Read Online The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson - Free Book Online Page B

thirty years ’: Woodhouse, 240.
    2 an exchange from summer 1904 : Woodhouse, 218, 219.
    3 he was thrilled by the Libyan campaign : Woodhouse, 263, 264.
    4 ‘ in a species of lyric frenzy ’: According to Thomas Page, the US ambassador to Italy.
    5 did not even mention D’Annunzio or his speech : O’Brien [2004], 57.
    6 ‘ a new species of “ free spirits ”’: O’Brien [2004], 57.
    7 He drafted a manifesto on the ‘ profound antithesis ’: O’Brien [2004], 32
    8 Mussolini was latently pro-intervention: O’Brien [2004], 34.
    9 A former comrade in the Socialist Party later alleged : Rossi.
    10 Mussolini waited to be called up : O’Brien [2004], 68.
    11 ‘ The people’s heart is never in any war ’: Mussolini, 59–60, 110, 111.
    1  Here is a wartime propagandist’s hilarious account: ‘Almost in voluntary exile, and rapt in his sublime visions, he seemed to have forgotten his beautiful fatherland. But no, as soon as the first signs of the new dawn appeared in the skies of the fatherland, he arose proudly and his heart inflamed his mind with a shudder of love, and he ran to the breast of the great Mother.’ Did the author, Stefania Türr, pen this passage before, after, or even while being pleasured by the Bard? 
    2  Colossal statues of mythical twins Castor and Pollux, on horseback, in the piazza in front of the Quirinale palace, then the residence of the royal family, now the seat of the President of the Republic.  
    3  During the war, 162,563 soldiers were court-martialled for desertion and 101,685 were found guilty. Either Mussolini made up the figure of 535,000 on the spot, or he referred to the propaganda myth – discussed in a later chapter – that most of the 600,000 Italian prisoners of war, taken by the Austrians and Germans, were ‘deserters’.  

FIVE
The Solemn Hour Strikes
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night and
when you move, fall like a thunderbolt .
S UN T ZU
   
War should be undertaken with forces corresponding
to the magnitude of the obstacles that are to be
anticipated .
N APOLEON , Military Maxims (1827)
      
    Yellowed prints of the 1866 border show simple guardhouses beside stone bridges. Farmers pose, squinting, by the barrier poles alongside their carts and livestock, while children play at the roadside under listless flags. Few traces of that frontier can be seen today. On the outskirts of Cormons, a guardhouse has been adapted into a loggia for a private home, sheltering an expensive car. Deep in its stony bed, the River Judrio trickles past the end of the garden. Traffic whines along the SS356 highway, a hundred metres away, beyond a monument marking where the first shots were fired in Italy’s last war of independence. The inscription says that on the night of 23/24 May, Italian customs officers opened fire to stop Austrian reservists from burning the wooden bridge over the Judrio. A few hours later, the first Italian casualty was brought back across the bridge on a farmer’s cart.
    The 23rd was a Sunday, and parish priests along the border warned their congregations that war was coming. Hostilities officially com menced at midnight. Assuming supreme command, the King over came his diffidence and spoke to the people – something he rarely did. The solemn hour of national claims had struck, he cried, standing on the balcony of the Quirinale palace and waving a flag. The enemy were battle-hardened and worthy; favoured by the terrain and by careful preparations, they would fight tenaciously, ‘but your indomitable ardour will certainly overcome them’. It was an oddly subdued performance. Even so, according to press reports, the crowd was delirious. With this ordeal behind him, the King hurried to the front; he did not want to miss a moment of his army’s dash to glory.
    The army was not, however, dashing anywhere. Full mobilisation began on 22 May and was scheduled to take 23 days. It took twice as long; the army was not fully deployed until