Cry Wolf Part 27

MAJESTY ORDERS ME TO CONVEY HIS FELICITATIONS ON YOUR ELEVATION TO.

THE.

RANK OF MARSHAL OF THE ARMY AND TO THANK YOU FOR THE IMPECCABLE.

EXECUTION OF YOUR DUTY IN RECAPTURING ADO WA STOP WITH THE ATTAINMENT.

OF.

THIS OBJECTIVE I CONSIDER THAT YOUR MISSION IN EASTERN AFRICA HAS.

BEEN.

COMPLETED STOP YOU HAVE EARNED THE GRAt.i.tUDE OF THE NATION BY YOUR.

OBVIOUS MERITS AS A SOLDIER AND YOUR STEADFAST DISCHARGE OF YOUR DUTY.

AS A COMMANDER STOP YOU ARE REQUESTED TO HAND OVER YOUR COMMAND TO.

GENERAL PIE TRO BADOGLIO ON HIS IMMINENT ARRIVAL IN AFRICA..

Marshal De Bono accepted both his promotion and his recall with such good grace that it could have been mistaken, by an uninformed observer, for profound relief. His departure for Rome was completed with such despatch as to avoid by a hair's breadth the semblance of indecorous haste.

General Pietro Badoglio was a fighting soldier. He had staffed the headquarters before Adowa, although he had played no part in that debacle, and he was a veteran of Caporetto and Vittorio Veneto. He believed that the purpose of war was to crush the enemy as swiftly and as ruthlessly as was possible, with the use of any weapon at his disposal.

He came ash.o.r.e at Ma.s.sawa with a furious impatience, angry with everything he found, and impatient of the policies and concepts of his predecessor, although in truth seldom had an incoming commander been handed such an enviable strategic situation.

He inherited a huge, well-equipped army with a buoyant morale, in a commanding tactical position and backed by a magnificent network of communications and a logistics inventory that was alpine in proportions.

The small but magnificently equipped airforce of the expedition was flying unopposed over the Ambo mountains, observing all troop movements and pouncing immediately on any Ethiopian concentrations.

During one of the first dinners at the new headquarters, Lieutenant Vittorio Mussolini, the younger of the Duce's two sons, one of the dashing Regia Aeronautica aces, regaled his new commander with accounts of his sorties over the enemy highlands and Badoglio, who had not had close aerial support in any of his previous campaigns, was delighted with this new and deadly weapon. He listened transfixed to the young flier's descriptions of the effect of aerial bombardment particularly an account of an attack on a group of three hundred or more enemy hors.e.m.e.n led by a tall, dark-robed figure. The young Mussolini told him, "I released a single hundred-kilo bomb from an alt.i.tude of less than a hundred metres, and it fell precisely in the centre of the galloping hors.e.m.e.n. They opened like the petals of a flowering rose, and the dark-robed leader was thrown so high by the blast that he seemed to almost touch my wing-tip as I pa.s.sed. It was a spectacle of great beauty and magnificence." Badoglio was happy that his new command included young men with such fire in their veins, and he leaned forward in his seat at the head of the table to peer down over the glittering silver and sparkling leaded crystal at the flier in his handsome blue uniform. The cla.s.sical features and dark curly head of hair were the artist's conception of young Mars. Then he turned to the airforce Colonel who sat beside him.

"Colonel, what is the opinion of your young men in the Regia Aeronautica? I have heard much argument for and against but I would be interested to have your opinion.

Should we use the nitrogen mustard?"

"I think I speak for all my young men." The Colonel sipped his wine and glanced for confirmation at the young ace who was not yet twenty years of age. "I think the answer must be yes, we must use every weapon available to us." Badoglio nodded. The thinking agreed with his own, and the next morning he ordered the canisters of mustard gas shipped from the warehouses of Ma.s.sawa, where De Bono had been content to let them lie, and despatched them to every airfield where flights of the Regia Aeronautica were based. Thousands upon thousands of the wild tribesmen of Ethiopia would come to know the corrosive dew when later they endured bombardment by artillery and aerial attack with a stoicism greater than most European troops were able to muster yet they could never come to terms with this terrible substance that turned the open pastures of their mountain fastness to fields of terror. Barefoot, as most of them were, they were pathetically vulnerable to the silent insidious weapon that flayed the skin from their bodies, and then stripped the living flesh from the bone.

