HOW THEY KILLED "THE MAN WHO COULD NOT DIE"
Told by a Soldier Under General Cantore
I—STORY OF THE ITALIAN ALPINI
They said he could not die. The men who fought under him in Tripoli, the men who stood beside him in the bloody capture of Ala, looked on Antonio Cantore with almost superstitious awe. For he ought to have been killed a hundred times. A hundred times he came back, smiling quietly behind his spectacles, out of perils through which other men could not live. So the legend grew up among the Italian Alpini that their commander led a charmed life; they said he had the camicia della madonna and that bullets could not harm him. Death got him at last, but those boys of his—as he used to call his soldiers—will not believe it, even though they carved his tomb out of the rock and heaped the earth over his body.
Gen. Cantore was not a bit like a hero, as one pictures heroes. One might have taken him for a schoolmaster, a clerk in the post office, a retired commercial traveller. He was not tall, nor was his bearing martial. His kind blue eyes looked mildly through his round spectacles. His mouth laughed under his white mustache. He wore a black mackintosh and walked with his head a little on one side and his hands in his pockets. But he was not afraid. Neither was he foolhardy. He neither feared nor courted death; he merely ignored it. He had the sublime courage of the man who knows the danger so well that he will let no one else face it, but will brave it all alone.
The veterans of the Tripoli campaign talked in this wise to the young recruits of the Alpini:
"Look at that old man, with his kind face and gentle soul. He is the father of the Alpini. He has seen them born and has brought them up, all of them. They are his sons, his boys. With a word he has moulded them according to his own heart of bronze; with a smile he has forged them a heart of steel. You don't know him? Then you were not in Libya! But go to him, say 'Good morning, General!' and tell him your name. Ten years from now he will remember the name. And some night when you are on outpost duty and the hail of bullets is most furious, and the miaowing of the shells is maddest, when the air seems a-quiver with death, and the darkness is shot through with arrows and flashes, and the silence is shattered with bangs and explosions and roars, if your heart trembles a moment as you think of your little ones at home and the bells of the far-away village church ringing the Angelus, you will see the old man, the General, Antonio Cantore, rise suddenly before you, place himself between you and the enemy, shield you with his body.
"For, you see, Antonio Cantore is everywhere and always ahead of everybody. When you leap first into an enemy's trench, eyes aflame, hands clawing, bayonet between your teeth, look ahead from the trench in which you are battling, and between it and the second line of trenches from which the enemy is still bombarding you with rapid-fire guns you will see a kind old man, his eyes twinkling behind his spectacles, his mouth smiling under its white mustaches, his hands in his pockets, his head slightly bent and inclined to one side. It will be Antonio Cantore.
"For that old man, you see, is always everywhere and ahead of everybody. And he cannot die. We have seen him return unscathed from places where hundreds and hundreds have been killed. We have seen him march without flinching right up to the cannon and the mitrailleuse. Shells and bullets fall before him; they are afraid of his smile!"
II—"MY GOD! A GENERAL!"
Thus the lengend grew and spread from the Adige to Leno, from the Altissimo to Coni Zugna, from Pasubio to the Col Santo, wherever the Alpini were engaged.
And every hardy mountaineer who was called to the colors cheered his loved ones on parting with the words: "Never fear! I am going to join Antonio Cantore's brigade."
One night on the slopes of Monte Campo, Gen. Cantore was on reconnoitring patrol. For he was his own scout. Most commanders ask for two or three volunteers for a night reconnaissance. This general, instead, would say: "Are there two men who would like to come with me to-night and inspect the enemy's barbed wire entanglements?" And all the men would want to go. He would pick out two, saying to the others: "No, no, boys; I need only two of you. Thank you, just the same. Your time will come." To the chosen ones it was like a promotion or receiving a medal of honor.
And so, one night he was out scouting with only his sergeant as company. "His" sergeant was Sergt. Cillario, a veteran of Libya, who had stayed in the army just to be with Antonio Cantore, whom he called "my" general. They had climbed a difficult mule-path toward the Austrian trenches, the general leading, the sergeant following in silence.
