SIX
Despite more than five months of war on the Isonzo, many civilians near the front continued to lead a tolerably normal existence. The fighting had shattered the security of prewar life in the Littoral, but much of day-to-day living remained unchanged. In Trieste, safely behind the front lines, residents were able to live reasonably undisturbed by the nearby slaughter. The war had deprived the city of many of its young men and much of its prosperity, both perhaps forever, but the essential patterns of life were able to continue without drastic alterations. Heavy Italian bombardments of the Carso could be heard clearly anywhere in the city, but Trieste had been spared the direct effects of Luigi Cadorna's three great offensives. The same could not be said of Gorizia. The City of Violets had been trapped in the middle of the Isonzo fighting from the beginning. The front line, where Luigi Capello's VI Corps and Erwin Zeidler's Dalmatians dueled ferociously for every hill, ran through its once industrious western suburbs. Still, even many civilians in Gorizia managed to live surprisingly normally while the war took its toll all around them. There were not many Gorizians left in their city, barely 10,000 by November, less than one-third the prewar population. Some diehards, mostly older residents, refused to abandon their homes. Many of them were retired Austrian officers, determined to wait it out no matter the cost or duration. Some residents had stayed behind to greet Cadorna's legions when they arrived in the city; there were not many, however, and by now they were deeply disappointed. Such Gorizians would have many more painful months to wait for their liberation and redemption.
In the meantime, the city's residents enjoyed few luxuries; war-induced inflation and rationing quickly impoverished everyone. Nevertheless, a facade of happier prewar days lived on, and much that was familiar had remained. The city still had its newspaper, and many businesses stayed open. There were few goods in the shops, and even fewer advertisements in the paper, but Gorizians contented themselves with what they had. A handful of schools were still in session, and the ever efficient Austrian postal service kept the mail coming to Gorizia with few delays. Hotels continued to stay open and accept guests, although there were few visitors now. Most important to the city's morale, the cafes were still in operation. Throughout the Habsburg Empire, the cafe had long served as a refuge from the pressures of day-to-day life, a place where people of all classes could take a break from the world, visit with their longtime friends, and catch up on the day's news, and Gorizia was no exception. Even during the worst fighting, the cafes stayed open. The wartime coffee was of poor quality, and there was little to discuss except the war, but Gorizians had much to forget for a while, and were happy to have their beloved cafes to comfort them. The city's most fashionable cafe, located in the main square, was as popular as ever. Many of its habitues were officers of the 58th Division, seeking a temporary refuge there from the fighting on Podgora hill, only one and a half miles to the west. Weary officers could walk from the forward trenches to the city's main square in twenty minutes. There they enjoyed a brief glimpse of prewar life, a world destroyed by the endless fighting. They ensured that the cafe was always full, and it was frequently difficult to find a table. The table at the front window, however, was rarely requested, even during the cafe's busiest hours; it was in the clear line of fire of an Italian machine gun on Podgora hill, an unpleasant surprise when first discovered.
Still, many Gorizians could be forgiven for forgetting during lulls in the fighting that there was a war going on around them, that Cadorna's army was less than two miles away. It was impossible to sleep during the frequent around-the-clock Italian bombardments, but not many Gorizians feared for their lives. Astonishingly few residents had been killed by the fighting. Cadorna's general policy of not bombarding majority-Italian cities meant that only a handful of shells and bombs had landed in Gorizia itself, despite all the Austrian military positions in and around the city. There were unpleasant exceptions, of course, such as the huge 305mm shell that hit an army repair shop, killing and wounding nearly a hundred workers. So far, however, the Isonzo fighting had proved to be more a hardship than a terror for the residents of Gorizia who had remained in their city for the duration of the war.
The hundreds of thousands of Austrian and Italian soldiers dug in around Gorizia and on the Isonzo were not so fortunate. By November, cold Alpine winds had arrived and late autumn rains turned trenches into seas of mud, making the already primitive living conditions dangerously unsanitary. The filthy trenches, with their limited bathing facilities, cold and damp sleeping quarters, and inadequate latrines, were a haven for infectious diseases; the countless thousands of unburied corpses all along the Isonzo only increased the opportunities for disease to spread among the living. Only the legions of rats that plagued both armies thrived in such surroundings. Without any allegiances, the rodents were free to roam contentedly from trench to trench, across no man's land, growing fat on the flesh of dead soldiers. The soldiers were much less happy, and less adapted to life in such squalor. During the brief lull in the fighting, the toll of seriously ill Italians and Austrians rose alarmingly. Tens of thousands of soldiers in both armies became gravely sick from a number of pervasive maladies-trench foot, skin infections, persistent stomach ailments, and, worst of all, cholera. A major cholera epidemic broke out on the Isonzo in late October and reached its peak in mid-November, taking a heavy toll on both sides. The Italians, poorly prepared to deal with the crisis, were harder hit. Their squalid and overcrowded field hospitals were swamped byfanti struck down with cholera, and were unable to cope with the crisis. Thousands of Italian soldiers whom the Austrian bullets had missed were killed by disease; they died needlessly and painfully in dirty army hospitals.
One of the many Italian infantrymen laid low by disease was Benito Mussolini. Like many of Cadorna's fighting men, he feared Italian hospitals more than the enemy. He survived the Third Battle unscathed, and even managed to avoid the cholera epidemic, but in November he was infected with typhus. His condition worsened, and he was sent to an army hospital in Cividale, twenty miles behind the front, where he nearly died. He was eventually dispatched to a larger hospital in Milan to recover. There Mussolini enjoyed an almost three-month convalescence, missing the Fourth Battle entirely. However, like many Italian soldiers, he had not just the enemy and disease to contend with, but also his own army's troublesome bureaucracy, combined in his case with political interference. Before Mussolini fell ill, his colonel offered him a chance to avoid the fighting by becoming the regimental clerk. Certainly the former journalist was better suited to such a desk job than to life in the trenches, where his chances of survival were slim. Mussolini declined the offer: he came to Isonzo to fight, not to type. He did want the chance to become an officer, however. The colonel approved Mussolini's request, which was a normal one, given the ex-journalist's education. Mussolini was immediately promoted to corporal and was soon on his way to an officer training school safely behind the lines. Yet his time as an officer cadet was destined to be short-lived. The Comando Supremo soon received word of Mussolini's admission to the school and reacted immediately; citing his "deplorable background," the War Ministry decided without delay that it could never grant such an infamous radical a commission. Prime Minister Antonio Salandra even became involved. He, too, agreed that the officer corps was no place for a troublemaker like Mussolini, no matter what his educa tional qualifications were. Salandra personally saw to it that the corporal-cadet was dismissed from the school and sent straight back to the Isonzo. After only a week in the rear, Mussolini was again in the high Julian Alps with his Bersaglieri comrades, his career as an officer ended before it could begin.
