FIGHTING ON MOUNTAIN PEAKS

Much of the fighting on the Austro-Italian front which has been narrated in the preceding pages has been going on in territory with which comparatively few are acquainted. A great part of the front is located in those parts of northern Italy and the Austrian Tyrol and Trentino which for generations have been known and admired all over the world for their scenic beauty and natural grandeur. People from many countries of the world have used this ground which now is so bitterly fought over as their playground, and have carried away from it not only improved health, but also the most pleasant of memories. Though much of its beauty undoubtedly will survive the ravages of even this most destructive of wars, a great deal of damage has been inflicted. For in order to achieve some military ends the sky line of entire mountain ranges has been changed. Summits have been blown up, and contours of mountains which have been landmarks for centuries have been changed.

Pleasant though life is in these regions when peace reigns, they offer particularly great and severe difficulties to the fighting men. The dangers and hardships which these courageous soldiers of Italy and Austria have been called upon to undergo are not easily appreciated unless one has been on the very ground on which they do some of their fighting. The following extracts from descriptive articles from the pen of Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, and some special correspondents of the London "Times" give a most vivid picture of actual conditions in the Austro-Italian mountains in war times.

Speaking of his visit to the Cadore front, Lord Northcliffe says in part:

"In discussing the peculiarities of the hill fighting as contrasted with the fighting on the road to Trieste his Majesty the King of Italy, who has a fine sense of words, and who has spoken English from childhood, said: 'Picture to yourself my men 9,000 feet up in the clouds for seven months, in deep snow, so close to the Austrians that at some points the men can see their enemies' eyes through the observation holes. Imagine the difficulties of such a life with continued sniping and bomb throwing!'

"The illustrated newspapers have from time to time published photographs of great cannon carried up into these Dolomite Alps, but I confess to having never realized what it means. It never occurred to me what happens to the wounded men or to the dead. How do supplies and ammunition reach these lonely sentinels of our Allies?

"Here food for the men and food for the guns go first by giddy, zigzag roads, especially built by the Italians for this war. They are not mere tracks, but are as wide as the road that runs between Nice and Mentone, or the Hog's Back between Guilford and Farnham. When these have reached their utmost possible height, there comes a whole series of 'wireways,' as the Italian soldiers call them. Steel cables slung from hill to hill, from ridge to ridge, span yawning depths and reach almost vertically into the clouds. Up these cables go guns and food, as well as timber for the huts in which the men live, and material for intrenchments. Down these come the wounded. The first sensation of a transit down these seemingly fragile tight ropes is much more curious than the first trip in a submarine or aeroplane, and tries even the strongest nerves.

"Man is not fighting man at these heights, but both Italians and Austrians have been fighting nature in some of her fiercest aspects. The gales and snowstorms are excelled in horror by avalanches. Quite lately the melting snow revealed the frozen bodies, looking horribly lifelike, of a whole platoon which had been swept away nearly a year ago.

"While there have been heavy casualties on both sides from sniping, bombing, mountain and machine guns, and heavy artillery, there has been little sickness among the Italians. The men know that doctors' visits are practically impossible. Therefore they follow the advice of their officers. Yet the men have all the comforts that it is humanly possible to obtain. The cloud fighters are extremely well fed. Huts are provided, fitted with stoves similar to those used in Arctic expeditions.

"Higher yet than the mountain fighting line stand the vedettes, sentinels and outposts whose work resembles that of expert Alpine climbers. They carry portable telephones with which they can communicate with their platoon. The platoon in turn telephones to the local commander."

Of some of the fighting and of life in the Dolomites he says:

"Of the three peaks of the Colbricon only the third, known as the Picolo Colbricon, remains to the enemy. The action which is now being developed on the Colbricon is especially interesting from the fact that the Italian advance there is not due to trained mountain troops, but to the light arm of Bersaglieri, who have there proved themselves equal to their best traditions. In the advance from the first to the second summit of Colbricon the Bersaglieri had to climb a gully at an angle of 70 degrees. At two points the wall rises perpendicularly, and the enemy was able to defend his positions by simply rolling down rocks, which carried in their train avalanches of pebbles.

"In no region of the Italian front is there greater difficulty in the matter of supply, transport, and the care of the wounded. Every stretcher bearer here finds himself continually exposed to the peril of falling over a precipice together with his wounded.

"As the sun rose the great peaks of the Dolomites stood out like pink pearls, set here and there in a soft white vapor. Coming through a Canadian-looking pine forest, with log-house barracks, kitchens, and canteens beneath one such peak, I was reminded of Dante's lines: 'Gazing above, I saw her shoulders, clothed already with the planet's rays.' But poetic memories soon faded before a sniper's bullet from a very near Austrian outlook.

