United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On this day I walked to and from S. Andrea, returning to the Battery in the evening greatly perspiring but with an enormous appetite. Large numbers of Infantry were going up the Vallone and the Volconiac in the dusk. Italian Infantry march in twos on either side of a road, not in fours on one side as ours do. The Austrians shelled a good deal this evening, and put a lot of gas shell into Merna.
East of Goritz the Austrians were holding out in trenches on the lines of Monte San Gabriele and Monte San Marto. The Vallone was crossed by Italian troops on August 11, 1916. The same detachments stormed the western slopes of Monte Nadlogern and the summit of Crn-Hrid and occupied Opacchiasella, on the northern edge of the Carso Plateau.
During the next few days the advance was pushed across the Doberdo plateau, south of Gorizia, and beyond the Vallone on to the western end of the forbidding and formidable Carso. By the 15th the Italian line ran from Tivoli, north-east of Gorizia, down the river Vertoibizza, across the Vippacco and along the Carso east of Nad Logem, Opacchiasella, and Villanova.
Grannonia, when she learnt that they were talking of her lover, asked at once whose son he was, and if there was any hope of his recovery; to which the fox made answer that the birds had said he was the son of the King of Vallone Grosso, and that the only thing that could cure him was to rub the wounds on his head with the blood of the very birds who had told the tale.
It never entered the fox's head that even foxes can be outwitted, so after a bit he consented to go with her; but he hadn't gone far before the cunning girl seized a stick, and gave him such a blow with it on the head, that he dropped down dead on the spot. Then Grannonia took some of his blood and poured it into her little bottle; and went on her way as fast as she could to Vallone Grosso.
One came right over us and then turned down the Vallone, and there was a series of heavy explosions, and great clouds of brownish smoke leapt up beneath her track. Why, I kept asking myself, didn't the fools shell Pec village, where a crowd of men and guns were waiting for transport? Why didn't they put over gas shell? Why didn't they bomb us? Evidently there were no Germans here!
To the south of Goritz, too, the Italian advance came to a standstill after the Vallone Valley, separating the Doberdo from the Carso Plateau, had been crossed. Continuous fighting, however, went on along the northern edge of the Carso Plateau throughout the balance of the month of August, 1916, much of it being done by the artillery of both sides.
The Austrians were routed completely and retired east of Vallone, leaving, however, strong rear guards on Cima Debeli and on Hill 121, east of Monfalcone. The Italians also occupied Rubbia and San Martino del Carso and the whole of the Doberdo Plateau, reaching the line of the Vallerie.
The country people throng to market in the early hours of the morning, and are ready to return by the time the average English tourist has finished his breakfast and sets out sightseeing. We went to Muggia about midday by one of the little steamboats which round the Punta S. Andrea, and, passing the Lloyd-Arsenal, cross the bay, the Vallone di Muggia.
Word Of The Day