January 15, 1918.—The command of the Third Army has stationed its headquarters in the village of Mogliano, near Venice. The troops of the Third Army, which for the past two months have been successfully resisting the continual thunderous attempts of the Austrian troops to cross the Piave, have established a front extending from the bridge of the Priula to the sea. Fortunately the region along the coast is flooded. Our other troops hold the old Piave line. Even in the mountain regions, events seem to favor us. After the first moments of confusion had passed, 2 the new recruits, especially the youths of nineteen, exhibited once more all the boldness, all the pugnacity which had brought them distinction on the Carso. In vain did the Germans hurl their divisions, from the Lake of Garda to the Montello, against the light line recently reinforced by the foot soldiers of our company. The very troops which were unable to resist the forces of the enemy in the trenches of the Carso, although supported by thousands of mouths of every caliber belching forth fire, here on the rocky precipices of the Grappa, with a few wire entanglements and a single line of uninterrupted trenches, formed a barrier insurmountable by the violent enemy.
The German troops, drunk with the wine from our cellars, and fattened with the rich products from our fertile fields, were in a few instances, held back without aid of munitions, as without support of artillery, by mere stones and rocks hurled upon them by our men inexorably determined not to let 3 the enemy pass. Again I took courage. I had never doubted the fate of our army, but in the rarer and more hazardous moments, had none the less been compelled to question my own convictions, since events scarcely justified my boundless optimism. This optimism depended in some measure upon the fact that I was an officer of the Third Army, the army which, under the command of the Duke of Aosta, had numerous times endeavored to open up a way toward Trieste, and which had occupied, little by little, the land of the Dolina and the rocky regions of the Carso. We of the Third Army had never considered ourselves beaten; we had been compelled to submit to inevitable events; we had been compelled to withdraw, against our wishes, lest we had been surrounded, and to the end that the stream of Germans which had penetrated from Caporetto, might not cut off our road to the Piave. But the heroes of Faiti, the heroes of Hermanda, even on the day when 4 the retreat was determined upon, repulsed more than thirty attacks of the enemy, and in a final magnificent play, in defiance of the enemy pressing them on all sides, made a desperate assault in which they conquered new trenches and made several prisoners.
Those soldiers wept as they abandoned their huts. On our front the enemy had always been held back, and when it did advance, its journey was slow and costly. We aviators, who had been absolute masters of the air over the Isonzo, who had traversed with unswerving flight the enemy sky where hostile machines had in vain attempted our territory, who a thousand times had brought a greeting to the City of Grief, Trieste, seeming ever to be waiting for us there at the end of the Gulf at the foot of the hills—we aviators of the Third Army had even in our retreat inflicted such great damage on the enemy, that our troops, our ordnance, our supplies were enabled to move slowly on the muddy, congested roads, without 5 fear of any harm from the wings of the enemy. Although the enemy planes were supported on land by the slow, persistent advance of their troops, they never dared nor risked firing on our slowly retreating column. A feat which but for us would have been easy, and would have shaken seriously the morale of our soldiers.
I shall ever be able to visualize the spectacle of that retreat; I shall ever remember that throng of men with heads bent low, with an air at once so grim, and so surly, that the collective countenance seemed scarcely human. Yet there were not a few encouraging ones among them. I shall always remember a corporal of the Alpini whom I met in the village of Pordenone. He was lying exhausted beside his machine gun which he had carried on his shoulder from summit to summit, from hill to hill, for seven consecutive days, until he had reached the plain. For food he had eaten bits of musty bread chanced upon along the 6 road. When I stopped he first begged me for a bit of bread, then anxiously inquired on what line our command had decided to halt. He desired to shoulder his gun thither, again to set it up against the enemy where the need of halting their advance was greatest. The soldiers of the new Italy were being re-born!
Without a tear I had left the countryside endeared to me by memories of my childhood, the place where I was born, the place where for several centuries my ancestors had lived. On the last night, when I had a clear vision of the inevitable, after I had learnt from a superior officer that our next stand would be on the Piave, and that all the region in which lay my properties, my houses, my villas, all I possessed, was to be ceded to the enemy, I rushed in an automobile borrowed from headquarters to my father’s dwelling that I might persuade him to depart. I was certain that he would not believe me, and it was not without a 7 prolonged struggle that I succeeded in convincing him. Indeed he would have preferred on that day to hear that we, his two boys, had fallen in battle, rather than learn from one of us that we had been unable to stop the enemy. At last becoming resigned to the cruel reality, giving no thought to the salvation of any of our belongings, since even the dearest personal thing lost all significance when the entire country was in danger he decided to leave.
Even now I can see his tall, straight figure on the threshold of the house, as he turned to cast a final look upon the scene of all our memories; a scene which he would never again observe as he left it that night. The women servants in the house, convulsively weeping, threw themselves at his feet that they might express in a last desperate farewell all the strength of their love. I could not shed a tear. I had given all my tears when I had seen our soldiers retreating from the Carso. I had never feared 8 death, yet then I prayed God with all my strength and faith, that I might live; that I might not die with that vision of defeat in my mind. A thousand times I had hurled myself where danger seemed the greatest, where death was reaping a rich harvest, not asking God to spare me. But at the Carso I prayed for life. I could not die defeated.
