27.George Kirk, The Middle East in the War [Survey of International Affairs 1939–1946] (London: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 19.
28.Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East: Vol. I, pp. 5–6.
29.‘Meeting of the Cabinet’ (Basis of Estimates), Cabinet 39(28), 18 July 1928, CAB23/58, TNA; Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, pp. 237–572.
30.Major-General W.H.A. Bishop to Barton, 3 November 1949, CAB106/910, TNA.
31.‘Obituary: Sir George Giffard’, The Times (London), 19 November 1964; ibid., ‘I.L.W. writes’, 21 November 1964; ibid., ‘C.R.A.S. writes’, 26 November 1964.
32.Ibid., ‘I.L.W. writes’, 21 November 1964.
33.Colonel G.M. Orr (Retd.), ‘The Future of Defence in Eastern Africa’, The Journal of the Royal United Service Institution (Vol. 74, Issue 495, 1929), pp. 606–607.
34.Lützelschwab, ‘Colonial Settler Economies in Africa’, pp. 4–5.
35.Major Sir Humphrey Leggett, ‘The British East African Territories and their Strategical Implications’, Journal of the Royal African Society (Vol. 39, No. 156, July 1940), p. 203; Orr, ‘The Future of Defence in Eastern Africa’, p. 610.
36.Barnett, The Collapse of British Power, p. 125.
37.Ralph J. Bunche, ‘The Land Equation in Kenya Colony: (As Seen by a Kikuyu Chief)’, The Journal of Negro History (Vol. 24, No. 1, Jan. 1939), p. 34.
38.Ibid.
39.Bishop to Barton, 27 February 1950, CAB106/911, TNA. The officer in question was Charles Gwynn who, as a major-general, was later commandant of the Staff College at Camberley.
40.‘Memorandum by the Inspector General, The King’s African Rifles on Defence of East Africa’, 8 January 1928, CO820/3/10, TNA.
41.Christine Stephanie Nicholls, Red Strangers: The White Tribe of Kenya (London: Timewell Press, 2005), p. 215.
42.Bishop to Barton, 27 February 1950, CAB106/911, TNA.
43.Andrew Stewart, Empire Lost: Britain, the Dominions and the Second World War (London: Continuum, 2008), pp. 15–25.
44.Glover, An Improvised War, pp. 3–16.
45.Ibid., p. 3.
46.J.S., ‘The Rise and Fall of the Italian African Empire’, 21 January 1943, CAB106/404, TNA; ‘Ethiopia: From Solomon to Haile Selassie’, The Listener, 13 February 1941.
47.Glover, An Improvised War, p. 9.
48.G.M. Gathorne-Hardy, A Short History of International Affairs 1920–1939 (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 403.
49.Angelo Del Boca [trans. P.D. Cummins], The Ethiopian War 1935–1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 12.
50.Major G.P. Wallace, ‘Abyssinia’, 17 October 1941, DO35/1001, TNA.
51.Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Vol. I, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell & Co., 1948), p. 149.
52.Del Boca, The Ethiopian War 1935–41, p. 6; Lieutenant-Colonel A.C. Arnold, ‘The Italo-Abyssinian Campaign, 1935–36’, The Journal of the Royal United Service Institution (Vol. LXXXII, No. 525, 1937), pp. 71–75.
53.Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 149.
54.Robert Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933–1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 9.
55.A.J. Barker, The Civilizing Mission (London: Cassell & Co., 1968), p. 64.
56.Ibid., pp. 62–63.
57.Richard Carrier, ‘Blindness and Contingencies: Italian Failure in Ethiopia (1936–1940)’, in Richard G. Davis (ed.), The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare (Selected Papers from the 2007 Conference of Army Historians), pp. 107–110; Lieutenant-Colonel H. de Watteville, ‘Italy and Abyssinia’, The Army Quarterly (Vol. XXXI, No. 2, Jan. 1936), pp. 206–207.
