slopes in fierce close fighting. The
centre and right wing were directed
against Mt. Kaymakchalan and the
task of keeping both supplied with
ammunition and food was a heavy
strain on the motor transport over
those mountain roads. Mr. G. Ward
Price, Official War Correspondent with
the Allied forces in the Balkans who
witnessed the attack on Monastir,
wrote :

THE LAND OVER WHICH THE SERBIANS
FOUGHT.

"There is a belt of splendid beech
forest half way up Kaymakchalan, but
beyond that the bare mountain side
stretches nakedly on to its cap of
almost perennial snow and right on the
top stand the white boundary frontier
stones which mark the boundary of
Serbia. It was on this vantage-ground
above the clouds, with the country they
were fighting to win laid out before
their eyes, that the Serbs fought their
fiercest battles with the Bulgars. Little
intrenching was possible on the stone-
bound mountain-side. In clefts and
gullies, behind outcrops of rocks of
under shelter of individual heaps of
stones collected under cover of the dark,
the soldiers of these two Balkan armies
fought each other with savage and
bitter hatred, under the fiercest weather
conditions of cold and exposure. The
wind there was so strong that the
Serbs said they ' almost feared that the
trench mortar projectiles would be
blown back on to them.'

"There could be little artillery at
that point to keep the battle-lines
apart. Mortar, bomb and bayonet
were the weapons that worked the
slaughter on Kaymakchalan, and so
fiercely were they used that Serbs
would reach the ambulances with
broken-off pieces of knives and bay-

574



onets in their wounds. You came upon
the piles of dead in every gully; behind
each clump of rocks you found them,
not half-buried in mud or partly cov-
ered by the ruins of a blown-in trench
or shattered dug-out, but lying like
men asleep on the clean hard stones.
The fish-tail of an aerial torpedo
usually furnished evidence of the
nature of their death. Not for days




GENERAL SARRAIL

General Sarrail became Commander-in-Chief of the
Allied "Armee d'Orient" at Saloniki in 1915. During
his two years of command Saloniki was transformed
into an intrenched camp, and Monastir recaptured.

N. Y. Times

only but for weeks after dead Bulgars
lay there, preserved in the semblance
of life by the cold mountain air, looking
with calm unseeing eyes across the
battle-ground that had once been the
scene of savage and concentrated
passion and activity, and then lapsed
back into its native loneliness, where
the eagle is the only thing that moves."

'TMIE SERBIANS STORM MOUNT KAYMAK-
1 CHALAN.

On September 20, the Russian
troops after a stern battle carried
Fiorina by assault, the same day that
the Serbians stormed the summit of
Kaymakchalan, the key of the Bulgar-



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



ian first line. The enemy made
desperate attempts to retrieve his loss
but the Serbians held fast and nine
days later Mishitch by a further ad-
vance outflanked him and drove him
back to the Kenali line, only 12 miles
from Monastir. The Kenali position
rested on the Tcherna where, entering
a rocky valley, it begins to turn north
enclosing a ridge within the loop. It
was the task of Mishitch to cross the
Tcherna and win the ridge. On a
rocky corner on the south of the river
the commander of the Serbian Morava
division had his observation post.

Meanwhile the French were making
frontal attacks on the Kenali position
in the plain, and the Russians doing
rough righting among the mountains
to the west. The Kenali intrench-
ments were too strong for frontal at-
tacks for they were made with the
skill and thoroughness of lines on the
Western Front, and when it became
apparent that the artillery was not
heavy enough to smash them, General
Sarrail based his hopes on Serbian
outflanking and strengthened their
army with French and Russian troops
from the plain. Unfortunately, at the
end of October the weather broke and
the trenches in the Kenali plain were
flooded out, and amid the wet and fog
the fighting among the hills slowed
down also. On November 14, *a
general offensive from Kenali to
Tcherna was ordered, and amid rain
the Franco-Russians captured the line
and forced the enemy back to the
Bistritza river intrenchments. On
the I yth and i8th the Serbs carried
the last heights of the Tcherna loop
which commanded the Prilep road
north of Monastir. Without further
pressure von Winckler retreated a
dozen miles to Prilep but was not
pursued, as snow now barred the way
and the Allied force was insufficient.

*T^HE GREEK MENACE IN THE REAR.

