Talk:Battle of Gondar

Rewrite

I am currently rewriting the article so that it is not a copyvio. Your Grace Lord Sir Dreamy of Buckland ^tm 12:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Done. Your Grace Lord Sir Dreamy of Buckland ^tm 23:52, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Criticism

I wish someone had dropped a note over at the WikiProject Ethiopia page about this article; I would have stepped in with some suggestions. One would have been to remove the obviously erroneous mention of Ras Mikael Sehul in this matter -- he died almost 160 years before this battle, & had no way to play a part! Another would have been to point you to Solomon Getamun, History of the City of Gondar (Africa World Press, 2005), which contains relevant information to this article. -- llywrch (talk) 01:18, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

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CE

Added some citations and details from OH MME II and removed the banner. Tidied referencesKeith-264 (talk) 17:25, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

• A request, mostly out of curiosity: could you provide the exact citation for the Allied casualty figure? I would wish to compare them to the Italian one, since a 1:100 killed or missing ratio is quite extraordinary, especially given that they took almost as many casualties against a smaller Italian force at Kulkaber. My first thought is that the two sources may have recorded casualties under different criteria - perhaps the Italian one records casualties at Kulkaber and Gondar, for instance.Capt Jim (talk) 13:54, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
  • Greetings Captain, did I add that number? p. 321 of OH II has the British and Allied casualties as noted in the box, plus 10,000 Italian and 12,000 Ethiopian prisoners taken at Gondar. P. 317 has a footnote with 950 IT killed and wounded at Wolchefit (from the IT OH), p. 320 has 1,648 IT and 775 E troops taken at Kulkaber. It's the only source I've got so I don't know about the number of IT & E killed; could it be a typo for 400? Keith-264 (talk) 14:35, 13 July 2014 (UTC)
    • Sorry to be so late in getting back to you on this. As the Italian wiki on the battle uses the same source and numbers for the Italian casualties, I'm assuming it's not a typo (unless there was a typo the first time it was written and was then carried over when the information was copied to another wiki). However, the Italian page on the battle uses this figure for the wider scope of casualties inflicted not from 13 to 27 November, but from June to 30 November, and it includes in its coverage the battles at Wolchefit and Kulkaber. So it would appear to me that in the context of the English page and the period it covers, the figure for Allied losses is accurate but the Italian figure encompasses the losses of Nasi's entire force during its months-long stand post-Amba Alagi and not just in the final assault on Gondar itself.

This figure makes a lot of sense in that light (if this is indeed the way it's meant to be taken) since it's a record of the casualties sustained over a period of more than five months; attrition deaths from disease and fighting bands of Ethiopian patriots, along with the larger-scale fighting against Commonwealth forces.

Hope this all made sense. At any rate it's quite strange to use the same figure for two vastly different periods of time; if only we had access to the source itself we could clarify what period and places the casualty figure covers.Capt Jim (talk) 14:03, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems likely; are there any aficionados we can ask?Keith-264 (talk) 08:40, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure. I don't speak Italian, and it's a shame this campaign's been glossed over in most English texts on the war. I don't think there's been any recent or definitive English publication that focuses solely on the fighting in Italian East Africa. Perhaps we ought to see if there's an Italian speaker in the World War II portal who could access Italian-language sources or someone in the Italy Portal who's interested in the dissolution of the Italian colonial empire? I'll be busy for the next week or so but afterward I'll be sure to ask there. Capt Jim (talk) 18:06, 20 September 2014 (UTC)