan, had scared London. Ten days after the fall of Moyale
Churchill had sent his Chiefs of Staff a scorching note insisting
—for the first time—that plans for a concerted attack on the Italian
position in Ethiopia should be pressed forward.
The Middle East Committee met two days later. After the
meeting Eden had to face a violent tirade from Churchill which at
times degenerated into ‘a heated altercation’ about the whole
Middle East situation and about Wavell himself. Churchill was
becoming irritated with his generals. Even the former Prime
Minister, Chamberlain, remarked: ‘I’m sorry, Anthony, that all
your generals seem to be such bad generals’.
The Middle East Committee issued its recommendations on 25
July: ‘no financial considerations should be allowed to stand in the
way of fomenting the rebellion in Ethiopia’. In other words the
purse strings were to be loosened. Sandford and Haile Selassie
would get their equipment, the rebels their arms and money.
And incidentally, Sir Stewart Symes was to be transferred. That
4
240 THE MILLS OF GOD

week Eden went over to Northern Ireland to talk to Symes’s

appointed successor, a military man, Major General Sir Hubert
Hudleston; and was ‘much impressed by him’. Hudleston knew
the Sudan well. It had indeed been he who had originally raised
and organized the Sudan Defence Force—the first Kaid. But
Wavell was summoned back to London ‘for consultations’.
Churchill was determined to shake up Middle East Command
and avoid any further defeats by the emboldened Italians. But in
this he was to be too late.
 CHAPTER 20

THE FALL OF BRITISH SOMALILAND

Frusct had attacked; Gazzera had attacked; It was now the turn
of the commander ofthe third military Sector, General Nasi, to
show what he could do. Large forces assembled at Harar, ready
to sweep the enemy into the Red Sea. This was thought to be a
comparatively easy matter, for General LeGentilhomme had
been ousted from Djibuti by the Vichy emissary. British
Somaliland was therefore dramatically alone, facing a far
superior force assembled to crush the French hornet, not the
British mosquito. No wonder, as the French settled into friendly
neutralism, that General Nasi should be exultant and the British
demoralized. “The overrunning of Somaliland seems assured’,
wrote Newbold in a despondent letter, ‘such is the Wops’
numerical superiority. Poor Reggie Chater, he deserves a better
show but he’s a fine soldier and will hold them up for a time. I
only hope there isn’t a second Dunkirk at Berbera.’

On 3 August the Italians launched their invasion of British

Somaliland. The advancing columns numbered no less than forty
thousand men; twenty-six regular battalions supported by artil-
lery and planes, and irregulars.
General Nasi had looked at his maps—which, as he was later to
discover, left something to be desired—and had made his plans
accordingly. His main thrust, as the British had always sus-
pected, was to be directed at Berbera, through the wide pass at
Tug Argan; and for this he had formed at Harar a ‘Special
Division’ under the command of General Carlo de Simone, four
brigades strong—including the II commanded by the famous
Colonel Lorenzini. Somali irregulars were to fan out on the right
flank of the main invading force and to probe the narrow pass at
Sheikh.
General Nasi probably knew very well that the other two
passes, at Jirreh and Dobo, had been allotted to French troops.

id
 Sa]!W
vorTeneg
uoleneg = BN ea) YQ S E »

Osc wy
S <2
199) OOF ¢12A0 puey

siejn3aiy

| OS

007
YSiig
uelyel]

ado)
infopiony

00!
AIBN
ae
wa
ta 3

UOISRAU] UPT[LI]
NILYANSIW

:puryipeuros
uapp

SY],
fo
fjny a

ysuug
eee

‘sigalund
dvw“L

ae Wi
,

ss we Yast.
eainpe

”qDO
NAGY
Eudasad
BST

usayoY
‘sueisapoyy
/ y
pplopy
ssod

-
x

eo
738 Sieiey

Cont

n&
| |
TIDY
opiese

NV
a
i
AE
LNaS
ynqifq*
:
 THE FALL OF BRITISH SOMALILAND 243

Now that there were no French troops to defend them they

would be defenceless. He planned therefore to push the second
prong of his attack swiftly through to Zeila on the Red Sea and
along the coast road to Berbera, thus cutting off the British
defenders at Tug Argan from the rear and involving them in a
catastrophe. To make certain ofthe success of this left hook, he
had indeed not one column but two lined up. In charge ofthese
columns were two generals known to be bitter personal enemies:
a Blackshirt general, Passerone (once described by the British
Consul as a ‘Fascist Firebrand’), and a regular army general, Ber-
toldi. Thus stirred by emulation—it was Trezzani’s original idea
and Trezzani’s phrase—they would dash forward with winged
feet, each eager to pounce on Berbera before the other. General
Bertoldi was given the stronger force: two native brigades with
two battalions of white troops as well. General Passerone only
had a Blackshirt battalion and a native battalion plus artillery—
strength for the one, mobility and fire-power for the other.
Italian intelligence officers had, as usual, hugely overestimated
the numbers of troops opposing them. They put the total at
11,000 (possibly including the illaloes' as fighting troops, though
in fact the illaloes did nothing). There were certainly more than
there had been, however. Two Sikh battalions and the 2nd KAR
had been sent over from Aden, more than doubling the strength
of the 1,600-odd troops already on the spot, and far improving
the quality of the defence. For the Indian battalions were highly
professional troops—unlike the newly-raised Northern
Rhodesians, or the Somali Camel Corps which in its day had
been obliterated by the so-called Mad Mullah and whose
enthusiasm when engaged against the fellow-Somalis ofa pro-
Muslim power was dubious. Rather to Italian surprise, the
British seemed determined to make a stand. Brigadier Chater
gathered his main force around Tug Argan, and sent out a fairly
desperate plea for reinforcements.
In fact he had to hand potential reinforcements, keen and quite
experienced if highly irregular. These were the Ethiopian refu-
gees—the group already in the camp in British Somaliland, anda
further group, 800 strong, who had come across from Dyibuti.
There was a difference in these two groups, corresponding to a

' Irregular Somali levies, said to be so-called from their British officers’ rallying-
cry ‘Tally-Ho!’
244 THE MILLS OF GOD
difference in the attitudes of the two governments towards them.
The British had always been disapproving and parsimonious.
But General LeGentilhomme and Captain Appert had not only
approved of but had armed and retrained their refugees. The
French had therefore attracted the most warlike of them, includ-
ing two well-known leaders, Asfau Wolde Giorgis, their own
protégé (Promotion General Mangin, St. Cyr, 1929-1931), and the
notorious Omar Samanthar of Walwal fame, the outlaw on whose
head for ten years the Italians had put a price. Well-disciplined,
they had been armed with ex-Spanish Civil War rifles. Inevit-
ably, when they left Djibuti and crossed the frontier, they were
disarmed and interned by their British ‘allies’, and their rifles
were, with equally inevitable stupidity, destroyed. Just before
the invasion, useless and badly treated, they were sent away,
shipped offtoAden aboard the Jehangir, and from there down to
Mombasa and up into Kenya like the others. It was a great waste.
A reinforcement, however, was en route. It was Wavell who
had decided, against much advice, that British Somaliland if
invaded would be seriously defended. So Wavell had sent a
battalion of his own regiment, the 2nd Battalion The Black
Watch, down to Aden. These Highlanders had an even more
warlike reputation than the Sikhs of the Punjab. They were
camped uncomfortably in Aden, ina tented camp at Khormahsur
when the invading columns crossed the frontier.

There was no resistance. The outlying Camel Corps riders fell

back towards Tug Argan without even trying to stop Nasi’s ‘left
hook’. Two days after the invasion, General Bertoldi and his
column were in Zeila with the rival General Passerone not far
behind, ready to move along the coastal track towards Berbera
and cut off the defenders of Tug Argan. It was only the following
day that the Black Watch was finally given the order to move, and
it is a measure ofBritish ill-preparedness that it took three days to
ferry this single battalion over from Aden across the Gulf. There
at Berbera the Black Watch took up their position as reserve.
During these three days, however, the Italian columns —and this
is a measure ofItalian inefficiency—did virtually nothing. They
moved cautiously forward when they could have dashed, suc-
cessfully, for their objectives before these were reinforced.
General de Simone was particularly cautious, always moving
his unwieldy central column in text-book formation, though
 THE FALL OF BRITISH SOMALILAND 245

scouts were reporting the country ahead virtually clear up to the

passes. On 6 August, having captured Hargeisha after a brief
exchange of shots with a Northern Rhodesian outpost, the
central column paused. On its right the Somali dubats halted too.
Indeed for two whole days, on the pretext of rain and bad roads,
all General Nasi’s columns sat down where they were, until they
were set moving again by continual prodding from Addis Ababa,
from Trezzani, and indeed from the Viceroy.
The British had meanwhile, thanks to the tortoise-like move-
ments of the Italian generals, moved their own reinforcements
forward into place. By the evening of 10 August the Black Watch
had been lorried up to the little village of Laferug behind Tug
Argan. In front of them lay Brigade headquarters on the hill of
Barkasan. Three of the other four battalions were strung out,
facing the enemy along the sides of the wide gap of the Pass: the
2nd KAR, the Ist/2nd Punjabis and the rst Northern Rhodesians.
The fifth battalion, the 3rd/14th Punjabis had been detached
—sent to hold the other pass over to the east at Sheikh. But
behind and around and everywhere else was a military void:
nothing—nothing except a few roaming troops of Camel Corps
and a few Somali police. Berbera lay open almost for the asking if
the ‘left hook’ had hooked in. But the two Italian columns on the
coast seemed inexplicably and inextricably delayed.
Meanwhile a set battle loomed at Tug Argan; while from
Harar, Gina’s brother landed at Hargeisha airstrip, “which Mr.
Englishman had abandoned in his flight the other day. The
advanced party which first occupied the place found beefsteaks
still hot on the linen-covered tables. Perhaps this was the third or
fourth of their five daily meals.’ He took off to machine-gun a
badly-camouflaged petrol dump down at Berbera: ‘The barrels
catch fire like matches, sending dense columns of smoke up.
What a brutal joy one finds in destruction!’

As Italian light tanks probed forward into the pass at Tug Argan,
the Royal Navy offered a saluting gun with thirty shells and three
seamen to man it as an anti-tank weapon. The Black Watch
thanked the Scottish gods that they had ‘borrowed’ some bren-
guns from their fellow Scots Guards at Cairo, and hastily trained
native runners to replace the wirelesses they had never received.
GHQ at Cairo—for Wavell was en route to London—ordered
down a regiment of field artillery by ship which never arrived and

id
246 THE MILLS OF GOD
a Major-General from Palestine to take command of the defence
who did.
Major-General Godwin-Austen, already en route to Kenya
when diverted, reached Tug Argan on the evening of 11 August
to find the usual British Army set-up: a scattering of detached
companies positioned on the sides or tops or ridges of anumber
of newly-baptized hills—Knobbly, Mill, Black, Castle,
Observation, and the rest. They had been bombed that day at
dawn, and attacked by one enemy brigade, while another,
Lorenzini’s I], had attempted an outflanking movement round to
Laferug. The two Italian brigades were pulled back that evening.
Both sides seemed amazed and slightly alarmed at the strength
and determination of their antagonists.
General de Simone learnt that over on his right the dubats had
also been blocked by the Sikhs at Sheikh Pass. He rested a day.
Then he attacked and attacked again, and was counter-attacked,
and pushed back the counter-attack, and called in the air force and
tried, unsuccessfully, more outflanking movements. But he was
amazed and distressed to find that the British defence was not just
wide and shallow but wide and deep. The native troops, in
particular the Shoans and Amhara, dashed wildly forward in
their attacks and lost a lot of men. The XIV Brigade had to be
taken out of the action, so heavy were its casualties. Furthermore,
the terrain was so difficult that Lorenzini’s Eritreans, though far
better trained and much more experienced, were unable to get
round the flanks of the enemy positions however hard they tried.!
So though the attackers outnumbered the defenders by about
four to one, and though two hills were captured, none of the
Italian generals were very happy about the way things were
going—neither De Simone at the front, nor Nasi co-ordinating
from Harar, nor Trezzani back in Addis Ababa.

What they did not realize was that their opponents were even
more unhappy, and that the two battalions of African troops, the

' They were not helped in their endeavours by what the Italian staff still did not
realize: that the maps they were using, based on an old 1926 British map, were totally
wrong, and had confused the Sheikh-Laferug track with the Hargeisha—Berbera road.
This incompetent bit ofstaff work totally messed up all the attempted Italian turning-
movements on the ground and made their commanders unable to believe that the
British could possibly have found defensive positions in depth. It is almost impossible
to fight successful battles with inaccurate maps, as anyone with the least military
experience knows.
 THE FALL OF BRITISH SOMALILAND 247
2nd KAR and the Northern Rhodesians, were at breaking-point.
So was the imported Major-General’s nerve. Godwin-Austen
had been particularly shattered by an incident on the night ofthe
13th, when for the first time a company ofthe Black Watch, till
then held in reserve, had been ordered forward. It had been
ambushed in the moonlight by Lorenzini’s men. In the general
confusion Captain Rose, commanding, had eventually escaped,
driving back ‘like Jehu with a touch of Agag’, only to find that the
black drivers, even swifter, had preceded him with a laconic but
distinctly gloomy report. ‘Major killed, captain wounded, all
finish, no good.’ If even a company of the Black Watch could be
dispersed in confusion (and its commanding officer had been
replaced on the very dubious official grounds that his ‘health had
broken down’) what hope was there? Though the Major-General
had also felt obliged to replace the commanding officer of the 2nd
KAR with another Black Watch major, the situation on Tug
Argan was worsening. The morale of the Africans was bad, and
likely, thought Godwin-Austen (who had been studying reports
of the KAR débiacle at Moyale), to become worse.
Major-General Godwin-Austen was not of course to know
that the generals on the other side were equally worried. Nasi and
Trezzani, meeting in conference, were seriously considering
calling the whole operation off—particularly as their machiavel-
lian scheme with the two coastal columns from Zeila had gone
very wrong. As Trezzani wrote to Marshal Badoglio afterwards,
each of the rival generals concentrated all his energy not on
himself advancing, but on stopping the other from doing so.
Some of Bertoldi’s column had even reached the village of
Buchar, three-quarters of the way to Berbera, only to be pulled
back. And nothing but complaints about obstructions, lack of
water, and non-existence of roads previously reported passable
were coming in. So the whole Italian scheme, in theory excellent,
had gone awry, because of a still-unrecognized staff error (the
map mistake) which had resulted in heavy casualties, and because
of the criminal incompetence oftwo Italian generals and the over-
cautiousness of a third. Fortunately for them they were faced
with a British general who was not very much better.
For early on 15 August Godwin-Austen threw in his hand. He
sent offa cable to Cairo asking for permission to evacuate, saying
that he saw no alternative. At midday a cable came back from
‘Jumbo’ Wilson, that ‘rock of strength’: ‘Permission granted’.
248 THE MILLS OF GOD
No Thermopylae at Tug Argan—though a Thermopylae would,
as those who can be wise after the event are able to judge, have
been not only a feat of but a triumph for British arms.
The problem now was ‘to avoid a Dunkirk at Berbera’. In this
Godwin-Austen, helped it must be admitted by De Simone, was
much more successful. Orders were sent out for evacuation. The
three forward battalions at Tug Argan were to withdraw through
the Black Watch; the four companies of the Black Watch to take
up position at Barkusan and hold it till nightfall.
This was easier said than done. The pass at this point was over a
mile wide, and the Black Watch companies positioned on either
side of it were on the lower slopes. There they could be over-
looked and shot down at by any outflanking enemy movement.
To stop the Italian tanks they only had one Bofors anti-aircraft
gun and one captured Breda anti-tank gun with five rounds. ‘Had
the enemy used his tanks properly’, wrote the regimental intelli-
gence officer afterwards, ‘he must have overrun the defence.’ But
he did not. This was in part very understandable, because one
medium and two light tanks were destroyed by Sergeant Major
Sandy. The view of such destruction naturally tends to make
surviving tank commanders wary.
The Black Watch held on throughout the day. They were
attacked in the morning by Lorenzini’s Eritreans, who kept in
touch with whistles till ‘the whole countryside was an elaborate
whistle symphony’. The attack looked dangerous. It was pushed
forward on the left with great spirit until fifty Highlanders upped
and charged wildly yelling, bayonets out, for six hundred yards,
a terrifying sight that sent ‘the enemy rising and running like
hares in their hundreds’. In the afternoon nearly twenty tanks
cruised threateningly around in front while a battalion of
Lorenzini’s, with mules, worked slowly, visibly, and worry-
ingly round to the rear. Just before dusk, having lost only seven
men killed, but having successfully covered the withdrawal of
the other battalions the Black Watch was given permission to pull
back, watchfully, towards Berbera.
Gina’s brother was out flying, mightily impressed by his first
sight of a battle on the ground beneath him, and ready to believe
any tale however tall, of that epic day. ‘A bitter battle’, he wrote:
On the morning ofthe 17th our motor transport, lorries, tanks etc. were
coming out like huge tortoises and in Indian file setting off down the
 THE FALL OF BRITISH SOMALILAND 249

white road towards Berbera. There was the strongest resistance to the
repeated assaults of our white and coloured troops. From above we
could see terrific artillery duels . . . Waves of Capronis and Savoias
hammered their positions. After days of hopeless fighting our General
Staff had outflanked them. Our coloured troops, drunk with spirits and
the taste of blood, rushed their strongholds, massacring the Australian
and Rhodesian troops in the service of the British Empire.
But those unmassacred—and the total casualties on the British
side for the whole Somaliland episode were only 260 as against an
Italian total of 2,029—got safely away, totally unharassed by the
Italians. For General de Simone apparently never considered a
proper harassing pursuit, though the road was open. A few hours
after midnight even the rearguard, the Black Watch, had quietly
embarked. Italian patrols did not even reach Berbera till forty-
eight hours later. As a result they took no more prisoners and
found far less booty and equipment than they had a right to
expect. What they did find however was a warm welcome, for
none of the Somalis were particularly sorry to see the British go.
The Camel Corps had more or less dissolved. Just before leaving,
the British military authorities had demonstrated their trust in
their own appointed officials by tricking the Somali police in
Bervera to parade in the square. There they disarmed them under
the menacing threat of aPunjabi machine-gun detachment.
So British Somaliland was added, to the general satisfaction of
its inhabitants, to the governorate of Harar and annexed by its
conquerors to Italian East Africa.

The Italian press was triumphant. The British press, naturally,

played the incident down and insisted on the worthlessness ofthis
strip of desolate desert. In public, in the House of Commons,
Churchill referred to a ‘small but vexatious military episode’. But
in Aden the loss came as a shock; and in London too where British
public opinion had been led to expect that Ethiopia would fall like
a ripe plum into British hands. Public opinion was not consoled
by the sudden switch of the nationality of the hands into which
the plums appeared to be falling.
The Italian generals involved drew, more quietly, their conclu-
sions. General Nasi considered that they had underestimated the
British frontal position, which was true; that the turning move-
ments had been a success, which was not; and that the exercise
had in any case been a logistic triumph, which is hardly the kind
250 THE MILLS OF GOD

of pat that a Napoleon would have given himself on the back.

General Trezzani, who had pointed out what a splendid attacking
spirit the Shoan and Amhara troops, generally considered unreli-
able, had shown, noted also that white troops—i.e. the Black-
shirts—were very inferior in operations of this sort to native
troops, too delicate and demanding too many luxuries. He did
not claim that the turning movements had been a success. On the
contrary the fact that they had been a failure showed that forces
even when involved in battle needed not merely prodding but
orders from the centre—that is to say, from himself. Marshal
Badoglio, more concerned with the general political picture, was
happier. While the operation was in progress he had sent a
bracing telegram to Nasi to urge him on, implying that peace in
Europe was close. All that Italy needed was a clear victory over
England to put her in a stronger position at the peace conference.
As for the Duke of Aosta, he had always been against the
invasion, perhaps for suspect, almost pro-British, motives. He
complained churlishly that valuable reserves of men and
materials had been wasted on conquering a useless stretch of
sand. This was a criticism that many Italians, particularly mili-
tary men, were to voice. Their reasoning does not appear
justified. Clearly the Sudan or Kenya would have been a greater
prize. But either, if only because ofthe famous ‘logistics’, would
have needed a greater effort; and for that greater effort the
experience acquired during this invasion, indeed the mistakes
made, would be invaluable. Furthermore, tactically it had
removed a possible base for a possible attack. Administratively
and ethnically it had rounded off a natural appendage of AOI.
Strategically it was by no means useless. For the Italians now
controlled a continuous stretch ofcoastline running from the Red
Sea down into the Gulf of Aden. This could have been a threat,
and indeed the British took it as a threat. One immediate
effect—minor but expensive and irritating—was that when the
Italians put out the light ofthe lighthouse on the tip of the horn of
Africa, on Cape Guardafui, all British convoys had to go round
to the east of Socotra, thus adding 200 miles to their trip and
several days to their journey. This delay alone was a worthwhile
gain for the Axis war effort.
The real benefit, however, was psychological. The Italian
army had taken on, and beaten, the British army—as anyone
capable oflooking at an atlas could see. This had not been a minor
 THE FALL OF BRITISH SOMALILAND 251

skirmish for an Obscure frontier post but a proper invasion in

which the British had been hurled back to the sea, and had for the
first time in the war lost one of their colonies to the enemy.
Italians everywhere were exultant. Their mood was the mood of
Gina’s brother, as he flew back to the capital. ‘Thus I left
Hargeisha this flower ofthe earth, this garden of rich vegetation
and springlike climate, which one day will undoubtedly be
populated by our peasant families who will cultivate and exploit
these immense tracts ofland all around, after decades of British
domination and injustice.’

As for Churchill, he might publicly play the episode down but in

private he was more than vexed, he was furious. His first reaction
was to demand that Godwin-Austen should be suspended,
nothing less. A ‘red-hot cable’ went to Cairo. Wavell, in his reply,
refused. ‘I have no doubt that both General Godwin-Austen’s
recommendation and General Wilson’s decision were correct,’ he
cabled. Then he added, ‘a big butcher’s bill is not necessarily
evidence of good tactics.’ It is said that this last phrase stirred
Churchill to greater fury than his staff had ever seen before. But
his continuing pressure for at least a military enquiry was in vain.
Wavell was just back in Cairo when these cables were
exchanged. He had, while the battle at Tug Argan was being
fought, been fighting a defensive battle of his own in London.
Summoned by the War Cabinet, he had arrived on 8 August to be
taken down the next day to Chequers and confronted for the first
time by the man who wanted to judge his calibre, Mr. Churchill.
This first meeting had gone only ‘reasonably well’. Churchill was
warm, exuberant, and a talker. He admired men like himself.
Wavell was notorious for his silences, and ill at ease when asked
to address civilians. Eden, who was trying to patch over the
differences between the two men, became more and more
depressed. Wavell was ‘not a man to be drawn out or one to make
a special effort to please’. There had been ‘a very long and
exhausting sitting. . . The truth was that Churchill never under-
stood Wavell and Wavell never encouraged him to do so.’ And by
letter to the Prime Minister—for the meetings were punctuated
by the exchange ofletters and memoranda—Eden commented:
‘Dill and I were very much perturbed at your judgment of
Wavell.’ :
That judgment went from bad to worse. Wavell, in Churchill’s

/
2$§2 THE MILLS OF GOD

opinion on the 12th, lacked mental vigour, lacked the resolve to

overcome obstacles, tamely accepted a variety of circumstances
in different theatres, and showed a lamentable inability to con-
centrate upon the decisive point. By the following day Wavell
had become a ‘good average colonel’, who would make a ‘good
chairman ofa Tory association’. Eden pointed out that he had
been a scholar at Winchester, had, that is, succeeded in what is
probably the most difficult intellectual test that any boy of
thirteen in England is ever faced with. Therefore his air of
lethargy was merely superficial. But unfortunately Churchill ‘did
not care much for Winchester or its products, except Sir Edward
Grey’. Eden was miserable.
Wavell left London on the night ofthe 15th to reach Cairo just
in time to learn of the loss of Somaliland, and to receive, after the
outraged cable, an enormous Directive, prepared before the fall
of Somaliland, on the whole conduct of the war in the Middle
East. This was ‘the first of a long and remarkable series of
telegrams’, as the Official History with tact puts it, “from the
Prime Minister to one or the other of his Commanders-in-Chief
in the Middle East... . Some must have been much more
welcome than others. They could have left no doubt that there
was indeed a central direction of the war, and a vigorous one.
There had been nothing like it since the time of the elder Pitt.’
The “General Directive on the Middle East’ resumed and
expanded two previous mementoes that Churchill had addressed
to Ismay ‘for General Wavell’ following their initial meeting at
Chequers. In the first, Churchill had particularly stressed that
large forces were standing useless and idle in Kenya—the South
African brigade, ‘probably as fine material as exists for warfare in
spacious countries’, two West African brigades ‘brought at much
inconvenience from the West Coast’, and ‘at least two KAR
brigades’, not to mention the ‘East African settlers who should
certainly amount to 2000 men.’ Churchill proposed therefore
that these East African settlers and the KAR should hold Kenya.
Meanwhile the other three brigades should be sent by sea to
reinforce Egypt and the Sudan where ‘the fate of the Middle East,
and much else, may be decided.’
In the second memento, two days later, the Prime Minister
returned to the attack after what had evidently been a long session
during which Wavell had contradicted him. Wavell’s line was
that the South African brigade was untrained and unready to go
 THE FALL OF BRITISH SOMALILAND 253

into action. Churchill refused to accept this without proof.

‘Anyhow’, he wrote—it was before the scuttle from Somaliland
—'they are certainly good enough to fight Italians.’ As for the
two West African brigades, they should be sent immediately to
Khartoum via Port Sudan. ‘I do not know’, he complained, ‘why
these two brigades were taken away from West Africa if the only
use to be made of them was to garrison Kenya.’ But he reserved
his special wrath for the Kenya settlers. He had probably been
informed that only a handful had enrolled, and that so far from
being eager to fight they were far more interested in following in
Nairobi the notorious cause célébre of that summer: the trial of Sir
Delves Broughton for the murder of the Earl of Errol. ‘Let me
have a return of the white settlers of military age in Kenya,’
fulminated Churchill. ‘Are we to believe that they have not
formed local units for the defence of their own province? Ifso, the
sooner they are made to realise their position the better.’
These ideas were expanded and placed in context in the nine
points of the formidable General Directive which Wavell
received on 22 August and to which he replied in four long cables.
It is interesting to see, despite the ‘vigorous central direction of
the war’, how little Churchill achieved. The South Africans were
not sent up to Egypt. The Nigerian and the Gold Coast brigades
did not move to the Sudan. The Kenya settlers were not con-
scripted. Despite Churchill’s wishes, indeed orders, the situation
remained basically unchanged and Wavell’s disposition of his
forces as scattered as ever.
Indeed the fall of British Somaliland did very little to stir the
lethargy of Middle East Command. On 26 August Eden
attempted to soothe Churchill with news of comforting reports
from Wavell: above all, that there was no immediate danger as
regards Egypt, though on the Sudanese border things were ‘by
no means as reassuring’. Wavell however had decided to
reinforce the Sudan—not with the West Africans, though, but
with a fresh Indian division, the Fifth. This news must have
satisfied Churchill as regards the defence of the Sudan, though
not as regards the over-defence of Kenya. Where both Eden and
Wavell were totally wrong, though, was in believing that there
was no threat to Egypt.

For on 13 September Marshal Graziani invaded Egypt with an

enormous force: five divisions invading, two more in reserve, a

id
254 THE MILLS OF GOD
tank group and 300 aircraft in support. It seems perfectly clear
that this invasion was the direct result of the fall of British
Somaliland. No doubt it had long been planned. But the plan was
only put into execution—and that only after delays, for Mus-
solini had just as much difficulty in prodding or ordering a most
reluctant Graziani into action as Churchill had had with Wavell
—when the previous invasion had been successful: when, that is
to say, it had been proved that Italians could outfight and out-
general the British. This, the fourth invasion by an Italian army
of a British territory, was by far the most important both in scale
and objective. It should have been decisive. Had it been successful
it would have proved Churchill right and condemned Wavell for
ever. But Graziani, more tortoiselike even than De Simone,
halted at Sidi Barrani and ‘consolidated’. Thus he allowed his
enemies, now seriously alarmed, the time to build up their
strength. Once again, and this time on a decisive scale, an Italian
commander failed to take a justified risk. It seems to me that,
consciously or subconsciously, the memory of Adowa and of
General Baratieri’s end must have been preying on the minds of
all Italian generals in Africa. Only this can explain their reluctance
ever to move forward till they had overwhelming superiority
totally assured and lines of communication totally safe. Only this
can explain, and perhaps excuse, their inability, even then, to
move forward at more than a snail’s pace. So many missed
opportunities cannot but have been pathological. They were
certainly disastrous.
 CHAPTER 21

TO FIND A LAWRENCE

In Khartoum, in this August of 1940, the third month ofthe war,

there was a constant flurry of visitors and of jumpy but rather
pointless activity. Major Maurice of canoeing fame was put in
charge of all Ethiopian volunteers. A Belgian cyclist lieutenant
appeared demanding liaison after King Leopold’s surrender,
having apparently cycled over from the Congo. A French liaison
officer was sent in more conveniently from the nearest French
outpost in wavering French Equatorial Africa, Fort Lamy in
Chad. The Governor of Darfur Province came with eager plans
for forming a Groupe Nomade of Zaghawa Scouts to raid up into
Libya. Hosts of Air Commodores and Major Generals passed
through ‘unfortunately omitting to bring their squadrons and
divisions,’ as Newbold commented in the midst of this ‘bloody
whirl’, where he had to deal with ‘incognito Emperors, Richard
Dimbleby (who had diphtheria), weeping women of Italian
internees, Yemini spies, and the Egyptian Consul at Addis who
didn’t get out and is now causing us great trouble as we have to
arrange a flag of truce in the Gedaref district.’
He had the incognito Emperor to dinner, ‘a very mild
enlightened courteous person. . . but he didn’t wear the famous
cloak. He brought his beard though.’ He even took his son the
Duke of Harar to the movies to see the film of The Mikado; he told
him he was Nanki-Poo; and the boy replied pertly that there were
lots of Katishas in Ethiopia.
But the Emperor was tired and dejected. His initial enthusiasm
and vigour had died away as he saw for himself how badly the
war was going for the British and realized that even with the best
ofwills they were not in much ofa position to help him. Sir Miles
Lampson, down from Cairo, thought he was in need ofdiversion
and suggested a trip to Kenya. But the Governor there, Sir Henry
Monk-Mason-Moore, and General Dickinson turned down this
suggestion emphatically. It seems they were already having
256 THE MILLS OF GOD
trouble with Blatta Takele at Taveta Camp who at or around this
time was put into detention, presumably for expressing anti-
British feelings; and in their ignorance they probably felt that all
Ethiopians, Emperors or Blattas, were much of a muchness:
basically bandits—just shifta and trouble-makers. For it will
already have become apparent how very ignorant of Ethiopia the
Kenya officials were. This was partly for geographical and
human reasons. With the wilds of the Northern Frontier District
abutting into the almost equally wild southern regions of the
Ethiopian Empire Kenya officials had never had any contact with
the settled areas of Amhara rule or with the great Amhara nobles.
It was partly also because the calibre of Kenya’s colonial officials
was much lower than that of the élite Sudan Civil Service.
In any case there was no visit for Haile Selassie to Kenya. In his
depression the Emperor’s thoughts turned more to his family
than to his prospects. And he sent a touching telegram to Sir
Sidney Barton in London: perhaps the only little document
known where human loneliness and affection peeps out from
under that calm political mask. “No letters from the family’, read
the cable, ‘not even Tsahai. Five letters remain unanswered. Very
worried. Beg you for information and to give me news. Haile
Emperor.’
On the other side of the border Italian intelligence officers
gathered reports about the movements of British units and the
rebel leaders. They calculated that about 5,000 rifles had been
distributed at Gedaref and Gallabat. They knew that one-eyed
Fitaurari Worku had received 350 and was planning to attack
Major Parodi and his little garrison at the fort of Kwara. They
kept a special watch on the man whom they apparently con-
sidered the most dangerous, Adane Makonnen: he‘had told his
people they could go on cultivating till 5 September but must
rally on 6 September, before Maskal. But what really relieved
them was that there were no British officers with the rebels. ‘It is
amazing’, wrote Colonel Talamonti, ‘that the British have not
yet found a Lawrence to send to Armachecho as the political
effect on the populations of other areas such as Beghemder and
Goyjam will be considerable.’
But the British were trying to remedy this deficiency.

‘I met one of your octogenarian Ethiopian experts tottering

around the bar the other day,’ remarked a bright young staff
 TO FIND A LAWRENCE 257
officer in Cairo to a friend up from Khartoum. Certainly the
British officers who were chosen to lead little groups into the
Sudan at this time were, though spry, an odd choice as potential
rebel-rousers. There were three of them, Colonel Dan Sandford
aged fifty-eight, Major Count Bentinck a year his junior, and
Lieutenant Arnold Wienholt aged sixty-three.
They were, all with different ranks—Commanding Officer,
GSO I, Intelligence Officer—attached to Mission 101. But their
ranks and titles in fact meant very little, since the intention was
that they should operate separately. We know why Sandford was
there. ‘Rocky’ Wienholt was an Australian, a volunteer who had
five years earlier become transport officer with the Ethiopian Red
Cross when the Italians invaded Ethiopia. He therefore ‘knew the
country’. As for Bentinck, he was a retired Coldstream Guards
officer related to a Count Henry Bentinck who had been British
Minister at Addis Ababa in the 1920s. Possibly this qualified him
as a local expert.
The plan was that these three officers should cross the frontier
into Frusci’s territory, accompanied by small mule caravans,
bearing rifles and money and promises in order to foment more
active rebellion among the natives and consternation among the
Italians. Bentinck and Wienholt would head separately through
Armachecho. But for Sandford there was bigger game afoot.
For word had come from the most reputed of all the rebel
leaders, Dejaz Mangasha Jimbirre of Gojjam. He wrote in
response to the Kaid’s circular letter of 11 June. His own letter
was encouraging and, what was rarer, practical. Mangasha
Jimbirre announced that the Italians were sitting targets. They
were, he claimed, isolated and scattered, controlled no more than
a quarter of the country, and had never penetrated into Belaya
which was hilly, full of narrow passes, and totally clear of
opposition. Since he controlled Belaya, he controlled the gate-
way into Gojjam—that is to say, the whole long length of the
frontier, about 200 miles, between the Italian garrisons at
Metemma to the north and Gubba to the south. He stated that to
drive the enemy out with—at last—the help of the English
Government he needed not only rifles and ammunition but 100
machine-guns and ¢ light pieces ofartillery. He had therefore, as
had been suggested, sent a caravan which was on its way to
collect these modest items from the British. And he added a very
concrete proposal himself: ‘let someone important from the
258 THE MILLS OF GOD
English Government come to Belaya and choose out an aero-
plane landing ground. Once that has been done no other diffi-
culty remains.’ He added one warning: to give no one rifles or
ammunition without his signature, and to deal therefore only
with his right-hand man, Fitaurari Taffere Zelleka of Belaya.
This letter was both encouraging and embarrassing. Encour-
aging in the general picture it gave of vast stretches of Gojjam
totally free of Italians; embarrassing because of the demands it
made and because of the implications of these demands. The
British had no machine-guns or artillery to spare at all. Fur-
thermore, the ‘experts’ could deduce that Mangasha Jimbirre
wanted cannon as much to bolster up his own power and cow his
neighbour and younger rival Negash Bezibeh as to attack the
Italians.
As regards the aeroplane landing ground, this too was a most
sensible request. Clearly the only practical way of supplying the
rebels with arms and supplies would be by air. Yet though in
Cairo Air Chief Marshal Longmore had promised air support for
the rebellion, Sandford knew that for the foreseeable future there
would only sporadically be planes available. At least, though,
‘someone important from the English Government’ could go to
Belaya.

As another letter! came in from Fitaurari Taffere Zelleka to

announce the approach of his caravan with 160 men, Gedaref
hummed. Trevor Blackley organized the administrative side,
with the help of the Eastern Arab Corps and under the protection
of the garrison on the spot, the West Yorks. The Frontier
Battalion was sent down to the other post from which caravans
could be passed in and out, to Roseires on the Blue Nile.
Meanwhile there was a burst ofactivity in the south. Whalley,
the enthusiastic but ‘cold-douched’ Captain Whalley, was at last
sent down to the Boma plateau to join his fellow-plotter Cave
Bey of the Equatorial Corps with orders to raise the South-West.
They were to isolate Maji, cut the Gore-Jimma road, and, if
possible, also the Jimma—Addis Ababa road. But he was not to be
a Lawrence. He was given explicit instructions not to enter the

' Containing requests for inter alia rifles from new stock with numbers on the butt,
five fountain-pens and ink, salt, corn and cotton cloth, bags, water-bottles, belts,
greatcoats, rifle pull-throughs, oil bottles, and for himself officer-style coat and
trousers, tailor-made to fit, good shoes, a goat hat, and a watch.
 TO FIND A LAWRENCE 259
territory of Italian East Africa in person. It seems that General
Platt was prepared to use him but would trust him only as far as
he could control him.
On 6 August Sandford and his caravan set out from Gedaref:
five Englishmen, five Ethiopians including Gabre Maskal, and
fifty mule-men plus servants. A week later they crossed the
frontier very cautiously twelve miles south of Metemma, flush-
ing out two hostile Gumz tribesmen, and moved up on to the
Kwara plateau, into the comparative safety of one-eyed Fitaurari
Worku’s territory. Their progress, inevitably, was very slow.
Their next ‘bound’ was to the territory of another minor chief-
tain, Fitaurari Ayalew Makonnen of Mount Zibist. Half the party
left for there with 20 mules, a wireless set, and 2,000 dollars at the
end of August.
Meanwhile the other two officers had set out. Bentinck left
Gedaref on the 21st, Wienholt passed by Gallabat ten days later.
Bentinck had 24 muleteers, 5 Sudanese soldiers, nearly a
thousand rifles, and a Sapper officer, Captain Foley; Wienholt,
more modestly, half adozen men and a few donkeys. By the first
days of September, Italian military intelligence knew that there
were British officers with wireless sets and rifles to distribute in
Armachecho. They were much less alarmed, however, after their
recent resounding successes. The British, they felt, ‘might be
thinking of some attempt to raise the morale of their men which
must be low after the fall of Kassala and British Somaliland’.
For weeks no news oftheir progress or adventures was to come
back to the Sudan. However, amidst considerable excitement the
caravan from Mangasha Jimbirre did finally arrive, despite
rumours that it had been attacked and destroyed on the way. A
caravan from Negash Bezibeh was approaching too, and Mesfin
Sileshi went out to escort it in to Gedaref.
There in the first week of September Haile Selassie had his
diversion. He was flown down to Gedarefin Sudan’s biggest and
most impressive aeroplane, a Vickers Valentia, to meet
Mangasha Jimbirre’s men. With him came all his reconstituted
court including two new and most welcome arrivals from
Jerusalem, Dejaz Makonnen Endalkachew, the giant head of the
Addisge clan, and his wife, Haile Selassie’s beloved niece, Lilt
Yashasha Worg. Trevor Blackley did him proud, setting up an
embroidered tent.on the Polo ground; and the West Yorks
officers were introduced to an Emperor shaded in full ceremonial
260 THE MILLS OF GOD
style by the State Umbrella and guarded by Mesfin Sileshi with a
hide thong. They were photographed together. George Steer had
the photograph copied and printed on leaflets later, adding an
interesting caption to the effect that thus the Emperor could be
seen in conference with high-ranking officers of the British
General Staff.

What of the Italians all this time? Were they content just to sit
gathering information about the British and trying to forecast
what rebel leaders might do after the rains? The indications are
that they were not. There are indications scattered here and there
in letters and diaries and reports, that General Frusci was plan-
ning a major attack on Port Sudan and the Butana Bridge but was
meeting with obstruction from the Duke of Aosta. The Duke put
demands to Rome that he must have known to be impossible
—for thousands of new tyres for lorries and scores more aircraft
to be supplied before invasion could be contemplated. There
were, furthermore, internal difficulties in Frusci’s Sector due to
the abrasive personality of General Tessitore, his Troop Com-
mander. Tessitore was Military Governor of occupied Kassala,
the base from which an invasion would have to be launched.
‘There will be no peace here’, wrote Talamonti in his personal
diary, ‘till either the Troop Command HQ is abolished or
Tessitore “torpedoed”’.’
So the Italians’ final chance of an easy triumph passed as really
effective reinforcements reached the Sudan. General Heath’s
Fifth Indian Division came by train from Cairo to Khartoum.
Though it was under strength (numbering only six infantry
battalions and one cavalry regiment, Skinner’s Horse), these
were professional fighting troops: Baluchis and Pathans from the
North-West Frontier, Garhwalis from the central hills, Sikhs
from the Punjab, Hindi-speaking Mahrattas from the heart of the
Mogul Empire, commanded by the experienced campaigning
officers of the Indian Army.
To bring the Division up to its full strength the three British
battalions already in the Sudan were incorporated. Thus three
brigades were formed, each consisting of one British and two
Indian battalions. The Sudanese MMG Companies at the Butana
Bridge were combined with the motorized Skinner’s Horse,
formed into ‘Gazelle Force’ and placed under a dashing Indian
Cavalry officer—Colonel Messervy.
 TO FIND A LAWRENCE 261
But though the Italians were rightly worried about what was
being hatched in the Butana Bridge area—which had miracu-
lously survived their repeated bombing attacks—Khartoum was
still very much on the defensive. In a private letter Newbold,
officially optimistic, gave vent to his genuine feelings.
We are not having a purely defensive mentality . . . Platt is as aggressive
as they make ’em, a regular little tiger, a fine upright fiery (often testy)
capable soldier—but we must prevent them taking Gedarefor Tokar or
Atbara and so making our advance more difficult when the time comes
. . . Few people who urge the Kaid to Attack Now realize the strength
and morale of the enemy. Wavell, H.E., Platt and I know too much
about his numbers, armament, direction and supplies to do that but
people outside our circle and in the Provinces who don’t know the facts
are inclined to say they are only Dagos and a tribal army of hearty
Sudanese with spears and muskets will see them off. However, we will
see them off and the Sudanese will play a large part. [don’t know when.
It takes time to assemble a sufficient force with transport signals,
munitions supply etc. to crush an army of a quarter of a million even
though morale is bad and the rebels are lifting their head. . .

In other words the British authorities exactly like the Italian

authorities tended to overestimate their enemy’s numbers,
strategy, co-ordination, and general efficiency and insist on their
own ‘logistic’ difficulties as a pretext for putting off aggressive
action. Yet by September the strategic position in the Sudan had
dramatically improved.
French Equatorial Africa rallied to De Gaulle; and the Belgian
Congo appeared to be following the trend.! This meant that a
whole wide arc ofpossibly hostile territories on the Sudan border
were now friendly, a great worry removed. It meant furthermore
that, logistically, the overland flying route from West Africa via
Takoredi was now open for supplies and reinforcements. It
meant, strategically, that the Italians in Libya had now to face a
serious if minor threat from their south, thereby reducing the
danger of their attacking the Sudan. It meant furthermore hopes
and promises of future reinforcements of French and Belgian
troops for the eventual attack on Ethiopia.
All this however was long-term. In the short term there was

1 Newbold sent a case of champagne to M. Eboué the Governor of Chad and the
first to rally to De Gaulle.“It’s fine to see a black man have the courage,’ he wrote to his
mother.
262 THE MILLS OF GOD
news from across the border, from the trio of potential
‘Lawrences’; some good, some tragic, some almost farcical.

The good news came from Sandford. On 15 September Gabre

Maskal set up his wireless high on Mount Zibist to announce that
the second ‘bound’ had been successfully accomplished, that they
were with Fitaurari Ayelew Makonnen and had received a letter
from the great Dejaz Mangasha Jimbirre fixing a rendezvous.
And also that Captain Critchley, Sandford’s second-in-com-
mand, had been sent aside for a three weeks’ excursion to recce
Mount Belaya and meet Fitaurari Taffere Zelleka.
The next morning the party had their first brush with the
opposition, a very close shave. A plane flew low over Mount
Zibist at dawn and spotted them. At 10 o’clock Getahun Tessema
out on sentry duty fired a warning round: Italian troops were
approaching. In the ensuing panic they ran for shelter in all
directions, abandoning their mules and the chests of money on
them; slithering down the mountainside to hide in caves hun-
dreds offeet below as the Italian troops tossed hand grenades after
them and burnt Ayalew Makonnen’s village. But fortunately for
Mission ror the pursuit was called off that afternoon; Sandford
and his companions crept back cautiously and were guided to
where Ayalew Makonnen was hiding.
Of‘Rocky’ Wienholt nothing had been heard since 10 Septem-
ber. Next day armed peasants saw a small caravan with a white
man moving thirty miles south of Metemma. They reported it to
the nearest banda outpost. The banda attacked, and the party fled.
They believed that the white man was wounded, and they were
able to identify him as Wienholt because they aroieg his
correspondence.
In Gedaref, Trevor Blackley waited anxiously for news.
Finally one of Wienholt’s servants came back, with a confused
story. The gist of it, however, was clear. Wienholt was dead.
Exactly how and where he died and where, if at all, he was buried
neither the British nor the Italians ever learnt. When Bentinck,
weeks later, learnt of his death, he wrote indignantly in his diary:
‘He was over sixty and was left to scramble after the other
columns ... He could speak neither Amharic nor Arabic. It
seems a waste of a good life.’
As for Bentinck, he had been more fortunate, in a sense. The
only representative of the enemy he had seen had been Wubneh
 TO FIND A LAWRENCE 263
Amoraw’s captured Italian cook. But to his annoyance no sooner
had the Ethiopian with him, Wolde Giorgis, produced Haile
Selassie’s Awaj than both Wubneh Amoraw and Ayane Chekol
announced that they were off to Khartoum to visit their
Emperor. And in the weeks that followed Bentinck found the
same story repeated whenever he met an important chief. ‘He
also to my horror wanted to go to Khartoum!’—despite his
protests that this was absurd; for ‘How can I carry out my
mission if you’re away?’ When Maskal came, it found Bentinck
staying disconsolately with Abba Qirqos the priest and watching
disapprovingly the leaderless rebels firing off their new rifles and
wasting the ammunition he had brought. He suspected moreover
that they had been selling their old, captured rifles back to the
Italians.
But at Khartoum there was a large and moderately splendid
gathering for Maskal when the chiefs from Armachecho had
arrived: the first public occasion of happiness that Haile Selassie
had had since leaving England. The ceremony was watched by
Newbold, who wrote to his mother

I went to attend. . . his first review of hismen—a religious service, not

just a parade, with his own priests and officers. It was rather a ragged
show, poor refugees and some troops ofhis own, a handful of officers,
but they marched past, and he smiled on them and he kissed the Cross
which was held by the Ethiopian bishop. I sat next to him, and I wonder
what thoughts passed through his mind at the sight of this faithful
remnant.
About 30 of us went, representatives of the Council, the Army, the
RAF, and as we went out he whispered to me: I am very touched at you
all coming on a hot afternoon to support me. It may be that his men will
do what Garibaldi’s ragged shirted men did. Lots of tyrannies have been
overthrown by men like this.

So at long last the Emperor, ‘the little man’ as the British half-
affectionately called him, was publicly, almost emotionally
acknowledged by officialdom in Khartoum.
Not so very far away from Bentinck, at Bahr Dar on the shores
of Lake Tana where he had just arrived that day, Gina’s brother
was also watching the Maskal celebrations, though with much
less sympathy and with a far more critical eye than Newbold.
The country is strewn with tukuls where the natives live in a primitive
state. It is strange that during 4 years ofItalian occupation we have been
264 THE MILLS OF GOD
unable to inculcate in these people some trace of civilization. They live
trading cattle, snake skins, crocodile skins and others. Religion is
predominantly Coptic with some Muslims. Today 27 September is the
Coptic feast of Maskal and from the nearby tukuls come their strident
and guttural songs accompanied by the beating of tom-toms. Towards
dusk they come to the camp around the tinish robilano (little planes)
doing their dances and fantastic movements, all very strange and
primitive. Then a group of stinking natives gets hold of each one of us
by surprise and with their arms outstretched throw us high into the air
sometimes to a dangerous height, catching us and throwing us again
until we promise to give them falas. It is their custom and it is better to
humour them. . . After dinner we drink to the next victories that we
wish ourselves.
Yet Gina’s brother, though confident and hopeful, was
depressed both by the lack of white women—only one
‘represents the female sex among the Italians-—and, more par-
ticularly, by his living conditions. The airmen had to live within
one square kilometre bounded by wire-netting interspersed with
sentry posts and continually patrolled. Why? He gives the
answer, disconsolately, in his entry for the same day.
The Gojjam is populated exclusively by rebels, now full of hate and
rancour towards the Italians, perhaps more than in 1936 when Starace
occupied Gondar, Tana and the surrounding districts. And here, Bahr
Dar, is surrounded by shifta bande consolidated by Mangasha; they once
submitted but are now in open revolt again. Thus our garrison and also
the others at Dangila, Burie, Engiabara, Debra Markos, etc. may at any
moment be subjected to assaults by the rebels who would be confronted
with strongholds supplied with hundreds and hundreds of rifles and
machine-guns. No 13 Bomber Squadron stationed here operates con-
tinuously and indefatigably on these rebels, smashing up their inhabited
centres, markets, herds of cattle, and so on.
No wonder Mangasha and Fitaurari Taffere Zelleka wanted
above all else the appearance of British planes in the sky and the
bombing of precisely the strongholds mentioned. But no
wonder, either, that in these conditions high Italian commanders
were following with increasing anxiety the growing power of
Mangasha Jimbirre as the caravans wound their way out from the
Sudan towards his lands.
With all these supplies and arms en route—and the news of real
British help at last was known all over western Gojjam—more
and more Gojjamis started rallying to Mangasha’s power. The
news had also come that white men were there, with a wireless.
 TO FIND A LAWRENCE 265
For Sandford and his party, escorted by Fitaurari Ayalew
Makonnen and two hundred men, had at last succeeded in
reaching the great leader’s territory in the hills around Dangila.
The pro-Italians, the leaders of irregular bande such as Dejaz
Aberra Imam, were despondent. The Italians had to act. As
Sandford and his party moved south to visit Dejaz Negash
Bezibeh, Mangasha’s rival, near Burie, three battalions were sent
up from Burie north to Dangila. When these arrived Torelli
launched an attack into the hills.
This action was a brilliant success. Torelli was one of the
boldest of the Italian commanders and his brigade, the XXII,
were experienced and totally loyal.! Not only did he send
Mangasha Jimbirre’s men running, after killing many of them,
and so prove to the wavering that the Italians still had teeth, he
also captured the Dejaz’s son. The son confirmed the presence of
Englishmen with his father, of whom the chief was Mr. Room.
‘Mr. Room’ meanwhile—the Italians would have been
alarmed to know it was Sandford, on whom they had built up a
large file—was heading back with his party towards a very
shaken Mangasha. The Dejaz’s discomfiture had from their point
of view a positive aspect: for with his overweening confidence
shaken he was ready at long last to patch up his quarrel with his
rival Negash. Azaz Kebbede Tessema, of Sandford’s party,
presided over the negotiations. Though he was slow and too
‘old-school’ for Sandford’s taste, he was the real politician of the
party, and he was successful. On 24 October Negash and
Mangasha swore a pact to leave all their disputes in abeyance to be
settled only when the Emperor returned; from that day onwards
to cease interfering in each other’s territory; and not to accept any
man who deserted the one to join the other. This was considered
a great success. When the further good news came that British
planes had appeared and had bombed Engiabara and Bahr Dar
there was great rejoicing.
Next day they held a council of war. Gabre Maskal announced
that yet another caravan was about to leave from Gedaref,
according to radio messages received by him. It would be larger
and better, escorted by Mesfin Sileshi and one hundred of his
1 It was said that he never set foot out of camp with less than a thousand men. The
British took this, wrongly, as a sign of cowardice. On the contrary it was a habit that
gave Torelli great prestigewith the population, accustomed to judge all great men by
the number of their armed retainers.
266 THE MILLS OF GOD
men. This too was excellent news. The two Dejaz demanded
mortars since there was no hope ofany artillery. Sandford agreed
with them that with mortars they could capture all but the
strongest ofthe Italian positions, all the forts and outposts outside
the garrison towns. Getahun Tessema, also of Sandford’s party,
reported that he now had agents inside all Italian forts and
garrison towns, and had set up a messenger system to cover all
western Gojjam. It ended with Sandford despatching envoys far
and wide with optimistic instructions to raise the Galla and the
Wollo and to contact Ras Abebe Aregai. He himself prepared to
move on into eastern Gojjam to contact the leaders there. But
first he agreed to send back to Khartoum an urgent request for
money. For the two Dejaz argued that only by paying their men
could they ensure immediate obedience to their orders, and avoid
time-wasting discussions of every proposal. It is a difficult
business, arranging a revolt. But it looked as if the armed truce in
Gojjam was over. It seemed that under the British aegis the
rebellion was at last about to turn into a revolt.

The Italians certainly feared this to be so. By the end of Septem-

ber 2,000 single-shot rifles, 2,195 magazine rifles and 676,000
rounds had been distributed from the Sudan to the rebels. The
only way to stop the revolt was to liquidate the supply routes and
to stop the caravans. But the only really satisfactory way of
liquidating the supply routes was to eliminate the bases from
which the caravans set out: Gedaref and Roseires.
There seem indeed to have been Italian plans for a move against
Gedaref. But Colonel Castagnola at Metemma, the conqueror of
Gallabat, had become extremely nervous. He was sending in
reports of thousands and thousands of rebels massing to attack
him. However the date for the feared attack passed harmlessly,
and from Gondar a highly annoyed General Martini called for a
confidential report on the nervy Colonel. Meanwhile, the High
Command in Addis Ababa, apparently disgusted by the inability
shown in Frusci’s Sector to arrange an attack on Gedaref, decided
to mount their own centrally-controlled operation—against
Roseires.
They planned their thrust to go in from the south of the Blue
Nile; and having no faith at all in General Gazzera, the Sector
Commander, who had displayed almost total inactivity, did not
even consult him or his local divisional commander. They sent
 TO FIND A LAWRENCE 267
down from Shoa to Asosa, the base for the attack, two units:
Prina’s excellent XI Brigade, and one of the most experienced of
the banda groups, Rolle’s 1300 men. The plan was for the bande to
make a probing attack and spy out the land. Then the regular
troops of the Brigade would launch the decisive assault.
From the British point ofview it was a sudden, dangerous, and
well-prepared move: sudden because they had not been expect-
ing a thrust through the difficult country south of the Blue Nile,
well-prepared because it now seemed obvious that three months
earlier the Italians had overrun Kurmuk precisely to prepare for
this, and dangerous because the path of the invasion lay through
the tribal lands of the Watawit who hated the British. It seemed
therefore that the Italians might, stealing a leaf out of the British
book, be intending to arm the tribesmen and raise a revolt. At the
same time Hancock, Roseires’s District Commissioner, feared a
simultaneous attack from Major Quigini, the Italian commander
at Gubba, on the other bank of the Nile.
Hancock was rightly worried. The caravan for Fitaurari Taf-
fere Zelleka had only just moved off and could be intercepted and
cut up, with all the unforeseeable consequences that the report of
such a disaster would have on the Goyjam rebellion. Moreover,
there was only Boustead Bey’s Frontier Battallion and a few
police to defend Roseires, and it sounded as if the Italians were
attacking, as they had always done before, in overwhelming
strength. And where were reinforcements to come from when
Gedaref was perhaps equally threatened and it would take days to
send troops down from Khartoum? It looked as if Roseires, like
Kassala and Gallabat before it, was bound to fall. And from
Khartoum it looked as if the Italians were at last launching their
long-expected post-rains offensive. At Gedaref and Port Sudan
and the Butana Bridge the defenders were put on the alert and
warned that this time the real invasion was starting.
In the Engessana Hills the Wisko D.C. burnt his papers and
abandoned his home as the invaders advanced up the dried river-
bed of the Khor Offat. But at Roseires the nonchalant Boustead
Bey showed a sudden spurt ofactivity, as he was always to do in
times of real crisis. He hired ten broken-down market lorries
from Wad Medhani and drove off, ignoring cries of alarm from
Khartoum, to meet and attempt to halt the invaders, himself
leading his now-mechanized and mobile men in his own little
brown box-car.
268 THE MILLS OF GOD

Rolle and his irregulars were used to fighting in the mountain

highlands and living off the land. They crossed the frontier
north-east of Kurmuk with only four days’ rations, but by the
time they reached Wisko the banda was nearly starving and its
mules were dying of thirst. The invaders could not go on. They
turned tail. Ten days after Rolle’s force had crossed the frontier, it
was back again, having lost fifty-two men and all its animals. But
the pursuit by a jubilant Frontier Battalion had ground to a halt.
Boustead’s box-car broke down first, and one by one the market
lorries followed suit. The only casualty on the Sudanese side was
a tribesman of the peace-loving Engessana who had seen one of
the red and black Italian grenades lying by the roadside and,
apparently mistaking it for a money-box, had attempted to chop
it in two.
To General Gazzera’s quiet satisfaction the XI Brigade and the
now-discredited bande were pulled back to Shoa. This was the
first and last attempt by General Trezzani to put into practice the
principle he thought he had learnt from the Somaliland invasion
and to direct an operation on the frontier from the distant centre.
It was the first failure of the Italians; and therefore it had results
out of all proportion to its importance. Khartoum breathed
again, realizing that this had been an isolated thrust, not the
first forward move in a co-ordinated campaign. The British
authorities began seriously to consider going over to the
offensive.

It was at this happy moment that the Secretary of State for War,
Mr. Eden, flew into Khartoum. He arrived on the evening of 28
October to dine at the Palace—with unnervingly clear ideas,
encouraged by the reports of the growing revolt within Ethiopia.
He showed himself very anxious that the regular British forces
should actually win a battle and so improve morale throughout
the whole Middle East. For nowhere as yet had the British
successfully got to grips with the Italians. In all the encounters so
far they had been defeated. Even Rolle’s recent incursion into the
Sudan had been turned back not by British troops but by physical
difficulties. Furthermore there were odd rumours circulating
about the Mahdi’s son and his contacts with the Egyptian troops
still in the Sudan. The Italians had got wind ofthese stories and
believed that the loyalty of the Anwar to the British was not what
it had seemed to be, and that old memories of the jihad and ofthe
 TO FIND A LAWRENCE 269
dervishes following behind the Green Crescent were stirring in
local breasts.
‘Politically the whole situation here,’ Eden had cabled to
Churchill from Cairo, ‘would be immeasurably improved if we
were able to gain some military success.’ Having no magic
powers offoresight, he predictably enough believed that this first
success could, would, and should be gained against the Italians in
Ethiopia. He mentioned to Churchill the plans that were being
prepared by the Sudan Command for the recapture of Kassala.
He had therefore called a full-scale conference in Khartoum.
General Wavell had come with him from Cairo. General Platt
was there of course but also General Dickinson from Kenya, and
a General Cunningham, brother of Admiral Cunningham at
Alexandria, who was soon going to replace Dickinson as GOC
East Africa. There was General Hudleston too, the new Gov-
ernor-General and host, and two more Generals, General Smuts
and his Chief of Staff General Rynevald. For the South African
Prime Minister had flown up specially from Cape Town, just for
the meeting.
The Kaid set the ball rolling. Platt told the gathering that as he
had now 28,000 men plus some artillery and a few tanks, he was
confident that he could repel an invasion from Kassala. This was
not at all the sort of thing that Eden had hoped for. He had been
expecting to hear plans for attacking Kassala, not fears of being
attacked from it. He listened therefore all the more eagerly to a
suggestion from Smuts for attacking from Kenya into Jubaland
and capturing the little port of Kismayu. Smuts too needed a
military success in which South African troops would be used to
counter the pro-German propaganda of his political rivals at
home. Eden knew this, and he believed too that the capture of
Kismayu would go some way to satisfying Churchill. It was
agreed that Smuts and Cunningham should fly off next day to
Kenya to see whether Kismayu could be captured before the
rains.
It was very hot that night. They slept on the roof of the Palace.
Next morning Smuts and Cunningham flew away; and
Hudleston far from well, retired to bed with lumbago. In the
early afternoon Eden with Platt inspected the garrison at
Khartoum. He was upset by the state of the West Yorks, who
were short ofofficers and under-strength in men, but very much
approved of the three MMG Companies of the Sudan Defence
270 THE MILLS OF GOD

Force with their home-made armoured cars, which were ‘ideal

for the country’. He noticed, though, ‘a surprising reluctance to
offend Mussolini and later a difficulty in finding the right type of
Arabic-speaking officer’.
In the late afternoon Eden, with Wavell, called on Haile
Selassie. It was indeed Haile Selassie who once again had been
largely responsible for causing a conference to be called. For,
stimulated by the news of Sandford’s success and by the Maskal
celebrations which traditionally marked in Ethiopia the opening
of the fighting season, Haile Selassie had suddenly requested an
immediate Treaty of Alliance and Friendship and his own recog-
nition as an independent sovereign.
This was a demand which raised the whole question of Ethio-
pia’s future regime. It put, and it was intended to put, the British
Government in an awkward spot. The Foreign Office had not yet
made up its mind; and there were both in British Africa and in
London various schools of thought. At any rate the Emperor
would have to be placated.
But Eden, who was already convinced, and Wavell, who was
less so, listened to Haile Selassie’s complaints with sympathy.
Eden was infuriated to learn how little, still, the Kaid had done to
help and indeed how little interest any high officials in the Sudan
had shown in the rebels, and the refugees, or even in Mission Iot.
A stormy meeting inevitably followed—though not until after
dinner. Both Eden and Wavell, the Secretary of State for War and
the General Officer Commander-in-Chief, with the full weight
of their combined authority criticized Platt and his staff officers
for their lethargy, incompetence, and general lack of aid to the
rebels in Ethiopia and to the Ethiopians in the Sudan. “There are
times when it does little good to sit down to a pleasant evening
party,’ observed Eden; and he, normally so polite, deliberately
made himself offensive. The Kaid, for once, had to control his
testiness and accept criticism in silence. Haile Selassie, had he
been there, would have been delighted.
Next day Eden flew offatdawn to visit first the Butana Bridge,
then the threatened outpost at Gedaref. There were three sad
sights at Gedaref. Firstly the aerodrome, where the charred
remains of a number of aircraft—8 Wellesleys and 2 Vincents
—shot down by Italian fighters formed a ‘doleful framework’.
Secondly some of the British gunners, looking very sorry for
themselves, all with arms and knees in bandages—‘they had been
 TO FIND A LAWRENCE PF)AN

pricked by a poisonous thorn that abounds in these parts’. And

thirdly, another and more distinguished victim of an accident,
Major-General Heath, commander of the Indian Division ‘who,
poor man, had lately smashed himself
up by driving his car into a
camel at night.’
But Eden liked Heath: ‘big, pondéré, and, I should think,
sound’. He briefly inspected the Essex—‘from what I saw I
should judge a good battalion’ (an unfortunate observation). He
then flew back to Khartoum to learn that Smuts and Cun-
ningham in Kenya had approved proposals for an attack on
Kismayu and the River Juba early the following year.
Next day Eden was out again, to inspect the Worcesters at Port
Sudan, who ‘seemed fairly cheerful’. He flew back to Khartoum
to work on a full report, which was endorsed by Platt. And the
following day, 1 November, he flew out to Wadi-Halfa en route
for Cairo after a four-day visit during which misunderstandings
had been cleared up, laggards upbraided, and certain precise plans
made. Before leaving Gedaref he had met one of Heath’s Indian
Army brigadiers. ‘Well goodbye Brigadier’, he had said holding
out his hand, ‘thanks for your hospitality and for showing me
round, and’—with an amused twinkle in his eye—‘the best of
luck on Wednesday.’
 CHAPTER 22

PAIL UREA GALL

AG An

EDEN had obtained his wish. There was, after all, to be an

immediate military operation. The objective, however, was not
the recapture of Kassala but, much more modestly, of Gallabat
—the frontier post from which the Bimbashis of the Eastern Arab
Corps had been ejected.
The brigadier whose hand Eden had shaken at Gedaref and
who had been grimly determined not to let even his War Minister
know about ‘Wednesday’ was Brigadier Slim, commanding the
roth Indian Infantry Brigade. Slim was a professional soldier
with a sense of humour and humanity, a ‘bad-tempered little
terrier’. The attack on Gallabat was to be his first active operation
as commander of a Brigade. He was determined it should be a
success, and it looked as ifitwould be. It had in fact been prepared
by Eden and accepted by the assembled generals at Khartoum.
Though they had no idea how nervous Colonel Castagnola was,
they knew that there was little to fear from him. He had made no
move forward since July, and had not launched the expected
attack towards Gedaref. If then Metemma was not attacking
towards Gedaref, let Gedaref attack towards Metemma! That
was why General Heath had been, despite his camel car collision,
down at Gedarefto inspect the ground and lay his plans, and why
Slim and his brigade had been quietly moving down tojoin the
highly impressed amateurs, like Thesiger and Hanks, on the
spot. But when the decision was finally taken, the keynote was
secrecy. For the infantry forces would be fairly evenly balanced:
three battalions against three battalions.
Colonel Castagnola whatever his other failings had certainly
not been idle as regards defence. He had surrounded the captured
fort at Gallabat with a very stout wall and a barbed wire
entanglement, six hundred yards long and four hundred yards
wide; and he had cleared the scrub and bush all around to give a
 FAILURE AT GALLABAT 273
clear field of fire. Metemma on the Italian side of the frontier was
even more formidably defended. Two separate deep wire
entanglements encircled the whole area, inside which the
buildings were fortified. The road running across the Khor
linking Metemma to Gallabat was also heavily wired on both
sides.
It would have been useless to attack these positions with mere
infantry, as the rebels had found out in similar attacks on less
well-fortified posts inside Gojjam. Ideally, artillery was needed
to break down the fortifications and tanks were needed to break
through the barbed wire and the walls. Then and only then could
the infantry pour through the gaps that the armour had made.
Slim in fact had artillery and tanks—a regiment of artillery and a
squadron of tanks, both light and heavy. It was these ‘secret
weapons’ whose presence had to be concealed from the Italians,
and it was for this reason that there were such strict security
precautions at Gedaref. Without the tanks and the artillery an
attack on Gallabat and Metemma could not succeed. With them it
seemed certain to.
Slim slowly moved his dumps of artiilery shells forward by
night to the Khor el Otrub. His tank crews removed their
conspicuous black berets lest these should be spotted by an Italian
spy and the presence of the tanks guessed at. General Heath
approved and added his own suggestion for increasing confusion
and alarm among the enemy—that in future everyone should
refer not to the Fifth Indian Division but to Five Indian Divisions
and so play up to the by-now recognized tendency of Italian
military intelligence to exaggerate the numbers of enemy facing
them. .
Slim planned to seize Gallabat by a surprise attack at dawn,
then to push the Essex through for a tank-led assault on the main
position at Metemma. This was to be a very different thing from
Bimbashi Thesiger and a few rebels loosing-off shots from the
hills. It was intended to be a highly-organized military operation
complete with air support, the first the British had ever attempted
against the Italians. Nothing was left unplanned to secure its
success. Once that success was achieved, not only would the
British have a feat of arms to boast of and the Italians be
correspondingly cast down, but the best and by far the most
convenient of the caravan routes from the Sudan to Gojjam and
Armachecho would be opened up. Caravans to the rebels—or

id
274 THE MILLS OF GOD
rather to the Patriots as they were now to be called'—could then
be slipped in and out with speed and safety.
The attack had been planned for the morning of 8November;
but news came that reinforcements for the Italian garrison were
on their way from Gondar. It was put forward to the morning of
the 6th.
Slim slept at his command post, a small hill in front of the Khor el
Otrub, one-and-a-half miles from Gallabat. In the darkness
before dawn he was awakened by his Garhwali orderly with the
traditional cup of tea.
To the east the hills behind Gallabat, Jebel Negus and Jebel Mariam
Waha, began to show up as dark and distant silhouettes against the first
pale lemon wash of sunrise. Gently, the lemon deepened to gold and
changed to soft luminous blue, but the hill of Gallabat remained
invisible, sunk in the blackness ofthe further hills.

