Part 2 (2/2)
Through the mud we came to the Judrio, which marked the line of the old frontier. We crossed the river by a pontoon bridge, for the Austrians had destroyed the other in their retreat.
”We are in Austria now, I suppose?” I remarked. ”In Italia Redenta,”
my companion corrected me. ”This region has always been Italian in everything but name, and now it is Italian in name also.” The occupation by the Italian troops, at the very outset of the war, of this wedge of territory between the Judrio and the Isonzo, with Monfalcone, Cervignano, Cormons, Gradisca--old Italian towns all--did much to give the Italian people confidence in the efficiency of their armies and the ability of their generals.
Now the roads were filled with the enormous equipment of an army advancing. Every village swarmed with gray soldiers. We pa.s.sed interminable processions of motor-lorries, mule-carts, trucks, and wagons piled high with hay,[A] lumber, wine-casks, flour, sh.e.l.ls, barbed wire; boxes of ammunition; pontoon-trains, balloon outfits, searchlights mounted on motor-trucks, wheeled blacksmith shops, wheeled post-offices, field-kitchens; beef and mutton on the hoof; mammoth howitzers and siege guns hauled by panting tractors; creaking, clanking field-batteries, and bright-eyed, brown-skinned, green-caped infantry, battalions, regiments, brigades of them plodding along under slanting lines of steel. All the resources of Italy seemed crowding up to make good the recent gains and to make ready for the next push. One has to see a great army on the march to appreciate how stupendous is the task of supplying with food the hungry men and the hungrier guns, and how it taxes to the utmost all the industrial resources of a nation.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A Heavy Howitzer in the High Alps.
Nowadays guns ”command” nothing. Instead of frowning down on the enemy from an eminence, they stare blindly skyward from behind a wall of mountains.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: An Outpost in the Carnia.
”On no front, not on the sun-scorched plains of Mesopotamia, nor in the Masurian marshes, nor in the blood-soaked mud of Flanders, does the fighting man lead so arduous an existence as up here on the roof of the world.”]
Under all this traffic the roads remained hard and smooth, for gangs of men, with sc.r.a.pers and steam-rollers were at work everywhere repairing the wear and tear. This work is done by peasants, who are too old for the army, middle-aged, st.u.r.dily built fellows who perform their prosaic task with the resignation and inexhaustible patience of the lower-cla.s.s Italian. They are organized in companies of a hundred men each, called _centurias_, and the company commanders are called (shades of the Roman legions!) _centurions_. Italy owes much to these gray-haired soldiers of the pick and shovel who, working in heat and cold, in snow and rain, and frequently under Austrian fire, have made it possible for the armies to advance and for food to be sent forward for the men and ammunition for the guns.
When this war is over Italy will find herself with better roads, and more of them, than she ever had before. The hundreds of miles of splendid highways which have been built by the army in the Trentino, in the Carnia, and in Cadore will open up districts of extraordinary beauty which have hitherto been inaccessible to the touring motorist.
The Italians have been fortunate in having an inexhaustible supply of road-building material close at hand, for the mountains are solid road metal and in the plains one has only to scratch the soil to find gravel. The work of the road-builders on the Upper Isonzo resembles a vast suburban development, for the smooth white highways which zigzag in long, easy gradients up the mountain slopes are bordered on the inside by stone-paved gutters and on the outside, where the precipice falls sheer away, by cut stone guard-posts. So extensive and substantial are these improvements that one instinctively looks for a real-estate dealer's sign: ”This beautiful lot can be yours for twenty-five dollars down and ten dollars a month for a year.” Climbing higher, the roads become steeper and narrower and, because of the heavy rains, very highly crowned, with frequent right-angle and hair-pin turns. Here a skid or a side-slip or the failure of your brakes is quite likely to bring your career to an abrupt and unpleasant termination. To motor along one of these military mountain highways when it is slippery from rain is as nerve-trying as walking on a s.h.i.+ngled roof with smooth-soled shoes. At one point on the Upper Isonzo there wasn't enough room between our outer wheels and the edge of the precipice for a starved cat to pa.s.s.
