On June 13 there was a continual round of visitors and the relatives
who had come to see Bottecchia had all brought something for us to eat.
Some brought a piece of cheese, some a peasant bread baked under hot
ashes, others a stoup of wine preserved by who knows how many
sacrifices from the avid throats of our adversaries. I was not present
at the meeting between Bottecchia and his parents, for at the time I
was walking about in the wood, and when I returned I found my soldier
seated on the trunk of a tree between a little old woman and an old man
and I understood from their voices and the sweetness of their
expressions that they must have been his parents. The father, a
lean little old man almost eighty years old, still works unloading
material and pushing hand cars on the new railroad the Austrians are
constructing in the vicinity of Sarmede. I kept away from them so as
not to interrupt their talk, but after they had left I saw on the face
of Giovannino such satisfaction, I read such great joy in his eyes,
that I envied him—I who no longer have the fortune of ever being able
to see my mother again.
The nights were now dark, even when it did not rain, for there was no
moon, and we should have to wait awhile before we were due to receive
any pigeons. Every morning I took a long walk in the wood to see if any
basket had fallen during the night; I examined carefully the branches
of the trees to see if a parachute had perhaps been caught in the
foliage, but found nothing. Through the refugee and the other peasants
who had placed their services at my disposal, I told everyone whom I
could trust, that in case they found little baskets with pigeons on
their fields they were to gather them for they were meant for me. I
designated certain vicarages as places to which they should be
delivered, for the priests offered to pass them on to me as soon as
they received them.
My soldier’s sister, to give me an idea of how certain the Austrians
were of the success of the first blows of the offensive, told me the
following anecdote. A Hungarian officer was bargaining with her for the
purchase of a linen sheet which the officers were accustomed to use for
making white uniforms for wear in the summertime. The amount asked for
the sheet seemed too high and the officer walked away saying, “It
really would be a pity to pay so high a price for my uniform when the
offensive is scheduled to commence shortly. On the first day we will be
in Treviso, on the second in Venice, and there I shall find enough
white linen to clothe my entire company in white.” I hoped that soon
this ugly creature, who was relishing in advance the joys of pillage
and plunder, would find in the whirlpools of the Piave a uniform to
suit him!
Another frequent visitor was Rosa, a young woman whose husband was on
the other side and who now made a livelihood serving as cook for some
Hungarian officers. She listened to all their conversations and every
now and then tried to fathom some secret which she referred at once to
us. The table at which she served belonged to a group of field
artillery officers and she told me that they had a long discussion in
which some of them held that a supply of 5000 shots for every gun would
be enough in the first battle, whereas others held that, given the
enormous waste of munition in modern methods of warfare, this number
would not guarantee a sufficient reserve. On the whole, from the
reports received I inferred that the Austrians were short of ammunition
and had placed their hope in a quick success of the offensive, for
otherwise they would find themselves in a very bad position because
there were very few projectiles in the internal depots in Austria to
replace those spent at the front. Rosa also told me of the abundant
fare the enemy officers allot themselves, for they were not ashamed to
give free rein to their gluttonous desires even though their soldiers
were kept on truly pitiful rations. Poor Rosa also brought us whatever
she could take away from the table and one day she came with a large
package of cigarettes which she held out to us saying, “I hope you will
not smoke them all in one day; I hope you will appreciate them because
I had to pay for these cigarettes with kisses.”
I tried to show I appreciated them so as not to displease her, but in
truth I preferred never to smoke again in my life rather than force
such bargaining on her, but alas, she had often to resort to such
methods if she wished to feed her youngsters who otherwise would die of
hunger. Sometimes Rosa, weeping, told us of the compromises she had had
to make to appease the hunger of her youngsters.
“Necessity makes me do it,” she would say, “but you should see the
disdain with which the gay Viennese women, who have followed the
officers thus far, treat me. Many of them go about dressed in clothes
stolen from our houses and the other day, in the house of one of these
street-walkers I recognized a whole silver coffee set which belonged to
a count who ran away during the first days of the retreat.”
From Vittorio I received regularly the messages of Brunora and from his
notes I gathered much useful information, especially in regard to the
movements of the troops of the sixth army. It seemed that special
divisions of swimmers had been trained to cross the river in a surprise
attack and that they were to clamber up on the side of the Montello
which slopes vertically to the river, by means of hooks and ropes and
so surprise our men from behind. On June 13th the regiment stationed at
San Martino left unexpectedly for the front and the 31st division which
was near Miane left unexpectedly for a destination unknown to us
together with the 11th division of cavalry on foot. At the headquarters
of Tappa di Vittorio a notice had been posted saying, “Any civilian
found damaging the telephone lines will be at once taken before a
firing squad.” All these indications made me feel certain that on the
fifteenth we should visualize the greatest battle in history and I
believed I was one of the few privileged characters who would be able
to participate in it from the enemy’s side.
By now I had exact knowledge of the habits of the gendarmes and I was
convinced that even though I had much to fear from them if they should
succeed in laying hands on me, still with a little wit and intelligence
I could succeed in avoiding them. The gendarmes who most frequented our
region were those from Mezza Villa and therefore I entrusted the owner
of the house in which they live, who knew all their habits, to warn me
if he should notice anything unusual in their plans. In this way I
eliminated the danger of being surprised. I knew they usually went out
at eight in the morning; that they made brief rounds on the road
between Mezza Villa and Fregona and that they returned for mess at
eleven and rested until four, so that during those hours there was
little fear of meeting them. Frankly, if one wished to wander there was
really no need of promenading on the main highways and it seemed that
the gendarmes did not deviate much from the main roads since the day in
which they lost all track of one of their comrades who penetrated a
little more deeply into the wood. As for the soldiers who roamed about
the country, they did not bother about stopping the peasants; they
thought only of trying to steal whatever they could lay their hands on
without attracting the attention of the owner, so if the wanderer could
make believe he was an owner, he was certain never to be molested.
I began to walk in the wood and with a little trepidation I ventured as
far as the summit of a hill which dominates all the plain. From my
observation point one could see all Vittorio and when it was clear one
could also see the Montello. An Austrian Drago balloon rose in the
vicinity of Cuzzuolo. Suddenly I saw shrapnel bursts and immediately
the sausage began to descend hurriedly. It must have been attacked by
one of our aeroplanes but this time it escaped too easily.
Far away in the distance, behind the line of the Piave, which on clear
days outlines itself as a thin silver streak on the plain, our
observation balloons arose. I counted twelve and with an incredible
feeling of homesickness I remembered that under them lay our dear land.
While descending the hill I saw a little hut, half demolished, from
which came a thin stream of smoke. I wished to see who could live
within such battered walls. As I opened the door a nauseating stench
came forth. At first I thought the place uninhabited, but near the
manger I espied two human bodies enveloped in a long wrap. I tried to
get them to talk, but at first they would not answer me. Finally, from
above that confusion of rags, I saw not a head, but something which
looked more like a skull than a head. A feeble voice which seemed to
come from afar murmured, “Leave us in peace, leave us alone, let us die
here. We are two escaped Italian prisoners from the concentration camp
at Vittorio, where they used to give us nothing to eat and would
nourish us with beatings. As long as the Russian prisoners stayed here
we fed ourselves on their herd of cattle, but now it is fifteen days
since they have gone and we have had nothing but snails and the
mushrooms in the woods. We are here at the end of the manger so that if
a gendarme should open the door he would not see us (the man coughed),
but for some time we have not had even enough strength to get up and we
lie here all day waiting for the hour of liberation, in the hope that
death at least will free us forever from our torturers!”