After December (when street fight-
ing occurred in Athens), the Greek
menace in the rear became very
serious. It was a real danger, too, for
the only communication with Monastir
was a single line of railway a hundred



miles long, and at Verria the line makes
a loop southwards towards Old Greece
and was there exposed to being cut by
Royalist troops who moved north in a
threatening manner and caused Sarrail
to recall the French detachments to
meet the peril. Once again Constantine
had served his German masters by dis-
tracting Allied attention from their
real object, the Bulgars, and causing
them to resume the defensive once
again. Their offensive had succeeded
in part measure only; it had not re-
lieved Rumania but it had given back
Monastir to the Serbs as an earnest
of better things to come.

During the first three months of the
next year mud and rain imposed
immobility upon campaigning in the
Balkans. It was a deadlock only
in so far as fighting was concerned.
The Bulgars used the time in strength-
ening their positions, making new
roads, bringing up fresh drafts and
ammunition against the spring offen-
sive. The Allies found themselves
with their hands full with complica-
tions resulting from the Greek revolu-
tion of October, 1916. To avoid
conflict a "neutral zone" between the
spheres of influence of the Royalists
and Venizelists had been established,
and it had to be occupied by Allied
troops. To the rear of the Saloniki
position the Chacidice Peninsula
stretches its three-pronged head into
the sea, and armed reservists and other
Royalist agitators began to make
disturbances there which the Venize-
lists strove to repress. Constantine
and his ministers grew all the while
more openly antagonistic, but it was the
policy of the Entente to keep Greece
quiescent and avoid having to fight a
campaign in Thessaly or Attica as well
as in Macedonia. Therefore we have
the apparently futile, wholly undigni-
fied, negotiations between king and
Allies, wherein the latter played a
trimming game to keep Greece out of
war.

It will be remembered that in
September, 1916, the British Saloniki
Force was given the task of holding the
line from Vardar to Struma, a distance
of 90 miles and of engaging the Bul-

575



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



garian Second Army so that it did not
interfere with the advance upon
Monastir. General Milne had per-
formed the task, had even pushed his
line forward and extended communica-
tions, but the wet and cold winter had
tired his men who so far had had no
part in a brilliant offensive. At the
beginning of April, 1917, the British



Moglena mountains by the Serbs, on the
right bank of the Tcherna by the Serbs
and Russians, in the loop of the Tcherna
by French, Russians and Italians, and
especially on that semi-circle of hills
west and north of Monastir where the
French were faced by a strong concen-
tration of Germans, Austrians, and
Bulgarians. Local improvements of




SOLDIERS OF THE FRENCH ARMY OF THE ORIENT

Camping in Macedonia was cheerless work. The climate was treacherous. Up in the mountains the winter was
intensely cold with heavy snowfall; in the plains the temperature ranged from an average of 81 Fahrenheit in
midsummer to a minimum of 14 in winter and canvas tents formed but little protection against summer heat or
penetrating damp. Insect pests were an ever-present torment.



Commander determined, as part of
the general spring offensive ordered
all along the line, to attack the enemy
positions around Lake Doiran, which
were exceptionally strong in natural
defense. April 2 the first attack was
delivered on the Doiran fortress and
for a month heavy fighting in that
sector of the front continued, with
little result save that the British oc-
cupied the enemy's first trenches.
Simultaneously all along the line were
going on similar Allied offensive move-
ments "on the right bank of the Vardar
by the French and Greeks, among the
576



the line were made at several points
but nowhere was it found possible to
drive a wedge into the Bulgar front."
May 29 the offensive was called
off; the brief spring was over and it was
time to make dispositions for the un-
healthful summer during which it was
impossible to stay among the malarial
river valleys. The Bulgar was as well
aware of the unhealthfulness of the
lowlands as were the Allies. He put out
placards, "We know you are going
back to the hills: so are we," and soon
he, too, had only a strong outpost
line on the plain.




Italian Artillery on the Austro- Italian Front



CHAPTER XXXV



The First Italian Campaigns

ITALY FIGHTS FOR THE UNREDEEMED LANDS AGAINST FEAR-
FUL ODDS



'"PHERE is a picture where the fore-
^ ground shows only a solitary battle-
flag, rent and pierced, yet waving out
from its staff with something of ineffable
dignity and freedom, high above a
landscape of rough mountainside and
deep river valley far and dim as seen
from this lonely height. The flag is the
flag of Italy. The river is the Isonzo
flowing between the bitterly-contested
hills that formed the eastern barrier of
the Austro-Italian front, a barrier "for-
midable even beyond the dreams of its
makers. " There is symbolic suggestion
in the dauntless folds of the flag with
its tatters and scars, in the grimness and
grandeur of the whole scene. It con-
veys a sense of stern, determined strug-
gle in the midst of a region where "in
spite of the utmost efforts of two great
armies, nature was still big enough to
be lord and master."

npHE WORK OF THE ITALIAN ENGINEERS.

