The Burning Sky (24 page)

Any success they had, and that was partial, came by the picking out of those few who showed some appreciation of the need for battlefield control and forming them into cadres in charge of manageable platoons of thirty men, then companies of ninety to a hundred, though care needed to be exercised not to upset tribal superiors in a very hierarchical society.

So, when it came to battalion level, the leaders were aristocrats, one named Yoannis, the other Aswaf, of the level of
fitawrari
, which equated to commander of the vanguard – fitting, given they were assigned a special attacking role at the forefront of
Ras
Kassa’s loosely coordinated divisions, while it was made plain to Jardine he was an advisor, not a commander.

He was at least privileged to be allowed access to the Ethiopian plan of attack, through the good offices of
Ras
Kassa, which was certainly ambitious: nothing less than an attempt to separate the various corps, then crush the Italian ground forces and invade Eritrea with the aim of evicting them from that territory. But there was little sense in being an advisor and not giving advice. Thanks to a notion of his, readily agreed to, Yoannis and Aswaf would be right at the spearhead of that attack, and they would have the men who had overseen their training alongside them.

‘So let me into the loop, Cal,’ Alverson demanded. ‘I
promise to keep the plans under my hat till it’s clear to spill.’

‘You have to wait, Tyler, until the offensive is under way.’

‘You think it’s a secret, you think our Italian friends don’t know what’s coming?’

‘They know there’s an offensive coming but they don’t know the details.’

‘You hope, brother. My guess is that this place leaks plenty, and this new guy is a hotter proposition than De Bonehead.’

‘Where’s Goody Two Shoes?’ Jardine asked, to change the subject.

‘Who dat?’

‘It’s a very old children’s story, but in this case it’s Corrie Littleton.’

‘You have a real down on her, Cal, don’t you?’

‘I think you’ve got that the wrong way round.’

‘She’s a feisty dame, for sure, but she’s not a bad person, though I will grant that her mother is a pain in the ass.’

‘So where is she?’

‘Right now she’s helping to set up a field hospital with a Spanish doctor and driving
Ras
Kassa mad asking for supplies and equipment. That French pilot guy is doing his best to get stuff into her.’

‘I bet he is.’

‘Jealous?’

‘In your dreams.’

‘If you two cats would stop spitting at each other you might find you could get along.’

‘That is what I need to do, Tyler – we move out at dawn, so get your head down.’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘Tyler, I know you’ve been around some, and in a few hairy places, but this is going to be real bloody. We’re attacking prepared positions, sandbagged lines, trenches with machine guns, artillery that is already ranged – and that leaves out planes which will be strafing us all day long.’

‘Cal, you’re not suggesting I should stay at home?’

‘No, just be careful. I just had a vision of you ending up in Corrie Littleton’s field hospital, that’s all.’

‘Hell, I’ll be right alongside
Ras
Kassa.’

‘Tyler, that old bastard is set on sticking a spear into an Italian arse and twisting it. Being next to him once his blood is up could be the most dangerous place on the battlefield, bar none.’

‘Boy, that would be some photograph, Cal.’

All along the Ethiopian front lines, in a chilled pre-dawn, a mass of movement was under way, close to two hundred thousand men pressing forward like pale white ghosts in three separate armies. Any observer looking into their eyes would not have seen fear, for it was not present. They might have seen excitement and anticipation; they would most certainly have heard the soft sound of prayers from deeply religious warriors. As the first hint of light touched the eastern sky the Italian artillery opened fire, dropping shells in front of their lines, for they did indeed know what was coming. Soon there would be bombers and fighters overhead.

With Vince Castellano at his side, Cal Jardine had moved out in the hours of darkness. They were just behind Yoannis and Aswaf, the leaders of the men they had trained, moving towards their chosen objective, the Dembeguina Pass: a narrow, heavily defended defile that was a critical part of the Italian defences.

The aim was to get behind the Italians holding the head of the pass and, acting in conjunction with the local assault, drive a wedge into the Italian positions which, exploited, could threaten the whole security of their line, which would draw in more troops to hold it and thus create weaknesses elsewhere that the rest of the army could take advantage of.

