easier angle. The view, hitherto much masked by closely overhanging
slopes, opened out. To right and left the gaze plunged into blue
depths, fell on miniature woods and thin white strips that were roads.
Far away on either hand the mountain ranges lifted themselves, superb,
into the blue sky. But directly in front the higher peaks were not
seen. A sheer wall of dark rock barred the view as effectually as it
seemed to bar further progress.
At the foot of the precipice was a stationary column of motor-lorries,
tiny by comparison with the towering mountain. The road went straight
up to it. The captain in the car bestirred himself, picked up his
heavy fur coat. Far away and high above was a prolonged rumbling roar
that seemed to re-echo from invisible walls in the upper atmosphere.
Involuntarily the captain raised his eyes. The blue sky was untroubled.
Upon the face of the rock--which leaned back less precipitously than
had appeared--swarmed hundreds of grey-uniformed engineers. They were
laying a pathway of heavy timber, erecting huge sheers, arranging a
complicated tackle of thick rope and large pulleys. Back along the road
the first of the heavy pieces for which this hoisting apparatus was in
preparation lumbered already into sight.
This tackle was not the only feature on the precipice. A little further
along, at the centre of the line of lorries, a light cantilever steel
standard was connected by drooping wire ropes to the summit. Suspended
from those ropes by a running-gear of pulleys a little car was gliding
steadily upwards, another coming down. It was the _Teleferica_--the
famous wire-rope railway, that, many times multiplied, made modern war
possible at these high altitudes.
Ammunition in boxes was being unloaded from the lorries, stacked on the
roadside near the _Teleferica_. The downward-gliding car was seized
by a group of waiting men, steadied, stopped, quickly loaded with the
boxes.
The staff-captain's motor drew up. He descended, walked towards the
_Teleferica_, exchanged a salute with the dapper little ammunition
officer superintending the work.
"_Buon' giorno, signor capitano_," said the little lieutenant. "Are you
going up to see the attack?"
The captain nodded.
"Ah! Some people have all the luck! I never see anything. My battery
never has any casualties--and here am I left supernumerary. I might as
well be mountaineering for my pleasure!" He drew a lugubrious grimace
of comic, half-sincere self-pity.
The captain struggled into his heavy fur coat, apparently superfluous
here in the fierce heat which glowed from the rock in the noonday sun.
"A glass of wine before you ascend, _capitano_!" said the lieutenant.
"Come, I will take no denial!"
He led the way to a little wooden shack close under the lee of the
precipice. Within, the walls were decorated with a number of scathingly
satirical drawings of the _Tedeschi_; some extremely clever studies
of the mountains in their different aspects of light--sunset and
dawn, moonlight. The host, perceiving the captain's glance, made a
deprecatory gesture.
"What I am reduced to, _signor capitano_! And I might be blowing the
Austrians out of their eyries!" He was typical of that new Italy which,
while it cannot cease to be artistic, holds all of small account that
is not war against the Austrian. He filled the glasses, raised his own,
half turned to a portrait of Gabriele d'Annunzio that shared with the
King the honours of the wall. "_Per la più grande Italia!_"
"_Per la più grande Italia!_" Both officers drank the toast. "To-morrow
morning she will be a little greater if the fates are kind," added the
captain.
A few minutes later he was lying full-length in a narrow low-sided
cage, suspended from a pulley on a thick wire-rope, and being hauled
up, with much creaking and strident protest of the pulley-wheel and
vicious jerking of the loose rope, to the summit of the cliff.
There he was again in a scene of activity. Broad-shouldered porters
in frayed and much-worn Territorial uniforms were bearing away the
ammunition boxes that had arrived at the summit, carrying them towards
the next station of the _Teleferica_. The captain followed in their
track.
The wire-rope railway ran in short sections from station to station.
