by Gay Talese
From what Antonio could deduce from the editorials and the reports of correspondents attached to the French and Russian armies, the war was not going well for Italy’s allies. The French, British, and Belgians on the western front had been mostly on the defensive since the war had begun more than nine months before, months of Italian neutrality. Now the Germans held a large slice of northern France. The Austro-German forces facing the Russians on the eastern front also appeared to be getting the better of it. And the Austrians in the Balkans were no longer being challenged by the unaccountably quiescent Serbian army.
What Italy hoped to gain by entering the war would be at the expense of Austria (Italy had not yet declared war on Germany); Italy claimed as geographically Italian the land northeast of Venice approaching the Julian Alps, which Antonio believed was where he was headed, as well as some territory on the opposite side of the Adriatic Sea, which included the port city of Trieste. Italy also wanted a large chunk of the eastern Alps that Austria controlled—namely the Dolomite region up to the Brenner Pass, below Innsbruck, and the Trentino region southwest of the Dolomites. While a substantial percentage of the population in this area spoke German and was partial to Austrian rule, Italian patriots nonetheless argued that it was more Italian than anything else, and had been since Roman times, even though it had been regularly invaded and occupied by barbarians from the north—by Alaric and his Visigoths, by Attila and his Huns, and by numerous others whom many Italians now associated with the Austro-Hungarian regiments controlling the area. Whether it was worthwhile for Italy to go to war in the hopes of repossessing this region of mountain ranges and deep-cut canyons was a question Antonio had not been able to answer when it had been raised during his final furlough in Maida by his father’s favorite customer, the aristocratic Torquato Ciriaco. Don Torquato, who had once traveled through the alpine country on his way home from a holiday in Zurich, said it consisted mostly of infertile soil and huge, useless rocks. But in Paris, Monsieur Damien, who before the war had taken a vacation trip into the Dolomites and Trentino and down through Lake Garda, had described the region’s natural beauty and salubrity, its Tyrolean country inns, mineral water spas, and majestic cliffside hotels. Monsieur Damien remembered balmy summer evenings on white terraces with wealthy and elegant sojourners from every part of Europe and America, dancing to Viennese waltzes, drinking French champagne, dining on Italian cuisine; and he recalled a delightful ride in a paddle steamer on Lake Garda.
The tracks over which Antonio now rode would soon take him past the southern edge of that same lake, as he knew from consulting the map he carried folded in his pocket. The train had been moving east since leaving Milan. It had paused overnight at a railhead somewhere west of Brescia, where it attached to itself two stock cars loaded with timber, rolls of barbed wire, heavy gun barrels covered with canvas, and replenishments of canned rations that were passed through the cars (amid the groans of troops). In the morning the train returned to the main tracks, and before noon it was slowly edging along a hillside toward the southern rim of the lake. Looking out the window to his left, Antonio was amazed at the calmness of the water, with barely a ripple rising to mar what appeared to be a gigantic mirror. The southern basin of the lake was in Italian territory; but its northern end, which was more than thirty miles away, and skirted the cliffs of Trentino, was controlled by the Austrians. The train moved very slowly past the lake, as if the engineer had become cautious. But Antonio saw no sign of movement in the surrounding hills, and not even a bird flew over the water. It was a scene of total abandonment and tranquillity, the sun brightening the surface and leaving soft shadows behind the tall trees in the hills and the groves with their empty picnic benches. The paddle steamer that carried Monsieur Damien is probably being stored for the duration of the war, Antonio wrote in his diary, and maybe the hostelries that he mentioned are deeper in the lake region, where the Austrians are. I see a dark outline far to the north that might be a range of mountains. Maybe the Austrians are up there somewhere, sitting on terraces with their boots on tables, drinking champagne.… Soon we should be past Venice, heading north into the mountains. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, we will meet the Austrians up there.…
In the middle of the afternoon, after bypassing Venice and heading northeast through marshlands and hillside towns that appeared uninhabited, the train finally stopped at an unmarked station along the foothills of a cavernous mountain. The sun that had shone over Lake Garda was now hidden, and it was beginning to rain. Two military policemen who had been riding in one of the front cars jumped onto the platform and began to blow their whistles; then a sergeant major appeared with a megaphone and ordered the troops to step out hastily and line up for inspection. Hopping off behind the others and taking a position in the ranks, Antonio could hear the thundering echo of big guns exploding in the distance. The explosions were perhaps twenty miles away, yet Antonio thought that he could feel along the oakwood platform under his feet a tingling sensation not unlike the earthquake tremors that sometimes rattled the cobblestones of Maida.