So Slim wrote afterwards. He was an ordinary army officer.

But like the best, like Wavell too, he had a streak of poetry in him
and appreciated, especially in the setting of this epic land, both
the lyric and the tragic—and indeed as was to become clear, the
ironic elements of war.
A small group of officers had gathered at the command post.
Slatter, the RAF commander, looked at his watch. ‘They ought
to be over in eight minutes from now,’ he said. Colonel Welcher
of the artillery, a great telescope hanging from one shoulder, a
six-foot spear grasped in his hand, gave orders for the camouflage
nets to be thrown off the guns. Sure enough there was a hum
from the west and as the bombers and and fighters went in, the
guns opened fire for the first time on the Sudanese front. As the
planes flew away signalling that a direct hit had been scored on
the Metemma wireless station the tanks lumbered towards Gal-
labat hill and from the ground rose lines of slouch-hatted figures,
the Garhwali infantry. As they vanished into the smoke sur-
rounding Gallabat, the artillery ranged further forward on to
Metemma. When the din and the clamour had died down, Verey
lights rose smokily to burst into green and red over Gallabat fort.
This was the success signal. The British had retaken Gallabat.
Slim and his staff drove forward towards the captured fort, to
' This change of name from ‘rebels’ to ‘patriots’ was on Eden’s and Wavell’s
instructions, following Haile Selassie’s request. But in Kenya, typically enough, the
colonial authorities still went on calling them Shifta, unlike the chastened Platt.
 FAILURE AT GALLABAT 275
be halted by a small but well-laid minefield. At this point firing
flared up again all around Gallabat, making them fear that the
success signal had been premature. But they finally reached the
forward slope of Gallabat hill and roared up through gaps in the
wire and the wall obviously torn by a tank, only to come face to
face with an Italian officer resplendent in red and gold.
‘A Wop general!’ cried Welcher.
Highly excited, drawing their revolvers, the Brigadier and the
Colonel leapt from the truck. The Italian wisely raised his hands.
He was young and fresh-faced. Slim could not help thinking that
he looked rather youthful for a general. ‘I surrender,’ he said in
good English. ‘I am Capitano in the colonial battalion.’
Somewhat crestfallen, Slim asked him where his commanding
officer was. ‘In Metemma by now,’ the Capitano answered
bitterly. ‘As soon as your bombardment started he rushed out
crying, “To the walls, to the walls” and disappeared towards the
boundary khor. He has not been seen since!’
So the 27th had lost the Fort which they had captured so easily a
few months before from Bimbashis Thesiger and Hanks; but only,
as it were, according to plan. For the Italians had known that an
attack was coming. As early as 3 November the airmen at Gondar
had been alerted, and in that sense the British attempts at secrecy
had failed. But what the Italians had not been expecting were the
tanks and the artillery. These had torn through their defences and
caused them many casualties. Yet even so the garrison had only
been obeying orders when they pulled back to Metemma. For the
Italian plan had been to evacuate Gallabat if it was attacked in
strength, but then to counter-attack swiftly with the reinforce-
ments concentrated in Metemma—the 25th and the 77th and a
company of the Savoy machine-gunners—before the British had
had time to reorganize. They had in fact very rapidly put in this
counter-attack despite the inevitable confusion caused by the
shelling of Metemma. But it had failed, driven back by the
efficient Garhwalis, during the minutes when Slim and his staff
had been halted by the little minefield.
‘I don’t think these Wops will try again in a hurry’, said the
Colonel of the Garhwalis to Brigadier Slim, who had nearly been
picked off moments earlier by a Savoy machine-gunner. The two
of them were crouching behind an embrasure in the eastern wall
of Gallabat, looking out at their next objective, Metemma. Some
of the tukuls were burning fiercely but Metemma’s buildings
276 THE MILLS OF GOD
seemed intact and the formidable wire barriers were unbroken.
This was where the tanks would have to break in first.
There had been a lot of trouble in getting these tanks. Tanks
after Dunkirk were in the British Army worth almost their
weight in gold and were just as carefully hoarded—particularly
the heavy ‘I’ tanks, known as the Matildas, whose armour was so
thick that no known Italian anti-tank gun could penetrate it.
They were therefore the ultimate weapon—invincible. And Slim
had six of them. Or rather, had had. For the squadron leader (ofB
Squadron, the 6th Royal Tank Regiment) came across with a
glum face to report that five of his six Matildas and four ofhis six
light tanks were out of action.
For the Matildas though invincible were not, as Sim now
learnt to his enormous dismay, unstoppable. Their caterpillar
tracks made out ofplates of steel joined by tough rubber had been
broken by the glass-sharp, ice-hard volcanic trachyte rocks of
Gallabat hill. This was the first disaster. The second had been
more tragic. As they went into action, the tank crews had
replaced their traditional black berets; when their tanks had
broken down, the crews had got out to inspect the damage.
Several of them had, because of the berets, been mistaken for
Italians and killed or wounded by the Garhwalis. Slim could
hardly have been expected to foresee this double disaster but he
had to take it into account. He decided, reluctantly, to postpone
the second phase of his attack till late afternoon. The Essex were
arriving at Gallabat to take up position. But now, in lieu of a
sudden tank attack, a prolonged artillery barrage would have to
be laid on to break the two belts of wire around Metemma.
Activity died down in the heat of the day. Slim went back to his
command post one-and-a-half miles west of Gallabat to prepare
for the afternoon’s battle. At about three o’clock, as he was
talking on the field telephone, he heard the drone of aeroplanes,
coming this time from the east. It was a large force, from the
bases at Gondar and Bahr Dar, about ten bombers which drop-
ped stick after stick of bombs on Gallabat, escorted by nearly
twenty fighters including, inevitably, Gina’s brother. ‘These are
days of real warfare,’ he noted in his diary. At long last he had his
revenge! and his victory. Two lone Gloucester Gladiators came
' Twice he had been bombed at Bahr Dar. But, as always, his bitterness was
tempered by the beauty ofthe scene, a beauty that he was unable not to appreciate,
almost to admire. The first time was at night. ‘The RAF, malignant, doesn’t wish to
 FAILURE AT GALLABAT PLGLT
flying out to intercept the raiders, and one of them Gina’s brother
shot down, his sights fixed on the pilot in the cockpit. The other
crashed as he watched.
This was absolutely contrary to Air Commodore Slatter’s
plan, which had been to attack—if at all—only in strength.
Nevertheless more planes in driblets came flying out from the
airstrip at Gedaref only to be picked off by the Italian fighters one
by one as they appeared. Among the pilots killed was the leader
of the newly-arrived South African fighter squadron. It was a
great day for General Pinna and his air force. They almost
eliminated the few planes still in the Sudan. They also decided the
battle.

When the bombing and the dogfights stopped, Slim set off for
Gallabat again to see how the Essex and the Garhwali had come
through it. He was not unduly alarmed because he imagined his
infantry would be at least partially dug in. Not far outside
Gallabat, on the track, a traffic control post had been set up. As
Slim reached it, he was surprised to see the Baluchi officer in
charge running down the hill.
‘British soldiers from Gallabat’, called out the Baluchi, ‘are
driving through my post, shouting that the enemy are coming
and that the order is to retire. We cannot stop them: they drive
fast at anyone who tries!’
‘Nonsense,’ said Slim, ‘they must be just empties coming back
to refill. You have misunderstood what they said.’
The Jemadar shook his head.
‘Look, Sahib.’
Slim looked. Two trucks filled with gesticulating British
soldiers were crashing down the hill very fast, refusing to stop,

spare even this corner of Africa; and this morning at 03.45 woke the sleepers with a
start and dropped like a cold shower nearly 10 bombs, shining like silver in the moon’s
reflection.’ So was the next. ‘We were awakened by sounds ofrifle fire which gave the
alarm. The moon is accomplice to the plane as it goes buzzing round and round above
us. This is truly a real Englishman, the pilot at the controls; he doesn’t appear to be ina
hurry; calm, calculating, he goes round and round above us poor inert people then he
goes off only to return in a few minutes to drop a flare which seems suspended in the
air, illuminating the whole target area with the light of day. He makes repeated runs,
dropping one bomb at a time, just like at Assab. He is met with string bursts of
machine-gun fire, and we could see the tracer bullets crossing each other from
different parts of the camp as they missed their target, not quite visible. He drops a few
incendiaries which spray us with some choking stuff, and gradually we revive in the
black silence which follows.’
278 THE MILLS OF GOD
despite frantic signals. Then came a third and a fourth, the
soldiers yelling as they drove by: “The enemy are coming!’
Alone, with only a walking stick as a weapon, in a furious
temper, Slim marched up the road towards the fort. He met and
stopped a straggling group of men walking down, all but one, he
noticed, with their rifles. They told a rambling, confused story
about how the Italians had retaken the fort with great slaughter.
They had resisted desperately and were probably the sole
survivors of their battalion. Their colonel had been killed. And,
one of them rashly added, “The Brigadier’s killed too!’ Slim
managed to convince them that this last item was incorrect. He
forced them to retrace their steps, picking up en route other
stragglers including a group with an officer of the Essex, an
apparition which reduced him to spluttering fury.
The Essex had panicked. There had been no desperate stands
and no great slaughter for the simple reason that the Italians had
not only not recaptured the fort, they had not made a move
towards it out of Metemma. With splinters bouncing and
ricocheting off the hard rock, and the troops unable, obviously,
to dig trenches, the bombs had been particularly terrifying. But
the casualties had not been high—in the end the Essex lost only 3
killed and 2 wounded. The incident that had touched the panic off
had been a direct hit on an ammunition dump near the reserve
company. Panic had spread. Men ofthe Essex had run down the
hill, piled into the vehicles at its foot, and fled.
It took until dark to restore order. Obviously the assault on
Metemma was off, at least for the moment. For not only were the
remainder ofthe Essex listless and jumpy but it became clear that
the tanks could not be repaired. Slim judged the Essex useless for
an assault. His third battalion, the Baluchis, up to now held in
reserve, would have to be moved forward to replace them. All
this meant postponing any possible attack till the following day.
But Gallabat was bombed that evening and again at dawn the
following morning, causing many dead among the Garhwali.
Furthermore, the Essex—what remained of them—panicked
again when the Italians fired smoke shells from Metemma. The
cry of ‘Gas!’ went up. General Heath, coming forward to see
what had gone wrong, was in his turn met with a stream of
British troops and vehicles heading helter-skelter in the wrong
direction.
Reluctantly, and against his better judgment, Slim admitted
Mussolini was an impressionable twelve-year-old
when the Battle of Adowa was lost. Just under forty
years later the Italians captured Adowa and Italian
soldiers carved this gigantic face of the Duce look-
ing out over Mount Shelloda from whose slopes the
Ethiopians had launched their most ferocious
attacks in 1896. The carving does not survive....
 Right: The Grand Council of Fascism met in Palazzo Venezia,
Rome, on May 9th, 1936 (Year XIV of the Fascist Epoch). On
Mussolini’s right is the white-bearded General de Bono, on his
left his son-in-law Count Galeazzo Ciano—both to be executed
on his orders eight years later. The inscription reads: THE HIS-
TORIC SESSION IN THE COURSE OF WHICH THE DUCE LAYS THE
FOUNDATION OF THE EMPIRE BEFORE THE GRAND
councit Below left: On April 10th, 1936, Badoglio rode into
Dessie, the capital of Wollo—to be greeted by the local inhabit-
ants, who, ever since the civil war following the deposition of Li
Yasu, had been antagonistic to the Shoan Emperor. Below right:
The Italians’ greatest error was their (and particularly Graziani’s)
hostility to the Ethiopian Church, whose dignitaries at first
welcomed their Christian conquerors with civility and respect—
as can be seen here on the outskirts of Addis Ababa in May 1936.

THE BECKER COLLECTION

OLLECTION
TIOO
NOLLOS
AHL
AOA
Usa

Above left: The Duce proclaims King Vittorio Emmanuele III

Emperor of Ethiopia from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia. Left
bottom: Mussolini was never more popular than on the evening of
May 9th when after the meeting of the Grand Council he pro-
claimed to a vast crowd of almost half a million, pressing into
Piazza Venezia in the centre of Rome, the annexation of the
Empire. Above: Haile Selassie had had an equestrian statue of his
great predecessor Menelik raised in the centre of Addis Ababa for
his coronation celebrations in 1930. Lessona, Mussolini’s Minister
for Italian Africa, personally supervised its toppling six years later
—at night, asa sop to the Viceroy Graziani’s fears that this act
would provoke an uprising in Shoa. It did not.

COBLECTION
THE
BECKER
—
 AOA
Ad
NOILOATIOO
FHL

TH
NOCUNO7T
LVaLsO
FHL
Ca
MAN

e
4
S
fn
c!

2
w~
>
ve)
<

On June 3rd, 1936, Haile Selassie reached England—and exile. TOP: He disembarks at Southampton
from the Orient Line Steamer Orford—followed down the gangway by Dr. Martin, Ethiopia’s Min-
ister in London, by his personal secretary Wolde Giorgis, by Princess Tsahai and the Crown
Prince. ABOVE: Crowds of Londoners were waiting to show their sympathy for Haile Selassie as he
set out from Waterloo Station, following his arrival in England, to the Ethiopian Legation in Prince’s
Gate. He was to spend most of the five years of his exile living in impoverished circumstances near
Bath. BELOW: Haile Selassie being greeted at Wimbledon in the summer of 1936 with his favorite
daughter Princess Tsahai—who was later to die, much to his distress, in England.

GALVULSNTI
NOCNOT
SMAN
TUNLOld
AUVUAIT
FHL
THE BECKER COLLECTION

Above: Hitler’s State Visit to Rome coincided with the celebrations marking the 2nd Anniversary ofthe
Fascist Empire. On May 9th, 1938, he watched a parade in which Ras Hailu and fifty Ethiopian digni-
taries took part. The King ofItaly and Emperor of Ethiopia, Vittorio Emmanuele, is standing beside
Hitler (whom he loathed) with his Queen-Empress at his side. The Duce as head of government but not
head ofstate is in the second row, looking peeved. Behind the Queen is De Bono and behind the King
Ciano. Among the Germans present Ribbentrop, Goebbels, Himmler and Hess can be seen surround-
ing Ciano (whom they loathed). All the women are Italian—Hitler had ordered the Nazi leaders to leave
their wives and daughters in Florence. Below: King Vittorio Emmanuele and Queen Elena of Italy—
born a Montenegrin princess. The King—‘that sardine, Mussolini called him—always had a fancy for
tall women. He was to abdicate exactly eight years later, on May 9th, 1946; the monarchy in Italy came
to an end soon afterwards.

NOILOATIOO
XO
Ud
FHL

'
FHI
AOA
Ud
NOILLOATIOO

This extraordinary photograph still sends a shudder up Ethiopian spines. Noblemen who ‘submitted’ in
Ethiopia were despised by those who preferred exile; but noblemen who came to Rome to make their
obeisance to Mussolini in person were never totally forgiven. Here in Palazzo Venezia Ras Getachew has
a shifty look in his eyes and an understandably uneasy smile on his lips face to face with an arrogant Mus-
solini and a dour Starace. He is flanked by the bearded Ras Kebbede and by the young Li Asrate, son of
the dead Ras Mulugueta. Ras Seyum’s face can just be made out past the Duce’s chin. The worried little
man is probably an Eritrean interpreter. Below: A ‘fighting patrol’ of the Sudan Defence Force on the
border with Eritrea shortly after the outbreak of war with Italy in June 1940. The SDF was only 5,000
strong; and though they did run to some home-made armoured cars, in addition to their camels and
mules, the Italians with their vastly superior forces could easily have taken Khartoum. The country, as
this photograph shows, offered no obstacles at all to a swift advance.
 QQ

WOASNW
UVM
TVRIAdWI

Above: Anthony Eden, the lanky Secretary ofState for War

and the burly General Wavell, C-in-C Middle East,
inspecting the West Yorkshires at Khartoum at the end of
October 1940. A stormy meeting with the crotchety Gen-
eral Platt, the Kaid of the SDE, followed that evening—and
Brigadier Slim’s disastrous attack on Gallabat within the
week.

IMPERIAL
WAR
MUSEUM
WOASOAW
TVINIdWI
UVM

Above: The Emperor crossed the border with ‘two powerful Ethiopian and English armies’ on Janu-
ary 20th, 1941, and raised the Ethiopian flag at Um Idla just inside Ethiopia. Standing next to him
here is Hugh Boustead, commander of the SDF’s Frontier Battalion. Beside Boustead in the short
cloak is Ras Kassa; behind Ras Kassa the Emperor’s second son, the Duke of Harar; and behind him
Abba Hanna, the priest who once guarded Lij Yasu. The clerical figure in the foreground is the
Echege. The moustachioed officer just behind him is Edwin-Chapman Andrews, formerly the Brit-
ish Consul at Harar, Haile Selassie’s liaison officer.
WNASOW
TVRIFdWI
IVAN

Haile Selassie never claimed to be a war-leader and it is doubtful whether he ever used that drawn
sword. Heis pictured here out ‘inspecting the countryside,’ in Gojjam at the foot of Mount Belaya in
the month after his entry. The impressive figure striding at his side is Dejaz Kifle Dade.
WOASOW
TVINAdWI
UVM

Above; Orde Wingate inspecting the Ethiopian troops of No I Op Centre

in Goyjam. Wingate bore an extraordinary resemblance, physically, to
Haile Selassie—very possibly cultivated. Below: The “Big Three’ of
Gideon Force in a symbolically accurate pose—with Orde Wingate laying
down the law, Brigadier ‘Dan’ Sandford listening benevolently, and Haile
Selassie looking neat and impressive.

WNASAW
TVIMAdWI
UVM
=a)
eel

>
ae
5:

<
c
ee)
Si
<

Above: The ‘horrible escarpment,’ Keren. This photograph of British

troops in position gives some idea ofthe difficulties of attack inside Eritrea
against strongly defended, almost impregnable mountain peaks. Below:
By contrast this photograph shows the easy country of the Ogaden.
Ahead, however, lies, beyond Jijiga, the Marda Pass up which snakes the
road to Harar—being ‘recced’ here by Brigadier Smallwood of the Ist
Nigerians, whose men later put in a fierce and highly successful attack.

WNASNW
TVRIFdWI
UVM
 The popular General Cunningham commanded the
TWRIadWI
UVM
WOASOW British forces attacking from Kenya. Within eight
wecks of crossing the Somali border, they had cap-
tured Mogadishu, Harar and Addis Ababa.

WNASOAW
TWRISdWI
UVM

Above: An Italian armoured car

negotiates the surrender of Harar on
March 28th, 1941, to troops of the Ist
South African Brigade. Italians
always surrendered where possible
to the British or South Africans
rather than to the Ethiopian Patriots,
whom they (unjustifiably) feared.
Right: Addis Ababa fell on April 5th,
1941, to General Cunningham’s
forces without resistance—but with
immense piles of military booty,
which the British and South Africans
confiscated, much to the fury of the
Ethiopian Patriots, who felt these
material rewards were the least they
deserved for their years of fighting.

LADD A
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
WOASOW
TVRISdWI
UVM

Above: Haile Selassie returned to his capital on May 5th, 1941, five years to the day after having left it.
Watching the Victory celebrations here are the Echege, the young Duke of Harar, Dejaz Amde, the strik-
ing Menz aristocrat Dejaz Makonnen Endalkatchew, and old Dejaz Adafrisau, who as a young man had
fought at Adowa. The Crown Prince Asfa Wossen can just be seen over on the far left. Below: Abebe
Aregai’s Patriots paying their respects in the traditional manner to the Conquering Lion ofJudah at the
Victory ceremonies. Despite General Cunningham’s failed attempts to keep them out of the ‘liberated’
capital, they caused no trouble. Patriots grew their hair long almost as an outward sign of inward grace,
to distinguish them—dangerously, one might have thought—from the ordinary population.

WNASAW
TVRIFdWI
UVM
 TVRIFdWI
UVM
WNASNW

Above: On May 19th, 1941, the Duke of Aosta surrendered on Amba Alagi—provided only
that he and his troops were given the honours of war. Here, with Major General Mayne at his
side, he inspects a British Guard of Honour before being despatched with his 5,000 men to
prisoner-of-war camps in Kenya. Below: The ‘Little Man’—as the British called him—
back at his Council desk in his capital, preparing to face the difficulties of re-establishing his
authority over his unruly Empire. He was to rule another thirty-three years before being
deposed in his old age.

UVM
WNASOW
dWI
TVA
 FAILURE AT GALLABAT 279
defeat. He ordered his brigade to pull out and abandoned the ill-
fated Gallabat Fort to the enemy. Italian reinforcements,
Polverini’s IV Brigade, reached Metemma forty-eight hours later
to face in their turn a terrible pounding by British bombers on 20
November that, in Castagnola’s words, reduced Gallabat and
Metemma to ‘a pile of rubble’. The 27th, the Beni Amer, had
been, the Italians admitted, ‘very badly knocked about’.
Polverini’s Brigade had to be replaced after only a fortnight, what
with the bombing and the continual ground raids by fighting
patrols from Khor el Otrub. For Slim kept on harassing the
Italians till the end of the month, successfully enough.
But there could be no disguising the fact that the battle had
been lost. The easy caravan route from Gallabat had not been
opened. Indeed news of the defeat of the British soon spread
through Gojjam and, by the end of the month, had dampened
many of the Patriots’ hopes. Eden had not had his longed-for
military success in the Middle East. On the contrary, it had been
yet another defeat for British arms, and as much as possible was
done to hush it up throughout Egypt and the Sudan. It seemed to
prove that, however bad Italian troops might be, English troops
were worse. For even Blackshirt battalions had never panicked
and fled under a mere bombing.
Furthermore the frightening weakness of British troops had
not been compensated for by either the superiority of British
technical equipment or the efficiency of their commanders. The
Matilda tanks had been torn to shreds in a matter of minutes by a
few rocks. Bombers had flown singly and uncoordinated to their
destruction. Officers at battalion level had been unable to control
their troops, and at brigade level had failed to arrange a successful
attack on a weaker enemy force though supported by armour,
artillery, and the air. Despondency settled over various levels of
Middle East Command and the War Office the more they studied
the implications of the action at Gallabat.
The culprits paid. Both the Essex and Brigadier Slim were out
of the Sudan before the end ofthe year. Brigadier Rees, known
affectionately as ‘the little pocket wonder’, took over command
of the Brigade; and more warlike Scots, the 2nd Highland Light
Infantry, replaced the bucolic levies from East Anglia.
As for the Italians, one sympathizes most with the reactions of
Gina’s brother: ‘It isn’t right that after such hard days I am denied
a few delicious moments with a lovely native woman.’
 CHAPTER23

A LAWRENCE FOUND

Yet the very day that the Essex panicked and the attack on
Metemma failed was the day on which an event occurred that
marked, though none yet realized it, the turning-point in the
fortunes of this war. For on that day, the last and in many ways
the greatest of the personages who have appeared in the course of
this history made his entrance upon the Ethiopian scene.
On 6 November 1940, Major Orde Wingate arrived in
Khartoum, having been sent down from Cairo to work in close
liaison with, and as a staff officer to, Haile Selassie. After the
Khartoum conference Wavell and Eden, back in Cairo, had
decided that such an appointment was overdue. The man chosen
ought to be not an Ethiopian expert but a regular army officer,
and on the same wavelength therefore as General Platt. He would
be able, though technically Platt’s subordinate, to press him to
put into effect the decisions taken at the conference. Eden and
Wavell discussed the various officers available, and they agreed
on Wingate. Wavell sent for him; and the three had a long
discussion on the aims and extent of the mission with which he
was to be charged.
Why Wingate? Why indeed. Eden, with Wingate’s dossier
before him, would have learnt something about the man before
he met him. He would have known, then, that Orde Wingate
was aged 37 and had followed an apparently normal enough
career as an artillery officer: Charterhouse, Woolwich, and
Larkhill; that he came from a military family on both sides; that,
interestingly enough, he had already served in the Sudan ten
years earlier both at Gallabat and Roseires as a Bimbashi attached
to the Sudan Defence Force; and, even more significantly—for it
meant that his name would be recognized all along the border and
in the interior—that his father’s cousin had been Sir Reginald
Wingate, Governor-General of the Sudan, founder of the Sudan
Civil Service, Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, and, twenty-four
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 281
years earlier, General Officer Commanding Operations in the
Hejaz, based on Port Sudan. Such a background was no
handicap.
But then Wavell would have had to mention that he knew
Wingate of old. As General Officer Commanding Palestine from
1937 to 1939 he had had quite enough trouble with the man to
remember Wingate very well; and he would have had to draw
Eden’s attention to one paper in the file: the report put in by
Wingate’s commanding officer at Jerusalem when Wingate was
posted back to England. ‘Orde Charles Wingate DSO. Is a good
soldier but as far as Palestine is concerned he is a security risk. He
cannot be trusted. He puts the interests of the Jews before those of
his own country. He should not be allowed in Palestine again.’
Wingate’s grandfather had been a Scottish missionary in
Budapest, his father after a lifetime in the Indian Army had
become a Plymouth Brother, and his mother had brought him up
on the Old Testament, the Psalms and Proverbs, and a suitably
harsh and frugal regime. This was the stuff that fanatics were
made of. In Palestine Wingate had become an ardent and active
Zionist, leading the younger members of the kibbutzim in
reprisal raids against the Arabs. For a time the British authorities,
themselves internally divided, turned a blind eye. ‘My favourite
madman’, Weizmann called him, and Moshe Dayan who fol-
lowed him on the night raids added that he had never known
Wingate to lose an engagement or to be worried about odds.
But this could not last. Wingate made himself much disliked
throughout the army for his criticism of ‘the military ape’, the
average British officer, and of the average British soldier—‘Don’t
imitate the British Tommy,’ he advised the young Jews, ‘learn
his calmness and discipline but not his stupidity, brutality and
drunkenness.’ It was he who was later to describe Slim as ‘a bad-
tempered little terrier’, and it was typical that Wingate did not
mean it as an insult. ‘The only one soldier worthy of the name
East of Suez,’ he was to add. Wavell and Eden despite inevitable
misgivings selected him to stir the lethargy at Khartoum. He, for
his part, was eager enough. He had been languishing for nearly
two years in an anti-aircraft unit outside London till a
memorandum he had written on battle conditions in North
Africa was passed up to the Prime Minister. Churchill, impres-
sed, had had him posted out to Cairo. But the military apes had
shunted him aside; and the disconsolate Wingate browsing
282 THE MILLS OF GOD
among the files at GHQ had been lit by a fresh enthusiasm. He
had found a letter there from five weary Australian sergeants
stationed in Palestine who had written to volunteer, partly out of
boredom, partly out ofidealism, to help the revolt in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia was bound to attract a man like Wingate, a land
oppressed by white conquerors, heavy with history and in-
habited by a people as biblically-minded as the Jews,
impregnated —like himself—with the Psalms and the Old Testa-
ment. He plunged into the files, studying all he could find
relevant to the Ethiopian campaign. His indignation grew as he
considered the inefficiency with which it had been conduc-
ted—and the wasted enthusiasm ofthe five Australians and ofthe
many others who must, like them, be kicking their heels in
Palestine or Transjordan, eager for action.

He reached Khartoum with a million pounds to spend, and his

own ideas clearly formulated. Almost immediately he endeared
himself to General Platt by telling him that promises to Haile
Selassie had in his, Wingate’s, opinion been extraordinarily badly
implemented. He added that Brigadier Sandford had been extra-
ordinarily feebly supported. ‘I cannot help coming to the conclu-
sion, Sir’, went Wingate’s peroration, ‘that the conduct of the
revolt so far shows poverty of invention combined with an
intention to limit its scope below what is possible and desirable.’
This is not normally the sort of comment that a General accepts
from a Major. But when the Major comes armed with money-
bags and when behind the Major there is known to be the
authority of theCommander-in-Chief and of the War Minister, a
wise General grinds his teeth in comparative silence. So the Kaid
contented himself with observing to his more respectful subordi-
nates that “The curse of this war is Lawrence in the last.’ He felt
this sentiment all the more profoundly as other would-be
Lawrences such as Major Hamilton of 106 Mission—of whom
more later—were simultaneously descending upon Khartoum to
plague him. Indeed with the appearance of Major Neville of 107
Mission in Nairobi, missions appeared to be proliferating like
rabbits—all under the aegis ofa certain Major Quintin Hogg at
the War Office.
There is a chapter in The Prince in which Machiavelli debates
whether it is better for a ruler to be loved or feared, and concludes
that on balance it is better to be feared. Wingate may not have
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 283

read Machiavelli but he acted instinctively on the principle.

Within a brief fortnight he had made himself feared by some and
detested by many. Even now, over forty years after his death,
strong reactions are provoked by the mere mention of his name
not only among Englishmen but among the Ethiopians who
knew him. What he did not, in any circumstances, inspire was
indifference. This was partly because of what he did, but even
more because of what he was: his manners, his behaviour, his
appearance. Newbold felt such a distaste for him that he
apparently could not bring himself even to mention Wingate’s
name once in his circulars or letters. Major Dodds-Parker, a
liaison officer at Khartoum, used to sit at the smallest table in the
Grand Hotel to avoid having to share his meals with Wingate.
And this is how Bimbashi Harris of the Frontier Battalion des-
cribed him: ‘rather an ogre—beady eyes set very close together
over a huge nose. His hair was long and far from clean. He wore
an incongruous collar and tie. His voice grated like a rasp.’
Whatever else he may have been, he was not a typical regular
army officer. “Though he was such a small man,’ Moshe Dayan
used to say, ‘when he was disdainful he could make you feel as
tiny as a mouse.’ Not a characteristic calculated to put his
brother-officers at their ease.
But then it was not his aim to put them at their ease—quite the
contrary. One of the first objects of his anger was indeed the
Frontier Battalion. It had originally been formed to help the
rebels by escorting arms and supplies into their territory. Instead,
Wingate complained, it had been sitting garrisoning Roseires,
which was not its job.
Before the month was out a caravan was leaving Roseires
escorted by one of the five companies of the Frontier Battalion,
the bearded Bimbashi Acland’s, bearing nearly a thousand rifles,
ammunition, and 72,000 Maria Theresa dollars, carried on 150
camels, the biggest convoy so far, to Fitaurari Taffere Zelleka’s
base on Mount Belaya. This was just one example of what
Wingate managed to get done. Indeed within three days of his
arrival the Armachecho chiefs who had been lingering in
Khartoum, Wubneh Amoraw, Birre Zagaye, and Ayane
Chekol, had been sent out and back into the fray, accompanied
by the Emperor’s ‘Representative to the North,’ Tsehafe Taezaz
Haile. Chapman-Andrews (now a Major and Political Liaison
Officer to the Emperor) had been sent down with Lorenzo
284 THE MILLS OF GOD
Taezaz to Kenya to sort out the Refugee battalions there. A
military school of sorts under the grandiose name of the Sobat
Military Academy had been set up a few miles outside Khartoum
to train young Ethiopians as officers.
None of this could have been achieved if Haile Selassie had
adopted the same attitude towards Wingate as the other authori-
ties had done. Haile Selassie, however, was only too delighted to
find that at long last some dynamism was being injected into the
revolt, and indeed into his own future. The first visit Wingate had
paid after his row with Platt had been to Haile Selassie. Wingate
had immediately taken ‘the little man’ and his cause to heart—so
much so that he had offended some of the Emperor’s most loyal
supporters, notably George Steer, by criticizing the efforts of the
Propaganda Unit.
Yet after the initial success of the Awaj, the propaganda unit
had been working very effectively and was producing in
thousands copies of anews-sheet, Banderachin. This was passed
out through the caravans to the rebels or dropped over Italian
garrisons by the RAF and it had resulted in a considerable number
of deserters coming over into the Sudan. What Wingate objected
to was not the propaganda itself but the extravagant promises or
boasts which were sometimes made. It was a principle ofhis that
all propaganda should be based on truth. ‘Lies are for the enemy,
the truth is for our friends. Righteousness exalteth a nation,’ he
said. And in particular he objected to a photograph which
showed the Emperor standing on a British tank while reviewing
the troops at Gedaref. This went contrary to a principle that
Wingate had decided upon even before coming to Khartoum and
was never to abandon: Haile Selassie was to be David—not
Bethsheba’s David but the David of the Psalms. Above all the
‘little man’ was to be the David who would destroy Goliath. For
this the new David needed no large forces nor modern technical
weapons as symbolized by the tank, nor indeed foreign support
at all, but mobility, the weapons most suitable to mobility, and
above all confidence in the justice of his cause and the greatness of
his name.
Wingate therefore never approved of ‘Plan X’—the original
plan by which the Emperor should return to his country at the
head of his own large army or at the very least of areconstituted
Bodyguard. Wingate found the idea ‘worthy of the Middle
Ages’. ‘The suggestion that the Emperor should move sur-
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 285
rounded by a horde in the manner of Menelik’ he considered to be
in any case far from sensible for practical reasons. Not only
would it destroy mobility and render the expedition cumber-
some, it would also present a perfect air target to the enemy. His
own idea was that the Emperor should have a personal body-
guard of 100 men—all that was ‘necessary or desirable’. Instead of
a trailing expeditionary force in one massive column, small
groups of highly-trained armed men should spread out all around
the Emperor in different directions and at different distances,
spreading by their guerrilla tactics alarm among the enemy. It
was these guerrilla groups that would provide the Emperor’s real
protection.
Wingate christened these guerrilla groups Operational Centres
—Op Centres for short. In his mind’s eye he planned ten of them,
each to consist of one British Officer, five British NCOs, and 200
Ethiopians divided into ten squads—206 men in each. Fast
moving, lightly but well-equipped, they would open up Gojjam
ahead of the Emperor and spread the rebellion—not so much by
working in conjunction with the Patriots as by setting them an
example.
For Wingate had very strong views on the Patriots too. He
believed, tentatively, that they should be allowed to act on their
own because their methods would be different from those of
trained troops. He held, most definitely, to one negative
principle: that the way to foster a revolt was not to issue rifles and
ammunition haphazardly to all who demanded them.
This idea struck at the whole root of what Mission r1o1 and the
rest had been doing so far. They had, precisely, been issuing rifles
haphazardly to all patriot leaders who had asked for them. And
indeed, though this was the obvious method of stimulating a
guerrilla revolt, the results had not been good. Many thousands
of rifles had been distributed. Theoretically the revolt was under
way. But in practice, as Wingate was to point out, very little bar
promises had been achieved. Very little damage had been inflicted
on the Italians. Though both Sandford and Bentinck had found
much talk of raids and attacks, in fact virtually all these projects
had vanished into the air when the moment came to carry them
out. What attacks there had been had been put in by the Italians.
As Wingate stringently said, the presence of the British officers
had been ‘mildly ericouraging’ to the patriots but had no effect on
the Ethiopians who had adhered to the Italian cause.

4
 286 THE MILLS OF GOD
One of the reasons, as Wingate pointed out, was that it was
useless to hand out antiquated French rifles—‘junk’—to a patriot
leader who already possessed several hundred modern rifles
captured from the Italians. ‘The effect was to make him think
either that we were laughing at him or that we were deficient in
war material.’ More than this, however, he was against the very
principle of handing out modern rifles except when they were to
be used for a very specific purpose. For what was the usual result?
The patriot leader’s mind—as Wingate described it in a famous
passage—tended to work as follows:
This person evidently needs my (very inefficient) help; so much so that
he is willing to part with arms he must know I have only the most
rudimentary idea how to use. . . I must face facts. Why should I die
without hope of victory? . . . I think on the whole the best and kindest
way will be to accept the help with gratitude; to hold it on trust in case
some day I can use it against the common enemy; and meanwhile to get
to learn how to use it by settling once and for all that dispute over the
water with the Smiths.

Not long afterwards Bentinck bitterly and empirically came to

the same conclusion. ‘Does HQ’, he noted in his diary, ‘realise
how dangerous is the wholesale arming of these unruly and
turbulent chiefs?’

Wingate’s positive ideas on guerrilla warfare and on the ideal role

and composition of what he now began to regard as ‘his’ force
echo, consciously or unconsciously, Lawrence, and anticipate
Mao Tse Tung—particularly in his major premise, which he laid
down in this way: ‘While it is the ideal for 100% ofthe population
to be friendly, it is in no way essential. What is essential is that
the supposed friends should be trustworthy. These friendly
inhabitants are the matrix in which the force has its being.’
Directly contradicting Platt who two years earlier had thought
it useless to throw away a thousand men on ill-conceived
Operations against a vastly superior force, he added: ‘Given a
population favourable to penetration, a thousand resolute and
well-armed men can paralyse, for an indefinite period, the opera-
. tions of a hundred thousand.’
But to this principle he added various riders. The qualities of
both men and commander must be ofthe highest; they must play
an independent role and have unity of command; they must
(
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 287
operate in conjunction with a definite propaganda; and they must
be given an objective the gaining of which will vitally affect the
campaign. These were riders that he was to add later; and in that
sense are tinged with the bitterness of disappointment. For he
was to complain of divided command, uncertain propaganda,
varying objectives and, above all, echoing Wellington’s term, of
how ‘the scum of an army’ was selected to do his work.
As regards relations with the local patriot leader, he laid down
the correct course of action:

The guerrilla commander, on arrival, will offer nothing; and ask merely
for food supplies and information. ‘This is curious,’ the patriot leader
will say to himself. ‘The force is very small, but no doubt much larger
ones are at hand, or he wouldn’t be so confident. I wonder why he didn’t
ask my help. I had better watch this.” And the next night the guerrilla
commander will put in a successful but secret attack on an enemy post.
This will bring a worried patriot leader to beg to be allowed to help. ‘I
am a soldier and I have been fighting the enemy for years. Only tell me
what you want me to do, and I will show you that we can do it.’

This is less convincing than Wingate’s criticism of the wrong

method. Yet it illustrates the two principles in which he always
believed and which were always to be the base of his action as a
guerrilla leader: personal example founded on self-reliance, and
bluff.

Yet Wingate, for all his powers ofclear thinking and analysis and
despite all his energy, was unable to put his plans for the perfect
guerrilla operation into action. This was partly because he was
not himself always consistent, and partly because Plan X had
already gathered such momentum that it was impossible entirely
to change its course. One suspects also that Wingate was
influenced, against his own better judgment, by Haile Selassie.
At any rate in the end he agreed that for the purposes of prestige
the Emperor should cross the frontier not just with a small
personal guard but with a comparatively large escort, as befits a
descendant of Solomon and Sheba who cannot, as Ras Seyum
had said years before, ‘skulk in the hills like a shifta’. And,
inconsistently, he came more to complain of the deficiencies of
the Refugee battalions who formed this escort than to criticize
their very existence. Indeed he was lit by something of the
Eimperor’s indignation as regards the treatment of the Eritrean
288 THE MILLS OF GOD
deserters in Kenya. This had become a very sore point, for they
had been formed not into a fighting unit, though they had all
originally been professional soldiers trained by the Italians, but
into a Labour Corps and put to work on building roads. Despite
the protests of Haile Selassie, of Eden and Wavell, and eventually
of Churchill himself, the Colonial Office for months refused to
budge. It only gave way and allowed the transformation of the
Labour Corps into the ‘4th Ethiopians’ when it was too late for
them to take part in the fighting—a waste of fine material and a
tribute only to the typical obstinacy of the Colonial Office. It was
also a great success for Italian propaganda which had harped on
the Eritreans’ ‘proven unreliability vis-a-vis the Ethiopian cause’.
It had been to sort this mess out that Lorenzo Taezaz, himself
an Eritrean, and Chapman-Andrews had been sent down to
Kenya. But although they were unable to achieve anything with
the Eritreans, they reported that a battalion of refugees from
Taveta, the ‘2nd Ethiopians’, commanded by Captain Boyle,
was almost ready for action; and they arranged for it to be moved
up to Khartoum by road, via Uganda and Equatoria Province.
Blatta Takele as its Staff Officer was allowed to accompany it
only as far as Juba before being turned back. So he and Wingate
were never to meet. A pity, for they were alike in their energy
and aggressiveness—though meeting Blatta Takele might have
shaken Wingate’s devotion to the Emperor.
Another battalion, the ‘3rd Ethiopians’, was also being
formed, out of the various deserters arriving across the border
from Eritrea or Gojjam. It was put under the command of
Captain Whinney of the West Yorks, one ofthe instructors at the
Sobat Military Academy where all the bright sparks ofthe exiled
Ethiopian nobility from the Duke of Harar downwards were
being, or were later to be, trained.
Yet Wingate, though forced to accept them, disapproved of
these Refugee Battalions, partly because a great deal of money
was lavished on them, and partly because they had been formed
too late. In his opinion they, and the Eritreans above all, should
have been assembled at Khartoum within a few weeks of the
declaration of war. Most ofall, however, he disapproved because
they were badly officered. For though an eccentric himself, he
was a regular officer and did, sporadically, appear to believe in the
values of the regular army. “To put it briefly’, he wrote, ‘these
Refugee Battalions were an ill-trained, ill-armed, ill-equipped
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 289

demoralised rabble, led by British officers and NCOs mostly

drawn from African colonies, who although ofexcellent material
and full of gallantry were for the most part not qualified to train
troops for modern warfare.’
However, there they were. His own Op Centres were not yet
in existence, and the Emperor was pressing to be allowed across
the border. Haile Selassie could not be held in check much longer,
even had Wingate considered this desirable. So, conscious that in
the main he would have to accept Plan X, hoping eventually to
add his own Op Centres and gradually twist the scheme more
towards his own ideas, he flew away from Khartoum. He had
been there only two weeks but in those two weeks he had
revolutionized the whole atmosphere.

Where did Wingate go? Naturally enough, being Wingate, into

the interior, to see for himself how the revolt was going and
above all to meet Sandford, his own nominal commander and the
god-father of Plan X. He knew that they would at any rate agree
about their major aim: the return of Haile Selassie across the
border into Ethiopia in the role of past and future Emperor. He
knew also that, with a clearer mind than Sandford’s he would be
bound to disagree with him on many points and particularly on
immediate objectives and methods. ‘It is a common error’, he
wrote, ‘to think that something has been achieved when forces
have been assembled in desolate areas far from points vital to the
enemy.’ Yet, this, he knew, was what Sandford had done on a
small scale and was planning to do on a large. Up to a certain
point Wingate would agree with him, and work out the best
method of assembling large forces. But the aim was not just to
ensure the presence of the Emperor safely inside his Empire; it
was to attack, harass, and if possible destroy the Italians.
On 20 November Wingate accompanied by one of the young
university-trained exiles, Makonnen Desta, flew across half Goj-
jam to land on a specially-prepared landing ground at Sakala.
This was in the hills just to the east of Burie in Dejaz Negash’s
territory. He stayed for only forty-eight hours before taking off
again and flying back to Khartoum; but in that time Sandford had
explained the situation in Gojjam, Wingate had cross-questioned
him on many details, and the two men together had agreed on a
lan. 4
A Sandford had just returned from a three-weeks’ trip to eastern

rd
290 THE MILLS OF GOD
Gojjam, Gojjam proper as it was called. There he had found
much the same situation as in the west: the Italians confined to
their forts and garrison towns and the roads in between, but the
rebellion stagnant owing to the rivalry between two great patriot
leaders. Strangely enough, he had found the nobleman with the
saintly reputation, Lij Hailu Belew, to be a ‘rather common-
looking man obsessed with grievances against his next-door
neighbour,’ but the neighbour, the bandit and commoner ‘Lij’
Belai Zelleka, to be ‘a fine-looking fellow with a long thin face
and a pointed black beard.’ Yet, physical appearances apart, he
had got on better with Hailu Belew, whom he believed to be ‘a
man of his word’ and who had promised action at last—to attack
two Italian posts. Belai Zelleka had on the contrary appeared
gauche, ignorant, unintelligent, and intensely suspicious, sur-
rounded by shum-shum (‘wasters’). He was unable to win over
banda leaders locally because he had killed too many of their
relatives; and though promising to invest Bichenna and even to
try and cut off Debra Markos, was unwilling to leave his back
exposed to Hailu Belew. Though Sandford had left Azaz Keb-
bede to try and repeat his success and work out an agreement, it
seemed that at best the two rivals in eastern Gojjam would sign a
pact. They refused to meet.
Sandford added that the news ofHaile Selassie’s presence in the
Sudan had filtered through very slowly and meagrely. He was
disappointed to hear from Wingate that the Refugee battalions
still needed a lot of training before being capable of any action,
and very interested in the project for Op Centres.
Wingate, however, thinking ahead, plied Sandford with ques-
tions. Was the escarpment up from the Sudan passable for camel
transport? Could or would the enemy interfere? Could the
camels be met at the top of the escarpment by mules? Was free
movement in Gojjam possible? Could ill-protected convoys of
mules reach their destination locally without interference from
the enemy? Could supplies be purchased locally?
Sandford gave encouraging answers to all these questions. In
particular he promised that he would arrange for 5,000 mules to
meet the Emperor’s force at the top of the escarpment. They
made their plan. As soon as possible the Emperor and his force,
accompanied by Wingate, should cross the frontier. The
rendezvous where they were all to meet, the base for their future
moves, should be Mount Belaya, the territory of Fitaurari Taf-
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 291
fere Zelleka, Dejaz Mangasha’s follower. The news eventually
reached the Italians. Their reaction proved it a good choice. As
Italian military intelligence had to admit, ‘Belaya is an area
unknown to us.’
Two further details were settled. Critchley, Sandford’s
second-in-command, was suffering from serious eye trouble and
it was agreed that he should be replaced. Secondly, the name and
title of the expedition to accompany the Emperor was chosen,
and chosen, evidently, by Wingate: Gideon Force.
Wingate flew back to Khartoum; and a week later, on 1
December, Sandford sent in a report. The caravan with Mesfin
Sileshi, and 150 camels, had reached Belaya, alas without mortars
or machine-guns. The revolt was going well. Bande were desert-
ing after the recent bombing of Dangila. A worried General Nasi
was reported to be visiting Burie. The visit of Major Wingate had
been most useful, and he was glad to know that Wingate was
organizing the Emperor’s entry. In fact the whole situation had
taken a very favourable turn.
The elder man was accepting with good grace a situation that
would clearly lead to his own eventual loss of influence to a
younger and more vigorous officer. The Ethiopians with him
had recognized in Wingate a natural leader.' But Wingate’s
reaction was less generous. He appears to have considered Sand-
ford’s approach woolly-minded, and in particular to have been
enraged by Sandford’s habit of making promises of arms and air-
support to the rebel leaders which were mere words. Such
promises were in Wingate’s view counter-productive, though
perhaps Wingate here underestimated the Ethiopian capacity for

' Particularly as he came by plane. Among the more sophisticated, Gabre Maskal in
particular was to become devoted to him. “Wingate was never demoralized,’ he told
the author. ‘I have never seen a man ofsuch courage and so human at the same time’.
Gabre Maskal had fallen out with Sandford, not a technician, over the use of his
wireless though he admired Critchley, ‘an indefatigable man’. As for Wingate he was
to become equally devoted to Gabre Maskal and his team, which included Sergeant-
Major Grey. In his eventual report he complained ofthe ‘appallingly low standard of
the signals provided. A thoroughly incapable officer was put in charge. The one
capable man—RSM Grey—was not in charge. The operators were lazy, ill-trained,
and sometimes cowardly. The best were Ethiopians who had trained themselves’, i.e.
Gabre Maskal and his men. .
Other comments on Wingate made by recently prominent Ethiopians to the author
varied from ‘his eyes were impressive’ (General Aman Andom) via ‘he was a slovenly
man’ (General Gizau) toa very hard man but Iliked him very much’ (General Abiye
Abebe).
292 THE MILLS OF GOD

not expecting the pledges they received to be any more reliable

than the pledges they gave.
At any rate Wingate returned to Khartoum, conscious that the
full weight of organizing the Emperor’s entry must fall on his
own shoulders, and making himself under the nervous strain
even more unpopular. At one parade at the Sobat Academy he
struck and knocked down an Ethiopian for being badly turned-
out. In order to encourage punctuality he ostentatiously wore a
small alarm clock strapped to his wrist in place of awatch. His
British colleagues he treated with equal abruptness, even accus-
ing two staff officers of cowardice. As for his British subordinates
he would summon them to interviews in his bathroom at the
Grand Hotel, which he would conduct quite naked, scrubbing
himself with toothbrushes. One person he summoned was the
officer who had been chosen to replace Captain Critchley, Bim-
bashi Thesiger.
‘Are you happy?’ asked Wingate.
‘Well, yes, I suppose I am, reasonably,’ replied Thesiger.
‘Tam not happy,’ said Wingate. ‘But then, I have been
thinking, no great man ever was really happy.’
Though considered in Khartoum an eccentric, a megalo-
maniac, almost a lunatic, he was quite clear in his own mind ofhis
powers and of the virtue of his plans. He flew to Cairo at the
beginning of December where General Wavell had summoned a
military conference to decide on future plans, and there was
allowed to harangue the assembled commanders. Some say that
he scattered insults, others not. What is certain is that he created a
highly favourable impression simply because what he had to say
was music to the ears of the Commander-in-Chief and his
generals. Wingate claimed that, given support in supplies and in
the air, he could raise a revolt that would put an end to the Italian
Empire in East Africa and that there was therefore no need to risk
regular troops in offensive action. ‘Give mea small fighting force
of first-class men,’ he said, ‘and from the core of Ethiopia I will
eat into the Italian apple and turn it so rotten that it will drop into
our hands.’
Wavell, with his greater sources of information, must have
realized that this was a wild claim; and in particular that there
were parts of the Italian Empire in which there was no hope of
raising any revolt—notably Eritrea and Somalia. Yet Wingate’s
concept fitted in so well with what he would have liked to be true
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 293

that thereafter he most stubbornly resisted all attempts from

London to force him to invade Italian East Africa in strength. His
opinion was that, the rebellion stimulated, Italian East Africa
could be left ‘to rot by itself’. At the utmost, holding attacks
might be launched by regular troops on the borders ofEritrea and
Somalia. To this point of view he and his subordinate generals
clung with all the obstructive pig-headedness of which they were
capable—a fact for which Wingate bears, indirectly, the
responsibility.
After this triumph Wingate stayed briefly in Cairo to enrol the
nucleus of his first Op Centre, the five Australians whose letter
had orginally inspired them. Appeals for further volunteers were
sent out through the regiments stationed idly in Palestine and
Transjordan. He obtained permission to collect a number of his
Jewish friends, somewhere near twenty in all, to be attached to
Gideon Force, though only in a semi-civilian role, as secretaries
and doctors. Then, followed by this entourage, Wingate flew
back to Khartoum to organize Gideon Force and in particular its
transport.

For Wavell’s conference a report had been called for not only
from Sandford but also from the other half of 101 Mission,
Bentinck.
Bentinck’s report was almost equally optimistic. November
had seen (thanks to Wingate’s drive) the return of the
Armachecho patriot leaders and the Emperor’s representative
with a caravan of rifles, and the revolt was ‘now in full swing’.
Furthermore, Captain Foley had been out on his own ‘showing
great determination and energy’, blowing up the road behind
Metemma leading to Gondar. At the end of the month he had just
arrived at Bentinck’s camp ‘preceded by men singing and playing
a harp and blowing a bugle’. With the help of ahandful ofpatriot
volunteers he had managed to blow up twelve lorries and one
armoured car. There were reports too that near Debra Tabor Ly
Johannes and his men had attacked and destroyed a convoy of 6
lorries, killing 50 troops and capturing 4 machine-guns. As for
Bentinck, he had personally received a letter of thanks—in
verse—from one of the chiefs, Wanjo of Maraba, ‘altogether a
most refreshing and unusual epistle’.
But what he needed now in order to exploit the situation was a
number ofBritish officers and if possible a company of Gurkhas,
294 THE MILLS OF GOD
plus more rifles. For the Emperor’s representative, the Tsehafe
Taezaz Haile, whom Bentinck still believed to be ‘a kindly old
man’, had brought only 250 instead of 852 rifles promised, and
nineteen chiefs and their followers were at Bentinck’s camp (and
incidentally having to be fed) waiting for arms and ammunition.
There had even been threats from Birre Zagaye to seize the rifles
by force!

Bentinck’s and Sandford’s optimistic reports were both sent in on

1 December. Though they were not to know it, the Italians were
equally worried about frontal attacks which they believed to be
imminent all along the border and about rebel activity in two
other areas. These were the Tseggede where Adane Makonnen,
whom they feared more than any of the Armachecho chiefs, had
raised his men after Maskal and was threatening all the forts and
outposts around Adi Remoz and surprisingly even those beyond
the Upper Simien inside Tigre. Panicky reports had come
through with the news that huge forces—put at 5,000 armed
rebels—were gathered in the hills under Negash Workineh. They
were not only threatening Makalle but were talking of advancing
on Adowa—and this in Tigre, which had always been so
peaceful.
The Italians knew that there were British officers in Gojjam
and Armachecho (they had by now identified ‘Mr. Room’ as
Sandford). They suspected that British troops had already slip-
ped into those areas; there was even one scary report of seven
British battalions in Armachecho. They believed that machine-
guns were being distributed, and they had learnt that, though
there were no British officers with them, both Adane Makonnen
and the highly-threatening Negash Workineh had been in touch
with Khartoum. Deeply alarmed by the state of the highlands,
fearing how the revolt would spread when Haile Selassie was
eventually brought in, the Italians decided on a series of counter-
moves. These were to prove most successful.
The brain behind these moves appears to have been that of
General Nasi. For a start intrigues and rivalries were to be
actively encouraged among all local leaders, and those loyal to the

' So Bentinck had empirically come to reach one of Wingate’s conclusions: the
need for a small trained core, an Op Centre or a Gurkha company, as the basis of a
successful guerrilla force. He had also recognized (cf. p. 286) the dangers of
distributing rifles to rebel leaders.
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 295
Italians were to be allowed to form their own banda and given
increased pay, gifts, and decorations. Certainly Bentinck did not
know that Fitaurari Mesfin Redda, whose courtesy and impress-
iveness he had so much admired, was at the same time having
talks with the former Governor of Eritrea, Gasperini, to whom
he had said that he was ready to go ‘anywhere’. Or that Birre
Zagaye had promised to obstruct the British. Or that Adane
Makonnen had been befriended by two pro-Italian Dejaz, Abitau
Mintuab and Desta Maru, and promised arms and an area to
control.! But by mid-December Bentinck was growing
depressed. He was annoyed at the lack of support his ‘sideshow’
was getting from Khartoum, disappointed at Tsehafe Taezaz
Haile who had shown that he lacked ‘personality and energy’,?
and highly disturbed by the stormy atmosphere of his camp
where the chiefs spent the whole time plotting and intriguing to
obtain each other’s rifles and the Tsehafe Taezaz’s favour.
‘Certainly Foley is the only inspiration to the revolt and his
exertions in Chano appear to have set the local chiefs alight,’
noted Bentinck. But by the end of the month Foley too was ill
and depressed.
As for the threat from the Upper Simien, there the Italians
successfully incited Lij Wossene, the heir of the Wagshum, and
his mother Woizero Shoanish, against Negash Workineh
—though Lij Wossene was ill with malaria and had only 100 men
with him and two heavy machine-guns. So successful was Italian
intrigue that Lij Wossene and the men of Wag, embittered by
Negash Workineh’s pretensions, actually attacked the rival
leader. There were many dead among the patriots on both sides.
On the borders of Gojjam there was from the Italian point of
view one stroke of luck. Fitaurari Worku of Kwara, the One-
Eyed, had proclaimed himself Representative of the British
Government. The hard-pressed Major Parodi was preparing to
1! This was not mere treachery and double-dealing. All over Beghemder the patriot
leaders had been impressed by Blatta Takele’s warnings, and were preparing to fight
on two fronts, both against their present overlords the Italians and against those
whom they suspected might become their future overlords, the British. They were
seriously preparing, from Armachecho to Debra Tabor, to attack the British if the
British should show signs oftaking permanent root. This inevitably involved them in
complicated manceuvring, much ofit centred round the imperial personage of Lij
Johannes. ta
2 Which is not surprising in view ofhis character. This is the same man who in 1936
abandoned the cadets and their Swedish officers to the lonely defence of Ad Termaber
against Badoglio’s advance.
296 THE MILLS OF GOD
abandon his little outpost in Kwara fort when, in the first week of
December, Fitaurari Worku was shot and mortally wounded by a
Gumz sniper. In the inevitable argument over his successor his
followers split. So died the earliest and most reliable of all the
British-backed minor chiefs, and one whose territory was the
first ‘bound’ on the route to Belaya. Songs were composed by his
brother in memory of his gallant deeds.

Yet all this was a mere foretaste. On 11 December General Nasi

made his most masterly move. He brought Ras Hailu back to
Gojjam.
Ras Hailu—it was nearly ten years since the son of the Negus
Tekle Haimonot had set foot in his father’s kingdom. Since then
he had been imprisoned by Haile Selassie, released on the
Emperor’s train to Djibuti, and made Graziani’s chief native
adviser. Largely because of that, and because of his unfortunate
role in the killing of the two sons of Ras Kassa, he had been
relegated to the shadows under Graziani’s successor as Viceroy,
the Duke of Aosta. But even Graziani had been careful not to
allow him to set foot in Gojjam. Only the utmost crisis ofItalian
power permitted Ras Hailu after those long years of absence to
achieve his patient wish and return to his people.
That they had not forgotten him became immediately clear.
He was welcomed with enormous enthusiasm in his capital of
Debra Markos. When he visited the threatened garrison towns of
Burie and Dangila he was ‘received with great rejoicing by all,’ as
the British were forced to acknowledge. Sandford sent ina highly
alarmed report to say that the local situation appeared critical.
Many small patriot leaders submitted again to the Italians.
Uneasiness spread among the remainder. General Nasi, who had
personally taken in hand the situation in Gojjam, had the entire
province detached from General Frusci’s Sector and allotted to
his own. Striking while the iron was hot, he sent reinforcements
to Colonels Natale and Torelli. He formed new bande—Dejaz
Kassa Mashasha for instance was sent down to reinforce Parodi at
Kwara. He announced, not inaccurately, that the British had
stopped bombing because they had lost so many planes.
In Khartoum there was alarm; Haile Selassie authorized the
opening of negotiations with Ras Hailu. There was reason for
alarm, for of the four great rebel chiefs in Gojjam two were
related by blood and one by marriage to Ras Hailu. To all of them
 A LAWRENCE FOUND 297
Ras Hailu sent letters. The confusion of their spirits and even
more of that oftheir followers can be judged by the reply sent to
Ras Hailu by the one low-born leader unrelated to him, ‘Lij’ Belai
Zelleka. In it Belai Zelleka, who signed himself ‘Venger of the
blood of Ethiopia’, rejoices at the return of Ras Hailu. But

Your Highness! The country and I are yours. But inasmuch as we are
yours, if, as we have heard has been done already in Shoa and among the
Gallas, you have come with the intention of driving us one against the
other with deceptions, I shall abandon the country and retire to the
desert to resist like a man for the independence and the honour of my
country, and I shall so bear myself that my history shall be written in
Europe.

