The southern front advance had achieved an incredible success – far beyond what anybody, even Wavell, had anticipated might be possible – and the statistics were nothing short of exceptional. During a remarkable fifty-three days, this one arm of what was turning into a two-pronged pincer advanced more than 1,700 miles from the Kenyan frontier to the Ethiopian capital, occupying some 360,000 square miles and capturing more than 50,000 prisoners, all for the loss of 135 men killed, 310 wounded and another 59 missing.107 At the time it was described as a military record and, as Cunningham’s obituary later noted, it was carried out at ‘a pace seldom surpassed in history’.108 The eventual scale of Operation ‘Canvas’ was huge: to put it in a European context, had Cunningham’s headquarters been in Cherbourg, his three fronts would have been centred on Marseilles, Madrid and Milan.109 Wavell himself calculated that it was the equivalent of conducting operations in Inverness while based in London but having a railway line that extended only as far as Newcastle.110 That this did not present an insurmountable problem only served to highlight that the main difference between his troops and those facing them was that the British and Commonwealth force ‘was mobile and dashing while [the Italians] were sluggish and unenterprising’.111 Indeed, as another contemporary account noted, in contrast it had taken ‘Marshal Badoglio seven months to advance 425 miles in 1936 against the brave but sadly ill-equipped Abyssinian forces’.112
Despite the terrific pace of the advance and the other challenges he had to face, Cunningham remained throughout in ‘terrific form’, according to his aide, and had stood up extremely well to ‘what must have been a terrific strain’.113 As his forces captured territory there was never a place that he had not visited within twelve hours; he was in the second aircraft to land in Mogadishu and entered Gelib while his troops were still fighting in the outskirts. He had a narrow escape flying into Jijiga in one of three South African Junkers 52 aircraft which landed and taxied to a halt but were then attacked by three Italian fighters.114 The planes were machine-gunned but nobody was hit and the damage was minimal as, by this stage, the attackers only had a few rounds of incendiary ammunition remaining.115 It could have been far worse if they had been loaded with more of these and if the attack had come five minutes earlier when the aircraft were coming in to land.116 The Italians probably did not know they had missed a chance to kill almost the entire British headquarters staff. They returned the next day and bombed the airstrip again, this time with more incendiary rounds as a single resupply aircraft had arrived overnight from Benghazi. Without the element of surprise, and faced by South African fighters, including two of the Hurricanes, they inflicted further damage on the ground, including to one of the transport aircraft, but for the loss of two attackers.
The greatest problems Cunningham faced were those which he had anticipated from the outset: the constant difficulties in organising supply and transport, and, once the scale of the potential opportunity for success became clear, urging his forces to maintain their phenomenal pace. When the general had been at the Imperial Defence College a few years before, as part of the studies examining any possible future war involving the British Empire, a campaign against the Italians in East Africa had been considered. The conclusion his syndicate had reached was that an advance from the south was quite impossible so he was ‘very pleased that he had got there first when it was never dreamt of by anyone that he had the slightest chance’.117 Blewitt had witnessed it all at first hand and was not alone in his conclusion that the Italians had simply assumed it would not be possible to advance as quickly as the British and Commonwealth forces had done. This outcome he put down ‘largely to the general’s own personal driving power’.118 In another letter his aide once again referred to the role Cunningham had played and ‘his foresight and readiness to take risks which had made the campaign the complete success that it had been’. He did, however, also refer to those moments when his commander had wondered what might happen if the decisions he was making had been mistaken. Fortunately this did not prevent him from urging those around him ever onwards, whether it was the fighting forces as they continued the advance or those tasked with keeping the flow of supplies moving alongside them.
Just as the British general had believed it was the decisive moment, De Simone also recognised that after the failure of his defence of the Juba he had not been able to form another coherent front or mount an effective defence. He was interviewed following his capture and revealed that although wireless interception had provided him with a good deal of knowledge about British plans, he could not capitalise on the advantage to achieve any real success on the battlefield.119 The Italian had clearly been worried from the beginning that his flanks would be turned by his opponent pushing on from Bardera towards Mogadishu. This was his reason for ordering the garrison there to hold out for as long as possible and its failure to do so was described as a critical reason for why the entire position was lost. As Kismayu was abandoned to avoid its being cut off, the troops moved to strengthen Gelib but were pursued all the way and De Simone himself was machine-gunned by a British aircraft while travelling in his staff car. His task was not helped when Aosta took his best troops, the 101st Division, who had offered the stiff initial resistance at the Juba, for the defence of Addis Ababa. De Simone claimed that he had still intended to halt at Modun but as he drove there his staff car was once again attacked from the air, whilst shelling from the Royal Navy was so effective that it destroyed his mobile headquarters and even his own personal tent. With all of his senior commanders having fled by this stage and most of his remaining men having disappeared into the bush there was little he could do to halt the advance of his opponent.120 As he concluded, ‘in many cases the senior officers were lacking in ability and . . . he had not much faith in them’; his best men, he felt, were the bande.121 He had also considered the position at Harrar to be particularly strong but the resistance mounted there was another great disappointment. Troops who had displayed ‘definite dash and courage’ only a few months before during the invasion of British Somaliland now ‘disappeared like “fluff in the breeze”’; of the 20,000 men originally under his command, only 2,000 remained, leaving him still with twenty-two batteries of guns but almost no infantry.122
It was certainly true that, aside from a few of the initial battles, throughout the advance from Kenya the Italians seemed prepared to withdraw very readily. The more obvious examples were at Mega, where the South Africans could very easily have been forced back, and also at Afmadu, where a lone Italian left behind told those who found him ‘you only have to make a noise like an armoured car and you will be in Mogadishu in a fortnight’.123 This was, in large part, a result of their main operational weakness which, according to one assessment by a senior British military officer, was their leadership. The staff officers were only considered moderate in terms of their abilities, whilst with only a few exceptions higher commanders lacked enterprise, vigour and determination. As a result, there rarely seemed to be any thought given to launching counter-attacks even though the Italian company commanders would often put in effective and well-directed local actions. Neither were their intelligence services thought particularly good, although, as De Simone had confirmed, wireless interception was excellent, as was the field telephone system he used which meant his ability to communicate instructions was often much better than that enjoyed by Cunningham.
