Priest's Hat Taken

Last Sunday every important foreign correspondent with Italy's Northern armies was summoned to Marshal Badoglio's advance base on the flanks of Amba Gheden a few miles beyond Makale. Hollow-eyed, worried, the Marshal motioned the correspondents to be seated, then spoke out with Rooseveltian frankness. "Not unreasonably, perhaps, you have complained of the difficulty of seeing what we of the fighting services have been doing all these past weeks. Now, gentlemen, you are to have the rare privilege of watching a battle, and it may prove to be a most important battle. From myself to the lowest soldier in my army, we are all ready to fight desperately. Every service has been fully prepared--food, water, munitions, animals and men--to give a smashing blow, a blow that you can follow with your own eyes. BUT, in return, you must observe strict discipline, you must consider yourselves my own soldiers. Not one word of all this is to be written until the battle ends." Right in front of the Marshal's headquarters stood the powerful Zeiss telescope, formidable as a cannon, that goat-bearded Marshal de Bono had brought to Africa. Through it the staff officers and war correspondents squinted for the next six days, saw the whole development of a modern military engagement as few men have ever done. About ten miles straight before them was Amba Aradam, the mountain that was Italy's immediate objective. Skirmishing parties and repeated airplane flights made it obvious that one of Ethiopia's greatest chieftains, Ras Mulugheta, was entrenched there in force. Sprawling sidewise to the Italian advance, Amba Aradam was of two parts: a jagged ridge known to the Italians as "The Herringbone" and, at the extreme right, a flat-topped peak called "The Priest's Hat." All the land at its base was known as the Enderta. Through the same telescope, when the clouds cleared, could be seen Alaji, another mountain about 30 miles further on. These two peaks were main pegs in Ethiopia's defense. At 8 a. m., with a round moon still high in the sky, operations started with a short advance all along the line. This was to be a white man's battle. Regulars and Blackshirts led the advance, with the native Askaris, on which Fascist de Bono had leaned so heavily last year, forming the reserve. It was also a gunner's battle. Marshal Badoglio is an artilleryman first & last. And last week he showed what he could do with guns. His main headquarters was also the artillery observation post. Every five minutes scouting planes went out to circle the front. Monotonously their radios droned directions: A body of Ethiopians had gathered behind such & such rocks on hill so & so. Within ten minutes Italian gunners had the range and were dropping high explosives on those same rocks. But it was hard going. Not irregular white-robed tribesmen but regular drilled and uniformed troops were opposing the Italians. They, too, had artillery and knew how to shoot. For the first time since the war started, Italians had the uncomfortable sensation of shells bursting on their side of the line.

Then it rained. Every road and trail from Adowa and Adigrat up to the line was blocked with trucks and caissons axle-deep in mud. The clouds came down and shut out the toy figures of dying men from the great eye of the Marshal's telescope.

Ras Mulugheta was Amba Aradam's main defender. Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum, his immediate superior, held their troops over in Tembien Province, well to the west of the mountain. To prevent them from joining Ras Mulugheta on the mountain, Marshal Badoglio sent a Fascist division in a wide flanking movement along the Cabat River, but Ras Kassa and Ras Seyoum were not going to risk a pitched battle when it was not necessary. They began to retreat.

To capture the mountain, the Italians had to make their main attack on one side or the other. Which would it be, "The Herringbone" or "The Priest's Hat"? Ras Mulugheta guessed "The Priest's Hat," and he guessed wrong. A whole division swarmed up "The Herringbone," where only a few hundred Ethiopians opposed them. On this attack, the rain clouds were high enough to permit correspondents at the great telescope to see it all as in a play. Bodies sprinkled the mountainside, then the ridge. A leader rode frantically for safety on his gaudily caparisoned mule. A puff of smoke and the mule's head was blown clean off by a bursting shell. The animal galloped a dozen yards before rider and beast fell dead.

With the fall of "The Herringbone," the jig was up. Fighting every inch of the way, Ras Mulugheta retreated from "The Priest's Hat," leaving the whole district of Enderta to the Italians, striving to reassemble his forces by the still more formidable mountain of Alaji.

Looking years younger than when the correspondents saw him six days earlier, Marshal Badoglio popped out of his headquarters, wearing a turtleneck sweater, switching his legs with a giraffe-tail fly whisk.

"Gentlemen, you have brought us luck!" he cried. "The mountain which has been weighing on our stomachs for so long is now ours. I cannot show you the actual peak at this moment, the clouds are too low, but, gentlemen, the Italian flag flies from the Amba Aradam in triumph. You have noticed the boldness of our maneuvers which show that the Italian soldiers have good legs and marvelous hearts. And now write freely what you have seen. I wish you all Buona sera e buon appetito!"

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