FIFTEEN
Once the great victory is gained, the next question is
not about rest, not about taking breath, not about
considering, not about reorganising, etc. etc., but
only of pursuit of fresh blows.
CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ
The Sixth Battle of the Isonzo
By mid-June, Cadorna’s mind was back on the Isonzo. His original ambitions had taken such a bruising that he set more modest goals for the next offensive. He told the Duke of Aosta that it would take place as soon as possible, aiming for ‘firm possession of the threshold of Gorizia’. He wanted to set the Italians up for a future attack on the city and on Mount San Michele, and to make it impossible for the Austrians to break out of Gorizia. For the first time, he would concentrate his firepower ‘in a very narrow space’, the short tract of front between Podgora hill and Gorizia. He also accepted the Duke’s suggestion to extend the attack down to Mount San Michele in the south. Although it was separated from Gorizia by the valley of the Vipacco, five or six kilometres wide, San Michele was in tactical terms the southern rampart of the Gorizia enclave. Cadorna rightly supposed that the Austrians would not expect a major operation on the Isonzo so soon after the close call in Trentino. Given his previous disdain for the element of surprise, this was another sign that something had been learned.
After the restructuring around Gorizia, the offensive came under the Third Army. The Duke of Aosta made sure the three divisions attacking San Michele had substantial artillery support (though no heavy guns) and the lion’s share of reserves, which were never abundant on the Isonzo. This had serious consequences when the attack took an unexpected turn. The task of getting a foothold on the left bank of the Isonzo, on the skirt of land between the river and the city, fell to VI Corps under General Capello. Capello’s orders reiterated Cadorna’s aim of capturing ‘a small bridgehead’ that could be defended by a few men with machine guns.
Capello, bulking larger than life, cultivated renown as a plain-speaking warrior, learned in the arts of war, implacable in attack. He predicted that they would take the bridgehead in four hours and Gorizia in four days. ‘Let us not deceive ourselves,’ cautioned Cadorna, five times burnt. In this case, Capello’s bullish confidence had a foundation: the Italians’ excellent preparatory work on Mount Sabotino, a 600-metre hill that fills Gorizia’s northern horizon like a scalene triangle. The western side descends steeply but evenly; on the other side of a narrow summit crest, the eastern side falls almost sheer to the Isonzo. Since winter, units of the 4th Division had excavated an intricate grid of trenches, tunnels and caverns in the limestone, often by night, sapping up the western flank of the mountain until the front lines were close enough for the infantry to attack with realistic hope of success. The 4th Division had one of the better commanders, General Luca Montuori, assisted by Colonel Pietro Badoglio, a veteran of Ethiopia and Libya with the knack of inspiring trust in senior commanders. When Sabotino came under the responsibility of VI Corps, Capello became involved.
The divisions that had been transferred to the Trentino were brought back to the Isonzo, along with most of the First Army’s artillery, without detection. By early August, over 200,000 men were ready to move against San Michele and Gorizia. The heavy guns were placed in front of Gorizia, shells had never been available in such quantities, and the number of mortars quadrupled over the past year.
The bombardment began early on 6 August, pounding the Austrian lines all the way from Tolmein to the sea, before drawing in to San Michele and Gorizia. Cadorna’s gunners had never been so effective. The Austrian lines were shrouded in smoke, their command centres disabled, many observation posts destroyed, and communications wrecked. Boroević telegraphed the Army High Command for urgent reserves and heavy artillery. He had underestimated the enemy build-up, partly because it was well concealed (with Cadorna making highly visible visits to Trentino). The Austrians had assumed that the new government in Rome would want more time before launching its first offensive. What was more, the trickle of deserters that preceded previous offensives had not materialised. But the high command was desperately stretched on the Eastern Front and had nothing to spare for the Isonzo. Boroević would have to manage with what he had, some 102,000 fighting men along the middle and lower Isonzo. Only 18,000 of these were deployed around Gorizia, in a semicircle from Sabotino to the Vipacco valley. The troops and guns that had been lent to the Punishment Expedition were slow to return. Making matters worse, Boroević had sent his own reserves – a scanty six battalions – south to protect the direct approach to Trieste. Retrieving them would take several days. As for artillery, the inferiority was frightful: he was outgunned on the Isonzo by at least 3:1, and in some places around Gorizia by 12:1.
