gorge another week. Tell him we need ammunition, guns,
medicine, blankets, food anything he can spare. Ask him to send a
train down to Sardi with supplies, and to take out the wounded." He
paused, and thought for a moment. "That's it, I think.
Do that and then come back, with all the food you can carry. I
think we left most of our supplies down there" he glanced down into the
misty depths of the gorge "and these fellows won't fight on an empty
stomach." Jake reversed the car and pulled back on to the track.
"Oh, and Jake, try and find a few cheroots. I lost my entire stock
down there. Can't fight without a whiff or two." He grinned and
waved. "Keep it warm, old son," he called, and turned away to begin
stopping the trudging column of refugees, pushing them off the track
towards the prepared trenches that had been dug into the rocky sides of
the gorge, overlooking the double sweep of the track below them.
"Come along, chaps," Gareth shouted cheerfully. "Who's for a touch of
old glory!" ROM GENERAL BADOGLIO, COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE
AFRICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE BEFORE AMBA ARA DAM TO COLONEL COUNT ALDO
BELLI, OFFICER COMMANDING THE DANAKIL COLUMN AT THE WELLS OF CHALDI.
THE MOMENT FOR WHICH WE HAVE PLANNED IS
NOW AT HAND STOP I CONFRONT THE MAIN BODY OF THE ENEMY, AND HAVE
HAD THEM UNDER CONTINUOUS BOMBARDMENT FOR FIVE DAYS. AT DAWN
TOMORROW
I SHALL ATTACK IN FORCE AND DRIVE THEM FROM THE HIGH GROUND BACK
ALONG
THE DE SSI ROAD. DO YOU NOW ADVANCE WITH ALL DESPATCH TO TAKE UP A
POSITION ASTRIDE THE DESSIE ROAD AND STEM THE TIDE OF THE ENEMY's
RETREAT, SO THAT WE MAY TAKE THEM ON BOTH TINES OF THE PITCHFORK.
"forty thousand men lay upon Ambo Aradam, cowering in their trenches
and caves. They were the heart and spine of the Ethiopian armies, and
the man who led them, Ras Muguletu, was the ablest and most experienced
of all the warlords. But he was powerless and uncertain in the face of
such strength and fury as now broke around him. He had not imagined it
could be so, and he lay with his men, quiescent and stoic. There was
no enemy to confront, nothing to strike out at, for the huge Caproni
bombers droned high overhead and the great guns that fired the shells
were miles below in the valley.
All they could do was pull their dusty shammas over their heads and
endure the bone-jarring, bowel-shaking detonations and breathe the
filthy fume-laden air.
Day after day the storm of explosive roared around them until they were
dazed and stupefied, deafened and uncaring, enduring, only enduring not
thinking, not feeling, not caring.
On the sixth night the drone of the big three-engined bombers passed
overhead, and Ras Muguletu's men, peering up fearfully, saw the
sinister shapes pass overhead, dark against the silver pricking of the
stars.
They waited for the bombs to tumble down upon them once more, but the
bombers circled above the flat-topped mountain for many minutes and
there were no bombs. Then the bombers turned away and the drone of the
engines died into the lightening dawn sky.
Only then did the soft insidious dew that they had sown come sifting
down out of the still night sky. Gently as the fall of snowflakes, it
settled upon the upturned brown faces, into the fearfully staring eyes,
on to the bare hands that held the ancient firearms at the ready.
It burned into the exposed skin, blistering and eating into the living
flesh like some terrible canker; it burned the eyes in their sockets,
turning them into cherry-red, glistening orbs from which the yellow
mucus poured thickly. The pain it inflicted combined both the seating
of concentrated acid and the fierce heat of live coals.
In the dawn, while thousands of Ras Muguletu's men whimpered and cried
out in their consuming agony, and their comrades, bemused and
bewildered, tried unavailingly to render aid, in that dreadful
moment,
the first wave of Italian infantry came up over the lip of the
mountain, and they were into the Ethiopian trenches before the
defenders realized what had happened. The Italian bayonets blurred
redly in the first rays of the morning sun.
The cloud lay upon the highlands, blotting out the peaks, and the rain
fell in a constant deluge. It had rained without ceasing for the two
days and three nights since the disaster of Aruba Aradarn. The rain
had saved them, it had saved the thirty thousand survivors of the
battle from being overtaken by the same fate as had befallen the ten
thousand casualties they had left on the mountain.
High above the cloud, the Italian bombers circled hungrily; Lij
Mikhael could hear them clearly, although the thick blanket of cloud
muted the sound of the powerful triple engines. They waited for a
break in the cloud, to come swooping down upon the retreat. What a
target they would enjoy if that happened! The Dessie road was choked
for a dozen miles with the slow unwieldy column of the retreat, the
ragged files of trudging figures, bowed in the rain, their heads
covered with their shammas, their bare feet sliding and slipping in the
mud. Hungry, cold and dispirited, they toiled onwards, carrying
weapons that grew heavier with every painful step still they kept on.
