While pursuing my engineering studies in the UK during the late fifties and early sixties, I had direct contact with Major General Aseffa Ayene who was the Ethiopian government’s liaison officer to the officers and men of the Swedish Air Force entrusted with the establishment and training of the IEAF. At the time, such a contact was a privilege not enjoyed by many lowly second lieutenants. The purpose of the contacts was neither for social nor for political ends but for fact-finding and offering suggestions on purely professional matters for the development of our air force. Of the five-plus years I spent in Europe, I spent a good portion of it to cover and report to him on policies and practices regarding Training, Technical Support and Flight Operations as well as evolution of Strategies in the air forces of the UK, Sweden and, especially, Israel.
On matters of such importance to the air force, one can question as to the credibility of having such a relationship established at all. Nevertheless, the relationship that enabled this uninhibited flow of information between us grew over a protracted period starting before my air force days when I was in primary school at the Seventh Day Adventist Boys Boarding School in Akaki, Beseka. His uncle, Gen. Aseffa, raised Mulutsega Sebhat who was my closest friend in primary school. Mulutsega and I spent time together also on off-school days both at my father’s and his uncle’s residences in Addis Ababa. The uncle had the ability to bridge age gaps and invited dialog as long as the subject matter interested him. He was interested in all matters we could think of. In 1943, they used to live in an apartment near ‘Yetiyit Fabrica’. Both the factory and apartment buildings was ‘Yetelat Nibret’. At the time, the bachelor Aseffa held a staff position in the Ministry of War that assigned the apartment to him until he fell out of favour with the Minister, Ras Abebe Aregai, because of a written criticism he made of the ministry. As a result, before I reached my teens, he was spirited away to Gemu Gofa to work, where the governor was a traditional feudal lord who, to make an example of, capriciously meted out harsh punishment to whomsoever he fancied. Upon return from the de-facto punishment, the Emperor assigned Gen. Aseffa as liaison officer to the IEAF, from which position he started building the air force with great dedication, untiring efforts and limitless energy. He would scour schools for eligible candidates for air force cadetship and learn to fly with them and participate in operational exercises. He would stand behind the Emperor at school year-end award-giving ceremonies and compile a list of candidates from award winners, who would find themselves in front of the Emperor within days. The Emperor would cajole them into joining the air force. I resisted joining the first time he put me on his list in 1947. I was tall for my age but only 14 years old and our Swedish headmaster, Dr. David Thornblom, vowed that he would fight, if need be with his hunting rifle, to keep me in school by protecting me from any of the organizations being established at the time. However, Gen. Aseffa persisted and two years later, for reasons that would become clear later, succeeded in enrolling us, his nephew Mulutsega and me, at the IEAF Flying School at Harer-Meda. Mulutsega and I maintained our friendship, even though we went to different and competing secondary schools i.e. Wingate and Haile-Selassie 1st respectively, through our air force days until he died in the early fifties in an accident when flying a SAAB B-17A dive-bomber.
The most notable impediment to the IEAF’s recruiting efforts during this early period was the insatiable thirst for knowledge of young persons. The ban on schooling during Fascist Italy’s five-year invasion of our country had deprived us of academic studies and, at the end of this period; we were attending classes that are steps below where we would have been under normal circumstances. Hence, we would cram and take examinations each term that would qualify us for the next higher class. For example, during the three terms of the first year in primary school, I managed to complete classes one through three and, as a twelve year old at the beginning of the second year, I was sitting in fourth class with older students some of whom were in their twenties. These older ones were fair game for the recruiting effort of the IEAF and other start-up organizations. However, most wanted to continue studying and evaded the recruitment efforts of the air force, police force, etc, with help from their teachers and headmasters. Gen. Aseffa found a solution for this problem by the time recruiting for IEAF’s third Entry arrived in 1949. Specifically, high school teachers from the UK started giving academic classes in the air force. As a result, I was able to write my Cambridge, UK matriculation with the same secondary school classmates I had left for the air force a couple of years earlier. In addition however, I had gained my pilot’s wings. Later, this same policy enabled me to earn an aeronautical engineering degree. The IEAF was truly a nurturing air force.