Once or twice in every winter a thick, sticky, hot wind from somewhere
on the other side of the Mediterranean breathes upon the snow and
ice-locked Alpine valleys the breath of a false springtime. The Swiss
guides, if I remember correctly, call it by a name which is pronounced
nearly as we do the word “fun”; but the incidence of such a wind means
to them anything but what that signifies in English. To them--to all
in the Alps, indeed--a spell of _fun_ weather means thaw, and thaw
means avalanches; avalanches, too, at a time of the year when there is
so much snow that the slides are under constant temptation to abandon
their beaten tracks and gouge out new and unexpected channels for
themselves. It is only the first-time visitor to the Alps who bridles
under the Judas kiss of the wind called _fun_.
It was on an early January day of one of these treacherous hot winds
that I was motored up from the plain of Venezia to a certain sector
of the Italian Alpine front, a sector almost as important
strategically as it is beautiful scenically. What twelve hours
previously had been a flint-hard ice-paved road had dissolved to a
river of soft slush, and one could sense rather than see the ominous
premonitory twitchings in the lowering snow-banks as the lapping of
the hot moist air relaxed the brake of the frost which had held them
on the precipitous mountain sides. Every stretch where the road curved
to the embrace of cliff or shelving valley wall was a possible ambush,
and we slipped by them with muffled engine and hushed voices.
Toward the middle of the short winter afternoon the gorge we had been
following opened out into a narrow valley, and straight over across
the little lake which the road skirted, reflected in the shimmering
sheet of steaming water that the thaw was throwing out across the ice,
was a vivid white triangle of towering mountain. A true granite Alp
among the splintered Dolomites--a fortress among cathedrals--it was
the outstanding, the dominating feature in a panorama which I knew
from my map was made up of the mountain chain along which wriggled the
interlocked lines of the Austro-Italian battle-front.
“Plainly a peak with a personality,” I said to the officer at my
side. “What is it called?”
“It’s the Col di Lana,” was the reply; “the mountain that Colonel
‘Peppino’ Garibaldi took partially in a first attempt, and afterwards
Gelasio Caetani, the Italo-American mining engineer, blew up and
captured completely. It is one of the most important positions on our
whole front, for whichever side holds it not only effectually blocks
the enemy’s advance, but has also an invaluable sally-port from which
to launch his own. We simply _had_ to have it, and it was taken in
what was probably the only way humanly possible. It’s Colonel
Garibaldi’s headquarters, by the way, where we put up to-night and
to-morrow; perhaps you can get him to tell you the story.”
* * * * *
Where his study window looks out on the yellow Tiber winding through
the Rome for which his father had fought so long and so bravely, I had
listened one afternoon, not long previously, to that fiery old
warrior, General Ricciotti Garibaldi, while he spoke of the war and of
Italy’s part in it. “All of my boys are fighting,” he had said, “and
my daughters and my wife are nursing. Two of the boys are gone--killed
in France--but the other five are with the Italian army. They are all
good fighters, I think; but one of them--Peppino, the eldest--is also
an able soldier. Or at least he ought to be, for he has been trained
in the ‘Garibaldi’ school. There hasn’t been a war (save only that
between Russia and Japan) or revolution in any part of the world in
the last twenty years that he hasn’t drawn a sword, carried a rifle,
or swung a machete. You must make a point of seeing him if you are
visiting his part of the front, for he is a good little fellow, is our
Peppino.”
“And you’ll fare well if you put up with Peppino, too,” his little
English mother had added: “He is sure to have a good cook; and then
the dear boy was always so fond of sweets that I can’t imagine his
doing without them. Besides, Sante is with him, and Sante was running
a co-operative creamery when the war broke out. You may be sure that
he has foraged his share of the good things too.”
* * * * *
We found the grandson and namesake of the great Giuseppe Garibaldi
quartered in a little string of an Alpine village which occupied the
last bit of ground open enough to enjoy even comparative immunity from
the snow sliding from either flank of the deep valley which the road
followed up to the pass. The “good little fellow” who sprang up from
his map and report-littered desk to bid us welcome turned out to be
six feet of vigorous manhood, with a powerful pair of shoulders, a
face red-bronzed from the sun-glint on the snow, and a grip which
fused my fingers in the galvanic pressure of its friendly clasp. The
high, narrow forehead, the firm line of the mouth, the steady serious
eyes--all were distinctly Garibaldian, recalling to me the words of
his mother: “Ricciotti is my handsomest boy, but Peppino is the one
most like the old General, his grandfather.”
His greeting was warm and hearty, and only in the grave eyes was there
hint of the terrible responsibility accumulating through the fact that
a hot, moist wind was playing upon the heaviest fall of snow the Alps
had known for many winters.