While Mussolini was being shuffled around by the army bureaucracy, and thousands offanti suffered from cholera, Cadorna was at his comfortable headquarters in Udine, planning his next offensive. The bloody Third Battle had failed to achieve anything of note, but this naturally did not restrain Cadorna from another attempt to break the Austrian hold on the Isonzo. Despite the abundant evidence that Italian firepower and masses of infantry could not yet hope to penetrate Svetozar Boroevic's defenses, the count's faith in himself and his methods continued to reign unchallenged by doubts. His obsession with the Isonzo, particularly the drive to Trieste, persisted, undulled by three catastrophically failed offensives. Indeed, the terrible cost of the first three battles tragically served to make future battles necessary. Cadorna knew that his frightful butcher bill demanded the capture of Trieste and the redemption of Italia irredenta; nothing less could silence his many vocal critics. By November, only a complete and unchallengeable victory over Austria could possibly make his army's sacrifices seem worthwhile. He thus refused to entertain other strategic options: only through the Isonzo valley could Cadorna see victory. A Balkan operation in support of Serbia, recommended by some generals and politicians, might well have delivered notable military and diplomatic gains, at a fraction of the cost of the Isonzo bloodbath; Austria's southern frontier was lightly defended, and assisting the Serbs with a few divisions might have produced decisive results. Cadorna would hear none of it. He was equally dismissive when the navy, in a rare gesture of interservice cooperation, offered to help Cadorna land troops on Austria's vulnerable Dalmatian coast and islands. An amphibious landing there, or better yet on the Istrian peninsula, would have turned Boroevic's southern flank and forced a serious-perhaps fatal-weakening of the 5th Army's hold on the Isonzo. Nevertheless, Cadorna had no interest in such schemes. He could envision only a direct strategy; more indirect methods appealed to his rigid mind not at all. The Comando Supremo therefore remained irrevocably committed to the Isonzo front.
To be fair to Cadorna, he was by no means the only Allied general in 1915 who persisted in seeking a breakthrough where none could possibly be achieved. The Allied war effort in the latter half of the year was characterized by repeated dismally failed attempts to dislodge German and Austrian static defenses. In the East, major Russian offensives intended to push the Central Powers back into Galicia gained no ground but suffered grievous losses; by the end of the year the Russians appeared to be barely in the war. Worse, offensives by the Western Allies could not recapture lost ground in France and Flanders at any price. Joseph Joffre's much anticipated late September "war winner" fell apart after only three days. The battle was not over, however; in a pattern that was repeated on all fronts, attacks produced counterattacks, which only led to further futile attacks. By the time the second Champagne offensive sputtered to a halt in early November, the French had lost 145,000 casualties without regaining any French soil worth mentioning. Joffre was certainly no closer to winning the war. The British participated, too, rounding out the Allies' tale of woe by adding a doomed effort in Flanders, what the easily victorious Germans termed das Leichenfeld von Loos-the corpse field of Loos. Everywhere the defense reigned supreme. The Allies seemed incapable of evicting the Central Powers from their positions in the East, in the West, or on the Isonzo. Nevertheless, both Joffre and Douglas Haig, the new commander of the British Expeditionary Force, were planning even greater offensives-with more men and more guns-in 1916 to gain the ground they so painfully failed to take in 1915. No general, no army had yet learned how restore mobility to the battlefield, how to overcome the dramatic superiority of entrenched machine guns and artillery over human flesh. That would take time, and countless more lives to achieve. Cadorna was hardly alone in his ignorance.
Even so, Cadorna does stand out as unique for his obstinance and ruthlessness, which were remarkable even by the terrible standards of the First World War. His intolerance of opinions contrary to his own cherished military theories was legendary. Cadorna's favorite dictum, quoted regularly at his headquarters, was the old Piedmontese maxim, "The superior is always right, especially when he is wrong" Commanders in the field who disappointed the chief of staff were quickly "torpedoed," sent to the rear in disgrace. Members of his staff who dared question Cadorna's methods were dealt with far more directly. Talented staff officers who quietly noted the obvious-that Cadorna's strategy was dangerously simpleminded, and his tactics were lethal-were subject to imprisonment for insubordination. Several of Italy's finest military minds were thus thrown in jail for their common sense.I
The harsh treatment meted out to officers who disappointed or questioned Cadorna was nevertheless mild compared to the sentences that awaited common soldiers who fell afoul of Cadorna's iron discipline. The chief of staff's brutal understanding of how to motivate his men made no allowances for human frailty. In the best Piedmontese tradition, he made no attempts to inspire his troops to victory; fear and intimidation were always more congenial to his uncompromisingly authoritarian outlook. His infantrymen knew there was no choice but to charge the Austrian lines, no matter how hopeless the odds. Cadorna made sure his men understood that the firing squad awaited those who would not face the enemy's machine guns. During and after every battle, accused deserters and cowards were rounded up and executed publicly, lest any soldier entertain ideas of avoiding combat. By November, Cadorna's disciplinary methods had hardened further still. To make his troops fight with greater de termination, Cadorna, like most Italian soldiers an avid admirer of all things Roman, resurrected one of the ancient Roman Army's most loathsome practices, decimation. In this atavistic ritual, regiments that failed to achieve their objectives were taken out of the fighting, lined up in rows, and every tenth soldier was executed, to encourage his comrades to do better next time. The effect of decimation and Cadorna's other cruel disciplinary methods on the Italian Army's morale was understandably corrosive. Yet Cadorna's iron rule ensured that his regiments would not easily desert or refuse battle. It took a very brave soldier to contemplate desertion in Cadorna's army.
Assured that his divisions would advance, Cadorna prepared to send his armies into battle again. He was convinced that Boroevic's forces were so weakened by the Third Battle that a rapidly executed follow-up offensive would achieve the gains which so far had eluded him. His battle plan was essentially unchanged. Cadorna intended to refight the Third Battle, almost without modifications-except that this time he was confident the tired and depleted Austrian regiments would not hold their ground. The Fourth Battle, like its predecessor, was aimed foremost at Gorizia, with major supporting offensives north and south of the city. As a month before, Cadorna believed that the 2nd Army could outflank the city from the direction of Plava while the 3rd Army could outflank it from the Mt. San Michele area. To achieve this, Cadorna again had the bulk of Italy's field forces at his disposal. He was fortunate that the army's wartime expansion program was beginning to bear fruit. Months of increased draft calls, coupled with the recall of more classes of reservists to the colors, meant that by November the Italian Army had expanded unprecedentedly, despite the enormous numbers of troops needed to replace Cadorna's losses. The mobilization of Italian industry for the war effort supplied the newly raised units with the substantial quantities of modern equipment they needed. Nine new infantry divisions had been added to the order of battle, and overall the number of infantry battalions had grown by one-sixth. The army's expansion was tailored to the tactical needs of the Isonzo fighting, which demanded specialist mountain troops and sappers, lots of infantry, and, most of all, substantial quantities of heavy artillery. The 1915 expansion program gave Cadorna 181 freshly raised combat battalions: 102 infantry (seventy-two line, plus four Bersaglieri and twenty-six Alpini), forty-two artillery (four mountain, eighteen heavy, and twenty superheavy), and thirty-seven of combat engineers. At last the army was being reorganized to suit the siegelike requirements of the Isonzo front. Only with an army organized for trench warfare could Cadorna hope to break through.
