The First Victory

by Andrew Stewart

  What Wavell and the other senior British political and military leaders still did not know even at this stage was that, despite the great advantages they appeared to enjoy, there was no danger of any significant Italian offensive operations. Despite having complained during his visit to Rome that his command was unprepared for war, Aosta had apparently protested when told by Badoglio of Mussolini’s order that he was to adopt a defensive position. He believed that his previous instructions did at least allow him the possibility of bombing British and French naval and air bases and it was certainly the case that in March 1940 the viceroy had proposed to launch offensives against both Jibuti and Kenya.26 The German consul in Addis Ababa later confirmed that a more aggressive plan had been developed, albeit under his authorship.27 Allegedly, this called for an immediate invasion of Kenya extending as far as Uganda and with a focus on Mombasa with the intention of capturing, occupying and then retaining it as a fortified base. If this proved impossible the port was to be destroyed and a ‘scorched earth’ policy adopted as the Italian forces fell back to the mountains in the north of Ethiopia while the air force harassed any pursuing enemy advance. Not only had the leadership in Rome dismissed the plan as ‘too ambitious’ and ‘hazardous’, they had assured the German diplomat that their opponents would not be able to cross the deserts of the frontier, and Aosta was instead told to do nothing.28 It is not clear what Badoglio himself thought about this, but the Chief of the General Staff was considered to be the most able of Italy’s soldiers and was certainly the most experienced.29 Whilst he had previously clashed with the Italian leader over strategy and would later resign from his position as a result of the disastrous military intervention in Greece, at this stage Badoglio would not challenge the direction he received from Mussolini. The same was true of Aosta and his subordinates, who did as they were ordered.

  Although this was not the approach he wished to adopt, the viceroy confirmed to General Pietro Gazzera, commanding the ‘Southern Sector’ around Galla and Sidamo, that his land forces would be used only ‘in the improbable event’ that the British crossed the Kenyan frontier, and it was made quite clear that no one but Mussolini himself could decide when an attack might begin.30 Any troop movements conducted before then were intended only for reconnaissance purposes and to alarm the enemy or to better position the men for a counter-attack if this was required. Elsewhere this meant Italian aircraft did not bomb key targets such as Mombasa for fear that Addis Ababa or Mogadishu would be targeted in response. Along the Red Sea, Italian naval forces therefore sat in their ports and coastal defence batteries failed to fire on British shipping so as to avoid the potential for retaliation. A single recorded attempt was made at striking a convoy but this resulted in seven bombers being shot down; Italian Air Force General Giuseppe Santoro wrote that, whilst such losses would normally have been considered insignificant, ‘they were too serious for us to sustain in our peculiar circumstances’.31 Nothing was done to interfere with the reinforcements as they arrived in Kenya and the Sudan to strengthen the local defences; the Italian military was content to simply sit and wait.32

  The British did, of course, face their own problems at this point in the war. The survivors from Dunkirk had made it home but the vast majority of their equipment was left behind, abandoned on the roads heading to the evacuation ports.33 British production lines were therefore tasked with working to re-equip the garrison that was assembling to protect the country from German invasion. Even in these most desperate of circumstances, for some the news that Mussolini had now also declared war was still seen as a cause for some cheer. The senior civil servant Sir Alexander Cadogan was not alone when he noted in his diary that he was rather glad as it could now be said ‘what we think about these purulent dogs’ who he hoped could be given ‘an early and hard knock’.34 Some also felt that Britain owed Ethiopia and its people a debt for not having helped when the country was overrun by the Italians.35 And for many British officers, they also believed that, despite the much-changed strategic position, this new military opponent was not one that really needed to be feared. Even those commentators who were prepared to accept the existence of some positive attributes within the ranks of the Italian Army concluded that these could not overcome the ‘gangster-leadership’ and the more general failings of the strategy which had been adopted by the country’s senior military officials.36 Finally, along with critical shortages of resources – coal was commonly mentioned as one example where there was a potentially crippling dependency on German imports – and the problems of supplying its distant and isolated empire, the Italian economy was known to be on the verge of bankruptcy. The conclusion was that Italy was ‘a liability and not an asset’ for Germany and, once the maritime blockade took hold, the leadership in Berlin would come to question Mussolini’s value to the Axis alliance.37 With France lost, the British Empire was short of friends and stretched on all fronts and any form of potential success would offer some hope. Many thought this could be found in East Africa.

