Last Act in East Africa

Airplanes turned the trick in East Africa last week. Resistance of the Italian Empire, which had appeared to be stiffening, suddenly collapsed. Everywhere the extra factor which made the difference was a clap of bombing and a clatter of strafing by planes of the British Empire, for the British had learned the lesson taught by the Germans in Poland, Norway and the Low Countries: that an air force can be used in lieu of artillery to strike where artillery cannot reach because of distance or rough terrain.

Cheren fell. There about 35,000 Italians had ensconced themselves on formidable ridges, against which any sort of direct assault was suicide. The Italians, besieged for seven weeks, fought with unprecedented valor--fought so hard that a British spokesman was obliged to say last week: "It must not be expected that the [British] casualties were on the same light scale as they were in North Africa." But day after day the R.A.F. bombarded from the sky and supplemented artillery in pounding the Italian positions in the mountains. In twelve days British bombers dropped 120 tons of bombs, and in the last attacks before the Italians gave up, R.A.F. pilots were in the air from dawn till dark.

Last week Sir Archibald Wavell arrived at the scene of action, looked at the maps of relative positions, ordered a column to undertake a daring advance along a brush-covered gorge bottom. This the column accomplished, surprising the Italians into a fear of being surrounded.

The Italians retired from their height and tried to defend the town until the British seized their artillery emplacements. This was too much for the brave Italians. They fled in the night, but the British, according to their first count, captured 3,775.

With the fall of Cheren, the British hoped for no further major battle in Eritrea. They pressed on through the hills at once toward the capital, Asmara, as fast as sappers ahead of the armored-car spearhead could clear away land mines and landslides left by the Italians. Ahead of the sappers the R.A.F. continued its bombardment, destroying trucks and twisting bridges. Beyond Asmara lies Massaua, Eritrea's only good port, which the Royal Navy had tightly corked and hoped soon to possess.

Harar fell the same day as Cheren to a British column advancing from Somaliland in the south. Italian resistance in Marda Pass before Harar was surprisingly light, and the British met almost no resistance at Harar itself. This column's mission--breaking the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railroad--was accomplished at week's end when the British announced they had occupied Dire Dawa, the nearest station to Harar on the railway, and that the Italians had withdrawn westward toward the capital. Main reason given by the Italians for this withdrawal was again British air activity. All week long and all along the railroad, the British bombed trains, supply depots, bridges, tracks. With their communications cut behind them, the Italians at Harar were forced to retire.

With these two key towns taken, the remnants of Benito Mussolini's Imperial Forces were completely hemmed in. Cut off from supply by sea, and also from escape by sea, they were in a virtually hopeless position. The British anticipated that they would make their next stand at the Awash River, 100 miles east of Addis Ababa.

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