There was something just a bit ominous in the brooding warmth of the soft air that was stirring at the base of the towering cliffs of the Marmolada, where I took theteleferica; and the tossing aigrettes of wind-driven snow at the lip of the pass where the cable-line ended in the lee of a rock just under the Italian first-line trenches signalled the reason why. The vanguard of one of those irresponsible mavericks of mountain storms that so delight to bustle about and take advantage of the fine weather to make surprise attacks on the Alpine sky-line outposts was sneaking over from the Austrian side; and somewhere up there where the tenuous wire of thetelefericafined down and merged into the amorphous mass of the cliff behind, my little car was going to run into it.
“A good ten minutes to snug down in, anyhow,” I said to myself. And after the fashion of the South Sea skipper who shortens sail and battens down the hatches with his weather eyeon the squall roaring down from windward, I tucked in the loose ends of the rugs about my feet, rolled up the high fur collar of myAlpiniocoat, and buttoned the tab across my nose.
But things were developing faster than I had calculated. As the little wire basket glided out of the cut in the forty-foot drift that had encroached on its aerial right-of-way where the supporting cables cleared a jutting crag, I saw that it was not only an open-and-above-board frontal attack that I had to reckon with, but also a craftily-planned flank movement quite in keeping with the fact that the whole affair, lock, stock, and barrel, was a “Made in Austria” product. Swift-driven little shafts of blown snow, that tried hard to keep their plumes from tossing above the sheltering rock-pinnacles, were wriggling over between the little peaks on both sides of the pass and slipping down to launch themselves in flank attack along the narrowing valley traversed by thetelefericaand the zigzagging trail up to the Italian positions. Even as I watched, one of them came into position to strike, and straight out over the ice-cap covering the brow of a cliff shot a clean-lined wedge of palpable, solid whiteness.
One instant my face was laved in the moist air-current drawing up from the wooded lowervalley, where the warm fingers of the thaw were pressing close on the hair-poised triggers of the ready-cocked avalanches; the next I was gasping in a blast of Arctic frigidity as the points of the blown ice-needles tingled in my protesting lungs with the sting of hastily-gulped champagne. Through frost-rimmed eyelashes I had just time to see a score of similar shafts leap out and go charging down into the bottom of the valley, before the main front of the storm came roaring along, and heights and hollows were masked by swishing veils of translucent white. In the space of a few seconds an amphitheatre of soaring mountain peaks roofed with a vault of deep purple sky had resolved itself into a gusty gulf of spinning snow blasts.
My little wire basket swung giddily to one side as the first gust drove into it, promptly to swing back again, after the manner of a pendulum, when the air-buffer was undermined by a counter-gust and fell away; but the deeply grooved wheel was never near to jumping off the supporting cable, and the even throb of the distant engine coming down the pulling wire felt like a kindly hand-pat of reassurance.
“Good oldteleferica!” I said half aloud, raising myself on one elbow and looking over the side: “you’re as comfy and safe as apassenger lift and as thrilling as an aeroplane. But”—as the picture of a line of ant-like figures I had noted toiling up the snowy slope a few moments before flashed to my mind—“what happens to a man on his feet—a man not being yanked along out of trouble by an engine on the end of a nice strong cable—when he’s caught in a maelstrom like that? What must be happening to those poor Alpini? Whatever can they be doing?”
And even before the clinging insistence of the warm breeze from the lower valley had checked the impetuosity of the invader, and diverted him, a cringing captive, to baiting avalanches with what was left of his strength, I had my answer; for it was while the ghostly draperies of the snow-charged wind-gusts still masked the icy slope below that, through one of those weird tricks of acoustics so common among high mountain peaks, the flute-like notes of a man singing in a clear tenor floated up to the ears I was just unmuffling from a furry collar:—
“Fratelli d’Itali, l’Italia, s’è desta;Dell’ elmo di Scipio s’è cinta la testa!”
“Fratelli d’Itali, l’Italia, s’è desta;Dell’ elmo di Scipio s’è cinta la testa!”
“Fratelli d’Itali, l’Italia, s’è desta;
Dell’ elmo di Scipio s’è cinta la testa!”
