by John Harris
‘Gunfire now,’ Piccio gasped.
The mortar bombs were coming in a shower when, just as Guidotti was beginning to wonder how many there were, they stopped as suddenly as they’d started.
The inside of the fort was silent as the grave. Lights appeared. Only two men, one a native levy, had been killed, but six had been wounded, three seriously. The damage had not been extensive but the short bombardment had been nerve-racking.
They were just clearing up the debris when the mortar bombardment started again. This time there were only six bombs and they all came together, landing in a salvo in the courtyard to kill another man and wound two others.
Ordering everybody under cover, Guidotti called Piccio into Pavicelli’s office to discuss what they could do to counter the mortarings.
‘We can’t mortar back,’ Piccio pointed out. ‘We don’t know where they are unless they mortar us in daylight.’
Guidotti frowned, almost in tears with despair as he leaned over the plan of the fort spread on the desk. He was still struggling to set his senses in order when he became aware of shouting outside.
‘Now what?’
Smelling smoke and hearing the crackle of flames, he dropped the map and rushed into the courtyard. The stables were alight and the haystore was burning furiously. Pavicelli’s native cavalrymen were leading blindfolded horses into the courtyard through the smoke.
‘The old women,’ Pavicelli panted. ‘The old women who look after the cattle! They must have planted some sort of device. We can’t get at it. The whole lot’s going up!’
While Guidotti was trying to make sense of what was happening, the mortaring started again. Ten bombs fell, one after the other in a long salvo that cracked and rattled inside the courtyard. A horse screamed and shouting started. By dawn, Guidotti’s nerves were completely on edge. The inside of the fort was blackened with smoke, the cavalrymen tramping around in a sodden mash of mud, ash and charred straw.
Guidotti was still depressed by the night’s events when Piccio appeared, white-faced, to announce that they had lost the small herd on which they relied for fresh meat.
‘Those damned old women!’ he spluttered. ‘They opened the gate of the cowfold while we were fighting the fire and drove the lot out.’
They were still discussing the ration situation when the mortaring started once more and Guidotti ran to the tower to study the land outside the fort. Wisps of smoke were hanging over the dried river bed.
‘They’re in the khor,’ he yelled to Piccio. ‘And they’re unsupported. Send out Pavicelli. No mercy.’
The native cavalrymen assembled in the courtyard, a mass of kicking, biting, squealing animals still nervous after the fire and the mortaring, their riders uncertain in the confusion what they were about to do. With difficulty, Pavicelli got them into order and they moved forward with a jingling of bits, a proud show of nodding heads, their riders garbed in white robes and armed with swords, rifles and slings of the little Japanese grenades. Guidotti watched from the ramparts as the barbed wire entanglement was dragged aside. As the horsemen bunched, jockeying to shake themselves into line, a gun barked and a shell burst among them. Horses fell, kicking and screaming with pain, one of them, smashed to the ground by the explosion, heaving itself up, its jaws foam-flecked, its eyes bulging, to drag itself along on its stiff forelegs, its hindquarters trailing like those of a dog run over in a Rome street. The rest of the troop were milling about in confusion as they tried to form a line for their charge.
For a moment, Guidotti couldn’t make out where the shell had come from, then he realized the gun had been set up among the scrub and thorn bushes. There seemed to be only one – an Italian 75mm – but then the mountain guns started, backed up by the 20mm weapons of the armoured cars. Running from the walls, he reached the sergeant-major in command of the two ancient spoke-wheeled 75mm guns he’d dragged with him from Bidiyu, but even as he gave the order to fire, the sergeant-major gestured in frustration at the cavalry milling about in the line of fire.
Distinctive on his white horse, Pavicelli was circling in front of his squadron, trying to get them back into order, then he raised his sword and, spurring to the front of the line, led them in a loose formation to the right in an attempt to reach the guns from the flank. It was a brave attempt but it didn’t have a chance. Through his binoculars, Guidotti saw the men behind the guns lifting their trails and swinging them through a ninety-degree arc to fire into the mass of horsemen.
