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Updated: September 17, 2025
Besides accomplishing their advance in the Val Sugana, the Austrians continued the reduction of the forts protecting Arsiero, well across the Italian frontier on the way toward Vicenza. Arsiero is the terminus of a railway leading down into the Vicenza plain and the city of Vicenza.
On March 17, 1917, after violent artillery preparation the Austrians attacked Italian positions at the head of the small valley of Coalbo, in the Sugana, but were driven off with heavy losses.
On February 6, 1917, on the Trentino front the artillery fighting was more intense in the Astico Valley. In the Sugana Valley an Austrian detachment which attempted to attack advanced Italian positions on Monte Maso was put to flight, leaving arms and ammunition on the ground. On the Julian front artillery fighting occurred, during which the Austrians bombarded Goritz for a short time.
The Austrian attack is being made with colossal forces in the narrow zone between the Adige and the Val Sugana. The enemy had assembled fourteen divisions of his best troops. An Austrian officer who was taken prisoner said: "'You are not far from the truth in reckoning that there are three hundred thousand men against you.
But a big raid by our own airmen on the enemy aerodrome at Borgo in the Val Sugana put an end to this source of trouble. I was able now and then to make short expeditions down the mountains in the Battery car to Thiene, and sometimes even to Vicenza, for the ostensible purpose of buying canteen and mess stores and drawing the Battery pay. Thiene is the ugliest and dullest little town in Italy.
During the 3rd the confusion among the Austrians was, if possible, increased by their mistaken belief that the Armistice had come into force; they ceased even the isolated semblance of resistance, and were herded in the valleys like sheep. That evening the Battalion lodged in Caldonazza, just south of the Val Sugana; here the enemy had abandoned a vast ordnance park and more than 200 guns.
The next day, April 13, 1916, saw some severe fighting in the Sugana Valley in the Dolomites, where Italian troops carried with the bayonet, a position at Santosvaldo, west of the Sarganagna torrent, taking seventy-four prisoners, including five officers. During the night of April 18, 1916, one of the most spectacular and important exploits of this period was executed.
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