It was the “Inno di Mameli,” the Song of 1848—the Marseillaise of the Italians. I recognised it instantly, because, an hour previously my hosts at luncheon in the officers’ mess belowhad been playing it on the gramophone. Clear and silvery, like freshly minted coins made vocal, the stirring words winged up through the pulsing air till the “sound chute” by which they had found their way was broken up by the milling currents of the dying storm. But I knew that the Alpini were still singing,—that they had been singing all the time, indeed,—and when the last of the snow-flurries was finally lapped up by the warm wind, there they were, just as I expected to find them, pressing onwards and upwards under their burdens of soup-cans, wine-bottles, stove-wood, blankets, munitions, and the thousand and one other things that must pass up the life-line of a body of soldiers holding a mountain pass in midwinter.
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 wasnotsinging; for to him—to all Italian soldiers, indeed—song furnishes the principalchannel 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 seemsto 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-consummatedcoups de mainwould 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 isquite fatalistic. If a certainvalangais 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 againstyouravalanche; all of them will be superfluous as regards the onesnotfor 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 warningPericoloso 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 especiallydesired 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, walkingas 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 beencut 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 thevalangaas thevalangawas 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 throughthat awakeningvalanga,—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 hisnose, 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 themassifstill in the hands of the slipping Austrians.
That afternoon, as it chanced, thetelefericato 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 thetelefericaterrace 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 atelefericacable at any time in the winter is an experience that maywell 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.
As regards the spirits of the Alpini, song is a barometer; as regards their health, a thermometer. An experienced officer will judge the mental or physical condition of one of his men by noting the way he is singing, or refraining from singing, just as a man determines his dog’s condition by feeling its nose to see if it is hot or cold. I remember standing for a half-hour on the wind-swept summit of a lofty Trentino pass with a distinguished major-general who hadtaken me out that afternoon in his little mountain-climbing motor to give me an idea of how the winter road was kept clear in a blizzard. The wind was driving through the notch of the pass at fifty miles an hour; the air was stiff with falling and drifting snow; and it was through the narrowed holes in ourcapuchosthat we watched a battalion filing by on its way from the front-line trenches to the plains for a spell of rest in billets. Packs and cloaks were crusted an inch thick with frozen snow, eyebrows were frosted, beards and moustaches icicled; but, man after man (though sometimes, as a wind-blast swallowed the sound, one could only guess it by the rhythmically moving lips), they marched singing. Now and then, as the drifts permitted, they marched in lusty choruses of twos and threes; but for the most part each man was warbling on his own, many of them probably simply humming improvisations, giving vocal expression to their thoughts.
Suddenly the general stepped forward and, tapping sharply with his Alpenstock on the ice-stiff skirt of one of the marchers, brought him to a halt. The frost-rimmed haloes fringing the puckered apertures in the two hoods came close together and there was a quick interchange of question and answer between wind-muffledmouths. Then, with a clumsy pat of admonition, the general shoved the man back into the passing line.
“That boy wasn’t singing,” he roared into my ear in response to my look of interrogation as he stepped back into the drift beside me. “Knew something was wrong, so stopped him and asked what. Said he got thirsty—ate raw snow—made throat sore. Told him it served him quite right—an Arab from Tripoli would know better’n to eat snow.”
Three or four times more in the quarter-hour that elapsed before the heightening storm drove us to the shelter of arifugiothe general stopped men whose face or bearing implied that there was no song on their lips or in their hearts, and in each instance it transpired that something was wrong. One man confessed to having discarded his flannel abdominal bandage a couple of days before, and was developing a severe case of dysentery as a perfectly natural consequence of the chill which followed; another had just been kicked by a passing mule; and a third had received word that morning that his newly-born child was dead and its mother dangerously ill. The two former were shoved none too gently back into line with what appeared to be the regulation prescription in such cases: “Servesyou right for your carelessness”; but I thought I saw a note slipped into the third man’s hand as the general pressed it in sympathy and promised to see that leave should be arranged for at once.
I was no less struck by the efficacy of this novel system of diagnosis than by the illuminative example its workings presented of the paternal attitude of even the highest of the Alpini officers toward the least of the men under them.
