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There was considerable bombardment of the bridgeheads at Tolmino and Gorizia. In the Gorizia sector the Austrians attacked the Italian positions at Oslavia, capturing 900 men and inflicting severe losses in killed and wounded. Determined attacks by the Italian troops followed, and the positions were again transferred to Italian hands.
For Gorizia is a sort of Austrian Cheltenham, whither Austrian officers retire in large numbers to pass their last years in villas which they take over from one another's widows. So the Austrian officer class has a sort of vested interest in the preservation of the place.
This Plateau is of a general height of about 2400 feet, and is continued south-eastward by the Ternova Plateau, rising to a general height of about 2200 feet. Bending again towards the south-east, the Isonzo flows out into the Plain of Gorizia. Here stand Monte Sabotino and Monte Santo, the western and eastern pillars of this gateway leading into the lower lands.
In order to reach Gorizia we had to motor for some miles along a road exposed to enemy fire, for the hills dominating the city to the south and east were still in Austrian hands.
That adventure cost Austria at least 100,000 dead and wounded men. But not for a moment did the Italians permit the Austrian offensive in the Trentino to distract them from their real objectives: Gorizia, the Carso, and Trieste.
Early in August Cadorna had completed his transfer of guns and troops from the Trentino front, and on the 4th he feinted an attack across the Isonzo at Monfalcone. On the 6th a heavy bombardment battered the whole front from Mount Sabatino to Mount San Michele; both the key-positions were taken by assault in a battle which lasted two days, and on the 9th Gorizia fell.
By this I do not mean to imply that the Austrians never shell it, for they do, but only in a desultory, half-hearted fashion. During the day that I spent in Gorizia the deserted streets echoed about every five minutes to the screech-bang of an Austrian arrivé or the bang-screech of an Italian départ.
His Battery had fought there in the early part of the war. He knew, too, Gorizia and the Carso battlefields. And he was sick at heart, as every Italian always silently was, at the memory of the retreat of last autumn. And I remember saying that what was now happening in the Somme country would happen soon in Italy.
The double girdle of walls of the castle, with well-preserved battlemented towers, is the principal factor in the effect. The gateways are pointed: outside the walls, towards Castel Parentino, is the pedestal for the municipal standard; on the other side is an illegible inscription in which the date 1475 may be deciphered. The more important church, S. Sofia, still has its outside walls, the three apses, with traces of frescoes in the central one, and the walls of the sacristy. At the beginning of the fourteenth century it appears to have belonged to the Castropola, and then to the Count of Gorizia; but in 1420 the Venetians appointed a podest
After some days of bombardment, first directed at the whole front and then concentrated upon Sabotino and San Michele, the Italians swept forward, took both hills, turned the Austrians out of Podgora and Gorizia, took 15,000 prisoners and a vast booty of guns and munitions. They had completed the first phase of their task by August 7, 1916.
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