Now we were well within the danger zone. I knew it by the screens of woven reeds and gra.s.s matting which had been erected along one side of the road in order to protect the troops and transport using that road from being seen by the Austrian observers and sh.e.l.led by the Austrian guns. Practically all of the roads on the Italian side of the front are, remember, under direct observation by the Austrians. In fact, they command everything. Everywhere they are above the Italians. From the observatories which they have established on every peak they can see through their powerful telescopes what is transpiring down on the plain as readily as though they were circling above it in an airplane.
As a result of the extraordinary advantage which the Austrians enjoy in this respect, it has been found necessary to screen certain of the roads not only on both sides but above, so that in places the traffic pa.s.ses for miles through literal tunnels of matting. This road masking is a simple form of the art of concealment to which the French have given the name ”_camouflage_,” which has been developed to an extraordinary degree on the Western Front. That the Italians have not made a greater use of it is due, no doubt, to the wholly different conditions under which they are fighting.
Now the crowded road that we were following turned sharply into a narrow valley, down which a small river twisted and turned on its way to the sea. Though the Italian positions ran along the top of the hill slope just above us, and though less than a thousand yards away were the Austrian trenches, that valley, for many miles, was literally crawling with men and horses and guns. Indeed it was difficult to make myself believe that we were within easy range of the enemy and that at any instant a sh.e.l.l might fall upon that teeming hillside and burst with the crash that scatters death.
Despite the champagne-cork popping of the rifles and the ba.s.so profundo of the guns, it was a scene of ordered, yes, almost peaceful industry which in no way suggested war but reminded me, rather, of the Panama Ca.n.a.l at the busiest period of its construction (I have used the simile before, but I use it again because I know none better), of the digging of the New York subway, of the laying of a transcontinental railway, of the building of the dam at a.s.suan. Trenches which had recently been captured from the Austrians were being cleared and renovated and new trenches were being dug, roads were being repaired, a battery of monster howitzers was being moved into ingeniously concealed positions, a whole system of narrow-gauge railway was being laid down, enormous quant.i.ties of stores were being unloaded from wagons and lorries and neatly stacked, soldiers were building great water-tanks on stilts, like those at railway sidings, giant sh.e.l.ls were being lowered from trucks and flat-cars by means of cranes; to the accompaniment of saws and hammers a city of wooden huts was springing up on the reverse slope of the hill as though at the wave of a magician's wand.
As I watched with fascinated eyes this scene of activity, as city idlers watch the laborers at work in a cellar excavation, a sh.e.l.l burst on the crowded hillside, perhaps five hundred yards away. There was a crash like the explosion of a giant cannon-cracker; the ground leaped into flame and dust. A few minutes afterward I saw an ambulance go tearing up the road.
”Just a chance shot,” said the staff-officer who accompanied me. ”This valley is one of the few places on our front which is invisible to the Austrian observers. That's why we have so many troops in here. The Austrian aviators could spot what is going on here, of course, but our fliers and our anti-aircraft batteries have been making things so hot for them lately that they're not troubling us much. That's the great thing in this game--to keep control of the air. If the Austrian airmen were able to get over this valley and direct the fire of their guns we wouldn't be able to stay here an hour.”
My companion had thought that it might be possible to follow the road down the valley to Monfalcone and the sea, and so it would have been had the weather continued misty and rainy. But the sun came out brightly just as we reached the beginning of an exposed stretch of the road; an Austrian observer, peering through a telescope set up in a monastery on top of a mountain ten miles away, caught sight of the hurrying gray insect which was our car; he rang up on the telephone a certain battery and spoke a few words to the battery commander; and an instant later on the road along which we were travelling Austrian sh.e.l.ls began to fall. Sh.e.l.ls being expensive, that little episode cost the Emperor-King several hundred kronen, we figured. As for us, it merely interrupted a most interesting morning's ride.
