Italians cross the Austrian border

The British chronology of the war records under 24 May 1915 that Italian troops crossed the Austrian border “at midnight on 24–25 May”. According to Italian sources, however, operations began a day earlier. The day before, Italy had declared war on Austria-Hungary and announced that it considered itself at war “from tomorrow”. The first shots were fired in the night of 23–24 May, and at dawn on 24 May the leading units of the Italian army crossed the border along almost its whole length, from the Alps to the Adriatic coast. Thus the Italian front was opened.

The first shots

On the border river Judrio, which since 1866 had separated the Kingdom of Italy from Austrian Gorizia, Italian customs guards opened fire during the night on Austrian soldiers who were trying to set fire to a wooden bridge. A few minutes before four in the morning the guns of the Italian Fort Verena on the Asiago plateau shelled the Austrian forts on the other side of the border with Trentino. Italian tradition regards these salvoes as the first shots of the war. In the mountains above the Natisone valley the Alpino Riccardo Giusto of the “Cividale” battalion was killed by an Austrian guard’s bullet; he is regarded as the first Italian soldier to fall. For decades his name was wrongly given as “Di Giusto”.

The Austrians did not wait either. Even before dawn ships of the Austro-Hungarian fleet shelled Ancona and other towns on the Italian Adriatic coast, and aircraft dropped bombs on Venice. The damage was slight, but there were civilians among the dead.

Cadorna’s plan

The Chief of the General Staff of the Italian army, General Luigi Cadorna, deployed four armies on a front of some 600 kilometres. The First Army of General Roberto Brusati and the Fourth Army of General Luigi Nava faced Trentino and stood in the Dolomites, where they were to defend or carry out secondary operations. The main blow was to be struck by the Second and Third Armies in the east, in the valley of the Soča, which the Italians call the Isonzo. Their objectives were Gorizia, and beyond it Trieste and Ljubljana.

The Italians had an enormous numerical superiority. After mobilisation was complete they put more than a million soldiers into the field, while according to various estimates Austria-Hungary had only 50,000–70,000 men on the Italian border on 24 May, largely from Landwehr and Landsturm formations. According to some studies, in mid-May only two divisions guarded the border on the Soča. Reinforcements were hastily brought in from the Serbian front and from Galicia, and the defence of the Soča was taken over by the Fifth Army of General Svetozar Boroević. Italian mobilisation, however, was not complete either. General mobilisation was proclaimed only on 22 May, and moving the troops up to the border was to take several more weeks.

The first bound

Cadorna called the first operations an “offensive bound” (sbalzo offensivo). The troops were to take up favourable positions beyond the border before the real offensive began. The first Italian war communiqué reported that the Second Army had taken Caporetto, today’s Slovenian Kobarid, and the hills between the Judrio and the Soča, and the Third Army Cormòns, Versa, Terzo and Cervignano, which the Italian press hailed as the first “redeemed” town. Some sources date the capture of Caporetto to 25 May.

The Austrians did not defend the border itself. As planned, they withdrew to prepared positions behind the Soča and on the mountains above it, destroying the crossings behind them. The bridge at Kobarid was blown up just as the Italians were entering the town, and in the afternoon of 24 May the Austrians destroyed the railway bridge and burned the road bridge at Pieris on the lower Soča. The Italian cavalry failed to seize them in time. The Italian commanders, convinced that the enemy was stronger than he really was, advanced cautiously.

Caution cost the Italians the best opportunity of the war. They reached the Soča in the last days of May but crossed it only at the beginning of June. They took Monfalcone on 9 June. In the meantime the Austrians had managed to occupy the hills above the river, the Gorizia bridgehead and the edge of the Karst plateau. On 23 June Cadorna began the first of the twelve battles of the Isonzo.