The Carso and the Gorizia sector
Recognising that previous progress had been made in the first days or even hours, Cadorna curtailed the preparatory bombardment. At 16:00 on the 6th, Capello’s first wave of infantry scrambled out of the upper trenches on Mount Sabotino with large white disks tied to their backs. Thanks to this simple device, the battery commanders co-ordinated their fire with an assault for the first time. The Dalmatian troops defending the mountain were hopelessly outnumbered when Badoglio’s men stormed the summit, taking it in 38 minutes flat. ‘They look like Roman legions!’ enthused the King, watching from a hilltop in the rear. When the last defending platoons in the warren of tunnels refused to surrender, the Italians poured petrol into the tunnels and set them ablaze.
It was the best news since the capture of Mount Krn more than a year before. D’Annunzio, the self-styled poet of slaughter, caught the joyful mood in a couplet:
Swift as the wing that stoops in a streak,
The first shout rang out from victory’s peak.
Further south, across the river, more glory lay in store. Although San Michele had seen no major offensives since the Fourth Battle, the Italian XI Corps had not been idle. As on Sabotino, the ‘methodical advance’ was conducted diligently until no-man’s land was only 50 or even 10 metres wide. When rock-drills arrived at the end of March, proper shelters and tunnels were excavated. Secure emplacements were made for the new trench mortars. Salients were protected with extra wire.
Even without major operations, the attrition on San Michele had been costly. Hundreds of men were lost in the limited actions of the Fifth Battle, and hundreds more during Austrian diversions in May. The following month, the Austrians used a new weapon to loosen the Italians’ grip. On 29 June, a mixture of chlorine gas and phosgene was released above the Italian line. After a stormy night, the wind died away just before dawn and the Austrians had considered aborting the operation. Then a south-easterly breeze picked up, and the 3,000 cylinders were opened. Dirty white clouds rolled towards the mystified Italians, withering the leaves and grass, then smothering the lookouts and the front line. The men keeled over, gasping, glassy-eyed, foaming at the mouth, and died clutching their stomachs. Primitive gas-masks – cotton-wool pads impregnated with alkaline solution, and separate goggles – had been distributed not long before, but many soldiers thought the precaution was needless; their masks were soon lost or damaged. In the second line, men looked around in panic for their gas- masks, not knowing these were ineffective against phosgene. Some 2,000 men of the Brescia and Ferrara Brigades died, and a further 5,000 were injured. Yet, like the Germans at Ypres in April 1915 when lethal gas was first used, the Austrians were too fearful of their weapon to seize the opportunity that it had created. (Fearful with reason: they lost 40 dead and 212 wounded to the gas.) They had bought a little time without improving their strategic position. By the end of the day, Italian counter-attacks had regained the ground lost in the morning.
Survivors and relief units were shocked by the sight of dead men at their post, caught unawares and so quickly that they had not even tried to escape. Corporal Valentino Righetti (19th Infantry, Brescia Brigade) was among those sent up the hill late on the 29th, wondering why his unit was returning to the front line only a day after leaving it. Reaching his trench after dark, he was perplexed to find it full of soldiers. The silence was complete; they must all be asleep. They were still sleeping at first light, so he shook the man next to him. ‘Dead! They were all dead! Eyes rolling, foam on their mouths.’ The brass stars on their uniforms and the metal of their rifles were discoloured green. Outrage was compounded when studded maces were found in the trenches. These had been used to finish off the gassed victims. The maces were exhibited in schools around Italy to prove the contrast between Habsburg barbarism and Italy’s just struggle – what the Supreme Command called the ‘sublime goodness’ of the war.1
*
The assault on San Michele began at 15:30 on 6 August. Though suffering heavy losses, the Catanzaro, Brescia and Ferrara Brigades took the summit while the Pisa and Regina Brigades pushed to the edge of San Martino hamlet. The counter-attacks that night, by Hungarian units, were beaten back. Boroević’s reserves were needed to limit the breach at Sabotino; there was nothing left for San Michele.
