by John Harris
He was moving up and down the road, pushing at the Somalis as they hesitated over the scattered loot. Already strings of camels, mules, horses and asses were beginning to wind away back into the valleys in the hills. Behind them was a line of men, their eyes fierce, their tobes like loincloths round their waists under looted Italian tunics. They carried rifles and swords and bayonets and wore Italian watches and bracelets and Italian sun helmets on their woolly hair. Bringing up the rear were the women and children who had waited in the hills.
Harkaway shoved at one or two last hesitant men still trying to loot the dead Italians then he fired his revolver into the air. As they looked up, he pointed to the hills.
‘Go!’ he roared. ‘If you’re caught here you’ll be shot! Go!’
They lost one more lorry as it struck a hollow in the slope, tucked its nose down and went down end-over-end. This time, both men escaped, the Somali laughing, the askari driver shuddering with shock.
Harkaway was the last to leave. The whole gorge was down, several vehicles and men under the rubble. Beyond it, there was only wreckage. On his own side there were more dead men, many of them stabbed by Somali spears, and the twisted remains of the two wrecked lorries at the bottom of the slope from the road.
‘Mount,’ he yelled and everybody who was left began to climb on to the captured lorries. Their own lorries started up as they saw them moving towards them, then the two columns formed together and began to move south under a spreading cloud of dust.
Six
Rushing to Barracca’s rescue with what few troops he still had under his command, Guidotti had come to a full stop. Beyond the gaping hole in the road where the gully had been, he could see vultures already circling in the sky.
Standing by his car, he sent his native troops ahead on foot while his engineers struggled to fill the hole in the road. It was a hopeless situation and Guidotti knew that while he was away from Bidiyu, what few troops he had left behind might well be deserting and attacking the women.
Eventually he began to get his lighter vehicles across the gap, with the aid of ropes and a lot of muscle-power, but round the next bend they found the road covered with boulders, scattered over a wide area and obviously placed there deliberately.
His men began to roll them clear, but it was a slow business and his vehicles could edge forward only at the speed at which they were clearing the obstructions. By the time he reached the gorge, he found only a few wrecked lorries, a few dazed survivors and the native troops he had sent ahead.
It was a macabre scene of burned-out vehicles and the dusty, broken-doll shapes that had been flung aside by the tidal wave of earth and stones that had come down. Shocked, he walked through the wreckage among the damaged and abandoned lorries, past the sprawled corpses and the moaning wounded who were calling on Mary, Mother of Jesus, to help them, to the front of what had been Barracca’s column. The three smashed lorries which had stopped it dead lay on their side in the catchment ditch, still sending up columns of black smoke between the towering defiles of the gorge.
Indifferent to the possibility of snipers, Guidotti stood still and stared upwards, screwing up his eyes against the light. There was no sign of the attackers and, walking back along the road, assailed by worried aides, he reached his car. There, a group of officers were questioning the survivors. One of them crossed to Guidotti and pointed.
Guidotti lifted his binoculars. Away to the south, he could just make out a dwindling cloud of dust.
Barracca’s kidnapped drivers turned up several days later, coming from a totally different direction from that which had been expected, indicating that the stolen lorries had been driven in a vast circle, first south, then west, then north and finally east. Now, Guidotti knew, they were somewhere in the region of Eil Dif.
But now that he knew for certain where they were, there was no longer anything he could do about it. He hadn’t the men, time was growing short and the South Africans were drawing nearer every day. One column had reached Ferfer and was heading for Scillave Wells, and the second had reached Dolo. From the speed with which they were travelling, Guidotti expected them in Jijiga around the middle of March and he knew that before then he had to be on his way.
The drivers were distressed and exhausted, haggard with thirst, their clothes covered with dust, but they realized they were lucky to be alive. The stories they brought confirmed everything Guidotti had heard: four white men and a white woman, and Somalis trained to a point to which they had never seen Somalis trained before.
