The sun would be down in less than thirty minutes. The young flyer had plenty of fuel and time enough to reach a landing field behind his lines before darkness, but he felt compelled to take a gamble. He would not leave his comrade there alone. After all, he reasoned, if his friend had made a successful landing without damage to his crippled aircraft, he could do the same. His friend could jump in the rear cockpit and they would be home in time for supper.
Flying low over the site, he surveyed the landing path of the downed plane. It looked chancy but he would do it. He swung around to line up for the landing. He throttled back. Slowing his plane to just above stalling speed, he dragged onto the landing site with just a little power so he could touch down at the lowest possible speed to shorten the landing roll. His wheels touched. The plane bounced along the rugged ground, the lower wings scraping over scrub bushes, the propeller chopping through a few of them. The pilot could see his friend running toward him.
Without warning, the right wheel slammed down into a hole. The jolt bottomed out the landing strut with such force it was torn loose. The plane careened violently to the right, dropped the lower wingtip into the dirt, and swung. Turning the plane around, it kicked up a huge cloud of dust. It came to a stop resting on the left gear and right wingtip. The idling wooden propeller struck the ground and tore itself to pieces. Fearful of fire, the pilot leaped from the cockpit. The only fire was that in the setting African sun.
“Mother of God! You should have left me. In the morning you could have brought help to find me.”
“I’m afraid that would have been too late, my friend. There are others who have already found you. Now they will find us both. They are coming from that far little hill over there . . . maybe twenty of them, maybe less. I cut their numbers down some.
“We can’t fight them off until morning. If we run now, maybe we can lose them in the dark.
“They’ll know we’ll travel toward our lines which must be thirty or forty miles to the north. We can try. Do you have a canteen? We’ll need water in this godforsaken desert.”
“It really doesn’t matter.” As he spoke, the Italian pilot drew his pistol and crouched beside the wreckage of his plane. “It seems your friends, some of them at least, have arrived in record time.”
“Where? I can’t see in this fading light.”
“Just there to the left about two hundred meters. I see only one.”
A rifle shot rang out. Then a second shot. Young Ethiopian runners had been launched ahead of the main party to quickly reach the plane wreck and pin down any survivors. The Italian hunters had become the prey. Firing occasional shots, two of them held the flyers at bay as the last gleam of dusk faded into darkness.
The two young pilots sat back-to-back, pistols drawn, waiting to be rushed from any or all sides.
“I’ve heard they are good night fighters.”
“Save the last bullet for yourself. You know what they did to the last flyers they caught.”
“I saw the report. It seems we should have paid more attention.”
A report was circulated to all Italian pilots about two airmen who had been downed at Daggah Bur. They had been found beheaded, their bodies mutilated.
While the Italians waited in darkness, the Ethiopians, masters of the art of night infiltration, drew straws for the honor of using their knives.
“I’m sorry to have caused all of this. I was foolish to have flown so low. We’ve been warned about that. You were crazy to try to pick me up, but I want you to know I am grateful to you, my friend.”
“I, too, am sorry, but you would have done the same for me. With a little luck we would have made it. Now we finish it together.”
As the light of dawn crept over the desert, a pair of hyenas cautiously approached the site of the wrecked planes. Overhead, vultures circled. The two pilots stared up at them with glazed, unseeing eyes. The men’s feet were bare, their flying boots and leather jackets missing. Just below their chins, black flies covered their gapping throats like living, squirming beards. Slit from ear to ear, the flyers had bled out onto the sand in great dark pools, the now clotted blood a feast to beetles and ants. The vultures flapped down near the bodies and begin a rude debate with the hyenas over how to divide the spoils of war.