The daily summary of enemy intercepts produced on 3 March for the British and Commonwealth commanders included reference to a commentary on Italian radio about the losses that had been suffered. During this it was said that ‘the Empire is a stronghold which can be surrounded or even partially dismantled, but as a whole it can resist any attack’; this, it was concluded, was clear evidence that the Italian people were being prepared for defeat.124 Even at this stage the prospect of Germany intervening to save the day apparently remained a commonly held belief and the best hope for the rapidly shrinking defending garrison. This outlook, along with a ‘Maginot menta
lity’, was believed to account, at least in part, for why neither the regular Italian forces nor their locally raised troops had seemed particularly keen on offering any resistance during the fighting on the southern front.125 By late March their strategy was assessed by their British opponents as being one of holding onto a foothold, which seemed to be in Eritrea, where the defence that had been fought until then appeared to have been comparatively better. In the south they had already lost the war.
CHAPTER 7
SECOND FRONT
Striking from the Sudan
THE OPENING SHOTS of the East African offensive actually began on the northern front. The advance by British and Commonwealth troops that started from the Sudanese border saw some of the heaviest fighting and the most resolute defence conducted by the Italians, not just in this campaign but in any of the entire war. In many respects it was what Wavell had anticipated from his earliest strategic reviews: that the Red Sea would prove an attractive draw to his opponents, who would place many of their best units in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. As part of his wider plan, he had given Platt – who had been promoted to lieutenant-general on 7 January 1941 – the twofold objective of securing the security of the Sudan and removing the threat to the maritime supply routes which were vital to his operations both in East Africa and also in the Western Desert. Once the safety of the Red Sea was guaranteed, the United States could once again permit their merchant ships to use this route, which meant that more of the hard-pressed British shipping would be available for use elsewhere.1 It also meant that at least one point of access to the Suez Canal could be guaranteed for the convoys being sent to him from around the British Empire.
In his headquarters in Khartoum, Platt continued to believe that Kassala, where the battles had been fought the year before, remained the key target for his forces. The original appreciation made in the summer of 1940 had apparently concluded it would be impossible for a force of any great size to advance in the direction of Asmara from the small frontier town. This was due to difficulties of supply and even just the handling of those units which had been assembled on this front.2 Once again terrain and weather were also vital considerations. As the Kaid’s forces completed their preparations, many of the troops were camped near the River Atbara in which it was possible for them to bathe. From here, however, it was thirty-seven miles to the next water feature, the River Gash, described as ‘a seasonal stream’, with no water at all to be found in between. At the time of the advance the Gash was actually a dry and sandy bed and the men had to dig seven feet to find any form of liquid. As for the ground they were covering, one of the officers described it as ‘an immense dusty plain in which grow an endless number of stunted, dark, thorny and evil smelling trees’ which had three-inch thorns that could puncture the tyres on the trucks.3
Facing Platt was Luigi Frusci, a sixty-two-year-old veteran of the Spanish Civil War who had three full divisions and three independent brigades under his command, and with additional reserves he could call upon from northern Ethiopia. Consequently his forces outnumbered those of his opponent by more than two to one, once again a significant, even potentially decisive, advantage, particularly when combined with the excellent defensive positions presented to him by the terrain. It was much hillier in the north and the Italian equipment, including mule transport which was essential for mountain warfare, was also of a generally higher quality. The British and Commonwealth forces were, however, better prepared and equipped for a campaign based on manoeuvre and Frusci was worried about the challenge of defending an area that he believed favoured mechanised columns.4 Platt was initially unaware of this, or that in June 1940 the SS Umbria had been detained as it tried to force its way through the Red Sea, including amongst the munitions and military equipment it was bringing from Italy a consignment of anti-tank guns. Their loss meant that the Italian troops had practically no ability to stop British tanks if any were sent to fight on this front.5 Frusci did have some armour of his own but it was no match for what his opponent could produce and he generally doubted whether he had sufficient capabilities to stop the British. Added to his more general concerns about the stocks of ammunition and petrol available, his anxiety about the demoralising effect on his troops if they were forced to fall back did not bode well for the battle ahead.
