With British Guns in Italy - Hugh Dalton
WITH BRITISH GUNS IN ITALY
A TRIBUTE TO ITALIAN ACHIEVEMENT
BY
HUGH DALTON
SOMETIME LIEUTENANT IN THE ROYAL GARRISON ARTILLERY
WITH 12 ILLUSTRATIONS AND 3 MAPS
_First Published in 1919_
TO THE HIGH CAUSE OF ANGLO-ITALIAN FRIENDSHIP AND UNDERSTANDING
"Nella primavera si combatte e si muore, o soldato."
M. PUCCINI, _Dal Carso al Piave_.
"So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received, each for
his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of
all sepulchres; not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a
home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to
speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is the
sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone
over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol,
woven into the stuff of other men's lives."
_Funeral Speech of Pericles_.
"Dying here is not death; it is flying into the dawn."
MEREDITH, _Vittoria_.
PREFACE
So far as I know, no British soldier who served on the Italian Front has
yet published a book about his experiences. Ten British Batteries went
to Italy in the spring of 1917 and passed through memorable days. But
their story has not yet been told. Nor, except in the language of
official dispatches, has that of the British Divisions which went to
Italy six months later, some of which remained and took part in the
final and decisive phases of the war against Austria. Something more
should soon be written concerning the doings of the British troops in
Italy, for they deserve to stand out clearly in the history of the war.
This little book of mine is only an account, more or less in the form of
a Diary, of what one British soldier saw and felt, who served for
eighteen months on the Italian Front as a Subaltern officer in a Siege
Battery. But it was my luck to see a good deal during that time. Mine
had been the first British Battery to come into action and open fire on
the Italian Front. And, as my story will show, it was either the first
or among the first on most other important occasions, except in the
Caporetto retreat, and then it was the last.
I have camouflaged the names of all persons mentioned throughout the
book, except those of Cabinet Ministers, Generals and a few other
notabilities.
For permission to reproduce photographs, I wish to thank the
representatives in London of the Italian State Railways (12 Waterloo
Place, S.W.), and my friend and brother officer, Mr Stuart Osborn.
H. D.
LONDON, _February_ 1919
CONTENTS
PREFACE
PART I
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I
THE ANGLO-ITALIAN TRADITION AND ITALY'S PART IN THE WAR
PART II
SOME EARLY IMPRESSIONS
CHAPTER II
FROM FOLKESTONE TO VENICE
CHAPTER III
FROM VENICE TO THE ISONZO FRONT
CHAPTER IV
THE WAR ON THE ISONZO FRONT
CHAPTER V
PALMANOVA
CHAPTER VI
AQUILEIA AND GRADO
CHAPTER VII
A GRAMOPHONE AND A CHAPLAIN ON THE CARSO
CHAPTER VIII
A FRONT LINE RECONNAISSANCE
CHAPTER IX
AN EVENING AT GORIZIA
CHAPTER X
A CEMETERY AT VERSA
CHAPTER XI
UDINE
CHAPTER XII
THE BRITISH AND THE ITALIAN SOLDIER
CHAPTER XIII
I JOIN THE FIRST BRITISH BATTERY IN ITALY
PART III
THE ITALIAN SUMMER OFFENSIVE, 1917
CHAPTER XIV
THE OFFENSIVE OPENS
CHAPTER XV
WE SWITCH OUR GUNS NORTHWARD
CHAPTER XVI
THE FALL OF MONTE SANTO
CHAPTER XVII
THE CONQUEST OF THE BAINSIZZA PLATEAU
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIGHTING DIES DOWN
CHAPTER XIX
A LULL BETWEEN TWO STORMS
PART IV
THE ITALIAN RETREAT AND RECOVERY
CHAPTER XX
THE BEGINNING OF THE ENEMY OFFENSIVE
CHAPTER XXI
FROM THE VIPPACCO TO SAN GIORGIO DI NOGARA
CHAPTER XXII
FROM SAN GIORGIO TO THE TAGLIAMENTO
CHAPTER XXIII
FROM THE TAGLIAMENTO TO TREVISO
CHAPTER XXIV
THOUGHTS AFTER THE DISASTER
CHAPTER XXV
FERRARA, ARQUATA AND THE CORNICE ROAD
CHAPTER XXVI
REFITTING AT FERRARA
PART V
A YEAR OF RESISTANCE AND OF PREPARATION
CHAPTER XXVII
IN STRATEGIC RESERVE
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE FIRST BRITISH BATTERY UP THE MOUNTAINS
CHAPTER XXIX
THE ASIAGO PLATEAU
CHAPTER XXX
SOME NOTES ON NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
CHAPTER XXXI
ROME IN THE SPRING
CHAPTER XXXII
THE FIFTEENTH OF JUNE, 1918
CHAPTER XXXIII
IN THE TRENTINO
CHAPTER XXXIV
SIRMIONE AND SOLFERINO
CHAPTER XXXV
THE ASIAGO PLATEAU ONCE MORE
PART VI
THE LAST PHASE
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE MOVE TO THE PIAVE
