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The First Italian Campaigns

ITALY FIGHTS FOR THE UNREDEEMED LANDS AGAINST FEARFUL ODDS

THERE is a picture where the foreground shows only a solitary battleflag, rent and pierced, yet waving out from its staff with something of ineffable dignity and freedom, high above a landscape of rough mountainside and deep river valley-far and dim as seen from this lonely height. The flag is the flag of Italy. The river is the Isonzo flowing between the bitterly-contested hills that formed the eastern barrier of the Austro-Italian front, a barrier "formidable even beyond the dreams of its makers." There is symbolic suggestion in the dauntless folds of the flag with its tatters and scars, in the grimness and grandeur of the whole scene. It conveys a sense of stern, determined struggle in the midst of a region where "in spite of the utmost efforts of two great armies, nature was still big enough to be lord and master."

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proceeded, met the needs of the fighting men. Where first there were rough roads or no roads at all, there came to be miles of good highway, built with gradual incline and rolled smooth. Light railways were constructed for communication with the forces in the field. Drinking-water, lacking in many of the rocky posts, was carried by mules or lorries in some cases; but, as soon as possible, pipe-lines and reservoirs furnished a more satisfactory supply. Perhaps the most interesting engineering contrivance employed was the teleferica, or aerial cable railway, which made a direct connection between the fighters on their mountain-peaks and shelves and the sources of supply below, and was capable of raising a load of nearly a half ton. Systems of trenches and underground galleries became a necessity as soon as it was proven that the conflict would be one of siege rather than a rush through the enemy's lines.

HE ITALIAN PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

THE

Let us take a look at the situation along the frontier immediately after the declaration of war against Austria, on May 23. It will be recalled that General Cadorna's plan was to secure the northern line and hold it, while driving insistently against the eastern barrier in the hope of breaking a way across into Austria, and, if possible,

seizing Trieste. The Commander's intimate knowledge of that difficult frontier was invaluable in preparing plans for the armies which had sprung into place in the Trentino, among the Carnic Alps, and on the Isonzo, to close the entrances that pierce the mountain rampart along the four hundred eighty miles from the Stelvio Pass to the Adriatic Sea.

The last week in May saw the Austrians falling back from their foremost stations in the mountains and the Italians taking their places, tearing out, as they moved forward, the yellow and black poles that bore the Austrian eagle. The enemy wasted no great effort in trying to retain positions that were too difficult to defend. As the main strength of the Austro-Hungarian army was needed in Galicia for the time, the object of the Archduke Eugene, in command on the Italian front, was to hold his line with as little risk as possible until more and better troops could be spared. In a general way, the fortified

line may be described as following the crest of the passes along the Trentino, and the Carnic Alps and running down the east bank of the Isonzo, except where Monte Sabotino and the ridge of Podgora had been kept as protection for bridgeheads west of Gorizia. Santa Lucia was to serve the same purpose for Tolmino.

Naturally the attention of both sides. was concentrated in the neighborhood of points where railways ran through gaps between the mountains; near Trent, where the road from Verona runs up the Adige Valley; Tarvis, opposite the Pontebba Pass, on the road to Laibach; and Gorizia, the key to Trieste. and the Austrian front.

HE ADVANCE ON THE ISONZO LINE.

THE

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strongholds on Podgora as an immediate focus for attack. The right wing was entrusted with the taking of Monfalcone and an advance upon the Carso plateau, on each side of which stretched lines of railway making a double connection between Gorizia and Trieste.

And

In most of the early fighting, before heavy guns could be employed in large numbers, light troops were engaged. In the mountains the Alpini naturally took the lead. These sturdy Alpine climbers, with their supporting batteries of mountain artillery were the special northern frontier troops. faithful guardians they showed themselves through three long winters of war. Where quick action was required, the Bersaglieri were relied upon. Each army corps had its regiment of four Bersaglieri battalions, of which one was composed of cyclists-the swift "ciclisti. On Alpini and Bersaglieri rested the heaviest part of the "longdrawn weight of the war.