But it is not only the buoyant Alpini who pour out their souls in song. The Italian soldier, no matter from what part of the country he comes or on what sector of the front he is stationed, can no more work or fight without singing than he can without eating. Indeed, a popular song that is heard all along the front relates how, for some reason or other, an order went out to the army that there was to be no more singing in the trenches, and how a soldier, protesting to his officer, exclaimed, “But, captain, if I cannot sing I shall die of sadness; and surely it is better that I should die fighting the enemy than that I should expire of a broken heart!”
On many a drizzly winter morning, motoring past the painted Sicilian carts which form so important a feature of the Italian transport on the broken hills of the Isonzo front, I noted withsheer astonishment that the drivers were far and away likelier to be singing than swearing at the mules. To one who has driven mules, or even lived in a country where mules are driven, I shall not need to advance any further evidence of the Sicilian soldier’s love of song.
And on that stony trench-torn plateau of the Carso, where men live in caverns under the earth and where the casualties are multiplied two- or three-fold by the fragments of explosive-shattered rock; even there, on this deadliest and most repulsive of all the battle-fronts of Armageddon, the lilting melodies of sunny southern Italy, punctuated, but never for long interrupted, by the shriek and detonation of Austrian shells, are heard on every hand.
There was a trio of blithe rock-breakers that furnished me with one of the most grimly amusing impressions of my visit. It was toward the end of December, and Captain P——, the indefatigable young officer who had me in charge, arranged a special treat in the form of a visit to a magnificent observation-post on the brink of a hill which the Italians had wrested from the Austrians in one of their late advances. We picked our way across some miles of this shell-churned and still uncleared battlefield, and ate our lunch of sandwiches on the parapet ofa trench from which one could follow, with only a few breaks, the course of the Austrian lines in the hills beyond Gorizia, to where they melted into the marshes fringing the sea.
“There’s only one objection to this vantage-point,” remarked the captain, directing his glass along the lower fringe of the clouds that hung low on the opposite hills. “Unless the weather is fairly thick one is under the direct observation of the Austrians over there for close to an hour, both going and coming. It would hardly be pleasant to come up here if the visibility were really good.”
And at that psychological moment the clouds began to lift, the sun came out, and, taking advantage of the first good gunnery weather that had offered for a long time, the artillery of both sides opened up for as lively a bit of practice as any really sober-minded individual could care to be mixed up with. I have seen quieter intervals on the Somme, even during a period when the attack was being sharply pushed. A hulking “305,” which swooped down and obliterated a spiny pinnacle of the ridge a few hundred yards farther along, also swept much of the zest out of the sharpening panorama, and signalled, “Time to go!” A large-calibre high-explosive shell is a far more fearsome thing whenrending a crater in the rock of the Carso than when tossing the soft mud of France.
Work was still going on in the half-sheltereddolinasor “sink-holes” that pock-marked the grisly plateau; but on the remains of a cart-road which we followed, and which appeared to be the special object of the Austrians’ diversion, none seemed to be in sight save a few scattered individuals actively engaged in getting out of sight. It was an illuminating example of the way most of the “natives” appeared to feel about the situation, and we did not saunter any the more leisurely for having had the benefit of it.
We stepped around the riven body of a horse that still steamed from the dying warmth of the inert flesh, and a little farther on, there was a red puddle in the middle of the road, a black, lazily smoking shell-hole close beside it, with a crisply fresh mound of sod and rock fragment just beyond. A hammer and a dented trench helmet indicated that the man had been cracking up stone for the road whenhishad come.
“One would imagine that they had enough broken stone around here already,” observed Captain P—— dryly, glancing back over his shoulder to where a fresh covey of bursting shell was making the sky-line of the stone wall behindus look like a hedge of pampas plumes in a high wind. “Hope the rest of these poor fellows have taken to their holes. A little dose like we’re getting here is only a good appetiser; to stick it out as a steady diet is quite another matter.”
