The First Victory

by Andrew Stewart

  Moves were now under way to signal to Italy that the agreement reached two years earlier had been cancelled, and Selassie was now both considered an ally of Britain and recognised as leading ‘the lawful Government of Ethiopia’.13 As news started to filter through about the worsening situation in British Somaliland, heated discussions in the House of Commons debated the potential value of adopting ‘a thoroughly Machiavellian manner’ and taking more active steps to highlight the fact that a revolt in Ethiopia was now being fully supported. The September Chiefs of Staff appreciation, which provided a framework for how the wider war would be fought and won and had made such prominent reference to the Italian position in East Africa, also noted that the conditions were right for inciting ‘large scale revolution’ as this would benefit the wider regional position.14 It was certainly the case that Badoglio, in his role as Chief of Staff in Rome, was concerned at the beginning of August by reports of Selassie’s arrival in the Sudan, which he believed would ‘aggravate’ the internal situation.15 France had been lost, the Battle of Britain was well under way, and there was little else that could be done immediately against Italy other than fight a propaganda war and prepare intrigues.16

  As these were developing, an opportunity had fleetingly presented itself to the Italians to exploit the advantage they had gained. Despite later claims about their lack of fighting spirit, papers found by intelligence officers after the campaign confirmed that Aosta had developed various ideas about continuing his offensive. Although it is not clear if it was the German plan that allegedly had been given to him before the fighting began, following the occupation of British Somaliland there was certainly an idea to invade Kenya with troops advancing from the south of Ethiopia and Jubaland to join up at Fort Hall just to the north of Nairobi.17 With the intention that the attacking columns move on the capital next, the Italian viceroy had written on the bottom of the plan, ‘Extreme caution must be observed.’ His concern may well have been about the inadequacy of his transport and the qualities of the colonial forces available to him; at this stage there were still no more than six battalions of troops defending the British colony. The commander in Eritrea, General Vincenzo Tessitore, had also proposed to Aosta that there should be an advance once war broke out with Britain, but heading towards Khartoum and Atbara.18 Later, these plans were seen by the colonel who was in charge of intelligence in the Sudan before the war, and he asked the captured Aosta why the attack had not been carried out; Aosta replied that his orders were to co-ordinate his actions, and his strategy depended upon what happened farther north.19 In September, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, with an army of 200,000 European and African troops and the best part of the Italian Air Force, had moved forward from Fort Capuzzo in Libya and advanced into Egypt as far as Sidi Barrani. In Addis Ababa, Aosta had concluded he could only risk a move into the Sudan if he was certain that Graziani would be able to complete a link-up with him – and once the attacking Italian forces had been pushed back into Libya, this was clearly not a viable option.

  Aosta had in fact retained a generally sound understanding of the wider strategic position that faced him, one which had actually changed little since earlier in the year, even before Mussolini had decided to pursue war with Britain. With his already dwindling stocks of transport and petrol, doing very little appeared the only real option open to him. Some of the more cynical British intelligence officers who reviewed the documents for possible offensives concluded that they were based on a calculation that if everything went badly, any defeats that were suffered ‘might at least get rid of their intolerable Duce’.20 As the author of this assessment added, ‘Fascism was a peculiar poison because it eventually made men loathe and despise themselves and wish for their own country’s downfall’, and there was little evidence that any real attempt was made to secure a decisive victory in East Africa. Following British Somaliland, the advice Aosta received from Badoglio on future operations continued to carry no real sense of urgency.21 He was instead told that he was now to limit himself to launching an anti-British propaganda campaign and closing up the approaches to the south and west of Italian-held territory. This was because the leadership in Rome believed that the war could end as soon as October, following a successful German invasion of England, which meant there was all the more reason for Mussolini to instruct his forces to maintain an essentially defensive outlook.22 As a result, other than preparing for possible co-ordination with Graziani, Aosta took no further action.

  This reliance on help arriving from the Axis alliance, however fanciful it might have seemed later, was, at this stage, also a cause for some concern for the British and reflected the confusion over the level of assistance that was already being provided. There had been reports in mid-July that a German lorry-borne infantry company had been formed in Asmara which it was concluded could be a group of colonists from northern Italy, Austrians or sailors who had organised themselves into a ‘national service’ unit.23 The following month the possibility of parachute troops landing in Tanganyika was raised along with uncertainty about the situation in French Equatorial Africa and the Belgian Congo, which had both recently seen the surrender of their home governments back in Europe.24 In Cairo, however, mixed conclusions were still being put forward. In the late summer of 1940 Colonel Wilfrid Ebsworth, one of the senior officers from the headquarters, spent eight weeks travelling around Africa and sending back regular reports. From these it was not entirely clear that he recognised there to be any great threat facing East Africa. At the end of his trip he produced an interim appreciation detailing what he had seen and a series of planning recommendations which were both sent to Wavell and Anthony Eden, the Secretary of State for War.25 Six concerns were listed but only one of them directly related to Kenya: this was the possibility that it might collapse internally, presumably in the face of an Italian attack, although the author seemed less concerned about the actual threat of an invasion succeeding. Ebsworth’s interest remained very much the political instability in the Union of South Africa and the threat to the Copperbelt as a result of a local uprising or attacks from Angola.

