Tales of War Pathways to peace A project promoting trails through key sites from the First World War in Central Friuli 1915-1918: The First World War The long period of peace that defined La Belle Époque the historic, cultural and artistic period of European history spanning from the late nineteenth century to the start of the First World War came to an abrupt end in August 1914, when the most important nations in Europe made the decision to abandon the diplomatic route for resolving their reciprocal political, economic and military tensions and took up arms. And so came the Guns of August : what was supposed to be a brief conflict involving Austria-Hungary, Germany and Turkey on one side, and France, the United Kingdom and Russia on the other. These nations were the Central Powers in the conflict and those responsible for it, but almost all of the nations in Europe took sides: there were those in the Triple Alliance, and those in the Triple Entente. Italy was among the states that remained neutral (including Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and the Scandinavian countries), having decided that, despite having been tied to Austria- Hungary and Germany through the Triple Alliance since 1882, at this stage it was better to stay out of the conflict. Officially, the Triple Alliance did not force Italy to act, as it was a defensive alliance and, here, it was Austria-Hungary that had first declared war on Serbia, triggering a chain reaction. Italy s intentions, although legitimate from the perspective of international law, were not clear in political terms, and the national establishment soon decided that a change of alliances would be more beneficial. France, the United Kingdom and Russia did indeed have something more to offer, something that Austria-Hungary could not provide: the unredeemed territories. The territories in question were those we know today as the provinces of Trento and Bolzano, Trieste and Istria, lands which had never before belonged to Italy, but where there was a significant presence of Italian-speaking citizens and a minority Italian annexation movement, justifying Italy s quest to obtain said annexations. Austria-Hungary, as a multi-ethnic empire, simply could not grant Italy this concession without triggering an irreversible chain of nationalist claims, which would have led straight to the dissolution of the Empire. In this context, Italy stalled until April 1915, surreptitiously negotiating with both sides, and as soon as the positive effects of neutrality on the economy began to attenuate and the promises of the Triple Entente were to guarantee future possession of the unredeemed territories, it decided traitorously to side with France, the United Kingdom and Russia. 24 May 1915: Italy enters the war Italian military intervention began on 24 May 1915 and the region of Friuli was on the front line from the very beginning. Even though the war was fought close to the border established after 1866, overstepped by just a few miles and only in a few places in the southern part of Friuli, the whole region was involved in the conflict. An army of several
million men with all of the logistical demands of war transformed almost every town into a possible candidate for serving behind the front line. The Tagliamento railway One of the most pressing needs of every army at war is to organise transport routes, as these are what guarantee the provision of crucial supplies to the front line and the zones behind it. Said transport routes at the time consisted in either roads or, more commonly, railways. It was precisely the proximity of the town of Dignano to the Casarsa-Pinzano- Gemona railway line the so-called Tagliamento railway that led to a bridge being built across this large Friulian river in 1915. The railway line, opened in 1912 and completed in October 1914 when the bridge over the Tagliamento river was tested in the town of Cornino, allowed vital materials to be transported to support the northern sector of the Second Army alliance and the troops in the XII Corps, known as the Carnia Zone. The bridge between Gradisca and Bonzicco The railway line wound along the right bank of the river and, level with the town of Gradisca in the district surrounding Spilimbergo where the former boat passage once was, a wooden bridge on stilts was built by the public corps of civil engineers in the summer of 1915, connecting Gradisca to the inhabited town of Bonzicco on the left bank. The bridge was designed to guarantee safer and more convenient transportation of troops on their way to the northern part of Friuli, allowing them to go back up the Tagliamento via rail, without blocking the Delizia bridges and, at the same time, creating a network serving the zones behind the front line. As dictated by the construction technology available at the time, the bridge could not be crossed with heavy loads and so the heavier artillery had to use alternative routes. The rout at Kobarid The life of the bridge, until autumn 1917, was ordinarily tied to the whims of the river, which put the bridge structure to the test with its floods and high waters. On 24 October 1917, the Austro-Hungarian and German troops caught the Royal Italian Army unawares and the front in Bovec, Tolmin and Kobarid fell, leading to a disastrous retreat. The need to redeploy the entire army, first beyond the Tagliamento and later another river, the Piave, clashed with the bottlenecks created by the scarcity of bridges connecting the two banks of the Tagliamento. As the crossings drew nearer, with the river overflowing due to the heavy rainfall, total chaos ensued and the roads to access the sites at the extremities of the passages were blocked for miles by materials and men, soldiers and refugees, who had come to realise that their salvation from imprisonment and from the feared but imaginary Teutonic violence lay inevitably beyond the Tagliamento.
