FOUR
The Italian Army was surprised by the failure of Luigi Cadorna's offensive, and shocked by the losses inflicted by the outnumbered Austrians. For the soldiers at the front, the disappointment soon led to disillusionment. Morale remained high in many units, especially those not yet committed to battle, but in the bloodied regiments of the 2nd and 3rd Armies the expectation of a quick victory had evaporated. Politicians in Rome might still speak of resuming the "walk to Vienna," but the riflemen in the line knew better. The fanti holding the forward trenches all along the Isonzo had only more grueling attacks to look forward to. They had learned at a terrible cost that the Austrians were not going to be easy to defeat. The peasants who filled the ranks of Cadorna's legions were tough, hardy soldiers, men accustomed to a harsh, demanding life. Yet the prospect of more offensives worried even the most stoic Italian infantry. The conditions of service in the Italian Army were poor: abysmally low pay, inadequate rations, and few diversions for troops when not in the line. The demanding life of the divisions on the Isonzo took its toll on the soldiers' morale, and destroyed any naive enthusiasm. The blistering midsummer heat wore further on the soldiers' fighting spirit. Still, Cadorna's armies remained steadfastly loyal and willing to carry out the orders of the chief of staff.
In the two weeks after the First Battle died away, the frontline regiments were busy absorbing replacements, improving their positions, and readying for the inevitable second offensive. Italy still had enormous manpower reserves, so there was no difficulty rebuilding shattered regiments. The army called up a few more classes of reservists, and Cadorna's armies were again up to strength. Units absorbed reservists, as well as a smattering of teenaged volunteers and lightly wounded soldiers returning to the front. Hundreds of freshly commissioned lieutenants arrived to take the places of those already fallen on the Isonzo. The regiments rested during the day, when possible, and worked at night to build better entrenchments, to provide more protection against the occasional Austrian shell. Otherwise the infantry waited anxiously for the order to go on the offensive again.
Cadorna did not give his soldiers long to wait. He was anxious to achieve the breakthrough that had eluded him. He gave little thought to the condition of his armies or to the morale of his fighting men. Cadorna remained uninterested in how his regiments were faring; like too many Italian officers, his attitude toward the mostly peasant fanti was dismissive. He showed little concern for his soldiers' living conditions, rations, or water supply even in the scorching summer heat. He never visited the front lines to see how his armies were holding up under the strains of war. To Cadorna, the Italian infantry existed only to win his great battle. The soldiers' suffering, though perhaps regrettable, was the natural by-product of war. He had no desire to see it for himself.
Keeping the army motivated to fight and conquer was always a major concern for Cadorna. He believed at the outset that Italy was "morally unprepared for war"; like many Italians-and not just generals and conservatives- Cadorna felt that chronic indiscipline was the "old evil" of the Italian race.' For Cadorna, the indomitable individualism of the Italian spirit-to him, slackness and weakness-was as much the enemy as the Austrians were; ordinary methods of maintaining morale would not work. Therefore the fighting spirit needed to achieve victory was instilled through fear, as in the eighteenth century, when infantrymen advanced because they were more afraid of their own officers than of the enemy. Cadorna was never squeamish about stern disciplinary measures, even terror. Indeed, he considered them vitally necessary to win his war. He spoke forthrightly about "the usual discipline of persuasion which is needed in Italy," and he meant what he said. As the count explained to a journalist, "The country was undisciplined, and so was the army; we have taken care of the problem by the usual and proper means, the shooting of the insubordinates to prevent the sparks from turning into a fire" Units that failed to advance far enough were dealt with harshly; for soldiers showing insufficient courage, there was always the firing squad.
The High Command was hardly more lenient with officers who failed to meet Cadorna's exacting standards. He relentlessly dismissed commanders whose units had not advanced as far as he considered necessary. In the face of Austrian machine guns, moving units forward was often impossible at any cost, but Cadorna remained uninterested in tactical realities. He was concerned only with battlefield success. His siluramento (torpedoing) of subordinates began just after the end of the First Battle. He abruptly fired commanders of battal ions, regiments, divisions, even army corps. The discarded career officers were sent to the rear to sit out the fighting. In the first two months of the war, Cadorna dismissed twenty-seven generals, as well as uncounted more junior officers, and the torpedoing continued unabated for the next twenty-seven months.
Cadorna was accountable to no one, not even to the king. Vittorio Emanuele inevitably deferred to his chief of staff's presumably superior judgment in military matters, and never dared to challenge his orders. Cadorna tolerated no dissent among his staff, and was rigidly closed to any suggestions. A drive across the Isonzo remained the only course of action, despite the catastrophic failure of the First Battle. Certainly he dismissed the politicians out of hand. Cadorna was inflexibly hostile to all politicians, regardless of political stripe. He was especially contemptuous of Socialists and others on the Left whom Cadorna regarded as traitors, but he basically hated the entire political class. In Cadorna's thinking, Rome was at least as much the enemy as Vienna, and he paid no attention to the numerous questions raised by politicians about his strategy and tactics. Once, before a visiting Frenchman, Cadorna ripped up a note from Prime Minister Antonio Salandra to demonstrate his contempt for politicians. The only voice that Cadorna listened to was God's. A devout Catholic, he attended Mass daily, and his personal chaplain never left his side. To Cadorna, the road to victory led through the Isonzo valley as surely as the way of Christ led to the cross. His faith in another offensive appeared as unshakable as his faith in the Holy Trinity.
This irrational belief ignored the obvious and growing strength of the Austrian defenses on the Isonzo. Yet Cadorna continued to maintain that more determined attacks would crack the Austrian line. With more valorous assaults supported by more artillery, the road to Trieste would be forced open. He was ready to renew his offensive on July 18, only eleven days after the end of the First Battle. This time, the brunt of the push would be borne by the 3rd Army. Cadorna had decided that before he could conquer Gorizia, the north edge of the Carso, particularly Mt. San Michele, would have to be taken first. Only then could the 2nd Army successfully restart its drive on Gorizia. To achieve this, the Duke of Aosta was given all available reserves of men and munitions. His 3rd Army, seven divisions strong, was to clear the western edge of the Doberdo plateau of Austrian troops. The main effort was in the hands of the XI Corps, whose three divisions were aimed at Mt. San Michele. Further down the Isonzo, the the VII Corps was to advance past Redipuglia and take Hill 118, Mt. Sei Busi, which overlooked the south-central Carso and the river as it neared the Adriatic. Between the two attacking army corps, X Corps was to make supporting attacks. The Duke of Aosta had a considerable reserve of two infantry and three cavalry divisions at his disposal to reinforce his success on the plateau. General Pietro Frugoni's 2nd Army was relegated to a secondary, supporting role in the Second Battle. The three divisions of the VI Corps were to attack Austrian positions before Gorizia, the II Corps was to assault the Isonzo line at Plava, and the IV Corps was to renew its efforts on the upper Isonzo. Cadorna had eighteen divisions and 900 guns to break through the Austrian defenses. He expected that heavy shelling, to begin July 18, would so weaken Boroevic's defenses on the Carso that the 3rd Army would be able to achieve the strategic victory he had been denied in June and early July.