The whole sector fell the following day. The dreary whaleback hill was firmly Italian at last. Soldiers wandered around the silent summit, dazed at finally being able to set foot among the corpses, cartridge- boxes, spent cartridges, blackened boots, bits of rifles and empty knap sacks. One officer’s chief memory was of disgust at the sight of maggots, more than he had ever seen before, apparently sprouting out of the ground, ‘white and soft, wriggling towards the motionless bodies, penetrating them, feeding, reappearing in the empty sockets and half- closed mouths’. The conquest of San Michele had cost at least 110,000 Italian casualties over 14 months, including 19,000 dead, on a sector only eight kilometres long.
With Sabotino lost, the 15-kilometre line around Gorizia began to crumble. Most of Podgora hill – insuperable for so long – was overrun on the 6th. Counter-attacks during the night could not roll back the Italian gains. The Austrian artillery had run out of shells, and other sectors on the Isonzo were so sparsely manned that they could only spare half a dozen battalions, nothing like enough to wrest back control of Sabotino. Boroević was startled by the speed of the Italian advance; his reserves could not reach Gorizia before 10 or 11 August – too late to save the city. Nevertheless, he would not hear of a withdrawal, so more counter-attacks were launched, in vain. By sunset on the 7th, the ground between Sabotino and Podgora had fallen. A single Croatian regiment stood between Cadorna and complete control of the Isonzo’s right bank. Shortly after midnight, Zeidler told BoroeviČ that the situation was untenable and ordered his men to fall back across the river. Only 5,000 reached the second line behind the city, where the triple peaks of Monte Santo, San Gabriele and San Marco form a barrier even more imposing than Sabotino and Podgora.
Two hours after Zeidler issued his fateful order, Capello reminded his divisional commanders that their task was still to establish ‘little bridgeheads wherever possible’ on the Isonzo. A commander who reported rumours that Gorizia stood empty, and recommended a vigorous thrust over the river, was told to investigate further. Naturally the commander shrank from sticking his neck out, and troops continued to cross the river in dribs and drabs. As often, the senior commanders’ lack of nerve was exposed by a plucky junior officer. Early on the 8th, as the last pockets of resistance on Podgora were being mopped up, a few platoons of the 28th Infantry (Pavia Brigade) gathered on the right bank of the Isonzo, opposite the city. The first Italians to get this far, they had discovered a tunnel under the flank of Podgora and made their way through it, towards the river. Machine-gun fire was incoming from a trench across the river, some 20 metres from the water’s edge. As the only intact bridge was under heavy Austrian fire, a young officer, Lieutenant Aurelio Baruzzi, got permission to wade across the Isonzo, carrying an Italian flag.
The water is fast but not very deep; Baruzzi uses the flagpole as a staff to steady himself. Other men are swept downstream, but a hundred or so make it across, clear the trench and seize the bridge. The railway station is visible a few hundred yards away, across a field. Baruzzi knows what to do: ‘I must cross that field. I have sworn to my flag that it will fly over the houses of Gorizia. Now the flag helps me for the second time. I unfurl it and shake it open. Our gunners see it and lengthen their fire. We run across the field to the station.’ The station is protected by wire, but Baruzzi finds a breach and races up the staircase. ‘Moments later, the flag is flying from the highest roof-beam under the hot August sun.’
By the afternoon, Gorizia was in Italian hands. The latest bombardment had caused huge damage. All the churches were hit, some several times over. Rubble and shattered trees lay everywhere. The streets were barricaded with barbed wire and heaps of furniture. Some buildings were mined. A last-minute evacuation left only 1,500 civilians, risking everything to save their property.
Grasping the scale of the breakthrough, Capello alerted the Duke of Aosta, who advised Cadorna to chase the Austrians back to their second line and attack the chain of hills behind the city. Cadorna agreed, and brought the Second Army into play, attacking the Plava bridgehead. Everything went well that day; the Italians were unstoppable. Seen from the rear areas, the horizon from San Michele to Podgora was ‘wrapped in fire and steel’, roaring under a cover of reddish cloud.
