World's War Events Volume III Part 9

[Sidenote: Austrians use seventeen-inch howitzers.]

I went up again to visit the British batteries which were with the Third Army on the afternoon of the twenty-fifth, and from one of their observatories watched the heavy sh.e.l.ling. The Austrians were using huge seventeen-inch howitzers, and the explosions of their gigantic sh.e.l.ls, each weighing a ton, was like a small eruption. A solid block of piebald smoke as big as a cathedral sprang into the air and it was a minute or more before the last of it had drifted away.

[Sidenote: Monfalcone the most romantic point in the fighting line.]

And as the sun was setting I went down to Monfalcone, to a place which could not be mentioned then, but which was at the same time probably the oddest and the most romantic point of the world's fighting-line.

Monfalcone was for the Austrians a sort of combination of Birkenhead and Bournemouth. There were important ship-building yards there, and it had besides popularity as a seaside place. In the shipyard the Austrians had left an eighteen-thousand-ton liner, of which the hull was complete and the decks built in.

[Sidenote: Tools of constructive labor are dropped.]

To reach the ship you pa.s.sed through a yard that was a rusty monument to the futility of war. There were all the tools of constructive labor just as they had been dropped when this nightmare of destructive pa.s.sion burst upon the world; weather-reddened traveling cranes rusted to the tracks on which they will never move again; trucks overturned, a lathe smashed by a sh.e.l.l that had torn a wide gap in the roof above. Here, where the air used to tremble all day long with the clang of giant hammers, there was now silence and desertion, and the offices from which great ships were controlled on their voyages to far-off seas had become the barracks of Italian artillery-men.

[Sidenote: The partly built Austrian liner.]

There was a big wooden staircase that the Italians had built leading up to the various decks of the great liner, and, once on board, you could walk out to the forward bridge of the ship where from a sort of conning-tower you looked out at the Austrian trenches less than a mile away without the possibility of being seen. An odd observation post, neither asea nor ash.o.r.e, and to make the confusion of elements more complete, the gunners whose guns barked continually from just behind it were sailors of the Italian Navy, dressed not in blue, but in military gray-green.

[Sidenote: A view of coveted Triest.]

Triest, the coveted city, lay ten miles away in full view, and each night the Italians saw its windows answer with flashes of dull gold the last rays of the sun setting behind Italy. As you looked from Monfalcone across the dreamy blue of the empty gulf between, the town lay like a stone image, lifeless except for the white smoke curling gently from a single tall chimney into the quiet evening air. Much nearer along the coast was the Castle of Duina standing on an abrupt cliff. It belongs to the Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Thurn and Taxis, who used to gather parties of poets, painters, and writers there to stay in what was like a legendary palace looking down from its high headland upon the sunlit, sail-flecked Adriatic, stretching away into the shining distance.

[Sidenote: The Italians are evacuating the Bainsizza plateau.]

It was from that last fair glimpse of Triest that you turned back to the grave realities of situation. On the next morning, the twenty-sixth, the Italian supreme command announced that the Bainsizza plateau was being evacuated. It had been won with great losses and gallantry in August, and the Italians had laboriously equipped it with roads and military establishments to create a firm taking-off place for the next attack upon the crest of Mount Gabriele, which was expected to drive the Austrians back for five miles up the Vippaco valley, on the way to Laibach, one of the back-doors to Triest.

The same day came the news of the fall of the Italian Government, which had been attacked during the fortnight by a strange combination of the advanced wing of the pro-war party who considered that the ministry was not displaying enough firmness in its conduct of the campaign, with the pacifist socialist party who denounced the Government for infringing the const.i.tutional rights of the people in the interests of militarism.

A feeling of _malaise_ was in the air. All the elements of success were present in the Italian Army except the most important of all, the psychological element.

[Sidenote: Evacuation of Udine.]

By this time motor-lorries had already begun to pour back through Udine, and in the streets the Signal Corps were taking down the telegraph-wires. You saw little parties of father, mother, and children suddenly emerge from house or shop, each with hand-luggage. If you looked closely you generally saw that the woman was crying.

[Sidenote: Air fights between Germans and Italians.]

On the twenty-sixth there were frequent attempts to reach Udine by German flyers who were new to the ground. It was the first time that the Italian Air Corps had had to deal with a German attempt to contest their supremacy and they came well out of the trial. Ten enemy machines were brought down during the day, two individual Italian airmen accounting for three each. When the enemy machines were sighted heading for Udine the jarring scream of a siren gave the alarm, and the police cleared the streets.

Sat.u.r.day, October 27, was the day of general exodus.

[Sidenote: Batteries hold rearward positions.]

