100 Years Ago - Italian Front
...И в битвах на вершинах горных
унылый берсальер Кадорны...
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fighting-in-the-dolomites-6xw7vngc0
Fighting in the Dolomites
August 17, 1916
General Cadorna is intensely grateful to the heroes fallen in this strange, deadly guerilla warfare on the mountain peaks. I saw yesterday one young officer with three medals for valour. In one division alone 40 such medals were recently distributed.
CADORE FRONT, Aug 16. In reading the steady flow of good news that has followed General Cadorna’s great coup de main, it is important to bear in mind the several factors which have rendered it possible. First among them wore the preparation and organization of the Italian Army, which to-day is as well equipped, trained, and organized as any of the Allied Armies. At the outset General Cadorna’s troops lacked many things. The wars in Abyssinia and Libya had, indeed, taught them the value of good equipment, but they had to leam the requirements of modern European warfare in the hard school of actual war.
Italy is now throwing herself into the land war as heartily as the British Empire. Many of her initial difficulties were not unlike our own. Others are peculiar to her geographical environment. The recent Italian successes on the Carso would have been impossible had not the mountain armies on the Trentino and the Cadore held a very large proportion of the total enemy forces, which at one moment numbered at least 800,000 men.
Austria is compelled to keep many strong divisions on these mountain fronts lest numerical weakness should expose her to the cutting of some of her most important strategic railways, notably the Puster Valley railway, which runs eastward from the Tirolese fortress of Franzensfeste along the Drave Valley, and is even now exposed at Toblach to the long-range fire of the Italian heavy guns on this Cadore front. She is therefore unable seriously to reinforce either the armies which are retreating before the Russians or those which are falling back on the water pipes in the Carso desert. It should always be remembered that the Austrians have water pipes of suitable lengths, which they destroy as they retreat, whereas the Italians are handicapped by having to construct them as they advance, just as we are doing on the Somme.
MEDALS FOR VALOUR.
General Cadorna is intensely grateful to the heroes fallen in this strange, deadly guerilla warfare on the mountain peaks. I saw yesterday one young officer with three medals for valour. In one division alone 40 such medals were recently distributed - a sure sign how General Cadorna, who is no sentimentalist, appreciates the gallantry of these fighters among the precipices and avalanches.
On reaching the headquarters of this division at dawn I found a batch of prisoners captured in a midnight battle near a Dolomite summit drawn up in line. In contradistinction to the prisoners taken in the Gorizia battle, they were ragged and unkempt tramps. The only decent thing about them were their boots and the stout mountain staff which each carried. The captors with soldierly generosity had shared their own soup with them - food such as, the prisoners said, they had not tasted for six months. One had a lump of Austrian military bread. It is before me as I write. Dark coloured - not a healthy colour, rye bread - hard to chew, sodden to touch, evil of smell, it seems barely possible that it can sustain the strength of human beings in the coming terrible winter conditions of this mountain warfare.
A MOUNTAIN SCENE.
As the sun rose the great peaks of the Dolomites stood out like pink pearls, set here and there in a soft white vapour. 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 neighbouring summit at a height of over 10,000ft. A few yards below in an open cavern protected by an overhanging rock the little grey 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.
TUNNELLING MOUNTAINS.
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 30 or 40 tons of dynamite. Then the Alpini swarm over the debris and capture or kill the enemy survivors and rejoice in a well-earned triumph.
One needs to have scaled a mountain side to an Italian gun emplacement or look-out 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 7,000ft up. Reckon that each gun emplacement represents three months’ constant labour 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.
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.
I have already pointed out that the Italians have driven the Austrians in most cases by sheer hard fighting to the very tops of the peaks. Unless the positions thus won were firmly held during the winter they might rapidly be lost at the melting of the snows. They form an essential portion of the great Allied siege of Germany. Sir Douglas Haig has asserted that the war is a young man’s game. Certainly, as far as concerns the fighting in the high Alps, men above 30 are of very little use.
The experience of the Italian front brings into prominence one little understood aspect of the Italian character - its patience, eager and skilful as that of ants. Pazienza is one of the commonest Italian words. Here it is exemplified both by faith and works.
ADMIRATION OF THE BRITISH.
Its faith is wonderful. It believes wholeheartedly in the Allied cause. The men display the keenest admiration for the British Army. They are hungry for news of its doings. They are proud to be its Allies. The Italian newspapers, which I scan daily for news from home, tell them little beyond Sir Douglas Haig’s communiques. Yet the Italian Press possesses some of the best popular writers of our time.