“I have sketched you out a tentative programme for the next
twenty-four hours,” he said, speaking English with an accent which
plainly revealed that it had come to its fluency under American--and
probably Western American--skies “which is as far (and a good deal
farther, in fact) ahead than there is any use in planning while this
accursed weather lasts. There are still a couple of hours of daylight,
so we will begin by taking sledges to the upper valley and making a
survey of our lines from below. To-morrow--God willing!” (he said it
with the same quick fervency with which the pious Mohammedan
interpolates “Imshallah” into any outline of his future plans) “you
and Captain X---- will go to the summit and glacier of the Marmolada,
perhaps the most spectacular position on all our front. That will
depend upon whether or not we can keep the _telefericas_ going.”
As the sledge threaded its way between deep-cut snow-banks up the
narrowing gorge, Colonel Garibaldi spoke briefly of the difficulties
of Alpine transport in midwinter.
“On the ordinary battle front, like those of France and Russia,” he
said, “it requires rather less than one man on the line of
communications to maintain one man in the first-line trenches. For the
whole Italian front the average is something over two men on the
communications to one in the first line; but at points in the Alps (as
on this sector of mine), it may run up to six, or even eight or ten in
bad weather. It isn’t just keeping the roads clear from falling and
drifting snow, it’s the _valangas_, the slides. And with the slides
the worst trouble isn’t just the men you may lose under them (though
that’s terrible enough, Heaven knows), but rather the men who are
holding the lines up beyond the slides that have to be fed and
munitioned whatever happens. By an unkind trick of fate (just as bad
for the enemy as for ourselves, however), the snows of this year have
been among the heaviest ever known. This means that the slides are
also bad beyond all precedent, and especially that they are coming in
unexpected places, places where they have never been known before.
Slides in new places mean--what you saw where that swath was cut
through the lower end of the little village down the valley, and
problems like this!”
We had just come out of a narrowed section of the gorge where, to get
through at all, the road had to run on a sort of trestle built above
the now frozen river, and where the ice-sheathed walls above us
interlocked like the jaws of a wolf-trap. Ahead of us the road was
blocked by a towering barrier of crumpled snow, piled a hundred feet
or more high from wall to wall. Rocks and snapped-off and up-ended
pine trees peppered through the amorphous mass furnished unmistakable
evidence that the avalanche which formed it had come down out of a
“track.”
“We couldn’t go over it, and we couldn’t have shovelled it away in ten
years,” said my companion; “so we simply had to follow the only
alternative left and go through it. Here we go into the tunnel now. My
great worry is as to whether the new slide that the next day or
two--or the next hour or two, for that matter--may bring down upon
this will crush in my little tunnel or only pile up harmlessly above.
Hard-packed as it is, the snow” (I felt him lurch away from me in the
darkness, and heard the soft swish of something brushing against the
side of the tunnel) “is slushy even in under here. I’m rather afraid
that it won’t stand much more weight, even if it doesn’t fall in of
its own. But--ah” (we were out of the tunnel now, and a fluted yellow
cliff of staggering sheerness loomed through the notch ahead),
“there’s the Marmolada! Doesn’t look like an easy place to dislodge
the enemy from, does it? Well, my men--my brother, Major Ricciotti
Garibaldi, leading them--took the most of the 13,000-foot _massif_
from the Austrians with the loss of so few men that I am still being
accused of having thrown my dead in the _crevasses_ of the glacier and
filling their places with smuggled recruits!”
An Alpino passed singing, and the Colonel took up the air as he
returned the salute.
“O Marmolada, tu es bella, tu es grana
ina in peo e forta in guerra.”
“It’s a song the men have made,” he said. “The Marmolada was famous
even in peace time, but up to a year or two before the war it had
never been climbed from this side. The Captain of Alpini in the post
at that pass on the left was the first Italian to make the ascent. It
took him two days, and cost him several hundred _lira_ for guides.
Well, it was from this very side that we took it (I can’t tell you
exactly how, as we want to use the same method again), and now we are
sending fuel and food and munitions up there every day. To-morrow, if
the _telefericas_ are still running, you will go up there to that
snow-cap on the top in less than an hour.”
On the way back to the village in the gathering dusk I had an
illuminative example of the famous Garibaldi _sang froid_. The
conversation had turned--as it seemed to persist in doing during all
of my visit--to common friends and haunts in South America, and I
mentioned a meeting with Castro in Venezuela some years previously.
“Just what month was that?” Colonel Garibaldi queried. “March,” I
replied. “Then at that very moment,” said he, “I was chained to a ring
in the wall of the jail at Ciudad Bolivar. A little later,” he
continued, “I and a fellow-_revolutionista_ chained up with me broke
out and started to swim the Orinoco to----”.
