was fortunate enough to be included in the Duce's party for the opening
night." The Count relaxed a little, smiling that flashing smile.
The General sighed as he poured the wine. "Ha! The civilized life, so
far a cry from this land of thorns and savages .
It was late afternoon before the General had steeled himself to
approach the painful subject of the interview and, smiling
apologetically, he gave his orders.
"The Wells of Chaldi," repeated the Count, and immediately a change
came over him. He leapt to his feet, knocking over the Madeira glass,
and strode majestically back and forth, his heels cracking on the
tiles, belly sucked in and noble chin on high.
"Death before dishonour," cried Aldo Belli, the Madeira warming his
ardour.
"I hope not, caro," murmured the General. "All I want you to do is
take up a guard position on an untenanted water-hole." But the Count
seemed not to hear him. His eyes were dark and glowing.
"I am greatly indebted to you for this opportunity to distinguish my
command. You can count on me to the death." The Count stopped short
as a fresh thought occurred to him. "You will support my advance with
armour and aircraft? "he asked anxiously.
"I don't really think that will be necessary, caro." The General spoke
mildly. All this talk of death and honour troubled him, but he did not
want to give offence. "I don't think you will meet any resistance."
"But if I do?" the Count demanded with mounting agitation,
so that the General went to stroke his arm placatingly.
"You have a radio, caro. Call on me for any assistance you need
The Count thought about that for a moment and clearly found it
acceptable. Once more the patriotic fervour returned to the glowing
eyes.
"Ours is the victory," he cried, and the General echoed him
vigorously.
"I hope so, caro. Indeed I hope so." Suddenly the Count swirled and
strode to the door. He flung it open and called.
"Gino!" The little black-shirted sergeant hurried into the room,
frantically adjusting the huge camera that hung about his neck.
"The General does not mind?" asked Aldo Belli leading him to the
window. "The light is better here." The slanting rays of the dying
sun poured in to light the two men theatrically as the Count seized
De
Bono's hand.
"Closer together, please. Back a trifle, General, you are covering the
Count. That's excellent. Chin up a little, my Count.
Ha! Bello!" cried Gino, and recorded faithfully the startled
expression above the General's little white goatee.
The senior major of the Blackshirt "Africa" Battalion was a hard
professional soldier of thirty years" experience, a veteran of
Vittorio
Veneto and Caporetto, where he had been commissioned in the field.
He was a fighting man and he reacted with disgust to his posting from
his prestigious regiment in the regular army to this rabble of
political militia. He had protested at length and with all the power
at his command, but the order came from on high, from divisional
headquarters itself. The divisional General was a friend of Count
Aldo
Belli, and He also knew the Count intimately and owed favours decided
that he needed a real soldier to guide and counsel him. Major
Castelani was probably one of the most real soldiers in the entire army
of Italy. Once he realized that his posting was inevitable, he had
resigned himself and settled to his new duties whipping and bullying
his new command into order.
He was a big man with a close-cropped skull of grey bristle, and a
hound-dog, heavily lined face burned and eroded by the weathering of a
dozen campaigns. He walked with the rolling gait of a sailor or a
horseman, though he was neither, and his voice could carry a mile into
a moderate wind.
Almost entirely due to his single-handed efforts, the battalion was
drawn up in marching order an hour before dawn. Six hundred and ninety
men with their motorized transports strung out down the main street of
Asmara. The lorries were crammed with silent men huddling in their
greatcoats against the mild morning chill. The motorcycle outriders
were sitting astride their machines flanking the newly polished but
passenger-less Rolls-Royce command car, with its gay pennants and its
driver sitting lugubriously at the wheel. A charged sense of
apprehension and uncertainty gripped the entire assembly of warriors.
There had been wild rumours flying about the battalion for the last
twelve hours they had been selected for some desperate and dangerous
mission. The previous evening the mess sergeant had actually witnessed
the Colonel Count Aldo Belli weeping with emotion as he toasted his
junior officers with the fighting slogan of the regiment,
"Death before dishonour," which might sound fine on a bellyful of
chianti, but left a hollow feeling at five in the morning on top of a
breakfast of black bread and weak coffee.
The Third Battalion was in a collectively sombre mood as the sun came
up in a blaze of hot scarlet, forcing them almost immediately to
discard the greatcoats. The sun climbed into a sky of burning blue and
the men waited as patiently as oxen in the traces. Someone once
observed that war is ninety-nine per cent boredom and one per cent
unmitigated terror. The Third Battalion was learning the ninety-nine
per cent.
Major Luigi Castelani sent yet another messenger to the Colonel's
quarters a little before noon, and this time received a reply that
the
Count was now actually out of bed and had almost completed his toilet.
