Scenes from Italy's war

OO OUGHTON MIFFLIN CO

Isonzo

PREFACE

the great plain, in the narrow Isonzo gorge, in the streets of Caporetto and Gorizia, on the barren Bain- sizza and the fir woods of the Altipiano, and beneath the gigantic precipices of Pasubio.

CONTENTS

The Isonzo front, 1915-1916—Monte Sabotino—The Quisca road—The bad winter—Battle and cholera— The King—Mountain roads and road-making—The

THE BERSAGLIERI. 85

before, and the only one of the original officers who had not been killed or wounded. They were going up to the trenches again on the Carso in a few days, and there would soon be a sixth commandant. He was quite cheerful and gay, but confided to me that it was his task to turn these young men coming straight from home and college into ready-made Bersaglieri. It lay with him to give them the traditions and feel- ings of Bersaglieri, which, he said, had generally to be acquired by years of life in the corps. But these young- sters had to get it in a few months from him alone. After dinner they sat round and sang the special Ber- sagliere songs in fine loud chorus, while the Major strummed for them on a guitar. It was a “family” party. I have seldom liked any company of strangers better, or been more touched by the occasion. That was as long ago as May 1916, when the most prolonged and bitter fighting on the Isonzo front was still to come. How many of them are left now?

THE DAYS OF MAY. II

But most Italians are materialists one day and idealists the next. Hence their mercurial character. Hence the changing moods of their army—San Gabriele and the | Bainsizza one month, Caporetto the next, Grappa and the Piave the month after. Italian politics and war, closely intervolved in one another during the last four years, cannot be understood by foreigners unless they

BATTLE OF SAN GABRIELE. 159

* John Buchan, “ History of the War” (Nelson’s), XXI. p. 22. John Buchan says the Italian loss in the month’s offensive was 155,000, and that the enemy lost correspondingly. I know that the proportion of killed and gravely wounded to lightly wounded was higher than in battles before and after, owing to the greater part played on this occasion by heavy artillery. In the Piave battle in June 1918, machine- gun and rifle wounds were more common.

CHAPTER: VIII,

The Rally, November-December 1917—High Alpine warfare, 1918— The June battle on the Piave. N the first days of November 1917 the Second Army disappeared altogether from the line. But the front was becoming daily so much shorter by the con- tinuous withdrawal towards Italy’s “‘ bottle-neck ” of the Piave and Asiago (see Map XI., pages 178-9) that the Fourth Army from the north and Third Army from the south were able to link hands across the gap. Day by day the Duke of Aosta’s Third Army fought rear- guard actions in the plain, now on the Tagliamento, now on the Livenza, and finally stood firm behind the Piave, where the enemy’s inability to bring up heavy cannon quickly over the long bridgeless roads compensated for the fact that the Italians had lost so many of theirs which it would at best take weeks and months to replace. It was already clear that the army would make a

THE FINAL VICTORY. 231

preferred to run light railways along the side of some of the larger roads. The Italians, who trusted to their | Fiat lorries for supply, at once got to work on repairing — the road surface, and in a week had transformed con- q ditions of transport in Venetia and Friuli. So, too, : behind the enemy’s Piave battle front, we had found 4 very little work done on trench preparation. The © Italians had done infinitely more on the other side of the q river. The want of labour, and of food to strengthen 4