I have written in May & June of this year about the end of the "Africa Orientale Italia" (A.O.I.) in the last months of 1941. But the end of this Italian East Africa empire after the surrender of the last AOI Vicerroy (general Nasi) in Gondar, was followed by a guerrilla war done by thousands of Italian soldiers with some Eritrean colonial troops (faithful to Italy).
Most estimates (like the one of Rosselli, Alberto: "Storie Segrete. Operazioni sconosciute o dimenticate della seconda guerra mondiale") pinpoint that more than seven thousand Italians participated in this guerrilla, until the surrender of the Kingdom of Italy to the Allies on September 8, 1943. They fought in the desperate hope that the Italian & German Army of Rommel could win the war in Libya & Egypt and reach later the region of former AOI.
It is interesting to note that last italian guerrilla fighter to surrender was Corrado Turchetti, who wrote in his memoirs that some soldiers continued to ambush Allied troops until October 1943. The last Italian officer known to have fought the guerrilla war was Colonel Nino Tramonti in Eritrea until the Italian Armistice of September !943.
But the last Italian troops to surrender were Eritrean colonial Ascari under the command of the "Muntaz" Ali Gabrè, an Eritrean "Zaptié" (Eritrean Carabinieri). In 1941, when the Italian Army surrendered to the English, he continued to fight and his resistance lasted until 1946.
This means that, for five years, Ali Gabrè, known as Ali Muntaz, with initially 8 other Eritrean & Italian soldiers, in the fort of Agordat area bravely opposed the English in the name of the King of Italy and he later continued on his own, with a hundred other "Eritrean Ascari diehards", to fight in the Abyssinian/Eritrean bush in all 1944. He fought until the imbalance of forces and the lack of armaments forced them to lower the Italian tricolour flag, but only nearly one year after the end of WW2.
Thanks to these Italian & Eritrean fighters the Italian flag was present in Ethiopia from 1935 until 1946 and not only less than five years (from 1936 to 1941), as is written mistakenly by the actual Ethiopian propaganda!
......to be continued.....
