which rises all around him from an abyss that reflects no ray in its
profundity, and blots out the stars high in the sky with irregular
cones and shapeless masses of inky night. From those mountains a
wind blows chilly on his face. He fixes his gaze upon a point in the
blackness far across the gulf. The point is decided upon after careful
reference to a phosphorescent compass in his hand. He stares at this
blank darkness until it almost seems that he must be staring against
closed lids.
Suddenly in the gloom at which he strains his eyes, he perceives a
pin-point of light. It flickers for an instant and then projects itself
in a ray of intense brilliance widening from the point of origin, right
across the gulf. It falls in a great oval of blinding whiteness upon
the hill-side to his right. Its hard white glare is painful in its
brutality. Everything outside the ray is swallowed in a blackness where
even the stars are lost. The white oval on the hill-side moves slowly.
It brings into vivid relief a long line of loosely piled stones behind
which lie, in many attitudes, the motionless bodies of men. Some,
which have fallen across the heap of stones, throw grotesque shadows,
intensely black. The white oval stays its slow progress, vignettes
them from the night. In the centre of the picture one of these figures
stirs, raises itself upon one elbow and rubs its eyes stupidly like a
man wakened from sleep by the sudden glare.
Instantly a group of sharp reports, multiplied by rapidly reiterated
echoes, breaks from the distant blackness. The figure sinks quickly, a
dark hole visible in the ghastly whiteness of its face. The oval begins
to move again, assuring the men who lurk far back in the night that
this uncompleted shelter-trench is held only by the dead.
Suddenly the light is cut off. The stars reappear in a sky that seems
strangely pallid. The mountain masses silhouette themselves more
definitely than before against their tenebrous background, the outlines
of the high summits, where some snow still lies, picked out in a grey
that has just the faintest tinge of yellow. From the black gulf below
eddies of mist boil up like steam from a mighty cauldron, veiling the
shrinking stars. A wall of fog rolls along the hill-side, blots out the
mountains and the sky.
The captain turns instantly and calls down an order in a carefully
restrained voice. The company in the hollow springs up and over the
crest with the agility of born mountaineers. They follow their captain
at a quick pace into the bank of fog. Behind them is a murmur of
voices. The other companies of the battalion are coming up, deploying
rapidly into line when they reach the crest. The first company has
halted for a moment to allow time for their arrival. Seconds are
precious. At any moment the cloud may roll away, expose them to the
glare of hostile searchlights and a storm of bullets. In two long lines
the battalion moves briskly down the hill, leaving the unfinished
shelter-trench upon its right. Behind, another battalion is coming up
in support.
Some way down the slope the infantry breaks out of the mist. They open
their files and slacken pace, dodging nimbly from one to another of the
boulders which glimmer in the twilight. Overhead the searchlights move
uneasily in long pale bands against the paling sky and fall upon the
fog-belt in white circles as upon a magic-lantern screen. The infantry
is not yet discovered. It works stealthily but quickly forward, aiming
at a lower ridge that rises before them. They seem alone in the narrow
mountain-valley that begins to reveal itself in the dawn, but their
officers know that to right and left of them other battalions are
likewise creeping forward. They reach the ridge, halt and lie down upon
its slope, wisps and wreaths of mist blowing over them.
The searchlights are extinguished--when, it is hard to say. The sky
is now a translucent ultramarine where no stars are left, and against
which the mountain peaks stand out in vivid orange. White fog patches
wander over the dark lower faces of the hills. The infantry creeps
cautiously up to the summit of its ridge and, like one man, peeps
over. In front of them is a mountain-wall that goes back at an angle,
leaving a great gap. Another ridge, parallel to their own, starts from
the mountain-side and drops away to the left. Its foot is lost in a
sea of fog. Between them and that ridge the ground drops into a ravine
and then mounts in a smooth _glacis_ to the further crest. A little
below its summit the loose boulders, which are everywhere sown over
the ground, are disposed in a long regular grey line. The officers of
the battalion give the range to that line--750 yards. The infantrymen
snuggle down behind boulders and inequalities on the crest and adjust
their sights. There is a general loosening of sheepskin coats, a tinkle
of cartridge-clips laid in readiness, and then the line lies still,
waiting, its bayoneted rifles slid back out of view.
