FIVE
With the end of the Second Battle, soldiers on both sides of the Isonzo enjoyed a well-deserved rest before preparing for the next round of fighting. Those who had been fortunate enough to survive the July and August bloodletting unscathed enjoyed the few comforts provided for frontline soldiers. They received a regular supply of food and water, in contrast to during the battle, and were able to bathe and to exchange filthy, tattered uniforms for clean, new ones. There was plenty of work to be done, between sentry watches and the backbreaking improving of trenches, but soldiers were able to catch up on lost sleep, play cards with comrades, and write letters home. There was little else for the troops to do. Luxuries were limited, especially for the Italians; the best the average infantryman, the ordinary fantaccino, could hope for was a bottle of strong, army-issue red wine, and, if he were very lucky, a quick, unromantic trip to a field brothel. The Austrians at least had better organized entertainment, with field concerts and ample supplies of alcohol for the troops when they were not in battle. Only the comradeship of the front, uniting men of widely different classes and regions, made life bearable. Still, danger was everywhere, even on the quietest days on the Isonzo. If the Austrians were tormented by the random Italian artillery shell, the Italians lived in fear of Austrian snipers, the dreaded cecchini. No Italian soldier who poked his head above the trenches in the forward area was safe, at least during daylight. It was best for the soldiers on both sides of the Isonzo to keep under the cover of entrenchments, and hope fate would keep them safe.
Fortunately for the infantrymen on the Isonzo, Luigi Cadorna gave them their first extended respite from battle. Aware that his forces had suffered grievous losses during the Second Battle, he sought to rebuild his armies with even more artillery before he tried to crack the Austrian defenses again. He fully intended to mount another major effort in the autumn, but his legions needed several weeks to rest and recover. In the first week of September, only days after the fighting on the upper Isonzo had ended, Cadorna was visited at his Udine headquarters by General Joseph Joffre, French chief of staff and architect of Allied strategy on the Western front. By the late summer of 1915, it was evident that the war was not going well for the Allies. The German hold on Flanders and northeastern France appeared unshakable, and developments on the Eastern front appeared even more ominous. The trench warfare that prevailed in the West, from the English Channel to the Swiss border, had reduced the fighting to static and futile attempts to penetrate the German lines in the hope of achieving a strategic breakthrough. Throughout the year, the French Army, sometimes supported by its British allies, had tried to push the German invader off French soil, but without success. A major effort in Flanders from late April to late May cost the Allies 70,000 soldiers, but was notable only for the introduction of poisonous gas as a battlefield weapon. The German use of chemical agents proved to be more an irritant than a practical weapon; the French and British failed to break through anyway. France's early summer offensive in Artois cost another 100,000 casualties, but was no more successful than previous efforts. Despite crippling losses already in 1915, Joffre was determined to evict the Germans from French soil before the year ended. He could expect little effective help from his allies. Britain was still preparing to join the war as a major player; her volunteer army expanded impressively from ten to thirty-seven divisions in 1915, but most units were still poorly trained and untested in battle. The vaunted Russian juggernaut had collapsed in the East. By late summer, the Germans and Austrians had completely evicted the Russians from Galicia, and had taken all of Russian Poland. After losing a million prisoners, the Russians were barely holding on, and were incapable of assisting their French allies. Even the Dardanelles operation, the British effort at Gallipoli that had aroused such hopes of victory, by late August had ended ignominiously. Some of the finest divisions in the British Army had failed to make headway against the entrenched Turks, and the operation had to be abandoned. Undaunted by the prospect of going it practically alone, "Papa" Joffre told Cadorna of his plan to win the war. He had assembled two armies, thirty divisions, to attack the German trenches in Champagne in the last week of September; he expected to break through within three days. Joffre believed that a decisive victory in Champagne would force the Germans into a strategic retreat that could decide the war. He asked for a supporting Italian offensive on the Isonzo in late September, both to distract the Germans and to keep pressure on the Austrians, who would then be unable to supply their German ally with any reserves.
Cadorna considered Joffre's request, but informed his French counterpart that he was not optimistic that his battered armies would be ready to take the offensive so soon after the end of the Second Battle. In truth, Cadorna had little interest in helping the French. There were no long-standing military or diplomatic ties between Rome and her newfound allies, as there were among the French, British, and Russians. Cadorna was unconcerned with France's fate, except where it directly affected his own war plans. In addition, the 2nd and 3rd Armies were unquestionably too weak to undertake a major offensive in late September. Cadorna therefore informed the disappointed Joffre that he would be unable to launch another Isonzo offensive until six more weeks had passed, that is, mid-October. Italian support for the French Champagne offensive would have to wait.
The Austrians used Cadorna's six-week delay to reinforce the 5th Army. To Boroevic, the situation still appeared very precarious. Trieste was less than twenty miles from the fighting line on the central Carso, and little more than a dozen miles from the front's southern edge. The city's residents could hear the shelling clearly, and often watched the bombardment of the Carso from their windows. The threat to Trieste was serious; there were not enough Austrian troops available to prevent any Italian breakthrough on the Carso from taking the city. The loss of Trieste would not constitute just a major psychological and political defeat: the fall of the city to the Italians would immediately endanger Ljubljana, western Croatia, and the Istrian Peninsula with its naval bases, all within striking distance of Trieste. To prevent this, the High Command scraped together all available reserve formations and sent them to the Isonzo. Boroevic received two fresh divisions in late August and a third in early September. He soon had to send two veteran divisions back to the Balkan front, so his net gain was only a single division. However, two of his newly arrived divisions, the 22nd Rifle and 28th Infantry, made up the III Corps, the "Iron Corps," the finest in the Habsburg Army. Raised from German and Slovene Alpine districts, the hard-fighting Iron Corps took its place in the line on the southern edge of the Doberdo plateau.
Before Cadorna was willing to renew his push across the Isonzo, he wanted to remove any Austrian threat to his left flank. This required pushing the 5th Army deeper into the high Julian Alps. As before, this entailed seizing the Tolmein bridgehead and the Rombon area. Evicting the Austrians from the Mrzli chain and the Flitsch basin had proved impossible in the first two battles, but Cadorna demanded that the IV Corps win the victory that had so far eluded it. He gave it generous reinforcements of infantry and artillery. On the eve of battle, it boasted four strong divisions, an extra infantry brigade, and two brigades of Alpini, but it had the actual strength of eight divisions. It was virtually the size of an army. The three defending Austrian divisions had received no notable reinforcements since the end of the Second Battle.
