ATTACKS IN GORIZIA

After the Italian success in June, 1915, certain readjustments were manifest in the Austrian forces in the Italian theatre. Although there was no declaration of war between Italy and Germany, it was reported that German officers were sent to aid the Austrians, and that the forces of Archduke Eugene were progressively strengthened from this time on. German soldiers who joined the Austrian detachments were supposed to have volunteered in an irregular individual manner. In this manner Germany preserved the appearance of neutrality.

The latter part of June, 1915, found Austria occupied with the siege of Lemberg, and the archduke, apparently, was content to hold his own on the Italian front until a decision had been obtained in the more important operations against the Russians. Satisfied with their initial successes, General Cadorna on land and the Duke of Abruzzi at sea settled down to a slow, patient chess play, not unlike that worked out by General Joffre in France. Cadorna issued a statement to the Italian people in which he warned them that the preliminary successes which, he said, had made good the strategical defects of their frontier, would be followed by a long stage of gradual approaches against the enemy's second line.

The attrition of the Austro-Hungarian forces would be carried on by long-range artillery and sappers and local trench warfare with hand grenades. The Italian commander in chief resolutely refused to divert any part of his forces to the Dardanelles. Possible danger to Italian dominion in Tripoli, pointed out by the leaders of the Entente Powers, did not change his purpose to maintain a single concentrated front and not diffuse his efforts. The war with Austria, he believed, would be won or lost on the Italian frontier. His theory as to the best way to meet advances by the Teutonic allies in new fields was to increase pressure on their home frontiers where their interests were most vital. The Italian army in the field was increased to a million men, and, after the fall of Lemberg, Austria gradually moved more and more troops to the Alpine passes and the Isonzo, until by August she had 600,000 men facing the Italians, double the number arrayed on this front when Italy declared war. Had the Russians been able to hold out longer in Galicia, there is little doubt that Cadorna would have had something to show for the month of July besides a few local victories which did not vitally affect the main campaign.

On June 9, 1915, the capture of Gradisca completed the Italian control of the lower Isonzo, and Cadorna prepared for a general attack on all the strongholds guarding Trieste. Of these the most important were the Carso tableland on the south, Gorizia barring the river-valley of the Vipacco between the Carso and the foothills of the Julian Alps, the fortified system of heights north of Gorizia surrounding the town of Tolmino, and the great intrenched camp of Tarvis above Tolmino extending to Malborghetto and the other Alps of Carinthia. These fortified points had to be attacked generally or not at all. Any attempt to mass an army against any one of them would have spelled disaster, for the Italians would have been flanked by Austrian forces from the north or south. A properly defined advance against Trieste called for a simultaneous thrust at Tolmino and the Tarvis fortress commanding the road to Vienna. The Austrians had been strengthening Tarvis ever since 1859, after Napoleon III overthrew the Austrians in the battles that freed Lombardy. The Austrian fortresses were again strengthened after the siege of Port Arthur had demonstrated the power of high-explosive shells, and again in 1910 when the Teutonic allies made their great discovery that their new giant howitzers laughed at modern defense works of steel and concrete. In remodeling her Alpine strongholds Austria selected positions on the plateau for systems of earthworks containing mobile siege guns.

The key to this immensely strong Austrian line of defense was the railway town of Plava on the eastern bank of the Isonzo under the wooded heights of the Ternovane Forest. Plava was in a salient occupying about the middle of the Austrian line.

Here, on the night of June 17, 1915, the Italians began their general offensive by an attack from Mount Korada on the opposite side of the river. Under cover of darkness the Italian sappers built a pontoon bridge, and the Bersaglieri crossed and carried the town and the surrounding heights at the point of the bayonet. The Austrians realized the importance of the position and quickly returned to a violent counterattack. The Italians threw all their available men into the gap, and a great battle raged on the edge of the highlands east of the river. The Austrians had the advantage of position, for their forces could be massed in the woodland out of sight of the Italian aviators. But, on the other hand, the Italian batteries on Mount Korada were able to pour a plunging fire into the lower tableland; and due mainly to the aid of their artillery the Italian troops drove back the enemy and maintained the ground won by the first dash.

General Cadorna was now in a position to begin a direct attack upon Gorizia. He assailed the Hill of Podgora, forming the barbican of the city's system of defenses and advanced a reconnoitering force toward Mount Fortin. Meanwhile he massed 500 pieces of artillery on the heights commanding the city. But the defenses of Gorizia had been well planned, and they proved their completeness by a long resistance covering a period that brought successive reports that the fortress had fallen. All these reports proved false. South of the city the Austrian intrenchments covered a front of more than ten miles, from the Mount of San Gabriele below Plava to Mount San Michele on the Carso tableland. The trenches were built in the most modern style, of concrete more than a yard thick covered with steel armor, against which ordinary shrapnel had no more effect than so much hail, and even high-explosive shells of medium power did little damage. The Italian weapons of attack were hand grenades and short knives, in the use of which the infantry were expert. Four army corps operating under the Duke of Aosta between Gorizia and the sea were beaten back by the Austrians with heavy losses. This victory so encouraged the archduke and chief lieutenant, General Boroevics, that they decided upon a counteroffensive in force. Therefore, as soon as the Italian attack slackened, the main Austrian army advanced across the Carso Plateau.

