THE CHINATM MAHL. THURSDAY, SUPPLEMENT, JANGART 21, 1937
DEATH AT DAGGAHBUR
THERE was heavy fighting all along the
The four big Caproni bombers and Zing's Hittle Hispano Hawk were rolled out of their hangars an hour before dawn, and it was usually dark when they came roaring back down the blue Eadowa Valley with their machine-guns boiling and their bomb-racks empty.
TSB era Fronturas caristans week.
The six gay and cocky young pilots of the crack Disperata Squadron, which includ ed Bruno and Vittorio Mussolini, and who shared the correspondents' quarters here at Harrar, were wildly exhilarated by this first real taste of war. Bombing caravans, hedge- hopping the straw tamils of native villages. dodging snipers and ground-strafing enemy patrols-this was life with a kick to it. Man's work
But at night they were only six very tired boys. They would swagger in from the planes with their gray chests thrown out like pouter pigeons. toss of a stiff hooker of cognac, drop full-clad onto their cots and fall instantly asleep. Because little Zing was our favourite we usually pulled of his boots first and draped the inosquito-net over his smooth baby-face before we turned in.
For all of us sleep was more precious than food or water in those exciting days between Christmas and New Year's. Here at last, after our weeks of sulking in the 120-degree blaze of Somaliland. was real- action on the dull Southern Front
to
You may recall reading in the dispatches how Graziani's "Hell on Wheels" army of. whippet tanks and armoured trucks, led by the veteran Genoa Dragoons, started drive a giant V up toward Jijiga and the prized railroad. We watched it speed through the desert of Hand, the fastest and most in the world beautifully equipped army "The irresistible spear-head of the Roman " Legions!" as II Dec shouted from the dock at Naples.
What you did not read was that quite suddenly and unexpectedly this "Hell on Wheels" crashed head-on into three Ethio- Desta pian divisions under the wily Ras Demtu, who gave it a brave and bloody argument before they fell under its steel bumpers. This was the first major battle since Adowa, which was important news and kept us moving.
We took up stations about sixty miles apart along the Italian line; with Cony. beare of the London Times up at Dire-Dawa, Agnew of the Express riding with the Eri- trean Camel Corps out of Godissa Curo, and myself south across the river with the 10th Milano Cavalry.
Through this plan we hoped that our combined stories might throw some light upon this most chaotic and misreported war in modern history. For, thanks to the Italian censors, the only way we can get the facts through is (like this) in the mailbags of the Swedish Red Cross, viz Berlin, Stockholm, and God knows where.
I
By New Year's night the battle of Neg- belli was over, with both sides claiming the usual staggering massacre and again with the real casualties impossible to learn. returned in one of thirty ambulances packed with the Italian dead and wounded (“8′′ officially) to our base at Harrar. Here I found the other correspondents and Опу friends the young flyers preparing a joint celebration of the great victory and Christ- mas with a gala dinner in the telegraph tent.
News of our party spread rapidly through the camp. All afternoon while we fixed the tree-a dusty stunted acacia-a steady stream of Italian soldiers poked their grinning sun-baked faces into the tent and offered decorations. One brought a brass cartridge clip, another the nickel guard- chain from his automatic rifle; a set of ball- bearings, three polished belt buckles and several cornucopias made from old copies of Il Popolo. Then we topped off the job with a bright tin star cut from a mess-plate. But it was a Christmas tree. Everyone agreed on that.
Afterwards we sat around in our under- wear, all except the two Englishmen, sipping the warm talla beer and fanning lasily at the blast-furnace draft which steamed in from the Ogaden plains.
The
Of the
Six Gay Cocky Young Pilots Disperata Squadron Were Wildly Exhilarated By Their First Taste Of War
From the adjoining cook tent came the rich garlicy fumes of our dinner-Mombasa beef. baked potatoes, fresh bread and the inevitable spaghetti. In front of us on the table were eleven tin plates and besice each a thick army wineglass. The cloth was, a elean sheet, the napkins were crisp khaki
I berchiefs and the silver, bright steel
a blue bowl of. Sicilian the centre was
dates and figs. oranges and lemons, fresh In the icebox were three bottles of sauterne and a sort of plum duff concocted by Agnew. The temptation to begin izmediately had us all swallowing, but two of the chairs were still vacant-
Zing and Concara had not yet returned from their regular afternoon patrol over Daggah Bur. Zing's pal Riccoboni laughed as he explained that they were probably hunting for Dagne Wodajo, a graduate of France's St Cyr and chief of the comical Ethiopian air force. Among the pilots of the Disperate there was keen rivalry as to who would eventually bring him down. He was a very clever and daring flyer, as he had proven in his single-handed raid on an am- munition train at Makale. He drove a new French pursuit plane capable of 200 miles an hour and equipped with twin guns; but our friends were not impressed.