  At the same time in London, where the danger of a German invasion attempt was growing acute, a generally optimistic view of the situation in East Africa still appeared to exist. The focus was on the wider Middle East, as was most obvious in the general appreciation delivered to the War Cabinet in the first week of September by the Chiefs of Staff Committee. This highly significant wartime document examined ‘the factors affecting [Britain’s] ability to defeat Germany’, and aimed ‘to make recommendations from the military point of view as to the policy which should govern our war effort and the future conduct of the war’.26 In this context, Italian fighting power was viewed as much less of a threat than that of its principal ally. As such, an attack on either Italy itself or its African colonies was ‘the first important step towards the downfall of Germany’, a victory against which would represent ‘a strategic success of the first order’. The conclusion, therefore, was that operations against Italy were a priority and should take place as soon as resources allowed. The appreciation also pointed to where this should happen: ‘In East Africa the Italian forces are a wasting asset and although they may have temporary successes their situation will be critical after June 1941 even if they exercise strict economy in the expenditure of their limited resources.’ The Italian Air Force was seen as being particularly vulnerable; although it was concluded that there were about 200 aircraft in East Africa, 40 or so were being destroyed each month and their replacement was considered to be ‘impracticable’. With a more general estimate of just twelve months’ ammunition, less than a year’s food and only six to seven months of fuel oil, an increase in the scale of attack would threaten this ‘precarious’ position and force the Italians to use their reserves more quickly. It was this series of recommendations which provided Wavell with the authorisation he needed to move his plans forward.

  Orders had in fact already been given the previous month to start strengt
hening his forces, despite the threat that was then facing the British Isles. A cycle of six-weekly convoys commenced sending reinforcements from Britain, India and Australasia; at their peak, these delivered an average of 1,000 men per day, with a similar tonnage in equipment, vehicles and stores also arriving in theatre. This allowed Wavell to make up the balance of his armoured and infantry units in North Africa while at the same time providing more men and equipment available for the southern part of his vast command. Even with this, in Kenya and the Sudan there were still only nine British battalions, four of Scots, one from the Royal Fusiliers and one each from the Worcestershire, Sussex, Essex and Yorkshire regiments. The remainder of the ‘home’ troops were from the Royal Artillery, which provided fifteen batteries of guns of various sizes; the Royal Tank Regiment, which sent two squadrons; and a railway construction company from the Royal Engineers.27 From India there were two famous cavalry units, Skinner’s Horse and the Central India Horse, three batteries of mountain guns, sappers, signallers, a number of anti-tank companies and fifteen battalions of infantry. The KAR provided a similar number of infantry; there were also the men of the Kenya Regiment, a reorganised machine gun battalion made up of all the machine-gunners and machine-gun units from the other battalions, along with large numbers of pioneers and support troops. Two armoured car regiments were intended to play an invaluable recce role as were the more lightly armoured vehicles from South Africa which also sent light tanks, twenty-two batteries of guns, a road construction company and nine battalions of infantry. They were joined by the troops from Northern Rhodesia who had been rescued from British Somaliland and Ethiopians who had fled their conquered homeland some years before. Added to this were the South Rhodesians and West Africans, the men from the SDF, the Equatorial Corps and various other exotic-sounding units, some of which were regular and others irregular in nature. This was a truly imperial force made up not just of different armies and air forces but of different races and religions, ‘a microcosm of our war effort’ as one London magazine described it.28 Although still significantly outnumbered, Wavell now had a military organisation that was both equipped and trained for offensive operations.

  Despite the increasing interest in eastern Africa shown by the Chiefs of Staff in London, however, there remained a serious impediment for the British planners. Drawing upon his own increasingly distant military experiences, Churchill often thought he knew better than the military men around him, and he continued to combine a particularly close interest in Wavell’s progress with a mounting level of criticism.29 Eden had written to the prime minister in late September with a range of topics for discussion; most related to the Middle East and one referred specifically to the alleged ‘waste of troops in Kenya’.30 It was actually an attempt to defend Wavell and, in his letter, Eden detailed the various British and Commonwealth forces available, arguing that the majority of them had been positioned in such a way as to safeguard the defence of the Sudan. This, according to the Secretary of State for War, was something that all three men had been in agreement on as it was viewed as being a greater priority than the defence of Kenya. In a directive sent in August, Churchill had indeed ordered that the defence of the Sudan be put first, arguing that it would always be possible to ‘reinforce Kenya faster than Italy can pass troops thither from Abyssinia or Italian Somaliland’.31 Now Eden reminded Churchill that in the colony, aside from the still limited strength of the infantry garrison, at this point there were only twenty-eight artillery pieces, twelve South African light tanks with untrained crews and another twenty-four guns and forty-four armoured cars due to arrive the following month. This was a recurring discussion over subsequent months as pressure grew on Wavell to go on the offensive.32 And whilst Churchill remained the most persistent critic, he was not alone in questioning progress: in early October, the Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Robert Haining, wrote to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff warning that the headquarters in Cairo had become ‘over-loaded and rather indifferently organised’.33 Even Dill, one of Wavell’s greatest friends, noted that the deterioration of Italian morale had been widely reported and advised him that it was highly desirable for him ‘to hit them wherever and whenever we can’; he hoped the general in Cairo would make the necessary arrangements to carry out operations in East Africa as had originally been intended.34