The series of battles that now followed were the first engagements of any size between the Italians and the Austro-Hungarians in the open field. They began June 22, 1915, and lasted until the close of July, with a short let-up at the end of the first week in July. The theatre included the whole Carso front, the Vipacco Valley, and the southern part of the Ternovane Forest. After his first repulse General Boroevics brought up fresh corps and renewed the attack, but in the end he was driven back to his main line with shattered forces. In the Carso tableland the Austrians had as nearly perfect a position of natural defense as a general could choose. On the east of the Isonzo plain the broken, rocky wall rises in places to 1,000 feet, seamed with gullies and ravines, and bristling with forest growth which afforded ideal cover. The action of the rain has pitted the limestone with funnel-shaped holes which form natural redoubts for machine guns; and there are larger depressions and caves where heavier pieces of artillery may be placed in excellent shelter.

But while the Italians were unable to capture this position, when General Boroevics took his troops out of their defenses and sent them charging across the open ground, he found that the enemy had made good use of his precarious hold on the edges of the tableland. Although they occupied barely more than the rim of the plateau, with the flooded Isonzo a third of a mile broad beneath them, the Italians had strengthened their positions with sandbag intrenchments and hauled up a few pieces of light artillery.

The chief support of the infantry holding these sandbag defenses was the heavy guns across the river, which searched out the Austrian columns whenever they left cover. In weight of artillery the Italians had the advantage, for most of the Austrian 12-inch howitzers were busy in the Alps, and they had to depend mainly upon 6-inch pieces.

By the second week in July, 1915, the Austrians relaxed their efforts, and the Italians began a slow advance, working up the hills overlooking Gorizia by a variety of methods. In the places, comparatively few, where there was cultivated ground, they practiced the siege method of sapping forward, but generally their advance was over bare rock, where trenches could be excavated only by the use of dynamite, and when a charge was made the troops had to carry sandbags to build temporary cover from machine-gun fire. This method of warfare, in fact, was general throughout the whole mountain front, where the hard rock carried a mere veneer of earth, and sandbags had to serve for defense until the engineers could blast trenches and galleries in the flintlike face of the slopes. The repulse of the Austrian counterattack in the middle of July, 1915, ended the first phase of the battle of Gorizia. On July 18th, 19th and 20th, General Cadorna delivered a fierce assault aided by knowledge gained in the first stage of the battle, which, for the Italians, was little more than a reconnaissance in force. For three days and nights he drove the troops of his combined Second and Third Armies against the enemy's lines all along the Isonzo. His system was to attack by day and then at night resist the enemy's counterassaults on his newly won positions. The Italians retained all the ground they won during these days of terrific fighting, and captured 3,500 prisoners.

By the 20th of July their confidence had increased to such an extent that they determined upon a night assault. But next morning Cadorna received word from his aeroplane scouts and his spies that the enemy was massing for a supreme effort. The Italian advance was stayed and every man was set at work helping the engineers strengthen the trenches.

On July 21, 1915, there came a complete lull. The next day the Austrians opened their attack with a concentrated bombardment. During the period of Italian advance the railways had been piling up the Austrian shells and German gunners had been sent by the Crown Prince of Bavaria to help serve the heavy howitzers rushed to the Carso from the Julian Alps and the Tyrol and Trentino salients. With the design to cut the Italian line of communication, the main Austrian infantry attack was delivered toward Gradisca where the Italians had constructed their principal bridges across the Isonzo. The infantry massed behind the neighboring hills and under cover of a tremendous artillery bombardment advanced in close formation. The first line of Italian troops seemed about to be swept away when the gunners on the heights across the river got the range and poured into the advancing Austrians a massed fire from all their 500 pieces. General Boroevics's advance was pounded to pieces; the Italians brought up reenforcements and charged and captured the lines from which the Austrians had delivered their assault, taking 2,000 prisoners.

On July 23, 1915, the archduke ordered another attack upon the Italian positions near the sea on the edge of the Carso tableland. This was really an effort to recapture Monfalcone; but it failed, although the Italians did not dare risk pursuit over the rough ground. Later two Austrian divisions, advancing from San Michele and San Martino against Sagrado were repulsed with heavy losses.

By July 25, 1915, the Italians were able to attack and capture some of the intrenchments on the slopes of San Martino and to storm Sei Busi. This hill of Sei Busi witnessed some of the most sanguinary fighting of the whole series of engagements. On a single day it was won, lost and won again by the Italians, both sides bringing up strong reenforcements and concentrating against the summit all the artillery within range. Over the crest of San Michele which dominated a large part of the tableland the battle surged for many days.

On July 27, 1915, the Italians, attacking with bombs and bayonets were able to occupy the summit, but could not establish themselves there in the face of the enemy's bombardment. The lower slopes they were able to hold behind their sandbag intrenchments, but the crest, swept by the enemy's heavy artillery and offering no shelter, was absolutely untenable. In all this fighting artillery played the major rÔle. The Italians charged that Archduke Eugene, realizing that any infantry advance against this terrific gunfire was a certain sacrifice of men, placed in his van regiments of men from the Italian-speaking provinces and from Old Serbia and Croatia. In this position these troops were exposed to fire from their own batteries with the knowledge that any attempt at treachery meant annihilation by their own guns in the rear. No figures as to the number of men from the "unredeemed" provinces forced to fight against their kinsmen on the frontier are obtainable. Italian writers, however, maintain that during the first months of the war Austrian infantrymen of Latin and Slav origin were sacrificed by the hundred thousand around Gorizia and Trento.

Like other great drives of the Allies on the French front, the Italian offensive on the chain of forts guarding Gorizia failed to break the enemy's resistance. The fighting, however, seasoned the untried troops of General Cadorna and won them praise even from the veterans of General Boroevics and from Boroevics himself. "I cannot refrain from saying," declared the Austrian General in an interview published in a Hungarian newspaper, "that the bravery of the Italian regiments was almost incredible, for even if certain regiments lost all their officers, this did not deter them from advancing with the greatest contempt for death."[Back to Contents]