1915

THREE

“The Hour of the Triumph of the Finest Values”

Once Italy declared war, General Luigi Cadorna quickly moved his headquarters and staff close to the front. He settled the Comando Supremo in the Friulian city of Udine, only a dozen miles from the Austrian frontier and just seventeen from the banks of the Isonzo. There Cadorna intended to direct the execution of his grand strategy, to see his well laid plans brought to fruition. He expected his 2nd and 3rd Armies, marshaling in eastern Friulia, to cross soon into Austria for the decisive battle on the Isonzo. Cadorna anticipated that his divisions would easily break through the weak Austrian defenses and advance rapidly eastward toward the Ljubljana gap, the major pass through the Julian Alps to the flatlands of Central Europe. Once there, his forces would threaten the Austrian capital. Italia irredenta would be liberated, and the Austrian Empire would be on its knees. By midsummer, it would all be over.

Everything seemed to be in Cadorna's favor. On May 23, the first day of the war, his legions were fully mobilized. Months of secret preparations, as well as the partial mobilization in late April, meant that Italy's official mobilization on May 22 was a mere formality. The army was ready to enter battle immediately. By any standards, the forces at Cadorna's disposal were impressive. His field army totaled 900,000 soldiers. Counting second-line reserves, the army included thirty-five infantry divisions, a dozen divisions of militia, and four cavalry divisions, as well as a division of Bersaglieri, elite light infantry. There were also fifty-two battalions of Alpini, crack mountain troops, and fourteen battalions of combat engineers. The field artillery boasted 467 batteries, almost 2,000 guns and howitzers. There were also numerous battalions of paramilitary police, Carabinieri, and Finance Guards to support the field army. Cadorna's months of readying the army for war had borne fruit. Certainly the Italian Army was far larger, better trained, and better equipped than it had been the previous summer.

Still, there were notable weaknesses in Cadorna's order of battle. On paper, Italy's infantry divisions were organized pretty much like Austria's: two infantry brigades, each of two three-battalion regiments; a field artillery regiment; supporting units of engineers and cavalry; and service and medical units to sustain the division in the field. Yet despite General Vittorio Zupelli's months of reorganizing the field forces and procuring modern weaponry for them, combat units still lacked badly needed modern guns, machine guns, and even rifles. The artillery had the greatest shortfalls. The light field artillery, which did most of the work, was outfitted well enough, but the army was short of mountain guns, vital in the Alpine fighting Cadorna was about to initiate. Worse, the heavy artillery hardly existed: there were only 112 heavy guns in the entire army. In the siegelike conditions that would soon prevail on the Isonzo, this lack of heavy firepower would prove a serious shortcoming. Cadorna's armies were also short of machine guns, the dominant weapons of the First World War. There were only 618 machine guns on strength in late May, an average of only two per infantry regiment-one-third the Austrian rate. Hand grenades, dangerous and useful new weapons in 1915, were all but unknown in the Italian Army. There were not even enough modern rifles to go around. Italian arsenals produced only 2,500 M. 1891 rifles per month, nowhere near enough to equip reserve and militia units, and woefully inadequate to replace battle losses once the fighting began. The army's artillery shell reserve was limited, adequate only for a very short war, and daily shell output from Italy's factories-seven rounds per gun-could not sustain prolonged fighting. Italy's forces, although large, were thus unprepared for a long campaign. If the fighting lasted more than a few weeks, the army would run out of guns and munitions. Fortunately for Cadorna, his numerical superiority was so overwhelming than Austria's rapid collapse seemed guaranteed.

Italy's legions had a major factor in their favor to counteract some of their material deficiencies. Austria's military, unready for war even in 1914, had already suffered two million casualties and was on its last legs. Habsburg regiments were understrength and weak from the war, and morale was plummeting in the Carpathians. How long could Austria's badly bloodied army sustain a third front? In stark contrast, Italy's forces were fresh, eager, and untried. They displayed no war weariness; indeed, quite the opposite. Cadorna's regiments were marching to war enthusiastically, as Austria's had almost a year earlier. Their ranks were bolstered by thousands of ardent young volunteers, eager to enter battle and liberate Austria's Italian provinces. For such young men, fired by romantic nationalism, the Habsburgs' long-awaited day of reckoning and It aly's hour of glory had finally arrived. As one young poet pronounced, "This is the hour of the triumph of the finest values." Italy's unblooded regiments marched to the Isonzo with an enthusiasm not witnessed in Europe since doomed ranks of jubilant volunteers departed Vienna for Serbia and Galicia ten months before.

Of course, firepower had defeated mere numbers on all fronts of the war. In Flanders, Galicia, Alsace, and Serbia, weight of shell had annihilated whole divisions of enthusiastic volunteers. The will to fight was all-important, the most basic need in any army; yet it alone could not overcome superior gunnery, and it was not an adequate substitute for realistic training and preparation. This surely was the lesson of the terrible carnage on all fronts in 1914. Austria's weary army had learned this. Never again would Habsburg regiments go into battle as naively unprepared as in the previous summer. At the cost of two million soldiers lost in battle, the Austrian Army had learned that modern weapons-especially machine guns and artillery-dominated the battlefield and determined the outcome of combat. Cadorna's armies massing for battle remained untaught.

Italian tactical doctrine-that is, the army's official instructions about how to deploy units on the field of battle-in fact remained untouched by the fighting that had plagued Europe for the past ten months. Italian doctrine betrayed no awareness of the lessons of the costly fighting on either the Western or the Eastern front. At Cadorna's direction, the army prepared for war without examining the new patterns of combat that had emerged in the past year, particularly trench warfare. All over Europe, most notably in France and Flanders, the armies had burrowed deep into the earth to escape the lethal effects of artillery and machine gun fire. The fighting had become static and entrenched, a condition that strongly favored the defense. This was a rude shock for everyone-in fact, the precise opposite of the tactics taught throughout Europe before the war, which had preached that future combat would be mobile and decisive, and that modern weapons favored the attacker. However, Cadorna still planned to fight a mobile offensive war of a kind that had disappeared from the other fighting fronts. The Italian Army was preparing to fight the Austrians with the same tactics-mass infantry assaults without direct artillery support-that had such horrifying results everywhere in 1914.

