As we advanced further into this impressive zone of military activity you realized that all your preconceived notions of mountain warfare were upset.
Along the big military highway constructed by Napoleon ([see page 45])
To face page 74
Instead of the fighting taking place in the valleys and passes as one would have expected, the positions and even the trenches were frequently on the very summits of what one would have taken to be almost inaccessible peaks and crags, and in some places actually above the snow-line.
The whole region was positively alive with warlike energy, and what was only a few months previously a desolate and uninhabited area, had been transformed into a vast military colony, so to speak.
I was much struck with the pride of both officers and men in their work, and the evident pleasure it gave them to shew us everything, though, of course, our salvo condotti acted as open sesame everywhere. Visitors, still less pressmen, are not always welcome, especially when they turn up unexpectedly as we did.
Not the least astonishing feature of all these operations to my mind was the fact that men of branches of the service one does not usually associate with “special” work were working at it as though to the manner born.
The Bersaglieri, for instance, who are men from the plains, were doing sappers’ jobs amongst the rocks, or stationed high up on the mountains where you would have only expected to find Alpini; but they were all, I was told, gradually getting accustomed to their unaccustomed work, and often developing undreamed of capabilities, while their cheerfulness under the circumstances was always astounding, even to their own officers.
“Grousing” appears to be an unknown quantity in the Italian Army. I had a little chat with a sergeant of a Territorial regiment. He spoke French fluently, and told me he had lived several years in Paris. He was now in charge of a small detachment in a particularly exposed spot.