He would join the battalion shortly. The Major swore with the practice
of an old campaigner and set off with his rolling swagger down the
column to quell the mutinous mutterings from the half mile-long column
of canvas-covered lorries sweltering in the midday sun.
The Count came like the rising sun itself, glowing and glorious,
flanked by two captains and preceded by a trooper carrying the battle
standard which the Count had personally designed. It was based on the
eagles of a Roman legion, complete with shrieking birds of prey and
dangling silken tassels.
The Count floated on a cloud of bonhomie and expensive eau de cologne.
Gino got a few good shots of him embracing his junior officers, and
slapping the backs of the senior NCOs. At the common soldiers he
smiled like a father and spurred their spleens with a few apt homilies
on duty and sacrifice as he strode down the column.
"What a fine body of warriors," he told the Major. "I am moved to
song." Luigi Castelani winced. The Colonel was frequently moved to
song. He had taken lessons with the most famous teachers in Italy and
as a younger man he had seriously considered a career in opera.
Now he halted and spread his arms, threw back his head and let the song
flow in a deep ringing baritone. Dutifully, his officers joined in the
stirring chorus of "La Giovinezza', the Fascist marching song.
The Colonel moved slowly back along the
patient column in the sunlight,
pausing to strike a pose as he went for a high note, lifting his right
hand with the tip of the second finger lightly touching the thumb,
while the other hand grasped the beiewelled dagger at his waist.
The song ended and the Colonel cried, "Enough! It is time to march
where are the maps?" and one of his subalterns hurried forward with
the map case.
"Colonel, sir," Luigi Castelani intervened tactfully. "The road is
well sign-posted, and I have two native guides-" The Count ignored him
and watched while the maps were spread on the glistening bonnet of the
Rolls.
"Ah!" He studied the maps learnedly, then looked up at his two
captains. "One of you on each side of me," he instructed. "Major Vita
you here! A stern expression, if you please, and do not look at the
camera." He pointed with a lordly gesture at Johannesburg four
thousand miles to the south and held the pose long enough for Gino to
record it. Next, he climbed into the rear seat of the Rolls and,
standing, he pointed imperatively ahead along the road to the Danakil
desert.
Mistakenly, Luigi Castelani took this as a command to advance. He let
out a series of bull-like bellows and the battalion was galvanized into
frantic action. Like one man, they scrambled into the covered lorries
with a hundred rounds of ammunition in his bandolier and a rifle
between his knees.
However, by the time 690 men were embarked, the Colonel had once more
descended from the Rolls. It was an unfortunate chance that dictated
that the Rolls should be parked directly in front of the casino.
The casino was a government-licensed institution under whose auspices
young ladies were brought out from Italy on six-month contracts to
cater to the carnal needs of tens of thousands of lusty young men in a
woman less environment.
Very few of these ladies had the stamina to sign a renewal of the
contract and none of them found it necessary.
Possessed of a substantial dowry, they returned home to find a
husband.
The casino had a silver roof of galvanized corrugated iron Hill and its
eaves and balconies were decorated with intricate cast-iron work. The
windows of the girls" rooms opened on to the street.
The young hostesses, who usually rose in the mid afternoon, had been
prematurely awakened by the bellowing of orders and the clash of
weapons. They had traipsed out on to the long second-floor veranda,
clad in brightly coloured but flimsy nightwear, and now entered into
the spirit of the occasion, giggling and blowing kisses to the
officers. One of them had a bottle of iced Lacrima Cristi, which she
knew from experience was the Colonel's favourite beverage, and she
beckoned with the cold de wed bottle.
The Colonel realized suddenly that the singing and excitement had made
him thirsty and peckish.
"A cup for the stirrup, as the English say," he suggested jocularly,
and slapped one of the captains on the shoulder.
Most of his staff followed him with alacrity into the casino.
A little after five o'clock, one of the junior subalterns emerged,
slightly inebriated, from the casino with a message from the Colonel to
the Major.
"At dawn tomorrow, we advance without fail." The battalion rumbled out
of Asmara the following morning at ten o'clock. The Colonel was
feeling liverish and disgruntled. The previous night's excitement had
got out of hand, he had sung until his throat was hoarse and had drunk
great quantities of Lacrima Cristi, before going upstairs with two of
the young hostesses.
Gino knelt on the seat of the Rolls beside him, holding an umbrella
over his head, and the driver tried to avoid potholes and
irregularities in the road. But the Count was pale and his brow
sparkled with the sweat of nausea.