"At one spot the Austrian barbed-wire entanglements were clearly visible through glasses on a neighboring summit at a height of over 10,000 feet. A few yards below in an open cavern protected by an overhanging rock the little gray tents of Italy's soldiers were plainly seen. It may be a consolation to our men on the Somme and in Flanders that the war is being waged here in equally dangerous conditions as theirs.

"The Italians have driven back the Austrians foot by foot up the almost vertical Dolomite rock with mountain, field, and heavy guns, and especially in hand-to-hand and bomb fighting. Sniping never ceases by day, but the actual battles are almost invariably fought by night.

"The only day fighting is when, as in the famous capture of Col di Lana and more recently at Castelletto, the whole or part of a mountain top has to be blown off, because it is impossible to turn or carry it by direct assault. Then tunnels sometimes 800 yards long are drilled by machinery through the solid rock beneath the Austrian strongholds, which presently disappear under the smashing influence of thirty or forty tons of dynamite. Then the Alpini swarm over the dÉbris and capture or kill the enemy survivors and rejoice in a well-earned triumph. "One needs to have scaled a mountainside to an Italian gun's emplacement or lookout post to gauge fully the nature of this warfare. Imagine a catacomb, hewn through the hard rock, with a central hall and galleries leading to gun positions, 7,000 feet up. Reckon that each gun emplacement represents three months' constant labor with drill, hammer, and mine. Every requirement, as well as food and water, must be carried up by men at night or under fire by day. Every soldier employed at these heights needs another soldier to bring him food and drink, unless as happens in some places the devoted wives of the Alpini act nightly under organized rules as porters for their husbands.

"The food supply is most efficiently organized. A young London Italian private, speaking English perfectly, whom I met by chance, told me, and I have since verified the information, that the men holding this long line of the Alps receive a special food, particularly during the seven months' winter. Besides the excellent soup which forms the staple diet of the Italian as of the French soldiers, the men receive a daily ration of two pounds of bread, half a pound of meat, half a pint of red wine, macaroni of various kinds, rice, cheese, dried and fresh fruit, chocolate, and thrice weekly small quantities of cognac and Marsala.

"Members of the Alpine Club know that in the high Dolomites water is in summer often as precious as on the Carso. Snow serves this purpose in winter. Then three months' reserve supplies of oil fuel, alcohol, and medicine must be stored in the catacomb mountain positions, lest, as happened to an officer whom I met, the garrisons should be cut off by snow for weeks and months at a time."

Mr. Hilaire Belloc vividly pictures some mountain positions and observation posts in the high Dolomites as follows:

"There stands in the Dolomites a great group of precipitous rock rising to a height of over 9,000 feet above the sea and perhaps 6,000 feet above the surrounding valleys, one summit of which is called the Cristallo. It is the only point within the Italian lines from which direct and permanent observations can be had of the railway line running through the Pusterthal. In the mass of this mountain, up to heights of over 8,000 feet, in crannies of the rock, up steep couloirs and chimneys of snow, the batteries have been placed and hidden quite secure from the fire of the enemy, commanding by the advantage of the observation posts the enemy's line with their direct fire. One such observation post I visited.

"A company of men divided into two half companies held, the one half the base of the precipitous rock upon a sward of high valley, the other the summit itself, perhaps 3,000 feet higher; end the communication from one to the other was a double wire swung through the air above the chasm, up and down which traveled shallow cradles of steel carrying men and food, munitions, and instruments. Such a device alone made possible the establishment of these posts in such incredible places, and the perilous journey along the wire rope swung from precipice to precipice and over intervening gulfs was the only condition of their continued survival. The post itself clung to the extreme summit of the mountain as a bird's nest clings to the cranny of rock in which it is built; while huts, devised to the exact and difficult contours of the last crags and hidden as best they might be from direct observation and fire from the enemy below, stood here perched in places the reaching of which during the old days of peace was thought a triumph of skill by the mountaineers. And all this ingenuity, effort, and strain stood, it must be remembered, under the conditions of war. The snow in the neighborhood of this aerie was pitted with the shell that had been aimed so often and had failed to reach this spot, and the men thus perilously clinging to an extreme peak of bare rock up in the skies were clinging there subject to all the perils of war added to the common perils of the feat they had accomplished.

"Marvelous as it was, I saw here but one example of I know not how many of the same kind with which the Italians have made secure the whole mountain wall from the Brenta to the Isonzo and from Lake Garda to the Orther and the Swiss frontier. Every little gap in that wall is held. You find small posts of men, that must have their food and water daily brought to them thus, slung by the wire; you find them crouched upon the little dip where a collar of deep snow between bare rocks marks some almost impassable passage of the hills that must yet be held. You see a gun of 6 inches or even of 8 inches emplaced where, had you been climbing for your pleasure, you would hardly have dared to pitch the smallest tent. You hear the story of how the piece was hoisted there by machinery first established upon the rock; of the blasting for emplacement; of the accidents after which it was finally emplaced; of the ingenious thought which has allowed for the chance of recoil or of displacement; you have perhaps a month's journeying from point to point of this sort over a matter of 250 miles."

