Jack Ludlow: The Burning Sky

‘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.

Not 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 communique 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.’