Italy's armed forces at the ready in a 1915 postcard. In the foreground the artillery, infantry, an Alpine soldier (in feathered hat), and a Bersaglieri (in plumed headgear). Behind them are a bugler and lancer; in the distance marines and colonial troops. The Italian navy is off shore, an airship and planes overhead. On the reverse are the lyrics of a patriotic Italian March by Angelo Balladori, lyrics by Enrico Mercatali. It ends with a call to the brothers of Trento and Trieste, Austro-Hungarian territory with large ethnic Italian populations.
Reverse:Marcia ItalicaD'Italia flammeggin le sante bandiereBaciate dal sole, baciate dal vento,Su l'aspro sentier di Bezzecca e di TrentoDe l'alma Trieste, sul cerulo mar.. . . Fratelli di Trento, Triestini fratelli,La patria s'è desta alla grande riscossa!Dell'aquila ingorda la barbara possaDai liberi petti domata sarà!Parole di Enrico MercataliMusica di Angelo Balladori.Casa Editrice Sonzogno - Milano. 1915.
"The last days of the [Third Isonzo] battle, 3 and 4 November, were extremely violent. Brigade diaries reported fears that some units might crack and desert en masse. The attacks on San Michele were weakening under the internal pressures of exhaustion and hopelessness. The Italians had sustained 67,000 losses along the front. On San Michele, the Catanzaro Brigade alone lost almost 2,800 men and 70 officers between 17 and 26 October, nearly half of each category. The Caltanisetta Brigade, deployed alongside the Catanzaro, took even heavier casualties, losing two-thirds of its men and 63 per cent of its officers between 22 October and 3 November. South of Monfalcone, the 16th Division carried out a frontal attack on Hill 121, the nearest point to Trieste that Cadorna's army had yet reached. This one failed attack cost 4,000 Italian casualties."
Italian Commander-in-Chief Luigi Cadorna launched the Third Battle of the Isonzo River on October 18, 1915 on a 50-kilometer front with 1,300 guns, most of them 75 mm. field guns that neither cut barbed wire nor destroyed entrenchments. The Adriatic port of Trieste, Austria-Hungary, with a large ethnic Italian population, was one of Italy's war aims.
The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson, page 130, copyright © 2008 Mark Thompson, publisher: Basic Books, publication date: 2009
1915-11-04, 1915, November, Trieste, Cadorna, Italian Front, Third Battle of the Isonzo, Third Isonzo, Isonzo