58.Del Boca, The Ethiopian War 1935–41, p. 205; David Clay Large, ‘Mussolini’s “Civilising Mission”’, Military History Quarterly (Vol. 5, No. 2, Winter 1993), pp. 44–53.
59.John Gooch, ‘Re-conquest and Suppression: Fascist Italy’s Pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922–39’, The Journal of Strategic Studies (Vol. 28, No. 6, 2005), p. 1022.
60.G.L. Steer, Sealed and Delivered: A Book on the Abyssinian Campaign (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), pp. vii–viii.
61.Lieutenant Commander Francesco Marino (Italian Navy), Military Operations in the Italian East Africa, 1935–1941: Conquest and Defeat, Master of Military Studies Paper, United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 2008, pp. 24–31.
62.Steer, Sealed and Delivered, pp. vi–ix.
63.James J. Sadkovich, ‘Understanding Defeat: Reappraising Italy’s Role in World War II’, in Nick Smart (ed.), The Second World War (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), p. 379.
64.De Watteville, ‘Italy and Abyssinia’, p. 217.
65.Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers: At the Admiralty, Vol.I – September 1939–May 1940 (London: William Heineman, 1993), p. 402; ‘Foreword to East African Campaign’, n.d., CAB106/919, TNA.
66.Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East: Vol. I, pp. 23–26.
67.‘Report on a Conference held at Aden from 30th May to 3rd June 1939’, WO201/248, TNA.
68.Sir Angus Gillan, ‘The Importance of the Sudan’, The Listener, 28 November 1940. He went on to explain how ‘the various local tribesmen were good fighters, the Berberines from the north, the Arabs in the central zone and the Fuzzy Wuzzy to their east who wandered the Red Sea hills. These were practically all Moslems, Arabic speaking and semi-civilised. South of the latitude of 12 degrees was the area from which the Sudan took its name, the land of the blacks, tribes who were much more diverse, pagan, with different languages and less civilised in their customs.’
69.Andrew Stewart, ‘The British Government and the 1938–1939 South African Neutrality Crisis’, English Historical Review (Vol. CXXIII, No. 503, Aug. 2008), pp. 947–972.
70.Shula Marks, ‘Southern Africa’, in J.M. Brown and W.M. Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Vol. IV, The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 545.
71.Eric Rosenthal, The Fall of Italian East Africa (London: Hutchinson, 1941), p. 8.
72.Ibid., p. 31.
73.N.H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy: Vol. I – Rearmament Policy [History of the Second World War – United Kingdom Military Series] (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1976), p. 665.
2: Hoping for the Best
1.Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East: Vol. I, pp. 31–32. In peacetime this officer was Inspector General of the Royal West African Frontier Force; it was only in war that he was to command the troops in East Africa.
2.Brian Bond, ‘Ironside’, in John Keegan (ed.), Churchill’s Generals (London: Cassell & Co., 1991), p. 20; ‘Life Goes Calling on Britain’s General Ironside at Gibraltar’, Life, 31 July 1939.
3.‘Obituary: Field Marshal Lord Wavell’, The Times (London), 25 May 1950; Ian Beckett, ‘Wavell’, in Keegan (ed.), Churchill’s Generals, pp. 70–88; Nick Smart, Biographical Dictionary of British Generals of the Second World War (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2005), pp. 324–326.
4.Robert Woollcombe, The Campaigns of Wavell 1939–1943 (London: Cassell & Co., 1959), p. 1.
5.Heath to Barton, 24 August 1946, CAB106/905, TNA.
6.Crosskill, The Two Thousand Mile War, p. 79.
7.Comments by Major-General R.J. Collins, 24 August 1945, CAB106/904, TNA.
8.Major H.A. De Weerd, Great Soldiers of the Second World War (London: Robert Hale, 1946), p. 53.
9.Adrian Fort, Archibald Wavell: The Life and Times of an Imperial Servant (London: Jonathan Cape, 2009), pp. 176–177.
10.Alan Moorehead, African Trilogy (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1944), p. 22.
