The sun over Sicily was pitiless.
At a dry valley north of Siracusa, dust rose through the wind like ash.
Italian Fascist engineers had turned a barren land into a mock battlefield for the Blackshirt militias.
Cacti were used to simulate dense brush, old farm huts were reconstructed to resemble Ethiopian tukuls, and loudspeakers played recordings of tribal drums and war cries at full volume.
The training was not ceremonial.
It was chaos.
Colonel Vincenzo Lisi stood on a small hill, binoculars raised, eyes scanning the maneuver drill below.
Blackshirt soldiers some barely twenty scrambled under barbed wire, crawled through trenches flooded with waste water, and practiced flanking maneuvers against wooden targets marked with Amharic script.
Lisi turned to his adjutant. "Mark every man who hesitates. Send them back to Palermo. We don't need parades in East Africa. We need hounds."
"Yes, sir."
A loud bang cut through the smoke.
