Ethiopia is presented as a wartime front approached through the narrator’s service with the Lorraine Squadron, rather than through a detailed account of events inside the country. Its significance lies in the contrast between the airmen’s frustrated inactivity and the campaign’s approaching close: by the time the narrator returned to duty in Sudan, the fighting there was nearly over.

Setting and Campaign

The memoir refers to the Ethiopian front as the next operational setting for the squadron after the narrator’s assignment to Bangui. There, the airmen had been posted with three Blenheims to provide cover for French Equatorial Africa, where they felt underused and increasingly exasperated. After the narrator’s arrest and subsequent release, he rejoined the squadron, which was then operating on the Ethiopian front.

Operations and the Campaign’s End

The account gives little detail about the squadron’s operations in Ethiopia itself. It instead locates the campaign’s final phase through the narrator’s return to the squadron in Sudan: taking off from Gordon’s Tree airfield at Khartoum, the airmen no longer encountered Italian fighters, and the anti-aircraft fire they met was sparse. They continued bombing Italian garrisons, but the campaign was already drawing to a close.

Narrative Significance

Ethiopia marks a change in the narrator’s wartime circumstances, from the boredom and misdirected risk-taking of Bangui to renewed service near an active front. Yet the squadron’s arrival does not become a sustained account of combat there. The return to Sudan instead emphasizes how quickly the campaign was ending: the narrator’s renewed operational role coincided with a front that had largely fallen quiet.