At that moment the sledge chanced to be worrying by a long pack train
on the trestle in the bottom of the overhung gorge I have referred to,
and just as my companion reached this point in his story a big icicle,
thawed loose somewhere above, came crashing down on the back of one of
the mules. The pack-load of provisions was riven as by a knife, and
the mule, recoiling from the sudden shock, shied back into the animal
immediately behind him. This one, in turn, backed into the animal next
in line, so that the impulse went back through the train by what I
once heard an old Chilkat packer call “mu-leg-raphy.” The consequence
was that the hundred yards of gorge (in passing through which one was
cautioned even to lower one’s voice for fear of starting vibration
that might break loose one of the thousand or so Damoclean swords
suspended above) was thrown into an uproar that set the echoes
ringing. The temperamental Alpini swore at the mules, and at each
other from the depths of their leather lungs, while the mules simply
did the mulish thing by standing on their forelegs and lashing out
with their hind ones at whatever fell within their reach.
But, unruffled alike by the kinetic energy released below and the
potential energy which menaced from above, the imperturbable scion of
the Garibaldi simply leaned closer to my ear and went on with his
story.
“Poor Y---- never reached the bank. Shark got him, I think. I headed
off into the jungle----” That was about all the story I remember,
except the finish, which had to do with racing a couple of Castro’s
spies for a British steamer lying alongside the quay at La Guayra.
This latter part, however, was related after we had come out from
under the icicles and the heels of the mules to the open road beneath
the awakening stars.
* * * * *
There were several interruptions during dinner that evening. Once a
wayfaring Alpino, whose lantern had gone out, and who had turned in to
the nearest house to relight it, appeared at the door. That he
stumbled upon his Colonel’s mess did not appear to disturb him a whit
more than it did the Colonel, who gave the smiling chap a box of
matches and sent him on his way with a cheery “_a rivederci_.” A
little later the door was opened in response to a timid knock, to
reveal a little old lady who wanted to borrow a tin of condensed milk
and five eggs. Her son was coming home on leave on the morrow, she
said, and she was going to make a _pannello_ for his dinner. The
little village shop was out of eggs and milk for the moment, and as
the _Colonello’s_ cook had refused to lend them to her, she had come
straight to the _Colonello_ himself. She had heard he was very kind.
“See that she has all she wants; fill up her basket,” was the order
sent out to the cook. And then, as the grateful little old dame
backed, bowing, out of the door: “Feed him up well, _madre_; a man has
to have something under his belt to fight in these mountains, doesn’t
he?”
“Brother Sante usually looks after callers of this kind for me,” said
my host with a laugh; “but Sante is away for a day or two, and I have
no buffer. You will observe, by the way, that I am not quite at one
with my distinguished grandfather in the matter of rations. What was
it he said to the men who had assembled to follow him in his flight
after the unsuccessful fight for the Roman Republic? ‘I offer neither
pay, quarters nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst forced marches,
battle, and death.’ Well, I too have plenty of fighting to offer my
men, but no more of the other ‘inducements’ than I can possibly help.
And when they have to die, I like to feel that it’s on a full stomach.
“Perhaps you heard,” he went on, “what a stir it made up here when I
first asked for marmalade for my men. They started out by laughing at
me. ‘Of course,’ they said, ‘we know that your mother is English; but
that is no reason why, much as _you_ may crave it, your _men_ should
need marmalade!’ Then they said that _marmellata_ would cost too much,
and finally tried to prove that it would be bad for the men’s health.
But I had seen what troops had done in South Africa on a generous
marmalade allowance; also what they were doing in France. So I stuck
to it, and--well, we took the Marmolada on _marmellata_, and a good
many Austrians besides.”
We were still laughing over the little joke when the door opened, and
the telephone operator from the room across the hall entered to report
in a low voice some news that had just reached him. The Colonel’s face
changed from gay to grave in an instant; but it was with voice and
manner of quiet restraint that he asked a couple of quick questions
and then gave a brief order, evidently to be transmitted back whence
the news had come.
“It must have been either A---- or B----,” he said musingly, turning
again to the big slice of caramel cake he had just cut for himself
when the interruption occurred. “Oh I beg pardon; but I’ve just had
word that the middle _teleferica_ serving the Marmolada has been
carried away by an avalanche, and that one of the engineers is
killed. I was just speculating as to which one it was. They were both
good men--men I can ill afford to lose. This puts an end, by the way,
to the trip we had planned for you for to-morrow. You will have to go
to the position at the---- instead; providing, of course, _that
teleferica_ doesn’t meet a like fate.”
