On 3 October 1935 an Italian army, fully mechanised and over 125,000 strong, invaded Ethiopia on the orders of Mussolini. The Ethiopian army was swiftly crushed and the Emperor Haile Selassie was forced into exile. But the will of the Ethiopian people was not defeated. Here, in their own words, the surviving Patriots (several of them women fighters) tell their own story of effective guerilla warfare waged for six years to victory. Nowhere else will you find this record of a struggle not only germane to the outcome of the Second World War but also to the final waning of European colonial ambition.