  Although the broad Italian strategy was based on avoiding a decisive battle, and with British and Commonwealth commanders still focusing on assembling their forces, at the local level officers on both sides were willing to test their opponent’s defences. Where the two bordered one another, skirmishes broke out and offered some early lessons for those involved. Dickinson had correctly guessed that Moyale would be among the first places to see action but for some reason the garrison had been reduced and only a single company of the KAR was in the small fort on the British side of the border with orders to ‘Hold on as long as you can and then get back to Buna.’38 Facing them was an entire enemy brigade of three battalions of colonial infantry supported by artillery.39 Elderly Caproni bombers attacked on 13 June, also hitting the airfield at nearby Wajir, destroying 5,000 gallons of British aviation fuel and killing four of the defending askaris. British-led troops had, however, advanced across the frontier first, a patrol moving out of Moyale earlier on the same day and reaching the Italian Resident’s house which they found to be unoccupied. At nearby Dif they encountered only ten defenders and further patrols the following day found rifles, ammunition and equipment, which suggested the enemy had taken to the bush.40 This first engagement was reported in Britain as evidence of an initial success: it came at the same time as housewives were told new ration books were being distributed and that they now needed to register for margarine.41 With the announcement that the August Bank Holiday was being cancelled, in comparison it must all have seemed a relatively minor matter in a place unknown to most.

  The attack at El Wak, launched by two companies of the KAR on 18 June to capture the Italian side of the frontier, was a much larger affair.42 Unreliable guides meant any hope of surprise was lost and despite the appearance of the RAF which forced the Italian colonial troops to flee into the bush, the attackers were easily beaten back by ‘very wild and inaccurate’ fire. However, British officers gained some valuable pointers about the effectiveness of both their own forces and those of the enemy.43 It was already clear that raids by small groups to gain intelligence appeared to be the favoured form of action. They provided a good opportunity to blood the African troops although the limited attacks had to be well planned; if they were reckless in nature and failed, there was a risk that morale would be undermined. The initial very minor engagements also highlighted the importance of the defending banda, formed from Eritreans and Ethiopians, and which were not to be confused with the shifta, the groups of wild-haired bandits who roamed the countryside murdering at will. These were generally organised by the Italians into large groups of bande, about 1,500 men, which were then split into informal units of 250 each led by two white officers, and whilst they were unwilling to act as infantry in open battle they were used as scouts, a screen for regular troops, and also to harass the enemy rear areas. They put to good use their knowledge of the country, their considerable toughness and mobility, and their limited requirements for food and water to cause some real concerns for the B
ritish. By early September 1940 it was estimated that there were as many as 40,000 of them, resulting in warnings that if numbers were to continue growing they could prove ‘a potential danger’ with their hit-and-run tactics.44 They also developed, at least initially, a fearsome reputation for murderous deeds amongst the British and Commonwealth troops, with tales of ambushes and sleeping victims dispatched during the night, although such acts were more often the work of the shifta.

