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The Isonzo Battlefield. (source)
Slovenian blogger Mitja Iskrić has put together a fascinating page about his great-grandfather Johann Iskrić,
who fought on the Isonzo (SoÄ?a) front during World War I. The eleven
brutal battles along the Isonzo valley culminated in the famous Battle of Caporetto (known today as Kobarid) which was immortalized by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms.
Cumulatively, the Austro-Hungarian army lost 200,000 of its soldiers in
Slovenia’s borderlands between 1915 and 1918. The
Italians lost 300,000.
As Edward Crankshaw notes in his excellent
The Fall of the House of Habsburg: "The remarkable thing was that the
Habsburgs had held on for so long and that their army proved so loyal.
The deeds of that great army remain unsung. For four years it fought,
always with amazing tenacity, sometimes with great skill, first against
the Russians and the Serbs, then, as well, against the Italians and the
Rumanians, on a front that ran from the Adriatic to Central Poland, and
then along the terrible Alpine barrier….. We have heard a great deal
about the mud of Flanders and the torturing heat of Gallipolli; but we
have heard little or nothing about the mud of the great Polish plain
and the Serbian river valleys; the bitter and terrible fighting in the
Carpathians, the Bosnian hills, the Karst of Istria — where the
totally barren limestone rock, splintering under shellfire, magnified a
thousand times the effect of every burst; in the high Dolomites, where
Austrians and Italians in sub-zero temperatures and eternal snow
tunnelled and counter-tunnelled through ice and living rock to emerge
facing each other at point-blank range thousands of feet above he
valley floor: the relics of that mountain war still, half a century later, clutter the sheer precipices of Monte Marmolada,
so that it is possible to be freshly amazed that ordinary men, Italians
and Austrians alike, managed to exist at all, let alone fight, in such
conditions — and to marvel at historians and military critics who
generalize comfortably about the poor fighting qualities of both
armies."
Mitja’s tribute to his great-grandfather is online in English or Slovene. The project
began as a grammar school seminar that slowly morphed into an online
work. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated since 2003. Here’s hoping
that will change soon.
Comments
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Very nice post. Thanks for bringing to my attention both Mitja’s
website and Crankshaw’s book. As you might have noticed, this topic is
an interest of mine. Let me mention, for you and your readers, a novel
that is fantastic on its own merits as well as for giving a very vivid
description of the terrain and fighting along the Soca front (more personal and
detailed than Hemingway’s, by far): "A Soldier of the Great War", by
Mark Helprin. The book is intensely human, while showing with
gut-wrenching intensity the folly of war. I highly recommend it.
Looks like a great book, thanks for recommending it!
Only one thing I’d like to add here : it’s great that these soldiers
are being remembered, rather than the anonymous tactics where these people
were - and are - being shoved around like pawns on a chess board (or
Stratego, if you’re into that). Any reminder of wars gone by and
innocent people on both sides losing their lives should be a billboard
for all of us, shouting in big, red letters : NO MORE! Alas, we haven’t
yet arrived to the point where we can do without, it seems. Kudos to
Mitja for his excellent page.
Yes, some of the stories from that time are amazing. My
grandmother’s cousin actually volunteered for the Austro-Hungarian army
at the beginning of WWI. He survived Galicia and wrote letters back,
lamenting his decision to join the army. Luckily, he used to be
employed at the railroad, so somehow he was able to be released and
kept working at the railroad, since that was important for transporting
everything back then. There are plenty of lessons to be
learned about managing a multi-national state from old Austria-Hungary.
Unfortunately, along with old Yugoslavia, these historical lessons
mostly point towards the collapse of EU. Perhaps there will be a
difference because EU is not an empire or a kingdom, but I remain a
sceptic. Too bad. A great book about a guy trapped in the war that pre-dates Catch-22, yet is perhaps even better, is "The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War" . Most people in Slovenia have heard of it at least, but it is not that well known in the USA.
I remember they even made a movie and a tv series of ‘Svejk’ in
Germany. I have two stories of my own I’d like to share… My great
grandparents had a grocery store in WW II and, as was usually the case,
the invading forces had to be quartered in with families in the
villages they controlled. So they had a German soldier for a ‘guest’.
But this person, it seems, was pressured into enlisting. A reminder of
the fact that not all Germans were the warmongers some people who like
to think in stereotypes would like us to believe to this day. He really
missed his home and his family, and, since my grandmother made nice
ribbon bonnets, she continually had to make them for this man, who sent
all of them to his family back in Germany. The second story is actually
so beautiful I wrote a song about it for my solo project. It happened
to the singer in my other band. He was walking around his home town
some years ago, when this old German man came up to him, and asked him for
directions. He said he had been quartered in the town during WWII and
fell in love with a local girl. Well, they both did, actually. At the
end of the war, he had to retreat, leaving his girl behind. After the
war, it wasn’t easy for him to get back into this country, so he
rebuilt his life back in Germany, got married and led his life, but
still couldn’t forget about his first love, even though he loved his
wife very much. After she died, and with years gone by since WWII, he
had to come back and see if she was still alive. When he told all this
to our singer, the church bells started ringing and upon hearing them, the man got tears
in his eyes, telling my friend how much these bells reminded him of
those days and the love he had to leave behind. He never found out
whether or not this man found his old love again, but the story gripped
me so much, that I wrote a song about it, called ‘Seele’. As a tribute
to this man, I wrote most of the lyrics in German. I hope he found her
again and they are now happy together. Once again, these stories show
what havoc war can wreak on the lives of ordinary people, but also that
even in war, love can still be strong…
Thanks for the great review of my site. I do have a lot of material (documents and stories) to add soon. Regarding the long waited update- I am attending Faculty of Arts, department of library and information science and bookstudies and I really had no time. Now I am finishing it and I hope that the pages will be updated with a new interface before 2006. But than again looking for a job and writing the diploma takes a lot of energy.Anyway, I wanted to congratelate you on your blog for a while now. Great stuff!
I just got in from classes and had a look at Mitja’s site, it’s very
beautiufl and thorough, I like most Americans had read ‘A Farewell to
Arms’ as a young person. It was really interesting to look at this site
because it throws light on that book for me, and because it’s good to
remember these men!
On the EU, I share misgivings about it for the same
reason, maye the EU is more fragile because there was a pride certain
empires had in the trappings of empire, the symbolism was very
unifying, even so it didn’t hold, so how is something weaker and less
exciteing supposed to hold?
Arf, thanks for sharing those stories! When you arrive in Slovenia, we should definitely have a sit-down and talk. And maybe argue about what beer to drink…