They swore with bland confidence that clipping his wings was merely the question of a few days, per- haps hours. Zing was particularly rabid on the subject. He admitted half-seriously that his promotion to Flight Commander and Italy's Public Hero No. 1 would be a fair reward for Wodajo's wooly scalp.
Perhaps in older and more experienced soldiers such cocky arrogance might have become tiresome after so many weeks. but in these zaive 20-year-old Aedglings, it was constantly amusing. They had only a very vague idea of what the war was about, and- cared even less. All were reserve officers of the class of 1915 who had been plucked sud- denly from the dull routine of desk jobs or universities, and for whom this Ethiopian Odyssey meant Adventure with a big capital A.
We came
to know them intimately. "Zing" Zingarelli had clerked in a hotel in Rhodes, and his friend Concara was an apprenticed lawyer from the same village. Tasco and Riccoboni were engineering stu- ⚫dents from Rome. O'Ancona was a junior architect with a firm in Naples, and Biancol- In short, leli was a mechanic in Genoa. they were just an average half-dozen young- sters taken from civilian life, who behaved as normally crazy as boys in any war before their first taste of blood.
All six of them proudly displayed the Disperata emblem of skull and bones tattooed in red and black across their chests. They wore wide leather straps on both wrists, a la
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Tarzan; drank a great deal of raw brandy and generally swanked around the camp in the best Hollywood-pilot manner, to the in- tense disgust of the footsore Infantrymen, who rolled their eyes and made effeminate gestures whenever they passed.
But nothing dismayed Zing and his blithe companions. Striding arm-in-arm through the crowded camp they might have been. promenading in St. Mark's Square, instead of being surrounded by thousands of sick, hol-. low-eyed men who lay naked on their straw mats streaming sweat and tossing with fever.
It was not that Zing's crowd didn't care. They were really very gentle and considerate fellows. They simply refused to see. They were flyers and therefore a race apart. For them this war was" merely a great game of checkers with themselves as the free-roving kings. If the dusty foot-slogging troops must scramble through rocky ravines and thorny jungles while gerilla snipers took pot-shots from every bush, that was just their tough luck
Such was the general tone of their con- versation with us. They had heard rumours, yes, but no one they knew had been killed. A few Eritreans, perhaps. Their own job No was safe and simple enough, signore. danger at all. Each morning they went out and dropped their "eggs" on some designated village as casually as if they were delivering papers. They were like school-children on a holiday, refusing to recognise even the possi- bility of death or disease lest it spoil their pleasure. But meanwhile beneath all their bluster and bravado they were scared, on so pitifully scared!
On the morning that they attacked Ea- dowa little Zing called me outside the tent and gave me two letters in case anything- well, you know," and he had never asked for them back. Both Conybeare and Agnew held similar letters of Tusco's and D'Ancona's. Also, each one owned some charm, medallion, coin or crucifix, which never left his person except at night. One morning Concara mis- laid his jade cross and tore the tent inside out, his lean face white as a ghost, until he found it.
But these brief glimpses were very rare. Usually they ripped about in high spirits. wrestling, singing, arguing or rumpling Zing's hair. This latter sport was a great favourite, since Zing's head was our infallible barometer. When his black hair was tightly curled, rain always followed. When it re- laxed into soft strands a spell of fine weather could be expected. An extraordinary thing, but it never failed. Whenever he came in from a flight someone would pull off his helmet, grab his hair and yell out the weather-report.
Lieutenant Cesare Zingarelli stood only five feet four, in his cordovan flying boots, and coming from Rhodes it was perhaps only natural that they should call him "The Colossus." But “Zing"" was aborter and des- cribed him perfectly, for sing was precisely the tempo of his life.