CHAPTER XXXVII
THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST BATTLE
CHAPTER XXXVIII
ACROSS THE RIVER
CHAPTER XXXIX
LIBERATORI
CHAPTER XL
THE COMPLETENESS OF VICTORY
CHAPTER XLI
IN THE EUGANEAN HILLS
CHAPTER XLII
LAST THOUGHTS ON LEAVING ITALY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Italian Troops Crossing a Snowfield in the Trentino
Railway Bridge over the Isonzo Wrecked by Austrian Shell Fire
Italian Mule Transport on the Carso
No. 3 Gun of the First British Battery in Italy
Casa Girardi and Italian Huts
Some of Our Battery Huts near Casa Girardi
The Eastern Portion of The Asiago Plateau
Road Behind Our Battery Position Leading to Pria Dell' Acqua
Chapel at San Sisto and Italian Graves
Huts on a Mountain Side in the Trentino
Lorries Leaving Asiago after Its Liberation
Captured Austrian Guns in Val D'Assa
LIST OF MAPS
Map of Northern Italy
Map of the Isonzo Front
Map of Val Brenta and the Asiago Plateau
* * * * *
WITH BRITISH GUNS IN ITALY
PART I
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I
THE ANGLO-ITALIAN TRADITION AND ITALY'S PART IN THE WAR
Anglo-Italian friendship has been one of the few unchanging facts in
modern international relations. Since the French Revolution, in the
bellicose whirligig of history and of the old diplomacy's reckless dance
with death, British troops have fought in turn against Frenchmen and
Germans, against Russians and Austrians, against Bulgarians, Turks and
Chinamen, against Boers, and even against Americans, but never, except
for a handful of Napoleonic conscripts, against Italians. British and
Italian troops, on the other hand, fought side by side in the Crimea,
and, in the war which has just ended, have renewed and extended their
comradeship in arms in Austria and Italy, in France and in the Balkans.
During the nineteenth century Italy in her Wars of Liberation gained, in
a degree which this generation can hardly realise, the enthusiastic
sympathy and the moral, and sometimes material, support of all the best
elements in the British nation. There were poets--Byron and Shelley, the
Brownings, Swinburne and Meredith--who were filled with a passionate
devotion to the Italian cause.[1] There were statesmen--Palmerston, Lord
John Russell and Gladstone--who did good work for Italian freedom, and
Italians still remember that in 1861 the British Government was the
first to recognise the new Kingdom of United Italy, while the
Governments of other Powers were intriguing to harass and destroy it.
There were individual, adventurous Englishmen, such as Forbes, the
comrade of Garibaldi, who put their lives and their wealth at the
disposal of Italian patriots. But, beyond all these, it was the great
mass of the British people which stood steadily behind the Italian
people in its long struggle for unity and freedom.
[Footnote 1: Even Tennyson, who was not very susceptible to foreign
influences, invited Garibaldi to plant a tree in his garden.]
Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour, "the soul, the sword and the brain,"
which together created Modern Italy, all had close personal relations
with this country. Mazzini, driven from his own land by foreign
oppressors, lived a great part of his life in exile among us, and here
dreamed those dreams, which still inspire generous youth throughout the
world. When Garibaldi visited us in 1864, he was enthusiastically
acclaimed by all sections of the nation, by the Prince of Wales, the
Peerage and the Poet Laureate, no less than by the working classes. It
is recorded that, used as he was, as a soldier, to the roar of battle
and, as a sailor, to the roar of the storm, Garibaldi almost quailed
before the tumultuous roar of welcome which greeted him as he came out
of the railway station at Nine Elms. Cavour was a deep student and a
great admirer of British institutions, both political and economic, and
in a large measure founded Italian institutions upon them. And the first
public speech he ever made was made in London in the English tongue.
These great men passed in time from the stage of Italian public life,
and others took their places, but amid all the shifting complexities of
recent international politics, no shadow has ever fallen across the path
of Anglo-Italian friendship. And indeed during the Boer War Italy was
the only friend we had left in Europe.
