By November, after additional modest gains and a brief period of Italian inactivity, the initiative on the southern front went over to the Ethiopians.

[2] Late in the year, Ras Desta Damtew started preparations to launch an offensive with his army of approximately 40,000 men.

As a result, Olol Dinle was ordered not to proceed to Imi but to move into the recently subdued territory of the Ghelimes and then march on Ellot to attack the forces descending from the Gestro from behind, which could cause significant trouble to our right flank in case of a counteroffensive along the Doria River.

On the 24th and 25th, three enemy columns marched against him: one along the Webi Shebeli, one from Mount Ellot, and another from the southwest, from Barrei, aiming to cut off his retreat.

On the opposing side, it was feared that Olol Dinle’s bands were merely the vanguard of a larger force advancing from the Webi Shebeli.

Marshal Graziani wrote: "Wehib has lost both his bearings and his mind," and indeed, he told a foreign journalist that he couldn’t understand where the enemy armies in the South were or what the Command wanted to do: "With this, the war becomes impossible to conduct!"

In just one day, Marshal of Italy Pietro Badoglio routed an army personally commanded by Emperor Haile Selassie I.

Believing that Badoglio would not share the laurels of victory with him, Graziani decided to launch an offensive in the south against Ras Nasibu's army.

The architect of the Ethiopian version was Wehib Pasha, who had been a general in the army of the Ottoman Empire, and was serving as Ras Nasibu's Chief-of-Staff for the southern front.

According to a Time magazine of the period, the "Turkish General (retired)" fancied himself as "the Hero of Gallipoli" after his exploits in that campaign.

The ground forces fielded by Graziani were almost entirely "mechanized" and made use of an air component that was empowered to inflict the maximum losses on the enemy.

[8] On 29 March 1936, in response to numerous insulting messages from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and from Badoglio chiding him about when he would get started, Graziani sent thirty-three aircraft to Harar to drop twelve tons of bombs.

To move the advance along, tanks, flamethrowers, and artillery were brought up to within a few yards of the entrances of the caves where the harassing Ethiopians were sheltered.

When additional pressure was applied, the "Hindenburg Wall" gave way and the remaining Ethiopian defenders began a withdrawal.

[1]In the end Nasi’s Eritreans and Dinle’s Ajurans beat the men of Wollega, and of Gemugofa, and of Kulu who had travelled so far to fight.

But it may have been the overcast skies more than a change of heart on Graziani's part that saved the withdrawing Ethiopians from the Italian Royal Air Force.