The Austrian infantry manning the Isonzo defenses knew another offensive was coming. There were signs of enemy movement everywhere, and Italy was surely not going to abandon its attempt to seize Italia irredenta after a single failed effort, no matter how costly. So the soldiers in the front lines rested when they could, and spent most of their time improving their trenches. Italian artillery had caused most of the Austrian casualties in the First Battle, and Cadorna was sure to have more, not fewer, guns for his next try. Everywhere Austrian infantrymen, assisted by sappers, worked frantically to deepen, widen, and strengthen their positions. On the Carso, this was especially difficult because the limestone proved a formidable obstacle to digging deeper trenches. The ideal defense against Italian artillery was the kaverne, a position blasted ten to fifteen feet into the rock, which was invulnerable to direct hits from even the heaviest shells, none of which could penetrate more than five feet of limestone. Considerable quantities of explosives, building materials, and man-hours were required to construct kavernen, including prolonged work by hard-pressed engineering detachments, in addition to intensive labor by the infantry, who did much of the digging and preparation. Thus, despite heroic building efforts, by July 18 there were insufficient kavernen even for troops in forward positions. Most Austrian frontline defenses on the Doberdo plateau were simply normal trenches hacked into the stone, reinforced by many sandbags, occasionally protected by steel shields, and surrounded by barbed wire and "Spanish riders."2 In addition to command emplacements and communication and supply trenches, the trench system included secondary trenches and foxholes immediately behind the front line for infantry reserves, held back to provide badly needed reinforcements at decisive moments to turn back Italian assaults.
The overworked Austrian engineers were equally invaluable for other important tasks. Among these was the impressive civil engineering effort required to keep the troops on the Carso supplied with fresh water. There was little fresh water available on the plateau, and though soldiers went to great lengths to collect rain water, virtually all the water required by frontline infantry had to be piped to them. Nor could the almost barren plateau provide the troops with the considerable quantity of wood required for the construction of sturdy positions, not to mention for cooking and heating, so the engineers also had to keep the fighting units supplied with freshly cut timber. Additionally, the rough terrain and shortage of decent roads made resupply difficult; and, in the opposite direction, casualty evacuation was a prolonged, complicated process frequently in volving airborne stretchers, propelled by ropes and pulleys. So the engineers were busy building more roads, too. The almost two-week pause between Italian offensives was used to good effect by Austrian infantry and engineers, but would their defensive preparations prove sufficient to keep the Italians at bay?
The morale of the defending Austrians remained high, despite the heavy casualties incurred during the First Battle. Battalions holding the Isonzo line absorbed what replacements were available, and prepared themselves for the next enemy onslaught. The infantrymen remained convinced of the justice of their cause, and the German-Austrians and South Slavs in particular were steadfastly determined to repulse the coming Italian offensive. Their fighting spirit flourished, undulled by the losses of the recent battle. The riflemen holding the trenches just opposite the Italians, in many cases less than a hundred paces away, knew the odds were against them. Yet they were ready to resist the Italians with all their strength. The mostly peasant infantry's will to fight was bolstered by religious faith and devotion to the emperor. The war against Italy was not just an ethnic war but a religious war, too, even though both armies were overwhelmingly Catholic. For the 5th Army's Catholic soldiers-the vast majority of Boroevic's troops-Italians were not just faithless allies and perhaps ethnic foes, but also the jailers of the pope.- Troops in the front line, convinced of the righteousness of their cause, commonly wore religious medals on their breasts, and many had crosses sewn into their caps; others carried portraits of Franz Joseph. The Austrian infantrymen were ready to fight and die for God, emperor, and country, as their oath required them to do.
The defensive system devised by Boroevic and his staff took advantage of the infantry's stubborn determination to resist the Italians. The idea was basic: no matter how many shells or men the Italians could throw at the Isonzo line, the trenches had to be held at all cost. There was no room to retreat. The essence of Boroevic's scheme-"better a wiped-out battalion than a regiment shattered in a counterattack"-was simple and deadly. It meant that units were to be kept in forward positions, without relief, until overwhelmed. Any losses of territory, no matter how minor or inconsequential, had to be redeemed through counterattacks. Cadorna's armies could not be permitted to advance any closer to Trieste than they already were. Boroevic's defensive plan was, a survivor later recalled, "a frightful, mathematically precise system, a mill that had to grind economically so as not to languish idle. But woe to the battalion caught between the stones." The defense was based on the assumption that in any assault the Italians would run out of men before the Austrians did.
This assumption was mostly accurate, and the concept had proved effective in the First Battle. Even so, Boroevic's tactics were crude and costly, and received much criticism. Boroevic-Bosco to his troops and critics alike-was not his army's chief of staff like Cadorna, and had to contend with questions from rival officers and senior generals. The commander of the 5th Army was not much more open to criticism than Cadorna, however, and sometimes showed a similar alarming lack of interest in his soldiers. Confronted by queries about the high casualties his army suffered in the First Battle, Boroevic replied laconically that his losses in the Carpathians were worse. Like Cadorna, Boroevic refused to visit the front line; his defenders explained that the general could not possibly continue to employ such costly-but necessary-tactics if he saw their results on the infantry with his own eyes. Boroevic's many detractors were not as forgiving. Colonel Franz Schneller, head of the Italian intelligence section at the High Command, considered "this army-wrecker" incompetent, and was adamant that his methods were ruining the 5th Army. He informed Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf bluntly, "Bosco has got to go." Boroevic made the situation worse by arguing incessantly with rival generals. He particularly detested Lieutenant General Alfred Krauss, chief of staff of the Southwestern front. The fifty-three-year-old Krauss, perhaps the Austrian Army's finest tactician, was contemptuous of Boroevic and his crude defensive methods. Boroevic returned Krauss's hostility with venomous personal attacks, ridiculing Krauss's "Kaiser mustache" and calling his demeanor "that of a trained poodle." Field Marshal Archduke Friedrich, titular army chief, eventually intervened to make the two rivals overcome their mutual antipathy and work together. Conrad nevertheless continued to support Boroevic, although he shared some of the widespread doubts about his methods. In the final analysis, Boroevic was the best general to lead a steadfast, unbending defense of the Isonzo line, no matter the cost, and that was what ultimately mattered to the High Command.
On the eve of the Second Battle of the Isonzo, the 5th Army had reached a strength of nine divisions with 103,000 riflemen and 431 guns, about half the size of the forces Cadorna was about to send against it. This considerable increase in men and artillery over the previous battle was attributable mostly to the arrival of the VII Corps from the Carpathians. The Hungarian corps reached the Isonzo at the end of the First Battle, too late to see significant action. Its two divisions, the 17th Infantry and 20th Honved, were seasoned veterans of the terrible fighting in Galicia and the Carpathians. Its commanding general, Archduke Joseph von Habsburg, was likewise experienced in modern warfare. The forty-three-year-old general had spent most of his life in the army, and received the accelerated promotion enjoyed by all Habsburg archdukes in military service. Yet Joseph was a competent commander, having led the VII Corps on the Eastern front since November 1914. He was also a devoted native-born Hungarian nationalist. Atypically for a member of the House of Habsburg, Joseph was a Magyar chauvinist who regularly espoused the martial virtues of the Magyars. Although this was doubtless offensive to other generals and nationalities, and perhaps even to the emperor himself, the mostly Magyar soldiers of the VII Corps loved their general for it. Just days before Cadorna's offensive started, the VII Corps entered the front line, its two divisions freshly filled with replacements. Archduke Joseph's corps was assigned the all-important defense of the Carso, leaving the XVI Corps to concentrate on the defense of Gorizia and the Bainsizza plateau. The Hungarians assumed their place in the Isonzo line, particularly on Mt. San Michele and Mt. Sei Busi, crisscrossed with freshly dug entrenchments. The 17th and 20th Divisions prepared for combat and waited in their unfamiliar trenches for the shelling to begin. The Second Battle of the Isonzo was to be their fight.
