The Italians fought hard. Klaas gave them that. They surged out of their dugouts, those that had not been crushed by the artillery fire, and met the assault with fixed bayonets. Lee Enfield crossed with Carcano. The men carrying them fought desperately; all knew when two men fought with the bayonet, only one would survive. Other men fought with entrenching tools, spades with their blades sharpened to turn them into a vicious battle-axe that cleaved their opponent. Some, a few, turned to run. Their reward was a bayonet thrust in the back or a skull caved in by a swing from an entrenching tool. Klaas never remembered the details of that fight. Only that he had waded in with bayonet and entrenching tool, and that the Italians had died.
At some point, the sun had risen. It was daylight when the South Africans climbed out of the advanced trenches they had taken and moved on the second line. They left behind them a trench filled with bodies; some Italian, some South African. Further behind them, another wave of infantry was crossing no-mans land and moving up to support the lead elements. Ahead of Klaas and his men, the 18-pounders and 4.5-inch howitzers were still pounding the main line of resistance.
That was beginning to crumble already. Klaas could sense it. There was a feel to a battle, a sense of its tempo, and he knew that this one was going to succeed. The Italians were already beginning to fall back; their positions abandoned or marked with small white flags. Klaas didn’t blame them. They had probably seen and heard the horror in the advanced trenches and wanted no part of it.
What started as an advance became a pursuit. Klaas’s sense of the battle was right. The Italians were giving up the ground and retreating. By the time the main line of defenses had fallen to the South Africans, the Italian infantry was already streaming to the rear, boarding lorries and heading north, away from the artillery fire and the men with bayonets that followed it. A few rearguards hung on; they bought just enough time for the rest of their units to escape. That didn’t matter too much, for one very simple reason. It was the whole reason why the battle had been fought here, at a small village in northern Kenya whose very existence was of so little consequence that a detailed map was needed to find it.
There was no water between El Yibo and the Ethiopian border.
The sixteen Tomahawks were spread out, four flights of four aircraft each; all were hunting for Italian fighters. They would be coming to remedy the situation that had erupted on this front. Hunting for the Italian fighters was a phrase that echoed happily in newly-promoted Flight Lieutenant Pim Bosede’s mind. Gone were the days when the pathetic, obsolete Hawker Furies had run at the first shadow of an Italian fighter. Now, the Tomahawk ruled the skies and it was the Italians who fled at their approach.
“We see them.”
The message was from the Blenheim bombers below. The Natal Mounted Rifles reported the Italian forces that had been holding the front east of Lake Rudolf were in full retreat, heading north. The Italians themselves were in trucks; their Askaris, local auxiliaries, were on foot. That difference would be very important in the next few minutes. There were no real roads up here to disrupt the yellow-gray ground; only tracks, and few enough of them.
The Blenheim crews knew where the Italians would be. The cloud of dust thrown up by the trucks drove the message home.
Here we are, come and get us.
The Blenheims did.
<…>pound and 40-pound bombs on the troops beneath. Compared with the blast of the bombs, the patter of fire from the single machine gun arming each aircraft were of little account. The effect of the attack on the convoy was disastrous. Many of the lorries were hit. They started belching black smoke and blocked the track. The others turned off in a desperate attempt to escape. Their tires broke through the thin crust of hardened mud that covered the ground and spun helplessly in the fine sand underneath. The infantry in them knew that their ride northwards had just ended. From now on, their retreat would be on foot.
Watching them, the Askaris noted the development. They dropped their rifles. Being an Italian Askari had been a way of earning a little extra money for doing very little work. The possibility of being shelled, bombed and strafed hadn’t figured in that equation. It was time to leave. Word spreads fast in African villages. Soon, all across the front, the Askaris deserted and, very sensibly, went home.
High over the veldt, Bosede knew nothing of the word rippling through the African villages. What he did know was that the Blenheims had finished their attack and were on their way back to base. That released the Tomahawks to resume their free-chase. The squadron swung south, to where the Natal Mounted Rifles were advancing. Bosede had no doubt that the Italians would be trying to do to them what the Blenheims had just done to the Italian infantry.
“Bandits.” Flight Lieutenant Petrus van Bram, now acting squadron leader, spotted the Italian aircraft. Twin engined aircraft, their yellow and gray paint made them hard to see against the ground below.
“Pim, take them with your flight. The rest of us will stay up here and cover you.”
Bosede made a wingover and dove on the aircraft below. His eyes took in the details. The extensively glazed nose told him all he needed to know. Caproni Ca.311s. Almost an exact Italian equivalent of the Blenheim and as weakly defended: one 7.7mm machine gun in a top turret and one firing from a ventral hatch. Tracers licked out from the top turrets of the Italian aircraft. Light defensive fire that gave him little concern. His gun sight closed on the nose of the Caproni. His thumb squeezed the triggers, firing off a burst from both his nose .50s and the four .30s in his wings.
The effect on the Ca-311 was as disastrous, as it had to be. The aircraft staggered and flew apart under the concentrated blow. Its wings separated from its body as it disintegrated. The fuel tanks erupted into flame. What was left of the aircraft plowed into the dry, dusty veldt. Bosede swept upwards, climbing away from the scattering Italian formation. Three of the eight aircraft were already down;a fourth was trying to escape northwards, leaving a thick trail of black smoke behind it. Bosede watched a Tomahawk close in. A stream of tracers turned the aircraft into a flying torch. One more pass would finish the formation off.
One again, a wingover and a long dive down on to the poorlyprotected Capronis. Instead of firing from above, Bosede came in from behind.
His fire raked the rear fuselage and engines. His target went down; three parachutes emerged as the Italian crew bailed out.
“Pim, you’re trailing white vapor. Head back to Buna. The rest of your flight will escort you.” Petrus van Bram’s voice brooked no argument. Bosede glanced at his instruments. There was no sign of trouble yet, but the Tomahawks were precious. They had made the offensive that was driving the Italians out of Kenya possible and their numbers were carefully conserved. Bosede set course for Buna.
On the way, he noted that his engine temperature was starting to rise. By the time the runway at Buna appeared under his nose, it had reached serious levels. He wondered if Marijke would make it. By then, what had started as a thin line of white vapor had turned into a thick stream behind the Tomahawk. She didn’t let him down. By the time she came to a halt, he was surrounded by a white mist. It didn’t take the ground crew long to spot why.