South American revolution (in vivid reminiscence) had raised its
hydra-head many times before I saw my way clear to turn the
conversation into the channel where I was so interested to direct its
flow.
“Won’t you tell me, Colonel,” I said finally, “something of how the
young Garibaldi have carried on the tradition of the old Garibaldi in
this war? Tell me how it came about that you all foregathered in
France in the early months of the war, what you did there, and what
you have done since; and, especially, tell me how you took the Col di
Lana.”
“That’s (as you Americans say) rather a tall order,” was the laughing
reply; “but I’ll gladly do what I can to fill it.”
He drained his glass of cognac, waited till the occult rite of
lighting his “Virginia” over its little spirit-lamp was complete, and
then began his story (as I had hoped he would) at the beginning. The
narration which follows was punctuated by the steady drip of the eaves
and the not infrequent rumble of a distant avalanche as the hot south
wind called _fun_ breathed its relaxing breath on a half winter’s
accumulation of hanging snow.
* * * * *
“My father--and even my grandfather--had foreseen that Europe must
ultimately fight its way to freedom through a great war; that the two
irreconcilable forces (fairly represented by what France, England,
Italy, and the United States stood for, on the one hand, and what
Prussia and its satellites stood for on the other) made no other
alternative possible. The same feelings which led my father and
grandfather to fight for France in 1870 led me and my brothers to
offer ourselves to fight for France and her Allies in 1914.
“As the eldest of seven sons, and the namesake of my grandfather, my
father felt that it was up to me to carry on the Garibaldi tradition,
and when I was scarcely out of my teens he sent me out to train in the
only school that the old General ever recognised--that of practical
experience. ‘Some day you will be needed in Europe,’ he said. ‘Until
then, see that you make yourself ready by taking part in every war
that you can find. Learn how men follow, and then learn how men lead.
If there is any choice between two causes, fight for the one you think
your grandfather would have fought for; but don’t miss a fight because
you can’t make up your mind on that score. The experience is the
thing, and the only way you can get it is in real battles, not sham
ones.’
“Well, I did the best I could, considering the day and age we live in,
to follow out my father’s idea. With what success (so far as a
comprehensive experience was concerned) you may judge from the fact
that, up to the outbreak of the present war, I had--counting
skirmishes--fought on 132 battlefields. That I had not been wounded
was not, I trust, entirely due to not having been exposed to fire.
“The preparation of my brothers had been rather less drastic--less
‘Garibaldian’--than my own. In their cases, it was my father’s idea
that it would be sufficient if they simply knew the world and how to
get on with men; and to this end he encouraged them, as fast as they
became old enough, to seek work abroad, preferably something of an
outdoor character, such as that in connection with engineering
projects. None of us was overburdened with book-learning or technical
training, myself least of all. Indeed, I have often wished I had a
bit more of both.
“So it was that it happened that the outbreak of the war found all but
the two youngest of us scattered to the ends of the earth. I was in
New York (not long before I had gone through the first Mexican
revolution as Chief of Staff to General Madero), and with me was my
second brother, Ricciotti, who had joined me there for a trip to South
America. Menotti was in China, on the engineering staff of the
Canton-Kowloon Railway, and Sante, also an engineer, was working on
the Assuan Dam in Upper Egypt. Bruno was in a sugar ‘central’ in Cuba,
and Costante and Ezia, the two youngest of us, were at their studies
in Italy. My sister, Italia, was organising Red Cross work in Rio de
Janeiro.
“As the war clouds began to gather, my father sent a letter to each of
the five of us abroad, saying that when we received a cable from him
we were to start at once for whatever place was mentioned in it. I
forget what the cables received by Ricciotti and myself were about;
but the rendezvous was Paris, and we were away by the next boat. We
found Ezia and Costante already awaiting us in Paris, and Bruno and
Sante arrived a few days later. Menotti could not arrange to get away
from China until his own country entered the war, some months
subsequently.
“Word had already gone out that an Italian Legion was to be formed to
fight for the Allies, but in what theatre had not yet been decided
upon. All my own training had been for guerilla warfare, and, figuring
that this could be turned to the best use in the Balkans, I was in
hopes that my legion could be landed in Albania, to co-operate with
the Servians and Montenegrans against Austria. This was not to be,
however; indeed, Ezia, who was sent to drive a _camion_ at Salonika
after being wounded on this front a few months ago, has so far been
the only Garibaldi to reach the Balkans. I am sorry, in a way, for I
still think that that would have been my sphere of greatest
usefulness.