The Italian offensive on the upper Isonzo began with local attacks at the Tolmein bridgehead on September 4 and 5. The 7th Division again failed to dislodge the 8th Mountain Brigade. The next effort was more substantial. At noon on September 9, the heavily reinforced 7th assaulted the Austrian positions at the Church of Holy Mary and Hill 588. The division, twenty-seven battalions strong-fifteen infantry, eight Alpini and four Bersaglieri-was as big as an army corps. The savage fighting, much of it at close quarters, continued well into the night. The 8th Mountain Brigade still held its ground. Reinforced by two battalions of the elite 2nd Imperial Tyrolean Rifle Regiment, the famed Kaiserjager, the Austrians met the Italians' courage with demonstrations of equal bravery. The best regiments of the Italian and Austrian Armies fought hand to hand all day, producing frightful losses for both sides. When the last guns fell silent after twelve hours' sustained fighting, hundreds of Italian corpses littered the slopes around Holy Mary and 588. The shattered 7th Division needed a rest, but it was back in action, topped off with fresh replacements, within three days. After twenty-four hours of preparatory shelling, the division went over the top again on September 12. Five assaults on Hill 588 still did not push the Austrians off the summit. The Tyrolean troopers, including Italians from the Trentino, helped by Ukrainian and Croatian companies, managed to repulse every Italian attack. Again, the advantages offered by well entrenched machine guns and holding the high ground brutally outweighed Italian heroism.
During the third week of September, the IV Corps devoted its main effort to breaking the Austrian hold on the Flitsch basin. Attempts to take Mt. Rombon failed as they had three weeks earlier. The Bersaglieri Division and the Aosta Brigade made more sustained efforts in the mountains just south of the Flitsch valley. Supported by heavy artillery, Italian troops tried to break out of their positions on the summit of Mt. Vrsic and push the Austrians off Mt. Javorcek, the 5,110-foot peak that overlooks Flitsch from the south. Italian heavy guns pounded the peak, inflicting casualties on the defenders and sapping their morale; the Austrians had no heavy guns to counter the enemy's hard blows. Still, the Austrian Landwehrtroops were willing to keep fighting, and Italian efforts to evict them proved as trying as ever. Several days' attacking failed to gain even a foot of Austrian territory. The last assault came on the night of September 18.
As usual, the Bersaglieri left their positions after dark, headed for the Austrian lines under the cover of their own guns. The hard marching uphill with full packs at high altitudes was difficult for the riflemen, many of whom were recalled reservists and teenaged recruits just arrived to replace the recently killed and wounded. One of the Bersaglieri struggling to reach the Austrian trenches that night was Benito Mussolini, who had arrived on the upper Isonzo only hours before. The journalist and rabid irredentist had been recalled to the colors just three weeks earlier. When war broke out, Mussolini, like so many of his nationalist comrades, volunteered to fight to redeem Italia irredenta. However, the army refused Mussolini's patriotic request. The Coniando Supremo remembered Mussolini as a hotheaded Socialist who regularly insulted the army and all other Italian institutions. It certainly did not want him rabble-rousing in the ranks. The War Ministry informed Mussolini, a reservist, that he would have to wait until the rest of his reserve class of 1884 was recalled to the colors. The most vocal of all irredentists thus had to endure a summer of insults and jeers from his political opponents. While Italy's finest young men were sacrificing themselves on the Isonzo, Mussolini watched and waited, taunted endlessly and mercilessly by his Socialist ex-comrades, who blamed him for the war.
It was therefore a relief when Mussolini received his call-up notice on August 31. He immediately reported for duty with his old corps, the Bersaglieri. He received just two weeks' refresher training at Brescia, and was then sent directly to the front with a unit of replacements. Although his education entitled him to a place at an officer candidate school, Mussolini went to the Isonzo as a rifleman, an ordinary fantaccino. He crossed the old Austrian frontier on September 15, headed for the high Julian Alps. His unit passed through Karfreit, at the foot of Mt. Krn, it famoso e misterioso Monte Nero, as he recalled in his diary. They crossed the Isonzo and marched five miles northward into the dark mountains, reaching the freezing Italian trenches 6,200 feet up Mt.Vrsic (Monte Ursig to the Italians), in the early evening. Mussolini and the other replacements were exhausted, but they had no time to rest. The regiment to which they had been assigned, the 11th Bersaglieri, was going into battle again that night. At 10 P.M., Mussolini's battalion advanced on the Austrian positions, only a hundred paces to the east. The Bersaglieri, wearing their distinctive broadbrimmed black hats with green cock feathers, mounted a bayonet charge. Austrian rifle fire almost immediately forced the Italians to seek cover. Both sides exchanged rifle and machine gun fire, and the occasional hail of hand grenades, for two hours. Losses on both sides mounted. Just after midnight, Austrian sappers detonated a mine under an Italian trench section. Mussolini's company occupied those trenches, and he was caught in the confusion. When he realized what had happened, he noticed that more than thirty of his comrades lay dead and wounded. The disorganized fighting on the frozen, snow-covered summit continued until dawn, when both sides broke off the engagement. Italian artillery opened up on the Austrian positions, giving the Bersaglieri time to gather survivors and regroup. Mussolini was one of the lucky ones. He had survived his baptism of fire unscathed. His first battle was the last effort by the IV Corps to break through in the upper valley before the Third Battle. Like so many other engagements, large and small, on the upper Isonzo during September, Mussolini's September 18-19 tirefight had been bloody and inconclusive. It was notable only for those who were killed and maimed there.
