The Burning Sky (28 page)

‘Only if there is a miracle, and much as I love and respect my God, that I cannot see happening. However, we must try, and the invasion of Somaliland is progressing well.’

‘The cost, sir?’

‘How will this come, if it comes?’ the
ras
asked, holding up the mask again, unwilling to respond to Jardine’s question.

‘Ground canisters on the right wind were the normal method of delivery, but I believe the Italians used artillery shells in their North African provinces.’

Jardine was sure he could see the
ras
trying to calculate the potential effect; artillery argued it would be local and it was a gas that dispersed reasonably quickly, which might mean the effect would be contained. Conscious that he was inclined to think the man callous in his view of human life,
he also had to remind himself that he was not responsible for the alternatives.

Reports of what the Italians had done in their Libyan provinces did not provide a happy prospect for Ethiopia: mass deportations, murderous concentration camps in which thousands of rebellious tribesmen and their families had perished, as well as summary executions. When it came to mass killing, the Fascist generals had what Vince would call ‘form’, and there was no reason to suppose they would not employ the same methods here.

Yet there was no way the front-line troops could be kept safe from the effects of mustard gas burning; rarely fatal, it was, however, totally incapacitating on exposed eyes and skin, while it was almost as if, in the
shamma
, the Ethiopian peasant army had come up with a garment providing less protection than even an army uniform, and that was useless.

‘Ask Mr Alverson to come and see me, Captain Jardine. This, whatever the other leaders say, is a story that must be got out to the world and quickly, without embellishment.’

What had not been calculated for was the use of science to improve delivery, and it was the troops pushing back the Italians in Somalia who were the first to suffer from a cloud of mustard gas dropped on them from the air, a much more effective way to deploy the instrument of terror than had previously been known. From advancing with gusto, the troops of the eastern front were first stopped, then thrown into headlong retreat, unable to
face what they said was the terrible rain that burnt and killed.

For weeks the Italians had been preparing a second offensive on the main northern front – Badoglio had been reinforced with more regular troops. It was also obvious by the increased air activity and the relentless bombing of Addis Ababa – as well as the road to the front – to interdict both men and supplies, and it was a fair assumption that having used gas once, they would do so again.

How much the spear- and bow-carrying warriors knew of what was coming Cal Jardine did not know; what he was aware of did not bring peace of mind. There was to be no withdrawal by the imperial armies to the high mountains, but at least they had given up useless assaults and were now waiting to be attacked. What reconnaissance could be undertaken showed the steady build-up of armoured units at the front, and the lines of attack could be in little doubt.

Finally, under pressure from his field commanders, Haile Selassie had ordered his troops pulled back from where the blows would fall, and allowed them to disperse to save lives. Yet it was only half a cake to Cal Jardine, given he also hoped the emperor would allow them a flexible ability to respond in the counter-attacks he was already envisaging.

As they had dispersed, so had Corrie Littleton: she was now in a new field hospital well back from the front, nearer Gondar, while Alverson was toing and froing to there, now he had his Rolls back. Cal Jardine and Vince Castellano stayed with
Ras
Kassa’s forward HQ, now leading a very
tightly controlled group of a dozen young warriors in raiding, striking the Italian lines in different places and gathering intelligence.

They had, of course, to bow to the wishes of the
ras
: the job of their natives was to instil fear into their enemies by slitting the throats of the Italians, men who never left their front lines to raid themselves, while their British leaders sought prisoners who could be brought back for interrogation; to stop them being subsequently tortured and killed they were being passed back to Addis, ostensibly as presents for the emperor.

‘They might still pull it off, Tyler,’ Jardine insisted, when they got together for a meal – on a night of a full moon and a clear starlit sky, raiding was out of the question. ‘Scattered troops make them hard to find and bomb, and he has taken steps to keep secret where they are going to be concentrated.’

‘I’m no soldier, but as soon as Fatso’s boys attack they will have to concentrate, and in the open, yes?’

Jardine nodded. ‘That’s when they will get to see what Badoglio intends.’

‘You know, I don’t like the odds, guv.’ Vince insisted, having made no secret of his view that, even owning a mask, and now with an impermeable cape as well, he did not fancy mustard gas.

‘If he looks like he’s winning he’ll hold off, I think.’ There was no need to add what would come were the Italian assault to be held up.

‘Nightcap before I hit the sack?’ Alverson suggested, proffering yet more whisky. ‘I’m going back up to Gondar
in the morning. I’m running out of film and my slaver has been asked to bring some in.’

‘I’m for that,’ Vince said, nodding to the bottle, ‘it’ll help me get a good night’s sleep.’

‘Don’t kid me, Vince,’ Jardine joked. ‘You love being up all night.’

‘Depends what I’m up, guv.’

