With clanking tracks they made their way towards what was now a serious obstacle, dozens of boulders piled on top of each other. The lead gunner had stopped firing at human flesh and was using his ammunition to blast the barrier, seeking to break it up, not with much success. Unable to observe for the incoming fire, Jardine was now counting shots, because there must be a limit to the shells a light tank could carry and the Italians were being profligate, firing off round after round, with the now-redundant drivers raking the hills with machine guns as well — pointless, given they had no targets to aim at.
The firing diminished and Jardine heard the one-engine note change to a scream, so he risked looking out. The lead tank was climbing the face of his boulder wall, again its nose pointing nearly vertical, tracks scrabbling on the looser rocks and failing to grip. Whoever was in command had a brain: he sent a second tank to get on its backside to aid its traction, which helped and it made the top of the barrier, with Jardine’s heart sinking at the thought it was going to make it.
Having made the crest it balanced there precariously for a few seconds, before edging forward till it seemed impossible it could remain on an even keel, so far were its tracks sticking out. Then the nose dropped again with that sickening thud, but this time the forward tracks hit at such an angle they could get no traction and, in slow motion, the Fiat 3000 gently flipped over to drop on its turret and roll onto its side, rocking till it came to rest. The men inside must be seriously injured, but that was less important than that the rest of the tanks were trapped!
It was a waiting game then, cat and mouse, seeking to get the remaining tanks to use up their ammunition as the Italians were presented with seeming targets, which caused them to fire off wildly, until first one stopped and then the other two. They then tried to abandon their vehicles, the lower two-door forward hatches opening and the two-man crews jumping out. What greeted them was a wall of spear-carrying warriors charging downhill, screaming like banshees and totally indifferent to the fire from the Italian pistols.
One by one the tankers went down, to be slain by spear points before, like their compatriots earlier, their heads were cut off and their tanks set alight. The billowing black smoke told the story: through his field glasses Jardine watched as the Italian infantry slowly and deliberately withdrew.
Major Critini saw the smoke too, but he did not despair, for he had under his command good soldiers; trained, unlike those they faced. His men fought all day, but with commendable caution in terms of both life and the expenditure of ammunition. As the sun faded in the west, creating deep shadows, he abandoned any equipment he could not carry and began a fighting withdrawal up the pass, his troops showing admirable discipline under heavy attack, using bayonet charges where necessary to clear the way. That he lost half his remaining men on the way was a price worth paying, the alternative being to stay where he had been and lose them all.
Cal Jardine was not part of the pursuit. He, Vince and Alverson scrabbled down to the position the Eritreans had held on to all day in the heat, to look at the equipment left behind, much of it still strapped to the slaughtered mules. There was the shattered radio; the operator’s body, like those of the other casualties, had been laid in neat rows and covered with tent canvas. They were still there when the first elements of the rest of Ras Kassa’s forces began to pour through the Dembeguina Pass to seek to turn the flank of the Italian line and force them to retreat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The northern exit of the Dembeguina Pass was, as Jardine suspected, sealed off by artillery and well-sited machine guns, and to these were added regular infantry counter-attacks. Yet even backed by bombers and strafing fighters, so great was the pressure from the peasant army, and so reckless were they for their own safety all along the front, that the pressure began to infect the enemy high command, while what the world was to call the Ethiopian Christmas Offensive left little doubt regarding what they were seeking to achieve: nothing less than the destruction of the entire Italian position in the Horn of Africa.
The right- and left-wing armies, as planned, were fighting to get between the two Italian corps that had so recently invested Mek’ele and Aksum, the aim to cut them off, leaving them to be crushed by the Ethiopian centre while the two wings began an assault to the north, into Eritrea, which, if successful, might win them more than a second Adowa, with incalculable consequences in Rome.
Marshal Badoglio was forced to order a tactical withdrawal centred on Aksum, to shorten both his lines and his communications, aware that back in his homeland voices were being raised against the whole enterprise in Abyssinia, not least that of the man he had replaced. Such criticism was impacting on the reputation of Benito Mussolini himself, which brought forth a threat to remove Badoglio as well.
The cable he sent to save his skin was carefully worded to appeal to Il Duce’s vanity, while subtly underlining the truth: if the invasion of Abyssinia faltered or even failed, ultimate responsibility rested with the politicians as well as the army commanders, and the price for both would be high.
He had to be careful, the dictator was not a leader he had originally endorsed in 1922. Indeed, for his doubts he had spent a number of years being sidelined for his lack of zealous support for the new dispensation, and it had taken subtle manoeuvring from his many Masonic and army friends to get back into the fold; in short, he was not entirely trusted.
It was necessary to employ flattery, of course, to speak of the glory of Italy, a once-broken country raised by Mussolini to stand as equal to any in Europe. He acknowledged him as the successor to the great dictators of ancient times — Cincinnatus, Sulla and, of course, Julius Caesar — pointing out that such heroic figures had not flinched from extreme measures to subdue their enemies. Yet, sadly, the present-day sons of Italy were paying a high price — a slight massaging to heighten the casualty figures aided him here — for the adherence to sensibilities that had only come to other colonial powers after they had secured their conquests.
He had at his disposal not only the means to arrest Emperor Haile Selassie’s attempts to halt the march of history, but to throw him back and utterly destroy him, as well as his armies. He also reminded his political master that any finer feelings were required to be suppressed, for they were misplaced, given he had before him enemies who could lay no claim to being civilised. Was it not the mission of the Italian people, as it had been of the other European powers, to bring the vital gift of their culture to Ethiopia and its savage tribes?
Benito Mussolini would know of what he spoke, and being the great man he was, his loyal supporter Pietro Badoglio was sure he would not recoil from what was required, would not allow the hollow and hypocritical opprobrium of the feeble democracies, of socialists, of noble, savage-loving hypocrites, or even the combined voice of the League of Nations to deflect him.
The affirmative reply came back in days and Badoglio immediately sent to Asmara for the equipment necessary to protect his own troops from the decisive weapon, then called in his air force and artillery commanders to discuss how the knockout blow he envisaged could be delivered — one that would save the Italian campaign and his position.
Cal Jardine wanted to train the Ethiopians to do a bit of trench raiding, working on the same principle now as had been applied during the Great War: if you wanted to know the state of enemy morale and perhaps, if you were lucky, their immediate intentions, you infiltrated their lines and took prisoners, a point he had made to Ras Kassa, who came close to scoffing at the notion. He seemed content that, should his own warriors undertake such tasks, the slitting of Italian throats was satisfactory, reasoning that the average Italian soldier was as ignorant as any of his own men.