The September fighting around Tolmein and Flitsch illustrated again that courage alone could not overcome firepower. The lessons of the Western front, learned at such a price by the French and Germans in 1914, were now, a year later, evident to the Italians. The Isonzo battles even taught the Austrians a great deal about the importance of fortifications and heavy artillery. Simply put, the Italians needed many heavy guns to break through Boroevie's defenses, and the Austrians required strong entrenchments and lots of machine guns to stop them. Heroism alone had been found cruelly wanting. It was no longer a war between men, but a struggle between weapons and technologies. The question remained: Would Cadorna's forces devise a better method of attack faster than the Austrians could find a technical antidote'? Austrian Lieutenant General Alfred Krauss, the tactically astute chief of staff of the Southwestern front, coined a term for this new style of warfare, Materielschlaeht-the battle of materiel, of equipment. There was still a considerable human element, to be sure, but the essential matter was the technical power and proficiency of the armies. The Austrians devoted most of their energy to digging better entrenchments. Major General Anton Pitreich, Svetozar Boroevie's chief of staff, took advantage of the lull in fighting and ensured that all available manpower was used to build permanent trenches and caves to protect the infantry from Italian guns. On the Carso alone he had four battalions of highly trained sappers and a dozen of laborers at his disposal to perfect the 5th Army's entrenchments. The workers, many of them Russian prisoners of war, dug and blasted day and night. By mid-October, their task was nearly complete. Three strong defensive lines, trench systems cut into the rock, ran from Tolmein to Trieste; they were ready in the Gorizia and Bainsizza sectors, and nearly finished on the Carso. The engineers had blasted hundreds of kavernen into the "stony sea" of Doberdo, the only reliable protection for the infantry. They had also built enough barracks for forty battalions to rest when not in the line, and finished a water pump system to keep the Carso's defenders supplied with water. The technical improvements were remarkable, the result of six weeks of constant laboring, a task hardly less trying than combat. Boroevie's infantry was better prepared than ever to face Cadorna's onslaught.
The Austrian artillery shortage proved more difficult to remedy. Clearly the 5th Army needed more artillery, particularly heavy, long-range guns, to protect the infantry from relentless pounding by Italian guns. Yet the Austrians were fighting a three-front war, and had little heavy artillery to spare. The forces in the field would remain short of both modern artillery and a steady supply of munitions for many months to come. Still, Boroevic managed to get more guns from the High Command. His artillery counted 462 pieces in August, 62 of them medium and heavy; by mid-October he had 604 guns, including 108 medium and heavy pieces. The heavy guns included four batteries of superheavy mortars and eight 150mm naval guns, ideal weapons for hitting back at Cadorna's artillery. For the first time, the infantry also had its own artillery, light mortar batteries. Mortars, located just behind the frontline trenches, were shortrange but deadly weapons that could respond more rapidly than conventional artillery to changing situations on the battlefield. They represented a considerable increase in Austrian firepower. The Austrian gunners still could not compete on even terms with the Italians, but by the Third Battle at least they had a fighting chance.
One piece of new technology that the Austrians still sorely lacked was the steel helmet. Primitive steel headgear had been in use on the Western front since early 1915, and standardized models were in use in France and Flanders by early autumn. They had proved notably effective at protecting soldiers from fatal head wounds. Here, too, Austrian industry lagged behind. There had been some small field trials, but Austria did not yet have a steel helmet to issue to her infantry. Desperate to decrease the number of head wounds, the 91st Division, fighting in the Tyrol, issued its riflemen a thousand firemen's helmets, with some success. The less fortunate soldiers of the 5th Army would have to wait several more months before receiving protective headwear. Until then, they would have to brave the thunderous Italian bombardments unprotected.
The lack of steel helmets did not damage morale much, however. Most Austrian soldiers did not look forward to more fighting, but their spirits remained high in October. The harsh Alpine winter was coming soon, but Boroevic's infantry was prepared to resist all comers, as they had for the past five months. The 17th Infantry Regiment, a battle-tested Slovene unit that arrived on the Isonzo just in time to fight in the Third Battle, was eager to mix it up with the Italians. A soldier-poet in its ranks, traveling from Galicia to the Isonzo, recorded these sentiments:
Our blood has already flowed on hundreds of battlefields, And all our enemies know us wellStill we carry rifles and will tight For honor to the last drop of blood.
It is a testament to the 5th Army's fighting spirit, and to Slovene Italophobia, that combat veterans could express such romantic feelings after fourteen months of total war. On the eve of battle, Boroevic's army had grown to a dozen divisions with 137 infantry battalions, a total of 128,600 riflemen. The Italians had far more men and guns, and Boroevic's divisions were short 27,000 men according to officially authorized strengths, but nevertheless the 5th Army had never been stronger in soldiers and equipment. The Austrians had prepared well for the coming Materielscltlacht. Occupying well placed and well fortified positions, and bolstered by victory in the last two battles, Boroevic's infantrymen were prepared to repulse Cadorna's next offensive.
The Italian High Command was similarly aware that the outcome of the Third Battle of the Isonzo would likely depend on the amount of firepower Cadorna's armies could bring to bear on Austrian positions. Artillery was Cadorna's major preoccupation. He scoured arsenals across Italy and collected an impressive artillery park of 1,372 guns for his offensive. Some 305 of them were medium and heavy pieces, vital for shattering Austrian defenses. Cadorna ordered fortress guns removed from outmoded nineteenth-century forts far behind the lines, he received some French superheavy howitzers, and he borrowed several batteries of long-range naval guns to support the next Isonzo effort. Just as important, he amassed a reserve of a million artillery shells (many of them from Britain and France) for the Third Battle-enough, he believed, to blast a gaping hole through the crust of Boroevic's defenses. The infantry also received its share of new weapons. By mid-October, the 2nd and 3rd Armies boasted hundreds more machine guns, some new heavy mortars, better hand grenades, new demolitions to destroy Austrian wire and entrenchments, and even protective body armor-the first steel helmets from France, and steel shields for assault detachments. The Italians, too, had realized that the war had become a contest between machines as much as a fight between men.
The gradual reequipment of the Italian Army was no easy task. Italy's prewar economic backwardness made gearing up for total war a slow and painful process, made worse by the habitual bureaucratic complications. To overcome these realities, Cadorna put General Alfred Dallolio in charge of waging the industrial war that made the Isonzo fighting possible. As undersecretary for arms and munitions, and later as head of the Central Committee for Industrial Mobilization, Dallolio organized Italy's fragmented private industries into a united war effort. He oversaw the establishment of joint committees to resolve disputes, increased industrial productivity, improved labor relations, and established hundreds of auxiliary factories to expand Italy's modest industrial base. Dallolio's labors had just begun to bear fruit by October 1915, but he laid the foundation of eventual Italian victory in the First World War.
In the autumn of 1915, however, ultimate victory still seemed very far in the future. Most seriously, a financial crisis threatened to cripple the war effort. War Minister Vittorio Zupelli had grossly underestimated the cost of the fighting, so by October an ominous shortfall in government outlays constrained the army. A shortage of funds produced a shortage of shells. At the outset, Zupelli announced that a billion lire would be needed to purchase the army's munitions for the duration of the fighting. Like nearly all Italian generals and politicians, he had believed that Cadorna would lead Italian forces to a quick and easy victory over Austria. The cost of the war, and the quantity of munitions needed, therefore vastly exceeded the War Ministry's predictions. By the end of 1915, the army would use up six billion lire worth of shells. Only rapid British and French financial assistance prevented an autumn industrial halt in Italy. Cadorna could not wage war without funds to purchase munitions, and he was already dependent on his allies to provide much of the needed credit.
