The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 (44 page)

Proportionately, Boroević’s losses – at around 140,000 men – were even heavier, and could not be made good. The next Italian thrust would likely smash the line between Gorizia and the sea. This probability was not lost on Austria’s ally. Ultimately, the strategic significance of the Eleventh Battle is that it forced Germany to pay urgent attention to the Italian front for the first time. The German Supreme Command realised that further loss of ground would lead to the loss of Trieste, which held the key to Austria’s economic independence. ‘Trieste must therefore be saved, with German help if not otherwise.’

One of the men ferrying cartridges up San Gabriele was Private Antonio Pardi of the 247th Infantry: slogging uphill with a crate on his back, clambering over the dead, hunching under continual explosions, dumping his crate by the forward positions and half running, half sliding down again in a panic, grabbing at corpses to keep his balance, arriving at the bottom ‘clotted with filth, blood and mud’. Pardi set down his memories fifty years after the event, ‘not out of love for a just and terrible war’, but so that later generations could know what it had been like. ‘Death was so certain that you almost stopped thinking how to avoid it, yet every passing second was another second of life.’ This obliquely answers Gatti’s question: when the soldiers realised this battle was not the last, they would carry on, living for the next second of life. 

Source Notes
TWENTY-THREE
Another Second of Life

1
‘
grievously impressed
’: Martini, 941.

2
‘
They do not know what a torrent
’: Gatti [1997], 134.

3
the Emperor reportedly pledged that the next operation
: Weber, 234.

4
‘
has held everything together
’: Gatti [1997], 159.

5
Italians had taken 166,000 casualties
: De Simone, 128.

6
‘
I feel something collapsing inside me
’: Gatti [1997], 161.

7
What will happen, he mused, when
: Gatti [1997], 159.

8
‘
Trieste must therefore be saved
’: Hindenburg, 285.

9
‘
not out of love for a just and terrible war
’: Faldella, 74, 73.

1 
The great conductor Arturo Toscanini, who happened to be visiting the front, formed a military band and climbed to the top of Monte Santo the day after its liberation. ‘We played in the Austrians’ faces and sang our national anthems,’ he wrote proudly to his wife. When General Capello awarded him the silver medal for valour at a ceremony in front of a bersaglieri brigade, the maestro was overcome by ‘violent emotion’ and ‘cried like a baby’. 

TWENTY-FOUR

The Traitor of Carzano

Is this a tragedy or an operetta
?

M
AJOR
C
ESARE
F
INZI
(1917)

While the Eleventh Battle raged and waned beyond the Isonzo valley, something extraordinary happened 200 kilometres away, on a quiet sector of the front near the city of Trent.

The River Brenta curves tightly around the Asiago plateau before making for the plains and the Venetian lagoon. The northern part of its course – called the Sugana valley – passes below the plateau on one side (the heights of Ortigara) and the Dolomite foothills on the other. Here and there the valley broadens out, and the lower flanks are dotted with settlements. One of these is the unremarkable village of Carzano, surrounded by woods and vineyards, where the little River Maso flows to the Brenta.

As one of the easiest routes from the Veneto plains to the Tyrol, the Austrians should have fortified the Sugana valley. Instead they had strengthened the Asiago plateau. In summer 1915, the Italians penetrated the Sugana valley to within a dozen kilometres of Trent. Conrad’s Punishment Expedition pushed them back, before the counterattack in June 1916 regained some of the lost ground. The new front stabilised near Carzano.

This sector lay in the operational zone of Cadorna’s First Army, responsible for most of the Trentino front. Despite its strategic importance, it was generally quiet. Days passed without a shot fired; weeks passed without glimpsing the enemy. The soldiers manning the forward positions facing Carzano had no reason to expect anything unusual when, on a moonless night in July 1917, a Habsburg non- commissioned officer slipped through the wire and presented himself at a dug-out. The Italian officer who scrambled out of the dug-out looked in astonishment at the man calmly saluting him. True, he was unarmed and carried a sealed envelope, but he wore a fez, showing that he belonged to a Bosnian regiment. The fez had the same effect on Italians that the Scottish kilt had on Germans: it meant primeval savagery. How could a Bosnian intend anything except harm? When the Italian tried to take the envelope the other man refused, insisting it was for someone more senior. ‘
Io
essere
parlamentario
’, he repeated: it was bad Italian for ‘I have come to parley.’ Nonplussed, the officer blind folded the Bosnian and led him to the sector command. He turned out to be a Czech sergeant in the 5th Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment of Bosnia & Herzegovina.

His envelope made its way to the divisional chief of staff, who realised the documents were detailed plans of Habsburg defences around Carzano. There was a covering note signed by one ‘Paolino’: ‘We are ready to help you. If you accept, fire two 152-mm shells at the church tower in Carzano at noon, then shine a searchlight from Levre mountain at dusk. A junior officer will appear at midnight.’ The staff officers were extremely doubtful. They let the mysterious envoy return to the Habsburg line, and referred the matter to the Information Office at Sixth Army headquarters in Vicenza.

