The aspect of these mountains is particularly grim and wicked;they are worn old mountains, they tower overhead in enormous vertical cliffs of sallow grey, with the square jointings and occasional clefts and gullies, their summits are toothed and jagged; the path ascends and passes round the side of the mountain upon loose screes, which descend steeply to a lower wall of precipices.In the distance rise other harsh and desolate-looking mountain masses, with shining occasional scars of old snow.Far below is a bleak valley of stunted pine trees through which passes the road of the Dolomites.
As I ascended the upper track two bandages men were coming down on led mules.It was mid-August, and they were suffering from frostbite.Across the great gap between the summits a minute traveller with some provisions was going up by wire to some post upon the crest.For everywhere upon the icy pinnacles are observation posts directing the fire of the big guns on the slopes below, or machine-gun stations, or little garrisons that sit and wait through the bleak days.Often they have no link with the world below but a precipitous climb or a "teleferic"wire.Snow and frost may cut them off absolutely for weeks from the rest of mankind.The sick and wounded must begin their journey down to help and comfort in a giddy basket that swings down to the head of the mule track below.
Originally all these crests were in Austrian hands; they were stormed by the Alpini under almost incredible conditions.For fifteen days, for example, they fought their way up these screes on the flanks of Tofana No.2 to the ultimate crags, making perhaps a hundred metres of ascent each day, hiding under rocks and in holes in the daylight and receiving fresh provisions and ammunition and advancing by night.They were subjected to rifle fire, machine-gun fire and bombs of a peculiar sort, big iron balls of the size of a football filled with explosive that were just flung down the steep.They dodged flares and star shells.
At one place they went up a chimney that would be far beyond the climbing powers of any but a very active man.It must have been like storming the skies.The dead and wounded rolled away often into inaccessible ravines.Stray skeletons, rags of uniform, fragments of weapons, will add to the climbing interest of these gaunt masses for many years to come.In this manner it was that Tofana No.2 was taken.
Now the Italians are organising this prize, and I saw winding up far above me on the steep grey slope a multitudinous string of little things that looked like black ants, each carrying a small bright yellow egg.They were mules bringing back balks of timber....
But one position held out invincibly; this was the Castelletto, a great natural fortress of rock standing out at an angle of the mountain in such a position that it commanded the Italian communications (the Dolomite road) in the valley below, and rendered all their positions uncomfortable and insecure.This obnoxious post was practically inaccessible either from above or below, and it barred the Italians even from looking into the Val Travenanzes which it defended.It was, in fact, an impregnable position, and against it was pitted the invincible 5th Group of the Alpini.It was the old problem of the irresistible force in conflict with the immovable object.And the outcome has been the biggest military mine in all history.
The business began in January, 1916, with surveys of the rock in question.The work of surveying for excavations, never a very simple one, becomes much more difficult when the site is occupied by hostile persons with machine guns.In March, as the winter's snows abated, the boring machinery began to arrive, by mule as far as possible and then by hand.Altogether about half a kilometre of gallery had to be made to the mine chamber, and meanwhile the explosive was coming up load by load and resting first here, then there, in discreetly chosen positions.There were at the last thirty-five tons of it in the inner chamber.
And while the boring machines bored and the work went on, Lieutenant Malvezzi was carefully working out the problem of "il massimo effetto dirompimento" and deciding exactly how to pack and explode his little hoard.On the eleventh of July, at 3.30, as he rejoices to state in his official report, "the mine responded perfectly both in respect of the calculations made and of the practical effects," that is to say, the Austrians were largely missing and the Italians were in possession of the crater of the Castelletto and looking down the Val Travenanzes from which they had been barred for so long.Within a month things had been so tidied up, and secured by further excavations and sandbags against hostile fire, that even a middle-aged English writer, extremely fagged and hot and breathless, could enjoy the same privilege.All this, you must understand, had gone on at a level to which the ordinary tourist rarely climbs, in a rarefied, chest-tightening atmosphere, with wisps of clouds floating in the clear air below and club-huts close at hand....