Half a minute later we rounded a bend in the stone wall we had been hugging, to come full upon what I have always since thought of as the Anvil Chorus—three men cracking rock to metal the surface of a recently filled shell-hole in the road and singing a lusty song to which they kept time with the rhythmic strokes of their hammers. Dumped off in a heap at one side of the road was what may have been the hastily jettisoned cargo of a half-dozen motor-lorries, which had pussy-footed up there under cover of darkness—several hundred trench-bombs, containing among them enough explosive to have lifted the whole mountain-side off into the valley had a shell chanced to nose-dive into their midst. Two of these stubby little “winged victories” a couple of the singers had appropriated as work-stools. The third of them sat on the remains of a “dud 305,” from a broad crack in which a tiny stream of rain-dissolved high explosive trickled out to form a gay saffron pool about his feet. This one was bareheaded, his trenchhelmet, full of nuts and dried figs,—evidently from a Christmas package,—lying on the ground within reach of all three men.
The sharp roar of the quickening Italian artillery, the deeper booms of the exploding Austrian shells, and the siren-like crescendo of the flying projectiles so filled the air, that it was not until one was almost opposite the merry trio that he could catch the fascinating swing of the iterated refrain.
“A fine song to dance to, that!” remarked Captain P——, stopping and swinging his shoulders to the time of the air. “You can almostfeelthe beat of it.”
“It strikes me as being still better as a song to march to,” I rejoined meaningly, settling down my helmet over the back of my neck and suiting the action to the word. “It’s undoubtedly a fine song, but it doesn’t seem to me quite right to tempt a kind Providence by lingering near this young mountain of trench-bombs any longer than is strictly necessary. If that Austrian battery ‘lifts’ another notch, something else is going to lift here, and I’d much rather go down to the valley on my feet than riding on a trench-bomb.”
The roar of the artillery battle flared up and died down by spells, but the steady throb of theAnvil Chorus followed us down the wind for some minutes after another bend in the stone wall cut off our view of the singers. How often I have wondered which ones of that careless trio survived that day, or the next, or the one after that; which, if any, of them is still beating time on the red-brown rocks of the Carso to the air of that haunting refrain!
I was told that the wounded are sometimes located on the battlefield by their singing; that they not infrequently sing while being borne in on stretchers or transported in ambulances. I had no chance to observe personally instances of this kind, but I did hear, time and time again, men singing in the hospitals, and they were not all convalescents or lightly wounded either. One brave little fellow in that fine British hospital on the Isonzo front, conducted with such conspicuous success by the British Red Cross, I shall never forget.
An explosive bullet had carried away all four fingers of his right hand, leaving behind it an infection which had run into gaseous gangrene. The stump swelled to a hideous mass, about the shape and size of a ten-pound ham, but the doctors were fighting amputation in the hope of saving the wrist and thumb, to have something to which artificial members might be attached.The crisis was over at the time I visited the hospital, but the whole arm was still so inflamed that the plucky lad had to close his eyes and set his teeth to keep from crying out with agony as the matron lifted the stump to show me the “beautiful healthy red colour” where healing had begun.
The matron had some “splendid” trench-foot cases to show me farther along, and these, with some interesting experiments in disinfection by “irrigation,” were engrossing my attention, when a sort of a crooning hum caused me to turn and look at the patient in the bed behind me. It was the “gaseous gangrene” boy again. We had worked down the next row till we were opposite him once more, and in the quarter-hour which had elapsed his nurse had set a basin of disinfectant on his bed in which to bathe his wound. Into this she had lifted the hideously swollen stump and hurried on to her next patient. And there he lay, swaying the repulsive mass of mortified flesh that was still a part of him back and forth in the healing liquid, the while he crooned a little song to it as a mother rocks her child to sleep as she sings a lullaby.
“He always does that,” said the nurse, stopping for a moment with her hands full of bandages. “He says it helps him to forget thepain. And there are five or six others: the worse they feel, the more likely they are to try to sing as a sort of diversion. That big chap over there with the beard,—he’s a fisherman from somewhere in the South,—he says that when the shooting pains begin in his frozen feet he has to sing to keep from cursing. Says he doesn’t want to curse before theforestiereif it can possibly be helped.”
