Love in the Land of Barefoot Soldiers

by Frances Vieta

AS THE WAR PROGRESSED, there was bad news every day. Ceseli was feeling more and more useless and depressed, and there was no recent news of Marco. She had been volunteering at the hospital and she was learning a lot. She knew how to suture and other basic first aid measures. That was helpful, but it wasn’t the war. What could she do to help? She wondered when she had begun to think like this and pinpointed it to the tanks. She had reviewed several options at length before making her decision.

  She walked out of the small office where she had been working for the last five months. She liked the work and being able to consult the emperor’s personal library was adding enormously to her study. She had also photographed and made rubbings of all the coins in the collection including the thirty rare ones she had found at Axum. She had not found out why the obelisks fell.

  She read and reread Marco’s last letter.

  The pain I feel for these people is unbearable. I am so ashamed of being Italian. It is not only the wounds from battle that I am treating, but the horrifying pain brought on by the mustard gas. The Italian bombers come daily and spray not only the armies, but also the local villages. Worst still, they spray the fields so the people can’t eat, and the lakes so they can’t drink. All the people of Ethiopia have become victims. I treated one old man who looked liked someone had tried to skin him alive. He had only giant red cauldrons as eyes. So many of my patients are children.

  I miss you so much, Ceseli. So, so much.

  She folded the letter and tucked it into her pocket. As she walked toward Yifru’s office she reviewed her plans and still finding them acceptable, knocked on his door. He raised his eyes and smiled as she entered.

  “This is a pleasant surprise. How is the work going?”

  “It’s fine. Everything is fine. I’d like to talk to you,” she said, taking the seat in front of him. “Yifru. I want to go to Dessie with the Emperor’s hospital unit.”

  “Do you know what it will be like?” he asked.

  “I’ve given it a great deal of thought. I don’t have a great deal of training, but I can help and goodness knows you do need that. You won’t regret letting me go.”

  He looked at her for a long time before speaking, knowing that he needed to find some convincing argument that would dissuade her.

  “Ceseli,” he started to say, “do you have any idea of what you’d be getting yourself into? This is not what women do.”

  “Lots of Ethiopian women follow their men to war. And women are nurses.”

  “Yes of course they do; but they are Ethiopian. This is their war.”

  “I’m very committed to this. I know you have the power to say no, but I’m hoping you won’t use it.”

  “You’d be in constant danger.”

  “I can’t just sit around doing nothing. This means a lot to me. I care deeply about what will happen. I want to help.”

  He looked into her supplicating eyes. “I’d need to assign someone to take care of you.”

  “No you won’t. I know the language and there’s lots I can do at the hospital up there. And I know I wouldn’t be the only white person there. There are several other nurses and plenty of journalists. That’s not an excuse either.”

  “That’s true, but I don’t feel responsible for them. I would for you.”

  “Yifru, it’s something I very much need to do.”

  Yifru studied her. He couldn’t help remembering Debra. He’d known Ceseli for months. I’ve been taking her for granted, he thought, like someone you see every day and never really look at. Yifru looked at her now knowing that part of her desire to go must be connected to Marco. But the truth at hand was that Ceseli could be of help. Did he have the luxury of using her? Was she expendable? Not to him she wasn’t, but could he put his feelings before hers?

  “On one condition. No, actually two. If it gets very bad, you will obey my orders. I will evacuate you.”

  She pondered this for a moment. “That’s perfectly acceptable. And the second?”

  “I want Warren Rutherford’s permission.”

  “Warren Rutherford is my godfather.”

  “I know that. And the highest ranking American in Ethiopia. I know the emperor would want to know that he’s not going against Rutherford’s private wishes.”

  “If I get his permission, when can I leave?”

  “With the emperor’s honor guard. That will be soon. There is an American mission hospital in Dessie run by the Seventh-Day Adventists. My nephew, Yohannes, is with the guard. You know him, don’t you?”

  “He flew us to Axum.”

  “He would be flying now if we had any planes worth flying. I will tell him to take care of you on the trip.”

