Reincarnated: Vive La France-Chapter 137: Second Italo-Ethiopian War - IV

The dawn sky above Mekele was just rising.

A low announced the arrival of five Regia Aeronautica Ca.133 bombers, each flying in tight formation.

Below, the market square had just begun to stir farmers laying out baskets of grain, vendors hauling pottery onto carts, the morning bells of St. Michael’s Church ringing softly.

The first bomb struck without warning.

A thunderclap followed, splitting open a spice stall and sending two children crashing into a nearby goat pen.

Screams tore through the air

One of the bombers dropped its payload across the western quarter of the market, igniting a stretch of thatch-roof homes in a rolling burst.

"Take cover!" a militia guard shouted, dragging a vendor down behind a broken cart.

The second pass sent a wave of fragmentation bombs across the outer block near the hospital.

The roof gave way.

Nurses pulled the wounded into the open, laying them on bed sheets stained with soot and blood.

By 08:00, smoke columns reached nearly a hundred meters.

Ras Kassa stood on the eastern ridge above the town, his binoculars pressed to his face, fists clenched.

"How many dead?" he asked.

"Two hundred, minimum," replied his aide. "Mostly civilians."

"And the planes?"

"Gone. Back north."

Two days later, in Fik’ada Gorge, a band of fifty militia fighters waited silently beneath a rocky.

Chief Lemma, a grizzled veteran of past border skirmishes, signaled with his hand.

Below, twelve Italian transport trucks moved single-file, flanked by motorcycles.

At the choke point near a curve, the first detonation came a barrel packed with stolen TNT.

It flipped the lead truck into the gorge.

Lemma’s men opened fire from above, muskets and scavenged Italian rifles.

"Reload and move!" Lemma shouted. "No standing targets!"

When it was over, nine Italians had surrendered.

Forty lay dead or dying.

The rest fled.

The Ethiopians seized crates of ammunition, canned food, and a wireless set.

That night, De Bono ordered retaliation.

Flamethrower units entered three nearby villages at dawn.

They gave no warnings.

Homes burned, livestock shot in the fields, and men dragged into courtyards for interrogation.

Screams rang as one officer radioed in.

"Resistance rooted out. Gorge cleansed."

Mekele’s defense soon hardened.

Ras Kassa had turned the ridges into kill zones.

His riflemen, dressed in earth-colored tunics, used cliff crests to pick off Italian troops as they attempted to scale the outer valley.

They shifted position after each shot, never staying long enough to be shelled.

But De Bono had countermeasures.

"Begin creeping barrage," he ordered. "Two hundred meters an hour. I want no gaps."

Italian artillery opened up with methodical precision.

Shells landed in carefully calculated grids, creeping forward by distance and time.

As Ethiopian snipers fired, mortars followed. Infantry came in behind smoke.

"Push them out of their holes," barked an Alpini captain as he led his men through the crag. "And if they climb, follow."

On 10 October, the final aerial raid came for Mekele’s stores.

Italian bombers didn’t hit people this time they hit what kept people alive.

The grain silos were torched in the first strike.

Flames leapt ten meters as the food for ten thousand roasted in minutes.

Then came the reservoirs bomb after bomb pulverized the stone tanks that held the town’s drinking water.

Down below, women carrying infants screamed and fled.

Men cursed the sky, throwing stones in futility.

Kassa could do nothing but watch.

"They will starve us," he muttered. "We defend the mountain. But they kill the valley."

On the 13th, the main assault came.

At exactly 05:30, De Bono’s columns moved.

From the north came the Bersaglieri sleek, fast, running low with rifles tight.

From the west came the Alpini specialists in mountain warfare, carrying mortars and grenades.

From the southeast came colonial Eritrean troops, their uniforms dusty, eyes sharp.

Italian artillery roared first four full hours. Ethiopian trenches collapsed.

Barricades disintegrated.

Machine gun positions became graves.

Still, Ras Kassa’s men stood their ground.

"Hold the line!" he cried. "Shoot until your rifles melt, then use your knives!"

Firing positions choked with dust and blood.

Ammunition ran out by the second hour.

Some fighters switched to rocks.

Others pulled blades.

There was no time to reload.

Only to resist.

By 10:00, the lines were cracking.

Kassa ordered a withdrawal.

"Fall back through corridor five. Take wounded first. Set fire to the rear trenches. Nothing for the enemy."

His own son was found behind the third trench, unconscious, a shrapnel wound through the shoulder.

"I’ll carry him myself," Kassa said, lifting the boy over his back.

"He doesn’t die on foreign terms."

At dusk, the Alpini reached the fortress.

An Italian soldier tied the tricolor to a rusted pole and saluted.

Cheers rang across the ridgeline.

From Rome, Mussolini’s voice blared over radio waves.

"Victory in Mekele! Rome returns to Africa. General De Bono, your legions make Italy proud. The Empire is reborn."

Far north of Mekele, within a makeshift command post hidden beneath a cluster of boulders, two Ethiopian scouts returned breathless.

"General!" one cried, "Italian fuel trucks are exposed on the secondary ridge no escort!"

Ras Kassa, sweat coating his brow, leaned over a torn map of the Adwa basin. "Take twelve men. Set the fire and run. Leave nothing salvageable."

That night, they struck.

With torches and homemade firebombs, they descended on the Italian mule column.

A single crate of fuel ignited the slope.

The blaze consumed four trucks and their contents.

Ammunition cracked inside the heat.

An Italian soldier was seen jumping from a cliff to avoid the flames.

One guerrilla was captured.

A boy, no older than sixteen.

De Bono’s orders were swift, hang him at the crossroads as a warning. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com

The Italians complied.

In the rear zone near Adigrat, Regia Aeronautica pilots gathered around their commander for briefing.

"You’ll bomb Mekele again if necessary," he told them. "But primary targets now are water lines, animal herds, and trails leading to Dessie. We cripple what feeds their resistance."

A young pilot raised his hand. "Sir, we’ve already bombed wells. There are children..."

"They are not children," the commander said coldly. "They are future enemies."

The pilot did not speak again.

Further south, near Dolo, Graziani’s southern front was moving with cruel efficiency.

Somali Dubats irregular auxiliaries recruited with promises of land and glory were the first into every village.

Armed with rifles, curved daggers, and grenades, they overran border pickets and drove deep into Ethiopian lines.

"Push to Kelafo," Graziani radioed. "I want dust in their throats by morning."

One Dubat leader, Mahmoud Bari, led his men into a town by nightfall.

The Ethiopians had abandoned it.

Only women remained.

Graziani’s orders were clear "harbor no safe havens."

By dawn, the village was ash and ash alone.

Meanwhile, Ras Kassa moved his headquarters further south toward Dessie.

Along the way, he passed lines of displaced peasants barefoot, hungry, some carrying goats or children, others carrying nothing at all.

He dismounted from his horse as an old man approached.

"You are our lion," the man whispered, gripping Kassa’s wrist.

"No," Ras Kassa replied. "You are."

By nightfall, he sent a final dispatch to Haile Selassie.

Mekele is lost. But our resolve is not. The mountain still answers when called.

Selassie read it in silence.

And then began to prepare for the next line of resistance.