This experience is unlikely to have impressed him but Cunningham later confided that he also believed Wingate had actually made very little difference to the outcome of the overall campaign and had exaggerated the contribution made by the Patriots.45 Wingate, who became leader of the Chindits, was killed in a plane crash in Burma in March 1944, and through the years that followed his wartime experiences, including the relatively brief period he spent in Ethiopia, he subsequently received a great deal of flattering coverage.46 Unfortunately, many of the details of what had actually taken place in Africa were overlooked in favour of more doubtful versions that focused on his eccentric character and the apparently daring exploits he had carried out while commanding his irregular forces.47 This meant that the background to the British policy, as well as how Wavell had helped to promote the insurgency and the role that had been played by Sandford, were not always entirely accurately portrayed. The southern front commander was particularly angered by some of these accounts and ‘the somewhat distorted picture’ that was allowed to develop of the rest of the British effort.48
Cunningham was another of the regular senior British officers who had endured a progressively difficult relationship with the leader of Gideon Force. In post-war recollections, he was happy to point out that much of the insurgent activity had taken place after Addis Ababa had already been occupied. He had received very little support during the advance from the Kenyan frontier and, on at least two occasions, Wingate chose to ignore or interpret in a particular way direct orders he had been given by the general. His failure to respect the chain of command certainly created friction and animosity between both Cunningham and Platt which lasted throughout the campaign and beyond.49 The two more senior officers did not appreciate the antics of their often arrogant and acerbic subordinate who failed to recognise their authority and proved highly effective at both attracting the media’s interest and exploiting the support he appeared to enjoy back in Cairo.
In his post-war dispatch, Wavell described the operations which cleared the Gojjam as ‘a very remarkable achievement’, which he put down to the ‘energy and initiative’ shown by both Sandford and Wingate.50 There were undoubtedly positive effects but these operations acted more as a psychological threat. A Gold Coast Regiment officer recorded that the Patriots’ fire discipline was non-existent and they often advanced firing their rifles into the air, presumably because they assumed the noise was sufficient to make the Italians run.51 Considering its actual level of military impact, it was reasonable to argue that Gideon Force was not that decisive although it did distract the Italian higher commanders and prevent them from focussing exclusively on the more conventional moves made by Platt and Cunningham. This alone, however, was worthy of some credit; of all of the British forces fighting on the various fronts Wingate’s was the smallest, and the risks that he and his men faced were high: certainly on at least one occasion his forces were close to being overwhelmed by the Italians and a more organised opponent might easily have hunted him down.
At the same time, many of the ideas attributed to him had reportedly been put in place long before he ever reached Khartoum.52 Slim had first met Wingate in Ethiopia and told a post-war official historian that, whilst ‘his strategic ideas were to be admired and cultivated . . . his tactics on the other hand were often unsound’.53 There were also doubts about the Patriots’ reliability; as Platt put it, their ‘acceptance of proposals for battle was no guarantee of their appearance and participation’.54 Finally, to achieve even this, the level of financial support they required was massive and huge amounts were spent maintaining this sometimes questionable form of support. Operating near Wolchefit and the Gondar region, Ringrose later confirmed that he alone had spent over £1 million keeping his forces in the field.55 Nonetheless, at a time when there were limits on what could be provided in terms of manpower and equipment, Gideon Force appears to have been viewed as a potentially cheap force multiplier.
From a purely military perspective, the main role played by the Patriots was to conduct mopping-up operations throughout much of the country as the northern and southern advances secured the key objectives that had been given to them by Wavell at the campaign’s start.56 The insurgency made for an excellent distraction, as had been intended when it was initially proposed and at a time when a military campaign lacking in resources was looking for innovative ways to get at the enemy. As for Wingate, following his death Churchill told the House of Commons during a debate on the war situation that he had ‘paid a soldier’s debt’ and to this he added the famous line, ‘There was a man of genius who might well have become a man of destiny.’57 Despite such praise, the suggestion that Wingate had been a military figure similar in stature to Lawrence came under sustained attack, one commentator referring to them as ‘chalk and cheese’.58 His wartime role remains a subject of intense scrutiny and debate to this day, but despite the entirely valid criticisms made of Wingate, he did make a contribution to the final outcome of the East Africa campaign. It was, however, nowhere near as significant as he, and some of his post-war supporters, apparently believed. Their main contribution actually followed on from the initial stages of the British and Commonwealth advance, by which point Wavell’s key strategic objectives had already been almost entirely secured by the troops fighting under the command of Platt and Cunningham. The generals’ post-war disdain of an abrasive and apparently egotistical character was not, therefore, without some merit, particularly as the focus on Gideon Force detracted from the recognition of the campaign that they had led and were now about to win.
