End of the Eighth Battle of the Isonzo

On 12 October 1916 the Eighth Battle of the Isonzo was dying down on the Karst plateau. After two days of fierce fighting the attacking strength of the Italian 3rd Army had clearly weakened. Late in the afternoon the Italian 45th Division once more attacked in waves the ridge on the northern edge of the plateau, but accurate fire from the Austrian artillery and mountain riflemen forced it to retreat. In the three days of the battle this division lost 156 officers and more than 4,000 men. The attacks from Oppacchiasella and the ruins of Nova Vas and on hill 144 near Jamiano already broke down in the barrage. In the evening there were a few more local clashes in the Vipava valley, at hill 208 and on the hills above Monfalcone, and then, as the Austrian official history puts it, the exhaustion of both sides made them lay down their arms.

The heaviest day had been the one before. After a hurricane bombardment the Italian infantry went into the assault on the afternoon of 10 October. It took the ruins of Nova Vas, dented the front at Lokvica and came up to Jamiano, from where only a counter-attack drove it back. On 11 October, after failed Austrian counter-attacks, the defenders were pushed back to the rear line of Hudi Log–Lukatić. General Svetozar Boroević concluded that he no longer had the strength to retake the old positions, and during the night ordered the last units near Lokvica to withdraw to the western edge of the village. On 12 October the Italians occupied the abandoned trenches. General Luigi Cadorna wrote that on that day his soldiers reached the second Austrian line of defence east of the Vallone valley, below the slopes of the Pečinka hill and the first houses of Lokvica and Hudi Log. At Gorizia the Italian VIII Corps took the hills near Sober over a width of about one and a half kilometres in those days.

Once again the result was modest for the Italians. At the point of the deepest breach, at Nova Vas, they advanced less than one and a half kilometres, and Trieste remained out of reach. Cadorna stated that his troops had taken 8,219 prisoners, including 254 officers. Italian losses according to official figures amounted to 657 officers and 19,488 men, but other Italian compilations give about 25,000. The Austro-Hungarian 5th Army probably lost more than 20,000 men in the battle.

For the Austrians it was a defensive success, but a very costly one. On the northern part of the Karst their VII Corps now stood on an unfortified line, and on slopes exposed to Italian observers at that. In the following days Boroević reported to the high command that his army was in crisis and had lost about 100,000 men in battle since mid-August. Cadorna, meanwhile, was already preparing another blow at the same place.