Six months on the Italian front

by Julius M. Price

There was not a trace of vegetation, and one could see that the surface had been literally ground to powder by high explosives. Shells were still bursting over it, but they appeared to raise dust rather than soil, so friable had it become.

In the long, straggling and partially destroyed village of Grafenberg through which we now wandered, there were some Italian soldiers, but so few that one might have wondered why they had been left there at all. A tell-tale odour on all sides conveyed in all probability one of the reasons.

The dead were lying about everywhere and in all sorts of odd places, in the gutters alongside the road, just inside garden gates, anywhere they had happened to fall. There was a ghastly object seated in quite a life-like position in a doorway, with a supply of hand-grenades by its side. Grafenberg was distinctly not a place to linger in.

Meanwhile we were walking parallel with the Isonzo, which was only a hundred yards or so away; and the Austrians, though in full rout, were keeping up a terrific flanking fire with their heavy artillery, placed on Monte Santo and Monte San Gabriele with the idea undoubtedly of destroying the bridges. Two were already wrecked beyond immediate repair, one of the arches of the magnificent railway viaduct had been blown up, and the long wooden structure just above Grafenberg had been rendered useless for the moment.

There were two others still intact: an iron bridge the artillery and cavalry were crossing by and a small foot-bridge we were making for. To demolish these, and so further delay the Italian advance, was now the object of the Austrians. To effect this they were sending over projectiles of the biggest calibre. The terrifying noise of the explosion of these enormous shells would have sufficed to demoralise most troops.

At last we came to a pathway leading to the small bridge we hoped to cross by. It was a pretty and well-wooded spot, and the trees had not been much damaged so far. A regiment of infantry was waiting its turn to make a dash forward. We learned that the bridge had been much damaged in the early morning, but had been repaired under fire and in record time by the engineers.

A friend of mine, Lieutenant Ugo Oyetti (the well-known art critic in civil life), did some plucky work on this occasion, for which he received a well-deserved military medal a few days later.

Whilst the repairs were being carried out, two infantry regiments, the 11th and 12th, forded and swam across the river; a remarkable feat, as it is here as wide as the Thames at Richmond, though it is broken up with gravel islets in many places. It is frequently ten feet deep, and the current is very strong and treacherous.

We pushed our way through the soldiers who filled the roadway, and got to the bridge, which was a sort of temporary wooden structure built on trestles known in German military parlance, I am told, as a “behielfs brücken,” and evidently constructed to connect the city with Podgora.

A continuous rain of shells was coming over and bursting along the bank or in the river, and we looked like being in for a hot time. At the commencement of the bridge two carabinieri stood on guard as placidly as if everything were quiet and peaceful. There was no objection to our crossing, but we were told we must go singly and run the whole way. The screech of the projectiles passing overhead, and the terrific report of explosions close by, made it a decidedly exciting “spurt,” and I, for one, was not sorry when I got across.