By Dr. Richard Pankhurst:-
The rainy season of 1936, which began at the end of June, greatly
hampered Italian offensive operations, and thus provided the Ethiopians
with a much needed breathing space in which the Patriot Movement
developed.
“Sons of Ras Kassa”
The first significant incident of this phase of the struggle occurred
on 6 July, when a force of Patriots, described by the Italian writer
Bollati as “incited by the sons of Ras Kassa,” cut the railway and
telegraph lines between Akaki and Mojjo, and derailed several carriages
near Adda. This, according to Corrado Zoli, caused an eight-day
interruption of traffic. The same Ethiopian group then proceeded to
attack an Italian force near Adama on 8 July. The Italian dead included
one senior officer, General Mercati.
The operation, according to Edward Press of the Bank of Ethiopia,
“showed considerable organisation”, and, as he put it, was “certainly
not the work of a haphazard band of Abyssinian brigands.” The British
journalist, and later novelist, Evelyn Waugh, who travelled by rail from
Dire Dawa to Addis Ababa shortly afterwards, reported that “there had
been sharp fighting in the previous month. A train was derailed and
sacked, two bridges destroyed and a station besieged for a day and a
half. For ten days trains could not get through”.
The Italians, Waugh reports, were therefore taking strong
precautions: “there was a machine-gun section”, he says, “posted at the
front of the train; another at the rear.”
Patriots to the north-west of Addis Ababa were also engaged in
fighting at Debra Berhan and Koromesh on 19 July, and launched assaults
at Ankober on 21 and 22 July.
“Greatly in Fear of an Ethiopian Attack on the Capital”
An Italian nurse, Maria Giaconia Landi, who was then in Addis Ababa,
records that by then many of her compatriots were greatly in fear of an
Ethiopian attack on the capital. On 17 July she noted that within a
radius of three kilometres of the city the rebels were “attacking
continually”, that there was “firing every night”, and that the area of
the old Menelik hospital was “not too secure”.
On the following day she reported: “There is always talk of attacks
on the city. They say we cannot be quiet until the rainy season ends. It
is thought the Abyssinians will try to make an invasion en masse or
else infiltrate one day into the market.” It was, however, hoped that
even though a “night assault might in part succeed it would expose the
enemy to be exterminated with the light of dawn. “On July 20 she
reported hearing shooting on the previous night, on 21 July that the
“rebel” force outside the city was believed to be 40,000 strong, and on
22 July that Dr. Bora of the Italian hospital on the Gulale road
“absolutely did not want her to go to the old Menelik hospital “because
it is said to be one of the most dangerous places”.
28 July
Addis Ababa was, in fact, attacked, for the first time, on 28 July,
when Patriot forces advanced on the city from the northwest and
south-east. Zoli describes them as a “strong nuclei of dissidents and
rebels “under Aberra Kassa and Dejazmach Balcha, “while Bollati says
that a “strong force” – Giaconia Landi quotes the figure of 30,000 armed
men under the sons of Kassa “infiltrated the woods around the capital,
attempting to attack it in the hope of provoking a revolt in the city.”
Landi says the rebels’ attacked near the Italian hospital, and that
there was fighting near St. George’s Cathedral. Waugh was later informed
by the Italians that several hundred armed raiders got into the centre
of the city “before they were discovered and wiped out in the gulleys”,
while Woizerit Salome Gabre Egziabher investigating the matter a
generation or more later, claimed that contrary to Italian statements,
the attacking force was supported by “almost the entire population of
the town”.
Italian Aircraft Bombing and Machine-Gunning
On the following day Landi describes hard fighting, while Italian
aircraft, according to Zoli, attacked the Patriots around Addis Ababa
fiercely “throughout the day of 29 July, bombing them, machine-gunning
them and thus finally dispersing them”. Landi relates that the hill
above the New Palace had for a time been “entirely occupied by the
rebels”, and that there had even been a possibility of the Italian
hospital, at Gulale, falling into their hands.
