The Ottomans retired initially to Azizia, some 40 kilometres to the south-west, but once the Italians began strongly fortifying Ain Zara they advanced their main position some 20 kilometres to Suani Ben Adem (Senit Beni-Adam). This place was, as McClure noted, close enough to threaten the surroundings of Tripoli, whilst being ‘far enough away to admit of an easy retreat […] if that course should seem politic.’38 That a retreat, easy or otherwise, would not become politic was quickly to become evident.
CHAPTER NINE
Deadlock
When Europe knows how few were the men who for months kept the great and splendidly equipped Italian army cooped up, so that it hardly dared to venture forth from the town of Tripoli, and is even now confined to a very few miles of coast-line, the standing of Italy as a military power must surely be forever lost.
Alan Ostler, The Arabs in Tripoli, 19121
EXPECTATIONS that Frugoni would prove an aggressive general seemed to have been confirmed with the advance on Ain Zara. The former Ottoman HQ was turned into ‘a miniature fortress; planks by hundreds were formed into rough parallel stockades and the space between filled with sand and rubble.’2 The garrison for this stronghold was powerful, consisting of the 1st Infantry Division under Lieutenant-General Count Conte Pecori-Giraldi, and arrangements were made to construct a railway between it and Tripoli. It was first proposed that this be a ‘Decauville Railway’ – a 600 mm narrow gauge line made up of easily portable pre-assembled sections3 – but this was upgraded to a 950 mm gauge line before work started.
As originally conceived, the taking and fortification of Ain Zara was but a first step in a scheme for further advances. Caneva and Frugoni were planning a divisional-strength advance into the ‘Jaws of the Sahara’ in order to clear the enemy from the oases that lay on the Tripolitanian coastal plain (the Jefara plain), the southern boundary of which was marked by the Nafusa Mountains.4 One of the primary targets would be Al ‘Aziziyah (El Azizia, Azizia) some 55 kilometres south-west of Tripoli, a major waypoint on the route from the coast to the mountains and beyond to the Fezzan. Though the term desert implies a trackless expanse of sand and rock this was not quite the case. There were routes through it that had been used for centuries, perhaps millennia, by camel caravans. Such caravan routes, or masrabs as they were sometimes termed, were observed and studied by a New Zealander who had enlisted in the British Army and was stationed in Western Egypt in 1916, Captain Claud H Williams:
The masrabs consist of wavy camel tracks a few feet apart, running parallel to one another, and vary in number from 5 or 6 to 50 or 60 according to the importance of the route. In one case 120 distinct camel tracks were counted and the masrab was consequently over 100 yards in width. The masrabs appear to be of great antiquity, for the tracks are, in some places, deeply worn into solid rock; the constant traffic over a period of hundreds of years has rendered them much firmer and more solid than the surrounding unbeaten desert. A little study of the map will show the system in which they are laid out, and how connection can be made between almost any part of the coast and the important places in the interior […] they help define one’s position on the map in travelling across their course.5
The purpose of Williams’ study was in relation to the use of motor vehicles for penetrating the desert, using the ancient routes for travel and reference points. Prior to the advent of reliable vehicles, which were just coming into being in 1911, the only way to move through the desert was on foot or on the back of an animal. The desert inhabitants knew these routes and their waypoints intimately, whereas of course the invaders did not and the difficulty the Italians faced was based on getting their forces through, and maintaining them in, the desert over large distances. There were precedents for such operations, though study of them probably offered little in the way of practical advice for Caneva and Frugoni. Even the much vaunted Imperial German army had found itself stymied by the guerilla tactics employed, perforce, by the Nama people during the colonial war in Deutsch-Südwestafrika (Namibia) between 1904 and 1909. Despite adopting a process of extermination towards the Herero and Nama, the German troops sent to the colony were unable to effectively penetrate the desert regions where the Nama survivors of the German genocide continued to fight. Jakobus (Jacob) Morenga, the Nama leader in the insurrection, was interviewed in the Cape Times and was asked if he knew that ‘Germany is one of the mightiest military powers in the world?’ Morenga replied ‘Yes, I am aware of it; but they cannot fight in our country. They do not know where to get water, and do not understand guerrilla warfare.’6
The most recent successful large-scale attempt had probably been the British reconquest of the Sudan in 1897-98, when an Anglo-Egyptian force some 25,000 strong had travelled to Omdurman under Major-General Herbert Kitchener and won the eponymous battle there on 2 September 1898. One of the officers that had taken part in the campaign was Charles à Court Repington, who had since been forced to resign his commission after being named in a divorce case. Repington, who had seen extensive wartime military service in India, Afghanistan, Egypt, the Sudan and South Africa, then became military correspondent for the London Times in 1902. He had applied his not inconsiderable intellect to the problems facing the Italians, and proffered advice, albeit in a rather negative tone, in one of his columns:
The crossing of the desert can be accomplished in one of three ways: by throwing a light railway into the interior – a very long and difficult undertaking – by establishing posts at intervals for the storage of water, or by forming a huge system of camel transport to accompany the army. The posts would have to be very strong, and the establishing of them would be a long and very considerable enterprise in itself. As for camel transport, the thousand camels said to be at General Caneva’a disposal would be utterly insufficient. Napoleon preferred deserts to mountains or rivers as the natural protection of a State, and he had good reason.7
