Order of Battle
The Italian force attacking British Somaliland in August 1940 was commanded by Lieutenant General Guglielmo Nasi, General Officer Commanding Eastern Sector. The force included twenty-three colonial battalions of regular native troops in five brigades, three Blackshirt battalions, and three bands (bande) of dubats and other locally recruited irregulars. The Italians also had armoured vehicles (a small number of both light and medium tanks), artillery, and, most important, superior air support. The Italians numbered about 24,000.
On Italy's declaration of war in June 1940, the British forces in Somaliland had been placed under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Reginald Chater, the commander of the Somaliland Camel Corps. At the start of August, the newly-promoted Brigadier Chater commanded a contingent of about 4,000 soldiers comprising the lightly armed Somaliland Camel Corps, the 2nd (Nyasaland) Battalion King's African Rifles (KAR), the 1st Battalion Northern Rhodesian Regiment (KAR), the 3/15th Punjab Regiment and 1st East African Light Battery (four 3.7 in (94 mm) howitzers). They were joined from Aden on 7 August by the 1/2nd Punjab Regiment and 8 August by 2nd Battalion Black Watch. Chaters' force was not only critically short of artillery but it had no tanks or armoured cars nor did it have any anti-tank weapons to oppose the Italian medium and light tanks.
Read more about this topic: Italian Conquest Of British Somaliland
Famous quotes containing the words order and/or battle:
“Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature’s monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.”
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918)
“The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision—whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath. It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out for dulled reactions and faulty judgment.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)