The men in the lonely catacombs at the top of the Dolomites or struggling across the thirsty Carso would be consoled to know that their hardships and perils are fully shared by their British brothers in arms, who side by side with the French are fighting in the trenches, on the Somme, and in Flanders. The work of our Navy is entirely understood in Italy, but, I repeat, the superb work of our Army needs to be made known. While the strategic co-ordination of the Allied forces is being effected the peoples and the fighting men ought never to be forgotten.
BRITISH ARMY’S MESSAGE TO ITALIAN COMRADES.
Rome, Aug. 16. On the occasion of the occupation of Gorizia, General Sir Douglas Haig telegraphed to General Cadorna: The British Armies in France send through me their warm congratulations to you and your Armies on your glorious success at Gorizia.
General Cadorna replied: I cordially thank, on behalf of the Army, General Sir Douglas Haig and the valiant British troops fighting in France for the warm fraternal message sent to their Italian comrades.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pressing-forward-on-the-carso-nhm3208dg
Pressing forward on the Carso
October 16, 1916
Artillery action here, as along the entire stretch of the front during this battle, has been extraordinarily accurate and effective, in spite of the constant mist which has interfered with accurate aim.
For the moment our Allies on their Isonzo front are consolidating the positions already won. A resumption of the offensive is largely dependent on the weather, which in that region is extremely fickle. Our Milan correspondent, who is with the Italian troops at the front, depicts the fighting on the Carso in a vivid dispatch printed below. The struggle is described as an unbroken series of attacks and counter-attacks, in which the Italians are steadily pressing forward, the artillery demoralizing the enemy as well as causing enormous casualties.
GORIZIA, Oct 13. The advance along the Gorizia-Carso front, which was successfully renewed on Tuesday afternoon, has continued persistently in spite of the weather and the almost desperate resistance encountered at certain critical points. Fighting has been unceasing, but it is of a nature which does not lend itself to description, being one uninterrupted series of attack and counter-attack, for the most part on that most bleak, most desolate and most monotonous of all battlefields - the Carso. Here there never were plants and trees - only rocks and clay, which latter, after the ceaseless downpours of this rainy season, has become blood-red in colour and has assumed unimaginable shapes and dimensions.
Miles of rocks and blood - that is the background of Italy’s now endeavour towards Trieste. The fantastic desolation of the scene is heightened by the geological phenomenon of the doline - sunken troughs in the rocky sea, caused, it is said, by the constant erosion which is going on underneath the plateau. Here and there a scraggy hill lifts itself, one of the footstools of the ever-increasing heights which some miles back form the formidable chain of the Julian Alps. Every one of these scraggy hills is an Austrian stronghold, known generally only by its height in metres.
THE ITALIAN LINE.
The Italian line as it was left when the weather interrupted all vision three weeks ago was a long zigzag-salients everywhere. The fiercest fighting at that time centred around the village of Nova Vas, which presents on its western edge a long bastion, and the twin Hills 208, with a slightly lower saddle between: The Italian line ran west of Nova Vas, along the ridge of the two hills, and farther south exactly cut in two another hill (144), a detached and incomparable citadel. The red mud of the Carso is only faintly symbolic of the blood which has been spilled on these three hills.
During September and October operations, as it seemed impossible to take 208 with its three rows of trenches by a frontal attack, it was decided to demolish the two sides of the salient by a heavy enfilading fire. Artillery action here, as along the entire stretch of the front during this battle, has been extraordinarily accurate and effective, in spite of the constant mist which has interfered with accurate aim.
So terrific was the effect of the pounding that when the troops went to charge with the bayonet they passed over 208 and its curtain in half an hour and made contact with the forces moving south from Oppacchiasella, and found themselves well beyond the village of Nova Vas, where they proceeded to entrench themselves. During that first afternoon the remaining trenches of 144 were taken and lost over and over again. This hill, on which hangs the whole line to the south, it seems, the Austrians are determined never to renounce and the Italians never to let go. Yesterday afternoon a fierce counter-attack with fresh troops in great numbers tried to throw the Italians back towards the crest. The only result was to gain a foothold which cannot possibly remain to them long. For the Italians have too securely entrenched themselves on too long a stretch of the Austrian second line for it to bo possible for the Austrians to obtain a definite recovery of 144.
EXTENT OF ADVANCE.
