FIGHTING IN THE MOUNTAINS

While the world hears little about strategic plans that fail to work out, it is believed that the Austrians in May, 1915, had in mind to let the enemy obtain a good start in his advance against Trieste. Then, when the Italian operations were well under way, and the two railroads from Venice were choked with their supplies, the Austrians probably intended to launch a swift attack upon Verona and the rich cities of Lombardy, thus cutting off the chief centers of Italian industry. At the same time, they undoubtedly meant to send an invading army through the passes of the Carnic and Julian Alps from their base at Tarvis, and by a sudden swoop southward take the Italian forces on the Isonzo in the flank. At least this is what the Italian staff believed was their plan, and they arranged their own forces accordingly.

This was the reason for the extensive Italian drive during the third week of May, 1915, at all the mountain passes of the long frontier. For almost any of these passes might prove to be the gateway of invasion, whereas, once captured, they could be held by a few battalions. But behind each force that occupied the passes won in the first Italian dash was a large reserve ready to lend support wherever the enemy tried to break through. The Italians were not kept long in suspense as to where this thrust from the north first would come.

On May 29, 1915, under cover of a heavy fog, the Austrians concentrated a strong force from Villach, brought them to Mauthen, and from that point launched five successive attacks in an effort to win back the pass of Monte Croce in the Carnic Alps. The Alpini met the attacks with musketry and machine-gun fire, then, after the last attempt had failed, leaped from their trenches and drove the Austrians down the valley.

Thus began the battle of Monte Croce, an engagement described in the official bulletins of both countries in a way that gave the world its first intimation of the peculiar features of this mountain warfare. Each side had large reserves, and the struggle for the pass continued day and night, the Italians pushing over the neighboring passes and gathering their strength for a counterattack when the Austrians were exhausted.

On June 8, 1915, the Italians stormed Freikofel, a height commanding the Plocken Plateau, and took the Pass of Valentina and the Pass of Oregione, 7,500 feet high, and overlooking the wooded valley of Gail. The Alpini won Oregione by climbing through ice and snow over Paralba Mountain and fighting their way downward. Undaunted, General Dankl called up a fresh corps.

On the night of June 14, 1915, the Austrians made a supreme effort to break through the Italian line and put into effect his plan of pouring an army through the Carnic Alps to attack the flank of the main Italian army. Although 100,000 men were engaged in this battle, the ground permitted no massed movements. For miles the saddle of Oregione, the snow-clad sides of Paralba, and every smaller peak and ravine extending to Monte Croce and Freikofel were speckled with fighting men. After the two sides came to grips, the big guns held their fire, and it was man to man and bayonet against bayonet. At one point only did the Austrian thrust reach Italian soil. For a short time the Austrians were on Paralba at an elevation of 8,840 feet, but threatened both in the flank and in the rear they were forced to retreat and take refuge in their prepared positions on Steinwand, a huge limestone mountain overlooking the Gail Valley.

The strategic idea of General Cadorna is more easily understood when one studies the railway map of the Austrian territory north of the Carnic border. Here their railway line through the Drave Valley passed closer to the boundary line than did the Italian system on the south, and they could bring up fresh troops with more speed. In the Gail Valley they had a wide region in which they could mass hidden from the enemy, and they had a good road up the mountains from Mauthen, while the Italians had to depend upon rough tracks through the valley. Although Cadorna had the hard task of keeping the doorway to Venice closed while he attacked the enemy on both flanks, he accomplished his purpose.

The Italian army operating in the province of Cadore won its next success in an attack upon the village of Cortina, situated in a salient of the frontier, 4,000 feet high, amid some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. Cortina was taken on May 30. The Austrians had barricaded the famous road winding up through the Dolomites, and dug elaborate trenches; but the Italians, by superhuman efforts, moved up their mountain guns, while the Alpini scrambled over the mountains by the glaciers of Serapis and the tarns of Croda da Lago, and descended into Cortina on either side. Then, holding the enemy on the east, they advanced into the Tyrol westward to Falzarego.

In this region they had an experience which illustrated the foresight of the Austrians in preparing for the attack they believed would come. Some years before an Austrian had built a hotel in a deep ravine shut in by walls of limestone and very difficult of approach. Tourists had commented upon the lack of practicability of the man who placed a hostelry in so inaccessible a spot. But when the war came it developed that the hotel builder probably had a subsidy from the Government. For sandbags, machine guns, and quick-firers quickly converted the hotel into an excellent fort, which dominated the famous ravine. Thanks to the hardiness and ingenuity of their picked Alpine troops, the Italians, after a week of hard fighting, cleared the mountains above the ravine and dropped upon the hotel fort.

By June 9, 1915, the Italians had won the Falzarego Pass. At times the fighting raged on summits 10,000 feet high, where the thin air exhausted the combatants far quicker than their physical exertions. In the last battle of this engagement the Italians obtained a footing upon a point of great strategical importance three miles beyond the pass on the Sasso d'Istria, close to where the Dolomite road bends southward through the ravine and penetrated the mountains in two tunnels.

This victory gave the Austrians cause for anxiety regarding the western defenses of Tyrol, for by a double flanking movement along the Cordevole River and the Dolomite road the Italians in Cadore had extended like two arms around one of the principal systems of defense. General Dankl hurried reenforcements to the Cadore front to check the thrust up the Cordevole Valley. At the end of this valley was the focal point of the system of railways that carried food and munitions to both the Trentino forces and those in southern Tyrol. If the Italians had succeeded in cutting the railway at this point the enemy would have had great difficulty in maintaining his armies on the Trentino and Tyrol fronts. The Italian effort was not pushed to success; but it at least had the effect of discouraging any plans General Dankl might have formed of invading the plains of northern Italy at the foot of the frontier mountains.