At last the general told the sergeant to stop, and he went on alone. When he would not permit a man to risk his life, that man did as he was told. Only on such occasions did Gen. Cantore make his rank felt. He no longer said: "Let us go, my boy," but "Sergeant, stay there." His boys were not saints, but they obeyed. They had to, for otherwise he—raised his voice and smiled no more!
So that night, as on many others, he went on alone. And when his hands touched the first barbed wire the sentries of the Austrian trenches fired at him. This did not disconcert him. He went on with his hands in his pockets, his head on one side, stooping to examine through his spectacles the entanglements by the light of flashes from the enemy's guns. He was ten yards from the Austrian trench, a single dark shadow advancing like fate through the volleys, an invulnerable shadow seeking out the interstices of the barbed wire entanglements to find spaces through which men might pass, scrutinizing them with the calm interest of a botanist examining a garden.
A Tryolean kaiserjaeger, who has been taking careful aim at him, saw the insignia of his rank.
"My God! a General!" he exclaimed, and let his rifle fall.
III—TALES OF GENERAL CANTORE
When the town of Ala was carried by assault last June he was the first to enter it. He went through the hail of bullets with the same calmness as he would have gone through a rainstorm, and as unscathed.
When the Austrians fled a group of about one hundred and fifty took refuge in the Cafe 25 Maggio in the piazza then called Moses, and in the Villa Brazil, almost opposite, determined to resist to the last in order to cover the retreat. Gen. Cantore said the lieutenant in command of the nearest platoon, "Come on." They went to the door of the cafe. "Make them open," he said, "but leave your pistol. They won't fire." But they did, sending a shower of bullets from the windows. Neither of the Italians was hit.
"They won't open," said the lieutenant.
"I'll make them," said Cantore. He approached the door, armed only with his riding whip. Another volley greeted him, and shots from the windows of the Villa Brazil. He was unwounded, but he lost his calm as he cried:
"Charge, boys, charge! Burst the place open and take them all prisoners!"
The fight lasted a quarter of an hour. The walls, windows and door of the cafe were shot full of holes; the Villa Brazil was turned into a ruin. The few Austrians left alive were made prisoners.
That street is now the Piazza Antonio Cantore.
When the fight was over Gen. Cantore and a few other officers sat down to dine in the Albergo di Ala. There were three girls from Roverto who had taken refuge there. They were so pretty that they were called the "three graces." They waited on the diners. Gen. Cantore chatted with them, joking one especially, whose name was Pina, calling her affectionately by pet names—Pinotta, Pinella, Pinina, Pignotta, Pignina—laughing like a big boy. When he rose from dinner he took her chin in his hand and said:
"Poor little Pina, far away from thy home! But we shall soon be at Roverto, and thou wilt come to Roverto right after us. Then thou wilt be happy again, eh?"
But Antonio Cantore was never to see Roverto. A man cannot snub Death indefinitely. Death had to get even with Cantore, or remain forever discredited. One day he had his revenge.
It was on July 20. The Alpini, under Gen. Cantore, were in the Ampazzano valley, trying to dislodge the Austrians from the slopes of the three mountains called Tofana di Rozzes, Tofana di Mezzo and Tofana di Dentro, whence they were able to fire on Cortina and other towns. Between the Tofana di Rozzes and the Tofana di Mezzo was a refuge hut for chamois hunters from which Austrian sharpshooters picked off the Italian soldiers at their leisure. The refuge hut had been bombarded, but the effect was doubtful.
At 12.30 o'clock Gen. Cantore and Capt. Argenteri started to explore the place. They reached the advanced trenches by 5.15 o'clock. The Austrians were still firing from the hidden hut. Cantore and the Captain tried to locate the precise spot, but could not.
"Captain, we will go up higher and look," said the General. They climbed up the slope and hid behind some rocks. As they peeped over these the sun shone straight in Cantore's face.
"I cannot see well," he called to the Captain. Then he stood up and was placing his field-glasses to his eyes when three shots rang out. Cantore fell, with two bullets in his forehead. He died instantly.
"His" sergeant, veteran of many battles, grown callous by the sight and suffering, asked a month's leave of absence to go away and mourn for his general. In Verona he walked about like a spectre, his face ghastly and set. They asked, "How did the General die?" And Cillario answered, "Antonio Cantore is not dead. Antonio Cantore could not die." (Told in the New York World.)