11.Denise Richards, Royal Air Force 1939–1945, Vol. I (London: HMSO, 1974), p. 249.
12.William Jackson, The North African Campaign 1940–43 (London: Batsford, 1975), p. 24.
13.Wavell to Mitchell, 5 August 1939, WO201/246, TNA.
14.Wavell to Gort, 10 August 1940, WO201/248, TNA.
15.Headquarters, Royal Air Force,
Middle East to Wavell, 12 August 1940, WO201/246, TNA.
16.Ibid., A.H.Q. Aden to H.Q.M.E. (r) A.S.O. Khartoum, 1 September 1939.
17.Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East: Vol. I, p. 41.
18.‘The Fox and the Prince’, Toronto Daily Star, 13 February 1941; ‘Aosta on Alag?’, Time, 2 June 1941.
19.‘Report on the visit of Lt-Col. A.R. Chater DSO, Officer Commanding, Somaliland Camel Corps to Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia – March 1938’, n.d., WO201/247, TNA.
20.Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Vol. III, The Grand Alliance (London: Cassell & Co., 1950), p. 82.
21.‘Notes on Operations against Italian East Africa by G.O.C. in C. M.E.’, 3 October 1939, WO201/246, TNA.
22.Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East: Vol. I, pp. 93, 165.
23.‘Abyssinia on the Verge of Revolt’, The War Illustrated, 31 January 1941; Barton (with handwritten notes by Fabin), ‘Note on Rise of Patriot Movement’, 11 July 1945, CAB106/904, TNA.
24.Christine Sandford, Ethiopia Under Haile Selassie (London: Dent, 1946), pp. 94, 104; Christine Sandford, The Lion of Judah Hath Prevailed (London; J.M. Dent & Sons, 1955), pp. 85–86; Steer, Sealed and Delivered, pp. 8–9.
25.‘Report on the visit of Lt-Col. A.R. Chater DSO . . .’, n.d., WO201/247, TNA.
26.A.P. Wavell, ‘The Training of the Army for War’, RUSI Journal (Vol. 78, Issue 510, 1933), p. 258.
27.Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East: Vol. I, p. 182.
28.‘Britain and Italy’, The Times (London), 18 April 1938.
29.Wavell, ‘Operations in East Africa, November 1940–July 1941’, p. 3528.
30.Aregawi Berhe, ‘Revisiting Resistance in Italian-occupied Ethiopia: The Patriots Movement (1936–1941) and the Redefinition of Post War Ethiopia’, in J. Abbink, M.D. Brujin and K. Walraven (eds), Rethinking Resistance: Revolt and Violence in African History (Netherlands; Koninklije, 2003), p. 90.
31.M.O.1 (Records), ‘East Africa – The Sudan – Somaliland, September 1939 – January 1943’, n.d., WO106/2337B, TNA.
32.Ibid., ‘For Consideration by Joint Planning Staff – Operations against Italy in Libya and I.E.A.’, 13 October 1939.
33.Ibid., ‘Extract from letter from Major-General Dewing’, 17 October 1939.
34.Smart, Biographical Dictionary of British Generals of the Second World War, pp. 117–118. He soon returned in June 1940 to head the newly created West Africa Command where he did a remarkable job, but he remains ‘probably the least known of all British generals who held high command in the Second World War’.
35.He was another officer who received only brief mention in post-war accounts as a result of his early death in 1949, which left him unable to contribute to these histories; ‘Obituary: Major-General D.P. Dickinson’, The Times (London), 12 January 1949.
36.Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza, ‘History of the War – Nyanza Province, First 3 Months’, 9 March 1940, History of the War – PC/NZA/2/3/61, KNADS; Bishop to Barton, 27 February 1950, CAB106/911, TNA. Another account notes that he was initially assigned a small hut at Egerton School without a clerk or even a typewriter.
37.Bishop to Barton, 3 November 1949, CAB106/910, TNA; Major-General D.P. Dickinson, ‘East Africa Forces Report’, 31 December 1939, p. 4, WO106/2335, TNA.