As men and animals went down, machine guns opened up and Guidotti realized his opponent had thought of everything. As the horsemen swept towards the mortar crews, the guns were firing at point-blank range and Guidotti saw with surprise an unexploded shell bounding along the ground before lifting end-over-end to disappear from sight. Horses were going down in whole bunches and groups of white-robed figures appeared between the guns to pour in old-fashioned volley fire.
The charge ended in a frantic scramble for shelter. Pavicelli was down with both his subalterns and what was left of his squadron was circling back towards the fort. Instead of heading for the gap in the wire, however, they swung to right and left and kept on going, heading north in little groups of twos and threes until they vanished from sight in the scrub.
Watching the last of them disappear, Guidotti turned and stared over the battlefield. Animals lay in heaps, their robed riders alongside them. Over them the dark shadows of the circling vultures moved. A few unhorsed men stumbled back to the fort, a few chargers stood motionless, their heads down, trying to graze, quite indifferent to the butchery, one of them moving in halting steps because its feet were caught up in its own entrails.
He turned as he heard a sound alongside him and saw Piccio standing by his elbow, his eyes wet.
Guidotti swallowed. ‘Have the wire closed,’ he said. ‘We can do no more.’
Twelve
The vultures were feasting on the grisly remains of Pavicelli’s action like black-weeded widows arguing at a funeral when Gooch brought a message to where Harkaway was sitting in his headquarters truck.
‘A feller with a white flag’s come,’ he said. ‘They want permission to clear away the dead.’
‘Tell him nothing doing.’
‘The buggers are beginning to smell.’
‘They’ll smell worse to them than they do to us. They’re nearer.’
Gooch went away. He was back a few minutes later. ‘He appeals to your Christian instincts,’ he said. ‘He says it’s against all the rules of war.’
‘There aren’t any rules in war.’
Gooch persisted. ‘I think we ought to let ’em.’
‘Nobody’s asking you,’ Harkaway snapped. ‘You bloody dimwit, don’t you realize everything that adds to their discomfort makes it easier for us when we decide to go in. Those stiffs out there are demoralizing them. They’re all sitting behind the bloody walls thinking “I’m next.” Tell your Italian friend not to bother bringing any more white flags. I’m not interested. The only thing I’m interested in is unconditional surrender.’
The message was received inside the fort with long faces. Food was beginning to run short and one of the mortar bombs had damaged the well in the courtyard so that water was short, too.
The survivors of Pavicelli’s charge who had made their way back into the fort were exhausted, dehydrated and suffering from wounds not caused by the Sixth Column guns. They had hoped to escape northwards but Abyssinian patriots had fallen on them and cut them up. Only a few had managed to hide in the bush, all of them without horses, and they could think of nowhere else to go but back to Guidotti.
The nightly bombardments of the fort continued – short showers of mortar bombs sending everyone bolting for cover – together with a salvo of small shells every dusk and dawn against the gates. There were never many and they had grown used to them now, so that Guidotti no longer sent his men up to the ramparts in case of attack, but kept them in safety in the rooms below, behind the thick walls.
&n
bsp; Hating the static defence that was being forced on him, that night Guidotti sent out a strong patrol with the intention of finding the mortars and snatching back the initiative. But Harkaway was alerted early and, lifting his head to sniff the wind, he gestured briskly.
‘Set the bush on fire,’ he said.
Men began to run in the dark with brands snatched from the fires and the Italian patrol, moving forward cautiously, saw a line of flames leap up. As their shouts of alarm gave away their position, an old Vickers started sweeping the ground in a slow clack-clacking and the patrol had to fling themselves to the ground. Caught by the wind, the flames moved swiftly among the scrub and dried grass so that they were in danger of being cut off and had to scramble away in the dark, firing at shadows.
From the walls, Guidotti listened to the shooting in an agony of apprehension. When the returning patrol was sighted, he ran to the small back entrance to the fort as they fell inside, a confusion of panting men still raging with excitement and crowding forward to recite the numbers of men they’d killed. The native sergeant claimed that they’d surprised a patrol of Abyssinians creeping forward to plant a mortar and had killed the lot, but Guidotti wondered just how much of it was made up and just whom they really had killed.