Far back the infantry brigade commander is lying upon his stomach upon
the height to the left of the wrecked shelter-trench. The fog-belt has
moved off. He has a clear view from ridge to ridge. Suddenly he takes
his field-glasses from his eyes and picks up a telephone receiver at
the end of a long line trailing over the ground. He speaks a few words
into it, replies shortly to mysterious enquiries that emanate from
the far distance, suggests a number of metres in thousands. Almost
immediately the shriek of a shell passes overhead and the report of a
cannon-shot comes echoing along the valley, arrives in a succession of
distinct shocks to the ear. Ere the echoes have died away another shell
screams past, followed by its series of reverberations. The infantry
brigadier is watching the distant ridge through his binoculars. The
line of boulders is faintly visible. The first shell bursts above it
and beyond; the second bursts short. The bracket is too wide. The
brigadier speaks again through the telephone. Another shell wakes weird
noises from the mountains as an accompaniment to its own shriek. It
bursts just in front of the line of boulders above it. Through his
glasses the brigadier sees the splash of shrapnel bullets upon the
rocks like twinkles in quick whiffs of dust. He speaks two brief words
into the telephone. A flight of shells rushes overhead like a covey
of screaming spirits and with an enormous roll of thunder arrives the
roar of a battery in rapid action. Its reverberations roll and clash
endlessly, surging from side to side of the valley in confused waves of
violent sound. The long line of boulders is suddenly whelmed in a cloud
of dust that renews itself as fast as it drifts into the air. From
one end of that cloud spurt tiny points of flame, and shriek crosses
shriek in the air above, whilst a series of sharp crashes mingles
with the continuous roar. Quick puffs of white smoke appear in groups
against the blue sky. In the unfinished shelter-trench spurts of dust
leap up around the bodies of the dead men who lie behind the boulders.
A battery of guns has been pushed up into the infantry line over there
on the hostile ridge and, unobservant of the menace close at hand, is
spending its fury upon the trench that it wrecked overnight.
The firing line upon the intervening ridge lies quiet in its
concealment. Its officers have no wish to provoke a _rafale_ from a
battery protected by tall stone sangars. Intently they watch the sheets
of dust that spurt up high over the line of boulders like the beat of a
rough sea against a breakwater. They mark where the long thin tongues
of flame shoot out ceaselessly in reply, spitting at a distant target
far behind them. They communicate these observations to the battalion
commander who is smoking a cigarette in an attitude of ease a little
way down the slope. A man close to him commences a series of quick,
jerky gesticulations with a pair of flags held stiffly at arm's length.
No flags wave in reply, but, far back, the brigadier at the telephone
speaks. A great shell rushes overhead with the roar of an express
train. A moment later the officers upon the ridge see a sudden eruption
of flame and rocks in the centre of the line of boulders. They send
another message down to the signaller. Another shell hurtles through
the air, another explosion shoots upward, this time nearer to the
spitting guns. Where the fumes drift off, great holes, in which there
is a scurry of tiny figures, are visible in the shelter trench. Wide
grins open on the faces of the Serbian firing-line as they draw their
rifles close to them and finger the triggers. They understand fully
the value of artillery support. Again and again the volcanic eruptions
spout into the air with an appalling detonation that breaks heavily
into the rolling echoes which fill the valley. Two of them leap up
suddenly from the very midst of the dust-cloud where the battery is at
work. There is a fountain of flying rocks dark in the centre of the
flame, and in the colossal roar of the explosion a brief, acute note of
human agony comes like a high-pitched discord mingled with a thunderous
bass. A moment later the line of guns is revealed, naked to attack. A
few men are seen darting with short movements about them. Three out of
the six eject a tongue of flame at short intervals. While they fire,
a pale gleam flickers along the Serbian ridge as the bayoneted rifles
are thrust forward, and with a long dry crackle a sheet of bullets
leaps out at the wrecked battery. The sun rises over a shoulder of the
mountains and a band of golden light spreads downwards, illuminates the
flying clouds of dust in which figures can just be seen frantically
endeavouring to turn the guns in the new direction. They are picked
off one by one with deadly aim. Above the trench the shrapnel bursts
incessantly, a new shower starting ere its predecessor has reached
earth.
