Photograph of four First World War Italian soldiers. The one on the far right wears a monocle.
"The end of July and the first fortnight of August [1916] were a quiet and comparatively pleasant time for us. There were no attacks, and without attacks life in the trenches, however hard it may be, is nothing really to complain of. The whole drama of war lies in the moment of attack. In itself death is a normal happening and soldiers die without fear. But the thought of death, the certainty of its imminence, make the hours that precede it tragic. Why was it that two men of the 10th battalion had killed themselves? In ordinary trench life no one expects death or thinks it inevitable; and when it comes, it comes in kindly fashion, unheralded and unexpectedly."
Emilio Lussu's Sardinia Brigade had been deployed from the Isonzo Front to the Trentino to stem the mid-May, 1916 Austro-Hungarian Asiago Offensive. Austro-Hungarian Chief of Staff Conrad von Hötzendorf stopped that attack on June 16 to turn east to deal with Russia's Brusilov Offensive. Italian Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna took advantage of Conrad's focus on his Russian Front to strike again on the Isonzo on August 6, the sixth battle on that river, and Cadorna's greatest success. For Lussu in Trentino the weeks were quiet.
Sardinian Brigade by Emilio Lussu, pp. 132–133, copyright © 1939 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., publisher: Knopf, publication date: 1939
1916-08-07, 1916, August, Italian Front, Trentino, Italian soldiers, Italian soldier
