SIXTEEN
The Isonzo is again peaceful, one of the loveliest valleys in all Europe. It is difficult to believe that there was ever any fighting along the beautiful blue-green river, surrounded by impressive snowy peaks and dotted with charming white-washed Alpine villages. Yet, the evidence of the war almost nine decades earlier is easy to find for the determined explorer. The valley, from the Slovene frontier to the Adriatic coast, is rich with monuments, cemeteries, and battle sites, many long forgotten but together a moving tribute to the immense sacrifice on the Isonzo early in the last century. Regrettably, there are few survivors of the dozen battles still living; hardly anyone of any nationality remains who personally witnessed the terrible carnage on the Isonzo.I Nevertheless, the valley today offers the traveler much sad testimony about the European tragedy that transpired on the Isonzo from 1915 to 1917. This section is intended as a guide for anyone who wishes to see the Isonzo front as it is today.
The starting point, traveling from the north, is the Italo-Slovene border crossing point at the Predel Pass, coming on Strada statale 54 from Tarvisio, off the E55 Autostrada. The high Julian road into Slovenia soon reaches the village of Log pod Mangartom, nestled among the clouds and mountains, some of them nearly 8,000 feet high. The rugged Predel area has seen much fighting: the Austrians battled Napoleon's armies here in 1809, and during the Second World War, German troops burned Log pod Mangartom as a reprisal for Partisan activities. But the village is significant for the Isonzo battles of 1915 to 1917 because it contains an Austrian cemetery. Habsburg authorities built numerous military cemeteries throughout the valley during the Great War, but they fell into disrepair after the empire collapsed. The remote Austrian cemetery at Log pod Mangartom, undisturbed by the twentieth century, is the last to remain much as it was during the war. Located behind the village's civil cemetery under a forested mountain, it contains 1,328 graves of Austrian troops killed in the fighting for Mt. Rombon. They are largely German, Slovene, and Bosnian soldiers, nearly all of their graves marked with a black steel cross bearing a simple inscription: NEPOZNANI (unknown). In the very back row, at the forest's edge, is the grave of Franz Janowitz, the Bohemian Jewish poet and officer of the 2nd Kaiserschutzen, who died of wounds sustained on Rombon during the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo. The cemetery is guarded by a large monument, the work of the Prague soldier and sculptor Ladislav Kofranek. It portrays two Austrian soldiers, one a mountain rifleman, the other a Bosnian soldier wearing a fez, and is dedicated "To the Memory of the Brave Defenders of Rombon" in German, Serbo-Croat, and Slovene.
Five miles down the main road, heading into the upper Isonzo basin, is the town of Bovec (Flitsch), under the shadow of Rombon to the north; to the south are Javorscek and Vrsic, where Mussolini received his baptism of fire in 1915. Just before the town is another Austrian cemetery containing several hundred dead from the battles for Rombon and Cukla; the nameplates, unfortunately, are long gone. Across the road is a monument to the Austrian defenders of Bovec from 1915 to 1917. The town itself was mostly destroyed during the Great War, when it was held by the Italians. After the war, Bovec, temporarily renamed Plezzo, was reconstructed by the occupying Italians. Therefore, with its white stucco walls and red tiled roofs, it has a distinctly Mediterranean appearance. It is the major town on the uppermost Isonzo (Soca to the Slovenes) and the center for Isonzo water sports, principally white-water rafting and kayaking. The Isonzo, here a cold, fast-flowing Alpine river, runs just south of the town.
Bovec includes an excellent private museum, Zbirka iz 1. Svetovne Vojne "87. Polk" (First World War Collection "87th Regiment"), run by Vera and No Ivancic. The collection consists entirely of items found in the area, principally on Mt. Rombon. In Bovec there is a group of amateur hiker-historians who regularly climb the surrounding mountains looking for artifacts; the small museum showcases their findings. Everything from weapons and unit insignia to radio sets and machine guns is on display, found on the peaks overlooking the town. Rombon (7,290 ft.) is still remote (the summit is snow-covered throughout the year), and there are many weapons and unexploded shells at or near the peak. The Bovec group also frequently discovers Austrian and Italian dead, who are buried in the town. Because climbing Rombon is arduous and dangerous for the inexperienced mountaineer, a trip to the Bovec museum is strongly recommended instead.