Indeed Belai Zelleka had his wish. He did so bear himself: his
history has been, and is now again being, written in Europe. But
amidst such confusion ofloyalties it was clear that no rebellion
could flourish.
Three weeks later General Nasi, no mean propagandist, struck
his second blow. He issued officially a decree from Debra Markos
to celebrate the return of Ras Hailu, expressing the goodwill of
Italy, and warning the Gojjamites against the snares of a bar-
barous and foreign people: ‘In your land where milk and honey
flow, surrounded by holy Ghion which God has given you as a
boundary on every side (the Blue Nile), this people has scarcely
ceased from poisoning you with the honey of its words . .’
Unofficially, surreptitiously, and most effectively, he had a
forged document circulated bearing, like the Awaj of 8 July, the
Imperial Seal of the Lion of Judah and Elect of God, Haile Selassie
I, and appointing Dejaz Mangasha Jimbirre Negus of Gojjam.
This forgery despite shrill denials did its work. All the inhabitants
of Gojjam except Mangasha’s immediate followers began to
despise and detest the name of the usurper. Even more signifi-
cantly, they remembered how they had been treated by the
Negus Negusti in the past and how he had, years before too,
appointed over them a Governor, Ras Imru, whom they had
never chosen.
Yet though the rebellion came to a standstill, and the garrisons
sallied out of Burie and Dangila again, dangerously threatening
Sandford who appealed in vain for immediate drastic action, the
bulk of the rebels did not go over to the Italians. For the Italians,
particularly the Director ofPolitical Affairs at Addis Ababa, Dr.
298 THE MILLS OF GOD
Frangipani, hesitated to take the really decisive step. They did not
give Ras Hailu real autonomy by withdrawing some of their
Residents and Commissars. They did not arm him with
machine-guns and the four cannon he was ‘timidly’ requesting.
Above all they did not themselves appoint him Negus of Gojjam.
This hesitation was their great mistake.
Yet the idea was much in the air. At the same time they had sent
back two other great chiefs to their districts, ‘Ras’ Ayalew Birru
to Gondar and ‘Ras’ Haile Selassie Gugsa to Makalle. In reserve at
Addis Ababa they still held Ras Seyum whom they trusted less.
Yet even so there was talk of appointing Ras Seyum Negus of
Tigre. For with the return of the other great chiefs, even the
falsely titled, to their regions, the threat of British-inspired
rebellion had been countered—if not ended.
 CHAPTER 24

SUCCESS AT EL WAQ

GENERAL CUNNINGHAM had taken over the command in Kenya

on 1 November from General Dickinson who was ‘tired and in
need of rest’. At least the British occasionally managed to get rid
oftheir generals, though by no means ofall their ‘tired’ generals.
Under him General Cunningham found no less than three
recently arrived generals; first General Wetherall, second a ge-
nial South African known as ‘Daddy’ Brink, and last General
Godwin-Austen of Somaliland fame.
These generals had arrived to take command offorces that had,
during the summer months, dramatically increased. By Novem-
ber two more brigades of the KAR had been raised and formed,
and two more brigades of South Africans had come up to
Nairobi. For the overland lorry route to the Cape had now been
opened and not only men but materials were streaming up to
strengthen East Africa Force. Its power therefore stood, when
Cunningham took up his command, at a total of nine brigades.!
Nine brigades formed three divisions. Hence the need for the
three major-generals—one to command each division.
This was a substantial force. In addition there were the sup-
porting arms: Pemberton’s local armoured cars, as well as
armoured cars and a squadron oflight tanks from South Africa;
plus about fifty aeroplanes, artillery, a swarm oflorries, and all
the other trappings.
There was also a scattering of irregular forces. The Kenya
settlers, under command of a Captain Nicholl of the 14th
Lancers, had managed to form the Kenya Independent
| The four KAR brigades were the 21st (Brigadier Ritchie), the 22nd (Brigadier
Fowkes), the 25th (Brigadier Owen) and the 26th (Brigadier Dimoline). The three
South African Brigades were the 1st (Brigadier Pienaar), the 2nd (Brigadier
Buchanan) and the sth (Brigadier Armstrong). The other two Brigadiers were
commanding the West African brigades which had arrived at Mombasa in July. The
Nigerian Brigade was comimanded by Brigadier Smallwood, the Gold Coast Brigade
by Brigadier Richards.
300 THE MILLS OF GOD

Squadron—eighteen men, with forty-six horses and mules,

which had the glory of being the smallest unit in the British
Empire. But, more importantly, a number of ‘Irregulars’ had
been raised, first as companies, then, increasing in strength, as
Irregular Battalions.
The inspirer of this move was a colonial official from British
Somaliland, by the name of Curle, the same Curle who had been
attached to the Anglo-Ethiopian Boundary Commission that had
been attacked at Walwal. Evacuated, like all the civilian officials,
from Somaliland, indignant at the waste of good fighting
material in the Ethiopian refugees there, he had got permission to
form from them an armed group: the ‘2nd Irregulars’. He
promised to pay, feed, and clothe his men. They in their turn
agreed to accept one punishment only: twenty-five lashes. As for
the other officers, an equally rough bunch of Kenyan settlers,
they included an Austrian who had fought both British and
Italians in the First World War, and an Estonian called Nurk who
had escaped from prison in Italian East Africa. By the beginning
of November, Curle had raised five companies, each of sixty
men, and by mid-November he had absorbed the remnants ofthe
‘rst Ethiopians’, those of the failed ‘invasion’ north of Lake
Rudolf. They had been retrained by another of these curious
Kenya adventurers, Angus Buchanan, a man who had once led
two exploring expeditions for Lord Rothschild. But Buchanan
knew nothing at all of the Ethiopians. His attempt to run his unit
like a British battalion was disastrous. Trouble broke out, and
both Buchanan and the old Ethiopian leaders—Dejaz Wolde
Mariam, Zaudi Ayalew, and Fitaurar1 Tademme Zelleka, Ras
Desta’s lieutenant—were removed. Most of the rest were
absorbed into the ‘2nd Irregulars’ which rose to a*strength of
twelve companies. A few were sent up to Khartoum to join
Wingate’s No. 1 Op Centre.
Meanwhile, two other groups ofIrregulars were formed out of
Somalis in the no man’s land between the Tana and the Juba, one
under Captain Dougie Douglas. In the far north-west ten com-
panies of fierce Turkana were raised to form the ‘sth Irregulars’.
And Mr. Bonham, the Intelligence Officer at Marsabit, raised his
own group oflocal tribesmen—‘Bonham’s shifta’.
General Cunningham underestimated the importance of all
native troops, regular as well as irregular. He trusted mainly in
the fighting qualities of his three white South African bri-
 SUCCESS AT EL WAQ 301
gades—because they were white. Cunningham was a conven-
tional officer, with no experience ofthe colonies. He was in fact as
typical a regular soldier as it might be possible to find: approach-
able, unlike General Platt, sociable, unlike General Wavell, and
very cautious, unlike his fellow-gunner Major Wingate. He
applied to his armies the principles he had learnt to apply to his
guns: they would function well provided they were lined up
exactly on a well-observed target, equipped before battle with a
substantial stock of reserves, and above all used well within their
range.

He and Smuts had left Eden’s Khartoum Conference in order to

fly down and see if an attack on Kismayu was feasible. They had
visited most of the front together, and discussed plans. While
Cunningham stayed in Nairobi to take up his new post, Smuts
flew back to Cape Town. From there on 5 November Smuts sent
an enthusiastic cable to Churchill: not only would it be possible to
take Kismayu, but from Kismayu Cunningham should be able to
attack northwards and threaten Addis Ababa. This was exactly
what Churchill wanted to hear. He was even more delighted
when Smuts added that with internal unrest inside Ethiopia and a
thrust from the North as well, ‘the Italians may crack in the
summer.’ This was very different from the vague plans for attack
and the very concrete news of defeats that Churchill had been
used to receiving from the Middle East up till then. He was also
delighted with his new General in Kenya and with that new
General’s offensive spirit. For he naturally assumed that Smuts
and Cunningham had agreed.
They may have done. But within days Cunningham’s innate
caution reasserted itself. Not only was there no more talk of
threats to Addis Ababa but Cunningham reported to Wavell that
he had decided that it would be impossible to attack Kismayu
before the spring rains were over; before, that is to say, May.
Wavell cabled the news to General Dill. The inevitable outburst
followed from Downing Street. Why this delay? All that Dill
could rather feebly say was that Wavell had called a meeting in
Cairo ofall his military leaders and that doubtless the plans would
be discussed and decided there. ‘None of us were satisfied with
this,’ noted Churchill grimly, and he dispatched memoranda and
cables in various directions in an attempt to influence the result of
the military conference.
302 THE MILLS OF GOD

As usual, this attempt failed in face of Wavell’s immense

passivity. As a sop to Churchill, Eden promised that Cun-
ningham would make a minor attack towards Kismayu before
the February rains. But Churchill, disgusted with the pusil-
lanimity of his British advisers and at the way in which planned
operations inevitably appeared to be both postponed and watered
down, had turned with enthusiasm to a new proposal put
forward by a new figure who appeared briefly but dramatically
on the East African scene: General de Gaulle.

The Free French at least appeared to want to fight, unlike the

infinitely more powerful British. This, in Churchill’s eyes, was
their main merit. It compensated both for the never-ending
internal intrigues and even for their outward vanity—only too
apparent in the boasting and lack of secrecy which had just led to
the failure of the expedition against Dakar in West Africa.
De Gaulle had come back from this débacle chastened but
unabashed. He was encouraged by the news that the Belgian
Congo had at long last followed the example of his own obscure
fief, French Equatorial Africa, and declared itself by the voice of
its governor-general, M. Pierre Ryckmans, ‘officially and juridi-
cally at war with Italy.’ In London he found waiting for him the
other fiery French general, LeGentilhomme.
LeGentilhomme seemed to bear a charmed life. Not only had
he got out of Djibuti safely but he was one ofthe few survivors of
the ship in which he sailed from Aden to England: the Empress of
Britain, sunk on 26 October. Three days later LeGentilhomme
had reached London safely, and three weeks later De Gaulle
joined him. Together they formed a plan for a ‘Dakar’ on a less-
ambitious scale: the recapture or rather recovery of Djibuti.
Three Free French battalions including the Foreign Legion would
be transported by the Royal Navy round the Cape and under
General LeGentilhomme’s overall command hover outside
Djibuti till the Senegalese troops and their officers there rallied to
their former commander. To this plan they gave the code-name
of ‘Operation Marie’.
Then with Dyibuti once more in Allied hands (and with, inci-
dentally, the power of the Gaullist forces doubled) the original
Franco-British plan for invading Ethiopia down the railway line
towards Addis Ababa could immediately be put into effect. It
was no doubt this second stage that Churchill most appreciated.
 SUCCESS AT EL WAQ 303

When he and De Gaulle met in London in the last week of

November, Churchill approved enthusiastically the plans for
‘Operation Marie’. He regretted only that it would be probably
two months before the sea-borne force could appear outside
Djibuti: not, in other words, until 1 February 1941. De Gaulle
and LeGentilhomme looked forward eagerly to combined opera-
tions against the despised Italians—once they had rallied the
Djibuti garrison back again to the Cross of Lorraine.

General Cunningham probably felt a pang of conscience at

postponing his attack on Kismayu when he learnt that in mid-
November a cargo boat had docked at this port loaded with
supplies: rice, sugar, and more important, petrol and tyres.
Kismayu was clearly important to the Italians. Cunningham
made haste to put into action the ‘minor thrust’ towards it which
he had promised would take place before the February rains. It
was indeed a minor thrust, for its only aim was the water-hole on
the artificial frontier between Kenya and Somalia named El Waq.

General Pesenti was Commander of the Juba Sub-Sector,

Military Governor of Somalia, and Cunningham’s opponent on
this front. He had, after the usual alarm felt by all Italian
commanders at the outbreak of war, settled down confidently to
a quiet existence. There had been no attacks at all on his front,
merely sporadic bombing raids which spared, as he noticed to his
annoyance, the port of Kismayu—undoubtedly because the
British intended to use it eventually for their own ships. One
group of his famous white-turbaned Somali dubats, a thousand
strong, was stationed forward on the frontier at El] Waq, and
Pesenti had recently reinforced it with a native battalion, the
1gist. This threatening force of 2,000 men stood then on the
Kenyan frontier, just over a hundred miles from Wajir.
It was this force that Cunningham decided to attack. He took
even less chances than the Italian generals had in their attacks on
the small Sudan frontier posts. He assembled at Wajir the Gold
Coast Brigade and Pienaar’s 1st South Africans, added Pem-
berton’s armoured cars and some light artillery, had seventeen
aircraft provided for air cover, and numberless lorries for trans-
port. He then put the whole force under the command ofGeneral
Godwin-Austen. -
With a force outnumbering the enemy’s by nearly four to one,
304 THE MILLS OF GOD
Godwin-Austen could hardly go wrong. The unhappy Colonel
Garino, a chemist by profession, called up to command the
outpost at El Wagq, saw his men swept away by these motorized
columns. But the dubats put up a brave defence, even halting
temporarily a line-abreast charge by the armoured cars with their
noisy hand-grenades. The defenders lost only fifty men, includ-
ing prisoners, against, admittedly the attackers’ casualties of two.
The next day the attackers withdrew, the 1st Transvaal Scottish
having captured the colours of the rgIst.
But the repercussions of this little skirmish were extra-
ordinarily extended. All the malaise and sense ofinferiority from
which the troops in Kenya had been suffering disappeared almost
overnight (even though General Cunningham had been careful to
use neither the Nigerians nor the KAR, the troops which had
previously been defeated). At the same time the generals were
pleased with themselves. For the first time in East Africa a British
operation had gone as planned, without the slightest hitch, and
this despite the fact that it was a complicated operation carried out
at a temperature of 106 degrees, involving troops of different
nationalities and colour, mechanized transport, air support,
armour, and considerable distances—the famous ‘logistics’ prob-
lem. It had been almost a text-book exercise.
Correspondingly, the Italians in Somalia were extraordinarily
depressed by this proof of British efficiency and immediately
decided that they had after all been underestimating the enemy.
General Pesenti, a music-lover and a composer in his spare time,
was particularly struck by the harmony with which the British
commanders had orchestrated their movements. From. this
moment on he considered the war, which he a non-Fascist had
never viewed with favour, as good as lost. So much do small
incidents, particularly at the beginning of a campaign, affect the
morale and behaviour not only of soldiers but of generals.
The Duke of Aosta first learnt of the skirmish over the BBC
News, where it was much boasted about. He immediately called
for an inquiry, having received in reply to a cable to Pesenti the
astounding news that Pesenti knew nothing of the incident.
Upon which he himself flew down with his ADC General
Volpini to take charge of the inquiry personally. On his arrival at
Mogadishu airport he was greeted by General Pesenti whom he
ordered abruptly to present himselfat the Palace. There the most
extraordinary scene took place. General Pesenti, having given his
 SUCCESS AT EL WAQ 305
account ofthe E] Waq affair, drew from it the conclusion that the
struggle was hopeless. He suggested that the Viceroy should ask
the British for an immediate armistice, as a prelude to a separate
peace between AOI and Great Britain. Though he was immedi-
ately ordered by the Duke to be silent, he insisted on speaking,
pointing out the political and psychological repercussions that
such an audacious move could have in Italy. He upset Amedeo
of Aosta by referring to his ancestor Carlo Emmanuele, and by
adding that the King had never wanted the war—so Badoglio had
told him, Pesenti.
There is a curious sentence in a long memo sent out by
Churchill to the Chiefs of Staff'a week or so later. The sentence is
this: ‘At any time we may receive armistice proposals from the
cut-off Italian garrison in Ethiopia.’ The section, part of a near-
directive on the whole conduct of the war in the Middle East,
goes on to explain why an Italian collapse could be near. But the
significant point is this precise reference to ‘armistice proposals’.
It seems almost as though the British Government must have
known of General Pesenti’s feelings. This implies either that a
highly efficient intelligence service informed them of the con-
frontation at Mogadishu after the event—or more likely, that
General Pesenti had in fact, though he claimed to be speaking
spontaneously, already been in contact with the opposing com-
manders. Pesenti himself recounts that only a month before the
declaration of war he had been ona business trip to South Africa.
It is clear therefore that he could have kept his lines open.
It is equally clear that the Duke of Aosta must have been
seriously tempted. His heart was notin the war against his British
friends and he had already done much to keep its tempo at a low
level. But at the same time Pesenti’s anti-fascist arguments and
appeals to ancestral example were a two-edged weapon. Pesenti
ought to have remembered that the Duke’s father, Emmanuele
Filiberto, had been indirectly responsible for the success of
Mussolini’s March on Rome and had been rewarded with honour
though not with the throne to which he had aspired. Amedeo of
Aosta was no Fascist and never appears to have been eaten by the
ambition that devoured his father, yet he owed more to the Duce
than to the King. So, perhaps hesitantly, he again halted Pesenti,
remarking, according to one account, that Pesenti ought to be
shot for making sach treasonable remarks and he himself for
listening to them.
306 THE MILLS OF GOD
Pesenti was not shot. He was relieved of his command, and
replaced by General de Simone, the sluggish conqueror ofBritish
Somaliland, who had at least proved more than a match on that
occasion for General Godwin-Austen. But unexplained changes
of general, except for clear reasons of military defeat, are bad for
morale; and it must be assumed that this was one of the reasons
why the morale ofthe Italian troops standing on the line of the
River Juba and awaiting a British attack went into a long decline
towards the level at which it was to end: at zero.
 CHAPTER 25

THE BALANCE SWINGS

In the second week of December events occurred far from East

Africa which had a decisive effect upon the East African
campaign. Eden finally obtained his desired military success,
though in the place where he had least expected it.
Marshal Graziani and his enormous invading army had been
camping for three months inside Egypt without moving
forward. On 9 December, six months almost to the day since
Italy had declared war, Wavell’s Army ofthe Nile attacked the
invaders. ‘News of the attack on Sidi Barrani came like a
thunderbolt,’ noted Ciano in his diary. Two days later he referred
to a ‘catastrophic telegram’ from Graziani. The British had swept
through the Italians’ position, and had captured 38, 300 prisoners,
237 guns and 73 tanks—for the loss of 624 casualties themselves.
For a month the war in general had been going badly for Italy.
First their offensive in Greece had collapsed. Then the RAF had
bombed the Italian Fleet in Taranto harbour. Thirdly, in a naval
action off Cape Sparavento, a number of Italy’s best ships had
been sunk by Admiral Cunningham. But none of these came as
such a shock as the catastrophe in North Africa. At one stroke the
threat to Cairo and the hope oflinking the two halves ofItaly’s
African Empire were removed; and at one stroke Italian morale
dissolved. Within the week Badoglio was dismissed from his
post as head ofItaly’s armed forces to be replaced by another man
who had made and lost a reputation in Ethiopia, Cavallero. As
for Graziani, ‘Here is another man’, said the Duce, ‘with whom |
cannot get angry because I despise him.’ Graziani remained in
place, only to conduct an even more catastrophic retreat before
being recalled in ignominy. Italian military men everywhere
were despondent. At Addis Ababa there was, according to
Colonel Talamonti, nothing but confusion, with everyone giv-
ing orders, and the Viceroy, by insisting on seeing everything,
wasting time, and deciding nothing. Italy had entered the war
/
308 THE MILLS OF GOD
only because it seemed that the war would be over in a matter of
weeks rather than months. But in Addis Ababa, after the disaster
in Egypt, they gloomily predicted at least another year of war,
and even more gloomily considered their own predicament. This
was the atmosphere in which a Pesenti could talk of an armistice
with no real danger of facing a firing squad. Not that all the
Italians were demoralized. Gina’s brother spent Christmas with
her, attending the same mass on Christmas Day in the Cathedral
as His Royal Highness; on 31 December he noted: “Being the last
day of the year, I must admit that it has gone very well indeed
(certainly not like last year).” He went out riding and in a fall
skinned his knees and grazed his elbow. It is just as well that he
did not have the gift of foresight. Worse things than skinned
knees and grazed elbows were to befall him, the Duke of Aosta,
and all the Italians in East Africa before the next year was out.
Churchill, exultant with victory, just before Christmas,
broadcast from London to the Italian people:
Our armies are tearing and will tear your African Empire to shreds and
tatters. . . How has all this come about and what is it for? Italians, I will
tell you the truth. It is all because of one man. . . That he isa great man I
do not deny but that after eighteen years of unbridled power he has led
your country to the horrid verge of ruin can be denied by none.

It is unlikely that many Italians listened to Churchill’s words.

But the sentiments expressed certainly reflected the new mood of
the British, who after so many failures had just won their first
great victory of the war.
The winning of it had an almost immediate effect on British
plans. Churchill had never been resigned to virtual inactivity on
the Kenya and Sudan fronts. He was less than ever inclined to
accept the mild projects of Middle East Command now that, in
his view, the weakness of the enemy had been thoroughly
revealed. The battle at Sidi Barrani had been fought and won by
only two British divisions: the Seventh Armoured (and on desert
ground the unstoppable Matildas had come into their own) and
the Fourth Indian. It was therefore with mixed feelings that he
learnt that Wavell was pulling out the triumphant Fourth Indian
and sending it down to the Sudan. On the one hand this meant a
less effective pursuit of the defeated armies of Graziani. On the
other hand it was proof that Wavell did intend to launch a more
serious offensive in the Sudan and that at any rate the recapture of
 THE BALANCE SWINGS 309
Kassala (for which Eden had demanded extra troops) was
definitely on.
But it was, naturally, among the Ethiopians that the defeat of
Graziani had the greatest effect. He had been their conqueror and,
as Viceroy, their tyrant. As the victorious Army of the Nile
pressed on and in its turn invaded enemy territory to capture first
Bardia and then Tobruk with fresh hordes of prisoners, George
Steer issued leaflet after leaflet with photographs oflong lines of
Italian captives. He prepared a bumper issue of Banderachin in
which he hammered away at the theme of Graziani’s defeat, and
at the failure of all the boasts made by the Italians in East Africa.
‘After Maskal, what did they do? Four months of fighting
weather have passed and the Italians have not gone forward.’ Nor
would they now, for: ‘Even as the prophet Isaiah has foretold,
“Yet a remnant of the Lord shall return, and come with singing
into Zion, and sorrow and sadness shall flee away.”’ ’
Wingate, in a state of nervous exhilaration, was all for speeding
up the return into Zion and profiting from the enemy’s disarray.
It was decided that Haile Selassie’s entry could not be delayed
until the Op Centres or the Refugee Battalions were trained and
ready. Sandford, in view of the alarms in Gojjam, agreed.
The plan then was for the Emperor to cross the frontier within
weeks rather than months. He would be escorted by his own
personal bodyguard of young noblemen, by the 2nd Ethiopians,
the only moderately well-trained refugee battalion, by No.1 Op
Centre and by the Sudanese troops of Boustead’s Frontier Bat-
talion. For after their initial brush Boustead and Wingate got on
surprisingly well. Superficially this was unexpected; for
Boustead was an epicurean where Wingate was a stoic, faddy
about his personal comfort, insisting for instance on eating offa
table covered with a table-cloth and properly laid, whatever the
circumstances. In other words Boustead was, in his own more
urbane way, also an eccentric. But he was a fighter too. Though
he had been for sixteen years in the Sudan, latterly in the Political
Service, he had deserted from the Navy in the First World War in
order to see active service and had enlisted as a private in the
Gordon Highlanders. Winning a Military Cross, he had received
at the same moment the King’s pardon and the King’s decora-
tion. He had been one of the original officers to join the Sudan
Defence Force when General Hudleston, clearing out the Egyp-
tians, had founded it.
310 THE MILLS OF GOD

This long acquaintance with the new Governor-General was

extremely useful. Boustead and Wingate now put all their energy
into collecting the camels that would be needed to carry the
supplies of Gideon Force to the top of the Ethiopian escarpment.
The Frontier Battalion had only 900 camels, and no saddles for
mules. But thanks to General Hudleston’s support and in particu-
lar thanks to the Governor ofthe central camel-raising province
of Kordofan, the transport problem was solved. It was not easy.
Knowing it useless to conscript unwilling tribesmen, Wingate
hired them and their camels as civilians for an arms-running
contract, playing off tribe against tribe. Within four weeks he had
25,c00 camels and 5,000 camel men converging on the base from
which Gideon Force was to set out, Roseires on the Blue Nile.
Meanwhile, however, a difficulty had occurred that put the
whole project in peril.

It has already been mentioned that Major Hamilton of 106

Mission had arrived in Khartoum on the same day as Wingate.
He was ahearty, boisterous Army officer ofa very different kind,
six foot four inches tall, a heavyweight boxer, and winner in his
day of the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst. He was only passing
through Khartoum. His destination was Aden—he had been for
seven years a political officer in British Somaliland—and the task
of his mission was to sabotage Djibuti and to blow up the railway
line leading to Diredawa and the capital. He found at Aden an
assembled Mobile Force (known locally as the ‘Mobile Farce’)
featuring inter alia a red-bearded British officer 1/C Dhows, by
name Cardell-Ryan, but Lawrence-style, addicted to Arab
clothes and to calling himself Haji Abdullah. Hamilton also
found confusion about his own role. The plans for ‘Operation
Marie’ were being co-ordinated, in rather muddled fashion,
between London, Cairo, Brazzaville, and Fort Lamy, and it
seemed pointless to provoke the French in Djibuti at precisely the
moment when a concerted effort to win them back to the good
cause was being planned. So Hamilton listened to the suggestions
for making better use ofhis abilities that were put forward by an
officer attached to this Mission named Courtenay-Brocklehurst.
Courtenay-Brocklehurst had been a game-warden in the Galla
country in the old days. He had known Sandford who had been
down in Majiat the time. But he had also known the Galla; and he
disagreed with Sandford profoundly.
 THE BALANCE SWINGS 310

As another British officer in Aden at the time was later to write

on the whole subject of irregular warfare:
Too much reliance was also at first placed on the views of the Local
Expert . . . He had probably been in his region for many years and
would have been very fond ofhis particular tribe or race. As a Galla man
for instance he would be very pro-Galla and would have nothing to do
with the Amharic expert, being infected himself by local animosities
. . . The Local Expert was extremely useful as an adviser but not so
good as a commanding officer.

These were wise words. Courtenay-Brocklehurst was a Galla

man, as Captain Erskine of Gore had been before him. Like all
Galla men he detested the Amhara and knew that the Galla in
their great majority wished to be free of Amhara rule. So far the
Amhara experts had had it all their own way. But from the Galla
expert's viewpoint the Amhara experts were involving a naive
and ill-informed British government in a dastardly attempt to
reimpose Amhara rule and an Amhara emperor on the Gallas
under the guise of‘liberation’.
Courtenay-Brocklehurst and Hamilton flew down to
Khartoum to try and halt ror Mission and in its place to lead 106
Mission into Galla country. They would raise the Gallas with the
promise of genuine liberation, both from the Italians and from
their previous and more oppressive masters, the Amhara.
Their arrival caused a considerable stir. From the Kaid’s point
of view, and from Wavell’s too, they were merely a nuisance. But
the Foreign Office felt differently. They had always questioned
the wisdom of restoring Haile Selassie and had been extremely
sceptical about reports of his continuing popularity within the
country. They had an important file on the Western Galla
Federation of 1936 which had vainly appealed for British protec-
tion. They knew that the Galla experts were not lying when they
claimed that Haile Selassie’s restoration would not be viewed as
‘liberation’ south of the Blue Nile. Moreover, they suspected that
the Emperor’s value as a rallying-point north ofthe Blue Nile had
been much exaggerated by such biased Local Experts as
Sandford.
The debate was of great moment. Willingly or unwillingly, the
British held the whole future of Ethiopia in their hands. Their
decision to support or not to support the Emperor would be of
personal importance to many millions of Ethiopians. Haile
312 THE MILLS OF GOD

Selassie, with Wingate’s support, wrote directly to Churchill,

appealing to be allowed to enter his country immediately—an
obvious way offorcing the British government’s hands. Church-
ill, who appears to have been badly briefed, and confused by
reports that Mission 106 had been prevented from entering the
Galla country, sent one of his ACTION THIS DAY memos to Eden,
just appointed Foreign Secretary, and to Ismay:
It would seem that every effort should be made to meet the Emperor of
Ethiopia’s wishes. We have already, I understand, stopped our officers
from entering the Galla country. It seems a pity to employ battalions of
Ethiopian deserters, who might influence the revolt, on mere roadmak-
ing. We have sixty-four thousand troops in Kenya, where complete
passivity reigns, so they could surely spare the roadmakers.
On the first point I am strongly in favour of Haile Selassie entering
Ethiopia. Whatever differences there may be between the various
Ethiopian tribes, there can be no doubt that the return of the Emperor
will be taken as a proof that the revolt has greatly increased, and will be
linked up with our victories in Libya.
I should be glad if'a favourable reply could be drafted for me to send to
the Emperor.

This virtually decided the issue. Eden did retort the following
day, 31 December, with a memo warning against being
‘stampeded into premature and possible catastrophic action’, and
suggesting that nothing should be done for several months with
the Emperor. Churchill was surprisingly mild in his own reply to
this; mild but firm. “One would think that the Emperor would be
the best judge of when to risk his life for his throne.’
The decision was taken. The crisis was over, and 106 Mission
and its officers discredited and sent on their way. Once again by
diplomatic skill, by playing in this case on the British Prime
Minister’s desire for and admiration of brave action, Haile
Selassie had come safely through a potentially disastrous turmoil.
The decision was taken for Gideon Force to cross the frontier in
the third week ofJanuary.
Ras Kassa arrived from Jerusalem to join the Emperor, the
greatest of all the exiled nobles, with his fourth and only surviv-
ing son, Asrate. His other sons, Wondossen, Aberra, and
Asfawossen, had been treacherously killed on the orders of
Graziani. Ras Kassa himself had led the Armies of the North
against Badoglio—two enemies now disgraced. On both sides of
the frontier the lords and lesser lords of Ethiopia moved into
 THE BALANCE SWINGS 513
place; in Roseires, Haile Selassie, Ras Kassa, Dejaz Makonnen
Endalkatchew, and the Imperial Fitaurari Birru Walde Gabriel;
down in Kenya Dejaz Abebe Damtew, whose brother Ras Desta
had also died at Graziani’s command; and ranged over against
them Ras Hailu, long the personal enemy of Haile Selassie, back
at last with power in Gojjam; ‘Ras’ Ayalew Birru, more uneasy,
at Gondar; and, in the greatest dilemma of all, Ras Seyum at
Addis Ababa, protected by the Italians whom he and Ras Kassa
had fought together in the Tembien and with Haile Selassie at the
bloody field of Mai Ceu. Perhaps as they wondered on whom
fortune would smile and who, if any, would be left alive to claim
the imperial throne at the issue of the struggle, they spared a
thought for Ras Imru far away in his island prison but freed from
their rivalries and the turbulence that now threatened them all.
 CHAPTER 26

JOY IN THE MORNING

Port SUDAN was very, very hot. Even the newly-arrived Indian
Army officers complained ofthe prickly heat and left their baths
standing all night. The only wartime landmark was a shot-down
Italian fighter on view in the market with a money-box beside it
for appreciative contributions (in the first three hours £50 was
collected). ‘The only trouble the police had’, noted Mr. Lea the
DC, ‘was with a number of people who wished to show their
contempt for Mussolini by using it for an improper purpose.’
Outside the town there had been the usual dramas with
unexploded bombs which seemed to have an irresistible attrac-
tion for the Beja, who took the brass fittings for pure gold until
they learnt better. The Beja had largely replaced the Beni Amer in
Lea’s own banda, ‘Meadowforce’, partly because the Beni Amer
had too many kinsmen fighting magnificently for the wrong side
and partly because the Beja despite feigned innocence were
experienced raiders. Steer watched them being issued with rifles.
‘Over-reacting heavily, each man had insisted on being shown
how to load and fire.’ When targets were put up at 300 yards,
‘each man plugged his entire clip of bullets clean through the
bull’s eye.’
Very different were the Hadendoa of‘Frostyforce’ down in the
Gash, whose uniform was a red sash and a fuzzy mop ofhair and
whose idea of training was, according to their own commander,
‘to lie on their backs in the sun for 3 days, then turn over and
shoot a few rounds and then turn over again for another three
days’ rest.’ Not that it mattered. They had had a surprisingly
calm war in the Gash, amusing themselves since the fall of
Kassala mainly with the “Gash Code’, based on the striking
resemblance of the frontier at that point to the map of London.
Gedaref was ‘Chelsea’, the Gash Delta ‘Soho’, Atbara ‘the
Edgware Road’, and Kassala itself ‘Piccadilly Circus’. This had
agitated the Italian wireless interceptors and alarmed their
 JOY IN THE MORNING RIS

superiors who imagined these code-words to refer in some

mysterious way to the massing of British troops on the frontier.
Those who used it became adept at improvisation—the friendly
Sheikh Othman Ali Keilu became known as ‘Eros’ not for any
heart-piercing exploits but simply because he lived plumb in the
centre of‘Piccadilly Circus’.
It was at Butana Bridge that the newly-arrived commander of
the Fourth Indian Division, General Beresford-Peirse,
established his headquarters with two of his three brigades, the
11th and the sth. This, with Messervy’s Gazelle Force of
Sudanese and the other Indian Division, Heath’s, made a for-
midable concentration. It was strengthened by a squadron of
tanks (B Squadron, 4th Royal Tank Regiment) and by the first
French troops to arrive, theoretically for ‘Operation Marie’—a
squadron of Spahis who immediately distinguished themselves
by attacking and routing an Italian patrol at Om Ager to the
south.
The black hump ofJebel Kassala dominated the skyline for
miles in all directions. Messervy suggested that the attack should
be launched in the third week ofJanuary.

On New Year’s Day 1941 came the first active bit of excitement
for the year on the border—reports that Major Quigini and his
men had evacuated Gubba way down to the south.
A week Iater an RAF plane occupied Gubba, carrying only
George Steer and his assistant at the Propaganda Unit, the fat and
jovial Mamur, with 500 dollars and the Imperial Awaj to dis-
tribute. They found Gubba deserted; no replies came to their
shouts in Amharic and Arabic. The Hamej had fled from their
homes and were watching from the hills. Steer hauled down the
blue and yellow flag of the banda and raised the lion-banner of
Ethiopia; the first raising of the flag over a ‘conquered’ Italian post
on the Sudan frontier. He also found, abandoned but not
destroyed, invaluable large-scale maps (1:50,000) of parts of
Eritrea.
The evacuation of Gubba proved Wingate wrong. A combina-
tion of bombing, propaganda, and circling rebels had been
enough to scare the Italians out without a hard core of pro-
fessional guerrilla troops taking part. It was of course only a small
outpost, but at Jeast theoretically it barred the route to Mount
Belaya. Therefore with its evacuation the only threat to the
316 THE MILLS OF GOD
Emperor’s safe entry was removed. To the north Kwara, sur-
rounded and distant, was the nearest Italian outpost.

Steer flew back to Roseires to prepare his most dramatic news-

letter for the great day. Three weeks later, the great day had
arrived. As Banderachin put it:

OnJanuary 20 His Majesty the Emperor Haile Selassie Iaccompanied by

the Crown Prince and the Duke of Harar, by the Echege, Ras Kassa,
Dejaz Makonnen Endalkatchew, Dejaz Adafrisau, by his delegate to the
League of Nations Ato Lorenzo Taezaz and by his principal secretary
Ato Wolde Giorgis, by the Chief of his Imperial Guard Kenyaz Mokria,
by two powerful Ethiopian and English armies equipped with war
material superior to the Italian, crossed the frontier of the Sudan and
Ethiopia and entered into hisown. . . Therefore we rejoice in the tender
mercies of our God and ofJesus Christ and we give thanks before the
Divine Throne.

Or as Newbold wrote: “The Emperor left here for Ethiopia

today, flying to the frontier and then in by ground. I hope he
doesn’t get blotted.’

The Emperor and his cortége had flown from Khartoum to

Roseires on 18 January. Two days later they were flown to the
hamiet of Um Idla near the border, a place Wingate had chosen as
being ‘practically incapable of detection or interception by the
enemy.’ There was not then, nor was there ever to be, any
question ofHaile Selassie leading his troops in person: his person
was too valuable to risk. He and his bodyguard of young
noblemen, with Chapman-Andrews always by his side, fol-
lowed behind where Wingate and others led.
Wingate had reached Um Idla a few days before the Emperor,
almost simultaneously with one of the ‘two powerful armies’,
Captain Boyle’s 2nd Ethiopians. The other ‘army’, the ‘English’
one, was Boustead’s Frontier Battalion of Sudanese which in fact
did not accompany the Emperor. For at this stage ofthe invasion
of Gojjam there was no danger at all. The sole object was to
assemble the different entities of Gideon Force in the interior at
Mount Belaya where one of Boustead’s four companies, the
bearded Bimbashi Acland’s, was already in position.
It took a fortnight to get the Emperor there. While Haile
Selassie camped for a week thirty miles inside the frontier by the
 JOY IN THE MORNING 317
banks of the River Dinder, Wingate ranged ahead with two
trucks trying to find a suitable route for the Imperial convoy. By
3 February Haile Selassie had reached ‘Road’s End Camp’ but
only after reducing his personal escort from seventy-strong to
twenty, abandoning his lorry and riding in on Boyle’s white
horse. At Road End’s Camp Wingate had, in his turn, abandoned
his two trucks and gone on alone by horse. The following day he
rode back to camp on a bedraggled steed, with a British sergeant
and three exhausted mules, to announce that they were still fifty
miles from Belaya. On 4 February ‘the powerful army’ set out on
mules and camels: Wingate, Boyle, Chapman-Andrews, His
Imperial Majesty, and two or three Ethiopians. That day they
covered six miles. The following day was the grimmest and
hardest of all. But on 6 February they finally reached the foot of
Mount Belaya, to find a smiling Boustead already there. He had
come from Roseires by the easier, southern route, opened up by
the evacuation of Gubba. ‘You were right, and I was wrong’,
admitted Wingate. Behind them the 2nd Ethiopians struggled
slowly in and the endless columns of slow-moving camels, many
dying as they were driven up into the highlands, followed the
blazed trail.
Sandford was also at Belaya, having arrived there a week
earlier from the interior—but without the 5,000 mules he had
promised. Mules were as valued as rifles in the highlands.
Promises to supply them or even to sell them were almost
invariably broken, as all the British officers attached to the
Patriots were to learn to their cost. So with trucks unable to cross
the bitter country, and mules as scarce as diamonds, Gideon
Force was reduced to relying on camels for transporting its
supplies, in a country totally unsuitable for camels. ‘I do not
recommend this archaic form oftransport for campaigns in other
theatres’, wrote Wingate later. By 12 February, when Haile
Selassie presented their colours to the 2nd Ethiopians, hundreds
of dead and dying camels were littering the foothills of Mount
Belaya. Wingate and Sandford were not there for that ceremony.
The landing strip had been completed the day before, and they
had flown back to Khartoum, to consult with General Platt. The
Emperor and Gideon Force were in position. But what was the
next move to be—and who was to decide it? For by then the
position had chariged dramatically, both in the north and the
south.
318 THE MILLS OF GOD

THE SOUTH
Boustead had detached from the Frontier Battalion his No. 5
company of Nuba tribesmen under Bimbashi Campbell for a little
rampage of their own. On 20 January Campbell crossed the
frontier, bypassed occupied Geissen and made for the Shogali
crossing. But it was not till 14 February that he actually seized it.
At about the same time the 2/6th KAR, the only KAR battalion
to be used in the Sudan, occupied Kurmuk. Its commander, Lt.
Colonel Johnson, was given the overall command of all opera-
tions in this area. His base was at Malakal.
Here, as all along the Galla-Sidamo frontier, in the hot low-
lying jungles, bush country, and desert, the various British
advances were opposed mainly by General Gazzera’s Gruppi
Bande Frontiere. By seizing the Shogali crossing, Bimbashi
Campbell had effectively countered any plans by General
Gazzera to send reinforcements into Gojjam and thus threaten the
Emperor from the flank.
Further south lay the Baro Salient, held by Major Praga at
Gambeila with the 3rd Gruppo. Here the local District Commis-
sioners fought their own little raiding war with their Anuak and
Nuer levies. “Romilly Force’ captured Jokau Post on the Baro on
23 January. Evans-Pritchard intrigued with the Anuak nobles
along the Gilo, where the District Commissioners Renny and
Lesslie (later to die in this ‘campaign’) fought a skirmish on the
28th. A few potential Galla ‘rebels’ were brought to the province
capital at Malakal and given money to spread the rebellion. They
spent the money on clothes.

Further south still, Cave Bey and Captain Whalley stood on the
Boma plateau at Towoth Post with the Equatorial Corps, facing
Major Gobatto and the 2nd Gruppo, based at Maji. Whalley’s
string of urgent reports to Khartoum had died down. Groups of
would-be rebels had come and, finding no arms or ammunition
available, had gone back into the interior. But it seems that
permission was at last given for Whalley and his men to cross the
frontier. The post of Eribo was attacked on the 25th. But it was
very difficult country.
Round the corner, inside Kenya, anewly-raised KAR Brigade,
the 25th, was intended also to thrust towards Maji. The brigade
was based in Turkana country, north of Lodwar, on the Sudan
 JOY IN THE MORNING 319

side of Lake Rudolf. The objectives given in its operation order of

31 January were the little posts of Todenyang, Namuruputh, and
Kalam to the west of the Omo.
Brigadier Owen, the commander, had only two KAR bat-
talions; but over a thousand Turkana tribesmen had been raised
and armed under the supervision oftheir District Commissioner,
Major Gregory Smith. They were formed into the ‘sth
Irregulars’, and split into spear companies and rifle companies,
led by Captain Bilborough.
This gave the invaders a strength of somewhere near 3,000
men. Across the frontier lay a few banda of the Maji group but
above all the ferocious Merille tribesmen, who with their allies
the Donjiro were blood enemies of the equally ferocious
Turkana. Between them the Merille and the Donjiro were 4,000
rifles strong; and they were on the best of terms with the Italians
whose Residente at Kalam, Lieutenant Modesto Furesi, had been
arming and supplying them. ‘Any Merille seen are to be
attacked,’ said the operation order. When captured, Merille
tribesmen were to be segregated, six to be selected, given two
white arm-bands and a white flag and split sticks with messages
for the three great Merille chiefs; the very old half-paralysed
Lokweria, the powerful Tappo, and Lomoromoi, leader of the
Moran. All were to be invited to come to Kalam for a Baraka to
discuss stolen cattle, blood payments for past killings, and the
question of hostages.
This was tribal warfare in all its traditional glory. Todenyang
was occupied, Namuruputh was taken after a skirmish, but the
Merille gathered to defend a ford on the road approaching
Kalam, and the 2/4th KAR was driven back, though bombing
shook the tribesmen. By 12 February ‘peace talks’ had been
opened with the Merille.

THE NORTH
Thus all up and down the 1,200-mile frontier between the Sudan
and Italian East Africa the Kaid had, in conjunction with General
Cunningham in Kenya, planned a series of attacks and raids
—some large, some small, some mere feints, some with serious
objectives—to coincide with the entry of the Emperor. But the
main blow was to be struck from the Butana Bridge. General
Platt’s most serious objective was the recapture of Kassala
—long-discussed, now decided and planned in detail. Immensely
320 THE MILLS OF GOD

meticulous battle-plans had been drawn up for this, the most vital
thrust ofall. Both the Kaid’s Indian divisions circled Kassala, ready
to put in their textbook attack. As it turned out, however, all the
carefully prepared staff work was wasted effort. On the morning
of 19 January Messervy’s Gazelle Force reoccupied the town
without a shot fired. The Italians had abandoned Kassala two
nights earlier. It was, for the military at least, highly frustrating.
But the civilian authorities were delighted. Kennedy-Cooke,
the Province Governor, moved back into his house, glad to find
that the damage done had been much less than expected. The
temporary occupiers had broken a few windows but had kindly
dug a number of underground shelters. These latter were a mixed
blessing, however. A few months later the lavatory of Kennedy-
Cooke’s spare bedroom disappeared into one of the shelters
during the night. The two Sayids came to pay their respects.
They explained somewhat evasively that they had tried to get a
message out to announce the Italian evacuation but had failed.
With the reoccupation of Kassala, the threat to the Sudan was
over. The initiative now lay definitely with the British.

The situation on the early morning of 19 January was this. On

the British side the two Major-Generals, Beresford-Peirse and
Heath, had the bulk of their two divisions—four brigades—
concentrated at Kassala. Two more brigades were out on the
flanks. Briggs’s 7th stood on the Red Sea coast, assisted by
Meadowforce. In the south Mayne’s 9th, with the Eastern Arab
Corps, faced Slim’s uncaptured Metemma.
Less than two hundred miles from Kassala lay Asmara, capital
of Eritrea and seat of Frusci’s command. Half-way between the
two stood the town of Agordat, linked to Kassala by two
highways, an upper and a lower. General Frusci strung out five
brigades along these two roads. Behind Agordat, where the
lowlands ended and the highlands began, on the mountains
overlooking the picturesque little town of Keren, he placed a
sixth brigade, Lorenzini’s famous and never defeated II, fresh
from its triumphs in British Somaliland. With six of the eleven
Italian brigades in Eritrea facing an invading force of only four
British brigades, the odds appeared definitely to favour General
Frusci and the defence. But despite their own misgivings, yield-
ing largely to Churchill’s insistent pressure, the Kaid and his two
Major-Generals decided to attack.
 JOY IN THE MORNING 321

The so-called Battle of the Lowlands that followed was more a

battle of manceuvre than anything else. Messervy’s armoured
cars and lorries swung round unmarked tracks to take the Italians
in the rear and scare them out of one position after another back
into Agordat on the upper, or Barentu on the lower road. This
caused much frustration to the Indian Army which never had a
chance for a really blood-curdling engagement.
The only resistance to speak of was met at the gorge of Cheru,
the scene of one of the most heroic and picturesque incidents of
the war. The British had halted outside the gorge and had
trundled their guns up into position. As the guns were being
sited, just after dawn, the gunners were suddenly aware that they
were being charged, literally charged, from the flank by about
sixty horsemen led by an Italian officer on a white horse. The
horsemen galloped forward in extended line, firing wildly from
the saddle and throwing grenades as the gunners hastily swivelled
their guns right round and fired point blank, their shells piercing
the horses’ chests without exploding or slithering across the
ground. Even this did not halt the charge. A Brigadier and the
Gunner Colonel who, against regulations, were not carrying
their personal sidearms, attempted to seize rifles from the soldiers
around them. ‘No fear, that’s mine’, cried an indignant private,
as small-arms fire opened up.
The last of the horsemen fell within twenty-five yards of the
guns. Of the sixty who charged, two-thirds were killed including
their brave leader Lieutenant Togni. They were part of the
Gruppo Bande a Cavallo Amhara, a cavalry unit commanded by
Lieutenant Guillet. An hour later he, rashly but not so wildly,
attacked again, with all his bande, over 500 strong. They overran
the 4/11th Sikhs who had moved forward, but sheered off when
faced with the artillery behind. In all that morning’s work, 179
horsemen were killed and 260 wounded—8zg horses were killed,
68 wounded. It must have been the last great European-led
cavalry charge in Africa. Churchill, who himselfin his youth had
charged with the 8th Hussars at Omdurman, would have
approved. Togni’s charge very nearly succeeded. It had certainly
shaken the British, and proved to those who doubted that Italian
officers knew how to fight and how to die. Guillet withdrew his
surviving horsemen to the heights of Shanfalla that night, patrol-
ling out on the flanks of the British.
But though the advance ofthe invaders was held up, the retreat

/
322 THE MILLS OF GOD

ofthe defenders was chaotic and disorganized. Had it not been for
Guillet and his horsemen, almost all the Italians would have fallen
into the hands of the blocking column behind Cheru. As it was
the Highland Light Infantry took 700 prisoners including a
brigade commander, Ugo Fongoli, the first Italian general to be
captured.

Six days after the invasion the position was, then, from the Italian
point of view serious but not disastrous. They had lost ground,
been outmanceuvered and were minus one general. But in
recompense their brigades, instead of being strung out, liable to
be gobbled up one by one, were concentrating in strength. Their
confusion and panicky withdrawals could be attributed mainly to
a lack of co-ordination between their own commanders as
opposed to the close co-ordination between the two British
generals. Strings of contradictory orders had been issued from
Addis Ababa, from Asmara, and from the three divisional
commanders. The Italian High Command took steps. Even
though Addis Ababa proclaimed the invasion to be mere ‘ten-
tativi di infiltrazione’, the Duke of Aosta ordered the immediate
dispatch to the area of half his reserve, the 11th Savoy Grenadiers.
And at dawn on 25 January General Trezzani arrived at Asmara
and then went out to Agordat with Frusci and the air force
commander, General Pinna, to co-ordinate the defence.
An immediate decision was taken, and a wise one. Lorenzini
was promoted to General, his II Brigade was called forward from
Keren to Agordat, and he was given command of the whole
zone. Unfortunately after Trezzani’s departure Frusci sent a brace
of Generals, including the disastrous Tessitore, back to ‘advise’
him. This meant that two whole days, vital to the planning of
defensive or offensive moves, were wasted. By the evening ofthe
27th Lorenzini had, by cabling strong protests, rid himself
of his
‘advisers’. But by then it, was almost too late. That evening
Lorenzini stood with four brigades at Agordat, Bergonzi with
two at Barentu, each facing an attacking force of two brigades.
The antagonists on both sides were now concentrated.
The blow fell first on Agordat. The ‘P tanks, the heavy
Matildas, lumbered forward along the plain. Mines had not been
laid, there were no sharp rocks to cut their tracks as at Gallabat,
and eleven of the outgunned Italian tanks sent out to halt them
were blown away. Meanwhile, the 11th Indian Infantry Brigade
 JOY IN THE MORNING 323
moved north-east to cut the road behind Agordat leading back to
Keren. This was the finish. The armoured cars of Gazelle Force
led the infantry into Agordat at midday on 31 January. Lieutenant
Guillet and his horsemen were again the last to leave, holding out
till the end and then escorting the whole garrison down the
railway line, avoiding the road and its trap. So, of the 15,000
troops there, less than 1,000 were taken prisoner.
It was bad luck on Bergonzi. He and his two brigades had that
very day successfully counter-attacked their besiegers. Certainly
the Fifth Indian Division was not up to the standard of the
Fourth. They had not enjoyed a triumph in the Western Desert as
the Fourth had done. They had not, like Beresford-Peirse’s men,
gathered in acres of surrendering Italians. Indeed their only taste
had been that ofdefeat, at Gallabat. The two brigades ofthe Fifth
attacked on 1 February, to be met with a stubborn defence. That
night, skilfully, Bergonzi pulled out. With Agordat gone he had
no choice. Next morning the attackers shelled an empty town
before moving in to occupy it.
What the Italians called the Battle of the Lowlands was,
therefore, over less than a fortnight after it had begun; and a large
section of the ancient colony of Eritrea had fallen into British
hands. There was no particular reason why the invaders should
have been successful. Indeed if the Italian generals had been as
courageous or as active as the Italian cavalry lieutenants, the
British advance would not have gone very far. But even the
reputed Lorenzini had put up only a poor defence at Agordat.
Above all, the Italians never seem seriously to have considered a
determined counter-attack. The British circled around them, and
cut them off from the rear. But they, though having more troops,
never circled around the British. All that can be said in their
favour is that they did conduct their retreats—always a difficult
military manceuvre—most skilfully. Their brigades fell back to
the prepared positions at Keren with very little loss. From
outlying Om Ager, Colonel Postiglione and his brigade were
also pulled back across country, successfully.
There was, however, nothing inevitable about the invaders’
success, as events on the north edge of the Northern Front, on the
Red Sea, showed. There, as the attack on Agordat was being
planned, Brigadier Briggs and the 7th Indian Infantry Brigade
were ordered to recapture Karora. Karora was garrisoned by
merely one Guardie di Finanza (Customs Police) battalion. The
324 THE MILLS OF GOD

Royal Sussex set out by lorry from Port Sudan, 180 miles away,
to launch the attack at dawn on 24 January, supported by
Meadowforce, already patrolling forward. But by evening the
lorries, which had been moving at only eight miles an hour, had
bogged down in the sand. At dawn the next day they were still
ten miles away. Meadowforce, however—three Englishmen and
ninety tribesmen——had not received the order to cancel the
operation; when they skirmished forward they were attacked and
very nearly surrounded. The whole thing was, in the military
phrase, a balls-up. Next morning, Italian planes strafed the
stranded lorries. Two Italian brigades, the V and the XLIV, were
moved up into the area to hold off any repetition ofthis attack and
cover the northern flank of what had now become the key of the
whole Italian defensive position: Keren.
It was on Keren that, belatedly, as Agordat fell and Lorenzini’s
columns retreated, Trezzani and the Duke of Aosta were con-
centrating their will and their reserves. Two more brigades, the
VI and the XI, were sent up from Shoa; and the 11th Regiment of
the Savoy Grenadiers were hastily recalled from the line of the
Juba and sent up in non-stop convoys to reinforce Keren. To
relieve General Frusci ofall other responsibilities the governorate
of Amhara was detached from his command and a new Sector,
the West Sector, was formed out of Shoa and Amhara and
allotted to General Nasi. Thus the area of Frusci’s command was
reduced to the governorate of Eritrea; and both sides con-
centrated the best oftheir forces at what General Platt referred to
as ‘the horrible escarpment’, Keren.
On 2 February Gazelle Force leading, as always, the pursuit of
withdrawing Italians, halted at the dried bed ofthe river Baraka,
150 yards wide. The bridge over the river, Ponte Mussolini, had
been rather uselessly blown. But the river-bed was mined and the
retreating men of Lorenzini thus protected. It took Messervy’s
men eight hours to clear a path through the minefield; and as the
last Italians struggled up and into the gorge ahead engineers blew
down massive sections of the cliff-face behind them. At five
o'clock that evening the armoured cars of Gazelle Force came up
against the first Italian road-block, five miles from Keren. Ahead
of them, the road and the railway wound through the Dongalaas
Gorge. On both sides of the Gorge, mountains towered—
Samanna, Sanchil, Dologorodoc, Falestoh, Zeban.
 JOY IN THE MORNING 325

KENYA

Over on the far side of Lake Rudolf, to its east, General Cun-
ningham in his turn had been preparing a major thrust. Two of
his three South African brigades, the 2nd and the sth, were spread
out around the Marsabit area. General Cunningham’s plan here
was to recapture Moyale and thrust towards Mega, thus opening
up the whole southern area of General Gazzera’s command. One
or two swift military successes would, he was sure, put life into
the latent rebellion.
Unfortunately (as Cunningham should have known) there was
very little rebellion latent. There were to be even fewer military
successes. The South African troops appear to have been very
bad. Curle’s ‘2nd Irregulars’ (nearly 2,000 strong after the
absorption of the ‘3rd’) who operated with them under the
overall command of General ‘Daddy’ Brink, had a very low
opinion of the whites. There was a skirmish on 17 January—a
preparatory attack on the little outpost of El Yibo. After it the
Trregulars judged the South Africans to be ‘poor soldiers’,
‘unwilling to close’, and ‘had a very poor opinion of them.’ The
men of the Natal Mounted Rifles sold their boots to the Ethio-
pians, and the crews ofthe South African armoured cars mowed
down whole herds of oryx with their machine-guns.
At the end of January a more serious attack was launched. But
at Moyale the single defending battalion, the 54th Colonial,
pushed back the attackers. The two South African brigadiers
consoled themselves and their senior generals by each capturing a
waterhole: Gorai for Brigadier Buchanan of the 2nd, Hobok for
Brigadier Armstrong of the sth. This was hardly what General
Cunningham had. been hoping for from troops which he, and
Wavell too, persisted in regarding as the ‘best’ on the southern
front.
There was between Platt and Cunningham no open sign ofthat
professional and personal jealousy which six years earlier had
animated the previous invaders of Ethiopia, Badoglio, and
Graziani. But Cunningham would hardly have been human if he
had felt no pique at the thought ofall the success and all the kudos
going to the credit ofthe dour Platt: and Cunningham was a very
human man. With things going badly on the remote side of Lake
Rudolf—which was not important—and worse in the Meg-
Moyale area, which was—he decided to have a go on his third
326 THE MILLS OF GOD
‘front’. On 28 January he asked for permission to try for Kismayu
on the coast. Permission was granted. On 2 February, Wavell
sent the Prime Minister a cable that was honey and balm to
Churchill after so much frustration. ‘In Kenya’, read the cable, ‘I
have approved the proposal to attempt the capture of Kismayu
about the middle of February. . . Generally I have given instruc-
tions to both Cunningham and Platt for the maximum effort they
can make against Italian East Africa in the next two months.’

It was hardly surprising that in his speech to the House of

Commons one week later Churchill was unable to resist a
triumphant reference to the campaign in East Africa. Three
weeks after the invasion all the British posts in Italian hands had
been recaptured. British forces, large and small, stood deep inside
Italian territory in halfadozen places and poised to strike in halfa
dozen more. And the Emperor was safely back inside his Empire.
‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job’, was the theme of
Churchill’s speech. After describing the triumphs in Libya, he
went on—with broad accuracy—as follows:
Fifteen hundred miles away to the southward a strong British and Indian
army, having driven the invaders out of the Sudan, is marching steadily
forward through the Italian colony of Eritrea, thus seeking to complete
the isolation ofall the Italian troops in Ethiopia. Other British forces are
entering Ethiopia from the west, while the army gathered in Kenya—in
the van of which we may discern the powerful forces of the Union of
South Africa organized by General Smuts—is striking northward along
the whole enormous front. Lastly, the Ethiopian patriots, whose
independence was stolen five years ago, have risen in arms; and their
Emperor, so recently an exile in England, is in their midst to fight for
their freedom and his throne.
Here, then, we see the beginnings ofa process of reparation and of
chastisement of wrong-doing which reminds us that though the mills of
God grind slowly, they grind exceedingly small.
 CHAPTER 27

Tee Bee TLEOPKEREN

ELEVEN peaks dominated the approaches to Keren. Seven were

to the north ofthe road, ranging from Samanna, the highest ofall
at 5,922 feet, to Sanchil just above the gorge. Four were to the
south—Dologorodoc, Zeban, and Falestoh grouped like a hostile
triangle, and slightly on its own, separated by the Acqua Col, the
peak of Zelale, known as the Sphinx. Each peak was a fortress,
each garrisoned. For 150 miles north and south the Keren
escarpment stretched unbroken. Many miles to the south Post-
iglione and his brigade, pulled back from Om Ager, barred the
only possible route that might be used to outflank the position, at
Arresa. The northern approach from the Red Sea through Karora
would not, in the opinion ofthe British staff, bear ‘the traffic ofa
large force’. In any case the British seemed to welcome the
necessity of a frontal attack, of what both Platt and Newbold
were to call, with apparent pleasure, a real ‘ding-dong battle’.
Yet at first the British commanders seem to have imagined that
they could sweep away the defenders as they had swept away the
defenders in the lowlands and at Agordat. On the afternoon of 2
February the armoured cars of Gazelle Force had reached the foot
of the wall of hills that shut off the Keren plateau; and only
twenty-four hours later Savory’s brigade, the 11th, was attacking
up to the peak on the north of Dongalaas Gorge to Sanchil. In the
next three days as the Cameron Highlanders, the Rajputs, and the
Punjabis attacked and won and lost again, Platt and his subordi-
nate commanders came to realize the strength of the defenders’
position and the enormous difficulties of the enterprise facing
them.
The weather was hot, and the hillsides waterless. Shells for the
British guns had to be lugged up by hand; and when a man was
wounded, it took twelve men to carry him down the slopes
again. Worse still, all the British movements on the road and the
gorge were in full view of the enemy on the heights. Very soon
 08 WY
So] OO]

09
VAS

Or
ddaDe>

0c
meuog
[7]
Wpueqy
000$
4940 0
US
BMESSE|

Wl -_

y Bso1ly
14 0985MHONVS
ZZ

Cringe

Pe
Saanv av

vy
\

\
“

\yepio3y,~
INITOSSOW

tuizues07
WGA
sepebug
»

\BE
ALNOd

VNNVAVS
66s
1d

9904

9jfazeg

(Ansossayy)
(y380H)
ae

WOISIAIg
ueIpU/
Yd414

apebug |
/
/
¢ “OH

auo16)s0g
Bessey

KovAr
SiS, ARE SA

MAP 8. The Keren Campaign

 THE BATTLE OF KEREN 329
the British learnt wisdom and moved only by night. The ‘I’ tanks
were blocked by the cliff-face which the Italian engineers had
blown, a huge tumble of rocks, boulders, and crags.
The actual Italian defences were well-sited and well-prepared.
Their forward positions, the only ones that the British artillery
(because of the trajectories involved) could reach, were situated
on false crests, below the main peaks; protected in front and
behind, out of bombing range, by a double apron ofloose wire.
Machine-gun positions in stone sangars swept the approaches and
covered each other with supporting fire. And ifa false crest were
taken despite the hand-grenades which were rolled down on the
advancing troops, despite the defence by the bayonet which
became habitual, even then mortars hidden behind were ranged
on to these crests—mortars that were, as the intelligence
reported, ‘accurate, well-sited and well-handled’. They quickly
made the attackers’ position untenable. The Italian counter-
attacks were characterized by ‘bold and clever infiltration, with
sniping, by small parties supported by fire.’
This was a very different enemy from those whom the
invaders had grown quickly and unwisely to despise. There was a
pause, hesitant, alarmed. Major-General Beresford-Peirse
brought forward his other brigade, the sth, and tried a night
attack to the south, against Acqua Col. There was confusion, as
there so often is in night attacks. The signals broke down, and the
leading companies of the Royal Fusiliers and the Rajputana Rifles
suffered heavily. The lesson was clear. Isolated assaults by single
brigades were worse than useless. The general prepared a com-
bined assault, a major attack both north and south of the Gorge
with both his brigades against the enemy which had been such an
easy prey to his Division in the Libyan desert.

