The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 (66 page)
Read The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 Online
Authors: Mark Thompson
Tags: #Europe, #World War I, #Italy, #20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, #Military History, #European history, #War & defence operations, #General, #Military - World War I, #1914-1918, #Italy - History, #Europe - Italy, #First World War, #History - Military, #Military, #War, #History
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Bread had to be brought from as far as Ferrara, south of the River Po, and went mouldy before it reached the men, who were more troubled by the shortage of tobacco.
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Prime Minister Antonio Salandra near the front in May 1916, a month before he was forced to resign.
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Baron Sidney Sonnino: ‘never was a foreign minister more stubborn and unintelligent, or more honest and sincere’.
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Captain Gabriele D’Annunzio, talking the talk near Vicenza, 1918.
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Benito Mussolini, arrested at an interventionist rally in 1915. Perhaps this was in Rome, in April, when Curzio Malaparte saw Mussolini bellowing as the police dragged him away: ‘thin, pale, jaws set hard, his neck straining with effort’.
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General Cadorna visiting British batteries in spring 1917.
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Looking from the western rim of the Isonzo valley, across to Mount Mrzli. The Italians clawed their way up this 1,200-metre face, but could not take the summit. Colonel De Rossi’s view in May 1915 was from a lower elevation.
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Austro-Hungarian troops rest while building a trench on the Carso.
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Looking from the Austro-Hungarian forward positions on Mount San Michele, northwards, across the Italian lines and the River Isonzo to the plains of Friuli. The outskirts of Gorizia are visible in the distance on the right.
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Trieste and its port in 1919. ‘National deliverance’ has come at last to the city’s ‘huddled browntiled roofs’ (James Joyce). And the quays are empty.
