VALIANT ITALIANS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17239, 15 February 1918, Page 7

VALIANT ITALIANS

BORIANTS MEN AT ASIAGO. SUCCESS AGAINST TREMENDOUS ODDS. In a. despatch to tho New York Times, Mr Percival (.ribbon, the war correspondent, gave a. stirring account of the stemming cif tho Asiago drive by the Italian troops under General Boriani. The- message, which is dated Novcanber 29, states: — l>osp:iir is the touchstone of valour. None but tho true mttal resists its test. On the high tableland that takes its namo from tho ruined village of Asiago that tost has been applied and daily withstood every sinco November 9 by the body of men under General Boriani, who, outnumbered, out-gunned, and unsupported, have burnished Italy's glories to a new lustre. They wero the men sent thither to withstand that mighty Austrian thrust whose total strength reached 44 battalions of the cream of the- Austrian army, such divisions as the 19th, which the Italians hammered down to a residue- of 3000 men, while their own strength totalled no more than 12 battalions at any one time, and their total forces from November 9 to now have been only 19 battalions of Alpini infantry and Borsaglicri.

BARRED THE ROAD TO THE PLAINS.

Upon them and upon that ecstasy of strength which comes to bravo men from the knowledge of their weakness depended on tho defence of ono of the high roads to the plain, that old blood-sodden, hardbought road across the Asiago plateau, which opens on tho oast to Brenta "'alley and on tho west to the Valley of tlie Astieo—easy roads, both of them, leading by plain and straight ways to the heart of Italy. Hither after the retreat from the Isonzo came General Boriani and what was lr-ft of his sth Brigade of Borsaglieri. with sufliriV-it Alpini and infantry added to them to make them look like a weak division.

They had been at Liga when the enemy forced his way up Globoko and retook the batteries in a hand-to-hand fight. r Tbey also fought a rearguard action at 'iorre bridge. Boriani himself -went into Uclme at l" p.m. on October 28, which was about an hour after I left it, and w-as fired nrron by Germans in the largo square overlooked by Cadorna's headquarters. They fought with the rearguard to the Tagliamento, led bv Boriani himself on foot, and there was never a momwit throughout tho tragedy of the retreat when the 5M> Bersaglieri failed in discipline or lost cohesion as a body. GENERAL FOUR TIMES WOUNDED. Boriani was ono of tho distinguished fighting leaders of the Second Army. A youngish, vivacious man, with an extraordinary flow of nursery English, speaking of the Austrians to me, he said:— "They aro horrid, nasty beasts," and, showing the bandaged hand in which he had received his fourth wound this year, ho complained that he could not use a fork at the table. " I am like a beastly beast in a beastly cage," he said —all this with a twinkle and snap of tho lively eyes in the humorous, strongly-marked face of the man who began life as a doctor and became a specialist in diseases of women, and is now famous as one of the most reckless and successful leaders of the fighting men in Italy. On November 9, with the Austrian forces in greatly superior numbers threatening, his whole line, he fell back from a portion _ of the old Asiago front to 'points at which Monte Longara and Monto Meletta were held by hie advance posts. That night, in blizzard, the Austrians attacked him, and succeeded in forcing him back so that they took positions on Meletta Castelgomberto and a 1736-metre height on tho great upland of Monte Fior ; besides the whole of that mass of steep pastures and little woods which aro known as Meletta d'Avanti.

BORIANI TAKES THE OFFENSIVE.

Faced here with the alternatives of an almost immediate further retirement to another line or an attacking wjjth inferior forces in the hope of recovering some of tho lost ground and thereby mending the situation, Boriani chose the latter, and on November 16 his men, by sheer fighting, retook the whole of Meletta d'Avanti and Meletta di GaUio, besides thrusting out westward and ridding themselves of a number of objectionable Austrian neighbours in the form of advanced posts. He had accomplished what he designed, but no single victory could make his position a good one. His front was a narrow salient, ballooning northward from Asiago on tho west, taking in '• Gallio and Monto Longara, and turning eastward just north of the heights of Castelgomberto and Tondarecar. Thence it ran south across Badenecche, and reached the Brenta some miles below San Marino. Its greatest width was not more than 10 miles, and there was no part of it that was not pounded daily by the ponderous Austrian artillery. The incessant bombardment and Austrian pressure mado the position daily worse. Tho snow was deepening on the desolate levels of the tableland walled in by its fringe of great mountains. It was a case of attacking or being squeezed or hunted out. Boriani, of course, attacked. He organised his attack to begin on the morning of November 22, before the bitter dawn of these high, wintry deserts. He did not know—he had no moans of knowing—that the Austrians wero as tired of him as ho of them, and had 'themselves arranged for an attack for that morning, to start just after the hour for which he had arranged. So, when the Italians went forward, they were mot by the preliminary bombardment which was to mako ihings easy for tlie Austrian infantry. They ducked for cover forthwith, while the swift brains of their leaders went to work on this new problem. It was settled by the Austrians coining duly forward for the attack, with a handsome barrage in front of them, and tho two forces met ill the open. Boriani speaks of it as a sort of joke, but, then, fighting is his hobby as' well as his trade.

FRIGHTFUL FIGHTING IN THE OPEN.

There ensued perhaps the most frightful open fighting which this war has seen. It was a melee over acres of ground where battalions were locked one with another, and stabbed and slashed among the crags and over the snow while the Austrian shells burst among them, killing friend and foe together. There were men who fought barehanded and others who fought with s;ones. It was a saturnalia of killing. Sheer numbers decided it, and by nightfall the Italians had lost a little ground, every yard of which had been paid for with dead men. They recovered 'the whole of that ground in the course of the night, and it was not till the night of November 26 that they fell back, without a fight and without pressure from the enemy, upon their present line. The Austrian forces engaged against them included the 19th Division, to which I have referred above ; the 11th Division from tho reserve; and the 106 th. whose 2nd Brigade comprised of six battalions of Kaiserjagcr; and ako tho 18th and 14th Divisions.