Kitchener’s force had of course the benefit of the Nile to aid his communications, hence Churchill’s account of the campaign being called The River War. Nonetheless, because of the various cataracts and meanderings of this artery they also had to construct the 600-kilometre long Sudan Military Railway from Wadi Halfa to Atbara. More pertinently, the Sudanese forces chose to fight conventionally. Their error in so doing was revealed at Omdurman, where Winston Churchill observed that the technological superiority of the Anglo-Egyptian force ensured that destroying the enemy was merely a ‘matter of machinery.’8 The forces resisting the Italians would make no such error, but in attempting to penetrate the interior the Italian army seemed to be contemplating using a combination of all three of Repington’s stated methods. The beginning of the railway to Ain Zara, the wells of which could perhaps be considered as the first of the ‘posts,’ coincided with the beginning of a scheme to purchase and import some 2,000 camels from Tunisia and Somalia Italiana. There was an additional component, and one that had only recently became available; McClure noted the presence in one of the Tripoli markets of ‘Fifty motor wagons, each carrying between 1-1.5 tonne […] and it was reported that Italian firms were working night and day to treble the number.’9
Something of a consensus seems to have emerged amongst the foreign war correspondents with the Italians, to the effect that large-scale operations would commence around March 1912. The weather would be better then, and the facilities for operating the semi-rigid dirigible airships, P1 and P3, would have been repaired; the two hangars, one complete and one nearly so, at the aviation facility near the Jewish Cemetery had been destroyed on 16 December by a storm. Without the enhanced endurance and communication facilities of these craft, compared with aeroplanes, any advanced operations would be rendered more difficult.
If large-scale advances were seemingly on hold, then the same did not apply to more minor manoeuvres designed to disrupt Ottoman communications. The Italians had not occupied two villages on the coast to the west of Tripoli which lay just outside their lines. The nearest of these was Gargaresh (Gargaresch, Girgarish) a
t some 4 kilometres distance, whilst Zanzur (Janzur, Sansur) was around another 4 kilometres away. There was little that was remarkable about these places; the contemporary edition of Baedeker’s Mediterranean described a ‘monotonous sandy coast […] with the little port of Sansur, and the watch-tower of [Gargaresh] [being] scarcely visible till we are nearing Tripoli.’10 Zanzur though was one of the few decent anchorages between Tripoli and the Tunisian frontier, albeit only able to accommodate small vessels. According to Irace: ‘Here the roads meet that come from Tunis, and from it start good caravan routes for Azizia and Garian to the south. Through it naturally passes a double stream of contraband from the sea and from Tunis.’11
It is then difficult to understand why the Italians had not occupied the place, though both it and Gargaresh were highly vulnerable, inasmuch as they lay directly under the guns of the fleet with Gargaresh being within range of land-based artillery as well. There was also a telegraph station at Janzur that the Italians believed formed a link in the communication chain between Zuwarah (Zuara, Zuwara, Zwara, Zouara), a coastal town about 105 kilometres west of Tripoli, and the Ottoman forces at Gharian and Azizia. They therefore decided to mount an operation with the objective of destroying ‘telegraphic communication between Zuwarah and the Turkish headquarters.’ Zuwarah was also an important link in the trade route from Tunisia. In an attempt at interdicting this route an amphibious landing was attempted there on 16 December when four transports with naval support appeared offshore. The town and surrounding area was subjected to a heavy bombardment under cover of which advance parties of marines landed on the beach. Following their securing of a beachhead the intention was to land the 10th Brigade of infantry that had been transported from Italy for the purpose. A combination of bad weather and unexpectedly stiff resistance from the defenders, who forced the marines back to their boats carrying their dead and wounded, prevented the operation being carried out. According to Abbott:
The Arabs kept quiet until several boats had disembarked their passengers. Then the sheikh in command gave the order ‘Fire!’ The Arabs poured volley after volley down upon the hapless marines. […] They tried to repel the attack, and, supported by the big guns from the warships, they answered the Arab fire. But they had to fire from low and open ground at an enemy whom they could not see. After a time they gave up their futile fusillade and fled back to their boats, carrying off half a dozen dead with them, and leaving a quantity of rifles, ammunition, and other loot, to make glad the heart of the Arabs, who, having picked up these spoils, retired from the fray with only one wounded. The warships went on bombarding the sand dunes.12
Thwarted thus in their efforts to take the more distant target, the Italians determined on securing the closer. Consequently a land-based thrust against Janzur began on the morning of 17 December with the advance of the now experienced 50th Regiment, augmented by one battalion of the newly arrived 73rd Regiment. The infantry were supported by a regiment (five squadrons) of the 9th Regiment of Florence Lancers (Lancieri di Firenze) also newly arrived, and a battery each of mountain and field artillery. Covering the desert flank of this force was a smaller column, consisting of two battalions of infantry, two squadrons of cavalry, and one battery of mountain-guns. This force moved south-west towards el-Togar, where there was a small party of Ottoman regulars about twenty strong. The force was described as ‘advancing gingerly to the south’ by eyewitnesses and it halted completely when fired on by the nineteen remaining troops; one had been sent to Suani Ben Adem to report the movement. Bennett, the former MP and fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, later reported:
I was in the Turkish lines at the time, and everybody, officers and men alike, was highly amused at the almost incredible timidity of the assailants. We were all longing to see them advance against [Suani Ben Adem]. No such luck! All we saw was fifteen shells rushing over the desert from the retiring mule battery and bursting 1,000 yards in front of the camp – a sheer waste of ammunition.13
There was an even smaller Ottoman force, consisting of four men according to some sources, at Janzur, which wisely retreated inland at the approach of the column. They were accompanied by many of the inhabitants, as the appearance of the Italians heralded a bombardment of the village from the sea. Possession of the village was thus undisputed; most of the male Arabs of military age had vanished. The remaining women, children, and old men offered no resistance as the invaders carried out a thorough search for weapons and suchlike and cut down the telegraph-line.