Following the Isonzo road south, toward Gorizia, the next town of any size is Kobarid (Karfreit, Caporetto). The ten-mile drive follows the river past the hamlets of Zaga and Srpenica, between steep, often cloud-covered Julian Alps. Kobarid remains much as it was in 1917 when victorious Austrian soldiers of Prince Felix zu Schwarzenberg's 55th Division passed through it. It is nestled on the west bank of the Isonzo, on a plain, overlooked on all sides by steep blue-gray mountains; to the southwest is Mt. Matajur, where Erwin Rommel earned his Blue Max. The greatest of the surrounding peaks is Krn (7,410 ft.), four miles to the east of Kobarid, across the Isonzo.'- Just north of Kobarid, on the hill of Saint Anthony overlooking the river, is an Italian ossuary. The octagonal memorial, designed by Gianni Castiglioni and Giovanni Greppi, was opened by Mussolini in 1938 and contains the bones of 7,014 Italian dead who fell between Rombon and Tolmin. It includes stations of the cross and offers an impressive view of Kobarid and the surrounding valley.
The town itself, rebuilt in the 1920s, boasts a museum dedicated to the Great War. Located in a restored eighteenth-century house, the Kobarid Museum, opened in October 1990, has numerous displays about the Isonzo fighting, particularly the Twelfth Battle. The impressive collection includes excellent maps, photos, documents, and displays of weapons and uniforms from both armies. It justly received the European Community's award for European Museum of 1993.
Continuing down the Isonzo road, the next stop is Tolmin (Tolmein), the major town on the upper Isonzo and the county seat. Eight miles southeast of Kobarid, it is on the Isonzo's east bank, just south of the imposing Mrzli ridge. The hub of Austrian resistance on the upper Isonzo, Tolmin never fell to the Italians during the fighting, yet it is surrounded by a wealth of historical monuments. At the river's edge is a walled German ossuary, where the Imperial German dead from the Twelfth Battle and the fighting for the Tolmin bridgehead are buried. The impressive building, completed in 1936, was constructed from stones imported from Germany; its indoor mosaic includes the names of all Germany's dead on the Isonzo. Immediately east of Tolmin, at Loce, is a major Austrian cemetery, where as many as 7,000 dead from the battles for Krn and Mrzli ridge are buried. The overwhelming majority are unknown, but some graves are marked with ornate, privately purchased headstones and monuments. Many of the dead are Poles of the 3rd Mountain Brigade. Two miles northwest of Tolmin, near the Isonzo's banks and under the shadow of Mrzli vrh, is the village of Gabrje. There, a small shop, formerly a barn, which was found to have been an Italian military chapel with an accompanying cemetery during the war. The dead, Alpini from the 1915 battle for Krn, were moved to Kobarid, and the chapel was forgotten.
Also north of Tolmin is the beautiful Church of the Holy Ghost. It is located east of Mrzli ridge at Javorca, in a remote cattle pasture 3,500 feet above sea level. To get there, follow the road to Zatolmin, just north of Tolmin, then take the dirt track uphill, hugging mountainsides for some four miles. It is a daunting trip, but well worth it. The church, nestled on a foggy crest overlooking the Tolminka valley, was built between April and November 1916, by soldiers of the Austrian 3rd Mountain Brigade, the defenders of Mrzli ridge. It was designed and constructed to commemorate its dead by the architects, artists, and stonemasons in the ranks of the brigade. The church remains undisturbed after more than eight decades, receiving only a small number of mostly local visitors. It is a magnificent dark wood and white stucco building with a gray stone base, complete with painted coats of arms representing the provinces of the empire. Inside it is even more impressive. (The key can be obtained from the old woman in the neighboring farmhouse.) The interior is finished in tones of blue, including marble, and the walls are covered with the 3rd Mountain Brigade's "Book of the Dead," wooden panels inscribed with the names, painted in black, of every Austrian soldier who fell in the fighting for Mrzli ridge. Hidden in the Julian Alps and far removed from civilization, the aptly named Church of the Holy Ghost is one of the best preserved and most moving monuments to the war on the Isonzo.
