Part 12 (1/2)
It was impossible to get telephonic communication with the Battery from Cima Echar, so we could not, as we had hoped, do from there some registrations on wire and trench junctions on Sisemol, which were among our allotted targets. We therefore went back to Costalunga, where the Italian Field and Mountain Batteries along the crest were firing away with great vigour, and after an excellent lunch, which had been hospitably prepared for us, went down again into the valley and walked several miles further west to Monte Tondo.
I noticed at lunch, as on several other occasions lately, a change in the Italian att.i.tude to good weather. They no longer hoped that it would break and so prevent further Austrian offensives. They hoped it would continue and so permit offensives of their own. Their morale was rapidly rising. We had, indeed, received the previous day the artillery portion of an elaborate offensive plan, but no date had yet been fixed for it.
We climbed up Monte Tondo and down the other side and made our way to an O.P. in a front line trench. For fifty yards of the way there was a break in the trench line and we had to run across the open through knee-deep snow. But the Austrians didn't fire. From this O.P. we had again a fine view of Asiago and the country round it. After delays connected with the telephone, we succeeded in registering two targets.
While we were firing, all the woods and houses grew rosy in the sunset.
It was dark when we finished. We went back with a Major of the Pisa Brigade, a quiet, spare little man, of great energy and exhausting speed of movement. He gave us coffee and showed us maps at his Brigade Headquarters and then sent us on to the Regimental Headquarters, further down the hill, where they gave us rum punch, believing, as all Italians do, that an Englishman is never happy unless he is drinking alcohol. We got back to the Battery in the moonlight.
On January 27th the long expected action began, and our Brigade lost one of its best officers, who was. .h.i.t in the head in the front line O.P. on Monte Tondo. His steel helmet and the skill of Italian doctors just saved his life, but he was permanently out of the war. The Italians put their best doctors right forward in the advanced dressing stations. All that day we bombarded enemy Batteries and cross roads and barbed wire.
Next morning the Italian Infantry carried Col Valbella and Col d'Echele by a.s.sault. The day after they took also Col del Rosso, and beat back very heavy counter-attacks. The Sa.s.sari Brigade and a Brigade of Bersaglieri specially distinguished themselves. It was an important and useful success. It considerably improved our line between the Asiago Plateau and Val Brenta, it deprived the enemy of the secure use of the Val Frenzela, and it was the first offensive operation of any importance undertaken by the Italians since the great retreat. Its success went to prove that the Italian Army had been effectively reorganised, and that its morale was again high.
From my sleeping hut and from the Battery Command Post I used to hear for days afterwards the Italian Infantry singing in great choruses, far into the night. There was triumph in their songs, and there was ribaldry and there was longing. I thought I knew what dreams were in their hearts, and, if I was right, those dreams were also mine.
The advance left us a long way behind the new front line, and we expected to move our guns forward; indeed we selected and asked to be allowed to occupy a very good position behind Montagna Nuova. But this was not allowed, and we stayed where we were for another six weeks. It snowed a great deal and we fired very little. But we had plenty to do to keep pathways dug between the guns and the huts; often we had to clear these afresh every hour.
During this time I made the acquaintance of several interesting Italians and Frenchmen. Among these was Colonel Bucci, who had been attached the year before to the Staff of one of the British Armies in France. He was now in command of a Regiment of Field Artillery, including a group of Batteries known as the Garibaldian Batteries, which were always placed at their own request in the most forward positions. I heard that, when he took over this command, he sent for all his officers and said, ”Now here we are, some old men and some young men and two or three boys, and we are all here for the same purpose and I hope we shall all be always the best of good friends. But, as a matter of convenience, someone has got to be in command of the others, and I have been chosen because I am the oldest.”
He used to tell an amusing story of an encounter he had in France with a British officer from one of the Dominions, who walked into his bedroom late one night, after a liberal consumption of liquor, and said he ”wanted the fire” and asked if Bucci was ”that Portuguese.” Bucci, having persuasively but vainly asked him to go away, got out of bed and genially taking him by the shoulders,--he is a powerful man,--ran him out into the pa.s.sage. Whereat the British officer, surprised and protesting, said, ”You have no business to treat me like that. Don't you see that I am a Major and have three decorations?” pointing to his left breast. ”Yes,” said Bucci, ”and I am a Colonel, and I have some decorations too, but I don't wear them on my nighty, and I want to go to sleep.”