On one of my last days on the Italian front I climbed to a shell-splintered peak of the Trentino under the guidance of the son of a famous general, a Mercury-footed flame of a lad who was aide-de-camp to the division commander of that sector. Mounting by an interminabletelefericafrom just above one of the half-ruined towns left behind by the retreating Austrians after their drive of last spring, we threaded a couple of miles of steep zigzagging trail, climbed a hundred feet of ladder and about the same distance of rocky toe-holds,—the latter by means of a knotted rope and occasional friendly iron spikes,—finally to come out on the summit, with nothing between us and an almost precisely similar Austrian position opposite but a half-mile of thin air and the overturned, shrapnel-pitted statue of a saint—doubtless erected in happier days by the pious inhabitants of —— as an emblem of peace and goodwill. An Italian youth who had returned from New York to fight for his country—he had charge of some kind of mechanical installation in a rock-gallery a few hundred feet beneath our feet—climbed up with us to act as interpreter.
To one peering through the crook in the lead-sheathed elbow of the fallen statue, the roughly squared openings of the rock galleries which sheltered an enemy battery seemed well within fair revolver shot; and, indeed, an Alpino sharpshooter had made a careless Austrian gunner pay the inevitable penalty of carelessness only an hour or two before. One could make one’s voice carry across without half an effort.
Just before we started to descend my young guide made a megaphone of his hands, threw his head back, his chest out, and, directing his voice across the seemingly bottomless gulf that separated us from the enemy, sang a few bars of what I took to be a stirring battle-song.
“What is the song the captain sings?” I asked of the New-York-bred youth, whose head was just disappearing over the edge of the cliff as he began to lower himself down the rope. “Something fromWilliam Tell, isn’t it?”
Young “Mulberry Street” dug hard for atoe-hold, found it, slipped his right hand up till it closed on a comfortable knot above his head, and then, with left leg and left arm swinging free over a 200-foot drop to the terraces below, shouted back,—
“Not on yer life, mista. De capitan he not singa no song. He just tella de Ostrichun datta Italia, she ready fer him. Datta all.”
I looked down to the valley where line after line of trenches, fronted with a furry brown fringe that I knew to be rusting barbed wire, stretched out of sight over the divides on either hand, and where, for every gray-black geyser of smoke that marked the bursting of an Austrian shell, a half-dozen vivid flame-spurts, flashing out from unguessed caverns on the mountain-side, told that the compliment was being returned with heavy interest.
“Yes, Italy is ready for them,” I thought; and whether she has to hold here and there—as she may—in defence, or whether she goes forward all along the line in triumphant offence—whichever it is, the Italian soldier will go out to the battle with a song on his lips, a song that no bullet which leaves the blood pulsing through his veins and breath in his lungs will have power to stop.
It was about the middle of last July that the laconic Italian bulletin recorded, in effect, that the blowing of the top off a certain mountain in the Dolomite region had been accomplished with complete success, and that a considerable extension of line had been possible as a consequence.
That was about all there was to it, I believe; and yet the wonder engendered by the superb audacity of the thing had haunted me from the first. There was no suggestion of a hint of how it was done, or even why it was done. All that was left to the imagination, and the result—in my own case at least—was the awakening of a burning interest in the ways of the warriors who were wont to throw mountain peaks and fragments of glacier at one another as the everyday plains-bred soldier throws hand-grenades, which, waxing rather than waning as the weeks went by, finally impelled me to attempt a visit to the Austro-Italian Alpine Front at a time of year when the weather conditions threatened to be all but, if not quite, prohibitive.
“With twenty-five degrees of frost at sea-level in France,” observed a French officer at Amiens to whom I confided the plan, “what do you expect to find at 10,000 feet on the Tyrol?”
“A number of things which they don’t do at sea-level in France or anywhere else,” I replied, “but especiallywhythey blow the tops off mountain peaks, andhowthey blow the tops off mountain peaks.”
Even in Rome and Milan (though there were some who claimed social acquaintance with the Titans who had been conforming Alpine scenery to tactical exigency), they still spoke vaguely of the thing as “fantastico” and “incredibile,” as men might refer to operations in the Mountains of the Moon.
