Unto the Sons (52 page)

The Austrian gunners had been silent since nightfall, but Antonio assumed that they would resume their random bombardments in the morning. He was surprised that he was neither tired nor hungry after his group had marched through its first hour, and then through its second, third, and fourth. During the rest periods, when the troops were allowed to sit along the roadside and sip water from their canteens—but not to eat, smoke, or speak—he remained standing, sustained by nervous energy, too restless to relax. The deeper into the woods they went, the more clearly he could see in the darkness, and the more acute his senses. Above the light rustle of the wind and the soft steps of the soldiers, he heard the sounds of distant crickets and owls, and the scampering of small scavengers through the leafage and brushwood. He assumed there were wolves in these parts, but did not dwell on that thought.

Shortly before dawn, his group arrived along the foothills of the mountain. Here the trees were shorter, the ground moister; and, as they entered the clearing, Antonio caught a glimpse of the river curving below, less than a half-mile away. Major Reina now led the troops in a flanking movement parallel to the river toward a ridge that stood about two hundred yards above the river’s western bank and offered concealment from the mountains on the other side. Here they would settle until the major ordered their next move.

As Antonio and the others lowered their knapsacks to the ground behind the ridge, the sergeant passed among them whispering that all of them must begin digging their foxholes at once. Antonio pointed his entrenching tool into the ground and began to shovel as quickly and deeply as he could. But it did not take him long to realize that he was lagging behind everyone else. He felt pains in his arms and his back; his shoulders and hands lacked the strength and whatever finesse was necessary to cut a man-sized hole into the earth as readily as those around him. After a while the other soldiers began to sink from sight, and eventually only the tops of their steel helmets showed above the ground. Frantic and sweating heavily, aware that dawn was emerging and that he would soon be exposed in the daylight, Antonio continued to shovel; but despite his best efforts his hole was only waist-high. It was as if the others had cut through soft sand while he was confronting hard rock. Too proud to seek help, and
too exhausted to continue, he tried to burrow into his undersized hole as best he could, crouching down with his knees and elbows bent, and his chin squeezed into his chest; but his bowed back remained conspicuously humped above the hole. Uncomfortable as he was, he remained fixed in this position for several moments, then squirmed slightly as he felt something crawling up his back.

Fearing that it might be a rodent or other alpine animal, and hoping it would go away, he tried not to move; but as the crawling sensation gave way to a harder tap on his shoulders, he slowly turned and looked up. There in the dim light he saw the hulking figure of Muffo leaning over him, motioning for him to get out of the hole. Antonio did so and Muffo crawled into it, and, after a number of powerful pokes with his shovel, the hole became large enough to contain Antonio’s entire body. Antonio grabbed his knapsack and slid down. Before he could express his thanks, Muffo had moved back into his own underground retreat.

The troops stood in the dirt, breathing as softly as they could. The sun rose rapidly on the horizon, and with it came the heat, which in time began to bake the men’s heavy, damp wool uniforms. Antonio shifted in his foxhole as he felt the sweat on his skin drying beneath his clothes, making him itch and imagine that bugs had penetrated his carefully stitched seams. The day’s heat burned on, but still no order was given; and as time blurred imperceptibly, Antonio drifted between sleep and reveries, bomb sounds and mosquito buzzing, while alternately and unconsciously charting the slow arc of the sun as in late afternoon it slid behind the trees. Relieved by the cooling twilight, he reached into his knapsack for his diary.
At any moment, he wrote, I think some Austrian in the mountain with a telescope will spot our boot tracks around the ridge, and order that the ridge be blown up. But all morning and afternoon the guns have been firing away from our location. I can’t see the mountain across the river because of the ridge. I can see behind me the mountain we came down last night. Some trees at the top of this mountain are on fire from the explosions. Throughout the day I have slapped at mosquitoes and crushed bugs crawling up from the dirt. They feast on the shit in this hole and the crumbs of rations I drop. This afternoon in my knapsack I found the beef sandwich that they gave us when we got off the train. The bread was moldy and the meat was green around the edges. I ate what wasn’t green and threw the rest down the hole to the bugs
.…