The rain had hampered the Italian pursuit. Their big troop-carriers
were bogged down helplessly in the treacherous mud, and each engorged
mountain stream, each ravine raged with the muddy brown rain waters.
They had to be bridged by the Italian engineers before the transports
could be manhandled across, and the pursuit continued.
The Italian General Badoglio had been denied a crushing victory and
thirty thousand Ethiopian troops had escaped him at Aradam.
It was Lij Mikhael's special charge, placed upon him -personally by the
King of Kings, Baile Selassie, to bring out those thirty thousand men.
To extricate them from Badogho's talons, and regroup them with the
southern army under the Emperor's personal command upon the shores of
Lake Tona. Another thirty-six hours and the task would be
accomplished.
He sat on the rear seat of the mud-spattered Ford sedan, huddled into
the thick coarse folds of his greatcoat, and although it was worn and
lulling in the sedan interior, and although he was exhausted to the
point at which his hands and feet felt completely numb and his eyes as
though they were filled with sand, yet no thought of sleep entered his
mind. There was too much to plan, too many eventualities to meet, too
many details to ponder and he was afraid. A terrible black fear
pervaded his whole being.
The ease with which the Italian victory had been won at Araoam filled
him with fear for the future. It seemed as though nothing could stand
against the force of Italian arms against the big guns, and the bombs
and the nitrogen Mustard. He feared that another terrible defeat
awaited them on the shores of Lake Tona.
He feared also for the safety of the thirty thousand in his charge. He
knew that the Danakil column of the
Italian expeditionary force had
fought its way into the Sardi Gorge and must by now have almost reached
the town of Sardi itself. He knew that Ras Golam's small force had
been heavily defeated on the plains and had suffered doleful losses in
the subsequent defence of the gorge. He feared that they might be
swept aside at any moment now and that the Italian column would come
roaring like a lion across his rear cutting off his retreat to Dessie.
He must have time, a little more time, a mere thirty-six hours more.
Then again, he feared the Gallas. At the beginning of the Italian
offensive they had taken no part in the fighting but had merely
disappeared into the mountains, betraying completely the trust that
the
Harari leaders had placed in them. Now, however, that the Italians had
won their first resounding victories, the Gallas had become active,
gathering like vultures for the scraps that the lions left. His own
retreat from Aradam had been harassed by his erstwhile allies. They
hung on his flanks, hiding in the scrub Laid scree slopes along the
Dessie road, awaiting each opportunity to fall upon a weak unprotected
spot in the unwieldy slow-moving column. It was classical shifta
tactics, the age old art of ambush, of hit and run, a few throats slit
and a dozen rifles stolen but it slowed the retreat slowed it
drastically while close behind them followed the Italian horde, and
across their rear lay the mouth of the Sardi Gorge.
Lij Mikhael roused himself and leaned forward in the seat to peer ahead
through the windscreen. The wipers flogged sullenly from side to side,
keeping two fans of clean glass in the mud-splattered screen, and
Lij Mikhael made out the railway crossing ahead of them where it
bisected the muddy rutted road.
He grunted with so tis faction and the driver pushed the Ford through
the slowly moving mass of miserable humanity which clogged the road. It
opened only reluctantly as the sedan butted its way through with the
horn blaring angrily, and closed again behind it as it passed.
They reached the railway level crossing and Lij Mikhael ordered the
driver to pull off the road beside a group of his officers. He slipped
out bareheaded and immediately the rain de wed on his bushy dark hair.
The group of officers surrounded him, each eager to tell his own story,
to recite the list of his own requirements, his own misgivings each
with news of fresh disaster, new threats to their very existence.
They had no comfort for him, and Lij Mikhael listened with a great
weight growing in his chest.
At last he gestured for silence. "Is the telephone line to Sardi still
open? "he asked.
"The Gallas have not yet cut it. It does not follow the railway line
but crosses the spur of Ambo Sacal. They must have overlooked it."
"Have me connected with the Sardi station I must speak to somebody
there. I must know exactly what is happening in the gorge."
He left the group of officers beside the railway tracks and walked a
short way along the Sardi spur.
Down there, a few short miles away, the close members of his family his
father, his brothers, his daughter were risking their lives to buy him
the time he needed. He wondered what price they had already paid, and
suddenly, a mental picture of his daughter sprang into his mind Sara,
young and lithe and laughing. Firmly he thrust the thought aside and
he turned to look back at the endless file of bedraggled figures that
shuffled along the Dessie road. They were in no condition to defend
themselves, they were helpless as cattle "Until they could be
regrouped, fed and re-armed in spirit.