“Recruits flocked to us from all over the world, among them being many
men who had fought with me in South and Central America. We were quite
the typical band of soldiers of fortune, and except for the fact that
we were all Italians, there wasn’t a great deal to differentiate us
from the Foreign Legion into which we were incorporated. Side by side
with the several scions of Italian nobility who had joined us marched
men who had ridden as _gauchos_ on the pampas of Argentina or hammered
drills in the mines of Colorado and the Transvaal. Nor was I by any
means the only one who had peered hungrily outward through barred
gratings and was familiar with the clank and tug of the ankle chain.
But whatever we were, and whoever we were, we had come to fight, and
we did fight. Yes, all in all, I think we lived up to the traditions
of the _Légion Étrangère_ quite as well on the score of fighting as we
did on that of pedigree. It isn’t where you come _from_ that counts on
the battle line, but only where you _go to_; and if there was a man in
the Italian Legion who wasn’t ready to fight until he dropped, I can
only say that he did not come under my notice.
“Considering the fact that we began with practically raw material
(though, of course, many of the men had seen previous service), and
that there were no _cadres_ to build upon, I think our work with the
_Legion Italienne_ was about a record for quick training. It was
October before we were well started, and by the end of December we
were not only on the first line, but had already gone through some of
the bloodiest fighting the war has seen. My grandfather used to say
that proper military training was nine-tenths a matter of applied
common sense and one-tenth a matter of drill. Well, I employed what
common sense and experience I had, and made up the rest with drill.
Inside of two months we had 4,000 men at the front, where the French
Higher Command was so well impressed with their quality that it was
but a week or two before they were deemed worthy of the place of
honour in an attack upon the Prussian Guard, which had been pressing
steadily forward in the hope of cutting the communications between
Chalons and Verdun. No regiment ever had a warmer baptism of fire. We
drove back the Guard two and a half kilometres, but lost a thousand
men in the effort.
“I don’t recall anything that was actually said between us on the
subject, but it seemed to be generally understood among us brothers
that the shedding of some Garibaldi blood--or, better still, the
sacrifice of a Garibaldi life--would be calculated to throw a great,
perhaps a decisive, weight into the wavering balance in Italy, where a
growing sympathy for the cause of the Allies only needed a touch to
quicken it to action. Indeed, I am under the impression that my father
said something to that effect to the two younger boys before he sent
them on to France. At any rate, all three of the youngsters behaved
exactly as though their only object in life was to get in the way of
German bullets. Well--Bruno got _his_ in the last week in December,
ten or twelve days ahead of Costante, who fell on January 5. Ezia--the
youngest of the three fire-eaters--though, through no fault of his
own, had to wait and take his bullet from the Austrians on our own
front. (It occurred not far from here, by the way.)
“The attack in which Bruno fell was one of the finest things I have
ever seen. General Gouraud sent for me in person to explain why a
certain system of trenches, which we were ordered to attack, _must_ be
taken and held, no matter what the price. We mustered for mass at
midnight--it was Christmas, or the day after, I believe--and the
memory of that icicle-framed altar in the ruined, roofless church,
with the flickering candles throwing just light enough to silhouette
the tall form of Gouraud, who stood in front of me, will never fade
from my mind.
“We went over the parapet before daybreak, and it was in the first
light of the cold winter dawn that I saw Bruno--plainly
hit--straighten up from his running crouch and topple into the first
of the German trenches, across which the leading wave of our attack
was sweeping. He was up before I could reach him, however (I don’t
think he ever looked to see where he was hit), and I saw him clamber
up the other side, and, running without a hitch or stagger, lead his
men in pursuit of the fleeing enemy. I never saw him again alive.
“They found his body, with six bullet-wounds upon it lying where the
gust from a machine-gun had caught him as he tried to climb out and
lead his men on beyond the last of the trenches we had been ordered to
take and hold. He had charged into the trench, thrown out the enemy,
and made--for whatever it was worth--the first sacrifice of his own
generation of Garibaldi. We sent his body to my father and mother in
Rome, where, as you will doubtless remember, his funeral was made the
occasion of the most remarkable patriotic demonstration Italy has
known in recent years. From that moment the participation of our
country in the war became only a matter of time. Costante’s death a
few days later only gave added impulse to the wave of popular feeling
which was soon to align Italy where she belonged, in the forefront of
the fight for the freedom of Europe.
“Further fighting that fell to the lot of the Legion in the course of
January reduced its numbers to such an extent that it had to be
withdrawn to rest and re-form. Before it was in condition to take the
field again, our country had taken the great decision, and we were
disbanded to go home and fight for Italy. Here--principally because
it was thought best to incorporate the men in the units to which they
(by training or residence) really belonged--it was found impracticable
to maintain the integrity of the fourteen battalions--about 14,000 men
in all--we had formed in France, and, as a consequence, the _Legion
Italienne_ ceased to exist except as a glorious memory. We five
surviving Garibaldi were given commissions in a brigade of Alpini that
is a ‘lineal descendant’ of the famous _cacciatore_ formed by my
grandfather in 1859, and led by him against the Austrians in the war
in which, with the aid of the French, we redeemed Lombardy for Italy.