But once in the Zona di Guerra, with every rift in the lowering cloud-blanket that so loves to muffle the verdant plain of Venezia in its moist folds revealing (in the imminent loom of the snowy barrier rearing itself against the cobalt of the northern sky) evidence that the “mountain-top” part of the story had at least some foundation of fact, whether the “blowing off” part did or not, things took on a different aspect. On my very first day at General Headquarters I met officers who claimed to have seen with their own eyes a mountain whose top had beenblown off; indeed, they even mentioned the names of themontagna mutilati, showed me where they were on the map, pointed out the strategical advantages which had already accrued from taking them, and those which might be expected to accrue later.
They were still there, I was assured, even if their tops had been blown off. They were still held by the Alpini. Two of the most important of them were not so far away; indeed, both could be plainly seen from where we were—if other and nearer mountains did not stand between, and, of course, if the accursed storm-clouds would only lift. And so, at last, the names of Castelletto and Col di Lano took sharpened shape as something more than mystic symbols.
“But can I not go and see them?” I asked. “You have told mewhyyou blew them up, but nothow; yet that is the very thing that I came out to find about at first hand.”
They shook their heads dubiously. “Not while this weather lasts,” one of them said. “It has snowed in the Alps every day for over a month. Thevalangasare coming down everywhere, and (even if you were willing to risk being buried under one of them) the roads in places will not be open for weeks. You might wait herea month or so, and even then be disappointed so far as getting about on the Alpine Front is concerned. Best see what you can of the Isonzo Front now and come back for the Alps in the spring.”
That seemed to settle it so far as seeing the Castelletto and Col di Lano was concerned. Regarding the way in which they were mined, however, one of the officers at the Ufficio Stampa said that he would endeavour to arrange to have the Castelletto—much the greater operation of the two—report put at my disposal, as well as a set of photographs which had been taken to show the progress of this mighty work.
“We have never given out any of the photographs before,” he said, “and only portions of the report; but since you came to Italy on purpose to learn about the mountain whose top was blown off, the Comando Supremo may be moved to make a special dispensation in your favour.”
Exclusive permission to make use of both report and photographs was granted me in due time, and since the former makes clear both the “why” and the “how” of the unprecedented Castelletto operation, it will perhaps be best to summarise it first as a sort of drab background for the more vivid and intimate personal detailswhich a lucky turn of the fitful weather vane made it possible for me to obtain later.
The first part of the report, by the Colonel commanding the Alpini Group, makes plain why the mining of the Castelletto became asine quâ nonto further progress in this important sector.
“In the month of October, 1915,” he writes, “I was charged with the carrying out of an attack with two battalions of Alpini against the positions of Castelletto and Forcella Bois. This was the fourth time, if I am not mistaken, that an attempt on these positions had been made. In spite of the fact that the artillery preparation of the opening day had been excellently performed I discovered, on the evening of October 17, when I moved with my troops to the attack, that its work had been absolutely of no avail.
“Having received orders at midnight to proceed to Vervei, where the two battalions above mentioned were to take part in another operation, I was forced to abandon the attack. I am convinced, however, that I would not have succeeded in capturing the Castelletto position.”
“As known,” the report continues, “the Castelletto is a sort of a spur of the Tofana (about 12,000 feet high), with a balcony shaped like a horse-shoe, and with a periphery consistingof numerous jagged peaks. In the rear of the balcony, and within this rocky spur, the enemy had excavated numerous caverns in which machine-guns and light artillery pieces, handled by isolated but able gun-crews, furnished an invisible and almost impregnable position of defence, giving extraordinary confidence and encouragement to the small forces occupying them.
“Costeana Valley was accordingly at the mercy of the enemy’s offence and actually cut in two. From Vervei on, all movements of troops had to be carried on only at night and with great difficulty. The conquest of the Castelletto was rendered necessary not only for tactical but for moral reasons as well, since our troops came to regard it as absolutely imperative that such an obstacle should be overcome. After completing my observations and researches regarding the Castelletto position, I reached the conclusion that the only means of dislodging the enemy therefrom was to blow it up.
