Amedeo: The True Story of an Italian’s War in Abyssinia. Sebastian O’Kelly
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been talking to.’
The mildness of the colonel’s reproaches, coupled with his blessing in the coming war, aggravated Amedeo’s sense of guilt as he took his leave. It had not been his father, Baron Guillet, who had swung Amedeo’s transfer, for he had retired and was living at the family palazzo in Capua managing, with little enthusiasm, the family estate. Nor had Amedeo approached his bluff, bonhominous Uncle Ernesto, called in the family Zio Murat, who had been his commanding officer. He had turned instead to his Uncle Amedeo, the middle of the three Guillet brothers and the one whose career had been the most brilliant.
Fourth or fifth in Italy’s military hierarchy, Uncle Amedeo was an exceptional man who, during the Great War, had twice received the Kingdom of Italy’s highest military decoration, the Ordine Militare di Savoia. For officers only, it was an acknowledgement of ability to command as well as of outstanding valour. To win one ensured an officer’s straight path to the top; to win two was almost unheard of. Good-looking, and a familiar figure in Roman society, Uncle Amedeo had definite presence and whenever the family gathered both Amedeo’s father and Uncle Ernesto deferred to him. He was a man of wide culture as well as a full army corps general. Benedetto Croce, the philosopher, was an intimate friend, as was Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of radio, while D’Annunzio had dedicated a book to the general as ‘the purest embodiment of the Latin genius’.
Before 1914, Uncle Amedeo had once been in love with an American woman, but for reasons no one in the family fully knew it had come to nothing, and he had remained single. As a result, his family feelings concentrated on the children of his older brother, and particularly on the youngest boy, his namesake. In childhood, Amedeo had always felt over-awed in the presence of his distinguished relative, but as he grew older he became closer to his uncle than any other man, and almost all his ambitions were spurred by a desire to win his respect and good notice.
During an evening together in Rome, Amedeo poured out his thoughts. All his life there had been talk of the League of Nations heralding an era of peace. Now there was going to be war: Italy’s African colonies were at risk from the Ethiopians. He had to be a part of it. It was the aim of all the training he had received, and what he had joined the army for.
Uncle Amedeo took seriously his nephew’s request to transfer to the Spahys. He was not sure about this war which Mussolini had set his heart on. All Italy seemed agreed that it was necessary except a few dissidents on the left, whose opinion could be ignored. But the consequences in Europe were more troubling. Britain and France, firmly against it, were threatening Italy with economic sanctions if the war went ahead. Not that Mussolini seemed to care. Like the popular newspaper editor he, at heart, always remained, the Duce couldn’t see further than the next day’s headlines, and fighting the ‘black hordes of barbarism’ was a story with legs. Uncle Amedeo was worried how the regime was beginning to change, its tone increasingly hectoring and bombastic. A report had recently arrived on his desk with a memo from the Duce: ‘Victory is ensured by the aggressive spirit of the army.’ To which he had added laconically, ‘And good artillery.’
The morning after his meeting with his nephew, the general summoned his adjutant into his office and the cogs of Italy’s military machine began to turn. A week later a note arrived for Major Antonio Ajmone Cat in Libya from the Ministry of War informing him that he was about to receive a new lieutenant.
The sun was going down and there was a cool breeze blowing across the desert by the time Amedeo arrived at Zuara. A cluster of officers, mostly Spahys, sat talking on the terrace of the neat white bungalow that served as the mess. Major Ajmone Cat, wrapped in the bright blue burnous of the Spahys, was recounting a story that had now become part of the regimental mythology. At the height of the action at Bir Tagrift, the last battle against the rebels in Tripolitania, his horse had been shot from under him, and a mysterious Spahy had given him his own, complete with its high-sided Arabic saddle. But afterwards no one could say who this man was, nor did anyone come forward to reclaim the horse. His men were convinced that the Spahys, and their commander, were watched over by a benign spirit, or marabut. Whether true or not, it was their belief, the major concluded, urging the officers never to make light of such superstitions in front of the men.
Amedeo hovered at the edge of the group waiting for the story to end. He took a deep breath, walked forward and made his sharpest Modena salute before the major, then presented himself.
‘Ah yes, Lieutenant Guillet,’ the major replied coolly, while the other Spahy officers adopted expressions of uninterest. ‘I’ll be frank with you, Guillet. You are the only officer I have not chosen for this unit. I don’t doubt your qualities, but everyone else has earned his right to be here. Try to learn the ropes as soon as you can.’
Amedeo stammered a reply, his cheeks burning. It had been a short and sharp public humiliation, but the major was not the sort to prolong it. To Amedeo’s relief at that moment an old friend from Pinerolo, Lieutenant Luigi Cavarzerani, clapped him on the back and breezily welcomed him to the regiment. The other officers had heard of Amedeo’s riding successes, and received him without resentment. He had got off lightly, they assured him once the major had left. Two other young officers, for whom strings had been pulled, had been sent straight back to Italy.
Amedeo was reminded of Neapolitans piling off a crowded tram, although instead of people pushing and shoving this involved steamships. The whole of Italy’s merchant navy seemed to be choked into the harbour of Massaua forming an ill-tempered queue to disembark. On the quayside were scurrying Eritrean dock workers, and in among them, helping unload artillery, lorries and light tanks, were scores of Black Shirts. They had come to fight; but morale was high and they were eager to help. Major Ajmone Cat shouted down to a port official demanding that the Spahys should be given priority owing to the horses. He had not lost one during the ten-day voyage from Libya, and he had no intention of doing so now. When they had refuelled at Port Said, the ship and all its passengers had been covered in coal dust, but the major ordered the men to use the sea for their ablutions: the fresh water was for their mounts. In spite of the major’s impatience, the Spahys sweltered at anchor in the roads of Massaua for a day and a half, as temperatures rose to 45 degrees. Nor, alarmingly, was it much cooler at night. One by one the Spahys’ mounts were finally winched up from the hold in a canvas sling and lowered ashore into a throng of excited dockers.
The Spahys rode down the quayside of Massaua, then the biggest port in east Africa, and through the narrow labyrinthine Turkish and Arabic streets. They were arcaded to provide some protection against the unremitting sun, a device the Italians had continued in the adjoining European quarter, reminding Amedeo of De Chirico’s paintings. On the Yacht Club terraces some Europeans raised their glasses as the Spahys rode down a wide seafront avenue that led to the domed and dazzling palace built for the Turkish-Egyptian pashas, now home to the Italian governor. It was so white in the daytime sun that it strained the eyes and in front of it, defying every horticultural law of survival, was a form of lawn. Above the pedimented portico was a vast red shield with the white cross of Savoy, visible from several kilometres out at sea, which the officers saluted as they rode by.
The desert began on the city’s outskirts, stretching monotonously towards the mountains and the Eritrean hinterland. Only five kilometres out of Massaua, the major brought the column to a halt and ordered everyone to dismount and walk. The horsemen had been told not to clog up the asphalt road, along which lorries filled with infantrymen and supplies were speeding up to Asmara. Instead, the horses had to pick their way painstakingly forward across the scrubby, broken desert land, covered with rocks as though sprinkled from a castor. To speed their progress, the Spahys kept as far as possible to the wadis. Lethal torrents for a few brief weeks during the great rains of July and