A Mighty Endeavor (41 page)

Watching them, the Askaris noted the development. They dropped their rifles. Being an Italian Askari had been a way of earning a little extra money for doing very little work. The possibility of being shelled, bombed and strafed hadn’t figured in that equation. It was time to leave. Word spreads fast in African villages. Soon, all across the front, the Askaris deserted and, very sensibly, went home.

High over the veldt, Bosede knew nothing of the word rippling through the African villages. What he did know was that the Blenheims had finished their attack and were on their way back to base. That released the Tomahawks to resume their free-chase. The squadron swung south, to where the Natal Mounted Rifles were advancing. Bosede had no doubt that the Italians would be trying to do to them what the Blenheims had just done to the Italian infantry.

“Bandits.” Flight Lieutenant Petrus van Bram, now acting squadron leader, spotted the Italian aircraft. Twin engined aircraft, their yellow and gray paint made them hard to see against the ground below.

“Pim, take them with your flight. The rest of us will stay up here and cover you.”

Bosede made a wingover and dove on the aircraft below. His eyes took in the details. The extensively glazed nose told him all he needed to know. Caproni Ca.311s. Almost an exact Italian equivalent of the Blenheim and as weakly defended: one 7.7mm machine gun in a top turret and one firing from a ventral hatch. Tracers licked out from the top turrets of the Italian aircraft. Light defensive fire that gave him little concern. His gun sight closed on the nose of the Caproni. His thumb squeezed the triggers, firing off a burst from both his nose .50s and the four .30s in his wings.

The effect on the Ca-311 was as disastrous, as it had to be. The aircraft staggered and flew apart under the concentrated blow. Its wings separated from its body as it disintegrated. The fuel tanks erupted into flame. What was left of the aircraft plowed into the dry, dusty veldt. Bosede swept upwards, climbing away from the scattering Italian formation. Three of the eight aircraft were already down;a fourth was trying to escape northwards, leaving a thick trail of black smoke behind it. Bosede watched a Tomahawk close in. A stream of tracers turned the aircraft into a flying torch. One more pass would finish the formation off.

One again, a wingover and a long dive down on to the poorly-
protected Capronis. Instead of firing from above, Bosede came in from behind.

His fire raked the rear fuselage and engines. His target went down; three parachutes emerged as the Italian crew bailed out.

“Pirn, you’re trailing white vapor. Head back to Buna. The rest of your flight will escort you.” Petrus van Bram’s voice brooked no argument.

Bosede glanced at his instruments. There was no sign of trouble yet, but the Tomahawks were precious. They had made the offensive that was driving the Italians out of Kenya possible and their numbers were carefully conserved. Bosede set course for Buna.

On the way, he noted that his engine temperature was starting to rise. By the time the runway at Buna appeared under his nose, it had reached serious levels. He wondered if
Marijke
would make it. By then, what had started as a thin line of white vapor had turned into a thick stream behind the Tomahawk. She didn’t let him down. By the time she came to a halt, he was surrounded by a white mist. It didn’t take the ground crew long to spot why.

“There’s your problem, sir.” The flight sergeant pointed at a single small hole in the nose. “Looks like a bullet from a 7.7 caught your cooling system. Another few minutes and she’ll have seized solid. Don’t sweat it; we’ll have her fixed by morning.”

The telephone rang and a voice came warbled on the other end. The Flight Sergeant grinned broadly. “And that was a Lieutenant van der Haan from intelligence. Confirmed your two Capronis shot down.”

Bosede staggered under the vigorous back-slapping and cheering. It was a long, long way from the days on the Hawker Fury. He threw his cap skywards to celebrate. Then he saw the single tiny hole that had nearly brought him down. A sudden sense of mortality weighed him down to earth.

GHQ, Middle East Command, Cairo, Egypt

“We have word from General Cunningham in Kenya, Archie.” Maitland Wilson had a conceited expression on his face that reminded Wavell of the time one of his dogs had stolen an entire leg of roasted lamb. “Alan seems to be quite happy with the way things are going down there.”

“I’ll need more than that, Jumbo.” Wavell wasn’t in the mood for playful games.

“The South Africans have broken through in both the northern and southern sectors. In the south, they have captured Gorai and el Gumu. Their columns are advancing north towards Kismayu and the Jubu River. In the north, they captured the wells at el Yibu and el Sarbu and sent the Italians packing there. Our aircraft are bombing and strafing the Italians as they retreat, and it looks like that retreat is turning into a rout. Alan doesn’t expect any serious resistance inside Italian Somaliland and thinks the Italians will try and concentrate on holding Ethiopia.”

“Italian aircraft?” To Wavell, this was the crux of the matter.