There was no proper night’s sleep: the Italian artillery barrage started before dawn and it was ferocious, churning up the ground in front of their positions, sending earth and rocks skywards but killing few men – their enemies were no longer there. Virtually all that had been left out front, to fool the air reconnaissance the Italians relied on, were
shammas
supported by triangular sticks, backed up by a piquet; as a barrage it was mostly wasted.

By the time the sun came up Cal Jardine and Vince had been out observing for an hour, finally able to use field glasses to assess what was coming, though given the rate and density of shell there could be little doubt. They also knew exactly when the enemy were going to move, as the barrage lifted and crept forward.
Ras
Kassa Meghoum had been up as long as them, and they could see the vehicles he had kept back getting ready to pull out.

‘Time to go, guys,’ Alverson said from behind them. ‘Your carriage again awaits.’

The plan was sound: to once more let the Italians advance into a vacuum. By the time the Ethiopians engaged, the enemy would have begun to suffer the common gremlins of war – tanks no longer operable and broken into packets,
troops in distended formation instead of tight brigades – merely because such discipline in an advance was difficult regardless of which nation was undertaking it, and the Italians had already shown they were not the best. Also, the concentration of the artillery when on the move could not be anything like what they were sending over now.

‘You two got a death wish?’

‘He has,’ Vince replied, nodding at Jardine.

‘Not bad gunnery,’ was the reply from Jardine, as they watched the churning of the ground move forward at a steady pace. ‘Mind, they’ve had a long time to get the ranges.’

‘I take it you want to be the last one here, Cal.’

Cars, including the Dodge of
Ras
Kassa, were behind them now; the warriors with whom they had so recently worked and the old man’s bodyguard were going too, and at a fast pace. ‘No. I was just living in the past for a bit.’

‘Present suits me better, old buddy.’

‘Me too, Tyler.’

They left as the creeping barrage inched up to the now abandoned site of the Ethiopian HQ, not looking back; whatever was going to happen in this war was going to be decided in the next few weeks, or maybe even days.

N
ot long after they reached the new HQ, halfway to Gondar, they heard the news and it was uniformly bad. On the main battlefront around Mek’ele, through the use of mustard gas, the Italians had completely unhinged Ethiopian resistance and the eighty-thousand-strong army of
Ras
Mulugeta. To call the act indiscriminate did not even begin to describe the damage inflicted. Discharged from special sprayers in the bomb bays of the Italian bombers, they flew in almost continuous formations that avoided the respite of temporary dispersal.

They had inundated the forces – which had concentrated, seeking to encircle them – inflicting terrible burns and causing a great number of warrior fatalities. Their actions, carried out over an ever-widening area as Mulugeta’s army fell back, also mutilated women and children and completely destroyed the livestock – sheep, goats and cattle, on which the survivors depended – while poisoning
the very waters that irrigated their land and gave them a chance of life.

There was no news blackout on this; indeed, Emperor Haile Selassie sent out his own condemnation communiqué to the nations of the world, but the world, horrified as it might be, was not listening, or at least those that held the power and ability to act against Italy held their tongues. Lesser countries brought forward motions to condemn the use of gas to the floor of the League of Nations Chamber in Geneva, but if they got a resolution that was all it was: words.

Worse followed: a broken army trying to withdraw was at the mercy of a relentless pursuit, forced to abandon the best they had in equipment, and that was not much – a clutch of old tanks and artillery pieces, rifles, machine guns and ammunition – while being harried by every weapon in the Italian armoury. Gas-burnt bodies, unable to move, were mashed to pulp under tank tracks, groups seeking to make a stand were pulverised by field artillery or massed machine gun fire and conventional bombs, while any accumulation of warriors which even showed the ability to hold back the enemy advance was gassed into submission and further retreat.

‘I don’t know whether to tell the truth or lie, Cal.’

Sat at his typewriter, in a tent close to the newly set up casualty station, Tyler Alverson had lost his air of distance to what was happening; he was not a man given to tears, but he was close now and he was angry too, in that frustrating way of someone who would love to have the power of decision, but lacked even the ability to persuade.
He was also in possession of information that had come to him only by accident.

The Ethiopians, while condemning the use of mustard gas, were, quite naturally, seeking to play down both the rout of their forces and the level of their casualties, but the international doctors with the divisions around Mek’ele, retreating ahead of the army they served, had thought it only fair to alert their as yet unburdened colleagues with some idea of what they would face in the event they sustained the same level of defeat: an overwhelming number of casualties, too many to even begin to treat.

‘If these figures are true, then that’s what you should send out,’ Jardine said. ‘It helps make the case.’

‘Six thousand dead, twelve thousand wounded,
Ras
Mulugeta killed, his army a rabble, and that does not even begin to mention the effect on the civilians.’

