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This was practically the last Italian effort during 1916 to reach Trieste. Weather conditions now rapidly became so severe that any actions beyond artillery bombardments and minor attacks by small detachments had become impossible. During the balance of November, 1916, artillery duels were frequent and sometimes very severe on various parts of the Isonzo front, especially on the Carso Plateau.

On June 5, 1917, lively artillery duels continued on the front from the Monte Nero area to the heights of Goritz. On the Carso the violent shelling of Italian positions from Versic to Jamiano was resumed, provoking an energetic reply from their batteries. South of Jamiano the fighting was less intense.

If you have ever gone, in a single day, from the sunlit orange groves of Pasadena up to the snow-crowned peaks of the Coast Range, you will have as good an idea as I can give you of the journey from the Isonzo up to the Carnia. Down on the Carso the war is being waged under a sky of molten brass and in summer the winds which sweep that arid plateau are like blasts from an open furnace-door.

It will be a long road, a hard road, a bloody road which the Italians must follow to attain their City of Desire, and before that journey is ended the red rocks of the Carso will be redder still. But they will finish the journey, I think.

In the meantime a heavy artillery bombardment had been started by the Italians on the Carso Plateau. From day to day the intensity of the artillery fire increased. At last on October 10, 1916, the Italians launched their attack against the Austrian lines south of Goritz and on the Carso. The battle lasted all day and night.

The Nad Logem is part of the northern edge of the Carso, and from our O.P. a great panorama spread out north, east and west, with the sinuous Vippacco in the foreground, fringed with trees. From here I had pointed out to me the various features of the country. The play of light and shade in the distance was very wonderful.

On the Carso an Italian detachment raided the Austrian lines southwest of Lucati and destroyed the works. The dugouts were burned and twenty-four prisoners and one machine gun captured. An Austrian counterattack failed.

The plans of General Cadorna had involved three separate campaigns one in the Trentino, the other in the Carso, and a subsidiary campaign in the Carnic Alps to the north, along the main watershed of the mountains. A general offensive in the Trentino had been tested and found well-nigh impossible.

Along the thirty-mile front from Tolmino to the sea there is a continuous wall of defensive works, flanked on the north by the fortified position of Tolmino, and on the south by the formidable Carso Plateau, while Gorizia constitutes the central Austrian point d'appui, having been converted into a modern fortress with a girdle of exterior forts supplemented by advanced batteries provided by armored cars on which the latest types of howitzers are mounted.

But a large heavy piece of exploded shell that had been thrust very urgently upon my attention upon the Carso I contrived to lose during the temporary confusion of our party by the arrival and explosion of another prospective souvenir in our close proximity.