“In July I was given command of a battalion occupying a position at
the foot of the Col di Lana. Perhaps you saw from the lake as you came
up the commanding position of this mountain. If so, you will
understand its supreme importance to us, whether for defensive or
offensive purposes. Looking straight down the Cordevole Valley toward
the plains of Italy, it not only furnished the Austrians an
incomparable observation post, but also stood as an effectual barrier
against any advance of our own toward the Livinallongo Valley and the
important Pordoi Pass. We needed it imperatively for the safety of any
line we established in this region, and just as imperatively would we
need it when we were ready to push the Austrians back. Since it was
just as important for the Austrians to maintain possession of this
great natural fortress as it was for us to take it away from them, you
will understand how it came about that the struggle for the Col di
Lana was perhaps the bitterest that has yet been waged for any one
point on the Alpine front.
“Early in July, under cover of our guns to the south and east, the
Alpini streamed down from the Cima di Falzarego and Sasso di Stria,
which they had occupied shortly before, and secured what was at first
but a precarious foothold on the stony lower eastern slope of the Col
di Lana. Indeed, it was little more than a toe-hold at first; but the
never-resting Alpini soon dug themselves in and became firmly
established. It was to the command of this battalion of Alpini that I
came on July 12, after being given to understand that my work was to
be the taking of the Col di Lana regardless of cost.
“This was the first time that I--or any other Garibaldi, for that
matter (my grandfather, with his ‘Thousand,’ took Sicily from fifty
times that number of Bourbon soldiers)--had ever had enough (or even
the promise of enough) men to make that ‘regardless of cost’ formula
much more than a hollow mockery. But it is not in a Garibaldi to
sacrifice men for any object whatever if there is any possible way of
avoiding it. The period of indiscriminate frontal attacks had passed
even before I left France, and ways were already being devised--mostly
mining and better artillery protection--to make assaults less costly.
Scientific ‘man-saving,’ in which my country has since made so much
progress, was then in its infancy on the Italian front.
“I found many difficulties in the way of putting into practice on the
Col di Lana the man-saving theories I had seen in process of
development in the Argonne. At that time the Austrians--who had
appreciated the great importance of that mountain from the outset--had
us heavily out-gunned, while mining in the hard rock was too slow to
make it worth while until some single position of crucial value hung
in the balance. So--well, I simply did the best I could under the
circumstances. The most I could do was to give my men as complete
protection as possible while they were not fighting, and this end was
accomplished by establishing them in galleries cut out of the solid
rock. This was, I believe, the first time the ‘gallery-barracks’--now
quite the rule at all exposed points--were used on the Italian front.
“There was no other way in the beginning but to drive the enemy off
the Col di Lana trench by trench, and this was the task I set myself
to toward the end of July. What made the task an almost prohibitive
one was the fact that the Austrian guns from Corte and Cherz--which we
were in no position to reduce to silence--were able to rake us
unmercifully. Every move we made during the next nine months was
carried out under their fire, and there is no use in denying that we
suffered heavily. I used no more men than I could possibly help using,
and the Higher Command was very generous in the matter of reserves,
and even in increasing the strength of the force at my disposal as we
gradually got more room to work in. By the end of October my original
command of a battalion had been increased largely.
“The Austrians made a brave and skilful defence, but the steady
pressure we were bringing to bear on them gradually forced them back
up the mountain. By the first week in November we were in possession
of three sides of the mountain, while the Austrians held the fourth
side and--but most important of all--the summit. The latter presented
a sheer wall of rock, over 200 metres high, to us from any direction
we were able to approach it, and on the crest of this cliff--the only
point exposed to our artillery fire--the enemy had a cunningly
concealed machine-gun post served by fourteen men. Back and behind,
under shelter in a rock gallery, was a reserve of 200 men, who were
expected to remain safely under cover during a bombardment, and then
sally forth to repel any infantry attack that might follow it. The
handful in the machine-gun post, it was calculated, would be
sufficient, and more than sufficient, to keep us from scaling the
cliff before their reserves came up to support them; and so they would
have been if there had been _only_ an infantry attack to reckon with.
It failed to allow sufficiently, however, for the weight of the
artillery we were bringing up, and the skill of our gunners. The
apparent impregnability of the position was really its undoing.