The Duke of Aosta himself visited Keren on 7 February. General

Frusci was in overall command of the sector, back at Asmara.
General Carnimeo had been appointed commander of the Keren
area. He skulked in a cave on the right ofthe little town of Keren
that lay down in the valley behind the Dongolaas Gorge, and was
never seen. But Lorenzini with his II Brigade was sent south of
the gorge to cover the dangerous gap at Acqua Col, with the XI
Brigade, sent up from Shoa, in support on the nearby peaks. The
VI, formerly at Metemma, covered the railway and the gorge,
with behind them on the heights above Keren three brigades
330 THE MILLS OF GOD
pulled back from the lowlands. From the Red Sea area, the V,
forward near the frontier was called back.! But above all, excel-
lent Italian troops, their best, manned the peaks north of the
Dongolaas Gorge, from Samanna to Sanchil. These were the
three battalions of the 11th Regiment of Savoy Grenadiers,
commanded by Colonel Corso Corsi, reinforced on about 10
February by the Alpini ‘Worq Amba’ Battalion of the roth
Regiment, and by the best of the Blackshirts, the three battalions
of the r1th Legion. In all, the defenders numbered some 25,000
men (with 144 guns under the command of Colonel Lam-
borghini), conscious that the fate of Eritrea and possibly of the
whole war depended on their efforts.

On the afternoon of 10 February the Fourth Indian Division

launched its two-pronged attack. The fighting swayed, back-
wards and forwards, for forty hours, almost non-stop. To the
north of the Gorge the 11th Indian Infantry Brigade twice
captured, twice lost, Sanchil’s twin, ‘Brig’s Peak’, while the
Camerons backed up on ‘Cameron Ridge’ down below. To the
south Gazelle Force and the sth Indian Infantry Brigade attacked,
fruitlessly, Lorenzini’s brigade at Acqua Col. Subadar Richpal
Ram of the Rajputana Rifles won in this attack a posthumous
V.C. for his bravery in the bitter hand-to-hand fighting. By
midday on 12 February Beresford-Peirse decided to cancel fur-
ther operations. Gazelle Force could not get back that night nor
the following day—it was forty-eight hours more before Mes-
servy’s men wearily escaped.
The two brigades pulled back to lick their wounds and to rest.
Beresford-Peirse left the front to confer with Platt, now pro-
moted to Lieutenant-General, who called off all further attacks.
For a month the invaders halted, doing very little. The two
brigades of the Fifth Indian Division, the roth and the 29th,
which had taken no part in the fighting, were recalled to Barentu
and given intensive mountain training. There they were joined
by the division’s third brigade, the 9th, called up from the
Gallabat-Gondar road where it had been halted. Gazelle Force
was dissolved; and Colonel Messervy, its dashing and successful

| This opened the road to Brigadier Briggs’s 7th Indian Infantry Brigade which,
reinforced by two French battalions from Equatorial Africa including the famous 13th
Demi-Brigade ofthe Foreign Legion, crossed the frontier and moved swiftly south till
it was halted at Cub-Cub.
 THE BATTLE OF KEREN 331
commander promoted to Brigadier, was given command of the
gth. Meanwhile the air war intensified. RAF bomber squadrons
based on the captured airstrips at Barentu and Agordat raided,
besides Keren itself, Asmara, Massawa, and Makalle. It was by
no means a one-sided affair; the Regia Aeronautica destroyed 13
British planes on the ground ina single raid against Agordat. But
by mid-March there were less than $0 serviceable aircraft in the
whole of AOI. Gina’s brother made curt entries. Three months
had passed since the joyous feast-day of the Madonna of
Loreto—patron of all Italian airmen—a day on which he had,
irreligiously, visited streams in out-of-way places ‘where I sur-
prise native girls bathing. . . and manage with a bit of trouble to
catch the nude roundness of some young girl in my view finder
and so augment my collection of black Venuses.’ In those three
months the Italian air force had been virtually destroyed. As late
as 8 March, however, a batch ofnew planes flew in from Libya.
Masters of the skies, the RAF dropped thousands of leaflets
over Keren, bearing replicas of the Ethiopian flag, and messages
in both Tigrinya and Amharic from the British to the soldiers of
Eritrea. Another carrying Haile Selassie’s seal was addressed in
particular to the Shoan and Gojyjami levies of the XI and VI
Brigades.
Gojjamis! It is in faithful Gojjam that I have set up my flag and won my
first victories. Come back to your homes, Shoans of the XI Brigade!. . .
Come to me through the English. Ras Kassa is with me in Gojjam, and
when all Gojjam is ours you will be our army to cleanse the Italians from
Salale and Debre Brehan.

This propaganda had its effect, particularly on the Shoans of

the XI Brigade, who began to desert in increasing numbers
—though the barbed wire that defended the Italian positions
hampered deserters, and Italian patrols ruthlessly shot any askaris
spotted trying to crawl through the wire. Even so, by early
March almost 600 deserters had, since the invasion of Eritrea,
reached the British lines.
The Italians attempted to react to the Emperor’s propaganda
and to the news ofthe presence ofthe revered Ras Kassa, who six
years earlier had commanded the Armies of the North against
them, by a major political move. On 26 February the Viceroy
appointed Ras Seyum Negus ofTigre and shortly afterwards sent
him back to his capital of Adowa. To ensure his loyalty, and to
a2 THE MILLS OF GOD
show their trust, the Italians issued the new ‘Negus’, rapturously
welcomed, with 7,000 rifles. Almost simultaneously they sent
‘Ras’ Ayalew Birru back to Gondar. Both leaders, it should be
noted, were closely watched: Ayalew Birru by General Martini
and the Gondar garrison; Ras Seyum, who might pose more of a
threat if treachery were in his mind, by Colonel Delitala’s
Brigade, the garrison of western Tigre.
On the ground, on the night of 23 February the Italians
followed up their political moves by a fierce counter-attack. It
was led by a reputed Eritrean battalion, the 4th Colonial,
‘Toselli’, famed before the Battle of Adowa for the defence of
Amba Alagi. Colonel Persichelli commanded, and with the help
of four armoured cars, drove the Indians back from their
advanced positions.
Lieutenant-General Platt planned a two-division attack for
mid-March. This was timed to coincide with an assault from the
Red Sea side by Brigadier Briggs’s troops against the mountain
range to the north of Keren. But Lorenzini’s II Brigade had been
moved to meet and counter precisely such a threat. “The Keren
battle is in full swing,’ wrote Newbold in a letter on 10 March. ‘It
is the biggest in the war so far in the Middle East, as the Western
Desert ones were rather a walk-over.’ He was right about the size
and importance ofthe battle, wrong about it being in full swing.
There were still five days to go before the major British attack. ‘It
is going to bea bloody battle’, Platt said, ‘against both the enemy
and the ground. It will be won by the side which lasts longest.’
Saturday 15 March was a heavy, thundery day. At dawn the
bombers flew over—Blenheims, Wellesleys, and Hardys. An
hour later the artillery opened up ahead of the Fourth Indian
Division as it attacked to the north of Dongolaas Gorge. The
guns then switched over to the south as Messervy’s brigade, the
leading brigade of the Fifth Indian Division, made for
Dologorodoc.
For forty-eight hours the noise and mélée ofbattle rose on both
sides of the Dongolaas Gorge, peaks lost and recaptured,
counter-attacks delivered, held or not held, colonels wounded,
junior officers killed, battalions decimated. These were the great
days ofthe Indian army, of the Sikhs and Punjabis, the Garhwalis
and Mahrattas, the Pathans and Baluchis, and the Rajputs of the
lands around Jaipur. Over fifteen battalions of Indian troops were
involved in the fighting, supported by only three battalions of
 THE BATTLE OF KEREN 333
English troops and two of Highlanders. Messervy was the most
successful of the British commanders. He captured and held
Dologorodoc. But all the other attacks were beaten back by the
Italians. As both divisions withdrew, the peaks on the north from
Samanna to Sanchil remained inviolate, and of the peaks on the
south only Dologorodoc remained in the hands of the attackers.
The attack had failed.
It had failed too to the north of Keren, where Lorenzini had
held the mountain range of Ab Aubes against the combined
Anglo-French attack. By now he was virtually commander of the
whole defence of Keren, recognized as such in all but title. He
came south, after a day’s pause, to direct and lead the first of seven
counter-attacks against Messervy on Dologorodoc. And there he
was killed. Twenty-four hours later Newbold was writing his
nutshell obituary ‘General Lorenzini, the “Lion of the Sahara’,
who was in command at Keren was a capable, energetic chap and
his death in action is a blow to them as they have few capable
generals.’ Persichelli of the 4th Colonial had been seriously
wounded. Corsi of the 11th Savoy Grenadiers had been
wounded, and one of his battalion commanders, Colonel
Barzon, had been killed. Although the defenders had won the
battle, they had paid a heavy price—and from 20 March onwards
Frusci’s reports became hourly more anxious.
But the British were not to know this. Churchill, who had
been expecting an early victory, cabled Eden in Cairo to ask
whether reinforcements would be needed, as the battle seemed
‘rather evenly balanced’. At Dologorodoc the Alpini of the roth
Savoy Grenadiers came within 80 yards of Messervy’s brigade
headquarters. That night the seventh Italian counter-attack
(which Messervy’s men had no means of recognizing as the last)
was supported by three Italian tanks. On their side the British had
only a few tanks in reserve, and had used up 1,000 lorryloads of
ammunition, and 110,000 shells for their guns. They attempted
to make up by stratagem what they lacked in force. Earl Bald-
win’s son, Lord Corvedale, rigged up a loudspeaker system to
broadcast extracts from Italian Opera over the hills; and having
stirred nostalgia, followed up heroic Verdi with prosaic
announcements of Italian defeats in Libya. Battalion comman-
ders resorted to strange and ingenious devices in their attempts to
breach the unbreachable defences. The 4/11th Sikhs attacked up
towards Sanchil like medieval warriors, each turbaned soldier
334 THE MILLS OF GOD
carrying in front of him a full-length ‘shield’ of corrugated iron.!
As they approached the enemy wire, the artillery fired smoke-
shells for five minutes to cover their final charge uphill. Yet even
so they were driven back with 71 casualties. Platt, like Frusci, was
wavering. The British were envisaging a retreat.
Yet there was one hope for the British. During the attack
forward from Dologorodoc sappers had reached and examined
the road-block in the gorge, and had reported that, given forty-
eight hours, they could clear it. With Messervy on Dologorodoc
giving them cover and supporting fire, the Indian sappers
worked by night—and, dangerously exposed, even by day—at
the task.

On 25 March, under the eyes of two anxious generals, Platt from

Khartoum and Wavell from Cairo, two brigades, Messervy’s and
Rees’s, attacked straight up the Dongalaas Gorge on both sides of
the railway line. They scrambled on foot to their objectives
beyond the tumbled cliff-face of the road-block and held their
positions grimly—Mahrattas and Punjabis on the left, Highland-
ers and Baluchis on the right—in the face of mortar and shellfire,
while the sappers came forward with their trucks and explosives
and tackled the road-block seriously. Italian troops, massing fora
counter-attack in the afternoon, were dispersed and scattered by
British shellfire. By evening there were contradictory stories
circulating at staff headquarters of white flags having been seen
on the peaks, and of counter-attacks threatening that night.
The counter-attacks failed to materialize; the white flags, if
any, disappeared. But the road-block gradually shrank and
diminished in the day that followed until by late afternoon it was
almost cleared. Next morning, 27 March, an hour before dawn,
the Worcesters and the Garhwalis attacked forward from Dolo-
gorodoc towards Zeban. They found the peak deserted. The ‘I’
tanks rumbled through the road-block, followed by the Central
India Horse ‘remounted’ in s0 Bren carriers. At 7 a.m. air
reconnaissance reported Keren evacuated, and an hour later the
tanks thundered down through the Gorge into the pretty little
town.
Simultaneously the four battalions under Brigadier Briggs’s

' One ofthe attackers reported that six grenades bounced off his shield, leaving him
with only a headache.
 THE BATTLE OF KEREN 335
command supported by air and artillery, with a newly-arrived
company of French marines in the van, launched a well-co-
ordinated attack on the pivots of the Italian position to the north
of Keren, Mounts Engiahat and Ab Aubes. ‘Rien n’y
manquerait’, noted a caustic officer of the Legion, ‘—si l’ennemi
n’avait jugé bon de décrocher dans la nuit.’
Frusci had decided that the situation was hopeless. On all sides
the Italians had faded away during the night. The advancing
British bombed and shelled and fired upon empty rock and air.
Only a few white flags fluttered, finally, on Sanchil where a
group of isolated defenders had been left behind. Apart from
that, it had been a most skilfully conducted retreat. ‘I believe’,
wrote Newbold in a postscript to a letter dated that day, ‘Keren is
falling. The road block is overcome and IJ hear our tanks are in
town. But it’s still secret and no details. Great news if it is so.’ The
battle of Keren was over. It had cost each side over 3,000
casualties.

The French hurried down through the mountains and by the

following day had cut the road behind Keren. The Foreign
Legion took over a thousand prisoners, including $0 officers and
200 survivors of the Savoy Grenadiers ‘qui retraitaient en bon
ordre’.! But the pursuit was not sustained. Though only just over
thirty miles separated Keren and Asmara, another pass lay
ahead—another fearsome gorge, Ad Teclesan. General Platt
feared that this position might be an even tougher proposition
than Keren, for there would be less room for the British artillery
to deploy in front ofit.
In the two-day pause that followed, General Frusci rearranged
his troops and their commanders. General Carnimeo was
ordered to lead the defenders of Keren back to Asmara, not to
take up position with the roth Regiment of Savoy Grenadiers
under Colonel Borghese at Ad Teclesan. The soldiers were
weary and discouraged. For the first time ever Eritreans were
deserting—not to the British, though, but to their homes and
families. Even the faithful askaris ofthe II Brigade were thinning
out. Colonel Delitala was ordered to move from Enda Selassie
into Adowa, with his brigade, and to extract guarantees from Ras

1 ‘Le Général Platt’, noted Captain St Hillier of the 2nd Company with justified
complacency, ‘est heureusement surpris de l’arrivée de la brigade francaise.’
336 THE MILLS OF GOD
Seyum. Frusci was doing what he could. And, changing his
mind, he ordered General Tessitore to transfer four native bat-
talions to Ad Teclesan, to reinforce the fresh but untried
Grenadiers.
In the lull before the attack on Ad Teclesan, De Gaulle flew in
from Agordat with his chief of staff, Colonel Brosset, to review
the Brigade Frangais d’Orient on the plain of Chelamet below Cub-
Cub. Next day he flew away again, following Wavell back to
Cairo, ‘ot battait le coeur de la guerre, mais un coeur mal
accroché.” There Wavell faced ‘toutes sortes d’entraves
politiques’. ‘Je dois dire,’ added De Gaulle—who found him to be
‘par bonheur fort bien doué quant au jugement et au sang-
froid’—‘qu’il les subissait avec une noble serénité. A tel point
qu’il mantenait son quartier-general au Caire, ou elles l’enser-
raient de toutes parts. C’est au coeur de cette ville grouillante,
dans le tumulte et la poussiére, entre les murs d’un petit bureau
surchauffé par le soleil que l’assaillaient continuellement des
interventions exterieures 4 son domaine normal de soldat’—the
presence of Eden, ‘télégrammes comminatoires’ from London,
‘et voici quej’arrivais, incommode et pressant.’ But De Gaulle
was not longer pressing for ‘Marie’. Content with the success of
his forces, he was resigned to what was to be two more years of
‘nefaste obedience’ by Dyibuti to the government at Vichy. The
chapter was closed. Behind him he left, though only for the
moment, the two battalions and one company of French troops.
They were destined to join LeGentilhomme’s division in Egypt
for the trial of strength looming ahead in the Middle East, De
Gaulle’s great chance.!
Before dawn on 31 March Messervy and his brigade attacked
Ad Teclesan. Two hours after the attack started, 19 officers and
460 men ofthe Ist Battalion of the roth Regiment of the Savoy
Grenadiers had surrendered. Fighting went on all day and
Colonel Borghese was killed, but it was obvious that the
defenders were not of the calibre of the rrth Regiment and that
the pass would fall. At 10.30 a.m. General Frusci. declared
Asmara, capital of Eritrea, seat of the governate, and head-

' At Cairo, as in Khartoum, he spent much time in the Zoo, opposite the Legation
of France, from whose window gazed ‘visages tendus . . . dont le regard cependant
suivait le General de Gaulle.’ The author believes he is the first to have noted (though
he would not endeavour to explain) the General’s predilection for Zoological
Gardens.
 THE BATTLE OF KEREN 337
quarters of his Sector, an open town, and prepared to evacuate.
At dusk he sent a message to General Carnimeo at Ad Teclesan to
break contact and pull back along a side road towards Metemma,
to General Tessitore’s command. In Asmara rioters and looters,
held in check by the Chief of Police, were joined in the evening by
grenade-throwing native troops of the disbanded soth and srst
Colonial Battalions. At midnight precisely, General Frusci sent a
last message to Addis Ababa:
Words cannot describe the gallantry shown by my troops during the
superhuman struggle in which they have taken part. Before destroying
the radio I send to Your Royal Highness the loyal greetings of my troops
and myself. Viva Italia!
It was a melodramatic moment for all Italians, this loss of their
former colonial capital, the city built out of nothing by them-
selves, for so many decades the centre of their power in Africa.
Yet if the Italians had held onjust a little longer at Keren, if they
had not in the end cracked under pressure, they might have pulled
off the victory. A British retreat would have been disastrous for
British morale. The loss of Keren was the turning-point of the
war, a very close-run thing. During the night Frusci and his staff
left for the town he had chosen as his new headquarters, Adigrat.
Before dawn civil envoys were out on the road, armed with
white flags, led by the Bishop. They were met and, regrettably,
fired upon in the half-light by the advancing ‘Flitforce’-—Colonel
Fletcher and the Central India Horse in their Bren carriers. The
Italians did not hide their eagerness that the British should take
over as quickly as possible. In this war there was often an
unspoken, sometimes indeed an open complicity, between the
opposing white men, especially when there was a risk of native
‘anarchy’. By midday the 1oth Indian Infantry Brigade had
occupied Asmara; and Admiral Bonetti, Commander of Mas-
sawa on the coast, had been persuaded to restore the water and
the electricity supplies which he controlled and which he had, as
an act of war, cut off. On 2 April the British authorities officially
took control ofthe civil and military administration ofthe capital
of Eritrea, Italy’s oldest colony—delayed but sweet revenge for
the débacle in Somaliland eight months earlier.
 CHAPTER 28

GIDEON FORGE

GIDEON ForceE camped at the foot of Mount Belaya, waiting for

Wingate and Sandford to fly back from Khartoum. It was a
motley collection of men and beasts. A few hundred Ethiopian
refugees, an ex-Emperor plus a bevy of impoverished nobles
who had spent the last five years in the Coptic monasteries of
Jerusalem, were balanced by a few hundred Sudanese soldiers
with their amateurish British officers. A little group of Kenya
settlers, five Australians, a handful of Jews, and several eager
young cavalry subalterns from the regiments stationed in
Palestine added more to its confusion than to its effectiveness.
The fighting force was totally outnumbered by the thousands of
hired camelmen with their dead and dying camels. There was
hardly a professional army officer in the force, Wingate apart.
But if there were a lack of regular soldiers there was a plethora
of professional writers'—though, curiously, the man who was
probably the greatest writer of them all, Thesiger, has never
described that period ofhis life. But Thesiger was described most
notably by another Bimbashi of the Sudan Defence Force, Harris
of the Frontier Battalion, who found him already installed at
Belaya as
‘one of those hardy men who seem to take a delight in being as
uncomfortable as possible . . . | found him naked in the middle of the
stream having a vigorous bath in the freezing water. Thesiger had
breakfast with me and, after informing me that he had lived on the
country for the last two months and could not imagine why people
troubled to take rations with them, proceeded to finish my last tin of
grapefruit, half my remaining supply of sugar, and most of my one and
only remaining pot of marmalade.’
' Wingate himself was no Lawrence with the pen, though his reports were concise
and, in an abrupt style, well-written. But his Jewish secretary Akavia, the English
journalist Leonard Mosley, the American journalist Stevens, and the South African
Laurens Van Der Post were all with Gideon Force and wrote accounts of its—or
their—exploits.
 reqgey[eo
i OHOIAHOVWUV

ened
NYIOM
Ajqwessy
pue ,
einjiedep
Julod104 2
uoepig, 89404

Josadwz
aly
asseas
pug
Sey essey

LNOQOW
VAWV vaviza
v eisueq
JS —

AONIAOUd
j \ v

e
preqgrisuq
% 7

Mor
NF AY 3 uv} wYN-8
(82 J
aoe =

/ ¢
jauojo9

BF
ayeren
oyoyez Soyre yA b1igad
199) 000 OZ 91 000 OI 19A0 pueq L
I Asaf] SBY BSSBY SAAB]YUM
puey J9A0O| / ‘ 1ysequig sabisayy
0} ansind
OOO 193}
ay) OUe}UaAeIEp
UUuInjOD
ayy sosadwg
s ayPwIxoidde
a1NOs
Buimoys
SalRp
JO JUILUSAOW
proy

OI
i
SOIL
| 0s wuy a=
Le SIPPV.OBqeqy

dvw6 suelloy
oy], ustedue>Z
jo UOapry9910.4puek IY} uiNjay
Jo ay Jorsduig
340 THE MILLS OF GOD

A motley collection, indeed, to reconquer an Empire.

Wingate and Sandford spent four days in Khartoum hammer-
ing out their plans with General Platt. It was decided that Gideon
Force should harass the Italians all over Gojjam and as far north as
Gondar. Its objective would be not to drive the Italians out but on
the contrary to pin down as many troops as possible within this
whole vast area of operations. That had been Lawrence’s strategy
in the Hejaz. The Arab Revolt of 1917 was designed to harass but
not destroy the railway to Medina, thus leaving the vast Turkish
garrison there intact but useless, ina state of perpetual tension. The
regular officers of the British Army had at the time scoffed at this
plan. But by Wingate’s day it appeared, encouragingly, thatevena
Platt, despite his well-publicized views on would-be Lawrences,
had learnt this particular lesson from the First World War.
Platt gave his approval. Wingate flew back to Belaya on 15
February. But by then the whole situation had changed, and the
planned strategy could no longer be applied. The Italians had,
infuriatingly, made a move themselves. A week earlier, on 8
February, General Nasi had flown to Gondar, the city that was to
be his future base, to take up his post as commanding officer of
the new Western Sector. The following day—he was still Vice
Governor-General—he installed Ras Seyum solemnly at Adowa.
Having done his best to cover his northern flanks, he turned his
attention to the south, to Goyam.
The road curving down from Gondar to Debra Markos passed
through four garrison towns: Bahr Dar on the southern tip of
Lake Tana, Dangila, Engiabara, and Burie. The British had
always assumed that the Italians would do everything to keep this
road open—it was after all the highway linking Gondar to Addis
Ababa. This would have meant holding the four garrison towns.
But General Nasi confounded British expectations. He ordered
all forces to withdraw from Dangila north to Bahr Dar, and all
forces to withdraw from Engiabara south to Burie.
Major Simonds and a handful of men from 101 Mission were
already up on the highland plateau, near Dangila, urging Dejaz
Mangasha Jimbirre on. Dejaz Mangasha had at least 4,000
patriots with him but despite Simonds’s urging he failed to attack
the Italians as they retreated north from Dangila.! The fact of the
matter was that the Dejaz had no interest in risking the lives ofhis
' A failure condemned, rather unfairly, by Wingate as ‘a classic example ofthe folly
of springing a trap too soon.’
 GIDEON FORCE 341
men now that the Italians were voluntarily and, it seemed,
permanently retiring from the prize he had coveted for years: the
town of Dangila. He entered, installed himself as its ruler and,
honour and prestige satisfied, took no further part in the
campaign.
‘Torelli bolting towards Bahr Dar,’ Simonds signalled. ‘RAF
could annihilate, Sitting Target.’ But no planes came. Only
orders from Wingate for Simonds to go north, chase Torelli into
Bahr Dar ‘and, if possible, out ofit’. Simonds with his personal
escort of 24 riflemen and No. 3 Company of the Frontier
Battalion under Bimbashi Jarvis, an exiguous force, set off
immediately to ‘chase’ Torelli’s 10,000 men.
Meanwhile, the main body of Gideon Force wended its way
from the foothills of Belaya up the steep and arduous escarpment
of Malakal. At the top lay the long-desired highland plateau
which Mark Pilkington, a young subaltern of the Household
Cavalry Op centre (who reached that point two weeks later)
described as follows:
It was attractive, very fertile, undeveloped meadowland, a bit like the
Cotswolds in places, with green belts of trees down all the rivers, and
many little ridges of hills, some rocky and like Scotland. It was much
cooler in the day and bitterly cold late at night . . . We came through
some beautiful arable valleys, most fertile, and carrying a good stock of
large-humped cattle, sheep, goats and stock horses. We fed extremely
well on this part of the journey, being able to buy bread, milk, eggs,
chickens, goats, unripe peaches, tej (native beer made from honey) and
even a bull.
But not so well as the British officers who went forward with
Wingate into deserted Engiabara and there enjoyed their first and
most memorable spoils of war—soup, mushrooms, spaghetti,
peaches and cream, all washed down with Chianti. Morale rose.
Morale needed to rise. The striking column of Gideon Force
assembled outside Engiabara on the afternoon of 23 February. It
consisted of 700 camels, 200 mules, three companies of
Boustead’s Frontier Battalion,' Boyle’s 2nd Ethiopians, No. 1

1 Bimbashi Johnson and No. 1 Company, Bimbashi Harris and No. 2 Company,
Bimbashi Acland and No. 4 Company. But even these were not at full strength, for
various platoons remained behind to cover the Emperor’s ascent. Haile Selassie and
his escort did not reach the plateau till 4 March. Sandford, from this point on,
remained in the rear with the Emperor.
342 THE MILLS OF GOD

Op Centre, and a Propaganda Unit—1, 00 men in all. This small

force proposed to rout an army.
THE BATTLE FOR BURIE: 24 FEBRUARY TO 8 MARCH

The small town of Burie barred the road to Debra Markos,

capital of Gojjam. At Burie Colonel Natale had been ordered to
stand fast. He had several thousand troops, both regulars and
irregulars, plus artillery and air support. A line of fortified posts
stretched behind him towards Debra Markos. Natale was an
experienced colonial fighter who for years had led columns to and
fro across the country, with rebels in front, to the rear, and on all
sides. The Brigade he commanded, the III, was one of the most
experienced in the Empire.
Gideon Force moved forward slowly by day, harassed by
Italian planes whose pilots, seeing the long straggling columns of
camels, reported the approach of a large invading force. Natale,
misled, stayed behind his defences. Wingate, within striking
distance of Burie, decided—as his strategy dictated—not to
attack the town but to bypass it and cut it off. He therefore
prepared Gideon Force for a night march that would take his men
across country to the rear of the enemy by dawn the following
day. The white camels were camouflaged with mud! and
Wingate set out ahead with thirty Ethiopians to light fires as
beacons. The plan was to leave two Ethiopians by each fire, who
would identify themselves by whistling—long short short, long
short short. Just before dusk the huge snakelike column ofcamels
set off. But ‘everything’, wrote Bimbashi Harris, ‘seemed to go
wrong the moment it grew dark.’
The columns spread out and straggled, halted, were bumped
into and bypassed, and lost their way. Then almost inevitably,
one ofthe beacon fires got out of control spreading to illuminate
the whole countryside.
‘It was a wild scene’, wrote an officer of the 2nd Ethiopians, ‘that no-one
who was present will ever forget. Rolling downs across which whistled
a cutting wind, heavy clouds in an inky sky, the glare ofthe fire roaring
in the background, strings of ghostly camels coming from every
direction out of the night, men huddled in blankets waiting patiently for
the orders to move on, everyone trying to protect themselves from the
bitter cold.’
' “Wingate was no respecter of men or animals, particularly the latter!’ Bimbashi
Harris.
 GIDEON FORCE 343
‘Nerves’, added the officer, tactfully drawing a veil, ‘were so taut with
anxiety and fatigue that there were unnecessary recriminations.’

Bimbashi Harris was less tactful. Completely lost with his

company, but by good chance heading in the right direction:
I heard a string of English oaths uttered in Boustead’s unmistakable
voice followed by a torrent of Arabic in which the words ‘ma
talukhabat’—‘don’t get muddled up’—frequently occurred. Boustead
was almost beside himself with wrath, and Wingate was in a paroxysm
of rage.

Two of Boyle’s companies had gone astray, and dawn was not
very far off. The wretched Boyle, by profession a Nairobi car-
dealer, was not spared.
‘Wingate when I reached him was seated on a boulder drinking tea out of
a thermos,’ Bimbashi Harris continued. ‘On learning that I was present
and correct he offered me a cup and proceeded to tell me at length what
he thought of Ethiopians in general and of Boyle’s Battalion in particu-
lar. He was far from polite, and I was sorry for Boyle who was sitting
looking rather dejected, well within earshot.’
The fire was now lighting up the whole countryside.
We were within easy striking distance of a large enemy garrison sitting
in a sort of floodlit arena at the mercy of any force which chose to come
out against us, and we had to sit there for another 3 hours waiting for
stray sheep.

But Colonel Natale did not seize this opportunity to attack,

rout, scatter, and probably end the career of Gideon Force. He sat
behind the fortifications on the cone-shaped hill of Burie, secure
in his defences, while Gideon Force reassembled and set out
again. Despite another last-minute drama—the markers failed to
whistle (‘they were Ethiopians and half of them didn’t know
how’)—by 6.45 a.m. the whole force were under cover in a large
wood, on the outskirts of Burie. Half an hour later two Caproni
bombers flew over; but they saw nothing. Despite the chaos the
night-march had been successful. Gideon Force was almost in
position.
They lay up in hiding all day. Wingate adapted his plan to the
new circumstances. The following night he sent Boyle and the
2nd Ethiopians off on a long detour to cut the road behind Burie
leading to Debra Markos. He and Boustead prepared to attack
344 THE MILLS OF GOD
with the Sudanese and, hopefully, to scare the defenders out into
the Ethiopians’ waiting ambush.
One fort defended Burie to the north. By dawn on 27 February
Wingate was round in the rear of this northern fort, with a
hundred of Acland’s Sudanese, blazing away. Boustead, with the
main force, remained hidden in the woods on the other side till
the late afternoon. Then he and most of the remaining men broke
cover to attack Burie itself.
This was the opportunity for which the defenders had been
waiting. Italian mortars opened up and set the wood on fire. As
Boustead’s men, now out in the open, hesitated, they heard ‘the
hoofs of galloping horses accompanied by the high-pitched
luluing of savage horsemen as they bore down upon us through
the smoke’. Fifty strong, the horsemen wheeled up firing from
the saddle, and veered away. ‘We bolted for our lives back into
the wood.”! It appeared to be a total stalemate. The attackers
were too weak to press their attack, reluctant to use their mortars
on a town full of Ethiopians, and without any air support. The
defenders sat smugly inside their fortifications. Almost the only
encouragement for Gideon Force was the discovery that the
bande, and indeed regular native troops as well, showed an almost
unconquerable reluctance to fire on the Ethiopian Flag. Indeed
the display of the flag was bringing deserters over, in dribs and
drabs. Natale worriedly reported these desertions. But a message
came, from the Duke of Aosta himself, ordering him sternly to
hold Burie come what might.
By the morning of 1 March Wingate had taken three measures
which, he hoped, would unblock the sitation. First, he had rid
himself of the encumbrance ofthe baggage train by establishing a
camel camp in a ravine three miles to the east of Burie. Secondly,
he had given up his fruitless attack on the strong northern fort and
was concentrating at another, isolated fort, the Fort of
Mankusa—six miles down the road defending the rear of Burie to
the south and manned only by two companies of Italian native
troops. Thirdly, he had summoned to his side Boustead and most
of the men-from-the-wood. Bimbashi Johnson and his Company
crossed in front of Burie, by day but at long range, thus enticing
the defenders to waste a great deal of ammunition. Boustead

' “Boustead, delighted and much tickled, said he had had a similar experience in the
last war in Russia, and agreed it was most awe-inspiring,’ noted Bimbashi Harris.
 GIDEON FORCE 345

followed more cautiously by a moonless night. There at

Wingate’s camp they had been joined by Zelleka Desta, Dejaz
Negash’s chief military adviser, and a horde ofPatriots, guided in
by Thesiger. Wingate’s immediate objective, with the help of all
these reinforcements, was the capture of Mankusa Fort. He
calculated that Natale, like most commanders, would be alarmed
at the thought of being cut off, and ‘surrounded’—however tiny
the force ‘surrounding’ him might be.
The defenders of Mankusa Fort first realized they were under
attack when George Steer’s Propaganda Unit blared away
through the loudspeakers, announcing the nearby presence of the
Emperor and the imminent liberation of all. The Eritrean askaris
shouted back scornfully that they knew nothing about Janhoy.
They were Italian subjects, not slaves! Thesiger had reported that
irregular banda under Fitaurari Haile Yusus were ready to desert
that morning. But the morning passed, and no banda came out.
Wingate ordered an attack. The Patriots were to charge, and
his men would give covering fire with their machine-guns and
mortars. It was the first time Wingate had tried, against his own
principles, to direct an attack with his own troops and Patriots
combined. It was also the last, for he quickly learnt his lesson.
The wild Ethiopians charged with too much abandon, and far too
fast. The first mortar shells fired by the Sudanese landed among
them. The charge broke up. The attack, dismally, had failed.
But, meanwhile, in reply to Gideon Force’s desperate appeals
air support had at long last appeared. RAF Wellesleys flew to
bomb the Burie forts.
‘Patriots,’ Wingate wrote, ‘and, I fancy, most guerrilla forces attach
great importance to air action. Undue importance, as I think this
campaign shows. . . At the same time the right bomb in the right place
(in cooperation with a Fifth Column) is worth a lot.’
This was the only time the RAF supported Gideon Force, but it
was certainly the right bomb in the right place. There was a fifth
column of sorts within Burie. The Emperor was nearing the
plateau, and Lij Mammo! was wavering in his allegiance. That
day he and his banda took to the hills outside Burie, to await the
outcome of events; 1,500 men in all. Colonel Natale knew that
the British were in his rear, and believed that the Fort of Mankusa
1 Lij Mammo was Ras Hailu’s great-nephew and leader of an experienced banda
that had long fought at Natale’s side.
346 THE MILLS OF GOD
was likely to fall. Lij Mammo’s desertion, coupled with the
bombing, shook his already-wavering morale. He radioed a
panicky report to Gondar, requesting permission to evacuate
Burie before he was totally cut off.
On the morning of 4 March the amazed and delighted
‘besiegers’ in the hills, Bimbashi Harris among them, watched ‘file
upon file of enemy troops come marching out of the town
preceded by four light armoured cars. The road was soon black
with troops animals and transport as far as the eye could see and
still they came on in increasing numbers.’ They watched, and
ran. Three Caproni bombers flew overhead, and as the column
passed through the village of Mankusa it was joined by the
defenders of the Fort. Wingate’s plan had, against all expec-
tations, succeeded. But Wingate himself, arriving a little later,
was highly annoyed to find that Boustead had missed a ‘glorious
opportunity’ to shoot up the retreating column. Boustead poin-
ted at the aircraft overhead: his Sudanese were in open country,
and would have been annihilated by the bombers if they had
revealed their postion.
That night, however, the Frontier Battalion did harass Natale’s
camps; and next morning, as the Italian columns moved forward
once again towards Debra Markos, Bimbashi Harris with his
Sudanese subaltern Hassan attacked them from the rear. Too
excited, they came too close, and round the next corner found
themselves facing yet another cavalry charge—six little infantry
men facing 50 horsemen only 200 yards away. They ran as fast as
their legs could carry them, floundering over a stream into the
safety of thick bush.
‘It had been a very near shave,’ wrote Bimbashi Harris afterwards, ‘and
we were completely exhausted. But the reaction to such a situation is
often curious and all that we could do at that moment was to lie back and
laugh. We laughed until the tears rolled down our cheeks.’

On the other side of the road, Boustead and Acland had also
had to run for it, lugging bren-guns with them. Wingate mean-
while was back in Burie, happily inspecting the captured enemy
stores and arranging, with Sandford, for the town’s occupation by
No. 1 Op Centre, the Australians. In fact it was Dejaz Negash and
his men who took over much as Dejaz Mangasha had down at
Dangila to the north. The Dejaz appointed himself Governor and
prepared to welcome the Emperor back to his town with his men.
 GIDEON FORCE 347
That night, the night of 5 March, Boustead’s men once again
sniped at the encamped Italians; and the following morning took
up, though more cautiously, their pursuit. Suddenly, to the
amazement of both pursuers and the rearguard of the pursued,
there was a violent din away at the head of Natale’s column far to
the south-east. The explanation came three or four hours later;
abandoned camels wandered into view—camels belonging to
Boyle’s Battalion.

The 2nd Ethiopians had been almost totally out of touch with
Wingate and the rest of Gideon Force for five days. Boyle’s orders
had been to cut the road leading south from Burie towards Debra
Markos near the little fort of Dembecha. This, after an unsuccess-
ful but tiring night attack on another little fort, Gigga, he had
proceeded to do. Then the 2nd Ethiopians, in Wingate’s words,
‘sat down in the line of the enemy’s retreat. . . in what must have
been one ofthe worst tactical positions for defence in history.’ He
was generous enough to Boyle to add the two-edged compli-
ment: ‘It was to this that the Battalion owed its partial survival.’
Natale’s retreating columns, lorries, armoured cars, machine-
guns, cavalry squadrons, with the Caproni bombers still over-
head, suddenly ran into the 500-odd men of the 2nd Ethiopians,
with their seven white officers, in open country on the banks of a
dried-out river. The Italian forces, some 8,000 strong including
500 white troops, were—according to Wingate’s theory—so
surprised to find the enemy in such an exposed position that they
simply could not believe their eyes—until, from very close range,
Boyle’s men opened up. One of his companies even charged
forward to the attack. After the first shock the Italian armoured
cars opened fire with their machine-guns as the long columns
behind them halted. Unabashed, Corporal Wandafresh Falaka
with eight rounds ofhis anti-tank gun scored direct hits on two of
the armoured cars at a hundred yards’ range. But then the milling
mob ofItalian troops burst over and through the pitiful opposi-
tion. Banda spread out to attack and loot Boyle’s camel camp,
while three columns ofinfantry charged straight down the road
and on both sides of it, overrunning his totally-outnumbered
little force. By midday it was all over. A quarter ofthe battalion
lay dead or wounded, the rest were captured or had disappeared.
But though the 2nd Ethiopians were barely to function again as
an active unit in the Gojjam campaign, this, its one battle, had
348 THE MILLS OF GOD
much impressed the Italians. For Natale’s column left 250 dead
behind them, plus their two disabled armoured cars. They had
even lost a bomber, shot down from the ground.
The advance guard of Boustead’s Frontier Battalion arrived at
the scene of the carnage an hour after the tail of the enemy had
passed through. Much to the indignation ofthe survivors of the
battle, his Sudanese commandeered the Italian flag that Boyle’s
Ethiopians had captured.
That night the enemy rearguard still held the Fort at Dem-
becha. As Bimbashi Harris, with his men, machine-gunned it
from 2,000 yards, he was wounded. This meant the end of the
campaign for him. ‘Stop making such a bloody row and get on
back,’ ordered an unsympathetic Boustead. He got on back, and
Wingate personally bound up his wound. He was evacuated with
the other wounded, by lorry, to be welcomed by ‘the genial
countenance of Colonel Sandford’ at Burie Fort.
It was a fierce little engagement at Dembecha. Wingate went
forward, with Gabre Maskal his preferred radio operator at his
side, just in time to face a series of bayonet charges by the enemy.
‘Retire!’, ordered Wingate. Gabre Maskal took no notice. ‘Go
away!’, shouted Wingate. ‘How can I leave you alone?’ asked
Gabre Maskal reproachfully, walking slowly backwards all the
same. Wingate had the quality of leadership. He, in Gabre
Maskal’s words, was ‘never demoralized’. ‘I never saw a man of
such courage, and so human at the same time.’ And he looked
after the followers he judged efficient—in the thick ofthe fighting
he remembered to send a horseman to guide Gabre Maskal and
the others back to the safety of Boustead’s base. It was not till
forty-eight hours later that its 500-strong garrison evacuated
Dembecha, burning down the tukuls around the Fort. They
pulled back to the last Italian stronghold in Gojjam, the capital of
the province: Debra Markos.

THE PAUSE: 8 MARCH—-17 MARCH

As the Dembecha garrison pulled back, an infuriated General

Nasi flew down from Gondar. His first action was to relieve
Natale of hiscommand and to despatch him, ignominiously, to
join Admiral Bonetti’s sea-girt garrison at Massawa. In the
General’s view Natale had been bluffed out of Burie and had
failed to crush a far inferior enemy. He had furthermore just
evacuated two outlying posts, Boma and Fort Emmanuel, and
 GIDEON FORCE 349
against Nasi’s express instructions had not defended the line of
the Tamcha river. In his place, as commander of the Debra
Markos garrison, General Nasi appointed another and far
tougher colonial officer, Colonel Maraventano. Debra Markos
was strengthened: by artillery, by aircraft, by 1,000 Blackshirts,
and by most of the XIX Brigade, until the total strength ofits
garrison had risen to 12,000 men with another 3,000 irregular
bande out in the hills behind. Before flying back to Gondar,
General Nasi, with Ras Hailu at his side, assembled the garrison
at Fort Dux in Debra Markos and harangued them. There was no
point, he said, in retreating out of Gojjam across the Nile, to face
even stronger forces of the enemy. It was disgraceful for Goj-
jamis to be beaten by the Shoan Tafari Makonnen. Let them in
their turn counter-attack and drive the invader out of their land!
Wingate, meanwhile, having in his turn addressed a ‘Victory
Parade’ of the 2nd Ethiopians at Dembecha Fort, had gone back
to Burie, to find an Emperor angry at being kept so little
informed and a brigadier angrier for more weighty reasons.
Sandford complained that Gideon Force appeared to be driving
the Italians out of Gojjam instead of harassing them inside
Gojjam as had been agreed. The more subtle strategy originally
decided on had been abandoned, and there was a risk of the
Gojjam garrisons reinforcing other sectors of the front contrary
to the agreed plan of operations. To this Wingate had no
answer—except, presumably, to tell Sandford to concern himself
with his political affairs, and to leave the military decisions alone.
As Wingate later put it, ‘for what appeared to be sufficient
reasons, an officer was appointed to command with the rank of
Lt-Colonel while a Brigadier was given a roving commission in
the same theatre. This could not work and did not work... I
need hardly add that the confusion created in the Ethiopian mind
was considerable.’
Wingate was in a bad mood, in any case. He was dissatisfied
with Natale’s escape, for he was certain that with air support he
could have wiped out the whole Italian force when it was held on
the road by the 2nd Ethiopians. He was dissatisfied with himself
for having failed, owing to a lack of maps, to cut off Natale’s
retreating column outside Debra Markos at the Tamcha river.
Furthermore he was dissatisfied with the supply base at Belaya,
which he considered served no useful purpose.
In conference at Burie on 11 February an agreement on this last
350 THE MILLS OF GOD
point was patched up. Sandford was to take over all the supply
problems and set up Gideon Force’s base at Burie. There was one
piece of good news in this respect. Bimbashi Le Blanc and Captain
Foley had succeeded in driving a dozen trucks up the escarpment,
and the days of camel supply only were over. But there was still
no artillery of any sort, no pack-guns even. Wingate sighed for
just a couple oflight tanks.
Both Wingate and Sandford were preoccupied about the Op
Centres. Ten had been formed, but most of the ten were
wandering undirected about the highlands and lowlands. In
Wingate’s view they had in any case been formed too late. They
should have been ahead of the main body, not behind it. As it
was, two of them were defending Burie in the rear—the
Australians with No. 1 Op Centre and the newly-arrived Scots
Greys’ Op Centre, Bill McLean’s. Mark Pilkington of the
Household Cavalry Op Centre was coming in, very proud of
having acquired 40 good mules. And another Op Centre, No. 2
commanded by Captain McKay, was moving north to join the
intrepid Major Simonds outside Bahr Dar.!
From Gondar, General Nasi on the other hand now viewed his
command with more satisfaction. He ordered traffic across the
Takazze into Ras Seyum’s country to be suspended as a pre-
cautionary measure but reported to Addis Ababa that inside his
own sector Ras Hailu’s loyalty, unlike Ras Seyum’s, could be
counted on totally. Before leaving Debra Markos Nasi had sent
Ras Hailu to join his banda in the hills; and there were satisfactory
reports of fierce fighting in the Chokey Mountains to the east
between the rival forces of Ras Hailu and ofLij Hailu Belew, his
‘rebel’ nephew.
Like Nasi, Wingate realized very well that Ras Hailu’s attitude
would be the key to success or failure in Gojjam. He decided
therefore to attempt to win Ras Hailu over to the Emperor’s side.
His next move was a dangerous gamble. With only three hun-
dred Sudanese as escort, he marched across country past Debra
Markos into the foothills of the Chokey Mountains. Ras Hailu
' With Captain McKay came a genial personage, the Imperial Fitaurari Birru
Wolde Gabriel, accompanied by an escort of500 Patriots. They had been armed with
new rifles at Um Idla by the British: ‘450 of them’, noted Simonds bitterly, ‘deserted
the following day, anxious to sell their rifles’. The Fitaurari had already been
appointed governor-general designate of Beghemder by Haile Selassie; but despite
this, Simonds after a failed raid reported that beyond the Blue Nile ‘the entire
countryside was hostile to us.’
 GIDEON FORCE 351
came down with 6,000 armed men to confront him. The two
forces camped warily, two miles apart, by Abba Mariam.
Wingate sent a messenger to Ras Hailu’s camp, bidding him to
acknowledge Haile Selassie as his liege lord and submit. Ras
Hailu sent a messenger back, courteously refusing. He could
certainly have attacked and probably have annihilated Wingate’s
tiny force then and there; but he was either too chivalrous or too
cautious. Next day, 15 March, he entered Debra Markos with
half his strength, leaving—astutely—3,000 banda in the hills to
block any further outflanking move by Wingate.
For Wingate, being Wingate, had indeed had an ulterior
military purpose behind his move into the eastern hills. He had
planned to seize the strategic bridge at Safertak over the Blue
Nile. This would have cut the highway and snapped the link
between Debra Markos and Addis Ababa, isolating Gojjam from
Shoa. There was no other way across the Blue Nile. Colonel
Maraventano and his men would have been cut off, and if forced
out of Debra Markos, thoroughly and totally trapped.
Wingate, foiled by Ras Hailu’s watchful men, did not abandon
this plan, though he modified it. He ordered Captain Foley with
his demolition squad and Bimbashi Thesiger with a small escort of
Sudanese to slip forward, make contact with ‘Li’ Belai Zelleka
and lay an ambush at the Safertak bridge. Thesiger and Foley
were experienced officers, and he knew he could rely on them.
Having done his best to set the trap, Wingate himself with most
of his Sudanese escort turned back. It would now bea question of
driving the Italians out of Debra Markos into the waiting
trap—or, if things went wrong, of himself being driven back to
Burie and beyond. It would be a battle of wills as well as a battle
of men.
THE BATTLE FOR DEBRA MARKOS: I8 MARCH—6 APRIL

On the western outskirts of Debra Markos, about two and a half

miles from the town, the road from Burie ran through a line of
small hills, the Gulit Ridge. Here facing Gideon Force Colonel
Maraventano placed two battalions, his first line of defence.
Wingate and Boustead took up position in front ofthe ridge with
their men and mortars. The active strength of Gideon Force was
by now very low. Platoons of the Frontier Battalion were
scattered over a good part of Gojjam garrisoning local strong-
points, and the besieging force amounted to merely 400 Sudanese
352 THE MILLS OF GOD
and a dozen Englishmen— besieging’ 16,000 armed men. Behind
the ‘front’, the 2nd Ethiopians were—theoretically—resting,
recovering and re-forming at Fort Dembecha. No. 1 Op Centre
was due to come forward to reinforce them. Wingate counted on
these reinforcements and on Maraventano receiving bad news of
enemy activity in his rear, at Safertak bridge, This he hoped
would lead to Maraventano being flushed out by bluff, like
Natale at Burie. Meanwhile the Sudanese mortared away at the
Gulit Ridge by day, and sniped from closer in by night. These
tactics were surprisingly effective. The irregular banda began to
desert in great numbers and come over to join the besiegers. But
in another sense all this was very suspicious, for there were no
Patriots with Wingate at this stage. All the Patriot chiefs, great
and small, were converging on Burie, well to the rear of the
battle, to pay their respects to Haile Selassie.
Then things took a turn for the worse. On the 17th, a Greek
trader arrived with a string of camels carrying supplies. He
should have gone north-west, to Fort Emmanuel, twenty miles
away, which (abandoned by Colonel Natale) had been taken over
by a platoon of Sudanese; and Wingate sent him angrily on his
way. Two days later he was back again, with panicky news: there
was much fighting at Fort Emmanuel, and many shiftas! were
being killed.
What had happend was that for the first time in this whole
campaign, the Italians had taken the initiative. Maraventano had
sent two battalions out from Debra Markos and recaptured Fort
Emmanuel, sweeping away the Sudanese platoon that held it and
their local allies. At the same time he had sent another battalion to
reoccupy Mota. Then, two days later, the Italian forces on Gulit
Ridge actually went on the offensive and attacked ‘High Hill
Camp’, the little base ofthe besiegers. It was beginning to look as
if Maraventano was not to be bluffed as Natale had been. ‘Local
patriots were adversely affected,’ noted Wingate. ‘We seemed to
them to be in an absurd situation.’ This was an under-statement.
The garrison at Fort Emmanuel threatened their flanks. The
garrison at Gulit threatened their front. To make the situation
even more absurd, the little force of besiegers was surrounded by
three times its number of ‘friendly’ deserters—1,200 banda,
camping all around but keeping their distance. Was the desertion

' “Dog ofa fool’, said Gabre Maskal, ‘we call them Patriots, Rot shiftas.’
 GIDEON FORCE 353
genuine or a ruse? Makonnen Desta, at Wingate’s side, con-
sidered that treachery was ‘most probable’.
Gideon Force had never been in a more dangerous position. Its
allies were demoralized, its units were scattered, and the enemy
was concentrating. News came that Ras Hailu had brought in
lorry-loads of mules from the hills. This seemed to presage a
sortie en masse by his men, a final punitive expedition that,
combined with a treacherous attack from the deserting banda,
would put paid to Boustead and the Sudanese and Wingate with
them.
As for the hoped for ‘reinforcements’ from Dembecha, they
were in an even worse state. In the rather coy phrase ofone ofthe
2nd Ethiopians’ officers: ‘It was becoming noticeable at Dem-
becha that the battalion was beginning to be affected by excessive
drinking.’ Boyle and the adjutant, Captain Smith, were ‘in a
nervy condition’. Physically minor wounds and cuts were turn-
ing septic. Mentally the officers were under a strain. Drunken-
ness among the men led to clashes and a state of near mutiny.
No. 1 Op Centre had arrived, but was in much the same state.
Indeed three of the five Australians (whose enthusiasm for
Ethiopia had originally inspired Wingate), Sergeants Howell,
Body, and Wood, had to be sent ignominiously back to
Khartoum.
Wingate hesitated, and considered pulling back to the Tamcha
riverline. But Gideon Force had, up till then, never gone back-
wards, always, whatever the odds, forwards. A retreat of any
sort would be justifiably taken by the enemy as a sign of
weakness. Colonel Maraventano and Ras Hailu would certainly
debouch from Debra Markos and probably succeed in sweeping
the scattered and demoralized elements of Gideon Force back to
Burie. There they might even seize the person of the Emperor. It
was a nightmare vision. Whether Wingate, Boustead, and the
Sudanese withdrew or stayed where they were, disaster loomed.
Wingate made up his mind. When in doubt, whatever the
odds, attack. But on the morning ofthe 24th the Italians attacked
first, just before dawn. However, warned by the bande, the
Sudanese cleared out of High Hill Camp, where they had
bivouacked, before the attackers reached it—an encouraging
incident that dispelled most oftheir fears of treachery. That night
Boustead’s men split into three groups and in their turn attacked
the enemy posts on the Gulit Ridge with machine-guns,
354 THE MILLS OF GOD
grenades, and the bayonet. At the command post an Italian
machine-gun drove back the attackers; three Sudanese were
killed there, and Captain Allen badly wounded. But on the other
parts of the Ridge the Sudanese rampaged, led by Bimbashi
Acland and his men.
This night attack succeeded temporarily in its aim. It put a
damper on the dismayed enemy. Neither the Gulit Ridge bat-
talions nor the garrison in Debra Markos made any further move
forward. Nevertheless the stalemate persisted. A tiny force of
besiegers were besieging an enormous garrison that might be
bluffed into staying on the defensive but would not be bam-
boozled into evacuating. So how to break the stalemate?
Wingate, at his best when faced with apparently insoluble prob-
lems, devised a new plan: all the Patriots, led by the Emperor in
person, should move up from Burie for an all-out attack on
Debra Markos. Only the Emperor’s presence on the British side
could, Wingate calculated, counter-balance the presence of Ras
Hailu on the Italian side. Only that would tip the scales
favourably.
Wingate enthusiastically hurried back to Burie, leaving
Boustead in charge of the siege. Sandford opposed such a
dangerous policy. While fierce discussions followed at Burie,
Colonel Maraventano, noting the inactivity of the enemy, plan-
ned another and more wholehearted attack. Unfortunately, for
the whole of this Gojjam campaign, memoirs and documents,
official and unofficial, though plentiful on the British side, are
totally lacking on the Italian side. But it seems that General Nasi,
co-ordinating the operations of his subordinates from Gondar,
was preparing a pincer movement: a counter-attack that was to
throw the invaders of Gojjam back into the hills. Colonel Torelli
was to attack southwards from Bahr Dar and Colonel Maraven-
tano westwards from Debra Markos. The attack was planned for
27 March.
On the evening of 26 March, however, General Frusci had
given the order to evacuate Keren: an order that within hours
became known to all Italian senior officers in the Empire. From
other fronts (most noticeably from the South—from Galla
Sidamo and Somalia) that day brought further bad news.
Everywhere the situation appeared to Italian commanders to be
fluid and liable to change from hour to hour. They looked to their
rear, and considered lines of retreat.
 GIDEON FORCE 355

So, fortunately for Boustead and his Sudanese, there was no

attack from Debra Markos on the 27th. In the north, however,
Colonel Torelli did attack, though with two days’ delay. Captain
McKay of No. 2 Ops Centre had been seriously wounded and
evacuated a week earlier, and Major Simonds had been deluged
with innumerable orders and counter-orders from Burie and
Khartoum.!He was now faced with ‘a strong well-planned attack
on my main position.’ With him Simonds had only 250 Sudanese
under Bimbashi Jarvis, and the Imperial Fitaurari Birru Wolde
Gabriel with 75 followers—a force that Torelli (who had
estimated it at 3,000) attacked with 5 battalions, pack-artillery
and 1,000 banda, in three columns.
The ‘besiegers’, naturally enough, fled into the hills. Why
Torelli did not continue with his advance down the road and
recapture Dangila is a mystery. Admittedly without a similar
movement from Debra Markos, threatening Burie and the per-
son of the Emperor from both sides, the strategic advantage
would have been small. Possibly also Torelli had learnt that Li
Mammo and his banda, on hearing that Keren had fallen to the
British, had finally decided which was the winning side, and had
come down from the hills to join the Patriots. Torelli lost 175
men killed or wounded by Simonds’s sniping. He withdrew back
into Bahr Dar only seven hours after issuing forth.
Stimulated by the good news from the north and the west,
Wingate, still at Burie, issued his orders. Bill McLean and his
sergeants from the Scots Greys were to go north, with No. 6 Op
Centre—180 men—to join Fitaurari Birru and Simonds. This
combined force should then break away from Bahr Dar and head
boldly into the interior towards Debra Tabor where Colonel
Angelini and a strong garrison guarded the road between Gondar
and Dessie. There they would link up with the rebels of Ly
Johannes and Dagnew Tessema. Thus confusion was to be
spread, and the enemy’s communications cut, all over General
Nasi’s command.
Meanwhile, Bimbashi Jarvis and the rump of ‘Beghemder
Force’ were to be left to conduct the ‘siege’ of Bahr Dar. Further
north still, to the north of Gondar, word went out to Basil

1 ‘As I had received clear and concise orders originally from Colonel Wingate, |
continued to obey these.’ Wingate’s orders to Simonds’s ‘Beghemder Force’ had been
to invest Bahr Dar and compel the evacuation of all small enemy forces in its
neighbourhood.
356 THE MILLS OF GOD
Ringrose of the Sherwood Rangers (whose Op Centre had joined
up with the priest Abba Qirqos) to cut the road north of Gondar.
The whole area north of the Gondar—Gallabat road, in what had
been Bentinck’s beat,! was by now in ferment. Wubneh Amoraw
and his followers were planning—but still only planning—to
attack the pro-Italian Kemant. Fitaurari Mesfin Redda was active
in the Wolkait. The formidable Adane Makonnen after a visit to
Bentinck’s camp did attack the Italians 15 miles north-west of
Gondar at Tukul Dingia, and fought a fierce skirmish there.
British officers were quartering the hills, and on 29 March Lt.
Railton with a company of the 3rd Ethiopians (the ‘new’
deserters) was sent north from Wahni towards Tukul Dingia to
join Bimbashi Sheppard. But it was not all one-sided. Adane
Makonnen was routed by the Kamant north of Gondar; anda few
days later Bimbashi Jarvis reported that he was, not surprisingly,
in ‘difficulties’ by Bahr Dar.
Meanwhile, Wingate had turned his attention back to the west.
Orders went down to Boyle to recapture Fort Emmanuel; and
this time the 2nd Ethiopians, stiffened by some platoons of
Sudanese, pulled themselves temporarily together and did the job
well. The two native battalions defending the Fort retreated to
Debra Markos that evening.
Closer in, Boustead was cock-a-hoop, predicting, rightly, that
the Gulit Ridge garrison, 2,000 strong, would probably with-
draw the following day, 1 April. He planned a real massacre,
herding them backwards with his Sudanese into the arms of the
2nd Ethiopians who would carefully have been posted in ambush
in their rear, along the road back to Debra Markos.
It did not work out. The 2nd Ethiopians were not only not in
position but had relapsed into a state of total chaos. ‘A’ Company
had mutinied, and a deputation was sent to the Emperor, as he
and Wingate moved slowly forward from Burie, to complain
that they had been struck and treated like slaves by their white
officers. Boyle and his adjutant Smith were called back to
explain, and finally relieved of their commands.
Once again the opportunity of annihilating by ambush a mass
of retreating enemy troops had been lost. Maraventano and all his
forces were now safely inside Debra Markos. Nothing daunted,
Wingate set about planning a repeat on a far larger and more
' The wearied Bentinck was about to be replaced by Bimbashi Sheppard, a youthful
Professor of Poetry from Cairo University.
 GIDEON FORCE 357

dramatic scale of the whole manceuvre: the masterstroke-to-be of

his whole campaign. Now up with Boustead on Gulit Ridge, he
was confident that with the Emperor present he could frighten
Maraventano out of Debra Markos as he had frightened Natale
out of Burie. But this time the enemy should not escape.
Twenty-five miles to the east of Debra Markos, at Safertak
Bridge, Thesiger and Captain Foley were reported to be in
position to cut the Italians off with ‘Lij’ Belai Zelleka and his
bandit Patriots. To join them Wingate sent past Debra Markos
over half of Boustead’s remaining force.! A bold, indeed in the
circumstances almost a Napoleonic decision.
Inside Debra Markos, now seriously besieged, there was much
toing and froing, with Maraventano receiving and issuing his
last-minute orders while Ras Hailu sent out and accepted emis-
saries and messages from all sides. On 2 April mortar shells
struck the ghebbi of Ras Hailu’s daughter. Uncertainty was
spreading. Morale was collapsing. Wingate’s plan was working.
On 3 April the watchers, inside and outside the city, saw the
sight which they were now half expecting. Lorries, cavalry, and
infantry were pouring out of the eastern gates of the city—two
Brigades, the III and the XIX, 7,000 native troops, 1,100 Italians,
and, with the column, over 2,000 women and children. Wingate
smiled when the news was reported. He knew the column was
doomed.
But before leaving the city Colonel Maraventano had handed
over command of all the irregulars, plus all ammunition, rifles,
and stores that he had not taken with him, to Ras Hailu. With
over 6,000 well-armed followers Ras Hailu was the master of
Debra Markos, and the potential master ofall Goyam. Wingate,
Boustead, and the Sudanese, the Emperor, Ras Kassa, and the
court, waited tensely outside the city for Ras Hailu’s next move.
At dusk they saw the Ethiopian Flag raised and flying above the
citadel. But no offer of submission came. Makonnen Desta, sent
in to Debra Markos, overcome by awe, prostrated himself and
kissed Ras Hailu’s hands and feet. After so many years Ras Hailu
was back as lord of the capital he had once ruled, among his
faithful people. After so many humiliations he had, very nearly,
his old enemy Tafari Makonnen at his mercy.
| Bimbashi Johnson and No. 1 Company; Bimbashi Riley (Harris’s replacement) and
No. 2 Company; 140°loyal 2nd Ethiopians under Lieutenant Rowe; plus Azaz
Kebbede and his followers.
358 THE MILLS OF GOD
It must have been very tempting for Ras Hailu to use his
power. But though immediate success and, possibly, revenge lay
within his grasp, in the long term the odds were against him.
Against Haile Selassie alone he might have risked a coup. Against
Haile Selassie supported by the British he knew he could not. Yet
for two more days he enjoyed his brief but total independence,
before, gracefully and with dignity, announcing his submission.
These were two vital days. The Maraventano column had
halted, and seemed prepared to hold the Forts between Debra
Markos and the Blue Nile. But Wingate intercepted an Italian
phone-call to what they still believed to be headquarters. Think-
ing quickly, he called in Stevens the American journalist, who
spoke excellent Italian, and had him order the Fort commanders
to evacuate. The ruse, of which both were justifiably proud, was
successful. Maraventano and his column were forced to move
rapidly towards the Blue Nile and the trap at Safertak Bridge
waiting to be sprung. Meanwhile, however, a wilier man had
played a yet more cunning hand.
Ras Hailu knew he could expect little mercy from either Haile
Selassie or Ras Kassa in whose sons’ deaths he had been involved.
Yet very few Ethiopians then or later condemned him outright.
Some said he had always been a Patriot at heart; others that he had
mollified the severity of the Italians, particularly of Graziani. The
people of Gojjam saw him as their rightful ruler and protector.
More generally, it was felt that in the long struggle for Imperial
power, from the death of Menelik through the reigns of LijYasu
and of the Empress Zauditu, he had like all the great lords tried
his fortune. At the time he had lost but the coming ofthe Italians
had given him an unhoped-for chance ofturning the tabi Was
he to be blamed if he had seized it?
In British eyes, however, Ras Hailu was a traitor and a
collaborator, nothing more nor less. Possibly if he had at the last
minute turned on the Italians, he might have played on British
sympathy. But Ras Hailu appears to have been, in his way,
genuinely a noble man. Not only did he not turn on the Italians in
their distress, he gave his word to Colonel Maraventano that he
and his column would pass safely across the Blue Nile.
As soon as Ras Hailu had announced his submission, Boustead
and his men drove merrily past Debra Markos to join their
advanced companies and to attack the Maraventano column in
the rear. They expected to find the retreating Italians confused
 GIDEON FORCE 359
and panicky, unable to cross the Safertak bridge into the safety of
Shoa. Instead they found no Italians, and only a smouldering
bridge. Nearby Thesiger and Foley were waiting disconsolately,
with dismal, apologetic stories of Belai Zelleka’s treachery, of
Maraventano’s successful crossing of the bridge, and of a sharp
rearguard action.
It had been Ras Hailu’s last service to his allies and erstwhile
protectors. He had sent messengers to ‘Lij’ Belai Zelleka ordering
him to let the Italians through. Thesiger and his handful of
Sudanese, in Belai Zelleka’s power, had been unable to do
anything to prevent this. Captain Foley alone had succeeded in
setting off his demolition charges on the road and by doing so had
destroyed—which was at least a gesture—a number of Maraven-
tano’s lorries. It was rumoured that Ras Hailu had, in return for
this favour, promised Belai Zelleka one of his daughters in
marriage, and that the thought of such social advancement had
turned the ex-bandit’s head, and corrupted his loyalties. There
was nothing Wingate could do, except fume. His best-prepared
and most dramatic trap had failed.
But with their crossing of the Nile Goyam was finally free of
the Italians—except for one isolated battalion, left behind in
Mota. On Palm Sunday, 6 April, Haile Selassie drove in triumph
into Debra Markos, on the front seat of a truck driven by
Bimbashi LeBlanc, with his chief officers and courtiers inside the
truck or hanging on to its sides. Thanks to Wingate, the Emperor
had ‘recaptured’ ‘Holy Gojyam’.
 CHAPTER 29

CUNNINGHAM’S COUP

IN Nairobi sat a wretched and forlorn figure. Major Ralph

Neville, a gunner, had been sent out by the War Office in its
moment of euphoria to head 107 Mission. In theory he was to be
to Kenya what Sandford of 101 Mission was to the Sudan. In
January he had seen General Cunningham, who had spoken most
encouragingly and who had told him to get on into the south of
Galla—Sidamo and organize the rebellion. But not till early March
was he given an assistant—Captain Bilborough, who had been
with the sth (Turkana) Irregulars—and not till the end of the
month was he allotted a clerk. Still less was he given any wireless
equipment, any transport, or any heavy arms. He had however a
certain amount of money and a dump of rifles and ammunition to
distribute. Back at Taveta refugee camp he found the only two
Ethiopians who seemed capable of raising followers and using his
rifles: Dejaz Abebe Damtew and Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat.
Major Neville knew nothing of Ethiopian history and politics,
even less (if that were possible) than the Kenya authorities.
Having found his men, he armed them and sent them in. So
Blatta Takele and Abebe Damtew, each with a little group of less
than a hundred followers, joined the merry fray in Galla—Sidamo.
They headed for the country around Neghelli, where the Borana
tribes were already up in arms.
In this jungly, roadless, heavily populated country inhabited
by a myriad of primitive tribes, among whom for the past five
years isolated groups of Amhara, reduced to the status of bandits
and pursued by the local banda, had wandered, it was almost
impossible, particularly with the spring rains coming on, to
conduct ‘serious’ military operations. Confused and confusing
skirmishes took place over a vast area. The Amhara bands, both
old and new, plus Curle’s 2nd (Ethiopian) Irregulars, spread out
and clashed with the banda by the Great Lakes and were bombed,
once or twice, by their own allies, the South African pilots, as
 jouoij eAUDY IY] dVW “OI
sueayy yinos
no; > IqoseN]
re)Hp! Igore WY 00007 i0
gS rue (¢ ee a2s04 C21 y 1Sez 4. —
naa
suevabiy arg. / wey6uluung /8419UayH Soyitu OO OS 0La
2a
J0}9aS-gng eqnr ; _ |Spoomyews = y
ag |jeseue 9
auowls I$ 20 ls
52 Pa a vi. speoy ——
=|s S}UdWdAOW
NVIIO vorsig fey b\22 a x N o fq O J BUIMOYS SMO
1e1u0/09 ZOL SOS) eG Maar eiues Ba ) YSHG So5J0)YM ae
dwes aabnjas vedoryi7 , oJOls] Sdd10Oj URIIRI] Cy

soyeg
NVIGNI
se x
| Jey Samos
cas

LMuULsia
(3)

sel
121010
ISIAL

eeZz

VaNV9N
fen
ray
101
ay

_
iat

);
=]

|
oa
ra

\
(
ye

\
WIL IWO wd

)
<\ SW
bem 1d \
on ,
=
- YX
ve NYdHNION yar
JeEMpO
ae
pe
VITVWOS /
|i; aX.K. alesow
la Poe en
[nvr ya
ipuruay J J Seri AK. WYK x Joieee ee Le
d Yan a er Be . geets 4 4
2 Ss Fn UOISIAIG, PEs ‘foes? SS cA
— he [e1uojo) 4)HZ : ; 2
4 100 s,owsnjelg :
/ SN ih care ES
} aiudjais *7 unas
dt, (y117 YORE; sounded > = NEI \e NVQGnNS
wy apediig IsROD ploy) 1U82N™
362 THE MILLS OF GOD
they tried to encircle the regular enemy battalions. The focus of
all this activity was the Italian-held town of Neghelli.
By mid-March messengers were streaming back to Major
Neville in Nairobi. They brought news that Neghelli had been
abandoned, news that Neghelli had not been abandoned, news
that Blatta Takele had been seriously wounded, news that Blatta
Takele had been taken prisoner by the Italians. But it was not till
27 March that there was definite news. Yes, the Italians had
withdrawn, and Neghelli had been occupied—but occupied from
the far side, by a force coming up from a different theatre of war.
That force was the Gold Coast Brigade, and the theatre of war
was Italian Somalia.
General Cunningham’s plan had been to open up the whole of
Galla-Sidamo east of the River Omo and to push forward
through Neghelli and the great lakes towards Addis Ababa. He
had launched two ofhis three South African Brigades—the 2nd
and the sth—over the frontier at Moyale, with half his KAR in
support. But the South Africans had not done as well as he had
expected.'In fact the whole attempt to move into Ethiopia from
Kenya's northern frontier had turned into a bit of a fiasco.
Cunningham tured his attention to what was, in his view, his
secondary and minor front—Somalia. He remembered that he
had promised Eden he would try for the little port of Kismayu,
two hundred miles inside Italian territory, before the spring
rains.
Thanks to the South Africans, he could count on plenty of
lorries and good air support. But he had only four brigades on his
start-line, the river Tana. Opposite, on the river Juba that runs
north from behind Kismayu, General de Simone, his antagonist,
also had four brigades: the ror Colonial Division inland, 6,200
rifles and 24 guns strong, and on the coast the 102 Colonial
Division, which with the garrison of Kismayu and the dubat
groups amounted to no less than 14,000 rifles and 60 guns. The
1o2nd was itself as strong as the whole invading force.
Nevertheless a promise was a promise.

