Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur (книги онлайн без регистрации полностью .TXT) 📗

OBJECTIVE

AMBA ARA DAM IS TACTICALLY UNDESIRABLE ... THE TERRAIN FAVOURS AMBUSH

CONDITION OF ROADS VERY POOR ... TRUST MY JUDGEMENT ... URGE YOUR

EXCELLENCY TO RECONSIDER AND TO TAKE COGNIZANCE OF THE FACT THAT THE

MILITARY SITUATION MUST TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER ALL POLITICAL

CONSIDERATION." FROM BENITO MUSSOLINI TO MARSHAL DE BONO PREVIOUSLY

OFFICER COMMANDING THE ITALIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN AFRICA HIS

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 GRATITUDE 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 ashore at Massawa 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

horsemen led by a tall, dark-robed figure. The young Mussolini told

him, "I released a single hundred-kilo bomb from an altitude of less

than a hundred metres, and it fell precisely in the centre of the

galloping horsemen. 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 passed. 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 classical 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

Massawa, 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,

assessing 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 glasses 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