MORE MOUNTAIN FIGHTING—RESULTS OF FIRST CAMPAIGN

At the western end of the rugged battle front, the Italian mountain troops, after the first advance, were less successful than the troops of Cadorna in the Carnic and Julian Alps. Here the fighting mountaineers of Tyrol redeemed their reputation by a daring stroke. The scene of this brilliant operation was close above the Tonale Pass, the site of one of the greatest glaciers in Europe. From Presanella to Care the ice extends in a gleaming crescent for more than twenty miles. Its broadest part stretches for six miles to Monte Adamello, 11,640 feet high. The paths over or by these glaciers had been seized and fortified by the Italians and their line along this front lay mostly within Italian territory. In mid-July a force of Tyroleans found a new track through the ice and before the Italians, engrossed with operations elsewhere, knew what they were doing they had penetrated several miles into Italian lands. The Italians met the invaders at the famous Garibaldi Hut owned by the Italian Alpine Club just beneath Mount Adamello and checked the advance, although the Austrians retained some of the peaks commanding the Hut.

Just north of the Adamello group of peaks in the upper part of the Giudicari Valley extending to Lake Garda the Italians took one of the northern passes by surprise and advanced toward the forts defending Riva and Arco. Eventually they won all the country south of the Ledro Valley with a series of fierce artillery duels. A similar advance was made east of Lake Garda and down the Lagarina Valley. The forward movement was signalized by engineering feats comparable, in their mastery of the human hand over the forces of nature, only to the building of the Pyramids. The great siege guns weighing many tons were hoisted to the top of cloud-piercing summits solely by man power. Every bit of ammunition and supplies had to be brought up by the same laborious method. At Col di Lana the Austrians had an intricate series of works excavated deep in the solid rock. High explosive shells and hand bombs were useless against this defense, but Colonel Garibaldi, a grandson of the great Italian Liberator, found a way to drive the Austrians out of their position. He mustered a corps of engineers who had helped drill the great railway tunnels on the Swiss frontier and under his direction they tunneled right through the mountain into the Austrian galleries on the reverse slope. When the fumes of the last charge of blasting dynamite cleared away a detachment of bomb carriers leaped through the jagged hole, drove the enemy from their galleries, and, constantly fed by supporting troops, cleared their way up and down the mountain.

The first of August, 1915, found the Italians holding the Austrian outpost positions they had taken during June and July; but the Austrian main defenses from one end of the frontier to the other, a distance of more than 300 miles, were virtually intact. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Italian General Staff at this period of the war never contemplated any general offensive except on the Isonzo River. Although their attack along the Isonzo did not attain its object of reducing the main defenses of Trieste and Gorizia, proved too hard a nut to crack, the Italians here won a series of minor victories against great odds and, to the Italian mind at least, demonstrated the valor of the army and the effectiveness of the new artillery which boded well for the future.

It has been pointed out that in these operations General Cadorna had to consider other things besides the immediate problems facing his troops. The Italo-Austrian warfare was but a small factor in the great plan of the Entente allies, who as the war progressed, realized more and more the importance of cooperative action. All that happened in Galicia, Poland, Lithuania and Courland had a direct influence upon Cadorna's plans. Russian reverses and the failure of all attempts by the French and British to break the German line in France and Belgium made the Italian commander cautious. The series of Teutonic victories made it possible that at any time he might have to face an overwhelming host of Austrians and Germans equipped with artillery which he could not hope to equal and backed by an apparently limitless supply of ammunition. For political reasons, also, he could not risk, even in the hope of reaching Trieste, sacrificing his men in an offensive costing anything like the quantities of human material being used up each day in other theatres. His preponderance of troops at the opening of operations in May was gradually reduced. But the enemy's positions and his superior artillery offset the Italian's greater numbers. On the whole it may be said that the Italians accomplished quite as much as any of their allies. They penetrated farther into the Alps and the rugged tableland west of Trieste than the British and French with their colonials did into the hills of Gallipoli or into the ridge of the Lille region, and the length of their thrusts was greater than the French advances in Artois and Champagne.

The Italians were more successful in concealing the extent of their losses than most of the other belligerents. A conservative estimate places their total casualty list between the last week in May and the first of August, 1915, at 25,000. The Austrians in the same period on the same front lost about 15,000 dead, 50,000 wounded and 15,000 prisoners. The slight Italian losses compared with their enemy's is remarkable in view of the fact that they were almost constantly on the offensive. By far the greater portion of the casualties were suffered in the east, during the two assaults on the defenses of Gorizia.

Measuring the territory gained during these two months and comparing it with the concessions offered by Austria as the price of Italy's neutrality—on this basis the Italians had no cause to regret their decision. On the Venetian Plain by the lower Isonzo a few thousand men in two days with comparatively small loss conquered all the territory which the Italian nation had been offered for keeping out of war. This conquered territory, however, was far less than the prize the Italian King and his Cabinet set before the eyes of the people when they declared war.[Back to Contents]