On the left Lokvica is held in part; the Vcliki Kribach, the northernmost bulwark of the Austrian line on the Carso, is yielding foot by foot, and across the Vipacco towards Gorizia the advance has been of the highest strategic importance, tending as it does to relieve the Gorizia basin of the menace of San Marco and to support tho Carso advance on Veliki Kribach.
Somc 8,000 prisoners have been taken so far in the battle, but the usual proportion of enemy killed for prisoners taken cannot hold good in this action. The consensus of opinion of Italian commanders is that the losses of the enemy have been really appalling. They seem not to have expected and not to have been able to resist the work of the Italian artillery. At one moment, in front of 208 a column of men appeared coming from the Austrian trenches under the full fire of the bombardment. The Italians, believing it to be a counter-attack, mowed them down. Afterwards it was found that they were unarmed and had left their trenches like madmen, obeying an instinctive desire to escape the pitiless shelling.
The men are for the most part what are called Honveds, but they are very different from the one-time famous martial forces bearing that name. Their marching battalions are now reduced to 500 men, and they are very young. The Rumanian business seems to have affected them greatly, and there is no doubt they would surrender in greater numbers were it not for the implacable pursuing fire of their own guns - a manifestation of that desperation of wrath against half-hearted fighters.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-italian-victory-hwpsvbl78
The Italian Victory
November 3, 1916
The Austrian positions consist partly of deep trenches blasted out of the solid rock, strengthened by strong steel plates and loopholes cemented into the rock and protected by many lines of barbed wire fixed to iron stanchions, and partly of the crater-like depressions that form a special feature of the Carso region.
Once more General Cadorna has struck a shrewd and successful blow on the Gorizia-Carso front. Nearly 5,000 prisoners and a goodly number of guns grace his triumph.
Our Rome Correspondent, telegraphing from Italian Headquarters on Tuesday, stated that a very heavy bombardment began in the Gorizia and Carso districts at midday, continued throughout the afternoon and evening, and seemed “to have been completely successful”. Now the Italian official communique supplies details of the ensuing infantry assault.
Notwithstanding the sodden nature of the ground beyond Gorizia, the Italian troops occupied the enemy trenches on the eastern slopes of the Tivoli, san Marco, and Sober positions, which lie a few miles east and south-east of the city. This success should tend to check the shelling of Gorizia in which the Austrians have from time to time indulged.
Farther south, on the Carso, the 11th Italian Army Corps stormed a series of heights running, roughly, south-west from Hill 375, which lies east of Veliki Hribach, to a point one kilometre east of Segeti. Farther south again, below the road going due east from Oppacchiasella towards Kostanjevica, the Italians occupied the enemy line at several points and held it against constant counter-attacks. This striking advance on so wide a front bears witness at once to the efficiency of the Italian artillery, the gallantry of the troops, and to the excellent organization of the whole offensive.
Since the great attack early in August, which led to the taking of Gorizia and to the first sweeping advance on the Carso, General Cadorna’s troops have never gone back. The same master hand which secretly transferred a large army and ninety-three batteries of artillery from the Trentino to the Isonzo front in a week, and struck the unsuspecting Austrians a smashing blow, has evidently controlled all the subsequent operations.
The character of the Carso fighting was graphically described in Lord Northcliffe’s dispatches last August, and has since been illustrated by the lucid telegrams of our Milan Correspondent from the Italian front. The Austrian positions consist partly of deep trenches blasted out of the solid rock, strengthened by strong steel plates and loopholes cemented into the rock and protected by many lines of barbed wire fixed to iron stanchions, and partly of the organized doline or crater-like depressions that form a special feature of the Carso region. The disadvantage of such positions from the point of view of defence is that the nature of the ground makes it impossible to multiply them in close succession as the Germans multiplied their trenches on the Somme front. Thus when one position is carried the whole line in that section of the battlefield is apt to become untenable, while the preparatory bombardment probably inflicts upon the defenders heavier casualties than they would have suffered in earthworks, where the effects of shell fire are not multiplied a hundredfold by fragments of rock.
The influence of this now Italian success upon the Austrians will be considerable. General Cadorna is clearly not a man with whom it is safe for an enemy to take liberties. For the fourth time since the beginning of August he has hit the foe hard, and his take of prisoners already outnumbers a complete Austrian Army Corps. Much heavy fighting is doubtless in store for King Victor-Emanuel’s brave troops before they can reach the positions that command Trieste and the railway communications with the Istrian Peninsula; but the enemy has now received such a taste of Italian quality that, however stubbornly he may fight, he will fight with forebodings of defeat in his heart.