The Italian preparatory barrage began at 4 A.M. on July 18, shattering the predawn stillness with a hail of tire. The shelling engulfed the entire western edge of the Carso, but, as expected, was particularly heavy in the Mt. San Michele and Mt. Sei Busi sectors. Cadorna's artillery, including all the guns of the 3rd Army and the southern end of the 2nd Army, was more accurate than in the First Battle. This time, the guns were aimed at specific targets, rather than firing blindly at the Austrian lines. The intensity of the shelling increased through the morning; it was worse than anything the Hungarians had endured on the Eastern front. The troops of the VII Corps holding the forward trenches on the plateau were soon blinded by clouds of smoke and dust. Heavy shelling destroyed many positions, killing or wounding all occupants; one regiment recorded "the gigantic, hard-pounding hammering of thousands of shells, which no words on God's earth can express" Dazed survivors struggled to find safer trenches as the earth shook around them. The Hungarian soldiers holding Mt. San Michele were hit especially hard. The mountain absorbed more than 2,500 heavy shells that morning; numerous defenders were literally blown to pieces, and many carefully constructed trenches and dugouts were reduced to rubble. One doomed young lieutenant of the 46th Infantry Regiment, holding part of the San Michele sector, recorded in his diary
July 18th. The artillery fire became terrible in the night. It's coming to an end, I think, and I am preparing myself to die bravely as a Christian. It's all over. An unprecedented slaughter. A horrifying bloodbath. Blood flows everywhere, and the dead and pieces of corpses lie in circles, so that
There the subaltern's diary ended; it was found near the body of its author. Casualties among the defenders were severe. The brittle limestone of the Carso made it worse. Every exploding shell propelled hundreds of lethal, razor-sharp rock fragments in all directions. The rock claimed as many Austrian soldiers as the shrapnel did. The number of often fatal head wounds was very high because there were no steel helmets. Worse, the evacuation of the wounded was impossible during the barrage. The Austrian defenders who managed to survive the initial bombardment were stunned by its severity, which far surpassed anything experienced in the First Battle.
At 1 1 A.M. the shelling ceased on the middle sector of the plateau, and the 14th Division fixed bayonets, went over the top, and charged the Austrian defenses on Hill 118, Mt. Sei Busi. The Italians reached the shell-scarred Austrian trenches, and bitter bayonet and hand-to-hand fighting ensued. At 1 P.M. the shelling on the northern edge of the Carso died away. Soon two divisions of the XI Corps left their trenches and assaulted the Austrian defenses in the Mt. San Michele sector. An hour later, the last Italian batteries fell silent, and the 20th Division attacked Austrian positions around Redipuglia. Everywhere the survivors of the morning's bombardment emerged from their entrenchments to meet the Italian advance. The Hungarian troops of the VII Corps had been ordered to defend every foot of the Carso with alI their strength-to the last man, if necessary. The battered Honved regiments of the 20th Division bore the brunt of the first day's fighting. Their depleted companies held off the Italian onslaught. The Italian artillery performed better than in the last battle, but Cadorna's infantry tactics remained primitive, with lethal effects for his advancing foot soldiers. As in the First Battle, Italian regiments went forward in dense columns, "nearly disorganized crowds," led by officers carrying swords and standardbearers armed only with large flags. Italian artillery was almost useless during the infantry assault. The Italian guns gave little fire support to the advancing infantry during the all-important last phase of the attack; indeed, communication between the riflemen and gunners was so poor that Italian batteries often inflicted more casualties on their own men than on the Austrian defenders. The tightly packed battalions approaching Austrian positions were cut down in waves by well entrenched machine guns that had survived the preparatory barrage. A single properly placed machine gun was able to hold up a whole regiment and inflict crippling losses on exposed infantry. The Italians fought bravely when they got to the Austrian lines, but too few fanti survived long enough to reach them.
Italian progress on July 18 was therefore slight, despite the 3rd Army's courageous efforts, limited to minor gains on the western edge of the Carso. The next day was more productive for the attackers, however. Cadorna vigorously renewed his offensive on July 19. The Duke of Aosta's divisions attacked the Austrian line again, this time with more success. The fighting was particularly heavy around Hill 143, two and a half miles southwest of Mt. San Michele. The weary 20th Honved Division tried to hold its ground, but was pushed back after hours of vicious melees and heavy shelling. The Hungarians retreated several hundred feet to the east by nightfall, relinquishing Hill 143 to the Italians. Typically, the Italian artillery, not the infantry, had been the decisive factor. The rifle company of the 61st Regiment holding the peak of Hill 143, bloodily repulsed repeated Italian mass infantry assaults with ease. But after several hours of shelling, the hundred survivors of the surrounded company had no ammunition left, and could not be resupplied, so they decided to surrender. Elements of the 17th Division were rushed into the line to halt the Italian advance. The division's commander, Lieutenant General Karl Gelb, was a native of Gorizia, and was determined not to let his home fall into Italian hands. He made sure his troops held their new defensive positions that night, so as not to endanger the Austrian stand on Mt. San Michele, the key to the defense of the northern Carso and Gorizia. The 17th prevented the tired attackers from advancing further. By the evening of July 19, the VII Corps was still maintaining a coherent defense, but it was badly strained. It had lost 5,500 men in two days' fighting, most of them in the shattered 20th Division. The Honved division entered the battle with 6,000 riflemen; less than forty-eight hours later it had only 2,000 left.
Even with the support of the 17th Division, the drained 20th Division could not keep the Italians at bay. The threat of another push by the 3rd Army to take Mt. San Michele compelled Archduke Joseph to order a counterattack to regain Hill 143 and force the Italians away from San Michele. Boroevic, true to form, would not tolerate the loss of Mt. San Michele, and was anxious to regain the lost hill. The Duke of Aosta, however, was planning his own attack for the following morning in the same area. He ordered his X and XI Corps to break through the disorganized Austrian defenses and seize San Michele before noon on July 20. The guns of the 3rd Army readied to fire a five-hour preparatory barrage in the San Michele sector to clear the way for the infantry.
In the early hours of July 20, several battalions of the 17th Division, reinforced by the remnants of the 20th Honved Division, left their trenches and charged the Italian positions just west of Mt. San Michele. The ill-fated Habsburg infantry walked into the preplanned Italian bombardment, suffering catastrophic losses; the dazed survivors struggled back to their own lines. The Croatian 96th Infantry Regiment, one of the lead elements in the attack, lost more than 600 men to the 3rd Army's guns. At that moment the Italian infantry attacked. The frontline units of the VII Corps, confused by the failed attempt to recover Hill 143, were soon overwhelmed by the aggressive Italian advance. The Italian guns kept constant pressure on the Austrians, making the supply of reserves and munitions all but impossible. In the early afternoon the fighting reached the slopes of Mt. San Michele. The mountain, blanketed by thick clouds of smoke, saw dozens of vicious engagements between Italian and Austrian troops. The battle was disorganized, more a series of close encounters between small units of attackers and defenders than a coherent struggle. The fanti, encouraged by their progress, fought with great courage, and the beleaguered Hungarians of the VII Corps resisted with unexampled passion. By 5:30 P.m., troops of the Italian XI Corps had secured the flat upper part of Mt. San Michele, and the Austrians were pushed 300 feet to the southeast. The summit had fallen to the 3rd Army. The Duke of Aosta's infantry had a clear view of Gorizia, five miles to the northeast.