Standing at attention, holding his rifle in front of his face in the now steady rain, he looked past the barrel at the terminal building adjacent to the tracks, a barnlike structure of recent date, flanked by supply depots that had tents overhead and resembled some of the vendors’ stalls in his village square. Stacked under these tents, however, were dozens of ten-gallon cans filled with motor fuel, engine parts and tires, pontoons for floating bridges, and thousands of rations in the white cans with which he had become nauseatedly familiar. After the sergeant major and two young lieutenants had marched past him without looking at his rifle or scrutinizing his knapsack to see if it contained all that was required, Antonio relaxed at parade rest for nearly a half-hour, until the inspection team had gone the entire length and width of the five rows of troops that extended along the platform. Then, at the bark of the sergeant’s voice, the troops raised their rifles to their stomachs, turned to the right, and marched as directed away from the platform and across a rain-sodden field into huge rectangular tents set off by stakes and ropes. Inside the tents were several long tables. At one table, on which were spread piles of gas masks, each soldier was told to take one and insert it inside the steel helmet strapped on the outside of his knapsack. At another table, on which were caldrons of steaming soup and stacks of paper-covered beef sandwiches, the troops were told to take out their steel cups and help themselves to the soup, and to tuck a single sandwich, unopened, into their knapsack. The sandwich would be eaten later, the sergeant major emphasized, after permission had been granted.
Antonio finished his soup as he moved through the line, and then he and the others were hustled out of the tent back into the rain by a sergeant who waved his arms and pointed toward a long line of green canvas-roofed trucks parked in puddles of mud so deep that all their tires looked flat. The troops lined up in single file to hop into the back of the vehicles, and as Antonio ran, keeping his rifle dry under his trench coat, he saw a drenched officer standing next to the fender of the first truck, screaming obscenities up at the driver, who could not get the motor started. The driver of the second truck was immediately appointed to lead the convoy, while the troops huddled under the canvas of the first truck were ordered out into the rain, along with their humiliated driver, to direct traffic around their battery-drained vehicle.
Antonio climbed into the fifth truck and found a place on the back bench between the soggy wool coats of two soldiers sitting on the edge of their seats, their bulky knapsacks taking up most of the space behind them. Just as the driver was about to close the truck’s rear gate, Muffo came splashing through the mud and jumped in, and landed on Antonio’s feet. Seconds later the motor started and the wheels turned forward, skidding now and then until finding traction on a macadam road that led up into the mountain, in the direction of the sounds of the thundering guns.
As Antonio watched the train station getting smaller and the long line of mud-splattered trucks fo
llowing his own up the curved road at the base of the mountain, he thought of writing something in his diary, but he was too squeezed in to reach into his knapsack for his book. None of the soldiers spoke. They either stared into space, wincing when the guns boomed louder than before, or, like Muffo on the floor in front of him, they closed their eyes and appeared to be sleeping. On the other side of Muffo, however, was a young soldier who was busy with a pencil, writing or sketching on a piece of cardboard that he held on his lap and partly concealed within the folds of his unbuttoned coat. He had a pale, chubby, innocentlooking, almost cherubic, face; he was beardless and appeared too young for conscription, maybe no older than fifteen. His peaked cap was pushed back on his head, revealing his schoolboy bangs, and he somehow gave the impression of being effeminate. He had not been in Antonio’s barracks at Catanzaro and must have boarded the train at one of the stops along the northern route, perhaps in Milan or during the layover near Brescia. He reminded Antonio of a youth he had known in the Paris claque, an opera buff and homosexual who was apprenticed to one of the city’s leading milliners. Antonio had not been aware of homosexuals when growing up in Maida, but in Paris he had met a few of them. A fellow student at the École Ladaveze had alerted him to a homosexual on the faculty. As Antonio kept watching the soldier, the young man looked up and smiled at him, and then turned the cardboard around to show what he had been doing. Across the top he had drawn a line of soldiers holding their rifles in a firing position, and under that, in block lettering, were the words of Gabriele D’Annunzio, the poet and advocate of intervention: “May every blow find its mark, every citizen be a warrior, every warrior a hero.” Antonio had heard that quoted by one of the speakers at the farewell parade in Catanzaro. The young soldier continued to exhibit the cardboard, as if waiting for some sign of approval. Antonio coolly looked away.