унылый берсальер Кадорны...
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fighting-in-the-dolomites-6xw7vngc0
Fighting in the Dolomites
August 17, 1916
General Cadorna is intensely grateful to the heroes fallen in this strange, deadly guerilla warfare on the mountain peaks. I saw yesterday one young officer with three medals for valour. In one division alone 40 such medals were recently distributed.
CADORE FRONT, Aug 16. In reading the steady flow of good news that has followed General Cadorna’s great coup de main, it is important to bear in mind the several factors which have rendered it possible. First among them wore the preparation and organization of the Italian Army, which to-day is as well equipped, trained, and organized as any of the Allied Armies. At the outset General Cadorna’s troops lacked many things. The wars in Abyssinia and Libya had, indeed, taught them the value of good equipment, but they had to leam the requirements of modern European warfare in the hard school of actual war.
Italy is now throwing herself into the land war as heartily as the British Empire. Many of her initial difficulties were not unlike our own. Others are peculiar to her geographical environment. The recent Italian successes on the Carso would have been impossible had not the mountain armies on the Trentino and the Cadore held a very large proportion of the total enemy forces, which at one moment numbered at least 800,000 men.
Austria is compelled to keep many strong divisions on these mountain fronts lest numerical weakness should expose her to the cutting of some of her most important strategic railways, notably the Puster Valley railway, which runs eastward from the Tirolese fortress of Franzensfeste along the Drave Valley, and is even now exposed at Toblach to the long-range fire of the Italian heavy guns on this Cadore front. She is therefore unable seriously to reinforce either the armies which are retreating before the Russians or those which are falling back on the water pipes in the Carso desert. It should always be remembered that the Austrians have water pipes of suitable lengths, which they destroy as they retreat, whereas the Italians are handicapped by having to construct them as they advance, just as we are doing on the Somme.
MEDALS FOR VALOUR.
General Cadorna is intensely grateful to the heroes fallen in this strange, deadly guerilla warfare on the mountain peaks. I saw yesterday one young officer with three medals for valour. In one division alone 40 such medals were recently distributed - a sure sign how General Cadorna, who is no sentimentalist, appreciates the gallantry of these fighters among the precipices and avalanches.
On reaching the headquarters of this division at dawn I found a batch of prisoners captured in a midnight battle near a Dolomite summit drawn up in line. In contradistinction to the prisoners taken in the Gorizia battle, they were ragged and unkempt tramps. The only decent thing about them were their boots and the stout mountain staff which each carried. The captors with soldierly generosity had shared their own soup with them - food such as, the prisoners said, they had not tasted for six months. One had a lump of Austrian military bread. It is before me as I write. Dark coloured - not a healthy colour, rye bread - hard to chew, sodden to touch, evil of smell, it seems barely possible that it can sustain the strength of human beings in the coming terrible winter conditions of this mountain warfare.
A MOUNTAIN SCENE.
As the sun rose the great peaks of the Dolomites stood out like pink pearls, set here and there in a soft white vapour. 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 neighbouring summit at a height of over 10,000ft. A few yards below in an open cavern protected by an overhanging rock the little grey 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.
TUNNELLING MOUNTAINS.
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 30 or 40 tons of dynamite. Then the Alpini swarm over the debris and capture or kill the enemy survivors and rejoice in a well-earned triumph.
One needs to have scaled a mountain side to an Italian gun emplacement or look-out 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 7,000ft up. Reckon that each gun emplacement represents three months’ constant labour 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.
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.
I have already pointed out that the Italians have driven the Austrians in most cases by sheer hard fighting to the very tops of the peaks. Unless the positions thus won were firmly held during the winter they might rapidly be lost at the melting of the snows. They form an essential portion of the great Allied siege of Germany. Sir Douglas Haig has asserted that the war is a young man’s game. Certainly, as far as concerns the fighting in the high Alps, men above 30 are of very little use.
The experience of the Italian front brings into prominence one little understood aspect of the Italian character - its patience, eager and skilful as that of ants. Pazienza is one of the commonest Italian words. Here it is exemplified both by faith and works.
ADMIRATION OF THE BRITISH.
Its faith is wonderful. It believes wholeheartedly in the Allied cause. The men display the keenest admiration for the British Army. They are hungry for news of its doings. They are proud to be its Allies. The Italian newspapers, which I scan daily for news from home, tell them little beyond Sir Douglas Haig’s communiques. Yet the Italian Press possesses some of the best popular writers of our time.
