British troops in Italy

On 4 November 1917, the day after the news of French troops in Italy, the British chronology of the war records the announcement that British troops too were arriving in Italy. In reality their divisions were still in France. So far only small advance parties of officers and men from the staffs had set out for Italy, leaving Paris by the evening mail train on 30 October, and the corps commander and his staff were on their way. Entrainment of the divisions was not to begin until 6 November.

The decision was taken in haste. On 26 October, as ever worse news of the breakthrough at Caporetto came in from Italy, the prime minister, David Lloyd George, without even convening the War Cabinet, instructed the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, William Robertson, to send two divisions from France to Italy. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, who was just beginning the last phase of the offensive in Flanders, chose Lieutenant-General Frederick Lambart, Lord Cavan’s XIV Corps, with the 23rd and 41st Divisions. Both had fought in September in the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge. Two squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps were also sent to Italy. Haig protested that this weakened the operations in Flanders, but was told to be ready to give up still more divisions and heavy artillery.

According to the British official history (Edmonds), moving even so small an army across the Alps was an enormous undertaking. The base was set up at Arquata Scrivia in Piedmont, and each division needed 59 trains. Twenty-four trains were to leave every day, some of them carrying ammunition and supplies. The trains ran along the coast through the Riviera, and the journey took from four to seven days. From Ventimiglia to Savona there was only a single railway line, so the field artillery went on by road along the coast, covering about 120 kilometres in five days. Lord Cavan left France on 2 November and was in Pavia on 5 November. He met the King at Padua, and on 6 November General Luigi Cadorna at Treviso. Cadorna was disappointed that the British were to concentrate far in the rear, in Lombardy. In the end the area of Mantua was agreed, where the first units of the 23rd Division detrained on 11 November and of the 41st Division on 16 November.

At the Rapallo conference of 5–7 November Lloyd George promised the Italians two more divisions. On 8 November Haig designated the 7th and 48th Divisions, and in the middle of the month Lieutenant-General Richard Haking’s XI Corps was also sent to Italy. Command of all British forces in Italy was given to General Herbert Plumer, commander of the Second Army, which in those days was taking Passchendaele. Plumer had no wish to go at all. “I have not the slightest desire… I simply hate leaving the Second Army,” he wrote. He took his staff with him and arrived at Mantua on the evening of 13 November.

The British went into the line only at the beginning of December. From 30 November to 4 December the 41st and 23rd Divisions relieved the Italians on the Montello hill above the Piave, and on 4 December Lord Cavan took over command of that sector. By the end of 1917, 715 trains had been used to carry British troops and supplies to Italy.