“This cunningly conceived plan of defence I had managed to get a
pretty accurate idea of--no matter how--and I laid my own plans
accordingly. All the guns I could get hold of I had emplaced in
positions most favourable for concentrating on the real key to the
summit--the exposed machine-gun post on the crown of the cliff--with
the idea, if possible, of destroying men and guns completely, or,
failing in that, at least to render it untenable for the reserves who
would try to rally to its defence.
“We had the position ranged to an inch, and so, fortunately, lost no
time in ‘feeling’ for it. This, with the surprise incident to it, was
perhaps the principal factor in our success; for the plan--at least so
far as _taking_ the summit was concerned--worked out quite as
perfectly in action as upon paper. That is the great satisfaction of
working with the Alpin, by the way: he is so sure, so dependable, that
the ‘human fallibility’ element in a plan (always the most uncertain
quantity) is practically eliminated.
“It is almost certain that our sudden gust of concentrated gun-fire
snuffed out the lives of all the men in the machine-gun post before
they had time to send word of our developing infantry attack to the
reserves in the gallery below. At any rate, these latter made no
attempt whatever to swarm up to the defence of the crest, even after
our artillery fire ceased. The consequence was that the 120 Alpini I
sent to scale the cliff reached the top with but three casualties,
these probably caused by rolling rocks or flying rock fragments. The
Austrians in their big ‘funk-hole’ were taken completely by surprise,
and 130 of them fell prisoners to considerably less than that number
of Italians. The rest of 200 escaped or were killed in their flight.
“So far it was so good; but, unfortunately, taking the summit and
holding it were two entirely different matters. No sooner did the
Austrians discover what had happened than they opened on the crest
with all their available artillery. We have since ascertained that the
fire of 120 guns was concentrated upon a space of 100 by 150 metres
which offered the only approach to cover the barren summit afforded.
Fifty of my men, finding some shelter in the lee of rocky ledges,
remained right out on the summit; the others crept over the edge of
the cliff and held on by their fingers and toes. Not a man of them
sought safety by flight, though a retirement would have been quite
justified, considering what a hell the Austrian guns were making of
the place. The enemy counter-attacked at nightfall, but in spite of
superior numbers and the almost complete exhaustion of that little
band of Alpini heroes, were able to retake only a half of the summit.
Here, at a ten-metres-high ridge which roughly bisects the _cima_, the
Alpini held the Austrians, and here, in turn, the latter held the
reinforcements which I was finally able to send to the Alpini’s aid.
There, exposed to the fire of the guns of either side (and so,
comparatively, safe from both), a line was established from which
there seemed little probability that one combatant could drive the
other, at least without a radical change from the methods so far
employed.
“The idea of blowing up positions that cannot be taken otherwise is by
no means a new one. Probably it dates back almost as far as the
invention of gunpowder itself. Doubtless, if we only knew of them,
there have been attempts to mine the Great Wall of China. It was,
therefore, only natural that, when the Austrians had us held up before
a position it was vitally necessary we should have, we should begin to
consider the possibility of mining it as the only alternative. The
conception of the plan did not necessarily originate in the mind of
any one individual, however many have laid claim to it. It was the
inevitable thing if we were not going to abandon striving for our
objective.
“But while there was nothing new in the idea of the mine itself, in
the carrying out an engineering operation of such magnitude at so
great an altitude, and from a position constantly exposed to intense
artillery fire, there were presented many problems quite without
precedent. It was these problems which gave us pause; but finally, in
spite of the prospect of difficulties which we fully realised might at
any time become prohibitive, it was decided to make the attempt to
blow up that portion of the summit of the Col di Lana held by the
enemy.
“The choice of the engineer for the work was a singularly fortunate
one. Gelasio Caetani--he is a son of the Duke of Sermoneta--had
operated as a mining engineer in the American West for a number of
years previous to the war, and the practical experience gained in
California and Alaska was invaluable preparation for the great task
now set for him. His ready resource and great personal courage were
also incalculable assets. (As an instance of the latter, I could tell
you how, to permit him to make certain imperative observations, he
allowed himself to be lowered over the side of a sheer cliff at a
point only partially protected from the enemy’s fire.)
“Well, the tunnel was started about the middle of January, 1916. Some
of my men--Italians who had hurried home to fight for their country
when the war started--had had some previous experience with hand and
machine drills in the mines of Colorado and British Columbia, but the
most of our labour had to gain its experience as the work progressed.
Considering this, as well as the difficulty of bringing up material
(to say nothing of food and munitions), we made very good progress.