With the Italians in the north already retreating on Addis Ababa, Guidotti was well aware that time was not on his side and that he had to leave Bidiyu. He knew it even more clearly the following day when he heard that Gabredarre had fallen and that the South Africans had reached Daghabur. They would be in Jijiga within a matter of days and then he would be completely cut off.
He called for Piccio and Di Sanctis. He was still awaiting orders from Jijiga and he knew the Duce didn’t look kindly on men who moved without them, but he was aware that something had to be done.
‘We have no alternative but to withdraw,’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for orders but Berbera seems entirely concerned with the arrival of the British from Aden, and Addis Ababa is virtually surrounded. We have no alternative but to save ourselves. I shall probably answer for it with my neck if things go wrong – even–’ he paused ‘–even if they go right, but I wouldn’t wish for what happened to Barracca to happen to us. Piccio, you will warn all Italian troops in the town to be prepared to move at once.’
‘What about civilians, Excellency?’ Piccio asked. ‘There are a lot of them. Officials who were sent down from Eritrea and Abyssinia last year. Many of them brought their wives. They thought the war was about to end.’
Guidotti’s shoulders moved helplessly. ‘I barely have enough vehicles to remove my troops.’ The words stuck in his throat.
‘Suppose the natives rise, Excellency?’
Guidotti sighed. ‘The British are efficient. They’re also not unkind. The lot of those who stay might well be better than that of those who go. Inform every man that he will be allowed no more than what he carries on his back. Make sure there’s enough food and water and that guns are mounted and ammunition’s at hand. And don’t rely too much on the native levies. I’m not sure how much longer they’ll remain with us. Di Sanctis, I want you to look out a route north. We might have difficulty getting to Harar, but there’s a road that goes north via Borama towards French Somaliland.’
‘Of course, Excellency.’ Di Sanctis paused. ‘But then where, sir? Where do we go from there?’
Guidotti was silent for a moment then he shrugged. ‘God alone knows, Di Sanctis,’ he said. ‘I don’t. General Barracca told me that the Duke of Aosta’s made plans to concentrate his troops near Amba Alagi if Keren falls. From French Somaliland, we ought to be able to reach Assab and from there head inland. If the Duke is at Amba Alagi, then we can join up with him. If he’s not–’ Guidotti became silent, lifted his hands and let them fall to his sides.
Guidotti wasn’t the only one who was bewildered by the turn of events. The British general in the south, moving north behind his troops towards Jijiga and Harar, was puzzled by the reports that were coming out of British Sormaliland. It was an empty, God-forsaken country not worth fighting for and certainly not one to plan for. But someone was fighting for it and someone was planning for it. And, what was more, appeared to be making a good job of it, with a remarkable amount of energy and considerable military skill.
‘This so-called Sixth Column we keep hearing about, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Where’s it come from? Are you sure the navy haven’t landed?’
‘Not to our knowledge, sir,’ Charlton insisted.
‘Contact Aden. Perhaps something went wrong somewhere and we’ve missed a message. Perhaps they landed troops at Assab in Eritrea. I can’t see any other alternative.’
But the Royal Navy in Aden, concerned with the forthcoming attack on Berbera, and well a
ware that their plans were already pointless because there would be no fighting anyway, promptly reported that they had been about to ask the general the same question.
The general stared at his maps. This new and obviously very potent force seemed to have sprung to life in the middle of British Somaliland and he had received reports of a new and very decisive defeat inflicted on a large group commanded by no less than an Italian general, while the RAF was reporting wreckage near the Wirir Gorge and a distinct sign that the Italians were preparing to move out of Bidiyu.
‘Can we contact them by radio?’ he asked.
‘Sir–’ Charlton coughed apologetically ‘–that’s something that occurred to me. I thought I might even be able to provide you with a fait accompli. But Intelligence and Signals insist that they’ve never even heard them transmitting.’
‘But, dammit–’ the general lit a cigarette and slapped the map with the palm of his hand ‘–their movements are quite clearly conforming to ours!’