The gaps between the sections--stretches of comparatively level
ground--were filled by the sturdy Alpine porters or, in the case of
longer distances, by pack-mules. It was the line of communications
to the sector of the front immediately ahead--a front that for the
most part of 450 miles is thrust out amid the eternal snows of lofty
mountains, along the edges of deep chasms, upon the knife-ridges of
_arêtes_, across the Arctic desolation of glacier and _neve_. Over it
was transported food and ammunition, light guns, clothing, equipment,
all the necessaries for an army in action. By it descended the wounded
and the sick, the unwanted stores.
Over section after section the staff-captain passed, ascending higher
and ever higher towards his goal. About him rose the great peaks, their
robes of snow dazzling white under the sun, splendidly superior to
the ragged army of stunted pines that sought to climb them, last lost
sentinels straggling half submerged in the snow. Up sheer rock-faces
whence birds of prey darted frightened from their nests, over deep
chasms where he looked down to a dark profundity of pines and rushing
streams, over great empty fields of snow far away beneath him on
which zigzagged long lines of tiny black figures insignificant in the
immensity, bearing burdens, upward and ever upward to the regions where
snow and ice reign in eternal winter, the _Teleferica_ bore him. And
ever between the stations there were throngs of busy men, more and more
thickly clad at each successive height, who marched under heavy loads.
Always there was a thunder rolling among the mountains. From apparently
inaccessible crags dark against the blue, from bare snow ridges, from
bleak white wastes where there seemed nothing to detain the eye,
spurted little darts of flame, drifted faint smoke. Detonations came
in sharp direct cracks, fantastically re-echoed; in a long rumbling
angry mutter from the more distant guns. From steep mountain-sides,
avalanches, loosened by the concussions, rushed downwards in a white
smoke of flying snow, their thunders rivalling the persistent artillery.
The staff-captain dallied not. The bombardment which was to prepare
the way for the attack had already commenced. He hurried over the
intervening spaces between the wire-rope stations, ascended higher and
ever higher in the little dangling cages.
It was afternoon when he reached the limit of the _Teleferica_--a
little snow-covered hut on a desolate ledge. Here, sheeted down from
the weather, stacks of supplies awaited further transportation. It was
the depot of the quartermaster of the battalion holding the sector. An
Alpino soldier, thickly clad, was in waiting to act as guide.
The staff-captain borrowed an alpenstock from the quartermaster and
set out. In front of him stretched a great smooth slope of snow that
ascended until, high above him, it cut--in sharp contrast--across the
blue of the sky. Its whiteness was blinding--the captain fitted on a
pair of darkened spectacles. Far across it, dark dots strung like beads
on an invisible thread, a company of soldiers was marching in a long
single file zigzagged over the snow, climbing to the crest. Nearer at
hand to the right, vivid spurts of yellow flame shot out from mounds of
snow aligned at a little distance from each other. The detonations of
the battery came crisply to the ear, predominant over the rumble and
roll and confused echoes of the general bombardment.
As the captain followed his guide up the vast empty slope he heard a
long plaintive whining in the air, descending a scale of tones. It
had not ceased when over to his right a great fountain of snow leaped
skywards from the field--subsided leaving a smother of dirty smoke.
The whine finished in an ugly rush, a muffled detonation. Another and
another followed, in each case the visible effects of the shell's
explosion preceding the noise of its arrival. The Austrian batteries
were replying.
The echoing thunder of the bombardment continued all through the
dreary fatiguing climb up the slope of snow. The higher peaks began to
throw long blue shadows across its whiteness, their argent heads to be
suffused with gold.
The ridge to which they climbed was not, after all, the summit. There
was another, yet higher, whence splintered crags serrated the sky.
They reached it, stood among rocky pinnacles.
"_Attenzione, signor capitano!_" said the guide. "It is dangerous to
linger!"
Followed by the captain he swung himself round a jut of rock, dropped
into a trench excavated deeply in the snow. As they dropped a couple of
ugly "_phutts!_" just above their heads explained the warning.
The Alpino grinned.
