A General Overview.
By Francesco Davini
All photos are by the author.
The main battles of World War I on the Austro-Italian front were fought on its eastern portion, along the present Slovenian-Italian border and along the Piave river, in the Venetian plain, after the Austrian breakthrough at Caporetto.
Other important battles were fought in the central portion of the front, over the mountains and plateaus which dominate the Venetian plain on the south and the town of Trento on the north.
The western segment of the front, going from Zwitzerland in the north to Lake Garda in the south, was of very little strategic importance.
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map of the Italian front.
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Deep in the heart of the Alps, only three roads connected Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire along 80 km of border. Even in case of a massive breakthrough along one of these roads, both armies would have had to march along 30 km of narrow valleys before reaching anyplace of some strategic importance. The front line there, remained then more or less unchanged from May 1915 to November 1918.
The border started at Stelvio Pass (2759 m) and was continuously over 3000 m for more than 30 km in the Ortles-Cevedale Group to Tonale Pass (1895 m), where it went up again over the glaciers of the Adamello Group for some 20 km and then down to lower but wild and rugged mountains to Lake Idro and Lake Garda.
The need to cover a front line at such altitudes, without any previous experience, created new and unexpected problems both tactically and logistically.
War plans for the north-western alpine front were essentially defensive on both sides. As the war started on May 24, 1915 the Tiroler Standschutzen were quicker than the Alpini in occupying the border and the highest positions along the border, from Switzerland to Tonale Pass, including Stelvio Pass and the surrounding peaks. This occurred due to the large local autonomy that these formations had.
In the first months of war very few troops were available in this region so that only the most important and accessible positions had a permanent garrison.
While the troops were being deployed along the front line during the summer of 1915, several kilometres of the front on the highest glaciers were unmanned and just patrolled from time to time. This caused the first peculiarity of the war in this area. On both sides these patrols were lead by a few local professional Alpine Guides, usually enlisted as non commissioned officers. They all knew each other and were sometimes good friends. Before the war they were just the villagers of the next valley!
In the summer of 1915 Italian and Imperial patrols met on a mountaintop, many hours away from the nearest officer, and sat together to share their lunch! These meetings are documented in personal memoirs and oral tradition.
A long series of such "unofficial" meetings took place in this area all during the war, even when the war started to be a "real" war. Moreover a sort of chivalry seems to have persisted at all levels. For example: the Italian artillery avoided bombing the relief squads when a large Imperial barrack caught fire in March 1917 near Trafoi and an Imperial officer asked the Alpini near the top of Monte Cristallo to avoid staying so exposed, because his command had asked him why they were not shooting at such easy targets.
The main reason for the long time needed to permanently occupy and garrison the highest positions was the logistics. Many valleys had no roads, but just narrow paths to reach the shepherd's summer huts.
Most strategic positions needed several hours to be reached from the nearest village, often without any path and intermediate rest places. This situation also slowed the deployment of artillery.
During the first summer of war there was very little fighting. Both armies dedicated their efforts in exploration and reconnaissance on the highest glaciers and in creating a logistical structure to survive the upcoming winter and to accommodate more troops and artillery for the next summer. Building new roads and creating logistical structures was the main occupation of the troops when not in line. From the summer of 1916 installing and maintaining cableways became an important duty.
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Remains of the upper station of a cableway, Mount San Giacomo (3280 m.)
Great efforts were also necessary to keep the roads and paths clean from snow in winter and from mud in spring. Snow avalanches and landslides also were a continuous danger along the roads. Being isolated from any supply for many days was pretty normal for the front line troops in winter.
Later in the war the Imperials took advantage of the large number of Russian prisoners. Being used to the cold of the winter in their country, they were extensively used.
The useful period for works in the Alps goes approximately from May to October, but is much shorter above 3000 m. A normal summer thunderstorm down in the valley is often a snowstorm on the surrounding peaks.
Thunderstorms are extremely dangerous on mountain tops over 3000 m: where there is nothing else around but ice, snow and rocks. Any piece of metal acts as a lightning conductor. During thunderstorms, soldiers had to get rid of their helmets, rifles and ice-axes. Huts, telephone lines, cableways and guns were also dangerous to be too near.
A second peculiarity of warfare on the high mountains was the small number of troops, along the first 30 kilometres of front line only 1500-2000 men where deployed on each side. No more than 500 ever were in each first line. Big numbers quickly proved to be more of a problem. In many places there was simply no space to built more than a small hut and accommodate more than a few soldiers with big supply problems. Mules, which are famous for their reliability at high altitudes, were extensively used but could not climb glaciers or ladders. Cableways could not reach some place and were a favourite target for artillery. Moving many troops in the harsh environment of high mountains was very difficult and seldom was done unseen from the enemy.
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Remains of a
Italian observation post in Val Cedech.
The Austrian positions were on the mountains on the other side of the valley.
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Remains of a hut near the cable station.
A third peculiarity was the great number of tunnels bored in the ice. Unlike the Dolomites Alps, the kind of rock in this area is difficult to bore and not very suitable for mines.
Tunnels in ice are easy to dig, but hard to maintain. Glaciers are moving like rivers, only more slowly. Tunnels were mainly used as shelters and connection or access paths where the surface was too exposed to the enemy's view. A few tunnels were more than 2 kilometres long and a couple were more or less successfully dug by the Imperials to attack Italian positions.
