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In other words, the fall of Gorizia would uncover Austria's entire Isonzo line, and, although there might be some subsequent resistance in the mountains to the north, the giving way of the line would be inevitable. Gorizia, however, as has been shown, stands in the front rank of strong natural defensive positions.
Every waggon that goes up full comes back empty, and many wounded were coming down and prisoners and troops returning to rest. Goritzia had been taken a week or so before my arrival; the Isonzo had been crossed and the Austrians driven back across the Carso for several miles; all the resources of Italy seemed to be crowding up to make good these gains and gather strength for the next thrust.
Early in June, 1915, the Italians forced a passage of the Isonzo at Plava and at Monfalcone, and cut the railroad at these two points. Gorizia then continued to be supplied only by the Trieste branch. Nor was Trieste itself cut off, as the road from Laibach through San Pietro continued open.
But May has been specially Italy's month! The Italian offensive on the Isonzo, and the Carso, beginning on May 14th, in ten days achieved more than any onlooker had dared to hope.
On January 13, 1916, Italian aeroplanes dropped bombs on a barracks in the Breguzzo zone in the valley of the Giudicaria, with success. On January 15, 1916, an Italian air squadron made an extensive raid in the region of the East Isonzo and bombarded the enemy aviation camp at Assevizza, the cantonments at Cihapovano and Boruberg, and the railway stations at Longatica, Pregasina, and Lubiana.
Again atmospheric conditions enforced a lull in military operations during the next few days and brought to a sudden end what had seemed to be an extensive offensive movement on the part of the Italian forces on the Isonzo front. On March 17, 1916, however, violent fighting again developed on the Isonzo front in the region of the Tolmino bridgehead.
During the balance of April, and up to May 15, 1916, military operations on the entire Isonzo front were restricted to artillery bombardments, which, however, at various times, became extremely violent, especially so with respect to Goritz and the surrounding positions. In the next sector, the Doberdo Plateau, much the same condition was prevalent.
Then, as the advance continued, the Austrian right wing above Canale gave way in confusion and the Italians pressed forward on to the Bainsizza Plateau. But their difficulties were tremendous. When they left the valley of the Isonzo behind them, they entered a waterless land, without springs for some four miles.
It is not like the Front in the higher Alps, where, as on the Adamello, trenches are cut in the solid ice, where the firing of a single gun may precipitate an avalanche, where more Italians are killed by avalanches than by Austrians, where guns have to be dragged up precipices and perched on ledges fit only, one might think, for an eagle's nest, where food, ammunition, reinforcements, wounded and sick have all to travel in small cages attached to wire ropes, slung from peak to peak above sheer drops of many thousand feet, where sentries have to stand rigidly stationary, so as to remain invisible, and have to be changed every ten minutes owing to the intense cold, where Battalions of Alpini charge down snow slopes on skis at the rate of thirty miles an hour, where refraction and the deceiving glare of the snow make accurate rifle fire impossible even for crack shots, the Isonzo Front is not so astounding and impossible a Front as this, but it is yet a very different Front from any on which British troops are elsewhere fighting in this war.
The number of prisoners taken by the Italians was 21,750, and in the next few days nearly 20,000 more fell into their hands, with great stores of war munitions and many guns. The taking of Goritz, one of the strongest fortresses in Europe, compelled the retirement of the Austrians at other points along the Isonzo River, and opened the road for the Italians, under Gen.
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