Every foot of land we ceded to the enemy was a new grief to my Italian heart. For every villa, for every square, for every expression of art we had to cede, for every remembrance profaned by the greedy barbarian, the wound became greater and hurt with a vehemence never heretofore experienced. At the death of my mother alone had I felt anything similar. I felt as though the world were crumbling about me. At dawn and at evening, on the rising of the sun and its setting, I would ask myself, how, with such immense grief in the world, nature could act according to her custom 9 of mathematical regularity, regardless of so much suffering.
With our successful resistance on the Piave the most painful days had passed. A wave of new bold blood, of passion, had permeated our fighters. They had found themselves again, and if anyone among them previously for a moment had felt a streak of cowardice, he now asked to be allowed to sacrifice his life, to place his multiplied energy at the disposal of his country. Often I had asked myself anxiously what would become of our villages; often flying low over the territories which were now held by the enemy but which I knew inch by inch, I had tried to discover what the enemy plans might be. I had tried to steal from the enemy the secret he guarded so jealously.
Once indeed while flying over San Vendemmiano, over the road which passes near my villa, I discovered a long line of cars slowly traveling eastward. Without a moment’s 10 hesitation I ordered the pilot to lower the plane as much as he could. We were a few hundred feet above the enemy when I let loose on them the fury of our machine gun. Gradually I saw a few men turn for cover towards my villa. This assured me that it, too, was occupied by the enemy, and I fired repeatedly at my own house. Small satisfaction though the deed brought me, it yet sufficed to drive away somewhat of the deep dejection which recent events had instilled.
However, my usual program was interrupted one day by a communication from the Intelligence Division of the Third Army, sent by Colonel Smaniotto, ordering me to report at once to the Command for important instructions. I had but just returned from a flight and was editing my report on the movements I had noticed on the coast roads and the modifications I had noticed on an enemy bridge over the new Piave, when the summons came. Swiftly 11 enough I traversed by automobile the short distance between the aviation camp at Marcon and the headquarters of the division which were in a villa in Mogliano. The colonel immediately received me, with his customary smile and courteous manner. He was seated in front of a large table burdened by maps and books—a high table which dominated other smaller tables at which officers in charge of special departments of the Intelligence Division were seated. Colonel Smaniotto was the leading mind in the Intelligence Division. He possessed the calm, fine, discriminating mentality which analyzed all the varied reports—strange, common, unusual, gathered from all sides, whence he prepared an exact summary of the enemy forces and plans for the use of the General Staff. With his clear, straightforward look he would stare into our eyes to divine our thoughts; his manner was serious and tranquil; his entire personality inspired faith and confidence.
12 “Are you from Vittorio?” he asked me.
“No, sir. I was born in Venice, but the old house of my family is in Vittorio, and in Vittorio, Congliano, Cimetta, Fontanelle, in fact scattered all over that region we have—or rather we had—extensive properties.”
“Did you know,” the Colonel continued with a smile, “that the command of the German army of Von Buelow had established itself in your house in Vittorio?”
“I did not know.”
“But why? Don’t you read the daily bulletins which are circulated to keep the aviators informed about the enemy forces?”
“No, sir. For the past few days I have been flying a great deal and I have had less time for reading.”
“What would you say,” he asked me point-blank, “if I were to propose to you an excursion to go on the enemy side for the purpose of seeking exact information about the condition of the enemy? Nothing 13 has been determined as yet—the time, nor the means for effecting this project. Think it over. We need a trustworthy person, a man who is serious, and in whom we can have absolute faith. I am glad to see you have already two medals, one of silver and one of bronze. This might be a chance for you to earn a medal of gold. As I said before, I have as yet no particular plan. It is up to you, knowing well as you do that countryside, and the habits of its peasantry and their dialects, to devise some way for landing and keeping yourself on the other side. Tell me, now, when your family left Vittorio, didn’t you leave some custodian or guardian to look after the houses?”
The question annoyed me, and I answered half in jest and half in earnest, “The day of the retreat we were really very little preoccupied by our own affairs, but I do believe, however, that an old agent and a woman did not succeed in getting behind our lines. I presume they remained in our 14 house, where they used to stay before. But, Colonel, do you think the Germans will have permitted them to remain in our house? I do not think so. I am inclined to believe, however, that many of our peasant families which live isolated out in the country, have not been molested, and it would perhaps be better, if I should succeed in reaching the other side, to try to join one of these families. I know how deep is their affection for my father, and how greatly they love all that belongs to our family.”
“Very well, think it over, and let me have an answer shortly. Meanwhile I want you to live here in the Intelligence Office, that you may become acquainted with the kind of information we receive concerning the doings on the other side. This will not prevent your flying, since I know that would displease you too much.” A broad smile passed over and illumined his soldierly face. “Here you will get a clearer notion of the 15 possibilities of my project, and a better angle on the customs of the enemy in invaded territory. Therefore to-morrow you will be transferred to my department, without, however, binding yourself in any way to undertake the trip I have mentioned. I shall expect you to-morrow.”
Our hands met in a firm, cordial clasp, and I left him.
All night I could not sleep because of the thousands of plans I kept revolving in my mind. One plan suggested another, and then another, until there were heaps and heaps of them, confused, without beginning or end, just overlapping fragments of ideas. Towards dawn I slumbered a little, but I had to get up early to go to the office. On the fifteenth of January I became a part of that complicated organization which gathers and summarizes all the information the army has about the enemy.