Two miles south of Tolmin, straight down the Isonzo, is the town of Most na Soci (St. Luzia), the wartime Austrian supply depot and railhead on the upper Isonzo. The determined Austrian defense of the Tolmin bridgehead is commemorated with a stone plaque: "Hier Kampfte das XV. Korps" (the XV Corps fought here). Just across the Isonzo lies the village of Modrejce, which contains an Austrian cemetery on the river's edge. It holds 2,750 mostly unknown dead from the 1916 fighting for the Tolmin bridgehead.
Continuing down the main Isonzo road, which here runs parallel to the river near the water's edge, the Bainsizza plateau rises ahead. The first major town is Kanal (Canale), where Enrico Caviglia's XXIV Corps broke the Austrian defenses during the Eleventh Battle. Kanal is perched handsomely on the Isonzo's east side, its white stucco houses adorning the steep, rocky river bank. It is an ideal starting point for exploring the rugged, thickly forested, and still sparsely populated Bainsizza plateau (Banjsice to the Slovenes). There are numerous minor roads, most no more than dirt tracks, running through the plateau, and few show any obvious signs of the Great War. Still, several villages contain large Austrian graveyards. The town of Bate on the central Banjsice possesses a now abandoned cemetery with 5,000 unknown Austrian dead, none of them with gravestones. Likewise, the village of Ravnica has an Austrian burial site, once a cemetery but now just a meadow, adorned only with a cross and a stone pyramid. The tiny village of Luzarji's Austrian cemetery is dolina filled with some 300 Habsburg dead, many with small headstones. The town of Cepovan on the plateau's eastern edge once had a large Austrian cemetery, but now only a stone pyramid remains; the gravestones were removed after the Great War by peasants looking for building materials to reconstruct their wrecked homes. The Austrian cemeteries on the Banjsice are filled with the dead from several Isonzo battles, predominantly the Eleventh.
To explore the lower plateau and Gorizia, return to Kanal and continue south on the Isonzo road. Little more than three miles downstream is the village of Piave (Plava), and opposite on the Isonzo's east bank looms Hill 383, the site of so many failed Italian offensives. Despite the huge losses sustained by the Italians in two years of attacks at Piave, there are no official monuments here. The terrible sacrifice of the II Corps apparently has been forgotten. Yet, close examination reveals several poignant reminders of the terrible fighting. At the base of 383, along the road overlooking the Isonzo, a half-dozen kaventen remain blasted in the rock, where doomedfanti waited to go over the top in 1915. They are just as they were then. Slightly up the hill, hidden behind trees and underbrush, are two stone faces where doomed Italian infantrymen carved their names and regimental numbers into the rock before assaulting the Austrian trenches; they are all that remains of the thousands of soldiers of the 3rd Division who were sacrificed on the slopes of "Bloody 383." The hillsides also contain a few overgrown trench sections, and shell casings are strewn everywhere.