He could see the glow of the enemy’s fires and his radio operator could even pick up their signals. They were in touch now with British headquarters in Addis Ababa and were replying to all the suggestions that they should be reinforced with the comment that they were not in need of assistance. Guidotti had a feeling they were right.
He couldn’t make out why he was being pursued so ardently. He’d heard of the British officer in command of the Sixth Column. A man called Harkaway, he’d discovered, who for some reason seemed to bear malice towards Guidotti.
His eyes narrowed as his thoughts raced. The future looked bleak. Italy’s enemies were scenting victory as town after town fell, and the dreaded Abyssinian patriots were coming out of the hills, blowing bridges, passing information, ambushing columns. And, Guidotti had heard, they were now moving down on Fort San Rafaelo.
Harkaway was staring at the bodies of a dozen unarmed herdsmen when Yussuf appeared. Guidotti’s frightened patrol had kept well clear of Harkaway’s bloodthirsty warriors and when they’d stumbled on the herdsmen they had killed the lot, even some of their flock.
Their mutilated bodies had been found at first light and Harkaway had brought them into camp and made every single man file past. He was fighting a war in the old style of the North-west Frontier, the way his grandfather had described. It wasn’t the way civilized European wars were fought, but you could hardly describe as civilization the use of gas on half-naked troops or taking up difficult chiefs in aeroplanes, as Graziani had done, and dropping them out in front of their watching tribesmen. The Italians, among the most civilized and compassionate of races, could also be among the most cruel. You could say, he decided, that he was only using their own methods.
Yussuf’s news was of the arrival of one of the Ethiopian chiefs, who came out of the bush looking like Henry VIII, accompanied by a group of his followers led by bagpipes and wearing enough silver bangles to shackle a carthorse.
He was big, fat and bearded, his thick hair standing out round his head like a crown, and he was wearing a captured Italian uniform, gorgeous with gold braid, his chest chandeliered with Italian medals. He said his name was Ras Minelik and he informed them that Eritreans and Abyssinians from Guidotti’s garrison were already slipping over the rear wall in the dark, their numbers such that the Italians were growing worried.
A feast of well-spiced mutton and rice was prepared, and the old man stuffed himself with meat and tej and sat back proudly, waiting for them to reward him with arms and money to encourage him to join them. He got neither but the following morning Harkaway noticed he was still around.
‘He has decided to join you,’ Yussuf explained.
Harkaway gave a grim smile. ‘I thought he might,’ he said.
That afternoon he called Gooch, Tully, Sergeant Catchpole, Yussuf, Abdillahi and Ras Minelik round his armoured car. On the bonnet he had spread a plan of the fort he’d drawn.
‘Tonight,’ he announced. ‘We’ve given them long enough for them to scare themselves to death. We bombard the fort as usual, but this time it goes on as long as we have the ammunition. I want the gates smashed down. Are the ladders ready, Gooch?’
‘Enough to get over the wall at the back.’
‘No prisoners,’ Harkaway warned. ‘We’ve nowhere to put ’em.’
‘No quarter?’ Catchpole looked surprised.
‘Do you think the Boys’ll give it, Sergeant?’ Harkaway said blandly. ‘They’ve seen what that patrol did to those herdsmen.’
‘There’s just one point, sir.’ Catchpole was standing erect, his hands at his side, his heels together, a sergeant addressing his officer.
It pleased Harkaway. He was growing used to command now and hadn’t demoted himself when they’d learned he’d been confirmed in the rank of major. ‘Go on, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘What’s the trouble?’
‘How do we identify them from us?’ Catchpole asked. ‘They’ve got Banda men in there who don’t wear uniform and half of ’em come from the same tribal areas as our people.’
‘Good point,’ Harkaway said, ready to dish out a little praise. ‘But I’ve thought of that one. Let every man find a sprig of green and stick it in his hair. There’s plenty of it about and they have the sort of hair where it’ll stick. Then have ’em paint their faces.’