Unconcerned with the financial situation, Cadorna intended the Third Battle to be his long-awaited victory. The objective was Gorizia. The capture of the City of Violets would not be militarily decisive, but it would be a bitter blow to Austrian prestige and morale. His attempt to take the Carso and drive on Trieste had failed, so he now aimed his armies at Gorizia, a far closer and more attainable objective. Cadorna planned a two-phase battle. It would begin with coordinated attacks to the north and south of the city, at Plava and on the northern Carso. These flank attacks would drive behind Gorizia, cutting it off. Then a direct assault on the city would lead to its capture. To achieve this, Cadorna had collected two-thirds of the Italian Army, twenty-nine divisions with 338 infantry battalions, some 350,000 riflemen. The main mission was given to Pietro Frugoni's 2nd Army, with 163 battalions and 654 guns. On the left, its bloodied IV Corps would attack the Austrians again in the upper valley, with the objective of taking Tolmein. On the central Isonzo, the VIII and II Corps would move into the Bainsizza plateau and outflank Gorizia from the north. Across the Isonzo from the city, the VI Corps was ordered to take Podgora and Mt. Sabotino, familiar objectives, and wait for the drive to the river's east bank. The Duke of Aosta's 3rd Army, slightly weaker with 125 battalions and 546 guns, was given the mission of taking Mt. San Michele and making supporting attacks on the central and southern edges of the Doberd6 plateau. Cadorna kept two corps with four divisions in reserve to exploit the success of the first phase. By mid-October he was ready.
The Austrians were well aware what Cadorna was planning. The army's intelligence service was efficient, and excelled at deciphering enemy codes; in fact, at the beginning of the Great War, Austria was the only country in Europe besides France to have a signal intelligence service, and experienced Habsburg code breakers rendered sterling service on the Russian and Italian fronts. Boroevic's signal intelligence section intercepted numerous Italian messages that indicated an imminent offensive; 5th Army intelligence knew Cadorna's order of battle in almost every detail. At lower levels, Austrian forward positions observed Italian movements all along the Isonzo. Cadorna and his soldiers made little attempt to conceal their actions. Everywhere Italian infantry was on the move, new artillery units were arriving, and in some places Italian engineers made preparations for a river crossing in broad daylight. If this did not make the picture sufficiently clear, as the day of battle approached, some Italian troops sought refuge in Austrian captivity. In the three days before the battle, the Tolmein sector alone collected fifty-four deserters, who were happy to have avoided combat and who provided Austrian intelligence officers with a wealth of information about their units and their orders. The Austrians were thus well prepared when Cadorna began his epic preparatory barrage, signaling the beginning of the Third Battle.
Precisely at noon on October 18, the massed artillery of the 2nd and 3rd Armies opened fire, beginning by far the greatest barrage yet witnessed on the Italian-Austrian front. The shelling blasted Austrian positions all along the Isonzo, from Krn to the Adriatic, a distance of more than thirty miles. The bombardment by more than 1,300 guns continued virtually nonstop through the day and night. The morning of October 19 saw increased shelling, and the first major Italian air attack of the war. The air services of both sides were still in their infancy, and large air operations were a rarity. The early morning raid on the main Austrian airfield, just east of Gorizia, was thus a surprise. Over a hundred bombs fell on the aerodrome, causing few casualties but extensive damage to aircraft; secondary bombing runs on headquarters, reserve positions, and rail stations added to the chaos. Ammunition shortages prevented Austrian guns from responding to the Italian barrage except in a few areas. The infantry stoically had to endure the Italian shelling and wait for it to end. The barrage reduced hundreds of emplacements and trench sections to rubble. Sleep and rest were impossible for the defenders. On October 18, on the Carso alone, Italian guns killed and wounded 5,300 Austrian soldiers. The casualty rate dropped as the shelling wore on, but the impact of Cadorna's great preparatory barrage on Boroevic's frontline infantry was terrible.
Except for a few probes, Cadorna's infantry remained in their positions while the guns did their fearsome work. After seventy hours of shelling, the bombardment ceased at 10 A.M. on October 21. Two hours later the first mass infantry attacks began. The offensive's left flank soon bogged down. On the upper Isonzo, the fighting was intense but indecisive. Attempts by the IV Corps to break through the Mrzli chain typically failed. Combat around Vrgic and Javorcek was sustained and costly for both sides. Repeated Italian assaults up the second mountain proved in vain. The Austrians resisted with all their strength, even resorting to rolling flaming barrels of explosives down the mountainside on the heads of the advancing Bersaglieri. These "rolling bombs" were an old tradition on the upper Isonzo; Habsburg defenders had used them successfully against Napoleon's GrandeAnnee in 1809. Italian soldiers, Mussolini among them, continued until midnight to attack what he remembered as "the tragic passes of Vrgic and Javorcek" Snowstorms and complete exhaustion brought an end to the Italian attempts. Renewed efforts to reach the Tolmein bridgehead also failed. Four major assaults led by elite battalions of Alpini and Bersaglieri broke apart on the Austrian defenses around Hill 588.
The Italian push on the central Isonzo was equally abortive. On the northern edge of the Bainsizza plateau, troops of the VIII Corps crossed the Isonzo in boats, but were soon repulsed and pushed back to the west bank with heavy losses. Plava continued to live up to its evil reputation. Flanking attacks by the 3rd and 32nd Divisions around Hill 383 were likewise turned back. Later efforts ended disastrously on the hillsides of 383. Everywhere on the northern flank, Austrian forces, much battered by Cadorna's barrage, still managed to keep the Italians in check. The seventy-hour bombardment inflicted heavy losses on the defenders, but always enough machine gunners and riflemen survived to hold the Italians back. Austrian losses were heavy, of course; the XV Corps, defending the upper Isonzo, lost 2,900 soldiers in the first week of the Third Battle, including 650 confirmed killed. Still, Italian casualties were considerably worse.