The fall of Mt. San Michele was by far the worst news yet to arrive at 5th Army headquarters. It was the first serious Austrian setback in the Isonzo fighting. Predictably, Boroevic, under pressure from the High Command not to lose any positions, was adamant that San Michele must be retaken before dawn on July 21. However, he had no fresh troops at his disposal; all his units were engaged in combat and could not be sent to the Doberdo plateau. The only reserves available on the entire Southwestern front were two regiments of crack Tyrolean mountain troops, ideal forces for the counterattack, but they were in the Tyrol, two days by train from where they were needed on the Carso. So Boroevic decided that the counterstroke would have to be made with the tired and depleted regiments of the VII Corps. He commanded Major General Boog to launch all available battalions against the Italians on the summit before dawn.
Boog collected fifteen battalions from four different formations, a jumble of mostly weary units from all corners of the Habsburg Empire. The most important mission, the recapture of the summit, was given to the 12th Mountain Brigade, which was still relatively fresh. Its five battalions had not yet fought on the Carso, and had so far sat out most of the Second Battle. The lead unit chosen for the attack was the 3rd Battalion of the 2nd Bosnian Regiment. The Austrian Army's four regiments of Bosnian troops were among the empire's youngest, raised in 1894 in the Balkan provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina, occupied by Vienna since 1878. Yet the novice regiments of Bosnian Serbs, Muslims, and Croats soon developed a reputation for martial prowess. The four regiments of Bosniaken proved to be among the toughest Austria produced; they were certainly the most feared by the Italians. The Bosnians were excellent close-in fighters, especially at night. They were aggressive, even brutal, in the attack, liking to close with the enemy to kill with knives and bayonets. Thoughts of fez-wearing, knife-wielding Bosnians gave even battle-hardened fan ti the shivers.
Fearing that Boroevic would attempt his usual counterattack, on the evening of July 20 Cadorna gave the Duke of Aosta his last reserves, the two-division-strong XIV Corps. During the night the fresh troops were moved toward the San Michele sector to repulse any Austrian attempt to retake the mountain. While the Italians were organizing their defenses, the VII Corps was busy preparing its gunners and riflemen for the night attack. The counterattack was supported by every available Austrian gun on the Carso. At 2 A.M. on July 21 the barrage opened up, showering the peak of San Michele with fire. An hour later the 12th Mountain Brigade left its positions and marched on the summit of Mt. San Michele. Major Nikolaus Ruzcic led his Bosniaken forward, with two companies in the lead and two supporting companies behind. The Bosnians of the 9th and 10th Companies emerged from the darkness and soon reached the Italian trenches, yelling their battle cry, "2ivio Austrija!"4 as the terrified defenders attempted to resist. The screaming Bosniaken, knives and battle clubs at the ready, jumped into the Italian trenches and overwhelmed the startled fanti. The bloody melee continued for more than a hour, and by 5 A.M., after much costly hand-to-hand fighting, the summit of Mt. San Michele was again in Austrian hands.
The general counterattack started at 4 A.M., when the other ten Austrian battalions assaulted the San Michele sector. As at the summit, tired and surprised Italian defenders retreated before the VII Corps. By 9 A.M., the entire sector had fallen to Major General Boog's attack, and the Italians were still withdrawing. The reserve 30th Division of the XIV Corps was thrown into the fight to keep the Austrians at bay, but to no avail. The 3rd Army's formations on the north Carso were in disarray. The only reason the Italians were not pushed completely back to the Isonzo was that the Austrians had no reserves left. Boog's battalions were tired by midmorning and needed a rest. As had happened in the First Battle, only Austrian weakness staved off a complete Italian catastrophe.
Both sides exhausted themselves that morning, so the afternoon and evening of July 21 were relatively quiet on the northern edge of the plateau. On the Carso's southern flank, the Italian VII Corps renewed its attacks around Selz and Vermegliano, but made no progress. Boroevic was pleased with Boog's counterstroke, but he still wanted to regain all ground lost to the Italians, including Hill 143. On the morning of July 22, the VII Corps tried to push the Italians farther back. The battered survivors of the 20th Division, hungry, thirsty, and totally exhausted, went over the top and advanced on Italian positions around Hill 143, but this time the Italians were ready. The attack was a fiasco. Only 1,200 Honved riflemen returned. The Carso's defenders were at the end of their strength. Constant Italian shelling made reinforcement and resupply impossible; the wounded could not be evacuated, and there was no fresh food or water. The infantry simply waited in their dugouts for the bombardment to stop. Fortunately for the Austrians, the 3rd Army was equally exhausted. On July 23, after five days of almost constant fighting, the guns fell silent in the San Michele sector. On the southern edge of the Carso, the Italian VII Corps again attempted on July 23 and 24 to advance in the Selz-Vermegliano area. This won little except heavy losses for both sides; the Austrian VII Corps suffered nearly 3,000 casualties, and the attacking Italian VII Corps certainly lost far more. On the evening of July 24, the Duke of Aosta ordered his divisions to temporarily cease their attempts to advance on the Carso. Since July 18, Archduke Joseph's VII Corps had lost 25,000 soldiers dead and wounded, more riflemen than it had brought to the Isonzo from the Carpathians. Still, their sacrifices prevented an Italian breakthrough on the Doberdo plateau.
The Hungarians were not the only Habsburg troops to sustain losses in the battle's first phase. Frugoni's 2nd Army had been busy supporting the 3rd Army on the Carso. On July 19, the II Corps, now known as the Plava Corps, assaulted its old nemesis, Hill 383. Yet again, the defending 1st Mountain Brigade held onto its positions at the summit of 383, and the attacking 3rd and 33rd Divisions were pushed back with heavy losses. Farther down the Isonzo on the same day, the VI Corps tried to dislodge Erwin Zeidler's 58th Division from its trenches around Podgora and Mt. Sabotino. The 4 P.M. advance by three divi sions ended in disaster, as all the previous attempts had. The Dalmatians successfully defended their line, and the Italians failed to make progress anywhere.
During the morning of the following day, July 20, the VI Corps made minor probing attacks on the 58th's positions to determine their precise strength. This was followed in the early afternoon by a full-fledged corps attack. This Italian offensive, like all the others, was slow and methodical. Artillery plastered the Austrian trenches, and the infantry soon charged in waves. The 4th Division advanced up Mt. Sabotino while the 11th, 12th, and 29th Divisions assaulted Podgora hill. The Dalmatians' machine guns carried the day, as usual, ripping terrible swaths through the dense columns of fanti, and by the early evening the Italian effort had faltered. The 58th Division had again prevented the VI Corps from reaching the Isonzo. The Italians advanced anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred paces, but they managed to take only one small forward observation post from the Austrians, a minor accomplishment. Otherwise the 58th Division's defenses were intact. That night Zeidler's headquarters reported to Boroevic that the Dalmatians' entrenchments were surrounded by "mountains of corpses"
Undaunted, the VI Corps repeated its futile attacks on July 21 and 22. The 4th Division made three more doomed charges up the west slope of Mt. Sabotino, and the 11th, 12th, and 29th Divisions launched more heroic and useless attacks up Podgora hill. Again pure courage and fighting spirit failed miserably to overcome concentrated machine gun fire. On July 23, the 58th Division launched a local counterattack that cleared Podgora hill of any Italian infantry. The minor Italian gains of July 19-22 were thereby erased. Italian official sources claim that the VI Corps lost 3,390 soldiers in its five-day offensive, but the true total must have been far higher. The 2nd Army's attempt to advance toward Gorizia to support the 3rd Army ended, like all previous attempts, in utter failure. The last VI Corps action in the first phase of the battle was the inexplicable shelling of Gorizia itself. Italian policy effectively forbade the bombardment of Gorizia, as well as Trieste and other majority-Italian cities and towns in the Littoral-after all, why should the Italian Army attack fellow Italians, those whom it was trying to liberate'? But on July 24, theVl Corps artillery dropped incendiary shells on the city, causing fires and killing civilians. The shelling, almost certainly a mistake, has never been satisfactorily explained.