  Ceseli was so overjoyed she grabbed his hand on the desk, smiling. “You don’t know what this means to me. You won’t regret this, Yifru. I promise.”

  “I pray to God you’re right.” Yifru bent over and took from his side desk drawer a Luger pistol.

  “German?”

  “The only ones we could get,” he said as he fished around for a box of bullets.

  Ceseli wondered whether she could ask and decided in the affirmative. “Guns from Hitler?”

  “Yes, and on very favorable terms.”

  “The piano crates?” she asked, now understanding.

  “Rifles and ammunition.”

  “Ingenious,” she smiled, holding the heavy pistol. “But why would Hitler want to sell arms to Ethiopia?”

  “He didn’t whisper in my ear, but if I were to guess, I would have to think that if Mussolini’s army was involved in a protracted war in Ethiopia, he, Hitler, would have a more open hand in Europe. Austria and Czechoslovakia I should say.” Yifru smiled at her, “But that is my supposition. You’ll need to learn how to use it,” he added, nodding at the pistol.

  “I know how to use it. My father taught me.”

  Minister Warren Rutherford stood up as soon as she walked into his office. Ceseli was not surprised by his agitations, but neither did she intend to be dissuaded. She walked over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Ceseli, I will not permit this,” Rutherford said, holding both her hands. “For all the friendship I had for your father, I will not send you up there to die.”

  “I’m not going up there to be killed.”

  “I can forbid this, you know. I am the American Minister.”

  “But I hope you won’t,” she said, still holding his hands.

  “You’re about the age of my daughter. You don’t have to be Joan of Arc.”

  “I’m not thinking of Joan of Arc and I’ll be as safe as the emperor.” Ceseli said, determined not to get sidetracked.

  “That is certainly not saying much.”

  Ceseli turned as Standish entered the room. She turned back to the friendly, but stoic American Minister she had come to know and respect. She felt sure that her admiration for him would not be diminished. “I’m sorry if you don’t approve. I probably would not either. But my father always taught me to make my own decisions. To follow my head. But, when necessary, to follow my heart. This is very important for me.” She looked at him. And then at Standish.

  Rutherford turned to Standish. “I forbid it. You agree with me don’t you, Standish?”

  “If I could do it myself, I would,” Standish answered. “But there’s a condition I think you should hear about. If Yifru tells her to return, he will see to it she gets back to Addis.”

  “How, pray tell, can he guarantee that?” Rutherford asked, looking from one of them to the other. “As this war progresses, the emperor himself will become the prey. He already is.”

  Standish looked at Ceseli. “I will,” Standish said.

  “Uncle Warren,” Ceseli spoke quietly, “if Daddy could tell you what he thought, you know what he would say.”

  “I do know that, Ceseli, my dear. I know very well.”

  After a prolonged discussion at dinner, Ceseli walked back down the dark path to her tukul. She lit a candle and sat undecided as to what to do next. Th
en she got up picked up a pad of paper and sat down at the small table.

  November 23, 1935

  Dear Sotzy,

  Everything is not fine in Ethiopia. I’m sure you are keeping up with the events even better than I am. It is so hard to find out what is going on in the rest of the world. I have been volunteering at the hospital as I’ve told you, but somehow it’s not really like being part of the war. Everything is happening a long way away.

  I need to tell you something, and I have no doubts on how you will accept this. My work at the hospital is dandy. You know, Sotzy, that’s the best expression I can find for it. Almost as if I’m spending my time dividing the right socks from the left ones. So I have decided to volunteer with the Emperor’s Hospital unit. Guess what? They said yes. Or Yifru said yes and he’s the only one who counts. Except the emperor of course, who would never be involved in such a humble decision.

  Warren Rutherford is not pleased, but he has not forbidden me. So I’m going to leave Addis in five days’ time.

  I know you will understand me, and you know how much your love and opinion mean to me, Sotzy. However, I’m sure that it will be quite some time before you will get any letters from me. I’ll write when I can. Just believe in me. Happy Thanksgiving!

  My love to you always.