“The Italians are throwing them in to try and slow down our advance. The Tomahawks are having a field day. They’ve shot down more than forty aircraft, mostly light bombers, but with a handful of CR.32s and 42s thrown in. We’ve had one Tomahawk shot down and three or four are damaged, but the odds are enormously our way. Even better, the Italians have brought the aircraft from northern Ethiopia down to try and regain air superiority. It won’t do them any good; they’ve only a handful of fighters and they’re CR.42s. Alan has ordered all our biplanes grounded; not that they were of much consequence anyway. That leaves the sky free for the Tomahawks down there; they can shoot at anything that isn’t a monoplane.”

Wavell nodded with a measure of relief. The first blow had been launched in Kenya because that was where the Italians were weakest and where the first squadrons of Tomahawks were based. He was gambling that the Italians would see this as a major thrust and would shift their air and ground forces south to match it. That would open the way into northern Ethiopia for the two Indian divisions in the Sudan. They would drive south, taking the Italian formations defending Ethiopia in the rear. Finally, with that battle under way, Maitland Wilson could launch his attack on Graziani and the supplies around Mersa Matruh with some hope of achieving tactical surprise.

The beauty of it was that each of the three operations was genuinely independent. Not one of them actually depended for its success on any of the others working. Each might work or fail on its own merits. In each case, the benefits they would bring by their success would be worth having. But, if all three worked together, then the success achieved would be, literally, world-changing.

4th Battalion, 11th Sikh Regiment, Kassala, Sudan

“Jai Hind!”

The call went up from the ranks moving up the hill. Subedar Shabeg Singh repeated the cry. He relished the sun gleaming off his bayonet and the sight of the waves of infantry that were moving against the railway junction at Kassala. The area had been seized by the Italians during the first days of the fighting in Sudan. A previous Indian attempt to recover it had been defeated due to heavy Italian air attacks.

Today, Italian aircraft were absent from the battlefield and the 7th Infantry Brigade was advancing in fine style. Having tanks in support was a help. Six Matilda IIs were moving in a manner that could best be described as stately. Their machine guns were rippling fire across the Italian positions. That was their job; to support the infantry. There were light tanks for the chase that would take place once the Italian positions were broken.

Overhead, the sound of artillery fire slackened slightly. The Indian gunners had been laying a barrage down on the Italian positions from their 4.5-inch howitzers. Those guns were more useful than the 18-pounders in very hilly terrain; one reason why the Indian divisions had a much higher proportion of them in their artillery regiments. The Italians were using reverse slopes to protect themselves from artillery fire, but the howitzers could lob shells over the crest to land on that reverse slope. It was an open question as to
what
they would hit that way.

The reduced artillery fire allowed Shabeg Singh to hear the sound of approaching aircraft. That had meant disaster a few weeks earlier. The Italian Breda ground attack aircraft had strafed and bombed the regiment, making the positions they had won untenable. They’d had to fall back; the shame of doing so still stung the Sikhs.

Today, though, was different. The aircraft were coming from the north. That meant they were supporting the 11th Sikh Regiment, not harassing it.
Assuming that the pilots do not make a mistake,
thought the ever-realistic Singh. The flight of Fairey Battles swept overhead. Bombs dropped on the defensive positions. The blasts and towering columns of smoke from over the ridgeline were the signal for the final push up the hill.

“Jo Bole So Nihal, Sat Sri Akal!”

The Sikhs sprinted across the remaining few yards of ground and jumped down into the Italian positions, preparing to take them with the bayonet. Instead, they found empty entrenchments and deserted defenses. The artillery fire had pounded some portions of the defenses, the bombing from the aircraft had done more, but the lack of Italian casualties was painfully obvious. The preparation had landed on mostly empty trenches.

The implications of that were still sinking into Singh’s mind when he heard the renewed whistle of artillery fire. This time, the difference in sound was immediately obvious.

“INBOUND!”

The Sikh troops scattered and took cover in the deserted Italian positions. In some cases, the safety they offered was illusory. Foxholes and trenches had been booby-trapped. The resulting explosions beat the arrival of the Italian artillery fire by a few seconds. The light cracks of the inbound shells told Singh that they were only 65mm mountain guns firing a puny 9-pound projectile. The placement of the rounds made up for any lack of power. The Italian gunners droped their shots into the positions just seized by the Indians with almost uncanny accuracy.

They’ve pre-registered all the positions.
The thought ran through Singh’s mind as he scrambled out from the dugout he’d occupied and got as far away from it as he could. Behind him, a pattern of the light shells covered the position he’d just vacated. Fragments whined around his head.