CHAPTER 10
WINNING THE WAR, WORRYING ABOUT THE PEACE
WITH THE ITALIANS having lost the Red Sea, two main objectives remained for Wavell’s commanders. From the south Cunningham’s rapid march had left him poised outside Addis Ababa and its capture would complete the main part of the plan that had been given to him, leaving only the hinterland beyond to be brought under control. As for Platt, he had also done everything that had been asked of him and was now looking to link up with his counterpart, which would complete the devastating pincer movement and destroy any remaining enemy forces in the process.
The numbers of available troops to accomplish this, however, were diminishing. Only a few months before, the commander in Cairo had made the bold decision to strengthen his forces in East Africa, believing that continuous pressure could lead to victory in the summer or autumn of that year. He had remained resolute despite the Greek expedition which had robbed him of forces and the reversal of fortunes suffered in the Western Desert.1 Wavell had told Platt, ‘I want every aeroplane, every gun, every vehicle and every fighting formation I can get hold of but I am not going to take a single one from you until you have finished your attack here. Then, directly you are through Keren, I expect you to offer everything you possibly can.’2 He always remained acutely sensitive to the almost symbiotic relationship between the two theatres, and when, in April, Rommel threatened as victory in East Africa drew close, he was quick to order the changes. In the first instance this meant the 4th Indian Division was recalled back to Egypt, leaving its sister division and the South Africans as the main British and Commonwealth force. With the pressure from London growing ever more acute, this was just the start.
Ethiopia, 900 miles long and 750 miles wide, was larger than the combined area of Italy and France, and some of Cunningham’s units, having first also crossed Italian Somaliland, had travelled almost its entire length.3 These troops who had advanced from the Kenyan frontier now had one last major objective to capture. At 8,700 feet above sea level, Addis Ababa was ‘a capital in the clouds’ where, according to one of the war correspondents writing in typically expansive tones, ‘the altitude makes your heart race and your pulse throb’ and the mountain air left everybody ‘with a false hangover, an unfulfilled feeling of an ebullience never quite achieved’.4 It had been founded in 1897 by Menelik II after he had camped on the Entoto Hills and liked them so much he decided to make it his perma
nent base.5 Originally there was a forest of cedar trees on the hills but these were used as building material and fuel, so the Ethiopian leader imported from Australia blue gum eucalyptus trees: it was from them that Addis Ababa, which translates as ‘The New Flower’, got its name. Orders were given for these trees not to be destroyed, and in the years that followed they thrived in the hot and moist climate. The conquering Italians added to the existing city buildings a large airstrip, a railway station and even a racecourse and, much as Mussolini had hoped, the white settler population grew quickly to 40,000. The Royal Palace had been built for Selassie by a German firm a few years before the Italian invasion and was not damaged in the fighting.6 Used by successive Italian leaders, it was here that Aosta now waited for the inevitable.
Having crossed the Awash, the 22nd East African Infantry Brigade had passed through the South Africans on 1 April to continue the advance as the leading element of 12th African Division.7 The viceroy of Italian East Africa had contacted Rome the following day and asked for permission to open discussions with Wavell about the capital’s surrender.8 As one magazine in London put it at the time, ‘Honour requires no more from the Duke than he has done.’9 Mussolini agreed, and within twenty-four hours Aosta had left the city, heading north to join Frusci and leaving General Renzo Mambrini, Inspector-General of the Police, to take charge and make preparations for the city’s occupation. Four days later, a young major, Fausto de Fabritus, accompanied by an armoured vehicle and thirty Blackshirts and police motorcycle outriders, was sent to meet with the advancing troops near the Garibaldi Pass. This envoy carried an urgent request that British forces now occupy Addis Ababa as quickly as possible to protect civilian life and property. The recently appointed Italian commander feared possible retribution from the local Ethiopian population and had issued an order on 4 April instructing all women and children, if they heard a ten-minute siren blast, to take shelter in one of a dozen security zones that had been established. These were in hotels and other large buildings which had been surrounded with troops and barbed wire for their protection.