There was ample evidence that such methods would lead to disaster. Italy had officers serving as observers at all the fighting fronts who witnessed the growing carnage as well as the complete change in tactics. The army's attaches serving in foreign capitals had ample opportunity to note the rise of trench warfare. Indeed, by May 1915 there was a great deal of information available to Cadorna and his staff which indicated plainly that something had gone dreadfully wrong on the Western front. In December 1914 and February 1915, Lieutenant Colonel Breganzi, military attache in Paris, submitted detailed reports concerning the fighting in France. His first report noted the strength of the defense, the dominant role of artillery and fortifications, the tremendous casualties, and the great expenditure of ammunition; the second concluded that it was impossible for either side to reach a battlefield decision in such conditions. In March. Cadorna received an even more in-depth analysis from Colonel Bongiovanni, attache in Berlin. The perceptive colonel described in great detail all aspects of the new siegelike trench warfare that prevailed everywhere on the Western front: the dominance of artillery and machine guns, the need for infantry-artillery cooperation, the construction of trenches, and the impact of barbed wire and new weapons like hand grenades and mortars. Bongiovanni warned Cadorna that huge amounts of artillery and even greater quantities of shells would be required for any offensive to be successful. The chief of staff simply ignored these and many other revealing and cautionary reports. The stubborn and closed-minded Cadorna believed that the Austrians were weak, indeed collapsing, and that his forces would cross the Isonzo without a prolonged fight. His vague doctrine called for a mass artillery barrage followed by waves of infantry to overwhelm the enemy. Cadorna remained supremely confident of victory; the troops' enthusiasm and high morale would prevail against any merely physical obstacles: "This will depend on their energy, their tenacity, and their conviction of their own material and moral superiority."

In the last days of May, the much reinforced 2nd and 3rd Armies, now on the Austrian border, made their final preparations for battle. The 3rd Army, commanded by the king's handsome and popular cousin, Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia, the Duke of Aosta, had the politically significant mission: securing the western edge of the Carso and marching on Trieste. General Pietro Frugoni's 2nd Army was to take Gorizia and the upper Isonzo. Before the main assault could begin, however, Frugoni's divisions had a very important preliminary task: seizing several important towns and mountains before the Austrians could reinforce their weak garrisons. In the last days of May and the first days of June, the 2nd Army was to cross the upper Isonzo and occupy the town of Karfreit and several strategic peaks, including Mt. Krn and Kolovrat ridge. Frugoni readied his units, particularly his elite Alpini mountain battalions, for the war's opening engagements.

While the 2nd Army made last-minute preparations, Cadorna and his staff waited in Udine for the war to get going. The chief of staff was undoubtedly frustrated that the movement of troops into the battle zone was slower than expected, despite the months of planning. There had been a few minor penetrations across the border soon after the declaration of war, but no major advances yet. And supplies were somewhat delayed. There were six rail lines to the Piave River, but only two went beyond it to the Austrian frontier, so each of Cadorna's field armies had only a single rail line to carry all its munitions and supplies. Still, Cadorna was unconcerned. He had been joined in the field by the king, who had come to observe his army's imminent triumph. Although Vittorio Emanuele III was the titular head of all Italy's fighting forces, he came to the Isonzo as a spectator: Cadorna exercised all real control. Short and unmilitary in bearing, Vittorio Emanuele was an unlikely and unimposing commander in chief. Yet he was an avid military enthusiast; military history was his favorite conversation topic, and he had always preferred military men to civilians. Since coming to the throne in 1900, the king had displayed considerable interest in military affairs, and fully supported the war; he was fond of saying, "Italy was unified not by Dante but by bayonets." Like almost everyone else, he was confident of victory. Yet ironically it was Vittorio Emanuele alone who voiced a degree of caution, or at least realism, as his armies marched into battle. In his order of the day for May 27, the king stated his faith in his troops but admitted that the Austrians would not be as easy to defeat as Cadorna and the generals had imagined: "Favored by the terrain and by careful preparation, they will put up a tough resistance, but your unquenchable dash will, without doubt, overcome them."

Vittorio Emanuele's more sanguine assessment of the fighting soon to engulf the Isonzo valley was possibly due to the recent unwelcome news from the Eastern front. Between Italy's signing of the Treaty of London on April 26 and her official declaration of war on May 23, the fighting in the East had shifted decisively in favor of the Central Powers. Just one day before Italy denounced the Triple Alliance, a combined German-Habsburg offensive opened in Galicia and the Carpathians. The push, spearheaded by the German 11th Army, was intended to take the pressure off the ailing Austrian forces in the Carpathians. The Gorlice-Tarnow offensive soon succeeded beyond all expectations. A dozen veteran German divisions, attacking on a front of less than fifteen miles and well supported by heavy artillery, quickly overran the weak Russian 3rd Army; the disorganized defenders were soon in headlong retreat. By the second week of May, Austrian divisions had fought their way out of the Carpathians, and the Russians were hastily withdrawing eastward. By early June, the Austrians had retaken the fortress of Przemysl, and by the end of the month nearly all of Galicia was again in Habsburg hands. The Russians suffered an unprecedented defeat, losing the better part of a million men. All the Allied gains of the previous autumn had been overturned; the strategic balance on the Eastern front had been altered decisively in favor of the Central Powers. Significantly, Austria now had some breathing room, and the Habsburg Army had been saved from apparent annihilation. The expected Russian victory in the Carpathians, and the resulting Austrian collapse-the root strategic assumptions of Italian entry into the First World War-had evaporated.'

With the mortal Russian threat in the Carpathians lifted, Austria could concentrate more forces on her exposed Italian frontier. Conrad could now shift reserve divisions to the Isonzo to hold off the expected Italian invasion. On May 23, within hours of Italy's declaration of war, the chief of staff ordered the XV and XVI Corps from the quiet Serbian front to the Isonzo. These corps (each of two or more infantry divisions and supporting troops) totaled five understrength divisions, forty veteran mountain battalions in all. Their experience and equipment made them ideal for holding the Alpine terrain on the Isonzo's east bank. The divisions were dispatched to the Littoral on the first available trains in a race to reach the Isonzo before Cadorna launched his great push. Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf also created a new command, the 5th Army, to hold the Isonzo line and to control the defense of the entire Littoral, from Triglav to Pola.