It would seem not unreasonable to argue that, had it not been for
Italian control of the air, Patriot forces might then, and later, have
actually captured Addis Ababa!
So, far from being demoralized the Patriots seem, however, to have
continued in their determination. On 16 August, Landi reported further
Italian alarm, She states that it was believed that the Patriot leaders,
Aberra Kassa and Fikre Mariam, were about to march on the capital at
the head of 11,000 men.
Patriots around this time were also active to the east of the
country, in the Chercher area, where Zoli admits that though the
population had surrendered 24 machine-guns, 320 Mauser rifles and 1,100
other types of rifles, the Italian advance went slowly.
Ethiopian forces in fact counterattacked in this area, attacking the
Italian garrison at Kolubi on 14 and 19 August. On that day they
captured the local church, while other groups far away in the north
launched an attack on Warra Illu on 20 August.
Addis Ababa Again Attacked
Addis Ababa was again attacked a few days later. Landi wrote, on 26
August, of rumours of enemy “infiltration in the city”, and reports that
it was believed that five Patriot leaders, each with ten to twelve
thousand men, had agreed to attack together, while another thousand
rebels were established near the airport. The expected attack, led by
Dejazmatch Balcha came that night. The capital, she says, was in
consequence in “a permanent state of alarm,” and a night curfew was
imposed, for it was thought that some “rebels” had already succeeded in
penetrating the city’s confines.
On the following day Graziani telegraphed to Rome that he had given
instructions that all coded telegrams from the ex-foreign Legations, now
reduced to consulate level, should be held up to prevent the diffusion
of what he termed “alarmist news”, until the Minister of the Colonies
had been able to release his own version of events, i.e. some sort of a
cooked-up concoction!
“Quite a Battle”
Waugh, who was in the city at this time, recalls that the official of
the Italian Ministry of the Press detailed to look after him “seemed
embarrassed.” The Patriots, he adds, were “attacking the aerodrome.
Bombers arrived from Dire Dawa. It was quite a battle.”
Describing conditions in and around the capital at the time of his
visit the English writer goes on to say that “there was a general sense
of insecurity.” Writing, it should be remembered, as a sympathiser of
fascist Italy, he added:
“The raids on the town were futile; the chance of a rising inside it,
remote. But all the time there was an illusion of being besieged. The
thick groves of eucalyptus which surround Addis on all sides provided
perfect cover for attack and retreat. . . the bandits could and
frequently did advance unobserved to a few yards of the outer defences;
more than this, the circumference of the town is so large and its
boundaries so ill defined, the ground so broken with water-courses and
footpaths, that they could effortlessly penetrate the defences at twenty
places”.
Such incidents, however, were few and far between, and the Italian
garrison, Waugh explains, often had “nothing to do except sit about
sheltering from the rain and gaze out from the sentry posts into the
dripping eucalyptus; to go into action when it suited the temper of the
marauding bands to come and shoot at them”.
Dr. Ladislas Sava, a Hungarian physician then practicing in the
capital, wrote more sympathetically of the Patriots. He declares that
guerrilla troops often approached Addis Ababa from the forest, harassing
the Italian troops whenever they met them. Graziani, he explains, was
“master of the town, but on the Gulali road, for instance, in the
Italian hospital there, one could often hear quite clearly the noise of
rifles and machine-guns in the near neighbourhood”,
Fighting Outside the Capital
Outside the capital, fighting was even more frequent. Italian records
tell for example of battles with “strong rebel forces” in the Debra
Sina area, as well as in other parts of Shoa and Harar province at the
end of August, of Patriot attacks between Kolubi and Chalenko on 1
September, and of guerrilla operations in Menz and near the Termaber
pass around 7 September, with the Ethiopians attempting to capture Debra
Sina on the following day.
On August 31 Landi reported that “rebel” forces were said to be
strong in the area of Akaki, and on 26 September that it was thought
that the Ethiopians were planning another attack on the capital. She
added that 15,000 armed men were already on the march, and reported, on 9
October, that the railway line had once more been attacked near Akaki.
Source: http://www.linkethiopia.org
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