The Italian Air Force, the Regia Aeronautica, also offered him little support as by this stage in the campaign it was easily dominated by its opponents.6 In late January 1941, the ageing fleet of British aircraft was augmented by newer Gladiators, Blenheim bombers and Hurricanes. They were employed most effectively as their landing strips were positioned as close as possible to the forward edge of the advancing troops. This meant they could stay longer in the air, providing cover for the ground forces and, as Platt later wrote, their impact on the subsequent fighting was considerable: whilst the Italians had at first machine-gunned and bombed the advancing columns, ‘thanks to the efforts of [our British] airmen, their appearances and their effectiveness gradually diminished’.7 The general even went so far as to conclude that ‘this was a prime factor enabling greater distances to be covered’, and, although it was not clear at the time, it was this success in the air which went a long way to hampering the chances of a successful Italian defence.8
Despite the much larger size of his ground forces, in a number of critical areas Frusci was actually at a disadvantage. As was the case for De Simone, he was not helped by having to rely upon intelligence of dubious quality and, as a result, he tended to overestimate his opponent’s strength. Platt did much the same as Cunningham in the south, exploiting this advantage ruthlessly, often in tandem with a better use of deception, to undermine the apparent Italian superiority in manpower and equipment. With his limited military strength Platt had actively sought to deceive the Italians about the size of the forces facing them; post-war accounts that highlighted the ‘extraordinary incompetence of the Italian intelligence services’, and the degree to which they were taken in, were entirely accurate.9 There were numerous examples such as at Aqiq, an anchorage on the Red Sea south of Port Sudan, where repairs were made to the jetty and landing grounds and dummy camps were laid out in an effort to make the Italians think that a major attack would come from this direction.10 Another was the attempted commando raid in early January 1941 carried out in the Gallabat region, approximately 200 miles south of Kassala. This was intended to distract the Italians forcing them to send more reinforcements to Metemma where the battle had been fought two months before. Relying on an incompetent local guide, after a long night march up the Atbara the men got lost in the darkness but eventually managed to make their way back home; this nonetheless left the Italian garrison nervous about their opponent’s intentions.11
Platt’s establishment of a dedicated mobile column to continually harass and raid their positions proved the most successful method of confusing the Italians.12 Referred to as Gazelle Force, this had been formed in October 1940 around Skinner’s Horse to which was added a machine gun regiment from the SDF and other supporting units, including even some light artillery.13 Wavell ordered that maximum disruption be caused in order to intimidate the Italians and fix their defensive positions, and this unit proved hugely successful at making it appear that a much larger force was operating along the frontier. They were under orders from their commanding officer, Colonel Frank Messervy, to ‘Terrify the enemy. Make his life absolute hell!’ As Messervy said, ‘I want it to be that they are afraid to move by day or sleep by night, so that they think more of protecting themselves than probing for our weak points. They must become completely defensively minded.’14 Described as ‘a charming, efficient, very brave and determined commander’, before the war Messervy had been an Indian Army cavalry officer and a very good polo player.15 Another of his colleagues noted his ‘great dash and verve’ and his ‘always itching to get where the fighting was fiercest’, and it was certainly the case that this small force achieved a much greater effect than could have reasonably been anticipated.16 W
ith a headquarters staff divided more or less equally between Indian Army and SDF personnel, although there was lots of ‘horse talk’, the unit was entirely mechanised with armoured cars and trucks. As a result it was known as the ‘tin cavalry’ but, even with limited numbers, it proved too much for the Italians.17 Throughout November and into December Platt’s troops lay ‘in wait like a cat watching a mouse’ whilst everything was done to undermine the enemy’s morale and harass the Italians, who believed they were facing five heavily armed divisions.18
A good intelligence network on the ground also helped as it recorded the movements of enemy troops in and around Kassala. By this point British signals intercept stations were positioned in various locations in eastern Africa and Wavell and his generals in the field were provided with near real-time decrypts of Italian messages. These outlined the enemy’s strength and identified where the troops were and how their commanders intended to use them. Such was the advantage this provided that the Deputy Director of Military Intelligence in Cairo believed there was no equivalent in any other wartime theatre.19 Gazelle Force even had its own attached air reconnaissance which provided invaluable support, photographing the enemy frontier posts and carrying out occasional bombing attacks on them.20 This Rhodesian squadron also took Messervy into the skies to observe the terrain over which he and his men would be operating – visibility which offered huge advantages later as they played a prominent role in the rapid advance into Italian territory. This ability to view what was happening along the frontier meant the senior British commanders could monitor what was believed to be one of the most vulnerable points for attack and which, if it was in Italian hands, could have led to a potentially dangerous northward advance.
The First Victory Page 18