The new army was placed under the command of an experienced leader, General Svetozar Boroevic von Bojna, whose name would be irrevocably associated with the war on the Isonzo. The fifty-eight-year-old Boroevic was a born warrior, the son of a Serbian Grenzer family from Croatia. The Habsburg Army's Grenzer regiments had defended the empire's southern border against the Ottomans since the early sixteenth century. Until its disbandment in 1881, the unique Military Border, as it was known, provided the Habsburgs with their fiercest soldiers, wild Serbian and Croatian irregulars renowned for their loyalty to the emperor and their brutality toward all foes. All men in the border regions could be called out to defend the frontier in an emergency. The Grenzer farmer-warriors lost their unique status in 1881, their local regiments being amalgamated with the regular army. But their spirit lived on in the border region's soldiers, like Svetozar Boroevic. The general was descended from Grenzers on both sides of his family, and his father had fought the Italians in 1859 and 1866. He was a Serb from Croatia's harsh frontier, the region more recently known as the Krajina,'- and he had spent nearly his entire life serving Franz Joseph.

Boroevic, like Cadorna, entered cadet school at age ten, and succeeded at every school he attended. He served as a junior officer in the infantry, fought in several battles during the occupation of Bosnia in 1878, and was decorated for bravery at the capture of Sarajevo. Soon after, he attended the War School, where he excelled, and then entered the elite General Staff. He thereafter divided his assignments between staffs and field commands, performing well in both roles. Before the war Boroevic commanded Croatia's home guard, the 42nd Honved Division, known as the "Devil's Division" for its martial prowess. He distinguished himself as a corps commander in the Galician battles of 1914, and rose to command the 3rd Army during the terrible Carpathian winter. His army suffered appallingly high losses, but Boroevic was considered an effective leader nevertheless. He was physically unimposing, a small, almost petite man, but his appearance belied a stem character; Boroevic had a well earned reputation for determination and toughness, which was sometimes taken out on rival generals and subordinates. On the whole, however, Conrad felt him to be a skilled defensive general, an astute tactician, and a cool-headed officer, able to hold ground at any cost-an ideal commander for the 5th Army.

General Boroevic arrived in Ljubljana on May 27, accompanied by four staff officers from the 3rd Army. The small headquarters began the confusing process of sorting out the tasks before it. Newly arriving units had to be deployed, defenses improved, logistical details arranged, and the new command structure established-all before the Italian blow fell. The result was often chaotic, with reinforcements and supplies going to the wrong units-the headquarters' "Carpathian tempo" was much criticized by the High Command-but the new 5th Army command was in place and functioning by the end of May. By May 28, reinforcements had begun to arrive from the Balkans, the XV Corps on the upper Isonzo and the XVI Corps at Gorizia. Before the June fighting commenced, Boroevic had at his disposal a total of eight divisions. In the week between the Italian declaration of war and the first notable Italian moves, while Cadorna waited to unleash his armies, the strength of the Austrian forces on the Isonzo more than doubled.3

The arrival of fresh troops was not the only movement in the Isonzo valley in late May. Half of Gorizia's residents voluntarily evacuated the city after the Italian declaration of war. Villages on the Carso likewise emptied before the Italians started shelling. On the middle and upper Isonzo, soon to be a battlefield, the entire population was evacuated by the Austrian Army. In a considerable logistical undertaking, some 80,000 Slovenes, most of them women, children, and the elderly, were removed from their villages west of the river and on its east bank. Many were sent to Slovene areas farther from Italy, but thousands of less fortunate Slovenes were collected in refugee centers near Vienna, where they sat out the fighting in crowded barracks, waiting for the war to end.

The entry of Italy into the war had an unanticipated impact on the Austrian war effort. Although the addition of a third front was a strategic liability, the impending Italian invasion gave a tremendous boost to morale. Even among common Austrian soldiers, there existed a sincere sense of outrage against a former ally that had attacked beleaguered Austria on its exposed frontier. Habsburg subjects of all nationalities-including many Italian Austrians-shared this sentiment, so that the war against Italy, the "hereditary enemy," was perceived as necessary and just by all, to an extent that was never true of the conflicts with Serbia and Russia. There was also a tradition of defeating Italians, invoked in Franz Joseph's May 23 manifesto to his troops, issued upon Italy's entry into the war: "The great memories of Novara, Custozza and Lissa, which formed the pride of My Youth, and the spirit of Radetzky, Archduke Albrecht and Tegethoff, which lives on in My Land and Sea forces, guarantee ... that we will also successfully defend the borders of the Monarchy against the South" Enthusiasm for the war ran especially high in German-Austrian and South Slav areas of the empire, which felt justifiably threatened by Rome's expansionist plans. More than 25,000 volunteers from the German Alpine provinces, most of them teenagers, came forward in May to defend Carinthia and the Tyrol against the invader. Emotions among Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs ran equally high, and the outbreak of war with Italy was greeted enthusiastically. Italian designs on the Littoral and Dalmatia were well known, and few South Slavs-including General Boroevic-had any illusions concerning Italian intentions. For the Slovenes in particular, the struggle on the Isonzo was a people's war, a national resistance against the foreign invader. And even the most anti-Habsburg Serbs feared Italian occupation of their territory, and were willing to fight to prevent an Italian invasion of South Slav lands. Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs in Austrian uniform were as determined to hold the Isonzo line as the most ardent Italian volunteers were to redeem Italia irredenta.

In the last days of May, General Frugoni's 2nd Army advanced into the upper Isonzo valley without much of a fight. The Austrian XV Corps decided to make its stand not at the frontier, but beyond the river's east bank, in the high Julian Alps. It was precisely these mountains that the Italians had to take. The Mrzli range roughly paralleled the Isonzo, running ten miles from just north of Tolmein almost to Flitsch. Its four main peaks-Mrzli vrh (4,500 ft.), Km (7,410 ft.), Vrata (6,400 ft.), and Vrsic (6,260 ft.)-dominated the upper Isonzo. Cadorna felt that the Mrzli range, particularly its southern half, had to be cleared of Austrian troops before the general thrust across the Isonzo could start; he did not want any threats emerging from the north during his advance. Frugoni ordered his IV Corps, three divisions strong and reinforced by several Alpini battalions, to cross the Isonzo and take the Mrzli line. On the early morning of May 24, Italian troops crossed the frontier and seized the river town of Karfreit, gaining an important bridgehead across the Isonzo. By June 1, Alpini detachments had likewise taken Vrata and Vrsic, virtually without a fight. However, the IV Corps had not rushed into the Mrzli range soon enough. By the end of May, its southern half was occupied by Austrian mountain troops.

