The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 (32 page)

30
‘
the public at large was given a false and exaggerated
’: De Simone, 160.

31
Turati was closer to the mark
: Orlando [1923]. Turati said this on 23 February 1918.

32
 ‘
there are certain rules of hygiene
’: Walter Lippmann, quoted by Sevareid, 1.

33
‘
emotional sensitivity
’
made them vulnerable
: Sema in Masau Dan & Porcedda.

1 
Another journalist who kept his public and private accounts of the war in separate boxes was Rino Alessi of
Il Secolo.
Alessi’s ‘secret letters’ to his editor form a fascinating parallel chronicle that often bears little resemblance to the war described in his articles. For example, he criticised Cadorna’s decimations privately (‘unacceptable from any point of view’), not in his reports.

2 
In substance, Cadorna’s bulletins were not more misleading than Haig’s. British GHQ after the first day of the Somme notoriously assured readers that ‘Thanks to the very complete and effective artillery preparation, thanks also to the dash of our infantry, our losses have been very slight … ’ 

NINETEEN

Not Dying for the Fatherland

 ‘
It’s a silly front,’ she said. ‘But it’s very beautiful.
Are you going to have an offensive?
’

H
EMINGWAY
 

The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Battles of the Isonzo

Despite his victory at Gorizia in August 1916, Cadorna was still at loggerheads with Rome. After Salandra lost the vote of confidence in parliament in June, a new government was formed under the 78-year-old Paolo Boselli. With ministers drawn from across the political spectrum, Boselli’s was in effect a ‘national unity government’ under weak leadership.

One of the new ministers without portfolio was Leonida Bissolati, a former socialist. After the death of Cesare Battisti in July, he was the most prominent ‘democratic interventionist’. He had argued passionately for Italy to join Britain and France, volunteered for the Alpini at the ripe age of 58, won two silver medals for valour and been wounded. Later in the year, he would became the first senior Allied politician to call for the destruction of Austria-Hungary. Boselli gave him special responsibility for relations with the military and sent him on a fact-finding mission to the front. At their first meeting, the Supreme Commander ‘intuited’ that Bissolati held him partly responsible for the near disaster in Trentino. ‘He began to see me as the worst of enemies,’ Bissolati reported. After the triumphant Sixth Battle, Cadorna wrote imperiously to Boselli that unauthorised visits by ministers to the front must stop. The Prime Minister agreed at once, but a week later he blundered by mentioning to journalists that Bissolati gave the Duke of Aosta much of the credit for taking Gorizia. The incandescent commander banned Bissolati outright from the war zone.

The next upset came at the end of August, and involved Colonel Douhet, chief of staff in the Carnia Corps, mentioned in earlier chapters. Even before the war, he was a prophet of air warfare, urging Italy to set up a military air force, seek command of the air, and practise high-altitude bombing long before these ideas had currency. Under Mussolini, Douhet would develop his thinking on terror bombing and total war. For now, he was an appalled observer of Cadorna’s tactical traditionalism and ineffectiveness. The low-intensity conflict on the Carnian front gave him time to keep a diary, copiously analysing the Supreme Command’s faults. He also corresponded with ministers and deputies – anyone in a position of influence who would listen. One of these was Bissolati; visiting Rome in July, Douhet handed the new minister a blistering assessment of Cadorna’s performance: his thinking was 45 years out of date; the ‘absurd concept’ of the frontal attack had wiped out the country’s ‘best soldiers, those who really knew their profession’; the insistence on holding every bit of conquered ground, regardless of losses, was unjustifiable; the soldiers were treated as so much ‘raw material’. In sum, Cadorna had no strategic vision, had lost the army’s trust, and the government was duty-bound to act accordingly.

It was all true, and very provocative. But Douhet, who had the intransigence as well as the foresight of a prophet, would not be discreet. At the end of August, an anonymous memorandum written for Sonnino and Bissolati – arguing that the capture of Gorizia had not improved Italy’s strategic situation by a jot – found its way by mishap to the Supreme Command. The mixture of expertise and contempt left no doubt that Douhet was the author; he was arrested for spreading false information, breaching confidentiality, and denigrating the Supreme Command. A court martial jailed him for a year.

Bissolati was also the real target in Cadorna’s third feud at this time. Jealous of the credit that the press and public opinion gave to Capello after the capture of Gorizia, Cadorna became convinced that certain ministers were intriguing to replace him with the other man. So he banished Capello to a remote command on the Asiago plateau.