Along the Serbian ridge the sheepskin-clad figures lie in snug
safety and pull trigger with chuckles of satisfaction. There is no
excitement, only a keen savouring of primeval emotions that can now be
given rein. About them dance quick spurts of dust and bright splashes
of nickel appear upon the rocks. An irregular rifle fire is coming from
the hostile ridge. One or two shells burst overhead and then the guns
fall silent, are forgotten. The company on the right starts suddenly to
its feet, dashes over the crest and down the slope. The rifle fire from
the other ridge changes in character, welcomes them with rapid, violent
claps. A couple of machine-guns strike into the din with a continued
rapid and resonant hammering, nerve-racking in its persistency. Men in
the running line throw up their arms or pitch forward here and there,
but the company is lost to sight almost immediately on the rock-strewn
hill-side. The men dart forward from boulder to boulder. Behind them on
their left other companies are descending in quick succession towards
the ravine.
At the other side of the ridge, in rear, the second line of the
battalion is coming up in support, and behind them the other battalions
of the brigade are streaming forward, unhindered as yet by artillery
fire. It is a brief respite, however. In a moment or two a distant,
unseen battery has got their range, flings shell after shell to burst
over their heads and fall in a spreading cone of bullets. The brigade
advances with quick onward dashes by battalions that spring up, race a
hundred yards and disappear for a breathing space among the boulders.
Gradually they draw into the shelter of the intervening ridge, and
battalion after battalion tops it and moves down to the aid of those
in front. A strong firing-line remains on the crest, keeps up a steady
stream of bullets against the long grey line still whelmed in dust by
an unceasing hail of shrapnel. The brigadier ensconces himself in a
rock shelter at the end of this firing-line, the telephone receiver
still ready to his hand.
The first line of the attack has now reached the ravine. The men
seize hold of tiny shrubs that grow out at overhanging angles and
swing themselves down, scrambling over loose stones and sliding sand.
A hail of bullets is beating upon them from the trench above and
from a line of supports that has come into action higher still. The
machine-guns hammer with an appalling energy that knows not fatigue.
Where their aim is directed the sand spouts up as though struck by
an air-blast from a hose. In that ravine the first line is more than
decimated. Men stumble and fall upon their own bayonets. Corpses,
hanging limply, weigh down the shrubs. With fierce shouts the survivors
scramble onward. The second line has caught them up, is mingled with
them. The battle-madness seethes in every head; each bullet that
strikes harmlessly upon the earth is a shock of stimulation to already
hyper-excited nerves. They lose their identity, lose the instinct
of self-preservation in the flood of an older instinct which blinds
them to all but the hazards of the ground, and sweeps them forward
like demented animals frantic to assuage a thirst that consumes
their tissues. A savage cry breaks automatically from every throat;
the blood-congested brains, that permit the action of the muscles,
unconscious of it. They reach the bottom of the ravine, not very deep,
and clamber up in the comparative security of the other side.
At the foot of the smooth slope which reaches to the dust-whelmed
boulder-line, their officers halt them by orders, entreaties. The men
lie down and open a rapid, irregular fire against the trench. More men
arrive behind them, frenzied with excitement. They attempt to rush
upward, are pulled back by officers, or are struck down quickly in the
rain of bullets from the trench. The rifle-fire up there comes now in
one long rolling crackle through the cloud of dust that flurries in
answer to the continuous crashing of the shrapnel. The fire of the
attack increases in sporadic bursts.
On the ridge behind, the brigadier speaks a few brief words into the
telephone. A minute later the shrapnel ceases to burst over the trench.
In the disordered crowd of men that lies at the foot of the slope is
a commotion that defies the efforts of the officers. In vain do they,
knowing what is about to occur, endeavour to form a regular line of
attack up the ravine, as, from those who are still swarming down the
other side, arises one hoarse, savage cry that dominates the crash
of rifle-volleys. It is the battle-cry of a primitive people that
spontaneously clutches its primitive weapon in this awakening of its
oldest instincts, this plunge into the æon-old chaos where man thirsts
for the blood of man. "Na Nos! Na Nos!" comes the cry from a thousand
throats, reiterated endlessly by frenzied men whose faces are deathly
white or inflamed with blood. "Na Nos! Na Nos!" from parched mouths,
from dry, cracked lips the shout issues, overpowering the orders of
the officers. The bloodshot eyes that protrude with wild hatred at
the trench no longer see those officers. It is a savage horde merely,
in which the modern military hierarchy is lost, obliterated by an
intensely individual lust to slay as their ancestors slew. "Na Nos! Na
Nos!" "With the knife! With the knife!" What matters it that the knife
is at the end of a rifle? It is still a knife, the primordial weapon.
