the most treacherous battle of world war i took place in the italian mountains

7/25/2019 The Most Treacherous Battle of World War I Took Place in the Italian Mountains

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The Most Treacherous Battle of World War I Took Place in the Italian

Mountains

Even amid the carnage of the war, the battle in the Dolomites was like nothing the world had ever

seenor has seen since

Just after dawn we slipped into the forest and hiked a steep trail to a limestone wall. A curious ladder of U-shaped steel rungs was fixed to the rock. To reach the battlefield we would trek several miles along this viaferrata, or iron road, pathways of cables and ladders that traverse some of the most stunning and otherwiseinaccessible territory in the mountains of northern taly. !e scaled the "# feet of steel rungs, stopping everyten feet or so to clip our safety tethers to metal cables that run alongside.

A half-hour in, our faces slick with sweat, we rested on an outcropping that overlooked a valley carpetedwith thick stands of pine and fir. $heep bleated in a meadow, and a shepherd called to them. !e could see the

%asubio &ssuary, a stone tower that holds the remains of ",### talian and Austrian soldiers who fought inthese mountains in !orld !ar . The previous night we had slept near the ossuary, along a country roadwhere cowbells clanged softly and lightning bugs blinked in the darkness like mu''le flashes.

Joshua (randon ga'ed at the surrounding peaks and took a swig of water. )!e*re in one of the most beautifulplaces in the world,+ he said, )and one of the most horrible.+

n the spring of , the Austrians swept down through these mountains. /ad they reached the 0enetian

plain, they could have marched on 0enice and encircled much of the talian Army, breaking what had been abloody yearlong stalemate. (ut the talians stopped them here.

Just below us a narrow road skirted the mountainside, the talians* 1oad of "2 Tunnels, a four-mile donkeypath, a third of which runs inside the mountains, built by ## workers over ten months in 3.

)A beautiful piece of engineering, but what a wasteful need,+ said 4hris $immons, the third member of our

group.

Joshua grunted. )Just to pump a bunch of men up a hill to get slaughtered.+

5or the next two hours our trail alternated between heady climbing on rock faces and mellow hiking alongthe mountain ridge. (y mid-morning the fog and low clouds had cleared, and before us lay the battlefield, itsslopes scored with trenches and stone shelters, the summits laced with tunnels where men lived like moles.!e had all served in the military, 4hris as a 6avy corpsman attached to the 7arine 4orps, and Joshua and with the Army infantry. (oth Joshua and had fought in ra8, but we had never known war like this.

&ur path 9oined the main road, and we hiked through a bucolic scene, blue skies and grassy fields, 8uiet save

for the sheep and the birds. Two young chamois scampered onto a boulder and watched us. !hat this had

once been strained the imagination: the road crowded with men and animals and wagons, the air rank withfilth and death, the din of explosions and gunfire.

)Think of how many soldiers walked the same steps we*re walking and had to be carried out,+ Joshua said.!e passed a hillside cemetery framed by a low stone wall and overgrown with tall grass and wildflowers.7ost of its occupants had reached the battlefield in July of and died over the following weeks. They atleast had been recovered; hundreds more still rest where they fell, others blown to pieces and never

recovered.

&n a steep slope not far from here, an archaeologist named 5ranco 6icolis helped excavate the remains ofthree talian soldiers found in 2#. )talian troops from the bottom of the valley were trying to con8uer thetop,+ he had told us at his office in Trento, which belonged to Austria-/ungary before the war and to talyafterward. )These soldiers climbed up to the trench, and they were waiting for dawn. They already had theirsunglasses, because they were attacking to the east.+


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The sun rose, and the Austrians spotted and killed them.

)n the official documents, the meaning is,


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&nce he understood the skill needed to travel and survive in mountains, he looked at the alpine war in talywith fresh eyes. /ow, he wondered, had the talians and Austrians lived and fought in such unforgivingterrain=

4hris, who is F, met Joshua four years ago at a rock gym in !ashington $tate, where they both live, andnow climb together often. met Joshua three years ago at an ice-climbing event in 7ontana and 4hris a year

later on a climbing trip in the 4ascade 7ountains. &ur shared military experience and love of the mountainsled us to explore these remote battlefields, like touring >ettysburg if it sat atop a 9agged peak at #,### feet.)Cou can*t get to many of these fighting positions without using the skills of a climber,+ Joshua said, )andthat allows you to have an intimacy that you might not otherwise.+

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f the talian 5ront is largely forgotten elsewhere, the war is ever-present across northern taly, etched into the

land. The mountains and valleys are lined with trenches and dotted with stone fortresses. 1usted strands ofbarbed wire sprout from the earth, crosses built from battlefield detritus rise from mountaintops, and pia''amonuments celebrate the heroes and the dead.