Badoglio’s army of the north cautiously pressed on toward the capital. His continued deployment of gas was not limited to the battlefield. Civilians were also targeted in his attempt to terrorize the local population. From low flying, tri-motor planes, gas was repeatedly sprayed like insecticide over villages as well as Red Cross and Red Crescent camps and ambulances. A second gas, phosgene, was introduced. It had the pleasant odor of fresh mown hay and could be breathed in or absorbed through the skin. Once introduced to the body in sufficient quantity, phosgene, like mustard gas, attacked lung cells, preventing the passage of oxygen into the blood thus causing its victims to suffocate slowly, agonizingly for days after exposure. (Records show Mussolini himself authorized the use of the weapons.)
One by one, the Ethiopian armies were destroyed. Ras Mulugeta was killed at Amba Aradam. The armies of Ras Seyoum and Ras Kassa had been blown to pieces by the Regia Aeronautica which rotated its aircraft in such a way as to keep at least a dozen planes over the battlefield at all times during daylight hours.
Only Ras Imru’s forces remained stubbornly undefeated. Badoglio halted once again to prepare a new drive against Ras Imru. He ordered forty-eight thousand artillery shells, seven million rounds of small arms ammunition, and hundreds of tons of bombs. Ras Imru had no supply depots, no reserve troops. As they ran out of ammunition, they attacked at night with swords and clubs.
Haile Selassie had reason to be proud of his troops. The Italians recorded the interrogation of a mortally wounded Ethiopian officer. When asked who he was, the man replied, “I am the commander of a thousand men.” When asked why he did not lie down on the stretcher they had provided, he told them he preferred to die on his feet. He said, “We swore to the negus that we would hold against you or die. We have not won but we have kept our promise.” He pointed to the valley below. It was littered with nearly nine thousand dead Ethiopians. He joined them before nightfall.
To the south, General Graziani was having a more difficult time. He had run into the “Hindenburg Wall,” named after the German line of defenses of the same name built during the Great War, a defense line designed and set up by Wahib Pasha, advisor to Ras Nasibu. And as April 1936 arrived, the beginning of the rainy season added to Graziani’s problems. The earth turned to mud and the rain-swollen creeks and rivers became difficult to cross. The Ethiopians dug in at the Jerar River. Besides being firmly lodged in caves and hollows, they dug trench positions.
When Graziani suffered heavy losses and was stopped at the line, he brought up another of his “special” weapons. His troops employed flamethrowers. Not only were there flamethrowers carried by troops, there were also CV 3/35 tankettes that had been converted to flamethrower tanks, their fuel carried in special armored trailers pulled behind and connected by hoses. Using motorized infantry, aircraft, bombs, artillery, tanks, flamethrowers, and poison gas, it still took Graziani ten days of fierce fighting to finally break the “Hindenburg Wall.”
Unlike so many of the foreign volunteers who drifted away as the situation grew steadily worse, John was determined to serve as long as he was needed. He was called to fly the emperor once more. With only one forty-thousand-man army left, the negus was determined to lead the last battle himself. When the emperor arrived at the field, John was shocked to see how worn and weary the small, dignified ruler appeared. He and a small staff boarded the Staggerwing and sat in silence. They all knew John was flying them to the last battle.
When they landed, Haile Selassie turned to John. “Colonel Robinson, you have served me and my people faithfully and well. You have endangered yourself unselfishly. You have done everything asked of you. Now you must go home and tell your nation what you have seen. I failed to convince the League of
Nations to understand that it is not just my country that is at stake. If they refuse to act in the future as they refused to stop Fascist aggression in Ethiopia, then what you have seen here is not the end. It is only the beginning.”
John could say nothing. He bowed his head in respect.
Haile Selassie looked up at John. “Take my hand, friend.” The emperor extended his hand. John, with tears in his eyes, grasped it. “Thank you, John Robinson. May God keep you. I pray we meet again.”
John returned to Addis Ababa. By this time, the capital suffered bombing raids daily. There was finally a use for the captured 1896 Italian cannons. They were used around the city for air-raid warnings: one shot for air-raid warning, two shots for all clear. Robinson refueled the plane, hid it in a remote corner of the field, and waited, hoping to receive a call to fetch the emperor from the field of battle.