The work of the Italian engineers in
meeting colossal difficulties was a mag-
nificent achievement. We have seen in
an earlier chapter that upon Italy's
entering the war, her armies had taken
positions upon the ridges and summits
of the border. It was not many weeks
before they were feeling the support of
the engineering forces, "whose techni-
cal skill was equal to their audacity,"
and who, more and more, as the war



proceeded, met the needs of the fighting
men. Where first there were rough roads
or no roads at all, there came to be
miles of good highway, built with
gradual incline and rolled smooth.
Light railways were constructed for
communication with the forces in the
field. Drinking-water, lacking in many
of the rocky posts, was carried by mules
or lorries in some cases; but, as soon as
possible, pipe-lines and reservoirs fur-
nished a more satisfactory supply.
Perhaps the most interesting engineer-
ing contrivance employed was the tele-
ferica, or aerial cable railway, which
made a direct connection between the
fighters on their mountain-peaks and
shelves and the sources of supply below,
and was capable of raising a load of
nearly a half ton. Systems of trenches
and underground galleries became a
necessity as soon as it was proven that
the conflict would be one of siege rather
than a rush through the enemy's lines.

''pHE ITALIAN PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.

Let us take a look at the situation
along the frontier immediately after
the declaration of war against Austria,
on May 23. It will be recalled that
General Cadorna's plan was to secure
the northern line and hold it, while
driving insistently against the eastern
barrier in the hope of breaking a way
across into Austria, and, if possible,

577



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



seizing Trieste. The Commander's
intimate knowledge of that difficult
frontier was invaluable in preparing
plans for the armies which had sprung
into place in the Trentino, among the
Carnic Alps, and on the Isonzo, to close
the entrances that pierce the mountain
rampart along the four hundred eighty
miles from the Stelvio Pass to the
Adriatic Sea.

The last week in May saw the Aus-
trians falling back from their foremost
stations in the mountains and the Ital-
ians taking their places, tearing out, as
they moved forward, the yellow and
black poles that bore the Austrian eagle.
The enemy wasted no great effort in
trying to retain positions that were too
difficult to defend. As the main
strength of the Austro-Hungarian army
was needed in Galicia for the time, the
object of the Archduke Eugene, in com-
mand on the Italian front, was to hold
his line with as little risk as possible un-
til more and better troops could be
spared. In a general way, the fortified
line may be described as following the
crest of the passes along the Trentino,
and the Carnic Alps and running down
the east bank of the Isonzo, except
where Monte Sabotino and the ridge of
Podgora had been kept as protection
for bridgeheads west of Gorizia. Santa
Lucia was to serve the same purpose for
Tolmino.

Naturally the attention of both sides
was concentrated in the neighborhood
of points where railways ran through
gaps between the mountains; near
Trent, where the road from Verona runs
up the Adige Valley; Tarvis, opposite
the Pontebba Pass, on the road to Lai-
bach; and Gorizia, the key to Trieste
and the Austrian front.

*"pHE ADVANCE ON THE ISONZO LINE.

The Italian advance on the Isonzo
line was planned in three divisions. On
the north, the left wing had for its ob-
jectives Tolmino and Monte Nero,
"the southernmost Alpine giant."
With these in their control, the Ital-
ians could break off communication be-
tween Vienna and the Isonzo forces.
The Italian centre was placed over
against Gorizia, with the Austrian

578



strongholds on Podgora as an immedi-
ate focus for attack. The right wing
was entrusted with the taking of Mon-
falcone and an advance upon the Carso
plateau, on each side of which stretched
lines of railway making a double con-
nection between Gorizia and Trieste.

In most of the early fighting, before
heavy guns could be employed in large
numbers, light troops were engaged.
In the mountains the Alpini naturally
took the lead. These sturdy Alpine
climbers, with their supporting batter-
ies of mountain artillery were the spe-
cial northern frontier troops. And
faithful guardians they showed them-
selves through three long winters of
war. Where quick action was required,
the Bersaglieri were relied upon. Each
army corps had its regiment of four
Bersaglieri battalions, of which one was
composed of cyclists the swift "ci-
clisti." On Alpini and Bersaglieri
rested the heaviest part of the "long-
drawn weight of the war."