It was now nearly five p.m., according to Antonio’s not always reliable watch, an American-made confirmation gift from his late uncle Gaetano that he was required to wind at least twice daily. He was not sure what day it was. It was perhaps the last day of May, or the first day of June, or maybe the second or third. The newspapers he had read on the train had been slightly outdated. Having drifted through sleepless days and nights since leaving Catanzaro, he had no precise sense of time. He knew only that he was living through a long day in the spring of 1915, a day made miserable by the driving rain, and that it was the year in which Italy had entered the war, and that his truck was zigzagging higher and higher. The mountains here were twice as high as those in his part of southern Italy. Some of the ranges in upper Italy and lower Austria had peaks between eight thousand and twelve thousand feet high—the latter being comparable to a dozen Eiffel Towers standing on top of one another. This war would be fought along the summits of Europe, and Antonio began to feel dizzy as his truck continued its climb and the guns became louder; and he knew he was approaching the danger zone, because the outer edge of the cliffside road was now camouflaged with ten-foot-high wire fencing interwoven with thick reeds and grass matting. This was designed to protect Italian motorized movements from detection by Austrian observers who were possibly positioned with telescopes on the snowcapped peaks across the canyon. The camouflaging extended over the top of the roadway as well, dangling down so close to the truck’s roof that some of the grass flew into the air as the vehicle passed. The grassy tunnels, which darkened the roadway and forced drivers to slow down, had recently been strung across by Italian military engineers working at night with no light except for that of the moon. The engineers managed to complete their task without being spotted by Austrian observers; and so far, since the first Italian trucks had begun transporting troops along this route a week or ten days before, none had been targeted by the enemy. The flimflammery of the camouflagers had been masterful.
Still, Antonio was relieved when the convoy detoured off the tunneled road, where he believed his luck was being pushed to the limit, and turned sharply through a crevasse in the mountain onto a dirt road lined on both sides by bushes and trees threaded with barbed wire. The trucks moved slowly for nearly half a mile, passing along the way a waterfall and rock stream in which Antonio saw some Italian soldiers bathing and doing their laundry. He realized it had finally stopped raining. At the end of the road the trucks were waved through an opened gate by two sentries with carbines. After the trucks had stopped, several sergeants and corporals appeared behind the vehicles and ordered everyone to get out and line up for inspection.
As Antonio jumped out and looked around, he saw that he was under an immense overhanging rock; he was standing on rocky flatland surrounded on all sides by mountain walls that rose hundreds of feet and tapered toward one another at the top. The edges of the walls were jagged, and through an opening in the top was a view of the cloudy sky. The flatland on which he stood was as spacious as the town square in Maida, and along its fringes near the walls were dozens of tents and wooden shacks surrounded by soldiers, some of whom stood next to mule carts and small trucks loading and unloading supplies and equipment.
Hundreds of troops seemed to be encamped in this hollow hideaway that surely was within easy artillery range, if not yet within telescopic sight and knowledge, of Austria’s alpine teams of observers and gunners. Indeed, Antonio suspected that some of the shells he now heard exploding in the far mountainside and valley were actually sailing over the apex of this rather cozy concavity. And yet, as he stood at attention while the sergeant major and a lieutenant made their way along the line inspecting each soldier’s identity papers, he could not help being amazed by the nonchalance exhibited by many of the officers and enlisted men he saw moving around across the way, in the vicinity of a large shack with an Italian flag on top that he assumed was the base headquarters.