Jardine was troubled: Pietro Badoglio had tempted the army of Haile Selassie into the kind of battle that should have been fought in reverse. He knew from bitter experience the cost of attacking prepared positions, yet he could also feel that excitement, like his blood was coursing through his veins at a faster pace, which half-pleased him and half-appalled him: was it right that a man, any man, should seemingly so love war that he actively sought it out?

T
yler Alverson was now in possession of a powerful pair of binoculars so he could see when
Ras
Kassa Meghoum’s forward elements hit the Italian line at first light. They did so with such force and in such numbers that the enemy were forced away from their natural line of retreat north-east, falling back instead into the confines of the Dembeguina Pass, through which they could rejoin their compatriots. What Alverson could not see was that which lay behind them, the two thousand men led by the two
fitawraris
Yoannis and Aswaf, sent by the
ras
on the suggestion of Cal Jardine to cover just such an eventuality.

The Italian commander, Major Angelo Critini, was a bit of a ruffian but a good soldier, if not a popular one amongst his fellow officers, given he was inclined to remind them that their duties extended beyond the needs of their personal comforts and that, if they failed to care
for their men, their men could hardly be expected to care for them. This was not news most of his peers wished to hear, nor did his superiors care much for such reminders, moving him to the position of senior major in a battalion of Eritrean askaris, seen as something of a push aside in the snobbish army of which he was a member.

Critini had two reasons to be happy: first, his colonel, a cavalryman, was absent having his crippling haemorrhoids seen to in Italy. Secondly, he was a fighter, and he knew that when it came to combat, the askaris would be in the forefront: there were going to be casualties and the high command would rather sacrifice native troops than the boys from home.

A professional soldier, Critini had fought his first serious engagement in the Great War as a newly commissioned lieutenant at the battle of Caporetto, where the Italian army, poorly led and bled white by twelve repeated and futile assaults on the Austrian lines of the River Isonzo, was nearly destroyed by an unexpected combination of battle-hardened Germans released from the Eastern Front by the collapse of imperial Russia, backing up the more feeble Austrians, an attack that had led to a confused, bloody and costly retreat.

He was in retreat now from his prepared positions before a set of hills, but, even if the sheer numbers of those who had begun the assault had forced him away from his natural route of disengagement, he was not worried. Seeing the mass of warriors he faced, who seemed indifferent to risk, and to avoid being outflanked before he could retire into the pass, he sent forward the six Carro Veloce L3/35
tanks he commanded to slow the enemy advance with machine-gun fire and retired behind their twin 8 mm guns in good order.

It was only then he discovered he had been out-thought: lying on the hillsides of the pass through which he intended to retire were elements of the enemy he had no idea were present; they had got behind him during the night by crossing the high hills on foot, and they now sent down a withering fire from two machine guns onto his battalion, that followed by sporadic but steady rifle fire.

Unbeknown to Critini, they did not all have rifles, for if they had, assailed by two thousand of them, he would have suffered an immediate and near-total massacre. He was spared that because he faced a force armed mostly with spears and bows, something he realised as arrows began to drop in amongst his forward elements and the dozens of mules carrying his supplies.

The commands he then issued were crisp and orderly, something Cal Jardine watched with appreciation through his field glasses. He did not know the man in charge, but his actions told anyone with a military brain the fellow knew his job. He did not panic, nor did he allow his troops to. Critini, himself on horseback, immediately ordered his men and animals forward into what seemed like a maelstrom, accepting the casualties he suffered in both areas as unavoidable to get them to a point where, with decent cover, the terrain favoured him.

Dismounted, he then calmly formed them up in a hedgehog defence, which would be hard to break through, and, stripping his remaining mules, set up his
own machine guns to rake the hillsides. He also managed to salvage a number of mortars. Jardine immediately requested Yoannis’s machine guns to cease fire in order to conserve their very limited ammunition, which produced a pout on the face of the nearest
fitawrari
: he disliked having an advisor along and he was not in the least affected by a mortar round landing nearby, which severely wounded some of his men.