The men in the lonely catacombs at the top of the Dolomites or struggling across the thirsty Carso would be consoled to know that their hardships and perils are fully shared by their British brothers in arms, who side by side with the French are fighting in the trenches, on the Somme, and in Flanders. The work of our Navy is entirely understood in Italy, but, I repeat, the superb work of our Army needs to be made known. While the strategic co-ordination of the Allied forces is being effected the peoples and the fighting men ought never to be forgotten.
BRITISH ARMY’S MESSAGE TO ITALIAN COMRADES.
Rome, Aug. 16. On the occasion of the occupation of Gorizia, General Sir Douglas Haig telegraphed to General Cadorna: The British Armies in France send through me their warm congratulations to you and your Armies on your glorious success at Gorizia.
General Cadorna replied: I cordially thank, on behalf of the Army, General Sir Douglas Haig and the valiant British troops fighting in France for the warm fraternal message sent to their Italian comrades.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/pressing-forward-on-the-carso-nhm3208dg
Pressing forward on the Carso
October 16, 1916
Artillery action here, as along the entire stretch of the front during this battle, has been extraordinarily accurate and effective, in spite of the constant mist which has interfered with accurate aim.
For the moment our Allies on their Isonzo front are consolidating the positions already won. A resumption of the offensive is largely dependent on the weather, which in that region is extremely fickle. Our Milan correspondent, who is with the Italian troops at the front, depicts the fighting on the Carso in a vivid dispatch printed below. The struggle is described as an unbroken series of attacks and counter-attacks, in which the Italians are steadily pressing forward, the artillery demoralizing the enemy as well as causing enormous casualties.
GORIZIA, Oct 13. The advance along the Gorizia-Carso front, which was successfully renewed on Tuesday afternoon, has continued persistently in spite of the weather and the almost desperate resistance encountered at certain critical points. Fighting has been unceasing, but it is of a nature which does not lend itself to description, being one uninterrupted series of attack and counter-attack, for the most part on that most bleak, most desolate and most monotonous of all battlefields - the Carso. Here there never were plants and trees - only rocks and clay, which latter, after the ceaseless downpours of this rainy season, has become blood-red in colour and has assumed unimaginable shapes and dimensions.
Miles of rocks and blood - that is the background of Italy’s now endeavour towards Trieste. The fantastic desolation of the scene is heightened by the geological phenomenon of the doline - sunken troughs in the rocky sea, caused, it is said, by the constant erosion which is going on underneath the plateau. Here and there a scraggy hill lifts itself, one of the footstools of the ever-increasing heights which some miles back form the formidable chain of the Julian Alps. Every one of these scraggy hills is an Austrian stronghold, known generally only by its height in metres.
THE ITALIAN LINE.
The Italian line as it was left when the weather interrupted all vision three weeks ago was a long zigzag-salients everywhere. The fiercest fighting at that time centred around the village of Nova Vas, which presents on its western edge a long bastion, and the twin Hills 208, with a slightly lower saddle between: The Italian line ran west of Nova Vas, along the ridge of the two hills, and farther south exactly cut in two another hill (144), a detached and incomparable citadel. The red mud of the Carso is only faintly symbolic of the blood which has been spilled on these three hills.
During September and October operations, as it seemed impossible to take 208 with its three rows of trenches by a frontal attack, it was decided to demolish the two sides of the salient by a heavy enfilading fire. Artillery action here, as along the entire stretch of the front during this battle, has been extraordinarily accurate and effective, in spite of the constant mist which has interfered with accurate aim.
So terrific was the effect of the pounding that when the troops went to charge with the bayonet they passed over 208 and its curtain in half an hour and made contact with the forces moving south from Oppacchiasella, and found themselves well beyond the village of Nova Vas, where they proceeded to entrench themselves. During that first afternoon the remaining trenches of 144 were taken and lost over and over again. This hill, on which hangs the whole line to the south, it seems, the Austrians are determined never to renounce and the Italians never to let go. Yesterday afternoon a fierce counter-attack with fresh troops in great numbers tried to throw the Italians back towards the crest. The only result was to gain a foothold which cannot possibly remain to them long. For the Italians have too securely entrenched themselves on too long a stretch of the Austrian second line for it to bo possible for the Austrians to obtain a definite recovery of 144.
EXTENT OF ADVANCE.