The 3rd Army's experience on the Carso proved similarly frustrating for Cadorna. The general attack, which began on October 21, soon stalled before Austrian machine gun nests, as before. The first waves of assault troops initially made impressive gains. They emerged from their positions clad in steel, wearing protective helmets, breastplates, even leg guards, looking like resurrected knights of the Middle Ages. Eight infantry regiments charged up Mt. San Michele, on a front little more than a mile wide. The defending Hungarians of the 20th Honved Division resisted fiercely, and the Italians advanced only on the mountain's west side. An Austrian counterstroke retook even that minor gain from the 3rd Army, capturing more than 500 tired fanti. The Italian net gain in the San Michele sector was an advance of a hundred paces. Losses for both armies were unprecedentedly high. The Austrian VII Corps, defending the Carso's northern half, lost 4,600 soldiers in five hours of fighting on October 21. The uncounted Italian casualties likely were higher still. The story was the same on the Carso's southern half, where the III Corps managed not to lose a single important position to the combined attacks of five Italian divisions. The cost was prohibitive, indeed even worse: 5,650 Austrian casualties, including almost a thousand known dead. Italian losses were surely worse, and there were no gains to show for such a sacrifice.
Frustrated by his lack of success, Cadorna ordered an even more vigorous offensive on the Carso the following day, October 22. The artillery opened up again, showering the exhausted defenders of the Doberdo plateau with high explosives. The bombardment was so intense that it could be heard more than sixty miles away. At 11 A.M., the XIV Corps launched another mass attack up Mt. San Michele. It fell apart after a bitter struggle near the summit with bayonets and hand grenades. The Austrian 43rd Regiment, a mostly Romanian unit, maintained its hold on San Michele. Italian efforts on the southern Carso fared no better. A determined counterattack by the 6th Austrian Militia Regiment even managed to retake the summit of Hill 118, Mt. Sei Busi, lost in the Second Battle; bombs dropped from an Italian airship failed to dislodge the militiamen. A brave attack by the Italian 16th Division up Hill 121, a rise less than two miles north of the Adriatic, ended in catastrophe. The division charged into the fire of Austrian machine guns and lost 4,000 soldiers on the hillside, without gaining any ground. The Iron Corps had lived up to its name.
The first phase of Cadorna's Third Battle reached its high point the next day, October 23, on the Carso. Cadorna realized that he could not take Gorizia without first clearing Mt. San Michele of Austrian troops, so he sent his legions back into battle against the apparently impregnable Austrian positions. He reinforced the 3rd Army with fresh battalions and replenished shattered regiments with replacements straight from training depots. Cadorna concentrated his effort on the San Michele sector, aiming three and a half divisions at the mountain. The attack promised to be very costly. The poet Gabriele D'Annunzio observed doomed fanti headed for Mt. San Michele. The energetic bard had volunteered to fight as soon as war broke out, and was assigned by Cadorna to 3rd Army headquarters. Despite his years-fifty-two in 1915, an age, he admitted, "fit for slippers and easy-chair"-he participated actively in the war effort. Between daring flights over Austrian territory and other dramatic exploits, D'Annunzio regularly visited the Carso front, which inspired him to write gruesomely romantic poetry. Watching infantrymen at a field Mass, just before entering battle on San Michele, D'Annunzio observed "Heads already touched by Death, marked by the terrible Worker. A mass of meat to be slaughtered." The horrible fate of thefanti, the "holy infantry," did not worry D' Annunzio; indeed, he proudly announced, "I am a poet of slaughter." The fight for San Michele would give the warrior-poet all the slaughter he could ask for.
After a brief but intense bombardment, the Italians again charged the Austrian trenches on Mt. San Michele, the first of several mass attacks on October 23. Fighting raged throughout the day, punctuated by more shelling. The battle was vicious and intense, with much hand-to-hand struggling in the Austrian trenchworks. The bayonet and hand grenade decided the day. The fight continued well into the evening, with Austrian attempts to regain lost entrenchments. In the late hours of October 23, both sides, thoroughly exhausted, enjoyed a brief rest. The Romanians of the 43rd Regiment still held Mt. San Michele. The cost of defending the Carso had been terrible. The Hungarian VII Corps was being bled white on San Michele. One of the many to fall on the mountain on October 23 was Colonel Eduard Weeber, commander of the 81st Honved Brigade, the defenders of the summit. Weeber was the second Austrian brigadier to fall on the Carso in as many days; Colonel Franz Drennig died the previous night defending Hill 121 alongside many of the soldiers of his 19th Militia Brigade. Most regiments were at less than half-strength, but it was difficult to bring replacements into the line. Around-the-clock Italian shelling of Austrian rear areas prevented a steady stream of food, water, and fresh men from reaching the front lines. The Third Battle would be decided on the Carso, on San Michele, as every Austrian soldier from Boroevic to the lowliest private knew. The only question was whether the tired, hungry, and thirsty defenders could withstand another Italian attack.
A predawn assault by the Italian 29th Division seized part of Mt. San Michele's north slope. So the VII Corps started October 24 with a 7 A.M. counterattack. The Austrian move pushed the Italians back down the mountainside, but the 3rd Army was not going to give up the fight. At noon, hundreds of Italian guns began shelling the VII Corps. The barrage continued for three hours and was especially heavy on Mt. San Michele. At 3 P.M., another mass infantry attack followed. As many as eight regiments-two divisions' worth of infantry-charged up the mountain, past the countless unburied corpses of comrades fallen in recent days. Surviving Austrian machine guns cut swaths through the advancing ranks of fanti, but more savage close combat followed when the Italians reached the Austrian trenches. Hand-to-hand fighting lasted all afternoon, but by the evening the Italians began to withdraw. This attack had stalled like all the others. Austrian infantry soon chased the survivors back to their own trenches. Boroevic's first defensive line was still intact. In the last hours of October 24, Cadorna reluctantly ordered the 3rd Army's offensive suspended; it was a pause, not a halt. The Duke of Aosta's divisions needed fresh men and more munitions before they could fight again. For the moment, the Austrians had prevailed. Archduke Joseph's VII Corps had again held all its ground in the face of the fiercest shelling and mass attacks yet seen. The cost had been terrible: in seven days' fighting, the VII Corps lost 13,500 dead and wounded, half its rifle strength; the precise losses of the neighboring III Corps, much less the Duke of Aosta's 3rd Army, can only be guessed at.