‘Perhaps they’re receiving,’ Charlton suggested. ‘But can’t transmit. If they have an experienced radio op., he could pick up our signals.’
‘But how the devil do they get about? They were last heard of in the Eil Dif area. Now the RAF says they’ve seen a great mass of men south of the Jijiga-Berbera road. How the devil did they get there without going over Bur Yi range?’
‘That’s not possible, sir.’
‘Hannibal crossed the Alps,’ the general reminded him. ‘So did Napoleon.’
‘But the reports say they’re using trucks, sir.’
‘For God’s sake, Charlie, other people have got trucks over mountains. Kitchener got an army to Khartoum the wrong way up the rapids of the Nile. What men have they got?’
‘So far, sir, our reports mention only four white men and one white woman. Everyone else seems to be Somali, drawn, it seems, mostly from the Odessi and Harari tribes, though I understand that now they’re coming from all over Somaliland. Their vehicles are largely Italian but their weapons probably came from a dump left at Shimber Addi in the Bur Yi Hills. It was placed there for a forward stop against the Italians but never used. We were informed it was destroyed by a party under a Lieutenant Watson.’
‘Where’s this Lieutenant Watson now?’
Charlton gestured. ‘I’ve tried to trace him, sir, but I gather that after he and his party went out to destroy the dump, nothing further was heard from them and it was assumed they ran into the Italians.’
‘Do you have the names of the party?’
‘Nobody important, sir. Specialists. One radio operator. One engineer. One armourer. All on attachment to the King’s African Rifles. There was also a civilian driver from the Public Works Department. None of them had any rank. They couldn’t have had much knowledge of what to do.’
The general frowned and took a puff at his cigarette. ‘Not that it matters,’ he said. ‘Since Wavell biffed the Italians out of Libya, nobody notices us, anyway.’
In that, however, the general was wrong, because two war correspondents, both of them with famous names, appeared the same day asking questions.
‘Asa Wye,’ one of them said, ‘Globe. This is Russell, of APA. We’re trying to find out something about this bloody Sixth Column. The RAF say there’s a great pile of scrap iron in the Wirir Gorge that was once Italian transport and that this Sixth Column did it. Who are they? Why Sixth Column? And who’s leading it?’
Charlton held up his hands. ‘I might as well be honest,’ he said. ‘I know as much as you.’
‘You mean they’re guerrillas?’
‘We don’t know what they are.’
‘Well, they’ve not been idle,’ Wye said. ‘We’ve just learned that they hit an Italian motorized column for six and pinched all their transport. To say nothing of kidnapping an Italian colonel some time back.’
‘Brigadier, actually,’ Charlton said placidly, pleased he knew something the newspapermen didn’t know. ‘Name of Ruffo di Peri. Commandante di Brigata Ruggiero Ruffo di Peri, if you want his full title. We picked it up from monitored radio messages.’
‘Was he kidnapped?’ Russell asked.
‘His chauffeur said he was.’ Charlton paused, aware that the military hierarchy had no great fondness for guerrilla forces who hogged the limelight. Since Lawrence of Arabia had been discovered by an American newspaperman and made to appear to have won the war in the Middle East in 1918, they were none too keen on having their thunder stolen, because the fame of guerrilla leaders tended on occasion to be somewhat overblown. ‘Those were small operations, of course,’ he went on. ‘Their big efforts seem to have started only since the Italians have been thrown into disarray by our own advance. It makes good sense, of course. If you hit a chap hard from every angle and all at the same time, he obviously doesn’t manage to defend himself quite as well.’
‘Okay, Colonel,’ Wye said. ‘Then where did they come from? Aden?’
‘We don’t think so. They know nothing of them there.’
‘Down from the north? We know a couple of our people were sent in there to stir things up. One of ’em a chap called Wingate.’
Charlton spread his hands. ‘That might be the explanation. But our reports are that Wingate’s still in Abyssinia.’
Wye scratched his head with a pencil. ‘Somebody must know who they are.’
