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Every requirement, as well as food and water, must be carried up by men at night or under fire by day. Every soldier employed at these heights needs another soldier to bring him food and drink, unless as happens in some places the devoted wives of the Alpini act nightly under organized rules as porters for their husbands. "The food supply is most efficiently organized.
I happened to look round, and found standing beside me, looking up at me, wide-eyed and wondering, the page boy from the Circolo, whom I had harangued on the destiny of the world's youth, and afterwards tipped. The band was playing over and over again, at short intervals, God Save the King, the Marcia Reale, the Marseillaise, the Brabançonne and the Marcia degli Alpini.
"The Alpini are usually as much deprived of the power of maneuvering as their comrades in the plains, and all that is left for them is to act by surprise. They have a system of attacking by infiltration forward, not so very dissimilar from Boer methods, and they have a number of devices and surprises which repay study.
The Alpini who remained, so few in number, threw themselves on the enemy again, permitting the retirement of the main body to the line running from Malga Milegna to Soglio d'Aspio. Even here there was one avalanche of fire. The enemy artillery had been pouring explosives on these positions for ten hours.
Artillery is added according to needs mountain, field, and heavy while there are engineers in plenty, and the mule transport is very good. "The Alpini wear a good hobnailed boot for ordinary service, but for work on the ice the heel of the boot is taken off, and an iron clamp with ice nails substituted.
In short he tried his luck, to the dismay of his conscience but with prodigious benefit to his pocket. His return to Brasted is described with excellent irony. Mr. WILL IRWIN'S war-book naturally divides itself into two parts, since he was lucky enough to get near the Front both about Verdun during the great attack, and with the Alpini fighting on "the roof of Armageddon."
As we came down, lorry loads of Italian troops passed us going up, Alpini, Bersaglieri, Arditi and men of the 152nd Infantry Regiment. They cheered us wildly as they passed, waving their caps and crying, "Avanti! Avanti! Viva l'Inghilterra! Viva gli Alleati!"
The northern part was held by the Italian Second Army, under General Capello, the southern by the Italian Third Army, under the Duke of Aosta. In the north the Isonzo runs through a deep ravine, with Monte Nero rising on its eastern side. Monte Nero is some 6800 feet high. The Alpini took it by a marvellous feat of mountain warfare in the first year of the war.
For mountaineering feats they often use scarpe da gatto, or cat shoes, made of string soles with felt uppers, which are more lasting than the Pyrenean straw sandals. The Gavetta, or mess tin of the Alpini, is very practical. It is of the same shape as ours, but a little deeper, and has a reserve of spirit at the base and a spirit lamp, enabling the Alpini to make coffee or heat their wine.
But here the Alpini and Frontier Guides had to bring up the heavy pieces, hauling them over the snow slopes and swinging them in midair across chasms and up knife-edged precipices, by ropes passed over timbers wedged somehow into the rocks. I was shown a photograph of a party of these pioneers working in these snowy solitudes last winter.
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