End of the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo

A British chronology of the war states that the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo ended on 17 March 1916. Each of the sources, however, closes it on a different day. The Italian army and most Italian studies date the battle from 9 to 15 March. The Austro-Hungarian official history ends it on 16 March, when the last Italian attack collapsed near Peteano on the Karst plateau. Some Polish compilations give 9–17 March, which agrees with the end date of the British chronology. The differences arise because the offensive of General Luigi Cadorna, begun on 11 March to relieve the French at Verdun, did not end in any decision. After a few days of scattered attacks on narrow sectors of the front it simply petered out in snow, rain and fog.

The Austrians decided that, since the Italians had stopped attacking, the time had come for attacks of their own. As early as 7 March the Austro-Hungarian high command ordered the 5th and 10th Armies to prepare raids, to begin from 19 March. They were not meant to gain ground. Six and a half divisions were just then being moved from the Isonzo and Carinthia to the Tyrol, and the attacks were to convince the Italians that an offensive was being prepared against them. The command of XV Corps of General Franz Rohr’s 10th Army, contrary to the high command’s order, set the first of them for 17 March, because it wanted to use the experienced 8th Mountain Brigade before it too left.

On the evening of 17 March the Bosnian-Herzegovinian 6th Field Jäger Battalion, supported by neighbouring battalions, attacked on the north-western slope of Sveta Maria hill near Tolmin and took the first line of Italian trenches. According to the Austrian official history, it captured 16 officers and 542 men of the Italian 7th Division, as well as 3 machine guns and a trench mortar. The next day the Austro-Hungarian 1st Division broke into the Italian trenches near Čiginj, and one battalion took Hill 854 south of the Mrzli vrh ridge, capturing a further 125 prisoners. Italian counter-attacks did not restore the old line, and the command of VIII Corps withdrew the 7th Division to the second position. On 19 and 20 March similar raids were carried out in deep snow near Flitsch, today Bovec.

The raids were only part of a wider deception. According to the Austrian official history, columns of troops marched towards the front by day and returned by night, quarters for a new army command were conspicuously prepared in Klagenfurt, and on 20 March the heir to the throne, Archduke Charles, made a showy tour of inspection to the Isonzo and the Carinthian front. False reports were fed to the press, including the neutral press, and wireless stations sent misleading messages. Austrian historians in fact believed that the Italians too had called their March attacks the “Fifth Battle” mainly in order to conceal the transfer of their own troops.

Each side lost about 2,000 men in the March battle. Cadorna did not hold on the Isonzo the troops the Austrians had chosen for the offensive in the Tyrol, and in May 1916 they struck at Asiago.