The actual frontier between Kenya and Somalia was an imagin-

ary straight line drawn across the desert, half way between the
River Tana and the River Juba. On 11 February Cunningham's

1 cf. page 325.

 CUNNINGHAM’S COUP 363
two leading brigades moved off from their positions behind the
River Tana and crossed this invisible frontier, Brigadier Small-
wood’s Nigerians heading directly for Kismayu along the coast
road, Brigadier Fowkes’s KAR moving towards Gelib on the
Juba line.
At dawn the next day the town of Almadu, reportedly heavily
fortified, was rushed by the KAR. One prisoner was captured,
plus 18 camels and much saddlery. The Gold Coast Brigade,
following close behind the KAR’s thrust, moved through to
fight a sharp skirmish on the banks of the river Juba. But mean-
while extraordinary news came in from the coast: the Italians
were abandoning Kismayu. Sure enough, on the late after-
noon of 14 February, Pemberton’s armoured cars, leading the
Nigerian advance along the coast road, entered Kismayu un-
opposed. They found it not only undefended but with all its
guns intact. There were 25 ships in the harbour, and—so much
for the pretence that the Italians were short of fuel—a million
litres of petrol, and halfa million litres ofaircraft fuel were there,
undestroyed.
It was almost unbelievable. Within three days of crossing the
frontier, with barely a shot fired, with no interference at all from
enemy aircraft, General Cunningham had not only kept his
promises but had captured, to his own amazement, an immense
quantity of booty. He could only imagine that the evacuation of
Kismayu was part of the enemy’s strategy, mishandled owing to
a confusion of orders, and that the real enemy defence was
planned behind Kismayu along the line ofthe Juba.
In its last fourteen miles, the Juba running through flat marshes
almost into the sea, was a formidable obstacle: tidal water $80 feet
wide. But further north it was by no means an ideal defence line.
Both ofits banks were covered with thick tropical vegetation and
at this period, before the rains had brought torrents down from
the highlands, it could in many places be waded. General Cun-
ningham brought his fourth brigade, Pienaar’s South Africans,
up into the lead. On the night of 17 February an advance guard of
the South Africans waded the Juba. The following day Brigadier
Richards’s three Gold Coast battalions, after a feint attack at
Gelib, started to cross too. Behind the infantry bridgeheads
pontoon bridges were thrown across, and the lorries and the
main body of troops followed, fanning out north and south and
east, across the flat, low plains of the Somali country. Fowkes’s
364 THE MILLS OF GOD
KAR came across in their turn. The appearance of three enemy
brigades in their rear naturally spread panic among the four
Italian brigades strung out in long lines along the riverbanks with
the enemy now behind them.
The almost complete collapse of General de Simone’s two
divisions followed: first little groups, then larger groups sur-
rendered here and there to the exultant Africans and their British
officers and even, in a batch several hundred strong, to Pipe-
Major Buchanan and five kilted pipers of the Transvaal Scottish.
The KAR switched to the coast road and reached Brava by the
24th. Then the Nigerians drove through them and on down the
coast road to Merca.
Seventy miles ahead of Merca lay Mogadishu, capital of the
Italian colony of Somalia, seat of the governorate and of De
Simone’s command. That same day the Nigerians, led by Major
Wacker in an armoured car, occupied Mogadishu. The Black-
shirt commander of the garrison, Consul-General Eugenio Fio-
retti, had fled. The only resistance was offered by a young Italian
naval Lieutenant Luchini, who died at the head of his men.
As for the booty, it was enormous: 1,800 tons of both petrol
and aircraft fuel, plus lorries, weapons, ammunition dumps,
military supplies ofall sorts, enough uniforms to equip a division
and enough food and drink to keep ten thousand men well-
nourished for seven to eight months. At the aerodrome 21 Italian
planes that had taken no part in the defence of the Juba line lay
damaged on the ground. In the harbour were more ships, and in
the prisons a number ofinterned merchant seamen, delighted to
be released—179 British, 13 French, and 36 Yugoslavs.
General Cunningham, exalted, cabled to Wavell to ask for
permission to try for Harar, over 800 miles away. Permission
was granted.
It was at this stage that he called away the two South African
brigades from the Gallo—Sidamo front. His strategy had been
turned topsy-turvy: he had imagined that his main thrust would
be up through Galla—Sidamo towards Addis Ababa, and the
attack on Kismayu had been in his mind a sop to Churchill. But
with the collapse in Somalia (and in addition to the booty,
thousands of prisoners were beginning to come in) plus the
disappointing showing in Galla—Sidamo, the situation had been
reversed. Cunningham therefore decided to bring the two South
African brigades in Galla—Sidamo, the 2nd and the sth, round to
 CUNNINGHAM’S COUP 365
join the 1st South African brigade, Pienaar’s, and thus reform the
South African Division. But not just for military reasons.

I was considering employing the 1st South Africa Division [he later
wrote] for the advance from Mogadishu into Ethiopia as not only did I
think that their greater firepower and superior equipment would be
needed in the Ethiopian highlands where the conditions would be
strange and difficult but also because I wished for political reasons
[Author’s italics] to give the South African Division a more prominent
part in the campaign.

In fact, however, Cunningham never put into practice his

project to prove his white soldiers’ superiority to his blacks.
Possibly events were moving too fast. Or possibly he realized
that, objectively, the two South African brigades in Galla—
Sidamo had proved themselves the worst of all his troops. In
mid-March they embarked at Mombasa for Egypt, to disappear
first into the Western Desert and then, fairly ignominiously, and
with little delay, into Rommel’s prisoner-of-war camps.
After three days’ pause at Mogadishu, the Nigerians—‘thanks
to the petrol captured from the enemy’—resumed their advance,
along the road that led into the Ogaden, the road that Graziani’s
invading columns had followed five years earlier. General De
Simone was by the first week in March back at Dagghabur,
where five years earlier Dejaz Nasibu, resisting a similar inva-
sion, had also set up his headquarters.
But unlike the Ethiopians, the Italians did not resist. Seventeen
day later the Nigerians were well past Dagghabur on the far side
of the Ogaden driving into Jiyjiga, only half an hour after the
Italians had pulled out—an advance of 744 miles, the swiftest
advance in the whole war.
The previous day, 16 March, the British had had an even
sweeter taste of revenge. A flotilla from Aden, Vice-Admiral
Leatham of the East Indies station commanding, had set sail
across the Gulf, to effect the first successful landing on enemy-
held beaches of the war. It had an imposingly aristocratic van-
guard. Lt.-Commander the Marquess of Milford Haven, the
King’s cousin, was commanding HMS Kingston, with on board
Lt.-Colonel the Marquess of Graham, heir to the Duke of
Montrose, as Forward Observation Officer.
As the cruisers and destroyers hove into sight, General
Bertello, military commander of the annexed territory, took to
366 THE MILLS OF GOD

his mule. The advance guard of the two Punjabi battalions landed
unopposed. They were met by the colonel commanding Ber-
bera, with his sixty officers and men formally drawn up. ‘War can
be very embarrassing’, one of the British officers present
recorded. The Italian Colonel handed over his revolver and
promptly burst into tears.

General de Simone would have done better to withdraw all his

troops, without even a nominal struggle, from the lowlands and
deserts of the Somali plains. In the highlands around his new
headquarters at Harar he had now, despite the preceding débacle,
grouped a force still superior to that of the invaders: five brigades
in a strong defensive position.
As the Nigerians halted in Jijiga, looking up doubtfully at the
high hills above them, and the KAR and the South Africans took
their lorries through the Ogaden to join them, the Gold Coast
Brigade had been sent off on a tangent, chasing the dispirited
1o1st Division up the Juba river line into Galla—Sidamo. At Dolo,
just below the highlands, they caught one ofits brigades, the XX,
and the commander, -staff, and 3,000 men surrendered. The
surviving brigade, the XCII, retreated towards Neghelli. Slowly
the Gold Coast Brigade advanced along that difficult road, with
rumours of shifta and tribesmen ahead, to find Neghelli
abandoned and occupied only by shifta, on 27 March.
The road from Jiyjiga wound up through the boulder-strewn
hills of the Marda Pass and continued for nearly 100 miles
through country ideal for the defenders before debouching into
the plateau of Harar. Brigadier Smallwood and his officers
christened the peaks above them: Saddle Hill, Observation Hill,
Camel Hill, and, with more originality, Marda’s Left Breast,
Marda’s Right Breast and Marda’s Behind. They had been
ordered to wait for reinforcements before attacking, but they
were unused to waiting, and three days in hot and dusty Jijiga
were more than enough. Despite orders, they attacked.
This time it was not a walk-over. The rst Nigerians, leading
the assault to the right of Marda’s Breasts, had two officers
killed—Captain Rogers and 2nd Lieutenant Rogers—and many
wounded. At dusk after five hours’ shelling by the South African
guns, they held the Left Breast, but the XIII Brigade, the
defenders, still held the Right, and Marda’s Behind.
That night, however, the XIII Brigade withdrew. The
 CUNNINGHAM’S COUP 367
previous night one ofits battalions had deserted en masse, leaving
the Commandant and officers to hold their hill alone. In the
morning the last Breast and the Behind were occupied by
Smallwood’s salacious soldiery. The Nigerians moved up into
the highlands and carried forward.
At the next defensive position along the road to Harar, the
Babile Gap, the Italian artillery held up the Nigerians for two
days and a half. But, wrote an Italian officer:
The days we spent at Babile were really terrible. The lives ofthe officers
were in danger every night, every night more askaris were deserting,
and then firing on us in the hope ofterrorising us to the point where they
would be able to get away with the battalion’s arms and equipment.
Booty, not treachery, was the motive.
The withdrawal of the Brigade, once highly reputed, was ‘the
final disaster.’
When we started the Companies consisted of 30-40 men each, most of
whom were Eritrean NCOs whom we thought were still faithful to us,
but during the march the askaris were going along firing and throwing
grenades constantly. It was impossible to stay on one’s mule because
bullets were whistling around our ears from every side. The orders and
reproofs ofthe officers were ignored, and it was clear that we were faced
with complete and irreparable collapse. When one sees one’s authority
going by the board in this way, one falls into a feeling of utter despair,
having to stand by impotently during the most barbarous and disgrace-
ful scenes without being able to do anything to stop them.

After a last fight at the Bisidimo river ten miles outside Harar,
the Nigerians entered the city. They netted an ‘embarrassing
amount of prisoners —which brought the total number taken in
six weeks’ campaigning to nearly 50,000, or roughly three times
the strength of the invading force.
Brigadier Smallwood wrote with both justified pride and eu-
logistic rhythm to ‘My dear General’:
I think I may be permitted to take this opportunity to tell you how
completely the Nigerian soldier has falsified all doubts as regards to his
reactions to the conditions of these operations.
It has been said that he could not go short of water; he has done so
without a murmur. It has been said he could not fight well out of his
native bush; at Marda Pass he fought his way up mountain sides which
would be recognized as such even on the Frontier. It has been said he
would not stand up well to shelling and machine-gun fire in the open; at
368 THE MILLS OF GOD
Babile, under such fire, men were trying to cut down enemy wire with
their matchets. It has been said that he would be adversely affected by
high altitudes and cold; at Bisidimo, after a freezing night on the hill, he
advanced over the open plain at dawn with the same quiet, cheerful
determination he seems always to carry about with him. He is
magnificent.
One might almost believe ‘My dear General’ had been heard
publicly to vaunt the South Africans, and deprecate the blacks.
Pienaar’s South Africans were now moved into the lead. At
occupied Harar, they were saluted on entry with a banner made
from sheets bearing the inscription ‘Welcome from the Congre-
gation of the Presbyterian Church’. Their first task, curiously
enough, was to rescue their enemies and chastise their allies.
On the night of28 March the 4oth Colonial Battalion stationed
at Diredawa on the railway below Harar refused to board the last
train for Addis Ababa. They mutinied and seized the arsenal. The
mutineers festooned themselves with hand-grenades and, cross-
ing the dry river bed, which separated the ‘native’ from the
‘European’ quarter, set about celebrating and looting in the
traditional Ethiopian fashion. The head ofthe Italian police force
thereupon telephoned Harar, begging to be ‘invaded’ and
‘occupied’. But by the time the Transvaal Scottish reached
Diredawa, four civilians and three Italian policemen had been
killed. One of the police officers had defended himself to the
death, with rifle, pistol, knife, and bare hands. The mutineers
rejoiced at the arrival of their new ‘allies’, but to their utter
disgust, the South Africans, in a day and a night, in the only
street-fighting of the war, restored ‘order’.
Despite all the rules oflogistics, General Cunningham, who
had promised only Kismayu, decided to try for the capital of the
Empire, for the great prize, Addis Ababa. There the Duke of
Aosta and General Trezzani had learnt with discomfiture of the
fall of Somalia, with amazement of the fall of Harar, and with
alarm and horror ofthe events at Diredawa. In Addis Ababa there
were over 11,000 Italian women and 7,000 Italian children for
whose safety they were responsible—as General Wavell tactfully
reminded the Viceroy in a message the RAF dropped by air over
Addis Ababa on 30 March.
All Italian officials knew very well how the population had
behaved in the three-day period of anarchy between the flight of
the Emperor and the entry of Marshal Badoglio and his troops, in
 CUNNINGHAM’S COUP 369
May 1936. They remembered too the massacres in Addis Ababa
perpetrated by rampaging Blackshirts in the days following the
attempted assassination of Graziani. There was reason to fear that
the population would, indeed, get out of control.
But though the Duke of Aosta sent an envoy by plane, as
Wavell had suggested, behind Cunningham’s lines, he was not to
be bluffed—as Wavell had intended—into surrendering the
capital. He could not believe that the British would indeed allow
fellow-whites, women and children too, to be massacred (and the
denouement of the Diredawa incident appeared to prove him
right). Moreover, what with police forces and the Blackshirt
garrison, there were over 10,000 armed Italians inside Addis. Ras
Abebe Aregai, who might have posed a major threat to the
Italians, was instead waiting, surprisingly inactive, in the
Ankober Hills.
Addis Ababa itself, lying in a basin of hills, could hardly be
defended from an enemy attack. But the road from Harar was
long. Pienaar’s Brigade, now in the lead, moved fast along that
road (and along the railway that ran side by side with it across the
Danakil desert) into the foothills to the south and east of Addis
Ababa. But not before General Trezzani had dispatched a com-
pany of Savoy Grenadiers machine-gunners, with two battalions
ofItalian troops, six tanks, and Rolle and his banda to hold the last
possible line of defence, the Awash river, ‘to the last man and the
last round’. The river was sixty feet wide. The force holding it
was a respectable one. Yet on 3 April, as Fowkes’s KAR took
over the lead from the South Africans and came up against this
barrier, opposition quickly melted away. The only real fight was
put up by the machine-gunners, most of whom were killed. But
it took the rest of the day and night for eighty men to drag across
the six armoured cars which were planned to lead the final thrust
towards Addis Ababa.
In Addis Ababa, as bad news came from the Awash crossing,
the Viceroy held his last Council at Villa Italia. There could be no
question, militarily speaking, of last stand in the capital. Should
he go south to join General Gazzera, in the Galla—Sidamo
‘redoubt’ at Jimma? North-west to join General Nasi at Gondar?
Or north to join General Frusci on the great Strada Imperiale, the
highway linking lost Asmara with doomed Addis Ababa? North,
insisted Trezzani. So at 5 o’clock on the evening of3 April the
Duke of Aosta and his escort with his ADC and old friend
370 THE MILLS OF GOD

General Volpini, with the commander ofhis almost non-existent

air force General Pinna, and with his chief of staff General
Trezzani, left his capital for the great mountain stronghold of
Amba Alagi.
Next day, as the RAF bombed and shot up the last ofthe Italian
aircraft on the Addis Ababa aerodrome, advance patrols of the
KAR entered Awash town. There they netted most of the
defenders, though Rolle and his banda had headed away north-
west across the desert towards Dessie. The six armoured cars
patrolled forward twenty miles while engineers worked to repair
the two bridges. The whole of Fowkes’s brigade, and the rest of
the armoured cars were over by 3 a.m. and moving forward.
Shortly after dawn they were met on the road by an enemy car,
decorated with a white flag and bearing an emissary from General
Mambrini, military governor and chief of police of Addis Ababa.
The emissary was Major Fausto de Fabritis, escorted by thirty
Blackshirts, and his request was for the ‘enemy’ to occupy Addis
Ababa as quickly as possible. The armoured car squadron, with
two lorried companies of the sth KAR, raced ahead. Just before
dark, they reached Akaki on the outskirts of the city. But there a
senior police official halted them, courteously passing on a
wireless message from their own General, from Cunningham.
The entry into the capital was to be a more solemn affair than a
mere dash by the Kenyans.
It was not, therefore, till next morning, and till a reasonable
after-breakfast hour, that a solemn column'set out from Akakito
enter Addis Ababa. General Wetherall, flanked by Brigadier
Fowkes and Brigadier Pienaar, escorted by C Squadron of the
Kenya Armoured Car Regiment, followed by first the South
Africans, then the KAR, drove forward through lines of ululat-
ing Ethiopians, held in check by armed Italian police and by
armed Blackshirts, to the Little Ghebbi where General Mambrini
and his Fascist Guard of Honour solemnly surrendered to the
conqueror the capital of Africa Orientale Italiana.
Forty-eight hours of what the Official History calls ‘delightful
tripartite cooperation’ followed—the culmination of what was
‘not so much a war as a well organized miracle.’ In under two
months General Cunningham’s four brigades had captured
Mogadishu, Harar, and Addis Ababa—three ofthe six capitals of

' Headed, unsolemnly, by journalists and photographers.

 CUNNINGHAM’ S COUP a7t
the six governorates of Italian East Africa. They had defeated,
dispersed, or captured, without any aid from the rebels, forces
many times their size and strength—for the total loss of 135
officers and men killed, 310 wounded, and 52 missing.
 CHAPTER 30

THE RETURN OF THEeEMPEROR

‘Tue Emperor’, wrote Newbold, ‘is all agog to march into Addis
Ababa.’ And what could have been more natural—or, one might
imagine, more simple? The Emperor had entered Debra Markos
on the same day that his allies had entered Addis Ababa. Wingate,
informed of this good news by General Platt, sent a message of
congratulations and added a request for a plane to fly Haile
Selassie to his capital.
The request was refused. Why? Newbold in unofficial langu-
age gave the official answer. “We restrained him a bit because
there are 100,000 Ethiopians there and 40,000 Italians and we
don’t want a massacre or incidents as the Ethiopians will all go
mad at the triumphal entry.’ This was the line: that Haile
Selassie’s return would create ‘a dangerous situation’ and that
therefore Haile Selassie should not return.
No one in the Emperor’s cortége, Wingate least ofall, believed
in the reasons given. They saw it as a far more sinister affair.
Their suspicions increased as stories came through from Addis
Ababa ofthe increasingly arrogant behaviour of white officers, of
the banning of Ethiopians from certain hotels and public places,
and of General Cunningham’s military police regime, which
more resembled an occupation than a liberation. The latent
Ethiopian fear that the British were planning to take over rather
than to hand back their country revived, for after all, as De Gaulle
had stylishly put it: ‘Quelle situation unique aura désormais
Angleterre dans tout l’ensemble: Ethiopie, Erythrée, Somalie,
Soudan!’
Were these fears justified? Eritrea and Somalia were occupied
enemy colonies and therefore would have to be administered,
until a peace treaty with Italy was signed, by the British accord-
ing to the traditional formula of Occupied Enemy Territory
Admunistration—OETA. Once it became clear that the Italians
were collapsing, the British set up a skeleton organization which,
 THE RETURN OF THE EMPEROR 373
as more territory was conquered, swiftly expanded. To head the
OETA General Wavell chose Sir Philip Mitchell, a man who had
already had experience in this field in the First World War, when
German East Africa was occupied. A logical but an unfortunate
choice, for Sir Philip Mitchell had until the outbreak of war been
Governor of Uganda. And to assist him he had two province
governors from the Sudan: Kennedy-Cooke of Kassala Province
and Lush of Northern Province. It looked very much as if
neighbouring British colonial governors were moving in in force
to take over as the Italians moved out. This seemed even more to
be the case when OETA was extended—without any consul-
tation with Haile Selassie—to the ‘liberated’ areas of Ethiopia
proper. The Ethiopians saw the white men installed in their
capital and organizing police forces, law courts, and money.
Worst of all, they saw the British Army confiscating, wherever
possible, captured Italian stores and equipment and weapons—
wealth on which the Ethiopians had been counting and which
they thought they deserved.
Hurt and incensed, Haile Selassie even talked of British ‘loot-
ing’ and condemned his allies as plunderers. What had really
offended the Emperor, though, was the title OETA. His Empire
was no longer ‘Occupied Enemy Territory’. It was in his view
friendly territory that had been occupied but was now liberated
and ought therefore to be restored entirely to his control. The
choice of the wording ‘Occupied Enemy Territory’ was one of
the worst mistakes the British made. It resulted in long-lasting
suspicion of British intentions.
There was a further dark suspicion in Haile Selassie’s mind, as
he sat impotent in Debra Markos. Under Sir Philip Mitchell’s
cold control at Cairo, Lush was Deputy Chief Political Officer
for Ethiopia and Kennedy-Cooke DCPO for Eritrea. But
‘Eritrea’ included under this arrangement not only the Italian
colony ofEritrea, but the Ethiopian province of Tigre. Sir Philip
Mitchell showed no signs of detaching Tigre from this vastly
expanded new ‘Eritrea’ and restoring it to Ethiopia. Furthermore
Haile Selassie had had news of Ras Seyum which was not
altogether reassuring.
Keren had fallen; Asmara had fallen; and as Colonel Delitala on
Frusci’s instructions withdrew his brigade from the Adowa area,
Ras Seyum reverted to his old loyalties. He could hardly be
accused of betraying the Italians. Though he had submitted, he
374 THE MILLS OF GOD
had been exiled to Italy and had only been restored to favour and
to power at the very last moment in a fairly desperate attempt by
General Nasi to bolster up a crumbling military position. The
Italians can hardly have expected Ras Seyum to act otherwise
than he did; for he had old scores to settle from the days of the
battles in the Tembien when he had been harried, bombed,
gassed, and driven back to that last battlefield at Mai Ceu.
So the day after the British took over control of Asmara, Ras
Seyum rode into the city and presented himselfto General Platt
and the new DCPO for Eritrea and Tigre, Kennedy-Cooke. He
offered his services to fight the Italians and asked, inevitably, for
money and arms. Platt discouraged him on the grounds that there
was a risk of clashes between Ras Seyum’s men and his own. Not
that in the event Ras Seyum took the least notice of Platt’s formal
or informal wishes, for he had many thousand Italian rifles and
already 7,000 men at his orders. But there was one point that the
British particularly noticed. Ras Seyum stressed the alliance ofhis
grandfather, then the future Emperor Johannes, with the British
at the time of Lord Napier’s expedition against Magdala and the
Emperor Theodore.
This was gloomy news for Haile Selassie. Could it be that the
British would encourage separatism? Could they be planning an
independent state of ‘Greater Eritrea’? Could they be hoping to
deny his claims and impose their own administration when ‘law
and order’ had irretrievably broken down? Might they even be
grooming a rival Emperor?
On 8 April a letter from Ras Seyum in Adowa reached Debra
Markos. It was addressed not to the Emperor but to Ras Kassa.

How have you kept since we separated? Thank God.we are well—
apart from our longing for you. Even though we were not separated in
thought, we were unable to speak face to face or to write to each other
and my sorrow at this was boundless. But since by the will of the kind
God the hindering yoke has been taken away, my joy is limitless at my
ability to write you this letter. Ihave recently returned from a visit to the
British Government authorities in Asmara. You will know that no man
will be more contented than I when the flag of Ethiopia, the sign of our
fathers and grandfathers, has been planted again in its country. Seyum
Mangasha Johannes.

Admirable duplicity. Nothing in this letter could be judged

treasonable or disloyal; on the contrary. But there was no
 THE RETURN OF THE EMPEROR 375
reference to Haile Selassie. But. . . the father and grandfather of
Ras Seyum had been great men indeed. Ras Mangasha had died at
Ankober, imprisoned by Menelik for rebellion. The Emperor
Johannes in his day had, like his grandson, been simply the Ras of
Tigre, and had reached the Imperial throne thanks to the support
of the then British Government. Once again it seemed as if Ras
Kassa’s attitude and reactions might decide Haile Selassie’s fate.
Although, in a more immediate sense, the fate of Haile Selassie
lay in Ras Hailu’s hands. It was an extremely paradoxical situa-
tion at Debra Markos. Ras Hailu had, indeed, submitted, but he
was in his capital. His retainers, now ‘Patriots’ too, retained their
arms, retained their forts and far outnumbered their new ‘allies’
and recent enemies, Gideon Force. Secretly Haile Selassie sent a
message to Khartoum asking if the British would intern Ras
Hailu in the Sudan. It seems that this request was refused—a
refusal which could hardly fail to make the Emperor feel even
more isolated. His isolation was only relieved by the arrival from
the Sudan of his two sons, the Meredazmatch Asfa Wossen and
the Duke of Harar; and by that of Lij Asrate Kassa, Ras Kassa’s
fourth and only surviving son.
As always, Haile Selassie was patient. Wingate too was forced
to be patient, kicking his heels in Debra Markos and following
from a distance the movements of his outlying forces,' and in
particular the very risky move against Debra Tabor.
Debra Tabor stood on the road almost half-way between
General Nasi at Gondar and General Frusci at Dessie, linking two
of the three remaining Italian ‘redoubts’. Colonel Angelini its
commander had orders to hold it at all costs. Simonds and
Fitaurari Birru had reached the area on 1 April with their personal
bodyguards and with two Op Centres, led by the dashing young
cavalry subalterns McLean and Pilkington. McLean dashed to
great effect. Helped by 200 men of Dagnew Tessema, he
ambushed various Italian columns, blowing up lorries and killing
100 banda—despite counter-attacks by Farello’s banda in which
several dozen were killed on both sides. ‘It is of interest to note’,
reported Simonds, ‘that the Patriots, having found themselves in

1 Maraventano’s fleeing column was heading north-east for Dessie, pursued by

‘Safforce’ consisting of Bimbashis Thesiger and Riley, Lt. Naylor and No. 3 Op
Centre, and Lt. Rowe and a company ofthe 2nd Ethiopians. A professional soldier Lt.
Colonel Benson of the Royal Ulster Corps had meanwhile arrived in Debra Markos
to take command of and re-form the 2nd Ethiopians, replacing Boyle.
376 THE MILLS OF GOD
a very sticky position, fought with great gallantry and
determination. This was the last attempt the enemy made to
reach Debra Tabor by motor transport from the north.’
Having cut the road from Gondar, Simonds moved east to the
Gaint district intending to cut the road from Dessie too. He
surrounded and besieged all the outlying forts in the area:
Tarragadam, Ifag, and the fort of Deran towards which the
Maraventano column pursued by Bimbashi Thesiger and ‘Saf-
force’ was heading.
This was the country of Lij Johannes, but Simonds was
Wingate’s man, and Wingate the Emperor’s. No question of
encouraging rival claimants here. ‘Lij Johannes’, reported
Simonds briefly, ‘a Pretender to the Throne, who had recently
been active on behalf of the Italians and well supplied with money
arms and ammunition was persuaded to submit to the Emperor
and despatched under guard to Addis.’ This was almost totally
false. Lij Johannes, like all the rebel leaders, had from time to time
had his contacts with the Italians and had, like Ras Abebe Aregai,
accepted supplies from them. But he had certainly never been
active on their behalf. What had happened was that his follower
Essayas, the Oletta cadet, had returned to Burie earlier when
news had reached Beghemder ofthe arrival of Haile Selassie, and
had been sent back by the Emperor with a letter for Lij Johannes
full of fair words and fine promises. Though distrustful of the son
of Ras Makonnen, as any son of Lij Yasu might well be, Lij
Johannes set out with a thousand men from Debra Markos,
accompanied by Essayas and certainly in no sense under arrest.
The news of his impending arrival at Debra Markos, despite
the size of his escort and largely thanks to Essayas’s skilful
negotiation, was bound to imply submission to Haile Selassie.
The Emperor had much to be thankful for. The war was going
well. Admiral Bonetti, attacked by the Free French and the
Indians, had surrendered at Massawa to Colonel Monclar of the
French Foreign Legion. East of the Omo, the Italians, ‘rein-
forced’ by 20,000 men and 20 generals fleeing south from Addis
Ababa, were being chased through the hills and jungles by
columns of KAR and Nigerians heading down from Addis
Ababa, by columns of KAR and the Gold Coast Brigade heading
up from Neghelli, and by ‘Patriots’ rising everywhere. North of
Gondar, following Ras Seyum and his own son, Lij Zaudi’s,
example (and, according to the Italians, influenced by the ‘gift’ of
 THE RETURN OF THE EMPEROR Bye
300,000 Maria Theresa dollars from the British) Dejaz Ayalew
Birru had turned against General Nasi and was moving down to
join Simonds. From Debra Markos the boy Duke of Harar was
flown by the British to Harar to take up official residence in the
Governor's Palace. Best ofall a letter dated 18 April arrived from
Ras Seyum:
To Haile Selassie, Elect of God, Emperor of Ethiopia, Janhoy!
I bow before you in greeting. Thanks be to God, we are well. God
working out His work of kindness has fulfilled the word which he spoke
by man’s mouth that within five years'he would show mercy to
Ethiopia.
And now may God, the doer ofall, satisfy you by enabling you to set
up the standard of Ethiopia now that you have returned to your country.
This was equivalent to formal submission. We do not know what
reply, if any, Ras Kassa had sent to Ras Seyum’s veiled letter; we
do not know what pressure, if any, the British had put on Ras
Seyum. But we may imagine. With Harar, his father’s fief, in the
hands ofhis son, with the danger of Tigrean separatism removed,
with a proclaimed rival Emperor and son ofLij Yasu riding in to
submit, with Ras Hailu posing less of athreat every day as news
ofBritish successes poured in, the Emperor had reason enough to
believe that his Allies were going to respect their promises and
that he himself would soon set foot once again in his capital. With
Wingate’s (and possibly Chapman-Andrews’s) connivance, he
sent Dejaz Makonnen Endalkatchew ahead by plane to Addis
Ababa, to prepare for his return, accompanied by three young
men, Mulugueta Bulli, Negga Haile Selassie, and Abiye Abebe.
Brigadiers Lush and Sandford, brothers-in-law but divided in
their allegiance,! were already there. And Boustead and his men,
who had been sent out to help the attack on Debra Tabor, no
sooner reached their objective Fort Mota than, to their disgust,
they were recalled. They returned to Debra Markos, cursing
Wingate, to find that they were ‘to provide adequate protection
on the road for His Imperial Majesty.’ The final move was near.

1 A reference to a notorious prophecy, word of which had spread throughout

Ethiopia, which was almost universally believed and which indeed proved to be true.
Its gist was that Italian rule would only last five years. 2%
2 They were married to sisters. Lush was DCPO—Deputy Chief Political Officer
—for Eritrea, and as a former Province Governor in the Sudan frankly in favour of
extending British administration. Sandford of course, being like his wife Christine a
devoted supporter of Haile Selassie, held quite the opposite view.
378 THE MILLS OF GOD
Yet there was a final hold-up. On 22 April a telegram arrived
from General Cunningham ordering Wingate to halt any move
of Haile Selassie’s approach to Addis Ababa, by all means ‘short
of force.’ But Cunningham by now was only delaying the
inevitable. For on 9 April Churchill had held a meeting of the
Defence Committee and instructed that the Emperor should be
allowed to return to his capital as soon as possible, and on 19
April a General Telegram had been dispatched to Wavell to the
same effect.
So the Emperor took the decision to set out for his capital; and
though Wingate had not yet had his orders countermanded, he
informed the Emperor that he did not propose to use force to stop
him, and indeed would feel obliged to provide an escort. There-
fore, on 27 April Haile Selassie, escorted by most of Gideon
Force, accompanied by Ras Kassa and indeed by Ras Hailu whose
presence he had ‘insisted’ on, and followed by Li Johannes who
had been promised the governorate of Sidamo, set out from
Debra Markos.
It took him a week to achieve his progress; and at every stage
good news came in. First, of the surrender of Dessie to Pienaar’s
South Africans and Bimbashi Campbell’s patriots; then on the
following day of the fall of Socota, seat of the Wagshum, to Ras
Seyum and Liy Wossene Hailu Kebbede, heir to the Zagwe
dynasty; finally, of the evacuation of Bahr Dar after a battle in
which Colonel Torelli, sallying forth, had been seriously
wounded. At the monastery of Debra Libanos, where Haile
Selassie and Ras Kassa had last prayed when fleeing from the lost
field of Mai Ceu, they prayed again together. At his fiefof Fikke,
Ras Kassa left the Emperor, saw the place ofthe killing of his two
sons, visited their graves, and then with 2,000 men set out to join
Bimbashi Thesiger in the hunting down of the Maraventano
column.
Haile Selassie continued on his way. On 4 May he halted
outside his capital. From the hills of Ankober, Ras Abebe
Aregai’s followers had poured down, and were camped at
Entotto on the northern outskirts. Inside the city General Cun-
ningham and his British and South African officers prepared with
some trepidation for the morrow.
Next day, five years to the day after Marshal Badoglio and his
‘iron-will column’ had driven into the city as victorious con-
querors, Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa. Orde Wingate
 THE RETURN OF THE EMPEROR 379
led the cortége, followed in an open car driven by Bimbashi
LeBlanc by the Emperor himself. The streets were lined, despite
Cunningham’s orders, by thousands upon thousands of Ras
Abebe Aregai’s men. As the Emperor drove to the Great Ghebbi
of Menelik where General Cunningham was waiting with a
Nigerian Guard of Honour to receive him, Ras Abebe Aregai
rode into the city, with his machine-guns and even a few pieces of
mountain artillery, with his Italian prisoners in chains, and his
fifteen-year-old son Daniel leading his army. It is reported that at
the end ofthe religious ceremony which the priests celebrated at
the Great Ghebbi, Abebe Aregai bowed low before Haile Selassie
and said: ‘I am your loyal subject. I never submitted to the
enemy. I never hoped to see you alive again and I am grateful to
God for this day, when I have seen the sun shine.’
These must have been the feelings of almost all the population,
as smiling, ululating, waving British and Ethiopian flags, they
joyously greeted their Emperor on his return. That night, after a
day entirely free from unpleasant incidents of any kind, Haile
Selassie slept again at his own palace, the Little Ghebbi.
And all around ‘the little man’ sleeping—if that night he did
sleep—others slept. The people of Addis Ababa, happy and
drunken; the Italians of Addis Ababa, men, women and children,
half prisoners, half free, much relieved; General Cunningham
relieved too but disgruntled; Wingate content but disappointed
that Gideon Force had not achieved more; Ras Abebe Aregai
hopeful; Ras Hailu without hope. Far away, throughout what
still was to many Africa Orientale Italiana, others slept, or dreamt,
or plotted too: General Platt luxuriously at Asmara, planning his
attack on Amba Alagi, the enemy’s last redoubt; Ras Seyum
down in Lasta surrounded by his men, planning his attack to
anticipate Platt’s; Colonel Maraventano near Deraa pursued by
Thesiger and Ras Kassa; Colonel Angelini in Debra Tabor
besieged by Simonds and Fitaurari Birru; Colonel Torelli back at
Gondar, in hospital; General Nasi more comfortably at Gondar
in the old castle of Fasildas; General Gazzera down in Jimma
comparatively undisturbed by the pinpricks west of the Omo.
Over the seas Wavell and Churchill, Mussolini, Badoglio,
Graziani and De Bono, Sylvia Pankhurst, and all the other men |
and women who had played some part large or small in the affairs
of Ethiopia retired that night with different sentiments: ofjoy,
pride, disappointment, sorrow, or satisfaction at the news that
380 THE MILLS OF GOD
the Emperor of Ethiopia had completed the wearying odyssey
that had led him from the field of Mai Ceu to Addis Ababa, from
Addis Ababa to Djibuti, from Dyibuti to Jerusalem, from
Jerusalem to Gibraltar, from Gibraltar to London, from London
to Geneva, from Geneva to cold exile in Bath and holidays at
Worthing; and then from Bath to London, from London to
Malta, from Malta to Cairo, from Cairo to Wadi-Halfa, from
Wadi-Halfa to Khartoum, from Khartoum to Um Idla, from
Um Idla to Mount Belaya, from Mount Belaya to Burie, from
Burie to Debra Markos, and from Debra Markos back to the
Little Ghebbi that he had built and furnished in the English style a
decade earlier.
 EPILOGUE

THE END OF THE WAR

THE war in East Africa was not, of course, over. There were still
to be heroic, comic, and tragic episodes before the last Italian
surrendered, still political intrigue galore before the Emperor’s
position was totally secured. But there was no longer any chance
of an Italian victory or any real doubt ofHaile Selassie’s eventual
success; the tension ofthe history is gone. So 5 May 1941, the day
of the Emperor’s return, seems as suitable a moment as any to
ring the curtain down.
It is right, however, to draw the curtain briefly aside for a
glimpse at the fate of the actors in this great melodrama.
Before the end of May the Duke of Aosta and General Frusci
(and Gina’s brother with them), besieged at Amba Alagi by
Pienaar’s South Africans from the south and by the Indians in the
north, attacked and harassed and terrorized by Ras Seyum’s
swollen army, surrendered to the British; and in March of the
following year the former Viceroy, POW 1190, died wretchedly
of consumption in a Nairobi hospital.
After Amba Alagi, the South Africans and the sth Indian
Division followed the 4th Indian Division up to the Western
Desert and into the battle against Rommel; leaving only black
colonial troops on the British side to fight the last battles of a
purely African war. The Gold Coast Brigade was held in the
forests north of Neghelli for many weeks by the valiant defence
of General di Pralormo’s men. But as the KAR broke through
from the south and the Nigerians from the north, the whole
Italian position east of the Omo crumbled. West of the Omo
Gurassu Duke, with thousands offollowers, marched on Jimma;
Captain Whalley happily entered Maji (for the Merille success-
fully blocked their KAR opponents); and Mesfin Sileshi and Azaz
Kebbede descended from Lekempti at the head ofhordes of‘last-
minute’ Patriots. General Gazzera and his staff, retreating west-
wards, preferred to surrender to the Belgians and their Congolese
382 EPILOGUE
troops moving up into the highlands from the Baro Salient rather
than to the rebels; no one, despite their fears, was eaten.
Cut off at Debra Tabor, Colonel Angelini surrendered to
McLean and Pilkington and Fitaurari Birru; Pilkington enrolled
Farello’s Wollo Banda (whom General Nasi had described as
his ‘best troops’) under his own command; and McLean did the
same with the 79th Colonial Battalion renamed the ‘79th Foot’.
As for Colonel Maraventano, after epic marching and counter-
marching his column finally surrendered to Wingate and Ras
Kassa —Wingate’s last exploit, before Gideon Force was dis-
solved, and he himself was deprived of command and ordered
back to Cairo, where he attempted suicide. From there, as is well
known, he went to glory and his death, once more under
Wavell’s command, in Burma against the Japanese—a death
that probably deprived the Israeli army ofits first Commander-
in-Chief.
General Nasi held out alone at Gondar till the rains were
passed. He finally surrendered to the composite forces of‘Fluffy’
Fowkes and the Crown Prince Asfa Wossen, and the Patriots of
Beghemder, and Pilkington’s Wollo Banda, and the Estonian
Nurk, and the poetic Bimbashi Sheppard, and McLean’s 79th
Foot, and the ‘Robber Baron’ Dougie Douglas, only after a last
fierce battle by Lake Tana. General Cunningham was appointed
to high command in the Western Desert, where he failed. General
Platt succeeded in ‘liberating’ Madagascar from the Vichy
French. Brigadier Sandford lived for many years outside Addis
Ababa, where the author met him, shortly before his death, in his
goth year.
As for the Ethiopians: how Haile Selassie re-established his
power and rid himself of his British allies; how Ras Imru was
liberated; how a revolt broke out in Tigre and Ras Seyum’s
position was endangered; how Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat
intrigued and was imprisoned; how the Sultan of the Danakil
made his peace; how a false Emperor Theodore arose in the
south-west; how Li Johannes and Haile Selassie Gugsa were
arrested and held, till March 1974, in confinement; how ‘Lij’ Belai
Zelleka and others were hanged; how Wolde Giorgis the sec-
retary became the power behind the throne and was then disgra-
ced; how, later, Ras Seyum and Ras Abebe Aregai and many
others were killed in the Green Room of the Little Ghebbi; how,
still later Blatta Takele died in his old age, machine-gun in hand;
 THE END OF THE WAR 383
how the Emperor out-lived all of his rivals and most of hisown
children only to be overthrown by the army he had himself
created—all this is another story, part of the continuing history of
Ethiopia, and it is not here that it can be told.
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

THESE notes are in no sense exhaustive. What follows is neither a

full list of all the Ethiopians named in the text nor a full account of
the positions, achievements, or lives of those listed. It is simply
an aid designed to help the reader trace a path through what may
have appeared to be the bewildering maze of Ethiopian names
and personages.
Though every effort has been made to be accurate, dates and
appointments should be checked where possible. Comments and
conclusions are of course the author’s own.
Where titles are given, they are either the titles most commonly
used in the text or, in certain cases, the titles by which those
concerned were best known in later life.

I. THE GENERATION OF ADOWA

Emperor MENELIK II
Emperor of Ethiopia from 1889 to 1912
Born in 1844. Menelik’s father, Haile Melakot, became Negus of Shoa
in 1847. When his father died in 1855 Menelik himself was being held at
Magdala as the Emperor Theodore’s hostage. He escaped, and was
proclaimed Negus of Shoa in 1865. He submitted unwillingly to
Theodore’s successor, the Emperor Johannes IV; but on Johannes’s
death at the great battle of Metemma in 1889 immediately proclaimed
himself Emperor. By 1904 he was ailing. In March 1909 he announced
that his heir would be his grandson, Lij Yasu. In October ofthat year he
suffered a stroke and was virtually incapacitated from then till his death
on 12 December 1912.

Empress TAITu
The childless wife of Menelik
Daughter of Ras Batul of Simien and Beghemder, she married Menelik,
her fifth husband, on 29 April 1883 at the age of 27. Following Menelik’s
stroke she tried to seize power for herself and her brother Ras Wule Batul
but was foiled by the Abuna Matteos, who arranged for a Regency to be
proclaimed on 21 March 1910. She died at Entotto on 11 February 1918.
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 385
Ras MAncGasua of Tigre
Ruler of Tigre and rival of Menelik
Mangasha, the bastard son of the Emperor Johannes, was legitimated,
created a Ras, and declared his father’s heir in 1888, the year before
Johannes’s death in battle. But Menelik of Shoa proclaimed himself
Emperor and marched north, securing Mangasha’s submission.
Nevertheless Mangasha was always in a state of semi-rebellion. He was
imprisoned in Menelik’s mountain fortress of Ankober from January
1899 till his death in 1906.

Negus TEKLte Haimonot of Gojjam

Ruler of Gojjam
Created Negus by the Emperor Johannes in 1881, Tekle Haimonot ruled
Gojjam till his death in 1go1. In Johannes’s reign he attacked Menelik,
then Negus of Shoa, but was defeated. On Johannes’s death in March
1889 he pledged loyalty to Menelik and so retained both his title and his
province.

Ras (later Negus) MikaEL of Wollo

The power behind the throne from 1912 to 1916
Queen Workitu of Wollo befriended Menelik when he escaped from
Theodore’s clutches at Magdala. Her stepson Mohammed Ali became
Menelik’s supporter and close friend; and when in July 1876 Menelik
reconquered Wollo for Shoa, Mohammed Ali was appointed its
governor. He was promoted to Ras, became a Christian, took the name
of Mikael, and married Menelik’s eldest daughter, Shoagarad. At
Adowsa he led the feared Galla cavalry. He founded Dessie, the first town
in Wollo and its new capital. Following Menelik’s death he was anointed
Negus on the instructions of his own son, Menelik’s grandson, Li Yasu.
Defeated by the Shoans at the great Battle of Sagalle, he died in captivity
on an island in the Great Lakes on 8 September 1918.

Ras MAKONNEN
Menelik’s well-loved cousin and right-hand man
Grandson of the Negus Sahle Selassie who ruled Shoa from 1813 to
1847. Menelik’s father, the Negus Haile Melakot, and Makonnen’s
mother, Tenagne Worg, were brother and sister. A diplomat as well as a
warrior, he was particularly successful in establishing good relations
with the British after the conquest of Harar in 1887. He visited London
in 1902 and attended the Coronation of Edward VII. His sudden death in
March 1906 almost broke Menelik’s heart.
386 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Wagshum GwancuL of Wag
Ruler of Wag
The Wagshums were descendants of the Zagwe dynasty which had
ruled medieval Ethiopia till roughly 1270, from Roha in Lasta (later
renamed Lalibela in honour oftheir most famous Emperor). Wagshum
Gwangul’s uncle, Wagshum Gobaze, had proclaimed himself Emperor
with the throne name of Tekle Giorgis in 1868, following the Emperor
Theodore’s suicide. He was defeated and deposed by his rival from the
North, the Emperor Johannes. But the Wagshums never entirely
abandoned their pretensions to the imperial throne.
Ras Bitwoded MANGASHA ATIKIN
Governor of Ifrata at the time of Adowa
Appointed Governor ofGojjam in 1901 on the death of the Negus Tekle
Haimonot. Died in I9gIo.
Liquemaquas ABATE
Menelik’s liquemaquas at Adowa
Later, as Ras Abate, he attempted to seize power in Addis Ababa in June
1911, following the death by poisoning of the then Regent Ras Tessema,
two months earlier. His attempt was unsuccessful but his punishment
light.
Abuna MaTTEos
Head of the Coptic Church in Ethiopia
Loyal to the wishes and memory of Menelik, the Abuna exercised great
influence as the most eminent conservative figure in Ethiopia till his
death in 1926 at the age of 83.

2. THE SUCCESSORS OF MENELIK

Liy YAsu
Menelik’s grandson and proclaimed successor
Lij Yasu was virtual ruler of the Empire from the end of the Regency,
eighteen months before Menelik’s death till his own deposition by the
Shoan nobles in October 1916. His mother was Woizero Shoagarad,
Menelik’s elder daughter; his father Ras Mikael of Wollo. Born in 1896,
Li Yasu died in captivity at Garamulata near Harar in November 1935,
on the eve of the Italian invasion.
Empress ZAUDITU
Ethiopia’s only reigning Empress
Second daughter of Menelik, she was born in 1875. Reigned from her
proclamation on 27 October 1916 till her sudden death on 2 April 1930.
Though three times married—the first time at the age of two-and-a-
half—she had no children.
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 387
Ras Gucsa WULE
Husband of the Empress Zauditu
Ruler of Beghemder, grandson of the immensely powerful Ras Batul,
and therefore nephew of the Empress Taitu. Attempted to seize power
in 1930 despite Zauditu’s apparent disavowal. Killed in battle (or,
according to some sources, captured and died in imprisonment shortly
afterwards).
Ras TAFARI MAKONNEN
The future Emperor Haile Selassie I
Born in Harar, where his father Ras Makonnen, Menelik’s cousin, was
governor, on 23 July 1892. Of his mother Woizero Yeshimmabet
(reputed to be the daughter of a Gurage war-slave) little is known.
Educated first by the Catholic Bishop of Harar. Mgr. Jarosseau, and
then at the Menelik II School for Nobles in Addis Ababa. Appointed
Dejaz on his father’s death in 1906. In 1911 given the governorate of
Harar by Ly Yasu.
On 27 September 1916 appointed Ras, Regent and Heir to the Throne
by the Shoan nobles in Addis Ababa. On 7 October 1928 after foiling the
so-called ‘palace conspiracy’ anointed Negus of Ethiopia. Ascended the
imperial throne on 3 April 1930, taking the throne name of Haile
Selassie. Crowned on 2 November 1930. Deposed by the Dergue (the
Co-ordinating Committee of the Armed Forces/the Provisional
Military Government) on 12 September 1974. Died in captivity of
‘circulatory failure’ on 27 August 1975 at the age of 83.

3. MAGNATES, NOBLEMEN, GOVERNORS, COURTIERS, AND OFFICERS

Ras ABEBE AREGAI

Most famous of the Patriot leaders in Shoa and a constant thorn in the Italians’
flesh
Son of the Nevraid Aregai, the religious ruler of Axum, who was
present at the Empress Taitu’s side at the battle of Adowa, and grandson
of Menelik’s Galla general Ras Gobana. Police chief and Balambaras in
Addis Ababa at the time ofthe Italian invasion. Believed to have French
support throughout the occupation. Became a most important figure in
post-War Ethiopia. Machine-gunned to death by Mengistu Neway and
his brother Girmame in the Green Salon ofthe Little Ghebbi in the failed
coup of 1960.
Dejaz ABEBE DAMTEW
Brother of Ras Desta and a Shoan war-leader
At the time of the Italian invasion, governor of the remote southern
province of Gemu Gofa. Active on the Kenya border in 1941.
388 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Dejaz ABERRA KASSsA
Second son of Ras Kassa and leader of the Resistance in Shoa on the Emperor’s
flight
Born circa 1900; married to a daughter of Ras Seyum; ruled his father’s
fief of Salale from its capital Fikke. Thought to have imperial longings.
Planned the attack on Italian-occupied Addis Ababa in the summer of
1936. Shot, treacherously, by the Italians in Fikke.
Dejaz ABERRA TEDLA
Shoan governor of Mai Ceu; and killed at the battle
Lij (later Lieutenant-General) ABlyE ABEBE
Shoan nobleman, married to the Emperor’s second daughter, Princess
Tsahai
Born 1918, son of the Liquemaquas Abebe Atnaf Seged who was killed
with Ras Lul Seged by the Negus Mikael before the battle of Sagalle. In
the early Resistance with Lij Merid Mangasha, he came to England from
Khartoum in November 1938. Though his marriage was short-lived,
Abiye Abebe became an important figure in post-War Ethiopia.
Minister of Defence and Chief
of Staff from 28 February to 22 July 1974,
he was shot by the Dergue on 23 November, ‘Bloody Saturday’,
together with more than fifty other prominent figures.
Dejaz ADAFRISAU
Menz nobleman, warleader of the older generation
Fought at Adowa as a young man. At Dessie with the Emperor as
Commander of the Imperial Guard. Spent Italian occupation at the
monastery of Kidhane Meret in Jerusalem. Came back in with Gideon
Force and the Emperor. Promoted Ras and died, a Crown Councillor,
aged nearly ninety.
Dejaz ADMassu BirRU
Brother of the more famous Ayalew Birru; leading member of the Beghemder
nobility
Governor of Yeggiu at the time of the Italian invasion.
Dejaz AMDE ALI
Wollo nobleman, son of Ras Ali, the Negus Mikael’s general
Dejaz AMDE MIKAEL
Head of the Shoan clan of the Moja
First cousin of the Empress Menen. At the time of the Italian invasion
Governor of Arussi in the south-west. Member of the Crown Council in
1943.
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 389
Li (later Ras Bitwoded) ANDARGATCHEW MeEssal
Ethiopian consul at Djibuti during the Italian invasion and conquest
A Shoan from Salale, and originally a follower of Ras Kassa. After the
War became the second husband ofPrincess Tenagne Worg, Governor-—
General of Beghemder, Chief Representative in Eritrea, and an elder
statesman of the Empire.

Dejaz ASFAWOSSEN Kassa

Third son of Ras Kassa
Married to a daughter of Mesfin Sileshi. Overshadowed by his brother
Aberra and shot, like him, in Fikke by the Italians in the summer of 1936.

Lij (later Ras) ASRATE Kassa

Fourth son of Ras Kassa
Born 1918. Escaped to the Sudan with his mother after the Italian
conquest. Trained with the Crown Prince at Sobat Military Academy in
Khartoum 1940/41. After the war became one ofthe most powerful men
in Ethiopia; it was thought he would be the strong man of the regime
when the Crown Prince inherited or even make a bid for the throne
himself. Shot on ‘Bloody Saturday’, 23 November 1974, by the Dergue,
the fourth son of Ras Kassa to die before a firing squad, the only one to
be executed by his own countrymen.

Dejaz AuRARIS
Shoan nobleman of the older generation
Governor of Menz at the time ofthe Italian invasion. Arrested at Dessie
with the Wollo leaders on ‘conspiracy’ charges during the Battles in the
North. Subsequently became leader of the Resistance in Menz.

Dejaz AYALEW BIRRU

Ruler of the Simien
Born in 1885 into the ruling house of Beghemder, Ayalew married in
1917 Manalabish the daughter of Ras Kassa. He distinguished himself, as
did his brother-in-law Wondossen, at the battle of the plains of Anchim
but was bitterly disappointed when Wondossen rather than he was given
power in Beghemder. Played a waiting game in the time ofthe Italians.

Dejaz BALCHA
One of Menelik’s most famous—and ferocious—generals
Asa young Galla lying, castrated, on the battlefield he was on Menelik’s
orders saved and brought to Court. Commanded the artillery at Adowa.
Thereafter a ferocious provincial governor, particularly in Sidamo, and
a conservative diehard. Imprisoned for two years after his failed coup of
1928, then entered a monastery. Died fighting the Italians in 1937.
390 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

Dejaz BEIENE MERID

Governor of Bale at the time of the Italian invasion
Born circa 1875, son of Dejaz Merid, a former Ligaba of Liy Yasu. He
married a daughter of Haile Selassie presumably born before the
Emperor’s marriage to Menen. She was named Romaneworg. Beiene
Merid was killed at Gojetti with Gabremariam on 19 February 1937. His
son Samson, Haile Selassie’s grandson, is living in exile in London.

Imperial Fitaurari Brrru WOLDE GABRIEL

Shoan warleader of the older generation; one of Ethiopia’s richest landowners
Reputed to be the illegitimate son of Menelik and therefore always
treated with suspicion by the Emperor. In disgrace and provincial exile
at the time of the Italian invasion but recalled, and fought at Mai Ceu.
Spent Italian occupation in Jerusalem. Back with the Emperor and
Gideon Force. The Italians at Debra Tabor eventually surrendered to
him. Created Ras and post-War governor ofKaffa and Jimma. His sons
were hunted down and killed by the Dergue in 1975.
Kenyaz BezIBEH SILESHI
Shoan nobleman; brother of the more famous Mesfin Sileshi
Ras Desta DAMTEW
Shoan nobleman; married to Haile Selassie’s eldest daughter, Princess Tenagne
Worq
Born circa 1898, the son of Fitaurari Damtew, famous for having visited
Russia. Married Princess Tenagne Worg in 1924 and had four daughters
and one son, Li Iskander. Appointed Governor of Sidamo in 1932 in
succession to Birru Wolde Gabriel and founded its two towns, Yirgalem
and Wondo. Killed by the Italians on 24 February 1937.
Fitaurari FIKREMARIAM
Commander of the Crown Prince’s Guard at Dessie; later a Patriot leader
A Shoan from Menz, of the Moja clan. Distinguished himself at the
battle of the plains of Anchim. Mystery surrounds his death. His body
was never found but it is thought that he crawled away to a cave to die in
or about October 1937.
Ras GABRE HiwoTt MIKAEL
Leading member of the ruling house of Wollo; therefore automatically hostile to
and suspected by the Shoans
Dejaz GABREMARIAM
Shoan war-leader of the older generation
Famous for his successful attack on the Italians in 1931 when
Governor-General of Harar and the Ogaden. Replaced on the outbreak
of war by the younger and more progressive Dejaz Nasibu. Killed with
Beiene Merid at the last battle of the war, on 19 February 1937.
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 391
GABRE MASKAL
Ras Imru’s, and later Wingate’s, wireless operator
Dejaz GABREMEDHIN
The aged Shum Tembien
Fitaurari GessessE BELEW
Member of the Gojjami ruling house
His father was Dejaz Belew, one ofthe two legitimate sons of the Negus
Tekle Haimonot. At the time of the Italian invasion besieged the Shoan
garrison in Debra Markos. Died soon after, thought to have been
disposed of by the Italians. His brother Hailu Belew became one of
Goyam’s four major Patriot leaders.
Ras GETACHEW ABATE
Governor of Kaffa at the time of the invasion
His father was the Liquemaquas Abate (see ‘The Generation of Adowa’)
Getachew was created a Ras in 1933. He commanded a column at the
battle of Mai Ceu; went into exile in Jerusalem; but then returned and
submitted to the Italians. After the War he was arrested. ‘I pardon you,’
said Haile Selassie, ‘but I do not know if God will.’ Exiled to a remote
province, he is said to have died of drink.
Tsehafe Taezaz HaILe
Haile Selassie’s ‘Representative in the North’ from 1940 to 1941
Had abandoned the defence of Ad Termaber to the cadets in 1936.
Dejaz Hare Kepsebe of Wag
War-leader of the Army of Wag
Brought up at the court of his uncle Wagshum Gwangul (see ‘The
Generation of Adowa’) who was succeeded by his father Wagshum
Kebbede. Fought in the Tembien, at Mai Ceu, and continued the
struggle after the fall of Addis Ababa. Killed and beheaded by the
Italians.

