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In the Carnic Alps hardly anything of importance occurred throughout the late spring and the entire summer of 1916, excepting fairly continuous artillery bombardments, varying in strength and extent. Considerable activity, however, was the rule rather than the exception in the sector between the Carnic Alps and the Dolomites. There, one point especially, saw considerable fighting.
But westward mist clung to a few mountain flanks, and to the east it was snowing on distant crests. Brown, sketching rapidly but accurately, laughed a little under his breath. "To think," he said, "not a Boche dreams we are in the Carnic Alps. It’s very funny, isn’t it? Our surveyors are likely to be here in a day or two, I fancy."
The barriers offered by the River Tagliamento and the many commanding heights of the Carnic and the Noric Alps were as nothing to the triumphant republicans; and from the heights that guard the province of Styria, the genius of Napoleon flashed as a terrifying portent to the Court of Vienna and the potentates of Central Europe.
Of what could two Americans be afraid in the Carnic Alps to challenge a pair of wandering ibex stalkers?" "You forget that I am Canadian," replied Stent, forcing a laugh. "At that, you are practically American and civilian " He glanced smilingly over their equipment, carelessly it seemed to Stent, as though verifying all absence of military insignia.
The Danube once crossed, between them and Constantinople was nothing but the rich rolling land of Turkey; between them and Rome nothing but the easy passes of the Carnic Alps, Laybach to Trieste. Trieste was the key of the Roman position. It was, and always will be, a most important point. It might be the centre of a great kingdom.
The progress of the Italian columns was checked at Malborgeth, where the Austrians had constructed a chain of permanent forts, while along the coach road an equally strong group of forts covering the Predil Pass blocked the way. A further offensive was directed across the Carnic Alps by way of the Kreuzberg Pass down the Seoten Valley to Innichen and Toblach on the Pusterthal railway.
One imagines that the Austrians must have many twelve-inch howitzers to spare, for there are, to give an example, a couple near Mauthen, beyond the crest of the Carnic Alps, and other heavy artillery in the same district hidden in caverns. In these caverns, which are extremely hard to locate, they are secure against shrapnel and cannot be seen by airmen.
To undertake her offensive on the Isonzo it was necessary that she guard her flanks and rear. The Tyrolese battle-ground contained three distinct points where it was necessary to operate; the Trentino Salient, the passes of the Dolomites, and the passes of the Carnic Alps.
Below you, like a vast tessellated floor, is the Friulian plain, dotted with red-roofed villages, checkerboarded with fields of green and brown, stretching away, away to where, beyond the blue Isonzo, the Julian and Carnic Alps leap skyward in a mighty, curving, mile-high wall. You have the war before you, for amid those distant mountains snakes the Austro-Italian battle-line.
Early in June Italy had won control of the ridges of the mountains in the two latter points, but the problem in the Trentino was more difficult. It was necessary, because of the converging valleys, to push her front well inland. On the Carnic Alps the fighting consisted of unimportant skirmishes. The main struggle centered around the pass of Monte Croce Carnico.
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