The 3rd Mountain Brigade, a polyglot formation, was rushed from the Serbian border to the upper Isonzo in less than a week. Most of the nationalities of the empire-Germans, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Magyars, Romanianswere represented in its five battalions, all veteran mountain units trained and equipped for fighting in difficult terrain. In the first three days of June, the war began in earnest on the upper Isonzo. On Cadorna's orders, the IV Corps made a maximum effort to take Krn and Mrzli vrh. The Italian 8th Division, supported by elite Bersaglieri, assaulted the positions of the 3rd Mountain Brigade on Mrzli ridge. Boroevic ordered the brigade to hold the ridge at all costs. Despite heroic efforts, the Italians made little headway up the steep mountains and suffered heavy casualties. In just one attack on June 2, the 8th Division's Modena Brigade lost 37 officers and 1,200 men to Austrian machine gun and rifle fire. The reinforcing Salerno Brigade suffered almost as many casualties, and the 12th Bersaglieri Regiment lost more than 400 riflemen, many of whom fell off cliffs. When both sides ran out of ammunition, they resorted to throwing rocks, occasionally with deadly results. By June 4, the 8th Division had advanced only a few hundred paces, and both Krn and Mrzli vrh remained in Austrian hands. Austrian losses of a thousand dead and wounded, most of them in the 3rd Mountain Brigade, were steep, but Mrzli ridge had been held. The 3rd Brigade had followed its demanding orders fully. It had no choice: a battalion commander of the brigade's 80th Regiment was court-martialed for losing Hill 1186 near Mrzli vrh. Boroevic would not tolerate the loss of a foot of ground without a grueling fight.

In the opening engagements, Boroevic's strict policy worked. Italian commanders were frustrated by the lack of progress against such a numerically weak enemy. Some units took their frustrations out on Slovene civilians. Soldiers of the IV Corps destroyed six villages near Mt. Km, alleging that residents had opened fire on Italian units. In a similar incident, the 42nd Regiment, advancing on Mrzli ridge, claimed that Slovene civilians from a nearby village had killed Italian wounded. Military police took all sixty-one men from the village, lined them up, and shot every tenth man as a reprisal; the survivors, as well as the women and children of the village, were rounded up and sent to internment camps in Italy.

General Frugoni was determined to take Krn, called Monte Nero (Black Mountain) by the Italians. He permitted the IV Corps several days' rest before attempting to wrest the peak from the Austrians. On June 16, six battalions of Alpini, led by the Susa and Exilles battalions, executed a predawn surprise attack on the snow-covered, fog-shrouded summit. The Italian troops scaled the 7,410-foot mountain under cover of the moonless night. The defenders, a battalion of the 4th Honved Regiment just arrived from the Carpathians, were caught completely unaware by the lightning assault. Once his men were near the summit, Captain Vincenzo Arbarello, commander of Exilles' 84th Company, ordered his men to drop their packs and charge the Habsburg positions. The Alpini emerged from the thick fog and overwhelmed the dazed Hungarians in hand-to-hand combat, capturing hundreds of defenders. By 4:45 A.M., Mt. Krn was in Italian hands and the survivors of the Hungarian battalion had been taken prisoner. Losses among the attackers were steep: Captain Arbarello was seriously wounded, and all the officers under him also were casualties. Among the dead was Lieutenant Alberto Picco, leader of the company's daring assault group, who was awarded the war's first Gold Medal for Bravery, the highest Italian decoration. The twice-wounded Picco kept fighting until he collapsed, dying in Captain Arbarello's arms. Italy had its first heroic martyr. The Alpini were showered with accolades and medals for their seizing of Krn, including thirty-two Silver and seventy-nine Bronze Medals for Bravery. It was Italy's first triumph of the war. The capture of Monte Nero gave Italy an early and inex-

pensive conquest; no one doubted there would be many such victories to follow. An Alpini veteran of the operation gave the army the first of many romantic war songs. It began:

Mt. Krn would remain in Italian hands until the end of the Isonzo fighting. Its quick capture gave the Italian military and people a dangerously unwarranted sense of optimism.

The Austrian 50th Division occupied Mt. Batognica, the neighboring peak a half-mile southeast of Krn. The Italians had seized Vrsic, Vrata, and Krn, but they failed to take Mrzli ridge. In particular, Austrian troops still held Mrzli vrh and the southern third of the ridge. The potential threat to the 2nd Army's advance remained. Even so, Frugoni abandoned the costly efforts the IV Corps on the upper Isonzo in favor of a crossing on the central Isonzo. At the village of Plava, fourteen miles downstream from Mrzli vrh, the Isonzo turns west, and then rapidly east again, forming a bulge. At the center of the bulge is a small mountain, Hill 383 (1,260 ft.), overlooking the town and the river. The Plava bridgehead represented the most direct path to the strategic Bainsizza plateau, as well as the key to Mt. Santo and Mt. Sabotino, the double "gate" of the river just north of Gorizia. The Italians had to take Hill 383, "the key to Gorizia," before they could advance on Gorizia or the Bainsizza. Frugoni gave Lieutenant General Gustavo Reisoli's II Corps the task of crossing the Isonzo at Plava and seizing the hill. Reisoli assigned two of his three divisions to the mission. The 3rd Division crossed the frontier and took the village of Plava without a fight, and on the evening of June 3, under the cover of darkness, Italian engineers built a pontoon bridge across the river to support the impending attack. The 3rd Division prepared its infantry and artillery for the assault. Hill 383's Austrian defenders could only watch and wait.

The six-mile Isonzo sector from Plava to Mt. Santo was held by troops of the 1st Mountain Brigade, recently rushed to the Isonzo from the Balkans. Its battalions were diverse-Si lesian, Viennese, Bohemian, and two Transylvanianbut filled with experienced mountain fighters. Its commander, Major General Guido Novak von Arienti, had only recently returned to duty after a long convalescence: he had been wounded in the head while leading the brigade in the Serbian campaign. The fifty-six-year-old Novak, aged for a brigade commander, had considerable experience commanding Alpine units, and was an effective leader of men, having spent his entire career with the infantry. He was a pure line officer, not a desk-bound General Staff type. His brigade was outnumbered six to one, and had only two mountain artillery batteries to support it, but Novak was confident that his troops would hold Hill 383 no matter what the Italians threw against them.

