by Wilbur Smith
smell of him was like the taste of his mouth. She felt the softness of
her own body crave the hardness of his and she pressed herself to
him,
finding pleasure in the pain of contact, in the bruising pressure of
his mouth against her lips.
She knew she was arousing emotions that soon would be beyond either of
their control, and the knowledge made her reckless and bold.
The thought occurred to her that she had it in her power to drive him
demented with passion, and the idea aroused her further, and
immediately she wanted to exercise that power.
She heard his breathing roaring in her ears, then realized that it was
not his it was her own, and each gust of it seemed to swell her chest
until it must burst.
It was so cramped in the cockpit of the car, and their movements were
becoming wild and unrestrained. Vicky felt restricted and itching with
constraint. She had never known this wildness before, and for a
fleeting instant she remembered the skilful, gentle minuet of formal
movements which had been her loving with Gareth Swales, and she
compared it to this stormy meeting of passions; then the thought was
borne away on the flood, on the need to be free of confinement.
Outside the car, the chill of the desert night prickled the skin of her
back and flanks and thighs, and she felt the fine golden hairs come
erect on her forearms. He flapped out the bed-roll and spread it on
the earth. Then he returned to get her, and the heat of his body was a
physical shock. It seemed to burn with all the pent-up fires of his
soul, and she pressed herself to it with complete abandon, delighting
in the contrast of his burning flesh and the cool desert breeze upon
her bare skin.
Now at last there was nothing to prevent the range of her hands and she
knew they were cold as ghost fingers on him, delighting to hear his
gasp again at their touch. She laughed then, a hoarse throaty
chuckle.
"Yes." She laughed again, as he lifted her easily and dropped to his
knees on the bed-roll, holding her against his chest.
"Yes, Jake." She let the last restraint fly. "Quickly, quickly my
darling: It was a raging, a roaring of all her senses. It was an
aching, tumultuous storm that ended at last and afterwards the vast
hissing silence of the desert was so frightening that she clung to him
like a child and found to her amazement that she was weeping. the
tears scalded her eyes and yet were as icy as the touch of frost upon
her cheeks.
General De Bono's first cautious but ponderous thrust across the
Mareb River, into Ethiopia, met with a success that left him stunned.
Ras Muguletul the Ethiopian commander in the north, offered only token
resistance then withdrew his forty thousand men southwards to the
natural mountain fortress of Ambo Aradam. Unopposed, De Bono drove the
seventy miles to Adowa and found it deserted. Triumphantly he erected
the monument to the fallin Italian warriors and thereby expunged the
stain of defeat from the arms of Italy.
The great civilizing mission had begun. The savage was being tamed,
and introduced to the miracles of modern man amongst them the aerial
bomb.
The Royal Italian Air Force ranged the skies above the towering
Ambas, reporting all troop movements and swooping down to bomb and
machine-gun any concentrations. The Ethiopian forces were confused and
scattered under their tribal commanders. There were half a dozen
breaches in their line that a forceful commander could have exploited
indeed even General De Bono sensed this and made another convulsive
leap forward as far as Makale. However, here he stopped appalled at
his own audacity, stunned by his own achievement.
Ras Muguletu was skulking on Ambo Aradam with his forty thousand,
while Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum were struggling to move the great
unwieldy masses of their two armies through the mountain passes to link
up with the army of the Emperor on the shores of Lake Tona.
They were disordered, vulnerable, ripe to be cut down like wheat and
General De Bono closed his eyes, covered his brow with one hand and
turned his head aside.
History would never accuse him of recklessness and impetuosity.