When there were pauses in the explosions, Antonio could hear snoring from some of the foxholes, and an occasional sigh or cough, and the tapping of the little telegraph machine that Major Reina’s orderly had carried in a canvas bag through the night. Antonio thought that Major Reina
was exchanging messages with the other reconnaissance groups along the river, and with the headquarters of the chief of staff, General Count Luigi Cadorna, far in the rear. Cadorna’s father had been a general during the Risorgimento and had led an army against the Pope in 1870, to take over Rome as the national capital. The younger Cadorna, while a successful leader in Italy’s recent colonial wars in Africa, had never been spoken of admiringly by any of the veterans Antonio had overheard during the months he had been stationed at Catanzaro. General Count Cadorna was seen as a lofty aristocrat and disciplinarian who was well versed in military history and strategy, but who cared little about the morale of the rank and file and had yet to prove himself as a great commander in any major battle. Now he had close to a million men under his authority in the Italian army—half of whom at this moment were stationed along a four-hundred-mile front that extended from the northwestern corner of Italy, bordering Switzerland, to the northeastern mountains, below Austria, and that included this ridge on the western edge of the Isonzo River, which Antonio’s unit was planning to cross.

As the sky darkened and the moon came out, most of the men along the ridge were fast asleep; but then, at about two a.m., a sergeant knocked against Antonio’s helmet and told him to wake up. All around him he saw the others climbing out of their holes and shaking the blankets in which they had enclosed themselves against the bugs and dank dirt. The night was still, as the gunners had maintained their usual nocturnal silence, and Antonio slowly realized he had experienced vaguely pleasant dreams while standing up, leaning his head on a small pillow he had made of surplus cotton socks he had taken from a supply room in Catanzaro.

After acknowledging Muffo and Branca, and sipping water from his canteen and daubing some of it on his face, Antonio fell in line with the others and followed Major Reina down a path below the ridge toward the river. Everyone moved cautiously. The intense quiet exceeded the vigilance of the previous evening’s march; now not a sound was uttered by anyone. Major Reina led the way with a drawn pistol, surrounded by his elite corpsmen and his sergeant with their rifles and carbines extended; and then came the others with bayonets attached to their rifles, protecting the flanks and the rear. Antonio kept looking to the left and the right as he marched next to Conti, while the two soldiers behind them marched backward. The trepidation that Antonio now felt was prompted not only by the possibility of confronting the Austrians but also by the fact that he would be required to cross the river. He was a product of his family’s, and
his village’s, tradition of hydrophobia. Like nearly everyone he grew up with, Antonio could not swim.

But as the group approached a clearing to the riverbank, Antonio was surprised to see that hundreds of soldiers had already arrived there. Wherever they had come from, they were now busily floating and linking pontoon sections across the narrower parts of the river; and Antonio saw further that one bridge was already operational. Crossing it were riflemen and soldiers escorting horses and mules, with some of the mules pulling two-wheeled carts containing guns and cannons.

Inexplicably, the Austrians who presumably were stationed high in the mountains seemed unaware of the Italians gathered around the river. The Austrian artillerymen surely must have heard the noise echoing from the crossing animals and men, Antonio thought. Either the Austrians up there were deaf, he decided, or they were in the process of moving to lower levels on the mountainside, where their big barrels would soon catch the Italians crowding on the bridges in a crossfire.

Major Reina thrust his pistoled hand in the air and motioned for his troops to follow him on the double toward the one completed bridge. Soon Antonio had wobbled his way over a dozen pontoons, resisting the temptation to grab on to the knapsack of Branca running in front, and finally he landed ankle-deep in mud on the other side. Slogging behind the others up to the dry land where the major stood waiting, Antonio had barely caught his breath when he again saw the major’s signal to move forward. This time they climbed along a rocky path, sending small stones tumbling behind them, until they reached a dirt trail that led through the lower woodlands above a ridge into a thick forest. Antonio felt that he was in the same place he had been the night before, except now his group was not alone; it was preceded and followed by other small units on this same trail, as well as units to the left and right who were climbing along parallel trails. He had no idea where they were going; he merely kept pace with Branca, Muffo, and Conti until they were ordered to stop momentarily while the major’s telegraph operator wired some information to the other advancing units or to the commanders in the rear. Then they were moving again, higher up the fir-forested mountainside, and
still
there were no bombardments from the enemy perched on the highest peaks.