In retrospect, the 2nd Army's attempt to advance in the upper Isonzo valley seems hardly more explicable. As in the May and June fighting, the Austrians, though spread thinly, held strong positions in the dauntingly high Julian Alps. The difficulty of advancing against well entrenched units was compounded by the treacherous terrain. Nevertheless, the IV Corps tried again to push units of the defending XV Corps off Mrzli ridge. The 8th Division's objective was Mrzli vrh itself; the Bersaglieri Division, reinforced by elements of the 7th Division, planned to attack from Vrata and Vrsic to the north; and two brigades of Alpini intended to push northeastward from Mt. Krn. On the heels of a heavy preparatory artillery barrage, the Alpini began their advance from Krn at 5 A.M. on July 19. One brigade assaulted troops of the 3rd Mountain Brigade holding neighboring Hill 2163 (6,790 ft.), while the other attacked units of the 1st Mountain Rifle Regiment on Hill 2041 (6,720 ft.). The skilled Italian mountain troops advanced bravely, but were beaten back by machine gun fire and a vigorous counterattack by the 3rd Mountain Brigade. The 8th Division's attempt to advance up Mrzli vrh-literally "the cold peak" in Slovene, an accurate name, even in July-and the Bersaglieri Division's drive to the north likewise stalled in the face of Austrian firepower. Undeterred by their initial setbacks, the Alpini resumed their offensive on July 21 with attacks on Hill 2163 and Hill 1931 (6,350 ft.). Artillery support kept the defenders' heads down, giving the Alpini time to reach the Austrian trenches. Intense close combat ensued in an area measuring only 800 feet by 200 feet, resulting in heavy casualties for both sides. The 3rd Mountain Brigade, weakened by the loss of 1,300 dead and wounded in two days, was forced to withdraw from Hill 2163 to another peak, 800 feet to the east. The rest of the Austrian line was intact, however, and the Alpini were too exhausted to push the retreating 3rd Brigade farther east.
On the evening of July 22, the Italian mountain troops moved into position to deliver a decisive blow to the depleted 3rd Mountain Brigade. At midnight the Alpini launched their surprise attack, which quickly became a confused melee in the dark. The close combat continued through the night, but at dawn the Austrians still held their trenches. The Italians made several smaller efforts over the next two days to force the Austrians to retreat deeper into the Julian Alps, but the defenders would not budge. The brave Alpini had proved their courage, and had won another hill in the Mrzli chain, but the IV Corps had otherwise failed to endanger the Austrian hold on the upper Isonzo. The conquest of one peak among hundreds meant little, and the Austrians simply reestablished a secure defensive line a few hundred feet to the east. As in so much of the Isonzo tighting, the minimal Italian gain was certainly not worth the uncounted cost.
To Cadorna, however, the situation looked quite different. The losses his forces had inflicted on the defending 5th Army would prove decisive, he believed; the week of relentless artillery bombardments and infantry assaults had weakened Boroevic's divisions to the breaking point. He remained confident that the Second Battle would end with a breakthrough on the Carso. On July 24 Cadorna therefore ordered the Duke of Aosta to renew his offensive with full force, and to take the Doberdb plateau-"at any price," if necessary. The 3rd Army would continue to throw all available shells and men at the Austrian positions on the Carso.
To achieve the long-awaited breakthrough, Cadorna gave the Duke of Aosta the last reserves in the entire Italian Army, the two fresh divisions of the XIII Corps. The attack was scheduled to begin on the evening of July 24, but problems with the 27th Division delayed it until the following morning. At 9:30 A.M. on July 25, the 3rd Army's infantry left its trenches yet again, headed for the Austrian lines. The XI Corps went forward in the San Michele sector, and the VII assaulted on the plateau's southern end, both after two hours' artillery preparation.
Archduke Joseph's VII Corps had no reserves left. The Hungarian soldiers were weak and tired, as Cadorna had anticipated, but they were not yet ready to give up the fight. As in the first phase of the battle, overworked Schwarzlose machine guns claimed huge numbers of Italian attackers, but this time more fanti reached the Austrian trenches. The artillery had done its work, wiping out many VII Corps weapon emplacements, destroying machine guns. In several places, the Duke of Aosta's battalions got close enough to use cold steel. The fighting was predictably bitter in the San Michele sector. There, three Italian divisions, reinforced by battalions of Bersaglieri, attacked Mt. San Michele from the northwest. The defending Hungarians countered with accurate rifle tire and, when the two sides met, with bayonets and knives. The hand-to-hand fight for the summit was nightmarishly intense. Losses on both sides were heavy. The major general commanding the lead Italian brigade fell at the head of his troops, as did numerous other Italian regimental and battalion commanders, slowing down the pace of the attack. Leaderless Italian infantry fought on regardless well into the night. By 10 P.M., their sacrifices paid off: the summit was again in Italian hands.
As before, the 12th Mountain Brigade was called upon to push the Italians off Mt. San Michele. The brigade attacked at noon on July 26 and again wrested the peak from the weary Italians. The Italian advance was more permanent on the southern flank of the Carso. There, after hours of close combat on July 25, the 3rd Army finally took Hill 118, Mt. Sei Busi, from the Austrians. By 5 N.M., troops of the VII and X Corps pushed the last of the 14th Mountain Brigade off the hill. Mt. Sei Busi was little more than a small rise on the westernmost edge of the plateau, but it was one of the highest points in that area of the Carso; more than that, its capture was at least a psychological victory for the Duke of Aosta and his bloodied regiments.
Both armies fighting on the Doberdo plateau were thoroughly exhausted. Two days' fighting on July 25-26 cost Archduke Joseph's VII Corps 6,000 dead and wounded; casualties in the 3rd Army were at least as many. The crippling losses, coupled with the summer heat and shortages of food and water in the front lines, meant that neither the Italians nor the Austrians were ready to keep fighting. Nevertheless, both Boroevic and Cadorna continued to press their soldiers hard. Bosco, as ever, demanded that his army regain all lost ground. To that end, on July 27 he sent the weak 14th Mountain Brigade back into battle to regain Hill 118. The brigade attempted to dislodge the defending 27th Division from Mt. Sei Busi for the next two days, but without success. The Austrians by now were too drained to succeed with their customary counterattack technique. The effort cost the VII Corps 2,500 more casualties, for nothing in return.