Emperor HaAI_e SELASSIE

see RAS TAFARI MAKONNEN in the preceding section, “The Successors of
Menelik’.

Dejaz Hate Serassie Guesa of Makalle

The traitor—the only magnate openly to side with the Italians during their
invasion
Son of Ras Gugsa Araya, ruler of eastern Tigre, and therefore rival of
Ras Seyum, the ruler of western Tigre. Married to Haile Selassie’s
favourite daughter, Princess Zenabe Worq, in 1932. (She, however,
died on the eve ofthe Italian invasion.) After the War he was imprisoned
in the Seychelles, Jimma, and Gore, to be released—but only briefly—at
392 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

the time of the Revolution. It is said that by that time the skin of his
wrists had grown over his silver chains.
Ras HaILu
Ruler of Gojjam; and chief collaborator with the Italians after the conquest of
Ethiopia
Born circa 1868, the illegitimate son of Negus Tekle Haimonot (see “The
Generation of Adowa’). Ruled Gojjam from 1907 to 1931. Married
many times, most notably to Woizero Assafalach, sister of the Empress
Taitu—he in his turn being her fourth but not her last husband. After the
War held under house arrest in Addis Ababa where he died in 1951.

Dejaz Harte MARIAM GABRE EGZIABHER

Galla potentate; governor of Wollega—Lekempti
Son of King Kumsa of Wollega who submitted to Menelik, was
baptized, and thereafter styled Dejaz Gabre Egziabher. Though a
loyalist till the Emperor’s departure, Hapte Mariam then became the
moving spirit behind the attempt to set up a British-protected Western
Galla Federation. When that failed he threw in his lot with the Italians;
but died soon afterwards, rumoured to have been poisoned by them.

Dejaz Hapte MIKAEL

Governor ofasmall southern province

Blattengueta HERouy WOLDE SELASSIE

Haile Selassie’s Foreign Minister
Born circa 1879. After 1916 held many important positions as the
Regent’s liberalizing supporter. 1931 Ambassador Extraordinary to
Japan. 1933 Minister of Foreign Affairs. Into exile with Haile Selassie.
Died at Fairfield on 19 September 1938. Rumoured by some to have
committed suicide on discovery of secret correspondence with Italians.
Author of twenty-eight books in Amharic.
Ras IMRU
Member of the ruling house of Shoa
Born circa 1894 and therefore younger than his first cousin once
removed, Imru was brought up in Harar with Haile Selassie. Both
shared early and melodramatic adventures during the struggle against
Li Yasu. On Haile Selassie’s accession Imru was appointed Governor of
Harar; in 1932 he replaced the deposed Ras Hailu as Governor of
Gojjam. In May 1935 he was appointed Regent. In December he
surrendered to the Italians and was imprisoned on Ponza till his release
by the advancing Allies. After the War he was Ambassador both to India
and the United States. In later life he became known for his liberal
land-reforming views. His only son, Lij Mikael Imru, was Prime
Minister with the Dergue’s approval from 22 July to 12 September 1974.
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 393
Ras Imru died peacefully in August 1980 and was given a State Funeral
by the Dergue.
Ras Kassa
The most respected figure among the Shoan nobility
Born in 1881, the son of Hailu of Lasta and via his mother the grandson
of Ras Dargie, brother of the Negus Haile Melakot, Menelik’s father. A
ofSalale near the great monastery of
devout churchman, he ruled the fief
Debra Libanos in north-western Shoa. Went into exile with Haile
Selassie but spent most of the occupation in Jerusalem. Returned with
Haile Selassie and Gideon Force. After the War became a Crown
Counsellor. Died, full of honours, in 1956.

Dejaz Kassa SEBHAT

Tigrean nobleman
Son of Ras Sebhat, of the House of Sabaudagis.

Ras KEBBEDE MANGASHA ATIKIM

Shoan nobleman
Son of Ras Mangasha Atikim (see ‘The Generation of Adowa’). Held
Amba Alagi with his forces during the Battles of the North. Later
submitted to the Italians and became an alcoholic.

Azaz KEBBEDE TESSEMA

Courtier
Fought at Mai Ceu. Spent Italian occupation in Jerusalem. In September
1940 crossed with Brigadier Sandford into Gojjam. Later part of Gideon
Force. After the War became an important bureacrat and in 1960 was
Chief of Staff of the territorial forces. It is widely rumoured that
Mengistu Haile Mariam, the “Comrade Chairman’ of the Dergue and
the present military ruler of Ethiopia, is his illegitimate son.

Dejaz LATIBELU GABRE

Courtier and war-leader
A Bajirond in 1935, he subsequently commanded a column at Mai Ceu.
Retired to his estates during the occupation, though under constant
Italian suspicion. Prominent Senator in post-war Ethiopia. Killed in the
Green Salon at the Little Ghebbi in the 1960 coup attempt.

LORENZO TAEZAZ
One of the Emperor’s bright young men
Born 1900, an Eritrean. ‘Discovered’ by Dejaz Nasibu Emmanuel and
sent to study in France. Married a daughter of Ras Imru. During the
occupation Representative of theGovernment-in-Exile at the League of
Nations—and secretly visited Gojjam and Gondar. In with Gideon
394 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Force. Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1941; President of the Senate 1943.
Died 23 June 1946 in Stockholm.
Bitwoded MAKONNEN DEMISSIE
Respected Shoan nobleman
Born 1889, the son of Ras Demissie, who had been Menelik’s Afanegus.
Married to Lilt Yashashaworgq, Haile Selassie’s favourite niece. Briefly
imprisoned for supporting the Empress Zauditu against the Regent; but
thanks to Yashashaworq released. A Governor of Wollega at the time of
the Italian invasion. Killed at Amba Aradam supporting Ras Mulugueta,
his corpse was cut in two by Major Burgoyne.

MAKONNEN DESTA
Courtier
Born in Gojjam in 1910. Educated Alexandria, Beirut, and Harvard.
Associate editor of progressive newspaper in 1930. Spent occupation in
Cairo. In with Gideon Force and the Emperor. Minister in various
post-War governments. Died 1966.
Dejaz (later Ras Bitwoded) MAKONNEN ENDALKATCHEW
Shoan nobleman, head of the Addisge clan
Tall, highly respected English-style aristocrat, fond of country life,
dogs, firearms—and novel-writing. Had eloped with Lilt Yashasha-
worg, the Emperor’s favourite niece at one stage. Governor ofIllubabor
at the time of the Italian invasion. Spent the occupation in Palestine.
Back in with Gideon Force and the Emperor. Minister ofthe Interior on
the Restoration, then Ethiopia’s first Prime Minister. Died in 1963. His
son, Lij Endalkatchew Makonnen, became in his turn the Emperor’s last
Prime Minister appointed by Haile Selassie in an attempt to stave off the
creeping revolution. He held office from 28 February to 22 July 1974 but
was executed by the Dergue on 23 November.
MAKONNEN HAPTEWOLD
Bureaucrat
A small, shabby, crafty man of a Shoan church family brought to the
Emperor’s notice by Blatta Takele. Director of Commerce at the time of
the Italian invasion. Spent the occupation in Paris. In the late Fifties he
and his brothers dominated political life in the capital. Killed in the
attempted coup of 1960.

Dejaz MAKONNEN WOSSENE

Governor of Wollamo at the time of the Italian invasion
Bitwoded MaNncasHa WUBE
Governor of the third Wollega province at the time of the Italian invasion
A Shoan, son of Menelik’s general Dejaz Wube Atnaf Seged. His was the
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 395
last reserve army, ordered to defend Addis Ababa. His men deserted, he
submitted, but was imprisoned in Italy from 1937 to 1944. President of
the Senate in 1946, he died in 1961.
Dejaz MANGASHA YILMA
Haile Selassie’s nephew
Son of Haile Selassie’s half-brother Yilma; brother of Yashashaworq.
Director-general in the Ministry of War at the time of the Italian
invasion. Killed at Mai Ceu.
Dejaz MAsHAsHA WOLDE
Governor of Cambata at the time of the Italian invasion
Lij) MertiD MANGASHA
Young Shoan nobleman
Born 1912. Married to the daughter of Ras Seyum’s sister. In the
Resistance with Lij Abiye Abebe. After the War ADC to the Emperor,
Governor-General of Beghemder, Minister of Defence, etc. Died 1966,
rumoured to have been poisoned.

Shallaka (later Ras) MESFIN SILESHI

Shoan officer and always a loyal supporter of Haile Selassie
Of noble birth, related to the ruling house of Shoa. Commander of the
modernized Guards battalions at the time of the Italian invasion.
Resistance leader in Shoa till he and Blatta Takele took refuge in the
Sudan. In later life Mesfin became the most powerful and detested figure
in Shoa, immensely rich and by repute immensely corrupt. He was shot
by the Dergue on 23 November 1974 in the dungeons below the Great
Ghebbi.
Kenyaz MoKRIA
Commander of the Imperial Guard in 1934 and again in 1941 with Gideon Force
and the Emperor; a Moja from Menz
Sultan MOHAMMED YAYO
Ruler of the Danakil; his ‘capital’ being Sardo

Ras MULUGUETA
Minister of War and Imperial Fitaurari at the time of the Italian invasion
As a young warrior had fought at Adowa. Involved in all the power
struggles that followed Menelik’s illness, usually on the reactionary
side. Appointed Imperial Fitaurari to replace the disgraced Birru Wolde
Gabriel. Killed by the Galla while retreating from Amba Aradam.
Dejaz Nasinu EMMANUEL
Haile Selassie’s chief collaborator in modernizing Ethiopia
Son ofa courtier of Menelik; follower of Ras Mangasha Atikim and of
396 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
his son Ras Kebbede. Married to the daughter of Fitaurari Babitchev a
White Russian emigré. As leader of the Young Ethiopians stage-
managed the so-called Palace Revolution of September/October 1928
that strengthened the position of the Regent vis-a-vis the Empress and
the conservatives. Governor of Harar at the time ofthe Italian invasion.
Died in exile.
Oot DINKE
Pro-Italian Somali leader of the Ajuran and appointed Sultan of Sciavelli
OMAR SAMANTHAR
Anti-Italian Somali; Mijurtin clansman who passed over to the Ethiopians

Ras SEYUM
Ruler of western Tigre
Born 1887, son of Ras Mangasha (see ‘The Generation of Adowa’) and
grandson of the Emperor Johannes. Inevitably as heir to the Tigrean
imperial line always a potential rival of any Shoan Emperor. Governor
of western Tigre from 1910 to 1935 and Governor of all Tigre, despite
his submission to the Italians and complex role in the Liberation, from
1947 till his death in 1960 by machine-gun in the Green Salon ofthe Little
Ghebbi. His son, Ras Mangasha Seyum, who ruled Tigre after his death
and was married to Haile Selassie’s eldest granddaughter, Aida Desta,
was considered a potential Emperor in late 1974; but is now living in
exile between the Sudan and Europe. Aida Desta is still in the Dergue’s
prison.
Fitaurar1 SHIFFERAW
Governor of the Ogaden at the time of the Italian invasion; Shoan nobleman
Fitaurar1 SHIFFERAW
Ayalew Birru’s advance-guard commander at the time of the Italian invasion.
Killed in battle.
TAFERE WORQ KIDANE WOLD
Interpreter at the British Legation at the time of the Italian invasion
Private Secretary to Haile Selassie 1941-55. Then, as Minister of the Pen
and subsequently as Minister of the Palace, played a major role in
Ethiopian power politics.
Blatta TAKELE WOLDE HAWARIAT
Childhood companion and lifelong bane of the Emperor
Born 1900 in Beghemder; related to the Negus Mikael of Wollo; his
grandmother was a Menz Shoan. In the Twenties a progressive and a
supporter of the Regent. Resistance leader—and also a Republican.
Kantiba of Addis Ababa, 1942; imprisoned 1942 to 1945; Vice Afenegus
1945; imprisoned 1947 to 1954; Afenegus 1957 to 1961; imprisoned 1961
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 397
to 1966. Three years after his release Blatta Takele, by then an old man,
attempted to blow up the Emperor with a land-mine on the Sabatu road
and died, machine-gun in hand, when the plot failed and his ghebbi in
Addis Ababa was surrounded.
Dejaz WANDERAT
Shoan nobleman from Marabete
Born circa 1854. Fought at Adowa. Died at the battle of Mai Ceu aged
nearly eighty.
Wopajo ALI
The Crown Prince’s tutor
Virtual governor of Wollo at the time ofthe Italian invasion. Wounded
at Amba Aradam. Deported from Addis Ababa after Yekatit 12 and died
in hospital in Sardinia.
WoLpDE Giorcis WOLDE JOHANNES
Bureaucrat
After the War involved in a long-running power struggle with Tafere
Worg Kidane Wold by whom he was eventually displaced. Minister of
the Pen 194I to 1955.

Bitwoded WoLpE TsaDDIK

President of the Provisional Government in the south-west after the Emperor’s
flight

Dejaz WONDOSSEN Kassa

Eldest son of Ras Kassa
Distinguished himself as a war-leader at the battle of the plains of
Anchim. Fought with his father in the Battles of the North. Led the early
Resistance in Lasta where he was killed by the Italians.
Dejaz YIGEZU BEHAPTE
Courtier
Son of Negradas Behapte, a slave in Menelik’s mother’s household.
1918, Minister of Commerce, Kantiba of Addis Ababa, promoted
Dejaz, and married to Lij Yasu’s ex-wife Sable Wongel. Rumoured to
suffer from leprosy. In Palestine during the Italian occupation. His son
Colonel Tamrut Yigezu became governor-general of Beghemder.
YILMA DERESSA
Wollega Galla nobleman
Born 1907, educated partly in England. During the occupation a
supporter of Dejaz Hapte Mariam Gabre Egziabher and a moving spirit
in the Western Galla federation. After the War a figure of considerable
importance, reputedly loyal to the Emperor.
398 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Dejaz ZAuDI ASFAU DARGHIE
Member of the Shoan ruling house
Born 1890. Great-grandson of the Negus Sahle Selassie and grandson of
Ras Dargie. Always suspect as a potential rival by Haile Selassie and
therefore ‘exiled’ to a small governorate in the provinces. Became a
leader of the Shoan Resistance. Refused to cross into the Sudan with
Blatta Takele and Mesfin Sileshi but later forced to submit.

4. HAILE SELASSIE’S FAMILY

Empress MENEN
Wife of Haile Selassie
Granddaughter of the Negus Mikael of Wollo. Born 1891. Her parents
were Woizero Sehin, Mikael’s eldest daughter, and the Jantirar Asfau of
Ambasel. She married her fourth husband, Dejaz Tafari Makonnen as he
then was, in July 1912 on Liy Yasu’s orders, after eloping from her
previous husband, Ras Lul Seged, by whom she had had one child. (Ras
Lul Seged was later killed in battle by the Negus Mikael.) The Empress
died in 1962.

Princess TENAGNE WORQ

Haile Selassie’s eldest child and a notoriously strong character
Born January 1913. Married first to Ras Desta Damtew and then to Ras
Andargatchew Messai. She herself was, like many princesses of the
imperial house, imprisoned by the Dergue; but she has still not, in early
1984, been released.

Mered Azmatch (Crown Prince) AsrFaA WossEN

Haile Selassie’s eldest and only surviving son
Born July 1916. In 1927 appointed Governor of Wollo with the title of
Mered Azmatch; and remained governor till the Italian capture of
Dessie. Married first to Walata Israel, Ras Seyum’s daughter, by whom
he had one daughter, Princess Ijjagayehu. (She died in the Dergue’s
prison.) Married secondly to Dejaz Abebe Damtew’s daughter,
Madfarish Worq, by whom he had three daughters and one soni, Prince
Zara Yacob. Never close to his father. Played an ambiguous role in the
attempted coup of 1960. Suffered a massive stroke in 1973 and was in
London for treatment at the time ofhis father’s deposition. Appointed
‘King ofEthiopia’ by the Dergue; but, wisely, never returned to take up
this (temporary) position. The monarchy was formally abolished by the
Dergue on 21 March 1975. Asfa Wossen, still a very ill man, is living
with his family in exile in London.
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 399

Princess ZENABE WORQ

Haile Selassie’s second daughter
Born July 1917. Married to Haile Selassie Gugsa. Died March 1933.
Princess TSAHAI
Haile Selassie’s youngest daughter
Born October 1919. Married to Abiye Abebe. Died in childbirth 1942.
Prince MESFIN MAKONNEN
Duke of Harar
Born October 1923. Married to Sara Gizau ofTigre and had four sons.
Died May 1957.
Prince SAHLE SELASSIE
Haile Selassie’s third and youngest son
Born February 1931. Married to Mahtsante Habte Mariam of Wollega
and had one son. Died April 1962.
[Of the Emperor’s six children, four—the four youngest—predeceased
him.]

5. CLERGY AT THE TIME OF THE ITALIAN INVASION

Abuna CyrRILLos
Successor to the Abuna Matteos. Remained in Addis Ababa

Echege SAuIROS
Went to Jerusalem, into exile
Abba ABRAHAM Bishop of Gojjam
The only Bishop to collaborate with the invaders
Abba Isaac Bishop of Tigre
Abba Mikaet Bishop of Gore
Refused to submit. Shot by the Italians at Gore
Abba Petros Bishop of Dessie
Co-ordinated the early Shoan resistance. Shot by the Italians in Addis Ababa

6. PATRIOT LEADERS AGAINST THE ITALIAN OCCUPATION

Many ofthose mentioned in section 3 above or section 7 below were also

leaders of the Resistance.

In Shoa
HaiLe MARIAM Mammo
Killed by the Italians
400 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

In Wolisso

GurRAssu DUKE
Raised an immense following of ‘last-minute Patriots’ as the Italians crumbled
OLONA DINKEL
Killed by the Italians

In Gojjam
Dejaz MANGASHA JIMBIRRE
Married to Ras Hailu’s much-married daughter, Sable Wongel; ruler of Faguta

Dejaz NEGASH BEZIBEH

Ofthe ruling house of Gojjam; grandson of Ras Bezibeh, legitimate son of the
Negus Tekle Haimonot
After the War Negash became President of the Senate and Bitwoded. In
1951 the Bitwoded Negash was involved in a plot to assasinate Haile
Selassie. Gurassu Duke, approached for support, informed the court;
and the Colonel of the Imperial Guard, Mengistu Neway, arrested the
conspirators at bayonet point. Tried and condemned, Negash was
pardoned by Haile Selassie but ordered to live under house arrest at
Jimma.

Lij (later Ras) Hattu BELew

Of the ruling house of Gojjam
Son of Dejaz Belew, the second legitimate son of the Negus Tekle
Haimonot; and brother of Gessesse Belew. Rival in eastern Gojjam of:

‘Li’ BeELAI ZELLEKA

Of low birth but a skilled guerrilla fighter
Induced by Ras Hailu to allow the Maraventano column to escape across
the Blue Nile. After the War involved in what became known as ‘the
Gojjam Patriots’ Plot’ together with Mammo Hailu, the great-nephew
of Ras Hailu who had once been an important banda commander. He,
Mammo, and other co-conspirators were sentenced to death in 1945 and
hanged on Janhoy Meda in Addis Ababa. These hangings caused much
resentment against the Emperor.

Fitaurari TAFFERE ZELLEKA of Belaya

Dejaz Mangasha Jimbarre’s right-hand man

Fitaurar1 WorKU of Kwara

The ‘One-Eyed’. Killed in battle by the Italians
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 401

In Armachecho

AYANE CHEKOL
Minor Chieftain
Brrre—E ZAGAYE
Very young, ambitious to become Governor-General of Beghemder in place of
the dead Wondossen Kassa
WuBNEH AMoRAW ‘the Hawk’
Impressive leader
Notorious for having tried to hang Blatta Takele in 1939 on the
Emperor’s apparent orders; and for having shot a group of Italian
soldiers from the top of a tree. After the War promoted Ras.

In Beghemder
Dejaz ADANE MAKONNEN of Tseggede
Much feared by the Italians
In February 1940 killed Major Loy, commander of the 14th Colonial
Battalion.

Fitaurar1 MesFIN Reppa of Wolkait

An old man, extremely religious and courteous
Lij Wossene of Wag
The son of Dejaz Haile Kebbede
After his father’s beheading continued the struggle, raiding from across
the Takazze with his mother Woizero Shoanish and his father’s
lieutenant, Fitaurari Hailu Kibret. Badly wounded in autumn 1939,
though first killing Major Tedesco, commander of the 24th Colonial
Battalion.
NecAsH WorKINEH of the Upper Simien
Raised over 5,000 men
A highly-ambitious balabat he styled himself ‘Prince of the Simien’. In
December 1940 fought a pitched battle with Lij Wossene’s men—which
resulted in many casualties on both sides.
Dejaz DAGNEW TESSEMA
Active around Debra Tabor
Born 1908, originally a follower of Ayalew Birru whom his
French-educated mother took as her second husband. Fought in the
Shire; submitted; joined a banda but then rebelled with his brothers in
June 1938. Intelligent, courageous, and disciplined. Captured two
Italian colonels, then attacked by sixteen battalions.
402 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

Lij JOHANNES
The son of Lij Yasu
Tempted to proclaim himself Emperor. Offered the position of Negus
of Beghemder at one stage by the Italians. Approached also by Blatta
Takele who (Mesfin wrote to Bath) wished to use him as a pawn prior to
setting up a Republic. Despite all these intrigues generally active in the
Resistance in Beghemder. Involved in a post-war plot in 1942, he was
exiled to Jimma. It is uncertain whether he is still alive.

Other Sons of Lij Yasu involved in the Resistance

Li) GIRMA
Held out in Gemu Gofa till, with his followers, he took refuge in Kenya where
he died in 1941
Lij MELEKE TSAHAI
The ‘Little Negus’.
Crowned Emperor at the Three Ambas by either Abebe Aregai or Haile
Mariak Mammo. Died in 1938.
Li) MENELIK
Supported by the French
His mother was probably a Danakil. Last heard ofin 1971, farming near
Harar.

FAUEADERSSOR THES Ol Eas@Ag CAD EMS

ABEBE TAFARI
Commander of one machine-gun company
AMAN ANDOM
Later, briefly, the first non-imperial Head of State of Ethiopia
As General commanding the Third Division, Aman Andom, an
Eritrean and a Protestant, won great fame in 1963 to 1964 in the brief war
against Somalia. He became known as the ‘Lion of the Ogaden’, but was
relegated by the Emperor to the Senate. Minister of Defence and Chief
of Staff in the last two Cabinets of Imperial Ethiopia, he became
Chairman of the Council of Ministers on 12 September 1974
immediately following the Emperor’s deposition. On 15 November he
refused to sign an order for summary executions submitted by the
Dergue. The Dergue convened on 22 November; and on their orders
Aman Andom was shot that afternoon with two members ofthe Dergue
‘resisting arrest’.
ASSEFA ARAYA
Commander of the second machine-gun company of the Cadets
 BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 403

EssAYAS GABRE SELASSIE

Commander of one of the two Cadet battalions
In contact with Lij Johannes in the Resistance. Later a Lieutenant-
General and Senator. Shot by the Dergue on ‘Bloody Saturday’, the day
following Aman Andom’s killing, in the wave of summary executions
ordered by the Dergue.
KIFLE NAsIBU
Brigade commander of the Cadets
Son of Dejaz Nasibu Emmanuel. Later one of the leaders of the ‘Black
Lion’ Resistance movement. Surrendered with Ras Imru to the Italians.
Executed by them in the wave of executions following Yekatit 12.
Necca Halt_e SELASSIE
Chief of Staff of the Cadets
Major-General in 1955, Governor-General of Beghemda in 1962. Now
living in exile in England.
MENGIsTU NEWAY
Military leader of the 1960 attempted Guards coup
Trained at Khartoum in 1940 to 1941 with Asrate Kassa, Merid
Mangasha, Aman Andom, and Mulugueta Bulli. Colonel and then
Commander of the Guard as Major-General. Staged the 1960 coup—the
moving spirit behind which was his brother Girmame—while Haile
Selassie was on a State visit to Brazil. Tried on 10 February 1961,
Mengistu was hanged in Addis Ababa on 30 March.
MutucuetA BULLI
Commander of the second Cadet battalion
A Sidamo Galla and the only Galla cadet. Spent the occupation in Djibuti
and Kenya; back in with Gideon Force and the Emperor. Commander of
the Imperial Guard and Major-General till replaced by Mengistu Neway
in April 1956. Killed in the Green Salon in 1960 by the man who replaced
him.
 SOURCES AND*CGHAP PERNOTES

ConsTRAINTS ofspace have caused almost all of the notes and references to
be eliminated. Instead I have attempted to give my general written sources
chapter by chapter and to tie these in with the bibliography that follows—
itself much curtailed. This method is not totally satisfactory because there 1s
not a source given for every incident or quotation or fact. On the other hand
this is a book, not a thesis. The general reader will, I think, prefer some
indication of the value of the various sources that can be consulted, and of
their quality and contents, to an exhaustive series of factual footnotes.
Specialists and researchers on the other hand will have enough indications to
point them in the right direction.
All sources given capital letters under the chapter notes that follow are
listed in the bibliography. Where the author’s name is followed by a
figure—e.g. STEER (2)—it refers to the second book listed under Steer’s
name. Common sense and a process ofelimination must guide the reader to
the appropriate section of the bibliography. Where there is an English-
language edition of an Italian work I have given that as the reference rather
than the original. As regards articles and unprinted papers or works, I have
listed only those that I have used extensively myself.
In addition to the published or privately-printed sources I have made
extensive use of the files in the Public Record Office—particularly War
Diaries, Consular Reports and captured Italian documents. It is much more
difficult to consult the ‘official’ Italian archives of this period, many of which
still contain very sensitive material; but I was allowed in certain more-or-less
strictly military cases to do so. Ethiopian archives do—or did—exist; but
permission to see them was not granted to me and (judging by the private
papers I had translated from Amharic) I doubt their value as records offact.
St. Antony’s College, Oxford, has a large collection of documents and
source material on the whole period. The Haile Selassie | University theses
listed in the last section of the bibliography are presumably still in Addis
Ababa and at the renamed university. Indeed the great difficulty has been not
the lack of source or published material but the vast quantity of both.
As regards the notes that in certain cases follow or embroider the chapter
sources, these are an eclectic collection indeed. I have chosen to elaborate
within the limitations of the space allowed me by the publishers on the
points or personages that particularly interested me; and hope that my
choice will coincide with that of many, if not most, readers.

PROLOGUE THE BATTLE OF ADOWA I896

There 1s a plethora of books, articles, and memoirs in Italian on the Battle of
Adowa but very little, naturally enough, in any other language. BERKELEY’s
book, though published in 1902 and therefore rather too close to the events
described, is by far the most useful. Richard Pankhurst’s article in the
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 405

Ethiopian Observer of 1957 gives, as is always the case with his articles, full
and exhaustive references. Most of the direct quotations are taken from
Lemmt's Letters and Diaries or from MENARINI on Dabormida’s brigade.
As for the Ethiopian side, the Amharic chronicles are, as always, more
biblical than realistic in tone. MATHEW and Wy pe between them give most
ofthe picturesque detail. For events leading up to Adowa, Cont Rossint is
by far the best Italian source. PETRIDES wrote a penegyric on Le Héros
d’ Adowa—his hero being, rather surprisingly, Ras Makonnen, Haile Selas-
sie’s father.

Dr. Neruzzini was the Italian peace envoy to the Emperor Menelik. The
feared Ethiopian invasion of Eritrea did not take place. A peace treaty was
signed in October 1896. The total independence of Ethiopia was acknow-
ledged, Adigrat evacuated and handed over to Ras Makonnen, the prisoners
restored, and the boundary between the Empire of Ethiopia and the Colony
of Eritrea fixed at the River Mareb. For the next forty years there were
surprisingly few attempts by the Italians in Eritrea to interfere in the affairs
of the Empire. But Adowa was not forgotten.

CHAPTER I EMPEROR OF ETHIOPIA

There is no decent biography ofHaile Selassie. His own Autobiography was

published by Oxford University Press for the School of Oriental and
African Studies in 1976, perhaps for diplomatic reasons; it yielded little.
Unfortunately only Haile Selassie could, had he so wished, have given the
real story behind so many events that will now always remain mysterious or
confused. Mrs SANDFORD’s (2) biography is merely a less-good repeat
performance of her previous useful but uncritical work on Ethiopia.
MosLey’s (2) is very uneven, though full of good things. Princess YILMA was
the granddaughter of George Bell, a friend of Menelik’s, and her biography,
published early in 1936, is much more informative than one might expect.
Professor Richard GREENFIELD of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, is generally
informative on the whole period, and excellent on the life and character of
Ras Imru, Haile Selassie’s cousin. Professor Harold Marcus ofthe Univer-
sity of Michigan has written a short biography of Menelik but there is no
book specifically devoted to either Zauditu or Lij Yasu that I know of.
The general works that cover the period are of unequal value. Probably
the most detailed in tracing Ras Tafari’s rise to power and the immensely
complex regional and provincial politics is Zout’s. Mostey (2) has
apparently had access to sources that give a totally different—and con-
vincing—accounnt of the great Battle of Sagalle from those that appear
elsewhere; but, infuriatingly, gives no hint as to what those sources are.
Dr. ZERVOS’s immense book is invaluable for its detailed account of
provincial affairs, of foreign legations and communities, and of the Ethio-
pian air force. ZOLI (1) and (2) is also indispensable. Dr PRoROK fora gossipy
picture and Dutron (for Balcha) are helpful. But the best impressionistic
picture of the extraordinary cosmopolitan atmosphere of Addis Ababa,
which lent itselftovituperative satire, is that given by the French romancier,
Henri De MonrrieD, who hated intensely both the capital and the new
406 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

Emperor, largely because he and Tafari had fallen out over a profitable arms
deal. I have listed most of the series of novels and chronicles in which DE
MonrreID describes his own experiences in and around the Red Sea;
unreliable as to facts, the atmosphere created is brilliant.
The quotations on pages §, 13 are taken from Wilfred THEsiGER’s brilliant
and much-admired Arabian Sands—which ofcourse only deals very inciden-
tally with Ethiopia. The Thesiger family have had extraordinary connec-
tions with the country. Wilfred’s grandfather was attached to Lord Napier’s
expedition to Magdala which led to the eventual suicide of the Emperor
Theodore. His father was British Minister in Addis Ababa; and he himself
after the various exploits described later in this book went on, briefly, to
become a Political Officer in British-administered Ethiopia—a role which he
detested.
Waugh in Abyssinia by Evelyn WaAuGH was partly reprinted in Chapter Two
of When the Going was Good under the title “A Coronation in 1930’ from which
the quotations in this chapter are taken. Waugh was later as ashamed as such
a man could be of his overtly pro-Fascist and anti-Ethiopian stand. ‘These
books’, he stated Jater, ‘have been out of print for some time and will not be
reissued.’ See Christopher SykeEs’s friendly biography. Sir Sidney Barton,
the British Minister at the time of Haile Selassie’s Coronation, is of course
the original of the Envoy in Evelyn Waugh’s famous novel Black Mischief—
there known as Sir Samson Courtenay. In the novel his daughter Patience
fell for Basil Seal by whom she was, sadly, eaten. In real life Miss Esme
Barton (now Mrs. Kenyon-Jones) became the second wife of George Steer;
she is one of the few British citizens still to have a house in Addis Ababa.
The description of Ras Seyum is from George STEER (1).
The Belgian Embassy papers were my source for this and all subsequent
chapters’ information on the Belgian Military Missions, both Official and
Unofficial.

Hopson, the eccentric British Consul at Maji, once drove a golf ball all the
way from his post to the capital, Addis Ababa. He went on to become
Governor of the Falklands—and of the Gold Coast. His widow, Lady
Hodson, a personal friend of the author, married her husband after his
Ethiopian sojourn.

CHAPTER 2 FASCIST ITALY AND ITS COLONIES

For a fascinating portrait of Fascist Italy see MACGREGOR-HASTIE. FINER

traces the rise of the Fascist state. The Aosta archives, as far as I know, have
never been made available. For the Blackshirts and the militia see VERNI.
Italy’s role in Libya and her part in the First World War are covered in
innumerable books and articles in Italian.
TREVASKIS, though primarily concerned with the British military
administration in Eritrea, gives a useful background study of the Italian
colony. I know of no general history of Tigre or of the Danakils. Lewis is
excellent on the Somalis, the pet hate of Sir Richard Burton the explorer
who described their character in a famous epithet: ‘constant in one
thing—inconsistency’.
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 407

CHAPTER 3 THE ‘INCIDENT’ AT WALWAL

The best accounts of the ‘incident’ are given by FARAGO (2) and STEER (1),
both more reliable than Cimmaruta. The author visited Walwal by
night—an unforgettable experience.
See De Bono for Mussolini’s plans. Mussolini’s relations with Hitler are
exhaustively covered in The Brutal Friendship by F. W. DEAKIN, Churchill’s
protégé and the friend of Antonin Besse, the Red Sea trader and arms-dealer
who founded—and funded—St. Antony’s College, Oxford, of which
Deakin was the first Warden.
Besse played a certain part in the resistance to the Italian occupation
himself. See the article by Weerts. It is of course largely because of the
interests of their founder that St. Antony’s possesses such a diverse collec-
tion of documents and archives on the Italians and Ethiopia.

In his Origins of the Second World War, A. J. P. TAYLOR writes of the ‘events
centring on Ethiopia’. ‘Their outward course is clear, the background and
significance still somewhat of a mystery ... Revenge for Adowa was
implicit in Fascist boasting; but no more urgent in 1935 than at any time
since Mussolini came to power in 1922. Conditions in Italy did not demand a
war. Fascism was not politically threatened, and economic circumstances in
Italy favoured peace, not the inflation of war.’
Part of the answer to the ‘mystery’ lies hidden in A. J. P. Taylor’s own
analysis. It was precisely because there was no political or even economic
crisis in Italy that Mussolini’s thoughts turned to foreign conquest. For
many dictators the achievement of power is in itself the ultimate objective;
this was distinctly not the case with the Duce. A. J. P. Taylor [cf. his
conclusion quoted on page 43] seems to agree.

CHAPTER 4 PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

From this point on the spate of books published in 1936/1937 by professional

writers, journalists, and military men who went out either to Eritrea or
Addis Ababa and returned to write their ‘on the spot’ accounts floods the
presses both in England and in Italy.
The Belgian Embassy papers have again been invaluable for some aspects
of this period of preparation on the Ethiopian side. On the other hand De
Bono is my main source for preparations in Eritrea and GRazIANI (1) for
preparations in Somalia. Of all the rest by far the most valuable, best-
written, and informative account is George STEER’s Caesar in Abyssinia,
particularly for the Ogaden and the Emperor. General Vircin’s memoir
gives a useful account ofthe initial Swedish involvement and ofthe founding
of the Oletta Cadets. Zot (3) continues to give full details of Ethiopian
appointments and shum-shir' largely based on Italian Consular reports which
were not made available to me. The Walwal negotiations and the reactions in

| The expressive Ethiopian phrase for the continual reshuffle by which the
Emperor tried to prevent any ofhis subordinates developing a fixed power
base. i
408 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

Europe must be referred to in almost every memoir and history of the

period. See KirKPATRICK for acerbic comments on Drummond in Rome;
and of course CIANO.

Sylvia Pankhurst’s son, Dr. Richard Pankhurst, was the Director of the
Institute of Ethiopian Studies when I was in Addis Ababa. His bibliographi-
cal studies and his advice as to sources have been of immense help to me, as
to all students of Ethiopia. He has written about his mother in the Ethiopian
Observer which for many years he and his wife edited till the 1974 Revolution
closed it down. The best general account of her life and background that I
know of is MITCHELL’s.

CHAPTER § INVASION

For the Italian invasion the memoirs of the various Italian commanders-in-
chief—DeE Bono, GRAZIANI, BADOGLIO—are supplemented by the accounts
of their own divisional and brigade commanders, namely Bastico, FRuscl,
PESENTI, etc.
All these and other sources have been carefully correlated and supplemen-
ted by Der Boca in his comparatively recent (1969) work published both in
Italy and in America, which by contrast to that of his predecessors has a
rather anti-patriotic slant. Though this invaluable study technically covers
the years 1935 to 1941, it concentrates on the invasion and the succeeding
battles and is sketchy on the rest.
A fascinating picture of Ethiopia as a whole and of the Red Cross side in
particular is given by Major Gerald Burcoyne’s letters and papers. His wife
Clarissa went out years after his death and traced, successfully, what
happened to her husband: she then proceeded to publish his letters and the
results of her own investigation in the Ethiopian Observer. Had space
permitted I would have liked to have quoted extensively from these in an
appendix.
STEER (1) is, as before, by far the best source for the Ogaden. For ‘Tamm’s
Boys’ see Tjanst Hos Negus by Captain Viking Tamm (Stockholm 1936)
whom Christianne Hojer kindly translated for me.
The famous Italian song, still familiar to most Italians, that the invading
troops sang as they marched into Ethiopia ran as follows—
Faccetta Nera Dusky little face
Bell’ Abissina Lovely Abyssinian Damsel
Che gia l’ora s’avvicina For the hour is near
Quando saremo When we will be
Vicino a te At your side
Noi ti Daremo We will bring you
Un’ altra Patria Another Fatherland
E un altro Re And another King.

CHAPTER 6 THE ETHIOPIAN COUNTER-ATTACK

After De Bono’s departure BADOGLIO’s account naturally takes up the

running as the main ‘official’ Italian source for the campaign in the North. It
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 409
suffers from the usual defects of such accounts, chiefofwhich is the lack of
frankness, but compensates (thanks: to the Italian wireless interceptions)
with its textual quotations of Haile Selassie’s messages. On the Ethiopian
side the best authority is KONOVALOFF who was a fascinated observer at the
Tembien and, later, at Mai Ceu. Though his facts and figures need to be
checked against other sources, his descriptions and atmospherics are totally
convincing.
STEER (I) is invaluable—not only for the southern front but also for his
general picture of Haile Selassie at Dessie, to which BurGoyNE adds many
details.
POLSON NEWMAN, FARAGO and FuLter, all of whom were reporting the
war from the Italian side are valuable—unlike the journalists and writers on
the Ethiopian side, who were utterly frustrated in their efforts to get
anywhere near the fighting. FULLER is the more objective, as befits a military
historian; but Porson Newman, though excessively pro-Italian, gives
plenty ofuseful detail in his accounts ofthe fighting. MATTHEWS is biased; as
is HARMSWORTH. MAKIN’s is a useful background account.
Dr. Nystrom was called up to attend Ayalew Birru and I have drawn on
the vivid description ofthe Criniti battle given in his book Med St Giorgis pa
dodsritt (Stockholm, 1937). Det Boca, who interviewed Ras Imru exten-
sively, is most useful here—and on the question of mustard gas.

The use of mustard gas—diclorodietilsulphur—was forbidden by the

Geneva protocol of 17 January 1926 which Italy had signed. The decision to
use it was not taken lightly by the Italians, and great efforts were made by
Italian diplomats in Europe to discredit the reports of journalists and the
complaints that Ethiopia laid before the League. These efforts were so
successful that even today many Italians quote, perhaps without realizing
the source, LEssona’s Memoirs, and his claim that only three bombs were
used and on only one occasion—to avenge the beheading ofthe Italian pilot
Minniti captured by the Ethiopians on the southern front. It is true that this
was the first occasion on which the gas was used, and even then Mussolini
did not give permission lightly. A cable came from Graziani requesting
permission for ‘maximum liberty of action for employ asphyxiating gases’.
Mussolini replied: ‘Agreed employ gas in cases where Your Excellency
considers it necessary for supreme reasons defence.’ It was however
certainly not the first and last occasion on which gas was used but rather the
first of a long series. Leaders and generals in war quickly overcome their
humanitarian scruples; though it is only fair to emphasize that mustard gas
was not poison gas. It burnt and maimed but it did not kill. Eventually the
Ethiopians were to get as used to it as they had become to bombs. It was their
mules and cattle who died from grazing on pastures contaminated by the
gas, a disaster which was just as serious for their armies.

CHAPTER 7 THE BATTLES IN THE NORTH

Gerald BurGOYNE gives the account of the Bitwoded Makonnen Demissie,

and his wife Clarissa tells how he and Ras Mulugueta met their deaths.
410 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

See also in addition to the sources previously cited STARACE and

TOMASELLINI.

The Bitwoded Makonnen’s widow, the Princess Yashasha Worg, had his
body returned to Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa after the war. The
priests would not explain why the tomb is so much smaller than those ofthe
other war-heroes.

CHAPTER 8 MAI CEU

Ras Imru’s frantic cable from Gojjam and Haile Selassie’s depressed reply are
quoted by Bapoctio. For the Gondar column see STARACE’s unintentionally
amusing account. The Wollo Plot can only be deduced from scattered
references.
The best account of the battle of Mai Ceu from the Ethiopian side is
undoubtedly that of the only European observer with the Emperor’s forces,
Konova torr. On the Italian side BADOGLIO gives a very different account to
PESENTI (1).

According to PESENTI who was commanding the First Eritreans, the first
Ethiopian column, 15,000-20,000 strong, was led by Ligaba Tasso and Ras
Kebbede; the second column, 30,000—3 5,000 strong, by Dejaz Adefrisau and
Ras Getachew; and the third column by Fitaurari Birru Wolde Gabriel. The
Emperor had at the Pass of Agumberta 3,000 men and 300 machine-guns
with him; behind him at Quoram lay Kenyaz Mokria with 1,200 men and
artillery; and to the left, in reserve between Socota and Quoram, Ras Kassa
and Ras Seyum and Dejaz Haile Kebbede with 6,000 men.
Again according to Pesenti the Guard did not attack until after midday
and was led by Dejaz Aberra Tedla. He puts the first enemy attack by all
three columns almost simultaneously at dawn, the second at 10 a.m.,
followed by a counter-attack put in by the Second Eritreans, and the third
after midday. It was at 2.30 p.m. in the afternoon that his own First Eritreans
counter-attacked. His book was published in August 1937 and must there-
fore have been written soon after the events, which probably makes the
details more reliable than BADOGLIO’s. But battles, and particularly the
enemy order of battle, are very confusing, even for generals:

CHAPTER 9 APRIL 1936

See esp. Tamm for an account ofthe last-ditch defence at Ad Termaber and a
general description of feelings in Addis Ababa.

Of the Oletta cadets who survived the Italian occupation many were to
play an important part in post-war Ethiopia—particularly Mengistu Neway
who as Commander of the Bodyguard troops led the attempted coup in
1960 during the Emperor’s absence abroad which is now seen as the
precursor of the 1974 Revolution. See Biographical Index, particularly
Section 7.
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 4II

CHAPTER IO NINE DAYS IN MAY

For the confusion in the capital on Haile Selassie’s return and for his own
momentous decision to leave, as for his adventures and misadventures en
route and the would-be attempt on his life at Akaki, see above all George
STEER (1). Steer, The Times correspondent, was not expelled till 13 May, a
week after the Italian take-over. Also GREENFIELD, MosLey, and Salome
GABRE EGZIABHER.
The burning and looting of Addis Ababa were of course widely reported
by all diplomatic sources.
The story of Negga was told by himselftoDr. Richard Pankhurst, tape-
recorded and translated by Tsahai Berhane Selassie.
Sir Edwin Chapman-Andrews gave me a somewhat guarded interview
on his role at the time and, later on, in 1941. He died in early 1980.
For the ‘column ofiron will’ see BADOGLIO.
General Essayas Gabre Selassie, an Oletta cadet, described to me his role
after the fall of Addis. I had a local account by one of his followers (in the
form of an obituary) translated on the career as a ‘rebel’ of Zaudi Asfau
Dargie (and his follower Wolde Johannes).
Mussolini’s proclamation of victory was of course reported everywhere
in the Italian press and in subsequent triumphant Italian accounts of ‘Anno
XIV’.

Just before the invasion began, a prominent British politician had made a
speech to the City Carlton Club:
To cast an army [he said] ofnearly a quarter of amillion men, embodying the flower
ofItalian manhood, upon a barren shore two thousand miles from home against the
goodwill of the whole world and without command of the sea, and then in this
position embark upon what may well be a series of campaigns against a people and a
region which no conqueror in four thousand years ever thought it worthwhile to
subdue is to give hostages to fortune unparalleled in all history.

A friendly warning; and typical enough ofthe general view of Mussolini’s

mad enterprise. Less than a year later the British politician would have had to
recognize (as indeed he was temperamentally inclined to do) that fortune
favoured the bold; that he and, like him, all of Europe and most ofItaly had
been wrong; that the Duce had been right; and that an extraordinary
enterprise had been successfully carried through despite the five specified
dangers of distance, general ill-will, no command of the sea, difficulties of
terrain, and fierceness of the opposing race.
A dozen years later the same British politician wrote as follows:
The Italian Dictator was not actuated solely by desire for territorial gains. His rule, his
safety depended upon prestige. The humiliating defeat which Italy had suffered forty
years before at Adowa and the mockery of the world when an Italian army had not
only been destroyed or captured but shamefully mutilated rankled in the minds ofall
Italians. They had seen how Britain had after the passage of years avenged both
Khartoum and Majuba. To proclaim their manhood by avenging Adowa meant
almost as much to Italy as the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine to France. There seemed no
way in which Mussolini could more easily or at less risk consolidate his own power,
412 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

or, as he saw it, raise the authority ofItaly in Europe than by wiping out the stain of
bygone years and adding Ethiopia to the recently built Italian Empire. All such
thoughts were wrong and evil, but since it is always wise to try and understand
another country’s point of view, they may be recorded.

He concluded however, that Mussolini’s designs had been ‘obsolete and

reprehensible’. Perhaps that is fair enough as a final judgement upon the
Italian invasion. But if the conquest of Ethiopia did in the event become
obsolete, it was largely because the politician who made the preceding
speech and wrote the preceding somewhat contradictory paragraphs, Win-
ston Churchill, stepped onto the centre of the stage determined to play his
part in reprehending the conquerors—as the third part of this book will
recount.

CHAPTER II AFRICA ORIENTALE ITALIANA

At this stage official and semi-official Italian sources (particularly the

invaluable Gumpa De tv’ Aot, and Lessona) give the general and often the
detailed outline of the story inside Ethiopia as major outside sources dry up.
For Haile Selassie’s life in exile the Foreign Office papers are the main
source supplemented by newspaper clippings of the time, by MosLey, and
to a lesser extent by SANDFORD. The same applies to the exiles in Jerusalem
about whom a long correspondence between the Colonial Office, the High
Commissioners and the Foreign Office built up.
The vivid description of the Ceremony of Submission I have condensed
from the report in the now-defunct French magazine ILLUSTRATION. The
Banda are alluded to in numerous Italian works ofthe period.
For the Beghemder/Gojjam column see STARACE, TOMASELLINI.

A word about the Banda. General CAVALLERO was later to describe them as
having four characteristics. Firstly, their members were opposed to long-
term service. Secondly they fought for love of adventure and raiding—
‘which renders their use somewhat delicate’. Thirdly they were unwilling to
move far outside their own territory. Fourthly they were unwilling ‘to
submit to a more rigid discipline, such as that of the native battalions’.
In a less flattering judgement an Italian staff officer wrote as follows: ‘The
Bande, both the so-called regular and the irregular ones, really are bands and
except in the rarest cases have nothing military about them. They serve the
interests of the leader who forms them, their commander and their own
members, never those of the population and goods whom they should
protect.’ Physically they were, in this officer’s judgment, a posto—‘as they
should be’—but their command was too often given to young officers or
inexperienced militia officers and this system ended ‘in the moral ruin of
their officers too’. Technically a Gruppo Bande consisted of 1,200 men, but
there were usually 400 relaying each other every few months—though
monthly pay was drawn for all 1,200. ‘Hence the passion for the formation
of Bande by Residents and Commissars.’ .
Nevertheless for all their shortcomings the Bande were an indispensable
instrument. Not only did they garrison the villages and patrol the highlands
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 413

at least nominally on Italy’s behalf, but they also offered a means of

employing the unemployed—but not yet disarmed—levies.
Irregular bande were raised and commanded by ‘loyal’ chiefs, whereas the
regular bande were commanded by a handful ofItalian officers. The first took
the name of their leader—for instance the Banda Assege in Gojjam. The
second took the name ofthe town or district in which they were raised, and
were usually formed into a Gruppo of three Bande which itself had a more
generalized title—the Wollo Yeggiu Bande for example. Some of the Bande
such as the Banda Serae or the Banda Akele Gazai had long histories going
back to Adowa and before; these two were named after two of the three
Residencies near Asmara and, since they were formed of Eritreans, were
considered more reliable. But others tended to be referred to as the years
wore on by the names of the Italian officers commanding them—the Rolle
Bande was to be the best-known example.
The word banda was used to mean both a band and a member of a band.
Bande is the plural form. Hence Banda Debra Tabor, Gruppo Bande Lago
Tana.

CHAPTER I2 THE ATTACK ON ADDIS ABABA

On the Ethiopian side the main source is the account (complete with
contemporary letters) given by Salome GaBreE EGZIABHER in the Ethiopian
Observer. On the Italian side Maria LANp1’s letters describe vividly the
feelings and sentiments ofthe surrounded Italians.

Negga (cf. Chapter 10 and notes) has left an extraordinarily vivid account
ofhis part in the attack as a follower of Fikremariam. Bombed and strafed,
Fikremariam’s men were then attacked by Italian tanks. “They killed seven
of my companions. I felt dizzy. Pulling out the Emperor’s sword and at the
same time praying the Melka Edom (a prayer a priest had told me to say in
times of danger) I jumped onto one of the tanks. I saw two men in it. One
was short with an ugly red face; the other was fat. I beheaded the short man
and hurled him onto the fat man. He shouted three times “Mamma!
Mamma! Mamma!’”
It was Negga who persuaded his reluctant commander to call off the
attack when the Italian artillery started shelling. ‘I the son of Ato Nadew?’
Dejaz Fikremariam protested. ‘I the son of Ato Nadew? Shall it be said of me
that I entered Addis Ababa and then fled? | shall not flee!’ “Where is the
glory,’ retorted Negga with his usual pithy common sense. ‘If one does not
escape after killing?’
Fikremariam paid Negga back in his own coin that autumn after Maskal,
when Negga ambushed a train from Djibuti carrying Lessona on his first
visit to AOI. ‘After defeating the first train another came from the direction
of Addis Ababa and shelled us with bullets and bombs. I was shot in twelve
places and, being wounded in the stomach, my intestines poured out. I told
my servant to put them back in and he did so, using leaves, but my intestines
were twisted in the process.’ ‘I will be sorry,’ wrote Fikremariam
unsympathetically, ‘not for your death but for your loss as a witness to
Ethiopia’.
414 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

Negga however failed to oblige his chief or the Italians by dying. When
Fikremariam’s band was finally dispersed, he moved to the far south, to
Gemu Gofa where he and many others gathered round the semi-imperial
figure of Lij Girma, one of Lij Yasu’s sons. In July 1937 they decided (see
footnote to page 178) to cross the border into Kenya. ‘Take women with
you so that you will not be like asses,’ was Negga’s final proclamation. But
‘on finally reaching Kenya,’ he himself recorded, ‘I became a monk.’
Lack ofspace prevents the full story of Negga being reproduced here, but
these extracts will perhaps give some idea of the extraordinary vitality of the
Ethiopian fighting men.

CHAPTER 13 THE HUNTING DOWN OF THE RASES

See LEssona and—till the evacuation of Gambeila—the British Consular and

Foreign Office files. Erskine’s are particularly informative, and the whole
question of the Western Galla Federation is dealt with at great length.
Tadesse Mecha’s book on ‘The Black Lions’ (as the Oletta cadets who joined
Ras Imru called themselves), published in Amharic, also deals with the
question.
For the surrender of Ras Imru, and for the death of Ras Desta, GREENFIELD
is a mine of information; as also on much ofthe detail of this period. See also
the Ethiopian Ministry OF JuSTICE’s Documents on Italian War Crimes. I
follow GREENFIELD’s version (which he has assured me came from an
eyewitness) of the death of Dejaz Balcha.
The death of Ras Kassa’s eldest son, Wondossen, is wrapped in mystery.
In the case of his brothers Aberra and Asfawossen, Salome GABRE
EGZIABHER gives the fullest account; which PEsENTI supplements.

A word about Ras Hailu. During the war Italian propaganda spread the
rumour that Ras Hailu had been poisoned. On 22 January 1936 foreign
journalists in Addis Ababa were invited to visit him and see for themselves.
They found him in the apartments of the Crown Prince in good health, with
his servants, his regalia and his personal weapon. He recognized an Ameri-
can journalist whom he had met at the Coronation in 1930, and in reply to
questions, urbanely stated that he was treated with all the respect due to his
rank, was content with his lot, and grateful to His Majesty whom he
considered to be, as always, his friend. As the journalists took their leave, he
thanked them for their visit and assured them of his prayers to God for
themselves and their families. Whatever Ras Hailu’s merits or demerits, no
one could ever fault his style.
It seems most unlikely that Ras Hailu deliberately betrayed Aberra and
Asfawossen Kassa. The killings at Fikke could bring him no possible
immediate or long-term advantage. Used as an intermediary and a guaran-
tor, he was almost certainly deceived by the Italians into collaborating in the
execution of his own son-in-law. On his return to Addis Ababa he
demanded an interview with the Viceroy. In view of Ras Hailu’s anxiety
Graziani called an audience of notables at the Little Ghebbi and there, and in
public, took full responsibility for the killings. General Tracchia was sent
back in disgrace to Italy and PEsENTI (1) reports the Viceroy as ‘pale with
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 41§

disgust’ at Tracchia’s treachery which he had ‘covered’. But according to

Ethiopian accounts General Tracchia was heard to say next day: ‘What could
I have done? Graziani ordered me to do this by cables.’
‘I have never succeeded,’ wrote LESSONA years later, ‘in finding out how
and why (given the various mendacious reports that were made to me) the
son of Ras Kassa was shot by order of General Tracchia, one of our old
colonial hands.’ It seems that the brothers had not only been shot but
beheaded and their heads exposed to public view next day in the Church of
St. George; a sacrilege as well as an insult which could hardly fail to have
offended Ras Hailu.
The difficulty about writing of Ras Hailu is that there are no documents
(as far as I know) which give his own point of view or ‘the case for the
defence’. The Italians tended for obvious reasons to play down his impor-
tance and the British (as Part III of this book will show) were naturally
hostile. As for the Ethiopians, to Haile Selassie and his supporters, Ras Hailu
was a most convenient béte noir.

CHAPTER UA SYEKA LIE 12

The sources for this chapter are above all the Ethiopian MINISTRY OF
Justice’s collection ofItalian cables and directives, the genuineness of which
cannot be doubted. Also BEFEKADU WOLDE SELASSIE’s personal memoir and
Salome GaBRE EGZIABHER.

According to the version generally accepted by the Ethiopians the

assassination attempt was entirely spontaneous. Eritreans had always been
very sensitive to any formal signs ofracialism, which had never been the rule
in Eritrea—a colony where Italians slept happily with their Eritrean
‘madams’. But apartheid-style laws were passed in January 1937, and a spate
of articles appeared in the Fascist press on the dangers of mixed and inferior
races. This oppressive change in policy was inspired by Lessona. The last
straw came when Abraha Deboch and Mogus Asgedom went to the cinema
in Addis Ababa and found themselves segregated from the Italian spectators.
Their ends are veiled in mystery. Apparently Abraha Deboch had left the
monastery of Debra Libanos on 1 or 2 March and rejoined his companion
Mogus Asgedom in the Ankoberino hills with Abebe Aregai. It seems,
however, that the two Eritreans were not trusted by the Shoans. They
made, it is said, for the Sudanese border but before they reached it were
killed by local tribesmen near Metemma.

MITCHELL gives not only a rousing account of Sylvia Pankhurt but also
many interesting details on Haile Selassie’s poverty-stricken exile. These are
supplemented by the Foreign Office Reports. The Emperor had a very
gloomy second winter in exile. In December he had a taxi-accident, broke
his collar-bone and fell seriously ill. His family was dispersed (his lovely
daughter Tsahai training to be a nurse at the Great Ormonde Street Hospital
for children was his major comfort); ‘his credit with the local tradesmen was
none too good’; worst of all, the British Government was moving towards
facto recognition ofthe Italian annexation.
de jure as well as de
416 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

In the autumn of 1938 Blattengueta Herouy died at ‘Fairfield’; and a

month later on 16 November Sir Eric Drummond presented his Letters of
Credence as British Ambassador in Rome to ‘the King of Italy and the
Emperor ofEthiopia’. The next day The Times referred to the ‘ex-Emperor’.
In December Lord Southborough, a Trustee of Wellington College, called
at the Foreign Office, informed them of a projected move to send Asfa
Wossen to that school, and enquired discreetly whether Lord Halifax
considered that the ex-Emperor would be able to pay the fees.
The year 1938 was certainly a dismal one for Haile Selassie. But it must
not be thought that even at this low ebb he was totally out of touch with
affairs inside Ethiopia. He had strong partisans among the exile groups in the
Sudan; and emissaries bearing letters under his seal were constantly cross-
ing, much to the annoyance of the Khartoum authorities, the virtually wide-
open border.

CHAPTER I§ THE DUKE OF AOSTA

For an invaluable and beautifully-mapped (though inevitably one-sided)

account ofthe Italian military operations of 1938 see Ugo CAVALLERO. The
British Consular Reports from Addis Ababa supplemented by the official
reports from the Sudan are vital for the picture of AOJ at this time. Mr.
Helm ofthe British Consulate General submitted a much-praised report of
31 pages to the Egyptian Department ofthe Foreign Office at the end ofthe
year. (The Egyptian Department spread its wings not only over the ‘Anglo-
Egyptian’ Sudan but also, less justifiably, over Ethiopia. Its head during the
period leading up to the Second World War was a formidable activist,
Cavendish Bentinck).
See also Lessona; and for the Ethiopian side Salome GABRE EGZIABHER,
Richard PANKHUuRST and the theses written by Ethiopian graduates who
under Dr. Pankhurst’s spurring went out and interviewed those who had
played a part in the Resistance. (These theses were held before the revolution
at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, attached to Haile Selassie I University at
Addis Ababa.) But there is much controversy, and many different versions,
over actions and events in this confused period. To take a single example:
according to one story it was Haile Mariam Mammo, not Abebe Aregai,
who crowned the ‘Little Negus’ on the Three Ambas.

A minor point: I have given inverted commas to the titles the Resistance
leaders conferred upon themselves or the Italians conferred upon the
collaborators—i.e. ‘Lij’ Belai Zelleka, ‘Ras’ Haile Selassie Gugsa. The case
of Abebe Aregai was more complicated. Though his title of ‘Ras’ was in
effect self-conferred, the Emperor from his exile, though he at first persisted
in writing to ‘Balambaras’ Abebe Aregai, in the end addressed his letters to
‘Ras’ Abebe Aregai, thereby giving his implicit consent to Ababe Aregai’s
self-promotion. Readers will by now, I hope, be well aware that these were
not, in the Ethiopia ofthe time, matters oflittle importance.
A major point: I have perhaps not sufficiently stressed in the text that over
vast stretches of AOI there were no rebellions, no resistance at all to Italian
rule. The colonies of Eritrea and Somalia were totally at peace. Harar and the
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES A417
Ogaden were calm once the relics of the Imperial armies had fled or
submitted. The whole vast area of the South, united into the single province
of Galla-Sidamo was undisturbed except by roving bands of Amhara
soldiery and its traditional minor turbulence. The Galla in general, including
the Wollo Galla, appear to have welcomed Italian rule—with the notable
exception of Olona Dinkel. Most extraordinary ofall, Tigre—where revolts
on the scale of Gojjam or Beghemder might have been expected—was,
almost until the end ofItalian rule, generally though not totally peaceful.

CHAPTER 16 EDGING TOWARDS WAR

From this point until the Battle of Keren (Chapter 28) I have made extensive
use of Douglas Newbold’s letters and circulars in the Sudan, edited by K. D.
D. HENDERSON: fascinating material. I would particularly like to acknow-
ledge the generosity of his publishers, Faber and Faber, in allowing me to
make such extensive quotations. It is supplemented here not only by the
sources named in the last chapter but by, for the first time, War Office
tiles—Intelligence Reports, War Diaries, etc.—which from now on become
more relevant than Foreign Office archives as diplomacy is ‘continued by
other means’. Also JOUIN, CIANO, the Italian archives—and, on Wavell, his
excellent biographer CONNELL.

The author can testify from personal experience to the crustiness of

General Platt. His predecessor as Kaid, General Hudleston, later reappeared
as Governor General of the Sudan in succession to Symes (see p. 240). The
‘bog barons’ was the title generally given to the District Commissioners in
the south of the Sudan, who ruled their own little fiefs as benevolent
autocrats. It was said that whereas the Indian Civil Service attracted Firsts,
the Sudan Civil Service was the natural home for Blues.
Among those also in the Sudan at this period were the two Shoan guerrilla
leaders, Blatta Takele Wolde Hawariat and Mesfin Sileshi (see footnote to p.
183). Blatta Takele, despairing—rightly—of British aid, turned to the
French not just for aid but for a philosophy. He and his followers—of whom
the most notable was Essayas the Oletta cadet—wrote to the French
authorities announcing their conversion to the cause of Republicanism and
requesting guidance. Mesfin Sileshi, a loyalist, copied these letters—and sent
the copies to Bath. There they were greeted with a consternation that
became all the greater when it was learnt that early in 1939 Blatta Takele had
slipped across the frontier into Armachecho, sending Essayas ahead—for
Blatta Takele never believed in having only a single string to his bow—to
sound out Lij Johannes, the son ofLij Yasu, a possible rival pretender to the
Imperial throne. .
The intrigues with Lij Johannes (who was also being wooed by the Italians
with the offer of a virtual Protectorate over Beghemder) failed, though
Essayas remained at his side. But Blatta Takele succeeded in preparing a
Republican-style document for the League of Nations in which were set out
the wishes of some 900 Patriot leaders concerning the form of future
government in Ethiopia. From Bath, Haile Selassie reacted quickly. He sent
out a fairly mild general letter under his seal condemning republicanism as
418 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

‘an alien concept that would endanger Ethiopia’s advance to freedom’ but
admitting (a cunning concession) that there might be other persons who
would better merit the throne. More secretly and drastically he sent orders
(probably carried by Lorenzo Taezaz) that Blatta Takele should be arrested
and publicly hanged for treason. Arrested he was, by Wubneh Amoraw of
Armachecho (‘the Hawk’). The hanging was planned for 12 July. But Sime,
Blatta Takele’s ten-year-old son, escaped and summoned help from a rival
local rebel leader Ayane Chekol. Rescued though temporarily cowed, Blatta
Takele returned to Khartoum.
The whole story of Blatta Takele, a natural revolutionary and the only
contemporary of Haile Selassie who throughout a long life was always
prepared to come out in open opposition to him, merits more space than can
be given here. But see the entry on him in the Biographical Index, Section 3.