At daybreak, shortly before six, when Austria’s long-range guns commenced their activity, the gunners continued as previously to shell far to the west, lofting their explosives high over the heads of Antonio’s group and the other units gradually making their way up under the barrels of the
Austrian artillerymen. Antonio sensed that he was indeed part of a surprise attack, that the Austrians did not yet know of the Italian presence in the thick cover of trees beneath their noses. Antonio also believed, however, that it was just a matter of time before they would come face to face with the enemy.

Less than an hour later, after proceeding cautiously up through the woods, Antonio’s group came upon a small village in a clearing close to the edge of a cliff. It was a charming village with a dozen white stone chalets along a curved cobblestone street, and on the corner was an inn with red shutters and a rooftop porch that had a flagpole without a flag. On the other side of the street was a row of small shops, a few stables and barns, and, at the far end, behind a campanile, a stream that fell a few hundred feet from an upper cliff into a granite basin before spilling over the mountainside. While the shops were padlocked, some of the doors and windows of the houses and the inn, and the gates to the barn, were open, and goats and other animals wandered wherever they wished. There were no villagers in sight.

Crouched close to the ground, Major Reina and his Bersaglieri, joined by elite troops from two other reconnaissance patrols, surrounded the village; after tossing hand grenades into the doorways of some of the buildings, and even into one of the windows of the inn, hoping to drive out any snipers who might be posted inside, the Italians charged through the doors with their rifles extended, ready to shoot. But there was no one to shoot at.

All the buildings had been evacuated. It was evident, however, that they had been lived in until quite recently. In the kitchens the troops found fresh fruit and vegetables, and leftovers that had been cooked during the previous night or even this morning; and some of the cinders in the fireplaces were still warm. Despite the damage and disarray caused by the grenades, most of the rooms retained signs of their proprietor’s up-to-date care and orderliness. The floors had been swept, the beds had been made, the kettles scrubbed, the firewood neatly stacked. It was as if the inhabitants of these remote villages, unaware of the war, had been expecting houseguests, perhaps the tourists or other lodgers who normally rented rooms while on mountain-climbing or hunting expeditions.

Except for helping themselves to the food, and capturing pigs to be roasted later at their camp in the woods, the Italian soldiers adhered to the military policy against pilferage; there was little of monetary value to be found, anyway. There were nonetheless so many personal items and
articles left behind—family photographs, letters, eyeglasses, medicines, keys—that there was little doubt about the villagers’ hasty departure.

As Antonio toured one house he saw on a bureau a framed photograph of a handsome soldier wearing an Austrian uniform, with an arm tightly around a young blond woman who was kissing him on the lips. The couple had posed in front of the house that Antonio now stood in, but in the photograph there was snow on the ground, and icicles hanging from the roof eaves—uncommon sights to Antonio—and he imagined that the soldier had been here during a furlough last Christmas, perhaps visiting from the Russian front, where the Austrians were then heavily engaged, or from a unit stationed atop this very mountain. As Antonio indulged his curiosity by opening the drawers and looking in the armoires, he saw only the young woman’s clothing and shoes; there was nothing anywhere in the house that belonged to a man. The couple who had appeared so intimate in the photograph were not married, Antonio concluded, and because of the war they might never be.

In another house, while browsing through a bookshelf, Antonio noticed an Italian history book written by an Austrian professor, in Italian; he leafed through it and saw negative references to the Risorgimento, to Garibaldi, and to other men who had been portrayed as heroes by Antonio’s teachers. Intrigued by this alternative view of history, Antonio was tempted to tuck the book into his knapsack and keep it for later reading; but he decided he had better approach Major Reina outside and get permission to confiscate it.