)!e are living together with our deep history,+ 6icolis, the researcher, told us. )The war is still in our lives.+(etween climbs to isolated battlefields, we had stopped in Trento to meet with 6icolis, who directs theArchaeological /eritage &ffice for Trentino %rovince. !e had spent weeks before our trip reading historiesof the war in taly and had brought a stack of maps and guidebooks; we knew what had happened and where,

but from 6icolis we sought more on who and why. /e is a leading voice in what he calls )grandfatherarchaeology,+ a consideration of history and memory told in family lore. /is grandfather fought for taly, hiswife*s grandfather for Austria-/ungary, a common story in this region.

6icolis, who is ", speciali'ed in prehistory until he found !orld !ar artifacts while excavating a (ron'eAge smelting site on an alpine plateau a decade ago. Ancient and modern, side by side. )This was the firststep,+ he said. ) began to think about archaeology as a discipline of the very recent past.+

(y the time he broadened his focus, many !orld !ar sites had been picked over for scrap metal orsouvenirs. The scavenging continuesBtreasure hunters recently used a helicopter to hoist a cannon from a

mountaintopBand climate change has hastened the revelation of what remains, including bodies long buriedin ice on the highest battlefields.

&n the %resena >lacier, 6icolis helped recover the bodies of two Austrian soldiers discovered in 2#2. Theyhad been buried in a crevasse, but the glacier was "# feet higher a century ago; as it shrank, the menemerged from the ice, bones inside tattered uniforms. The two skulls, both found amid blond hair, hadshrapnel holes, the metal still rattling around inside. &ne of the skulls had eyes as well. )t was as if he waslooking at me and not vice versa,+ 6icolis said. ) was thinking about their families, their mothers. >oodbye

my son. %lease come back soon. And they completely disappeared, as if they never existed. These are what

call the silent witnesses, the missing witnesses.+

At an Austrian position in a tunnel on %unta Hinke, at nearly 2,### feet, 6icolis and his colleagues chippedaway and melted the ice, finding, among other artifacts, a wooden bucket filled with sauerkraut, an unsentletter, newspaper clippings and a pile of straw overshoes, woven in Austria by 1ussian prisoners to shieldsoldiers* feet from the bitter cold. The team of historians, mountaineers and archaeologists restored the site towhat it might have been a century ago, a sort of living history for those who make the long 9ourney by cable

car and a steep hike.

)!e cannot 9ust speak and write as archaeologists,+ 6icolis said. )!e have to use other languages: narrative,poetry, dance, art.+ &n the curved white walls of the 7useum of 7odern and 4ontemporary Art in 1overeto,battlefield artifacts found by 6icolis and his colleagues were presented without explanation, a cause forcontemplation. /elmets and crampons, mess kits, hand grenades and pieces of clothing hang in vertical rowsof five items, each row set above a pair of empty straw overshoes. The effect was stark and haunting, a


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soldier deconstructed. )!hen saw the final version,+ 6icolis told us, ) said, od, this means ampresent. /ere am. This is a person.* +

!hen Joshua stood before the exhibit, he thought of his own dead, friends and soldiers who*d served underhim, each memoriali'ed at ceremonies with a battle cross: a rifle with bayonet struck in the ground mu''le-down between empty combat boots, a helmet atop the rifle butt. Artifacts over empty shoes. am present./ere am.

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The sky threatened rain, and low clouds wrapped us in a chilly ha'e. stood with Joshua on a table-si'epatch of level rock, halfway up a ,G##-foot face on Tofana di 1o'es, an enormous gray massif near theAustrian border. (elow us a wide valley stretched to a do'en more steep peaks. !e had been on the wall sixhours already, and we had another six to go.

As 4hris climbed ## feet overhead, a golf ball-si'e chunk of rock popped loose and 'inged past us with ahigh-pitched whir like whi''ing shrapnel. Joshua and traded glances and chuckled.

The Tofana di 1o'es towers over a 3##-foot-tall blade of rock called the 4astelletto, or Hittle 4astle. n "a single platoon of >ermans occupied the 4astelletto, and with a machine gun they had littered the valleywith dead talians. )The result was startling: n all directions wounded horses racing, people running fromthe forest, frightened to death,+ a soldier named >unther Hanges recalled of one attack. )The sharpshooterscaught them with their rifle scopes, and their bullets did a great 9ob. $o an talian camp bled to death at thefoot of the mountain.+ 7ore and better-armed Austrians replaced the >ermans, cutting off a ma9or potentialsupply route and muddling talian plans to push north into Austria-/ungary.

