Three Rivers

At Gorrahei, Italy's advance base on the Southern front last week, bugles blew, whistles shrilled, field telephones jangled all day long. Staff officers beat on their folding desks, demanding action while sergeants stalked about impressively. Sweating squads of half-naked soldiers unloaded dust-coated trucks, then for no apparent reason loaded them up again. Field ambulances rolled through the town. Swarms of airplanes took off for mysterious destinations. Something big was happening over beyond the Shibeli River where the black tribesmen of Ras Desta Demtu, hard-working little son-in-law of Haile Selassie, were hiding in the thorn trees.

Days later as the same ambulances were rolling back into headquarters heavy with groaning men, news came out that made excitable Italians dance in the streets of Rome. There had been a victory, a great victory. Italian papers first hailed it as "one of the greatest victories in colonial history," later called it, "The battle of the Three Rivers," from the fact that three stony streams unite northwest of Dolo to form the Juba River.

There General Graziani had been able to trap the forces of well-meaning but none too skillful Desta Demtu in open combat, attack them simultaneously with tanks, planes and two divisions of infantry, one white, one black. Honest Ras Desta Demtu would be an ideal Quartermaster General if Ethiopia had a modern army, but he is a poor strategist. He made the mistake of entrenching part of his troops. Under the pounding of Italian guns they fell back slowly at first, finally broke and ran. Unsupported by eye witnesses, Italians exultingly claimed that they had killed 5,000 Ethiopians, advanced 142 miles in six days--a manifest impossibility for an army in Ethiopia, though scouting tanks may have done so unopposed.

Looking at the map, seeing the obstacles still ahead of them, Italian staff officers in Rome regarded the victory more temperately. "It is a great victory," explained one, "but not a decisive battle."

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