CHAPTER 38

ON NOVEMBER 28, THE same day that the emperor began to move his headquarters forward to Dessie, General Pietro Badoglio succeeded General Emilio De Bono as the new High Commissioner of the Italian Expeditionary Forces. Mussolini sent De Bono word of his dismissal by a secret and personal telegram read by everyone. The dismissal was not surprising. De Bono was not moving fast enough and it was ludicrous to think of the massive Italian army at a standstill in front of a virtually unarmed, barefoot army.

Two weeks later, General Badoglio reached the general headquarters now at Adigrat. One of his first official duties was to call an impromptu press conference.

Badoglio stood at attention as the journalists walked into his large square tent. He wore a beret over his thick white hair, a flannel-lined cape, and the thick socks and heavy boots of an Italian mountaineer. His hands, feet, shoulders, and neck were reminiscent of Mother Earth.

Bruno Zeri studied his wide, wrinkled forehead, his flat, pugilist’s nose, his trim, solid physique maintained, despite his sixty-four years, by rigorous daily exercise.

“I will give you a general plan of where the enemy is,” Badoglio began in his gravelly voice as he turned to the map propped up against a folding chair.

“On the general line between Dessie and Makalle, a body of troops under the command of Ras Kassa, estimated according to our information at about fifty thousand armed men, has reached the area of Lake Ashanghi. Here,” he said, pointing to the map, “another of about equal strength, under Ras Mulugeta, has come up from Dessie to join them.” Badoglio hit his rhinoceros tail fly-switch on his boot as he moved to the other side of the map.

Zeri knew that Badoglio, once a royalist opponent of Fascism, was regarded in Fascist circles as a political ignoramus with the limited mentality of a soldier and virtually no understanding of the grand concept of Fascism. He was, however, a good soldier. Zeri, taking notes as the general continued, could not help admiring Badoglio’s precision and detail.

“As we began to make plans for this campaign, I calculated that Abyssinia could put in the field, to start with, from two hundred thousand to two hundred fifty thousand men in the northern districts, and from eighty thousand to one hundred thousand men in the southern districts. For historical, ethnical, and political reasons, and in view of supply considerations, I calculated they would certainly be massed in two bodies and would operate in this way in the two different theatres of war.”

Zeri stopped writing as his mind wandered. He put his notebook aside. He had not seen at first hand the use of mustard gas, but he was convinced Badoglio would use it. He knew the army would not transport one hundred thirty tons of it to Eritrea just for fun.

Later that evening, he looked at his harmonica. It had ten holes above and ten below. He thought about how the code could be used. He started with the Italian alphabet, which has twenty-one letters. He needed twenty. He subtracted the “H”, so that he could divide the higher level of the harmonica and the lower one. But he needed a way to show that he was changing from letters to numbers. Bruno spent some time debating before eliminating “z,” not often used in any case and he could substitute with an “s.”

He sat there studying the situation. He could now use ten letters in the G Clef and ten letters in the F Clef to signify the twenty letters in the Italian alphabet. Middle C could be used to signify switching from letters to numbers, or vice versa. A single letter “C” indicated that letters followed, two middle “C’s” indicated that the next ten notes in the “G” Clef would be numbers. The end of a number or of a single word was indicated by a bar line. His fingers faltered. He wrote the music. To his surprise, the code worked. He looked at the tune he had composed: MUSTARD GAS.

Ceseli found the trip north with the Imperial Guard depressing after the mood of the same itinerary eight months before. The road was so heavily trafficked that it was difficult to make much headway. She had been assigned her own chocolate brown mule and it was young and a bit skittish. She named him Don Quichotte.

“How do you speak such good French?” Ceseli asked Yohannes as they rode side by side.

“I studied at St. Cyr,” Yohannes replied. “You know it?”

“Only that it’s a well-known French Military Academy.”

“It’s the best. You noticed my French accent?”

“Not much of an accent, but the way you pronounce my name is clearly French,” she said, imitating his accent on the last letter. “Ceselí. That’s cute. I guess I think the French are often cute. How did you get to St. Cyr?”

“The emperor sent me.”

“Like your uncle? Studying at Columbia?”

“The emperor has been very good to my family. He has promoted many of us even though we are not noble by birth. My father died when I was seven and Yifru has been like a father. My uncle was one of the first to study abroad,” he paused, kicking his mule to move over toward Ceseli.

“My grandfather worked in Harar for the emperor’s father. He was one of Governor Makonnen’s closest advisers and responsible for Tafari’s early schooling. When Makonnen died, Tafari was sent to the court of Menelik and my grandfather went with him. Both Tafari and my own uncle went to Menelik’s school. When Tafari became the regent, he persuaded Queen Zauditu to send my uncle to study in America.”

“He told me that. That’s where he met Standish’s father.”

“And learned that American women can be very strong-willed.”

“Which is probably why I’m here,” Ceseli smiled.

“I don’t doubt it, and why it’s my duty to take care of you. I really can’t understand why he let you come.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. But I’m glad he did. In the future, I’ll be sure to make that as light an assignment as I can,” she said, and then kicked her mule and rode forward.