‘How do they live wiv this back home, guv?’ asked a dejected Vince. ‘I just don’t get it.’

‘What you’ve got to ask yourself, Vince,’ said Corrie Littleton from just outside the tent flap, ‘is how are we going to deal with it when it comes our way?’

‘Which it surely must,’ Jardine agreed.

‘What does Kassa say?’ she asked.

Cal Jardine responded with a wry smile. ‘Right now he’s not saying much to me.’

‘Me neither,’ Alverson said, ‘which is pretty mean, considering.’

‘Considering what, Tyler? He doesn’t owe us anything.’

The journalist looked at his fellow American, now sat
down out of tiredness. ‘Honey, take a look in a mirror and you will see something of what he owes. You should have gone home with your mother.’

That had come as a relief to all: finally convinced she would never get to see the Ark of the Covenant, Ma Littleton had taken the train to Djibouti through Addis Ababa, the idea that her daughter should go with her, brushed aside. Corrie Littleton insisted she was needed and had not stopped working tirelessly at her self-appointed task.

‘Tyler’s right, you should rest,’ Jardine said.

‘That’s all I need, sympathy from Doc Savage, national hero.’

The reply came without rancour. ‘Well, if the war’s changed, you haven’t.’

‘That’s not fair, miss.’

‘I know, Vince,’ she replied in a weary voice. ‘Sorry, Jardine.’

‘Now I’m really at a loss. A bitch I can cope with.’

The slightest hint of a drone, the signal of approaching aircraft, magnified by their position in a deep, high-sided and narrow valley, killed her sarcastic response. Always a signal for danger, it had taken on an even more deadly meaning now. There was no time to find out if it was friend or foe, it was into the uncomfortable masks and the impermeable cloaks, which might not be protection enough, and that had Corrie Littleton running back to her casualty station where hers, despite numerous warnings, had been left.

It was a false alarm, it being a friendly plane flying over
to drop written despatches, the best way to communicate between two armies in the rough mountain country they now occupied: quite apart from the unreliability of the sets, when someone like Haile Selassie Gugsa had gone over to the Italians, radio communication not in code was dangerous. Gas mask off and outside the tent Jardine watched the sudden increase in activity, messages being sent off to the varying commanders; whatever had come had warned of trouble. The man coming towards him only underlined that:
Ras
Kassa wanted to see him.

For all their lack of intelligence gathering, a lot of information on what Badoglio was up to came into the various Ethiopian headquarters, merely through the fact that, behind his lines lay a mass of fellow countrymen, while the front, regardless of Italian efforts, was too extended and porous to close. So they knew of the roads being built, of the increasing numbers of their enemies related to the falling numbers of defenders, of the stockpiles of artillery shells and the certainty of an upcoming Italian offensive. On the situation maps it was all there to be studied.

There were three armies left in the field after the destruction of the one facing Mek’ele: forty thousand men under
Ras
Kassa, another, some thirty thousand strong, under
Ras
Seyoum, and the same on the eastern flank. The first two were spread out through the kind of terrain in which Geoffrey Amherst had advised that they fight:
fast-flowing
rivers, deep ravines and thick forest, spreading west from the road to Gondar.

‘I have been given permission from the emperor to withdraw, Captain Jardine.’

‘If it were not for the gas, sir, I would advise against that, but—’

The older man smiled even as he interrupted. ‘That, I think, is the first time you have said it is even possible to make a stand.’

‘Maybe you can,’ Jardine replied, wanting to be positive. ‘The terrain is perfect for defence, and provided you don’t put large concentrations of men in the open, the gas ceases to be such a potent weapon. The Italians can’t sit still, Rome won’t let them, and so they have only the option of attack. In such country tanks will be near to useless, the field artillery difficult to move in the mountains, and with the deep forest cover their air force won’t know where you are. Not even they have enough bombs to drop them everywhere.’

‘And you would advise
Ras
Seyoum to do the same?’

‘Definitely.’

‘I have just received a despatch telling me that he intends to come out of the mountains and launch an attack northwards to throw back the Italians on Aksum.’

Cal Jardine tried not to shake his head, but he could not resist it. ‘Can you override him?’

‘Only the King of Kings can do that and he will not interfere.’

‘Yet you don’t agree with him –
Ras
Seyoum, I mean.’

‘I have yet to decide.’

‘You should withdraw immediately, sir. If
Ras
Seyoum is defeated, you will be attacked at once with the full enemy
strength. With your left flank exposed not even the terrain can save you. Your fellow commander is not being foolish, he’s being stupid.’

