War Without Water

From the land that was once Ethiopia and is now part of Italian East Africa, Italy up to last week had launched two drives into British colonies--one southward into Kenya, the other westward into the Sudan. Neither had got very far last week when Italy launched a third--into British Somaliland.

That torrid little country (see map) is about the size of Missouri. Its capital, Berbera, is on the coast but has no port facilities. It has a municipal water system but no railway, no bank, no hotel. A coast road connects it through the secondary "port" of Zeila with Djibouti in French Somaliland which fell into Italy's hands in June.

British Somaliland looks and feels like a cross between the Montana badlands and Death Valley. Except in the mountains near the coast, which rise as high as 6,500 ft. in a wall behind Berbera, it rains only 2 1/2 inches per year. In July and August a hot, dry monsoon blows from the blazing Ethiopian hinterland. Nothing grows in British Somaliland except thorn trees, dense dry "bush" and tough desert fodder to keep alive the nomadic natives' herds of sheep, goats, camels, ostriches.

The only use Italy has for such a land is to threaten Britain's hold on the southern entrance to the Red Sea and the route to the Orient, a hold otherwise confined to the port of Aden across the Gulf and the island of Perim in the strait called Bab el Mandeb ("gate to the mandate"). To defend Somaliland, Britain had the Camel Corps, originally formed by British Marine officers to hunt Mohammed bin Abdullah, the "Mad Mullah" who for 20 years (1900-20) carried on a religious revolt until R. A. F. bombing planes drove him into Ethiopia. Chief gain for Italy in driving Britain from Somaliland would be prestige among the Arab peoples.

It appeared that Britain had only the Somaliland Camel Corps on guard in Somaliland last week. It is composed of one camel company, one pony company, one mechanized company with armored cars, manned by dark-skinned Somali Arabs and officered by Britons. Total with reserves: about 560 men. Beside these stood another 560 native mounted police with rifles, machine guns, British officers. Their leader was Lieut. Colonel Arthur Reginald Chater, oldtime desert fighter. Governor and Commander in Chief of the protectorate is Vincent Goncalves Glenday, 49, an Oxonian sportsman careerist in Britain's colonial service.

Against them moved Prince Amadeo di Savoia, Duke of Aosta, a lank, leathery, 42-year-old veteran of Italy's colonial service. Under his command were some 21,000 Savoy Grenadiers, seven legions of askaris* and a reserve of some 70,000 semi-trained labor troops. For the Somaliland venture he had ample aircraft, tanks, armored trucks and mobile light artillery for three mobile columns, totaling perhaps 10,000 men, which he set into motion last week. One column moved across the torrid, sandy coastal plain from Djibouti to Zeila. The other two, crossing the border by the road east from Harar and Giggiga, struck at Hargeisa and Oadweina--shack towns used by herdsmen and caravans as watering and market places.

No match for the Italians, whose central column at Hargeisa was reported 7,000 strong and bound northward to reach the coast at Bulhar, the Camel Corps merely harassed the Italians and fell back toward the hills around Berbera. Aiming for Burao, where the Corps headquartered, a junction east of Oadweina on the rocky back road to Berbera, the Italians claimed to have cut off one Camel Corps detachment at Bohotleh Wells, a post farther east. British planes (some with French pilots) from Berbera, from the larger air base at Aden and from the Australian cruiser Hobart, kept an eye on the Italians' movements, bombed their camps, strafed their supply columns as they extended their advance through narrow mountain defiles.

Not until the action entered its combat phase could its significance be estimated. But if Britain meant to hold Berbera by a stand around Sheikh, the summer capital in the mountains behind Berbera, it appeared that she must back up her Camel Corps not only with air power, man power and fire power from her naval units in the Gulf of Aden, but probably also with troops from India, six days away by boat.

Meantime the Italian drives from Ethiopia were but side shows compared to the bigger drive which the British expected Italy to launch from Libya across northern Egypt at Alexandria, Cairo, the Suez Canal. Air preparation and counteraction for this push, under command of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani and of Lieut. General Henry Maitland Wilson, continued last week. The British claimed 15 Fiat fighters shot down by their Gloster Gladiators in one encounter in the hot sky just west of Salum, British outpost destined to feel first the power of Graziani's legions.

With Italy striking into Egypt, a good deal depended on the attitude of King Farouk's Government, which in June broke off relations with Italy but did not declare war. Last week the Egyptians sounded as if they intended to fight. Leaves were canceled for all officers of Egypt's Army. Special Egyptian police were trained to combat parachute troops (many Germans were reported with the Italians in Libya). Pointing to the 400 waterless miles between Libya and the Nile, a Cairo newspaper warned Italy: "The desert is a terrible enemy!"

* In Libya and East Africa (but not in Egypt or the Sudan) a native trooper is called an askari.

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