  Back at Moyale, on 28 June the first significant Italian attack of the war in Africa got under way with an assault by 1,000 men which followed a full hour’s artillery bombardment. The defending troops from the KAR managed to fight off this assault and were reinforced over the following days to a strength of two companies, although one of their commanders was killed almost the instant he arrived. What the small garrison did not know was that their opponent had also committed a second brigade to the operation and assembled a force of more than 8,000 troops supported by significant amounts of artillery and light tanks.45 The terrain provided the attackers with a strong advantage with lots of valleys and hillsides and fields of green maize that it had not been possible to clear beforehand, all of which offered good cover. The outcome was inevitable, and on 10 July another concerted attack began using some of the heavy guns which the Italians had now managed to move closer to Lone Tree Ridge, a dominating position to the east of the fort, from where they fired 1,000 shells during the first day.46 The defenders were quickly surrounded and cut off from their water supplies and, despite some supporting air attacks, the position was increasingly hopeless. Attempts to push reinforcements forward, which reached within 2,000 yards of the besieged troops, failed and the fort was evacuated. It had been a hopelessly mismatched but heroic two-week defence which received considerable acclaim in the British press and led to the Military Cross being awarded to both the British officers serving with the KAR who had overseen the defence and the successful escape.47

  Over the next few days Italian propaganda referred prominently to the garrison’s rout and the capture not just of the Union Jack which had flown on the fort but also guns and ammunition, motor vehicles and rations. When reviewing the situation, Brigadier Fowkes, whose troops had formed the garrison, had not believed more than half the men could be saved. After the order came to withdraw, the British, who had donned black jerseys which could not be seen in the darkness, passed through the enemy lines unheard wearing rubber shoes, the African troops alongside them, barefoot, carrying their rifles and ammunition.48 After walking for four miles in the moon-light, all but one of the men reached safety at Buna, another isolated post surrounded by miles of bush and with little water. Throughout the fighting just ten men were killed and another thirty-five wounded. The British brigadier later wrote that the loss was strategically insignificant but it had temporarily weakened the morale of the African troops and given a boost to the Italians. He could not understand why this single incident had led to a ‘completely unjustified respect’ amongst his officers and men for their opponent’s fighting prowess, and he thought it inexplicable that the leadership in Rome should refer to it as a victory when it had taken several thousand heavily armed troops to push back a force a fraction of the attackers’ size.49 If the Italian military leaders had been honest with themselves, an analysis of what had really happened should in fact have offered some worrying evidence about the effectiveness of their military forces.

  Fowkes considered launching an instant counter-attack the following morning which he believed would be likely to relieve Moyale. He was aware that this could also have presented an opportunity for the Italians to threaten the advance base at Nanyuki and, reluctantly, the decision was therefore taken to halt, and the front quickly became static. Indeed no further action was taken until the end of July when a minor battle took place at Dobel, another of the frontier wells that offered such a vital source of water in the parched desert.50 Troops from 1st Battalion, Nigerian Regiment captured the position but were then forced to withdraw into a shallow valley overlooked from three sides and were given ‘a proper basting’. They fell back to Wajir ‘showing little stomach for the fight’ and with their morale in tatters; it was not until the initial stages of the main campaign the following year that they regained their fighting spirit.51 Despite the British and Commonwealth forces’ apparent struggles it was the Italians, however, who were drawing entirely inaccurate assumptions about the outcome of these initial battles – but these would only become clear later.

  This was a wartime theatre with two fronts: to the south, running along the Kenyan frontier, as well as to the north, where the declaration of war had been greeted by an equally sparse scattering of British and Commonwealth forces. British strength in the Sudan consisted of an infantry battalion from the West Yorkshire Regiment in Khartoum, along with supporting artillery and service arm detachments, 1st Battalion, Essex Regiment in Atbara, and a battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment split between Gebeit and Port Sudan.52 The distribution of these troops was entirely in keeping with Platt’s appreciation of the previous year. The same was true with the movement of the SDF, which had first been ordered in May to Butana Bridge and then on to Atbara from where its motorised machine-gun companies were meant to delay and harass any Italian advance.53 In the event of an Italian declaration of war, the initial instruction, however, was that these forces were not to fire on enemy positions across the frontier, and this included a platoon based in the old fort at Gallabat, where it heard the news on the radio that hostilities had commenced.54 Despite these orders, with twenty minutes to spare before sunset, two Vickers and two Bren guns on a ridge overlooking the Italians opened fire and continued for ten minutes before withdrawing. The men had fired 13,000 rounds of ammunition in that time and, on returning to their base, discovered they had in fact carried out the first attack of the East Africa campaign. On being told there were orders that no action was to be taken, their commanding officer told them to ‘write it off to training’.