“The worst thing about it all was the fact that it had to be done
under the incessant fire of the Austrian artillery. I provided for the
men as best I could by putting them in galleries, where they were at
least able to get their rest in comparative safety. My own
headquarters were in a little shed in the lee of a big rock. When the
enemy finally found out what we were up to they celebrated their
discovery by a steady bombardment which lasted for fourteen days
without interruption. During a certain forty-two hours of that
fortnight there was, by actual count, an average of thirty-eight
shells a minute exploding on our little position. With all the
protection it was possible to provide, the strain became such that I
found it advisable to change the battalion holding our portion of the
summit every week. Did I have any respite myself? Well, hardly; or,
rather, not until I had to.
“We were constantly confronted with new and perplexing
problems--things which no one had ever been called upon to solve
before--most of them in connection with transportation. How we
contrived to surmount one of these I shall never forget. The Austrians
had performed a brave and audacious feat in emplacing one of their
batteries at a certain point, the fire from which threatened to make
our position absolutely untenable. The location of this battery was so
cunningly chosen that not a single one of our guns could reach it, and
yet we _had_ to silence it--and for good--if we were going to go on
with our work. The only point from which we could fire upon these
destructive guns was so exposed that any artillery we might be able to
mount there could only count on the shortest shrift under the fire of
the hundred or more ‘heavies’ that the Austrians would be able to
concentrate upon it. And yet (I figured), well employed, these few
minutes might prove enough to do the work in. As there was no other
alternative, I decided to chance it.
“And then there arose another difficulty. The smallest gun that would
stand a chance of doing the job cut out for it weighed 120
kilos--about 260 pounds; this just for the gun alone, with all
detachable parts removed. But the point where the gun was to be
mounted was so exposed that there was no chance of rigging up a
cable-way, while the incline was so steep and rough that it was out of
the question trying to drag it up with ropes. Just as we were on the
verge of giving up in despair, one of the Alpini--a man of Herculean
frame who had made his living in peace-time by breaking chains on his
chest and performing other feats of strength--came and suggested that
he be allowed to carry the gun up on his shoulder. Grasping at a
straw, I let him indulge in a few ‘practice manœuvres’; but these
only showed that while the young Samson could shoulder and trot off
with the gun without great effort, the task of lifting himself and his
burden from foothold to foothold in the crumbling rock of the seventy
degree slope was too much for him.
“But out of this failure there came a new idea. Why not let my strong
man simply support the weight of the gun on his shoulder--acting as a
sort of ambulant gun-carriage, so to speak--while a line of men pulled
him along with a rope? We rigged up a harness to equalise the pull on
the broad back, and, with the aid of sixteen ordinary men, the feat
was accomplished without a hitch. I am sorry to say, however, that
poor Samson was laid up for a spell with racked muscles.
“The gun--with the necessary parts and munition--was taken up in the
night, and at daybreak it was set up and ready for action. It fired
just forty shots before the Austrian ‘heavies’ blew it--and all but
one or two of its brave crew--to pieces with a rain of high-explosive.
But it had done its work, and done it well. The sacrifice was not in
vain. The troublesome Austrian battery was put so completely out of
action that the enemy never thought it worth while to re-emplace it.
“That is just a sample of the fantastic things we were doing all of
the three months that we drove the tunnel under the summit of the Col
di Lana. The last few weeks were further enlivened by the knowledge
that the Austrians were countermining against us. Once they drove so
near that we could feel the jar of their drills, but they exploded
their mine just a few metres short of where it would have upset us for
good and all. All the time work went on until, on April 17, the mine
was finished, charged, and ‘tamped.’ That night, while every gun we
could bring to bear rained shell upon the Austrian position, it was
exploded. A crater 150 feet in diameter and sixty feet deep engulfed
the ridge the enemy had occupied, and this our waiting Alpini rushed
and firmly held. Feeble Austrian counter-attacks were easily repulsed,
and the Col di Lana was at last completely in Italian hands.”
* * * * *
Colonel Garibaldi leaned back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully at
the cracks in the ceiling as one whose tale is finished. The end had
come rather abruptly, I thought, and I was inclined to press for
further details.
“It must have been a grand sight,” I ventured--“that mountain-top
blowing off into the air with hundreds of shells bursting about it.
Where were you at the great moment?”
The grave face grew a shade graver, and a wistful smile softened the
lines of the firm mouth.
“Not in sight of the Col di Lana, I am sorry to say,” was the reply.
“My health broke down a fortnight before the end, and another officer
was in command at the climax. It was one of the greatest
disappointments of my life. I would have given my right hand to have
been the first man into that crater. But never mind,” he concluded,
rising and squaring his broad shoulders; “bigger things than the Col
di Lana are ahead before this war is over, and I feel that I am not
going to miss any more of them. It’s the Garibaldi way, you know, to
be in at the death.”
* * * * *