The First Victory

by Andrew Stewart

  After the battle Wavell is reported to have said that ‘the road into Eritrea was opened, and the end of Italian power and influence in East Africa brought within sight’.72 The real target of the Red Sea remained, however, and, despite their exhaustion, the men had no thought of any further delay. The advance resumed, led by the 5th Indian Division, but almost immediately they were presented with another, potentially even better, natural defensive position at Ad Teclesan. This was another place that the Italians had improved with road demolitions and the preparation of additional fortifications. The battle that followed never quite received the attention it should have in the post-war accounts, largely because of what had just happened at Keren, but it was still another hard encounter. Some of the former defenders of Keren, including the remaining Savoia Grenadiers, were joined by three more battalions and supporting artillery that had been rushed up from Addis Ababa and Gondar. The advancing Indian troops were restricted to a single road and only had a limited amount of artillery as equipment was passing slowly through the Keren Gorge, but, on 31 March, they broke the enemy’s centre. As no opposition remained to challenge the RAF’s aircraft they had been able to bomb and machine-gun the enemy’s defensive posts at will. Faced with these attacks the initially heavy opposition soon faded away, and the garrison surrendered en masse to the West Yorkshires supported by Punjabi infantrymen and sappers.73 This rapid collapse demonstrated that the same was happening here as on the southern front; the Italians had become reluctant to carry on with the fight, and were increasingly conscious of the road to the sea behind them and the possibility of escape it offered.74 Messervy, who had taken command of the 9th Indian Infantry Brigade and who was at the front of the march, believed that at some point ‘we had to fight it out’ and he was actually glad that it happened at Keren and not at Ad Teclesan which, he concluded, was potentially the stronger of the two positions.75

  The imperative was still to maintain the momentum. Next was Asmara which, aside from being the capital of Eritrea, was also the administrative centre for the Italian army with a major airfield and plentiful barracks for the troops. At an altitude of about 6,500 feet and cool in the evenings, it had been turned into a pleasant health resort with gardens, boulevards, shops and even a cinema; as the principal centre for leave for Italian military personnel, it was the home of the famous nightclub La Croce del Sud with its cabaret and local hostesses. The city, with its 20,000 European civilians, was not well suited for a major battle, however, and the local administrative authorities were acutely conscious of the large numbers of white women and children there. This concern, added to growing fears of what might happen if there was an uprising by the African troops, encouraged a willingness to co-operate with the advancing troops. On 1 April Asmara fell without any resistance, the Bishop of Asmara along with the Chief of Police and the senior government officials having negotiated the surrender during a conference in a large Italian bus that had been driven two miles to meet the leading British troops. As the advancing forces entered they found that a mutiny of colonial troops had taken place the night before and there had been widespread looting despite the presence of thousands of fully armed Italians.76 The mutineers were rounded up and separated from their ammunition and guns before being shepherded into large compounds that were used as POW cages. As Platt was anxious to push on and had few troops to spare, the Italian police were allowed to remain on duty and guard them. Although they kept their guns along with a few rounds of ammunition, they had orders not to use them for fear that a massacre might follow.77 It took some time before the police and Italian troops were also eventually disarmed in batches and also put into custody.78

  Capturing Asmara represented one more step towards the Red Sea and it also provided excellent intelligence on the defences that lay ahead at Massawa. Documents discovered in one of the official buildings included information marked clearly on maps showing the locations of the artillery guarding the approaches and the anti-tank guns, most of which had been removed from ships in the harbour.79 It also brought with it access to a number of locomotives and a good deal of rolling stock which was found intact at the city’s railway station. This was the location for the Italian military forces’ main workshops and was where most of the transport equipment was held in reserve. The Italian civilians operating the trains were offered, and readily accepted, the same terms under which they had previously been employed, only now with British supervision. By 8 April the line running back to Agordat had been cleared and up to three trains a day were able to move along it, releasing a large amount of motor transport for other duties.80 By the end of the month the line to Massawa was also reopened and became the principal means for sending troops and other equipment for embarkation to Egypt.

  With all of Platt’s forces concentrating on their final objective, the final battle of the campaign was now poised to begin, not much more than ten weeks after the invasion from the Sudan had got under way. After the earlier victories, the advancing 7th Indian Infantry Brigade had moved on to the 7,000-foot Mount Engiahat which was eventually captured just as news was received that Keren had also fallen. The brigade was once more directed back towards its original objective and ordered to link up with the 10th Indian Infantry Brigade, and it played a central role in Massawa’s subsequent capture.81 Situated in a shallow plain and surrounded on three sides by low hills, the port was actually built on low coral reefs and linked to the mainland by a long causeway, the seaward end of which formed one side of the large harbour. The daytime temperature was more than thirty degrees higher than in Asmara but this was a pleasant change for troops who had been exposed to cold breezes and frequent thunderstorms in the uplands which were nearly 7,000 feet higher. About four miles west of the harbour both the road and railway passed through a bottleneck that presented another ideal defensive opportunity and it was here that the Italian positions started. On a pronounced range of hills three forts had been built with barbed wire and trenches placed across the whole area, added to which there were extensive minefields. Approaching from the north, a ridge ran parallel to the road with a prominent feature on its eastern end known as Signal Hill, part of a semicircle of broken hills and sandy valleys that ran away to the coast. As had been the case at Keren, the defenders had constructed many concrete battery positions in which they had mounted seventy-four guns of various calibres on prepared gun emplacements. It appeared to be another formidable position.