The Second Battle had begun to wither away. Cadorna suspended major operations, at least on the Carso, and Boroevic had no reserves left to send into battle. Still, the battle was not yet over. Every day both armies continued to tight doggedly to win minor, insignificant gains. The fighting on the Carso became a struggle between battalions and regiments, rather than between divisions and army corps. These efforts did not always succeed, and they were invariably wasteful of human life. In particular, the Italian artillery kept up the tight all along the plateau, and the 3rd Army's guns remained as great a threat to the Austrians as ever. In what Boroevic's headquarters considered the "quiet days" between July 30 and August 1, the VII Corps lost 4,000 dead and wounded, almost all of them to nonstop Italian shelling. For the Hungarian soldiers holding the line, life was as dangerous as ever. One of the most hazardous undertakings was moving troops from the front lines to the safe rear areas, and back again, because there were few communication and supply trenches to otter protection from artillery tire. In just one instance, on August 2, a relatively uneventful day on the Carso, a 600-strong battalion of the 96th Regiment, a hard-fighting Croatian unit, attempted to march forward from a rest area to take its place in the line near Mt. San Michele. It was caught in the open by heavy Italian shelling and machine gun tire. Pinned down and raked by shrapnel, in a matter of minutes the battalion lost more than three-quarters of its soldiers. Only 105 riflemen escaped the slaughter, and they were incapable of fighting; the battalion commander observed that his surviving soldiers' morale was "completely ruined."
Fortunately for the exhausted Austrians and their equally worn-out Italian opponents on the Carso, the fighting slowly wound down until Cadorna formally ended his offensive on the plateau on August 7. He reluctantly acknowledged that the Duke of Aosta's attempts were not winning the war, but only adding to the casualty lists. To reassure the irredentists of Trieste that Italy had not abandoned them, the poet and romantic nationalist Gabriele D'Annunzio flew over the city, showering it with leaflets. They encouraged the triestini to be patient, reminding them that Cadorna's armies would soon reach the city, and ended, "Courage, brothers! Courage and constancy!" In official accounts, the Second Battle was considered to end on August 10. That is, however, largely a notional date. Low-level combat persisted on the western edge of the plateau and before Gorizia throughout the month. Hardly a day went by without a notable Italian or Austrian raid on the enemy's positions. These small, battalion- or company-sized operations, frequently supported by some artillery, were intended to harass the other side, not to break through. Still, the Second Battle raged quietly on the Isonzo throughout August. Soldiers continued to die every day, despite Cadorna's suspension of the 3rd Army's offensive.
The flames of war burned as brightly as ever on the upper Isonzo. The northern half of the river valley, from Tolmein to Flitsch, had been relatively quiet for much of the Second Battle. The soldiers enjoyed a two-week pause in the fighting after the late July battles for Mrzli ridge. Yet their we] I-earned rest would be short-lived. Cadorna had suspended his great offensive on the Carso, but he had no intention of giving up the tight on the Isonzo entirely. He decided to attempt another breakthrough in the high Julian Alps. Every Italian effort in the upper valley had stalled with heavy loss of life, due mostly to the difficult terrain: no place on the Isonzo offered more natural obstacles to the attacker than the Tolmein-Flitsch sector. Undaunted, Cadorna ordered a major offensive along the entire twenty-mile front to push the Austrians deeper into the Julian Alps. What this would achieve, and how this would lead to the occupation of Gorizia or Trieste, was not made clear.
The attack was in the hands of the IV Corps, commanded by the Piedmontese Lieutenant General Nicolis di Robilant, one of Cadorna's favorites. The overstrength corps included four heavily reinforced divisions (one of them composed of elite Bersaglieri), two brigades of Alpini, an extra infantry brigade borrowed from the neighboring Carinthian Group, and five Alpini battalions in reserve. The corps had more crack rifle and mountain battalions than the rest of the 2nd and 3rd Armies combined. The defending Austrians were outnumbered, as usual. To hold the line, Boroevic had allotted the upper Isonzo three mountain divisions, all understrength in men and guns. There were no reserves available to reinforce the infantry in the line if the Italians achieved a breakthrough. The defense would therefore be based on the well-rehearsed formula of holding mountain positions at all costs, and rapidly counterattacking to retake any lost ground. Still, the defenders enjoyed the inestimable advantage of holding high Alpine defensive positions, some of them nearly impenetrable rock fortresses.
The offensive began on August 12 with a massive artillery bombardment, the heaviest yet seen on the upper Isonzo. Di Robilant's artillery, supported by the heavy guns of the 2nd Army, pounded Austrian positions from south of Tolmein to north of Flitsch. The preparatory bombardment continued, day and night, for two days. The shells rained especially hard on two vital sectors, the Tolmein bridgehead and the Flitsch basin. The Italian infantry did not emerge from their trenches until August 14, after forty-eight hours of hard work by their supporting guns. The major blow fell in the Tolmein area, where the bulk of the IV Corps was committed to battle. The main Italian objective was the town of St. Luzia, on the river's east bank just south of Tolmein, the sole Austrian railhead for the upper valley. Taking St. Luzia, the defenders' supply depot, would render the Austrians incapable of fighting on in the high Julian Alps. To occupy St. Luzia, however, the Italians first had to clear the Isonzo's west bank of Austrian troops. Di Robilant dispatched an entire reinforced division, the 7th, to break through. The distance from the Italian lines to St. Luzia was less than a mile, but between the 7th Division and the railyard stood the 8th Mountain Brigade, holding secure mountain positions.
For five days, the 7th Division tried to push the Ukrainian, Czech, and Croatian defenders back to the Isonzo. The understrength 8th Mountain Brigade held two main positions, the Church of Holy Mary, perched on a hill, and Hill 588, a 1,940-foot peak in the center of the defensive sector. The repeated Italian attacks were aimed at these two positions, where the Austrians were dug in. The bravefanti of the 7th Division charged the enemy trenches every day, without success. Despite ample artillery support, the division could not break through the wall of machine gun and rifle fire thrown up around the church and Hill 588. Italian guns killed and maimed hundreds of defenders, but there were always enough survivors to hold the line. Only once, on August 19, did the Italians even seriously threaten the Austrian hold on 588, and the four assaulting battalions were soon pushed back by a vigorous counterattack by a Hungarian battalion. Five days' hard fighting had reduced the 7th Division to a shell of its former self, but had brought no gains worth mentioning. It made one more sustained attempt before the battle ended, launching a determined assault on Hill 588 on the night of August 21-22. The attack soon ended in disaster, like all the others. Undeterred by heavy casualties, di Robilant ordered one more try. From late afternoon until dusk on August 22, the division's artillery, sixty guns strong, pounded Austrian positions on Hill 588, on a front of less than a mile. The 7th's night attack failed again despite the extensive artillery preparation. The 8th Mountain Brigade held its ground, as in every previous attack. A handful of machine guns kept the division in check and inflicted terrible losses. The 7th Division was now too weak and tired to keep attacking.