General Pietro Frugoni's 2nd Army was to bear the brunt of the offensive. It controlled fourteen of Cadorna's twenty-eight divisions on the Isonzo. Its IV and VII Corps were supposed to at last take the Tolmein bridgehead, and the II Corps was ordered to assault the Plava area and roll up the Austrian lines from the northwest. Most important, Capello's VI Corps was given the mission of clearing Oslavia and Podgora of Austrian troops, which had to be done before the 2nd Army could cross the Isonzo and reach Gorizia. Farther south, the Duke of Aosta's 3rd Army, ten divisions strong, was ordered to seize the western edge of the Carso, particularly Mt. San Michele, with its four corps. Cadorna held an additional two corps with four divisions in reserve to reinforce the 2nd Army's drive on Gorizia. By November 9, he was ready to send his armies against the Isonzo line again. His infantry had enjoyed less than a week's rest since the end of the Third Battle. They had had little time to regroup and absorb replacements, the vital human fuel on which Cadorna's war machine ran, and which his tactics consumed so voraciously. Regiments shattered only days earlier on San Michele, Podgora, and Plava were ordered back into the fighting line, to be sacrificed again on hillsides with deservedly evil reputations.
The Austrian infantrymen holding the opposite trenches were hardly more enthusiastic about resuming the fighting. Boroevic's troops also had been ravaged by cholera, and had enjoyed less than a week to rest and replenish shattered regiments. The 5th Army was tired and understrength; the Third Battle had pushed the polyglot army to the breaking point. Ten percent of its 150 infantry battalions were too weak to be deployed in the fighting line. Morale had been frayed by months of terrible shelling and costly counterattacks. Still, Boroevic had not resorted to shooting his own men en masse to keep them in the fighting line. There was strong discipline, to be sure, and a captured Austrian deserter was destined for the firing squad just as his Italian counterpart would be, but on the whole the Austrians continued to fight because they believed in the cause. Naive talk about the ghost of Radetzky and teaching the Katzel- macher (cat eaters) a lesson had disappeared months before, but fighting spirit remained high in Boroevic's multinational legions, even after three bloody battles on the Isonzo.
The 5th Army was not as strong in early November as it had been in midOctober, but it remained an impressive force. It had nine divisions in the line and a tenth in reserve behind Gorizia; all divisions were short of both men and guns, but they were competently led veteran formations. Every province and region of Austria and Hungary was represented in their ranks. The German-Slovene 44th Rifle Division held the Flitsch basin, and the mixed 50th and 1st Divisions, collections of polyglot mountain battalions from all over the empire, occupied Mrzli ridge and the Tolmein bridgehead, respectively. The Bainsizza plateau, including the Plava bridgehead, was garrisoned by the 18th Division, a multinational formation with a high proportion of Croats and Serbs. As ever, the approaches to Gorizia were guarded by the tough South Slavs of the Dalmatian 58th. The San Michele sector was now occupied by the veteran Alpine German 6th Division, but the much abused Hungarian 17th remained on the northern Carso as well. The central and southern edges of the plateau, the road to Trieste, were held by the hard-fighting mixed German-Slovene regiments of the 22nd Rifle and 28th Infantry Divisions. Austria had collected regiments from every corner of the Habsburg possessions to defend the Isonzo line, including many soldiers from the empire's most martial races. In all, Boroevic's command promised to offer the Italians as hard a tight as ever; the Austrian infantry was still determined to exact a frightful price for every foot of the Isonzo front.
The Italians again helped the defenders by not bothering to hide their intentions. As before the Third Battle, the river's west bank was busy with frenetic activity in the days before the offensive. Signs of an imminent Italian attack were everywhere. Intelligence officers at 5th Army headquarters monitored the numerous indications: increased radio traffic, more trains coming from the west, the arrival of more artillery and large stocks of ammunition, and above all the delivery of impressive numbers of fresh infantry. Closer to the fighting line, Austrian positions all along the front observed the unconcealed Italian movements of men, guns, and munitions that promised a Fourth Battle of the Isonzo. When Cadorna began his renewed offensive where the last had left off, it came as no surprise to the defenders.
The fourth Italian attempt to break through Boroevic's defenses began on November 10, precisely at noon. Along the entire front, the massed guns of the 2nd and 3rd Armies opened up, pouring tons of high explosive on Austrian positions. As expected, the shelling was particularly heavy in the San Michele, Podgora, and Plava sectors. The bombardment lasted only four hours, but it made up in intensity what it lacked in duration. Even battle-hardened veterans of earlier Italian barrages were shocked by the power of the preparatory bombardment. Many dugouts and trench sections, especially between Podgora and Oslavia, were flattened by heavy shells. At 4 em., Capello's infantry emerged from their positions, bayonets fixed, and charged the Austrian trenches. The northern end of the 58th Division's sector was reinforced by a brigade of Poles from East Galicia atop Mt. Sabotino. The Poles on "Snake Mountain" were attacked by General Montuori's 4th Division. This division, which had already sacrificed so many men on Sabotino's rocky slopes, mounted a mass infantry attack up the bare hillsides. Although the Poles lost several machine guns to the shelling, the infantry charge accomplished nothing; as ever, enough machine gunners and riflemen survived to stop the fanti well before they reached the Austrian trenches. Capello's corps did somewhat better on the sector's southern flank. The 12th Division, attempting yet again to take all of Podgora hill, charged the Dalmatians' trenches, little more than a hundred paces to the east. On the hill's southern end, the Italians reached the Austrian positions, and vicious hand-to-hand fighting with the Croatian and Serbian defenders continued until midnight. The neighboring 11th Division's attack in the Oslavia sector registered one notable gain on November 10. The division's 70th Infantry Regiment evicted the Austrians from the village of Oslavia. In truth, the village no longer existed; the Italians captured only a few worthless ruins of houses abandoned months earlier. Still, the loss of the village to the Italians was a psychological setback for Zeidler's troops.
The fighting resumed with even greater fury the next morning. All through the day on November 11, the armies dueled for control of Oslavia and Podgora. The Italians and Austrians were now everywhere less than a hundred feet apart, in many places within easy hand grenade-throwing range. The fierce battle was decided with hand grenades, bayonets, and knives. The 12th Division tried in vain to expand its tenuous hold on Podgora hill. Capello sent the 6,000-strong Grenadier Brigade to Podgora to assist the 12th, but despite valorous efforts it, too, failed with heavy losses; only 3,200 Granatieri returned to the Italian lines that evening. At Oslavia, the 11th Division mixed it up with the Dalmatians all day in an inconclusive fight until both sides were exhausted. That evening, Zeidler, acting in accordance with Boroevic's orders that all lost ground had to be retaken, dispatched his last reserve, the 37th Rifle Regiment, to Oslavia to recapture the ruined village. The counterstroke surprised the tiredfanti, and by the early morning hours of November 12, Oslavia was again Austrian. The 11th Division had been pushed back to its starting positions on November 10, and Zeidler's troops had captured more than 500 Italian soldiers.
