The First Victory

by Andrew Stewart

  At this stage there was certainly plenty of evidence to suggest that the doubts and concerns expressed prior to the battle had been misplaced. The advance was undoubtedly going far better than Wavell or Cunningham could have hoped but the successes that were being won led only to further pressure from London to do more. With Kismayu’s fall Churchill had returned to his now familiar complaint, urging that Mogadishu be attacked as quickly as possible and complaining to Ismay that with such an easily won victory ‘one can see how much enemy resistance in this Kenya theatre was overrated’.67 This dismissive comment was pointedly first circulated around the Chiefs of Staff Committee and then repeated to Wavell two days later. What the general did not know was that the prime minister had also asked for all of the correspondence from the last four months to refresh his memory of why Cunningham had rejected his ‘efforts’ to launch an early attack against the port. As Churchill put it in a minute to Ismay, ‘it all seems very discreditable to the Kenya Command, who have devoured troops from all directions and on all pretexts, and who have done nothing but patrol warfare and skirmishes, and only screwed up courage to take Kismayu after the rottenness of the Italians became apparent’.68

  At the same time there was yet another pointed reminder to Wavell and the other generals in his command that everything possible needed to be done to secure a rapid victory. Aside from the situation elsewhere in Africa, there was also the growing concern that Japan had to be deterred and Churchill seemed convinced that the defeat of Italian forces in East Africa could have a considerable positive effect. Whilst there was no suggestion from Dill of ‘the slightest doubt’ of the plan’s soundness, the time factor had become of paramount significance.69 Three days later the response came that, with no more troops or air forces available, the Middle East commander could not proceed any faster. Ismay was one of the more astute thinkers advising Churchill and he thought it important that discretion should be given to Wavell to reinforce the Eritrean front as, until the opposition there had been defeated, no final victory would be possible.70 Less than a week later, however, following the capture of Mogadishu, it was confirmed by the War Office that the second South African division would now be moved directly to the Middle East, a ‘naughty’ decision that was apparently taken without any final discussion with the headquarters in Cairo.71

  This could have been seen as something of a gamble as there was still a long way to go to the Ethiopian capital. Despite some positive signs that much of the hard work had been done, the junior officers who arrived to replace casualties in the leading units shortly after Mogadishu’s capture were told the Italians were likely to stand and fight. Any naturally strong positions available to them between the coast and Addis Ababa were seen as presenting a challenge and Cunningham himself believed that a pause of two to three weeks was inevitable before the advance towards the major Italian base at Harrar could resume.72 This was based in large part on his knowledge of the still acute shortage of petrol as, whilst everything else that was needed had been found seized in the port, there was no sign of any fuel. The British general offered a reward of £25 – more than £1,000 in current money – to anybody who could show where the petrol had been stored; a Somali revealed the hiding place and large dumps buried in the bush, and 380,000 more gallons were now added to the stocks captured at Kismayu.73 The advance was being sustained by the ineptitude of the Italians, who seemed unable even to deny their opponent much-needed supplies. With this and the material being landed by the naval convoys at the recently captured ports, Cunningham was able to reverse his earlier assessment and set loose his ‘mobile’ capability: not just armoured cars and trucks but also road-making machinery, water-boring equipment and water-carrying vehicles. As the lead forces moved out of Mogadishu they managed to advance on average sixty-five miles per day, a rate that was far beyond the enemy’s ability to resist.74 Following the initial breakthrough and breakout, the southern front was now poised to witness one of the war’s great exploitation and pursuit phases.

  This was led by the 11th African Division reinforced by the 1st South African Brigade Group and 22nd East African Infantry Brigade. According to one of the British intelligence officers seconded to the KAR, once the Juba had been crossed Cunningham’s strategy was one of ‘genial simplicity’.75 With this formation he made sharp jabs on the left flank while the 12th African Division made a terrific right swing heading in the direction of Addis Ababa. Describing ‘one of the most thrilling and triumphant campaigns ever attempted by British arms’, the renowned British war correspondent Alan Moorehead confirmed to his readers that ‘Most of the preconceived ideas of colonial warfare went west in Abyssinia . . . As the guns breasted each rise they blasted the enemy out of the valley below and charged after them. It was untechnical and unprecedented, and it knocked the Italians into bewildered surrender.’76 The leading forces had advanced the 200 miles from Kismayu in just three days but then took the same period of time to catch up and generate the largest force possible to exploit this initial advantage. At the front was a reinforced brigade which, having left Mogadishu, motored north covering 740 miles despite there being no supplies of any kind to be found locally and with everything, including water, still having to be carried. The rains dictated the route that was taken and the Strada Imperiale was chosen over the Strada Royale as, although longer, it was less subject to the bad weather. It was also a well-maintained road that allowed for a rapid rate of progress to be made with no need to stop.

