Amedeo: The True Story of an Italian’s War in Abyssinia. Sebastian O’Kelly
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landscape like blood vessels in a slab of meat. Often accompanied by Cavarzerani, he would make for a wadi, shaded by a huge and majestic baobab tree. The sandy river bed provided a serviceable manège to school the horses, and with the corners marked out by large stones, Amedeo carried out the training exercises he had learned at Pinerolo. As the horse trotted and cantered around him on a lunge rein, the wadi echoed with his onomatopoeic endearments: piccolone, poppolone, coccolone, bello bello …
Amedeo would have chosen to name his new horse after Maria, his Hungarian amour, whose photograph he carried in his wallet. But as the horse was a stallion, like all the Spahys’ four hundred mounts, he lamely decided to name him after her father Sandor, the diminutive of Alexander.
By mid-September Major Ajmone Cat despaired that the war would ever start. He kept the Spahys occupied, sending out regular patrols to the border with the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. But before even a shot had been fired they were rapidly deteriorating. Most of the officers, including Amedeo, had already gone down with malaria, but far worse in the major’s view was the loss of eighty horses to mandef, a form of pneumonia picked up when they grazed. He had had to remount an entire squadron on Ethiopian horses, the Dongolai, which were virtually ponies.
The major was not alone in his frustration. Among officers in the invasion force muttered criticisms began to be directed towards the commander-in-chief, General Emilio De Bono. White-bearded and already sixty-nine years old, the general was an engaging character who worked a masterful charm on the ordinary soldiers, his figlioli. A distinguished general in the Great War – and the author of popular humorous books – he had been a Fascist from the beginning. Providing the movement with precious respectability, reassuring the king and the army, De Bono was one of the four quadrumvirs of the National Fascist Party, a long-standing confidant of Mussolini who was owed much. But as a conquering commander, he was never wholly convincing. And with the awful memory of Adowa always at the back of his mind, he wasn’t going to budge until the Duce had sent enough men to cover all possible contingencies. On occasion, Amedeo visited De Bono, a great friend of his Uncle Amedeo, at his headquarters in Asmara, and found the old general quite immune to the impatience of his subordinates and his political master in Rome.
Haile Selassie had cause to be grateful to his dilatory adversary as the diplomatic temperature rose alarmingly in Europe. Italian aggression would be met by force, Sir Samuel Hoare, the British Foreign Secretary, declared forthrightly in Geneva on 11 September. A few days later the British Home fleet was mobilised and sent to the Mediterranean; and the Italian fleet returned from the Dodecanese to La Spezia.
Feverish preparations for war continued in Addis Ababa. The emperor’s Swedish senior military advisor, General Virgin, had had to retire owing to altitude sickness – a common difficulty – but the army cadets’ training continued under Captain Viking Tramm. Belgian officers, meanwhile, introduced the imperial guard to the rudiments of modern warfare. In addition, scores of adventurers and assorted misfits eager to fight the Italians poured into Addis Ababa. Among them were a sixty-two-year-old English master of foxhounds, Major Gerald Burgoyne (later killed driving an ambulance) and Colonel Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, ‘the Black Eagle of Harlaam’, who on arrival proceeded to crash one of the emperor’s half dozen aircraft.
More valuable, perhaps, was a growing bivouac of foreign journalists and newsreelmen, who had arrived to report the war from the Ethiopian viewpoint. Though Evelyn Waugh, now accredited to the Daily Mail, was of the view that the sooner the Italians marched into Addis Ababa the better – ‘I hope the organmen gas them to buggery,’ he wrote to Diana Cooper – the sympathy of the world was with the dignified little emperor. Nowhere more so than in Britain. Sylvia Pankhurst, having previously espoused the cause of women’s suffrage, revolutionary socialism and unmarried mothers – she was one herself – rallied to the emperor. Loathing Italian Fascism – her lover was a leftwing dissident and journalist Silvio Coria – she soon demonstrated that Haile Selassie could not have wished for a more energetic propagandist. Although she had never met the emperor and knew nothing of Ethiopia, the justice of his struggle against a totalitarian enemy stirred within her a righteous wrath. In the years that were to follow, she would ensure, more than anyone else, that the plight of Ethiopia was never far from the public mind.
In Rome, meanwhile, a chapter closed on the career of another remarkable woman, as Margherita Sarfatti gave her former editor and lover her parting advice: ‘You have enough to colonise in Apulia, Sicily and Calabria … If you go into Ethiopia you will fall into the hands of the Germans and you will be lost. If we have to pay for the empire with the ruin of Europe, we will pay too high a price.’
At 9pm on 2 October 1935 the cathedral bells in Asmara began to toll. Catholic and Coptic churches across the colony followed suit, their peals echoing down to the small parish at Barentu. Major Ajmone Cat summoned his officers and told them to prepare to cross the frontier at dawn.
Amedeo did not need binoculars to see the men on top of a small hill about a kilometre away. In their white robes, the Ethiopian skirmishers stood out clearly against the burned brown of the rocky landscape. For the Spahys di Libya it was the first sight of the enemy since crossing the frontier three days before. At the front of the invasion force, Amedeo had looked back that first day from a high amba and seen three long columns of men, 100,000 in all, fording the Mareb river. And above flew the aeroplanes of La Disperata, whose first bomb, dropped on an unsuspecting village near Adowa, was released by a journalist friend of Ciano’s from Corriere della Sera. Mussolini had got his war at last.
Major Ajmone Cat lowered his field glasses and turned in the saddle towards his officers, singling out Amedeo. His feelings towards the general’s nephew had thawed over the past three months. Indeed, Amedeo had become something of a favourite with the irascible commander, who was impressed by his conscientiousness. He had wanted to leave the lieutenant behind at Barentu, as he was still weakened by malaria, but Amedeo had persuaded him that he was fit enough to serve. The young man may have been a little too eager. At dusk on the first day in enemy territory, Amedeo had strode up to his commanding officer, who was standing alone some way off, to report that the camels carrying the tents and supplies had been unloaded and that the encampment was secure for the night. The major had grunted in acknowledgement and turned his back; Amedeo had continued, ‘Comandante …’ Again the major turned away. For a third time, ‘Com …’ The major exploded: ‘Damn it man! Can’t you leave me to piss in peace!’ Amedeo’s excess of zeal had been a source of great amusement. But now, faced with the first appearance of the enemy, there was no trace of levity when the major held the lieutenant’s eyes for a moment, and said: ‘Guillet, clear that hill, if you please.’
So that was how it was done, Amedeo thought. Only a few short words, casually spoken as though he were being asked to round up a loose horse. But what they meant was vast. This was how it must have been for his father when he was ordered into action on the Carso for the first time. He could feel the eyes of the other officers on him, and he looked away towards the hill for a moment. Without a word, he calmly eased Sandor into a turn, taking care not to yank the bit in his excitement, and cantered down the column to his men. Although it was a hot afternoon and the Spahys had been marching all day, the major’s words had shaken off Amedeo’s torpor, and he felt as clear and focused as he had to be during the final jump-off in the showjumping ring.
‘Shumbashi Sarduk, have the squadron draw up in line behind me,’ Amedeo told his senior sergeant.
He watched his eighty horsemen detach themselves from the rest, sending up puffs of dust as they sorted themselves