The failure of Cadorna's first phase did not deter him from beginning the second, the drive on Gorizia. Although the flanking attacks at Plava and on the Carso made no progress, Cadorna ordered the 2nd Army to assault the Austrian positions before the city. The main objectives of this attack, like all previous ones, were Mt. Sabotino, Oslavia, and Podgora. The mission was assigned to the VI Corps, which had spent so much of its strength during the summer trying to wrest trench lines from Erwin Zeidler's Dalmatians. The corps had a new commander, however, who promised to transform defeat into victory. Lieutenant General Luigi Capello had been in command of the VI Corps for less than a month, but he already had a reputation for toughness and determination. The fifty-six-year-old Capello, although like Cadorna a northerner, was in many other ways quite different from his commander in chief. His father, a bureaucrat in the state telegraph service, encouraged him to pursue a military career. Capello was by all accounts very successful in his chosen profession, with many years in the field with the infantry. He commanded a brigade during the Libyan war, where he earned a reputation as a hard driver of men, an impression cemented by his aggressive command of a division on the Carso during the First and Second Battles of the Isonzo. It was this ruthless determination to win that Cadorna wanted above all in his subordinates. He therefore chose to overlook other aspects of Capello's life that he did not like: the new corps commander was a politically active, high-ranking Freemason, whereas Cadorna was a staunch Roman Catholic who detested politics. Cadorna considered Capello a schemer, un generale politicante. The two generals therefore agreed on little save the battlefield tasks at hand. They were never personally less than distant.
Capello had at his disposal more than three divisions, amply supported by artillery. For the first time, the VI Corps had enough heavy and superheavy guns-eleven batteries in the Sabotino sector alone-to blast holes in the Austrian defenses. The Italians were still opposed by the tough and well entrenched 58th Division, now reinforced by a brigade of Poles from East Galicia. The Polish 30th Regiment, new to the Isonzo front, garrisoned Mt. Sabotino, "Snake Mountain" to its defenders because of its long, winding ridges. A surprise night attack by the Livorno Brigade on Sabotino on October 23-24 made little progress. Attempts by the 11th and 12th Divisions to advance on Oslavia and Podgora were no more successful. On October 24, Italian mortars and heavy guns pounded Sabotino mercilessly, blowing apart and burying Austrian entrenchments. Still, a mass bayonet charge by the 4th Division up the mountain's northwestern face was annihilated by the Poles' remaining machine guns and the 58th's artillery, which caught the fanti on the bare, treeless slope. The heavy barrage had blasted away any cover for the advancing infantry. The remnants of the 4th Division struggled back down the mountain in the afternoon, chased by counterattacking Poles. The Pavia Brigade's effort two days later likewise collapsed, leaving 3,000 Italian dead and wounded on the mountainside. Capello, unconcerned by these setbacks, concentrated his divisions on the southern half of the sector instead. An assault by ten battalions against Podgora on the morning of October 25 was cut short by Austrian machine guns and mortar fire, as were further bloody attempts on October 26 and 27. By then it was evident that the VI Corps could make no headway. Capello's first offensive as a corps commander ended in frustration. The heavy artillery was successful at cratering the terrain and creating a great deal of noise and smoke, but it was not destroying Zeidler's sturdy defenses, only damaging them. Every attack found plenty of Austrian weapons still before it, enough to inflict grievous losses and block any advance.
While Capello's offensive before Gorizia stalled, Cadorna ordered Frugoni to renew his 2nd Army's drive on the upper and central Isonzo. Between October 24 and 27, the II Corps, the Plava Corps, made repeated attempts to take and outflank Hill 383. All failed. The 3rd and 32nd Divisions lost an additional 2,000 dead and wounded in these futile attacks on "Bloody 383"; the defending 1st Mountain Brigade counted 570 casualties in these struggles with its longtime adversaries. Farther up the Isonzo, the IV Corps tried yet again to occupy the Tolmein bridgehead. The attack, the biggest so far with two strong divisions and two Alpini brigades, similarly achieved nothing save a notable addition to the casualty lists. Still, attrition was wearing the Austrians down. The 5th Army was running out of soldiers. The XV Corps, defending the Mrzli chain, on Oc tober 26 had to commit its last reserves to stem the Italian tide. They were a regiment of middle-aged German and Slovene militia, armed with captured Russian rifles and clad in ancient dark blue uniforms. Cadorna's bloodletting was not pushing his armies any closer to Trieste, but it was draining the already shallow reservoir of Austrian manpower.
Aware that Boroevic's army could not withstand such losses much longer, Cadorna renewed his drive on Gorizia after just a day's pause. He sent the 2nd and 3rd Armies back into battle after only twenty-four hours to rest and absorb replacements. His army, like Boroevic's, had become a machine with an apparent life of its own, a ceaselessly running meat grinder that steadily consumed fresh regiments and spewed out their tattered remains. The battle's second phase began with a massive blow by Capello's VI Corps aimed at Zeidler's defenses. It started on October 28 with an attack by the 4th Division on Sabotino. The veteran division was joined by the Grenadier Brigade, the senior unit of the Italian Army, raised in 1659. Its two regiments of Grenadiers-the House of Savoy's famed Granatieri di Sardegna-took the tallest recruits in the army, and were renowned for their courage under tire. The six regiments together stormed the mountain, braving machine gun and artillery tare that felled whole companies of charging fanti. They did not reach the Austrian lines. Even the tall and strong grenadiers could not prevail against modern firepower. Casualties were very high, among them Colonel Buonamici, commander of the 127th Regiment, who died with hundreds of his troops while leading the futile charge up the north slope. Later in the afternoon, Capello sent the I 1 th and 12th Divisions into action against Podgora and Oslavia. These attacks also failed to make noteworthy progress. Even the limited gains on Podgora hill were undone by a vigorous counterstroke by five companies of the Dalmatian 23rd Rifles, who charged the Italian-held trenches with bugle calls signaling the attack. The 58th Division suffered too, but it had a good day: it held all its ground and took 500 Italian prisoners.
Despite these painful setbacks, Capello remained confident that his weakened divisions could still capture Zeidler's trench lines. On the morning of October 29 he sent the 12th Division against Podgora hill yet again, accompanied by artillery and mortar barrages. The bombardment was indiscriminate and inflicted minimal losses on the Dalmatians; several stray shells hit Gorizia, causing civilian casualties. The exhausted Italian infantry somehow managed to rise from their trenches and attempted to cross the mere hundred paces between them and the Austrians. A few farm even reached the Dalmatians' positions, and the usual hand-to-hand fighting ensued. The assault was hopeless, however, and the 12th was forced to concede defeat by the afternoon. In a rare display of Habsburg firepower, the Austrian artillery shelled Capello's infantry for hours on end, saving the tired Dalmatian foot soldiers. The withdrawal of the 12th Division to its own lines was welcome news to the Austrians because the 58th was worn out by the fierce brawling. Field Marshal Archduke Friedrich, titular commander of the Austrian Army, observed much of the day's fighting. He was visiting the Isonzo front and wanted to see Zeidler's methods for himself, so he watched the battle from the nearby headquarters of the division's artillery. The archduke was astounded by how close the two sides' trenches were, and by how long and hard the infantry mixed it up with knives and bayonets. Friedrich, like all generals and staff officers who could stomach watching the troops in action, was shocked by the cost of the bloody fighting.