  As was the case on the Kenyan frontier, further skirmishes followed and on the last day of June a more significant Italian attack looked possible in the Karora region until British aircraft bombed enemy troops who were gathering along the border. At Gallabat, which had been temporarily abandoned after this display of firepower, the opportunity to advance and occupy the post was ignored. British-led troops moved back in the following morning and it was not until 4 July that the Italians finally attacked using both European and African troops supported by tanks, aircraft and even motorbikes with mounted machine guns. The still small defending garrison proved no match for the attackers, and was forced once again to withdraw. With the battle won, Italian planes dropped leaflets in Arabic carrying the message that Mussolini was the protector of Islam.55 A brigade of motorised infantry units supported by armoured cars also crossed the border farther north heading for Kassala, a small border town which held a strategically vital position controlling the potential movement of troops between Eritrea and the Sudan, and even from here on to Egypt and Libya.56 Its 25,000 inhabitants lived largely in mud dwellings alongside another old fort in the shadow of an enormous granite hill, ‘a high rock sticking straight out of the desert’, which, added to the heat and dust haze that was common except during the rainy period, made for an unpleasant climate and one of the hottest, dirtiest and windiest towns ever visited by one British civil servant.57 Flowing alongside the town was the River Gash, which ran past the town from the Eritrean hills for three months of the year at a speed of about four miles an hour ‘heavily laden with silt and resembling pale tomato soup on the boil’.58 This made for some of the best agricultural land in the Sudan and a thriving economic hub, as the cotton which was grown locally was transported by rail from the station just a few miles outside the town. The Italians had drawn upon this same natural resource and dammed the river towards the east at nearby Tessenei to make this the centre of their cotton-growing scheme. They had also continued the main road from Asmara, described as a first-class piece
of engineering, so that it ended on their side of the frontier. This allowed for the rapid export of commercial goods and also meant that, if required, potentially overwhelming forces could be moved forward along it towards the Sudanese frontier. Platt knew this but there was little he could do to respond.

  Defending Kassala were only two motor machine-gun companies from the Eastern Arab Corps, a mounted infantry company from the Western Arab Corps which had travelled 1,000 miles from Darfur, and the town’s small police force.59 In total there were less than 500 men whilst the Italians had about 8,000 troops assembled in two motorised colonial brigades along with four cavalry regiments, artillery, eighteen tanks and aircraft. Prior to the attack, the town was bombed for twelve hours without pause but the defenders remained in their shelters and did not flee. When this ended, they quickly manned the defences and inflicted serious losses, with several hundred enemy casualties reported, even destroying six of the tanks. Eventually the defending garrison withdrew with the loss of one man killed, three wounded and sixteen missing, some of whom managed to find their way back to their units later. It had once again been an unconvincing Italian victory. The attackers had, however, broken through the frontier’s thin defensive screen and could have moved forward to threaten the Sudan with a more general invasion. Although July was the peak of the 1940 rainy season, it had been exceptionally light and movement along the roads and tracks was interrupted far less often than usual. Yet, again, the Italians made no attempt to exploit their advantage, either as a result of a mistaken assessment that it would be too difficult to advance or because they believed the defending forces to be far larger than they actually were. In fact they only pushed on towards Adardeb, close to the important rail line, and another frontier post at Kurmuk which was abandoned later the same day.60 The British and Commonwealth forces to the north and west were therefore able to quickly reorganise while preparing to harass the anticipated advance towards Khartoum, Atbara or Port Sudan. When this did not come, companies from both the Worcestershire and Essex regiments were sent forward as reinforcements, leading the Italians to retire to Kassala and to establish a garrison of five battalions supported by tanks and artillery. As was the case on the southern front, they now waited.