This single decision was one of many made that day by the new commander, and signalled the change from De Bono's humbling, but not unkindly civilizing invasion, to the new concept of total war war with only one objective.

MUSSOlini had wanted a hawk, and he had chosen well.

The hawk stood in the centre of the lofty second-storey headquarters office at Asmara, He was too consumed with furious impatience to sit at the wide desk, and when he paced the tiled floor, his heels cracked on the ceramic like drum beats. The elasticity of his stride was that of a man far younger than sixty-five.

He carried his head low on boxer's shoulders, thrusting his chin forward a heavy chin below a big shapeless round nose, a short-cropped grey mustache and a wide hard mouth.

His eyes were deep sunken into dark cavities, like those of a corpse, but their glitter was alive and aware as he worked swiftly through the lists of his divisional and regimental commanders, a.s.sessing each by one criterion only, "Is he a fighting man?" Too often the answer was "no,", or at the least uncertain, so it was with a fierce pleasure that he recognized one who was without question a hard-fighting man on whom he could rely.

"Yes," he nodded vehemently. "He is the only field commander who has displayed any initiative, who has made any attempt to come to grips with the enemy." He paused to lift his reading gla.s.ses to his eyes and glance again at the reports he held in his other hand. "He has fought one decisive action, inflicting almost thirty thousand casualties without loss himself. That in itself is an achievement that seems to have gone without suitable recognition. The man should have had a decoration, the order of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus at the least. Good men must be singled out and rewarded. Look at this this is typical!

When he was aware that the enemy had armoured resources, he was soldier enough to lure that armour into a baited trap, to lead it skilfully and with cool courage on to his entrenched artillery. It was a bold and resourceful stroke for an infantry commander to make and it deserved to succeed. If only his artillery commander had been a man of equally steely nerves, he would have succeeded in luring the entire enemy armoured column to its total destruction. It was no fault of his that the artillery lost their nerve and opened fire prematurely." The General paused to focus his reading gla.s.ses on the large glossy photographic print which depicted Colonel Count Aldo Belli standing like a successful big game hunter on the carca.s.s of the Hump. The shattered hull was pierced by shot and in the background lay half a dozen corpses in tattered shammas. These had been collected from the battlefield and tastefully arranged by Gino to give the photograph authenticity. Against his better judgement and his strong instincts of survival, Count Aldo Belli had returned to make these photographic records only after Major Castelani had a.s.sured him that the enemy had deserted the field. The Count had not wasted too much time about it, but had his photographs taken, urging Gino to haste, and when it had been done he had returned swiftly to his fortified position above the Wells of Chaldi and had not moved from there since. However, the photographs were an impressive addendum to his official report of the action.

Now Badoglic, growled like an angry old lion. "Despite the incompetence of his junior officers, and there my heart aches for him, this man has wiped out half the enemy armour as well as half the opposing army." He hit the report fiercely with his reading gla.s.ses.

"The man's a fire eater no question about it. I know one when I see one. A fire-eater. This kind of example must be encouraged good work must be rewarded. Send for him. Radio him to come in to headquarters immediately." As far as Count Aldo Belli was concerned, the campaign had come upon a not unpleasant hiatus.

The camp at the Wells of Chaldi had been transformed by his engineers from an outpost of h.e.l.l into a rather pleasant refuge, with functional amenities, such as ice making machines and a water-borne sewerage system. The de fences were now of sufficient strength to give him a feeling of security. The engineering as always was of the highest quality with extensive covered earthworks, and Castelani had laid out carefully over-lapping fields of fire, and barbed-wire de fences in depth.

The hunting in the area was excellent by any standards, with game drawn to the water in the Wells from miles around. The sand-grouse in the evenings filled the heavens with the whistle of their wings, and wheeled in great dark flocks across the setting sun, affording magnificent sport.

The bag was measured in grain bags of dead birds.

In the midst of this pleasantly relaxed atmosphere, the new commanding officer's summons exploded like a 100 kilo aerial bomb.

General Badoglio's reputation had preceded him. He was a notorious martinet, a man who could not be sidetracked from single-minded purpose by excuse or fabrication. He was insensitive to political influence or power considerations so much so that it was rumoured that he would have crushed the very Fascist movement itself with force if the issue had been put into his hands back in 1922. He had an almost psychic power to detect subterfuge, and to place a finger squarely on malingerers or lack-guts.

They said his justice was swift and merciless.