Cadorna was still determined to keep battering the Austrian defenses; after all, he had not seen his tactics at work with his own eyes. The appalling casualty figures that reached his headquarters at Udine-figures he did his best to keep from the king, the government, and the people-represented only numbers on a page, not human lives sacrificed to his hopeless schemes. He committed the Duke of Aosta's 3rd Army to another attack on Mt. San Michele. Hundreds of guns dropped high-explosive shells on the Austrian trenches through the morning of October 28, and the inevitable infantry advance soon followed. Two entire army corps charged the Austrian lines in the San Michele sector between the Vipacco River and Mt. Sei Busi, ninety-six infantry battalions on a front of less than four and a half miles-an Italian foot soldier every two and a half feet. The Austrian machine gunners had more targets than they had ammunition. The Duke of Aosta's infantry fell in the thousands before they reached the VII Corps's trenches, nowhere more than 300 paces to the east. The four divisions that assaulted Mt. San Michele itself made some progress during the day. Only a determined nighttime counterattack by the Hungarian 17th Division pushed the XIV Corps back to its own lines.
The slaughter resumed the following morning. October 29 was tilled with Italian charges and Austrian counterstrokes. The Italian XIV Corps, mauled by the struggles around Mt. San Michele, fought throughout the day, but the Romanians of the 43rd Regiment held on to the summit. Both armies were running out of fresh troops. The 3rd Army's offensive was losing steam due to frightful losses, and Archduke Joseph's VII Corps sent its last reserve battalion into the line on October 29. The two sides were now only 100 to 200 paces apart, in many cases much closer. The defenders had had no sleep in six days, rat-bitten unburied Italian and Austrian corpses lay everywhere, and the wounded could not be evacuated. Maimed soldiers sought refuge in dolinas and waited for the shelling to end. There had not been fresh food or water for days. Thousands of soldiers in both armies suffered from cholera, brought by Austrian reinforcements from the Eastern front. Even Boroevic's rear areas were not safe from Italian shelling. One unfortunate half-company of Austrian militiamen, resting in a dolina behind the front, was struck by a large-caliber shell. It left nineteen dead and twenty-six wounded, with the survivors running around insane. The Carso's defenders had reached the breaking point.
Cadorna anticipated that Boroevic's army could take little more. He observed, "The time has arrived to pick the fruits of the pressure exerted on the enemy and now to decide to begin the decisive phase of the offensive." Hence he ordered another massed offensive by the 2nd and 3rd Armies to outflank Gorizia and to attack the city head-on. It began on the 2nd Army's northern flank, with an attack on the Plava bridgehead. The objective of the II Corps, as it had been since the beginning of the fighting five months before, was clearing Hill 383 of Austrian defenders and advancing southward down the Bainsizza plateau toward Gorizia. A successful drive would surround Mt. Sabotino and seize Mt. Santo, an important Austrian observation post overlooking the city. The 32nd Division prepared to hit Hill 383 from the north and west while part of the 3rd Division readied to take it from the south. The rest of the 3rd would take the village of Zagora, a mile downstream from Plava. The attack started late on October 31, when Italian infantry emerged from the darkness and charged the trenches of Guido Novak's 1st Mountain Brigade. The 3rd Division struck Zagora especially hard, and the Austrian defenses were severely tested. The Plava Corps continued to push the next morning, with renewed attacks at dawn. The defenders of Zagora began to give way asfanti advanced through the rain and tog; the river road leading straight to Gorizia was nearly in Italian hands. Desperate to avert a disaster, the Austrian 18th Division dispatched its only nearby reserve, the 4th Battalion of the 4th Infantry Regiment, to Zagora.
The small but significant battle for Zagora showed the vital role played by individuals even in a Materielschlacht. The battalion commander, Emil Fey, was an unlikely hero. The twenty-nine-year-old son of a state insurance official, Fey had served in the army since the age of eighteen, when he enlisted as an officer cadet, and had spent almost his entire career in the supply corps. Casualties among frontline officers were so heavy that Fey was sent to the infantry in March 1915, to the ancient 4th Infantry, the Hoch- uiid Deutschmeister Regiment, recruited in his home city of Vienna.1 He had successfully traded in his logistical charts for a rifle and bayonet, but Plava would be his first real battlefield test. Fey and his Viennese battalion, 800 strong, arrived at Zagora just in time to meet the Italian breakout. Aware that an Italian victory would mean disaster, Fey led his soldiers in repeated bayonet charges against the onrushing 3rd Division. The Italians and Austrians fought through the day for control of the worthless little village of Zagora, until both sides were exhausted. By the evening the ruins of the village were again in Austrian hands, and the tired and weakened 3rd Division had been firmly contained; there was no longer any danger of an Italian drive down the Isonzo valley. Fey and his troops had saved Gorizia's northern flank, for which the captain was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Maria Theresia, the highest Habsburg decoration. The cost had been steep. Only a quarter of the Viennese battalion survived November 1 un scathed, Fey miraculously among them. Some 600 comrades lay dead and wounded around Zagora, on the banks of the Isonzo.
The opportunity for a quick victory at Plava evaporated with Fey's exploits, but the II Corps continued to throw its infantry at Hi11383. Until November 4, the 32nd and 3rd Divisions waged daily battles to advance up the barren hillside, without success. A strong Austrian counterattack on the evening of November 2 nearly pushed the Italians into the Isonzo. After five days of heavy fighting, the II Corps abandoned its efforts. Its two divisions had been completely destroyed. The defenders suffered notably as well: the 1st Mountain Brigade lost 40 percent of its soldiers dead and wounded, including Major General Novak, severely injured by Italian shrapnel during the November 2 counterstroke. Nevertheless, the brigade still held Hill 383 and Zagora. The Italian gain was limited to the capture of a single Austrian position and an advance of little more than a hundred paces near Zagora.