"Tirolese!" he said. "We could have gone round by a safer way, _signor
capitano_, but their snipers do not often hit if one is quick."
The deep trench, in cold blue shadow through the gilded surface of the
snow, descended the ridge at a gentle angle to the summit. It emerged
into another trench that ran roughly parallel to the ridge. This was
filled with soldiers who, well below the high parapet, larked with
one another, threw snowballs, wrestled and laughed. They were keeping
themselves warm during their enforced wait. Every one of them was
garbed in a thick white outer coat, with a hood. This was the main
trench; these were the men who presently were going to attack.
On steps cut in the parapet stood sentries, peering towards the enemy.
The captain ceded to an impulse of curiosity, interrupted his hurried
progress towards the battalion advanced headquarters, mounted to the
side of one of these sentries, looked out.
About him was a sea of mountains, their lower flanks in cold blue
light, their snow-covered peaks orange against the azure sky.
Immediately in front of him were the nearly submerged stakes, the
snow-thickened upper wires, of wide entanglements. Beyond them
stretched the confused, humped and fractured white surface of a high
glacier. On the other side of it was again a snow ridge, and in front
of that ridge could be discerned a belt of wire entanglements--the
enemy's. In the midst of that entanglement, and all up the snow to
the ridge, leaped fountain after fountain of white snow, momentarily
brilliant against the sky, falling back into a persistent cloud of dark
smoke. The noise of the explosions overwhelmed the roar of the guns
behind. The preparatory bombardment was in full swing.
Warfare in the high Alps, with their difficult communications, is
necessarily carried on by comparatively small bodies of men. The
vast masses of the Western and Eastern fronts could not possibly be
maintained among the crags and glaciers of the Italian frontier.
Operations by single battalions have all the importance of a divisional
attack elsewhere. In this case one battalion had been allotted the task
of storming and retaining the enemy's position.
In the little low timber hut sunk beneath the snow-level which was
the battalion headquarters, the captain found the colonel commanding
the regiment in conference with the local commander and the company
leaders. The atmosphere of the cramped interior was thick with
the exhalations of the half-dozen men, warm with the heat of a
petrol-stove. Capitano Ricci saluted the colonel, was received affably.
A pair of keen eyes under level brows appraised him, smiled upon him.
For his benefit the colonel recapitulated.
"The plan is briefly this. The artillery is cutting the wire and
shelling the trenches immediately in front of us. The Austrians of
course will assume that we are going to attack there. They will keep
strong reserves at hand in the vicinity--as strong as they can, for
we know that there is no very large force opposite. The artillery
is making it difficult to bring up the reserves from the rear. All
their communications are under fire. Now, we hope that the enemy will
concentrate on the damaged trench in front of us. The attack is being
made by four companies. One company will advance at 9 p.m., using
every precaution not to be seen, and will cross the glacier at an
angle to its right. It will fall upon the enemy's trench here"--he
indicated a spot on the left of the enemy's position as marked on a
plan spread over the table. "It should effect a surprise as the enemy
will be far from expecting an attack on a part of the line which has
not been bombarded at all. Directly that attack gets into the trench
it will turn to the left and continue to press on as hard as possible.
If it is progressing well it will send up a green rocket. If it is in
difficulties it will send up a red rocket. The second company will
advance to within about a hundred metres of the trench that has been
bombarded. There it will halt. If matters go as I expect them to, the
company on the right will send up a green rocket. Then the Austrians,
realising that they have made a mistake, will rush up their men from
the damaged sector and put up a resistance. The green light will
be followed by a red one which will automatically indicate that the
enemy's reserves are engaged. _Whenever that red light goes up_,
whether preceded by a green one or not, the second company will rush
the trench in front of it. I hope that it will find it thinly held.
The third company will advance, with every precaution, at 9.30 p.m.
in support of the second company. The fourth company I will retain as
general reserve under my command. The men will be served with hot cocoa
at 8.30 p.m. Is that quite clear, gentlemen?"