At this very late stage orders were received from Nairobi for the South Africans to move up to lead the advance and enter the city first. It was apparently done at Smuts’ personal request as he hoped to use the victory and the role played by his men to strengthen domestic support for the war. There was some discussion, however, amongst the more senior British officers who had been involved in the advance as to why the brigade of West African troops that had led it so well was now to be prevented from securing its final objective.10 Fowkes, leading at the head of the column, gave orders that every vehicle should have its tanks filled with petrol so that none would remain in the column’s accompanying fuel tankers, and he could truthfully say to division headquarters that there were no reserves to hand over.11 He was apparently determined to get to Addis Ababa first, so much so that when he received formal confirmation telling him to let his Commonwealth partners through he replied, ‘your message not understood’, and his own troops pushed on. He also gave orders to the rear party that no one was to be allowed to pass up the column; this was intended to prevent a written message being delivered by motorcycle dispatch rider.12 This resulted in an aircraft being sent: it flew over and just ten miles from the capital, at Akaki, the order was dropped in front of the brigadier’s car, leaving him no choice but to comply. Relations between him and his South African counterpart Pienaar did not suffer as a result of this decision and their joint motto remained ‘Straight and hard at the enemy and keep right on going’; subsequent accounts which referred to a ‘curious, unexplained episode’ failed to acknowledge the Machiavellian intervention that Smuts had made.13
Although the 1st South African Brigade was to pass through and have the honour of the ceremonial entry, they were preceded by an official party. The two brigadiers and their staff along with Brigadier Gerald Smallwood, who was commanding the Nigerians, and the divisional commander Major-General Harry Wetherall, were the first into Addis Ababa, having driven into the city on the morning of 6 April in a small, lightly armed convoy. About six miles from its outskirts they found a huge welcome banner strung across the road and an Italian family with two small girls throwing flowers at the vehicles as they went past.14 Other than them they saw little else of the general European population apart from a few groups of Greeks waving blue and white flags, until the final four miles when the route was lined on both sides by hundreds of armed policemen. Aosta had actually left behind 5,000 armed police and two complete battalions of the paramilitary Blackshirts, ostensibly to protect the civilian population, but, once again, some of these later ended up being pressed into guarding their fellow countrymen who were now prisoners of war.15 Arriving at the emperor’s palace, the ‘Little Ghebbi’, which the media correspondents had reached an hour before, the Union Jack was hoisted in front of the viceroy’s now former residence.16 (At the first attempt it was upside down but this was soon corrected.)
At the airport there were 1,200 fully armed troops, under the command of a general, waiting to surrender. On 3 April it had been attacked by the SAAF, who had destroyed the final thirty-two Italian aircraft and any remaining threat of a challenge from the air that could have halted the advancing forces. When a company from 6th Battalion, KAR arrived, they took the men prisoner simply by ordering them to parade. The offices and messes were found to be luxuriously equipped and furnished and the men had excellent meals that night.17 At 8 p.m. orders were received that they were to be gone by 5 a.m. the following morning so that the South African troops could be filmed entering the capital.
Churchill sent the message to Wavell: ‘Will you convey to General Cunningham the thanks and appreciation of His Majesty’s Government for the vigorous, daring and highly successful operations which he has conducted in command of his ardent, well trained well organised army.’18 The commander of the southern advance was not present at the surrender as he wanted any accompanying publicity to go to the troops who had been responsible for the victory. It was not clear if he was aware of Smuts’ latest intervention or if his absence was a deliberate response. He actually spent the day at his headquarters in Harrar where he would also have heard the news that the Germans had invaded Yugoslavia and Greece that same morning and were continuing to make advances in Cyrenaica.19 This dramatic worsening of the Allied position completely overshadowed the incredible success that had been won in East Africa.
Cunningham visited Addis Ababa for the first time on 7 April, landing at the airfield just twenty-four hours after troops had entered the city.20 His aide accompanied him and found it to be entirely as he expected, ‘perfectly filthy and not at all attractive’. They visited the viceroy’s former official residence which was already fully staffed by the division and, after weeks of bully beef, were provided with an excellent lunch at Little Ghebbi with steak, fresh vegetables and dessert accompanied by pre-lunch cocktails followed by two types of wine. Although they returned to Nairobi that same day, the two men were soon back again as there was already an ‘immense’ number of political and administrative details that needed to be resolved. For this second visit they were accommodated in Aosta’s private house, which was still fully furnished and staffed, leading Blewitt to comment, ‘as the Italians are still good waiters, whatever they are as fighters we should be comfortable’. He also later offered some more vivid impressions of the liberated city:
. . . a mixture of squalor and filth like so many of these Italian colonial towns. The wops were in the process of building a number of quite imposing buildings but none of these were finished and the wops as far as I could make out lived all muddled up with the natives in the same sort of little shack which didn’t look as though a pig should be allowed to live in them. The natives themselves are filthy but rather picturesque.21
Clear from this description is that there was at least one British officer who was not entirely convinced about what the victors had actually accomplished.
Despite not having
been at the front of the procession that had entered Addis Ababa, the 1st Battalion, Nigerian Regiment were selected as the garrison battalion and one company was billeted in the Royal Palace with another put up next to the former Italian officers’ brothel.22 Whilst the commanding major noted how little trouble there was between the Italians and Ethiopians, other accounts referred to continuous night-time shooting in the old town.23 However, this was between Ethiopians and Somalis and the British lost no time in ‘clearing this up’.24 The plan had been that the Italian troops would be employed to provide security for the European women and children who had been left in the city, but the restraint shown towards them by the newly liberated Ethiopians and the nervousness of the military, and the shooting incidents that this caused, led to a disarmament programme being ‘pushed on with all speed’.25 With no sign of any other outbreaks of fighting and it still unclear how many Italian troops remained in the field, Cunningham believed that the campaign was now to become one of sending out ‘cleaning up parties’. As for himself, he thought he would soon be sent elsewhere as there were more important jobs in the Middle East.26 It would be a couple of months before this happened, though, and until then responsibility for the majority of the decisions would lie with him.
The First Victory Page 24