“On November 19 I formally presented my plan to Headquarters, and about the middle of December I was authorised to attempt it. The unusual enterprise was a most difficult one, not only on account of its magnitude, but also on account of the particularly unfavourable conditionsof the winter season. Having prepared the necessary material for construction and excavation work, I began, on January 3, 1916, fortifying the position (entirely unprotected at the time) from which we would have to work, and completing the construction of the necessary buildings.
“Second Lieutenant Malvezzi, in his report on the subject, describes concisely and modestly the development of the work. The accomplishment of the enterprise, considered by many as chimerical, is due not only to the technical ability of Lt. Malvezzi, and Lt. Tissi, his assistant, but to their special military qualifications as well; also to the courage and goodwill of the Alpini who, in a very short time, became apersonnelof able miners and clever mechanics.
“The vicissitudes during more than six months’ work, at a distance of only a few metres from the enemy, and under an incessant artillery fire and shelling bybombardas, could well form the subject for a book devoted to the study of character. Although fully aware of the attendant dangers, including those of falling rocks due to the counter-mining of the enemy, the Alpini of the Castelletto, during the period of more than six months, gave proofs of brilliant valour and unflinching perseverance. They werecalm at all times, and moved only by the spirit of duty.
“In transmitting to Your Excellency the enclosed copy of the report compiled exclusively by Lt. Malvezzi (Lt. Tissi is at present lying wounded in the hospital), I desire to recommend to you these two officers (both as excellent engineers and brave soldiers), as well as the Alpini who were co-operating with them. Without any exaggeration, I consider their achievement as absolutely marvellous, both on account of the great technical difficulties surmounted and the military results obtained. The Austrian officers taken prisoner unanimously confirm the fact that only by springing a mine could the Italians have taken this position so important to the enemy.”
Lt. Malvezzi’s appended report launched at once into the “how” of the titanic task which was set for him.
“On January 3, 1916,” he writes, “work was begun on the approach to Castelletto, on the Tofana di Roches slope, levelling the soil and enabling the construction of lodging quarters for officers and troops. This work required the cutting of 660 cubic metres of rock. Next the construction of quarters, and the concealing themwas quickly accomplished. Finally, there was garrisoned at this post the Castelletto Detachment, commonly called the ‘T.K.,’ consisting of the necessarypersonnelfor labour and the defence of the position.
“Our first work was to examine and disclose the enemy lines of communication about the Castelletto and Tofana sides, and to gain full knowledge of their position in detail. In order to accomplish this, observation points were established which allowed us to carry out such investigation and to make topographical sketches of the zone. Being as we were always in the proximity of the enemy, this was a long and fatiguing work. After a month, however, we succeeded in constructing a series of positions at short distances from those of the enemy (from 50 to 150 metres). These were provided with cables and rope ladders to enable us the more rapidly and easily to study (from all possible points of vantage) the enemy’s positions and the development of his works.
“The topographic work was begun by taking as a plan metric base measurement 116 metres of ground on a four-triangle table, which method enabled making all other drawings based on it. By basing our findings on this table, we were able to draw up a series of points of the enemy’spositions. Using the method of successive intersections, we thus obtained all points of interest to us, as regards direction, distance and height.
“In addition to this work, executed with the greatest care and accuracy, we made two independent drawings of the enemy’s positions by simpler but less exact methods. The first was made with a topographic compass and Abney level; the other with a Monticole field-square. By these means we obtained excellent checks on the base system, and so grounded our work entirely on the trigonometric table and on the drawings by intersections.
“From the middle of February to the end of March the tools used for piercing consisted only of mallets and chisels. Our progress was necessarily slow, yet it was sufficient in this time to give us, besides 14 metres of tunnel, room for installing the perforating machinery. At the end of March, notwithstanding heavy snowstorms, the machinery—some pieces of it weighed as much as 500 and 600 kilos—for beginning work was installed. This was all brought up by hand, and without incident.
“The mechanical work was begun on April 2. We utilised two plant as follows:
“(1) A complete group of benzo-compressors, consisting of a 30-40 horse-power kerosene motoradjusted to a Sullivan compressor by means of a belt. This machinery was installed, on a solid base of cement, at the beginning of the tunnel, in a 5 × 8 metre space dug out in the side of the mountain for that purpose.
