The Burning Sky

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Researching Abyssinia is not easy, young Jardine,’ Geoffrey Amherst said, waving his pipe to emphasise the point, and also coughing, a regular feature of his conversation, given he had been gassed in the Great War. ‘Little has been written about the place in a military sense, don’t you know.’

‘I found that out for myself, sir. There are books by intrepid travellers which tell us about the people and the culture, but the only operations which provided any enlightenment on tactics, Magdala and Adowa, went back to the last century.’

‘Don’t discount those, laddie, because they do provide a degree of illumination.’

Magdala had been the name given to a British punitive expedition undertaken in 1868 by Lieutenant General Robert Napier and units from the Indian army to rescue a number of hostages — missionaries and the two diplomats sent to arrange their release. That resulted not only in a comprehensive victory but also in the death of the then emperor, who took his own life rather than surrender.

The Italian campaign of the 1890s, which ended with total defeat at Adowa, had been a fiasco brought about by a distant, posturing politician, crowing about Italy’s right to colonies, insisting on a battle the local commander did not want to fight. Out of twenty thousand Italians engaged, nearly two-thirds had become casualties, a humiliation which brought down the home government and for decades cured the nation of the idea of foreign adventures. It had also raised the Emperor Menelik, whose men had won the battle, to mythical status. It was that debacle Mussolini was looking to avenge.

‘Napier bribed his way to victory,’ Amherst said, as he rolled out a map on his table, ‘and, of course, he made it obvious he had no desire for conquest, just for rescue, so he was able to split the tribes rather than unite them. Very tribal is Ethiopia, which needs to be borne in mind.’

Jardine was looking around the book-lined study at the endless volumes on military history, memoirs, campaign studies, plus the owner’s own works on battlefield tactics and strategy, before turning back to the man himself: slim, balding, with a thin moustache — the pipe was a mistake given his afflicted chest. Introduced to him by a cousin many years past, Jardine had found him a rather pernickety fellow, very confident of his own opinions on matters military, with the caveat that he was a clever bugger and usually right. The man had one quality that made him valuable right now: he was always willing to share his view and to proffer advice.

‘Did you know old Menelik had Russian advisors at Adowa?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Ignored them completely when they advised him to refuse battle. If he had not enjoyed such overwhelming numerical superiority the Italians might have won.’

Jardine referred to the Italian order of battle, which he had shown the older man earlier; tellingly, though he raised an eyebrow, he did not ask from where it had come. ‘Mussolini is taking no chances now.’

‘You going out to advise them, laddie?’

‘No, sir,’ Jardine replied with a wry smile, ‘and I’m not sure I am capable, or if I were, if I would be welcome.’

‘Interest just general, is it, then?’ To respond to that was tricky because he did not want to lie if he could avoid it. The pause was enough for his host: he was a man of enormous discretion. ‘None of my concern, of course, so don’t bother with a reply.’

The finger was on the map now, pointing to the main Italian base at Asmara, then tracing the main route up past Lake Tana to the Abyssinian capital. ‘Addis is the key for the invaders, and given what we suspect the locals have, to try and stop them in open battle could be suicidal. A native army can rarely fight a modern one as Britannia proved too often in the past. Much harder now, of course, and as you so rightly point out, equipment apart, the enemy is not going to allow itself to be overcome by numbers this time.’

‘So the tactical advice would be to avoid contact?’

‘Most definitely, young Jardine.’ That way of addressing him had always made him curious, always made him wonder if Amherst knew an older Jardine; he had never had the audacity to ask. ‘But those Russians were right forty years ago and Menelik was lucky. If they have someone giving that advice now and they ignore it, they will be annihilated. Look here.’

Always brisk in his speech, that was given like a command.

‘The Danakil Desert to the east, bad country to fight in for anyone, but open and thus ten times worse for an army without an air force. Any incursion south of there from Italian Somaliland will be as much a diversion as real, to draw off part of the defence in Tigray Province. The route from Asmara to the south is the way the Italian army will employ for their main advance, and here, on the Ethiopian west,’ a finger jabbed down, ‘the mountains and the Great Rift Valley — that is where they should seek to fight.’

