The surrounding country was a jumble of ambas - flat-topped highlands - divided by ravines so deep men could not cross them on foot. One road threaded through it all toward Gondar, and that road went through the Culqualber Pass. After the Italian defeats at Keren and Amba Alagi earlier in 1941, General Guglielmo Nasi had pulled back into the Amhara highlands and built his defence around Gondar and a ring of lesser strongholds. Culqualber was the most important of them. Starting on 6 August, a mixed force of about 2,100 men dug in on a ridge they called the Costone dei Roccioni, carving caverns into the rock with embrasures that could fire in any direction.

The garrison was not only Italian. Under Colonel Augusto Ugolini and Major Alfredo Serranti stood 360 Carabinieri and Zaptie, 675 Blackshirts, and 620 Eritrean askari of the LXVII Colonial Battalion under Major Carlo Garbieri. About two hundred African women and children - the wives and children of askari, who by custom followed their husbands - sheltered among the positions at Culqualber and nearby Fercaber. The askari had also been joined by men who refused to surrender at Debra Tabor in July and walked overland to reach Culqualber. One of them, Muntaz Unatu Endisciau, was wounded crossing a minefield and died after delivering his battalion's banner to the Italian garrison. He was one of only two colonial soldiers awarded Italy's Gold Medal of Military Valor.

Ethiopian irregulars began cutting the supply road at the end of August, and by late September the Commonwealth forces had closed the ring. The food shrank to bargutta, a coarse flour made from fodder and animal feed. Water was worse. Carabinieri who tried to reach the rivers were cut down by British fire. From mid-October the garrison began launching sorties to buy themselves a little longer - the heaviest on 18 October at Amba Mariam, 15 kilometres to the north, where Ugolini's men overran British depots with a bayonet charge and came back with captured food and ammunition. The respite lasted days, not weeks. Two Fiat CR.42 biplanes tried to contest a sky filled with about a hundred RAF and South African aircraft. One of the two, flown by Sub-Lieutenant Ildebrando Malavolta, was shot down on 24 October.

The besiegers were not only British and South African regulars. Among the 22,500 men gathering for the final assault were roughly 10,000 Ethiopian irregulars - the arbegnoch, the patriot resistance that had been fighting the Italian occupation since 1936. For them Culqualber was not a stand; it was the end of a war that had begun when Mussolini's armies crossed into Ethiopia with gas and bombers five years earlier. The Kikuyu and Sudanese who fought alongside them at the ravines of the Costone dei Roccioni were part of a force that now outnumbered the defenders roughly ten to one.

The final attack began at three in the morning on 21 November 1941. Allied forces came from three directions with infantry, light tanks, and artillery. On the Km. 39 Spur and along the Costone dei Roccioni, the fighting turned hand-to-hand almost immediately. Carabinieri fought with bayonets and grenades when the ammunition ran out, counterattacked to retake lost positions, and were annihilated. All three Italian battalion commanders - Garbieri, Serranti, and Cassoli - were killed. Of the 2,900 men in the Culqualber and Fercaber garrisons, 513 Italians and 490 askari died, and about half of the 200 wives and children lost their lives in the shelling. Gondar fell six days later, ending organised Italian resistance in East Africa. The Carabinieri were awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor for the defence.