THE GLACIER WAR

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9788, 11 October 1917, Page 7

THE GLACIER WAR

ITALY’S MOUNTAINEERS “A NATION OF MANDOLINE PLAYERS.” This is the season, of avalanches; tho long, harsh roar of them, as slopes of snow lose their hold in the heights and pour down towards tho treelino, renews itself each hour (writes Mr Porcoral Gibbon, from the Italian front). But there was a day recently ■when, beyond the high passes which lead into Switzerland, the dejected hotelkeepers of. St, Moritz looked up startled at a new far thunder from the mountains that waned and swelled tn wares of heavy, sound. “Guns,” they said. “Guns in Italy 1” ■ That was when, across the glaciers of Monte Adamello, tho Alpini attacked tho Austrian positions upon the rock-pyramid which is called the Cavento, a. tusk of granite that stabs ■upwards ‘from tiic ultimate snowfields of the mountain, ten thousand and odd foot above the sea. They did it at mid-day, in such a still vehemcMO of sunlight as prevails, only upon these heights; they shelled the lines with guns which they had hauled upon sledges to their places; they sent their whitevolad riflemen on skis round tho elbow of the rock to rush the trenches frontally; while tho rest, hoisting one another, to lodges, hauling others up after them, stringing man ropes and driving in spikes as they climbed in the face of the fire, carried the battle up the wall of a, perpendicular precipice and into ■ the stone-traversed trenches.

They even took a flag with them; the Italians can do these things; and there, was a moment when the watchers below saw a figure rise to view, stark against- the sun-soaked sky upon the final summit of the Cavonto, and let fly the flag that was the token of victory. WAR IN THE ETERNAL SNOW. This 'war in the eternal snows, the environment and character of it, and the men, who wage it, make up a world of their own. To the other side of Lake Garda, the mountains of the Trentino are units, as definite, as separately equipped and garrisoned as the ships of a fleet. Monte Cengio fights Monte Cimone as the Queen Elizabeth might fight the Hindenburg, individually and almost personally ; at night, when thoir searchlights bridge the Val d’Astioo, and swing. and cross like swords engaged, the great black .'mountain hulls seem to shift and manoeuvre at each other. But here, looking over the rock parapet of the Lares Saddle, one sees the Austrian line pencilled upon the swoop of fissure-trapped glacier, with its redoubts dotted along its length like beads on a string, and its barbed wire showing delicate as a screen of filigree. Where it meet* rock, it swings up and over it—or down and through it, for the Austrians are great at quarrying. •

Behind it, as behind our own, the paths to the rear are across the shining desolation of snow, ice, and stone,

over which every cartridge every ounce of food and material must travel up on the labouring shoulders of men. The wounded go back on sledges drawn, by dog teams to where the aerial railway—an iron tray travelling on a cable—slides them down, they and their bandages and their drawn, remote faces, across the gruesome abyss to the hospital, perched like a gull’s nest on the lower crags. MU for the dead tliero are graves in the ice, tombs of enduring crystal overmantled with, the pall of tho snow*. aOMPATRIOTS~OF THE PEAKS. The Alpini of the A'damello are proud of their mountain; there is a sens© in which they hav© mad© it-. it is not only that they have cut roads and hung cables and stormed trenches upon it; but they have inhabited it familiarly and invested it character Theirs are the final heights, they are the compatriot? of the peaks, and to come at them it was necesarjr to graduate through layers of engineers and transport men at the lower levels, through a stratum of als half-way up, till one crawled at last from one’s swinging iron tray to tne lip of a precipice where the cheery, shabby men, each with eagle feathers in his hat. were at home. Faces blackened with sun on the snowfieWs, hands horny as horns, boots formidably ironclad, uniforms more workmanlike than uniform, and a tort of immanent and pervading 3°y°, ns " e f®’ a cordiality of spirit, a good gladness —something, in short, of tho humour of a happy saint joined to that ot a gallant toy-that is one’s first impression of tho Alpini. Eater, one conarms it in the light of their work, their hourly grapple with the forces of a Nature barbarous and grotesque, and of their fighting. Each of them is a little apt to tell you, in confidence, what glorious fellows the others are. “A nation of mandoline P la JC’ s > was the Kaiser’s verdict on the Italians, and he was right. In the moroom below the Garibaldi Pass on Adamello, one of them w as leaning back in his chair, the. mandoline against his breast, tweaking a tune from its strings, smiling down gently at the instrument, loving it, cuddling it like a baby. The lamp shone on its lacquer and on. his black-avised, rasned fighter’s face, abstracted non and dreamy, while the talk and laughter drhtedW tho table, indifferent to his music. ~, . + u_ I turned to my ncighbour at the table with a question : , these is the man who threw the AuE Irian officer over the precipice »a the fflVinj? of ths ? He nodded to the mandoline player, dreaming and tmklc-tvnkUng. That s tho fellow,” be rephed.