I left Udine early on Sat.u.r.day morning, in the car of the British general commanding our artillery contingent on the Italian front, to go up to the batteries and see how they got on in the retreat. We crawled out toward the front along roads blocked with rearward-moving traffic for which there was no organization, and after lunching at the general's headquarters at Gradisca, I went on to Rubbia, just across the Isonzo, to the south of Gorizia, where was the group headquarters of the batteries. Already the supply service of the Third Army were pouring in a black ma.s.s along the road, screened at the side and overhead by rushmats from the observation of the enemy. Voices and hammering under the long wooden bridge across the Isonzo at Rubbia were signs that the Italian engineers were putting in position charges of explosive to blow it up when as much material as possible had been brought over. Some of our batteries had already been withdrawn to rearward positions not far from group headquarters and were firing as fast as the guns could be reloaded. The others were still in their old emplacements a mile or so farther forward, being sh.e.l.led terrifically by the Austrian twelve-inch batteries, but having extraordinary luck. They were using up as much of their ammunition as they could, because it was becoming clearer every moment that the Italian transport service was not going to be able to supply the lorries to move the sh.e.l.ls, which were big enough for fifty of them to make a full lorry-load.

[Sidenote: Lack of motor lorries to move ammunition.]

A major from one of the batteries came into group headquarters while I was in the mess. He was dark under the eyes after a couple of sleepless nights, for his men had been working hard all round the clock to get the ammunition back from the forward dumps, labor that afterward proved wasted, as there were no lorries forthcoming to carry it farther on.

Sixty twelve-inch sh.e.l.ls and one aeroplane bomb a yard away from one of his four guns was the afternoon's experience of his battery, and only one man wounded made up the casualty-list for the same period.

"And I'm going to have a d.a.m.n good dinner to-night whatever happens," he announced. "Goodness knows when we shall eat or sleep again. So the fowls and the rabbits we had in the battery are being killed this afternoon."

[Sidenote: English and French artillery dependent on Italian transport.]

There were Austrian sh.e.l.ls falling on the hill by group headquarters, but none fell on that dense-packed road along which military traffic of every kind and shape crawled and stuck and crawled on again. The tension grew greater at our headquarters. The guns needed tractors to move them, and motor-lorries were required to carry the battery stores. For the English artillery contingent had no transport of its own, the arrangement having been that this should be supplied by the Italians.

The French artillery contingent with the Italian Army, on the other hand, was independent in this respect.

The organization with regard to the transport of guns is different in the Italian and the British armies. The British system is that every gun shall have its motor or horse-haulage permanently a.s.signed to it, so that it is always mobile at a moment's notice. In the Italian army the mechanical transport service provides haulage for all units when required, and as it is only in extraordinarily exceptional circ.u.mstances that every single thing in the army needs moving at once, they are able to effect considerable economies over the British method, which constantly keeps large numbers of lorries and tractors and cars, together with their drivers and mechanics, idle, since the units to which they are attached are not at the moment in need of transport.

[Sidenote: Doubtful if all the British guns can be moved.]

By the time it was dark on Sat.u.r.day evening the likelihood of all the British guns getting away seemed doubtful, and the Italian artillery colonel who supervised their employment as corps artillery came to our group headquarters to say that preparations must be made for blowing the last of them up, and that in any case each tractor must tow more than one gun and come back for others directly it had got its first tows behind the Isonzo.

[Sidenote: Enormous conflagration of military stores.]

And now the darkening landscape suddenly began to spring out into brilliant points of light, as everywhere behind the Italian front, supply-depots, military stores, and vast collections of wooden sheds were set in a blaze. Gorizia was the site of a special conflagration, and the enemy gun-fire was steadily increasing, till sometimes the barrage rose to a single prolonged roar, and you could not have got a knife edge between the bursts.

By 7.30 p.m. six of our guns were across the river and the rest were now firing like field artillery, with no other batteries between them and the enemy. They kept up this protection of the retreat of the infantry so long, in fact, that the last round of all, at about 10 p.m., was fired just before the gun was. .h.i.tched to the tractor, and there was yet another gun that had its breech mechanism smashed for fear it might have to be left behind.

[Sidenote: Abandoned ammunition is exploded.]

[Sidenote: Like a volcanic eruption.]

The bright moon hung in a pale-green sky, looking down on a dozen roads each crawling like a black snake with the close press of retreating troops. As I was making my way back to Gradisca the whole firmament leaped into sudden brilliance and every feature in every face among the throngs around me on the road stood out for several seconds under a ghastly light. Then followed from behind Monte Michele, a deep, rolling roar. It was the first of the explosions of the great abandoned stores of gun-ammunition behind the front. From then till dawn the night sky was continually breaking into a glare like that of gigantic sunset, and the crash of destroyed artillery ammunition shook the ground. The less brilliant, but steadier, glow of burning stores and sheds and houses was constantly multiplied, and the flash of every new explosion revealed fresh ma.s.ses of black smoke rising in sharp outline against the lurid horizon. It was an apocalyptic spectacle; nothing short of a volcanic eruption could produce those tremendous effects of infernal illumination. Millions of pounds' worth of material, all the fruits of two and a half years of labor, were burned and blasted out of existence in a few hours.

