BACKS TO PRECIPICES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17250, 18 August 1916, Page 10

BACKS TO PRECIPICES.

ITALIANS’ HEROIC STAND. Rejoicing over the Italian victory is nowhere more sincere than at the battle front, where the soldiers had for weeks accurately realised tho perilous situation, and had grimly hc-ld their ground against the successive waves of the Austrian onsets, yielding only after obstinate and almost superhuman resistance. Tho task of this defensive army, which I am assured amounted at one time hardly to two divisions (says the “Daily Telegraph’s” Milan correspondent, writing at the end of June), was to hold the enemy in check until a powerful army of offence could bo concentrated at their back. The ground thus heroically contested was a tortuous line of Alpine peaks, the chief of which, after the famous Mont© Pasubio. were the summits of Forni Alti, Monte Alba, Monte Novegna, Monte Pau, Monte Magnabosclii, Cimar Echar, and Monte Lisser. A young officer who was at Monte Lisser only a few days ago gave me a graphic account of these positions. The retreating battle had been fought furiously almost night and day for forty days. Tho enemy was already gaining glimpses over the mountain passes of the smiling plains of Vicenza below. The Italian soldiers were fighting with their backs to a long lino of precipices, over which the furious and incessant onslaught of the desperate enemy, whose numbers seemed' inexhaustible, threatened to hurl them. FEELING OF RELIEF.

Suddenly there came a feeling of relief. Sledge-hammdr blows were being dealt to tho Austrians on tho extreme right and left wings. The enemy’s attack in the centre instantly became less resolute, and the Italian troops, who had hitherto been retreating, found to their joy that they were backed by huge lines of impregnable defences prepared during those forty days, and masses of troops and artillery were eager to come forward and' take the places of the brave heroes who had so long defenaea the danger line. Hours uassed in eager expectation. The last scene in the preparation was the arrival of the guns. They were towed up the mule paths, dragged up by sheer work of hand to seemingly inaccessible summits. Ammunition trains stood thickly behind waiting to unload. Thousands upon thousands of troops were swarming up the mountain slopes. New roads sprang into existence where none haa' been befoie. Batteries stood where only eagles had built 'tbir nests, and the last desperate skirmish on Monte Lemerle and Magnaboschi had scarcely subsided, when hundreds of Italian guns opened fir© with an infernal chorus. Snells flew thick and heavy from tho lines between Monte Pau and‘Monte Stremel across the valley of Asiago, and word came that the Austrians wore yielding and falling back. _ . PURSUIT OF THE ENEMY.

The Italian infantry immediately took up the pursuit. They rushed clown tho mountain slopes, raising their war cry of “Savoy, ’ and occupied Securna and Gallio. Thence they spread along the roads of the entire valley, re-entered Asiago, and continued tho pursuit of the enemy on Monte Longara to tho. north and Mont Congio to tho south, and everywhere the Austrians were found in full retreat, or offering only a weak resistance. To the recapture of these summits must now bo added that of Monte Pria Fora, opposite Arsiero, and Monte Cimono, which is a height of 1518 metres, north of Monte Melita, on the tableland of Asiago. FIERY LITTLE "WARRIORS.

Tho Austrians are brave enough, and on tho averago they are bigger and heavier men than their opponents (says a British correspondent with the Italian Array). But they cannot face them with the bayonet. Contrary to u-liat one might have expected, they dread the Neapolitan and the Sicilian more than the hardier Piedmontese. These lithe, wiry, sunburnt, swift-foot-ed children of the South and East, sprint into the charge with wild shouts and eyes that flash like their own knives. They have done terrible work on tho Isonzo, and often enough the turbid waters of that languid stream have swam red with their own «ind the enemy’s blood. Only a few days ago they rushed a first line trench at Manfalcone, and came back with a crowd of prisoners and a fine booty in bomb-throwers and machine guns. None of the motley contingents of Austrians, Germans, Slovaks, Croats, Magyars or Tyrolese has any appetite for a point-to-point struggle with tlieso fiery little wariors.