The British take Keren

At around eight o’clock on the morning of 27 March 1941, British Matilda infantry tanks drove through the dismantled roadblock in the Dongolaas Gorge and entered Keren, a mountain town in northern Eritrea. The previous night the Italians had skilfully and in good order withdrawn most of their infantry and artillery from the positions around the town, leaving only a rearguard. White flags appeared on the peaks over which hand-to-hand fighting had raged for nearly eight weeks. So ended the hardest battle of the East African campaign. Its final, decisive act – the general assault by the two Indian divisions of General William Platt – lasted from 15 to 27 March. The victory opened the way for the British to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, and to the port of Massawa, and within two weeks it sealed the fate of Italy’s oldest colony.

Before the assault

By the beginning of March Platt’s troops had been standing before Keren for more than a month. Two February attacks by the 4th Indian Infantry Division on the peaks above the Dongolaas Gorge – the only gateway from western Eritrea onto the plateau – had ended in bloody failure, and the attackers had held on only to Cameron Ridge, a spur at the foot of Mount Sanchil. At Keren a stalemate set in: the defenders under General Nicolangelo Carnimeo dominated the valley from the heights, while the British stockpiled supplies for a great, carefully prepared attack by both Indian divisions, with all their artillery and air support. Platt approved the outline plan on 1 March. First, General Noel Beresford-Peirse’s 4th Division was to strike west of the gorge, at the peaks from Sanchil to Mount Samanna; then General Lewis Heath’s 5th Division was to attack east of the gorge, against the concrete fort on the summit of the Dologorodoc massif. The same artillery, without changing position, could support both attacks in turn.

Time was pressing. On 7 March the first convoys carrying British troops to Greece arrived at Piraeus, and General Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief Middle East, had already warned Platt in February that once Eritrea was taken he would take some of his troops away. At the end of February he had even considered breaking off the battle for Keren. Platt, however, convinced him that a new attack could succeed, and Wavell concluded that a withdrawal from Keren would encourage the Italians to counter-attack.

Skirmishes in the foreground and the Free French (10–14 March)

War chronologies based on English-language compilations record a “brief clash” between British and Italian troops in Eritrea on 10 March 1941. The sources, however, point to no specific engagement of any size on that day. What may have been remembered in this way is a series of minor skirmishes fought in the first half of March in front of Keren and on its flanks, as both sides prepared for the decisive contest.

From 8 March the 5th Indian Division – to which the 9th Brigade had returned under Brigadier Frank Messervy, until then commander of the motorised Gazelle Force – moved up from the Kassala area into the forward zone by night and as unobtrusively as possible. According to the British official history the Italians made no attempt to interfere with these preparations, and what worried them most were the air raids. Their patrols nevertheless showed considerable initiative west of the main positions, and Platt had to send against them the newly arrived 51st Middle East Commando. In the south, in the direction of Arresa, a small detachment of Skinner’s Horse and the Sudan Defence Force was to simulate a much larger force and draw the Italians’ attention.

Most was happening in the north. Brigadier Harold Briggs’s group, made up of two battalions of the 7th Indian Infantry Brigade and two battalions of the Free French Brigade of the East under Colonel Monclar (Raoul Magrin-Vernerey), had fought at Cub Cub in February and crossed the Mescelit Pass on 1 March, and now stood only about 22 kilometres north-east of Keren. Platt’s plan required it to push further forward in order to tie down the Italian reserves. On 6 March the whole Brigade of the East assembled in the Chelamet area: the 14th Battalion of the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion and the 3rd Marching Battalion from Chad. On 12–13 March the legionnaires, with camels carrying their weapons and supplies, marched by night along mountain paths up to the Italian defensive line on the passes the French called Grand Willy and Petit Willy. On 13 or 14 March (French accounts give different dates) two companies of legionnaires attacked the Engiahat hills. Shelled by Italian artillery and counter-attacked, they had to fall back once their ammunition ran out. According to an account published by the Fondation de la France Libre they lost five killed and 34 wounded; according to other French studies, eleven killed and 35 wounded. The attack from the north did not break the defence, but it fulfilled its purpose: the Italians had to keep troops there that they badly needed in the Dongolaas Gorge.

On 14 March Platt gathered his commanders and told them that this would be no walk-over but a bloody battle against the enemy and against the ground, which would be won by the side that lasted longer.