“(2) An Ingersoll compressor mounted on a four-wheel truck.
“Both machines were of American manufacture, and gave complete satisfaction at all times. Each compressed the air to a density of about seven atmospheres, injecting it into an air-chamber, whence, by means of a rigid tube, ending in one of flexible rubber, it was conveyed to the respective drills.
“Four squads worked at a time, each one consisting of a foreman and from 25 to 30 miners. Each squad worked six hours without interruption. This shift, apparently light, was found, on the contrary, to be very heavy, owing principally to the development of nitric gases which poisoned the air, and to the dust caused by the drills.
“At first the only explosive used was military gelatine; later, dynamite-gelatine. The system of over-charging the holes was always adopted, in order to reduce thedébristo minute particles, easier to be transported and unloaded. The work was carried on in sections, varying from 1·80by 1·80 metres to 2 by 2. The flat stretches of the tunnel were laid with Decauville rails. All material was carried out in cars and dumped into a hopper discharging into a large pipe. (The dump was accumulated at a point beyond the observation of the Austrians.) The average rate of progress was 5·10 metres per day.”
It may be well to explain here that it was not possible to begin tunnelling on the same level at which the mine was to be exploded, but considerably more than 150 feet below that level. The tunnel, had, therefore, to be driven on a steep gradient. Another point which the report does not make clear should be borne in mind, viz., that the tunnel divided in the heart of the Castelletto, the main bore being driven on to where the mine was to be exploded, while a smaller branch—referred to below as the “Loop-holed Tunnel”—was run up to a point where favourable exit could be obtained for charging into and occupying the crater of the exploded mine. In all 507 metres of tunnel had to be driven, involving the excavation of 2,200 cubic metres of rock. The details of this work are given in the report as follows:
(A) Chamber for Sullivan Compressor: Dimensions: 5 × 8 metres; average height 2·20 metres.
(B) First part of gallery to second dump of material. Length 72 metres; inclination 38·70 per cent.; elevation gained 25·90 metres.
(C) Second dump of material, established in order to free space for further work and reduce the length of transportation.
(D) Ingersoll Group chamber. Dimensions: 4 × 6·50 metres; average height 2 metres.
(E) Cut from the gallery of the second dump of material to the beginning of the ascent to the mining chamber. Length 136 metres; inclination 4·70 per cent.; elevation gained 6·40 metres.
(F) Ascent to mining chamber. Length 22 metres; inclination 36·30 per cent.; elevation gained 10·75 metres. (This ascent, in order to facilitate tamping, was worked by dividing it into three sections of 1 × 1·60 metres, at nearly right angles.)
(G) Mining chamber. Dimensions: 5 × 5·50 metres; average height 2·30 metres.
(H) Loop-holed tunnel. Length 162 metres; inclination 60 per cent.; elevation gained 83·50 metres in this tunnel itself, or a total of 168·50 from the second dump. This tunnel (the one through which the men were to pass for the attack after the explosion of the mine) had to be strictly confined to the rocky stratum betweenthe Tofana and the Castelletto; its planimetry appears (see map), therefore, rather uneven due to the constant elevation of the rock.
(I) Line of communication—partly in a natural cavern—measuring about 250 metres in length and giving access from the lodging quarters to the works.
(J) Tunnel dug out to the extreme south end of the Castelletto, 30 metres long, with two portholes (each 4 metres wide) for two Depfort guns, with closed cavern for the guns and ammunition.
“It was originally intended to divide the explosive charge between two chambers, each having a mining line of resistance of 20 metres, with a 16-ton explosive charge of 92 per cent. gelatine. However, owing to the countermining work carried on by the enemy—we were only a few metres from one of his positions during the charging of the mine chamber—we were obliged to confine the entire charge to a single chamber.
“The enemy meanwhile, with a view to avoiding the effects of our mine beneath the peaks of the Castelletto, had transferred most of his shelters to the side of the Tofana and the Selletta. This necessitated a considerable alteration in the location of the mine as originally planned, in order that it should act against theenemy shelters on both the Castelletto and Tofana flanks.