The Burning Sky

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Tyler Alverson was now in possession of a powerful pair of binoculars so he could see when Ras Kassa Meghoum’s forward elements hit the Italian line at first light. They did so with such force and in such numbers that the enemy were forced away from their natural line of retreat north-east, falling back instead into the confines of the Dembeguina Pass, through which they could rejoin their compatriots. What Alverson could not see was that which lay behind them, the two thousand men led by the two fitawraris Yoannis and Aswaf, sent by the ras on the suggestion of Cal Jardine to cover just such an eventuality.

The Italian commander, Major Angelo Critini, was a bit of a ruffian but a good soldier, if not a popular one amongst his fellow officers, given he was inclined to remind them that their duties extended beyond the needs of their personal comforts and that, if they failed to care for their men, their men could hardly be expected to care for them. This was not news most of his peers wished to hear, nor did his superiors care much for such reminders, moving him to the position of senior major in a battalion of Eritrean askaris, seen as something of a push aside in the snobbish army of which he was a member.

Critini had two reasons to be happy: first, his colonel, a cavalryman, was absent having his crippling haemorrhoids seen to in Italy. Secondly, he was a fighter, and he knew that when it came to combat, the askaris would be in the forefront: there were going to be casualties and the high command would rather sacrifice native troops than the boys from home.

A professional soldier, Critini had fought his first serious engagement in the Great War as a newly commissioned lieutenant at the battle of Caporetto, where the Italian army, poorly led and bled white by twelve repeated and futile assaults on the Austrian lines of the River Isonzo, was nearly destroyed by an unexpected combination of battle-hardened Germans released from the Eastern Front by the collapse of imperial Russia, backing up the more feeble Austrians, an attack that had led to a confused, bloody and costly retreat.

He was in retreat now from his prepared positions before a set of hills, but, even if the sheer numbers of those who had begun the assault had forced him away from his natural route of disengagement, he was not worried. Seeing the mass of warriors he faced, who seemed indifferent to risk, and to avoid being outflanked before he could retire into the pass, he sent forward the six Carro Veloce L3/35 tanks he commanded to slow the enemy advance with machine-gun fire and retired behind their twin 8 mm guns in good order.

It was only then he discovered he had been out-thought: lying on the hillsides of the pass through which he intended to retire were elements of the enemy he had no idea were present; they had got behind him during the night by crossing the high hills on foot, and they now sent down a withering fire from two machine guns onto his battalion, that followed by sporadic but steady rifle fire.

Unbeknown to Critini, they did not all have rifles, for if they had, assailed by two thousand of them, he would have suffered an immediate and near-total massacre. He was spared that because he faced a force armed mostly with spears and bows, something he realised as arrows began to drop in amongst his forward elements and the dozens of mules carrying his supplies.

The commands he then issued were crisp and orderly, something Cal Jardine watched with appreciation through his field glasses. He did not know the man in charge, but his actions told anyone with a military brain the fellow knew his job. He did not panic, nor did he allow his troops to. Critini, himself on horseback, immediately ordered his men and animals forward into what seemed like a maelstrom, accepting the casualties he suffered in both areas as unavoidable to get them to a point where, with decent cover, the terrain favoured him.

Dismounted, he then calmly formed them up in a hedgehog defence, which would be hard to break through, and, stripping his remaining mules, set up his own machine guns to rake the hillsides. He also managed to salvage a number of mortars. Jardine immediately requested Yoannis’s machine guns to cease fire in order to conserve their very limited ammunition, which produced a pout on the face of the nearest fitawrari: he disliked having an advisor along and he was not in the least affected by a mortar round landing nearby, which severely wounded some of his men.

Drawing a heavy sword, Yoannis shouted, through Shalwe, the interpreter, ‘We attack now and kill them all.’

‘I advise against that.’

Jardine guessed as the words were translated he was wasting his breath: the light in the Ethiopian leader’s eyes was one of wild excitement, and all around him the men he led, indifferent to the casualties among them, were keening in anticipation of what they expected to do. Many, like their leader, were brandishing swords, while Yoannis was waving his weapon and shouting to his fellow fitawrari, Aswaf, across the narrow pass, to join in the slaughter.

