II

This befell, as it chanced, during one of my early days on the Alpine

front, and the incident of men singing in a blizzard almost strong

enough to sweep them from their feet made no small impression on me at

the moment. It was my first experience of the kind. A week later I

should have considered it just as astonishing to have encountered,

under any conditions, an Alpino who was _not_ singing; for to him--to

all Italian soldiers, indeed--song furnishes the principal channel of

outward expression of the spirit within him. And what a spirit it is!

He sings as he works, he sings as he plays, he sings as he fights,

and--many a tale is told of how this or that comrade has been seen to

go down with a song on his lips--he sings as he dies. He soothes

himself with song, he beguiles himself with song, he steadies himself

with song, he exalts himself with song. It is not song as the German

knows it, not the ponderous marching chorus that the Prussian Guard

thunders to order in the same way that it thumps through its

goose-step; but rather a simple burst of song that is as natural and

spontaneous as the soaring lark’s greeting to the rising sun.

Discipline of any kind is more or less irksome to the high-spirited

Alpino, but he manages to struggle along under it with tolerable

goodwill so long as it is plain to him that the military exigencies

really demand it. But the one thing that he really chafes under is the

prohibition to sing. This is, of course, quite imperative when he is

on scouting or patrol-work, or engaged in one of the incessant

surprise attacks which form so important a feature of Alpine warfare.

He was wont to sing as he climbed in those distant days when he scaled

mountains for the love of it; and, somehow, a sort of reflex action

seems to have been established between the legs and the vocal chords

that makes it extremely awkward to work the one without the other. If

the truth could be told, indeed, probably not a few half-consummated

_coups de main_ would be found to have been nearly marred by a joyous

burst of “unpremeditated melody” on the part of some spirited Alpino

who succumbed to the force of habit.

I was witness of a rather amusing incident illustrative of the

difficulty that even the officer of Alpini experiences in denying

himself vocal expression, not only when it is strictly against

regulations, but even on occasions when, both by instinct and

experience, he knows that “breaking into song” is really dangerous. It

had to do with passing a certain exposed point in the Cadore at a time

when there was every reason to fear the incidence of heavy avalanches.

Your real Alpino has tremendous respect for the snow-slide, but no

fear. He has--especially since the war--faced death in too many really

disagreeable forms to have any dread of what must seem to him the

grandest and most inspiring finish of the lot--the one end which he

could be depended upon to pick if ever the question of alternatives

were in the balance. In the matter of the avalanche, as in most other

things, he is quite fatalistic. If a certain _valanga_ is meant for

him, what use trying to avoid it? If it is not meant for him, what use

taking precautions? All the precautions will be vain against _your_

avalanche; all of them will be superfluous as regards the ones _not_

for you.

It chances, however, that this comforting Oriental philosophy entered

not into the reckoning of the Italian General Staff when it laid its

plans for minimising unnecessary casualties; and so, among other

precautionary admonitions, the order went out that soldiers passing

certain exposed sections, designated by boards bearing the warning

_Pericoloso di Valanga_, should not raise the voice above a speaking

tone, and, especially, that no singing should be indulged in. This is,

of course, no more than sensible, for a shout, or a high-pitched note

of song, may set going just the vibrations of air needed to start a

movement on the upper slopes of a mountain side which will culminate

in launching a million tons of snow all the way across the lower

valley. The Alpino has observed the rule as best he could,--probably

saving not a few of his numbers thereby,--but the effort is one that

at times tries his stout spirit almost to the breaking point.

On the occasion I have in mind it was necessary for us, in order to

reach a position I especially desired to visit, to climb diagonally

across something like three-quarters of a mile of the swath of one of

the largest and most treacherous slides on the whole Alpine front.

There had been a great avalanche here every year from time out of

mind, usually preceded by a smaller one early in the winter. The

preliminary slide had already occurred at the time of my visit, and,

as the early winter storms had been the heaviest in years, the

accumulated snows made the major avalanche almost inevitable on the

first day of a warm wind. Such a day, unluckily, chanced to be the

only one available for my visit to the position in question. Although

it was in the first week in January, the eaves of the houses in the

little Alpine village where the colonel quartered had been dripping

all night, and even in the early morning the hard-packed snow of the

trail was turning soft and slushy when we left our sledge on the main

road and set out on foot.

We passed two or three sections marked off by the “Pericoloso” signs,

without taking any special precautions; and, even when we came to the

big slide, the young major responsible for seeing the venture through

merely directed that we were to proceed by twos (there were four of

us), with a 300-metre interval between, walking as rapidly as

possible and not doing any unnecessary talking. That was all. There

were no dramatics about it--only the few simple directions that were

calculated to minimise the chances of “total loss” in case the slide

did become restive. How little this young officer had to learn about

the ways of avalanches I did not learn till that evening, when his

colonel told me that he had been buried, with a company or two of his

Alpini, not long previously, and escaped the fate of most of the men

only through having been dug out by his dog.