In mid-September 1916, with Capello cooling his heels far from the limelight, Douhet under arrest and Bissolati’s independence buckling if not yet broken, Cadorna launched the Seventh Battle of the Isonzo. The Italians now had corpses behind as well as before them. A fetor of death hung over the land captured in August, and westerly breezes made life even more repulsive in the front lines. Cadorna had always known that winning Gorizia would not change the strategic balance on the Isonzo. ‘There are other fortified lines right behind the city’, he wrote to his daughter late in 1915. ‘This war can only be ended through the exhaustion of men and resources … It’s frightful, but that’s how it is.’ The King knew it, too. Observing the Fourth Battle from a hilltop in the rear, he had remarked: ‘Who knows what people in Italy will think when we
do
take Gorizia! Militarily, Gorizia means nothing in itself.’

Following the Sixth Battle, fresh recruits and munitions had poured across the Isonzo. While the Second Army consolidated around Gorizia, the Third Army geared up for another offensive on the Carso, to strike down towards Trieste across the Vallone. Cadorna wanted to catch the Austrians before they had recovered from their first real defeat and fortified their new positions. He also wanted to capitalise on their distraction by Romania’s entry into the war on the Allied side at the end of August.

Boroević was better placed than Cadorna knew. Alarmed by the loss of Gorizia, the Austrian high command granted reinforcements and better equipment. Steel helmets, mortars and gas-masks were rushed to the Isonzo. The high command also stood firm against German requests to release units from the Isonzo for the campaign against Romania. By early September, the Austrians had 152 battalions on the Isonzo, as well as 168 medium and heavy artillery pieces and 606 field guns. As for strengthening the new lines on the Carso, Boroević had 40,000 men at his disposal for construction work, including 20,000 Russian prisoners of war. Working around the clock, they dug trenches, laid wire, built roads and gun emplacements in the rear. By early September, he had four defensive lines – two more than the Italians realised.

Italy’s hopes of a Romanian dividend burst in the first week of September, along with the storm clouds over the Carso, marking summer’s end. Both sides’ trenches were awash with mud and filth. Cadorna had to postpone the attack, but started the preparatory bombardment anyway. He had 430 medium and heavy guns, 600 mortars, and 130 battalions on the Carso, facing 62 enemy battalions with a hundred guns. For several days his gunners fired blind into the fog, doing little damage. On 13 September, the skies cleared; that afternoon, with the sun at their backs, the Italians sighted their targets. With the help of aerial observers, the heavy batteries reduced much of the Austrian front line to rubble, blowing broad holes in the wire, shattering their communications. Cadorna took heart; he believed the Austrians were packed into their front-line bunkers. In fact they had left only a token force in the front lines, so their losses were relatively slight; their men were nearby, and ready. So were their skilfully disguised batteries.

The infantry attacked at 13:30. The Duke of Aosta had amassed 100,000 men on a front of eight kilometres, an unprecedented density. Emerging through smoke and dust in compact blocks, they presented ideal targets, like the British on the Somme a few weeks earlier. With no shells to spare, and not knowing the Italian batteries’ new locations, the Austrian gunners had waited for this moment. Now they opened up, inflicting terrible losses. The Italians kept coming, wave after wave, across open ground in close-order formation, shoulder to shoulder, against field guns and machine guns. To one Austrian artillery officer, ‘it looked like an attempt at mass suicide’. Those who reached the deserted Austrian line met flame-throwers, tear gas, and machine-gun and rifle fire emanating from hollows and outcrops on the crumpled Carso. When dusk fell, their only significant gain was a hilltop, wrested from the Polish infantry of the 16th Division. Bad weather returned, rain scouring the battlefield.

Over the following days, repeated attacks brought few durable gains. The Austrian VII Corps, ably led by Archduke Josef von Habsburg and well positioned on the eastern rim of the Vallone, bested the weary regiments probing uphill. A few scraps of ground were taken here and there. For the most part, where the Italians broke through, inexorable counter-attacks drove them back before they could dig in and bring up reserves. An isolated attack on Mount Rombon, at the northern end of the front, met with no greater success.