‘Let the Italians have Addis Ababa?’

‘The Russians let Napoleon have Moscow, and look what happened to him. Attrition is the key to defeating Mussolini, a drawn-out war and mounting casualties that cause him trouble with his home population. Seek to use the cover provided by the mountains and forested valleys, hold off his forces till the weather changes and the rains come, which are torrential in the mountains. Low cloud means planes can’t fly, which neuters the air force and time spent clambering about in wet weather will make his troops tired, miserable and sick of being away from home. Use ambuscade and stick to small-scale actions, that is what you should advise this Haile Selassie chappie.’

That was followed by a direct look and a rather toothy smile. ‘But, of course, you are not advising him, are you, young Jardine?’

‘Is there a flaw in that notion?’

‘Well spotted, boy,’ Amherst cried, like a pleased schoolmaster. ‘You recall my saying the place is very tribal and the present Lion of Judah, as Selassie styles himself, is not loved by all. There has been much palace intrigue in old Ethiopia, don’t you know. Had to manoeuvre his way to the top spot, so he might be in a jam if it comes to a long drawn-out war. Might need a quick victory just to hold his position. If he tries it, he will lose. Tricky, what?’

‘Surely the solution would be to offer battle once, with a pre-plan to break off the action quickly, retreat to prepared positions for stands of short duration, with a rearguard willing to make the necessary sacrifices as his forces disperse into the mountains. Thus he shows the folly of engagement in force and gets his tribes to agree to a new strategy. From what I have read, the one thing that unites them is the determination not to become just another subject African race.’

‘It’s damned difficult for a disciplined army to retreat in good order, laddie. For what is really a peasant force it might be impossible, and that means sacrificing his best troops to save the mass. Without those semi-professional levies he might find himself turfed out by one of his own, regardless. You’ll stay to luncheon, of course. Be a bit basic, since my wife is away.’

That proved to be an understatement: Amherst was not a hearty trencherman and he was the type to keep the wine bottle safely out of reach behind his back, so it was sparse fare and careful sipping for Cal Jardine as they talked about Hitler’s programme of rearmament, of the just-signed Anglo-German naval agreement — that had caused a rift between Britain and France — the woolliness of the League of Nations and the recent Stresa Conference, at which Mussolini had signed up to a limit on German expansion, to Amherst’s way of thinking only as a ploy to get his own way in the Horn of Africa.

‘He won’t keep his word, young Jardine, but in the hope of keeping the ice cream vendor on our side we will refuse any request from Ethiopia for either aid or arms, and so will our prickly French chums, not that they are in any state to intervene, anyway.’

‘Are we, sir?’

‘No, laddie! The army is in a shocking state and the ordnance is out of date. We have too many officers who are ill-equipped to fight the last war, never mind the next, tactical stupidity at the heart of everything they do.’

Jardine had to nod at that: he had served with some real dunderheads and had dined with and been inspected by senior officers who made his regimental idiots look intelligent.

‘What got us the breakthroughs in the last show? Tanks. Have we got enough armoured vehicles, as well as of the right kind, and methods of employing them properly? God, no! Government won’t spend enough money on aircraft, so really and as usual, we only have the navy. They are not much use unless we tell Mussolini we will sail through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and bombard Massawa. There’s no chance of that while the Italians have a full battle-ready division on the Libyan border ready to close the canal completely if we try.’

‘Germany?’

‘Determined on war since the Treaty of Versailles, and don’t be fooled that Hitler is the only one who wants it. His generals are just as eager and they have been planning it since they were forced to surrender. When it comes to grievances, he and they have a raft of them, given what we sliced off the sods. Half of Silesia, the Sudetenland and the blue touchpaper has to be Danzig and that damned piece of territorial stupidity called the Polish Corridor.’

‘You should hear the Germans on that, sir, they become incandescent.’

‘Can’t say I blame them. If we are not at war again by 1945 I will eat my hat. As the wise Roman said, “If you wish for peace prepare for war”, but no one in this land of ours is listening.’ That was expounded with passion, leading to a bout of coughing, until he spluttered. ‘Life is so much easier for dictators.’

‘You’re not suggesting we look for one, are you, sir?’