‘But do you not recall telling me that, at Adowa, King Menelik was foolish, or was it stupid?’ Jardine knew what was coming. ‘But what you do not acknowledge is that the Italians did not expect him to attack for the very reasons he was advised against it, yet in doing that he won a surprise victory. Perhaps
Ras
Seyoum will achieve something similar.’

Their eyes locked, with
Ras
Kassa determined to look as if he meant what he said; the glacial stare more than hinted to Cal Jardine he was trying to convince himself of something he knew to be fundamentally untrue.

‘So you will wait?’

‘I must, and if he shows any sign of beating the Italian devils I will support him.’

‘I take it, by the bustle, the orders for that have already gone out.’

‘They have.’

Making his way back to the tent, Jardine was thinking about national myths and the dangers they presented. The Ethiopians had lived off the legend of Adowa for forty years, a whole generation had grown up convinced they were unbeatable, and they were close to right if you took the poison gas out of the mix, while the Italians, or at least the Fascists, prated on about being the new Roman Empire. They were both trapped in national self-deception; men had already died for it and more would follow. He spoke as he entered the tent, and abruptly.

‘Tyler, if anyone asks you for the use of your car, say no.’

Surprised as he was, he did not ask the obvious question, given that if the car was required, it would be for a humanitarian need again. ‘How, brother?’

‘Take out the distributor cap, tell them it’s not working; and before you say they will not believe you, ask yourself how many people there are around here who know what a distributor is.’

‘What has rattled your cage, tiger?’

‘Stupid generals!’

‘The car?’

‘Might be our only way out.’

What came to be called the Second Battle of Tembien – the title was, as is common, coined by the victors – was nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.
Ras
Seyoum debouched with his entire force onto the plains, an army with more bows and arrows than rifles, no artillery or armour and hardly any machine guns, relying on sheer weight of numbers and the brio of his assault to overwhelm the enemy. The Italians did not need poison gas to blunt that: they had everything they required in conventional arms.

The white-cloaked warriors ran into a hail of shellfire – fighters, bombers and artillery that cut their numbers in half within one hour. Stunned and static, surrounded by the dead and dying, their spirit waned and the retreat began. But now the terrain at their rear became as much of an enemy as the Italians, and any weapons they had possessed which might have given their enemies pause
were on the battlefield with the corpses of their fellows.

The Italians streamed into the ravines and valleys in hot pursuit, because the obstacles that would have hampered them in the first instance now became bottlenecks for the Ethiopians. Seeking to get to and cross the Tekezé fords along a single road that canalised the flight, those trying to flee lost all cohesion. Artillery set alight the forested hillsides, for the gunners knew where to aim, and every raging river spewing white water from the surrounding mountains, which would once have taxed the invaders, was now a hazard the defeated could not cross. They became a milling, easy target, doubly so when unable to cross the fords, and forming a heaving, easily spotted mass, they were bombed into a bloody pulp.

Instead of advancing to aid
Ras
Seyoum, the army of
Ras
Kassa was forced into a hurried retreat, seeking and failing to avoid annihilation. Right behind the Dodge of
Ras
Kassa came Alverson’s Rolls-Royce, now carrying many of the personal followers of the commander, those that could hanging onto the running boards, avoiding the strafing fighters only by sheer luck, manoeuvring round bomb craters, staying ahead of gas attacks only because of those wheels. Behind them the army of
Ras
Kassa fell apart, dead, collapsed with massive burns to their body, or just dispersed to become useless.

Thousands survived the carnage that ensued, but no one knew how many: they were left only with the claims of the enemy. Those who got away did not join any other army, they went home, their fortitude broken like a dried reed. They had lived the myth and it had either killed them
or their spirit. By the time they reached the headquarters of the reserve army, the only men
Ras
Kassa still commanded were his personal bodyguards.

Haile Selassie now took command, gathering all his forces for a final battle, forty years to the day since his predecessor won at Adowa, and he brought with him, to parade before the rest of his warriors, the six battalions of the Imperial Guard, men in smart green uniforms, proper boots, steel helmets, and each with a modern rifle that Cal Jardine suspected were those he had brought into the country, weapons that should have been at the front long ago.

So should the rest of what he had preserved: there was a mobile mortar section, truck-towed 75 mm field guns, twenty in number, the fast-firing, highly mobile French weapon that had been so effective in the Great War as well as an anti-aircraft unit with up-to-date Oerlikons to make sure the King of Kings was protected from the air.

‘Where the hell was this lot when we needed them, Vince?’

The bitterness of tone and the fact that it was loudly proclaimed – it had to be, given the cheering – made Tyler Alverson turn to look at Cal Jardine. His eyes were fixed on the tiny, bearded figure of the Emperor of Ethiopia, who, even in ceremonial garb, on a platform that raised him well above the ground, could not even begin to look impressive. Vince said he looked like a doorstop not a figurehead.