On the evening of June 9, two battalions of the 3rd Division's Ravenna Brigade crossed the Isonzo in boats, under the cover of artillery fire from fifty guns. They established a bridgehead on the east bank and marched up the forested hill, garrisoned by only a single entrenched Austrian rifle company with 200 men. The Italian assault soon faltered in the face of unexpectedly accurate rifle and machine gun fire, and the brigade retired for the night. The next day, June 10, the Ravenna Brigade prepared to attack the hill again. After an intense artillery bombardment, the whole 6,000-man brigade arose from its positions at the base of Hill 383 at 9:30 P.M. as the sun disappeared for the night. The Austrian defenders, now a battalion strong, raised their heads from their trenches as the shelling lifted. Through the dust and clouds of smoke unleashed by the Italian bombardment, they saw the entire 37th and 38th Regiments marching up the hill in waves, yelling the traditional Italian battle cry, "Avanti Savoia!"4 Machine gun nests, undamaged by the bombardment, opened up on the advancing ranks of Italian infantry, and the stunned Ravenna Brigade quickly broke and fled back to their positions at the river's edge.

The next day, while Novak's brigade was repairing its shell-damaged trenches, the 3rd Division was readying itself for another assault on Hill 383. The Ravenna Brigade received replacements to make good its losses of the last two attempts, and the Forli Brigade was brought forward to reinforce the battered 37th and 38th Regiments. On the morning of June 12 the Italian guns opened up again, and the hill's Austrian defenders took cover. Throughout the day, the six battalions of the Ravenna Brigade charged up the hill no less than seven times. Austrian machine guns took their toll of infantry advancing up 383's now bare hillsides. Each attack brought the Italians closer to the summit, but the capture of the hill eluded them. The Ravenna Brigade's losses that day were 476 dead and wounded in the 37th Regiment and 361 in the 38th. The 3rd Division, now thoroughly exhausted by futile assaults, was taken out of the line. Among its survivors, Hill 383 had earned the title la collina della morte-"the hill of death"

The foot soldiers of Novak's 1st Mountain Brigade were just as weary after several days' hard fighting. The defending units were so depleted that a fresh battalion of the 22nd Regiment was sent to hold the summit of Hill 383, now surrounded by hundreds of unburied Italian corpses. Novak told the soldiers, just arrived from the Serbian front, that the hill had to be held at any price. The 22nd Regiment's infantrymen were Croats and Serbs from Dalmatia. For them, this was a personal tight: their home province had been promised to Italy by the Treaty of London. Indeed, their battalion commander, Major Stanko Turudja, was a Dalmatian Serb. He told his men before battle that they were defending not just a hill on the Isonzo, but "Slav earth" On the morning of June 16, the Italian II Corps tried to take it from them. The fresh 33rd Division was committed to battle. Three regiments from the Spezia and Forli Brigades went over the top, charging across the short distance between the Italian positions and the summit. There was little artillery support for the attack-both sides were now too close together, and Italian batteries would be more likely to kill their own troops than the enemy. The dug-in Dalmatians opened tire with rifles and machine guns at point-blank range, their well aimed rounds ripping through the advancing waves of infantry. Through sheer courage, the Italians reached the summit and forced the 22nd out of its positions. The Italians and Dalmatians fought hand to hand with knives and bayonets until the outnumbered defenders were forced to withdraw down the hill's east face to regroup. The 43rd Regiment had taken the summit. Soldiers of its 2nd Battalion raised the Italian tricolor, and officers and men embraced each other, crying for joy and for all the men who had died to raise the flag on Hill 383. The cost of the final assault on the hill had been high: 1,307 casualties, including 480 dead. Yet the 33rd Division's triumph would be short-lived. In the early hours of June 17, Turudja's 2nd Battalion of the 22nd Regiment regrouped and attacked the Italian-held trenches at the hill's summit. The Dalmatians surprised the sleeping soldiers of the 43rd Regiment, who were enjoying a well deserved rest. The rudely awakened Italians quickly retreated down the hill's west face. By dawn, the 33rd Division had reestablished its positions halfway down the hillside, and Hill 383 again belonged to Novak's 1st Mountain Brigade. The Dalmatians had retaken the summit, the piece of "Slav earth" they had been ordered to hold at all costs, losing 433 officers and men, half their strength.

On June 17, Frugoni ordered the attacks at Plava suspended. Attempts by the II Corps to take and hold Hill 383 had proved too costly, and further assaults would have to wait. This was welcome news for the hill's Austrian defenders, too. The cost of the weeklong tug of war had been exorbitant for both sides. Novak's brigade had lost 2,577 soldiers killed, wounded, and missing in its defense of the Plava bridgehead. Italian losses were probably three times as many. Reisoli's II Corps was severely battered in the fight for Hill 383; a later official Italian account of the initial offensive at Plava would term it merely "the first holocaust." One of the prisoners taken in the Dalmatian counterattack was a reserve second lieutenant, Giovanni Paradotto, a cavalry ordnance officer and member of Italy's parliament. Paradotto revealed that his army's losses were exceptionally high, and that the medical service was appallingly bad. The Italian medical corps was short of everything-doctors, medicines, bandagesand wounded soldiers frequently went untreated. Morale was understandably quite low, according to the captured lieutenant. The first sustained battle for the II Corps, indeed for the whole Italian Army, was a bruising shock. The Austrian 1st Mountain Brigade at least had a victory to justify its suffering: badly outnumbered, it had held Hill 383 against all comers. It had prevented an Italian breakthrough at a decisive point. Novak was rewarded for his energetic and determined leadership. He was presented the Knight's Cross of the Order of Maria Theresia, the highest Habsburg decoration, the first to be awarded on the Italian front.