The major, with the captain from the Comando Supremo who had been

taking me about the front, went on ahead, leaving me to follow, after

five minutes had gone by, with a young lieutenant, a boy so full of

bubbling mountain spirits that he had been dancing all along the way

and warbling “Rigoletto” to the tree-tops. Even as we waited he would

burst into quick snatches of song, each of which was ended with a gulp

as it flashed across his mind that the time had come to clamp on the

safety-valve.

When his wrist-watch told us that it was time to follow on, the lad

clapped his eagle-feather hat firmly on his head, set his jaw, fixed

his eyes grimly on the trail in front of him, and strode off into the

narrow passage that had been cut through the towering bulk of the

slide. From the do-or-die expression on his handsome young face one

might well have imagined that it was the menace of that engulfing mass

of poised snow which was weighing him down, and such, I am sure, would

have been my own impression had this been my first day among the

Alpini. But by now I had seen enough of Italy’s mountain soldiers to

know that this one was as disdainful of the _valanga_ as the _valanga_

was of him: and that the crushing burden on his mind at that moment

was only the problem how to negotiate that next kilometre of beautiful

snow-walled trail without telling the world in one glad burst of song

after another how wonderful it was to be alive and young, and climbing

up nearer at every step to those glistening snow peaks whence his

comrades had driven the enemy headlong but a few months before, and

whence, perchance, they would soon move again to take the next valley

and the peaks beyond it in their turn. If he had been alone, slide or

no slide, orders or no orders, he would have shouted his gladness to

the high heavens, come what might; but as it was, with a more or less

helpless foreigner on his hands, and within hearing of his superior

officer, it was quite another matter.

It was really very interesting going through that awakening

_valanga_,--so my escorting captain told me when we rejoined him and

the major under a sheltering cliff at the farther side--especially in

the opportunity that the cutting through of the trail gave to study a

cross-section of the forest that had been folded down by the sliding

snow. Indeed, they had told me in advance of this strange sight, and I

had really had it in mind to look out for these up-ended and crumpled

pine trees. Moreover, it is quite probable that I did let the corner

of an eye rove over them in a perfunctory sort of way; but the fact

remains that the one outstanding recollection I have of that

thousand-yard-wide pile of hair-poised snow is of the hunched

shoulders and comically set face of my young guide as revealed to me

when he doubled the zigzags of the tortuous trail that penetrated it.

Time and again, as his eyes would wander to where the yellow

light-motes shuttled down through the tree-tops to the snow-cap on the

brow of the cliff toward which we toiled, I would hear the quick catch

of his breath as, involuntarily, he sucked it in to release it in a

ringing whoop of gladness, only--recollecting in time--to expel it

again with a wheezy snort of disgust. For the last two or three

hundred yards, by humming a plaintive little love lilt through his

nose, he hit upon a fairly innocuous compromise which seemed to serve

the desired purpose of releasing the accumulating pressure slowly

without blowing off the safety-valve. When we finally came out on the

unthreatened expanse of the glacial moraine above, he unleashed his

pent-up gladness in a wild peal of exultation that must have sent its

bounding echoes caroming up to the solitary pinnacle of the _massif_

still in the hands of the slipping Austrians.

That afternoon, as it chanced, the _teleferica_ to the summit, after

passing the captain and myself up safely, went on a strike while the

basket containing the young lieutenant was still only at the first

stage of its long crawl, and he had full opportunity to make up,

vocally, for lost time. It was an hour before the cable was running

smoothly again, and by then it was time, and more than time, for us to

descend if we were to reach the lower valley before nightfall. I found

my young friend warbling blithely on the _teleferica_ terrace when I

crawled out at the lower end, apparently no whit upset by the way his

excursion had been curtailed.

“What did you do while you were stuck up there in the basket?” I

hastened to ask him; for being stalled midway on a _teleferica_ cable

at any time in the winter is an experience that may well develop into

something serious. I had already heard recitals--in the quiet

matter-of-fact Alpini way--of the astonishing feats of aerial

acrobatics that had been performed in effecting rescues in such

instances, and, once or twice, grim allusions to the tragic

consequences when the attempted rescues had failed.

“Oh, I just sang for a while,” was the laughing reply in Italian; “and

then, when it began to get cold up there, I dropped over on to the

snow and slid down here to get warm.”

I have not yet been able to learn just how far it was that he had to

drop before he struck the snow; but, whatever the distance, I am

perfectly certain that he kept right on singing all the way.