Continuing downstream on the Isonzo road, now on the river's east bank, Kuk and Vodice appear on the left. The valley here is a near chasm, surrounded by high ridges on both sides; the river, too, has changed, becoming deeper, slower, greener. Vodice, two miles southeast of Piave, has a monument at its hard-to-reach summit dedicated to Maurizio Gonzaga, the "Iron General," whose 53rd Division captured the 2,150-foot-high mountain in 1917. Just beyond Vodice is Sveta Gora (Monte Santo), which again has a monastery at its peak. The Slovene government maintains the restored pilgrimage site and its holy portrait of the Virgin Mary, saved from Italian guns in 1915. The 2,250-foot-high summit is accessible by car, a long and twisting ride. The view of the central Isonzo valley, the surrounding mountains, and Gorizia from Sveta Gora's peak is unsurpassed. The buildings at the summit now include a museum, opened in 1989, which highlights the history of the monastery and the bitter fighting for the mountain. It boasts an impressive collection of paintings and posters relating to the Isonzo front.
At the southern foot of Sveta Gora, in the shadow of Skabrijel (Monte San Gabriele), lies the village of Solkan (Salcano). The town borders Nova Gorica and includes a major rail bridge across the Isonzo. There is a Habsburg cemetery near the river's edge, behind and below the town's main burial ground. It was damaged by Allied bombardment of the rail bridge during the Second World War, but eighty-five stones remain. Most of the dead are Hungarians, killed in the fight for Sabotino. That mountain (Sabotin to the Slovenes) is directly above Solkan on the Isonzo's left bank. The international frontier straddles Sabotino, so that the north and east faces are in Slovenia, and the summit and south and west slopes belong to Italy. The mountain, officially designated a zona sacra (sacred zone) by the Italian government, is permanently scarred with stone entrenchments, but they are difficult to reach.
The border similarly runs through Gorizia/Nova Gorica, but most of the historical sights are in Italy. There is a city museum, opened in 1934, that highlights the history of Gorizia and the Isonzo battles fought around it. Otherwise, comparatively little remains there of the terrible fighting. Many streets are named in honor of generals and units made famous by the Isonzo front- Cadorna, Capello, Brigata Sassari, Brigata Aosta-but not much else in Gorizia stands as a reminder of the frightful cost paid by the Italian Army to win the city. It is much larger than in Habsburg times, and its suburbs have overrun former battlefields. Nova Gorica, built mostly since 1945, is newer still; largely drab and dull, it contains even fewer memories of the battles of the Isonzo.
One must look across the Isonzo to find graphic evidence of the six bloody offensives Italy undertook to occupy Gorizia. At the village of Oslavia, less than a mile west of the river, is an Italian ossuary. The awe-inspiring mass grave, perched on a 500-foot-high hill facing Gorizia, has the shape of a mighty white fortress. Designed by the Roman architect Ghino Venturi, the imposing circular ossuary was finished in 1938, just before Italy's next major war. It contains the remains of 57,201 Italian soldiers of the 2nd Army killed in the tight for Oslavia, Podgora, and Gorizia. (There are also 539 Austrian dead in the ossuary.) Some 20,700 of the dead fanti are identified and interred separately, but 36,440 others remain unknown. In each of the ossuary's three underground corners there is a simple, haunting stone in the floor with a brief inscription: "12,000 Unknown." The central tower of the ossuary contains the graves of thirteen soldiers who won the Gold Medal for Bravery. A hundred yards in front of the Oslavia mass grave is a monument to fifty-five "Julian volunteers," Austrian subjects who died fighting to redeem Italia irredenta. One of the names on the marble tablet is Scipio Slataper, the Triestine writer who fell trying to liberate Podgora for Italy.
South of Gorizia, across the tiny Vipacco River, rises Monte San Michele. Its 900-foot-high summit, only a mile east of the Isonzo, has become a monument to Italian bravery and sacrifice. San Michele, an official zona sacra since 1922, has an observation deck from which to survey the battlefield, as well as monuments to several of the twenty-nine Italian brigades that fought to win the peak, at a cost of 112,000 Italian killed and maimed. The most prominent of these unit memorials is the "iron grenade" symbol of the Grenadier Brigade, the famed Granatieri di Sardegna. There is a small museum at the summit to commemorate the six battles fought around Monte San Michele between June 1915 and August 1916.