‘He is saying they are beaten,’ Shalwe said, and it looked as though the young interpreter believed it too.

‘Tell Yoannis they are not and they have machine guns and more mortar rounds. If he tries to overwhelm them many will die.’

‘You won’t stop them, guv,’ Vince said quietly in his ear. ‘They are too worked up.’

Jardine never got a chance to answer that because all around him the shamma-clad warriors were on their feet and being led out of their excellent cover in a wild charge down the hillside, presenting, in their white garments, tempting targets. They were attacking troops who had years of training, not weeks, and it showed immediately as the controlled volley fire began to decimate the attackers.

The Italian machine guns raked the hillsides in a slow and deadly progression, the mortar-fire range dropping also, a steady rate of shells bursting in amongst the rushing warriors. It was not all one-sided, for defenders were falling to rifle fire: Jardine saw one Italian officer go down; he was — as was required in such a circumstance — bravely standing up to control his men, making him an easy target, yet it had to be luck, given the discharges were wild.

Critini saw one lieutenant drop just before he took a bullet in the soft muscle of his upper left arm, which felled him, thankfully and quickly aware that it had missed the bone. He was back on his feet within two seconds, seeing clearly that his defence was holding and that the furious Ethiopian charge was faltering in the face of everything already employed, now backed up by the machine guns of his tanks, which were in the middle of his position and had manoeuvred into a circle to cover all the approaches.

Jardine was cursing the folly of what he saw, yet there was a glimmer of a positive, something that told him the instructions he and Vince had tried to impart were not entirely wasted. On the other side of the pass Aswaf had not engaged in a wild charge, but instead sent out his riflemen to make their way slowly down the hillside, seeking cover from boulders as they went, their aim to pick off individual targets, particularly the Italian officers, easy to spot in their distinctive uniforms. It was they who were inflicting the most damage.

Yoannis, now stuck lower down, clearly realised the folly of his attack and was signalling to fall back using cover. Was it a tribute to training that he was so quickly obeyed? Jardine did not know, he was only grateful to see the casualty count drop away as men got behind boulders or crawled through scrub back to their starting positions.

The Italians had been chased into the pass by other forces, yet none of their fire was aimed in the direction from which they had come, a condition Jardine had insisted upon when the plan had been outlined. He was advising hard to control warriors and he did not want to have to worry about shooting those on his own side coming in pursuit. If the pass was cleared, that was the time for a good part of the main body to advance.

Corrie Littleton was no doctor, but she was one of nature’s organisers and that, with the first casualties pouring into her aid station, was just as important as wielding a surgical knife. The Spanish doctor and his nurses were working flat-out, but thanks to the American, the only cases that got to his operating table were those that would benefit from immediate treatment. Having been violently sick when the first wounded came in with torn bodies and hanging-off limbs, she was now working on a stomach long empty to assess each case.

Those close to death were left, as were the men with wounds that left them ambulant; it was the in-betweens that were given priority, and Corrie Littleton had lost any guilt for the fact that her decision-making might be flawed: the numbers as well as the extent of wounds from artillery fire were too great for such concerns, because the main attack of Ras Kassa’s forces, taking place to the east of the Dembeguina Pass, had run into a solid Italian defence.

In soft ground the Italians had dug trenches, on rocky surfaces they had built lines of sandbags interspersed with redoubts, both types of defence backed by machine guns and mortars aided by tactical and long-range artillery. Fanatical bravery, and the Ethiopians had that in excess, was another reason for the high casualty numbers, and what was being seen by Corrie Littleton was only a fraction of the losses the Imperial Army was suffering.

Tyler Alverson stood on the high outcrop from which Ras Kassa Meghoum was trying to control his part of the battle, watching the stream of messages coming in from staff officers in the green uniforms of the regular forces, but even with powerful glasses he could see nothing much, so great was the smoke and dust being created by gunfire and explosive shells.

Every so often an Italian fighter would strafe their position, the few anti-aircraft weapons they possessed seeking to dissuade them, which meant a leap into the previously prepared dugouts, but what they feared most was not long in coming into play: the Italian bombers.