Italy's membership of the Triple Alliance was always subject to two
conditions, first, that the Alliance was to be purely defensive, and
second, that Italy would never support either of her partners in war
against England. Thus, under the first condition, when Austria proposed
in 1913 that the Triple Alliance should combine to crush Serbia,
victorious but exhausted after the Balkan Wars, Italy at once rejected
the proposal. And, under the second condition, as German naval expansion
became more and more provocative and threatening to Britain, we were
able to transfer nearly all our Mediterranean Fleet to the North Sea,
secure in the knowledge that, whatever might befall, we should never
find Italy among our enemies.
* * * * *
The part which Italy has played during the war just ended, the great
value of her contribution to the Allied cause, and the great sacrifices
which that contribution has involved for her, have been often and
admirably stated. But I doubt whether, even yet, these things are fully
realised outside Italy, and I will, therefore, very shortly state them
again.
When war broke out in August 1914, Italy declared her neutrality, on the
ground that the war was aggressive on the part of the Central Powers,
and that, therefore, the Triple Alliance no longer bound her. By her
declaration of neutrality, she liberated the whole French Army to fight
in Belgium and North-Eastern France, and rendered our sea communications
with the East substantially secure. Bismarck used to say that, under the
Triple Alliance, an Italian bugler and drummer boy posted on the
Franco-Italian frontier would immobilise four French Army Corps. The
Alliance disappointed the expectations of Bismarck's successors.
But if Italy had come in at this time on the German side, she might well
have tilted swiftly and irremediably against us that awful equipoise of
forces which, once established, lasted for more than four years. There
would have been small hope that France, supported only by our small
Expeditionary Force and faced with an Italian invasion in the
South-East, in addition to a German invasion in the North-East, could
have prevented the fall of Paris and the Channel Ports, while Austria,
freed from all fear on the Italian frontier, perhaps even reinforced by
part of the Italian Army, could have turned all her forces against
Russia. Or alternatively, part of the Italian Army might have attacked
Serbia through Austrian territory, with the probable result that Rumania
and Greece, as well as Bulgaria and Turkey, would have been brought in
against us in the first month of the war.
At sea our naval supremacy would have been strained to breaking point by
the many heavy tasks imposed upon it simultaneously in widely-separated
seas. Our communications through the Mediterranean would, indeed, have
been almost impossible to maintain.
Many bribes were offered to Italy at this time by the Central Powers in
the hope of inducing her to join them--Corsica, Savoy and Nice, Tunis,
Malta, and probably even larger rewards. But Italy remained neutral.
In May 1915 she entered the war on our side, in the first place to free
those men of Italian race who still lived outside her frontiers, under
grievous oppression, and whom Austria refused to give up to their Mother
Country, and, in the second place, because already many Italians
realised, as Americans also realised later, that the defeat of the
Central Powers was a necessary first step towards the liberation of
oppressed peoples everywhere and the building of a better world. Italy
entered the war at a time when things were going badly for us in Russia,
and looked very menacing in France, and when she herself was still
ill-prepared for a long, expensive and exhausting struggle. The first
effect of her entry was to pin down along the Alps and the Isonzo large
Austrian forces, which would otherwise have been available for use
elsewhere.
She entered the war nine months after the British Empire, but her
losses, when the war ended, had been proportionately heavier than ours.
According to the latest published information the total of Italian dead
was 460,000 out of a population of 35 millions. The total of British
dead for the whole British Empire, including Dominion, Colonial and
Indian troops, was 670,000, and for the United Kingdom alone 500,000.
The white population of the British Empire is 62 millions and of the
United Kingdom 46 millions. Thus the Italian dead amount to more than 13
for every thousand of the population, and the British, whether
calculated for the United Kingdom alone or for the whole white
population of the Empire, to less than 11 for every thousand of the
population. The long series of Battles of the Isonzo,--the journalists
counted up to twelve of them in the first twenty-seven months in which
Italy was at war,--the succession of offensives "from Tolmino to the
sea," which were only dimly realised in England and France, cost Italy
the flower of her youth. The Italian Army was continually on the
offensive during those months against the strongest natural defences to
be found in any of the theatres of war. On countless occasions Italian
heroes went forth on forlorn hopes to scale and capture impossible
precipices, and sometimes they succeeded. Through that bloody series of
offensives the Italians slowly but steadily gained ground, and drew ever
nearer to Trento and Trieste. Only those who went out to the Italian
Front before Caporetto, and saw with their own eyes what the Italian
Army had accomplished on the Carso and among the Julian Alps, can fully
realise the greatness of the Italian effort.
