Evening star., 1941-03-15
Bv ROBERT J. CASEY.

By ROBERT J. CASEY,
Chicago Daily News Foreisn Correspondent.
WITH THE MIDDLE EASTERN
COMMAND. March 15.-Somewhat
overlooked IN the news service Of re-
cent international events, the i'm
perial column from Kenya today
had swept up to within striking dis
tance of the important road from
Adds Ababa to the sea Almost,
one might say it had come within
striking distance of the end Of the
Ethiopian war.
In many ways, this campaign IS
even more fantastic than that OF
the western desert whose techniques
of swiftnesS and audaclty 1t has
so freely borrowed. Only a few days
ago these troops crossed the border
onto the blistering lava beds and
attacked along the Juba River.
Today. with the remnants of an
army of $4,000 men dispensing into
the hills behind them. they are
once more menace-poSSibly the
last menace-to the harrled Duke
dAosta. who is probab bly, now Won
dering about his next line of retreat.
The columns moved so quickly
that ofhcial announcements have
generally been scores of miles be-
hind. For the most part 1t has
gone in complete silence, its wonders
to perform. But there is no secret
about the heartbreaking test to
which it was set er the miracle OF
its accomplishment.
Exceptional Desert.
For more than 800 miles. this
flying wedge has come through the
refuse pile that was left over when
the world was made-the Ogaden
desert. 1t is something exceptional
in deserts, this place-a chaos of
boulders, sharp stones, fragments of
volcanic glass in haphazard piles or
strewn in great barriers-hot stones
hot sands-skylines dizzy with the
heat, foreground mercifully veiled in
hot, yellow dust.
There are fat bare patches where
the earth's crust cracks like choco-
late under foot, curls up and falls
to dust-fat, bare steppes OF
weathered lava, filled with potholes
spiked with fragments of porphry
Troops in rafting trucks are
chilled by the quick evaporation OF
sweat while roasting in the sun
always on the verge of speechless-
ness with powdery muck filling thelI
nostrilS and throatS.
You carry your own water. you
carry your own gasoline and you
don't rest much because it's too hot
to sleep by day and in the cool OF
the evenings you are driving for
ward again. BY night, rowing hyenas
stand off IN the distance and run
and howl as the column goes by
hopeful, always hopeful.
Transports Cut OFF Road.
They have gooo reason for optl-
mism. For it is only few years
since the Italians and Ethioplans
met at Ualual-1, 200 Italians left
dead or dying, 300 Ethiopians. The
hyenas did well on that occasion
despite the competition OF lions,
.iackals and other beasts Of prey.
The wounded crawled into patches
of camel gorse and lay helpless until
the animals came to tear them 10
pieces-a forbidding and hostile
wilderness.
The road north from Mogadiscio,
never very good even after the
Italians gave surface to the dusty
trail across these bowling fats. IS
now cut up by heavy transports of
the retreat, by BOBBY traps left
behind. and rarely-scarcely ever
now-by shells dropped in rear
guard action.
Where the trucks have TO leave
the grade they nave no choice
of going-they plow through dunes
of loose sand, bump uncomfortably
and dangerously over the heat
cubed clay, or skid and slide across
thin shells of black lava which
splinters with tinkling, like fragile
crockery.
Alongside the route. now and then,
are boulder -strewn beds of dry tor
rents. Skeleton trees. gray and leaf
less, rise in patches from the stony
rubble. At high water they may be
green again, but not now.
There is no uniformity on this
desert except that it all has ghastly
look, a hideous traverse with the sun
above and the dust beneath and the
thermometer at 135 degrees. Eternal
drought has squared parts off with
deep fissures which make it danger
GUS even for camels. Other parts
are stretches of bare rock, worn so
smooth under the sand blasts OF the
ages that the landscape for miles
may blaze like a mirror under the
fire of the sun.
Then the smooth stone area ends
in a zone Uttered with knife-edged
fragments. The stone gives way TO
sand, and the sand to little Gases of
camel gorse and tall grasses which,
apparently, have solved the problem
of living under water
The fiat land breaks into region
of steppes with hard greenery in
arroyos. In these latter retreats
wild beasts have always lived and,
until rarsptly uildAr nen