1
The mountain warfare of Italy is extraordinarily unlike that upon any other front.From the Isonzo to the Swiss frontier we are dealing with high mountains, cut by deep valleys between which there is usually no practicable lateral communication.Each advance must have the nature of an unsupported shove along a narrow channel, until the whole mountain system, that is, is won, and the attack can begin to deploy in front of the passes.
Geographically Austria has the advantage.She had the gentler slope of the mountain chains while Italy has the steep side, and the foresight of old treaties has given her deep bites into what is naturally Italian territory; she is far nearer the Italian plain than Italy is near any practicable fighting ground for large forces; particularly is this the case in the region of the Adige valley and Lake Garda.
The legitimate war, so to speak, in this region is a mountaineering war.The typical position is roughly as follows.
The Austrians occupy valley A which opens northward; the Italians occupy valley B which opens southward.The fight is for the crest between A and B.The side that wins that crest gains the power of looking down into, firing into and outflanking the positions of the enemy valley.In most cases it is the Italians now who are pressing, and if the reader will examine a map of the front and compare it with the official reports he will soon realise that almost everywhere the Italians are up to the head of the southward valleys and working over the crests so as to press down upon the Austrian valleys.But in the Trentino the Austrians are still well over the crest on the southward slopes.
When I was in Italy they still held Roverto.
Now it cannot be said that under modern conditions mountains favour either the offensive or the defensive.But they certainly make operations far more deliberate than upon a level.An engineered road or railway in an Alpine valley is the most vulnerable of things; its curves and viaducts may be practically demolished by shell fire or swept by shrapnel, although you hold the entire valley except for one vantage point.All the mountains round about a valley must be won before that valley is safe for the transport of an advance.But on the other hand a surprise capture of some single mountain crest and the hoisting of one gun into position there may block the retreat of guns and material from a great series of positions.Mountain surfaces are extraordinarily various and subtle.You may understand Picardy on a map, but mountain warfare is three-dimensional.A struggle may go on for weeks or months consisting of apparently separate and incidental skirmishes, and then suddenly a whole valley organisation may crumble away in retreat or disaster.Italy is gnawing into the Trentino day by day, and particularly around by her right wing.At no time I shall be surprised to see a sudden lunge forward on that front, and hear a tale of guns and prisoners.This will not mean that she has made a sudden attack, but that some system of Austrian positions has collapsed under her continual pressure.
Such briefly is the /idea/ of mountain struggle.Its realities, I should imagine, are among the strangest and most picturesque in all this tremendous world conflict.I know nothing of the war in the east, of course, but there are things here that must be hard to beat.Happily they will soon get justice done to them by an abler pen than mine.I hear that Kipling is to follow me upon this ground; nothing can be imagined more congenial to his extraordinary power of vivid rendering than this struggle against cliffs, avalanches, frost and the Austrian.
To go the Italian round needs, among other things, a good head.
Everywhere it has been necessary to make roads where hitherto there have been only mule tracks or no tracks at all; the roads are often still in the making, and the automobile of the war tourist skirts precipices and takes hairpin bends upon tracks of loose metal not an inch too broad for the operation, or it floats for a moment over the dizzy edge while a train of mule transport blunders by.The unruly imagination of man's heart (which is "only evil continually") speculates upon what would be the consequences of one good bump from the wheel of a mule cart.
Down below, the trees that one sees through a wisp of cloud look far too small and spiky and scattered to hold out much hope for a fallen man of letters.And at the high positions they are too used to the vertical life to understand the secret feelings of the visitor from the horizontal.General Bompinani, whose writings are well known to all English students of military matters, showed me the Gibraltar he is making of a great mountain system east of the Adige.
"Let me show you," he said, and flung himself on to the edge of the precipice into exactly the position of a lady riding side-saddle."You will find it more comfortable to sit down."But anxious as I am abroad not to discredit my country by unseemly exhibitions I felt unequal to such gymnastics without a proper rehearsal at a lower level.I seated myself carefully at a yard (perhaps it was a couple of yards) from the edge, advanced on my trousers without dignity to the verge, and so with an effort thrust my legs over to dangle in the crystalline air.
"That," proceeded General Bompiani, pointing with a giddy flourish of his riding whip, "is Monte Tomba."I swayed and half-extended my hand towards him.But he was still there--sitting, so to speak, on the half of himself....I was astonished that he did not disappear abruptly during his exposition....
2
The fighting man in the Dolomites has been perhaps the most wonderful of all these separate campaigns.I went up by automobile as far as the clambering new road goes up the flanks of Tofana No.2; thence for a time by mule along the flank of Tofana No.1, and thence on foot to the vestiges of the famous Castelletto.
