A DEAD MAN WALKING


The Italians were not long in attacking what they saw as a country they could easily overrun and add to their expanding African empire. By the first week of August 1940 a force of 24,000 men, including twenty-three colonial battalions, three Blackshirt battalions (fascist paramilitary units) and a small number of native troops was ready to invade Somaliland. They were supported by both medium and light tanks with artillery and aircraft, the latter able to enjoy complete air supremacy. The British never stood a chance. *


In the early hours of 3 August 1940, the Italian army crossed the border between Italian East Africa (known by the Italians as the Africa Orientale Italiana) and Somaliland. The objective of Lieutenant-General Bertoldi was to seize Berbera.


the 1st East African Light Battery East African Artillery (EAA). Equipped with four 3.7 inch howitzers, the battery had formed in Kenya at the outbreak of war and arrived in Berbera, the Somali capital and main port, on 10 July 1940.


Further reinforcements were planned which would bring the total up to some 4,000 men – though these did not arrive before the outbreak of hostilities. The whole force was placed under the leadership of Lieutenant- Colonel Arthur Reginald Chater, the Camel Corps’ commander, who was promoted to the rank of Brigadier.


The French commander in adjacent French Somaliland, General Legentilhomme, promised to support the British in the event of an Italian invasion but he was replaced by a Vichy officer, General Germain. This officer enforced the terms of the French armistice with Germany and Italy, an instruction which meant that his forces would no longer fight any of the Axis Powers. Chater’s tiny force was on its own.


ABOVE:


The son of the rector of Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, Eric Wilson was born on 2 October 1912, at Sandown on the Isle of Wight. His interest in East Africa was kindled by his grandfather, who had founded the Church Missionary Society in Buganda (Uganda). (HMP)


BELOW:


Men of the Somaliland Camel Corps on patrol along the Somaliland-Abyssinian border in the summer of 1940. The tree is in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia). The Somaliland Camel Corps (SCC) was a unit of the British Army based in British Somaliland, in the northern part of present-day Somalia, during the 20th century. (HMP)


There were three roads capable of supporting motor vehicles which ran towards Berbera through a range of rugged hills which rose to over 4,500 feet. Bertoldi split his force into three and advanced confidently towards the capital.


Charter’s defensive plan was to delay the Italian advance for as long as possible to enable his reinforcements to arrive. The key defensive points were the Tug Argan Gap, the Sheikh Pass and the Dobo defile. Defensive positions had been prepared at these points and the roads demolished.


The principle position was at Tug Argan in the Golis hills. The main sector of this position was held by the Northern Rhodesia Regiment (less one company), the Machine- Gun Company, ‘B’ Company Somaliland Camel Corps, and the 1st East African Light Battery EAA.


Captain Eric Charles Twelves Wilson, seconded from the East Surrey Regiment and who commanded the Camel Corps’ Machine-Gun Company, was instructed to place his guns on four small hills known as Black Hill, Knobbly Hill, Mill Hill and


BRITAIN AT WAR


Observation Hill. These hills ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 yards apart and dominated the Tug Argan Gap through which the Italians would have to travel. The hills, however, were too widely separated to cover the entire area of the pass (8,000 yards across). Wilson, therefore, placed himself on Observation Hill which commanded the widest arc of fire, but it was perilously exposed and well known to Italian truck drivers who had driven past it daily before the declaration of war. *


As a schoolboy at Marlborough school, Wilson discovered a statue of the British colonial police officer Richard Conyngham Corfield who had perished fighting with Somalis against the Mad Mullah in 1913. He decided on a military life and, despite wearing spectacles, passed the Sandhurst entrance exam while still at school. In 1933 he was commissioned into the East Surrey Regiment. Four years later he volunteered for the King’s African Rifles, supporting the colonial administration upcountry in Tanganyika.


In 1939 he was asked to form seventy-five Somali conscripts into a company of machine-gunners with the Somaliland Camel Corps (the Somalis considered camels too precious to ride, keeping them for their milk and for transporting the Vickers machine-guns). *


The Italians attacked Tug Argan on 11 August 1940. At 07.30 hours a heavy, low altitude, air attack by bombs and machine-guns was delivered. This was followed by an infantry assault upon the hill positions. Wilson’s actions on this and the following days were subsequently recorded in the London Gazette of 14 October 1940:


“Captain Wilson and Somali gunners under his command beat off the attack and opened fire on the enemy troops attacking Mill Hill, another post within his range. He inflicted


42


AUGUST 2010


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