Across a lush green valley near Mai Ceu, thirty-one thousand Ethiopian soldiers plus the imperial guard faced forty thousand well-equipped Italian and Eritrean troops. Another forty thousand Italians held in reserve were deployed between the Belago and Alagi passes, poised to fill any gaps in the Italian line or take advantage of any breech in the Ethiopian defense.
Haile Selassie sent a message to his wife describing the battle: From five in the morning until seven in the evening, our troops attacked the enemy’s strong positions, fighting without pause. We also took part in the action and by the grace of God remain unharmed. Our chiefs and trusted soldiers are dead and wounded.
With only twenty thousand men left, the emperor ordered his troops to retreat. Because the few Red Cross and Red Crescent hospitals had been bombed out of existence, the Ethiopians could do nothing for their wounded but carry them. The retreating army was under constant air attack as they moved toward Lake Ashangi. Italian planes dropped seventy tons of explosives on the exhausted Ethiopians. Men and pack animals were blasted to pieces. The Italian planes faded away, only to refuel and rearm, this time with mustard gas. They returned to contaminate the waters along the shore of Lake Ashangi with the poison. Many of the thirst-crazed troops who drank from the lake died.
The emperor later described the scene: “It was no longer a war for the Italian airmen. It was a game, a massacre.”
John did get the call and returned Selassie to Addis Ababa. There the emperor conferred with Sir Sidney Barton, the British foreign minister, and Monsieur Albert Bodard, the French ambassador. He informed them that his imperial council had beseeched him not join Ras Imru, as he wished, to organize a guerilla war from the gorges of the Blue Nile. His council had convinced him he should try to escape in order to maintain Ethiopian rule in exile until such time as his government could return. By that act, Ethiopia could, at least symbolically, refuse to accept defeat. His council advised that as long as “Haile Selassie was free and unbowed, Italian rule in Ethiopia could have no legitimacy.” To do otherwise, they said, would end futilely in capture, public humiliation, death, and the end of thousands of years of Ethiopian self-rule.
The British foreign minister arranged for the gold from Ethiopia’s treasury to be deposited in Barclay’s Bank in Jerusalem. Barton also promised that if the emperor could reach the port of Djibouti in French Somaliland, a British warship would meet him and transport his party to safety.
On May 2, 1936, at four o’clock in the morning, the last train left Addis Ababa. Because of the number of foreign citizens, the diplomatic corps, and members of the world press that were aboard the train, Mussolini refused to approve his commander’s persistent requests to bomb it. It was, after all, a French train. On that train, Haile Selassie and his government in exile made it to Djibouti. Two days later, on May 4, the day before Italian troops marched into Addis Ababa, Emperor Haile Selassie and his staff departed Djibouti aboard the British cruiser HMS Enterprise.
In the chaos of Addis Ababa, some were fleeing the Italians while others took advantage of the pandemonium to loot businesses and homes, especially those belonging to foreigners. Mixed among them were Azebu and Galla tribesmen who had sided with the Italians. General Bono had cleverly sent them into Addis Ababa ahead of his army. Their job was to create chaos. If that meant taking revenge against Selassie’s followers and looting as they pleased, so be it.
For John it was past time to leave. Robinson found his paymaster had fled and the banks all closed. The consulates scattered through the city were all barricaded and under siege. He thought, I should have left two weeks ago with Corriger and Demeaux.
Perhaps the Regia Aeronautica were distracted by the celebrations of victory that had already begun at the airstrips, for John was able to retrieve Staggerwing from hiding, get it off the ground, and fly unmolested to French Djibouti. He landed the morning of May 4 just as HMS Enterprise got under way. At the field, French officials impounded the sleek biplane bearing the colors and insignia of Ethiopia.3
The French weren’t quite sure what to do with an American citizen wearing the uniform of an Ethiopian colonel and possessing passports of both countries. After a day of interrogation, they impounded his sidearm and released him. John had escaped with a few possessions stuffed in a suitcase and very little money. His only option was to catch a freighter bound for Marseille and try to get home as best he could.