The general assault and Fort Dologorodoc (15–17 March)

On the morning of 15 March Blenheim, Wellesley and Hardy bombers attacked Italian artillery and infantry positions, and at seven o’clock the artillery of both divisions opened fire. The 11th Indian Infantry Brigade, reinforced to five battalions, advanced from Cameron Ridge on Sanchil and Brig’s Peak. It took both summits but could not hold them: the Savoy Grenadiers, the Bersaglieri and the Eritrean askaris counter-attacked, as in February, immediately and ferociously. Further west the Hog’s Back and Flat Top ridges were taken and held, while the weakened 5th Brigade forced its way onto the slopes of Samanna and stuck there. At half past ten the 2nd Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, set off across the gorge towards the lower hills in front of Dologorodoc, but flanking fire from the slopes of Sanchil pinned it down until dusk.

During the night Messervy’s 9th Brigade took up the attack. The 3/5th Mahratta Light Infantry captured a hill called the Pinnacle, and the 3/12th Frontier Force Regiment a hill called the Pimple. Messervy then threw in his reserve, the 2nd Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, which approached the fort from the south along a narrow ridge and took it at 6.30 a.m. on 16 March at little cost, capturing some forty prisoners. Fort Dologorodoc became the turning point of the battle. It gave observation over both sides of the gorge and over the reverse slopes of the massif, hitherto screened from British fire, where the Italians kept their reserves and supplies.

Further attempts to exploit the success failed. During the night of 16–17 March Platt threw his last reserve, the 4/10th Baluch Regiment and the 3/18th Royal Garhwal Rifles, against Sanchil and Brig’s Peak, again without result. That same night the 29th Indian Infantry Brigade passed through Dologorodoc towards the Falestoh and Zeban ridges, but in the difficult terrain it fell behind the barrage, was held up under heavy fire and spent the whole day cut off, supplied from the air with ammunition and food dropped in improvised containers. It was withdrawn during the night. During the night of 17–18 March the exhausted 4th Division came down from the slopes of Sanchil and Brig’s Peak, keeping hold of the Hog’s Back and Flat Top.

At 3 p.m. on 17 March General Orlando Lorenzini, commander of the 2nd Colonial Brigade, known as “the Lion of the Sahara”, who at Agordat had commanded an entire colonial division, was killed by a shell splinter. The British official history describes him as a commander respected by both sides who knew how to inspire his askaris, and in Italy he became one of the heroes of the defence of Keren and was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour. The same officer had earlier conducted operations against the Ethiopian resistance, and according to historians, among them Frederic Wehrey, it was a column under his command that in April 1939 carried out the massacre in the Zeret cave, where mustard gas was used and hundreds of Ethiopians who had surrendered were killed.

Counter-attacks and preparations for the breakthrough (18–24 March)

The Italians understood the importance of the fort very well. According to the British official history they tried seven times between 18 and 22 March to retake it, suffering heavy losses, with the fighting often hand to hand. The 5th Division, exposed to fire from three sides, held Dologorodoc. General Luigi Frusci, Governor of Eritrea and commander of the northern front, reported daily to the Viceroy, Prince Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, on heavy losses, especially from aircraft and artillery. By 20 March the strength of the Italian units had fallen by a third, and Frusci’s reports were becoming ever more anxious. As early as 16 March the Viceroy had written to Benito Mussolini about the lack of transport, anti-tank weapons and aircraft, and about how the askaris regarded every order to retreat as a sign of weakness and preferred to desert rather than leave their home districts. Rome replied that he must play for time and wait for the war to be decided elsewhere.

In the air the British reigned almost unchallenged. Systematic raids in February and March on Italian airfields and workshops meant that by 22 March, according to the British official history, the Italian air force in the whole of East Africa had only 37 serviceable aircraft left. In the decisive phase of the battle it hardly appeared over the battlefield at all. The British artillery, supplied without a break by columns of lorries, received nearly two hundred thousand shells in March alone.

The failed attack by the 29th Brigade had one important consequence. Sappers who, during the nights of 16–17 and 17–18 March, had crept up to the roadblock in the gorge under infantry cover judged that clearing it for tracked vehicles would take about 48 hours, provided nobody interfered with them. From a distance the road, buried under rocks, had looked impossible to clear. Heath concluded that the key to the gorge was not the impregnable Sanchil but two small knolls just above the roadblock, the so-called Railway Bumps, which could be approached along the railway line from the tunnel below Cameron Ridge. Platt ordered the 5th Division to seize the hills on both sides of the gorge, clear the roadblock and pass tanks and carriers through it to Keren. The attack was fixed for 25 March. Matilda tanks of the 4th Royal Tank Regiment, Bren carriers and Indian cavalry were formed into a pursuit force under Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Fletcher, called Fletcher Force.