The western Carso belongs to Italy, and it retains much of the look it had during the fighting. It is easy to imagine the bloody campaigns that drowned the Carso in blood for more than two years. The battlefield has become overgrown in many places, since the harsh and uninviting "world of rock" remains sparsely populated. There are villages, but no major towns, in the heart of the plateau. There are dozens of Italian, and some Habsburg, monuments scattered throughout the Carso. Many of them mark the site where a brave soldier won the inedaglia d'oro, usually posthumously. Others are unit memorials, dedicated to regiments and brigades sacrificed on the stony sea of Doberdo. One such is the monument near San Michele to the 4th Honved Regiment, defenders of the mountain; unlike most Habsburg memorials, it is still in good repair and is visited regularly by Hungarian groups. They come to commemorate Hungary's terrible sacrifice on the Carso more than eighty years before. Much of the plateau remains too hazardous to explore safely. Years of bombardments left countless unexploded shells strewn all over the Carso-Slovenia removed nearly 30,000 pounds of unexploded munitions from its portion of the Isonzo battlefield in 1995 alone. Even after so long a time, they are a lethal threat to the unwary explorer. The plateau boasts hundreds of trench sections carved into the limestone, but many are too risky to merit a visit. Fortunately, the Italian Ministry of Defense has plainly marked areas that represent an unacceptable risk.
The vi Ilage of Doberdo on the central Carso, which gave its name to many of the costly battles, is now just a mile and a half from the Slovene frontier. The village was wholly destroyed during the Carso campaigns, clear evidence of the savage fighting that engulfed it during the Great War. Villages across the border in Slovenia are much the same. They have been entirely rebuilt since the Carso battles. The villages of Kostanjevica, Opatje Selo (Opacchiasella), and Lokvica, made infamous during 1916, have reemerged, but they reveal little about the bitter battles waged there. All that remains are Austrian cemeteries, and few of them are still noticeable. The maintenance of Austrian grave sites has never been a high priority with any of the Carso's occupiers since 1918, whether Italian Fascists, Yugoslav Communists, or Slovene nationalists. There are several Habsburg grave sites, but most are small; some have been lost entirely. Even the larger ones are frequently in poor shape. A nameless cemetery on the Rence- Zigoni road, a mere quarter-mile from the Vipacco (Vipava in Slovene), still boasts a main monument, but the gravestones themselves are no longer visible. The graveyard at Volcja Draga has an impressive pyramid monument to the 76th Regiment, a mostly German unit from western Hungary. The large cemetery at Stanjel, a dozen miles east of the Italo-Slovene border, was finished in 1918 with the help of Russian prisoners of war. It was the site of a wartime hospital, and the Austrian soldiers buried there died of wounds sustained on the Carso. Few of the headstones at Stanjel remain intact. Time and neglect have taken their toll, and the Austrian sacrifice on the Carso has been largely forgotten.
The same cannot be said of Italy's enormous sacrifice on the Carso. Indeed, the losses of the 3rd Army are amply recalled in many memorials on the western edge of the plateau.3 The greatest of these is the enormous ossuary at Redipuglia, the "Park of Remembrance," hardly more than a mile east of the Isonzo. There, on the west face of Hill 118, Monte Sei Busi, the Italian Army built an imposing monument to the dead of the "undefeated" 3rd Army. The oversize memorial was designed by Giovanni Greppi and Gianni Castiglioni, who also planned the Kobarid ossuary. The imposing Redipuglia ossuary, the final resting place of 100,000 Italian soldiers, stretches all the way to the summit of Monte Sei Busi. The 39,857 known dead are interred in the twenty-two terraces that lead to the peak. Some 60,330 unknown fanti are buried in two large common graves on each side of the votive chapel at the top of the ossuary. At the base of the ossuary lies Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, the Duke of Aosta. He was buried at Redipuglia among his soldiers in 1931, under a seventyfive-ton monolith of porphyry.