The shock to the Count's system was considerable. He had been singled out from thousands of brother officers to face this ogre's wrath for he could not convince himself that the small deviations from reality, the small artistic licences contained in his long, ill.u.s.trated reports to De Bono had not been instantly discovered. He felt like a guilty schoolboy summoned to dire retribution behind the closed doors of the headmaster's study. The shock hit him squarely in the bowels, always his weak spot, bringing on a fresh onslaught of the malady first caused by the waters of Chaldi Wells, from which he had believed himself completely cured.

It was twelve hours before he could summon the strength to be helped by his concerned underlings into the RollsRoyce and to lie wan and palely resigned upon the soft leather seat.

"Drive on, Giuseppe," he murmured, like an aristocrat giving the order to the driver of the tumbril.

On the long hot dusty drive into Asmara, the Count lay without interest in his surroundings, without even attempting to marshal his defence against the charges he knew he must soon face. He was resigned, abject his only solace was the considerable damage he would do this upstart, ill bred peasant, once he returned to Rome, as he was certain he was about to. He knew that he could ruin the man politically and it gave him a jot of sour pleasure.

Giuseppe, the driver, knowing his man as he did, made the first stop outside the casino in Asmara's main street.

Here, at least, Count Aldo Belli was treated as a hero, and he perked up visibly as the young hostesses rushed out on to the sidewalk to welcome him.

Some hours later, freshly shaven, his uniform sponged and pressed, his hair pomaded, and buoyed UP on a fragrant cloud of expensive eau de cologne, the Count was ready to face his tormentor. He kissed the girls, tossed back a last gla.s.s of cognac, laughed that gay reckless laugh, snapped his fingers once to show what he thought of the peasant who now ran this army, clenched his b.u.t.tocks tightly together to control his fear and marched out of the casino into the sunlight and across the street into the military headquarters.

His appointment to meet General Badoglio was for four o'clock and the town hall clock struck the hour as he marched resolutely down the long gloomy corridor, following a young aide-de-camp. They reached the end of the corridor and the aide-de-camp threw open the big double mahogany doors and stood aside for the Count to enter.

His knees felt like boiled macaroni, his stomach gurgled and seethed, the palms of his hands were hot and moist, and tears were not far behind his quivering eyelids as he stepped forward into the huge room with its lofty moulded ceiling.

He saw that it was filled with officers from both the army and the airforce. His disgrace was to be made public, then, and he quailed.

Seeming to shrivel, his shoulders slumping, his chest caving and the big handsome head drooping, the Count stood in the doorway. He could not bear to look at them, and miserably he studied his gleaming toe caps Suddenly, he was a.s.sailed by a strange, a completely alien sound and he looked up startled, ready to defend himself against physical attack. The roomful of officers were applauding, beaming and grinning, slapping palm to palm and the Count gaped at them, then glanced quickly over his shoulder to be certain there was no one standing behind him, and that this completely unexpected welcome was being directed at him.

When he looked back he found a stocky, broad, shouldered figure in the uniform of a general advancing upon him. His face was hard and unforgiving, with a fierce grey mustache over the grim trap of his mouth and glittering eyes in deep dark sockets.

If the Count had been in command of his legs and his voice, he might have run screaming from the room, but before he could move the General seized him in a grip of iron, and the mustache raking his cheeks was as rank and rough as the foliage of the trees of the Danakil desert.

"Colonel, I am always honoured to embrace a brave man," growled the General, hugging him close, his breath smelling pleasantly of garlic and sesame seed, an aroma that blended in an interesting fashion with the fragrant clouds of the Count's perfume. The Count's legs could no longer stand the strain, they almost collapsed under him. He had to grab wildly at the General to prevent himself falling. This threw both of them off balance, and they reeled across the ceramic floor, locked in each other's arms, in a kind of elephantine waltz, while the General struggled to free himself.

He succeeded at last, and backed away warily from the Count, straightening his medals and rea.s.sembling his dignity while one of his officers began to read out a citation from a scroll of parchment and the applause faded into an attentive silence.

The citation was long and wordy, and it gave the Count time to pull his scattered wits together. The first half of the citation was lost to him in his dreamlike state of shock, but then suddenly the words began to reach him. His chin came up as he recognized some of his own composition, little verbal gems from his combat reports "Counting only duty dear, scorning all but honour" that was his own stuff, by the Virgin and Peter.