Strolling arm in arm out of the shack were two officers, who conversed as if they were enjoying a passeggiata. Next to the shack Antonio caught a glimpse of a few soldiers standing casually in line at the counter of a wheeled field kitchen, which was parked next to a wheeled post office, to which other soldiers carried parcels and letters for mailing. He also saw a wheeled blacksmith shop, its smithy working lustily with a steel hammer, seemingly unconcerned about the loud clanging sounds he was sending up through the interior, assuming no doubt that the echo of this noise would be muted by the louder sounds coming above from the artillery. Next to the medical aid station and a row of latrines were two large steaming wooden tubs in which a half-dozen soldiers were bathing themselves.
The new arrivals could take a bath, the sergeant major informed them after they had been counted and their documents verified; but first he led them to their barracks, which were located in the woods and were reached by walking a few hundred feet past a wide opening in the shelter, the same opening through which the trucks had come in earlier. The trucks had just been turned around and were headed up the dirt road, presumably on their way back through the grass-mat tunnels toward the train station to get more troops.
The barracks to which Antonio was assigned with Muffo was the second in a row of six, all of them painted the same gray-green color as the soldiers’ uniforms. Otherwise there was no camouflaging except that provided by nature, the deciduous trees in early bloom adding to the cover already offered by cypresses and pines. In the near distance Antonio saw the wooden gate through which they had entered, with its barbed-wire fence, and two steel-helmeted sentries carrying carbines. In the barracks, Antonio, Muffo, and the others were told to select a cot, to change into dry clothes, and, after going to the tubs and the field kitchen if they wished, to return and rest.
“It may be your final siesta until the war is over,” the sergeant said, grinning. Then he added: “Tonight, after midnight, all of you will be going out on patrol.” The room became silent, and Antonio no longer had any illusions that he had found a safe haven in the shadows of the war.
He spent the last part of the day walking around, too anxious to sleep, not hungry enough to eat. He filled his cup with coffee at t
he field kitchen, then sat nearby on a tree stump, while Muffo and the others helped themselves to soup and macaroni and sat eating at one of the long tables. By wandering about and overhearing conversations of officers as well as soldiers, Antonio got a sense of where he was and what military role the troops stationed here would be expected to play.
He was on a crest of a mountain some miles west of the Isonzo River, which flowed from the Austrian-controlled Julian Alps in the north down to the Austrian-controlled Gulf of Trieste in the south. The Austrians also commanded the mountains to the east of the Isonzo, but the Italians were planning to infiltrate the river area at night and mass troops there, and, after crossing the river on pontoon bridges, to fight their way up into the mountains and drive out the Austrians. The reconnaissance team Antonio would join on this night was an advance unit in the big campaign.
Antonio was rejoined by Muffo and the two sat talking, when a lieutenant called to them: “You men look like you need something to do.” Before they could reply, he ordered them to follow him. Soon they were back in the woods, not far from their barracks, approaching a stable and a barn. Two cavalrymen were brushing their horses near the stable, and in the barn were several mules attached to two-wheeled carts containing hay. There were soldiers nearby with pitchforks and smaller tools bent over bales of hay, hacking the hay into smaller sections and then picking it up in their hands and examining it before loading it into the carts.
“They’re checking to see if there are any tiny steel prongs in the hay,” the lieutenant explained to Antonio and Muffo, adding that word had come down from the commanding general’s office that some of the hay purchased by the Italian army from its allies—hay that had come from the United States—contained prongs that had been inserted possibly by German and Austrian sympathizers in the United States wanting to kill the horses and mules of the Allies. Prongs had been discovered in the hay delivered to other Allied theaters, the lieutenant said; consequently all Italian commands were taking precautions before feeding their animals. The hay in this barn had to be inspected before nightfall, the lieutenant went on, and therefore he wanted Antonio and Muffo to lend a hand to the task. The corporal in charge of the detail handed them two pitchforks, and the lieutenant thanked them and left.