THE BATTLE AREA.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 302, 19 November 1935, Page 7

THE BATTLE AREA.

TANKS CAUSE PANIC.

TROOPS FLEE IN LORRIES

Received November 19, 11.5 a.m. LONDON, Nov. 18

A vivid description of the panic among the undisciplined Galla tribesmen confronted by a small Italian force during the battle for Sasa Bancli was given the Daily Mail by a Somali lorry driver. . “The Galias took up a position near the junction of the Fafan and Jerer rivers. Italian machine-gun lire broke from the scrub, and 1 saw the Abyssinians streaming back toward the baggage lines. They commandeered 25 lorries and drove away’. Only’ about 800 stood tlieir ground, although the whole Italian force was probably only 700 men,” he said. “The Abyssinians brought forward u gun mounted on a lorry and blew off the top of a tank which was trying to climb the river bank, apparently killing the Italians inside. Two other tanks struck soft sand and their crews were killed when trying to leave. I saw the Italian tanks coming and shooting at our lorries, then the Italian native troops broke from cover firing, nobody giving orders. I saw I would be killed, so I ran and boarded a lorry with the others. Between Mustabel and Jijiga our lorry and five others were spotted by Italian ’planes, which bombed us. We ran the lorries into the bush and escaped. 1 had had enough fighting for the Abyssinians,” concluded the lorry driver. The Italian militarists attribute the Abyssinians’ puzzling lack of resistance to demoralisation by the tanks and aeroplanes, bearing out the Italian theory that the Abyssinians had been much overrated and were inclined to go to pieces when isolated.