Word: graziani
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...South. Fighting was fiercer, Italian progress more impressive. Troops under command of General Rudolfo Graziani were stretched not 60 but 400 mi. on a "provincewide front" from the Webbe Shibeli almost to the borders of British Somaliland. Fierce nests of Ethiopian sharpshooters and unseasonable rains that bogged tanks and trucks hub-deep had held up the southern advance for days, but now Italian troops, moving again in three columns, had crossed over half the Ogaden Desert, were drawing closer & closer to Harar, chief stronghold of Ras Nassibu, commander of the Ethiopian armies of the south in Ogaden. Scouting planes zooming...
...Dictator, having resolved that his Eastern forces shall remain the Army Nobody Knows until they are victorious, permitted no confirmation or denial of its tribulations. Meanwhile, the Southern Army of properly-publicized General Rodolfo Graziani slogged up the banks of the Webbe Shibeli River in an unseasonable downpour until they came on a fortified Ethiopian post on a little mountain at Dagneri, 60 mi. into Ethiopia. Italian native troops delivered an old-fashioned charge, 14 of them to the death, took the hill, and back in Italy, newspapers blossomed with VITTORIA headlines...
...South, Mussolini's Somaliland army, creeping north under command of Italy's ablest colonial fighter, lean General Graziani, was fighting harder and making more progress. Roads meant nothing in this rolling desert country where the advance was from water hole to water hole. Each hole was held by a little group of fanatical natives ready to charge and die at the first bang of a gun. It was slow and bloody business. General Graziani finally called out his bombing planes. Soon it was reported that the Italians were using a new, yellowish gas on the terrified Ethiopians...
This put the Ethiopian commander facing General Graziani, Dedjazmatch Nassibu, in a towering rage. His lion's mane headdress trembling with emotion, that chieftain roared...
...with two lion pelts (TIME, July 31, 1933). Last week found him at the head of an irregular army estimated at 200,000 preparing to join forces with a disgruntled white settler from Italian Somaliland, a onetime Boer Colonel named Siwiank, to try a surprise attack on General Graziani's flank from the difficult waterless lands of Ogaden Province...