Unto the Sons by Gay Talese

Author:Gay Talese [Talese, Gay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76541-3
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

25.

The surprise attack that killed Muffo, Branca, and two other soldiers in Antonio’s unit and injured half a dozen more was one of many setbacks suffered by Italian reconnaissance patrols in the early summer of 1915; and things only worsened in the weeks and months ahead, as the big battles began—battles characterized by the attempts of thousands of mountain-climbing Italians to scale the strategic peaks and topple the enemy perched along the jagged and crusty four-hundred-mile front. But it soon became apparent that more Italians were being shot down than were charging up, and the casualty figures at the end of the year shocked the nation. More than 62,000 Italian soldiers were dead, 170,000 were injured, and Italy had nothing to show for it except mortification and grief. The Austrians still controlled the dominant cliffs, and there was no reason to believe that this situation would change.

This is not what Italians had expected when the country entered the war in May 1915. At that time Italy’s involvement was seen as a limited adventure, not unlike the recent campaign in Libya, with much to gain and little to lose. It was believed that Austria, already at war with Serbia in the Balkans and with Russia on its eastern front, would offer scant resistance along its southern borders to the encroaching Italians. Italian strategists, however, had underrated the Austrian army’s strength and tenacity; and now after the unanticipated bloodshed there were angry debates in the Italian parliament, protests in towns and villages, and calls for the resignation of the Italian commander, General Count Cadorna.

But General Cadorna refused to blame himself or his staff entirely for the depressing turn of events. It had been the politicians, not he, who had drawn Italy into this war; and the war he had inherited had forced his inexperienced young troops into uphill battles whenever they ventured into enemy territory, while the inadequate supply of Italian weaponry and ammunition lent an added edge to the better-equipped Austrians. Italy’s industrial capacity, even at maximum efficiency, was no match for Austria allied with Germany (Italy had no coal, and before the war had relied extensively on Germany for hardware and machinery); and contributing to the low morale of Italian fighting men, General Cadorna believed, was the antiwar propaganda of the nation’s Socialists and other unpatriotic citizens who were spreading dissension and doubt.

Among the general’s doubters, however, were several of his own senior officers and veteran soldiers. They often saw him as a pawn of the other Allied commanders, a man who had needlessly sacrificed troops in risky assaults against the Austrians in response to the wishes of his high-ranking colleagues. But the French and British had also suffered heavy losses on the western front, as had the Russians on the eastern front; and the last thing these nations wanted, especially since their Serbian allies had seemingly gone into hibernation in the Balkans, was an unaggressive Italian army taking the pressure off the enemy along the southern border of Austria.

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