The breakthrough in the gorge (25–26 March)

On 24 March diversionary attacks were made on Sanchil, and just before midnight the West Yorkshires and the 3/5th Mahrattas came down from Dologorodoc and took three hills above the mouth of the gorge. The West Yorkshires occupied their hill without a fight; the Mahratta Light Infantry had to drive an Italian garrison out of its trenches. At three o’clock on the morning of 25 March, covered by the fire of a hundred guns directed at the Sanchil ridge, the 2nd Highland Light Infantry and the 4/10th Baluch Regiment emerged from the railway tunnel and pushed deep into the gorge, followed by the 3/2nd Punjab Regiment. The defenders, busy covering Sanchil, were taken by surprise. By half past five the two brigades had taken almost all their objectives, including the Railway Bumps, and nearly five hundred prisoners, many of them Bersaglieri. From then on the Italians no longer had any positions from which to direct fire onto the floor of the gorge.

Indian sappers and miners, working in shifts under mortar and artillery fire, dismantled the roadblock over the next day and a half. By the afternoon of 26 March a passage for the tanks was ready. That day the British noticed a marked slackening in Italian activity. Frusci reported that the situation was critical and that the British tanks could no longer be stopped. The Italian command decided to abandon Keren and fall back to the next position on the road to Asmara.

The fall of Keren (27 March)

During the night of 26–27 March the Italians skilfully withdrew most of their troops and guns, leaving only a rearguard. Early in the morning the British artillery lifted its fire onto Falestoh and Zeban, and the 29th Brigade, which attacked at 4.30 a.m., took both ridges unopposed. At dawn aircraft reported columns retreating along the road from Keren to Asmara. White flags appeared on Sanchil, and patrols of the 4th Division moved across ground they had been fighting for since February. Worst off in the retreat were the Savoy Grenadiers and Bersaglieri on the western peaks: cut off, they had to surrender.

Fletcher Force drove through the roadblock and, according to the British official history, the tanks entered Keren at about eight in the morning (other accounts say half past ten), then pressed on along the road to Asmara as far as the Habi Mentel gorge. From the north the legionnaires of the Brigade of the East, who had also set off in pursuit of the retreating Italians, rounded up prisoners on the roads around the town and, according to French accounts, entered Keren at dawn on 28 March. On that same day, 27 March, Carnimeo, who had defended Keren for nearly eight weeks, was promoted to major general for war merit.

Losses

The figures for losses are incomplete. According to the British official history, compiled by Ian Playfair, Platt’s forces lost 536 killed and 3,229 wounded in the whole battle of Keren, from February to March. Italian losses are even less certain. General Frusci reported some three thousand killed, and this figure was adopted by the British official history. Compton Mackenzie, in his history of the Indian Army, wrote that in the first days of the March assault the Italians lost about five thousand men, including 1,135 killed. Some Italian publications give much higher figures, which are hard to verify. What is known is that many battalions dwindled to 150 or 200 men, and that the askaris’ losses must be increased by the large number of deserters.

Its place in the war

The British official historian judged the battle decisive: the Italians managed to withdraw a considerable part of their artillery and infantry, but never again fought with such determination. As he observed, they knew all along that Keren was the key, and they stuck to a simple plan: hold the peaks above the gorge and retake any that were lost. The plan worked until the losses became too great. The outcome was decided by superiority in firepower, supplies and air power, and by the tenacity of the two Indian divisions, of which the 4th already had the victory at Sidi Barrani behind it. Keren had been Platt’s main objective from the first days of the offensive, which began in January with the occupation of Kassala, and since the victory at Agordat.

After Keren, resistance in Eritrea quickly collapsed. On 31 March, after a full day’s fighting, the 9th Indian Infantry Brigade took the last line of defence at Ad Teclesan; on 1 April Asmara surrendered without a fight, and on 8 April Massawa capitulated, where Monclar’s Free French accepted the surrender of Admiral Mario Bonetti. In the south the forces of General Alan Cunningham, which had taken Mogadishu in February, were closing in on Addis Ababa: on 16 March a British landing force from Aden retook Berbera, and on 26 March Harar fell. Italian East Africa was crumbling from two sides. On 11 April President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced that the Red Sea was no longer a combat zone, which opened it to American ships carrying supplies to Egypt. The threat to British shipping from India, Australia and Africa to the Suez Canal – the main strategic aim of the whole campaign – had disappeared.

The victory, however, came at a moment when the British position in the Middle East was rapidly deteriorating. Three days earlier, on 24 March, Erwin Rommel’s German troops had retaken El Agheila in Libya, while Wavell’s best forces were being shipped to Greece. Soon after the fall of Keren the 4th Indian Division was ordered back to Egypt, followed later by the 5th Division and most of the air force. For the Italians the defence of Keren remained a symbol of a self-sacrificing, if futile, struggle for their colonial empire; for the Indian Army it was one of the most important tests of the war. The Duke of Aosta could now only prolong resistance: in May he surrendered in the mountains at Amba Alagi, and the last Italian garrison, at Gondar, capitulated in November 1941.