The front line in the summer of 1916 was quite different than in any other place in Europe.
On some mountains the first line trenches were very close to the enemy, 30 to 50 meters away near Stelvio Pass, but in other places they were divided by a valley or a glacier. There were hundreds of meters or even a few kilometres of no man's land, only pastures, stony ground, glaciers or rocky slopes without any cover for a large number of troops. Only small patrols, very specialised and well equipped were able to cross the no man's land for sort of "commando" actions, like cutting or even intercepting telephone lines, taking prisoner, or killing an isolated sentinel, or setting fire to a hut.
When the weather was good, nearly no position was safe from the enemy's view. Due to the complex geography of the area there was always an enemy's position which was higher or which dominated the access path or could look at the rear of the opponents position.
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Ice Crampon
found inside the remains of the hut on Monte San Giacomo.
The use of artillery also had to face totally new problems. The need was for a great accuracy due to the small dimensions of targets. In a flat land a shell which goes a little too long is not completely wasted, but when trying to hit a mountain top or a crest, a shell which passes a few centimetres higher falls down kilometres away, causing no damage.
Being accurate was extremely difficult. Winds are not constant on high mountains and do change quickly. Ascending and descending air streams are common and not very predictable and wind direction may differ from one side of a valley to the other. To complete the picture, add the difficulty to stabilise a gun over a soft snowy surface and the need not to waste shells where the nearest depot is many hours away and 1500 metres lower.
The average calibre of the guns was small. Judging from the fragments and unexploded shells that literally cover some places, the most common calibre was 65 mm. The 75 mm was relatively uncommon. 120, 149 and 210 mm howitzers arrived in numbers only in late 1917 when the roads and supply facilities were ready to accommodate such large transports. A couple of 305 mm appeared in 1918 on the Imperial side and were used for the counterattack on Monte San Matteo. Those were probably Italian guns captured after Caporetto.
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Author in the
Italian fortifications on Cima di Vallombrina.
The San Matteo mountain is on the right of his head. With it's 3678 meters height
it's probably the highest point where a battle took place.
Big howitzers had to fire from very long distance and were not very effective.
Shrapnel shells were extensively used but were generally more bothersome than really dangerous, according to diaries and oral memories. Grenade launchers were placed in every front line position and were used sometimes for close defence.
The most effective weapons were undoubtedly machine guns. A single machine gun, well placed in a crevice or hidden between the rocks could inhibit any action on a whole mountain side.
With large empty spaces, long distances from the enemy, ineffective artillery, very few battles, and beautiful landscapes; one might think that life was not so bad for soldiers on the northwestern alpine front. However, life was bad. The need to keep the line, regardless of weather conditions, caused more casualties than the enemy's fire. The most common injuries were frozen extremities and snow avalanches. Rock and ice slides, lightning, falls in precipices and crevasses also contributed to the number of casualties.
Modern alpinists know very well how important is a good, well balanced, high calorie diet is when performing heavy duties at high altitudes for a long period of time. Unfortunately nutrition was not yet a science. The repetitive unbalanced diet, the use of water melted from ice and snow, and the prevalence of cold meals added to the poor hygienic conditions especially for the Imperials who really suffered from hunger in 1918.
When the War ended it was already winter on the high mountains. The Imperials simply closed the doors of their huts, made their guns and machineguns unusable and went home to their families. The Italians brought down their guns and machineguns, closed the doors as well and moved forward to take possession of Trentino and SüdTirol, before being demobilised. Most of the equipment was left on site to be recovered the following summer, but mother nature provided a 1918/19 winter extremely snowy and covered many sites permanently for decades. All ice tunnels disappeared forever.
As the troops moved away, the local impoverished populations did their best to recover everything which was useful and reasonably easy to reach. Unguarded barracks and huts were looted. Even barbed wires and their stakes were taken away.
When the Alpini came back in the summer of 1919 to recover the materials, they found that there was little to recover. What was not covered by the snow had already disappeared, except for places which were too difficult to reach or too far to be worth the effort.
With trench maps or direct knowledge of the sites. The Alpini could recover most, but not all, of the small depots of ammunition and goods along the Italian highest lines, but could find very little around the Imperials positions. Without knowing where to search, digging in the snow blindly was simply useless.
Most of the cableways, without maintenance for 8 months, were damaged and unusable, so that most of the ammunition found on the highest positions was simply piled up and exploded. I personally found traces of this in a couple of places where hundreds of cartridges are scattered around, cracked and twisted.
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Austrian
'Rohrhandgranate'
It had a paper
handle giving it much the same appearance
as a German stick grenade.
Austrian 8mm cartridge. 1998.
Found on the Vitelli glacier.
Photo: Francesco Davini
During the following years and up to the Great Depression in Thirties, the retrieval of metals was a way to survive for many poor people who retrieved shells and their fragments everywhere it was worth the effort.
In recent years, the withdrawal of glaciers and permanent snow coverage, is bringing to the light a number of "forgotten" sites. Huts, dugouts and trenches are slowly appearing in the state they were in November 1918, revealing the "everyday" life of soldiers.
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Cime di
Villacorna (3450 m.)
Parts of an Italian model "Raffa" pre-fabricated hut.
An Unfortunate Region 2001