It must never be forgotten that Italy is both the youngest and the
poorest of the Great Powers of Europe. Barely half a century has passed
since United Italy was born, and the political and economic difficulties
of her national childhood were enormous. For many years, as one of her
own historians says, she was "not a state, but only the outward
appearance of a state." Her natural resources are poor and limited. She
possesses neither coal nor iron, and is still partially dependent on
imported food and foreign shipping. She is still very poor in
accumulated capital, and the burden of her taxation is very heavy.
From the moment of her entry into the war her economic problems became
very difficult, especially that of the provision of guns and munitions
in sufficient quantities, and the extent to which she solved this last
problem is deserving of the greatest admiration. Her position grew even
more difficult in 1917. After the military collapse of Russia she had to
face practically the whole Austrian Army, instead of only a part of it,
and a greatly increased weight of guns. The Austrians had 53 millions of
population to draw from, the Italians only 35. Moreover, just before
Caporetto, a number of German Divisions, with a powerful mass of
artillery and aircraft, were thrown into the Austrian scale, while from
the Italian was withdrawn the majority of that tiny handful of French
and British Batteries, which were all the armed support which, up to
that time, her Allies had ever lent her. Only five British Batteries and
a few French were left on the Italian Front. By the defeat of Caporetto
she lost a great quantity of guns and stores and practically the whole
of her Second Army, while half of Venetia fell into the hands of the
enemy, and remained in his possession for a year. The inferiority of the
Italian Army to its enemies, both in numbers and in material, was thus
sharply increased.
But the Italians held grimly on; they turned at bay on the Piave and in
the mountains, and checked the onrush of Austrians and Germans. Then,
supported by French and British reinforcements, but still inferior in
numbers, they continued for a year longer to hold up almost the whole
strength of Austria. That winter the poor were very near starvation in
the cities of Italy, and the peasants had to cut down their olive groves
for fuel. The following spring part of the French and British
reinforcements were withdrawn to France, together with an Italian
contingent which numerically balanced the French and British who
remained in Italy.
The Austrians also lost their German support and sent some of their own
troops to France, but they retained their numerical superiority on the
Italian Front. In June they launched a great attack on a seventy-mile
front, which was to have made an end of Italy; but the Italians beat
them back. Then four months later, after an intense effort of
preparation, Italy, still inferior in numbers and material, struck for
the last time and utterly destroyed the Austrian Army in the great
battle which will be known to history as Vittorio Veneto. The Austrians
lost twice as many prisoners and four times as many guns at Vittorio
Veneto as they had taken at Caporetto.
The war on the Italian Front was over, the Austrian Army was broken
beyond recovery, the Austrian State was dissolving into its national
elements, which only tradition, corruption and brute force had for so
long held together. Italy, heroic and constant, had endured to the end,
and with her last great gesture had both completed her own freedom, and
given their freedom to those who had been the instruments of her
enemies.
PART II
SOME EARLY IMPRESSIONS
CHAPTER II
FROM FOLKESTONE TO VENICE
On the 6th July, 1917, I arrived at Folkestone armed with a War Office
letter ordering my "passage to France for reinforcements for Siege
Artillery Batteries in Italy." I had a millpond crossing in the
afternoon, and that evening left Boulogne for Modane.
Next morning at 2 a.m. I was awakened from frowsy sleep by a French
soldier, laden with baggage, who stumbled headlong into the railway
carriage which I was sharing with three other British officers. We were
at Amiens. I was last here ten months before, when my Division was
coming back from rest to fight a second time upon the Somme. I did not
sleep again, but watched the sunrise behind an avenue of poplars, as we
passed through Creil, and the woods of Chantilly shining wonderfully in
the early morning light. I spent that day in Paris and left again in the
evening.
Next morning, the 8th, I awoke at Bourg in High Savoy. Here too the
poplar dominates in the valleys. We ran along the shores of Lake Bourget
and up the beautiful valley of the Arc in misty rain. We arrived at
Modane at 10 a.m., and I was booked through to Palmanova, a new name to
me at that time. The train left an hour later and, as we lunched, we
passed through the Mont Cenis tunnel and slid rapidly downwards through
Alpine valleys, charming enough but less beautiful than those on the
French side of the frontier. Very soon it became perceptibly warmer,
electric fans were set in motion and ice was served with the wine.