The other divisions of the IV Corps fighting in the Tolmein area fared no better. Just north of Tolmein, a brigade of Alpini, reinforced by a regiment of Bersaglieri, failed to cross the Isonzo and reach the town. The 3rd Mountain Brigade, the veteran defenders of Mrzli vrh, stopped the elite Italian units in their tracks. The brigade also prevented the 8th Division from advancing deeper into the Julian Alps. Repeated costly attacks by the division in the third week of August pushed the IV Corps no farther across Mrzli ridge. Even the overstrength 33rd Division could not break the Austrian hold on the eastern Krn sector. Hungarian and Slovak soldiers of the 15th Mountain Brigade kept the Italians from moving more than a few hundred feet beyond the slopes of Mt. Krn. At the end of August, after seven days of relative calm, di Robi lant ordered one more effort to break the Mrzli line. On the morning of August 28, the 8th Division, bolstered by rifle and mountain battalions, launched five successive assaults between Mrzli vrh and Mt. Sleme. The depleted 3rd Mountain Brigade held this one-and-a-half-mile front through the day at considerable cost. At 8 em., the 8th Division made a final attempt. Four regiments of infantry made a mass charge through the darkness, overrunning the Austrian forward trenches. The stunned defenders mixed it up with the Italians in vicious hand-to-hand combat, but eventually gave way. The 8th appeared to have finally broken through the Mrzli line, and threatened to pour into the high Julian Alps. Its victory was cut short, however, by a well-timed and daring counterattack by a Bosnian battalion that surprised the fanri and threw the division entirely off balance. The knife-wielding Bosniaken emerged suddenly from the darkness and pushed the advancing Italians back to their own lines. By the early hours of August 29, the remnants of the 8th Division were retreating to their own trenches, their brave and futile effort collapsed in unexpected defeat. Two weeks of determined attacks left the IV Corps weaker, but no farther eastward into Austrian territory.
Di Robilant's drive on Mrzli ridge ebbed away, but the fighting continued unabated in the Flitsch sector, the northernmost reaches of the Isonzo front. On the southern end of the sector, Austrian Landwehr troops prevented a significant Italian advance in the Vrsic-Javorcek area. A series of courageous attacks by the Ber.saglieri Division east of Mt. Vrsic (6,260 ft.) pushed the 21st Rifle Regiment a few hundred feet deeper into the Julian Alps, but faltered before securing any noteworthy gains. The major fighting in the sector occurred in the Rombon area, just north of Flitsch. The 7,290-foot Mt. Rombon dominates the Flitsch basin and is the highest peak on the Isonzo. It is the summit of the Rombon mountain chain, one and a half miles wide and two and a half miles long, on the river's north bank. Italian troops of the Carinthian Group occupied the town of Flitsch, but their hold was unsure because the Austrians held Rombon. From the summit, Austrian mountain guns shelled the Italians below with impunity. It was therefore imperative that the Italians take the peak before they could advance into the highest Julian Alps, east of Flitsch.
Rombon, the greatest of the Austrian rock fortresses, was garrisoned by one of the hardest-fighting regiments in the Habsburg Army, the 2nd Mountain Rifles. The regiment, the most Slovene in the army, had just arrived from the Eastern front to defend their homeland. Its soldiers, 88 percent of them Slovenes, were determined to keep the Italians at bay. They marched up Rombon singing Slovene nationalist songs and wearing Slovene national insignia on their caps, in violation of army regulations. They would hold Rombon at any price, for their people and for their emperor. There were not enough troops to garrison the whole area, so the main bastion was the peak itself, with smaller units dispersed to several lower mountains in the chain. At Rombon's peak, the Austrian positions were very strong. The defenses consisted of two to four main trenches, as deep as a man and three feet across. They were cut into the barren stone at the summit, bolstered by rocks, wood, and sandbags. Only a direct hit by a heavy artillery shell could destroy the rock entrenchments. The Slovene defenders were supported by well-positioned, presighted machine guns and mountain artillery. It would take an enormous effort to dislodge the mountain troopers from Rombon.
The Flitsch area remained quiet while fighting raged farther down the Isonzo. Di Robilant did not attempt to advance up Rombon until the last week of August, long after his other offensives had faltered. The Carinthian Group, supported by Alpini, tried to push past the town of Flitsch, down in the Isonzo valley, on August 24. Five battalions failed to drive the Austrians eastward. The Slovene soldiers on Rombon watched the Italian attacks more than a mile below and waited for the inevitable assault up the mountain. It came on August 27. Before the Italians could secure the peak, they first had to occupy Mt. Cukla, the logical staging point for a drive to the summit. The 5,920-foot Cukla is located three-quarters of a mile southwest of the summit. Rombon's peak was held by just three Austrian companies, and Cukla by only two platoons. A rapid, relentless charge up the mountain might take and secure the defenders' trenches before the Austrians could launch their inevitable counterattack. On the morning of August 27 two Alpini battalions, Bes and Val d'Ellero, assaulted Cukla from the south and west under an umbrella of artillery fire. Taking Rombon would surpass even the capture of Mt. Krn in the annals of Italy's mountain troops, and the Alpini went forward with dash and determination. They annihilated the two platoons defending Cukla in hand-to-hand combat and continued their advance to the snow-capped summit. By now, the Slovene riflemen were ready, and well aimed machine gun and artillery tire ripped through the charging companies of Alpini, exposed on the bare, rocky slopes. A vigorous bayonet charge by the defenders pushed the attackers back to Cukla, and the weary fanti began to withdraw. Hundreds of brave Italian mountain troops lay dead and maimed on the southwest slope of Rombon, leaving two Alpini platoons stranded on Cukla ridge. The remnants of the Bes and Val d'Ellero Battalions tried another attack on August 29, but this one gained even less ground than the first. The two cut-off platoons repulsed Austrian probes for three days, but were eventually forced to retreat down the ridge. The Slovenes had held their mountain. Still, the issue had not yet been decided. The first Italian attack on Rombon failed with heavy losses, but, like the rest of the Isonzo front, there would doubtless be more offensives to come.
With the last day of August, the Second Battle of the Isonzo ended. A two-week sustained offensive on the Carso, combined with a month of probes on the upper Isonzo, had won precious little ground for Cadorna and for Italy. The 3rd Army had taken Hill 118, Mt. Sei Busi, in the center of the western edge of the Doberdo plateau, but that was about it. Other advances on the Carso, a few hundred paces in some sectors, amounted to little. They in no way affected the outcome of the battle, much less the war. Despite dozens of heroic attacks, Mt. San Michele remained firmly in Austrian hands, and Gorizia-much less Trieste-increasingly seemed an unattainable goal. Similarly, insignificant Italian advances in the Mrzli chain meant nothing to the outcome of the war; Italian efforts proved no more decisive on the upper Isonzo than on the lower.
Even more than the First Battle, the cost of the Second Battle was appalling. The disparity between lives lost and ground occupied had grown alarmingly. The two-week battle for the Carso in late July and the first days of August officially cost Italy almost 42,000 casualties. Certainly by the end of August, Cadorna's butcher bill far surpassed 50,000. Yet, as always, the true number of Italian dead and wounded was doubtless higher still. Boroevic's 5th Army admitted to 46,640 casualties, including 6,400 sick, between July 15 and August 15; the total figure probably exceeded 50,000. Incessant counterattacks, often against hopeless odds, added considerably to the numbers of Austrian dead and wounded. In fact, Boroevic's losses were, in relative terms, even worse than Cadorna's: nine Austrian divisions lost nearly as many men as eighteen Italian did. For both armies, the totals of dead and wounded far surpassed what had been accomplished.
During the Second Battle, divisions in the line were fed a constant stream of replacements to keep them in the field. The Austrian 17th Infantry Division, part of the VII Corps, successfully defended Mt. San Michele and the northern sector of the plateau. It lost almost 10,000 soldiers in the battle, more than its full rifle strength, but always remained in the fight. For instance, one of the 17th's regiments, the 61st, lost482 soldiers on August 5 in a bloody skirmish on the slopes of Mt. San Michele, reducing the regiment to just 820 riflemen; but owing to the rapid supply of reinforcements, less than twenty-four hours later the 61st had 1,786 riflemen. The Italians, too, repeatedly rebuilt destroyed regiments and divisions and sent them straight back into battle. Losses among officers and NCOs were always heavy, and the quality of leadership inevitably suffered. Austria could ill afford such casualties, particularly in some of her best divisions. Even Italy was beginning to drain her reserves of trained infantry.