Sergeant Gino wished to cheer him. He hated to see his
Count in misery and so he attempted to rekindle the warlike spirit of
yesterday.
"Think on it, my Count. We of the entire army of Italy will be the
very first to confront the enemy. The first to meet the blood-thirsty
barbarian with his cruel heart and red hands." The Count thought on it
as he was bidden. He thought on it with great concentration and
increasing nausea.
Suddenly he became aware that of all the 360,000 men that comprised the
expeditionary forces of Italy, he, Aldo Belli, was the very first, the
veritable point of the spear aimed at Ethiopia. He remembered suddenly
the horror stories he had heard from the disaster of Adowa. One of the
atrocity stories outweighed all others the
Ethiopians castrated their prisoners. He felt the contents of that
noble sac between his thighs retracting forcibly and a fresh sweat
broke out upon his brow.
Stop!" he shrieked at the driver. "Stop, this instant."
A bare two miles from the centre of the town, the column was plunged
into confusion by the abrupt halt of the lead vehicle, and,
answering the loud and urgent shouts of the commanding officer, the
Major hurried forward to learn that the order of march had been
altered. The command car would take up station in the exact centre of
the column with six motorcycle outriders brought back to ride as flank
guards.
It was another hour before the new arrangement could be put into effect
land with its distant smoky horizons and its vast vaulted blue dome of
the burning heavens.
Count Aldo Belli rode easier on the luxurious leather of the
Rolls, cheered by the knowledge that preceding him were three hundred
and forty-five fine rubbery sets of peasant testicles upon which the
barbarian could blunt his blade.
The column went into bivouac that evening fifty-three kilometres from
Asmara. Not even the Count could pretend that this was a forced march
for motorized infantry but the advantage was that a pair of
motorcyclists could send back with a despatch for General De Bono
reassuring him of the patriotism, the loyalty and the fighting ardour
of the Third Battalion and, of course, on their return the cyclists
could carry blocks of ice from the casino packed in salt and straw and
stowed in the sidecars.
The following morning, the Count had recovered much of his good cheer.
He rose early at nine " O clock and took a hearty alfresco breakfast
with his officers under the shade of a spread tarpaulin and then, from
the rear seat of the Rolls, he gave a clenched fist cavalry order to
advance.
Still in the centre of the column, pennants fluttering and battle
standard glittering, the Rolls glided forward and it looked, even to
the disillusioned Major, as if they might make good going of the day's
march.
The undulating grassland fell away almost imperceptibly beneath the
speeding wheels, and the blue loom of the mountains on their right hand
merged gradually with the
lighter fiercer blue of the sky. The
transition to desert country was so gradual as to lull the unobservant
traveller.
The intervals between the flat-topped acacia trees became greater and
the trees themselves were more stunted, more twisted and spiky, as they
progressed, until at last they ceased and the bushes of spino
Cristi replaced them grey and low and viciously thor ned The earth was
parched and crumbled, dotted with clumps of camel grass and the horizon
was unbroken, enclosing them entirely. The land itself was so flat and
featureless that it gave the illusion of being saucer-shaped, as though
the rim of the land rose slightly to meet the sky.
Through this wilderness, the road was slashed like the claw mark of a
predator into the fleshy red soil. The tracks were so deeply rutted
that the middle hump constantly brushed the chassis of the
Rolls, and a mist of fine red dust stood in the heated air long after
the column had passed.
The Colonel was bored and uncomfortable. It was becoming increasingly
clear, even to the Count, that the wilderness harboured no hostile
horde, and his courage and impatience returned.
"Drive to the head of the column," he instructed Giuseppe, and the
Rolls pulled out and sped past the leading trucks, the Count bestowing
a cheery salute on Castelani as he left him glowering and muttering
behind him.
When Castelani caught up with him again, two hours later, the
Count was standing on the burnished bonnet of the Rolls staring through
his binoculars at the horizon and doing an excited little dance while
he urged Gino to make haste in unpacking the special Mantilicher 9.3
men sporting rifle from its leather case. The weapon was of seasoned
walnut, butt and stock, and the blued steel was inlaid with
twenty-four-carat gold hunting scenes of the chase boar and stag,
huntsmen on horseback and hounds in full cry. It was a masterpiece of
the gunsmith's art.
Without lowering the binoculars, he gave orders to Castelani to erect
the radio aerial and send a message of good cheer and enthusiasm to
General De Bono, to report the magnificent progress made by the
battalion to date and assure him that they would soon command all the
approaches to the Sardi Gorge. The Major should also put the column
into laager and set up the ice machine while the Colonel undertook a
reconnaissance patrol in the direction in which he was now staring so