  The Nigerians continued to demonstrate a particular talent for this form of warfare despite the fact that they had been given virtually no training in mobile warfare, and before their arrival in East Africa ‘the only methods of advance they knew were the slow, weary bush treks where everything was head loaded’.77 With the speed that was being maintained, however, there remained some potential risk as it was only possible to keep the two forward companies of a battalion adequately supplied. The remainder of the men were anything up to 100 miles behind these leading troops while the rest of the brigade was separated by the same distance again as the advance was strung along the road and potentially vulnerable to counter-attack.78 This never came, and it took only seventeen days to reach Jijiga where it had been assumed that a stand would be made by the Italian forces. Climbing to over 10,000 feet, the advancing troops found ‘a filthy little spot, full of flies and only one house [in which] the sanitation didn’t work’, which had been abandoned without a fight.79 To reach it the men had travelled through a dust bowl in which the extremely fine sand could at times be more than a foot deep; this and the other challenges of the heat, poor diet and relentless nature of the advance meant that by its end at least one South African unit had lost 50 per cent of its drivers who in some cases ‘had sores on their backs the size of tennis balls’.80

  Cunningham already knew his supply problems were about to resolved entirely as a result of his being able to open another front with a typically daring operation.81 The reconquest of British Somaliland, lost in such an unfortunate fashion the previous summer, had a significant part to play in the overall outcome of the entire campaign. Having written about it in his ‘Camilla’ deception plan, Wavell genuinely believed in the importance of recovering Berbera as, despite the port’s limitations which he had himself witnessed, with some quick improvements it would help open up a much shorter supply line for the southern advance.82 With a devastating turning manoeuvre to open up his opponent’s flank, its recapture would have a huge propaganda impact throughout the British Empire. Whether he had believed the initial ruse or not, even Aosta had concluded by mid-February that the British would now be looking to conduct landings to recover their lost territory.83 Described in the official report as a ‘lash-up’ that used whatever local resources and facilities happened to be available in Aden, the plan called for the port to be seized, allowing an army supply base to be established which could sustain up to 15,000 troops.84 To achieve this, 3,000 men, mostly from two Punjab regiments, would be transported with t
heir equipment across the Gulf of Aden, a distance of about 140 miles, by a small landing force of eight Royal Navy ships with additional transports carrying their vehicles and heavy equipment.85 Supported by naval bombardment provided by the three largest available surface vessels HMS Glasgow (which carried the flag for the senior officer Captain H. Hickling who was in command of what was termed Force D), Kingston and Kandahar, this small invasion force was then to land on open beaches inside the reefs to the east and west of Berbera and, having secured the bridgehead, it would push on to recover the remainder of the protectorate.86

  Prior to its launch there were very real doubts about several aspects of the proposed operation, not least relating to lack of knowledge about the gaps in the reefs and even the difficulties attached to locating them in the dark when there were no visible features and the town was unlit. Such was the importance attached to the attack that it was decided to accept the risks involved and, after the issuing of an initial operation instruction, the expedition set off just a week later. The ‘Aden Striking Force’ assembled in the early hours the next day, on 16 March, at a point ten miles north of Berbera and 1,000 yards from the shore, and here it waited while small parties headed out to search for landing spots.87 Interrogations of prisoners had indicated that as many as seven battalions of troops were acting as a garrison but some were known to have been withdrawn, along with all the armoured vehicles. There was in fact a detailed Italian plan for conducting a fighting withdrawal in the direction of Gocti before linking up with forces from Harrar.88 A number of heavy guns and machine gun posts had been placed to cover the beaches on either side of the port, but when the landings began very few offered any fire.89 With the opening bombardment most of the locally raised troops – as many as 1,500 men – along with their Italian officers and NCOs fled from the port in the direction of Hargeisa, and only limited fire was directed against the boats that, just before 5 a.m., started to ferry the Indians to the shore.90 What little real fighting there was took place to the east of the port where a diversionary landing had been made and this attracted a more forceful response from the sixty men who were guarding this area. Amongst the attackers, casualties were limited to one African soldier killed and one British officer slightly wounded, and by 10 a.m. the town had been captured. The signal ‘The British flag again flies over Berbera’ was sent back to London; unfortunately nobody had thought to bring a Union Jack with them, but one was borrowed from a local Somali.

  Much of the success was credited to the level of preparation and training that had taken place from January onwards when it had first been proposed that a landing of troops might well prove desirable. In the few weeks that followed, shipping was converted for troop-carrying purposes while ramps were added to lighters to allow armoured cars to be driven off them. Further innovation, prominently referenced in the subsequent reports written about Operation ‘Appearance’, involved using some of these vessels as floating piers to make the offloading of vehicles much easier, an idea that may well have inspired the Mulberry harbours used during the D-Day landings in Normandy.91 The RAF also played an important role, carrying out numerous air photography and reconnaissance missions to identify possible landing places on the beaches, the Italian defences and the state of potential local landing strips.92 For the three nights before the attack, the major Italian airbase at Diredawa was bombed repeatedly and throughout the day of the invasion and the four days that followed a continuous fighter patrol was established over the port. With the defenders having fled or surrendered, a camp was quickly built at Berbera for the Italians captured here and elsewhere by Cunningham’s advance, and this was eventually able to hold 5,000 men. The general himself visited on 21 March to congratulate those who had taken part in the invasion and to discuss how to get the port up and running.93 The following day a brigade of South African troops arrived in the bay who were to play an important role in the subsequent advance.94 As for De Simone, he was left to lament that more had not been done to hold British Somaliland, but the order to withdraw had once again come direct from Rome, where Mussolini increasingly seemed intent on giving up his empire without much of a struggle.95 Back in London the leader writer of The Economist approvingly noted that the occupation had lasted only seven months.96