The 2nd Army's attempts to advance elsewhere on the Isonzo had proved no more profitable than at Plava. The untested VI Corps, facing Gorizia, crossed the Austrian frontier in early June and made several probing attacks in the hills in front of the city. Its 11th and 12th Divisions attempted to break through, but were bloodily repulsed by Dalmatian battalions of the 5th Mountain Brigade. In just one abortive advance on June 10, the Italian 35th Regiment lost 639 soldiers. An effort by the 4th Division to seize Mt. Sabotino was equally unsuccessful. Farther south, the Duke of Aosta's 3rd Army crossed the lower Isonzo without much resistance, its divisions advancing to the edge of the Carso, where Austrian regiments were dug in. They advanced no farther before Cadorna gave the official order to launch his great offensive. By June 20, the Italian Army was ready to cross the Isonzo in strength. Three weeks of preliminary fighting to better position the 2nd Army for its role in the coming offensive had yielded little. They demonstrated only that dislodging well entrenched Austrian units would be difficult and costly. Cadorna's forces admitted to losing 11,000 soldiers in this battle before the battle; the true figure was certainly far higher, perhaps twice as many. Austrian casualties, difficult to determine precisely, amounted to at least 5,000. A month after Italy's declaration of war, Cadorna was ready to start his long-awaited drive across the Isonzo.

On June 21 Cadorna finally issued the formal orders for the general advance toward Gorizia and Trieste, thus beginning the First Battle of the Isonzo. The month's delay in starting the offensive had given the Austrians vital time to reinforce the Isonzo line with men and entrenchments. Cadorna remained typically unconcerned. His main blow was to fall in the Gorizia sector, with major supporting attacks at Plava and on the Carso. He felt that Gorizia had to be secured before his forces could drive on Trieste. Frugoni's 2nd Army was thus assigned the decisive mission. The 2nd Army, totaling 160 infantry battalions supported by 136 artillery batteries, had been strongly reinforced for the offensive. The main effort was in the hands of the VI Corps, tour divisions strong, which was ordered to seize the hills before Gorizia, secure the west bank, and then cross the river to take the city. The battered II Corps was to renew its attacks on Hill 383, secure the Plava bridgehead, then advance southeast toward Mt. Santo. In the upper Isonzo valley, the IV Corps, bolstered by numerous Alpini and Bersaglieri battalions, was ordered to seize the strategic Tolmein bridgehead. On the lower Isonzo, the Duke of Aosta's 3rd Army, sixty-five battalions and seventy-six batteries strong, was to support Frugoni's drive by occupying the western edge of the Carso, the DoberdO plateau. In particular, the 3rd Army was supposed to seize the plateau's northern edge, which overlooked Gorizia. Monte San Michele, 900 feet high, was the highest hill in the sector, and securing it was the task of the XI Corps. The neighboring X Corps, just arrived on the Isonzo, was ordered to occupy the center of the plateau's western edge. Farther down the river, on the Adriatic coast, the VII Corps was assigned the mission of seizing several hills on the plateau's southern flank. Cadorna kept the XIV Corps, two reinforced divisions, as a general reserve to exploit the success of the initial attacks. His plan was straightforward, slow, and methodical. He planned to crush the Austrian defenses with a massive weeklong artillery barrage before he launched the infantry offensive. Italian foot soldiers would then merely have to occupy the shattered Habsburg trenches.

The Austrian troops holding those trenches expected that the long-awaited major Italian effort would start any day. Despite their success holding off the Italians at Plava, there was little cause for optimism. On the eve of the First Battle of the Isonzo, the 5th Army possessed only one-third of the infantry battalions and three-fifths of the artillery batteries of Cadorna's forces arrayed against it. By the numbers, the situation was highly unfavorable, particularly considering the Austrians' chronic shortage of replacements. Cadorna could rebuild his depleted regiments after every failed assault, but Boroevic had only a handful of replacement battalions at his disposal to replenish his units. There was virtually no heavy artillery available to support the infantry, and Boroevic's shell reserve for all calibers was alarmingly low, far lower than Cadorna's. The 5th Army could not sustain a prolonged defense of the Isonzo line. The determination of the Austrian infantry holding the forward trenches would therefore be the decisive factor.

By late June the riflemen occupying the forward trenches were well entrenched and prepared for the coming Italian onslaught. They did not have enough machine guns and artillery to support them, to be sure, but their weapons were well positioned, and everywhere they held the high ground. Austrian positions literally looked down on the Italian avenues of advance. The troops were confident that they would exact a high price from the attackers. The vital Gorizia sector, the centerpiece of Boroevic's defenses, was held by the 58th Infantry Division, another recent arrival from the Balkans. The 58th, raised only in March, was a mountain formation whose soldiers were almost all Dalmatians. The Croats and Serbs of the division were as determined to defend South Slav land as their kinsmen at Plava had been. Although the 58th was not particularly well equipped-half its artillery was obsolete, much of it quite antiquated-it had good leadership. Its two brigadiers were experienced leaders, and the divisional commander was an outstanding officer. Major General Erwin Zeidler was not a typical Austrian general. He was not from a military family, and he was neither an infantryman nor a caval ryman, nor even a gunner. The fifty-year-old Zeidler had spent his career in the engineers, a studious branch that did not produce many generals. He enjoyed an excellent reputation as a thorough, efficient officer, and was decorated before the war for his excellent construction of fortifications in Bosnia and the Tyrol, experience that would prove invaluable on the Isonzo. Zeidler's first major troop command was in the Serbian campaign, where he led a Croatian division. In the spring of 1915, he was chosen to lead the newly raised 58th Division, and he led it to the Isonzo in late May, where it would remain for the next twenty-nine months and twelve battles.

The terrain of the 58th Division's seven-mile defensive sector extended from Mt. Santo to the Vipacco River. The all-important four-and-a-half-mile front on the Isonzo's west bank was more hilly than mountainous; it included two notable hills, Oslavia and Podgora; the town of Pevma; and, at its northern edge, Mt. Sabotino, the 2,010-foot "gate" of the Isonzo. All these features had to be held to ensure the integrity of the defensive line. Zeidler did everything he could to prepare his division for the coming battle. He persuaded Boroevic to give him seven construction companies, more than 1,500 men, to help his troops dig positions. Although building materials were in short supply, the work crews made quick progress; the general personally oversaw the construction of the division's entrenchments. By late June, the 58th's trenches, covering all the hills and especially Mt. Sabotino, were between five and six feet deep, reinforced with wood, and protected by sandbags. Zeidler had replicated the Western front on the Isonzo. His infantry would be shielded from the worst effects of the imminent Italian bombardment.