The head of information was Major Cesare Finzi, probably the only intelligence officer in the army who would not assume the contact was a trap. For he was part Hungarian, and understood the complex workings of nationality politics in the empire. The maps were authentic: Italian data proved it. If the Austrians were setting a trap, why had ‘Paolino’ asked for nothing more than another meeting? And if it was not a trap, what was it? He decided to take the bait. The signals were sent, the Czech sergeant arrived again, and Finzi proposed a nocturnal meeting in the apple orchards of no-man’s land. ‘Paolino’ turned out to be a Slovene lieutenant, interim commander of the 5th Battalion, who introduced himself as Dr Ljudevit Pivko. A bespectacled schoolmaster from Marburg (now Maribor), Pivko explained that the Slovenes and Italians should be allies against the empire. He wanted to ‘redeem’ Slovenia for the Slovenes, he said, just as the Italians wanted to redeem Trent and Trieste.

Finzi was intrigued. Everyone knew that the Slovenes were outstandingly loyal to the empire, like the Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Inquisitive as well as cautious, he asks the other man to say more. Pivko complies, unburdening himself. ‘I used to think my fatherland and the empire were one and the same. No longer. Today I understand that we Slavs have nothing in common with the Germans. You do not know how the Austrians and Hungarians treat us; we are slaves, cannon fodder.’ He wants the Italians to achieve something important. The whole of Trentino is, he says, thinly defended. Breaking through the Sugana valley would lead straight westwards to the trophy of Trento itself. That triumph would, though, be short-lived unless the Italians attacked simultaneously from the west, chopping the Trentino salient in half.

He has discussed these ideas with a few sympathetic officers – Czechs and Bosnian Serbs. Not, however, with his men, who are good but simple. The Serbs, who hate the empire to a man, would support him; others – Muslims and Croats – would kill him if they thought he was plotting against the Emperor. Pivko’s sincerity shines through; Finzi trusts him, but can he convince the higher levels? Only if he shows them a flow of accurate data from his Habsburg source. He tells Pivko that if he can feed him information about the situation and developments on his side of the line, while recruiting supporters among the battalion’s Serbs and Czechs, they can do something momentous.

After the meeting, Finzi is euphoric. The more he thinks about it, the greater the opportunity becomes in his mind. At their next meeting, Pivko brings two Czech officers, who gravely offer Finzi their services. It is a surreal situation. Pivko hands over a wad of documents: field orders, transfer lists, artillery dispositions. Finzi presses for details of troop numbers, dispositions and movements throughout Trentino; also on garrisons, communications, the traffic in and out of Trento railway station. Pivko agrees to procure all this, and they devise an elaborate code of signals: flares, machine-gun fire, coloured smoke trails by aeroplanes.

Something else has been on Finzi’s mind; it is important, but he does not know how to broach it. Italy’s goals in the war include the annexation of territory where Slovenes and other South Slavs (Yugoslavs) make up a majority of the population. As a Slovene nationalist, Pivko is bound to oppose Italy’s expansion around the Adriatic. By betraying the empire, he will support that project. Finzi cannot contain his curiosity; how does Pivko see this sensitive matter? In whispered discussions, they agree that their views on the best settlement on the eastern Adriatic coast are different rather than irreconcilable, and need not hamper their collaboration. This pragmatism seals the men’s mutual liking. Finzi is unusual among Italian officers in wanting to see the empire destroyed; this was not an Allied war aim at the time, still less an Italian policy.

Pivko is as good as his word. By August, he has widened his network of contacts along the valley and onto the Asiago plateau, where Italian labourers and Russian prisoners are ready to talk. Pivko outlines a tremendous plan: he and his supporters can open the front at Carzano. The Italians should mount a surprise attack on Trento with 30 or 40 battalions (30,000 to 40,000 men), cutting off the garrison there. If they can overrun the city before reinforcements arrive from the Isonzo front, the lower Trentino will drop into their hands. The Italians can then pour up the Adige valley to Bolzano and the Brenner Pass. The loss of South Tyrol would be a devastating blow, lifting Italian spirits for the first time since August 1916. Britain and France will be grateful instead of grudging Allies. The moment is ripe for this operation, but Finzi fears that word will get out if he takes the idea to the Supreme Command through the usual channels. He approaches Cadorna directly, but the Supreme Commander is absorbed in preparations for the Eleventh Battle and Finzi cannot get past his chef de cabinet, Colonel Bencivenga, who sneers at the idea. Finzi tries to assure Bencivenga that the operation could be attempted without weakening the forces on the Isonzo, but the other man is not listening. Finzi is referred to his sector commander, General Etna.

Finzi is not easily discouraged. Contact has been authorised between the front-line units, and men from both sides are scampering like rabbits across no-man’s land. He sends two Czech deserters back across the line in their Habsburg uniforms (it is their idea) to gather intelligence. He hits on the idea of making Romanian deserters loiter near the enemy line, calling out in their own language to see if their compatriots can be tempted to make contact. These initiatives seem obvious, but were not so in the Italian army before 1918.