ROM GENERAL DE BONO COMMANDER OF THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE
AT MA KALE TO BENITO MUSSOLINI PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY HAVING
CAPTURED
ADO WA AND MA KALE I CONSIDER MY IMMEDIATE OBJECTS HAVE BEEN ATTAINED
STOP IT IS NOW VITALLY NECESSARY TO CONSOLIDATE THESE SUCCESSES' TO
FORTIFY MY POSITION AGAINST ENEMY COUNTER ATTACK AND TO SECURE MY
LINES
OF SUPPLY AND COMMUNICATIONS." ROM BENITO MUSSOLINI PRIME MINISTER
OF
ITALY MINISTER OF WAR TO GENERAL DE BONO OFFICER COMMANDING THE
ITALIAN
EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN AFRICA HIS MAJESTY WISHES AND I COMMAND YOU TO
ADVANCE WITHOUT HESITATION ON AMBA ARA DAM AND BRING THE MAIN BODY OF
THE ENENMY TO BATTLE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE STOP REPLY TO ME." ROM
GENERAL DE BONO TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF ITALY GREETINGS AND
FELICITATIONS I WISH TO POINT OUT TO YOUR EXELLENCY THAT THE
OBJECTIVE
AMBA ARA DAM IS TACTICALLY UNDESIRABLE ... THE TERRAIN FAVOURS AMBUSH
CONDITION OF ROADS VERY POOR ... TRUST MY JUDGEMENT ... URGE YOUR
EXCELLENCY TO RECONSIDER AND TO TAKE COGNIZANCE OF THE FACT THAT THE
MILITARY SITUATION MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER ALL POLITICAL
CONSIDERATION." FROM BENITO MUSSOLINI TO MARSHAL DE BONO PREVIOUSLY
OFFICER COMMANDING THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN AFRICA HIS
MAJESTY ORDERS ME TO CONVEY HIS FELICITATIONS ON YOUR ELEVATION TO
THE
RANK OF MARSHAL OF THE ARMY AND TO THANK YOU FOR THE IMPECCABLE
EXECUTION OF YOUR DUTY IN RECAPTURING ADO WA STOP WITH THE ATTAINMENT
OF
THIS OBJECTIVE I CONSIDER THAT YOUR MISSION IN EASTERN AFRICA HAS
BEEN
COMPLETED STOP YOU HAVE EARNED THE GRATITUDE OF THE NATION BY YOUR
OBVIOUS MERITS AS A SOLDIER AND YOUR STEADFAST DISCHARGE OF YOUR DUTY
AS A COMMANDER STOP YOU ARE REQUESTED TO HAND OVER YOUR COMMAND TO
GENERAL PIE TRO BADOGLIO ON HIS IMMINENT ARRIVAL IN AFRICA..
Marshal De Bono accepted both his promotion and his recall with such
good grace that it could have been mistaken, by an uninformed observer,
for profound relief. His departure for Rome was completed with such
despatch as to avoid by a hair's breadth the semblance of indecorous
haste.
General Pietro Badoglio was a fighting soldier. He had staffed the
headquarters before Adowa, although he had played no part in that
debacle, and he was a veteran of Caporetto and Vittorio Veneto. He
believed that the purpose of war was to crush the enemy as swiftly and
as ruthlessly as was possible, with the use of any weapon at his
disposal.
He came ashore at Massawa with a furious impatience, angry with
everything he found, and impatient of the policies and concepts of his
predecessor, although in truth seldom had an incoming commander been
handed such an enviable strategic situation.
He
inherited a huge, well-equipped army with a buoyant morale, in a
commanding tactical position and backed by a magnificent network of
communications and a logistics inventory that was alpine in
proportions.
The small but magnificently equipped airforce of the expedition was
flying unopposed over the Ambo mountains, observing all troop movements
and pouncing immediately on any Ethiopian concentrations.
During one of the first dinners at the new headquarters, Lieutenant
Vittorio Mussolini, the younger of the Duce's two sons, one of the
dashing Regia Aeronautica aces, regaled his new commander with accounts
of his sorties over the enemy highlands and Badoglio, who had not had
close aerial support in any of his previous campaigns, was delighted
with this new and deadly weapon. He listened transfixed to the young
flier's descriptions of the effect of aerial bombardment particularly
an account of an attack on a group of three hundred or more enemy
horsemen led by a tall, dark-robed figure. The young Mussolini told
him, "I released a single hundred-kilo bomb from an altitude of less
than a hundred metres, and it fell precisely in the centre of the
galloping horsemen. They opened like the petals of a flowering rose,
and the dark-robed leader was thrown so high by the blast that he
seemed to almost touch my wing-tip as I passed. It was a spectacle of
great beauty and magnificence." Badoglio was happy that his new
command included young men with such fire in their veins, and he leaned
forward in his seat at the head of the table to peer down over the
glittering silver and sparkling leaded crystal at the flier in his
handsome blue uniform. The classical features and dark curly head of
hair were the artist's conception of young Mars. Then he turned to the
airforce
Colonel who sat beside him.
"Colonel, what is the opinion of your young men in the Regia
Aeronautica? I have heard much argument for and against but I would be
interested to have your opinion.
Should we use the nitrogen mustard?"
"I think I speak for all my young men." The Colonel sipped his wine
and glanced for confirmation at the young ace who was not yet twenty
years of age. "I think the answer must be yes, we must use every
weapon available to us." Badoglio nodded. The thinking agreed with
his own, and the next morning he ordered the canisters of mustard gas
shipped from the warehouses of
Massawa, where De Bono had been content to let them lie, and despatched
them to every airfield where flights of the Regia Aeronautica were
based. Thousands upon thousands of the wild tribesmen of Ethiopia
would come to know the corrosive dew when later they endured
bombardment by artillery and aerial attack with a stoicism greater than
most European troops were able to muster yet they could never come to
terms with this terrible substance that turned the open pastures of
their mountain fastness to fields of terror. Barefoot, as most of them
were, they were pathetically vulnerable to the silent insidious weapon
that flayed the skin from their bodies, and then stripped the living
flesh from the bone.
This single decision was one of many made that day by the new
commander, and signalled the change from De Bono's humbling, but not
unkindly civilizing invasion, to the new concept of total war war with
only one objective.