CHAPTER I7 DOMINE DIRIGE NOS

Of all the ‘old Ethiopian hands’ who had been in Addis Ababa before the
invasion and who had kept in contact with Haile Selassie during his years of
exile, George STEER was probably the most active. He had written an
excellent book on the Italian invasion, Caesar in Abyssinia, and another, just
as brilliant, on the Spanish Civil War which he had also covered for The
Times. He had visited Djibuti in 1938 and again in 1939 when he published
two outstanding articles in The Spectator. These were noticeable for their
praise of French military preparedness and of the Quai d’Orsay intelligence
work. Thereafter, it seems, he played a role as a sort of unofficial spy-master
for the exiled Emperor—being instrumental in sending across the Sudan
border a shadowy French agent, Paul-Robert Monnier known as ‘André’.
(This infuriated the Khartoum authorities who reported that General
Gamelin had sent in ‘very amateurish’ spies without even consulting the
French government. ‘Very jolly’ minuted Sir Miles Lampson.)
Steer was not only politically and professionally but emotionally involved
with Ethiopia. He had married his first wife, Margherita, a Peruvian
journalist, in the grounds of the British Legation in the wild May days of
1936 after the Emperor had fled but before Badoglio’s Italians arrived. She
died, and he subsequently married in England the former British Minister,
Sir Sidney Barton’s, daughter, Esme, whom he had no doubt come to know
at exactly the same time. It was their son who became in June 1940 the
Emperor’s godchild.
STEER from this chapter on comes back into the picture with his second
book on Ethiopia, Sealed and Delivered. It is not as good a book as his
first—possibly because it was written in wartime when Steer himself was
playing an active role and hence could not be the frank and cynical observer
as before. But it is still quite outstanding, particularly for the reporting on
Haile Selassie as he moved from London to Khartoum and eventually into
Ethiopia.
On the Italian side De Biase (who used his father’s secret diaries) is
excellent for this period of preparation and mutual over-estimation. Mrs
SANDFORD (2), obviously, had first-hand information; and CHURCHILL now
enters the scene to play a role that continues to the end ofthis book.
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 419

CHAPTER I8 THE FIRST DAYS OF. WAR

The campaigns that follow are very clearly described in the OrricraL
History (edited by Major General Playfair). The equivalent on the Italian
side, for obvious reasons less frank, is the Urricio Storico. For more
concise reports from the British side see the STATIONERY OFFICE, the WAR
Orrice, and WAVELL’s long (73-page) article in the Supplement to the London
Gazette.
KENNEDY-COOKE’s short work—more of apamphlet than a book—is full
of vivid detail about the Sudan. Newbold is, as always, invaluable, and
much used by me for his running commentary on events. MARAVIGNA and
Mooreneab both describe how reluctantly both sides went to war and how
pessimistic each side was about its own chances. STEER (2) gives his vivid
account of the Emperor’s reappearance on the scene.
The War Office files contain the war diary of the Eastern Arab Corps; and
the Foreign Office files a mass of correspondence and reports concerning
Djibuti, Haile Selassie, the chances of fomenting revolt—and the necessity,
or not, of actually fighting. The Urricio Srorrco DELLA MaRINA MILITARE
recounts, but doesnotexplain, the Italians’ dismal performancein the Red Sea.

There are some observers, including Leonard Mosley who was in the
Sudan at the time, who assert that the Governor-General and many other
officials believed the Italian occupation of the Sudan inevitable. ‘It is not
unfair to add that it was a prospect viewed by Symes and many civil servants
in the Sudan with a certain complacency.’ Mosley asserts that the Duke of
Aosta had privately assured Symes that the Italians would not wreck the
British administration in the Sudan. ‘Therefore faced by an imminent
conquest by the Italians there were many dedicated civil servants in the
Sudan who were not cast down by their own weaknesses. Some of them
honestly believed that Britain was going to lose the war anyway, and their
principal anxiety was to ensure that Italy should assume control of the Sudan
with as little unpleasantness as possible.’
All this sounds exaggerated; but it was probably true in substance—if not
in June orJuly, then in August when defeatism was rampant both in East
Africa and in a Britain standing alone, blitzed, and threatened with invasion.
But Mosley does not reveal his evidence for the private contacts between Sir
Stewart Symes and the Duke of Aosta; which 1s a pity.

CHAPTER 19 AOI ATTACKS

CONNELL on Wavell and WaAvELL on the campaign complement each other.

The Foreign Office files (for Haile Selassie) and the War Office files (in
particular the war diary of the 1st Ethiopians) were indispensable. See
EvANs-PRITCHARD’s article in the Army Quarterly for his picture of an
anthropologist in action. As regards the South Africans, the SouTH AFRICAN
War Histories are the formal source, BirkBy’s eager pair of books the
informal source—both corrected by GANDAR Dower’s pro-askari compila-
tions. For the KAR in general see Moyse-Bart ett and for the Nigerians
HENNESSY.
420 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

CHAPTER 20 THE FALL OF SOMALILAND

From the British side I have pieced the story together from the war diaries of
the units involved, plus CONNELL, Fercusson, Lewis, CHURCHILL, MoysE-
Bart Lett, and the OrriciaL History—which does not refer to the ‘butcher’s
bill’ cable.
The Italians were naturally less reticent. To say nothing of Gina’s brother,
the Urricio StorIco, CARGNELOTTI, PESENTI, and De Biase all tell the story.

Twenty-six Englishmen were taken prisoner in this campaign, including,

rather shamefully, 11 officers (6 had been killed). One of the Black Watch
‘killed’, Corporal Genaudo, was awarded a posthumous VC—only to turn
up alive next year, at Asmara. 17 planes from Aden were lost or badly
damaged, and over §,000 rifles and 120 lorries captured.

CHAPTER 2I TO FIND A LAWRENCE

STEER’s second book, Sealed and Delivered, gives an eyewitness account of

Haile Selassie’s time in (or outside) Khartoum. How mixed the feelings of
Sudan officialdom were towards the ‘little man’ can be seen from the
passages in the letter of NEwBOLD quoted in the text—as self-contradictory
as the two passages that follow.
‘Tomorrow I’m having dinner with the Emperor again at the Clergy
House—the assistant Bishop is giving him a small party as these three days
are the great Ethiopian festival of the Holy Cross called Maskal. I have a
great admiration for him. Most exiles degenerate but he is still dignified,
mild and courteous, even with all this hope deferred and only a shadow
court. Some ofhis followers may be barbaric but so were King Alfred’s and
the Saxons from Germany, and it was their land and they threatened no-one
but Mussolini coveted it and wanted a splash and so he bombed and gassed
the poor little man out of his home, which had a history as good as Rome’s
back to the Queen of Sheba. I hope he gets it back and we’ll do our best for
him.’
Yet ‘I feel less sorry for H.S. than I do for the Duke of Aosta who is a very
cultured and kindly man, and a fine administrator, and now finds himself
bound to the Nazi machine and sees his colony plunged into war with
enemies within as well as outside the gates.’ Hardly a tyrant then; and there
seems little sympathy here for the black-skinned neo-Garibaldians within
the gates.
The Italian intelligence reports of Colonel Talamonti were later captured
and can, fortunately, be found in the War Office files—just like Gina’s
brother’s diary. For Eden’s visit see his Memoirs (AVON). War Diaries and
intelligence reports are the main source for this chapter.

CHAPTER 22 DISASTER AT GALLABAT

I have drawn very largely in this chapter from S.im’s vivid and extremely
well-written account of the Gallabat affair in his Unofficial History—a
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 421
delightful book. Naturally enough Slim does not name the Essex as the
battalion who ran away; and naturally enough too the Essex War Diary, a
pencilled job, is, as it were, hazy and designed to fade. But other unit diaries
fill the gap. Gina’s brother gives the little we know ofthe other side of the
picture.
This episode, a minor one in Slim’s life, is described only briefly in Ronald
Lewin’s prize-winning biography—which of course goes on to describe
Slim’s relationship with Wingate in Burma, where the two of them (and
Wavell) met again.

CHAPTER 23 A LAWRENCE FOUND

Christopher Sykes’s biography of Wingate is good but not excellent: there

seems to be an understandable lack of empathy between author and subject.
Harris has much more fun with him. STEer (2) appreciated his worth but
naturally enough disliked being relegated to a secondary role. Mrs. SAND-
FORD (2) tries loyally to play down the rivalry between her husband and
Wingate—which, however, the War Office files reveal. As for the ‘philo-
sophy’ of the Op Centres and ofinstigating a native rebellion via guerrilla
warfare, the quotations from Wingate come from his Report in the same
section of the WO files that contain Bentinck’s and Sandford’s more down-
to-earth reports.
Wingate, this report reveals, felt particularly hard done by as regards his
own Op Centres: ‘It was found that Operational Centres as conceived were
capable of many and varied uses, but in practice the work was almost always
beyond the capacity of the mediocre or inferior officers selected. The
standard of the NCOs was so low that they were a nuisance. It is difficult to
see justification for sending a thoroughly bad lot of NCOs to the best school
of war. . . Experience in the campaign proves that it is better to have one
company of a first-class fighting unit than half a dozen battalions of
scallywags. This is particularly true of war behind the enemy lines, where
bluff plays a very large part, and it is the quality rather than the quantity of
blows which demoralises the enemy.’ This was written of course after the
event when the Op Centres (see pp. 350, 353) had proved rather a
disappointment.
As for native allies: ‘Patriots’, Wingate wrote, ‘are at their best in fighting
on the move. Here they frequently show great courage and desire to come to
grips with the enemy. While the offensive spirit should definitely be
encouraged in patriots, they do best alone. The conditions ofpatriot attacks
are such as try the nerves of the stoutest of regular officers, and this reacts
on the patriots who normally appear unconscious of the appalling hazards
they run.’ In other words they were simply too brave for the British, and
the mere sight of their rashness would send cold shudders down the spine
of regular troops. This conclusion was probably the result of the one case
in which Wingate attempted a combined attack with the Patriots. See

A ree Axavia, and Mos ey (1) were also directly involved in Wingate’s
preparations and/or operations. His encounter with Thesiger in the bath-
room ofthe Grand Hotel is described in SyKEs.
422 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

The Italian counter-moves are known from Talamonti’s captured diary

and notes. For Belai Zelleka’s letter to Ras Hailu see Dr. PANKHURST’s
second article on the Ethiopian Resistance.

CHAPTER 24 SUCCESS AT EL WAQ

General PEsENTI (2) gives an extraordinarily frank account of his own

débiacle. The British sources are the obvious ones. DE GAULLE and CHUR-
CHILL describe their hopes and plans for “Operation Marie’-—which did not
necessarily coincide. For Curle and his Irregulars see the war diaries of the
units concerned plus BirkBy (2) and GANDAR Dower (1).

CHAPTER 2§ THE BALANCE SWINGS

C1ANo and CHURCHILL give their opposing views of Graziani’s dramatic

defeat. (For Graziani’s own excuses see CANEVARI). Wingate’s difficulties
with the abortive 106 Mission are recounted, blow by blow, in the War
Office files. The comment on the Local Expert is taken from Gordon
WATERFIELD’s picturesque account of his time in Aden.

CHAPTER 26 JOY IN THE MORNING

For the Indian Divisions and Cavalry Regiments see (apart from the
OrFICIAL HISTORY OF THE INDIAN ARMED FORCES) STEVENS, BRETT-JONES,
JAcksON, and above all HINGsSTON’s massive work. The minor skirmishes on
the Galla-Sidamo front are portentously described by General GAzzera. For
the Merille and Turkana my source is the war diaries and intelligence reports
of the various units and officers involved. KENNEDY-COOKE vividly des-
cribes the recapture of‘his’ Kassala. The Battle of the Lowlands is recounted
from the official British viewpoint by PLatr and Evans and from the
unofficial Italian viewpoint by CarcNELoTTI who also tells, with underst-
andable pride, the story of Lt. Guillet’s cavalry charge (confirmed by British
war diaries). CHURCHILL’s ‘mills of God’ speech to the House of Commons
indicates that he, at least, had every intention of restoring Haile Selassie to
power as soon as possible. (But cf. Chapter 30).

CHAPTER 27 THE BATTLE OF KEREN

All accounts of the campaign give, naturally enough, their version ofits one
great battle, Keren. In addition to the sources already quoted I should
particularly mention BARKER (1) PIGNATELLI and, for the French, Sr.
HILLIER.

CHAPTER 28 GIDEON FORCE

Mark PILKINGTON’s Letters have, unfortunately, only been printed

privately. Though quoted here, they really describe the later stages of this
campaign when Wingate had left; and give the best account I know of the
final capture of Gondar where General Nasi was holding out after the rains,
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 423
long after all other Italian forces in East Africa had surrendered. W. E. D.
ALLEN’s minor classic, as Christopher Sykes rightly calls it, unforgivably
out of print, gives the feel of the campaign better than any other of the
various books.

Mark Pilkington, a subaltern in the Household Cavalry, was a great friend

of Bill Allen—‘Nobody could want an abler, more amusing or nicer
companion. I couldn’t like him more. He is a fascinating person—quite a bit
older than me in age but not in mind or heart.’ ALLEN for his part described
Mark Pilkington as ‘a quaint dreamy fellow with a slow smile and an interest
in the Arabian language and ornithology’.
Both Pilkington and Bill McLean, a subaltern in the Scots Greys, had been
with the Cavalry Division that sailed for Palestine in February 1940. There
the Division had remained kicking its collective heels, waiting for tanks or
armoured cars to replace its horses. News of the ‘operations’ in Ethiopia
brought a spate of volunteers for the planned Op Centres. As the invasion
began, a whole group of cavalry officers turned up in Khartoum led by
Major Basil Ringrose of the Sherwood Rangers—described by Allen as ‘a
slight lithe fellow’—to find in the words of Pilkington, that ‘the thing that
has really brought home the war to us is the appalling shortage of whisky’.
Ringrose led an Op Centre into Beghemder, north of Gondar on 8
February. Pilkington and McLean, each with five sergeants from his own
regiment, led their two Op Centres towards Mount Belaya a week
later—PILKINGTON with 120 camels carrying arms and ammunition, ‘Maria
Theresa dollars, very bulky and heavy, grenades, land mines and god knows
what else.’

CHAPTER 29 CUNNINGHAM’S COUP

The war diaries of Cunningham’s units are, as might be expected, both

jubilant and full. On the Italian side all is (apart from a pained Di Lauro)
silence—the ‘horrors’ of the retreat from Harar being described in captured
notes, not intended for publication, reprinted by GANDAR Dower.
The fall of Addis Ababa is recounted by Maravicna; and the Duke of
Aosta’s subsequent ‘stand’ at Amba Alagi (which, like General Nasi’s far
more serious holding-operation at Gondar, falls outside the scope of this
book) by VALLETTI-BORGNINI.

CHAPTER 30 THE RETURN OF THE EMPEROR

Ras Seyum’s letters are quoted by George STEER (2) who, however, was not
sufficiently interested in internal Ethiopian politics to appreciate their
significance. Simonds’s remarks come from his reports in the War Office
files. The fall of Massawa is beautifully and wittily described by Sr. HILiier.
A private source, family archives of the Gillows of Waring & Gillow,
indicate the style in which the Little Ghebbi was furnished.

For OETA, and the subsequent wartime history of Ethiopia, at least as

seen from official British eyes, see Lord RENNELL’s massive work (he also
424 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES

describes the actual return of the Emperor) and Sir Philip MItTCHELL’s
memoirs. (THESIGER with a few throw-away remarks points out the useless-
ness of the whole operation). OETA meant an awkward form of dual
control, as Newbold saw very well.
‘I have given OETA Eritrea and Ethiopia 15 political officers’, Newbold
wrote on 30 March, ‘and part-time use of another 4. . . [don’t like to see too
many good chaps go to Ethiopia. Eritrea is different and needs a very good
cadre. . . Ethiopia is a phoney administration. Chaps think it romantic, and
so it will be for one or two months, then they will tire of poor staff,
diplomatic tangles, an ugly dyarchy of Emperor and OETA, lying chiefs,
no money, dirt and an ungrateful rabble of armed peasantry.’
It is clear enough from this letter that at any rate the officials in the Sudan
had no desire, still less any design, of taking over Ethiopia permanently. yet
the idea of aprotectorate was hovering in the air—though Eden in a meeting
with Sir Philip Mitchell on 20 March rejected it. It was by no means sure,
however, that Cunningham and Kenya and the Colonial Office might not
between them try to impose what Wavell and the Sudan and the Foreign
Office rejected. Haile Selassie was right to be—as he long continued to be,
even after his ‘official’ restoration—suspicious of Britain’s ultimate
intentions.

EPILOGUE THE END OF THE WAR

War diaries are the main source for the scattered operations that followed the
fall of Addis Ababa, plus (as already mentioned) PILKINGTON for General
Nasi’s final stand at Gondar and VALLETTI-BoRGNINI for Amedeo of Aosta
on Amba Alagi.

Troops from the Belgian Congo had reached their ‘theatre of operations’
—the Baro Salient—in February 1941 (see for the very minor part they
played WELLER’s bombastic account). Khartoum Intelligence intercepted the
Italian report and noted that ‘A rumour of the arrival of Congolese soldiers
with cannibalistic tendencies has struck fear into the hearts ofItalian forces.’
Younger members of Cheeseman’s Intelligence Staff corapocsd a Joint Ode
to mark the occasion. It ran as follows:

What a heavenly thought

To sit down to a sort
Of‘Italiens au Naturel’
To know that the chops
Are just slices of Wops—
Tasty in spite of their smell.

Fricasséed Frusci
Comp6éte Granatieri
Angelini on Horseback of course
A savoury dinner of General Pinna
Is a joy to the Congolese Force.
 SOURCES AND CHAPTER NOTES 425
So drink up your Vini
And one wet Martini
Or, if you're teetotal and daft
Acqua Pellegrini
In sensu obsceni
Is rather a nauseous draft.
Aosta, my man,
Make peace while you can
In a normal and usual fashion
It is better by far
To remain as you are
Than to end as a military ration.

Professor GREENFIELD’s book gives the most detailed and informative

account ofthe events leading up to the failed Imperial Guard coup of1960 in
which both Ras Seyum and Ras Abebe Aregai were killed.
There is—as yet—no really outstanding study of the 1974 Revolution and
its immediate aftermath. What appeared to beat first merely a wave of minor
protest movements made only slightly more serious by localized mutinies
over pay and conditions in the army culminated on 12 September with the
formal dethronement by the Dergue, the Provisional Military Committee,
of the Emperor. For a brief period it had seemed that Ethiopia’s monarchy
might survive with the Mered Azmatch Asfa Wossen becoming a constitu-
tional monarch. Wisely, he remained in exile and is living, a very ill man, in
London. Thus he escaped the massacre of ‘Bloody Saturday’—23 Novem-
ber 1974—when so many ofthe old nobility including Ras Asrate Kassa, the
only surviving son ofRas Kassa, and Li Iskander Desta, the eldest son of Ras
Desta, were brutally executed. Ras Seyum’s eldest son, Ras Mangasha
Seyum, was at the time ruler of Tigre; he refused a summons to the capital
and at one stage it looked as if he might lead a successful counter-revolution
from his provincial power-base. But he too went into exile. Ras Imru was
left unharmed. His eldest son Lij Mikael Imru supported the Revolution
and even became, briefly, Prime Minister in the months preceding the
Emperor’s dethronement. Lij Mikael survived both the Red and the White
terror that followed; Ras Imru eventually had the doubtful honour of being
the only member of the old nobility to be granted a state funeral by the
Revolutionary Government.
As for Haile Selassie I, once again the ‘ex-Emperor’, it was announced on
28 August 1975, eleven months after his dethronement, that he had died the
previous day of ‘circulatory failure’. The Dergue has not yet, however,
dared to reveal where he is buried.
 SELECT BIBbWIO
Gig rt

(1) BOOKS IN ENGLISH

ALLEN, W. E. D., Guerrilla War in Abyssinia (Penguin, 1943).
Avon, Earl of, The Eden Memoirs: Facing the Dictators. Vol.II: The Reckoning
(Cassell, 1962).
Barker, A. J., (1) Eritrea 1941 (Faber, 1966).
(2) The Italo-Ethiopian War 1935-36 (Cassell, 1968).
Bapocuio, Marshal, The War in Abyssinia [Foreword by the Duce]
(Methuen, 1937).
BERKELEY, G., The Campaign of Adowa and the Rise of Menelik (Constable,
1902).
BirkBy, C., (1) The Saga of the Transvaal Scottish Regiment (Howard
Timmins for Hodder & Stoughton, 1950).
(2) It’s a Long Way to Addis (Frederick Muller, 1942).
Bretr-JAmes, A., Ball of Fire: The Fifth Indian Division in the Second World
War (Aldershot: Gale & Polden, 1951).
CHEESEMAN, Robert, Lake Tana and the Blue Nile (London, 1936).
CHURCHILL, Winston, The Second World War, Vol.1 The ie: Storm
(Cassell, 1948). Vol.II Their Finest Hour (Cassell, 1949). [Especially
Appendices: ‘PM’s Personal Minutes and Directives’ |
CIANO, Galeazzo, Diary 1939-43 (Heinemann, 1947).
ConnéelLL, John, Wavell (Collins, 1964).
Deakin, F. W., The Brutal Friendship (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962).
De Bono, Marshal, Anno XIII: The Conquest of an Empire [Introduction by
the Duce] (Cresset Press, 1937).
De Prorok, Byron, Dead Men Do Tell Tales (Harrap, 1943).
Det Boca, Angelo, The Ethiopian War 1935-1941 (Chicago, 1969).
Dimsesy, Richard, The Frontiers are Green (London, 1943).
DuranD, Mortimer, Crazy Campaign (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1936).
Dutton, E., Lillibulero on the Golden Road (Zanzibar, 1944).
EDEN, eine see AVON, Earl of.
Faraco, Ladislas, (1) (ed.) Abyssinian Stop Press (Robert Hale, ag
(2) Abyssinia on the Eve (Putnam, 1935).
FerGussON, Bernard, The Black Watch (Collins, 1950).
Finer, Herman, Mussolini’s Italy (Gollancz, 1935).
FULLER, J. F. C., The First of the League Wars (Eyre & Spottiswode, 1936).
GaANDAR Dower, Kenneth, (1) Askaris at War in Abyssinia (Nairobi, 1941).
(2) (ed.), Abyssinian Patchwork: An Anthology (Frederick Muller, 1949).
GENERAL STAFF (INTELLIGENCE) HQ Troops IN THE SUDAN, Handbook of
Western Italian East Africa (Khartoum, 1941).
GREENFIELD, Richard, Ethiopia: A New Political History (Pall Mall, 1965).
Harmsworty, Geoffrey, Abyssinian Adventure (Hutchinson, 1935).
HENDERSON, K. D. D. (ed), The Making of the Modern Sudan: The Life and
Letters of SirDouglas Newbold KBE (Faber, 1953).
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 427
Hinoston, Major W. R., The Tiger Strikes (The Indian Divisions) (Thacker’s
Press and Directories, Calcutta, 1943).
Hopson, Arnold, Where Lions Reign (Skeffington, 1925).
KENNEDY-CookgE, B., Kassala at War (Khartoum, 1943).
KirKPATRICK, Sir Ivone, Memoirs (Macmillan, 1959).
Lewis, I. M., The Modern History of Somaliland (Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1975).
Lonerice, Stephen, A Short History of Eritrea (Oxford University Press,
1945).
Maccrecor-Hastie, Roy, The Day of the Lion: The Life and Death of Fascist
Italy (Macdonald, 1963).
Makin, W. J., War over Ethiopia (Jarrolds, 1935).
Marcus, Harold G., The Life and Times of Menelik II (Clarendon Press,
1974).
Matuew, David, Ethiopia: The Study of a Polity 1540-1935 (Eyre & Spottis-
woode, 1947).
MatTHews, Herbert, Eyewitness in Abyssinia (Secker & Warburg, 1937).
MINISTRY OF INFORMATION, The First to be Freed: The Record of British Military
Administration in Eritrea and Somaliland 1941-1943 (London, 1944).
MiInNIstRY OF JUSTICE, Documents on Italian War Crimes. Vol. I: Italian
Telegrams and Circulars [submitted to the United Nations War Crimes
Commission] (Addis Ababa, 1949-50).
Mirtcu_ELL, David, The Fighting Pankhursts (Jonathan Cape, 1967).
MircuELL, Sir Philip, African Afterthoughts (London, 1954).
Mone LLI, Paolo, Mussolini: An Intimate Life (Thames & Hudson, 1953).
MooreHEAD, Alan, Mediterranean Front (Hamish Hamilton, 1941)
Mostey, Leonard, (1) Gideon Goes to War (A. Barker, 1955).
(2) Haile Selassie: The Conquering Lion (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964).
Moyse-BartT Lett, Lt.-Col. H., The King’s African Rifles (Gale and Polder,
1956).
Ne son, Kathleen, & SuLLIVAN, Alan, John Melly of Ethiopia (Faber, 1936).
OrFiciAL HisToRY OF THE SECOND WorRLD WAR—The Mediterranean and the
Middle East (ed. Major-General I.S.O. Playfair). Vol.1: The Early
Successes Against Italy. (London, 1954).
OrFICIAL HIsTORY OF THE INDIAN ARMED FORCES IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR
(ed. B. Prusad). East Africa Campaign 1940-41 (Delhi, 1963).
Potson Newman, E. W., Italy’s Conquest of Abyssinia (Butterworth, 1937).
RENNELL OF RopD, F. J. R., 1st Baron, British Military Administration of
Occupied Territories in Africa. War Office: H.M.S.O. 1948.
ROSENTHAL, E., The Fall of Italian East Africa (Hutchinson, 1942).
SANDFORD, Christine, (1) Ethiopia Under Haile Selassie (Dent, 1946).
(2) The Lion ofJudah hath Prevailed (Dent, 1955).
SLIM, Field-Marshal Sir William, Unofficial History (Cassell, 1959).
SouTH AFRICAN WAR Histories: WORLD War II (ed. Comdt. N. N. D.
Orpen). Vol.I: East African and Abyssinian Campaigns (Capetown and
Johannesburg, 1968).
STATIONERY Office, H.M., The Abyssinian Campaign (London, 1942).
STEER, George, (1)-Caesar in Abyssinia (Hodder & Stoughton, 1936).
(2) Sealed and Delivered (Hodder & Stoughton, 1942).
428 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
STEVENS, Lt.-Col. G. R., Fourth Indian Division (Maclaren & Sons, Toronto,
1948).
Sykes, Christopher, Orde Wingate (Collins, 1959).
Taytor, A. J. P., The Origins of the Second World War (Hamish Hamilton,
1961).
THESIGER, Wilfred, Arabian Sands. (Longman Green, 1959).
Trevaskis, G. K. N., Eritrea. A Colony in Transition: 1941-1952 (Oxford
University Press, 1960).
VirGIN, General, The Abyssinia I Knew (Macmillan, 1936).
War Office, The Abyssinian Campaigns: The official story of the Conquest of
Italian East Africa (H.M.S.O., 1942).
WATERFIELD, Gordon, Morning Will Come (John Murray, 1944).
Waucu, Evelyn, (1) Waugh in Abyssinia (Longman Green, 1930).
(2) When the Going was Good (The Reprint Society, 1940). [Especially
Chapter 2, ‘A Coronation in 1930’ and Chapter 5, ‘A War in 193$’.]
WELLER, George, The Belgian Campaign in Ethiopia (Belgian Information
Centre, New York (n.d.)).
WIENHOLT, Arnold, The African’s Last Stronghold (John Long, 1938).
Wy pe, Augustus, Modern Abyssinia (London, 1901).
YILMA, Princess Asfa, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia (Sampson, Low &
Marston, 1936).

MANUSCRIPT AND PRIVATELY PRINTED WORKS IN ENGLISH

ABEBE TAFARI, Gen., Personal Memoir (in possession of author).

AkAviA Avram, With Wingate in Ethiopia (Tel Aviv).
BEFEKADU WOLDE SELASSIE, Memoir of the 12 Yekatit (in possession of
author).
Harris, Maj. W. A. B., Guerrilla Warfare in the Goggiam (War Office
Records).
Konovatorr, T. E., History of Ethiopia (Hoover Institute).
PILKINGTON, Mark, Letters (London).
Pratt, Gen. Sir William, The Campaign against Italian East Africa 1940-41
(Ministry of Defence, 1962).

(2) BOOKS IN ITALIAN

ANNALI Det Arrica ITALIANA Rome, Anno XV—Anno XVIII [especially
Vol. I: L’Attivita Militare Dopo L’Occupazione—Anno XVI (1938)].
Bastico, Gen. Ettore, II Ferreo III Corpo in A.O. (Milan, 1937).
CANEVARI, E., Graziani Mi Ha Detto (Rome, 1947).
CARGNELOTTI, Ten.-Col. Federico, Scacchiere Nord (Udine, 1962).
CarNIMEO, N., Cheren, I febbraio—27 marzo 1941 (Naples, 1940).
CAVALLERO, Gen. Ugo, Gli Avvenimenti Militari nell’Impero dal 12 gennaio
1938—X VI—12 gennaio 1939—X VII (Addis Ababa, 1939).
CIMMARUTA, R., Ual-Ual (Milan, 1936).
Cont! Rossini, C., Italia ed Etiopia dal Trattato d’Uccialli alla Battaglia di
Adowa (Rome Anno XIII (1935)).
De Biase, Carlo, I’Impero della Faccetta Nera (Rome, n.d.).
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 429

D1 Lauro, Raffaele, Come Abbiamo Difeso L’Impero (Rome, 1949).

Frusct, Col. L., In Somalia sul fronte meridionale (Bologna, 1936).
GAzzERA, Gen. Pieve: Guerra Senza Speranza (Rome, 1952).
GOVERNATORE GENERALE Det AOI, II Primo Anno dell’Impero (Addis Ababa
(n.d.)).
GraZzIANI, Marshal Rodolfo, (1) Fronte Sud (Milan, 1938).
(2) Ho Difeso la Patria (Rome, 1947).
GuiDA DELL’ AFRICA ORIENTALE ITALIANA (Milan, 1938).
Konovatorr, Theodore Evgenevitch, Con le Armate del Negus (Bologna,
1936).
LaNpD1!, Maria Giacoma, Croce Rossina in AOI (Milan, 1938).
LEMMI, Francesco (ed.), Lettere e Diari d’Africa (Rome Anno XIV (1936)).
Lessona, A., Memorie (Florence, 1958).
Maravicna, Gen. Pietro, Come Abbiamo Perduto la Guerra in Africa (Rome,
1949).
MeEnaRINI, G., La Brigata Dabormida alla Battaglia d’Adua (Naples, 1898).
Musson, Vittorio, Voli sulle Ambe (Florence, 1932).
Nasi, Gen., Relazione sulle operazioni di grande polizia svolte dal 15 guigno 1937
al 31 marzo 1938 (Harar, 1939).
PESENTI, Gen., (1) La Prima Divisone Eritrea alla battaglia d’Ascianghi (Milan,
1937).
(2) Fronte Kenya—La Guerra in AOI 1940-41 (Milan, 1950).
PIGNATELLI, Luigi, La guerra dei sette mesi (Milan, 1965).
STARACE, Achille, La Marcia su Gondar (Milan, 1936).
TOMASELLINI, C., Con le colonne celere dal Mareb allo Scioa (Milan, 1936).
Urricio Storico DELLA MarINA Mititare, La Marina nella Seconda Guerra
Mondiale: Le Operazione in Africa Orientale (Rome, 1961).
Uericio Storico, MINISTERO DELLA Diresa, STATO Macciore EseErcItTo, La
Guerra in Africa Orientale Giugno 1940— Novembre 1941 (Rome, 1952).
Urricio SuUPERIORE TOPOGRAFICO DEL GOVERNO GENERALE DELL’A.O.I.
vol. III: La Guerra Italo-Etiopica—Fronte Sud (Addis Ababa, 1937).
VALLETTI-BORGNINI, Gen. Marino, Amba Alagi (Rome, 1962).
VeERNI, V., MSVN (Naples, 1932).
Zou, Corrado, (1) Cronache Etiopiche (Rome, 1930).
(2) Etiopia d’Oggi (Rome, 1935).
(3) La Conquista dell’Impero (Bologna, 1937).

(3) BOOKS IN FRENCH

De GAuLLE, Charles, Mémoires de Guerre, vol.1: (Paris, 1954).
De Monrreip, Henri, (1) Vers les Terres Hostiles d’Ethipie (Paris, 1932).
(2) Les Guerriers de l’Ogaden (Paris, 1933).
(3) Derniers Jours de |’Arabie Heureuse (Paris, 1934).
(4) Le Drame Ethiopien (Paris, 1935).
(5) L’Avion Noir (Paris, 1936).
(6) Le Masque d’Or ou Le Dernier Negus (Paris, 1936).
(7) Trafic d’Armes en Mer Rouge (Paris, 1937).
') Charas (Paris, 1947).
GINGOLD Duprey, A., De |’Invasion a la Liberation de l’Ethiopie (Paris, 1955).
430 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

GUEBRE SELASSIE, Chronique du Régne de Menelik II, 2 vols. (Paris, 1930).

Perripes, S. P., Le Héros d’Adowa: Ras Makonnen (Paris, 1963).
Zervos, Adrien, L’Empire d’Ethiopie (Alexandria, 1930).

(4) ARTICLES
Note: I list here only a tiny selection of articles, those in English and French
that I have personally found most useful for this book. Students and
researchers can find much, much more in journals such as Cahiers d’Etudes
Africaines, Politique Etrangére, Présence Africaine, Annales d’Ethiopie,
published in Paris, Rassegna di Studi Etiopici (Rome), the Journal of Semitic
Studies and the Journal of African History (London), African Quarterly (Delhi)
Foreign Affairs, Africa Today, The Middle East Journal, Africa Report, (USA)
and others. The most useful journal in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian Observer,
was published first monthly by Sylvia Parkhurst from 1956 to 1960, and
then quarterly by her son Dr. Richard Parkhurst from 1961 till 1974.

Burcoyng, Clarissa, and Major Gerald, ‘Lost Month in Ethiopia’, Ethiopian

Observer, vol. xi, no. 4 (almost the whole issue), 1966.
Baer, G., ‘Haile Selassie’s Protectorate Appeal to King Edward VIII’
Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, vol. ix, no. 34, 1969.
Evans, Lt.-Gen. Sir G. C., ‘The Battle of Keren’. History Today, vol. xvi,
1966.
Evans PriTCHARD, E. E., ‘Operations on the Akobo and Gila Rivers 1940-
41’, The Army Quarterly, July 1973.
GiFFrorD, G., (1) ‘The Sudan at War’, Journal of the Royal African Society, vol.
xlill, 1943.
(2) ‘Fighting in Abyssinia: the Part Played by the Composite Battalion of
the East Arab Corps’, The Army Quarterly, August 1942.
GasrE EGZIABHER, Salome, (1) “The Ethiopian Patriots 1936-1941’, Ethio-
pian Observer, vol. xii, no.2 (almost the whole issue), 1969.
(2) ‘The Patriotic Works of Dejazmatch Aberra Kassa and Ras Abebe
Aregai’, Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Ethiopian
Studies, Addis Ababa, vol. 1, 1969.
GREENFIELD, Richard, ‘Remembering the Struggle’, Makerere Journal, vol.
1x, 1964.
Harper, H. G., ‘Irregular Forces in East Africa 1940-41”, Bulletin of the
Military Historical Society.
HENDERSON, K. D. D., “The Sudan and the Abyssinian Campaign’, Journal
of the Royal African Society, vol. xlii, 1943.
Hennessy, Major M. N., “The Nigerian Advance from Mogadiscio to
Harar’, The Army Quarterly, 1948.
Illustration, ‘The Ceremony of Submission’, issue of 1 August 1936, Paris.
‘INVICTRIX’, ‘Abyssinia 1940-41’, Cavalry Journal, March 1942.
Jackson, Lt.-Col. D., ‘Abyssinia 1940-41: The Indian Cavalry Regiments
of the Campaign’, Cavalry Journal, March 1942.
JaRDINE, Douglas, ‘At the Coronation of the Empress Zauditu’, Blackwoods,
October 1917.
 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 431
Journ, Lt.-Col. Yves, ‘La Participation Francaise 4 la Résistance Ethio-
pienne’, Revue Historique de l’Armée, no. iv, 1963, Paris.
Knott, Brig. A. J., “The Sudan Defence Force Goes to War’, The Royal
Engineers Journal, 1944.
Marcus, Harold, (1) “Last Years of the Reign of the Emperor Menelik’,
Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. ix, no. 1, 1964.
(2) ‘Ethiopia 1937-1941’, in Challenge and Response in Internal Conflict,
Cordit and Cooper, Washington, 1968.
PANKHuRST. Richard. (1) “The Ethiopian Patriots—The Lone Struggle
1936-40’, Ethiopian Observer, vol. xiii, no. 1, 1970.
(2) “The Ethiopian Patriots and the Collapse ofItalian Rule in East Africa’,
Ethiopian Observer, vol. xii, no. 2, 1969.
PANKHURST, Sylvia, (1) ‘The New Times and Ethiopia News’, passim.
(2) “The Ethiopian Patriots as Seen at the Time’, Ethiopian Observer, vol.
ill, NOS. IO, II, and 12, 1959.
PELLENC, Capt. ‘Les Italiens en Afrique’, Revue Militaire de l’Etranger, 1896—
1897, Paris.
SANDFORD, Christine, ‘Reforms from Within versus Foreign Control’,
International Affairs, March 1936.
SBACCHI, Alberto, (1) ‘Italian Casualties in Ethiopia 1935-1940’, Ethiopian
Notes, vol. 1, no. 2, Michigan 1970.
(2) ‘The Italians and the Italo-Ethiopian War 1935-1936’, TransAfrican
Journal of History, vol. v, no. 2, 1976.
(3) ‘Italy and the Treatment of the Ethiopian Aristocracy 1937-1940’, The
International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. x, no. 2, 1977.
St. Hiturer, Bernard, ‘Les FFI en Afrique: 1941’, Histoire, no.17, Paris 1968.
STEER, George, (1) ‘Ethiopia in 1939’, Spectator, 3 March 1939.
(2) ‘Addis Ababa—Civilized’, Spectator, 10 March 1939.
SurTEES, Major-Gen. G., ‘A “Q”’ War: An Administrative Account of the
Eritrean and Abyssinian Campaign 1941’, The Journal of the Royal
United Service Institution, 1963.
THESIGER, Wilfred, ‘The Awash River and the Aussa Sultanate’, Geographical
Magazine, vol. Ixxv, 1935.
Wart, D. C., ‘The Secret Laval-Mussolini Agreement of 1935 on Ethiopia’,
Middle East Journal, vol. xv, 1961.

(5) UNPUBLISHED THESES IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH

Note: Unless otherwise stated, these theses were all written by graduates of
Haile Selassie I University in the late 1960s or early 1970s and held at the
Institute of Ethiopia Studies where I consulted them. They are of very
uneven value.

Asy Demissie, ‘Lij Iyasu’.

Apucna Amana, ‘The Ethiopian Church becomes Autocephalous’.
AND ALE Mutaw, ‘Beghemder and Simien 1910-1930’.
Araya Hastal, ‘The Role of Eritrean Askaris in the Italo-Ethiopian War
and under the Occupation 1935-1941’.
432 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

BEKELE WOLDE ABA JiFAR, Anglo-Ethiopian Relations from the Anglo-

Ethiopian Crisis of 1944’.
FitteGU TADESsE, ‘La Politique Ethiopienne de la France 1933-1936’.
Strasbourg.
GETACHEW KELEMU, ‘Internal History of the Aleta Sidanchos’.
Hale MariaM GOsHu, ‘Jimma and Abba Jiffar II’.
KirLE MAMMoO, ‘British Foreign Policy and Public Opinion during the 1935
Italo-Ethiopian Crisis’.
LAVERLE BENNET Bray, ‘Anglo-Ethiopian Relations 1935-1945’.
Georgetown.
MaANIEzAWAL AssEFA, “The Resistance in Beghemder, Wollo and Gojjam’.
TADESSE BIsHAW, ‘Biography of Yigezu Behapte’.
TASFAYE ABEBE, “The Life and Career of Dejazmatch Takele Wolde
Hawariat’.
YOHANNES TAKLE HaIMonot, “The Regency in S.W. Ethiopia’.
YusuF OMAR Assi, ‘The Battle of Maichew and its Historical Significance’.
ZERAI BoureZzIOu, ‘The Legal Settlement of the S.W. Ethiopian Boundary’.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Durinc the months that I spent in Ethiopia visiting former battlefields and
doing the research for this book I encountered everywhere courtesy and
almost everywhere reserve. That this reserve eventually disappeared was
due in particular to the helpfulness of two men: Dr. Richard Pankhurst, the
son ofSylvia Pankhurst and at the time Director ofthe Institute of Ethiopian
Studies at the Haile Selassie I University; and General Aman Andom who
was then in semi-disgrace as a Senator.
Dr. Pankhurst, who has left Addis Ababa at least temporarily but whose
devotion to Ethiopian scholarship has never wavered, has continued to be
most helpful in every possible way. General Aman Andom, appointed head
of state by the co-ordinating committee of the armed forces, the Dergue,
after Haile Selassie’s deposition, was surrounded in his villa a month later by
the tanks of the Dergue and killed in the early evening of22November 1974.
In the subsequent executions on “Bloody Saturday’ many more of my
informants were killed—including Ras Desta’s son, Lij Iskander Desta, by
repute the Emperor’s favourite grandson, atrociously blown to death by
hand-grenades lobbed at him while his hands were tied behind his back.
Major-General Abiye Abebe, briefly the Emperor’s son-in-law, Dejaz Kassa
Wolde Mariam of the Wollega Galla royal house, and General Essayas Gabre
Selassie, once an Oletta cadet, to all of whom! am indebted, were executed
on that day—Essayas dragged from a hospital bed to face the firing squad.
Count Carl Gustav Von Rosen, with whom I had a long interview in Addis
Ababa, ended an adventurous and quixotic life in an apparent attempt to
rescue by air the imprisoned princesses of the Imperial family. I would
particularly like to thank—if, as I believe, they are still alive—Dejaz Gabre
Maskal, Dejaz Kebbede Tessema, General Wolde Johannes Tekle, Colonel
Tafere Debrawork, Major Getachew Afework, Fitaurari Markos of the
Army of Wag, Fitaurari Haile Beiene (who was one of the leaders of the
Eritrean deserters in 1936) and Grazmatch Abdullahi Terapi (who saw and
described to me Afework’s death in the Ogaden) for the information and
help that they gave me.
Colonel and Mrs. Sandford were living on their farm outside Addis
Ababa when I was there. Though ‘Dan’ Sandford was by this time very
doddery, his wife Christine, one of the Grand Old Ladies of Africa, was
most helpful, hospitable, and, where she felt it necessary, scathing. Both
have since died, as has Sir Edwin Chapman-Andrews, who was
unfortunately more discreet than open about the important part he played.
Brigadier Lush, Sandford’s brother-in-law—the two were at total odds over
the British role in Ethiopia—talked to me very frankly. Of the other
prominent British figures involved in this story I corresponded with
Professor Evans-Pritchard, General Platt, and General Cunningham—all of
whom have since died.
In Italy it was, naturally enough, more difficult to contact those involved.
When contacted théy tended to be very careful of what they said and in
434 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
several cases asked for their names not to be mentioned; but I would
particularly like to thank Donna Anna Maria Velardi for her continuing
hospitality and for information about the Duke of Aosta under whom her
late husband served, and Count Senni, Major Maurice’s successor and
predecessor at Gambeila.
I gratefully acknowledge the help of the librarians and staff of the Public
Record Office, then at Chancery Lane, of the Ministry of Defence at
Whitehall, of the Ministro della Difesa and of the Ministero degli Affari Esteri in
Rome, ofthe Bibliothéque de la Ministére de Guerre in Paris, of the Imperial
War Museum, and of St. Antony’s College.
I would also like to thank for assistance or information or both the British
Ambassador and the British Information Officer Robert Miller, in Addis
Ababa, the Belgian Ambassador, the Israeli Ambassador, the then Prime
Minister of France, M. Debré, Lij Mikael Imru in Geneva, Ras Mangasha
Seyum and Tsahai Berhane Selassie in England, Professor Richard Green-
field and Professor Michael Howard in Oxford.
Many other people have over the past years been most helpful and it is
impossible to list them all. But I cannot fail to mention Tom Stacey and
Robin Wright, Patrick Gilkes and Satish Jacob, Dominique Bertin and
Dorika Seib, Hope Leresche and Gwendoline Marsh, Christianne Hojer and
Angela Raven Roberts, and in particular Alastair Horne, Thomas Paken-
ham, and Professor Kenneth Kirkwood, all of or associated with St.
Antony’s College, Oxford, without whose active help this book would
never have seen the light of day. To Judy Cottam and Kate Fraser who typed
and retyped the manuscript at various stages go my especial thanks.
Finally I would like to pay a warm tribute to Neal Burton and Peter
Janson-Smith, formerly of Oxford University Press, whose encouragement
and assistance in preparing this book were quite invaluable and whose tact
and skill in dealing with their author’s difficulties were in my experience of
publishers unrivalled. They both left Oxford University Press before the
book was completed; and the task they had undertaken eventually passed to
Peter Sutcliffe, whose understanding, wise advice, and calm countenance,
together with the enthusiasm ofhis assistant Irene Kurtz, finally brought this
work to, I hope, a successful conclusion.
 INDEX

Abate, Liquemaquas, xxii, 115, 386 Adafrisau, Dejaz, 11, 226, 316, 388
Abba Jobir II, Sultan of Jimma, 152, Adane Makonnen of Tseggede, Dejaz,
166-7 256, 294-5,
356, 401
Abbai Kassa, Fitaurari, 60 Addis Ababa: described, 13; Italians
Abbi Addi, 81-2, 106 advance on, 124, 126-7, 131-2;
Abdel Krim ibn Mohammed, 70 and flight of Haile Selassie, 136;
Abdul el Mahdi, El Sayed, 218 sacked and pillaged, 137, 139~40;
Abebe Aregai, Balambaras (later Ras), Italians enter, 141-3; Aberra Kassa
71, 135, 137-8; and attack on attacks, 157-61; Blackshirt
Addis Ababa, 159-60; and Aberra massacre in, 175-7, 369;
Kassa’s submission, 169; and Cunningham captures, 368-70,
Shoan resistance, 183; crowns 372; Haile Selassie returns to, 372,
Meleke Tsahai, 190; guerrilla 378-9
resistance, 190-2, 201-2; Italian Ademe Anbassu, Fitaurari, 91, 93, 95
action against, 198; relations with Adigrat, 62-3, 65, 337
Haile Selassie, 202; Sandford seeks Admassu Birru, Dejaz, 76, 84, 113,
contact with, 266; waits in 155, 388
Ankober Hills, 369; Italians Adowa: Battle of (1896), xxi-xxiv,
supply, 376; and Haile Selassie’s 115; effect of, 46, 254; falls to
return to Addis Ababa, 378-9; Italians (1936), 61-2; prisoners
death, 382; note on, 387 (1896), 87
Abebe Damtew, Dejaz, 48-9; Afework, 40, 51-2, 68-70, 89
campaigns, 89, 128; popularity, Africa Orientale Italiana (AOI), 148-50,
go; returns to home province, 139; 186-7, 198, 208, 209n
returns from exile, 226; supports Agordat, 320-4, 331
Blatta Takele, 231-2; Haile Agostini, Gen. Augusto, 94, 127
Selassie on, 234; moved to Kenya, Airlie, David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of, 13
234, 239; and Haile Selassie’s re- Akavia, Avram (Wingate’s secretary),
entry into Ethiopia, 313; and 338n
Neville, 360; note on, 387 Alagi, Ber, 111
Abebe Tafari, 124, 157, 169, 402 Alberini, Cesare, 173
Aberra Imam, Dejaz, 265 Albertone, Gen., xxi, xxiii
Aberra Kassa, Dejaz, 76, 104-5, 122, Alem Saguet, 20
136; imperial privilege and Alemayu Goshu, Fitaurari, 39
position, 156-7; attack on Addis Alexander, King of Yugoslavia, 42
Ababa, 157, 159-62; submission Ali Nur, 39, 69
and death, 169-71, 312; note on, Allen, Capt. W. E. D., 354, and
388 notes, 423
Aberra Tedla, Dejaz, 97, 103, 119, 388 Allenby, Gen. Edmund Henry
Abiye Abebe, Lij, 157, 170, 377, 388 Hynman, Ist Viscount, 209
Abraha Deboch, 174-5, 179-81 Almadu, 363
Abraham, Abba, Bishop of Gojjam, Aman Andom, General, 402
TIPO IST LO55 399 Amba Alagi, 65, 76, 82-3, 99-100,
Acland, Bimbashi, 283, 316; with 102-3, III, 131, 379, 381
Gideon Force, 341n, 344, 346, 354 Amba Aradam, 97, 99-100, 102-4
Acqua Col, 327, 329-30 Amde Ali, Dejaz, 97, 112-13, 153,
Ad Teclesan (gorge), 335-7 388
Ad Termaber (pass), 124-7, 130-1; Amde Mikael of Arussi, Dejaz, 89,
tunnel, 187 ‘ 139, 388
436 INDEX

Amhara (people), 120-1, 177-8, 184, wounding denied, 112; and

192 Aberra Kassa’s attack on Addis
Anchim, Battle of (1930), 11 Ababa, 156-7, 159, 161; submits,
Andarge, Fitaurari, 76 169-71, 312; death, 171, 312; note
Andargatchew Messai, Lij (later Ras on, 389
Bitwoded), 182, 389 Asmara, 28, 320, 322, 336-7
Angelini, Col., 355, 375, 379, 382 Asrate Kassa, Lij, 312, 375, 389
Anglo-Ethiopian Boundary Assab, 221-2
Commission, 32, 37 Assefa Araya, 124-5, 402
Aosta, Amedeo, Duke of: marriage, Astrid, Queen ofthe Belgians, $8
21; North African command, 22- Auberson, Maitre, 15, 49
4; succeeds to title, 24; transfer to Auled Suleiman (tribe), 23
air force, 24-5; as Viceroy, 186-7, Auraris, Dejaz, 97, 112-13, 183n, 191,
192, 201; recalled to Italy, 192-3; 389
and attack on Djibuti, 194, 196; Axum, 28, 62
popularity among British, 194, Axum, Nevraid of see Aregai
197; mobilizes, 199; and Italian Ayalew Birru, Dejaz, 9-12; and Italian
war preparations for East Africa, campaign, $7; raises troops, 73;
208-10; and conquest of British campaigns against Italians, 77-8,
Somaliland, 250; obstructs Frusci, 80-3, 188; offers to defect, 77,
260; and Ras Hailu, 296; and El 107; Ras Imru on, 110; withdraws
Waq defeat, 304-5; and possible from Debra Tabor, 129; under
armistice, 305; and defence of Italian administration, 155, 200;
Eritrea, 322, 324; visits Keren, returns to Gondar, 298, 332; and
329; and defence of Burie, 344; Haile Selassie’s return, 313;
and British advance on Addis switches loyalties to British, 377;
Ababa, 368-9; leaves Addis note on, 389
Ababa, 370; surrender and death, Ayalew Makonnen, Fitaurari, 259,
381 262, 265
Aosta, Anne, Duchess of (Princess of Ayane Chekol, 225, 227, 263, 283, 401
France), 21 Ayele, Lij, 130-1
Aosta, Emmanuele Filiberto, Duke of, Azebo Galla (people), 116-19, 121-2
21, 23n, 186, 305
Aosta, Héléne (d’Orléans), Duchess of, Baade, Fitaurari, 69, 129, 178
21 Babbini, Gen. Ezio, 107
Appert, Capt., 244 Babile Gap, 367-8
Aregai of Axum, Nevraid, xxii, 57, 86 Babitchev, Mischa, 72, 137
Arimondi, Gen., xxi, Xxill Badoglio, Marshal Pietro: Governor-
Armachecho, 185, 256-7, 259, 273, General in Libya, 23-4; career, 23;
293-4 Graziani’s resentment of, 53; tour
Armstrong, Brig. B. F., 299n, 325 of inspection, 63-4; replaces de
Arussi, 89 Bono as Commander, 68; in
Asfa Wossen, Mered Azmatch (Crown Makalle, 74, 77, 85; and Haile
Prince): leaves Addis Ababa, 125; Selassie Gugsa, 74, 86; indecision,
and defence of Ad Termaber, 126, 76; and Ethiopian counter-attack,
131-2; and final councils, 135; and 80, 82-5, 87; assesses Ethiopians,
Abba Petros, 157; return to 85; radio intercepts, 92, I14;
Ethiopia, 234, 316; and Haile strength, 96; northern offensive,
Selassie’s position after 99, 101-2, 104, 106-9; link-up
reoccupation, 376; and Nasi’s with Graziani, 112; and Haile
surrender, 382; note on, 398 Selassie’s personal leadership, 114,
Asfau Wolde, Giorgis, 244 116; and Azebo Galla, 122; on
Asfawossen Kassa, Dejaz, 18; victory, 122-3; advances on Addis
marriage, 20, 156; in Dessie, 96; Ababa, 126-7, 131; enters Addis
 INDEX 437
Ababa, 141-3, 368; on Graziani in Belgium: advisers in Ethiopia, 12, 14—-
Harar, 145; made Governor- 15, 47-50, 71, 90; attitude to
General of AOI, 148; return to Ethiopian crisis, 46; withdrawal
Italy, 150, 158; dislike of from Ethiopia, $8; ex-officers
Cavallero, 186; and preparations recruited by Ethiopians, $9, 89;
for war, 209; and invasion of ex-officers leave, 124; embassy in
British Somaliland, 247, 250; Addis Ababa, 139-40; Congo
dismissed after Libyan defeat, 307 support for Ethiopia, 261
Bahr Dar, 183, 263-5, 276, 340-1, Bell (assistant district commissioner),
354-6, 378 236
Balbo, Italo, 24-5, 54, 224 Belly, Col., 66, 170
Balcha, Bajirond (later Dejaz): at Benson, Lt.-Col., 375"
Adowa, xxii; opposes Haile Bentinck, Major Count, 257, 259,
Selassie, 7-8, 10; liberated by 262-3, 285-6, 293-5, 356
Haile Selassie, 86; traditionalism, Berbera (British Somaliland), 241, 243,
go; as guerrilla leader, 145, 159; 245, 248-9
and attack on Addis Ababa, 159— Beresford-Peirse, Gen. Henry B. de la
61; killed, 166-7; note on, 389 Poer, 315, 320, 323, 329-30
Baldissera, Antonio, 64 Bergamo, Adalberto, Duke of, 55, 108
Baldwin, Stanley, 65n, 67, 150-1 Bergonzi, Gen., 322-3
Bale (province), 172 Bergonzoli, Gen. Annibale, 92-3
Banderachin (news-sheet), 284, 309, 316 Bertello, Gen., 365
Bantyergew, Fitaurari, 145 Bertoldi, Gen. Sisto, 243, 247
Baraka river, 324 Bertrand, Capt., 41
Baratieri, Gen. Oreste, xxi, xxili, 61, Beshah, Dejaz, xxii
65, 102, IIS, 254 Bezibeh Sileshi, Kenyaz, 91, 390
Barchard, Brig., 203 Biase, Gen. Luigi di, 197, 209
Baro salient, 236, 318 Bilborough, Capt., 319, 360
Barton, Mary, Lady, 71 Bildt, M. H. de, 12
Barton, Sir Sidney, 14, 49, 58-9; and Bircutan, 184
policing of Addis Ababa, 71; and Birre Zagaye, 225, 227, 283, 294-S,
sanctions, 133; and sack of Addis 401
Ababa, 139-40; supports Birru Wolde Gabriel, Ras (Imperial
Ethiopian cause, 182; grandson Fitaurari), 8, 11; and military
christened, 213; telegram from preparations, 47; disgraced, 59;
Haile Selassie, 256 Haile Selassie restores, 86; return
Barzon, Col., 333 to Ethiopia, 226; rejoins Haile
Basha, Nagradas, 52 Selassie, 313; with Gideon Force,
BasticomGens Ettores rir, 121, 130; 350n, 355, 379; and victory, 382;
146 note on, 390
Bateman, Charles Harold, 194 Birru Wolde Giorgis, Fitaurari, 115
Beghemder (province), 9-11, 120, 184, Bisidimo river, 367-8
188-9, 295n Blackley, Trevor, 219, 227, 259, 262
‘Beghemder Force’, 355 Blackshirts (Italian militiamen), 27;
Beiene Abba Segsib, Dejaz, 105 troops mobilize in Eritrea, 54-6;
Beiene Merid, Dejaz, 48-9, 90-1, I7I- in campaign against Ethiopia, 83—
3, 390 4, 99, 102; and Italian victory,
Beja (tribe), 314 146; and Fascist colonial
Belai Haileab, 164, 168, 177 administration, 154; massacre in
Belai Zelleka, ‘Lij’, 189, 290, 297, 351, Addis Ababa, 175-6; see also
357, 359, 382, 400
Forces, units and formations
Belau, Dr, 101 Blaikie (assistant district
Belaya, 257-8, 349 commissioner), 230
Belaya, Mount, 290-1, 315 Blue Nile, 351, 358-9
438 INDEX

Blum, Léon, 151 British East Africa, 199

Bodard (French Minister), 60, 140-1, Brophil (Irish adventurer), 72
E74 N79 Brosset, Col., 336
Bodard, Pierrette, 174, 179 Broughton, Sir Delves, 253
Body, Sergeant, 353 Buchanan, Brig. F. L. A., 299n, 325
Boma, 348 Buchanan, Capt. Angus, 239, 300
Bogor Isman, Sultan of the Miurtin, Buchanan, Pipe-Major, 364
31 Bulstrode, Sergeant, 216
Bonetti, Admiral, 337, 348, 376 Burgoyne, Major Gerald, 72, 86, 96,
Bonham, J., 300 101, 103; killed, 103-4, 106
Bono, Gen. Emilio de: as governor, Burie, 340, 342-8, 350, 352, 354
22, 24; and Fascists, 22-3, 26; Bush (RAF pilot), 229
visits Eritrea, 27, 41; and conquest Butana Bridge (Kassala Province), 219,
of Ethiopia, 41-2; on war 260-1, 267, 270, 315, 319
preparations, 47, 56; Graziani and,
53; on Haile Selassie Gugsa, 58; cadets see Oletta Cadet School
and invasion of Ethiopia, 61-5; (Caltelaat, Coll, at, nS yl
replaced, 68; and Ayalew Birru, Cambier, Lieut., 48, 90-1
77 Campbell, Bimbashi, 318, 378
Borana tribe, 360 Caporetto, Battle of (1917), 23, 46
Borghese, Col., 335-6 Cardell-Ryan (‘Haji Abdullah’), 310
Bottai, Giuseppe, 27, 143 Carnimeo, Gen. N., 329, 335, 337
Bourbon-Siciles, Prince de, 217 Carolei, Capt., 39
Boustead, Hugh, 212, 227, 267-8, Carter, Assistant Superintendent, 216
309-10; and Haile Selassie’s Cartier, Baron de, 142
return, 316-18; with Gideon Caruso, Lieut., xxiii
Force, 341, 343-4, 346-8, 353-7; Castagna, Sebastiano, 19in
escorts Haile Selassie, 377 Castagnola, Col., 207, 220, 227, 229,
Bouveng, Lieut., 130-1, 135 266; 272,.279
Boyle, Capt., 239, 288, 316-17; with casualties, 249, 371
Gideon Force, 341, 343, 347-8, Cat, Gen. Aimone, 84
353, 356 Cavallero, Gen. Ugo, 23; appointed
Briggs, Brig., 320, 323, 330M, 332, 334 troop commander in Ethiopia,
Brink, Gen. George E., 299, 325 186, 187m, 188; and rebellions,
Britain: embassy and consulates in East 189-92; recalled to Italy, 197;
Africa, 14; and Ethiopian replaces Badoglio, 307
Boundary Commission, 32; Cave Bey, El Miralai, 196-7, 258, 318
relations with Mussolini, 42; and Cerulli, Enrico, 32
League of Nations, 43; public Chamberlain, Neville, 151, 239
opinion on Italy, 45, 75-6; and Chambrun, Comte de, 45, 67
Italian invasion of Ethiopia, 63; Chapman-Andrews, Major Edwin,
1935 General Election, 67; 138, 225-6, 234, 283, 288, 316-17,
rumoured help from, 120; and SHE
sack of Addis Ababa, 139-40; Chater, Brig. Reginald, 241, 243
suspected of Yekatit 12 Cheeseman, Robert, 14, 212, 219
assassination plot, 179-80; Cheru (gorge), 321-2
approves Aosta regime, 187; and Chifli, Kenyaz, 117
return of Haile Selassie, 232-3; Chokey Mountains, 350
supports rebellion in Ethiopia, Churchill, Winston: and fall of Addis
239, 256-9, 265-6, 294, 298; and Ababa, 142; at outbreak of war,
loss of Somaliland, 250-1; 199; relations with Wavell, 211,
administration in captured 240, 251-3; and Sudan reverses,
territories, 372-3; see also Forces, 230; Haile Selassie writes to, 232-
units and formations 3; urges attack in Ethiopia, 239;
 INDEX 439
and reformed Middle East from Kenya, 319, 325-6, 362;
Command, 240; on fall of encourages Neville, 360; invades
Somaliland, 249, 251; Directives Somalia, 362-3; takes Kismayu,
on Middle East, 252-3; Eden 363; captures Addis Ababa, 368-
cables from Cairo, 269; and 70; and Haile Selassie’s return to
Wingate, 281; and Eritrean Addis Ababa, 378-9; fails in
deserters, 288; and attack on Western Desert, 382
Kismayu, 301-2; and de Gaulle’s Cunningham, Admiral Andrew B.,
East Africa plan, 302-3; and 307
possible Italian armistice, 305; on Curle, Alex T., 37, 300, 325, 360
Wavell’s North African victory, Cyrenaica, 22
308; on return of Haile Selassie, Cyrillos V, Coptic Patriarch of Cairo,
312; and attack on Eritrea, 320; on 6
East African successes, 326; on Cyrillos, Abuna, 10-11, 157, 175, 180,
Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa, 378 399
Ciano, Count Galeazzo: on Czechoslovakia, 193
Drummond, 49; flies in Eritrea,
$5; in air war, 87; attempts to
land at Addis Ababa, 141; dislike Dabormida, Gen., xxi, xxili
of Cavallero, 186; on rebellion in Dagghabur, 90, 127-9, 139, 365
AOI, 192; and preparations for Dagnew Tessema, 220, 355, 375
war, 208; on Graziani’s Libyan Dakar (West Africa), 302
defeat, 307 Damtew, Fitaurari, 90
Cimmaruta, Capt., 32, 38-9 Danakil desert, I11
Clifford, Gol., 32, 37-8 Dangila, 340
Cobbo, 96 Dassios sr, 72074
Collingwood, Lieut., 39 Davidson (RAF flyer), 229
Colson (US adviser), 15, 49 Dayan, Moshe, 281, 283
Congo, Belgian, 261, 302 Debra Brehan, 131-2, 180
consulates (foreign), 14 Debra Libanos (monastery), 180-1,
Cooper, Alfred Duff, 75 185, 378
Coptic Church, 157, 185 Debra Markos, 136, 189, 342-3, 346-
Corbeek Overloo, Dieudonné de, $1, 375; battle for, 351-9
Chevalier de, 48 Debra Tabor, 11, 129, 183, 355, 375-
Corvio, Silvio, 45 6, 379, 382
Corni, Guido, 32 Dejene, Kenyaz, 168
Corriger (pilot), 19 Del Valle, Capt., 101, 106
Corsi, Col. Corso, 330, 333 Delitala, Col., 332, 335, 373
Cortese, Guido, 153, 175 Dembecha (fort), 347-9, 353
Corvedale, Oliver R. Baldwin, Dessie: Haile Selassie in, 74, 82, 85,
Viscount, 333 91, 96-7; bombed, 74; plot in,
Courtenay-Brocklehurst (former 112; falls to Italians, 122-3; Frusci
game warden), 310-II in, 375-6; Pienaar captures, 378
Cousens, Bimbashi, 207 Desta Damtew, Ras, 19; and Alem
Criniti, Major, 78-9, 190 Saguet, 20; command, 49;
Critchley, Capt., 262, 291 campaign, 90-3, 128; defeat, 93-4;
Critica Fascista (journal), 27 disgrace denied, 112; and Haile
Cunningham, Gen. Alan G.: at Selassie’s flight, 138; faces Geloso,
Khartoum, 269; replaces 149; Graziani opposes, 152, I9In;
Dickinson as GOC East Africa, and Gabremariam, 171-2; escape
269, 299; approves Kismayu and death, 173, 181, 313; note on,
attack, 271, 301-3; attitude to 390
native troops, 300-1, 304, 365, Desta Tana, 144
368; takes El Waq, 303-4; attacks Diamanti, Filippo, 54, 81-4
440 INDEX

