'The first tread-way bridge built across the Isonzo river' is in the background, a destroyed bridge in the foreground, and another under construction. Austrian and German soldiers watch POWs — most likely Italian — draw carts, and cut and trim logs. 'In the background our trenches', and dozens of horse-drawn wagons waiting to cross the tread-way bridge. (The quotations are from a handwritten note on the reverse; translation Thomas Faust.)
M556
"At the Battle of Caporetto, within the space of four days, the forces of the Central Powers had virtually destroyed the Italian Second Army and had then pursued the retreating Italians nearly 80 miles to the Piave river. They were now at the gates of Venice. . . .Around 280,000 Italians were taken prisoner and a further 250,000 deserted. Some 30,000 were wounded, with the comparatively small number of 10,000 killed. In material terms the Italians lost 3,150 artillery pieces, 1,700 mortars and 3,000 machine-guns. Wrecked trucks, ambulances, weapons and dead horses littered the battlefields. And the effects of the defeat were not confined to the military as some 400,000 civilian refugees took to the roads."
In eleven Battles of the Isonzo from June 23, 1915 to September 12, 1917 the Italian army under the command of Luigi Cadorna had crossed the border into Austria-Hungary, crossed the Isonzo River, and taken plateaus and mountain peaks, only to look on more peaks beyond. The Eleventh Battle nearly broke the Austro-Hungarian defenders. When joint German and Austro-Hungarian forces (the two empires at the core of the Central Powers) attacked on October 24, 1917 in their first offensive of the Isonzo, the Italian Second Army, and then the entire front collapsed. The mountain war that had been fought since 1915, with the Italians perpetually attacking defenders who held higher ground, was suddenly ended and brought to Italy's northeastern plain, within reach of the Adriatic port and prize of Venice.
Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign: The Italian Front 1915–1918 by John MacDonald with Željko Cimprić, page 172, copyright © John MacDonald, 2011, 2015, publisher: Pen and Sword Books, publication date: 2011
1917-10-28, 1917, October, Battle of Caporetto, Caporetto, Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo, Twelfth Isonzo, Isonzo, tread-way bridge, Isonzo tread-way bridge,