He listened now, with all his attention, and they were talking about him. They were talking of Aldo Belli. His caved chest filled out, the high colour flooded back into his cheeks, the turmoil of his rebellious bowels was stilled, and fire flashed in his eye once more.

By G.o.d, the General had realized that every phrase, every word, every comma and exclamation. mark of his report was the literal truth and the aide-de-camp was handing the General a leather-covered jewel box, and the General was advancing on him again albeit with a certain caution and then he was looping the watered silk ribbon over his head so that the big enamelled, white cross with its centre star of emerald green and sparkling diamantine, dangled down the front of the Count's tunic. The order of Irish St. Maurice and St. Lazarus (military division) of the third cla.s.s.

Keeping well out of his clutches, the General pecked each of the Count's flushed cheeks and then took a hasty step backwards to join in the applause while the Count stood there puffed with pride, feeling that his heart might burst.

You will have that support now," the General a.s.sured him, scowling heavily to hear how his predecessor had grudged the Count sufficient force to win his objectives. "I pledge it to you." They were seated now, just the three of them General Badoglio, his political agent and the Count in the smaller private study adjoining the large formal office. Night had fallen outside the shuttered windows and the single lamp was hooded to throw light down on the map spread on the table top, and leave the faces of the three men in shadow.

Cognac glowed in the leaded crystal gla.s.ses and the big ship's decanter on its silver tray, and the blue smoke from the cigars spiralled up slow and heavy as treacle in the lamplight.

"will need armour," said the Count without hesitation.

The thought of thick steel plate had always attracted him strongly.

"will give you a squadron of the light CV.3s," said the General, and made a note on the pad at his elbow.

"And I will need air support."

"Can your engineers build a landing-strip for you at the Wells?" The General touched the map to ill.u.s.trate the question.

"The land is flat and open. It will present no difficulty," said the Count eagerly. Planes and tanks and guns, he was being given them all. He was a real commander at last.

"Radio to me when the strip is ready for use. I will send in a flight of Cap.r.o.nis. In the meantime, I will have the transport section convoy in the fuel and armaments I shall consult the staff at airforce, but I think the 100-kilo bombs will be most effective. High explosive, and fragmentation."

"Yes, yes," agreed the Count eagerly.

"And nitrogen mustard will you have use for the gas?"

"Yes, oh yes, indeed, said the Count. It was not in his nature to refuse bounty, he would take anything he was offered.

"Good." The General made another note, laid aside his pencil, and then looked up at the Count. He glowered so ferociously that the Count was startled and he felt the first nervous stir in his belly again. He found the General terrifying, like living on the slopes of a temperamental Vesuvius.

"The iron fist, Belli," he said, and the Count realized with relief that the scowl was directed not at him, but at the enemy.

Immediately the Count a.s.sumed an expression every bit as bellicose and menacing. He curled his lip and he spoke, just below a snarl.

"Put the blade at the enemy's throat, and drive it home."

"Without mercy, said the General.

"To the death," agreed the Count. He was on his home ground now, and only just hitting his stride; a hundred bloodthirsty slogans sprang to mind but, recognizing his master, the General changed the s...o...b..lling conversation adroitly.

"You are wondering why I have put such importance on your objectives. You are wondering why I have given you such powerful forces, and why I have set such store on you forcing the pa.s.sage of the Sardi Gorge and the road to the highlands." The Count was wondering no such thing, right now he was busy coming a phrase about wading through blood, and he accepted the change of theme reluctantly, and arranged his features in a politely enquiring frame.

The General waved his cigar expansively at the political agent who sat opposite him.

"Signor Antolino." He made the gesture and the agent sat forward obediently so that the lamplight caught his face.

"Gentlemen." He cleared his throat, and looked from one to the other with mild brown eyes behind steel-framed spectacles. He was a thin, almost skeletal figure, in a rumpled white linen suit. The wings of his shirt collar were off-centre of his prominent Adam's apple and the knot of the knitted silk tie had slid down and hung at the level of the first b.u.t.ton. His head was almost bald, but he had grown the remaining hairs long and greased them down over the shiny freckled plover-egg scalp.

His mustache was waxed into points, but stained yellow with tobacco, and he was of indefinite age over forty and under sixty with the dark malarial yellow tan of a man who has lived all his life in the tropics.

"For some time we have been concerned to design an appropriate form of government for the captured ah the liberated territories of Ethiopia."

