It’s almost monotonous, but here goes: after the 7th Battle of the Isonzo River that front
had settled into a war of attrition, kind of like Verdun, so how do you break that?
Well, if you’re Italian army Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna, you launch the 8th Battle of
the Isonzo River.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the Romanians attacked the Bulgarians in Dobrogea.
The Five Nation Allied Army advanced in the Balkans, two new battles began at the Somme,
and the German ambassador to The Ottoman Empire was recalled for speaking out against the
Armenian Genocide.
Here’s what came this week.
The Italian front roared back into life, for starters.
Now, even though we refer to the seven previous battles of the Isonzo River as separate things,
to the soldiers involved it was just one long daily fight with constant artillery bombardments,
airplanes dropping bombs, and snipers on the prowl.
Cadorna had already planned for the 8th Battle of the Isonzo River, and it would be a two-pronged
attack.
The Duke of Aosta, with six divisions, would attack on the northern Carso on a front of
only 3 km, while his six other divisions would maintain pressure on the Southern Carso.
Three more divisions would attack the enemy north of the Vipava River, south of Gorizia.
The Italians, in both men and guns, far outnumbered the Austro-Hungarians.
They had bombarded the Austrians all last week and the intensity of the artillery was
so great – really concentrated on a narrow front- that the Austrians took over 4,000
casualties, in spite of the strength of their defenses and fortifications.
Fog and rain had put a temporary end to the bombardment, but on the 7th it began again
from over 1,000 guns raining death on the Austrian infantry for the next two days.
On the 9th, the Italians ran a series of probing infantry attacks in the afternoon, looking
for weak spots.
The next day, after a final barrage, the Italians poured out of their assault trenches onto
the battered enemy.
By the afternoon, the Italians had made substantial gains.
South of Gorizia, the defenders were pushed back nearly 2 km and it really looked for
a minute like Cadorna’s big breakthrough was here, but Austrian General Svetozar Borojevic
von Bojna’s troops, many of them Ukrainians and Romanians from the empire, launched counter
attack after counter attack and took back over half the ground they’d lost.
In the north and center of the Carso it was the same, but not in the south.
The Battle there centered on Hill 144, and at first it was going the same way, but was
saved for Austria by First Lieutenant Theodor Wanke, from a Czech battalion, who ordered
his riflemen to charge the advancing Italians, and at gunpoint forced a neighboring company
to join in.
The whole regiment soon followed his lead and they drove back the Italians.
The south Carso was saved.
On the 11th, artillery and infantry action was resumed, and it was both costly and vicious.
Slowly, the Austrians regained ground.
Cadorna wanted to continue the attack on the 12th, but both sides were basically too exhausted
to do so.
The Austrians had held on, but they couldn’t continue to take losses at this rate.
For the Battle, they had taken 38,000 casualties; the Italians over 50,000 and possibly even
60,000.
Cadorna believed he was winning the war of attrition, which he kind of was since the
Austrians were also fighting Russia and Romania and just didn’t have too many troops to
send here, and he began planning for another battle that would come before winter set it
and prevented new offensives.
The Italians were actually making headway elsewhere this week.
A dispatch from Rome this week told of them moving from Avlona, on the Salonika front,
in a region with really poor communications.
The reports on the 10th said they’d taken Klisura, more than 50 km from Avlona toward
Monastir and they were advancing toward Lake Ochrida/Ohrid, where the Bulgarian right wing
was.
They had obviously driven back the Austrians who had held the region.
There were other allied advances there this week, and on the 10th the British cut the
Seres railway, and the Bulgarians fell back to the hills.
But the Bulgarians were advancing in Dobrogea, the southern Romanian front.
Actually, on the 8th Berlin announced that the enemy was in retreat in both Dobrogea
and Transylvania.
This was kind of true except the Romanians still held positions in the Maros Valley.
German General Erich von Falkenhayn, commanding the German forces in Transylvania, had numerical
superiority and better railway access.
By the 12th, he was facing the Romanians in the Torzburg, Predeal, and Buzau passes, and
forcing them back.
On the 13th, however, came the best news the Romanians had had in weeks, the Germans had
been stopped and forced to retreat in both the Predeal and Buzau Passes.
Could the Romanians hold off the Germans in the Torzburg Pass?
They could not, on October 13th Falkenhayn drove through Torzburg Pass to Ricar, 10 km
within Romanian borders.
But the Germans were being pushed back in the west, at the Somme.
The combined French and British attack there the 7th was pretty big even though it was
only the preliminary for British Commander in Chief Sir Douglas Haig’s push toward
the region north of Cambrai.
One French and six British divisions attacked.
In general, the attack was a failure.
The weather had prevented the big guns from having time to spot German trenches and batteries.
The British did manage to take Le Sars, thanks to an effective creeping barrage preventing
the Germans from getting their weapons into play.
On the 8th, two Canadian divisions of the reserves tried again to take Regina Trench,
but failed, as they had back on the 1st.
The German barbed wire had not been cut by artillery in many places and the German machine
guns took care of those soldiers stopped in no mans land.
On the 12th, 5 divisions attacked the Transloy line’s outer defenses.
They too failed to take their objectives, and the commander of 30th Division said that
it was pretty much because of the German practice of scattering machine guns all over in shell
holes, but not in the trenches where they just couldn’t take them out with artillery,
however for the Newfoundland soldiers advancing at Guidencourt, they moved forward too quickly
under the creeping barrage and one in ten of them was killed by their own artillery.
The grinding casualties had by this time seriously weakened much of the British 4th army, but
to General Sir Henry Rawlinson’s credit, the attacks on the 12th finally opened his
mind to a few truths.
He wrote this in his diary (Somme), “There are numerous cases of wire uncut, distant
machine gun fire, and strong counter attacks, but that fact is that the Bosch put up a better
fight of it this time, and until we can reduce his resistance further by shaking his morale
we shall not, I fear, drive him out of his present line...”
Rawlinson summarized the reasons for failure, 1) absence of surprise, attacking only between
noon and three PM, 2) difficulty of observation.
He mentioned the poor weather, but there was also the loss of the commanding position on
the ridge as the men had moved forward into valleys, 3) recovering enemy resistance, 4)
lack of clearly defined starting trenches to give the creeping barrage a regular starting
line, and 5) distant machine gun fire.
It’s good to identify the problems, finally, but he had bigger concerns now; Haig wanted
to continue the battle all winter if necessary, until such time as they were stopped by the
weather.
Rawlinson told him that they didn’t have enough men and ammunition, and even if they
did the weather would screw things up.
Haig was aware of these three issues, of course, and his solution was to build better railways
to get more ammo to the front, for more men to enlist or be conscripted, and lastly, that
an ordinary winter would not put a stop to British advance.
He also believed they had to keep on because though he couldn’t say how close the Germans
were to the breaking point, they were a fair bit of the way there, so don’t give up!
The attacks would continue and continue.
And we reach the end of the week; slow going at the Somme, a short but deadly battle on
the Italian Front, the Germans pushing into Romania, and the Bulgarians pulling back in
the Balkans.
As Rawlinson said, the Germans were putting up a hell of a fight and without weakening
their morale further they would not crack.
At least he finally realized that.
His superior Haig had yet to do so and would keep pounding and pounding and pounding away
at the German lines until that magic moment happened.
Or until he realized that it wouldn’t happen.
Or until winter came and froze them men to the extent that it was a moot point.
Three options.
For the time being, Haig chose the first one.