7.
The Italian Front.
I left Croatia the following day, passing through the southern tip of Slovenia in a couple of hours, before entering Italy through an open border. So far on my journey, I had enjoyed going through the borders between countries. I had never had to wait long and it was like getting to the end of a chapter in a book, whilst eagerly anticipating what the next chapter would bring. It had divided up my journey well.
Thanks to the European Schengen zone, this was no more; each country just merged into the next. One of the things that I find the most beautiful about Europe is the different peoples, customs and cultures of each country. The Schengen zone partly takes this away and quite often I wasn’t entirely sure which country I was actually in!
The borders between the countries of Europe, have, for the most part, been shaped by war. Some of this was centuries ago, whilst others were after World War Two, or after the fall of communism. The rest were decided during the various treaties at the end of World War One. The Ottoman, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires collapsed, forming many new countries from the regions of the old empires. Germany lost land in the east and the west, as well as all their overseas territory. The most interesting aspect to these border changes (for me anyway) were the borders which were settled on or near to the old front line trenches. This is the case for most of northern Greece, as I talked about earlier. It’s also the same for a lot of the Italian borders with Slovenia and Austria.
(It should be noted that the Italian border stretched further to the north and the east after the Great War. The Treaty of London gave the Italians parts of modern day Austria, Slovenia and Croatia, as well as German colonies in Africa and the protectorate of Albania. These were all lost after the Second World War when the Italian borders were pushed back to only what they had managed to capture during the Great War.)
For the first part of the war, Italy was neutral, despite being the third member of the Triple Alliance. (The other two members were Austro-Hungary and Germany.) The reason for this was that Italy wanted the region of South Tyrol (amongst other regions) which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Italians entered into talks with both sides to see who would give into their demands. This was decided during the Treaty of London which ended on the 26th April 1915, with the Italians willing to fight against Germany and Austro-Hungary in exchange for the territories of Trentino, Gorizia, Trieste and Dalmatia. A high price was paid in blood for the Italians’ greed, with over a million soldiers lost on the Italian Front alone. Was it worth it, Italy? The Italians in South Tyrol still speak German as their first language, so it probably wasn’t!
One can only imagine what the German and Austro-Hungarian reaction was to the massive betrayal by their Italian friends. If there is one single thing which changed the outcome of the war, then this is probably it. If the Italian Front hadn’t happened, then 20th Century European history would have probably been a lot different and a German, Italian or Austrian might have been writing this instead of an Englishman!
Back to Italy: After stocking up on a few bits and bobs in Triest, I decided to go for a dip in the sea. I had thought that the centre of Triest had been a bit quiet and upon reaching the seafront I understood why. Everybody was there! After pushing my bike through the crowds of sun worshippers and being on the receiving end of some less than admiring stares, due to my ever increasingly ragged clothes and dishevelled appearance, I found a quiet spot to take a dip. Whilst sat in the cooling sea, I realised that it would be the last time I saw it before I reached the English Channel in Belgium, many days and weeks ahead of me.
The morning after, I found the first trenches on the Italian Front near to the coastal village of villagio del Pescatore. They’re dug into the crumbly limestone of the area, so they are nearly the same depth as they were during the war. Despite the whole original trench system being well preserved in the woods and shrubbery, it just seemed a bit false. It wasn’t, but this feeling was down to the lack of detritus from the war. Most of the other battlefields that I travelled through still had the remains of barbed wire entanglements, shells, shrapnel, etc. These items helped to bring back the horror of what these locations were to my mind. Those trenches might as well have just been ditches thanks to the efforts of the Italian scrap collectors in the 1920s and 1930s. Heck, I couldn’t even find a single bullet! One interesting site at this location was a memorial sculpture of two wolves, placed upon a rocky knoll, overlooking the main road into Monfalcone. ‘Lupi di Toscan’ (The Tuscan Wolves) is dedicated to Major Giovanni Randaccio and the 1st Battalion of the 149th Infantry Regiment, who were slaughtered at that location on the 27th May 1917, during an unsuccessful attack. No matter what the Italian politicians did in 1915, there’s no denying the tenacity and courage that the Italian soldiers showed at the ‘Fronte Italiano.’ They were mostly fighting uphill against heavily entrenched and fortified Austro-Hungarian positions on the summits of the hills and mountains. Anyway, I wasn’t doing what I was doing for the politicians of the world, just the ordinary men, women and children who had to suffer the consequences of their folly.