That comment made the older man laugh with real gusto. ‘Only if it’s me, young Jardine, only if it’s me.’

The stopover in London was only to pick up a suitcase, then it was off to Victoria for the boat train, a run through the verdant county of Kent to Dover, and a bit of a rough crossing that had Jardine staying away from those passengers who lacked sea legs. On the afterdeck he let the wind blow him about as he watched the disappearing white cliffs and recalled the first time he had done this, as an eighteen-year-old newly commissioned officer. His stomach had been less stable then, due to a combination of excitement and anxiety.

Anxiety? To go to war, when so many had paid the ultimate sacrifice before you, was something that could not be avoided, and especially when the evidence of what was happening at the front abounded — the ever lengthening casualty lists, the badly wounded men in the streets, the black-clad widows or old men with funeral armbands. These concerns were reflected in his mother’s sad eyes the day he joined up, but there was another reason: the fear of letting yourself, your peers or the regiment down by being shy in battle or going mad with shell shock.

Excitement was a common emotion for a youngster in such a situation, the chance to prove yourself a proper man quelling the fears of death or being maimed, that and the high spirits of your companions, all of whom seemed determined to arrive in France in a state of inebriation. After landing he had gone to the infantry training base at Etaples to find himself once more shouted at by unsympathetic sergeants as they sought to teach him what he would need to know to avoid the average death within two weeks of new subalterns on the Western Front.

The drinking did not abate: there had been gambling in nearby Le Touquet, or nights out in the fishing port of Etaples itself, a place of seedy bars and brothels catering to the carnal needs of the British army, with outrageous overcharging and ill-disguised resentment the norm from the locals. Being an officer he had been given leave to go to Paris, a city, even in wartime, so easy to fall in love with; that is, if you could stand the rudeness of the Parisians, even to a British officer who spoke their language. There he had steeled himself for his first paid encounter with the opposite sex, approaching many a Clichy doorway before shying away, the face of his young and beautiful wife intervening.

The Ludendorff offensive had put paid to that aim: every man was needed at the front to stem the great German bid to drive the British army into the sea. They were now the mainstay of the Allied fight, given the French had been bled dry at Verdun and the Russians had thrown in both the towel and their tsar. His baptism of fire had removed any trace of callow romanticism from Callum Jardine.

He was under the command of a grey-faced captain leading a hastily gathered force from at least ten different regiments, seeking to contain the flank of an ever-increasing bulge. Fighting was close, personal and mobile, not the trench warfare he had expected; at least any trenches he and his platoon occupied were the shallow ones they dug themselves in the hard earth for one night’s occupation only.

Food was intermittent, washing or a change of clothes out of the question, and often ammunition was only acquired by begging from a neighbouring unit. They were pushed very slowly backwards by repeated German assaults, each time extracting more in the way of death than they suffered.

Battle comes down to that before your eyes, so it was only much later he found out what a close-run thing that last great German offensive of the war had been. Erich von Ludendorff had thrown in every man he had, only to be sucked into a giant salient, one he could not hold for lack of numbers and reserves still fit to do battle, so slowly, that sack started to deflate.

The Yanks had begun to arrive in force, part of the reason why the Germans had cast everything on that one throw, and panic had finally unified the Allied command under Marshal Foch. Now Jardine became part of his relentless drive that threw back the enemy and gave them no respite until they had pushed back past their start line, then on through the supposedly impenetrable Hindenburg Line.

When they took prisoners, the first noticeable thing was their obvious hunger — the German army was lacking in food and, when questioned, ammo and men, as well as the will to continue, while behind them their country was sliding inexorably towards a bloody communist revolution, which forced the abdication of the Kaiser and the advent of a civilian government that sought an armistice.

The young lieutenant who stood up on that early November day, when the guns went silent, to look over the shattered battlefield before him, was a very different sort from the near-boy who had stood on this deck. He had his own wounds to carry, none of them serious, and a memory of men he had led, dying under his command, this while he had seen four commanders come and go, one through cracked nerves, the rest in death, as had a dozen fellow lieutenants. Lanchester had been there that day, as filthy and mud-caked as he, carrying the same physical complaints, cursing the idiocy of granting the Germans a peaceful end to a bloodstained conflict.