Dickinson, Gen. D. P., 238-9, 255, Elphinstone, Col., 212

269, 299 Emmanuel, Fort, 348, 352, 356
Dill, Gen. Sir John, 209, 251, 301 Enda Selassie, 80
Dimbleby, Richard, 255 Engiabara, 265, 340-1
Dimoline, Brig., 299n Enterprise, HMS, 141
Dinchinese, Woizero, 18 Equatorial Corps, 196
Diredawa, 368-9 Eribo, 318
Djibuti: French defences at, 194, 223- Eritrea: as Italian colony, 27-30; war
4; Italians attack, 194, 198, 222-3; preparations, 54-6; deserters from,
LeGentilhomme quits, 241; Free 85, 196, 232, 287-8, 335; troops
French plan to recapture, 302-3, mutiny, 94; at Mai Ceu, 119;
336; Hamilton’s sabotage mission, British conquest of, 320-6, 330,
310 337; British administration of,
Dobo (pass), 241 372-3
Dodds-Parker, Major, 197, 283 Errol, Josslyn Victor Hay, 22nd Earl
Dolo, 366 of, 253
Dologorodoc, 333-4 Erskine, Capt., 163-5, 196, 199, 311
Dongalaas Gorge, 324, 327, 329-30, Essayas Gabre Selassie, 124, 144, 157,
332,334 169, 376, 403
Dothée, Major, 48, 51, 59n, 90, 125n Ethiopia: army, 15, 50-1; constitution
Douglas, Capt. Dougie, 300, 382 (1931), 16; Boundary
Drummond, Sir Eric (later Earl of Commission, 32, 37-8; and
Perth), 45 Walwal incident, 39-41; and
Dubats, 31 Italian war threat, 44; mercenaries
Durand, Mortimer, 64 and foreign support in, $1, 71-2;
Dux, Fort (Debra Markos), 349 mobilization, 53, 60; invaded, 61;
army assessed by Italians, 85;
East Africa Force, 210-11, 299 annexed by Italy, 147, 148;
Eboué (French Governor of Chad), provisional government under Ras
261 Imru, 163-9; fighting ends in,
Echege (office), 6 173; Italian reprisals against, 175-
Eden, Anthony: and war threat, 47, 8; cause in Europe, 182; unrest
§0; and sanctions against Italy, 68, and resistance in, 183-4, 188-92,
151; compromise proposals, 75; 208-9; and British war
and fall of Addis Ababa, 142; preparations, 211-12, 220; Britain
visits Haile Selassie in London, supports rebellion in, 239, 257-9,
150; and provisional government 265-6, 294, 298; intrigue and
in Gore, 163, 164n, 165; at double-dealing in, 295-8; Haile
outbreak of war, 199; meets Selassie re-enters, 316; British
Mazzolini, 203; Wavell appeals to, administration in, 373
230-1; Churchill attacks on Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan, 219,
Middle East, 239; on Churchill 236, 318
and Wavell, 251-3; Khartoum
conference, 268-72, 279, 301; and Fabritis, Major Fausto de, 370
Haile Selassie’s Treaty of Alliance, ‘Fairfield’ (villa, Bath), 151
270; and Wingate, 280-1; and Farello, Capt., 169, 190, 375, 382
Eritrean deserters, 288; and Farinacci, Roberto, 25, $5
Cunningham’s caution, 301-2; and Farouk Bey, 51, 89
Sudan offensive, 309; and return Fascist Party, 25-6, 64, 154-6; see also
of Haile Selassie, 312 Italy; Mussolini, Benito
Edward VIII, King, 142, 151 Fekade Selassie, 15
Egypt, 253-4 Fedeli, Col., 222
El] Wagq, 303-5 Fikke, 136, 169-70
Ellena, Gen., xxi, xxill Fikremariam, Fitaurari, 11, 122, 135;
 INDEX 441
and Haile Selassie’s flight, 136; Equatorial Corps (of Sudan Defence
forms guerrilla band, 145, 159; Force), 196
and attack on Addis Ababa, 159- Essex Regiment, 271, 273, 276-9
61, I9In; note on, 390 st Ethiopians (Refugee Battalion),
Fioretti, Eugenio, 364 238-9, 300
Hletchen/GolS Bu Gear 2nd Ethiopians (Refugee Battalion),
‘Flitforce’, 337 239, 309, 316-17, 341-3, 347, 349
Foley, Capt., 259, 293, 295; with 352, 356, 357, 375n
Gideon Force, 350-1, 357, 359 3rd Ethiopians (Refugee Battalion),
Fongoli, Gen. Ugo, 322 356
Forces, units, and formations (military) Frontier Battalion (of Sudan Defence
BRITISH, COMMONWEALTH, AND ALLIED: Force), 283, 309-10, 316, 318,
7th Armoured Division, 308 341, 346, 348, 351
Australian (No. 1) Op. Centre, 350 Garhwalis, 274-8, 334
Black Watch, 244-5, 247-9 Gold Coast Brigade, 299n, 303, 362,
Ist Brigade (South African), 210, 366, 376, 381
239, 252, 299, 303, 365 Highland Light Infantry, 279, 322
2nd Brigade (South African), 299n, Household Cavalry (Op. Centre),
325, 362, 364 341, 350
sth Brigade (South African), 299n, 4th Indian Division, 308, 315, 323,
325, 362, 364 330, 332, 381
sth Brigade (Indian Infantry), 315, sth Indian Division, 253, 260, 273,
327, 330 323, 330, 332,381
7th Brigade (Indian Infantry), 320, 2nd Irregulars (Ethiopian), 325, 360
323, 330n sth Irregulars (Turkana), 3190, 360
oth Brigade (Indian Infantry), 320, Kenya Armoured Car Regiment,
330, 331 370
roth Brigade (Indian Infantry), 272, Kenya Independent Squadron, 299—-
330, 337 300
11th Brigade (Indian Infantry), 315, King’s African Rifles, 203, 210-11,
327, 330-1 237-8, 243, 245, 247, 252, 318-19
21st Brigade (KAR), 299n 363-6, 369-70, 376, 381
22nd Brigade (KAR), 299n Natal Mounted Rifles, 325
25th Brigade (KAR), 299n, 318 Nigerian Brigade, 299n, 362, 364-6,
26th Brigade (KAR), 299n 376
29th Brigade (Indian Infantry), 330 ist Nigerian Battalion, 238, 247,
Brigade Francais d’Orient, 336 366-7, 381
Camel Corps (Somaliland), 245, ist Northern Rhodesians, 245
249 3rd/14th Punjabis, 245, 327
Camel Corps (Sudan Defence Rajputana Rifles, 327, 329-30
Force), 229 Royal Air Force, 221-2, 229, 274,
Cameron Highlanders, 327, 330 276, 331, 345, 370
Central Indian Horse, 334, 337 Royal Fusiliers, 327
13th Demi-Brigade (French Foreign Royal Natal Carbineers, 210
Royal Sussex Regiment, 324
Legion),
330n, 335, 376
Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Rifles Royal Tank Regiment, (B
(South African), 210 Squadron, 6th RTR), 276 (B
ist East African Brigade (later 21st Squadron 4th RTR) 315
Brigade, KAR), 203 Royal Ulster Corps, 375n
2nd East African Brigade (later 22nd Scots Greys (Op. Centre), 350, 355
Brigade, KAR), 203 Sherwood Rangers (Op. Centre),
Eastern Arab Corps (of Sudan 356
Defence Force), 207, 217, 272, 4th/r1ith Sikhs, 321, 333
320 Skinner’s Horse, 260
442 INDEX

Forces (cont.) Gavinana Division, 46, $4, 62, 107-8

South African Air Force, 239 I Goliardi Battalion (of Tevere
Ist South African Division, 365 Division), $5
Ist Transvaal Scottish, 210, 304, Gran Sasso Division, 54-5, 107-8
364, 368 Gruppo Bande Altopiano, 78
West Yorkshire Regiment, 230, 236, 1st Gruppo Blackshirt Battalion, $4,
258, 269 81-2
Worcestershire Regiment, 271, 334 2nd Gruppo Bande Frontiere, 318
ITALIAN: 3rd Gruppo Bande Frontiere, 318
air force see Regia Aeronautica below Gruppo Bande a Cavallo Amhara, 321
Alpini ‘Worg Amba’ Battalion (of ‘January 23rd’ Division, $4, 99, 116
roth Regiment Savoy grenadiers), 11th Legion (Blackshirts), 330
330 114th Legion (Blackshirts), 105
Aosta Lancers, 92-3 221st Legion (Blackshirts), 146, 160
“April 21st’ Division, 54, 107-8 Libyan Division, 91, 94, 127, 145
Assietta Division, $4, 116 ‘March 23rd’ Division
I Brigade (Eritrean), 82, 127, 141-2 (‘Implacable’), 54-5, 99, 102, 104n
II Brigade (Eritrean), 241, 246, 320, ‘October 28th’ Division, 54, 83-4
322), 3297332,
335 Peloritana Division, 46-7, 91, 127
III Brigade (Eritrean), 107, 109-10, Regia Aeronautica (air force), 38-40,
127457 55, 60, 81, 86-7, 97, 103-4, 106,
IV Brigade (Eritrean), 279 117
V Brigade, 324, 330 Sabauda Division, $4, 99-101, I16
VI Brigade, 324 toth Savoy Grenadiers, 333, 335-6
IX Brigade, 237 11th Savoy Grenadiers, 322, 324,
XI Brigade, 267-8, 324, 329 330, 335-6, 369
XIII Brigade, 366 Sila Division, 54, 99, IOI, 104n
XIV Brigade, 246 ‘Special Lakes Division’, 149, 171
XIX Brigade, 349, 357 Tevere Division (Blackshirts), $5,
XX Brigade, 366 OI, 127, 146
XXII Brigade, 265 Valpusteria Alpini Division, $5, 100,
XLIV Brigade, 324 116-18
XCII Brigade, 366 Fowkes, Brig. ‘Fluffy’, 203, 237, 299n
4th Colonial Battalion (Eritrean), 363, 369-70, 382
332 Franca, Dr, 60
26th Colonial Battalion, 67 France: consulates, 14; relations with
40th Colonial Battalion, 368 Mussolini, 42; and League of
§4th Colonial Battalion, 325 Nations, 44; alliance with Italy,
79th Colonial Battalion, 382 44-6; aid in Ethiopia, 71; embassy
tot Colonial Division, 362, 366 in Addis Ababa, 139-40; and
102 Colonial Division, 362 Djibuti, 194; defeat by Germany,
Ist Corps, 61-2, 64-5, 99, III, I14 208, 222-3; Italy attacks, 223;
2nd Corps, 61, 64, 74, 80-1, 107-8 neutralism, 241-2
3rd Corps, 99, 104n, 106, III, 121 Francheschino (Military Advocate),
4th Corps, 83, 107 180
Cosseria Division, 55, 83 Franchet d’Esperey, Marshal L. F. M.,
La Disperata (air squadron), $5, 61 12-13
Eastern Lowlands Column, 65-6 Frangipami, Dr, 298
Eritrean Corps, 61, 64-5, 74, 81-3, Free French, 302-3, 330n, 335, 376
IO4n, 114, 122 French Equatorial Africa, 261, 302
Ist Eritrean Division, 54, 118 Frére, Lieut., 91, 93
2nd Eritrean Division, 54, 84, 117— ‘Frostyforce’, 235, 314
18 Frusci, Col. Luigi (later General), 69—
‘February Ist’ Division, 54, 83 70, 127, 145; attacks Kassala, 230,
 INDEX 443
241; rebels threaten, 257; plans Geloso, Gen. Carlo, 149, 171
major attack, 260; at Asmara, 320, George V, King, 4
322, 329, 336-7; defence of George Herouy, 165, 168, 177
Eritrea, 324, 336; and Keren Gérard (Belgian Minister), 40, 174
campaign, 329, 333-5, 354; leaves Gerlogubi, 40, 52
Asmara, 337; and Aosta’s flight, Germain, Gen., 224
369; at Dessie, 376; surrenders, Germany, 46, 199, 202-3
381 Gessesse Belew, Fitaurari (later Dejaz),
Puller Gen fy PPC.) 96 19-20, 77-8, 86, 146, 189, 391
Furesi, Lieut. Modesto, 319 Getachew Abate, Ras, 113, 115, 118,
P2122, 133—4,7136, 155, 301
Gabre Giorgis, Echege, 226 Getahun Tessema, 262, 266
Gabre Hiwot Mikael, Ras, 97, 112, Gete, Fitaurari, 100
1$3-5, 177, 390 Giardini (Italian consul),54
Gabre Maskal, 136; joins Sandford, Gideon Force: named, 291; formed and
200, 259; in Sudan, 202-3; equipped, 293, 310; enters
celebrates Italian entry into war, Ethiopia, 312, 317; composition,
216; military activities, 262, 265; 338; Goyam campaign, 340-59;
admires Wingate, 291n; with accompanies Haile Selassie to
Gideon Force, 348, 352n; note on, Addis Ababa, 378; dissolved, 382
391 Gigga (fort), 347
Gabreiehu, Fitaurari, xxii Gileazgi, Rosario, 174-5
Gabremariam, Dejaz, 33, 39, 48, 95s, Gill, Hope, 139
152, I7I-3, 390 Gindo, Fitaurari, 19
Gabremedhin, Dejaz, Shum Tembien, Girma, Lij, 190, 402
60, III, 391 Giuliani, Father Reginaldo, 54, 84
Galla (people), 163-5, 311-12; see also Gloucester, Henry, Duke of, 12-13,
Raya-Galla 150
Galla-Sidamo (province), 149, 236, Gobatto, Major, 318
360, 362, 364-5 Godwin-Austen, Major-Gen. A. R.,
Gallabat (Sudan), 207, 217-19, 229, 246-8, 251, 299, 303-4, 306
272-9 Gogetti, Battle of, 172
Galliano, Major Giuseppe, 65n Gojjam (province), 16-17, 19, 42;
Gallina, Col., 131, 161 revolt in, 86, 110, 120-1, 146;
Gambeila, 165-6 Italians incorporate in Amhara,
Garelli, Col., 180-1 148; resistance and rebellion in,
Gariboldi, Gen. Italo, 158, 160-1 183-5, 189-91, 264, 267, 296;
Garino, Col., 304 Mangasha Jimbirre’s plan for,
gas (poison), 81, 84-6, 409 257-8; Sandford and Wingate in,
Gash, 314 289-90; Ras Hailu’s return and
Gasperini, Gino, 29, 57-8, 295 intrigue in, 296-7; Nasi in, 340;
Gaulle, Gen. Charles de, 222, 261, Gideon Force in, 340-59
302-3, 336, 372 Gondar, 107, 109-10, 120, 355-6, 375-
Gazelle Force, 260, 315, 320, 323-4, 6
327, 330 Gongol, Fitaurari, 70
Gazerra, Gen. Pietro, 23, 236, 239, Gore, 136, 143, 152, 163-7
241; inaction, 266, 268; resists Gorrahei (oasis), 51-3, 68-70
British advance, 318; and Aosta, Graham, James, Marquess of (later
369; in Jimma, 379; surrenders, Duke of Montrose), 365
381 Graham, Sir Ronald, 45
Gebrai, Geraz, 94 Graziani, Marshal Rodolfo: in North
Gebredar, 68-70 Africa, 22-4, 195; embarks for
Gedaref (Sudan), 219, 236, 258-9, 265— Somalia, 47; in Mogadishu, $3,
7e27On 272 ‘ 55; counters southern threat, 90-3;
444 INDEX

Graziani, Marshal Rodolfo (cont.) Haile Selassie 1, Emperor (earlier Ras

radio intercepts, 91-2; link-up Tafari Makonnen): 1924 European
with Badoglio, 112; in Ogaden, tour, 3-4, 6, 40; as regent, 4-7;
127-9, 139; enters Harar, 145; diplomatic skills, 6; disbands
promoted to Marshal, 153; as Balcha, 7-8; advancement, 8-9;
Viceroy, 150; and guerrilla forces, and succession, 10; accession and
152; and Ethiopian submissions, coronation, 12-13; foreign
153-4; and Ras Hailu, 154; and influence and advice, 14-15; early
attack on Addis Ababa, 158, 160- plots against, 17-20; and appeal to
2; and Ras Imru, 166, 169; and League of Nations, 40-1; speech
killing of Aberra Kassa, 170-1; on Italian threat, 47; military
and Gabremariam, 172; distributes preparations, 47—50; requests
alms, 174; assassination attempt, neutral observers, $9; and Italian
175, 179, 180-1, 369; and Addis invasion, 62; visits Ogaden front,
Ababa massacre, 177; reprisals and 70; in Dessie, 74, 82, 85, 91, 96-7;
repression, 178-81, 186, I9In; and Ethiopian counter-offensive,
recuperates, 183; action against 82, 85, 87, 89, 95; and conduct of
Haile Kebbede, 184; replaced as war, 97; in Quoram, 106, III-12;
Viceroy, 185-7; and war personal command at Mai Ceu,
preparations, 209; in Libya, 224-5; 114, 117-19, 133; withdraws from
invades Egypt, 253-4; defeat at Mai Ceu, 121; prayer days, 122-3;
Sidi Barrani, 307-9 flight, 132, 133, 135-6, 137, 138—
Grey, Sir Edward, 252 41; final councils, 135; in
Grey, Regimental Sergeant Major, Jerusalem, 146; exile in England,
29In 1§0-2, 415, 416; addresses League
Gubba, 257, 315 of Nations, 151; and Ras Imru’s
Gugsa Araya, Ras, 9, 20, 28-9, $7 provisional government, 163-5,
Gugsa Wule, Ras, 9-11, 15, 18, 42, 169; condemns Yekatit massacre,
IZIisTO9, 387 182; suggested return, 196,
Guillet, Lieut., 321-3 212-13; and Abebe Aregai, 202; in
Guillon, Col., 137, 140 Khartoum, 225-7, 231-4, 255-6,
Gulit Ridge, 351-4, 356 263, 420; issues Awaj, 232, 234;
Gurassu Duke, 143, 159-60, IgI-2, status and position, 231~4; letter
198, 201, 381, 400 to Churchill, 232-3; and British
Gurinlian, Capt., 15 support, 239; flown to Gedaref,
Gurkhas, 294 259; Eden visits in Khartoum,
Gustav Adolf, Crown Prince of 270; requests Treaty of Alliance,
Sweden, 44, 49 270; ‘Plan X’ for return to
Gwangul of Wag, Wagshum, xxii, 82, Ethiopia, 284, 287, 289-90, 309,
386 311-13; Wingate and, 284-5, 287,
312; and Eritrean deserters, 288;
Haddis Alemayu, 168 and Ras Hailu, 296; enters
Hadendoa (tribe), 314 Ethiopia, 316-17; appeals with
Haile, Tsehafe Taezaz, 125-6, 130, leaflets, 331; and battle of Debra
142n, 283, 294-5, 391 Markos, 354, 357, 359, 372;
Haile Kebbede of Wag, Dejaz: attacks return to Addis Ababa. 372, 378—
Haile Selassie Gugsa, 63; sacks 81; mistrust of British
Makalle, 65; campaign, 76, 82; administration, 372-5; survival,
retreat, 106; at Mai Ceu, 115; 382-3; note on, 387; death, 425
wounded, 121; guerrilla warfare, Haile Selassie Gugsa of Makalle,
133, 184; beheaded, 184; note on, Dejaz: marriage, 20, 29; and
391 father’s death, 30; approaches
Haile Mariam Mammo, 142n, 144, Italians, 57-8; defects to Italians,
1$9, I61, 170, 183M, 190-1, 399 62-3, 65; forces disarmed, 74, 86;
 INDEX 445
desertions from, 86; under Italian of (Mesfin Makonnen) installed,
administration, 148, 200; at 377
Yekatit massacre, 174; Italians Harradiguit, 90
return to Makalle, 298; arrested, Harris, Bimbashi, 283, 341n, 342-3,
382; note on, 391 346, 348
Haile Yasus, Fitaurari, 345 Haseldon, Bimbashi, 235n
Hailu of Lasta, xxi Hassan (Harris’s subaltern), 346
Hailu of Gojjam, Ras: on 1924 Heath, Gen. L: M., 260, 271, 272-3,
European tour, 3, 17; and Raya 27:94) 3 155) 320
Galla revolt, 10, 18; declined title elim, Alp Keer 87
of Negus, 16; relations with Haile Herouy Wolde Selassie, Blattengueta,
Selassie, 16, 18; rule and 155539;°595 "133-6, P50, 392
character, 17; punished, 19; Hickey (Irish adventurer), 72
released, 86, 146; leaves with Hindi, El Shereef Yusuf el, 218
Haile Selassie on flight, 136; Hirohito, Emperor ofJapan, 16
returns to Addis Ababa, 138-40; Hitler, Adolf, 42-3, 193, 199
relegated under Italian Hoare, Sir Samuel, 58, 75-6
administration, 148; and Ethiopian Hodson (British Consul, Maji), 4, 9n
submissions, 1§3—4; Graziani Hogg, Major Quintin, 282
favours, 154; and Abba Abraham, Hojali, Sheikh, 165
157; and attack on Addis Ababa, Horn of Africa see Africa Orientale
158, 161; threat from cadets, 166; Italiana
and Aberra Kassa’s surrender, Howell, Sergeant, 353
170-1; and Italian reprisals, 177; Hudleston, Major-Gen. Sir Hubert,
and Italian rule, 200; returns to 195, 240, 269, 309-10
Gojjam, 296-8; and Haile Hussein Ali, 52, 128
Selassie’s return to Ethiopia, 313; Hussey de Burgh Bey, 219-20
with Nasi, 349-50; and Gideon
Force, 351, 353-4; in Debra Mlubabor, 89
Markos, 357-8; submits to Haile Imru, Ras, 9; as governor of Gojjam,
Selassie, 358, 375, 377; as 19-20, 297; Haile Selassie Gugsa
collaborator, 358-9; accompanies on, $7; raises troops, 73;
Haile Selassie to Addis Ababa, campaign, 77-8, 80-3; mustard
378-9; note on, 392; 414, 415 gas used against, 81, 86; guerrilla
Hailu Belew, Lij (Jater Ras), 189, 220, tactics, 85, 133; defends Gondar,
290, 350, 400 106-10; letter from Haile Selassie,
Halifax, Edward Wood, 1st Earl of, I13—I4; escape from Gondar, 120;
198, 213 appointed Regent, 136; threatened
Halpert, de, 15 by Gojjam rebels, 146; Graziani
Hamil Badel, 69 opposes, 152; provisional
Hamilton, Major, 282, 310-11 government in Gore, 163-6;
Hancock (district commissioner), 219, surrender and imprisonment, 167—
236, 267 9, 313; liberated, 382; note on,
Hanks, Bimbashi, 218, 220, 229, 272, 392-3
Indian forces see under Forces, units
275
Hanna, Abba, 19 and formations
Hanner, Dr, 135, 137 Irissa Dangom, 9
Hapte Mariam Gabre Egziabher, Isaac, Abba, Bishop of Tigre, 11, 61,
Dejaz, 86, 133, 392 157, 399
Hapte Mikael, Dejaz, 53, 128, 139, 392 Ismay, Gen. Hastings Lionel, 211, 312
Harar: war preparations in, $I~4,; Italy: defeat at Adowa (1896), xxi-
bombed, 127; Italians advance on, xxiv; consulates, 14; in North
129; Graziani captures, 145; Africa, 22-4; air force, 24-5;
Nigerians recapture, 367-8; Duke Fascism in, 25-7; and Eritrea, 27-
446 INDEX

Italy (cont.) Balcha’s army, 8; and Galla

g; and Walwal incident (1934), 38- revolt, 11; declines invitation to
41; threatens Ethiopian war, 42-5; constitution ceremony, 16, 18; in
and European powers, 44-6, army Beghemder, 20; and military
mobilizes, 46-7, 53-5; fleet preparations, 47; raises forces, 73;
mobilizes, 59; invades Ethiopia, campaign and leadership, 76, 83-
61-3; sanctions against, 67-8, 75- 5; and Italian northern offensive,
6; Hoare-Laval proposals for, 75; 104, 106, 109, 121; contact with
military intelligence, 92; victory enemy denied, 112; in Quoram,
celebrations, 146-7; annexes 113; at Adowa, I15; at Mai Ceu,
Ethiopia, 147-8; colonial regime, 117; in withdrawal from Mai Ceu,
148-50, 154-5; sanctions lifted, 122, 133; and Debra Tabor, 129;
151; reprisals and retributive exile, 136; and Ras Imru, 164;
actions, 175-9; and rebellion and rejoins Haile Selassie, 312-13; re-
resistance in Ethiopia, 183-4, 188— enters Ethiopia, 316, 331; at
92; colonial costs, 198; early Debra Markos, 357; and Ras
neutrality in European war, 200, Hailu, 358; letter from Ras
202; military strength in East Seyum, 374-5, 377; accompanies
Africa, 208, 209n, 214; enters war, Haile Selassie to Addis Ababa,
214-16; armistice with France, 378; pursues Maraventano, 379,
223; strength in Libya, 223; as 382; note on, 393
threat to Sudan, 235; invades and Kassa Mashasha, Dejaz, 296
conquers British Somaliland, 244- Kassa Sebhat, Dejaz, Shum Agame,
9; invades Egypt, 253-4; intrigues 57, 66-7, 393
against Ethiopian revolt, 294-5; Kassala (province), 219
defeat in North Africa, 307-8; Kassala (town), 219; Italians bomb and
deserters from, 331 capture, 220-1, 230; British bomb
and recapture, 235, 269, 309, 319—
Janssens (Belgian plenipotentiary), 12, 20
47, $8, $9n, 73, 139, 143 Kebbede of Wag, Wagshum, $7
Jantirar Asfau, xxii Kebbede, Fitaurari, 69-70
Japan, 16 Kebbede Mangasha Atikim, Ras, 83,
Jarvis, Bimbashi, 341, 355-6 99-IOI, 103, 106, 112, I1$, 122,
Jebel Kassala, 315 152-3, 155, 393
Jerusalem, 152 Kebbede Tessema, Azaz, 265, 290,
Jijiga, 365-6 357n, 381, 393
Jimma, 164, 166-7 Kebbedech, Woizero, 156
Jirreh (pass), 241 Kemant, 356
Johannes, Emperor, 4, 28-9, 65, 374 Kennedy-Cook (Governor of Kassala
Johannes, Abuna, 201 Province), 221, 320, 373-4
Johannes, Lij, 190, 220, 293, 295n, Kenya: interns Eritrean deserters, 94,
355, 376, 378, 382, 402 287-8; Italian threat to, 236;
John XIX, Coptic Patriarch of Cairo, British strength in, 239, 252-3;
10 attitude to Ethiopians, 256, 273n;
Johnson, Bimbashi, 341n, 344, 357" irregular forces, 299-300; see also
Johnson, Lt.-Col., 318 Forces, units and formations
Juba, River, 269, 271, 306, 362-3 Kerchove de Dantighem, Baron, 46
Jubaland, 31 Keren, 322-4, 327-35; effect of fall,
Julian, Col. Hubert Fauntleroy (‘Black 337, 354
Eagle of Harlem’), 71 Khartoum, 212, 221, 261, 269-71
Kaffa, 113 Khor el Otrub (pass), 229, 273-4, 279
Kalam, 319 Kidane Mariam, Blatta, 136-8
Karora 2108 230792350327, Kifle Nasibu: as cadet, 50; at Ad
Kassa, Ras: character, 5; disbands Termaber, 124-6, 130-2; returns
 INDEX 447
to Addis Ababa, 135; in Gore, Eritrea, 320, 322-4; promoted,
164; surrenders, 168; executed, 322; at Keren, 329-30, 332-3;
177; note on, 403 killed, 333
Kismayu, 31, 269, 271, 301, 303, 326, Lorenzo Taezaz, 32; and Walwal
362-3 incident, 40; heads press bureau,
Kittermaster, Sir H. Baxter, 13 71; and Haile Selassie’s final
Kolmodin, Dr, 49 council, 134; flees, 136; returns
Konovaloff, Theodore E., 51, 60, 83, with Haile Selassie, 225, 232; sent
II5 to Kenya, 284, 288; re-enters
Kubeddu, Gen., 120, 127, 172 Ethiopia, 316; note on, 393-4
Kurmuk, 236, 267, 318 Lowlands, Battle of the, 321-3
Kwara, 316 Luchini, Lieut., 364
Lush, Brig. Maurice, 373, 377
Labour Party (Britain), 65n, 67
Lagarde, Léonce, 30 Machiavelli, Nicolo, 282-3
Lamborghini, Col., 330 McKay, Capt., 350, 355
Lampson, Sir Miles, 194, 198, 225-6, McLean; Bill} 350; 3555 375, 382
255 Maffey, Sir John, 13
Lang, Cosmo, Archbishop of Magliocco, Gen., 153, 164
Canterbury, 182 Mahel Safari (Ethiopian army of the
Latibelu Gabre, Dejaz, 76, 393 centre), 10, 72, 102
Laval, Pierre, 44, 59, 67, 75-6 Mai Ceu, 97, 99, 103-4, I14, II6-19,
Lawrence, T. E., 286, 340 121
Lea (district commissioner), 219, 314 Maillet (pilot), 19
League of Nations, 3, 15-16, 39-41, Maji, 318, 381
46, 58-9, 67, 134, ISI Makalle, 62-3, 65-7, 83, 96
Leatham, Vice-Admiral Ralph, 365 Makonnen of Harar, Ras, xxi-xx1i, 3n,
LeBlanc, Bimbashi, 350, 359, 379 (GE iol, XO SOS Aiteles
Lee (British consular officer), 179 Makonnen Demissie, Bitwoded, 96,
LeGentilhomme, Gen. Paul, 194, 199, 99-104, 394
223-4, 241, 244, 302-3, 336 Makonnen Desta, 289, 353, 357,
Legesse Gabremariam, Lij, 125 394
Lekempti, 166 Makonnen Endalkatchew, Dejaz (later
Lemma, Fitaurari, xxiii Ras Bitwoded): leads Illubabor
Lennox-Boyd, Alan, 197 army, 89; in Ogaden, 128; exile,
Lesslie (District Commissioner), 318 139, 141, 150; Haile Selassie meets
Lessona, Alessandro, 63-4, 84n, 143, on return, 259; re-enters Ethiopia,
145, 171; and AOI, 148; and 316; in Addis Ababa, 377; note
Italian reprisals, 178; criticises on, 394
Graziani, 185-6; loses post as Makonnen Haptewold, 72, 125, 132,
Under-Secretary, 187 152, 394
Lettow-Vorbeck, Gen. Paul von, 210 Makonnen Wossene, Dejaz, 95, 394
Libya, 23, 223, 261; see also Sidi Malakal, 318, 341
Barrani Maletti, Gen., 70, 180-1
Ligne, Prince Albert de, 46 Malion, Fitaurari, §2, 129, 145, 178
Liotta, Gen., 175 Malladra, Gen., 23
Listray, Capt., 48 Mambrini, Gen., 370
Litvinov, Maksim M., 151 Mammo, Ly, 345-6, 355
Longmore, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mamur (Steer’s assistant), 315
Arthur, 258 Mangasha of Tigre, Ras, xxi-xxui, 20,
Lorenzini, Lt.-Col. (later Gen.) 28, 115, 375, 385
Raimondo: in advance to Makalle, Mangasha Atikim, Ras Bitwoded,
66; in invasion of British XX, 3N, 115, 386
Somaliland, 241, 246-8; defence of Mangasha Jimbirre of Gojjam, Dejaz,
448 INDEX

Mangasha Jimbirre of Gojjam, (cont.) reoccupation, 375; established in

184, 189, I9I-2, 198, 257, 259, Harar, 377; note on, 399
264, 291, 297, 340-I, 400 Mesfin Redda of Wolkait, Fitaurari,
Mangasha Wolde, Dejaz, 95 184, 295, 356, 401
Mangasha Wube, Dejaz, 122, 134, Mesfin Sileshi, Shallaka (later Ras),
394-5 115; and attack on Addis Ababa,
Mangasha Yilma, Dejaz, 105-6, 119, 1§7, 159-61; with Aberra Kassa,
395 170; and Shoan resistance, 183n;
Mankusa Fort, 344-6 crosses into Sudan, 192n; and
Mao Tse Tung, 286 Haile Selassie’s return, 231-2, 260;
Maramarcio, Col., 94 escorts Negash Bezibeh, 259;
Maraventano, Col., 349, 351-4, 356-8, military activities, 265; reaches
375n, 376, 378-9, 382 Belaya, 291; final actions, 381;
Maravigna, Gen. Pietro, 61, 64, 74, note on, 395
77, 80-1, 83-4, 107-8 Messervy, Col. (later Brig.), 260, 315,
Marda Pass, 366-7 320-1, 324, 330-4, 336
‘Marie, Operation’, 302-3, 310, 315, Metafaria, Dejaz, 125-6
336 Metemma, 207, 217-18, 227, 257,
Marie José, Princess of Belgium, 21 272-5, 278-9, 320
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, $5 Mezzetti, Gen., 188
Marriotti, Gen. Oreste, 66-7 Middle East Committee, 230, 239
Martin, Dr A. W. C., 150 Miurtin (tribe), 37, 40
Martin, Benjamin and Joseph (sons of Mikael, Abba, Bishop of Core, 11,
above), 164, 168; executed, 177 157, 165, 167, 399
Martini, Gen. Agostino, 266, 332 Mikael of Wollo, Ras (later Negus),
Mashasha Wolde, Dejaz, 105-6 XXII-XXill, 5, 385
Massawa, 56 Milford Haven, David Mountbatten,
Matilda tanks (‘I’ tanks), 276, 279, 3rd Marquess of, 365
308, 322, 329, 334 Milizia, 26-7; see also Forces, units and
Matteos, Abuna, 4-6, 157, 386 formations
Matteoti, Giacomo, 3n, 41 Minnetti, Lieut., 86
Matthews, Herbert, 56 Minniti, Col., 168
Maurice, Major, 165, 216, 255 Mirghani, Sharifat Alaoui el, 212
Mazzolini, Count Serafino, 203 Mirghani Pasha, El] Sayed Sir Ali el,
‘Meadowforce’, 314, 320, 324 218
Medici (Italian consul), 19 Mission IOI, 225-6, 234, 257, 262,
Mega, 325 270; 285, 293, 31st
Meleke Tsahai Yasu, Lij (‘Little Mission 106, 282, 310-12
Negus’), 190-1, 402 Mission 107, 282, 360 .
Melly, Dr, 96, 131, 140 Mitchell, Sir Philip, 373
Menelik II, Emperor, xxi-xxii, 4, 375, Mogadishu, $3, 364
384 Mogus Asgedom, 174-5, 179
Menelik, Lij, 190, 402 Mohammed Ally, 139, 179
Menen, Empress, 114, 139, ISI, 152, Mohammed el Amin Tirih, Sheikh,
398 Nazir of the Hadendoa, 235n
Mengistu Neway, 144, 169, 403 Mohammed Othman, Ugaz ofthe
Menz, I91 Ogaden Malinga, 129
Merid Mangasha, Lij, 157, 170, 395 Mohammed Othman el Mirghani,
Merille (tribe), 319 Sayed, 28
Mesfin Makonnen, Duke of Harar, Mohammed Yayo of Aussa, Sultan,
165; returns to Sudan, 225, 255; at 60, III, 395
Sobat Military Academy, 288; re- Mokria, Kenyaz, 47, 316, 395
enters Ethiopia, 316; and Haile Mombasa, 221
Selassie’s position after Monclar, Col., 376
 INDEX 449
Monfreid, Henry de, 18, 56 127-8, 145; and Gabremariam’s
Monk-Mason-Moore, Sir Henry, 203, guerrillas, 172; and Italian
255 reprisals, 177-8, 201; as Governor
Morgantini, Lieut., 61 of Harar, 187; made Vice
Mosley, Leonard, 338n Governor-General in Addis
Mota, 352 Ababa, 198, 200-1; pardon
Motte, Capt., 48 proclamation, 201-2; and Abebe
Moussa Ali, 60 Aregai, 201-2; attacks British
Mousti, Lieut., 38 Somaliland, 241, 245-7, 249; visits
Moyale, 236-7, 239, 325 Burie, 291; counters Ethiopian
Muhittin Pasha, Gen., 12 revolt, 294, 296-7; defence of
Mukria, Fitaurari, 69 Eritrea, 324; in Gondar, 340, 369,
Mulugueta, Dejaz, 10-11 375, 379; and Gideon Force
Mulugueta of Illubabor, Ras: and advance, 348-50, 354-5; on
military preparations, 47; at Wollo, 382; surrenders, 382
Queen Astrid’s memorial service, Nasibu Emmanuel, Dejaz, 32, 48;
58; as Minister of War, 59; leads defence plans, 51-2, 89; campaign,
Mahel Safari, 72, 76-7; campaign, QI-2, 127, 129, 365; exile and
83, 86, 89; and Italian northern death, 139, 141, 152; note on,
offensive, 96-7, 99-103, III; 395-6
killed, 104, 106; note on, 395 Natale, Col., 173, 296; opposes
Mulugueta Bulli, 124, 169, 377, 403 Gideon Force, 342-9, 352, 357
Mussolini, Benito (Il Duce): Haile Navarra, Col., 146
Selassie visits (1924), 3; and Haile Naylor, Lieut., 3751
Selassie’s coronation, 12; and Negash, Fitaurari, 69
Vittorio Emmanuele, 21; and de Negash Bezibeh, Dejaz, of Gojjam,
Bono, 23; admired, 27; plans 189, 258-9, 265, 346, 400
conquest of Ethiopia, 27, 33, 4I- Negash Workineh, Dejaz, ‘Prince of
3, 45, 47; reaction to Walwal the Simien’, 294-5, 401
crisis, 40-I, 47; and invasion of Negga, 137-8, 143,145, 178n, note on,
Ethiopia, 61, 63-5; and oil 413, 414
sanctions, 68, 75-6; and conduct Negga Haile Selassie, 124-6, 130, 169,
of Ethiopian war, 93, 126-7; 377, 403
announces annexation of Ethiopia, Neghelli, 93, 360, 362, 366
147; and surrender of Ras Imru, Negretti, 65
169; and Italian reprisals, 178; Neruzzini, Dr, xxiv, 31
‘olives and bayonets’ speech, 183; Neville, Major Ralph, 282, 360, 362
indifference to empire, 185-6; and ‘New Times and Ethiopian News’,
colonial appointments, 186-7; and 181-2
AOI rebellions, 192, 202; enters Newbold, Douglas: in Sudan, 195,
European war, 203, 208, 213-16; 199, 203, 208, 214, 236, 256, 261;
Aosta meets, 208; and Graziani’s on invasion of British Somaliland,
invasion of Egypt, 254; see also 241; on Haile Selassie, 263, 372;
Italy distaste for Wingate, 283; and
Mussolini, Bruno, $5 Keren; 3275) 3325 335; On
Mussolini, Vittorio, $5, 87 Lorenzini’s death, 333
Mustahil (Italian fort), 52 Nicoud (bandmaster), 12
Muti, Ettore, 25, $5 Noel-Baker, Philip, 213
North Africa, 22-4
Namuruputh, 319 Norway, 203
Napier of Magdala, Field-Marshal Nurk (Kenyan irregular), 300, 382
Robert Cornelis, 1st Baron, 4, 374
Nasi, Gen. Guglielmo, 53, 91; and Occupied Enemy Territory
Eritrean deserters, 94; in Ogaden, Administration (OETA), 372-3
450 INDEX

Ogaden, 37, 51-3, 89, 91-2, 127-9, 139 Pistoia, Filiberto Ludovico, Duke of,
Oletta Cadet School, 49-50, 72; cadets $5, 102
mobilize, 124-6, 130; cadets ‘Plan X’, 284, 287, 289
withdraw from, 144; cadets in Platt, Gen. Sir William: commands
Gore, 164, 166; with Abba Kassa, Sudan Defence Force, 195-6; and
169-70; notes On, 402-3 Whalley, 198, 259; talks with
Olol Dinke, Sultan of the Sciavelli, French, 199; war preparations,
32-3, 69, 91-2, 127-8, 396 208; disapproves of rebels, 212,
Olona Dinkel, 191, 201, 400 270, 273n, 286; troop dispositions,
Om Ager, 323, 327 219, 236; and return of Haile
Omar el Muktar, 24, 195 Selassie, 226, 372; aggression, 261;
Omar Samanthar, 31-2, 39, 69, 129, and Eden conference in
139, 244, 396 Khartoum, 269, 271; and
Operational Centres (Op Centres; Wingate, 280, 282, 284, 286, 317;
guerrilla groups): set up, 285, 289, and capture of Kassala, 324, 327,
293, 300, 309; with Gideon Force, 330, 332, 334-5; relations with
341-2, 346, 350, 352-3, 355-6, Cunningham, 325-6; promoted,
375n, 421; see also Forces, units 330; and Gideon Force, 340; and
and formations British administration, 374; plans
Organic Law, Italy (1st June 1936), attack on Amba Alagi, 379; in
148 Madagascar, 382
Orrigo, Brig., 237 Poincaré, Raymond, 4
Othman Ali Keilu, Sheikh, 315 Poland, 199, 202
Owen, Brig., 299n, 319 Polet, Major, 15
Political Office (Italian), 56, 66
Pallavicino, Major, 174, 179-80 Polo, Lieut. Tito, 105
Pankhurst, Sylvia, 45, 59, 150, 181-2, Polverini, Brig., 279
216 Port Sudan, 260, 267, 314
Parini (Consul General), 146 Postiglione, Col., 323, 327
Parodi, Major, 256, 295-6 Praga, Major, 216, 236, 318
Passerone, Gen., 243 Pralormo, Gen. di, 381
Patriotic Association, 123 Prina, Brig., 267
Pavone, Gen., 91 Princivalle, Col., 166-7
Pemberton, Col., 299, 363
Percy, Lady William, 197 Qirgos, Abba, 263, 356
Perham, Margery, 208 Quigini, Major, 267, 315
Persichelli, Col., 332-3 Quoram, 106, I1I-12, 184
Pesenti, Gen. Gustavo, 303-6, 308
Pétain, Marshal Philippe, 222 Railton, Lieut., 356
Peterson, Maurice, 75 Ranza, Gen., 127
Petretti, Armando, 175-6 Ras Tafari see Haile Selassie I,
Petros, Abba, Bishop of Dessie, 11, Emperor
157, 159, 161, 399 Rava, Ladislas, 176, 179
Pienaar, Brig. Dan H., 210, 299n, 303, Rava, Maurizio, $3
363, 368-70,
378, 381 Raya Galla (tribe), 9-11, 103, I11, 144
Pilkington, Mark, 341, 350, 382, 423 Red Cross, 71-2, 96, 140
Pinna, Gen. Pietro, 277, 322, 370 Rees, Brig., 279, 334
Pirie-Gordon, Charles, 146 Regia Aeronautica (Italian Air Force)
Pirzio-Biroli, Gen. Alessandro, 54; in see under Forces, units and
invasion of Ethiopia, 61, 65; formations
praised, 64; disposition oftroops, Renny (District Commissioner), 318
74; campaign, 82-3, 104n, 105; Rer Ibrahim (tribe), 37
and Mai Ceu battle, 114; enters Reul, Col., s9n, 73, 89, 93
Dessie, 122 Richards, Brig. C. E. M., 299n, 363
 INDEX 451
Richpal Ram, Subadar, 330 Sardo, 111-12
Riley, Bimbashi, 357, 375n Saroldi, Major, 207
Ringrose, Basil, 356 Sasabeneh, 128-9
Ritchie, Brig. A. McD., 299n Sauiros, Echege, 10-11, 399
Rodd, SirJ. Rennell, 30 Savory, Brig. Reginald A., 327
Rogers, Capt., 366 Sebhat, Ras, 63
Rogers, 2nd Lieut., 366 Seyum, Ras: on 1924 tour with Haile
Rolle, Capt., 190-1, 267-8, 369-70 Selassie, 3; and 1928 Raya Galla
‘Romilly Force’, 318 revolt, 9-10; deprived of Eastern
Rose, Capt., 247 Tigre, 28; and Italians, 29; and
Roseires, 266-7, 283, 310, 313 Konovaloff, 51, 60; Italian
Rosen, Count Carl Gustav von, 72, assessment of, 56-7, 85; Haile
150 Selassie Gugsa and, 57-8; troops,
Rosen, Count Eric von, 12 $9; during Italian invasion, 61-2;
Rosen, Count Stan von, 12 campaign, 76, 81, 83; and Italian
Rowe, Lieut., 257n, 275n northern offensive, 106; in
Rudolf, Lake, 325 Quoram, 113; at Mai Ceu, 115,
Ruggero, Col., 56 117; guerrilla warfare in Tigre,
Ryckmans, Pierre, 302 122, 133; negotiates with Italians,
Rynevald, Gen., 269 130; submits to Bastico, 146;
under Italian administration, 148,
Sable Wongel, Woizero, 17-18, 189 155, 298, 331; and threat to Addis
Safertak bridge (Blue Nile), 351-2, Ababa, 158; and Asfawossen, 170;
Sys) confined in Italy, 177; returns to
‘Safforce’, 375n, 376 Ethiopia, 200; and Haile Selassie,
Sagalle, Battle of (1917), 5 287, 313; appointed Negus by
Sahle Selassie, Prince, 151, 399 Italians, 331-2, 336, 340, 350;
Sahle, Dejaz, 61 switches loyalty to British, 373-6;
St Hillier, Capt., 3351 acknowledges Haile Selassie, 377;
St Quentin, Comte Alexis de, 75 takes Socota, 378; final
Salan, Raoul, 56 campaigns, 379, 381; and Tigre
Sandford, Christine, 377n revolt, 382; death, 382; note on,
Sandford, Brig. Dan A., 163n; in 396
England, 182; recalled by Wavell, Sheikh (pass), 241, 245-6
199; war preparations, 203, 2I1I— Sheppard, Bimbashi, 356, 382
13, 225; and return of Haile Shifferaw, Fitaurari (Governor of
Selassie, 226-7; helps Haile Ogaden), 37-9, $2, 396
Selassie with letter to Churchill, Shifferaw, Fitaurari (of Ayalew Birru),
233; and British support for 78-80, 396
Ethiopia, 239, 257-9, 261, 285; Shoa, 183, I9I, 202
with Mangasha Jimbirre, 265-6, Shoanish, Woizero, 184, 295
270; Wingate on, 282; Wingate Shumye, Fitaurari, 11
meets and plans with, 289-91; Sidamo, I1, 91, 93, 95, I7I-2
reports to Wavell, 293-4; on Ras Sidi Barrani, 307-8
Hailu’s return, 296-7; and re-entry Sikhs: troops in British Somaliland,
of Haile Selassie to Ethiopia, 309— 243-6; see also under Forces, units
Il, 317, 341n; and Gideon Force, and formations
338, 340, 349-50, 354; in Addis Simonds, Major, 340-1, 350, 355,
Ababa, 377; survival and death, 375-6, 379
382 Simone, Gen. Carlo de: invades
Sandison (District Commissioner), 219 British Somaliland, 241, 244, 246,
Sandy, Sergeant-Major, 248 248-9; replaces Pesenti, 306;
Santini, Gen. Ruggero, 61-6, 74, 99, defends Somalia, 362, 364; at
lip, IhiZt Dagghabur, 365; at Harar, 366
452 INDEX

Simpson, Major, 13 Wavell strengthens, 253, 261

Simu, Fitaurari, $3, 69-70 Sudan Auxiliary Defence Force, 214,
Sirak Selassie, 16 219
Slatter, Air Commodore Leonard H., Sudan Defence Force, 195-6, 199, 207,
274, 277 212, 219, 240, 260, 269, 309
Slim, Brig. William, 272-9, 281 Suez Canal, 64, 65n
Smallwood, Brig. G. R., 299n, 362, Sweden, 46, 49-50, 72, 124
366-7 Symes, Sir Stewart, 13; in Sudan, 195;
Smith, Major Gregory, 319 on Whalley’s invasion plan, 197-9;
Smith, Capt. B. Owen, 353, 356 and Aosta, 197; opposes
Smuts, Field-MarshalJan Christian, Sandford’s plans, 212; and
210-11, 221, 269, 271, 301 outbreak of war, 218; and return
Sobat Military Academy, near of Haile Selassie, 226; and Haile
Khartoum, 284, 288, 292 Selassie’s letter to Churchill, 233;
Socota, 378 transferred, 239
Somalia: divided, 30-2; Italian war
preparations in, 53-4; as Italian Tademme Zelleke, Fitaurari, 91, 93,
province, 149m; Cunningham 238, 300
invades, 362-4; British Tadessa Mulugueta, Shallaka, 103-4,
administration in, 372 106
Somaliland, British, 30-2; Italians Tafere, Balambaras, 52, 68
invade and conquer, 241, 243-51; Tafere, Fitaurari, of Wag, 113
casualties in, 249 Tafere, Ketemme, 69
Somalis, 30 Taffere, Worg Kidane Wold, 179, 396
Somma, Gen., 54, 84n Taffere Zelleka of Belaya, Fitaurari,
South Africa, 210-11; quality of 258, 262, 264, 267, 283, 290-1,
soldiers, 325, 365; see also under 400
Forces, units and formations Taitu, Empress (of Menelik), xxii, 9,
Spahis, 315 384
squadristi, 23, 25 Takele Wolde Hawariat, Blatta: as
Starace, Achille, 25, 55, 109, 120, 129, Director-General of Addis Ababa,
146, 186, 264 73; and final mobilization, 122-3;
Steer, Esmé, 213 plans to hold out, 133-5; and
Steer, George, 51-3, 89, 108, 150; Haile Selassie’s flight, 136;
supports Ethiopian cause, 182; son suggests burning of Addis Ababa,
christened, 213; friendship with 137; arms for guerrilla warfare,
Haile Selassie, 213, 216, 225, 418; 138, 143; and attack on Addis
supports Haile Selassie, 232, 260; Ababa, 159; at Jimma, 166; as
Wingate offends, 284; and Italian guerrilla, 167, 183, 192n;
North African defeat, 309; and Republican tendencies denounced
Beja marksmen, 314; in Gubba, by Mesfin Sileshi; escapes
315; announces Haile Selassie’s re- hanging by Wubneh Amoraw,
entry, 316; with Gideon Force, 417, 418; and British plans
345; see also Banderachin for Ethiopia, 231; and Haile
Stevens (US journalist), 338n, 358 Selassie’s return, 231-4; in Kenya,
Stone, Brig. (El Lewa Stone Pasha), 234, 239, 256, 288; compared to,
197, 199 Wingate, 288; and Ethiopian
Strum, Dr, 179 revolt, 295n; and Neville, 360,
Strunk, Capt. von, 56 362; imprisoned, 382; death, 382
Sudan: British in, 195; war note on, 396
preparations in, 207, 211-12, 214; Talamonti, Col., 256, 260, 307
and outbreak of war, 218-19; Tamm, Capt. Viking: as military
geography and position, 218-19; adviser, 49-50, 72, 122; and
Italian threat diminishes, 235-6; defence.of Ad Termaber, 124-7,
 INDEX 453
130-2, 152n; and Haile Selassie’s 268; and defence of Eritrea, 322,
final council, 134-5; and sack of 324; in Addis Ababa, 368-9;
Addis Ababa, 137; and Haile leaves Addis Ababa, 370
Selassie’s flight, 141 Tripolitania, 22
Tana, Lake, 382 Tsahai, Princess, 151, 399
Tana, River, 362-3 Tseggede, 294
Tarik Bey, $1 Tucci, Capt., 172-3, 181
Tasfai Tagagne, 59 Tug Argan (British Somaliland), 243-8
Tashemma, Balambaras, 78 Tukul Dingia, 356
Taveta (Kenya), 238-9, 256 Turkey, $51, 89, 129
Taylor, A. JuP., 43
Tegai Negussie, Fitaurari, 94 Udine, Prince of, 12
Tekle Gabre Hiwot, 144 Umberto, Prince of Piedmont, 21, 223
Tekle Giorgis, Prior, 181 Unofficial Belgian Mission, s9n
Tekle Haimonot, St, 6
Tekle Haimonot of Gojjam, Negus, Van Der Post, Laurens, 338n
XXI-XXill, 3n, 16-17, 189, 385 Vansittart, Sir Robert, 199
Tembien, 81-3, 102, 104, 109 Vaccarsi, Gen. Achille, 84
Tenagne Worg, Princess, 19, 49, 138, Vecchi, de, 31
173, 398 Villa Santa, Gen., 54, 62
Teruzzi, Attilio, 55, 187, 192, 202 Villefagne de Sorinnes, Baron, 46
Teshegger, Fitaurari, 69, 108 Vinci, Count, 47, 57-8, 71
Tessitore, Gen. Vincenzo, 160-1, 168, Virgin, Gen., 49, 59
230, 260, 322, 336-7 Viseur, Capt.,’ 73
Tewfik Nessim Pasha, Mohammad, 12 Vittorio Emmanuele III, King of Italy,
Theodore, Emperor, 4, 134, 374 se hie ah iiilgp, streko)
Theodore, false Emperor, 382 Vittorio Emmanuele, Prince of
Thesiger, Wilfred: childhood in Addis Naples, 174, 181
Ababa, 5, 13; East African Volpini, Gen., 370
invasion plan, 197; joins Eastern
Arab Corps, 217; and arming of Wacker, Major, 364
rebels, 217-18; and outbreak of Wad Medhani, 267
war, 218; attack on Metemma, Wag, 184
227; in action, 229, 275; Slim Wajir, 303
joins, 272; and Wingate, 292; with Walata Israel, Woizero, 20
Gideon Force, 338, 345, 351, 357; Waldia, 87, 96
359; described, 338; with Safforce, Waldthausen, Baron von, 12
375n, 376, 378-9 Walwal: 1934 incident, 37-41, 43-4, $I
Thornburn (Swedish officer), 130, 132 Wandafresh Falaka, Corporal, 347
Tigre (province), 27-9, 61-5, 148, 294, Wanderat, Dejaz, 119, 397
373 Wanjo of Maraba, 293
Titulescu, Nicolae, 151 Warieu Pass, 104n, i105
Toclu Meshesha, Dejaz, 172-3 Watawit (tribe), 267
Todenyang, 319 Wauchope, Gen. Sir Arthur, 146
Togni, Lieut., 321 Waugh, Evelyn, 12-13, 71
Torelli, Col., 265, 296, 341, 354-5, Wavell, Lt.-Gen. Sir Archibald: recalls
378-9 Sandford, 199; Middle East
Toselli, Capt., 65 command, 209-10, 212; and South
Toselli, Lieut., 141 African forces, 210-11; relations
Tracchia, Gen., 169-71 with Churchill, 211, 240, 251-3,
Trezzani, Gen. Claudio: AOJ 301-2; AA defence of Mombasa,
command, 209-10; and invasion 221; and Haile Selassie’s return,
of British Somaliland, 245-7, 250; 226; and early Italian successes,
and attempted attack on Sudan, 230-1; meets Haile Selassie in
454 INDEX

Wavell, Lt.-Gen. Sir Archibald (cont.) Wodajo Ali, 20, §8, 97, 122, 397
Khartoum, 233-4; Churchill Wolde Giorgis Wolde Johannes, 73,
summons to London, 240, 245; Q2Se2Os a LOma 26807,
and defence of British Somaliland, Wolde Johannes (band master,
244; receives Churchill’s directives Imperial guard), 144, 192n,
on Middle East, 252-3; and Italian Wolde Mariam, Dejaz, 238, 300
invasion of Egypt, 254; and Wolde Tsaddik, Bitwoded, 136, 163-
Sudan, 261, 308; with Eden in 5, 167, 397
Khartoum, 269-70; and Wingate’s Wolisso, 191
appointment, 280-1, 292; and Wollega, 96, 100-1, 122, 166
Eritrean deserters, 288; and Wollo, 9, 86, 112, 184, 382
Cunningham’s caution, 301; Sidi Wondossen Kassa, Dejaz, 11, $7, 76;
Barrani victory, 307; and campaign, 83, 121; guerrilla
Cunningham’s Kenya thrust, 325- warfare, 133; and Abba Isaac, 157;
6; and Keren battle, 334; and de killed, 169, 312; note on, 397
Gaulle, 336; and Cunningham’s Wood, Sergeant, 353
advance, 364; and Addis Ababa, Worku, Fitaurari, of Kwara, 217-18,
368-9; and return of Haile Selassie 256, 259, 295-6, 400
to Addis Ababa, 378 Worg Amba (‘Golden Mountain’), 82,
Wazir Bey, 181 104
Weber, Ludwig, 51, 140 Wossene Hailu Kebbede of Wag, Lij,
Wehib Pasha, 51, 89, 141 184, 295, 378, 401
Weizmann, Chaim, 281 Wreford-Brown, Bimbashi, 217
Welcher, Col., 274-5 Wubneh Amoraw ‘the Hawk (later
Western Galla Federation, 163, 311 Ras), 225, 227, 262-3, 283, 356,
Wetherall, Gen. E. H. de R., 299, 370 401
Weygand, Gen. Maxime, 222 Wule, Ras, xxii
Whalley, Capt. Richard, 196, 198, 258,
318, 381
Yashasha Worg, Lilt, 259
Whinney, Capt., 288
Yasu, Li, 5, 7, 9n, 17-20, 77, 86, 135,
Wienholt, Lieut. Arnold, 257, 259, 262
386
Wilson, Gen. Henry Maitland
Yekatit massacres, 174-82
(‘Jumbo’), 247, 251
Yigezu Behapte, Dejaz, 18, 73, 135-6,
Wingate, Major Orde Charles: arrives
in Khartoum, 280, 282-4; 140, 397
Yilma Deressa, 168, 397
character and manner, 280-1, 283,
Yoshida, Isabaro, 12
292; devotion to Haile Selassie,
Yusuf Ali, Sultan of Obbia, 31
284-5, 287-8, 312, 376; and
guerrilla groups (Op Centres),
285-7, 289, 293, 350; on Eritrean Zaudi, Lij, 376 .
refugee battalions, 288-90; meets Zaudi Abba Korra, Fitaurari, 105—6
Sandford, 289-91; Ethiopian Zaudi Asfau Darghie, Dyaz, 144, 159-
views of, 291n; and Haile 60, 183n, 192n, 398
Selassie’s return to Ethiopia, 291- Zaudi Ayalew, Fitaurari (later Dejaz),
2, 309-10, 312, 316-17, 373; and 108, 238, 300
evacuation of Gubba, 315; and Zauditu, Empress, xxii, 4-6, 9-10, 12,
Gideon Force, 338, 340-53, 356-9; 15, 386
and Ras Hailu, 351, 353; and Zeeland, Van (Belgian Foreign
Haile Selassie’s position after Minister), 59n
reoccupation, 375, 377-8; and Zelleka Desta, Fitaurari, 345
Haile Selassie’s return to Addis Zenabe Worg, Princess, 20, 29, $7,
Ababa, 378-9; Maraventano 399
surrenders to, 382; death, 382 Zennabish, Woizero, 112
Wingate, Sir Reginald, 218, 280 Zervos, Dr, 29
DT 387.8 .M53 1985
893° 27142
Mockler, Anthony.
Haile Selassie’s war

= State Library or Ohio

SEO Library Center
40780 SR 821 * Caldwell, OH 43724
(continued from front flap)
Ethiopia, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, and his
successor the anglophile polo-playing Duke
of Aosta; to the explorer Wilfred Thesiger (“a
useful man to have around in a tight spot”)
and the cantankerous Major Wingate, who
was liable to interview people while brushing
his teeth but who inspired victory when no
victory seemed possible.
Meticulously researched and dramatically
written, Haile Selassies War is sure to be read
by both the specialist and the general reader
for years to come:

GRAYSON
JEREMY
PHOTO:

ANTHONY MOCKER was educated at

Cambridge (where he obtained Double First
Class Honours in the Classical Tripos) and at
Perugia University, where he studied Italian.
He has traveled widely as a foreign
correspondent, especially in Africa, and was
fortunate enough to spend a year in Ethiopia
before the deposition of Haile Selassie,
during which he did much of the research for
this massive project. He continued his work in
Italy and as a Fellow of St. Anthony’s College,
Oxford. Like all who have been there, he
remains fascinated by Ethiopia and its
people.
Jacket photographs courtesy of:
BBC Hulton Picture Library
and The Bettmann Archive

Jacket design: Richard Adelson

Random Housé, Inc., New York, NY. 10022

Printedin U.S.A. 7 /85
© 1985 Random House, Inc.
HAI L E S E I A S S I E S W A R
| : “Anthony Mockler’s emai isS not onlyscholarly and.
eae meticulous, it is also a rattling good thriller, in which fascinating.
aoe unpredictable and often pee characters bestride the stage”
ost
4 he Birmingham Fo

= “Mr. Mockler’s careful work. toee he has given¢ years of-

“research and reading. will be the definitive work on this war.”
es. | he
eDaily telegraph

“Peopled with fantasticmedieval fig

igures..“thisis
isa bok to
relish and to
learn from:., — -—The Obser ver

“There was a soo bok, onnE thiopia: crying |tobewritten, and.

now Anthony Mockler hhas written it?” oe 7 he Spec tator

.
iv

0L0-AL
AMVC
UO
AA

| 0-394-Su2e2-3