  The main attacking force had now reached the final phase of its already remarkable advance as on 21 March it fought an extraordinary battle to capture the important Marda Pass beyond which was the Italian base at Harrar.97 A few years earlier, during the Italian invasion of their country, this position had been held for three months by Ethiopian troops but it now fell within twenty-four hours. It was a bright and clear day under a cloudless sky as the first battalion of the Nigerian infantry attacked at around midday across open ground supported by a troop of armoured cars from the Kenya Regiment and some South African field guns that fired more than a thousand rounds of shells as they duelled with Italian guns hidden from view on the other side of the pass.98 No attempt was made at concealment as the leading company used the main road, advancing along a broad front followed by the armoured cars and heading in the direction of Camel Saddle Hill which was believed to be clear of defending troops.99 There was supposed to have been a primitive portable wireless system available to co-ordinate the attack but the company commander had little faith in it and instead took his bugler into battle at his side. As the Italian artillery and mortars in the foothills ahead of them opened fire, compass bearings were taken and counter-battery fire began as the bugler sounded the ‘Retire’. It was later agreed that this was probably the last time during the war that this form of communication was used to manoeuvre a large unit of British and Commonwealth forces. The subsequent follow-up attack was conducted that same night and the position was occupied fully by first light. The Italians withdrew, abandoning more than forty machine guns and considerable amounts of ammunition and other equipment before blowing up the road behind them, although even this was done badly and there was only a six-hour delay before the advance resumed. The attackers had lost a total of thirty-two officers and men, including seven men who could not be rescued from the hillside and were said to have died from exposure during the bitterly cold night.100 Cunningham never could understand why the Italians gave up this position so easily; it was just the latest in a series of decisions by his opponents which made no military or strategic sense to him.101

  Capturing the Marda Pass marked the end of the open mobile phase of the southern advance and the beginning of the fight for the mountains. With the terrain becoming increasingly difficult to cross at speed, the prospects for the defenders should have improved greatly as both the Babile Gap and the Bisidimo Pass again offered significant advantages to them. The first of these was described as ‘a narrow defile leading down to a river, with high, rocky features on either side’ and what ‘appeared to be an almost solid wall of rock running from north to south’.102 Italian troops did put up some heavier resistance here during which several firefights developed before they were broken up by accurate artillery fire from the South African guns. One junior British officer calculated that 40 per cent of the shells fired at his men were duds whilst the enemy’s heavy mortars, which had a much greater range than those of the British and Commonwealth forces, were also used too badly to have any real effect.103 This in fact proved to be the last major engagement of the advance on this front. The pursuit which had begun at Mogadishu had been too quick for the Italians to counter and they were forced to continue their retreat to Harrar and the now inevitable conclusion. This was one of their most significant military bases and had been prominent in Cunningham’s thinking; held by three full brigades it had, once again, been expected to provide a very tough challenge but it was declared an open town even before the advancing forces arrived. Diredawa, another important administrative centre, and with a large Italian civilian population, was also simply abandoned by its garrison. Pursuit had turned into a rout.

  There was no chance that the initiative would be surrendered as the Br
itish-led forces continued to apply constant pressure on the retiring troops who were heading to the natural barrier of the Awash, one of the largest rivers in the whole of Ethiopia, some 150 miles away. This was the last possible line of defence and provided yet another formidable position, a deep gorge which almost cut a trench in front of the country’s central plateau that lay beyond. Cunningham was not alone in thinking the Italians could have formed positions here that would hold indefinitely and American media correspondents accompanying the advance speculated that ‘the road to Addis Ababa may be the scene of a series of battles’.104 But whatever fighting spirit the Italians might once have had was long since gone; the defending troops were entirely broken and their commanders were worrying more about the route along which they could fall back than anything else.105 As they continued the chase, and nearing exhaustion, South African armoured cars took the lead and, when they ran out of petrol, were passed by the 22nd East African Infantry Brigade. They reached the riverbanks before the machine-gunners from the Savoia Grenadiers, supported by the Blackshirt militia and colonial troops, had the chance to make good their defences, and troops from the KAR, supported by the guns of the 22nd Indian Mountain Battery, forced a crossing at dawn on 3 April which led to the defenders being outflanked. The battle for the village just west of the gorge lasted until the next morning, when most of the Italians withdrew. In the meantime, during the night six armoured cars were dragged across the 200-feet-deep gorge, using block and tackle and the strength of 200 askaris to manhandle them across. Another improvised bridge was quickly built across the river, one of seventy that were constructed by the engineers during the advance but the last one that would be needed on this stretch of road. The Italian commanders had calculated that destroying the road and rail bridges at the Awash would halt the advance by two days, just enough time to evacuate the capital, and all the other crossing points along the remaining 140 miles were left intact, so the road to Addis Ababa was wide open.106