Not a single projectile was dropped on their position, but dozens of the Savoia-Marchetti trimotors ranged across the rear areas of the advancing forces, covered overhead by numerous fighters to ward off any attempts to interfere in the destruction of the thousands of men waiting their turn to go into the battle raging before them. When the bombers departed, their escorts dived in to rake the area with gunfire, yet even under such an aerial assault the Ethiopian forces did not buckle.

‘Can you not advance through the Dembeguina Pass, Ras?’ Alverson asked.

The old man shook his head. ‘Not until we hear it is clear. Your friend Jardine was adamant that we would end up shooting at each other. Word will come when they are successful.’

‘Would I be allowed to go and see?’

‘You are a free spirit, Mr Alverson, you may go where you wish, but I will detail someone to escort you.’

That journey took Tyler Alverson past the casualty clearing station where he encountered a blood-covered Corrie Littleton racing to and fro between the wounded cases lying and sitting all around her tents, shouting to orderlies to take this one and that, while a constant stream of new cases were carried or staggered in. He was about to try and talk to her when he heard the screaming engine of an aeroplane and he looked up to see the silhouette in the sky of a Fiat fighter.

His shout to her to get down took a second to register, so that she was still standing when the first of a line of bullets hit the ground. She did dive to her right, which saved her life, but the run of gunfire hit the comatose bodies of those already wounded until the firing ceased as the Fiat screamed overhead, with Corrie Littleton up, yelling and shaking her fist at a bastard who had ignored the huge red crosses on the tent roofs.

Alverson saw that same bastard bank for another run and shouted a fresh warning, but so intent was the Italian fighter pilot on what he was doing that he had ignored the first rule of aerial combat — keep your eyes open and look around you at all times. The Potez 25 came from above, with the eastern sun at its back, its machine gun a stuttering, muted tattoo at the distance from which the two Americans could hear it.

The Italian fighter seemed to stagger almost, as though its engine had lost power, then it banked as smoke began to pour out from the cockpit area. So fast was it moving that only imagination could picture what was happening to that pilot, but what was obvious was the way the Ethiopian was following him down as he lost altitude, firing short bursts into the burning enemy.

The explosion of the Fiat hitting the earth made the ground around them shake, but the aircraft noise did not diminish. The Potez came flashing low overhead, slightly banked, and the pilot had taken off his flying helmet. Even at a hundred and twenty miles an hour the waving hand, the blond hair and, Alverson was sure, the gleaming teeth of Count Henri de Billancourt were plain to see.

Corrie Littleton was screeching her thanks and jumping up and down as the Frenchman came over for a victory roll, but as soon as he disappeared she went back to her tasks. Tyler Alverson got no more than a look, and a grim one at that.

The site the Italian commander had chosen was, as long as his ammunition and water lasted, in a reasonably good place. The rate of fire on both sides had dropped — to be expected, since to just keep going was a useless expenditure of ammunition — but Critini kept up sporadic mortar fire at a conserving rate, given it was his most effective deterrent weapon. He also wasted no time in seeking to get away a small party of his most fleet-footed askaris to test out an escape route.

Jardine and Vince grabbed rifles from a couple of the returning tribesmen and sought to pick them off, while the machine guns were employed from both sides of the pass. Dodging from boulder to boulder, or seeking shelter behind the scrub that covered the valley floor, made them hard targets, but to cheers, one by one they were brought down, aided by intelligent fire from Aswan’s men opposite.

‘Fitawrari Yoannis wishes to know what will happen now,’ Shalwe asked, pointing to the man in question, who had got back to safety but seemed to want to stay well away from the professional soldier advising him.

The reply was angry. ‘Tell him to look.’

The Carro Veloce CV35s were using their tracks to turn in tight circles, noses pointing north, while some of the askaris were levering a large rock out of the way that blocked the exit route.

‘This is no time to be snooty, is it?’ Vince said. ‘He knows he’s cocked up, guv, an’ he wants your help.’

‘That’s a boot up the arse you owe me, Vince,’ Jardine replied after a pause, for his friend was right.

‘I’d settle for a pint of Bass.’

‘I’ll let you have a sip of water.’