On San Michele, the Italians secured the summit and attacked the Austrian second line on the rearward slopes. Here they were stopped for the first time – another testament to Austrian defences. The loss of Gorizia removed the point of sacrificing more Austrian lives for San Michele. If the Italians maintained their impetus, they might cut off the Austrians’ routes back to their second line. Boroević transferred his artillery to new positions several kilometres further east, on the far side of a valley that scored a north–south line across the Carso. This was the Vallone, like a giant trench one or two kilometres wide and 200 metres deep. On 9 August, the troops followed.
The withdrawal from the western Carso – abandoning Mount Sei Busi, Cosich and other battlefields as well as San Michele itself – was perfectly executed. After contesting every pebble and root for 14 months, the Austrians flitted away like shadows. Next morning, the officers on San Michele scoffed at reports that the enemy positions were empty. By nightfall, the Austrian trenches were crowded with incredulous Italians, picking through the detritus for souvenirs. The Supreme Command ordered an immediate attack across the Vallone, but the artillery lagged behind (being too heavy for the pontoons over the river), the men were weary, the Austrian gunners were ready behind their wire, and Boroević’s reinforcements had finally arrived. Successive waves were beaten back in a reversion to the old futile pattern, until Cadorna called a halt on 17 August. The Austrians had lost 50,000 men since 6 August, the Italians at least twice as many.
On 9 August, the church bells of Friuli rang out for the first time since 24 May 1915. Patriots declared that a wholly Italian army had defeated a great foreign army for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire. Italy’s allies agreed that the capture of Gorizia was a mighty feat of arms. The enemy had been driven back four to six kilometres, along a 24-kilometre front. It was by far the biggest advance to date.
Coming so soon after the much-trumpeted defeat of the Punishment Expedition, this made Cadorna’s position unassailable. He had proved that he could carry out a successful offensive. As Italian morale surged, the Austrian army’s slumped. Successful resistance on the Isonzo had created a unique esprit de corps. This spirit was potent but highly vulnerable; the first substantial reverse might burst the illusion that the empire could defy all odds, indefinitely. Were this to happen, Habsburg morale could be expected to fray at exponential speed. The Sixth Battle did not deliver this defeat, but it came near.
Cadorna’s finest hour confirmed his limitations. Far from exploiting the breakthrough, he clung to his original plan. By the time he awoke to the opportunity, fresh troops, cavalry and munitions could not be brought up in sufficient strength to attack the second line before it was reinforced by Zeidler’s retreating battalions and fresh reserves. On 10 August, realising that a golden chance had slipped beyond reach, he censured Capello for his ‘slowness’ in attacking the high ground behind Gorizia, in line with the ‘objectives’ that had been assigned to VI Corps. This was disingenuous, for Cadorna had never anticipated capturing the city, let alone any ground beyond it. Capello, for all his show of audacity, was hardly better. Astonishingly, no one seemed to realise that the Vipacco valley, leading to the Slovenian hinterland, lay wide open. The enemy’s second line was still weak here, with shallow trenches and wire fixed loosely to the soil.
The Italians had shifted their problems several kilometres eastwards. The challenge ahead was all too familiar: attacking uphill against well- built positions defended to the death by battle-hardened troops. They had spent more than a year besieging San Michele and Podgora. In the next phase, they would hurl themselves at Monte Santo, San Gabriele, Fajti hrib and other obscure heights across the Vallone that soon became household names in Italy.
Source Notes
FIFTEEN Victory’s Peak
1 Fearful with reason: Weber, 199.
2 brass stars on their uniforms and the metal of their rifles: Faldella, 45–6.
3 ‘white and soft, wriggling towards’: Longo.
4 ‘wrapped in fire and steel’: Frescura, 114.
5 a wholly Italian army had defeated: Pieri [1965], 117.
1 Coincidentally, Cadorna had suggested on 26 June that poison gas should be used to make Podgora ‘uninhabitable’. This proved impossible, because the Italians still lacked reliable cylinders.