With an angry roar, the mass, no longer to be restrained, rushes madly
up the slope.
With an answering crash the rifle-fire from the trench leaps to a
climax. The men up there are firing for their lives. In the horde upon
the slope is an appalling massacre. Heedless of it, blind to it, the
mass surges upward, happily forgetful of the cartridges in their own
rifles, mindful only of the blade that gleams at the muzzle. They see a
line of faces, white behind countless spurts of flame. With one fierce
roar they hurl themselves upon them. Men in grey-blue spring up and
dash away or turn and run at them bayonet to bayonet. The attacking
line howls in the joy of butchery--"_Na Nos!_"
PER LA PIÙ GRANDE ITALIA!
The hot sun of a morning in early summer beat down upon the narrow
street of a little North Italian town. Down the long, confined vista
of colonnaded shopfronts, hung with striped awnings of warm hue,
the air quivered above the cobbles, troubled the view of an arched,
square-turreted gateway which barred the street. The sky above was
a long strip of intense azure. Sharp to the left, near at hand, was
the roughly-paved piazza, white-fronted Venetian-shuttered houses
looking out to the large round basin, the weather-worn Triton, of
the fountain where the pigeons, flashing in the sun, circled down to
drink. A group of girls, bare-armed, black-haired, skirts turned up
over vividly-coloured petticoats, water-jars underneath the gush from
the Triton's mouth, or poised already upon the graceful head, stood
laughing and chattering about the fountain. Their gaze was unanimously
turned towards the large building, the words _Palazzo Municipale_ over
its arcaded front, which occupied one side of the square. Carved on
that front, beneath the clock, defaced but not entirely obliterated,
might yet be made out the double-eagle of Austria--a memento of a
tyranny that had fled before a passionate patriotism, to entrench
itself, not far distant, high on the crag and glacier of the eagles'
haunts, ready to swoop. But not to that did the merry, whispering girls
dart their flirtatious glances. The two grey-uniformed Bersagliere
sentries, strutting up and down before the building, superb under the
drooping cocks' feathers of their grey-covered tilted hats, were for
once immune. A handsome young officer, black-moustached, dark-eyed, who
stood, one foot upon the running-board of a car that hummed ready to
start, in conversation with another officer, was the point of interest.
Both officers, clad in the grey field-service uniform, wore upon
their arm the brassard which indicated that they were of the Staff.
The officer on the point of departure wore the badges of captain; he
who was giving him his final instructions was a _tenente colonello_
(lieutenant-colonel).
"You quite understand what the General wants, don't you, Ricci?" he
said, using the familiar "_tu_," universal between Italian officers.
"As soon as possible after the position is captured, a report on its
possibilities for field artillery if we can advance to the covering
ridge. The General thinks it will command the valley road up from the
railway. You will see. Don't get buried under an avalanche!"
"Very good, colonel. I quite understand." He saluted--a quick movement
of the hand horizontally below the peak of the képi, palm downwards, as
though shading the sight, in the Italian fashion--and jumped into the
car. He pushed to one side a heavy fur coat, settled himself. A moment
later the car was humming out of the square, spinning down the long
colonnaded street.
In front of him loomed the heavy mediæval gateway, square above its
arch. Its ordinarily forbidding gloomy aspect was lost in a generous
decoration of green boughs, a trophy of Italian flags, red, white and
green, above a white-crossed shield, a great inscription--"Per la più
grande Italia!"[2] The battle-cry of Italy's greatest modern poet--the
cry that had rung beseeching, dominating, inspiring, through dithyramb
after dithyramb of the wonderful passionate orations by which he had
wakened the glowing soul of the people into flame, was blazoned here
as everywhere in Italy. Under that gateway thousands of Italy's sons
had marched to conflict with the _Tedeschi_, to the redemption of their
brethren; thousands more would march. And those to come would shout
as those who had gone had shouted: "_Per la più grande Italia! Evviva
Italia!_" The captain, glancing up at it ere the car shot under the
dark arch, carried the inscription marked upon his brain through the
obscurity. Familiar enough, he reperceived its meaning with a thrill.