‘Right now that will taste as sweet as best bitter.’

A skin was called for and they both drank from it, refreshed even if it was body temperature warm.

‘OK. They are going to try and break out with those tanks, but if you look at the valley floor I think they will have a tough time of it.’

‘Too many boulders.’

‘Not just that, Vince, it’s bloody uneven. At best they will be slow, so I want you to stay here with half a dozen rifles, and once the tanks are out, keep up a steady fire on the Italian perimeter to stop the infantry following. Use the machine guns if you have to, but we are short on ammo for those. I am going to take Yoannis and most of his men further up the pass. Shalwe, tell Fitawrari Yoannis that we need some grenades and his men are to do what I do. And tell him as well, don’t fire off rifles, it will be a waste of bullets.’

Jardine crawled away to the sound of tanks moving, their engines, lacking silencers, roaring, a sound that echoed and was magnified as it bounced off the faces of the surrounding hills. Slowly, in single file, they emerged from the defensive perimeter and it was obvious what Jardine had said was true.

Tanks were good over rough ground but this was more than that: it was horrendous for such small armoured vehicles powered by not very strong engines, with boulders forcing the drivers to try and take routes that were too steep even for their tracks, and that was before one side dropped into the depressions unseen by a driver peering through a narrow, metal-armoured slit, which gave him no sideways vision.

Regardless of Jardine’s instructions, some of Yoannis’s warriors were wasting ammo on the tank armour, but that, pinging on the side and exaggerated in what must be a baking hellhole of an interior, was enough to keep those driver slits closed. They were well away from the main Italian position now, and behind them they could hear the steady crack of rifle fire as the men with Vince kept up enough of a threat to ensure that infantry did not support the tanks.

It only took one to break down and get into trouble to show what would happen. Tank Number Three got stuck, and regardless of how hard it revved and bucked to and fro, stuck it stayed. Those to the rear tried to go round it and that meant a second tank ended up in difficulty, though it looked as though the driver was about to reverse and extricate himself, this while those to his rear stopped to see if he could manage it, for if he could not, they must reverse.

Now it was Cal Jardine on his feet and waving, as he plunged down the hillside, firing off single shots from his sub-machine gun, more for effect than to kill. With no turret to swing, the CV35s were sitting ducks from the rear, their machine guns only able to fire forward in a constrained arc, which he avoided by coming in behind them. He was yelling as hard as he could to draw the attention of those he was leading, as he dragged a pin out of a grenade and jammed it into the track of the rear tank, diving under the spitting machine guns to get out of the way of the blast.

The explosion sounded tremendous, but it was the clanking sound of a destroyed metal track that was music to Cal Jardine’s ears. Now his sword-wielding warriors were on top of the tank, beating with the flat of their blades on the armour, while one sought to lever open the hatch to drop in a grenade, another jabbing his weapon through the driving slit. The Italian gunner should have kept up his fire, if only to aid those ahead of him, but either he or the driver panicked and the hatch swung open, with two hands coming out as the first one tried to surrender.

He was grabbed by the hands of his enemies and dragged onto the side of the tank, where one yanked at his hair while another caught hold of his feet, then the sword came flashing down to take his head off in one sweep, with his driver being lugged into daylight just in time to see his mate die. His screams seemed as ear-splitting as the explosion of that grenade, but they were stopped as he too was decapitated. Jardine was shouting as loud as he could to let him be and take him prisoner; it was wasted breath.

One by one they moved up the line of tanks and each crew suffered the same fate, which sickened a man who knew that to seek to interfere was to risk the same himself. These warriors had their blood up and for them this primitive form of retribution was the norm, not some exception. Someone must have had the means to light a fire, for first one tank burst into flames, then another, with Jardine now yelling for them to get clear before the ammunition went up. By the time they left, all six tanks were ablaze.

Down the pass Vince could see the smoke and he knew that the Italian commander would see it too, so he called on his riflemen to cease fire; those askaris were going nowhere. Yet even he, and he considered himself immune, nearly puked when some of Yoannis’s warriors came loping along carrying Italian heads, which they threw in a blood-dripping arc into the enemy defences.