In mid-August, Pivko signals for an urgent meeting. The Habsburg high command has anticipated Cadorna’s attack on the Bainsizza plateau and is concentrating 30 divisions and as many guns as possible on the middle and lower Isonzo, sapping the forces in Tyrol. There is a golden opportunity to attack at Carzano, if the Italians hurry. Pivko has recruited three battalion commanders, three battery commanders, a machine-gun unit commander and 32 junior officers to the cause. He has a network of 52 informants across the Trentino.

But Finzi has a problem; he cannot persuade General Etna to take the idea seriously. The general thinks in terms of a local breakthrough to seize a few hundred prisoners. Finzi naturally conceals this difficulty from Pivko, who is working on a full-scale plan for a surprise attack on a front of two and a half kilometres. He hands this plan to Finzi in early September; it tells the Italians how many men they need, identifies their Habsburg guides, suggests timelines for a nocturnal advance, and even suggests passwords they should use. Small assault teams will infiltrate the lines at Carzano, and quickly widen this ingress to a breach. As the Italians move into no-man’s land, the electric current in the Austrian barbed wire will be switched off, telephone lines will be cut, munitions dumps will mysteriously blow up, the artillery will not fire. The loyal Bosnians will find bottles of brandy on their mess-tables, spiked with opiates. The forward patrols will be silenced with chloroform. The Italian gunners will have the Austrian firing tables.

Finzi knows it is only a matter of time before the plot is discovered, and anyway the Bosnians are likely to be transferred away from Carzano in the near future. He redoubles his efforts to get a meeting with Cadorna. On 4 September, he is shown into the generalissimo’s office. Cadorna listens closely, asks the right questions, takes Pivko’s documents and tells Finzi to come back in three days. On the 7th, Finzi briefs a staff meeting with Etna in attendance. He describes Pivko as a Czech, because Czech nationalists are beginning to be trusted by the Italian military, which Yugoslavs never are. The sceptical Etna proposes a minimal alternative; there should be no simultaneous thrust by the First Army from the west, merely a sortie along the Sugana valley without a strong intention to reach Trento. This proposal carries the day. Finzi is crestfallen. When an unknown brigadier is put in charge and assault troops with no combat experience are chosen to lead the way, he realises the operation is probably doomed. Still, he is hopeful by nature and preparations continue.

In the second week of September, the plot is denounced by a Czech acquaintance of Pivko, who is instantly suspended. Luckily the investigators decide the informant is lying and Pivko returns to his post. The next day, he is sent to Trent to represent the battalion at an inspection by Emperor Karl. Pausing in front of Pivko, the Emperor murmurs a few kind words: ‘I regret that somebody wished to cast a shadow over one of my most valiant officers. Greet my brave Bosnians for me.’ It is an incredible, Schweik-like moment. The unflappable schoolteacher from Maribor surely wonders how long his luck can hold. Finzi, meanwhile, tries to prevent Brigadier Zincone from rewriting Pivko’s plan. The brigadier wants to widen the breach at once, rather than penetrate rapidly beyond Carzano. Finzi even takes his concerns to Cadorna, who brushes them aside.

On 15 September, Pivko brings worrying news: his battalion is about to be transferred. If the Italians do not strike now, it may be too late. Finzi promises it will happen within 48 hours. Zincone agrees to move on the night of 17 September. Despite Finzi’s misgivings, the Italians have seven well-equipped corps plus their batteries against two understrength Habsburg corps, one under-strength division (comprising ten instead of twelve battalions), some mountain units, and a single infantry regiment in reserve. If the operation goes to plan, the Austrians will get a very nasty shock.

On the Austrian side, everything goes like clockwork; the road across no-man’s land is wide open. But the assault troops advance gingerly, as if on manoeuvres. Finzi realises the officers do not trust their Austrian guides. They take Carzano and its garrison more or less punctually, but the main force is nowhere to be seen. The road should be filled with infantry; instead it is empty. Finzi runs back, cursing, to ask Zincone what has happened. ‘The men are all on their way,’ the brigadier confirms.

‘But the road is deserted!’

‘They are using the trenches.’

‘Trenches! What trenches?’ blurts Finzi, turning cold, realising the brigadier has sent the troops in single file along a narrow lateral trench that twists towards Carzano, instead of four abreast along the undefended road. Troops that should have been pressing on beyond Carzano are still only a few minutes from the Italian lines. He is speechless.

As he scurries to and fro on the road, urging the uncertain officers forward, he runs into Pivko, ashen-faced. It is almost dawn and only five of the 12 Italian columns are where they should be. The Austrians still do not know what is afoot. A few guns are firing towards the Italian lines, alerted by the telephone silence. A machine-gun unit spots shadows moving on the road and enfilades the entrance to Carzano. Just when Finzi tells the columns to carry on regardless, an order arrives from Brigadier Zincone: fall back, the operation is suspended. The forward troops and their guides are abandoned.