Only twenty miles south of the Austrian outposts was the important city of Verona, famed for its memories of Romeo and Juliet. Nearer still was Brescia with the fertile lands of Lombardy surrounding it. But by his maneuvers at the opening of the war, General Cadorna effectively protected Italian territory and forced the enemy to devote all his attention to resisting the attacks of active light infantry and mountain artillery. The great 12-inch Skoda howitzers, upon which Austria depended to batter down the defenses of these Italian cities, were needed elsewhere, behind the Julian and Carnic Alps, and especially in the corner of the frontier near Predil Pass, by which Napoleon invaded Italy, and on the Isonzo front between Tolmino and the Adriatic.

Thus with his infantry, Cadorna overcame the artillery handicap under which Italy labored during all the first months of the war. The Skoda gun was reputed to be the best in the world. It had proved its worth in Belgium and Russia, and the fact that the Austrians were able to lend guns to their ally proved their wealth of big-gun power. Now, even after ten months of war, when thousands of the great howitzers were busy in Galicia and along the Danube, the Skoda works could still produce an armament superior to that of Italy. Much of the effectiveness of the Skoda gun lay in the fact that it could be separated into two parts for easier transportation. In addition to these 12-inch mortars, Austria had a 6-inch steel Skoda, designed in the summer of 1914, for use in the Carpathians and well adapted to fighting in the Alps. Due in part to their realization of this superiority of Austria in big guns, the Italians remained neutral for ten months, but meanwhile they had created a new armament for their own armies at full speed. For the attack on the Austrian infantry in the field they adapted the French 75-millimeter quick-firer, and for siege work they manufactured 6-and 12-inch howitzers. But it takes time to build heavy artillery, and at this time every armament firm in the world was pushed to its full capacity, while the Italians, being without coal fields, were handicapped in the development of armament resources at home. For political reasons also General Cadorna would not risk sacrificing his men to overcome this artillery handicap. His problem was to conserve his forces as much as possible in readiness for a defensive campaign against combined Teutonic armies, winning what small victories he could, and meanwhile keeping down his casualty lists, while fighting heavy howitzers with light mountain guns and 3-inch quick-firers.

After the Italians had established their hold upon the frontier points there was an apparent relaxation of effort while the infantry of the line waited for the heavy siege artillery to issue from the armament factories and come into action. This movement of artillery was slow, especially on the Isonzo front where engineering operations were delayed by the summer floods caused by the melting snows from the mountain tops. To transport heavy pieces of ordnance across the floods the Italian engineers had to build strong bridges, often under heavy fire from the enemy, who, even after their retirement from the east bank of the river, continually harassed the Italian advance guard holding the bridgeheads. The Austrians aided the work of the mountain floods by breaking down the high embankment used to carry off the snow water, and thereby inundated the plain. Working under a plunging fire from the enemy's batteries on the foothills, the Italian sappers built light pontoon bridges over the floods upon which the first Italian contingent crossed at night and occupied the first line of Austrian trenches near the river.

This much the Italians accomplished by the first week in June, 1915; but there they were forced to pause for the reasons already described. Active hostilities during the first part of June on the Isonzo front centered around Monfalcone, a seaport just below the dominating Carso headlands. Taken from Venice by the Austrians during the Napoleonic era, Monfalcone had become the third most important port in the empire. In its yards warships were being constructed.

On June 9, 1915, the Italians made their swift stroke in a southwesterly direction from their Isonzo line. The port was bombarded on June 7, 1915, by a light Italian cruiser squadron, and the Castle of Duino, standing at the sea edge near Trieste and defended by three artillery batteries, was shattered and set afire apparently to prepare for the operations against Monfalcone from the southwestern side of the Gulf of Panzano. Archduke Eugene hastily collected a strong force above Duino ready to resist an attempt by the Italians to land, but the attempt never was made. It developed that the bombardment of Duino was a feint.

The real movement against Monfalcone was launched from another quarter straight across the Isonzo. The Bersaglieri cyclist corps and grenadiers broke through the Austrian line at the river, and since the Austrians had neglected to prepare a reserve line, the Italians advanced by a swift, running fight through the villages around the Isonzo delta. Near the historic town of Aquileia, now a mere hamlet, the Italians forced a passage of the river at the point of the bayonet and flowed in two streams around the enemy's positions, depending for their rapid movements upon their cyclists with machine guns and their fast-marching light infantry. The Austrians set fire to the pine-clad mountain slopes, but were unable to stem the rush of the Italians who, under the flare of the forest fires, broke into the open town of Monfalcone after storming the promontory of Rocca.

Here, however, the Italian advance guard was in a dangerous position, for the Austrian batteries posted on the limestone bluffs rising 1,000 feet on the northern side of the town still dominated the streets occupied by the Italians near the water's edge. The situation was critical, not only because the troops in the lower town were in danger of annihilation if they held their ground, but because the Italians were anxious to save the town from bombardment, and preserve the warships under construction in the shipyards. So a brigade of light troops scaled the limestone cliffs dragging their mobile 3-inch guns, and forced the Austrians to retire, taking their heavy howitzers with them. Monfalcone now rested securely in Italian possession. The Italians in all this engagement lost only about 100 killed and wounded, while the enemy's casualties were estimated at 2,000. The loss stung the Austro-Hungarian Government deeply.[Back to Contents]