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"'Twenty thousand shells were fired against my position the first two days of the engagement, an Alpini major, commanding a small knoll, remarked to me. Using this as a basis, it would not be far from the truth to assert that over 1,000,000 shells have been fired by the enemy in the present battle, and there is as yet no slackening of effort. "And the troops?
Italy had, indeed, peculiar disadvantages; she was more divided in mind about the war than any of the great protagonists, and the splendid qualities of her Bersaglieri and Alpini were not shared by all her troops.
But nearly all the first Alpini, who went forth to battle in May 1915, are dead now.
Our route from Klagenfurt led back through Villach to Tarvis and thence over the Predil Pass to the Friuli plain and Udine, a journey which we expected to accomplish in a single day; but there were delays in re-crossing the Line of the Armistice and other and more serious delays in the mountains, caused by torrential rains which had in places washed out the road, so that it was already nightfall when, emerging from the gloomy defile of the Predil Pass, we saw before us the twinkling lights of the Alpini cantonment at Caporetto, that mountain hamlet of black memories where, in the summer of 1917, the Austro-German armies, aided by bad Italian generalship and Italian treachery, smashed through the Italian lines and forced them back in a headlong retreat which was checked only by the heroic stand on the Piave.
Originally all these crests were in Austrian hands; they were stormed by the Alpini under almost incredible conditions.
In an amazingly short time the work was done and the Italian field-batteries went tearing over the bridge at a gallop to unlimber on the opposite bank and send a shower of shrapnel after the retreating Austrians. Close behind the guns poured Carabinieri, Alpini, Bersaglieri, infantry of the line and squadron after squadron of cavalry riding under thickets of lances.
My memory of this tour I have just made is full of puzzled-looking men. I have seen thousands of poilus sitting about in cafes, by the roadside, in tents, in trenches, thoughtful. I have seen Alpini sitting restfully and staring with speculative eyes across the mountain gulfs towards unseen and unaccountable enemies.
The Tooth still remains in part to the Austrians. From the first day, the Alpini have scaled part of it and still stick there. "One of the spectacular sights of the day was an Alpini perched on his spire of the Tooth, who kept the Austrian machine gunners from their task, pelting them with rocks every time they set to work.
The hour of Ivery's coming on the 19th had been fixed by him for noon, and that morning Mary would drive up the valley, while Wake and the Alpini went inconspicuously by other routes so as to be in station around the place before midday. But on the evening of the 18th at the Hotel of the Four Kings in Chiavagno Mary received another message.
In one case twenty Alpini climbed up a sheer rock face at night by means of ropes, and leaping upon the Austrian sentries killed and threw them over the cliff without a sound, so that, when the main body of Alpini, climbing by hardly less difficult paths, reached the summit, they took the Austrian garrison in the rear and by surprise, and the heights were theirs.
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