Capello was furious. He was as determined to gain ground as Boroevic was loath to lose it. Adamant that his troops must reach Gorizia, he sent the exhausted 11th and 12th Divisions back into combat without any rest. The seesaw battle for Oslavia continued all day and into the evening. By the late hours of November 12, the VI Corps had recaptured the tactically useless ruins. Zeidler's Dalmatians were too tired to mount a counterattack, and there were no fresh troops left in the Gorizia sector, so the night was abnormally tranquil. By morning, however, Zeidler had collected a few half-strength companies to retake Oslavia. This attempt, like the previous one, succeeded in evicting the weary Italians from the village. By November 13, after four days of fighting, the VI Corps had nothing to show for its heavy losses. Capello's divisions had failed to hold their initial minor gains.
The story was much the same in the Plava sector. Only three battalions of the 1st Mountain Brigade occupied the two-mile river front, so the two divisions of the II Corps-twenty-four battalions-should have made considerable progress against the badly outnumbered Austrians. As before Gorizia, November 10 attacks by the 3rd and 33rd Divisions made initial gains up Hill 383. However, a lightning counterattack by a battalion each of the Viennese 4th and Dalmatian 22nd Regiments at dawn on November 11 took all the lost ground and even captured some Italian trenches. Later that morning the 3rd Division, undeterred by the setback, launched a mass infantry assault on the Austrian entrenchments at Zagora, a mile downstream. Battalions from five different regiments charged the village, and nearly overran the weak Austrian defenses. Only rapid action by the Viennese and Dalmatians, reinforced by a battalion of Bosnians, pushed the Italians back. Fire from machine guns overlooking the attackers tore through their ranks, pinning the farm down. Sustained shelling from two supporting Austrian mountain artillery batteries ripped apart the trapped battalions, shattering the 3rd Division's attack. Few survivors returned from the massacre, and for the moment the Italians were too weak to attempt further offensives at the Plava bridgehead. As in every previous effort, the Plava Corps had failed to advance toward Gorizia, and the 3rd and 32nd Divisions were yet again destroyed around "Bloody 383"
The 3rd Army's offensive on the Carso, aimed at clearing San Michele of its Austrian defenders, began on November 10. Attacks by eight divisions failed to make any progress that day or the next. The 6th Division's hold on Mt. San Michele was never endangered by these efforts, which, like so many before, fell apart in the face of concentrated machine gun tire. The Duke of Aosta wanted desperately to attain the objective that had eluded him for the past five and a half months, so on November 13 he sent the XI Corps up the slopes of San Michele again. The noontime attack by several regiments up the mountain's north face started promisingly. But a second, follow-up effort that afternoon to advance closer to the summit was cut short with a vigorous counterattack by the 7th and 9th Jager Battalions,'- tough Carinthian and Styrian mountain fighters. By dusk the German riflemen had chased the attackers back down the north slope. Attempts by the XI Corps to seize neighboring hills ended just as badly; a victorious company of the 17th Division's 43rd Regiment, garrisoning nearby Hill 143, found itself surrounded by more than 500 dead and dying Italian foot soldiers after a hard tight. The Italians renewed their attacks the next morning. After a three-hour bombardment of the VII Corps' entrenchments, the 29th Division charged up San Michele's north face, where so many attacks had drowned in blood. The defenders, just two companies of the 2nd Bosnian Regiment, were soon overwhelmed by the thousands of fanti, and were forced to retreat to the second defensive line. By the afternoon of November 13, the 29th Division held a 600-foot section of the Austrians' main entrenchments, and were close to taking the summit of San Michele.
An Italian advance to the peak had to be prevented at all costs, so the VII Corps commander, Archduke Joseph, ordered a counterstroke by his only nearby units, the survivors of the half-battalion of Bosnians, plus the 7th and 9th Jagers. The determined Austrian effort to push the 29th Division back down the hill continued well into the night. Hand-to-hand combat in the Austrian trenches with knives and clubs produced frightful losses for both sides until the Italians broke and ran. By the early hours of November 14, the XI Corps had again been pushed away from San Michele's summit. Retaking their own trenches cost the Austrians 540 dead and wounded; further Italian efforts on November 14 and 15, which lasted until the 3rd Army was completely spent, in flicted 1,750 more casualties on the VII Corps. The price of holding on to San Michele had reached unsustainable heights: from October 15 to November 15, the 17th Division lost 11,700 soldiers, its entire rifle strength. How much longer could the Austrians possibly absorb such losses? Worse, the Fourth Battle was far from over. The Austrian High Command sent Boroevic the scant reserves it possessed and hoped for the best.
Italian losses on the Carso were even higher than Austria's frightful casualties, but Cadorna was typically unconcerned. He still had plenty of fresh divisions and reservoirs of replacements left to throw into the fray. He knew that Boroevic's troops were exhausted, both in the Gorizia in the Carso sectors, and that there were few Austrian reserves remaining. Cadorna therefore determined that the offensive had to be continued at any cost, without concern for casualties. The breakthrough that appeared so temptingly near would justify his losses. He collected all available reserves and dispatched them to the Gorizia front. The fate of the Fourth Battle was placed in Capello's hands; his VI Corps was assigned the capture of the City of Violets, the 2nd Army's long-awaited goal. On November 17, Cadorna formally ordered a renewed offensive between Mt. Sabotino and the Adriatic, a last push to victory in 1915 before the approaching winter brought an end to major operations on the Isonzo.
Just before dawn on November 18, the combined guns of the 2nd and 3rd Armies began shelling the city of Gorizia. Cadorna, believing the city's civilian population had been almost entirely evacuated, ordered a four-hour bombardment by medium and heavy batteries. More than 3,000 shells rained on the city in the morning alone. A pause in the shelling was followed by a midday air raid that lasted two hours. Italian aircraft bombed Austrian artillery positions, troop concentrations, and supply depots, but inevitably many bombs missed their targets. By the early afternoon, a quarter of Gorizia's 2,000 buildings had been destroyed, and hundreds of civilians had been killed or injured. The Italian miscalculation laid waste to much of the city Cadorna's divisions were fighting to liberate. Some 7,000 of Gorizia's residents now abandoned the city rather than face more shelling; the population was soon reduced to 3,000, less than one-tenth the prewar total.
The artillery preparation soon shifted to the 58th Division's frontline entrenchments. The relentless hammering of Austrian positions on Sabotino, Podgora, and Oslavia continued the next day. By the morning of November 20, the VI Corps was ready to attack. Three entire divisions-a dozen regimentsadvanced on a front of a mile and a half, a rifle company of 200 men for every sixty feet of front. On the corps' left flank, the reinforced 4th Division charged in battalion columns up Mt. Sabotino and neighboring Hill 188, a rise between the mountain and the village of Oslavia. General Montuori personally led his division up Sabotino while the Grenadiers assaulted Hill 188. The densely packed ranks of infantry, thick columns of gray-green on the bare brown hill sides, were easy targets for Austrian machine gunners and sharpshooters. Hundreds offanti fell quickly to the 58th Division's machine guns, but the survivors charged bravely forward over their fallen comrades. The Grenadiers were stalled and could not continue their advance, so they were replaced on Hill 188 by the fresh Livorno Brigade. Its 34th Regiment spearheaded the bayonet charge, personally led by Livorno's commander, Major General Count Ferruccio Trombi. The hill's Polish defenders, exhausted after two days' shelling, tried desperately to hold their positions, inflicting heavy losses on the attacking brigade, but eventually they were overwhelmed. Hill 188 fell to the Livorno Brigade, yet the fighting was by no means over; General Trombi was killed by an Austrian hand grenade not long after the hill was captured. Progress up Sabotino was negligible, and the 12th Division's attacks on Podgora hill registered only minimal gains. An Austrian counterattack after dark, led by the Dalmatian 37th Rifles, pushed the tired 12th back to its own lines with heavy losses.