The votive chapel at the peak of the ossuary is a touching monument to the enormity of Italy's sacrifice on the Carso. It includes a small museum of personal artifacts dug up on the plateau-crosses, rosaries, pins, buttons, and the like-belonging to fallenfanti. There are also pictures of dead and missing soldiers, among them the three Cortellessa brothers who fell on the Carso within a year. Achille, Ermino, and Luigi, the oldest just twenty-four, appear in a small, faded photograph in the chapel, all that remains of the three doomed brothers from Caserta.
At the base of the hill, on the right, is a stone trench section, a relic of the bitter 1915 fighting for Monte Sei Busi. It is a fully covered stone entrenchment, used by the Austrians to protect their infantry from Italian shelling. Across Strada 305 are more Italian monuments. The site, carefully maintained by the Ministry of Defense, rests on the east slope of the Hill of St. Elia. Here was the original Italian monument at Redipuglia; today it boasts memorials to all the combat arms and services, as well as several Italian artillery pieces employed in the fighting. There is also a simple monument to the countless thousands of fanti who fell on the Isonzo but have no known grave; they are commemorated with a haunting phrase inscribed in marble:
UNKNOWN SOLDIER What does my name matter to you? Cry to the wind ITALIAN INFANTRYMAN And I will rest in peace
Alongside there is the Casa "Terza Armata," devoted to the history of the 3rd Army and its role in the Great War. It offers numerous maps, photos, and weapons from the war on the Carso, a tribute to the sacrifices of the Terza Arrnata on the rocky plateau. There is also a cafe where tourists can rest and ponder the terrible memories they have witnessed. Most of the Carso's few visitors today are elderly, and no doubt need a coffee break after climbing the immense ossuary.
All these memorials and battle sites are tenderly maintained by troops of the Italian Army, who guard and keep up the graves of their great-grandfathers. The rest of the world, including most Italians and Austrians, may have forgotten the sacrifice on the Isonzo, but the troops at Redipuglia have not. The Italians also maintain an Austrian cemetery a half-mile up the road from Redipuglia, at Fogliano. This is the only notable Austrian cemetery on Italian soil. It holds the remains of 14,406 Habsburg soldiers killed on the Carso. Only 2,406 of the dead are in marked graves; the rest remain unknown, buried in one mass grave of 7,000 at the head of the cemetery, and 2,500 more in each of the two rear corners. The entrance to the Fogliano gravesite reads: "Im Leben and im Tode Vereint" (United in Life and Death). The Austrian dead who have found their final resting place here-Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Poles, Romanians, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Serbs, even Italians-indeed remain united in death, a little more than eight decades after the Habsburg Empire disappeared forever. The cemetery at Fogliano stands as a fitting tribute to their poignant sacrifice in a lost cause.
The cemetery is beautifully maintained by the Italians, Austria's bitter enemies on the Isonzo. The grave sites are colored by evergreen flower beds and rows of cypresses that flourish among the mostly nameless dead. After more than three-quarters of a century and a Second World War that brought Europe bloodshed and terror far worse even than anything experienced during the Great War, Italians and Central Europeans can look back at the Isonzo with sadness and regret, not bitterness and hatred. It is a tribute to Europe at the beginning of a new century that Italians and Austrians, members of the European Union, can now hardly imagine that more than eight decades ago their forefathers fought each other so viciously in an obscure Alpine river valley for twenty-eight months. Indeed, Italian President Oscar Scalfaro and his Austrian counterpart, Thomas Klestil, met at Gorizia on October 4, 1995, for a memorial ceremony, including the joint dropping of a wreath into the Isonzo, to heal the last wounds lingering in their countries from the fighting. Yet, the hundreds of thousands of dead from the dozen battles of the Isonzo, resting in cemeteries from Rombon to the Adriatic, are there to prove that the unprecedented slaughter indeed happened, that a European tragedy took place here. But the care shown by Italian soldiers for the graves of their once hated foes buried at Fogliano stands as moving evidence that the Isonzo front has not been entirely forgotten, and that it will never happen again.