Leaving the car in the shelter of a hill, we toiled up a steep and stony slope to a point from which I was able to get an admirable idea of the general lay of Italy's Eastern Front. Coming toward me was the Isonzo--a bright blue stream the width of the Thames at New London--which, happy at escaping from its gloomy mountain defile, went rioting over the plain in a great westward curve. Turning, I could catch a glimpse, through a notch in the hills, of the white towers and pink roofs of Monfalcone against the Adriatic's changeless blue. To the east of Monfalcone rose the red heights of the Carso, the barren limestone plateau which stretches from the Isonzo south into Istria.
And beyond the Carso I could trace the whole curve of the mountains from in front of Trieste up past Gorizia and away to the Carnia. The Italian front, I might add, divides itself into four sectors: the Isonzo, the Carnia and Cadore, the Trentino, and the Alpine.
Directly below us, not more than a kilometre away, was a village which the Austrians were sh.e.l.ling. Through our gla.s.ses we could see the effects of the bombardment as plainly as though we had been watching a football game from the upper tier of seats in the Yale Bowl. They were using a considerable number of guns of various calibers and the crash of the bursting sh.e.l.ls was almost incessant. A sh.e.l.l struck a rather pretentious building, which was evidently the town hall; there was a burst of flame, and a torrent of bricks and beams and tiles shot skyward amid a geyser of green-brown smoke. Another projectile chose as its target the tall white campanile, which suddenly slumped into the street, a heap of brick and plaster. Now and again we caught glimpses of tiny figures--Italian soldiers, most likely--scuttling for shelter. Occasionally the Austrians would vary their rain of heavy projectiles with a sort of sh.e.l.l that went _bang_ and released a fleecy cloud of smoke overhead and then dropped a parcel of high explosive that burst on the ground. It was curious to think that the guns from which these sh.e.l.ls came were cunningly hidden away in nooks and glens on the other side of that distant range of hills, that the men serving the guns had little if any idea what they were firing at, and that the bombardment was being directed and controlled by an officer seated comfortably at the small end of a telescope up there on a mountain top among the clouds. Yet such is modern war. It used to be one of the artillerist's tenets that his guns should be placed in a position with a ”commanding” range of view. But nowadays guns ”command” nothing. Instead they are tucked away in gullies and leafy glens and excavated gun-pits, and their muzzles, instead of frowning down on the enemy from an eminence, stare blindly skyward from behind a wall of hills or mountains. The Italians evidently grew tired of letting the Austrians have their way with the town, for presently some batteries of heavy guns behind us came into action and their sh.e.l.ls screamed over our heads. Soon a brisk exchange of compliments between the Italian and Austrian guns was going on over the shattered roofs of the town. We did not remain overlong on our hillside and we were warned by the artillery officer who was guiding us to keep close to the ground and well apart, for, were the Austrians to see us in a group, using maps and field-gla.s.ses, they probably would take us for artillery observers and would send over a violent protest cased in steel.
On none of the European battle-fronts is there a more beautiful and impressive journey than that from Udine up to the Italian positions in the Carnia. The Carnia sector connects the Isonzo and Trentino fronts and forms a vital link in the Italian chain of defense, for, were the Austrians to break through, they would take in flank and rear the great Italian armies operating on the two adjacent fronts. West of the Carnia, in Cadore, the Italians are campaigning in one of the world's most famous playgrounds, for, in the days before the Great War, pleasure-seekers from every corner of Europe and America swarmed by the tens of thousands in the country round about Cortina and in the enchanted valleys of the Dolomites. But now great gray guns are emplaced in the shady glens where the honeymooners used to stroll; on the terraces of the tourist hostelries, where, on summer afternoons, men in white flannels and women in dainty frocks chattered over their tea, now lounge Italian officers in field uniforms of gray; the blare of dance music and the popping of champagne corks has been replaced by the blare of bugles and the popping of rifles.
