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Only eighteen of them survived. This was followed by a new imperial order saying that the disgrace of the 28th Regiment was "atoned for" by the "sacrifice" of this regiment on the Isonzo. As regards Italy, over 20,000 Czechs surrendered voluntarily on the Italian front up to 1917, and 7000 during the last offensive on the Piave in June, 1918.
At Longarone we breakfasted for the second time, and entered the narrow gorge of the Piave. The road was cut out of the face of the rock. Below us the long lumber-rafts went shooting down the swift river. Above, on the right, were the jagged crests of Monte Furlon and Premaggiore, which seemed to us very wonderful, because we had not yet learned how jagged the Dolomites can be.
"There's a small village," the boy went on "I never knew its name; it's back of the Piave; only a pile of broken stuff now anyhow. But the church was standing that night, a lovely old church with a tower pierced with windows. We stuck in a traffic jam in front of that church. The roads were one solid column going forward into the mess.
The city is situated on a group of small islands, rising in the midst of a shallow basin twenty-five miles long and five wide, and separated from the sea by a long sandbank, formed by the sediment brought down by the rivers Piave and Adige. Through this sandbank the sea had pierced several channels. Treporti, the northern of these channels, contained water only for the smallest craft.
Throughout the following years he followed Bonaparte in all his enterprises, and Napoleon on the Marchfeld, in 1809, wept bitterly when his faithful monitor was shot to pieces. Masséna advanced up the Piave against Lusignan, captured his rear-guard, and drove him away northward beyond Belluno, while the Archduke, thus separated from his right, withdrew to guard the road into Carniola.
French and British regiments, with some Americans, were helping to hold the Italian line when, on June 15, the Austrians, driven by their German masters, began an offensive along a 100-mile front, crossing the Piave river in several places. For two days they continued violent attacks, penetrating to within 20 miles of Venice, at Capo Silo.
Thus it was not until 25th October that they launched the blow which was to prove the destruction of the Austrian Empire. The attack was started first on the Piave and the Brenta; and operations further west were contingent on success in those areas.
But this lies far beyond the limit of our present subject. It must be again said that we have not to think of "the pleasant place of all festivity," but of a few huts among the sand-banks, inhabited by Roman provincials, who mournfully recall their charred and ruined habitations by the Brenta and the Piave. The sea alone does not constitute their safety.
The majority of these were held only at night. They looked across the wide bed of the Piave, which, like all capricious mountain streams, divided into three or four channels, intersected by overgrown islands and beds of shingle, which heavy rain, as in the June battles, would convert speedily into a roaring torrent. The widest and deepest stream flowed on the enemies' side.
I came back into Venice with only seven centimes in my pocket, otherwise I should have gone as far as the Tyrol; but the want of baggage and money obliged me to return. In a few days I shall start again, and cross over the Alps by the gorges of the Piave." And the spring's delights on the Alpine borders of Lombardy are described by her con amore, in the promised letters:
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