4on8uering the 4astelletto fell to the Alpini, taly*s mountain troops, known by their dashing felt hatsadorned with a black raven feather. &ne thought was that if they could climb the Tofana*s face to a smallledge hundreds of feet above the Austrians* stronghold, they could hoist up a machine gun, even a smallartillery piece, and fire down on them. (ut the routeBsteep, slick with runoff and exposed to enemy fireB

was beyond the skill of most. The assignment went to Ugo 0allepiana and >iuseppe >aspard, two Alpiniwith a history of daring climbs together. $tarting in a deep alcove, out of Austrian view, they worked up theTofana di 1o'es, wearing hemp-soled shoes that offered better traction than their hobnailed boots anddampened the sounds of their movements.

!e were climbing a route not far from theirs, with 4hris and Joshua alternating the lead. &ne would climbup about ## feet, and along the way slide special cams into cracks and nooks, then clip the protective gearto the rope with a carabiner, a metal loop with a spring-loaded arm. n other places, they clipped the rope to apiton, a steel wedge with an open circle at the end pounded into the rock by previous climbers. f theyslipped, they might drop 2# feet instead of hundreds, and the climbing rope would stretch to absorb a fall.

0allepiana and >aspard had none of this speciali'ed e8uipment. Dven the carabiner, a climbing essential

invented shortly before the war, was unknown to most soldiers. nstead, >aspard used a techni8ue that makesmy stomach 8uiver: Dach time he hammered in a piton, he untied the rope from around his waist, threaded it

through the metal loop, and retied it. And their hemp ropes could 9ust as easily snap as catch a fall.

As we neared the top of our climb, hoisted myself onto a four-foot lip and passed through a narrow chute toanother ledge. Joshua, farther ahead and out of sight, had anchored himself to a rock and pulled in my ropeas moved. 4hris was 2 feet behind me, and still on a lower level, exposed from the chest up.

stepped onto the ledge and felt it give way.

)1ockI+ shouted, and snapped my head to see my formerly solid step now broken free and cleaved in two,crashing down the chute. &ne piece smashed into the wall and stopped, but the other half, maybe "# pounds

and big as a carry-on suitcase, plowed toward 4hris. /e threw out his hands and stopped the rock with agrunt and a wince.


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scrambled down the chute, braced my feet on either side of the rock and held it in place as 4hris climbedpast me. let go, and the chunk tumbled down the mountainside. A strong whiff of o'one from the fracturedrocks hung in the air. /e made a fist and released his fingers. 6othing broken.

7y poorly placed step could have in9ured or killed him. (ut imagine the two Alpini would have thoughtour near-miss trivial. &n a later climbing mission with 0allepiana, >aspard was struck by lightning andnearly died. This climb almost killed him, too. As he strained for a handhold at a tricky section, his foot

slipped and he plummeted # feetBinto a small snowbank, remarkable luck in vertical terrain. /e climbedon, and into the Austrians* view. A sniper shot him in the arm, and Austrian artillery across the valley firedshells into the mountain overhead, showering him and 0allepiana with 9agged metal shards and shatteredrock.

$till, the two reached the narrow ledge that overlooked the Austrians, a feat that earned them taly*s second-highest medal for valor. Then, in what certainly seems an anticlimax today, the guns the talians hauled upthere proved less effective than they had hoped.

(ut the talians* main effort was even more daring and difficult, as we would soon see.

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n a region of magnificent peaks, the 4astelletto is not much to behold. The s8uat trape'oid 9uts up 3## feetto a line of sharp spires, but is dwarfed by the Tofana di 1o'es, which rises an additional ,## feet 9ustbehind it. Euring our climb high on the Tofana wall we couldn*t see the 4astelletto, but now it loomed beforeus. !e sat in an old talian trench built from limestone blocks in the 4osteana 0alley, which runs west fromthe mountain town of 4ortina d*Ampe''o. f we strained our eyes, we could see tiny holes 9ust below the4astelletto*s spineBwindows for caverns the Austrians and >ermans carved soon after taly declared war in

".

5rom these tunnels and rooms, which offered excellent protection from artillery fire, their machine gunnerscut down anyone who showed himself in this valley. )Cou can imagine why this was such a nightmare for

the talians,+ Joshua said, looking up at the fortress. n the struggle for the 4astelletto we found inmicrocosm the savagery and intimacy, the ingenuity and futility of this alpine fighting.