"Come to the point," said the General abruptly.

"It has been decided to replace the present Emperor, Baile Sela.s.sie, with a man sympathetic to the Italian Empire, and acceptable to the people-"

"Come on, man," Badoglic, cut in again. Verbal backing and filling were repugnant to him. He was a man of action rather than words.

"Arrangements have been completed after lengthy negotiation, and I might add the promise of several millions of lire, that at the politically opportune moment a powerful chieftain will declare for us, bringing all his warriors and his influence across to us. This man will in due course be declared Emperor of Ethiopia and will administer the territory under Italy."

"Yes, yes. I understand, "said the Count.

"The man governs part of the area which is the direct objective of your column. As soon as you have seized the Sardi Gorge and entered the town of Sardi itself, this Chief will join you with his men and, with appropriate international publicity, be declared King of Ethiopia."

"The man's name?" asked the Count, but the agent would not be hurried.

"It will be your duty to meet with this Chief, and to synchronize your efforts. You will also make the promised payment in gold coin."

"Yes."

"The man is an hereditary Ras by rank. He is presently commanding part of the army that opposes you at Sardi.

However, that will change-" said the agent, and produced a thick envelope from the briefcase beside his chair. It was sealed with the wax tablet and the embossed eagles of the Department of Colonial Affairs. "Here are your written orders. You will sign for them, please." He inspected the Count's signature suspiciously, then, at last satisfied, went on in the same dry disinterested voice.

"One other matter. We have identified one of the white mercenaries fighting with the Ethiopians those mentioned by you as being reported by the three of your men captured by the enemy and subsequently released." The agent paused and drew on his almost dead cigar, puffing up the tip to a bright healthy glow.

"The woman is a notorious agent provocateur, a Bolshevik with radical and revolutionary sympathies. She poses as a journalist, employed by an American newspaper whose sentiments have always been strongly anti-Empire. Already some of this woman's biased inflammatory, writings have reached the outside world. They have been a severe embarra.s.sment to us at the Department-" He drew again on the cigar, and spoke again through the billowing cloud of smoke.

"If she is taken, and I hope that you will place priority on her capture, she is to be handed over immediately to the new Ethiopian Emperor-designate, you understand? You are not to be involved, but you will not interfere with the Ras's execution of the woman."

"I see." The Count was becoming bored. This political nitpicking was not the type of thing which would hold his attention. He wanted to show the young lady hostesses at the Casino the great cross which now hung around his neck and thumped on his chest each time he moved.

"As for the white man, the Englishman, the one responsible for the brutal shooting of an Italian prisoner of war in front of witnesses, he has been declared a murderer and a Political terrorist. When you capture him, he is to be shot out of hand. That order goes for all other foreigners serving under arms with the enemy troops. This type of thing must be put down sternly."

"You can rely on me," said the Count. "There will be no quarter for the terrorists."

General Pietro Badoglic, moved forward to Ambo Aradam, there were some minor brushes. while the Italian General deployed his men for the major stroke. At Abi Addi and Tembien he received advance warning of the fighting qualities of his enemy, barefoot and armed with spear and muzzle-loading gun. As he wrote himself, "They have fought with courage and determination.

Against our attacks, methodically carried out and covered by heavy machine-gun fire and artillery barrage, their troops have stood firm, and then engaged in furious hand-to-hand fighting; or they have moved boldly to counter-attack, regardless of the avalanche of fire that had immediately fallen upon them. Against the organized fire of our defending troops, their soldiers many of them armed only with Cold steel attacked again and again, pushing right up to our wire entanglements and trying to beat them down with their great swords."

Brave men, perhaps, but they were brushed aside by the huge Italian war machine. Then at last Badoglio could come at Ras Muguletu, the war minister of Ethiopia, with his entire army waiting like an old lion in the caves and precipitous heights of the natural mountain fortress of Ambo Aradam.

He loosed his full might against the old chieftain, the big three-engined Cap.r.o.nis roared in, wave after wave, to drop four hundred tons of bombs upon the mountain in five days of continuous raids, while his artillery hurled fifty thousand heavy sh.e.l.ls, arcing them up from the valley into the ravines and deep gorges until the outline of the mountain was shrouded in the red mist of dust and cordite fumes.

Up to now, the time of waiting had pa.s.sed pleasantly enough for Count Aldo Belli at the Wells of Chaldi. The addition to his forces had altered his entire way of life.