“The worst thing about it all was the fact that it had to be done under the incessant fire of the Austrian artillery. I provided for the men as best I could by putting them in galleries, where they were at least able to get their rest in comparative safety. My own headquarters were in a little shed in the lee of a big rock. When the enemy finally found out what we were up to they celebrated their discovery by a steady bombardment which lasted for fourteen days without interruption. During a certain forty-two hours of that fortnight there was, by actual count, an average of thirty-eight shells a minute exploding on our little position. With all the protection it was possible to provide, the strain became such that I found it advisable to change the battalion holding our portion of the summit every week. Did I have any respite myself? Well, hardly; or, rather, not until I had to.
“We were constantly confronted with new and perplexing problems—things which no one had ever been called upon to solve before—most of them in connection with transportation. How we contrived to surmount one of these I shall never forget. The Austrians had performed a brave and audacious feat in emplacing one of their batteries at a certain point, the fire from which threatened to make our position absolutely untenable. The location of this battery was so cunningly chosen that not a single one of our guns could reach it, and yet we had to silence it—and for good—if we were going to go on with our work. The only point from which we could fire upon these destructive guns was so exposed that any artillery we might be able to mount there could only count on the shortest shrift under the fire of the hundred or more ‘heavies’ that the Austrians would be able to concentrate upon it. And yet (I figured), well employed, these few minutes might prove enough to do the work in. As there was no other alternative, I decided to chance it.
“And then there arose another difficulty. The smallest gun that would stand a chance of doing the job cut out for it weighed 120 kilos—about 260 pounds; this just for the gun alone, with all detachable parts removed. But the point where the gun was to be mounted was so exposed that there was no chance of rigging up a cable-way, while the incline was so steep and rough that it was out of the question trying to drag it up with ropes. Just as we were on the verge of giving up in despair, one of the Alpini—a man of Herculean frame who had made his living in peace-time by breaking chains on his chest and performing other feats of strength—came and suggested that he be allowed to carry the gun up on his shoulder. Grasping at a straw, I let him indulge in a few ‘practice manœuvres’; but these only showed that while the young Samson could shoulder and trot off with the gun without great effort, the task of lifting himself and his burden from foothold to foothold in the crumbling rock of the seventy degree slope was too much for him.
“But out of this failure there came a new idea. Why not let my strong man simply support the weight of the gun on his shoulder—acting as a sort of ambulant gun-carriage, so to speak—while a line of men pulled him along with a rope? We rigged up a harness to equalise the pull on the broad back, and, with the aid of sixteen ordinary men, the feat was accomplished without a hitch. I am sorry to say, however, that poor Samson was laid up for a spell with racked muscles.
“The gun—with the necessary parts and munition—was taken up in the night, and at daybreak it was set up and ready for action. It fired just forty shots before the Austrian ‘heavies’ blew it—and all but one or two of its brave crew—to pieces with a rain of high-explosive. But it had done its work, and done it well. The sacrifice was not in vain. The troublesome Austrian battery was put so completely out of action that the enemy never thought it worth while to re-emplace it.
“That is just a sample of the fantastic things we were doing all of the three months that we drove the tunnel under the summit of the Col di Lana. The last few weeks were further enlivened by the knowledge that the Austrians were countermining against us. Once they drove so near that we could feel the jar of their drills, but they exploded their mine just a few metres short of where it would have upset us for good and all. All the time work went on until, on April 17, the mine was finished, charged, and ‘tamped.’ That night, while every gun we could bring to bear rained shell upon the Austrian position, it was exploded. A crater 150 feet in diameter and sixty feet deep engulfed the ridge the enemy had occupied, and this our waiting Alpini rushed and firmly held. Feeble Austrian counter-attacks were easily repulsed, and the Col di Lana was at last completely in Italian hands.”
Colonel Garibaldi leaned back in his chair and gazed thoughtfully at the cracks in the ceiling as one whose tale is finished. The end had come rather abruptly, I thought, and I was inclined to press for further details.
“It must have been a grand sight,” I ventured—“that mountain-top blowing off into the air with hundreds of shells bursting about it. Where were you at the great moment?”
The grave face grew a shade graver, and a wistful smile softened the lines of the firm mouth.
“Not in sight of the Col di Lana, I am sorry to say,” was the reply. “My health broke down a fortnight before the end, and another officer was in command at the climax. It was one of the greatest disappointments of my life. I would have given my right hand to have been the first man into that crater. But never mind,” he concluded, rising and squaring his broad shoulders; “bigger things than the Col di Lana are ahead before this war is over, and I feel that I am not going to miss any more of them. It’s the Garibaldi way, you know, to be in at the death.”