Start of the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo

On 11 March 1916 the Italian artillery opened heavy fire of all calibres on the positions of the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army along the Isonzo, from the Gorizia bridgehead to the coast near Monfalcone. This bombardment opened the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo, the first Italian offensive of 1916. General Luigi Cadorna conducted it without conviction. His aim was not to break through the front but to fulfil an obligation to France, which for three weeks had been repelling the German attack at Verdun.

The date

A British chronology of the war states that the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo began on 15 February 1916. This is a mistake. In February winter positional warfare was going on along the Isonzo: artillery duels, night-time patrol skirmishes, fighting with grenades and mines where the trenches of the two sides lay closest together. The Austrian official history records in mid-February only an unsuccessful attack by a few Italian companies near San Martino del Carso on 13 February. The battle itself began in March, although its dates are given differently. The Italian army counts it from 9 to 15 March, because according to the plan the offensive was to be preceded by minor diversionary attacks. The Austrian official history, and many studies following it, takes 11 March as the start, when the whole Italian artillery opened fire.

Why in March

At the second conference at Chantilly in December 1915 the Allies had promised one another simultaneous offensives on all fronts and help for whichever of them was attacked. The Italians were preparing a great offensive only for the summer, but the German blow at Verdun changed their plans. When in the first ten days of March the Germans extended their attack to the left bank of the Meuse, the French command asked for help. An order of the Italian Supreme Command explained that the obligations to the Allies required the enemy forces facing them to be pinned down with the utmost energy and prevented from being moved to other fronts.

Cadorna also had his own reasons for caution. He knew of the concentration of Austro-Hungarian troops in South Tyrol, deep snow lay in the mountains, and since the end of February there had been torrential rain. He therefore did not prepare a single plan. He told the commanders of the Second and Third Armies to choose their objectives themselves, merely reminding them that these remained Gorizia and Tolmein. The brunt of the fighting fell to the Third Army of the Duke of Aosta, which was to attack the Podgora near Gorizia, Monte San Michele and San Martino on the Karst plateau, and the trenches near Selz.

The first day

The fire fell not only on the trenches but also on the roads by which reliefs and supplies came up to the front line. Despite poor visibility the Italian batteries kept firing through the night and the following day, and small assault detachments crept up to the Austrian wire to cut it. The infantry, however, did not go into the attack. Larger attacks, always on narrow sectors, came only on 13 March.

The Italians did not know that the Austro-Hungarian Supreme Command was at that very moment weakening this front. From 12 March the divisions of III Corps, chosen by General Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf for the spring offensive from Tyrol, began to leave the Isonzo. According to the Austrian official history, by mid-March General Svetozar Boroević had only about 100 battalions left, most of them Landsturm, and 467 guns instead of 693. Even so, within a few days he repulsed all the Italian attacks, and bad weather soon brought the offensive to an end. Each side lost about 2,000 men in it.