Word: aduwa
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Dates: during 1935-1935
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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...
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...
...losses in the capture of Aduwa have been entirely insignificant. Casualty lists will be published in due time." All the publicity, flag waving and glory went to the capture of Aduwa, but this advance, due south from Asmara was not necessarily the most important in the Italian campaign. Two other Italian armies were in the field last week biting their way too into Ethiopia without benefit of foreign war correspondents...
...raising Shoans and Gallas of central and southern Ethiopia. Like many another conqueror, Menelik spent his youth as the captive of his father's enemies. Not until he was 45 was he able to wangle the title of Negus Negasti for himself. By thoroughly defeating the Italians at Aduwa, soon afterward, he made the title mean something. He proceeded to yank together a true empire by a series of bloody conquests, notably against his father's Gallas, was extremely conciliatory to Britain, died in 1913, leaving a treasure of 10,000,000 gold Italian lire and his succession...