‘Of course they must,’ Charlton agreed. ‘But they seem to have failed to inform us.’
As the conference ended, the war correspondents went outside to their car. They were a dusty raggle-taggle couple, despite their fame and prestige. They had followed the African war for months now, flying backwards and forwards between Egypt and East Africa, trying in the last few weeks to keep up with the tremendous march of events. They had heard the reports from Egypt and it seemed that splendid stories were going begging up there for the sake of a doubtful and difficult journey across Africa, and they were constantly trying to be in two places at once – at the front or back at headquarters. Either way you got the news, but if you were caught halfway you got nothing and, even if you had information, you had no means of sending it.
‘We seem to breed these odd characters who raise private armies,’ Russell said. ‘The South African columns are full of elderly gentlemen who’ve spent all their life in the bush after big game and relish having a go at something tougher than an elephant. They’ve all suddenly become majors in command of recce columns.’
‘It’s not exactly new,’ Wye pointed out. ‘Half the best regiments in India were raised by types like that.’
He stared northwards. The land ahead was sand and rock for miles and the desert was a sheet of glaring whiteness. The last waterhole they had passed had been fouled by a dead camel and they had found vultures waiting near a beautiful young Somali woman who had held out a can for them to give her water for her baby. She hadn’t spoken a word as they had filled it and the baby had remained silent, its head lolling, but she had given all the water to the child, careful not to spill a drop, accepting none for herself. Wye was a hard man with few sparks of conscience but it had filled his heart with misery.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at the grim and blistered horizon. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘that we ought to try to get up there into British Somaliland. If we can get to Jijiga we can surely make contact and it seems there’s a hell of a story going begging.’
‘It’ll be bloody uncomfortable,’ Russell commented.
Wye shrugged. ‘What’s the difference?’ he said. ‘It’s bloody uncomfortable here.’
Guidotti’s plans for departure took time to mature and it was already growing difficult.
Telephone lines were being cut all over the country. Cut telephone lines were nothing new because the Somalis had always taken them to make bangles and anklets for their womenfolk, but these days it had reached epidemic proportions and it was clear the wire wasn’t now being taken merely for decoration.
Its disappearance made it difficult for Guidotti to conta
ct his outposts, and he was concerned for the few Italians and their women who had moved into Bidiyu after its capture the previous year. They were frightened and disgruntled and complaining the war was Mussolini’s, not theirs.
Guidotti’s honour demanded that he should not abandon them and he knew that somebody would have to stay behind with them. A little clever manoeuvring could delay enemy forces until the rest of them got away and he asked Di Sanctis and Piccio to decide which of them was to take over.
‘Honour indicates I should stay myself,’ he said. ‘Particularly as I speak a little English. Unfortunately, honour and military good sense aren’t always compatible and it’s never a good idea from the point of view of morale for generals to be captured. I’m afraid, gentlemen, it will have to be one of you.’
There was only a moment’s hesitation. Both Piccio and Di Sanctis spoke passable English but it was Di Sanctis who stepped forward and Guidotti suspected he was finding it difficult to put his Somali mistress behind him and was delaying the fatal moment as long as he could.
‘At least we can’t leave a mere major in command,’ he said. ‘No one will take any notice of him. You’re a colonel, Di Sanctis, as of this moment. You’d better try to find some insignia to put on your uniform. Perhaps you can search Di Peri’s kit. It was brought here after he disappeared.’
The following day, dressed in Di Peri’s tunic and cap, Di Sanctis listened to his orders. They had just heard that the British navy had landed in Berbera and that it was expected to head for Hargeisa within a very short time.
‘When they arrive–’ Guidotti began.
‘When who arrive, sir?’
‘The British, of course.’
‘It may not be the British, sir,’ Di Sanctis pointed out gently. ‘The South Africans are already north of Sassabaneh. It may be them. It may also–’ he paused ‘–it may also be this Sixth Column which has done us so much damage.’
The same thought had occurred to Guidotti but he let the matter pass and continued to give his instructions.