In the village of Heni, inside the Arab burial ground, had been perpetrated an absolute butchery. Of the eighty ill-starred men whose bodies we discovered there, there is no doubt that quite half had fallen alive into the enemy’s hands, and that all had been carried to this place, surrounded by walls, where the Arabs knew they were safe from Italian bullets. There took place here the most vile and loathsome carnage that can possibly be imagined.
The victims’ feet were cut off and their hands torn from their bodies. Some of them were crucified. The mouth of one was split from ear to ear; a second had his nose sawn off; others had ears cut away and nails torn out by some sharp instrument. Finally, there is one who has been crucified and whose eyelids have been sewn up with pack-thread.39
The unfortunate stretcher bearer also featured in the account of Bennet Gordon Burleigh, the circa 71-year old veteran correspondent for The Daily Telegraph in the 26 November edition of the paper:
It was near the mosque by the Henni I had my attention called to the bodies of those who had fallen into the hands of the fiends of the desert. Five soldiers, Bersaglieri, had been tied to a wall, crucified as on a cross, and afterwards riddled with bullets. It is needless to dwell upon the nature of the further atrocities which savage Muslims invariably practise on the bodies of Christians. A sergeant had also been crucified, but with the head down, and in the hands and feet were still left enormous nails.
A little farther away from this mosque a field hospital had been rushed, and every one put to torture and to death – doctors, hospital attendants, and wounded Italian soldiers. Bodies had been torn asunder, faces hacked, and limbs struck off as well as heads. […] But worst of all was this. A hospital attendant under the Red Cross, named Libello, of the sorely tried 11th Regiment Bersaglieri, who also had been crucified, had first had his upper and lower eyelids perforated and laced with tightly tied coarse string. Each eyelid was then pulled, and the cord being tied behind his head, the eyes were held wide open, and could neither be blinked nor closed in life or merciful death. Flies and insects abounded. The look of unutterable horror on the strained face of Libello will remain fixed for ever before me.40
In many ways the discovery of the unfortunate Libello and his comrades was a blessing for the Italians and their supporters; they now had a counter to the accusations of massacre and uncivilised behaviour levelled at them. Accordingly, and as with the massacres, the atrocities committed on the Bersaglieri were either played up or pooh-poohed according to the disposition of the commentator. Those who were pro-Italian used the incident as evidence of the barbarity of their opponents in general. McClure, for example, noted that one of the bodies had been ‘treated in a manner which is more familiar to those who have seen Turkish handiwork in Armenia and Bulgaria than to those whose experience has been confined to Arab practices.’41 Similarly, the Italophile Richard Bagot, who had never visited Tripoli, delivered his judgement in 1912: ‘these unnamable atrocities were committed, at the direct instigation and approval of Turkish officers, and in some cases actually perpetrated by Turks […].’42
In the 1880s Manfredo Camperio, the president of the Milanese Società di esplorazioni commerciali in Africa, had asked ‘How dignified, good, and interesting is the Libyan race! Who would have the courage to disturb these primitive people in their tranquil, pastoral life?’43 Some thirty years later, and whatever the precise identity of the perpetrators, ‘these primitive people’ had, from the Italian soldiers’ perspective been transformed into beasts (belve); the enemy had become inhuman (disumano).44 This perspective translated into popular culture also. The Italian poet Gabriele d’Annunzio produced ten poems, Canzoni per le gesta d’Oltremare [Songs of Overseas Deeds], published in the Corriere della Sera from 8 October 1911 to 14 January 1912. These celebrated the war while it was happening and depicted it as a racial and religious crusade. Indeed, according to Lucia Re:
The Christian rhetoric of the crusades is evoked in the description of the fight against ‘the infidels,’ who are depicted not only as vicious and inhuman beasts, but as ethnically and biologically unchangeable, animals destined to be locked in the inhumanity of an everlasting, unsurpassable barbarism. Eternally treacherous, bloody, and barbaric, they are doomed to replicate their sacrilegious and cruel acts over and over whenever their race is again confronted with the Christian world.45