The Italian soldiers probably had the worst experience compared to all of the other nationalities who were fighting. This was because they didn’t just have the enemy to fear, they had their own side too. The Italian Generals and politicians behaved despicably towards their own troops. Executions for trivial offenses were commonplace and they even brought back the Ancient Roman practice of “Decimation” for any army units that dared to rebel against their draconian leadership or even failing to perform as expected on the battlefield. (Decimation is the execution of every tenth man, whether guilty or innocent!)
A few minutes ride away was a memorial park just north of Monfalcone, this encompassed the Carso battlefield, which was where part of the Isonzo battles were fought. There was a useful information sign which said that the fighting first started on the 9th June 1915. Exactly one hundred years and one day ago. That was the second time I had visited a battlefield a day after the centenary.
The Isonzo River, also known as the Soca River, now meanders through the Slovenian mountains before it enters Italy near to the town of Gorizia, before running to the sea south of Monfalcone. In 1915 it ran just inside the border of a greater Austria and was the chosen site for twelve battles between June 1915 and October 1917.
During 1915, the Italians hoped that the fighting in the lower reaches of the Isonzo River would be easier as the hills and mountains were lower than everywhere else. It wasn’t and the fighting here degenerated into the same trench warfare which dogged the Western Front. The Austro-Hungarians fought an almost entirely defensive war on the Italian Front, leaving most of the offensives up to the Italians, but as they held most of the high ground, that was the most sensible option. The Italian leadership wasted the cream of their youth trying to dislodge the Austro-Hungarians from their lofty perches. For the most part they didn’t succeed. It was only due to the collapse of the other fronts that ultimately brought Italian victory. Heck, the Austrians could have held some of their positions for eternity...
The trenches on the Carso battlefield looked a bit more permanent than the others nearer to the coast. They were the old Austrian trenches which had been reinforced with concrete when the Italians finally captured them at the end of the war. Once again, every last scrap of war detritus had been removed. Near the top of the hill, some trenches and bunkers had been reconstructed and although it was interesting to see what they might have once looked like, the new timber and sandbags looked out of place and just felt a bit fake.
Just before dusk, I found myself in the joint Italian/Slovenian town of Gorizia. I headed to the Slovenian side and camped under a massive stone viaduct which spanned the Isonzo River. Up until now, I had done everything that I could possibly do to follow the route of the battlefields and trenches as closely as possible, but my body had slowly become a physical wreck! I’m not entirely sure how much weight I had lost at this point, but it must have been a fair bit. My illness in Greece hadn’t helped matters and I had come to realise that I was burning a lot more calories than I was putting back in. Something had to give as my ribs were starting to stick out and my upper body muscles were noticeably shrinking. The Italian Front would be the most difficult part of my journey and the thought of having to go up and down all those hills and mountains just made me want to bloody pack it all in and head home. My body needed a compromise.
Whilst planning this section of the route, I had noticed an Austro-Hungarian cemetery which was made next to a field hospital, a few miles behind the front lines on a back road to the Slovenian town of Tolmin. It was a good compromise as I was still following the route of the war, but the going was quite a bit easier. The cemetery was in an absolutely beautiful setting on the edge of the village of Cepovan, being surrounded by mountains but the cemetery itself was a mere shadow of its former self. It had been destroyed during the Yugoslavian Communist era and had only been rebuilt in recent years. It was comprised of a pyramid shaped stone memorial with a few headstones laid around its base. There were many Austro-Hungarian soldiers buried in the vicinity but their headstones and identities had been destroyed. Another sad indictment of mans folly. I left a poppy (and a few tears) in their memory, forgotten souls to most people, but they will forever linger in my mind and heart, whoever they were.
From there, the road to Tolmin was in the correct direction: downhill! On the way there I came across a large artillery piece which had been found in the Isonzo river during the 1970s or 80s? The Italian army had dumped it there during their great retreat of late autumn 1917. It was nice to see that the scrap collectors hadn’t found everything!
Luckily, I managed to reach Tolmin just as a large thunder storm came rolling along the valley and I took shelter in a petrol station. The storm thundered through, shaking the ground with its loud claps and hitting the summits high above with dozens of lightning strikes, I felt very glad that my emaciated body had prevented me from following the exact route of the battlefield on that stretch. Fate is everything! That night was spent camped at a wonderful spot where a large mountain stream joined the main river. It had stopped raining by then and a mist was forming from a combination of the cold water and the warm evening air. I managed to take a selfie by propping my phone up on a wooden bench and this is when I actually realised how much weight I had lost.