The talians first tried to climb it. &n a summer night in ", four Alpini started up the steep face, difficult

in daylight, surely terrifying at night. Hookouts perched on the rocky spires heard muffled sounds in thedarkness below and stepped to the edge, eyes and ears straining. Again, sounds of movement, metal scrapingagainst rock and labored breathing. A sentry leveled his rifle and, as the lead climber crested the face andpulled himself up, fired. The men were so close the mu''le flash lit the talian*s face as he pitched backward.Thumps as he crashed into the climbers below him, then screams. n the morning the soldiers looked downon four crumpled bodies sprawled on the slope far below.

The talians next tried the steep and rocky gully between the 4astelletto and the Tofana, using a morning fog

as cover. (ut the fog thinned enough to reveal specters advancing through the mist, and machine gunnersannihilated them. n the autumn of " they attacked from three sides with hundreds of menBsurely they

could overwhelm a platoon of defendersBbut the slopes only piled deeper with dead.

The Alpini reconsidered: f they couldn*t storm the 4astelletto, maybe they could attack from within.

Just around the corner from the 4astelletto and beyond the Austrians* field of view, Joshua, 4hris and scaled "# feet of metal rungs running beside the original wooden ladders, now broken and rotting. At analcove on the Tofana wall, we found the tunnel opening, six feet wide and six feet high, and the darknessswallowed our headlamp beams. The path gains hundreds of feet as it climbs through the mountain, steep

and treacherous on rock made slimy with water and mud. 5ortunately for us, it*s now a via ferrata. !eclipped our safety harnesses onto metal rods and cables fixed to the walls after the war.

The Alpini started with hammers and chisels in 5ebruary of and pecked out 9ust a few feet a day. n7arch they ac8uired two pneumatic drills driven by gas-powered compressors, hauled up the valley in pieces


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through the deep snow. 5our teams of 2" to F# men worked in continuous six-hour shifts, drilling, blastingand hauling rock, extending the tunnel by " to F# feet each day. t would eventually stretch more than ,"##feet.

The mountain shuddered with internal explosions, sometimes # or more a day, and as the ground shookbeneath them the Austrians debated the talians* intent. %erhaps they would burst through the Tofana wall andattack across the rocky saddle. &r emerge from below, another suggested. )&ne night, when we*re sleeping,

they will 9ump out of their hole and cut our throats,+ he said. The third theory, to which the men soonresigned themselves, was the most distressing: The talians would fill the tunnel with explosives.

ndeed, deep in the mountain and halfway to the 4astelletto, the tunnel split. &ne branch burrowed beneaththe Austrian positions, where an enormous bomb would be placed. The other tunnel spiraled higher, andwould open on the Tofana face, at what the talians figured would be the bomb crater*s edge. After the blast,Alpini would pour through the tunnel and across the crater. Eo'ens would descend rope ladders frompositions high on the Tofana wall, and scores more would charge up the steep gully. !ithin minutes of theblast, they would finally control the 4astelletto.

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The Austrian platoon commander, /ans $chneeberger, was years old. /e arrived on the 4astelletto afteran talian sniper killed his predecessor. ) would gladly have sent someone else,+ 4apt. 4arl von 1asch toldhim, )but you are the youngest, and you have no family.+ This was not a mission from which $chneeberger,or his men, were expected to return.

)t*s better that you know how things stand up here: They do not go well at all,+ von 1asch said during alate-night visit to the outpost. )The 4astelletto is in an impossible situation.+ 6early surrounded, under

incessant artillery bombardment and sniper fire, with too few men and food running low. Throughout thevalley, the talians outnumbered the Austrians two to one; around the 4astelletto it was perhaps # or 2# toone. )f you do not die from hunger or cold,+ von 1asch said, )then someday soon you will be blown into theair.+ Cet $chneeberger and his few men played a strategic role: (y tying up hundreds of talians, they could

ease pressure elsewhere on the front.

)The 4astelletto must be held. t will be held to the death,+ von 1asch told him. )Cou must stay up here.+

n June, $chneeberger led a patrol onto the face of the Tofana di 1o'es to knock out an talian fightingposition and, if possible, to sabotage the tunneling operation. After precarious climbing, he pulled himselfonto a narrow lip, pitched an Alpini over the edge and stormed into an outpost on the cliffside, where atrapdoor led to talian positions below. /is trusted sergeant, Teschner, nodded at the floor and smiled. /ecould hear Alpini climbing up rope ladders to attack.