Yet, Capello's troops had managed to wrest Hill 188 from the Dalmatians, a clear, if not overly significant, victory. To reward this feat, Trombi was posthumously awarded the Cross of the Military Order of Savoy, and both his regiments collectively received the Silver Medal for Bravery to adorn their colors. The 58th Division was so tested by the day's combat that it had no reserves left to retake 188. Boroevic immediately sent Zeidler a Slovene regiment to recapture the lost hill, but it would not be in position until early on November 22. The inevitable counterattack would have to wait. It was therefore surprising that the Austrians succeeded in recapturing Hill 188 a day ahead of schedule. On November 11, an attempt by Capello's VI Corps to push beyond 188 ended in disaster. In the confusion, a battalion of the 37th Rifles was thrown into the melee. The Dalmatians halted the Italian advance, overran Hill 188, then unexpectedly pushed the dazedfanti back to their own lines. Virtually all the Austrian trenches on 188 were thus recaptured, and the hill again belonged to the 58th Division.
Capello's four divisions were too weak and exhausted to try to retake the hill. The next day, however, the Novara Brigade arrived from the Tyrolean front. Capello immediately threw its two regiments against Hill 188 and Oslavia, where they were cut to pieces. Some 270 of the brigade's soldiers were captured, and hundreds more lay dead around the ruined village and the nearby hill. Capello's last available reserve had been sacrificed. His corps desperately needed a rest before it could attack again.
The 3rd Army's offensive on the Carso proved even less successful than Capello's battle. The Duke of Aosta's XI Corps courageously resumed its efforts to take Mt. San Michele. On November 18 it attacked the mountain's north face after an intense early morning artillery barrage. San Michele's defenders, troops of the 6th Division reinforced by the 17th, lost only a few forward positions to the mass infantry assault, and those were soon retaken. The noteworthy counterattack was executed by the I 1 th Replacement Battalion of the 28th Reg iment, the Czech unit that had gone over to the Russians in the Carpathians but fought heroically on the Carso. The battalion of recruits, just arrived on the Isonzo fresh from the training depot, lived up to the brave regiment's reestablished reputation, losing two-thirds of its men in its dynamic counterstroke on San Michele's north slope. The Italians still had plenty of reserves to throw at the mountain, and the next day they tried to advance up San Michele's south face. This attempt was even less successful, so on November 20 the XI Corps advanced up the mountain simultaneously from both the north and the south. The battle-scarred 17th Division bore the brunt of this offensive. Its Hungarian regiments, which had already shed so much blood on San Michele, stopped the two-pronged advance before it made any notable progress. The 3rd Army mounted continuous attacks for the next five days all along the Carso front, particularly around San Michele. They were all in vain, and served only to completely exhaust the attacking divisions.
Everywhere Italian forces had failed to make significant progress against the Austrian defenses. Even mass infantry attacks, amply supported by artillery and enjoying enormous numerical advantages over the defenders, could not advance except on a few very narrow fronts. The Austrians continued to excel at overturning all Italian gains; tired and weakened Italian regiments rarely were able to hold on to hard-won ground. All this terrible fighting was exacting a high price from Boroevic's army, one that the Austrians could not afford. That said, the Italian exchange rate of men for ground was as depressingly unfavorable as it had ever been. Such offensives would in time wear the Austrians down, but at current rates it would be many more months-and countless more lives thrown away-before Cadorna's armies would conquer the Isonzo valley. The ill-used fmiti were utterly exhausted; morale was at an all-time low. The infantrymen of one regiment, the 148th, even staged a mutiny, refusing to reenter the line. A few executions persuaded the rest to do their duty; but it was an alarming portent of things to come. Yet Cadorna, true to form, decided to continue the offensive. It was his last chance to make notable gains before the winter. He continued to believe that his methods would prevail, that his divisions would soon break through Boroevic's entrenchments and reach Gorizia.
The Fourth Battle's final phase began neither before Gorizia nor on the Carso, but rather in the high Julian Alps. Cadorna still wanted to push the Austrians deeper into the mountains to secure his vulnerable left flank. So far during the battle, bad weather had prevented the 2nd Army from attacking on the upper Isonzo. Winter arrived earlier in the high Julian Alps than on the Carso, and by November 1 the icy mountains were covered with snow and pelted by frozen rain. The harsh climate made military operations, particularly offensives, very difficult, so during the first week of the battle the Julian front was mostly quiet. From November 10 to 18, virtually nonstop snow- and rainstorms brought all movement to a halt. While Italians and Austrians dueled fiercely for Gorizia and San Michele, their comrades at Tolmein, and on Vrsic, Javorcek, and Rombon waited for battle and tried to keep warm and dry. By the third week of November, however, the weather had improved somewhat, and the IV and VIII Corps were able to participate in Cadorna's offensive. On November 25 the guns of the two Italian corps concentrated their fire on Austrian positions at the Tolmein bridgehead and on Mt. Rombon. At dawn the following morning, the 8th Division, strongly reinforced by battalions of Alpini, tried to break through the Austrian lines before Tolmein. The spirited attack faltered long before it reached the Isonzo. As had happened so many times before, the Italian assaults broke up on Hill 588, where Austrian machine gunners and riflemen picked off hundreds of advancingfanti. Simultaneous efforts by Alpini units to move forward in the Flitsch-Rombon sector likewise failed with heavy losses. Two days later the 8th Division was sent back into battle at the Tolmein bridgehead, but this attack proved even less successful than the first. Attacks by the 3rd and 32nd Divisions downstream at Plava were equally abortive. After November 28, the 2nd Army had to suspend operations on the upper Isonzo. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. The severe Alpine winter had arrived, bringing the offensive to a halt. For the next several icy months, both armies on the upper Isonzo would be too busy defending against the snow and cold to waste time fighting one other.