What then happened, as so often in the conflict, is subject to partisan dispute. According to the Italian version, which was reported in communiqués and reproduced in the international press, the column remained in Janzur throughout the rest of the day before retiring back to Tripoli in the evening with their work done. It was stated that ‘the importance of this advance lies in the fact that by it the smuggling of arms into Tripoli from the west has been rendered impossible for the future.’ The anti-Italian account argued that whilst engaged in Janzur the force was subject to an attack by tribesmen from the south, who eventually prevailed by driving them back to Tripoli at sunset. The Italian version is in general terms the most plausible, though the particular claim that it had made an impact on the movement of arms is risible.
There is though one point on which both narratives agree. When they withdrew the Italians took with them four senior tribesmen, variously described as notables or sheikhs. These either went willingly, because they had ‘submitted’ to Italian rule, or, as the counter argument has it, were captives and taken as prisoners. Both version agree in that whilst in Tripoli they paid formal homage to Italian power, though one version has it that they did this out of good sense, whilst the other maintains they dissimulated in order to get back to Zanzur. Whatever their motives, they were issued with paperwork so that they could fetch their families to Tripoli and returned to Zanzur.
Neither the notables nor their families travelled to Tripoli. However, it was reported by ‘spies’ to, and believed by, the Italians (and their supporters) that when Ottoman forces returned they did not find them at Zanzur either. According to this account, the Ottomans refused to accept the explanation that they had been made prisoners. They must then have gone to, and presumably stayed at, Tripoli willingly. Therefore they were traitors and, accordingly, their families were duly executed. This, according to McClure, demonstrated the folly of the Italians in ‘taking submission without giving protection’ as the results of ‘this untoward incident must have helped to rivet wavering Arabs to the Turkish cause.’ McClure admits that ‘the source of this story perhaps makes it suspect’ yet also argues that ‘it fits entirely with the probabilities.’14 According to Abbott, who was with the Ottoman forces at Azizia at the time, there was a very good reason the notables were not at Zanzur, or at Tripoli either for that matter. Instead of returning to Zanzur and taking themselves and their families to Tripoli, they instead ‘fetched their families away to the interior, and they themselves joined our camp, bringing the Italian permits with them.’15
The anti-Italian tale is undoubtedly the more convincing, and the story, whilst of little moment of itself, surely demonstrates the Italian’s continuing capacity for wishful thinking. It is though something of a mystery as to why they did not extend their occupation westwards the 8-10 kilometres necessary to enclose Zanzur and Gargaresh, given that the former was such an important hub in the Ottoman communication network. The excuse offered by Irace, ‘The fact that it is still in possession of the enemy merely means that we do not wish them to be relieved of the obligation of extending their forces from Azizia to the coast, a length of lines which is a continued source of weakness to them strategically’, seems flimsy. This is particularly so if one balances the Ottoman effort expended on defending it against the likely cost of having an important route closed down. The rationale behind the after-the-event Italian declaration that ‘the oasis of Zanzur has been occupied, and the population has submitted’ is also obscure. This is even more puzzl
ing since the same communiqué also announced that the reason for withdrawal was because the operation had succeeded in its mission of destroying the telegraph.16 Even pro-Italian commentators were critical, McClure arguing that:
[…] on broad principles, the whole episode of the reconnaissance to Janzur must be regarded as an error. […] A mere raid, followed by withdrawal, was of doubtful value at the best; in view of the accompanying circumstances and the inevitable sequel, the step cannot escape condemnation. These Janzur sheikhs were the first, outside the occupied towns, to make submission to the Italians. The precedent set by their experience was not favourable to the prospect of further defections from the Turkish cause.17
The belief that there were pro-Italian elements within the Arab population requiring rescue from Ottoman influence was one of the factors that led to a near disaster two days after the action at Zanzur. Again, interpretations of the affair were much disputed, both at the time and later, ranging across a spectrum of opinion from ‘a successful fight,’ to an event that was merely a ‘repulse’ of Ottoman attempts to harass a reconnoitring party, through to a situation that ‘nearly attained the rank of a regrettable incident,’ and on to a ‘crushing’ Italian defeat.18
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