[Sidenote: The necessity for speed.]

[Sidenote: Valuable stores abandoned for lack of lorries.]

The difficulty that complicated the Italian evacuation of their war-zone was the fact that every hour the need for speed became more urgent, if utter disaster was to be averted. A unit would be given twelve hours to get to the point on the railway where it was to entrain and then an hour later its time-limit would be reduced to two hours. A headquarters might be told that a sufficient supply of motor-lorries would be available to evacuate all its material and that it had better begin getting rid of chairs and tables and its superfluous stuff at once, but no sooner had these less important stores gone than word would come that no more transport was available and that all the immensely valuable stores and reserves of ammunition that still remained, must be abandoned, as no lorries could be found for them.

[Sidenote: Difficulties in a sudden retreat.]

[Sidenote: Every officer tries to save his supplies.]

Moving a great army is an affair of time-tables. There is room for only a certain amount of men and material on the roads and railways at one time, and every man and every wagon above that maximum becomes a factor of confusion and r.e.t.a.r.ds the movement of the whole ma.s.s to a dangerous degree. The sudden retreat of an army is often reduced to chaos, first, because a thoroughly worked-out plan of general retirement exists but rarely in the strong-boxes of any general staff, and secondly, because in the absence of a time-table drawn up in detail and strictly enforced, the elementary principle of self-preservation leads every unit of the army to put itself on the road as quickly as it can get transportation.

This is not to say that confusion is an invariable indication of personal panic; but it is very natural, and even very proper, that every battery commander, the director of every military store and depot, and the leader of every body of troops which is not definitely ordered to remain, should have the individual determination that his particular command shall not fall into the hands of the enemy. The artillery officer firmly resolves that he will save his guns at all costs; the heads of supply departments are in charge of valuable stores which their army needs for its very existence and which would be of great aid to the enemy if captured, and the troop-leader naturally argues that it would be futile to allow his men to be cut off when a general retreat has already been ordered. So if the organization of withdrawal is left to the discretion of the people involved in it, as it has to be when the whole thing has not been deliberately arranged beforehand, confusion is almost inevitable.

[Sidenote: Fear of being cut off by the enemy.]

[Sidenote: Only severest means can stop civilian traffic.]

[Sidenote: Modern war is a wild fury of destruction.]

Moreover, the enemy always seems to be advancing much faster than he really is. Under the discouragement that every army feels in falling back, it is easy to credit the pursuer with exaggerated powers of rapid motion; the defeated soldier forgets that the miles are just as long and weary for his adversary trudging painfully after him as they are for himself. Rumor, too, spreads wildly among tired and disheartened men.

Enemy cavalry, enemy armored motor-cars, hurrying ahead to cut him off--that idea haunts the mind of each man in an enforced retirement. A further complication is caused when, as was the case in the Italian withdrawal, the civilian population is also desperately anxious to be gone before the arrival of the enemy. The news of the forthcoming evacuation of territory spreads backward with rapidity, and the roads along the route of the retreating army fill at once with unregulated, disorderly swarms of frightened civilians and their household baggage, hastily stowed on slow-moving dilapidated carts that are likely to break down at narrow points of the way and block whole miles of military traffic for hours at a time. The Italian Army had to endure a great deal of that kind of complication. Theoretically, of course, a general could throw back cavalry and mounted police along the line of his retreat and forbid any civilian traffic whatever under pain of military penalties; but it is very difficult to use such measures against your own countrymen threatened with invasion, specially when the whole aim and object of your war is to free men of your own race from foreign domination. And not only does the sentimental reason of saving fellow-citizens from the yoke of an invader forbid this course, but also considerations of common humanity. In the old wars, when the danger-area of fighting was restricted to the places where opposing troops actually came into contact, there was no particular danger for the civilian inhabitants remaining in invaded territory; though their property might suffer from the enemy's requisitions, their lives were likely to be safe. But wars of this modern character spread destruction broadcast over a whole region. A rear-guard action will involve a rain of sh.e.l.ls that may smash to pieces any village on the line of retreat; gas may be used, creeping into the refuges where the non-combatant population has taken shelter, and choking them there like vermin in a hole. War is no longer a civilly organized affair of pitched battles; it is a wild fury of destruction, raging across the whole country-side like a typhoon.

If the English batteries on the Italian front had brought with them to Italy their full organization of transport, they could have saved all their ammunition and stores, their ordnance workshops and supplies. As it was, they had been incorporated in the Italian Army as corps artillery on the Italian basis; they had to take their chance of getting transport along with every one else, and consequently of all their equipment they could save only the guns themselves, which after all was what chiefly mattered.

[Sidenote: A marching army does not seem as numerous as the same in confusion.]

Discipline is a camouflage of numbers. A thousand men marching past in column of fours does not make upon the mind the same impression of mult.i.tude as the sight of half that number in a disordered rabble.