Marshal De Bono accepted both his promotion and his recall with such
good grace that it could have been mistaken, by an uninformed observer,
for profound relief. His departure for Rome was completed with such
despatch as to avoid by a hair's breadth the semblance of indecorous
haste.
General Pietro Badoglio was a fighting soldier. He had staffed the
headquarters before Adowa, although he had played no part in that
debacle, and he was a veteran of Caporetto and Vittorio Veneto. He
believed that the purpose of war was to crush the enemy as swiftly and
as ruthlessly as was possible, with the use of any weapon at his
disposal.
He came ashore at Massawa with a furious impatience, angry with
everything he found, and impatient of the policies and concepts of his
predecessor, although in truth seldom had an incoming commander been
handed such an enviable strategic situation.
He inherited a huge, well-equipped army with a buoyant morale, in a
commanding tactical position and backed by a magnificent network of
communications and a logistics inventory that was alpine in
proportions.
The small but magnificently equipped airforce of the expedition was
flying unopposed over the Ambo mountains, observing all troop movements
and pouncing immediately on any Ethiopian concentrations.
During one of the first dinners at the new headquarters, Lieutenant
Vittorio Mussolini, the younger of the Duce's two sons, one of the
dashing Regia Aeronautica aces, regaled his new commander with accounts
of his sorties over the enemy highlands and Badoglio, who had not had
close aerial support in any of his previous campaigns, was delighted
with this new and deadly weapon. He listened transfixed to the young
flier's descriptions of the effect of aerial bombardment particularly
an account of an attack on a group of three hundred or more enemy
horsemen led by a tall, dark-robed figure. The young Mussolini told
him, 'I released a single hundred-kilo bomb from an altitude of less
than a hundred metres, and it fell precisely in the centre of the
galloping horsemen. They opened like the petals of a flowering rose,
and the dark-robed leader was thrown so high by the blast that he
seemed to almost touch my wing-tip as I passed. It was a spectacle of
great beauty and magnificence.' Badoglio was happy that his new
command included young men with such fire in their veins, and he leaned
forward in his seat at the head of the table to peer down over the
glittering silver and sparkling leaded crystal at the flier in his
handsome blue uniform. The classical features and dark curly head of
hair were the artist's conception of young Mars. Then he turned to the
airforce
Colonel who sat beside him.
'Colonel, what is the opinion of your young men in the Regia
Aeronautica? I have heard much argument for and against but I would be
interested to have your opinion.
Should we use the nitrogen mustard?'
'I think I speak for all my young men.' The Colonel sipped his wine
and glanced for confirmation at the young ace who was not yet twenty