I found that I had six hours to wait at Turin before the train left for
Milan. My fleeting impression of Turin was of a very well-planned city,
its Corsi spacious and well shaded with trees, its trams multitudinous,
its many distant vistas of wooded hills and of the Superga Palace beyond
the Po a delight to the eye. But I found less animation there than I had
expected, except in a church, where a priest was ferociously declaiming
and gesticulating at a perspiring crowd, mostly women, who were
patiently fanning themselves in the stifling, unventilated heat. I was
an object of interest in the streets, where the British uniform was not
yet well known. Some took me for a Russian and some little boys ran
after me and asked for a rouble. A group of women agreed that I was
Spanish.
The train for Milan goes right through to Venice, so, being momentarily
independent of the British military authorities, I decided to spend a
few hours there on my way to the Front.
The carriage was full of Italian officers, chiefly Cavalry, Flying Corps
and Infantry. It is their custom on meeting an unknown officer of their
own or of an Allied Army to stand stiffly upright, to shake hands and
introduce themselves by name. This little ceremony breaks the ice. I
saw many of them also on the platforms and in the corridor of the train.
The majority, especially of their mounted officers, are very elegant and
many very handsome, and they have those charming easy manners which are
everywhere characteristic of the Latin peoples.
Nearly all Italian officers speak French. In their Regular Army French
and either English or German are compulsory studies, and a good standard
of fluent conversation is required. In these early days my Italian was
rather broken, so we talked mostly French. At Milan all my companions
except one got out, and a new lot got in. But I was growing sleepy, and
after the formal introductions I began to drowse.
* * * * *
I woke several times in the night and early morning, and, half asleep,
looked out through the carriage window upon wonderful sights. A railway
platform like a terrace in a typical Italian garden, ornate with a row
of carved stone vases of perfect form, and vines in festoons from vase
to vase, and dark trees behind, and then a downward slope and little
white houses asleep in the distance. This I think was close to Brescia.
Then Desenzano, and what I took to be the distant glimmer of Lake Garda
under the stars. Verona I passed in my sleep, having now crossed the
boundary of Lombardy into Venetia, and Vicenza and Padua are nothing
from the train. At Mestre, the junction for the Front, all the Italian
officers got out, and I went on to Venice.
Except for three British Naval officers I was, I think, the only
foreigner there, and a priest, whom I met, took me for an American.
Everything of value in Venice, that could be, was sandbagged now for
fear of bombs, and much that was movable had been taken away. I spent
three hours in a gondola on the Grand Canal and up and down the Rii,
filled with a dreamy amazement at the superb harmonies of form and
colour of things both far away and close at hand. And even as seen in
war-time, with all the accustomed life of Venice broken and spoiled, the
spaciousness of the Piazza S. Marco, and the beauty of the buildings
that stand around it, and at night the summer lightnings, and a
rainstorm, and a cafe under the colonnade, where music was being played,
will linger always in my memory. All the big hotels were closed now, or
taken over by the Government as offices or hospitals, and the gondolas
lay moored in solitary lines along the Grand Canal, and even the motor
boats were few and, as a waiter said to me, "no one has been here for
three years, but the people are very quiet and no one complains."
CHAPTER III
FROM VENICE TO THE ISONZO FRONT
I left Venice next morning by the 5.55 train, and reached Palmanova at
half-past ten. As one goes eastward by this railway, there is a grand
panorama of hills, circling the whole horizon; to the north and
north-east the Carnic Alps and Cadore, their highest summits crowned
with snow even in the full heat of summer; eastward the Julian Alps,
beyond the Isonzo, stretching from a point north of Tolmino, down
behind the Carso, almost to Fiume in the south-east; and yet further
round the circle to the southward the mountains of Istria, running
behind Trieste and its wide blue gulf, whose waters are invisible from
this railway across the plain.
Of Palmanova I will write again. This was the Railhead and the
Ammunition Dump for the British Batteries. I stayed there that day
scarcely an hour, and then went on by motor lorry to Gradisca, the
Headquarters of "British Heavy Artillery, Italy." Here I lunched and was
well received by the Staff, who were expecting no reinforcements and
were astonished at my coming. It was decided, after some discussion, to
attach me temporarily to a Battery which had one officer in hospital,
slightly wounded by shrapnel. I continued my journey in another motor
lorry after lunch. Gradisca lies on the western bank of the Isonzo,
which is crossed close by at Peteano by a magnificent broad wooden
bridge, the work of Italian engineers. Gradisca had not been badly
damaged, the Austrians having made no great resistance here against the
Italian advance in May 1915, but Peteano had been laid absolutely flat
by Austrian twelve-inch guns. It had been utterly destroyed in half an
hour's intense bombardment some months before, and many Italian hutments
in the neighbourhood had been destroyed at the same time.