The day following the capture of Monte San Gabriele, September 4, 1917, the battle on the Julian front was violently renewed. On the Bainsizza Plateau the Italians obtained new advantages, capturing an important position southwest of Corogio.
On the Carso Plateau the Austrians, after most violent bombardment, launched infantry forces against the Italian positions from Castagnevizza to the sea. On the northern section of the line, between Castagnevizza and Korite, the attack, after varying fortunes, was repulsed. In the center, between Korite and Celle, the Italian troops resisted seven furious assaults and maintained their positions.
To the south, between the Brestovizza Valley and the sea, the Austrians were able to gain an initial success between Hill 146, to the northeast of Flondar and the railway tunnel northeast of Lokavac, where the Italians were compelled to withdraw temporarily from a few advanced positions. In the afternoon, by energetic counterattacks, the Italian line was reestablished, with the capture of 402 prisoners, including fourteen officers.
Two hundred and sixty-one Italian airplanes participated in the battle, bombing the Austrian troops and their communication lines.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE STRUGGLE ON THE ISONZO FRONT
Immense quantities of booty had been captured by this time by the Italians as a result of their successful offensive movement. On the Bainsizza Plateau, near Santo Spirito and Laska, whole convoys of arms and munitions were abandoned by the Austrians in such haste that there was no time to destroy them. At one point thousands of boxes of projectiles, hand grenades, rockets, shoes, rifles, and helmets were strewn everywhere.
Mule paths and the adjacent side hills were littered with unexploded projectiles which the Austrians had thrown away, together with daggers, swords, and iron-studded maces used for dispatching the wounded. On Hill 652 the Italians captured three 105-millimeter cannon. Two of them were perfectly serviceable, and the Italians turned them on their former owners.
In an armored dugout near Ravena the Italians discovered the entire equipment of an Austrian staff of brigade. The extraordinary variety of objects found testified to the haste of the retreat. It included electric lights, official documents, toilet articles, kitchen utensils, ventilators, and even love letters. Ravena was the Austrian center of supplies for engineer troops, and near by were found stores of picks, shovels, hoes and wire cutters, entire outfits of electric equipments, miles of steel rails, and innumerable rolls of barbed wire.
During the next few days the fighting was chiefly done by the artillery on both the Bainsizza and the Carso Plateaus. The Austrians attempted a number of counterattacks, all of which, however, fell short of the desired results. During the period, devoted by the Italians to the consolidation of the newly conquered territory, they found time to count their prisoners and to list their booty. The result was the announcement that during the actual offensive there had been captured 30,671 Austrians, including 858 officers, and that the Austrians also had lost: 145 guns, including about eighty of medium caliber, ninety-four trench mortars and bomb throwers, 322 machine guns, 11,196 rifles.