A special correspondent of the London "Times" describes the fighting around Monte Pasubio in the Trentino, which has already been mentioned in the preceding pages, as follows:

"When the tide of the Austrian invasion rolled back at the end of June, 1916, its margin became fixed on the crest of the Pasubio, an enormous and irregular group of mountains, of which the Italians remained in possession of the highest peak, but all the northern summits and the top of the whole central ridge called the Cosmagnon Alps remained to the enemy. It was from this ridge that they dominated the Vallarsa, and their first-line trenches were on its edge. Fifteen yards below them the Italians had burrowed in somehow and had hung on until now.

"With the oncoming of winter, however, and the avalanches their hanging on became altogether too problematic. For weeks the weather prevented action through some meteorological phenomenon. When it is fair below in the plain Pasubio is crowned with dense fogs, and vice versa. Finally, the summits revealed themselves clear against the sky. The careful preparation had passed unobserved of the enemy, and during the night of the 8th inst., with increased intensity at dawn of the 9th inst., the artillery attacked on the whole line for several miles.

"Bombs were employed in great number, and are found to be even more effective here than on the Carso, the friable rock breaking into millions of fragments under the explosion.

"In the afternoon a demonstrative attack in the Vallarsa carried the line ahead some 400 yards, and at half past 3 the principal attack carried the trenches of the crest (Cosmagnon Alps), together with the summit called Lora. The arduous mountaineering feat of arriving on the mountain's overhanging brow was accomplished on rope ladders by infantry Alpini and Bersaglieri.

"The line once brought over the crest, the battle raged furiously on the mountain top. The Austrians had constructed magnificent caverns and dugouts, and made them as impregnable as their long residence permitted. Their resistance was specially keen around the fearful natural fortifications called the Tooth, consisting of spires and slender ledges and abounding in caverns. The Tooth still remains in part to the Austrians. From the first day, the Alpini have scaled part of it and still stick there.

"One of the spectacular sights of the day was an Alpini perched on his spire of the Tooth, who kept the Austrian machine gunners from their task, pelting them with rocks every time they set to work.

"The fighting all took place on the rolling surface of the Cosmagnon Alps—closed in by the barrage fire on both sides under the dazzling sky, but with the world below completely shut off by Monte Pasubio's crown of clouds. Shrapnel and shell disappeared in the ocean of clouds."

More so than in any other war theater, fighting on the Austro-Italian front was influenced by weather conditions during December, 1916, and January, 1917. For practically its entire extent it was located in mountainous territory, most of it indeed, as we have seen, being among mountain peaks thousands of feet high.

No wonder then that there was little to report at any time during December, 1916, and January, 1917, except artillery activity of varying frequency and violence. Occasionally engagements would take place between small detachments. These, however, were hardly ever little more than clashes between outposts or patrols. These and quite frequently even artillery activity were stopped entirely for days at a time by the severity of the blizzards and gales that prevailed throughout most of December, 1916. In January, 1917, much the same condition prevailed. Batteries everywhere were shelling each other and whatever positions of the enemy were within reach as often as the weather was clear enough to do so. On January 1, 1917, Goritz was subjected to a particularly heavy bombardment from the Austrian guns, which caused considerable material damage.

On January 4, 1917, two attacks carried out by small Austrian detachments—one between the Adige and Lake Garda and the other in the Plava sector—were repulsed. An Italian attack on the Carso Plateau resulted in an advance of about 600 feet along a narrow front. Similar small advances were made in the same region by the Italians at various times. In most instances they were maintained in the face of frequent Austrian counterattacks, though some of the latter occasionally were successful.

On January 18, 1917, the Austrians attempted, after especially violent artillery preparation, an attack against the Italian positions between Frigido and the Opacchiasella-Castagnievizza road on the Carso, south of Goritz. Italian gun and rifle fire, however, stopped the Austrian attack before it had fully developed. A few days later, on January 22, 1917, a similar Austrian attack, launched southeast of Goritz, was somewhat more successful and resulted in the temporary penetration of a few Italian positions. The same success accompanied a like undertaking in the vicinity of Goritz near Kostanjeoica on January 30, 1917.

On practically every day through January, 1917, there was considerable artillery activity in the various sectors of the entire front. This increased in violence in accordance with weather conditions, but generally speaking had little result on general conditions, which at the end of January, 1917, were practically the same as had been established after the fall of Goritz.[Back to Contents]