[3] After defending with his tank Ras Tafari from a coup d'etat organised by the followers of Empress Zewditu, he was appointed as commanding officer of the imperial guard.

[6] After being commissioned as a lieutenant, De Martini was again assigned to Ethiopia as part of the XI Colonial Brigade to fight against the Ethiopian guerrillas and was awarded with a bronze medal.

In the first months of 1941, he fought in the East African Campaign in Assab and Dankalia (southern Eritrea), where he was captured when severely ill with malaria by a British patrol, but a week later he managed to escape from the hospital of the Dessié.

He made contact with the Italian consulate in that country, and from the Yemeni coast organized a group of Eritrean sailors (with small boats called sambuco) in order to identify, and notify Rome with his radio, of the Royal Navy movements throughout the Red Sea.

Main colonial governors: Agenore Frangipani; Guglielmo Nasi; Enrico Cerulli; Pietro Gazzera; Luigi Frusci; Alessandro Pirzio Biroli