Drawing a heavy sword, Yoannis shouted, through Shalwe, the interpreter, ‘We attack now and kill them all.’

‘I advise against that.’

Jardine guessed as the words were translated he was wasting his breath: the light in the Ethiopian leader’s eyes was one of wild excitement, and all around him the men he led, indifferent to the casualties among them, were keening in anticipation of what they expected to do. Many, like their leader, were brandishing swords, while Yoannis was waving his weapon and shouting to his fellow
fitawrari
, Aswaf, across the narrow pass, to join in the slaughter.

‘He is saying they are beaten,’ Shalwe said, and it looked as though the young interpreter believed it too.

‘Tell Yoannis they are not and they have machine guns and more mortar rounds. If he tries to overwhelm them many will die.’

‘You won’t stop them, guv,’ Vince said quietly in his ear. ‘They are too worked up.’

Jardine never got a chance to answer that because all around him the
shamma
-clad warriors were on their feet and being led out of their excellent cover in a wild charge down the hillside, presenting, in their white garments,
tempting targets. They were attacking troops who had years of training, not weeks, and it showed immediately as the controlled volley fire began to decimate the attackers.

The Italian machine guns raked the hillsides in a slow and deadly progression, the mortar-fire range dropping also, a steady rate of shells bursting in amongst the rushing warriors. It was not all one-sided, for defenders were falling to rifle fire: Jardine saw one Italian officer go down; he was – as was required in such a circumstance – bravely standing up to control his men, making him an easy target, yet it had to be luck, given the discharges were wild.

Critini saw one lieutenant drop just before he took a bullet in the soft muscle of his upper left arm, which felled him, thankfully and quickly aware that it had missed the bone. He was back on his feet within two seconds, seeing clearly that his defence was holding and that the furious Ethiopian charge was faltering in the face of everything already employed, now backed up by the machine guns of his tanks, which were in the middle of his position and had manoeuvred into a circle to cover all the approaches.

Jardine was cursing the folly of what he saw, yet there was a glimmer of a positive, something that told him the instructions he and Vince had tried to impart were not entirely wasted. On the other side of the pass Aswaf had not engaged in a wild charge, but instead sent out his riflemen to make their way slowly down the hillside, seeking cover from boulders as they went, their aim to pick off individual targets, particularly the Italian officers, easy to spot in their distinctive uniforms. It was they who were inflicting the most damage.

Yoannis, now stuck lower down, clearly realised the folly of his attack and was signalling to fall back using cover. Was it a tribute to training that he was so quickly obeyed? Jardine did not know, he was only grateful to see the casualty count drop away as men got behind boulders or crawled through scrub back to their starting positions.

The Italians had been chased into the pass by other forces, yet none of their fire was aimed in the direction from which they had come, a condition Jardine had insisted upon when the plan had been outlined. He was advising hard to control warriors and he did not want to have to worry about shooting those on his own side coming in pursuit. If the pass was cleared, that was the time for a good part of the main body to advance.

Corrie Littleton was no doctor, but she was one of nature’s organisers and that, with the first casualties pouring into her aid station, was just as important as wielding a surgical knife. The Spanish doctor and his nurses were working flat-out, but thanks to the American, the only cases that got to his operating table were those that would benefit from immediate treatment. Having been violently sick when the first wounded came in with torn bodies and hanging-off limbs, she was now working on a stomach long empty to assess each case.

Those close to death were left, as were the men with wounds that left them ambulant; it was the in-betweens that were given priority, and Corrie Littleton had lost any guilt for the fact that her decision-making might be flawed: the numbers as well as the extent of wounds from artillery
fire were too great for such concerns, because the main attack of
Ras
Kassa’s forces, taking place to the east of the Dembeguina Pass, had run into a solid Italian defence.

In soft ground the Italians had dug trenches, on rocky surfaces they had built lines of sandbags interspersed with redoubts, both types of defence backed by machine guns and mortars aided by tactical and long-range artillery. Fanatical bravery, and the Ethiopians had that in excess, was another reason for the high casualty numbers, and what was being seen by Corrie Littleton was only a fraction of the losses the Imperial Army was suffering.

