Chapter II: Part XXVII
Chapter II: The Gambit of the West
Part XXVII
May 12, 1936
The screech of brakes and sudden deceleration woke Rudolf Schwarzbeck from an uneasy sleep. He looked around the sweltering interior of the train car. The Italian officers sitting around him had largely stripped to their undershirts. Cigar smoke and cigarette smoke mingled unpleasantly in the air, where it met the overpowering stench of sweat and mildewed baggage.
Out the window, the acacia-lined hills of northwestern Eritrea rose around the train in weathered ridges.
Maggiore Abbiati had claimed that these acacia trees had been alive since the time of Christ. The train passed the occasional hut or goat or African woman carrying firewood. Schwarzbeck thought it strange how much physical work the native women did in Africa. According to some of the officers, when compared to those in other parts of the continent, the Eritrean women had it easy.
The train at last shuddered to a stop. Some of the men poked their heads out the windows to see what was going on.
Taking a deep breath and shifting in his seat, the German observer slipped a hand into his pocket. The cool, dimpled skin of an orange set his parched mouth salivating almost immediately. Fellow observer Carl Feldt had thrust it into his hand as he boarded the train, and Schwarzbeck had since forgotten about it. He tried to peel the orange one-handed while it was still in his pocket -- he knew that if the Italians saw it they would ask for it section by section until there was none left.
Feldt had awakened him in his hotel room at three in the morning. Schwarzbeck had let him in to find him pale and grave. “Well, it has happened.”
“What has happened, Carl?”
“By radio last night, the Führer has proclaimed a Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy. Mussolini has at last cast his lot with us, hoping to grab the whole of Africa while the Great Powers are distracted in Europe… And of course kindly conscripting us to share his fate.”
“I take it that your confidence in the Italian Army is not high?”
The older diplomat laughed harshly. “Not high? Not high? A herd of drunken asses would have a better chance against the British.”
“I’ve seen them on drill. They didn’t seem so bad to me.”
“If they were used with full knowledge of their capabilities, perhaps they would be a credible army. But Mussolini has a crude, flea-bitten army and is totally blind to its flaws. He struts around as though they were the Gallic legions and will throw them at the British colonials with visions of smashing them like kindling. The British will not run as the Abyssinians did.”
“Time will tell, Carl.” Feldt’s pessimistic assessments of Italian strength had worn thin during their weeks in Abyssinia.
“Yes, and soon,” said Feldt, checking his wristwatch. “The reason I am here now as opposed to a more Christian hour is that you are to witness whether I am right or wrong. The Italians are making a quick push for Port Sudan, which they think is defended by General Lloyd and a single division of colonials. You shall be observing their operations from the start of the offensive.”
“Where will you be?” Schwarzbeck had asked.
“Mussolini himself is going east to try to take Djibouti from the French. Apparently he has ideas of leading from the front. I am to accompany him and report on Italian progress there.”
Shaving later in the tiny basin in his room, Schwarzbeck had replayed the conversation in his mind again and again. If his new allies were truly the fools Feldt believed them to be, he wanted no part of some adventure to capture a port that was worthless without the Suez Canal anyway.
Just after dawn he had taken an officers’ train from the railhead at Massaua to the Italian Army garrison at Keren, where the train had taken on a second locomotive and proceeded into the high country north of Nakfa. Here, the tracks had been newly laid, and the way had been straighter as the train wound ever northward.
Three times now, the train had come to an abrupt stop, only to roll into motion several minutes later. Abbiati, the Italian major sitting next to Schwarzbeck, said that the train was stopping because of threat from British warplanes. No aircraft were seen or heard by the men in the car, though.
Schwarzbeck carefully slipped a section of the orange out of his pocket in a closed hand and slipped it into his mouth facing out the window. No one saw him. He finished the fruit quickly. The train let off a long whistle and the car jarred into motion again. One by one, the heads sticking out of doors and windows were withdrawn.
For another two hours, the train wound its way northward, at last slipping out of the highlands by the middle of the afternoon. As the train rounded a wide bend, Schwarzbeck got a glimpse of the Red Sea, sparkling deep blue on the horizon. The train descended further. They were going through flat desert, now, with the sea on the right and the mountains to the left.
The train passed into the rear of the Italian army. The soldiers visible out the windows of the train looked rather ragged, it was true, but they were singing and in high spirits. To Schwarzbeck’s great relief, the train slowed and came to a stop towards the front of the advance. He got off the train, and was surprised to see that they had not pulled into even the most modest of stations -- the tracks simply ended about half a car’s length in front of the first locomotive.
He decided to ask one of the officers about the railroad, and made his way towards a small group of them slipping back into their uniforms after getting off the train. All around them, common soldiers were streaming towards Sudan: on foot, by truck and one of them on a strange creature Schwarzbeck recognized from cigarette packaging to be a camel.
The Italians streamed northward by the thousands towards Port Sudan.
The officers seemed to be squinting at something over Schwarzbeck’s shoulder. He turned to the north and saw a dark brown speck against the brilliant blue desert sky.
Slowly, he began to see wings -- two sets of them -- and the tiny protrusions that were surely landing wheels.
“That’s a Bulldog!” One of the officers pointed at the airplane.
The plane drew closer and closer.
“That’s a Bulldog!” The man was shouting now.
Schwarzbeck saw tiny flashes winking behind the propeller -- and an instant later twin lines of dirt fountained up from the midst of a large crowd of soldiers unloading baggage from the front of the train. There were screams of pain from wounded men and orders shouted in brisk dialectal Italian. Schwarzbeck stood, frozen, as the flashes appeared again. This time the plane strafed the train itself.
There was a shower of broken glass and wood splinters as the flimsy train cars were pelted by scores of bullets. The Bulldog pulled up at the last instant and leveled off. Schwarzbeck could see the pilot’s tan cap and goggles. A number of the soldiers fired their rifles at the plane as it roared overhead, not much higher than the roof of the train.
Men immediately began tending to the injured, and setting aside the bodies of those who had been killed. Schwarzbeck counted six. He noted that there had been no anti-aircraft guns ready to engage even a lone biplane. The Italians did not seem to truly think themselves at war yet.
A whistle from behind heralded the approach of a second train, which promptly began unloading armored vehicles. They were the Italian CV-35 tankettes, of which several were already rolling north with the rest of the infantry. They were dwarfed even by the Wehrmacht’s diminutive Panzerkampfwagon Is.
The CV-35 tankette saw combat during the Italian invasion of Sudan.
Abbiati introduced Schwarzbeck to a tall, martial-looking man who was the commander of the tankette platoon. He declared it an honor to escort a respected ally, and in short order, the German observer found himself atop a tank for the first time in his life, rolling slowly northward toward Port Sudan or whatever fate might overtake him.
. 