By the end of the Second Battle, the Italian ranks of nationalist volunteers and ardent interventionists had been decimated by Austrian machine guns. The romantic ideals of May and June had been drowned in a sea of blood on the banks of the beautiful Isonzo. Cadorna was sacrificing in vain many of Italy's most promising young men, her future. One of the thousands of Italian soldiers to die in July and August was Lieutenant Renato Serra, a thirty-year-old reserve officer. He was killed on August 20 while leading his men in a charge up Podgora hill. The attack was a suicidal effort and, like the dozens of others assaults on Podgora that summer, was cut down in a hail of tire from the hill's Dalmatian defenders. The attack won nothing, changed nothing except for those killed and maimed in it. Serra was decorated posthumously for his reckless courage.
He had been a promising young writer. A native of the Romagna, he studied classics at the University of Bologna. After his studies he served two years in the army as an infantry subaltern, a duty he performed effectively and enthusiastically. Serra led a sometimes troubled personal life, but became a respected and rising young author. Like most Italian literati, he greeted the coming of the war with enthusiasm, and he believed that Italy's cause would prevail; as he observed shortly before the fighting began, "The sea, the mountains, this theater of history does not change: Italy has time." Sadly, Serra himself did not. His best-and last-work, "Self-Examination of a Man of Letters," was published in late April 1915, several months after he had been recalled to the colors. In it, Serra sounded a note of caution, observing, perhaps in a premonition of his own fate:
What is there, on this tired earth, that will have changed, when it has drunk in the blood of so great a slaughter: when the dead and wounded, the tortured and the abandoned, shall sleep together beneath the ground, while the grass above will have become tender, bright, and new, all silent and luxuriant in the spring sun which returns unchanged?
Still, Lieutenant Serra continued to perform his duty, fighting on the Isonzo until he was killed by an Austrian bullet on Podgora. He lived long enough to see the naive hope of a quick and triumphant war evaporate. Yet, like so many Ital- ianfanti, he went stoically, even heroically, to his death, supported by a faith in Italy's ultimate victory. He noted, in what could serve as an epitaph, "The fields of battle are the same, and the roads to them are the same." Renato Serra took part in, and fell victim to, what so many young Italians of his generation experienced: a deep-felt desire for intervention, for glory, which led to an unprecedented slaughter on the Isonzo.
What is remarkable, in retrospect, is that so many Italians and Austrians went to their deaths so willingly. The Second Battle was the end of any dreams of an Italian quick-march on Trieste, or of an easy Austrian defense of the Isonzo line. For both armies, it was the death of all innocence. That the war would continue for a long time now seemed assured. Nevertheless, young Italians and Austrians continued to offer themselves as a sacrifice. Cadorna's methods of discipline were unquestionably harsh, and any soldiers who refused battle would face the firing squad; still, the fanti attacked again and again with recklessness and dash, far more than orders required. Such courage alone could not win the battle, but it was an impressive display of Italian heroism and commitment to redeeming Italia irredenta.
The Austrians likewise proved enthusiastic soldiers throughout the Second Battle. Habsburg soldiers of all nationalities fought with admirable, and frequently unanticipated, courage. The South Slavs, particularly Slovenes, continued to resist the Italians with unquenchable determination, as did German-Austrians in the ranks. The Second Battle demonstrated that Hungari ans could fight as well as any Habsburg soldiers; the battle belonged especially to the Hungarian VII Corps, whose stand on the Carso decided the battle's outcome. Even suspect nationalities fought surprisingly well on the Isonzo. Regiments of Czechs and Ukrainians that fought feebly against the Russians often battled heroically against the Italians. Prague's infamous 28th Regiment, the unit that went over to the Russians in the Carpathians in early April, redeemed itself on the Isonzo. The 28th was disbanded in disgrace after the humiliating Dukla Pass incident, but a battalion of raw recruits remained in service. By midsummer, the situation on the Isonzo had deteriorated, and the High Command reluctantly dispatched the Czech battalion to Boroevic; even questionable reserves were better than none. To the army's astonishment, the Czechs fought well on the Carso. The provisional battalion resisted several Italian attacks on Mt. San Michele with great courage, suffering heavy losses. It was praised by the High Command for its "steadfastness," "good spirit," and general soldierly honor, "withstanding the severest test of discipline." The training battalion continued to tight so well that Franz Joseph eventually ordered the 28th reraised around it, rescuing the honor and reputation of the army's Czech troops. Ironically, Vittorio Emanuele had only months before been the 28th Regiment's honorary colonel.5 The war with Italy, although costly, was genuinely popular in the ranks, and soldiers of all nationalities could be depended on to fight loyally and reliably against the Italian invader.
Despite the admirable determination shown by his polyglot army, Boroevic was growing concerned by the end of the Second Battle. His rigid defensive methods had prevailed, but at a terrible, and probably unsustainable, cost. The 5th Army's losses were a shock to the normally imperturbable Croatian warrior. He wrote to Istvan Tisza, the Hungarian prime minister, on August 10, reflecting on the battle: "My losses are severe.... It's getting so that one can't bury the corpses.... It was the purest Hell." Boroevic's controversial tactics had paid off with victory, but the number of dead and wounded had surprised even the normally unimpressed and unconcerned general. Even so, he remained at his headquarters, thirty miles behind the lines, far from the suffering. Boroevic was undoubtedly troubled by his army's losses, but not enough to reevaluate his methods. His uncompromising orders to hold every inch of ground at all costs would continue unchanged. His soldiers did not call him "the thick-skinned Croat" without cause.
At his headquarters in Udine, twenty miles behind his own front lines, Cadorna reconsidered some of his assumptions. The 3rd Army's massive offensive on the Carso had ended in disaster. Clearly, numbers of men and courage alone would not prevail against prepared Austrian defenses; the siege-like conditions described in prewar reports from the Western front had been recreated on the Isonzo. More guns and more weight of shell were what Cadorna needed, and demanded, for future offensives. The 3rd Army's shattering preparatory barrage failed to blast a path through the Austrian defenses on the Carso, but next time Cadorna would have even more guns. In this limited sense, Cadorna reevaluated his methods. Otherwise he stuck doggedly to his faith in a drive across the Isonzo into the heart of the Habsburg Empire. Privately, he admitted that the Austrians had to be worn down further before he could reach Trieste; he already expected the fighting to continue through 1916. The objective remained unchanged, even though the frame had been altered considerably. Publicly, of course, Cadorna presented a very different image. Vittorio Emanuele, observing the slaughter much more closely than Cadorna (the king liked to visit the front lines and take photographs), was seriously worried about the war's course; he had begun to doubt that victory was still possible. Cadorna dismissed the queries raised by the king, his nominal superior, and simply lied to politicians and the press. He and his staff systematically concealed the true number of casualties, and even began to manufacture victories when none existed to keep up national morale and public confidence in his generalship. Cadorna perhaps fooled those far from the sound of the guns, but the fighting men in the trenches knew better. But there was nothing they, or anyone else, could do to convince Cadorna to alter his disastrous strategic course.