Shortly after the Italian mountain artillery opened fire at Tolmein, Capello's guns began their own preparatory barrage. Throughout November 25, the VI Corps artillery, including heavy howitzer and mortar batteries, hammered away at the 58th Division's trenches around Oslavia and Podgora. The infantry made only limited probing attacks to determine the Dalmatians' strength. The general offensive came the following morning with a two-division attack at Oslavia and an assault on Podgora by the 12th Division. Four courageous mass attacks in the morning around Oslavia failed to push the Italian line forward. Two more attempts in the afternoon similarly made no progress. As usual, Zeidler's few craftily placed Schwarzlose machine guns decided the day. The 58th's machine gunners and riflemen crushed all six spirited advances before they ever reached the Austrian lines. The 12th Division's drive on Podgora also stalled painfully. Unmoved by his infantry's suffering, Capello sent the battered divisions back into the fray the next morning. After a brief predawn artillery barrage, five divisions went over the top between Sabotino and Podgora. The assaulting divisions were heavily reinforced by battalions brought from Plava and crack Bersaglieri from Cadorna's special reserve. Capello aimed his major effort between Hill 188 and the ruins of Oslavia, confident that a breakthrough there would be the quickest route to the Isonzo and to Gorizia. The four Austrian battalions holding the sector-Slovenes, Czechs, Croats and Serbs, and Ukrainians-held their ground, repulsing eight bayonet charges in as many hours. The close-quarter fighting, particularly the bitter struggle around the ruins of Oslavia's church, exhausted both sides by nightfall. The modest Italian gains were rapidly overturned by a determined Austrian counterattack. Capello still had nothing to show for his terrible casualties.
The Italian losses on November 27 were so severe that Capello had to postpone his next attack. The planned offensive, scheduled to begin before dawn the following morning, was delayed until the afternoon, after the arrival of fresh replacements. The effort by the VI Corps on November 28 was by any standards a failure. The capture of Hill 188 and the wrecked village of Oslavia still eluded Capello's shattered divisions. Both his VI Corps and Zeidler's Dalmatians were understandably running out of steam. Regiments of both armies were very understrength, soldiers were tired, and ammunition was running low. Nevertheless, Capello was not yet ready to give up the fight. He felt his ruined corps had enough energy and men left for one more attack on the Gorizia bridgehead. The last major Italian drive on Gorizia in 1915 came at midday on November 29. As he had two days before, Capello concentrated his forces between Hill 188 and Oslavia, a distance of less than a half-mile. The rocky terrain, now devoid of trees and littered with thousands of unburied corpses, offered no cover for the advancing Italian infantry. Capello committed his last reserves to the fight, the rebuilt 32nd Division, just shipped from Plava, supported by the resurrected Novara Brigade. Both formations were filled with teenaged conscripts and middle-aged recalled reservists just arrived at the front. Their bayonet charge came on the heels of a concentrated barrage. The fanti, knowing they had no place to seek cover, climbed out of their trenches and ran at top speed toward the Austrian lines, only a hundred paces eastward. The defenders were surprised by the speed of the Italian advance. In several places, the mad dash succeeded and the Italians were in the Austrian entrenchments before the machine gunners could react. The weary Austrians began to give way, and this time there were no reinforcements on hand to push the attackers back. Capello's infantry pressed on, capturing several Austrian positions. By the late afternoon his forward detachments were within a half-mile of the Isonzo. They could clearly see the river, its fast, blue-green waters, and Goriziajust beyond. Yet Capello's soldiers would get no closer to the City of Violets in 1915. The assault divisions had exhausted themselves advancing that far. Zeidler had no reserves left to push the Italians back to their own lines, but neither was the VI Corps able to continue its advance. Both armies were so tired and depleted that the lines stayed where they were. Capello had nearly reached the Isonzo, but it was too late, and he had used up too many good men to secure even these modest gains. He would have to wait until next year, after the winter snows evaporated, to resume his relentless drive on Gorizia.
The 3rd Army made no gains worth mentioning during the final phase of the Fourth Battle. As had happened so often before, brave infantry attacks registered modest advances that were quickly erased by vigorous Austrian counter attacks. The loss of thousands of infantrymen gained only bitter defeat. The Duke of Aosta continued to push his men hard. In the last days of November his XI and XIII Corps, seven divisions in all, tried vainly to capture the San Michele sector. On November 27 the 3rd Army's guns pounded Austrian entrenchments around the mountain, from the Vipacco River to Hi 11 111, a distance of three and a half miles. As always, the shelling was concentrated on the mountain, especially the north face. The afternoon's infantry attacks failed to gain any ground. The experienced machine gunners and riflemen of the 22nd Rifle and 17th Infantry Divisions cut down repeated bayonet charges. The tempo of the fighting increased on November 28. The Duke of Aosta's gunners shelled the entire VII Corps front, down to Hill 118, Mt. Sei Busi. At noon, four Italian regiments attempted to advance up Mt. San Michele. Austrian batteries caught the dense columns of fanti on the bare north slope. Shrapnel ripped through the Italian ranks, felling hundreds, until the attackers broke and fled. The division-sized assault made only slight gains on the north slope, but they were nearly all lost to rapid Austrian counterattacks. The same occurred at the village of San Martino, a mile southwest of the mountain. There, after a bitter struggle, troops of the 21st and 22nd Divisions captured several Austrian positions just west of the village. However, German and Czech militiamen of the 106th Division, returned to the Carso only hours before, pushed the weary attackers back to their own trenches. Cadorna's soldiers still had not learned to be prepared to resist Austrian counterattacks, with frustrating and costly consequences.
The Duke of Aosta prepared his army for one final mass assault on Mt. San Michele. Like Capello, he had enough men and munitions left for one last try on November 29. Yet the VII Corps preempted the Italian push with a predawn battalion-sized attack on San Michele's north face. Czech riflemen of the 28th Regiment's 11th Replacement Battalion mounted a surprise bayonet charge through the darkness toward Italian-held trenches near the summit. The Czech recruits quickly overwhelmed the sleeping Italians, and the positions again belonged to the VII Corps. Only minutes later, at 7 A.M., the 3rd Army's artillery commenced a powerful preparatory barrage. The earth shook between Hill 111 and the Vipacco River as thousands of medium- and heavy-caliber shells crashed around Austrian entrenchments. The troops holding the line ran for cover in dugouts and kavernen. During the night Archduke Joseph ordered the replacement of the weary German and Slovene regiments that had successfully defended San Michele. Their places were taken by two fresh regiments of the 20th Honved Division, the veteran formation that had shed so much blood on the Carso but that so far had been held in reserve during the Fourth Battle.
Two Honved regiments, the Magyar 1st on San Michele and the mostly Romanian 4th at San Martino, emerged from their dugouts at midmorning when the intense shelling ceased. Soldiers ran to their posts to man machine guns and mortars before the Italians reached their positions. As the Hungarians carefully watched the huge clouds of dust and smoke thrown up by the bombardment, they could hear the Italians' battle cry, "Avanti Savoia!" rising from thousands of voices. The blinding clouds slowly lifted, and the defenders caught a glimpse of three divisions' worth of bayonet-wielding Italian infantry climbing out of their trenches, headed for the Austrian lines. The fanti suddenly charged, and the Honved troopers opened fire with machine guns and rifles. Thousands of bullets tore through the advancing Italian columns, cutting down the front ranks. Austrian sharpshooters looked for the conspicuous battalion and company commanders leading their troops. Within a minute, dozens of Italian officers had fallen to the guns of the deadly cecchini. Leaderless, the forward Italian battalions became disorganized, and the mass attack began to fall apart. The distraught survivors struggled back to their own trenches. The 1st and 4th Regiments lost not a single position or entrenchment to the 3rd Army.