In the morning, I discovered a small Austro-Hungarian cemetery a few hundred yards north from my camping spot also alongside the river. I still had some hills to go up. There was no choice really, as I had looked forward to them for a long time. One of these ‘hills’ was Mt Krn. At 2,244m high (7,362ft), it was more of a proper mountain than a hill. Mt Krn and its neighbour Batognica (2165m) were heavily fought over after the Italians managed to capture them in June 1915 with the Austrians trying to retake them for the next two and a half years.
After leaving my bike chained to a tree near the small village of Vrsno on the southern slope of Krn, I headed north along a rough track which ultimately changed into a path that led to the summit. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m not much of a cyclist. I was only doing it on a bike as it was too far to walk. I belong in the mountains, they’re my realm and for a lot of years they’ve been the place where I’ve felt the most comfortable and at peace with the world. Mt Krn was no exception to this rule and as I ascended the steep slopes I found a second wind. An energy that I thought I’d left somewhere in the Balkan countries came back to me. Surprisingly, I felt good and despite my heavy rucksack, my body felt light and strong. I ascended up an old mule track, which was the main supply route for the Italian defenders, before following a path which turned through many hairpin bends. It took me past the mountain refuge Gomisckovo Zavetisce, before I finally reached the summit in the heat of the mid afternoon sun. The view was amazing, with the Adriatic Sea clear to the south, the Julian Alps to the north and the Dolomites just visible to the West. I had mistakenly left my camera back with my bike and the battery on my phone was flat, so I was disappointed that I couldn’t take any photos. Oh well, I’ll have to go back one day. From the summit, I descended east to a col, where there were a lot of visible remnants from the war. I then ascended Mt Botagnica (Monte Rosso) whose summit still bore the scars of the heavy fighting a century ago.
I was shattered when I returned to my bike the next morning after camping on a mountain meadow about halfway down, stretching my tarp across the low sunken walls of an old trench, just in case the storm of the previous day decided to make a comeback. It wasn’t my first night to sleep in an old trench, but it was the most scenic. The storm stayed away, so the light from the moon and stars lit up the meadow and surrounding mountains like an old black and white film...
After the previous days’ exertions, the short cycle ride to the small town of Kobarid was more than welcome. I found a wonderful campsite next to where the river Isonzo ran through a limestone gorge. In the morning I arranged to leave most of my luggage at the campsite for the day, so that I could visit the battlefields and sights in the surrounding area without being weighed down by my equipment. This was a welcome relief and meant that I could cover more miles and visit more places. Unfortunately there wasn’t that much to see in the valley bottom: an Italian memorial and ossuary, a museum about the war and a set of second line Italian trenches and dug outs. It was here that I left a ‘special’ poppy.
At home, during the planning stage, I had tried to contact everybody and anybody who might have been able to publicise my little journey of remembrance. If I’d have had the ‘correct’ person on board, I could have raised a lot more brass for charity, as I believed that my journey was the most challenging commemorative event for the centenary that anybody has attempted. Alas, it was not to be. One of the people that I tried to contact was Prince Harry. At least his private secretary had the decency to reply, unlike everybody else who I contacted. The reply stated that unfortunately he couldn’t support every World War One centenary project that was happening. I knew that, but I wasn’t knitting socks or anything. No offence to sock knitters, as we all do what we can! They probably never even told him about my little project?
Despite the rejection, I decided to leave a poppy for him anyway. He has a famous sense of humour, so I’m sure that he won’t mind that it was at the back of a World War One Italian latrine. I thought it was amusing at the time and it’s one of the things that we kind of skip when remembering warfare. We all use the loo, even royalty!
The Battle of Coporetto (12th Battle of the Isonzo) was fought during the autumn of 1917. The Germans realised that in order to keep them in the war, they would have to help their Austro-Hungarian allies on the Italian Front. (The naval blockade against the Central powers was really biting and the Austro-Hungarians were ready to pack it all in!) They decided that the best way to defend was to launch an offensive. This gave the Germans the opportunity to try out their new stormtrooper tactics before they were used on the Western Front in the spring of 1918.
In the early hours of the morning of the 24th October 1917, the battle was started with a mass chlorine gas attack on the Italian positions near Kobarid. (Caporetto.) This was followed by an artillery barrage by 2,200 guns to prevent the Italian positions being bolstered by their reserves. At about the same time, two huge mines were detonated on high points on either side of the valley. The Italians were in disarray even before the infantry attacked. This wasn’t done in the usual mass attack which was the norm during World War One. Instead, the Germans used their new infiltration tactics, making good use of the weapons which would cause so much fear on the Western Front in the spring of 1918, i.e. light machineguns, flamethrowers and hand grenades. It was an overwhelming success, with the Germans and Austro-Hungarians advancing more than 100km from their starting line towards the city of Venice. They were only stopped when they exhausted their line of supply and with the help of British and French troops, who were quickly sent to bolster the Italians. They were finally stopped at the natural defensive position of the Piave River, where the war once more became bogged down in the attrition of trench warfare.