  Mrs. Frances Sheraton

  290 Park Avenue

  New York, NY

  CHAPTER 38

  ON NOVEMBER 28, THE same day that the emperor began to move his headquarters forward to Dessie, General Pietro Badoglio succeeded General Emilio De Bono as the new High Commissioner of the Italian Expeditionary Forces. Mussolini sent De Bono word of his dismissal by a secret and personal telegram read by everyone. The dismissal was not surprising. De Bono was not moving fast enough and it was ludicrous to think of the massive Italian army at a standstill in front of a virtually unarmed, barefoot army.

  Two weeks later, General Badoglio reached the general headquarters now at Adigrat. One of his first official duties was to call an impromptu press conference.

  Badoglio stood at attention as the journalists walked into his large square tent. He wore a beret over his thick white hair, a flannel-lined cape, and the thick socks and heavy boots of an Italian mountaineer. His hands, feet, shoulders, and neck were reminiscent of Mother Earth.

  Bruno Zeri studied his wide, wrinkled forehead, his flat, pugilist’s nose, his trim, solid physique maintained, despite his sixty-four years, by rigorous daily exercise.

  “I will give you a general plan of where the enemy is,” Badoglio began in his gravelly voice as he turned to the map propped up against a folding chair.

  “On the general line between Dessie and Makalle, a body of troops under the command of Ras Kassa, estimated according to our information at about fifty thousand armed men, has reached the area of Lake Ashanghi. Here,” he said, pointing to the map, “another of about equal strength, under Ras Mulugeta, has come up from Dessie to join them.” Badoglio hit his rhinoceros tail fly-switch on his boot as he moved to the other side of the map.

  Zeri knew that Badoglio, once a royalist opponent of Fascism, was regarded in Fascist circles as a political ignoramus with the limited mentality of a soldier and virtually no understanding of the grand concept of Fascism. He was, however, a good soldier. Zeri, taking notes as the general continued, could not help admiring Badoglio’s precision and detail.

  “As we began to make plans for this campaign, I calculated that Abyssinia could put in the field, to start with, from two hundred thousand to two hundred fifty thousand men in the northern districts, and from eighty thousand to one hundred thousand men in the southern districts. For historical, ethnical, and political reasons, and in view of supply considerations, I calculated they would certainly be massed in two bodies and would operate in this way in the two different theatres of war.”

  Zeri stopped writing as his mind wandered. He put his notebook aside. He had not seen at first hand the use of mustard gas, but he was convinced Badoglio would use it. He knew the army would not transport one hundred thirty tons of it to Eritrea just for fun.

  Later that evening, he looked at his harmonica. It had ten holes above and ten below. He thought about how the code could be used. He started with the Italian alphabet, which has twenty-one letters. He needed twenty. He subtracted the “H”, so that he could divide the higher level of the harmonica and the lower one. But he needed a way to show that he was changing from letters to numbers. Bruno spent some time debating before eliminating “z,” not often used in any case and he could substitute with an “s.”

  He sat there studying the situation. He could now use ten letters in the G Clef and ten letters in the F Clef to signify the twenty letters in the Italian alphabet. Middle C could be used to signify switching from letters to numbers, or vice versa. A single letter “C” indicated that letters followed, two middle “C’s” indicated that the next ten notes in the “G” Clef would be numbers. The end of a number or of a single word was indicated by a bar line. His fingers faltered. He wrote the music. To his surprise, the code worked. He looked at the tune he had composed: MUSTARD GAS.

  Ceseli found the trip north with the Imperial Guard depressing after the mood of the same itinerary eight months before. The road was so heavily trafficked that it was difficult to make much headway. She had been assigned her own chocolate brown mule and it was young and a bit skittish. She named him Don Quichotte.

  “How do you speak such good French?” Ceseli asked Yohannes as they rode side by side.

  “I studied at St. Cyr,” Yohannes replied. “You know it?”

  “Only that it’s a well-known French Military Academy.”

  “It’s the best. You noticed my French accent?”