Disappointed by the morning rout but still determined to keep trying, the Duke of Aosta ordered his divisions to attack San Michele and San Martino again. The XI Corps needed several hours to regroup and to move replacements into the line, so the day's second attempt had to wait until the late afternoon. At 5 P.M. the regiments went over the top again. This time the Hungarians were ready, and the first wave was shattered by bursts of staccato fire from Schwarzlose machine guns. However, the XI Corps, well aware that the lead battalions would be slaughtered, had a second wave waiting nearby in reserve. The follow-up attack was launched before the first had ended, surprising the defenders; in several places, Italian infantry managed to reach the Austrian lines. Nevertheless, the hard-fighting Hungarians pushed the second wave back, too. As night fell, only one Austrian trench section west of San Martino was in Italian hands. The Hungarians had prevailed again. The day's offensive had been a bloody failure. The last major Italian effort on the Carso in 1915 ended disastrously, like all previous attempts, without achieving any gains worth mentioning.
The next morning, before dawn, the 3rd Army made a minor effort to seize the north slope of San Michele, almost as an afterthought. The 6 A.M. surprise assault on the mountain was repulsed easily by rifle and machine gun fire. In retaliation, the VII Corps sent a regiment to retake the lost trench section west of San Martino. The Austrians' well-honed ability to counterattack yet again proved its worth as the Hungarians wrested the position from the Italian 22nd Division. The 3rd Army thus lost the only ground it had gained in the San Michele sector during November. By December I the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo was over. Official historians later considered that the battle continued two more weeks, but Cadorna's effort to conquer the Isonzo in 1915 effectively came to an end by the first day of December. The 2nd and 3rd Armies still made local attacks, and soldiers certainly continued to lose their lives on both sides, but the early December attacks were minor and inconsequential. They added to the terrible butcher bill but decided nothing on the battlefield. These mostly small Italian probes, lasting until December 14, proved to be little more than an annoyance to the weary defenders. Italian artillery shelled the Carso sporadically between December 3 and 6, followed by a two-division attack up Mt. San Michele on December 7. The 22nd and 29th Divisions, which had already lost countless thousands of soldiers on the mountain's battle-scarred slopes, tried again to advance up the north face. The attack, far larger than what the Hungarian defenders had anticipated, managed to capture part of the north side, but the inevitable counterattack pushed the Italians back. Renewed efforts by the 3rd Army to take the mountain on December 8 and 9 were even less successful. Through it all, the 1st Honved Regiment remained the masters of San Michele.
The Gorizia front was by no means quiet during the two weeks after major operations ended. Capello's three divisions holding the front line regularly sent nighttime patrols into no-man's-land, both to conduct reconnaissance and to harass the bridgehead's defenders. These probes gained no ground, but they were an incessant irritant to Zeidler's Dalmatians. Capello's artillery frequently shelled Austrian trenches and rear areas, a constant form of harassment. The on-again, off-again bombardment killed few Austrians, but it prevented the tired Dalmatians from getting a good night's sleep. On December 2 and 4, Italian guns shelled the city of Gorizia; however, by now most civilians had left the city rather than endure more Italian shelling, so the artillery inflicted few civilian casualties.
Capello could not expand his hold on Oslavia. Instead, he sent out patrols to raid Austrian trenches there, as well as on Podgora and Sabotino. Every raid lost soldiers killed and maimed. Occasional daytime attacks tested Zeidler's defenses, but usually were very costly. One of the many Italian soldiers to fall in these raids, these small battles after the battle, was Scipio Slataper. His death was one of the numerous needless sacrifices after the Fourth Battle was really over, a burnt offering in the cooling embers of Cadorna's catastrophic offensive. The twenty-seven-year-old Slataperdied on December 3 while taking part in a 12th Division raid on Austrian entrenchments on Podgora.
Slataper was one of hundreds of fmui to die on the Isonzo after Cadorna had abandoned his great offensive, but in many ways he was different from his fallen comrades in arms. In the first place, he was a native of Trieste, and therefore an Austrian citizen. Although he was born and raised in Habsburg Austria, his heart had always belonged to Italy. Slataper was only half-Italian by blood (his father was of Slav origin, as his very un-Italian surname indicates), yet from his earliest days he was a fervent believer in Italy's greatness and destiny. His father, a devout nationalist and irredentist, raised the young Scipio on romantic stories of Garibaldi and the Risorgimento. His boyhood hero was Oberdan, the fellow triestino of Slav origin who became the first martyr for Italia irredenta. He hated Austria and the Habsburgs, but he passionately loved Trieste and especially the Carso, where he spent a happy teenage convalescence after a bout of nervous exhaustion. Slataper's fascination with the Carso deeply affected his personality and remained with him all his short life. After completing secondary school, Slataper left Trieste to attend the University of Florence. (There was no Italian university in Austria; Italian youths had to leave the Habsburg Empire if they wanted to study in their mother tongue.) Slataper received his degree in 1912 with a highly praised dissertation on Ibsen. He became a journalist; in his spare time he wrote about the need for Italian liberation of the Littoral. Like virtually all educated and liberal Italians, Slataper believed Trieste was mortally threatened by Slavs, and that union with Italy was the only desirable solution. War to liberate Trieste would be preferable to Austrian domination. He had dramatic premonitions of bloodletting and suffering. His greatest work, 11 mio Carso (My Carso), written between 1910 and 1912 while he was studying at Florence, was a romantic prose-poem dedicated to his home city and region; it firmly established the young Slataper as one of the most promising figures in Italian literature. In it, he wrote prophetically:
We love Trieste for the restless soul she gave us.... She has reared us for struggle and for duty.... Trieste is blessed for having let us live without peace or glory. We love you and bless you because we are happy even to die in your fire.
Slataper was in Germany when the First World War broke out. He was determined not to return to detested Austria; under no circumstances would he offer himself as a sacrifice to the Habsburg throne. He traveled to Italy, where he agitated for Rome to declare war on Austria and liberate Italia irredenta from the Habsburg yoke. In June 1915, days after Italy declared war, Slataperjoined the holy crusade; like hundreds of other "Julian volunteers" who offered to tight their country of birth, he took the precaution of enlisting under a false nameotherwise, he would be shot for treason if captured by the Austrians. Slataper underwent several weeks of infantry training, followed by months of waiting to enter action. He went to the Isonzo and fought in both the Third and Fourth Battles, an experience that caused him to take a more sanguine look at the war he had championed. Shortly before his death, he wrote
War is not in the explosion of grenades or a fusillade nor in hand-to-hand combat. War is not in what, from far off, one believes to be its terrible reality and which, close at hand, turns out to be a poor thing and makes little impression; it is-as Tolstoy realized-to be found in that curious space beyond one's trench, where there is silence and color and where the corn is ripening to no purpose. It is that sense of certain death which lies "beyond," there where the sun still shines on the age-old roads and the peasants' houses.