No, if the Italians came now it would be the end.
"Excellency, the line to Sardi is open. Will you speak? Lij
Mikhael turned back and went to where a field telephone had been hooked
into the Sardi-Dessie telephone line. The copper wires dangled down
from the telegraph poles overhead, and Lij Mikhael took the handset
that the officer handed him and spoke quietly into the mouthpiece.
Beside the station master's office in the railway yards of Sardi town
stood the long cavernous warehouse used for the storage of grain and
other goods. The roof and walls were clad with corrugated galvanized
iron which had been daubed a dull rusty red with oxide paint.
The floor was of raw concrete, and tire cold mountain wind whistled in
through the joints in the corrugated sheets.
At a hundred places, the roof leaked where the galvanizing had rusted
away, and the rain dripped steadily forming icy puddles on the bare
concrete floor.
There were almost six hundred wounded and dying men crowded into the
shed. There was no bedding or blankets, and empty grain bags served
the purpose. They lay in long lines on the hard concrete, and the cold
came up through the thin jute bags, and the rain dripped down upon them
from the high roof.
There was no sanitation, no bed pans, no running water, and most of the
men were too weak to hobble out into the slush of the goods yard. The
stench was a solid tangible thing that permeated the clothing and clung
in a person's hair long after he had left the shed.
There was no antiseptic, no medicine not even a bottle of Lysol or a
packet of Aspro. The tiny store of medicines at the missionary
hospital had long ago been exhausted. The German doctor worked on into
each night with no anaesthetic and nothing to combat the secondary
infection.
Already the stink of putrefying wounds was almost as strong as the
other stench.
The most hideous injuries were the burns inflicted by the nitrogen
mustard. All that could be done was to smear the scalded and blistered
flesh with locomotive grease. They had found two drums of this in the
loco shed.
Since then, she had worked without ceasing amongst the long pitiful
lines of bodies. Her face was deadly pale in the gloom of the shed,
and her eyes had receded into dark bruised craters. Her feet were
swollen from standing so long, and her shoulders and her back ached
with a dull unremitting agony. Her linen dress was stained with specks
of dried blood, and other less savoury secretions and she worked on, in
despair that there was so little they could do for the hundreds of
casualties.
She could help them to drink the water they cried out for, clean those
that lay in their own filth, hold a black pleading hand as the man
died, and then pull the coarse jute sacking up over his face and signal
one of the over, worked male orderlies to carry him away and bring in
another from where they were already piling up on the open stoep of the
shed.
One of the orderlies stooped over her now, shaking her shoulder
urgently, and it was some seconds before she could understand what he
was saying. Then she pushed herself stiffly up off her knees, and
stood for a moment holding the small of her back with both hands while
the pain there eased, and the dark giddiness in her he
ad abated. Then
she followed the orderly out across the muddy fouled yard to the
station office.
She lifted the telephone receiver to her ear and her voice was husky
and slurred as she said her name.
"Miss Camberwell, this is Lij Mikhael here." His voice was scratchy
and remote, and she could hardly catch the words, for the rain still
rattled on the iron roof above her head. "I am at the Dessie
crossroads."
"The train," she said, her voice firming. Lij Mikhael,
where is the train you promised? We must have medicine antiseptic,
anaesthetic don't you understand? There are six hundred wounded men
here. Their wounds are rotting, they are dying like animals." She
recognized the rising hysteria in her voice, and she cut herself off.
"Miss Camberwell. The train I am sorry. I sent it to you.
With supplies. Medicines. Another doctor. It left Dessie yesterday
morning, and passed the crossroads here yesterday evening on its way
down the gorge to Sardi-"
"Where is it, then?" demanded Vicky. "We must have it.
You don't know what it's like here."
"I'm sorry, Miss Camberwell.
The train will not reach you. It was derailed in the mountains fifteen
miles north of Sardi. Ras Kullah's men the Gallas were in ambush.
They had torn up the tracks, they have Fired everybody aboard and
burned the coaches." There was a long silence between them, only the
static hissed and buzzed across the wires.
"Miss Camberwell. Are you there?"
"Yes."
"Do you understand what
I am saying?"
"Yes, I understand."
"There will be no train." "No." Ras
Kullah has cut the road between here and Sardi."
"Yes."
"Nobody can reach you and there is no escape from Sardi up the railway
line.
Ras Kullah has five thousand men to hold it. His position in the
mountains is impregnable. He can hold the road against an army."
"We are cut off," said Vicky thickly. "The Italians in front of us.
The
Gallas behind us." Again the silence between them, then Lij Mikhael
asked, "Where are the Italians now, Miss Camberwell?"
"They are almost at the head of the gorge, where the last waterfall
crosses the road-"
She paused and listened intently, removing the receiver from her ear.
Then she lifted it again. "You can hear the Italian guns. They are