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Desert Rats:
The East African Campaign


The campaign in Italian East Africa in 1940 and 1941 has always held a certain fascination for me. We’d always planned for Desert Rats to include two non-British nationalities from the Commonwealth, to be chosen between New Zealand, South Africa and India. New Zealand was pretty easy, but the choice between the others was hard. Indian troops did a lot more fighting than the South Africans, but the South Africans were in the middle of Operation Crusader, which would yield many Desert Rats scenarios. Either one would allow East African scenarios.

India got the nod, and so the East African scenarios in Desert Rats come from the northern flank of the British campaign. There two Indian divisions drove the Italians out of Eritrea after weeks of intense fighting around Keren.

Italian forces consisted of one regular division, the very good 65th “Granatieri di Savoia,” and some small units. A number of Blackshirt battalions were also present, but most of the Italian forces were locally-enrolled Eritreans and Ethiopians with Italian officers.

Eritrean troops had fought in Italy’s wars since 1884, and distinguished themselves as early as the otherwise disastrous 1895 war with Ethiopia. They did not see front-line service in the First World War, but did serve in Libya helping to suppress the Central Powers-inspired Senussi revolt. Eritreans also fought the Senussi during the long years that followed the Great War.

The 1935 invasion of Ethiopia included a full division of Eritreans, and they fought very well. Afterwards, the Italian colonial army re-organized itself into brigades, with division headquarters fulfilling an administrative role only. New brigades of Ethiopian troops appeared as the colonial authorities used the time-tested method of enrolling potential rebels in their own armed forces to keep them occupied and under their eye. The Ethiopian brigades did not fight well in 1940 and 1941, and with only one or two exceptions crumbled quickly under Allied attack.


Askaris (African soldiers) march to war, 1941.

Almost all the Italian artillery in Italian East Africa had European crews, and in the game the standard Italian pieces are used for these. The colonial forces receive their own infantry (FAN, for “Fanteria,” to distinguish them from Italian INF pieces), machine gun (MIT, for “Mitragliere”) and their own cavalry. The colonial forces included large numbers of mounted troops, and some of these fought hard, even the Ethiopian horsemen. They’re all wearing Eritrean-style uniforms, complete with red fez.

The Italian colonial forces use Italian leaders and receive a special unit type unique to them, the Bande. Bande were groups of irregulars, usually raised by the native police rather than the army. Though lacking formal structure, most of their men were seasoned fighters well-experienced in internecine warfare and in the 1935–36 war (on one side or the other, or sometimes both). The Italians issued them rifles, but many disdained their use, preferring their long fighting knives. The small Italian “Red Devil” hand grenades were very popular with the Bande, however, and they scooped up as many as they could get and rained them down on British and Indian patrols from hidden ambushes. On the counter, the Bande wear the traditional white smock an Ethiopian man puts on when he goes to war.


General Sir Alan Cunningham welcomes
Emperor Haile Selassie back to Ethiopia.

Desert Rats includes five scenarios from the East African campaign. I’d like to do a full book supplement on it someday and include the counters that would be needed for more: Sudanese machine gunners, South Africans, the Somaliland Camel Corps, Belgian Colonials, Ethiopian exiles, naked Orde Wingate, Italian Blackshirts, Regia Aeronautica ground troops, Alpini, and other cool stuff.

Two of the existing scenarios are from the Italian conquest of Somaliland, an Italian victory dismissed by later Anglocentric historians but noteworthy for the impressive march across harsh terrain. The other three are from the approaches to Keren. Unfortunately, the open Desert Rats maps don’t really lend themselves to re-producing the mountains of Keren and that battle will need its own maps.

The East African campaign is waiting. Order Desert Rats now!