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What happened was the brilliant and bloody storming of the Austrian positions on Podgora and Monte Sabotino, a simultaneous crossing of the Isonzo opposite Gorizia and at Sagrado, and a splendid rush up to and across the plateau of the Carso which culminated in the taking of Monte San Michele.
The Italian Second Army, to whom we were strangers, watched us with interest as we went past in a cloud of dust. On the top of Podgora Hill was a series of O.P.'s, known collectively as Maria O.P., hollowed out of the rock, approached through rock passages, and in front a wide rocky platform commanding a splendid panorama.
Lucinico is nothing more than a heap of grey stones; except for a bit of the church wall and the gable end of a house one cannot even speak of it as ruins. But in one place among the rubble I saw the splintered top and a leg of a grand piano. Podgora hill, which was no doubt once neatly terraced and cultivated, is like a scrap of landscape from some airless, treeless planet.
Throughout the theater of operations bad weather limited, however, artillery action on the Isonzo, which was active only near Tolmino and the heights northwest of Goritz. Severe fighting took place on March 26, 1916, at several points. At the Goritz bridgehead the Austro-Hungarians captured an Italian position fronting on the northern portion of Podgora Heights, taking 525 prisoners.
From Podgora the depots, barracks, and supply houses of Gorizia are within artillery range of guns of all calibers, and the environs of Podgora have changed hands several times. To the north of Podgora, at a distance of between two and three miles, is a second series of heights the heights of Oslavia, which also dominate the bridgehead.
Monte Sabotino, the key to the bridge-head and the city, was in the hands of the Italians. But the Austrians intrenched on Hill 240, the highest summit of the Podgora range, still held out, and it took several hours of savage fighting to dislodge them. This last stronghold taken, the gray-clad infantry suddenly debouched from the sheltering ravines and went swarming down to the Isonzo.
A determined and carefully prepared attack was made by a large Italian force on Podgora, but though ten regiments were sent against the position they failed to get through.
At Sagrado the bridge had been much more completely demolished; no effort had been made to restore the horizontal roadway, but one crossed by a sort of timber switchback that followed the ups and downs of the ruins. It is not in these places that one must look for the real destruction of modern war. The real fight on the left of Goritzia went through the village of Lucinico up the hill of Podgora.
On that day a vigorous attack was launched against Austrian positions on the Monfalcone sector, the most southern wing of the Isonzo front. This sector was about ten miles southwest of Goritz and fifteen miles northwest of Trieste. Goritz was protected by three strong positions, Monte Sabotino to the north, Podgora to the west, and Monte San Michele to the south.
Lively fighting continued on the Carinthian front. In the Tyrol frontier district Italian artillery again held the Col di Lana section and some points south of the front under heavy artillery fire. On the Goritz bridgehead Austro-Hungarians in the morning set fire to an Italian position before the southern part of Podgora Height.
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