  Although the Italian garrison was believed to consist largely of second-class troops and included many of the stragglers from the previous battles, there remained approximately 10,000 men sheltering behind the extensive defences, but their food and fuel supplies were exhausted. They were, however, in touch with Rome and receiving directions from Mussolini which complicated the efforts that were being made to negotiate the surrender by telephone from Asmara. Rear-Admiral Mario Bonetti was overall commander of the forces that had either retreated there following the earlier battles or had spent several months waiting while the battle developed around them.82 Platt was hoping to prevent the scuttling of the naval vessels in the harbour but the senior Italian officer refused to accept the terms even though he was warned that any destruction of the port’s facilities could cause most harm to those civilians who would need it for future supplies.83 As it was, many ships in the harbour were scuttled, and five destroyers put to sea intending first to attack Port Sudan and then flee; these were engaged and sunk by a combination of naval gunfire from surface vessels and attacks by Swordfish aircraft from HMS Eagle.84

  Seven days after Asmara’s capture, and with a second demand to surrender having been refused, at 4 a.m. on 8 April three brigades largely of Indian troops attacked the port’s perimeter. These were now supported by plentiful artillery and a number of light tanks which still remained operational. There was also an abundance of airpower as HMS Formidable launched its squadrons of Albacores against targets in the port, believing the Italians to be particularly terrified of the threat of air or sea bomb
ardment.85 Operating alongside the Fleet Air Arm was the Free French’s Lorraine Squadron which was based at Khartoum and equipped with British Blenheims.86 As the troops approached the defence along the main road, there were frequent roadblocks, many of which took some time to clear, but no serious resistance. One brigade made good progress, and one of the others was briefly held up, but by 5 a.m., just an hour after the attack had begun, the Highland Light Infantry had captured Signal Hill, allowing the tanks to push forward. As had been the case from the start of the advance from the Sudanese frontier, the armour continued to be one of the most obvious differences between the two sides as, when progress appeared to be held up, it was able to clear any obstacles ahead. Now they drove on to occupy Fort Victor Emanuele, the last position between the troops and the town.

  It had been agreed that Briggs and the tanks would enter Massawa first in recognition of the critical role they had played.87 This was to take place at 2 p.m., but Monclar apparently could not restrain his impatience and entered the port about an hour before at the head of a platoon, accompanied by an Italian policeman and followed by a group of war correspondents who quickly pushed past him and were the first to reach the naval barracks.88 The main battle had taken place between five and ten miles outside the town and there were very few visible signs of the fighting other than the results of the air attacks and the smouldering ammunition dumps on the north-western outskirts destroyed by the Italians themselves. As had been feared, the inner harbour and the wharves had been put out of action, with sunken naval vessels strewn across the water. Two hours later, troops from 7th Indian Infantry Brigade finally entered the port and just twenty minutes after them came Heath, who had been leading the attack himself, in a small mechanised column which made for the headquarters. With the French commander already heading back out of the port, the general passed him as he was driven to the nineteenth-century domed palazzo that had been built for the Ottoman governor, where he accepted the formal Italian surrender. Approximately 10,000 prisoners were taken during the battle, including 465 officers, among them Major-General Vincenzo Tessitore, the acting commander for the whole of Eritrea, and over 7,000 other ranks.89 Bonetti was ‘found sitting rather moodily in a deck-chair at the side of the harbour. He had tried to break his sword across his knee but it only bent, so he threw it in the water.’90 The mangled object was later recovered and became a war trophy that was hung in Platt’s headquarters in Khartoum. Its previous owner, and the four Italian generals who had surrendered with him, were transferred to Asmara that same day, Heath escorting them personally, where they were granted permission to spend a final night with their wives and families.91 Even the large steamer Bonetti had sunk at the entrance to the harbour subsequently drifted from its intended position, allowing passage in and out, an entirely fitting epitaph to the rear admiral’s entirely ineffective attempt to defend the port.92