‘War paint?’ Tully grinned.
‘Two streaks down each cheek. They like painting for battle, so this time they can. It’ll act as identification. You got that, Sergeant? You, Yussuf?’
Catchpole grinned uncertainly. ‘I reckon it’ll scare the Italians out of their breeches, sir,’ he observed.
As the sun sank, aware that a battle was coming, the Ethiopians began to dance. The Somalis joined them and the yelling went on for an hour. Among the spears, long curving swords had appeared. No one had seen them arrive, but women had been following the column ever since it had left Bidiyu, and they could only assume that they’d brought the weapons with them.
As darkness fell, Harkaway watched the fort. Alongside him, Abdillahi and Yussuf waited with Gooch, Tully and Sergeant Catchpole.
‘There will be many deaths,’ Yussuf said slowly. ‘The ghelow bird cried all last night.’
Harkaway turned to Catchpole. ‘You ready, Sergeant?’
Catchpole stiffened. ‘Sir!’
‘Okay.’ Harkaway gestured. ‘Let ’em have it.’
As the first mortar fired, the pop was followed by silence then by a flash and a sharp crack from inside the fort. The men crouching with their weapons in the khor just short of the wire grinned at each other.
As other mortars started the nightly bombardment, from the flanks the two mountain guns started hammering at the gates, supported by the 20mms on the armoured cars. They were handled well by Sergeant Catchpole, and as Harkaway signed to Gooch and Tully, they moved off with their men into the darkness. Tobes were worn as loincloths and the only sign of the Somalis in the dark were the watermelon grins of white teeth. As they vanished, Harkaway gestured to the main body of his men to move up behind the khor.
Between them, another party moved up with shovels. Twenty feet of the khor were filled in and timber placed over the earth for the armoured cars to cross, then another party slithered forward, flat to the dusty earth, close to the wire. Somewhere in the rear in the darkness, they could hear the women wailing, urging their men on, chanting verses and encouraging them to be brave.
The shower of mortar bombs stopped. The guns stopped. Harkaway walked along the line of his men to where Catchpole waited.
‘How’s the ammunition?’ he asked.
Catchpole stiffened. ‘We can’t keep it up much longer, sir.’
There was one of the short nervous pauses that worried Guidotti and his men so muc
h, then the guns started again. By this time, Harkaway knew Gooch and Tully must be in position and Gooch’s men would be slithering under the wire.
‘One last go, Sergeant,’ Harkaway said. ‘This time knock down the gate.’
As the mortar fire came again, Guidotti watched from the tower. There was no sign of the enemy. He had tried a few mortar bombs against them but his ammunition was low and they had to endure the bombardment without being able to hit back.
As he watched, he saw a flash from where he knew the enemy had sited his 75mm and, almost immediately, there was a roar below him near the gate. For some time now, the shells of the mountain guns had been knocking chunks out of the walls and Guidotti and his soldiers, sweating to shore up the damage, were growing tired and dispirited.
There was another crash and Guidotti heard the rattle of falling stones and timber.
‘I think they’re about to attack,’ he said to Piccio. ‘Bring the reserve up in case they make a rush. Have a machine gun ready to cover the gate.’
Running to the courtyard, Piccio formed up a mixed bag of Italians and Eritreans who waited nervously in the rooms opposite the gate while another squad stood by the machine gun, ready to rush it out and set it up the minute the gate went.
As the shelling continued, Guidotti moved along the ramparts, checking that every man was in his place. He was determined to die like a soldier, to kill the lie the British put out that Italians lacked courage. His men were looking over their shoulders at him, though, and he knew it meant they would probably throw down their arms at the first sign of a reverse.
Descending the stairs, he moved towards the armoury to check that Piccio was in position, but as he turned the corner by his own room, he was startled to find one of his Italian corporals lying by the stairs. He was surprised, because it was impossible that he could have been hit by a splinter from one of the mortar bombs. Then it dawned on him that the man’s throat had been cut.