While the II Corps sacrificed itself at Plava, Capello's neighboring VI Corps restarted its drive on Gorizia. At dawn on November 1, Capello's guns opened up on the 58th Division's whole four-and-a-half-mile front. The 4th Division was so spent by the last attack on Sabotino that its place was taken by the Marche Brigade, assisted by the Grenadiers. The 55th and 56th Regiments advanced up Sabotino's north face while the two regiments of Granatieri assaulted the western side. The attacks continued until late on November 2, but captured no Austrian trenches, and the four shattered regiments had to retreat down the mountain. The I Ith Division's attempts to take Oslavia also failed bloodily, after some minor early gains. Zeidler committed his last reserve battalion to push the 11th back to its own lines. The 12th Division's effort on Podgora hill was more successful. By November 3, when Capello was forced to cease his attacks because of his troops' complete exhaustion, the 12th still held Hills 184 and 240 west of the village of Podgora. They had been bought at a cost of 10,300 dead and wounded to the VI Corps since October 18, according to official Italian figures. The two hills were militarily insignificant, even useless; they brought the 2nd Army less than a hundred paces closerto Gorizia. But they were the greatest Italian gains during the entire Third Battle. Only in Cadorna's army would such an advance have been hailed as a victory or considered a profitable trade of men's lives for territory.
The 3rd Army had absolutely nothing to show for its eighteen-day battle on the Carso. The blasting of Austrian positions by the Duke of Aosta's guns continued unabated, giving the defenders no chance to rest or regroup. A major two-division attack on Mt. San Michele on November 1 inflicted heavy losses on the 17th Division but gained no ground. The next day's effort produced the same results. A shattering early morning barrage shook the mountain and collapsed many Austrian positions. The 17th Division barely survived the shelling, but, as always, just enough of Boroevic's soldiers remained alive to man the machine guns that destroyed the attacking regiments of fanti. The 3rd Army launched its final attack of the Third Battle on November 4, but this brave effort likewise won nothing for the Duke of Aosta and his men. Two and a half weeks of powerful blows against the Austrian trenches on the Carso proved utterly fruitless. Heroic sacrifice, bolstered by almost a thousand guns, could not crack the Carso's defenses. The Italians failed to take and hold a single Austrian position on the entire Doberdd plateau.
The failed offensive had cost Cadorna 67,000 soldiers. After the war the Italians admitted to 10,733 killed, 9,624 missing,' 44,290 wounded, and 2,351 captured during the Third Battle. All figures are certainly underestimates; the Austrians captured at least 4,000 fanti, and there is no reason to think the other categories are substantially more accurate. To win a few positions around Zagora and two hills west of Podgora, Cadorna had sacrificed an entire army, an average of almost 4,000 soldiers a day. Italy still had plenty of fresh men left; Cadorna's methods had hardly begun to tax Italy's manpower reserves. Italy's industries were just beginning to mobilize. Cadorna could keep fighting such futile and sacrificial battles for many months to come without overly straining Italy's warmaking potential. There was enough men and materiel available for many more such offensives. Yet, the morale of the army was being tried as never before. D'Annunzio, a fanatical believer in fighting spirit and redemption through suffering, hailed the catastrophe on the Carso as "the ideal transfiguration of the Italian peasant"; always searching for a poetic metaphor, he compared the "sublimation of the spirit" he witnessed on the Doberdo plateau to Dante's Inferno. Doubtless the doomedfanti, without literary allusions to comfort them, felt differently.
Cadorna's brutal tactics and unforgiving discipline were at least as great an enemy to the frontline Italian soldier as the Austrians were. The fantaccino had to endure not just the virtual certainty of being killed or maimed, but also a deplorable medical system, poor rations, few distractions from battle, and the army's harsh code of justice. Mussolini, a veteran of the Third Battle and what he modestly termed "those days of extreme hardship" on the upper Isonzo, defined morale as "the sense of responsibility, the impulse toward the fulfillment of duty, the spirit of resistance, which an individual possesses." The ordinary Italian foot soldier displayed such qualities in abundance, even during the darkest hours of the Third Battle of the Isonzo. Whole brigades and divisions were slaughtered over and over again, only to return the next day to the same hill, without a mutiny. The Italian Army was holding up surprisingly well to the unprecedented strains of the Isonzo fighting. The elite Alpini, Bersaglieri and Grenadiers displayed remarkable dash, as the army anticipated, but even regiments recruited in southern Italy, an unmartial region with a poor military reputation, fought bravely. The Sassari Brigade from Sardinia, another region which the Comando Supremo believed produced mediocre soldiers, distin guished itself on the Carso.3 It lost more than 2,500 soldiers, including its commander, during the Third Battle. The ordinary Italian peasant, backbone of Cadoma's infantry, was a very good soldier when well led, recklessly courageous in the attack. He would fight bravely even when poorly led, as was too often the case. Still, how much longer could the 2nd and 3rd Armies be abused in such a fashion without a collapse of fighting spirit?
The cost of the Third Battle for the 5th Army was proportionately even worse. Boroevie's forces, ten divisions strong at the battle's end, registered almost 42,000 casualties, including 8,228 killed, 7,201 missing, and 26,418 wounded. The policy of holding every inch of ground had again led to terrible losses. More than half the casualties, nearly 24,000, were sustained by Archduke Joseph's VII Corps-a figure equal to 85 percent of the corps' rifle strength on October 18. The Hungarians' courage and sacrifice had again prevented an Italian breakthrough on the Carso. Their legendary ability to endure endless heavy bombardments assumed its rightful place in the annals of Habsburg military history. Amazingly, infantrymen of all nationalities showed no signs of weakness in the face of repeated Italian attacks. Against all odds, they continued to resist the enemy ferociously. Yet, the cost of the Third Battle in men and materiel raised pessimistic queries at 5th Army headquarters and the High Command. Both Boroevie and Franz Conrad wondered how long Austria could sustain such a pounding. Her army and industry, strained by a three-front war, could ill afford such expenditures of scarce infantry, weaponry, and munitions. One Materielschlacht was enough; a series of several more beatings at the hands of Cadorna's armies would quickly prove an unbearable burden. The Third Battle signaled the appearance of a new kind of war for the Italians and Austrians, the pattern for all future battles of the Isonzo. The new warfare was called fabrikliche Krieg-assembly-line war-by staff officers safely removed from the front lines. In the long run, such bloody industrialized fighting could only favor the Italians, who possibly could still afford it. The tired infantry holding the trenches on both sides of the Isonzo understood only that it meant more artillery, mortars, machine guns, and other highly lethal weapons, and a corresponding ever decreasing life expectancy for themselves.