Desert
Rats:
The East
African Campaign
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
December 2013
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!
|