He had been in Gorizia before Caporetto, and had kept, as a melancholy souvenir, the maps showing the line of his own Regiment's retreat. ”I call it the Via Crucis,” he said. ”I want to go back. I want to see an advance across the Piave with Cavalry and Field Artillery. I want to advance at the gallop. I have applied to be sent down there.” He was a natural leader of men, and I felt that I would willingly follow him anywhere.
We saw a good deal too of the officers of a French Observation Balloon.
One of their officers was a tall man, promoted from the ranks, with big upturned moustaches, a delightful smile and twinkling eyes. He smoked more cigars than any man I have ever met. He smoked them, like some men smoke cigarettes, one after another all the evening, with no interval between. He came from Ma.r.s.eilles. Another was from Auvergne, always most elegantly dressed. He never smoked at all, for he was very proud of his white teeth. He spoke Italian and German, but no English. A third was a little blonde Alsatian business man. He was usually rather quiet, but one evening I saw him roused, when someone had said something that displeased him about Alsace. Then he showed us that he could be eloquent when he chose.
They are very implacable, these Frenchmen. Undoubtedly Clemenceau spoke in their name, when he said, ”my war aim is victory.” Another Frenchman said to me once, ”when Clemenceau is speaking, no one dares to interrupt, for they know it is the voice of the soldier at the Front speaking.” And one can scarcely wonder that they are implacable. In Alsace-Lorraine and in the occupied territories of Northern France, they say that it is known with complete certainty that the daughters and wives and widows of many French officers and men have been compelled to take up their abode in brothels, and there to await at all hours of the day and night the visits of their country's enemies. Is it surprising that certain French Regiments, knowing these things, never take prisoners? And can one fail to admire, even if one does not unconditionally agree with, the soldier who would fight on and on, until everyone has been killed, rather than accept anything less than a complete victory?
It is all but impossible for a foreigner to measure the spiritual effects upon a proudly and self-consciously civilised Frenchman of these unpardonable, brain-rending, heart-stabbing provocations. But the statesman at home who, drawing good pay and living in comfort far behind the Front, is ever ready to declare that his country ”shall continue to bleed in her glory” is a less admirable spectacle. It is his business to conceive some subtler and more comprehensive war aim than bare military victory, and to make sure that, when he has died safely in his bed and been forgotten, other men shall not have to do over again the work which he complacently bungled. A fighting soldier, who risks his life daily, may speak brave words, which are indecent on the lips of an _imboscato_, whether military or civilian.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE ASIAGO PLATEAU
About the middle of March the British Divisions moved up from the Montello to the Asiago Plateau, and all the British Heavy Artillery was concentrated in the Asiago sector. We, therefore, moved six miles to the west and found ourselves in support of British, and no longer of Italian, Infantry. Our Brigade ceased to be a ”trench-punching” and became a ”counter-battery” Brigade. Most of our work in future was to be in close co-operation with our own Air Force.
My Battery was destined to remain here, with two short interludes, for seven months. It was in many ways a very interesting sector. The British held the line between the Italians on their left and the French on their right. To the right of the French were more Italians. The move had amusing features. One compared the demeanour of the lorry drivers of different nationalities. The scared faces of some of the British the first time they had to come up the hundred odd corkscrew turns on the mountain roads, taking sidelong glances at bird's eye views of distant towns and rivers on the plain below, were rather comical. Even the self-consciously efficient and outwardly imperturbable French stuck like limpets to the centre of the road, and would not give an inch to Staff cars, hooting their guts out behind them. The Italian drivers, on the other hand, accustomed to the mountains, dashed round sharp corners at full speed, avoiding innumerable collisions by a fraction of an inch, terrifying and infuriating their more cautious Allies. But I only once saw a serious collision here in the course of many months.
The Asiago Plateau is some eight miles long from west to east, with an average breadth of two to three miles from north to south. On it lie a number of villages and small towns, of which the largest is Asiago itself, which lies at the eastern end of the Plateau and before the war had a population of about 8000. Asiago was the terminus of a light railway, running down the mountains to Schio. The chief occupation of the inhabitants of the Plateau had been wood-cutting and pasture. In Asiago were several sawmills and a military barracks. Army manoeuvres used often to take place in this area, which gave special opportunities for the combined practice of mountain fighting and operations on the flat. It was moreover within seven miles of the old Austrian frontier.