T\ /T ONFALCONE TAKEN BY THE BERSAG-
1V1 LIERI.

Monfalcone is a seaport at the foot of
the Carso Plateau. During the last days
of May and the first week in June it had
been under bombardment by the Ital-
ian fleet in the Adriatic. On June 8,
an attack of Bersaglieri, with their
cyclist corps, and grenadiers w r as
launched from the Isonzo side. Their
swift running fight brought them into
Monfalcone in a few hours. On the
ninth the town fell, and so one loop of
theTrieste-Gorizia railway was severed.

An attempt to strike across the
northern part of the Carso by estab-
lishing a bridge-head at Sagrado, the
very point of the Carso salient, met
with far greater obstructions. June
was almost over before Sagrado was
won. The floods in the Isonzo, a natur-
al impediment, were augmented by the
Austrians' destroying the bank of a
canal and locking up the dam, so flood-
ing almost all the land from Sagrado
to Monfalcone. After persistent efforts
the Italians succeeded in blowing up
the dam and gaining a crossing, in
small detachments, fn the face of en-
filading fire from the Austrian guns. A
full month had been consumed in this




THE VALLEY OF THE ISONZO AND THE CARSO PLATEAU

With the topography of the Italian eastern frontier clearly in mind, one can understand why the Austrian soldiers
were given the memorandum: "We have to retain possession of a terrain fortified by 'Nature. In front of us a
great watercourse; behind us a ridge from which we can shoot as from a ten-story building." The glacial trough
of the Isonzo above Gorizia lies between the southern mounds and ridges of the Julian Alps. Monte Nero stands
guard north of Tolmino; a long spur runs southward west of the river as far as Podgora. Between Tolmino and
Gorizia stretches the irregular plateau of the Bainsizza with rocky heights rising above it. South of Gorizia, that
strange broken region, the Carso plateau, rears a seemingly insurmountable barrier before Trieste, a flat-topped
mountain, whose sides are precipitous walls three hundred to a thousand feet high, and whose broad top is a hot,
dry, hole-pitted desert. The Vallone, a long, dep, natural trench, breaking off the Doberd9 plateau from the rest
of the Carso, is one more vast obstacle for an advancing army. All the natural fortifications had been utilized
and improved by the Austrians. Railwavs to Trieste run on both sides of the Carso, the southern one near the
Gulf, the other following the Vipacoo (Wippach) Valley.

579



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



undertaking. Through July and Au-
gust they fought on, gaining by slow de-
grees a hold upon the north-western
edge of the plateau. With Monte San
Michele and Monte Sei Busi theirs, be-
side almost 20,000 prisoners, they had
not fought in vain.

'-pHE ATTACK ON HILL 383.

Meanwhile, a few miles to the north
of Gorizia, at Plava, another hard-won



forcements added night by night, the
Italians pushed steadily upon the hill
until by a strategem they caused confu-
sion among the Austrians and drove
them from their stronghold. By the
seventeenth of June the line from Gor-
izia to Villach was definitely cut at
Plava.

Although the hill and the bridge-
head thus obtained were in range of the
guns on Kuk (Monte Cucco) and Monte




MONTE NERO, A GIANT ON GUARD

Overlooking Tolmino and Caporetto at the bend of the Isonzo, Monte Nero, in the Julian Alps, stood at the head
of the valley which reached to its foot almost straight from the Gulf of Trieste. The summit of the mountain
(not black as the name would imply, but pearly gray) was so steep and forbidding as to be inaccessible of capture
by any but the Alpini, whose mountain craft and intrepid zeal almost surpass belief.



success came to the Italian forces. The
attempt to cross the river there was be-
gun on the night of June 8, but the
pontoon bridges were demolished by
enemy fire the next morning. On the
following night, a reconnoitring force
of two hundred men crossed by boat
and captured the Austrian pickets with-
out having revealed their presence.
Bridges were again started and again
destroyed, so that rafts were finally
resorted to for transportation. In this
way two battalions crossed, on the
night of June u enough to begin
attack upon Hill 383, which was
strongly fortified with cement trenches
and heavy barbed wire. With rein-
'580-



Santo and there was but one road, and
that entirely exposed, leading to the
bridge-head on the west bank of the
river, this precarious position was held.
Two years later, when a new, sheltered
road of approach had been built, Hill
383 served as a base for the attacks
which conquered Kuk and Bainsizza.