What mattered the little individual life he was hurrying to risk? "_Per
la più grande Italia!_"
The car sped along a road on the left side of a pleasant valley. In
front, immediately claiming the eye, a range of Alpine peaks, dark
rock-scars breaking their dazzling whiteness, exquisitely delicate and
fine-drawn as perceived through the warm atmosphere, towered in lofty
austerity into the rich unvarying blue of the sky. The road, thick with
dust, climbed towards them in long loops and bold curves. Close upon
its left, dark woodland descended, masking ever and anon the distant
prospect behind a shoulder of the hills. To the right, across the green
valley where the cattle stood hock-deep in flowers, village after
village--yellow-ochre and burnt-red, its slant-roofed campanile high
above the flat houses--clustered itself upon an eminence or nestled
low down to the valley stream. Viewing the scene of quiet bucolic
prosperity it was difficult to imagine that among the silent peaks in
the background lurked the terrors of war; men embattled for mutual
destruction.
Along the road creaked and squealed clumsy country-carts drawn by oxen
with patient heads bowed to the yoke. They hoofed the dust with the
unhurried motion of centuries of tradition in their toil, careless
of the goad of the barefooted _contadina_ crying them to hasten, to
turn aside to allow passage for impatiently hooting motor-lorries.
In strange contrast of locomotion, column after column of lumbering
mechanical transport rushed down from the mountains in a smother of
dust and petrol-fumes. Column after column proceeding upward was
overtaken and passed by the captain's car. Ever in front towered the
range of glittering peaks, in unshakable, eternal calm. Yet from
somewhere among their solitudes came a distant, faint roar that was not
the roar of nature's thunder.
The road had climbed high. The valley was narrower. The orchards
sloping to its stream were white with fruit-blossoms. The air was
rarefied but still hot under the direct rays of the sun. The dark
woods of oak gave place to darker woods of pine. The road swept round
in sharp curves on low-parapeted stone bridges above a rushing torrent.
Bare green slopes, strewn with grey boulders, opened between the woods.
The car overtook a long marching column of Alpini crunching the dust
under heavily nailed boots, pack high upon the shoulders, alpenstock
as well as rifle, sweating profusely yet pressing upwards with quick
step, the eagle's feather in their soft hats still jaunty. It was the
rear battalion of a brigade whose units were successively overtaken and
passed.
The road swung to the right round the head of the valley which here
commenced in a sheer drop. As the car followed it there was a sudden
spurt of flame, a drifting tawny smoke, in the dark depths to the
right. A tremendous, shattering detonation that re-echoed endlessly
down the valley ceased at last, leaving audible the eerie moaning of
a great shell speeding upwards over the mountains, already far away.
Another such flash and detonation followed the first. Looking over the
side of the car, the captain perceived, deep down, the long barrel
of a monster gun nosing upwards, men tiny about it. A second gun was
depressed, a crane-slung shell hovering near its breech. Once more
there was a crash--a series of distracted conflicting echoes that
shattered the Alpine silence as thick glass is starred and fractured.
In the sky above the valley an eagle beat the air with heavy, violent
wings, startled into a vertical climb, and then glided swiftly with
outstretched pinions downwards to its crag.
The road still ascended, left the valley, climbed tortuously a rocky
spur, thinly grassed. The car took the gradient slowly, noisily, on
second speed. In front, struggling on the brow of the spur, a column
of "caterpillar" tractors drawing the component parts of a battery
of heavy howitzers distributed on trucks rattled and detonated like
machine-guns in full action. The battery personnel, harnessed to
long ropes, hauled and strained at the leading piece in an effort to
facilitate the passage of the steep crest. Before the war the boldest
artilleryman would have scouted the possibility of such heavy ordnance
at this height among the mountains. But the battery was only entering
upon the area of its severest toil.