Читать книгу Amedeo: The True Story of an Italian’s War in Abyssinia - Sebastian O’Kelly - Страница 18

SIX

The Sword of Islam

Italo Balbo, air marshal of Italy and governor of Libya, stood on a platform in the main square of Tripoli, the Italian tricolour draped over the balustrade in front of him. It was July 1936; the Libyan veterans of Ethiopia had come home and the whole city turned out to honour them. European luminaries sat in the shade, the most important behind the governor, but Tripoli’s Arab and Jewish population were also packing the streets to hail the conquering heroes. The tricolour was flying from every rooftop and shopfront, and military bands were playing patriotic tunes. The Zaptie colonial police headed the parade, some on camels, followed by Zuave infantry and, finally, the Spahys, who had had to be remounted after leaving their own horses behind in Eritrea.

Amedeo stood to attention in his crisp, white colonial uniform, his sword by his side, and his face almost invisible in the shade of his pith helmet. Beside him were Major Ajmone Cat and a Libyan colonel, all three waiting to receive medals from the governor. They approached the raised dais. Balbo decorated the senior officers first and then pinned a Bronze Medal to Amedeo’s chest, in recognition of his valour at Selaclaca. To the others’ surprise, Balbo embraced him: ‘Bravo, Amedeo.’ As Ajmone Cat marched back to the Spahys, he cast an inquisitive look at the lieutenant. Given the circumstances of his arrival the year before, Amedeo had felt it more tactful not to mention that Italo Balbo, the second most influential figure in the Fascist regime, was a close family friend.

When Amedeo received his commission as a second lieutenant in 1931 he had been posted to Udine, a provincial city in northeastern Italy with a strong Austrian flavour. Yet it was there, while serving in Uncle Ernesto’s Cavalleggeri di Monferrato, that he had met and befriended two of the era’s most extraordinary personalities. One was Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, a cousin of the king and future viceroy of Ethiopia; the other was Italo Balbo then at the height of his fame. Literally so, for as Italy’s most celebrated aviator Balbo had led a mass formation of twenty-four aircraft to the Soviet Union and to South America, and then trumped both these achievements by flying over the north Atlantic to the United States. Chicago honoured his extraordinary feat with a ticker-tape reception, and immortalised his name in Balbo Avenue, which exists to this day. Balbo’s wife was the socially elevated Countess Florio, whose family came from Udine and had long been friends with Uncle Ernesto. Through this connection, Amedeo was accepted into the intimate circle of the great aviator.

A virile figure with a sharp black beard, Italo Balbo was hugely popular in Italy, which contributed to a growing chill between him and the Duce. For he was far more than a sporting hero. Balbo was also the country’s youthful air minister who had established the Regia Aeronautica. As one of Mussolini’s most pugnacious followers during Fascism’s rise to power, Balbo had set up the squadristi street gangs, purging with brutal vigour his native Ferrara, and later the whole of Emilia Romagna, of communists, anarchists, socialists and army deserters. No other Fascist ras was so disposed to resort to the sacro manganello – the ‘holy cudgel’ – as this son of a schoolmaster who had been a highly decorated officer in the Alpini during the Great War. It was he who introduced that peculiarly Italian touch to the squadristi brawling: the forced administration of castor oil, which gave its victims a humiliating bout of diarrhoea. When Mussolini planned the March on Rome, which imposed the Fascist regime in 1922, Balbo marshalled the Black Shirts.

Over years in government, Balbo’s thuggery had been forgotten and his early Fascist fervour, which included republicanism, became more moderate. A natural leader, he was widely regarded as one of the most able and independently minded ministers in the regime. But his success and showmanship, which rivalled his leader’s, both angered and worried Mussolini, always sensitive to the momentum of power. He removed Balbo from the command of the air force he had created, packing him off to Libya as governor in January 1934. But this was not the end of the career of a man who had captured the world’s imagination with his flights across the Atlantic.

In the twenty years since the Italian conquest, little had been done to improve Libya; the eastern province of Cyrenaica was still reeling from Graziani’s ministrations. ‘All the Arabs here are in concentration camps,’ Balbo complained on arrival, and one of his first acts as governor was to release the prisoners and unburden himself of the general, whose methods he deplored.