38.Bishop to Barton, 27 February 1950, CAB106/911, TNA.
39.‘History of the War – Summary of the more important events, decisions etc. during September, October and November 1939 in the Northern Frontier District’, R.G. Turnbull (Officer-in-Charge, N.F.D), 26 January 1940, PC/NFD4/1/11, KNADS; Charles Chevenix Trench, Men Who Ruled Kenya: The Kenya Administration, 1892–1963 (London: The Radcliffe Press, 1993), pp. 152–153.
40.Bishop to Barton, 3 November 1949, CAB106/910, TNA.
41.David Killingray and Richard Rathbone (eds), Africa and the Second World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1986), p. 26.
42.‘Draft Notes on Administrative Aspect – Additions resulting from Brigadier Martin’s notes’, n.d., CAB106/910, TNA.
43.Bishop to Barton, 3 November 1949, CAB106/910, TNA.
44.‘Draft Notes on Administrative Aspect . . . ’, CAB106/910, TNA.
45.Major-General Sir Alec Bishop, ‘Look Back with Pleasure, Vol. 1’, n.d., p. 60, LHCMA. Bishop only remained in Kenya until March 1940, when he inadvertently trod on one of the homemade anti-tank mines and was lucky only to suffer a serious foot injury, but the result was that he was next posted to London, where he served in the War Cabinet Secretariat.
46.Bishop to Barton, 27 February 1950, CAB106/911, TNA; Bishop, ‘Look Back with Pleasure, Vol. 1’, p. 60, LHCMA.
47.‘Obituary: Fallen Officers’, The Times (London), 20 July 1940. The brief obituary did not offer any further details of his death other than that he was ‘killed in action’.
48.‘East African Defence’, Cape Argus (Cape Town), 2 November 1939.
49.Captain R.E.R. Smallwood, ‘Developing the KAR’, The Army Quarterly (Vol. XLIX, No. 2, Jan. 1945), p. 215.
50.M.O.1 (Records), ‘East Africa . . .’, n.d., WO106/2337B, TNA.
51.Ibid., p. 214.
52.Troopers to Kaid, Khartoum, 18 August 1939, WO201/248, TNA.
53.Dickinson, ‘East Africa Forces Report’, 31 December 1939, p. 8, WO106/2335, TNA.
54.‘Force Headquarters, Intelligence Summary No.5 – Disposition of Troops’, 25 October 1939, Military Intelligence Report and Survey 1938–1939, DC/LDW/2/18/4, KNADS.
55.It had been the only place along the whole border where the British had a foothold in the Abyssinian highlands, the result of the Greek trader who had previously established a post there always having flown the Union Jack to impress the locals; ‘The Role of British Forces in Africa’, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Leahy (2nd Battalion, King’s African Rifles), Box 10, No. 163, MSS.Afr.s.1715, ODRP.
56.W.D. Draffan and T.C.C. Lewin, A War Journal of the Fifth (Kenya) Battalion (Uckfield, East Sussex: The Naval and Military Press, 2007), pp. 7–9.
57.J.F. Macdonald, Lion with Tusk Guardant (Salisbury: The Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Co., 1945), p. 60.
58.The wells were reputed to have been drilled through the limestone by a race of giants when the world began; John Pitt, ‘Adui Mbele (Enemy in Front) – Some Recollections of a Platoon Commander in the East African Campaign (1940–1941) and on Brigade Staff in Madagascar (1942–43)’, p. 17, John Pitt Papers, 89/1/1, IWM.
59.‘Force Headquarters Intelligence Summary No. 3 – Disposition of Troops’, 20 September 1939, Military Intelligence Report and Survey 1938–1939, DC/LDW/2/18/4, KNADS.
60.‘History of the War, N.F.D., Period 1st December 1939 to 28th February 1940’, Gerald Reece (Officer-in-Charge, N.F.D.), PC/NFD4/1/11, KNADS.