It should have been enough, that war, but it was not.

He decided on a night in Paris, and that meant dinner at Taillevent, one of the oldest restaurants in the city. After a sumptuous meal it was a taxi to the Gare de Lyon to catch up with Le Train Bleu, running south to the Cote d’Azur. Leaving behind the smoking industrial chimneys of outer Paris it was hard to imagine this country he was passing through, with night falling, as one in the grip of political turmoil, but it was, the left and right at riotous loggerheads, the Popular Front versus Action Francaise.

He went to sleep in his wagon-lit as it raced past grey stone buildings and woke when it was passing the red-tiled roofs and houses with sun-bleached walls that formed the outskirts of a city he knew well, teeming Marseilles. He had spent part of his childhood here and loved it: how much more romantic to read was The Count of Monte Cristo when you could actually look out and see the Chateau d’If from the Corniche?

Lunch was five wonderful courses as the luxury train followed the coast, the sky that deep Mediterranean blue, the landscape burnt scrub backed by high hills, with occasional fields of lavender on one side, beaches and sea opposite, on through what had been the playground of the rich until the Depression either wiped out the fortunes of the wealthy visitors — Churchill had been one — or so lowered the value of the pound that not even wealthy Brits could afford a four-month stay to avoid their national winter.

The home of Sir Basil Zaharoff was, like many dwellings in Monte Carlo, built into the side of a hill. He was not a man to call upon unannounced and Jardine had sent him a letter before going to see Amherst, though given he had dealt with the old man before, he was sure he need not wait for a reply. Reputedly the richest man in Europe, Zaharoff had many soubriquets, the least attractive that he was the original ‘Merchant of Death’. Cal Jardine had always found the infamous arms dealer courteous, of lively mind and a person of wide interests and strong personal attachments.

He was shown into a large study overlooking the yacht-filled harbour to find his man sat behind an enormous desk, before open windows. ‘Captain Jardine?’

‘That, Sir Basil, is not a title I use, quite apart from the fact that my fellow officers, serving and retired, think it infra dig to use any army rank in civilian life below major.’

‘Why would that be?’

‘Captain is a naval rank and vastly superior to its army equivalent.’

‘Ah, your English habits, so strange to we foreigners, regardless of how much time we spend in your country.’

God he’s aged, Jardine thought: the moustache was dropping, the goatee beard straggly and the skin falling from his cheeks, but that was not a comment one would make to anyone, and certainly not to a person of his eminence.

‘You will forgive me not standing to greet you, my legs are not what they once were.’ An arm was waved to invite him to sit, to which Jardine agreed; he was offered an iced cocktail, which he accepted, and then engaged in twenty minutes of polite conversation, which he enjoyed. ‘But you have not come to see me for the chit-chat, I venture.’

‘No. I have been engaged to see if I can get some modern weaponry into Abyssinia.’

It was hard for such a wracked face to fall but his did. ‘Oh dear, Jardine, that is not, I think, very wise.’

‘When was what you and I do wise?’

‘You hoist me, as you say, on the petard.’ That was nonsense, of course, Zaharoff being one of the wisest men he had ever encountered: he might be an arms dealer, but he was knowledgeable and no hypocrite. ‘You know I am no longer active, I have retired to this prison for the rich.’

‘But I suspect you know who is.’

‘I hear things, that is true, for I have kept many of my contacts; but I will say this, it will be hard to purchase modern weaponry for such a cause, and I suspect not easy to get it to where it is needed if you can.’ He began to tick off the sources. ‘Belgium and Czechoslovakia are the least scrupulous as of this moment, but you would require very deep pockets, especially without political clearance from your own government.’

‘My government must know nothing of what I am doing.’

‘Something I suspected must be the case, Jardine, or why come to see an old fellow like me, eh? Discreet purchase raises the cost — and substantially, my friend — quite apart from the fact the rascal Hitler is now being open about his rearmament programme instead of doing it in secret, as he and the General Staff have been doing for a decade and a half now. The two countries I mentioned will need to look to their own armouries in the face of his actions — they border Germany, after all.’