If d’Annunzio be thought somewhat highbrow, then Carolina Invernizio, one of the most popular Italian writers of the early twentieth century might be considered. Her 1912 novel Odio di araba [The Hatred of Arabs] was set in Tripoli and contains a prologue which outlines her perspective:
‘We are in the trenches of the eastern oasis of Tripoli at Sciara-Sciat on the morning of 23 October 1911, a fatal date which will remain a shining moment of glory in the history of Italian bravery, and will also mark the vile Arab attack, their ambush, their inhuman betrayal, while our sons were still trusting their acts of submission, and were convinced that they intended to surrender. How little did they know the true character of the Arabs, who […] are the most despicable, deceitful, treacherous, ungrateful beings in the world! Their cruelty has no limits, their pride is boundless. […] The hate that the Arabs feel for us and everything European is in their blood and depends not only on the horror which the Christian religion provokes in them, but also on the instinct which keeps them from any modification in their customs, in their clothing, in their life-style.’46
With this irrevocable breach the last strand of Italian pre-war strategy was broken, and all hopes for a short victorious war shattered. They could not, without extending the war into other theatres, force the Ottoman Empire to sue for peace. On the other hand, arriving at a compromise peace that would allow the Ottomans to cede the vilayet with some saving grace had, because it was domestically unacceptable, been rendered impossible by the decree of annexation. Italy was thus forced to remain in a seemingly open-ended conventional war, with all the consequences this entailed, whilst simultaneously conducting another, unlimited and hugely expensive, asymmetric colonial campaign against a population that was now viewed as irrevocably alien and hostile. Wishful thinking still prevailed to a certain extent; the French and British authorities in Tunisia and Egypt were blamed for not preventing ‘the trade in contraband of war’ across the frontiers. If this ceased, and the encouragement and interference of Ottoman officers was prevented, then the ‘tribes from the interior will come and submit to their new masters when they realise that famine is at the door, as they are sure to be overtaken by that formidable scourge.’47
In the meantime however the ‘tribes from the interior’ – ‘implacable as the expanse of sand and the scorching sun’ in Tumiati’s words – remained a defiant and potent force. It was in an attempt to curb their potency and drive them further back into ‘the jaws of the Sahara’ that Frugoni, having completed the recovery of the territory lost during the Battle of Tripoli, intended to take the fight beyond.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Italians Advance
Tripoli, topographically and climatically, is an impossible country to invade.
Charles Wellington Furlong in The New York Times, 4 May 1912.1
ON 5 November the Italian authorities released a statement, the contents of which were, intrinsically, of little moment. Nevertheless the document is of historic importance, containing as it does the first official communication ever made pertaining to an operation by aeroplanes in warfare.
Yesterday Captains Moizo, Piazza, and De Rada carried out an aeroplane reconnaissance, De Rada successfully trying a new Farman military biplane. Moizo, after having located the position of the enemy’s battery, flew over Ain Zara, and dropped two bombs into the Arab encampment. He found that the enemy were much diminished in numbers since he saw them last time. Piazza dropped two bombs on the enemy with effect. The object of the reconnaissance was to discover the headquarters of the Arabs and Turkish troops, which is at Sok-el-Djama [Suk el Juma].2
Italian military aviati
on, as in all states that pursued the matter, had begun with lighter-than-air craft – balloons. Pre-unification Italy could boast at least one pioneer in this regard in Vicenzo Lunardi, who had first flown in London on 15 September 1784 whilst stationed there as secretary to the Neapolitan Ambassador. Following his return to Naples Lunardi made several ascents, including one from Sicily in July 1790 that lasted two hours.3 Pre-unification Italy also had the distinction, if that is the correct term, of being the first target to be subjected to aerial bombardment. During the Austrian campaign to reduce the Republic of San Marco in 1849, the city of Venice was invested by Austrian forces. During the final stages of the conflict a novel expedient was attempted by the besiegers. According to Lieutenant General Gugliemo Pepe, the Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the Venetian Republic, they developed a scheme to utilise ‘balloons and other aerostatic devices.’