If you have ever gone, in a single day, from the sunlit orange groves of Pasadena up to the snow-crowned peaks of the Coast Range, you will have as good an idea as I can give you of the journey from the Isonzo up to the Carnia. Down on the Carso the war is being waged under a sky of molten bra.s.s and in summer the winds which sweep that arid plateau are like blasts from an open furnace-door. The soldiers fighting in the Carnia, on the other hand, not infrequently wear coats of white fur to protect them from the cold and to render them invisible against the expanses of snow. When I was on the Italian front they told me an incident of this mountain warfare. There was desperate fighting for the possession of a few yards of mountain trenches and a half-battalion of Austrian Jaegers--nearly five hundred men--were enfiladed by machine-gun fire and wiped out. That night there was a heavy snowfall and the Austrian corpses sprawled upon the mountainside were soon buried deep beneath the fleecy flakes. The long winter wore along, the war pursued its dreary course, to five hundred Austrian homes the Austrian War Office sent a brief message that the husband or son or brother had been ”reported missing.” Then the spring came, the snow melted from the mountainsides, and the horrified Italians looked on the five hundred Austrians, frozen stiff, as meat is frozen in a refrigerator, in the same att.i.tudes in which they had died months before.
With countless hair-pin, hair-raising turns, our road wound upward, bordered on one hand by the brinks of precipices, on the other by bare walls of rock. It was a smooth road, splendidly built, but steep and terrifyingly narrow--so narrow in places that it was nothing more than a shelf blasted from the sheer face of the cliff. Twice, meeting motor-lorries downward bound, we had to back along that narrow shelf, with our outer wheels on the brink of emptiness, until we came to a spot where there was room to pa.s.s. It was a ticklish business.
At one point a mountain torrent leaped from the cliff into the depths below. But the water-power was not permitted to go to waste; it had been skilfully harnessed and was being used to run a completely equipped machine-shop where were brought for repair everything from motor-trucks to machine-guns. That was one of the things that impressed me most--the mechanical ability of the Italians. The railways, cable-ways, machine-shops, bridges, roads, reservoirs, concrete works that they have built, more often than not in the face of what would appear to be unsurmountable difficulties, prove them to be a nation of engineers.
Up to the heights toward which we were climbing so comfortably and quickly in a motor-car there was before the war, so I was told, nothing but a mule-path. Now there is this fine military road, so ingeniously graded and zigzagged that two-ton motor-trucks can now go with ease where before a donkey had difficulty in finding a footing.
When these small and handy motor-trucks come to a point where it is no longer possible for them to find traction, their loads are transferred to the remarkable wire-rope railways, or _telefericas_, as they are called, which have made possible this campaign in cloudland. Similar systems are in use, all over the world, for conveying goods up the sides of mountains and across chasms. A wire rope running over a drum at each side of the chasm which has to be crossed forms a double line of overhead railway. Suspended on grooved wheels from this overhead wire are ”cars” consisting of shallow iron trays about the length and width of coffins, one car going up as the other comes down. The floors of the cars are perforated so as to permit the draining off of water or blood--for men wounded in the mountain fighting are frequently brought down to the hospitals in them--and the sides are of latticework, and, I might add, quite unnecessarily low. Nor is the prospective pa.s.senger rea.s.sured by being told that there have been several cases where soldiers, suddenly overcome by vertigo, have thrown themselves out while in mid-air. If the cars are properly loaded, and if there is not a high wind blowing, the _teleferica_ is about as safe as most other modes of conveyance, but should the cars have been carelessly loaded, or should a strong wind be blowing, there is considerable danger of their coming into collision as they pa.s.s. In such an event there would be a very fair chance of the pa.s.senger spattering up the rocks a thousand feet or so below. There is still another, though a rather remote possibility: that of being sh.e.l.led while in mid-air, for certain of the _telefericas_ run within view of the Austrian positions. And sometimes the power which winds the drum gives out and the car and its pa.s.sengers are temporarily marooned in s.p.a.ce. Aviation, motor-racing, mountain-climbing, big-game hunting, all seem commonplace and tame compared with the sensation of swinging helplessly in a shallow bathtub over half a mile of emptiness while an Austrian battery endeavors to pot you with shrapnel, very much as a small boy throws stones at a scared cat clinging to a limb.
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