The breakthrough after the Battle of Caporetto caused a massive collapse of the Italian line. The only section unaffected was in the west, running from Lake Garda to the Swiss border in the North. All of the heavily fought over positions in the Dolomites and eastern Alps were lost, with the new line starting on the coast, 20 miles east of Venice following the route of the Piave river, before joining the intact front just to the east of Lake Garda. Although it was a disaster for the Italians, it wasn’t a total defeat, as it meant that the length of the front was reduced by several hundred kilometres, thus easing the critical shortages of troops and shortening their supply lines. The Austro-Hungarians must have known that the war was all but lost when they were forced to stop at the Piave River....
The storm came back the following day and my little bivi tent had developed a leak in the floor, so I started the day wet and it didn’t get any better from then on. (I didn’t totally dry out until I was half way through Austria.)
The rain didn’t stop play; it just made things more difficult, especially as to save some weight, I hadn’t bothered bringing any waterproofs with me! I was hoping to go over the Passo di Predil, which crosses into Italy, before camping next to Lago di Predil (lake) but I was slightly concerned about being high up whilst there was a risk of lightning, especially whilst riding a steel framed bike in the rain! So, I checked into a campsite at Bovec to see if the weather would improve in the morning. It didn’t! On the way back down I visited the outdoor museum Ravelnik, which consisted of a system of reconstructed trenches, bunkers and tunnels, along with a lot of barbed wire and a few other artefacts. It was part of the Austro-Hungarian front lines which once stretched right across the valley just to the east of Bovec and gave an interesting idea of what life must have been like for the soldiers who fought and died there.
Whilst at the campsite I took refuge in the reception where a few men were about to watch a Slovenian football match on the telly. I’m not usually a fan of football, but it was drier in there than my soggy shelter. All was fine until just before the start when they played the national anthems and I realised that Slovenia was competing against England. Just my bloody luck! It was ok until England scored and suddenly my soggy shelter seemed much more inviting than the icy atmosphere in that room!
On the way back up to the pass in the morning I visited the battered remains of Austro-Hungarian Fort Hermann which was part of the Kluze fortifications and was heavily battered by Italian artillery. The scenery around there is supposed to be spectacular, but I didn’t see any of it thanks to the heavy rain, low cloud and fog. Being British, I’m used to it, but it was still slightly annoying! After crossing the pass, I reached Lago di Predil early in the afternoon. The weather was slightly better in Italy and although it was still raining, I could, at last, see some of the amazing scenery around the high mountain lake. On the western shore of the lake was a small fort which was built by the Austrians to help defend the area from an attack by Italy in the 19th Century. They didn’t need it then, but they put it to good use during the Great War.
The road from then on was all downhill until I reached Tarvisio many miles below in the bottom of a valley, although I’m not too confident when riding downhill (especially in the rain), so it took me until the early evening to reach it. Once there, I enquired about a campsite in the vicinity, but there were none. On my way into the town I had noticed a disused railway line, so I headed back to that in the hope of finding somewhere to camp. It turned out that the railway had been converted into a brilliant cycle way (one of many that I would follow in Italy and Austria.) After riding for a few hundred yards, I saw somebody sheltering from the rain at a disused railway station. I thought he was a tramp at first, but then I saw that he had a bike and then he waved me over. Woo hoo! Somewhere dry to sleep!
He was a young Hungarian lad, who was on his way home after a cycle tour around northern Italy and like a lot of people who I met, he spoke really good English. I bet he wished that he didn’t though, as I hadn’t had a decent face to face conversation with anybody since Croatia! Unfortunately, I can’t remember his name, but if he ever reads this, then thank you anyway, your company really helped to cheer me up! It also crossed my mind, that if we had both lived a century before, then we’d have been trying to kill each other instead of sharing a shelter for the night.
The next morning we rode north on the cycleway, before parting company at the Austrian town of Arnoldstein, where I headed west. My original plans hadn’t counted on actually travelling through Austria, but instead just following the route of the Italian/Austrian border where the old front lines ran. I’d had to change my plans slightly as I was becoming a bit concerned about not being physically able to complete the journey and I didn’t have a back-up plan.