T



HE MISLEADING NAME OF MONTE NERO.



The capture of Monte Nero (Black
Mountain) north of Tolmino, has been
acclaimed as "one of the finest feats
of the whole European war," "as fine
a feat of arms and mountaineering
combined as stands on record in his-
tory. " The final seizure of the sum-



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



mit, early in June, was accomplished
by Alpini, who alone were equal to that
task. Caporetto, on the west bank of
the Isonzo, had fallen to the Italians
on the first day of the war. With slight
delays caused by floods and the wreck-
ing of bridges, they proceeded to take
the heights beyond the river. One of
these was Monte Nero, whose pearly



side on the southwest. Their feet
bound with rags for greater noiseless-
ness, the climbers roped themselves to-
gether in groups. They were not dis-
covered by the enemy until they had
nearly reached the crest. Then while
the Austrians gave attention to dis-
lodging them, the main body came up
from the other side and closed in.




QUARTERS IN THE FAR MOUNTAINS OF NORTHERN ITALY

The Carnic Alps, a connecting link between the Venetian Alps and the Julian Alps, were the wildest and farthest
distant section of the Italian front. There the mountains are most rough, jagged and abrupt. To keep men prop-
erly supplied on such far-lying, high-hung ledges as this called for continual vigilance and executive force.



gray summit belies its name. The Slo-
vene term for rocky peak, Kru, was
sometimes confused with another word,
Cru, meaning black, and so the moun-
tain has become familiar as Monte Nero.
The peak seems impossible of attack,
and so it looked to Lord Kitchener
when he visited the site in the following
autumn; but the Alpini were not
daunted. After they, with the Bersag-
lieri and infantry of the line had estab-
lished themselves on the hillsides, they
alone completed the conquest of the
peak. Two cracks in the precipitous
northern face gave footing to a picked
company, while a larger column ap-
proached by the steeply-sloping rocky



qnHE APPROACH TO TOLMINO.

From Monte Nero the Italian troops
broadened their area of occupation,
since the position was important as a
point of approach toward Tolmino.
That town itself was a military depot of
sufficient strength to hold out as yet
against all efforts. It was protected
to the westward by the two hills, Santa
Maria and Santa Lucia, on the right
bank of the river. During the summer
the Italians pressed in slowly from the
northwest and west, and in August,
after a vigorous attack, were able to in-
trench upon Santa Lucia. Trench
fighting continued until October, when



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



another offensive movement secured
parts of both hills, and there the situa-
tion rested again for a while.

Through the summer the Isonzo val-
ley settled into trench warfare. The
Austrian side had been prepared in ad-
vance. From the river-banks to the
mountain tops overlooking them there
were rows of cement structures and ex-
cavations, well-guarded by machine-
guns and fields of heavy barbed-wire
charged with electricity. The whole
appeared like "a kind of formidable
staircase, which must be conquered
step by step with enormous sacrifice. "
In places the gorge of the river formed
a deep natural moat before the fortifi-
cations. On Monte Sabotino, opposite
Gorizia, the slope toward the Italians
was a glacis of limestone across which
the Austrians had blasted out a deep
trench, known to the Italians as the
trincerone (the big trench). Besides,
there were great shelters prepared for
protection in bombardments.

''pHE DIFFICULT ITALIAN POSITION.

Over against these previously estab-
lished lines of defense the Italians
scraped out their new trenches, still in
disadvantageous positions in spite of
all their valiant endeavor. Supplies
and reinforcements were brought up by
night over narrow muddy roads which
by day were exposed to the eye of the
enemy. Lorries, mules, ambulances,
and columns of troops passed and re-
passed in the dark on those sharply-
curving, difficult roadways, which as
yet had not been made adequate by
the engineers. By day the ambulances
alone traveled back and forth, but even
they were not safe from the enemy fire.
The red cross upon them and upon the
hospital sites was not always respected ;
for the attitude of the gunners varied
in different localities. At Plava the op-
posing trenches were within a few yards
of each other, with room for only one
set of barbed wire on their No Man's
Land. And in this close proximity, face
to face, the combatants remained for
nearly two years.

In the mountains there was continual
fighting and unremitting heroic achieve-
ment, but of such a nature that single

582



engagements can hardly be selected
and described. Among the Dolomites
far to the north, the Alpini with their
supporting troops were gaining new
heights, to be held by guns lifted to po-
sition through almost superhuman