  The war in the north had been won, and won decisively. Platt’s forces had lost approximately twenty-five men killed and fifty wounded during the assault on Massawa, its fall marking the culmination of the northern advance during which more than 40,000 Italians had been captured along with 260 guns and artillery pieces. For the defenders still remaining in Italian East Africa there were now no longer any tanks, armoured cars or aircraft available to them as they had all been captured or destroyed.93 The last significant enemy forces were in the neighbourhood of Amba Alagi, 200 miles to the south of Asmara, and at Gondar where there were 20,000 men although they were entirely surrounded by irregular forces. As Wavell had gambled, with this final victory Italian and German surface raiders and submarines had lost their naval base in the Red Sea. On 11 April President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced in Washington, DC, that both it and the Gulf of Aden were no longer considered combat zones.94 American shipping was therefore now free to carry supplies to anywhere along eastern Africa’s coast and beyond, to the British and Commonwealth forces who were fighting an increasingly challenging series of battles in the Western Desert.95

  The attack on the Keren position had been the pivotal point in the East Africa campaign as it delivered the decisive blow to the Italians and allowed Platt the opportunity to accomplish what Wavell had asked him to do, securing the Sudanese border and then clearing the Italians from the coast beyond.96 Fought against 30,000 Italians, including many elite troops trained in mountain warfare, it took fifty-three days before the white flag was seen flying from Mount Sanchil.97 The Italians conducted one of the best defences of the war, using their equipment well, defending their positions with great skill and showing considerable courage. Platt had worried about how effective the Italian defensive operations had been in slowing his initial advance, and Heath later praised the Italians, noting that they often showed great ingenuity in constructing cleverly concealed cement reinforced positions.98 The repeated and increasingly frenzied attempt to recover Fort Dologorodoc should have been enough to convince any observers of the Italians’ courage and resolve. In the process, they suffered great losses: during the eight weeks of the battle more than 3,000 men were killed and 4,500 wounded.99 Amongst the casualties was Brigadier-General Orlando Lorenzini, respected by both sides as an inspiring leader, and the loss of this influential officer on 17 March certainly weakened Carnimeo’s forces.100 The garrison commander was also hampered by Frusci’s indecisive interventions, with his wavering as to whether Keren was his principal defensive position and his belief that the main attack would come from the north, which meant he refused to move reserves forward during the final stages.101 Added to this were the relentless ground attacks, the incessant aerial bombing and the eventual impact of the British and Commonwealth artillery and tanks, the psychological effect of the heavy casualties they suffered and the news of defeats elsewhere, as well as the generally intolerable conditions on the battlefield.102 In light of all of this, it was an extremely impressive performance but one that, ultimately, could not stop the inevitable.

  Unable to break through the Italian defences, the British and Commonwealth forces had had to conduct frontal attacks and at great cost. The final engagements were extremely hard, with bitter hand-to-hand fighting and – although the sources vary, sometimes wildly, in their totals – it can be ascertained that around 400 men died and a further 3,000 were wounded, almost one in two of them front-line troops.103 A junior officer who climbed Mount Sanchil the day after the battle had ended wrote:

  Dead lay everywhere and parties were working flat out to bring away the bodies for proper burial. In the enemy position itself, efforts had been made to bury our dead, but with little success, as it was impossible to dig in the rocky ground. A head protruded from under a pile of stones while feet emerged from the other end. The stench and flies were nauseating.104

  A senior British officer who had been present throughout described Keren as a ‘Soldiers’ Battle’, in which relatively junior troops employed ‘brilliant improvisation and initiative’ to defeat a well-equipped and motivated opponent in prepared defensive positions.105 Wavell was so impressed by the British success that when he was later ennobled he chose as one of his additional titles ‘Viscount of Keren in Eritrea’.106 He knew that Platt’s success had also been felt many hundreds of miles away on the southern front as Italian reserves and equipment were moved from there northwards towards the Keren battlefield. In so doing they undoubtedly made Cunningham’s task a little easier, and had helped determine the outcome of the campaign.107

  At least one of the post-war writers to have studied Keren has concluded that it could ‘claim to be considered as one of the truly decisive battles of the world’.108 This assessment was based upon the lack of equipment available at this stage of the war to the attacking troops and the difficulties they faced in mounting the offensives. Another review reached the same conclusion but based upon wider strategic considerations in the sense that the victory had not only precipitated the collapse of the Italian East African Empire but had also allowed neutral American shipping once again to transport equipment
to Egypt.109

  As one of the brigadiers who had fought at Keren concluded, ‘the enemy had fought well and bravely, but our men had fought better and had been infinitely better directed’, and the victory received considerable acclaim as a high point of the war to date.110 In a subsequent House of Lords debate, one of the government speakers argued that the success at Keren stood out for special praise, noting that ‘alpine climbing at a snail’s pace and then to assault at the summit again and again demands great physical strain and determination’.111 He described it as ‘a task of supreme difficulty’ and a ‘formidable job’ and, rather forgetting the contribution that had been made by English and Scottish soldiers, doubted whether any troops in the world could have completed it as successfully as the Indian units. The press in Britain also made prominent references to experienced Indian Army officers’ descriptions of the terrain around Keren as being worse than anything that could be found on the North-West Frontier.112