  “Not much of an accent, but the way you pronounce my name is clearly French,” she said, imitating his accent on the last letter. “Ceselí. That’s cute. I guess I think the French are often cute. How did you get to St. Cyr?”

  “The emperor sent me.”

  “Like your uncle? Studying at Columbia?”

  “The emperor has been very good to my family. He has promoted many of us even though we are not noble by birth. My father died when I was seven and Yifru has been like a father. My uncle was one of the first to study abroad,” he paused, kicking his mule to move over toward Ceseli.

  “My grandfather worked in Harar for the emperor’s father. He was one of Governor Makonnen’s closest advisers and responsible for Tafari’s early schooling. When Makonnen died, Tafari was sent to the court of Menelik and my grandfather went with him. Both Tafari and my own uncle went to Menelik’s school. When Tafari became the regent, he persuaded Queen Zauditu to send my uncle to study in America.”

  “He told me that. That’s where he met Standish’s father.”

  “And learned that American women can be very strong-willed.”

  “Which is probably why I’m here,” Ceseli smiled.

  “I don’t doubt it, and why it’s my duty to take care of you. I really can’t understand why he let you come.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. But I’m glad he did. In the future, I’ll be sure to make that as light an assignment as I can,” she said, and then kicked her mule and rode forward.

  CHAPTER 39

  DESSIE, NEAR THE EASTERN rim of the Ethiopian high plateau in north central Ethiopia, was a market town of twenty thousand people. In 1882, while camping in the area, Emperor Yohannes IV saw a comet that he believed signified an important omen. He decided to found a city there and named it Dessie for the Amharic meaning of “My Joy.”

  In 1935, it had a sizable cluster of Ethiopian tukuls with an occasional European style building among them. The town was scattered at the bottom of a cup, irregularly formed by the surrounding three thousand foot yellow bluffs. Through a deep breach in the mountain wall to the southeast, the Borkenna River cascaded away to the landing strip and the far away Danakil Desert.

  On one of Dessie’s small hills was the rambling Ghibbi, or palace
of Crown Prince, Asfa Wossen. On another, the house of the local chief. On the west lay a long ledge of mountain and on its extreme slope, the Italian commercial agency. The Italian building, a handsome stone structure with a porch in the front, was undoubtedly Dessie’s finest building and now the emperor’s field headquarters.

  Not far away, housed in a new stone building with a corrugated iron roof and a huge red cross painted on it, was the American Seventh-Day Adventists Mission Hospital where Ceseli was working.

  With the arrival of the emperor, Dessie was swelled to overflowing not only by the recruited army, but also by the numerous camp followers, the women and children, who accompany their fighting men.

  At Dessie, Haile Sellassie maintained his peacetime lifestyle. He dined with guests on both European food and choice Ethiopian ones like wot, chicken served with chili peppers washed down with bottles brought from his wine cellar in Addis. He had his Arab race horses brought up to Dessie and stabled them in the grounds next to his only Oerikion antiaircraft gun.

  It was shortly after 8 a.m. on Friday December 6, 1935, one week after Badoglio assumed command, when the distant hum of airplanes became audible. If the Italians were coming to bomb, it was because they had learned of the emperor’s presence. He was certainly a legitimate target and Badoglio intended to win this war as soon as possible.

  When Haile Sellassie heard the approaching airplanes, he ran into the garden where his antiaircraft gun was already installed. As the planes neared, he could count nine white Italian Caproni bombers. These CA.133 three-engine monoplanes could carry two tons of high explosive and poison gas a range of nine hundred miles. The emperor, who knew how to use the antiaircraft gun, pushed aside the fumbling frightened soldiers and began shooting at the planes.

  The noise of the planes and the crashing of the bombs was deafening as if the mountains themselves were protesting. The whole earth heaved under the thunderous explosions. As the incendiary bombs dropped, fires sprang up and began to eat up the straw-roofed tukuls. Women and children, who had never seen a plane, were fleeing from the fires. Thinking this was a game, the children were laughing as they ran from the bombs. Yifru saw one woman and her two children all hit by a bomb as they tried to cross the narrow mud road.