After talking of these for two or three months, and after numerous experiments made in the Austrian camp near the Adriatic, and in that of Isonzo, they at last carried them into execution. They sent up some fire-balloons from their war-vessels stationed in the Adriatic, and opposite the Island of Lido. These went high enough to pass over that island, and the enemy flattered themselves that they would arrive and burst in the city of Venice; but not one ever reached so far. Under these balloons was a large grenade full of combustible matter, and fastened by a sort of cord, also filled with a composition, which, after a certain given time, was to consume itself. As soon as this happened, the grenade fell, and in its fall burst against the first obstacle which it struck. Of all these balloons that were sent up, one only left its grenade in the fort of St. Andrea del Lido. The others were all extinguished in the waters of the Lagoon, and sometimes sufficiently near the capital to amuse the population more than any other spectacle.4
The Italian Army gained a balloon detachment in the 1880s, with the 3rd Engineer Regiment, based at Rome, forming a company-sized aeronautical section on 6 November 1884. This ‘Aerostatic Section’ (Sezione Aerostatica), under Lieutenant Alessandro Pecori Giraldi, was equipped with two balloons purchased from France. The first manned flight of one of these took place on 7 November when Pecori Giraldi ascended to several hundred metres. The capability of the Aerostatic Section was demonstrated in the field in Eritrea in 1887-8, when three balloons were successfully utilised. Italian military aviation took further steps forward in 1894 with the inclusion of the section into a specialist brigade (Brigati Specialista) and the construction in 1908 of a dirigible, semi-rigid, airship which first flew on 3 October that year.5 Designed and flown by two engineering officers of the specialist brigade, lieutenants Gaetano Arturo Crocco and Ottavio Ricaldoni, this craft was designated N1. Constructed at a base at Vigna di Valle on the southern shore of Lake Bracciano (Lago di Bracciano), its maiden flight saw it journey from Vigna di Valle to Rome and back. It covered the distance, some 70 kilometres in total, at an average speed of about 60 kph flying at an altitude of around 500 metres, and was the first aircraft ever to fly over Rome.
In terms of heavier-than-air craft, the first aeroplane flights in Italy were undertaken by the French aviator Léon Delagrange, who established several duration records there in 1908. On 23 June he flew continuously for 18 minutes 30 seconds at Milan, and on 8 July at Turin he took Thérèse Peltier aloft as a passenger, making her the first, though some sources argue second, woman to fly in an heavier than air machine. On 13 January 1909 a triplane, the first aircraft of wholly Italian construction, rose from the grounds of the Royal Palace at Venaria Reale near Turin. Designed and built by the automobile engineer Aristide Faccioli the flight was only partially successful inasmuch as the machine crashed and was severely damaged. This did not discourage Faccioli however, who went on to reconstruct the craft and design several more.
More reliable types were introduced to Italy in 1909 by the Wright brothers, who were invited to Rome by the head of aeronautics of the Special Brigade, Major Massimo Mario Moris. Moris had travelled to France to meet the brothers and invite them to bring an aircraft to Italy, which would be bought, as well as to train Italian officers to fly. The Wrights arrived at Centocelle near Rome (now Aeroporto di Roma-Centocelle) on 1 April 1909 and began assembling their ‘Wright Model A Flyer’ aircraft. Several notable persons, including King Victor Emmanuel, attended the demonstrations, which began on 15 April, and on one flight a cameraman was taken aboard producing the first motion picture taken from an aircraft. Between 15 and 26 April 1909 the Wright aeroplane performed 67 flights and carried 19 passengers aloft. Two officers, Lieutenant Mario Calderara of the navy and Lieutenant Umberto Savoia of the army, were trained by Wilbur Wright to operate the aeroplane; the former, having more experience, completing the training of the latter. The following year, on 17 July 1910, army aviation was reorganised as a separate battalion of the Special Brigade under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Vittorio Cordero di Montezemolo. New equipment and facilities were ordered; six new Crocco-Ricaldoni dirigible airships, ten foreign-built aeroplanes (2 Bleriot, 2 Nieuport, 3 Farman, and 3 Voisin) and two new airfields, at Somma Lombardo (at Varese in Lombardy) and Mirafiori (at Turin in Piedmont).6
On 15 October 1911 elements of the aviation battalion, designated the First Aeroplane Flotilla, arrived in Tripoli under the command of Captain Carlo Piazza. Under him were eleven officer pilots, 30 ground crew, and nine or ten aeroplanes: 2 Blériot, 3 Nieuport, 2 (some sources say 3) Etrich Taube, and two Farman biplanes. A further three aeroplanes were sent to Cyrenaica. The Tripoli unit became active on 21 October at a site, a narrow field, near the Jewish Cemetery (Il cimitero degli Ebrei) just to the west of the city on the coast. The construction of hangars to hold dirigibles was also begun. The force had been extemporised at somewhat short notice; the decision to furnish the expeditionary force with an aviation component had only been made on 28 September.7
With this unit being the first ever deployed in an active theatre of war, it was inevitable that it recorded several aviation ‘firsts’ whilst carrying out missions. As has been related, aviation history was made on 22 October when Captain Riccardo Moizo, an artillery officer, performed a combat reconnaissance flight, albeit apparently on his own initiative, over enemy positions in a Bleriot. The first official flight was though made the next day, with Piazza flying west along the coast to Zanzur before returning – a mission lasting over an hour. The same day Moizo flew a mission double that length, with an observer, in a two-seater Nieuport. Moizo recorded another first on 25 October when he became the first pilot in history to have his aircraft hit by anti-aircraft fire. The dangers of enemy fire, whilst not to be discounted, were however comparatively slight compared with the perils of flying over the desert. Treacherous and unpredictable air currents, combined with the possibility of sand storms, made such an enterprise innately hazardous, whilst the inherent unreliability and fragility of the first aeroplanes and their engines only served to multiply the danger.