There was a general murmur of assent. The staff-captain requested
permission to advance with the second company, the one that was
attacking straight ahead. He received it.
The conference was at an end. Officers went out to give final
instructions to their subalterns, came in again, beating powdered snow
from their huge fur coats. One and all looked like Polar explorers.
Presently orderlies entered, put a steaming hot meal upon the
table. Crowded closely together in the confined space, the officers
ate--talking and laughing in high confidence, though in all was the
tension which precedes the moment of action. Occasionally during the
meal they heard the dull thud of an Austrian shell's arrival. They sat
over coffee and smoked.
At last the colonel looked at his watch, stood up.
"It is time to go to your companies, gentlemen. I rely upon all of you
as upon myself. I have promised the general that the trench shall be
taken--and held. _Per la più grande Italia!_ And good luck to all of
you!"
Some time later the staff-captain found himself by the side of the
company commander in the deep trench hewn through the snow. It was
night and in the faint reflected radiance of the white walls he could
just dimly discern the figures of a long line of men, all garbed
in white like himself. Only when their heads moved did they detach
themselves from their surroundings. Overhead, above the crisp line of
the parapet, the sky was a black background for an immense multitude of
strangely brilliant stars. A wind raised little whirls of powdered snow
upon the lip of the parapet, blew down into the trench in chill gusts
that penetrated the clothing. Not a sound broke the intense silence.
It seemed almost that one could hear the crackle of the sparkling
vivid stars. The artillery bombardment had long since ceased. There
was nothing to suggest that a death-dealing enemy was hidden only
eight hundred metres away across the glacier. No sound came from the
company that had already advanced. Along the trench was a murmur of
conversation, stifled laughter. The company commander stood gazing at
the luminous dial of his watch.
9.15! He turned his head, gave a command in a low voice.
"_Avanti!_"
It was repeated in a low murmur to right and left.
In an instant the company commander, the staff-captain at his side,
had sprung up on to the parapet. A bitter wind smote upon them from
the darkness, chilling to the bone. The commander glanced back, saw
his men like a line of ghosts faint in the dim light, already over
the parapet. Then the company commenced to thread its way through the
openings previously cut in their own wire.
Stealthily, with the utmost precautions to avoid any unnecessary sound,
the company stole across the uneven, heaped and riven snow and ice of
the glacier. Under that black night of stars it stretched away white
to a near indistinctness. The black masses of the mountains occulting
the stars near the horizon were too indefinite to indicate direction.
Compass in hand, the commander counted his paces over the snow, his
only means of judging distance. For greater accuracy the staff-captain
counted also. They spoke not a word. From the obscurity came the
whispers of the men as they preserved a rough alignment.
Sliding, stumbling over the inequalities of the frozen surface, they
pressed onwards. Somewhere over to their right, higher on the glacier
in front of them, the other company was advancing also. There was
neither sound nor sign of it. In that dim desolation the staff-captain
might with difficulty see his immediate companions. The remainder of
the company was swallowed up, was noiseless. It seemed that they were
stumbling on alone--on and on, an interminable distance--a few lost
figures struggling through an Arctic night.
Suddenly from the blackness straight ahead a beam of intensely white
light shot out horizontal with the ground, sweeping it. At its first
birth-splutter they flung themselves upon the snow, lay motionless.
The searchlight--a wall of milky radiance to one side of them,
suffusing the snow with a pale reflection--then, as it shone full on
them, a lane of intolerable light from a blindingly violent source,
casting long pitch-black shadows from every hump and hummock of the
ice--swept questingly over the glacier, rested doubtfully here and
there for a moment, passed on again. The Austrians were on the alert.
Cautiously, still repeating to himself the number of paces they had
marched when they dropped, the staff-captain glimpsed to right and left
of him, looking for the company. The nearer figures he saw, immobile,
their white humped backs looking like inequalities of the snow. Those
more distant were utterly indistinguishable. The searchlight ceased
abruptly. The world was annihilated in a profound blackness where the
stars reigned alone.