The artillery bombardment was joined by a crackle of rifle fire, punctuated by brief bursts from machine guns. Singh sneaked a look from the dip he had found himself in. The Italians were advancing quickly across the open ground. His eyes took in the black feathers on their helmets.
Bersaglieri.
Their rifle fire was accurate and, combined with the precision support from the little 65mm howitzers, they were making the Indian positions too hot to hold.

The Sikh troops, very reluctantly, started to give ground, dropping back over the ridgeline to the dead ground beyond. There, they were relatively safe from the Italian guns. When the Bersaglieri crossed the crest in pursuit, they were greeted by a barrage of rifle and machine gun fire. Tthat drove them back in turn.

In the brief pause that followed, Singh collected his surviving men and got them back into reasonable shape. Then the whistles blew. He led them back over the crest into an assault on the Italian line. Once again, the positions just over the crest had been abandoned and lay temptingly open, but the Sikhs had learned from their previous mistakes.

They kept going.

This time, without pre-registeration on carefully defined targets, the light Italian mountain guns were much less effective; they were an annoyance more than anything else. The Indian artillery observers had caught up with the infantry. They directed fire from the comparatively heavy 4.5-inch howitzers on to the Bersaglieri positions in the rear. The 35-pound shells had an authority that the 9-pound Italian projectiles lacked; the barrage suppressed the Italian infantry fire long enough for the Indians to close.

The fight was bitter. The Bersaglieri had no intention of giving ground without making their opponents pay dearly for it. By the time they were driven out of their defenses, Singh’s unit had lost yet more of his men. He doubted the ability of the remainder to advance further without rest and reinforcement. He was slightly surprised to see one of the Bersaglieri officers advancing with a white flag.
Surely they are not surrendering now, after the brave and honorable fight they put up?

It was with an anomalous sense of relief that he got the message from the company headquarters. “There will be a three-hour truce so that the wounded can be collected for care and the dead recovered for burial.”

A few minutes later, whistles blew on the Indian side to announce the start of the truce. Singh was amused to hear the same message being given on the Italian side by a trumpet fanfare. His men started to lay the Italian bodies out where the Bersaglieri could collect them and get their own wounded ready for carriage back to the battalion lines. Half way through the process, a stretcher team from the Italians turned up and started to pick up the Italian wounded. An Italian officer with them noted the first-aid work carried out on the Italian wounded by the Indians and caught Singh’s eye. Singh himself had seen the Italian medics and stretcher bearers treating the Indian wounded and returned the glance. Two professional soldiers who didn’t even begin to speak each other’s language reached an understanding without any problems. There was a time to fight and a time to give aid and comfort. This was the latter and that it was being respected as such gave honor to them both.

Vickers Wellesley
G-George,
Over Asmara, Eritrea

The eighteen Wellesleys were formed into three flights of six and lined up on the Italian Air Force base at Asmara. 47 Squadron had been assigned the base as its primary target, mostly to persuade the Italian Air Force not to come back north. As far as Squadron Leader Sean Mannix was concerned, the absence of Italian fighters was an entirely good thing. His Wellesley had been a remarkable aircraft once; long ranged and capable of carrying what was, for then, a heavy bombload. Now, it was painfully obsolete, slow and very poorly armed. His aircraft’s only real defense was a single .303 Vickers machine gun aft and that had a very limited field of fire. The fact that he and his gunner sat in separate cockpits made coordinating defense very difficult. All in all, it was fortunate that the Italians had moved all their fighters south, where the South African Tomahawks had cut a swathe of destruction through them.

Mannix peered over the nose, trying to see the airfield that he was supposed to be approaching. It was hard to make out the runway against the prevailing yellow-gray color of the bare African soil. Even black-topped runways quickly adopted the universal khaki color as they absorbed the windblown dust. The airfield was supposed to be south of the town, but he couldn’t see anything.

It didn’t help that he was his own bomb-aimer. He had to fly the aircraft, search for his target, keep in formation with the other aircraft in his flight and watch out in case any enemy fighters were around. He swept his eyes quickly around the sky before transferring attention back to the ground. That was when he saw two large, square buildings with a long, straight patch of desert in front of them.
Hangars, runway, south of the town. This has to be it.

It took a minor change of course to line up his aircraft on the target. Around him, the other five members of his flight saw the change and adjusted their own path accordingly. Their pilots watched his aircraft with their thumbs on the bomb release. As soon as he dropped, they would do the same. His was the only flight in 47 Squadron trained that way; the other two flights both relied on individual bomb-aiming. There had been long arguments over the technique Mannix had come up with. The other flight commanders pointed out that if he missed badly, everybody would. His counter-argument was that his flight would at least get a nice tight bomb pattern and damage something.