End of the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo

On 4 November 1916 the Ninth Battle of the Isonzo came to an end on the Karst plateau. In the three days since the opening bombardment the Italian 3rd Army had driven a wedge into the Austro-Hungarian front from the Veliki Hribach hill to the lower summit of Fajti hrib and the road to Kostanjevica. On its flank, however, the sector from the village of Hudi Log to hill 208, which the Austrians called the “Hudi Log pocket”, remained in Austrian hands. On the last day of the battle the Italians tried to break open this pocket and push back the southern wing of the defenders of the Karst.

The attack was entrusted to the Italian XIII Corps, and its objective was the village of Selo. According to the Austrian official history, the 47th Division, reinforced by two fresh brigades from the army reserve, struck at the corner at Hudi Log, and the 33rd and 34th Divisions at Lukatić and trigonometrical hill 208. Even before noon the Austrian Mountain Rifle Regiment No. 2 was repulsing violent attacks at Hudi Log. After a short, very heavy artillery barrage the Italians advanced along the whole sector, but the infantry of General Alfred von Schenk’s group did not give way, and the Austrian artillery, as Austrian authors stressed, had the main share in this success. Fierce fighting went on until 8 p.m., when night put an end to it. That same day the Austrian 14th Division, brought from Galicia, finally closed the gap between Kostanjevica and Hudi Log.

General Luigi Cadorna recorded in his memoirs only that on 4 November small attacks between Oppacchiasella and Kostanjevica moved the Italian lines about 350 metres south of the road, “after which the offensive was again suspended”. He regarded as the gains of the whole battle the hills of Veliki Hribach and Pečinka, the little Fajti hrib and nearly 9,000 prisoners. According to Italian studies, on 3 November the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio followed the Toscana Brigade, which was attacking Fajti hrib. The Austrian official history judged that the Italians had once again achieved only a “dent” in the front, too shallow to threaten the positions at Gorizia or the defenders of the southern part of the Karst, and that the Duke of Aosta had come no appreciably closer to Trieste. Each side lost about 30,000 men: according to official Italian figures, the Italians lost 825 officers and 28,100 men, and according to the Austrian official history, the southern wing of General Svetozar Boroević’s army lost about 28,000, almost a third of its front-line soldiers.

For the Austrians the most important thing was that for the first time since August they stood, on the northern part of the plateau as well, on a convenient line that they could fortify. Over the following weeks they built it up with all their strength, and by 11 November a Landsturm brigade, released from the Eastern Front thanks to the Germans, also reached the 5th Army. Losses, however, could be made good only gradually.

Cadorna was still thinking of another blow before winter, but late autumn brought downpours and the bora, a cold wind sweeping over the bare Karst. According to Cadorna, weather “of exceptional violence” made larger operations impossible, and in the intervals between downpours there were only local clashes, the fiercest of which were Austrian counter-attacks on the hills east of Gorizia on 14–17 November. On 26 December Cadorna gave up large offensives until the spring. The Tenth Battle of the Isonzo began only in May 1917.