MUSSOlini had wanted a hawk, and he had chosen well.
The hawk stood in the centre of the lofty second-storey headquarters
office at Asmara, He was too consumed with furious impatience to sit at
the wide desk, and when he paced the tiled floor,
his heels cracked on the ceramic like drum beats. The elasticity of
his stride was that of a man far younger than sixty-five.
He carried his head low on boxer's shoulders, thrusting his chin
forward a heavy chin below a big shapeless round nose, a short-cropped
grey mustache and a wide hard mouth.
His eyes were deep sunken into dark cavities, like those of a corpse,
but their glitter was alive and aware as he worked swiftly through the
lists of his divisional and regimental commanders,
assessing each by one criterion only, "Is he a fighting man?" Too
often the answer was "no,", or at the least uncertain, so it was with a
fierce pleasure that he recognized one who was without question a
hard-fighting man on whom he could rely.
"Yes," he nodded vehemently. "He is the only field commander who has
displayed any initiative, who has made any attempt to come to grips
with the enemy." He paused to lift his reading glasses to his eyes and
glance again at the reports he held in his other hand. "He has fought
one decisive action, inflicting almost thirty thousand casualties
without loss himself. That in itself is an achievement that seems to
have gone without suitable recognition. The man should have had a
decoration, the order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus at the least.
Good men must be singled out and rewarded. Look at this this is
typical!
When he was aware that the enemy had armoured resources, he was soldier
enough to lure that armour into a baited trap, to lead it skilfully and
with cool courage on to his entrenched artillery. It was a bold and
resourceful stroke for an infantry commander to make and it deserved to
succeed. If only his artillery commander had been a man of equally
steely nerves, he would have succeeded in luring the entire enemy
armoured column to its total destruction. It was no fault of his that
the artillery lost their nerve and opened fire prematurely." The
General paused to focus his reading glasses on the large glossy
photographic print which depicted Colonel Count Aldo Belli standing
like a successful big game hunter on the carcass of the Hump. The
shattered hull was pierced by shot and in the background lay half a
dozen corpses in tattered shammas. These had been collected from the
battlefield and tastefully arranged by Gino to give the photograph
authenticity. Against his better judgement and his strong instincts of
survival, Count Aldo Belli had returned to make these photographic
records only after Major Castelani had assured him that the enemy had
deserted the field. The Count had not wasted too much time about it,
but had his photographs taken, urging Gino to haste, and when it had
been done he had returned swiftly to his fortified position above the
Wells of Chaldi and had not moved from there since. However, the
photographs were an impressive addendum to his official report of the
action.
Now Badoglic, growled like an angry old lion. "Despite the
incompetence of his junior officers, and there my heart aches for
him,
this man has wiped out half the enemy armour as well as half the
opposing army." He hit the report fiercely with his reading glasses.
"The man's a fire eater no question about it. I know one when I see
one. A fire-eater. This kind of example must be encouraged good work
must be rewarded. Send for him. Radio him to come in to headquarters
&nb
sp; immediately." As far as Count Aldo Belli was concerned, the campaign
had come upon a not unpleasant hiatus.
The camp at the Wells of Chaldi had been transformed by his engineers
from an outpost of hell into a rather pleasant refuge, with functional
amenities, such as ice making machines and a water-borne sewerage
system. The de fences were now of sufficient strength to give him a
feeling of security. The engineering as always was of the highest
quality with extensive covered earthworks, and Castelani had laid out
carefully over-lapping fields of fire, and barbed-wire de fences in
depth.
The hunting in the area was excellent by any standards, with game drawn
to the water in the Wells from miles around. The sand-grouse in the
evenings filled the heavens with the whistle of their wings, and
wheeled in great dark flocks across the setting sun, affording
magnificent sport.
The bag was measured in grain bags of dead birds.
In the midst of this pleasantly relaxed atmosphere, the new commanding
officer's summons exploded like a 100 kilo aerial bomb.
General Badoglio's reputation had preceded him. He was a notorious
martinet, a man who could not be sidetracked from single-minded purpose
by excuse or fabrication. He was insensitive to political influence or
power considerations so much so that it was rumoured that he would have
crushed the very Fascist movement itself with force if the issue had
been put into his hands back in 1922. He had an almost psychic power
to detect subterfuge, and to place a finger squarely on malingerers or
lack-guts.
They said his justice was swift and merciless.
The shock to the Count's system was considerable. He had been singled
out from thousands of brother officers to face this ogre's wrath for he
could not convince himself that the small deviations from reality, the
small artistic licences contained in his long,
illustrated reports to De Bono had not been instantly discovered. He
felt like a guilty schoolboy summoned to dire retribution behind the
closed doors of the headmaster's study. The shock hit him squarely in
the bowels, always his weak spot, bringing on a fresh onslaught of the
malady first caused by the waters of Chaldi Wells, from which he had
believed himself completely cured.
It was twelve hours before he could summon the strength to be helped by