Twice since we joined the camp he had been-grounded with demerits for hazardous low-flying over the enemy lines. “But damn it, sir, I can't see what I'm abooting at from up there!" he explained to Colonel Canello. In appearance he was very dark with that. warm olive skin of the islanders, and a smile like a floodlight. On the inside of his locker door were tacked several pictures of his father's stone house at Lindo, surrounded by hibiscus and, orange trees in blossom, an- other of the spring festival at Malpasso, and one of Zing and a very pretty girl leaning on- aseawall Merely listening to him rag the others about their girls back home, or their planes, or whose bombs hit which but, re- minded you somehow of yourself at twenty eager and romantic, forever laughing merely to be aliveergude
Certainly so far as Comybeare, Agnew and I are concerned. Zing made life bearable for six months in this Hell-hole of Harrar All three of us had- and still have-DCCB sional attacks of the cofard, a form of the
blues, which produces violent tempers, re- morse and not infrequently madness. It is the most prevalent disease among the troops here. Each night some poor devil, screaRM- ing or crying after attacking his tentmates, is led away by the sentries, with the whole
camp awake and listening.
As for the three of us, living together for months in deadly fear of heat-stroke, cholera and amoebic dysentery; holding our noser to swallow the brackish, nauseous slime which they dole out to us for drinking and wash-` ing: at last sick of the very sight and sound“ of each other, I am now quite sure that sooner or later we would have been at each. other's throat but for Zing's saving sanity of nonsense. Hence this gratitude and detail- `ed description of the boy.
So now on that night as we sat waiting for him and Concars before starting our gala "Victory-Christmas" dinner, it was again painfully clear to everyone that Zing was the missing soul of the party. While we talked at random of this and that, pretending to be at ease, some one of us would glance up casually above the rim of. his glass at the sky in the west and strain to catch the familiar drone of his little Hispano Hawk zooming up the
valley. Five o'clock passed, then six By six-thirty we were all silent staring at Mussolini's words on a sign above the telegraph desk in the corner: Better one day as a lion than a hundred years as a lamb! The camp was full of such signs, but somehow we had never really noticed them until now,
***
Twice the big Somali cook started serve dianer and twice we glared him back into his kitchen. The sun's red ball bounced along the blue Radowa hills and finally sank out of sight. Almost immediately a fresh breeze swung out of the North and the brief equatorial twilight slid quickly into darkness. We started nervously as the lights came on, and then far across the camp we saw the beacon begin its thirty-second flash at the landing field. "
**
There was still no real cause for con- cern, we argued lightly." Though Zing's patrol ended at fire, it was frequently much? later when he checked in. Riccoboni-guess- ed that he was probably watching the bomb ers from Makale wreck the railroad, and in fact a few minutes later Rao, the telegraph operator, handed us a message saying that three miles of the track had just been de stroyed near Dire-Dawa.
This news infuriated our four friends of the Disperata, who had already attacked the railroad at that point without success. Also It gave Conybeare another golden chance to ride them about it, which he did with that supine, maddening nonchalance of the Bri tish But there was always a method is Conybeare's tactless paying, which could at times be very cruel but was nearly always conclusive.
"Well, my pigeons, so you let those blokes from Makale bowl your wicket again,” he grinned and lit his pipe. "I heard an Infantry officer say to-day that you boys couldn't hit a straw hut if you were sitting on the roof.”
D'Ancona rose beautifully to the bait. Tell him to climb up on one some time and find out, he muttered, and then added proudlyWe've wiped out twenty-seven vil- lages in twelve days. Play that tune on your. typewriter x
And Very well say twenty-seven. Now look, Conybeare leaned forward, "those native villages cost about two hundred lira to build Right? But you need two hundred thousand worth to destroy them. Now there are roughly thirty thousand villages in Ethiopia Figure it out for yourselves. In three more months Italy will be broke buy- ing eggs for you boys to play with And besides, he kicked my ankle, "those villages "are always empty of soldiers when you call.” “ "Who says so?” demanded Tasco, sitting up. I suppose all those white bundles we left on the ground at Deidei were just the week's wash, eh?"!!
"N-no the Times man admitted with a shrug, **—they were all very dead women and children who ran out to look at the pretty planes. Now if they'd only stayed inside their huts they'd have been perfectly safe. We hear the blacks are claiming that your bombs won't go through a fummit roof, but♬ say that's still a question...