Tyler Alverson stood on the high outcrop from which
Ras
Kassa Meghoum was trying to control his part of the battle, watching the stream of messages coming in from staff officers in the green uniforms of the regular forces, but even with powerful glasses he could see nothing much, so great was the smoke and dust being created by gunfire and explosive shells.

Every so often an Italian fighter would strafe their position, the few anti-aircraft weapons they possessed seeking to dissuade them, which meant a leap into the previously prepared dugouts, but what they feared most was not long in coming into play: the Italian bombers.

Not a single projectile was dropped on their position, but dozens of the Savoia-Marchetti trimotors ranged across the rear areas of the advancing forces, covered overhead by numerous fighters to ward off any attempts to interfere in the destruction of the thousands of men waiting their turn to go into the battle raging before them. When the
bombers departed, their escorts dived in to rake the area with gunfire, yet even under such an aerial assault the Ethiopian forces did not buckle.

‘Can you not advance through the Dembeguina Pass,
Ras
?’ Alverson asked.

The old man shook his head. ‘Not until we hear it is clear. Your friend Jardine was adamant that we would end up shooting at each other. Word will come when they are successful.’

‘Would I be allowed to go and see?’

‘You are a free spirit, Mr Alverson, you may go where you wish, but I will detail someone to escort you.’

That journey took Tyler Alverson past the casualty clearing station where he encountered a blood-covered Corrie Littleton racing to and fro between the wounded cases lying and sitting all around her tents, shouting to orderlies to take this one and that, while a constant stream of new cases were carried or staggered in. He was about to try and talk to her when he heard the screaming engine of an aeroplane and he looked up to see the silhouette in the sky of a Fiat fighter.

His shout to her to get down took a second to register, so that she was still standing when the first of a line of bullets hit the ground. She did dive to her right, which saved her life, but the run of gunfire hit the comatose bodies of those already wounded until the firing ceased as the Fiat screamed overhead, with Corrie Littleton up, yelling and shaking her fist at a bastard who had ignored the huge red crosses on the tent roofs.

Alverson saw that same bastard bank for another run
and shouted a fresh warning, but so intent was the Italian fighter pilot on what he was doing that he had ignored the first rule of aerial combat – keep your eyes open and look around you at all times. The Potez 25 came from above, with the eastern sun at its back, its machine gun a stuttering, muted tattoo at the distance from which the two Americans could hear it.

The Italian fighter seemed to stagger almost, as though its engine had lost power, then it banked as smoke began to pour out from the cockpit area. So fast was it moving that only imagination could picture what was happening to that pilot, but what was obvious was the way the Ethiopian was following him down as he lost altitude, firing short bursts into the burning enemy.

The explosion of the Fiat hitting the earth made the ground around them shake, but the aircraft noise did not diminish. The Potez came flashing low overhead, slightly banked, and the pilot had taken off his flying helmet. Even at a hundred and twenty miles an hour the waving hand, the blond hair and, Alverson was sure, the gleaming teeth of Count Henri de Billancourt were plain to see.

Corrie Littleton was screeching her thanks and jumping up and down as the Frenchman came over for a victory roll, but as soon as he disappeared she went back to her tasks. Tyler Alverson got no more than a look, and a grim one at that.

The site the Italian commander had chosen was, as long as his ammunition and water lasted, in a reasonably good place. The rate of fire on both sides had dropped – to be expected, since to just keep going was a useless expenditure
of ammunition – but Critini kept up sporadic mortar fire at a conserving rate, given it was his most effective deterrent weapon. He also wasted no time in seeking to get away a small party of his most fleet-footed
askaris
to test out an escape route.

Jardine and Vince grabbed rifles from a couple of the returning tribesmen and sought to pick them off, while the machine guns were employed from both sides of the pass. Dodging from boulder to boulder, or seeking shelter behind the scrub that covered the valley floor, made them hard targets, but to cheers, one by one they were brought down, aided by intelligent fire from Aswan’s men opposite.