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Monfalcone is a seaport at the foot of the Carso Plateau. During the last days of May and the first week in June it had been under bombardment by the Italian fleet in the Adriatic. On June 8, an attack of Bersaglieri, with their cyclist corps, and grenadiers_was

launched from the Isonzo side. Their swift running fight brought them into Monfalcone in a few hours. On the ninth the town fell, and so one loop of the Trieste-Gorizia railway was severed.

An attempt to strike across the northern part of the Carso by establishing a bridge-head at Sagrado, the very point of the Carso salient, met with far greater obstructions. June was almost over before Sagrado was won. The floods in the Isonzo, a natural impediment, were augmented by the Austrians' destroying the bank of a canal and locking up the dam, so flooding almost all the land from Sagrado to Monfalcone. After persistent efforts the Italians succeeded in blowing up the dam and gaining a crossing, in small detachments, in the face of enfilading fire from the Austrian guns. A full month had been consumed in this

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THE VALLEY OF THE ISONZO AND THE CARSO PLATEAU With the topography of the Italian eastern frontier clearly in mind, one can understand why the Austrian soldiers were given the memorandum: "We have to retain possession of a terrain fortified by Nature. In front of us a great watercourse; behind us a ridge from which we can shoot as from a ten-story building." The glacial trough of the Isonzo above Gorizia lies between the southern mounds and ridges of the Julian Alps. Monte Nero stands guard north of Tolmino; a long spur runs southward west of the river as far as Podgora. Between Tolmino and Gorizia stretches the irregular plateau of the Bainsizza with rocky heights rising above it. South of Gorizia, that strange broken region, the Carso plateau, rears a seemingly insurmountable barrier before Trieste, a flat-topped mountain, whose sides are precipitous walls three hundred to a thousand feet high, and whose broad top is a hot, dry, hole-pitted desert. The Vallone, a long, deep, natural trench, breaking off the Doberdo plateau from the rest of the Carso, is one more vast obstacle for an advancing army. All the natural fortifications had been utilized and improved by the Austrians. Railwavs to Trieste run on both sides of the Carso, the southern one near the Gulf, the other following the Vipacco (Wippach) Valley.

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Overlooking Tolmino and Caporetto at the bend of the Isonzo, Monte Nero, in the Julian Alps, stood at the head of the valley which reached to its foot almost straight from the Gulf of Trieste. The summit of the mountain (not black as the name would imply, but pearly gray) was so steep and forbidding as to be inaccessible of capture by any but the Alpini, whose mountain craft and intrepid zeal almost surpass belief.

success came to the Italian forces. The attempt to cross the river there was begun on the night of June 8, but the pontoon bridges were demolished by enemy fire the next morning. On the following night, a reconnoitring force. of two hundred men crossed by boat and captured the Austrian pickets without having revealed their presence.

Bridges were again started and again

destroyed, so that rafts were finally resorted to for transportation. In this way two battalions crossed, on the night of June II-enough to begin attack upon Hill 383, which was strongly fortified with cement trenches and heavy barbed wire. With rein

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QUARTERS IN THE FAR MOUNTAINS OF NORTHERN ITALY

The Carnic Alps, a connecting link between the Venetian Alps and the Julian Alps, were the wildest and farthest distant section of the Italian front. There the mountains are most rough, jagged and abrupt. To keep men properly supplied on such far-lying, high-hung ledges as this called for continual vigilance and executive force.

gray summit belies its name. The Slovene term for rocky peak, Kru, was sometimes confused with another word, Cru, meaning black, and so the mountain has become familiar as Monte Nero.

The peak seems impossible of attack, and so it looked to Lord Kitchener when he visited the site in the following autumn; but the Alpini were not daunted. After they, with the Bersaglieri and infantry of the line had established themselves on the hillsides, they alone completed the conquest of the peak. Two cracks in the precipitous northern face gave footing to a picked company, while a larger column approached by the steeply-sloping rocky

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THE APPROACH TO TOLMINO.

From Monte Nero the Italian troops broadened their area of occupation, since the position was important as a point of approach toward Tolmino. That town itself was a military depot of sufficient strength to hold out as yet against all efforts. It was protected to the westward by the two hills, Santa Maria and Santa Lucia, on the right bank of the river. During the summer the Italians pressed in slowly from the northwest and west, and in August, after a vigorous attack, were able to intrench upon Santa Lucia. Trench fighting continued until October, when

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