  The commander in the Middle East was, however, still prepared to argue the point with Churchill and try to make him better understand the challenges he faced. Wavell’s apparent reluctance to commit to offensive action has more often been linked to concerns about the level of training and preparedness of his troops, but it was the overreach of his forces and the ability to sustain any attack, specifically in Egypt but more generally across his entire command, that actually most worried him. He subsequently recalled that Britain’s leader ‘never realized the necessity for full equipment before committing troops to battle. I remember his arguing that because a comparatively small number of mounted Boers had held up a British division in 1899 or 1900, it was unnecessary for the South African Brigade to have much more equipment than rifles before taking the field in 1940.’35 As American media reports in October highlighted, the possibility of an Italian thrust to the north also continued to concern Wavell, perhaps more even than the other potential dangers, and his forces were on high alert to prevent ‘a gamble to sever the British Empire’s jugular’.36 Yet at the same time, and although recognising that Aosta’s shortages of fuel and other military supplies forced upon him ‘very sparing warfare’, the military correspondent of Life magazine also seemed critical of the failure to launch any attack against the Italians.37 No one seemed willing to take into account that the greatest problem for Wavell was trying to accurately anticipate the character and nature of Italian military intentions and work out what they were actually doing. In theory his opponents enjoyed a marked advantage but this would progressively decrease. Basic military logic pointed to their superiority being exploited but, at this stage, there was still no clear evidence as to whether the halt following the invasion of British Somaliland was a strategic pause or the culmination of the Italians’ efforts.

  The increasingly vocal inputs from Pretoria also indicated another delicate consideration for the British commander in Cairo. Leading politicians in London, such as Leo Amery, argued that Smuts should be given greater responsibility for the conduct of the war in Africa, with the caveat that it needed to be made clear that ‘his role is purely that of military coordination and does in no way imply political subordination or absorption’.38 This support helped establish an increasingly prominent role for him, and the subsequent campaign would in fact prove hugely significant for both Smuts and South Africa. The country’s official historian later described it as a ‘military honeymoon’ during which the troops ‘were untrained and equipment sketchy but there was plenty of movement and quite a good deal of interest’.39 It was in many respects more than just this, a more recent account comparing it to a ‘dress rehearsal for the struggle which followed further north’ and the fighting in the Western Desert.40 The South African leader had reviewed the first deployment of Union troops beyond the country’s borders at a farewell parade on ‘Delville Wood Day’, when each year the losses suffered during the 1916 battle were remembered.41 He told the men assembled before him on 14 July 1940 that East Africa formed ‘the strategic rampart and defence lines’ of their own country and that their role would at some future stage ‘open up wider horizons and establish larger interests’ for all of them. It was not just the troops which proved so important but also the equipment that was sent north, most of which was produced using domestic resources. In September alone the South African Ford plant assembled 18,349 trucks all of which were destined for the war effort.42 These were delivered using an overland convoy route with regular fuel dumps and rest camps, which allowed the vehicles to be driven from Pretoria to Broken Hill, a distance of 1,300 miles, and then on another 1,600 miles before arriving at Nairobi.43<
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  With this level of materiel and manpower support, it was inevitable that Wavell would have to take into account Smuts’ increasingly forceful opinions. A meeting held in Khartoum on 29 October to discuss future strategy brought into sharp perspective just how forceful the South African leader had become. Sitting with both men were Platt and Dickinson and alongside them was Eden, who had travelled out from London as a demonstration of the importance the British government attached to this meeting.44 Smuts argued that the best strategy was to keep the Italians guessing where an attack might be delivered while preparing to make rapid moves into their territory. At the same time he was adamant that the vital port of Kismayu had to be captured early on if the more general offensive against Italian Somaliland was to succeed. British and Commonwealth forces would concentrate there before launching an advance towards Addis Ababa. Kismayu was also known to be an important supply hub for the Italians and, although the harbour was supposed to be blockaded, reports in November pointed to the number of ships there as having changed.45 Air photographs and intelligence reports showed movement between Kismayu and Mogadishu but it was not known if this was local traffic or if ships were breaking the blockade. It had been first confirmed two months earlier that supplies were on their way from Japan, the ships subsequently reaching these ports where their cargo, which included lubricating oil, tyres and other spares for motor transport, was offloaded onto dhows under cover of darkness for use by the defending Italian military forces.46