On the left Lokvica is held in part; the Vcliki Kribach, the northernmost bulwark of the Austrian line on the Carso, is yielding foot by foot, and across the Vipacco towards Gorizia the advance has been of the highest strategic importance, tending as it does to relieve the Gorizia basin of the menace of San Marco and to support tho Carso advance on Veliki Kribach.
Somc 8,000 prisoners have been taken so far in the battle, but the usual proportion of enemy killed for prisoners taken cannot hold good in this action. The consensus of opinion of Italian commanders is that the losses of the enemy have been really appalling. They seem not to have expected and not to have been able to resist the work of the Italian artillery. At one moment, in front of 208 a column of men appeared coming from the Austrian trenches under the full fire of the bombardment. The Italians, believing it to be a counter-attack, mowed them down. Afterwards it was found that they were unarmed and had left their trenches like madmen, obeying an instinctive desire to escape the pitiless shelling.
The men are for the most part what are called Honveds, but they are very different from the one-time famous martial forces bearing that name. Their marching battalions are now reduced to 500 men, and they are very young. The Rumanian business seems to have affected them greatly, and there is no doubt they would surrender in greater numbers were it not for the implacable pursuing fire of their own guns - a manifestation of that desperation of wrath against half-hearted fighters.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-italian-victory-hwpsvbl78
The Italian Victory
November 3, 1916
The Austrian positions consist partly of deep trenches blasted out of the solid rock, strengthened by strong steel plates and loopholes cemented into the rock and protected by many lines of barbed wire fixed to iron stanchions, and partly of the crater-like depressions that form a special feature of the Carso region.
Once more General Cadorna has struck a shrewd and successful blow on the Gorizia-Carso front. Nearly 5,000 prisoners and a goodly number of guns grace his triumph.
Our Rome Correspondent, telegraphing from Italian Headquarters on Tuesday, stated that a very heavy bombardment began in the Gorizia and Carso districts at midday, continued throughout the afternoon and evening, and seemed “to have been completely successful”. Now the Italian official communique supplies details of the ensuing infantry assault.
Notwithstanding the sodden nature of the ground beyond Gorizia, the Italian troops occupied the enemy trenches on the eastern slopes of the Tivoli, san Marco, and Sober positions, which lie a few miles east and south-east of the city. This success should tend to check the shelling of Gorizia in which the Austrians have from time to time indulged.
Farther south, on the Carso, the 11th Italian Army Corps stormed a series of heights running, roughly, south-west from Hill 375, which lies east of Veliki Hribach, to a point one kilometre east of Segeti. Farther south again, below the road going due east from Oppacchiasella towards Kostanjevica, the Italians occupied the enemy line at several points and held it against constant counter-attacks. This striking advance on so wide a front bears witness at once to the efficiency of the Italian artillery, the gallantry of the troops, and to the excellent organization of the whole offensive.
Since the great attack early in August, which led to the taking of Gorizia and to the first sweeping advance on the Carso, General Cadorna’s troops have never gone back. The same master hand which secretly transferred a large army and ninety-three batteries of artillery from the Trentino to the Isonzo front in a week, and struck the unsuspecting Austrians a smashing blow, has evidently controlled all the subsequent operations.
The character of the Carso fighting was graphically described in Lord Northcliffe’s dispatches last August, and has since been illustrated by the lucid telegrams of our Milan Correspondent from the Italian front. The Austrian positions consist partly of deep trenches blasted out of the solid rock, strengthened by strong steel plates and loopholes cemented into the rock and protected by many lines of barbed wire fixed to iron stanchions, and partly of the organized doline or crater-like depressions that form a special feature of the Carso region. The disadvantage of such positions from the point of view of defence is that the nature of the ground makes it impossible to multiply them in close succession as the Germans multiplied their trenches on the Somme front. Thus when one position is carried the whole line in that section of the battlefield is apt to become untenable, while the preparatory bombardment probably inflicts upon the defenders heavier casualties than they would have suffered in earthworks, where the effects of shell fire are not multiplied a hundredfold by fragments of rock.
The influence of this now Italian success upon the Austrians will be considerable. General Cadorna is clearly not a man with whom it is safe for an enemy to take liberties. For the fourth time since the beginning of August he has hit the foe hard, and his take of prisoners already outnumbers a complete Austrian Army Corps. Much heavy fighting is doubtless in store for King Victor-Emanuel’s brave troops before they can reach the positions that command Trieste and the railway communications with the Istrian Peninsula; but the enemy has now received such a taste of Italian quality that, however stubbornly he may fight, he will fight with forebodings of defeat in his heart.