His promising literary career was cut short on December 3 on Podgora hill, where thousands of comrades had fallen before him, where so many Italian dreams and hopes had been forever shattered. Slataper died within sight of his beloved Carso, a haunting and inevitable death somehow foretold in his romantic writings about his homeland. Like Oberdan, his childhood idol, he offered himself as a willing sacrifice to Italia irredenta, a dream of redemption neither Italian patriot lived to see realized.
Scipio Slataper's death was, of course, only one among thousands during the Fourth Battle of the Isonzo. The vast majority of his fallen comrades were not educated men who volunteered to die to liberate Austria's Italian provinces. Instead, they were uneducated, often illiterate peasants who reported for duty because they had no choice; Trieste and the Carso meant nothing to them. Still, they did their duty and died in the tens of thousands to conquer the Isonzo for Rome. Sadly, their enormous sacrifices had brought Italy no closer to victory. Cadorna's net gain after the Fourth Battle amounted to the now nonexistent village of Oslavia, a few trenches on Podgora, and some useless positions on the north face of Mt. San Michele. Tragically, these conquests were tactically inconsequential; they in no way endangered the Austrian hold on the Isonzo. Yet this very modest gain officially cost Italy 49,000 soldiers; unofficially, of course, the total was far higher. Italian losses for the autumn of 1915, the total casualties for the Third and Fourth Battles, were estimated by the army at 116,000 dead and wounded. A later, more accurate count revealed a loss of 170,000 men. In all, Cadorna's four attempts to break the Isonzo line in the second half of 1915 robbed Italy of 230,000 of her sons killed and maimed. They died bravely but futilely. Cadorna's offensives gained almost nothing for Italy. Despite the loss of 230,000 soldiers-twenty divisions' worth of infantry-the Italian Army was really no closer to victory in late December than it had been when Rome declared war in late May.
The terrible cost of the fighting could not be completely concealed by Cadorna and his staff. The general felt no need to answer awkward questions from politicians and journalists, but the sheer magnitude of Italian losses on the Isonzo was obvious. By the end of 1915, almost a quarter of a million Italian families had been notified that a son, father, or brother was dead, wounded, or missing on the Isonzo. Many politicians had already grown restless. One exasperated parliamentarian rued, "The occupation of Rome cost Italy far less than a single square meter of the Carso"3 Cadorna naturally did not respond to this painful observation, or any others. He continued to believe that his methods would prevail in the end; he was discouraged by the obviously catastrophic failure of his grand schemes, but it in no way caused the stubborn Piedmontese to rethink his strategy and tactics.
Few of the foot soldiers who arrived with the 2nd and 3rd Armies on the Isonzo in early June were still alive and unscathed. Their places had been taken by teenaged conscripts and middle-aged reservists. The constant losses drained regiments and divisions over and over again. The frontline Italian infantryman had hardly any chance of surviving the fighting without injury; farm were virtu ally guaranteed death or maiming. Lightly wounded soldiers were patched up and sent back into battle until they were killed or crippled. In a typical case, the Bari Brigade fought in the Third and Fourth Battles, suffering its share of casualties. In seventy-five days in the line in the San Michele sector, the brigade lost 7,250 officers and men-120 percent of its authorized strength. Yet such losses were not considered exceptional. The morale of Cadorna's armies was noticeably low by the onset of winter. The chief of staff's ferocious discipline kept his army in the field, but indications of disaffection were everywhere. The 148th Regiment's short-lived mutiny was a sign of things to come. Perhaps even more ominously, the Austrians captured almost 9,000 Italian soldiers during the autumn; clearly many prisoners were only too happy to give themselves up to escape the war. Liberal application of firing squads and decimations assured Cadorna that the majority of his soldiers would remain loyal, but the naive enthusiasm of the summer's volunteers had been permanently replaced by the sober, hard-earned realism of combat veterans, whose sole aim was survival.
Boroevic's exhausted veterans at least had another victory to console them. The 5th Army had again prevailed against overwhelmingly superior Italian forces. Raw courage had repulsed innumerable Italian attacks; the fighting spirit of Austrian regiments on the Isonzo was still admirably high. Boroevic observed of his battered army, "Every soldier on the Isonzo front deserves the Gold Medal for Bravery" Nevertheless, the cost of victory had been hardly less bitter than defeat. From November 10 to December 1, the 5th Army lost 25,391 soldiers; the last two weeks of skirmishing added another 4,700 men to the casualty rolls. However, the true total was doubtless higher. The Third and Fourth Battles together cost Boroevic 95,000 soldiers dead, wounded, and missing. As always, the price of the numerous counterattacks that Boroevic demanded had added considerably to the numbers of dead and wounded. Between October 15 and December 15 the 5th Army received almost 120,000 reinforcements and replacements, yet total strength barely rose during that two-month period: almost 100,000 Austrian soldiers were consumed by Boroevic's war machine. At the unit level, Austrian losses were often as bad as Italian figures. The 22nd Infantry Regiment, the Dalmatian unit that repeatedly distinguished itself at Plava and before Gorizia, claimed 4,086 dead and wounded soldiers on the Isonzo in 1915. The "Lions of Podgora," the bravest of the brave, lost about 120 percent of their official strength between June and December. They had prevented an Italian breakthrough, but had been destroyed in the process.
The Austrian consumption of munitions was almost as daunting. During the Third and Fourth Battles the 5th Army fired a total of 37 million rifle and machine gun bullets, 706,000 artillery shells, 13,500 mortar shells, and 76,000 hand grenades. It had truly been a Materielschlacht. In the long run, the Austrian war machine could not possibly sustain such a consumption of men and munitions. The empire's limited reserves of men, guns, and munitions were strained nearly to the breaking point by fighting a three-front war. Boroevic and his soldiers were lionized in the Austrian press and congratulated by senior generals for their heroic defense of the Isonzo line, but the High Command knew that such losses could not be made good for much longer. Boroevic's methods had stopped Cadorna in his tracks, but they committed Austria to an endless war of attrition that she could not hope to win. Simply not losing on the Isonzo was not the same thing as victory, particularly at such a price.
Sobering doses of realism did not interest the Austrian infantrymen holding the Isonzo line as winter approached. They knew the odds were not in their favor, but they were happy to be alive. Boroevic, now hailed as "the Lion of the Isonzo," saw to it that his subordinates were showered with decorations for their bravery. Erwin Zeidler received the Knight's Cross of the Order of Maria Theresia for his pivotal role in the defense of Gorizia, and thousands of humbler soldiers were rewarded with medals of all classes for their victories over the Italians. The tens of thousands of exhausted Habsburg fighting men living in trenches from Rombon to the Carso celebrated their unexpected triumph; they had prevailed four times against impossible odds. They had stopped Cadorna's armies, thus saving Austria from total defeat. They had little to look forward to, save better rations at Christmas. The harsh Alpine winter had arrived. Snow had fallen everywhere in the Isonzo valley, and the bitterly cold born now lashed their positions mercilessly. Trench life, always unpleasant, was now almost unbearable. At least the winter brought large military operations to a halt; the spring thaw would only bring more Italian offensives, a prospect too dreadful to waste time thinking about. So as 1915 drew to a close Austrian soldiers hoped for the best and in a dozen languages prayed to God for the slaughter to end.