Tusco laughed shortly. It won't be any question to those inside. We hit where we aim.
"Oh now come, come, gentlemen. Be "member you're among friends. We're watched you work, Canybeare smiled pre- vokingly. "You've really never come down close enough to hit anything on the nail. Zing right, but then of course Zing is slight- No, you wouldn't have a Chinaman's chance if you ever got in range of their snipers.. They'd carve you into several very small hits, like the crew of that Caproni they shot down last week at Adi- Kaie. I suppose you've heard what they did to those poor fellows? No? Well, it seems that first they—" _
“Shut up, Inglesi!" Riccobani shouted angrily, and suddenly we noticed with sar- prise that the faces of all four of them were as white as the tablecloth.
Conybeare grinned and made no reply, calmly tamping his pipe. We exchanged glances across the table, and I think I havė never despised any man as much as I did them But Riccoboni apologized very de cently, shoved back his chair and strode over to the telegraph desk
tor.
"Get Daggah. Bar," be ordered the opera- "Zang may possibly sit down there for petrol or something." Now he turned to the had been no reports, no word at all. telephone and rang the field .... No, there He hung up, bit his lower lip thoughtfully for a second and poured out a drink from the cooler. There was no other sound in the tent but the gurgling water and the low chatter of Rao's key, calling Daggah Bur.
I think we all knew what had happened to Zing and Concars Planes "three-hours overdue and unreported" means only one thing in this sector. They were down some- where in that sniper-infested jungle west of Harrar. Perhaps a search at daylight, if they were still alive. . .
Very carefully now our friends avoided each other's eyes, staring down at their wet. cold hands, and Tusco slowly buttoned the undershirt over his tattooed chest.
Their frightened boyish faces, stripped of all the bluff and bravado by the shadow of death. shone pale with sweat in the harsh white light. Behind them in the kitchen doorway our black Somali cook stood listening, as if he too sensed the thing which had crossed our tent
As we sat on in an agony of silence broken only by the spasms of the telegraph. my gaze roamed to Zing's locker where his -red wool sock hung gally from the handle; then across to our forgotten Christmas tree with its queen ornaments which an hour ago had seemed so bright and festive, but which now gleamed back' with a hideous irony.
Suddenly Sergeant Eao hitched his chair closer to the desk and began to write. We all turned to stare at the tiny steel hammer spelling out the message, and at Rao's pencil moving rapidly across the yellow pad. Op posite me the blue vein at Tusco's texáple seemed ready to burst and the knuckles were a white row in his bronze fists. When final- ly the clicking ceased, Riccoboni lifted the pad from Rao's hands, read it through, very “ slowly and brought it over to us at the table. Riccoboni's blue eyes narrowed to steel points as he looked past our heads. Thea one by one we read the brief message and passed it on:
D-7 2003 shot down siz miles north of Daggak Bur at 5 PM. today by an unidienti- fied Ethiopian plane, said to be Wodajn's. D-24 arrived here alone at 6:44 PM with pilot Concara badly wounded. Latter reports seeing Zingarelli beheaded by enemy troops after landing. Details to follow.
Major Del Campo-DB-7:20 Then without a word Lientenant Ricco boni picked up his half-filled tumbler from the table and hurled it against the official portrait of Il Duce which hung above, the lockers. The thick glass ripped a fagged hole through that broad, scowling face; and befind it the water spread in a dark ring against the text.
"Better-one day-zs a lion," said Ric- coboni quietly, and his words fell upon the quiet like the chips from an axe, each one s bitter wedge of contempt for the smug, empty phrase, st
No one spoke. Somehow the mutinous outrage seemed very fitting and proper. Even Reo was silent, but the horrified cook's eyes were white balls in the shadow of the doorway. Y
Now very calmly sobered by the act and relieved of their tension, the four young Pilots pulled on their gray topics and went out; as we learned later to demand the mon- ing patrol in search of Wodajo. ***
After they had gone I arose, put on my cost, leaving Conybeare and Agnew slowly turning their empty wineglasses between their palms, and walked out to where the dark street of tents ends in the desert
I felt in my pocket for his letters, and then looked up at the low clouds, sendding across the moon, EG-morrow, I reflected it would rain. And so little Zing's hair must be curly now, lying close against his fore head