On May 5, Badoglio’s armies marched into Addis Ababa. Although Ethiopia never surrendered, the Italo-Ethiopian war was over. The kingdom of Italy annexed the Ethiopian empire on May 7, and on May 9 in Rome, Mussolini proclaimed King Victor Emmanuel III emperor of Ethiopia. Italy merged Italian Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Italian Somaliland into a single colony known as Italian East Africa.
3 This Beechcraft Staggerwing aircraft was destined for a long and fascinating history. Records indicate that this particular Staggerwing was given the French registration, F-APFD. It took part in the Spanish Civil War flown by the French pilot, Lebaud, for the Basque government 1936–1939. Lucky again, it survived to cross the Spanish border into France. In November of 1942, it was captured by the Germans at Briscous, a town on the French side of the Pyrenees. Dismantled, it was taken to Paris for display at a Luftwaffe exhibition. Sometime after World War II, this same Staggerwing somehow wound up in the United States and was refurbished and registered as NC 15811.
Chapter 21
Stranger to Peace
ROBINSON ARRIVED AT THE PORT OF MARSEILLE EARLY IN THE morning and was able to catch a train to Paris that same day. It was a long 450-mile ride in third class. He managed to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and cheap wine. Upon arrival at the railroad station in Paris, he went to the information booth where he found an elderly woman who spoke English. John told her he had limited funds, some French francs but most in English pounds sterling. He asked if she could recommend an inexpensive hotel. She remarked that the few American Negroes she had seen in Paris all seemed to be musicians, and he was the first she had seen in uniform since the Great War. She told him which bus to catch— that a taxi would be expensive. The hotel was small, old, but clean. It was located not far from the Seine on La Rive Gauche, the left bank. Bonetired, Robinson fell into bed and slept for twelve hours.
His main concern was how to get home with so little money in his pocket. The Ethiopian government, he knew, was fleeing into exile. He had no idea how to contact them to obtain the back pay and transportation to America he had been promised.
Haile Selassie had briefly put into port at Haifa to visit Jerusalem, his first choice as a location to establish his government in exile, but an Arab revolt against Jewish emigration made the city too dangerous. Arabs and Jews, both armed, were fighting in the streets of the holy city and the British were hard put to stop it. The emperor proceeded aboard HMS Enterprise to England where he established residence in exile.
John’s only choice was to swallow his pride and send a telegram via the Atlantic cable asking his former partner, Cornelius Coffey, for help.
While he waited for an answer, John took in the sights of Paris, spending as little as possible. He toure
d the Louvre, Notre Dame, walked along the Seine and down the Champs Elysées. He marveled at the Eiffel tower. He searched out small neighborhood restaurants where he could eat inexpensively. He loved the sidewalk cafés but could afford only coffee. Paris was an expensive city. He passed several clubs that advertized American Negro Jazz Orchestras, but he could not afford them.
Generally ignored by the French, John felt lonely in crowded Paris. He was relieved to be safely away from the senseless slaughter in Ethiopia, but felt uneasy surrounded by the bustling day-to-day activity of people engaged in ordinary life. The French seemed unconcerned about the war their neighbor Italy had waged on Ethiopia. There was little to nothing about it in the news. The war in Africa was over, no longer of interest. News of an impending civil war in Spain had chased “that Abyssinian business” off the front page. Some nights, John awoke in a cold sweat wondering if he had cried out in his sleep or only in his dreams, dreams of Italian planes surrounding him, of running for cover from bombs and shells, of hearing the screams of terrified wounded and dying people.
One evening while eating at a small restaurant, an old Frenchman, curious about the black man at the next table who had trouble ordering because he spoke little French, struck up a conversation with John. He said he had learned to speak English from American soldiers during the Great War. After discovering John had fought in “that African war” against Italy, he shrugged and said, “What can that Abyssinian business teach us about war? Italy is no threat to France. I was in the Great War. I already know all about such things. It will never happen here again. We are building the Maginot Line.”
The Man Called Brown Condor Page 21