Fifteen years ago a charming, cultivated young Italian, son of the Duke
of Sermonetta, came to the United States to study mining engineering.
He sank his identity in a family name, Gealsio Caetani, earned his
degree in the Columbia School of Mines, went West and labored at $2 a
day with pick and shovel so as to know his business from the ground
down, became superintendent (out of sheer ability) of a great mine in
Alaska and eventually opened a consulting office in San Francisco.
When the Germans overran Belgium Caetani threw up his business,
hastened to Belgium and volunteered. When Italy was ready to fight he
joined his own colors and entered the aviation service. I saw him in
flying man's toggery.
"But you, Caetani, are an engineer," I said. "Why not overthrow
mountains and build bridges instead of winging about as an observer."
Then I went away to see how successful the Austrians had been in
destroying the art treasures of Venice and Milan; and after a while
men told me the story of an engineer who uprooted a mountain range
upon which two battalions of Austrians had defied an army for many
months. This engineer who had solved nature's great problems in the
Rocky Mountains and in Alaska climbed like a fly up the face of sheer
rock cliffs, managed to drag after him the necessary drills and then,
with Austrian riflemen patrolling high overhead drilled a tunnel
of 300 meters length into the solid rock. It took three months. He
stuffed the tunnel with seven tons of explosives, attached his fuses
and his wiring, scrambled back down the cliffs and invited the army to
a spectacle. A touch of the forefinger, a cataclysm, cheers ringing
through the defiles. The mountain top was gone. This engineer was the
American trained Gealsio Caetani. The mountain was the Col di Lana in
the Trentino.
When one visits such men one climbs to the aeries of eagles, for it
is at such heights that the troops of Italy are fighting. To such
heights--2,000 meters, 3,000 metres, often 4,000 meters, they must
swing or drag the great guns, their stores of provisions, their
supplies of ammunition. Major Neri, a great engineer, nonchalantly
bridged two mountain ranges with slender wire cables; They had told
him it couldn't be done. He did it. I asked him how. "By fastening
one end of the bridge to one mountain and the other end to another
mountain--so," said Neri. What does one reply to such men?
In the Carso I formed a pretty good idea of the difficulties of the
Italian campaign. From the point of view of attack the character of the
country is the cruelest imaginable. It is simply inconceivable that
any human beings could persist for two years blasting out trenches
inch by inch, building up both sides to a proper height with fragments
of rock and myriads of sand bags under the most terrific and plunging
crossfire of mitrailleuse, musketry, hand grenades and all kinds of
artillery, until at last a trench was constructed varying from ten to
twenty meters in distance from the paralleling enemy's work. Everywhere
were barbed wire and chevaux de frise, endless lines of them. The rocks
between the trenches were literally and absolutely covered with shells
of every caliber, exploded and unexploded, and with thousands of hand
grenades, so that it was a very serious matter where one should put
one's feet. Many of the dead were lying under stones, and fragments of
bodies were strewn about.
In the beginning there may have been some stunted trees upon these
hills, but when I was there all verdure was gone, burnt up in shell
fire or gas attacks. An officer who accompanied me described these
attacks as the most inhuman imaginable. I had known this man for years
and no better sportsman or soldier exists. His mother was an Austrian
and he entered the war without any great enthusiasm. But he told me
that never in his life had he experienced the sensation of hate until
he witnessed the first gas attack. The sight of his men returning under
its influence filled him with passion, and the finding of the iron
spiked maces which were used by the Austrians to hammer the heads of
the bewildered, gasping Italians left no room in his heart to doubt
the baseness of the enemy. One of these maces was given to me. I have
it.