Word: aduwa
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Forty miles from Aduwa, at the frontier, the sound of those bombs reached Italian troops already on the march. In the darkness, long before the bombers had left their Asmara base, white-bearded old General de Bono, commander-in-chief, had gone with his chief-of-staff, General Melchiade Gabba, and other staff officers to a cleared mountain top from which they could have an unobstructed view of the frontier river, the Mareb, and the rude camel tracks leading up to the mountains and Aduwa...
...hundred miles and three-quarters of an hour after the takeoff they were through the black mountain peaks; below them lay Aduwa, scene of Italy's most galling defeat 39 years before, junction of the caravan routes of northern Ethiopia; Aduwa, to capture which Benito Mussolini had sent 280,000 men 2,500 miles at a cost of $160,000,000. Sprawled over three hills Aduwa was a collection of low-walled huts, some thatched, some roofed with corrugated iron, that housed some 3,000 souls. Count Ciano squinted down through his bomb sights and pulled the trigger...
Over the river, the Italians formed three columns. The left one swung east to Adigrat in an effort to encircle Aduwa from the left. To General de Bono, peering at maps, puffing cigarets on his cool mountain top, came the word: Adigrat had been captured almost without opposition. Italians sweeping into the town found it deserted of everything but old men, women and children, all of them painfully undernourished. The country had been swept bare of food for the warriors now hiding in the mountains. On to Aduwa...
...hours the Italian advance was held up, then, well satisfied, the Ethiopians slunk further back into their mountains to try again. Belatedly the Italian flag went up on the ruins of empty Aduwa. First troops into the town were the 84th Infantry of the Gaviana division, who received the honor of leading the assault because they were the first troops to be sent to East Africa. With them they carried a strange piece of equipment, a fragment of a Roman column, brought all the way from Italy to be propped up in the market square of Aduwa in memory...