A few days earlier, a half-do'en Austrians standing guard on the Tofana wall had started chatting with nearbyAlpini, which led to a night of shared wine. Teschner did not share this affinity for the Alpini. &ne $unday

morning, when singing echoed off the rock walls from the talians holding 7ass below, he had rolled heavyspherical bombs down the gully between the 4astelletto and the Tofana to interrupt the service.

6ow in the small shack he drew his bayonet, threw open the trapdoor and shouted, )!elcome to heaven,dogsI+ as he sliced through the rope ladders. The Alpini screamed, and Teschner laughed and slapped histhigh.

The attack earned $chneeberger Austria-/ungary*s highest medal for bravery, but he and his men learnednothing new about the tunneling, or how to stop it. (etween daily skirmishes with talian sentries, theypondered everything they would missBa woman*s love, adventures in far-off lands, even lying bare-chested

in the sun atop the 4astelletto and daydreaming about a life after the war. Cet the explosions provided an oddcomfort: As long as the talians drilled and blasted, the mine wasn*t finished.

Then the Austrians intercepted a transmission: )The tunnel is ready. Dverything is perfect.+


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ra8 a suicide car bomber rammed into his outpost as he slept, and the blast threw him from his bed, 9ust as ithad $chneeberger. )(ut that was nowhere near the violence and landscape-altering force of this explosion,+he said.

!e scrambled down a steep gravel slope and onto a wide snowfield at the crater*s bottom. The blast hadpulveri'ed enough mountain to fill a thousand dump trucks and tossed boulders across the valley. t killed 2#Austrians asleep in a shack above the mine and buried the machine guns and mortars.

t spared $chneeberger and a handful of his men. They scrounged a do'en rifles, F# bullets and a fewgrenades, and from the crater*s edge and the intact outposts, started picking off talians again.

)magine losing half your platoon instantly and having that will to push on and defend what you*ve got,+Joshua said. )Just a few men holding off an entire battalion trying to assault up through here. t*s madness.+

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felt a strange pulse of anticipation as we climbed out of the crater and onto the 4astelletto. At last, thebattle*s culmination. 4hris disappeared in the 9umble of rock above us. A few minutes later he let out a happy

yelp: /e*d found an entrance to the Austrian positions.

!e ducked our heads and stepped into a cavern that ran ## feet through the 4astelletto*s narrow spine.!ater dripped from the ceiling and pooled in icy puddles. $mall rooms branched off the main tunnel, somewith old wooden bunks. !indows looked out on the valley far below and peaks in the distance.

$uch beauty was hard to reconcile with what happened a century ago. 4hris had pondered this oftenthroughout the week. )Cou 9ust stop and appreciate where you*re at for the moment,+ he said. )And wonder

if they had those moments, too. &r if it was all terror, all the time.+ Dmotion choked his voice. )!hen welook across it*s green and verdant. (ut when they were there, it was barbed wire and trenches and artilleryshells screaming around. Eid they get to have a moment of peace=+

Joshua felt himself pulled deeply into the combatants* world, and this startled him. ) have more in commonwith these Austrians and talians who are buried under my feet than do with a lot of contemporary society,+he said. )There*s this bond of being a soldier and going through combat,+ he said. )The hardship. The fear.Cou*re 9ust fighting for survival, or fighting for the people around you, and that transcends time.+

The Austrians* and talians* losses and gains in these mountains made little difference. The alpine war was asideshow to the fighting on the son'o, which was a sideshow to the !estern and Dastern 5ronts. (ut for thesoldier, of course, all that matters is the patch of ground that must be taken or held, and whether he lives ordies in doing that.

The day after the blast, the talians hoisted machine guns onto the Tofana and raked the 4astelletto, killingmore Austrians. The rest scurried into the tunnels where we now sat. $chneeberger scribbled a note on his

situationBFF dead, position nearly destroyed, reinforcements badly neededBand handed it to Hatschneider.)Cou only die once,+ the platoon*s old man said, then crossed himself and sprinted down the wide scree

slope between the 4astelletto and the Tofana, chased by machine gun bullets. /e ran across the valley,delivered the note to 4aptain von 1aschBand dropped dead from the effort.1einforcements came that night, and $chneeberger marched his few surviving men back to the Austrianlines. The talians charged through the crater a few hours later, lobbed tear gas into the tunnels and capturedthe southern end of the 4astelletto and most of the relief platoon. A few Austrians held the northern end forseveral days, then withdrew.n the Austrian camp, $chneeberger reported to von 1asch, who stood at his window with stooped shouldersand wet eyes, hands clasped behind his back.

)t was very hard=+ he asked.

)$ir,+ $chneeberger said.)%oor, poor boy.+

the most treacherous battle of world war i took place in the italian mountains

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