‘I won’t mention a figure, but I suspect money might be constrained.’

What Lanchester had mentioned did not go far in Zaharoff’s world, but typically he did not ask him the source of any money, it being none of his concern.

‘The Italians are pouring much treasure into the Abyssinian venture, more, in truth, than they can afford.’

‘They are overextended?’ The emphatic nod was good news: it meant that the tactics outlined by Amherst had an even better chance of success — nothing drains money like an open-ended conflict.

‘I point out to you, Jardine, a number of things pertinent,’ Zaharoff said, ticking them off on his fingers. ‘A lack of money means a dearth of supply, while even if you were able to buy the most modern weaponry, your Abyssinians would not be able to use it without instructors. Even with such men to teach them you do not have time on your side. My information is that the Italian build-up of forces is near to complete. The only thing stopping them from moving is the lack of an aggressive commander, and Mussolini can alter that tomorrow.’

‘I don’t know this General De Bono.’

‘Nearly seventy years of age, which is well past the time a man might be at his peak.’

That got a smile. ‘I cannot recall if it is polite to remind a man of his age and when he was at his most active.’

‘You were always a flatterer, Jardine.’ Seeing his guest then frown, he added, as he rang a bell on his desk, ‘But never a sycophant.’ A sober-suited fellow answered the bell. ‘Drouhin, bring me the files on Abyssinia and Rumania.’

Zaharoff was smiling at him now, but Jardine did not react, albeit the idea of a file on Rumania was intriguing: what purpose could that possibly have? Reaching into his pocket he pulled out the Italian order of battle and gave it to his host. ‘Perhaps your man Drouhin would like to copy out this document.’

Zaharoff put a pince-nez on his stark, bony nose and looked at the document, nodding. He had always been a magpie when it came to intelligence; one of the reasons he had been so successful was his ability to outguess his opponents as well as governments through a network of well-placed informers.

‘Interesting. Thank you.’ Drouhin was back, carefully placing the files on the desk. The old man handed over the order of battle to Drouhin, who apparently needed no telling what to do, then opened the top folder and extracted a paper as the secretary left, handing that to Jardine.

‘Here is an appreciation of Emilio De Bono. He’s a long-serving soldier, successful as a young man, and now a member of the Fascist Grand Council. On the face of it he is a strong supporter of Mussolini, though my reports have him as a man who clings to the monarchy, and the King of Italy does not always see eye to eye with Il Duce. De Bono is a sentimental fellow, he cries readily and often, which argues he is no great warrior or a man who will see the blood of his troops spilt without conscience. I have also here his original plan for the invasion of Ethiopia, which involved nothing like the number of troops on this paper you have given me.’

That was a separate folder and, given to Jardine, one he examined with professional interest, because its nature indicated a cautious commander who had set out limited objectives to be captured over time with the emphasis on security at each stage of his advance. How the hell Zaharoff had come by it was a mystery and it made Jardine wonder if the order of battle he had handed over was quite as interesting as the old fellow had said — he probably had it already. Clearly he still spent a lot of money — and he had masses to disburse — on his own spies.

‘Do you have the new plan?’

‘Unfortunately no, Jardine, and you, of course, have not seen that which you have just looked at.’

Possibly untrue, but not something to question; the other file was. ‘Rumania?’

‘The Germans, as well as rearming, are also selling — they need the currency, after all — and one of their clients is Rumania. They are re-equipping their forces, and in that file is a list of what we suspect the Germans are supplying. Not tanks or field artillery, of course, for they have only just begun to manufacture those in quantity, but they had a surplus of small arms, given they have been secretly making them since the foundation of the Weimar Republic.’

Jardine took the list and examined it: Mauser rifles in the shortened K98 version, MG38 machine guns and 50 mm mortars.

‘What that means, of course, is that the Rumanians have a lot of old equipment to dispose of. Austrian Mannlicher rifles and old-pattern Maxim machine guns, which I sold them myself.’

‘Meaning?’

‘If the Ethiopians have anything, it will be weapons of that vintage. They will be much more likely to use them wisely than anything they require to be instructed to use, but that is not the real point. Such items will also be cheap.’