Accounts from the time Parish records by Don Giuseppe Sant, the parish priest for the town of Carpacco, provide a clear picture of what happened: Before describing the Germanic invasion, it is helpful to look briefly at the hasty, disastrous retreat of the Italian troops from Isonzo. They passed through Carpacco on their retreat on 26 October; they continued on 27 October in increasingly large numbers. On Sunday 28, the streets were crammed with soldiers. It rained torrentially throughout the day and night; the muddy streets turned to sunken torrents and were unusable. The Italian troops were retreating in a disorganised fashion penetrating the streets, one after another in quick succession. Soldiers came on foot, horseback and bicycles, and in cars, lorries and wagons pulled by tired horses. It was pitch black at night, and there was a terrible commotion. It broke one s heart to see such disorder, such pain, and so much blood shed pointlessly across Isonzo. The wooden bridge at Bonzicco over the Tagliamento, built at the start of the war in 1915, broke on the morning of 28 October, and so all of the troops sent that way to cross it had to turn back, heading towards Carpacco and the bridge at Pinzano. Along with the soldiers, whole families from the region went by: children, the elderly, the sick on wagons pulled by oxen, everyone was fleeing towards Udine. On Monday 29 October, the weather had eased and the Italian troops continued to pass, but not in such great numbers as on the previous day. They were hungry and went into people s houses asking for food. They asked courteously and it was no trouble for the local citizens. Poor souls! The Tagliamento river was swollen and overflowing because of the heavy rainfall, and this went on for about ten days, as it continued to rain for the first fortnight in November. The people of the town were undecided as to what to do, whether to stay or go. But I think if the river had been dry, most would have fled. On 29 October only troops on foot passed over the bridge at Pinzano. That bridge too was damaged, and so the civil and military wagons had had to stop. The pile-up of stationary wagons began in Villanova and went all the way back to Ragogna, one behind the other in two parallel lines along the streets. And all of these convoys loaded with everything imaginable from foodstuffs to clothes, arms and ammunition were stuck, prisoners, because of the sudden arrival of the Germans. The Germans threw everything into the ditches, to create a clear passageway for the troops. A lot of stuff was left there abandoned for a month, in the rain, and civilians claimed ample loot. The rest was gathered up by the Germans. On the evening of 29 October, the cannon sounded towards Udine. You could hear the machine guns. The Italian troops had finished their passage across but you occasionally saw squadrons of straggling troops, tired, wet and dirty, trying to move on.
It was Tuesday 30 October, at about 7 o clock in the morning when the first patrols of German troops started to reach Carpacco [...]. There were exchanges of gun fire on the bed of the Tagliamento. There was great trouble on the bridge at Bonzicco. The church and parsonage in Dignano were hit by the shots fired from Italian guns; in Bonzicco, Dignano and Vidulis, houses were destroyed by Italian guns answering the fire from the Germans across the Tagliamento. Many German and Italian soldiers were injured and killed in the retreat at Villanova. The Germans had to wait a few days before they could cross the Tagliamento, both because its waters were high and because of the slight Italian resistance. Bonzicco bridge, already damaged by the overflowing river, was cut off definitively by the retreating Italians; the Germans had no choice but to go back up the left bank towards Pinzano or come down the river towards the Delizia bridges, where the bridgehead fell precisely because it was attacked on the left side by troops coming from Dignano. The happy days of victory The bridge was restored as best it could be and reused for the full year of occupation, despite the structure still being fragile. In October and November 1918, the situation turned around and, after the Battle of Vittorio Veneto on 24 October 1918, it was Austria- Hungary retreating. By November, the front had fallen and Italy had officially won the war, but a large part of its territory was still occupied. And so began the race, which largely involved the cavalry, to reach at least the pre-war border as quickly as possible. Despite the bridges being a strategic part of this exploit, the Tagliamento river was once again kind to the Italians as, unlike in the year before, it was dry. This meant that its wide, sandy bed could be crossed at points other than the bridges, preventing any Austro-Hungarian resistance outright. From the records of Monsignor Giobatta Monai, the parish priest of Dignano: 2 November [...] The resistance troops have remained, vandalism reigns day and night, instilling real terror in the inhabitants, increasing trepidation for the battle about to be fought. The Italian troops, having already claimed the right beach of the Tagliamento, are willing to force their way over; here there has not been much preparation for the resistance, just enough to make us live through a horrible few hours. At about 8 pm, the bridge was destroyed with dynamite: we are waiting for night to fall. God pray it be a good one! 3 November [...] Along the flow of the water, among the willows, there are machine guns in place; in the town there are more ready, in Cooz there are two Infantry Divisions, guns are in place here and there as far as the towns of Cisterna and Flaibano. Will they cross today? Where? How many will be sacrificed?
Crossing the Tagliamento river Then it happened: at 8:40 [on 3 November] the first Italian cavalry regiment, the Nice Dragoons, galloped across the river without a single shot being fired. Had telephone communication been traitorously broken down? Had there been a mutiny by the gunners? Had the Austro-Hungarian fighters been informed too early of the armistice that was to take effect only as of 3 pm on 4 November? We do not know. What happened when the Italians appeared was indescribable, both the explosion of joy by the local people, and the bewilderment of the Austro-Hungarians. The day was spent in negotiations between officials from both armies, the Generals of the two contending parties, and the result was that, in the meantime, Scottish soldiers had arrived, ordering the Austro-Hungarians to surrender their arms, and the Italian Cavalry proceeded to Udine and Gorizia. The Austro-Hungarian army was no more the Habsburg Empire has fallen! Once the war was over, the bridge at Bonzicco was restored as was possible by the Italians and it remained in use until 1922, when it was definitively abandoned with the construction of the stone bridge in Dignano. It was demolished by the people of the towns along the river, whose hunger for wood was no less than the hunger in their stomachs had been during the terrible year of occupation.