The artillery of the 3rd Army opened fire in the early morning hours of June 23, and the guns of Frugoni's 2nd joined the bombardment in the afternoon. The major target areas were the Gorizia bridgehead, the Plava sector, and the western edge of the Doberd6 plateau. The shelling was heavy but essentially random; Italian batteries were not firing at specific targets, but instead were wreaking general havoc on Austrian positions. The barrage continued steadily all day, tapering off in the evening. There were few infantry actions on the first day, only occasional Italian patrols advancing temporarily to observe the shelling. Austrian positions were hit hard by the bombardment on June 23, but the level of destruction was still relatively low. The next day's barrage was far heavier, however. One of the first areas to be struck was an Austrian observation post on Mt. Santo, overlooking Gorizia. At the summit of the 2,250-foot-high mountain was a medieval monastery. Mt. Santo-called Sveta Gora (Holy Mountain) by the Slovene natives-had been a pilgrimage site for five centuries, and the monastery dated to the 1540s. Sveta Gora was a Slovene national treasure, known for its late Gothic basilica and a portrait of the Virgin Mary that had rested there since 1544. On the morning of June 24, Italian shells exploded near the summit, throwing up fiery clouds of smoke around the basilica. There was barely enough time for the Franciscan brothers to escape down the mountain, taking their holy portrait with them. The Virgin's image was saved and moved to Ljubljana for the duration of the war. But shells ripped through the monastery, destroying the basilica, then the pilgrims' guest houses. By nightfall, Sveta Gora lay in ruins. For the Slovenes, the loss of the monastery was a national tragedy-further proof, if any were needed, that the invading Italians had to be resisted at any price. The poet Simon Gregorcic, a native of the Isonzo valley, expressed his people's sorrow in "Temple":

A flock of pilgrims rushed to her, To seek the peace and comfort the world cannot give. But the church is no more! The walls, o cruel godless ones, they have been destroyed; No tower to see, no bells to hear, Neither hymns nor the voices of holy prayers.

The bombardment continued for five more days, sometimes through the night. Each day, more Austrian soldiers were killed or wounded, and their positions were gradually weakened. Movement to and from the front lines was dangerous, but the troops in well built trenches, notably Zeidler's Dalmatians, were reasonably safe. The infantry suffered from a lack of sleep and a shortage of food and supplies, but their positions were not yet in danger.

Cadorna ordered a series of attacks to precede the major push, scheduled for June 30. The Italians made halfhearted attempts to advance on the western edge of the Carso and before Gorizia, but their major effort, as before, was at Plava. The 33rd Division, replenished since the June 16-17 battle, was sent up Hill 383 again. A battalion of Novak's mountain troops still held the summit. On June 24, the 33rd sent its infantry up the north face of the hill eight times, but made no progress. Losses were very heavy, especially among the officers. The following day the II Corps renewed its attack, this time in the middle of a rainstorm, with even deadlier results. Soldiers of the 33rd Division retreated to their dugouts at the base of the hill. On June 26, the Italians attempted to take the summit again, but the exhausted assault regiments gained no ground in the face of concentrated machine gun tire. Hill 383 was still firmly in Austrian hands.

Cadorna's great offensive began in earnest on the morning of June 30. After seven days' artillery preparation, the 2nd and 3rd Armies launched their all-out assaults to breach the Isonzo line. Frugoni's troops started with an infantry attack on Zeidler's 58th Division by the four divisions of the VI Corps. The Dalmatians were tired from a lack of sleep, but their trenches were still intact after the week's shelling and their machine guns were targeted on Italian positions. When regiments emerged from their trenches and began to advance, their lead companies were cut down by torrents of fire from Austrian Schwarzlose machine guns. Italian attempts to take Mt. Sabotino and Podgora soon faltered bloodily and had to be suspended. The 2nd Army had no better fortune on the upper Isonzo. There the IV Corps attempted to take the town of Tolmein and cross the Isonzo to seize the town of St. Luzia, the Austrian railhead for the upper valley. The 7th Division advanced on Tolmein, but was painfully repulsed by Hungarian troops of the 50th Division. A few miles upstream, the 8th Division tried to take Mrzli vrh and expand eastward from its positions on Mt. Km, but Croatian troops prevented the Alpini from breaking out of Krn's summit. Renewed Italian efforts were fought off with grenades and even stones. In all, the 8th Division managed to advance a thousand feet deeper into the high Julian Alps, but it took none of its assigned objectives. By July 4, the 2nd Army's drives were thoroughly halted, having made no notable progress.

The Duke of Aosta's 3rd Army had done somewhat better on the Carso. Repeated attacks by the X Corps on the western edge of the plateau around the town of Redipuglia, a mile east of the Isonzo, achieved minor gains. A two-division attack on July 2 at the town of Sagrado failed, but the defending 93rd Division was forced to yield 300 feet of the Carso at Redipuglia. The next day, the X and XI Corps attempted to push the 93rd even farther back at Redipuglia, to exploit the previous day's advance, but with terrible results. The Austrians surprised the Italians with a five-battalion counterattack that pushed the Italians off the Carso entirely. The disorderly retreat of the X and XI Corps was witnessed by King Vittorio Emanuele, who left his headquarters at Udine to see Cadorna's great battle for himself. He observed his troops' disaster through binoculars from a church tower in the town of Turriaco, three miles west of the Carso. The 3rd Army renewed its offensive on July 4, and the Italians fought their way 200 feet back onto the plateau at Redipuglia. At the plateau's northern edge, the 21st Division advanced up Mt. San Michele at 2 P.M. The Italians were pushed off the hill after a bruising two-hour melee that left both sides exhausted. By the evening of July 4, the tired 3rd Army was stalled on the edge of the Doberdo plateau.

Cadorna was furious with his subordinates. He never accepted less than success from those under him, and he failed to see why his armies had not yet pushed the Austrians out of Gorizia and the Carso. He of course did not travel to the front lines to discover why his carefully planned offensive had bogged down so disastrously. Instead, Cadorna strongly reproached Frugoni and his 2nd Army for their poor performance, claiming that their supporting attacks had been halfhearted. He demanded victory, and ordered both his armies to try again the following day. The exhausted Italian infantrymen, the carelessly used fanti, rested for the night. They would need all their strength to push the Austrians out of their trenches.

