‘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.