Austrian casualties kept pace, and by the time Cadorna suspended the attack late on the 17th, Boroević’s army was in tatters. As Italian production increased, the artillery gap had widened. The quality of Austrian rations was slipping. The draft was despatching middle-aged intakes to the front after little training. Ominously, combat performance was starting to fracture along ethnic lines. On the Eastern Front, desertion rates were always high among the Bosnian Serbs, Russophile by culture and Eastern Orthodox faith; this pattern began to repeat itself on the Isonzo. The Czechs, on the other hand, fought tenaciously on the Isonzo, by contrast with their showing against the Russians. Most dependable of all were the Slovenes, Croatians and Bosnian Muslims, who usually wore their fez and tassel even when steel helmets were available. The ferocity of Bosnian regiments was legendary, and other Habsburg units sometimes donned fezzes before counterattacking, to put the wind up the Italians. Croatian units that performed poorly in Galicia were formidable on the Isonzo. As for the Slovenes, whose alleged pacifism would be a stock joke in Tito’s Yugoslavia, they excelled against the Italians wherever they were sent.

When the guns fell silent, the Supreme Command was already planning the next offensive. Aware of what was pending, Boroević begged for extra forces. The empire was still heavily engaged on the Eastern Front, and now committed against Romania as well. Even when Conrad released two more divisions, the Austrians were outnumbered almost three to one on the Carso. At least Boroević’s units were among the best: hardened Hungarian, Czech and Transylvanian infantry, and a German–Slovene alpine regiment. Smashed trenches and bunkers were rebuilt, wire re-laid, communications repaired.

A senior staff officer arrived from Vienna to inspect the defences. He proposed a new fortified line to run the length of the Carso, three kilometres behind the current front line, from the Vipacco valley to the Hermada massif, a labyrinth of ridges sloping steeply to the Adriatic – the last natural bastion before Trieste. Grottoes in the limestone would be enlarged and linked. Hamlets on the new line would be razed. This was a project for the future; there was no time to get these works under way before the next attack.

On the Italian side, fresh men and munitions were hurried to the front. Commencing on 30 September with a bombardment that lasted more than a week, counting interruptions for bad weather, the Eighth Battle replayed the Seventh, except that Cadorna involved the Second Army more actively, attacking from the north while the Duke of Aosta’s men pushed eastwards. The epicentre would be 800 metres wide, around the village of Nova Vas, where 10,000 men were massed. On 9 October, the shelling intensified into so-called ‘annihilation fire’, marking the climax before the infantry attacked. Even with more than a thousand guns, it was less than half the weight of equivalent bombardments on the Western Front.

The Austrians contained the first assault on the central Carso. In the north, however, the Second Army made dramatic gains, driving back the Austrians a couple of kilometres. The next day, 11 October, Cadorna widened the front to 18 kilometres, diluting the Austrian fire. The Italians had a very good day, capturing several villages beyond the Vallone. If the Czech riflemen had not mounted a spectacular charge on Hill 144, at the southern edge of the Carso, the road would have lain open to Hermada, which was not ready to withstand a major offensive. Fog settled overnight, slowing the next Italian assault and favouring the counter-attacks. The Austrians clawed back some of the lost ground. The danger of a breakthrough was averted. Again, the price was appalling; by the day’s end, the Eighth Battle had cost 24,000 Habsburg casualties. More than 40 guns were captured or destroyed. The best Habsburg chronicler of the Isonzo front reckoned that with 12 fresh divisions, the Italians would have broken through. But Cadorna did not have anything like those reserves to bolster his exhausted forces. He may also have been deceived by disinformation from Habsburg prisoners about the imminent arrival of extra Austrian divisions and even some German forces. Late on 12 October, he amazed his enemies by answering their prayers: the Italians stood down.

Again, the halt was intended as a pause for regrouping. The Duke of Aosta thought ten days would suffice. New artillery and trench mortars rolled to the front from the factories of northern Italy. The Germans let Conrad transfer another division from the Eastern Front, and fresh regiments of Bosnian, Hungarian and Tyrolese infantry were scraped together. The Russian prisoners and middle-aged militiamen set to work on the new defensive line down to Hermada.

The foul weather continued, and neither side had constructed effective shelters on the Carso. Men huddled in flooded trenches under icy gales. The sky began to clear in the last week of October, and the artillery opened up from Gorizia to the sea. With 1,350 guns, the Italians had three times the firepower of the Austrians. Deserters told the Austrians that the infantry would attack on the first fine day. This was 1 November. Annihilation fire demolished the Austrian front-line positions. At 11:30, the infantry attacked. With almost 200,000 men, Cadorna said he could crack the Carso and open the road to Trieste before winter. And indeed, on the northern Carso, the Third Army proved irresistible. Such was the Italian preponderance that the Duke of Aosta could afford to pack a single division (12,000 men) into 400 metres of front.