Asiago was hardly known before the war to foreign tourists, but many Italians used to visit it, especially for winter sports.
Across the Plateau from north to south ran the Val d'a.s.sa, which near the southern edge, having become only a narrow gulley, turned away westwards, the a.s.sa stream flowing finally into the river Astico. The Ghelpac stream, which flowed through the town of Asiago, joined the a.s.sa at its western turn. Apart from these two streams the Plateau was not well watered. In summer, when the snows had melted, water was even scarcer on the surrounding mountains. All our drinking water had to be pumped up through pipes from the plain.
The Plateau was bounded at its eastern end by Monte Sisemol, which stands at the head of the Val Frenzela, which, in turn, runs eastward into the Val Brenta near the little town of Valstagna. Sisemol was of no great height and was not precipitous. It had a rounded brown top, when the snow uncovered it. But it was a maze of wire and trenches, and a very strong point militarily. There had been very bitter fighting for its possession last November and it had remained in Austrian hands.
At the western end the Plateau was bounded by the descent to the Val d'Astico. On the northern side of the Plateau rose a formidable mountain range, the chief heights of which, from west to east, were Monte Campolungo, Monte Erio, Monte Mosciagh and Monte Longara. This range was thickly wooded with pines, among which our guns did great damage. I always more regretted the destruction of trees than of uninhabited houses, for the latter can be the more quickly replaced. This range was pierced by only four valleys, through each of which ran roads vital to the Austrian system of communications, the Val Campomulo, the Val di Nos, the Val d'a.s.sa and the Val di Martello. The Austrians had also a few roads over the top of the mountains, but these were less good and less convenient.
Along the southern side of the Plateau ran another ridge, less mountainous than the ridge to the north, and completely in our possession. This ridge also was thickly wooded, and pierced by only a few valleys and roads. The road we came to know best was the continuation of the wonderful road up from the plain, through Granezza to the cross-roads at Pria dell' Acqua, and on through the Baerenthal Valley to San Sisto. Thence it led through the front line trenches into the town of Asiago itself. At Pria dell' Acqua, a most misleading name, where there was no water, but only a collection of wooden huts, another road branched off westwards, running parallel to the front line, behind the southern ridge of the Plateau.
The Italian Engineers had created a magnificent network of roads in this sector of the Front. Before the war there had been only one road into Asiago from the plain. Now there were half a dozen, all broad and with a fine surface, capable of taking any traffic. And, in addition, there were many transverse roads, equally good, joining up and cutting across the main routes at convenient points.
When the British troops took over this sector in March, the whole Plateau, properly so called, was in Austrian hands. It had been taken last November in the mountain offensive which followed Caporetto. At one perilous moment the Austrians had held San Sisto and their patrols had pa.s.sed Pria dell' Acqua, but they had been thrown back by Italian counter-attacks to the line they now held. Our front line ran along the southern edge of the Plateau, and, on the right, along the lower slopes of the southern ridge, just inside the pine woods. On the left, further west, it ran mostly on the flat and more in the open. Where the Val d'a.s.sa turned west, our front line ran on one side of the shallow gulley and the Austrian on the other. The Austrian front line was completely in the open. The first houses of Asiago were only a few hundred yards behind it.
From the defensive point of view our line was very strong, and the trenches, particularly at the eastern end, very good, deeply blasted in the rock. The wooded ridge, running close behind our front line all the way, completely hid from the enemy all movement in our rear. He could get no observation here except by aircraft. Even movements in our front line, owing to the trees, were largely invisible at a distance, and, owing to the lie of the ground, large parts of No Man's Land could be seen from our own trenches, but from nowhere in the enemy's lines, with the result that we were able to post machine guns, trench mortars and even, for a short time, a field battery there, without being detected, until these weapons had served their immediate purpose. Our systems of transport, supply and reliefs of the troops in the line could, therefore, be carried out at any hour of the day or night with almost complete disregard of the enemy. His intermittent sh.e.l.ling of the roads was perfectly blind and haphazard and seldom did us any damage.