The two measures of the Ethiopian war in the Gondrand shipyard massacre

For Italy it was a barbaric massacre, for imperial Ethiopia it was a legitimate act of war. On 13 February in the locality of Utok Emni, near Mai Lahlà, the construction site of the Gondrand National Transport Company which dealt with road construction was attacked by Ethiopian troops belonging to the departments commanded by General Ras Immirù Hailé Selassie, the emperor’s cousin of almost the same name.

The area was behind the front lines and close to the border with the Italian colony of Eritrea. The attack began in the night between 12 and 13 in the village of Daro Taclé where the workers coordinated by engineers Cesare Rocca and Roberto Colloredo Mels were housed: there were just under a hundred of them and they were working on the widening of the Asmara-Adua rolling road.

Engineer Rocca shoots his wife to spare her from violence

We do not know exactly how many Ethiopians had stormed the barracks, certainly several hundreds, but we know that the workers defended themselves with the 15 rifles supplied and in hand-to-hand combat also with spades and shovels. In the end, the bodies of 68 Italians and 17 Eritreans remained on the ground, an unspecified but still high number of imperials, and two workers, the only survivors, were taken prisoner: Alfredo Lusetti and Ernesto Zannoni, who were later freed. Lydia Maffioli, wife of the engineer Rocca, was found killed with a revolver, and it was most likely her husband who shot her to avoid further brutality. When the troops of a nearby detachment arrived at the Gondrand construction site, a couple of hours after the end of the fighting but just in time to engage an enemy rearguard column and disperse it, the soldiers were horrified to discover the massacre and also the havoc carried out on the corpses of the workers, who had been mutilated and in some cases even emasculated.

Indiscriminate retaliation began with shootings and hangings

The horror triggers a ruthless reaction that escapes any possible control. In the memoirs and documents of the Italian officers, the phases of the spiral of violence to avenge the dead and the contempt of their bodies are reported. The first to pay the price are the civilians in the area close to the massacre, where anyone found in the wrong place and at the wrong time is shot. The first targets of the reprisal are the village leaders, executed and left on the gallows to the vultures as a macabre warning. But reports on what is happening are continually arriving at the command tables. Hatred towards the Ethiopians explodes at will, also fueled by the terror among national and colonial soldiers and even among civilian workers about the fate that awaits them if they fall into enemy hands. The recommendation will soon come to the military to always leave a bullet for themselves. The violence is often as brutal as it is unjustified. The culmination occurred on March 7, when during an inspection by the colonial troops who are part of the Royal Army in the village of Adi Anfitò, objects that had belonged to the engineer Rocca were found. It is an orgy of blood and death.

The gruesome story of second lieutenant Flaiano in the notes in the notebook

What happens next is told in a note in the war notebook of second lieutenant Ennio Flaiano, who in 1947 will recount his experience in the Ethiopian war in which he had taken part as a volunteer with the novel “Tempo d’uccidere” which will earn him the first Strega Prize: «On 7 March the Spahis group of the II Army Corps arrives in Adi Onfitò, inspecting some tucul. Objects belonging to the engineer Rocca (killed together with his wife in the massacre at the Gondrand shipyard in Mai Lalhà) were found. The inhabitants, who had already obtained permission to move freely from other troops, were killed en masse. The women and men barricaded in the church are massacred. A woman, the most attractive, is possessed in a circle and then a brand is introduced into her sex: a brand from the fire that was used to burn the Coptic persimmon. Then the church is cleared of corpses. It is decided to burn them. Some soldiers of the 107th are preparing for the disgusting undertaking. A poor sick woman is found in a coffin, her eyes wide open in terror. She is placed with the others near the stake. A centurion spots her and shouts: “But she’s alive!”. The soldier replies: “No, Mr. Captain, she is almost dead”. In any case the woman, saved from the fire in the evening, went there the next day. She died during the night.”

The complaint to the League of Nations that will never be discussed

Two days later, on March 9, the general secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs headed by Benito Mussolini, Fulvio Suvich, forwarded a document denouncing the Gondrand massacre to the League of Nations on behalf of the Italian government. The report speaks of “savage and bloody aggression against non-combatant workers”, of “bestial fury on the wounded and corpses, many of which were totally or partially emasculated (…) or subjected to other terrible mutilations”, with a detailed and gruesome list. But the LoN which had imposed sanctions on Italy after the attack on Ethiopia on 3 October 1935 will not have time to express its opinion because the conflict will be officially closed on 5 May 1936 with the entry of Marshal Pietro Badoglio into Addis Ababa and the Italian victory in the largest colonial war in history.

State funeral for General Ras Immiru who gave the attack order

The attack on the Gondrad shipyard will be claimed by Ras Immirù as a legitimate act of war. He himself had given the order to conquer it because the workers were in the area of ​​operations and were armed, so much so that they had defended themselves by opening fire and causing significant losses to the Ethiopians. The general recalled that his civilians could do nothing and had no defense weapons against the Italian planes that bombed them with explosives and gas. After the surrender, Immirù continued the guerrilla war until his capture in December 1936 and his deportation to Italy. He will be interned in Ponza, in the same villa which, after his arrest on 26 July 1943, will be used by Badoglio to hide Mussolini from the hunt that Otto Skorzeny’s Germans are giving him on direct orders from Adolf Hitler. After the defenestration in 1974 of Hailé Selassie who was restored to the throne by the English in 1941, Ras Immirù followed his cousin the emperor into exile and died in 1980, buried in Addis Ababa with a state funeral.