Boroevic's foot soldiers were no less exhausted. Days of almost uninterrupted combat, particularly on the Carso, had left his regiments weak and weary. They had endured a week of shelling followed by a week of infantry assaults. They were tired, hungry, and thirsty-it was difficult to get supplies to the forward trenches in the midst of battle. But Boroevic had no reserves left, and no replacements. The understrength battalions in the front line would have to hold out. Boroevic was in his own way as obstinate as Cadorna. The commander of the 5th Army felt that not a single position should be surrendered without a fight to the finish, and that any lost trenches would have to be recaptured. Even the insignificant Italian gains at Redipuglia would have to be overturned. The distance to Trieste-less than twenty miles from the western edge of the Carso-was so short that every foot of the battlefield counted. Thus there would be no relief for the infantrymen facing the Italians.

July 5 was the high-water mark of the First Battle. Opposite Gorizia and on the Carso, Cadorna's divisions advanced recklessly on Austrian trench lines. The 2nd Army's VI Corps tried again to push Zeidler's Dalmatians off the Isonzo's hilly west bank. On the heels of a predawn barrage, four and a half divisions fixed bayonets and charged Austrian positions along the entire length of the 58th Division's four-and-a-half-mile front-two Italian infantrymen per foot. Italian officers urged their men forward in dense columns, sometimes at gunpoint. Outnumbered more than six to one, the Dalmatians fired their machine guns and rifles into the screaming waves of onrushing farm. At such close ranges, Zeidler's gunners could not miss. The steady fire of the Austrian machine guns drowned out the cries of "Avanti Savoia!" and the screams of the dying and wounded. The mass attack crumbled before it reached the main Austrian positions at Mt. Sabotino, Podgora, and Oslavia. Inspired by their battle cry "Napred! Na 11oZ!"5 the Dalmatians counterattacked, pushing the Italians back to their own positions in disarray. Before they were forced to fall back, troops of the Re and Casale Brigades got close enough to the river to catch a glimpse of Gorizia; they were the first Italian troops to see the City of Violets. This was as close as Cadorna's men came to taking Gorizia. Zeidler's determined regiments had held their ground. Their well built trenches were surrounded by mounds of Italian corpses. The 29th Division, attacking the southern end of the 58th's trenches, lost 4,000 dead and wounded. The Dalmatians' losses were by no means light. Most of the Austrian casualties were suffered by the 37th Rifle Regiment, which bore the brunt of the defense. Its 2nd Battalion lost over 500 men, two-thirds of its strength, on July 5. The Dalmatians had not lost a single position to the enemy.

The 3rd Army renewed its Carso offensive with vigor on July 5. At 8 A.M., the heavily reinforced X Corps tried to push the Austrians away from Redipuglia. They encountered not the expected 93rd Division, its recent nemesis, but Magyar infantry of the 17th Honved Regiment, a unit just arrived from the Carpathians via Carinthia. The outnumbered Hungarians dueled with the Italians for Redipuglia through the day. Casualties on both sides were heavy, but by the evening the town of Redipuglia was again Austrian. Instead of breaking out of its foothold on the Carso, the X Corps had been evicted from its hard-won starting positions. Both the Italians and the Hungarians were utterly exhausted, and neither army attempted to renew the fighting the next morning. There were minor abortive Italian attacks before Gorizia and at Mt. Krn on July 6, but in general the Isonzo front remained quiet. July 7 was the first day of inactivity for either army in several weeks, and by the evening it was clear that the First Battle was at an end. Cadorna had suspended his offensive.

The Italians' "walk to Vienna" had ended in disaster. Cadorna's armies remained essentially where they had been when the battle started. His superiority in men and guns had availed him little. The Isonzo's outnumbered and outgunned defenders had stopped the 2nd and 3rd Armies in their tracks. The Austrian advantages of terrain and battle experience, combined with raw courage, had proved decisive. Cadorna's novice regiments had been brutally repulsed on the Isonzo. Cadorna, of course, did not accept any responsibility for the catastrophe, but the fault was mostly his. His blindness to the realities of the modern battlefield doomed his armies to tight with men against steel and fire. Enthusiasm and courage weighed little against well entrenched machine guns. Perhaps even more damaging was Cadorna's inexcusable monthlong delay before initiating his great offensive. This gave the Austrians four decisive weeks to transform their Isonzo line into an impressive fortification. As a result, after two weeks of shelling and attacking, the Italian Army had taken only two insignificant pieces of the Carso from the Austrians: a thin slice of the plateau near Sagrado, and two villages south of Redipuglia. Neither advance was more than a few hundred paces.

The price of this inconsequential territory was far too high. Neither army admitted the full extent of its losses-Cadorna in particular was regularly fraudulent in his accounting of his casualties-but the numbers of dead and wounded on both sides can be reliably estimated. The Italians admitted to 13,500 casualties, and the Austrians conceded a loss of 10,000. The true Austrian figure was probably at least twice the official count; certainly Italy's losses amounted to no less than 30,000. In any case, the cream of the 2nd and 3rd Armies, the trained officers and men of Cadorna's standing army, fell on the Isonzo in June and early July. For every one who died, another was put out of action permanently. The unexpected defeat also had a serious impact on Italian morale. Instead of marching on to Vienna, as everyone had confidently believed, by the end of the First Battle of the Isonzo it was evident that the Italians would be in the valley for some time to come, and that pushing the Austrians out of their positions would be very costly.

The Austrians naturally prided themselves on their success. Against expectations, the 5th Army had won its first battle. Even more remarkably, during the entire First Battle of the Isonzo it had not lost a single noteworthy position to the enemy. Boroevic's unbending doctrine had prevailed. The Austrians fighting under Boroevic had shown themselves to be determined and brave soldiers. They gave the hard-pressed empire a badly needed victory. Austria had enjoyed few battlefield successes in the war, and even defensive triumphs were important for morale. Still, the polyglot regiments of the 5th Army were tired, and there were few replacements available to refill the ranks of Boroevic's depleted divisions. The occasional replacement battalion arriving on the Isonzo invariably included more teenagers, middle-aged fathers, and returning wounded than well trained, fit men. The lack of reserves was mourned by generals at all levels. Certainly the Italians' weakness offered a tempting target, but there were no spare divisions available. Defending the Isonzo had stretched the army to its limits. Conrad said ruefully as the First Battle came to a close, "If only we had four divisions for a counterattack, the hounds would run to the Tagliamento River," thirty miles west of the Isonzo. Cadorna's wounded armies were unquestionably unprepared for defense, but weakened Austria could as yet offer no offensive threat. Besides, the 5th Army was busy enough preparing for the next Italian offensive, which was sure to come.