‘It’s goin’ to be just you an’ me in the Rolls, miss.’
‘You can’t win them all, Vince,’ Jardine said in a voice larded with deep sympathy.
None of them had ever known how powerful Ras Kassa Meghoum was, but you did not have to be at the main tactical HQ of the Ethiopian army behind Mek’ele to realise he was a man who had the ear and the trust of the emperor. He was not deferred to in an obsequious way, but the attention paid to his words by the field commanders showed they took what he said seriously. After a conference lasting several hours, from which the people he had fetched along were excluded, he emerged and took Jardine aside.
‘I have been asked to take over the remainder of Gugsa’s forces and a whole sector of the army, which will be reinforced and brought up to its previous strength. I would consider it an honour if you would agree to become an advisor to my command.’
‘You know what my advice would be, as I have told you many times: don’t fight, withdraw and harry the enemy.’
‘That was strategic advice, which I cannot take, nor would I want to, and besides, the decision resides with my emperor. But we must have a battle soon and I expect the forces I command to be part of that. I would value your tactical advice in such a situation.’
‘Do you intend to hold your present positions?’
‘We do, and De Bono must come towards us and take a risk, eventually.’
‘Might be an idea to goad him by launching some raids.’
‘That is what you would suggest?’
‘He must have disgruntled inferiors, sir, officers eager to engage with you. All the pressure will not just be coming from Rome, and it is a bad idea to leave him to choose his own time to do whatever he wishes. You said your men were good night fighters, and a few slit throats …’
‘These men I brought with me are the ones you were training and I know they respect you.’
‘You want me to lead them?’
‘I am to be in command of forty thousand warriors. It is not something I could do, much as my spirit wishes it.’
‘Where are we based?’
‘I think it is time, Captain Jardine, that I let you see a map of where the emperor’s forces are.’
Accustomed to European quality maps it was sobering to see the paucity of detail on the Ethiopian equivalents, but the main thrust of their approach was obvious. Their forces were in three divisions arced behind Mek’ele, covering the two routes to Addis: the one they had come by, via Gondar and the side of Lake Tana, the second more easterly route passing through Lalibela. One flank was protected by the Simien mountains and the eastern one by the waterless Danakil Depression. If those two features canalised the Italian advance it was still a broad front to defend.
By pulling back from the kind of flat terrain that favoured a mechanised army into more broken country they had blunted the enemy hopes. De Bono, if he wanted to make progress, would have to beat them in the hills and valleys that confined his armour, but which allowed for the lateral movement of foot-bound spearmen. They could not avoid facing tanks, but the Ethiopians could limit their exposure while making life difficult for the Italian artillery. That still left the air force as a problem, and there was no doubt they would suffer from aerial bombing.
Jardine’s problem was one of command — there was no way he was going to go forward with completely untrained troops — quite apart from, for him, his lack of language; he needed an interpreter, not necessarily at the point of contact with the enemy, but at all points in between, and especially when it came to outlining his intentions. Such training would not be speedy, weeks would be required, and these were points he put to Ras Kassa and they were accepted.
‘But let us hope the Italians do not grant you the time.’
‘I also need to do some air reconnaissance to look for opportunities. And since, if we do raid the Italian lines, it will be at night, can we get them to wear black shammas instead of white?’
In the end it was the two rulers who decided the next phase, Mussolini by removing De Bono just after he had occupied Mek’ele, promoting him to Maresciallo d’Italia to soothe his pride, and replacing him with the reputedly more aggressive Marshal Pietro Badoglio. He certainly seemed more active, using his air force, with many more reconnaissance flights and bombing raids on the supply routes, forcing the Ethiopians off the roads, yet that exposed one of the values of a peasant army: they could operate cross-country.
Likewise Haile Selassie, given a new and untried enemy commander, set his mind on attacking the Italians as quickly as an offensive could be mounted, rank folly to Cal Jardine, but it was unmistakeable the enthusiasm such a notion — not to mention his imperial presence — engendered in the forces under his command, and even he had to accept that in war, with nothing being certain, it might just work.
Not that Haile Selassie was personally impressive, excepting he had the power of his monarchical office. He was a small, rather insignificant man, bearded, and he arrived on his various visits to his troops on a donkey, with even his truncated height leaving his feet perilously close to the ground. If, to Western eyes, it appeared absurd, it did not do so to his subjects, and Tyler Alverson, who had now established himself as a sort of special correspondent, was given permission to report on his arrival and even allowed to send out photographs, scooping the whole tribe of journalists still stuck in Addis Ababa.
Jardine and Vince, having spent weeks in training groups of warriors, were encouraged to speed up their instruction, which meant trying to get some order and tactical nous into what was the usual form of warfare in this part of the world, based on brio and sheer weight of numbers. Proper weapons were so limited they had to be shared — if you left out spears, which every warrior carried and seemed to favour — and communication was slow, since everything had to be translated by a young man called Shalwe, a one-time teacher who knew a fair amount of English.
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.