A Taube monoplane at Tripoli City, or at least the fuselage and tail section. Presumably the wings have yet to be attached or have been removed for some reason. Designed and built in Austria-Hungary in 1909 the Taube (Dove) was heavily utilised in the aviation forces of the Triple-Alliance as well as, to a lesser extent, further afield. It has two significant aviation ‘firsts’ to its credit; the first bombing mission (1 November 1911) and the first air to air combat (28 September 1914). (George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress)
Captain Moizo’s aeroplane. Having made aviation history by being the first person to perform an aerial reconnaissance mission in a combat situation and then, less fortunately, becoming the first aviator to have his craft hit by ground fire, Riccardo Moizo was to chalk up yet another first. On the morning of 10 September 1912 he took off from Tripoli in a Nieuport monoplane which, whilst over enemy territory, suffered an engine failure. He was forced to land near Azizia and was swiftly taken prisoner by Arab forces. This photograph, which appeared in the French newspaper L’Illustration on 5 Octob
er 1912, shows his craft together with some formally attired Ottoman officers posing alongside. (Author’s Collection).
Another ‘first’ came on 1 November 1911 when 2nd Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped four ‘bombs’ on enemy positions at Ain Zara (Ainzarra) and Tagiura (Tajura) from a height of 600 metres. These devices had been designed and manufactured at the San Bartolomeo torpedo establishment, a part of the great naval arsenal at Le Spezia. Named for their inventor, Naval Lieutenant (tenente di vascello) Carlo Cipelli, granate Cipelli (Cipelli Grenades) were fabricated from thin steel into a sphere weighing about half a kilogram when filled with picric acid. The grenades had fabric ribbons attached which, when air-dropped, provided a ‘parachute’ effect and helped to neutralise any horizontal travel. The presence of the ribbons led to them being nicknamed ‘ballerinas.’ They were difficult to deploy as a firing cap had to be inserted into them immediately prior to use; not an easy task for a solo pilot. Other, similar, ordnance available was of Norwegian origin though manufactured in Denmark. Designed by Nils Waltersen Aasen, who is generally credited with creating the first functioning hand grenade, the device was fitted with a cloth skirt attachment. It was armed by a long cord that burned through as it was thrown or dropped. Consequently, as a contemporary British source stated it: ‘The chief property of the Aasen grenade is that it cannot explode prematurely during the first 11 yards [10 metres] of its flight, for the safety pin is only withdrawn after the burning of a strip of wool, 11 yards long, with which it is secured.’8 According to some sources, the Italians had seized a consignment of these weapons during the course of their blockade. The British airman and author, Edgar C Middleton, was to write in 1917 that ‘the war in Tripoli was of immense advantage to the Italians both in the matter of experience and development in aerial warfare.’9 Epitomising this reflection was the development of purpose-built bombs and devices for launching them from aircraft. An artillery officer, Lieutenant Aurelio Bontempelli, constructed finned cylindrical bombs containing explosive and shrapnel that could be launched through a tube affixed to the aircraft fuselage. In the early stages of the conflict, and certainly during November 1911, the Italian aviators had to make do with what they had or could contrive whilst they learned, or invented, techniques of air warfare.
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