The two officers rose to their feet, marched onward, resumed their
count of the paces. To right and left of them rose ghostly figures,
stumbling forward. On and on they went, bruising themselves on sudden
obstacles in the black night, the dim uniform whiteness of the snow a
bewilderment to the vision. Far away in the mountains of the Austrian
position a livid flash leaped to the sky. The reverberation of a
gun's discharge rolled heavily and ominously to their ears, the long
hurrying whine of a shell approached them. There was an instant of
suspense. Were they after all discovered? The shell passed overhead to
burst far behind, inaudible. The trench in front was invisible in the
darkness--not a flare, not a rifle-spurt marked its position.
"Seven hundred!" Both officers murmured the number at the same moment.
"_Alt!_" The whispered order was passed to right and left. The line of
ghostly figures sank down, was merged in the ice and snow under the
twinkling stars. "_Baionett' cann!_" There was a faint rustling, a just
audible click and clink of bayonets being fixed. Then again silence.
The company might have ceased to exist.
The company commander and the staff-captain gazed earnestly to their
right front, towards the point where the other company should be
attacking. At any moment now! Their comrades had a quarter of an hour's
start, had a rather longer, more difficult stretch to traverse. But
they should have reached their objective. At this moment stealthy
white-clad figures should be crawling among the stakes of the
entanglements, snipping at the wire. The two officers stared in the
fateful direction--in suspense for the up-flung flare, the shouts and
stabs of flame. They stared at complete obscurity.
The searchlight on the trench in front leaped out again to the night,
its origin startlingly close. This time as it swept over them, it
illumined the short heads of the stakes of the wire entanglement that
cast black shadows on the snow which all but submerged them. They were
very near. In the intense light the white craters of the shell-holes
produced by the afternoon's bombardment, hung with broken wire from
supports all askew, gleamed like craters of the moon seen in uncanny
proximity. Once more the light swept the glacier, searched doubtfully
and was extinguished.
A sudden shot, off to the right front--a swift succession of loud
reports--woke wild echoes from unseen cliffs. High up on the glacier,
to the left of the Austrian position, flare after flare was flung into
the sky, eerily illuminant, plucking strange rock-forms into grotesque
relief. There was a fierce shout that rolled in repeated reverberation,
a wild tumult of voices in a crisis of human lives, confused shots,
isolated and in irregular volleys, the dull thudding explosions of
bombs. The first company was attacking.
The two officers lying in the snow gazed with fixed intensity towards
the distant fight whose tumult swelled louder and louder with every
moment. The wild flares continued to soar into the night, but as yet
no rocket--neither red nor green--had leaped up to tell them of its
fortunes. The searchlight in front shot out again, swept quickly
from side to side. It illumined only the apparently empty, tumbled
desolation of the glacier. But it continued to blaze out into the
night. Both officers cursed it under their breath. From the trenches
they had left, far behind, rifle-shots rang out, the rapid hammering
of a machine-gun. The reserve company was indulging in a little tricky
target-practice at the searchlight. It was successful. The beam of
light vanished.
At the same moment a little spark of trailing fire went rushing
skywards from the tumult of the flank attack. It was watched with
suspended breath--green or red? The rocket burst into an effulgence
of uncanny green light. The cheer which came from under it was like a
ghostly utterance of the cheer repressed on the lips of the men lying
prone and motionless on the glacier. The colonel's forecast was sound.
But now the uproar on the flank increased to a wild intensity.
Incessant were the sharp detonations of the rifles, the dull thuds of
the bombs, mingling with a clamour of voices, shrieks and yells. No
more flares went up from the point of conflict, but from all along the
trench they soared into the air, symptomatic of the nervousness of
the unseen defenders. Machine-guns began to rap out their streams of
bullets in blind hazard across the glacier.