adventure, and a constant stream of them poured southwards, unaffected
by the embargo that the League of Nations had declared on the
importation of military materials into Eastern Africa.
Up to the present time, over three million tons of stores had been
landed, and this did not include the five thousand vehicles of war
troop transports, armoured cars, tanks and aircraft that had come
ashore. To distribute this vast assembly of vehicles and stores, a
road system had been constructed fanning into the interior, a system so
magnificent as to recall that of the Caesars of ancient Rome.
General De Bono smote his chest again, startling his aide. "They urge
me to untimely endeavour. They do not seem to realize that my "
force is insufficient." The force which the General lamented was the
greatest and most powerful army ever assembled on the African
continent. He commanded three hundred and sixty thousand men, armed
with the most sophisticated tools of destruction the world had yet
devised from the Caproni CA.133 three-engined monoplane which could
carry two tons of high explosive and poison gas a range of nine hundred
miles, to the most modern armoured cars and heavily armoured CV.3 tanks
with their 50 men. guns, and supporting units of heavy artillery.
This great assembly was encamped about Asmara and upon the cliffs
overlooking the Mareb River. It was made up of distinct elements, the
green-clad regular army formations with their wide-brimmed tropical
helmets, the black shirt r Fascist militia with their high boots and
cross-straps, their deaths head and thunderbolt badges and their
glittering daggers, the regular colonial units of black Somalis and
Eritreans in their tall tasselled red fezes and baggy shirts, their
gaily coloured regimental sashes and put teed legs above bare feet.
Lastly, the irregular volunteers or ban da who were a. group of desert
bandits and cut-throat cattle thieves attracted by the possibility of
war in the way that the taint of blood gathers sharks.
De Bono knew but did not ponder the fact that nearly seventy years
previously, the British General Napier had marched on Magdala with less
than fifty thousand men, meeting and defeating the entire Ethiopian
army on the way, storming the mountain fortress and releasing the
British prisoners held there, before retiring in good order.
Such heroics were outside the realms of the General's imagination.
"Caro."
"The General placed an arm about the gold, braided shoulders of his
aide. "We must compose a reply to the Duce. He must be made to
realize my difficulties." He patted the shoulder affectionately and
his face lightened once more into its habitual expression as he began
composing.
"My dear and respected leader, please be assured of my loyalty to you
and to the glorious fatherland of Italy." The Captain hastened to take
up a message pad and scribble industriously. "Be assured also that I
never cease to toil by night and by day towards--" It took almost two
hours of creative effort before the General was satisfied with his
flowery and rambling refusal to carry out his orders.
"Now," he ceased his pacing and smiled tenderly at the Captain,
"although we are not yet ready for an advance in force, it will serve
to placate Il Duce if we initiate the opening phases of the southern
offensive."
The General's plans for the invasion, when it was finally put in hand,
had been laid with as ponderous regard to detail as his earlier
preparations. Historical necessity dictated that the main attack
should be centred on Adowa.
Already a marble monument, brought from Italy and engraved with the
words "The dead of Adowa avenged with the date left open, lay amongst
the huge mountains of his stores.
ndary flanking attack However, the plan called for a secc, farther
south through one of the very few gateways to the central highlands,
This was the Sardi Gorge. A narrow opening that was riven up from the
desert floor, splitting like an axe-stroke the precipitous mountain
ranges, and forming a pass through which an army might reach the
plateau that reared seven thousand feet above the desert.
The first phase of this plan entailed the seizure of the approaches to
the Sardi Gorge and particularly important 1: in this dry and scalded
desert would be the water supplies of the attacking army.
The General crossed the floor to the large-scale map, of Eastern
Africa which covered one wall, and he picked up the ivory pointer to
touch an isolated spot in the emptiness below the mountains.
"The Wells of Chaldi, he read the name aloud. "Whom shall we send?"
The Captain looked up from his pad, and observed how the spot was
surrounded by the forbidding yellow of the desert.
He had been in Africa long enough to know what that meant, and there
was only one person who he would wish were there.
"Belli," he said.
"Ah," said the General. "Count Aldo Belli the fire eater
"The clown, "said the Captain.
"Come, caro," the General admonished his aide mildly.
"You are too harsh. The Count is a distinguished diplomat, he was for
