Word: ras
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...whole development of a modern military engagement as few men have ever done. About ten miles straight before them was Amba Aradam, the mountain that was Italy's immediate objective. Skirmishing parties and repeated airplane flights made it obvious that one of Ethiopia's greatest chieftains, Ras Mulugheta, was entrenched there in force. Sprawling sidewise to the Italian advance, Amba Aradam was of two parts: a jagged ridge known to the Italians as "The Herringbone" and, at the extreme right, a flat-topped peak called "The Priest's Hat." All the land at its base was known...
Following his pitched battle three weeks ago with honest but inept Ras Desta Demtu, son-in-law of Haile Selassie, Graziani took a long chance, cut a whole brigade of motorized cavalry loose from their base, sent them dashing north on half rations through some of the richest country in Ethiopia. Tactfully to stem the flood of personal publicity about Benito Mussolini's aviator sons, one of the first orders of Marshal Badoglio on taking command last November stated that henceforth neither the names of officers nor the movement of troops would be mentioned in dispatches. For his friend...
Knowing that discouraged Ras Desta Demtu was preparing another stand in the narrow Sidamo gorges, feeling that the time had come for prudence, General Graziani at week's end halted his advance, pulled his advance posts back 60 miles to Noghelli...
...about impressively. Sweating squads of half-naked soldiers unloaded dust-coated trucks, then for no apparent reason loaded them up again. Field ambulances rolled through the town. Swarms of airplanes took off for mysterious destinations. Something big was happening over beyond the Shibeli River where the black tribesmen of Ras Desta Demtu, hard-working little son-in-law of Haile Selassie, were hiding in the thorn trees...
There General Graziani had been able to trap the forces of well-meaning but none too skillful Desta Demtu in open combat, attack them simultaneously with tanks, planes and two divisions of infantry, one white, one black. Honest Ras Desta Demtu would be an ideal Quartermaster General if Ethiopia had a modern army, but he is a poor strategist. He made the mistake of entrenching part of his troops. Under the pounding of Italian guns they fell back slowly at first, finally broke and ran. Unsupported by eye witnesses, Italians exultingly claimed that they had killed 5,000 Ethiopians, advanced...