61.Glover, An Improvised War, p. 15.
62.Del Boca, The Ethiopian War 1935–1941, p. 4.
63.‘Force Headquarters Intelligence Summary No.5 – Disposition of Troops’, 25 October 1939, Kenyan Archives, Military Intelligence Report and Survey 1938–1939, DC/LDW/2/18/4, KNADS.
64.‘Chapter “H” – Comments by Major-General G.C. Fowkes’, n.d. [1950], CAB106/912, TNA; ‘Gondar Victor is Only 46’, Daily Express (London), 29 November 1941.
65.COS(39) 137 (J.P), 28 November 1939, cited in M.O.1 (Records), ‘East Africa . . .’, n.d., WO106/2337B, TNA.
66.Major-General W. Platt, ‘Appreciation of the situation in the Sudan with special reference to a possible war with Italy’, September 1939, WO201/252, TNA.
67.Gillan, ‘The Importance of the Sudan’, The Listener, 28 November 1940.
68.‘For Consideration by Joint Planning Staff – Operations against Italy in Libya and I.E.A.’, 13 October 1939, WO201/246, TNA.
69.‘Obituary: General Sir William Platt’, The Times (London), 29 September 1975; Smart, Biographical Dictionary of British Generals of the Second World War, p. 252.
70.Platt, ‘Appreciation of the situation in the Sudan . . .’, S
eptember 1939, WO201/252, TNA.
71.‘Allied Policy in Italian East Africa – Reply to French General Staff’, 2 November 1939, WO201/250, TNA.
72.Wavell to Dill, 7 January 1940, Wavell Papers, AW.
73.Bishop to Barton, 3 November 1949, CAB106/910, TNA.
74.Troopers to Kaid Khartoum, 18 August 1939, WO201/248, TNA.
75.Force Nairobi to Mideast Cairo, 14 October 1939, WO201/2675, TNA; ibid., Kaid Khartoum to Troopers, 8 October 1939.
76.Ibid., Group Captain H.E. Wrigglesworth to Brigadier A.F. Smith, 7 August 1939.
77.Ibid., Calder (Colonial Office) to Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 17 May 1939.
78.Ibid., Wrigglesworth to Smith, 7 August 1939; Smith to Wrigglesworth, 10 August 1939.
79.Ibid., Troopers (London) to Mideast, 29 September 1939.
80.Ibid., Troopers to Nairobi, Kaduna, Accra, Mideast, 21 December 1939.
81.Ibid., ‘Move of West African Troops to East Africa’, n.d.; ‘The Role of British Forces in Africa’, Lieutenant-Colonel Jack T. Ennals (3 Nigerian Regiment, Royal West African Frontier Force), Box 3, No. 139, MSS. Afr.s.1734, ODRP.
82.‘North Rhodesian Troops are in East Africa, Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg), 21 December 1939; W.V. Brelsford (ed.), The Story of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment (Bromley, Kent: Galago [Second Edition], 1994), p. 76.
83.‘Troops in 2,000-mile bus trek’, Daily Mirror (London), 5 March 1940.
84.Dickinson, ‘East Africa Force Report’, 31 December 1939, p. 10, WO106/2335, TNA.
85.‘Empire and the War’, November 1939, DO35/99/24/3, TNA; Stewart, ‘The British Government and the 1938–1939 South African Neutrality Crisis’, pp. 947–972.
86.Minute by Cabinet Office, 15 December 1939; CAB21/883, TNA; ibid., minute by Anthony Eden, 7 December 1939.
87.‘Notes on Lieutenant-Colonel Bishop’s Visit to South Africa’, 5 January 1940, DO35/1003, TNA.
88.‘The Leadership of Smuts’, The Times (London) 23 January 1940; Clark to Dominions Office, 7 February 1940, DO35/1003, TNA.
89.‘Diary’, Brigadier Dudley Clarke Papers, pp. 55–57, DWC1/4, IWM.
The First Victory Page 30
