Start of the Second Battle of the Isonzo

On 18 July 1915, a mere eleven days after the end of the first, the Italian army began the Second Battle of the Isonzo. General Luigi Cadorna again directed his main blow at the Karst plateau south of Gorizia. This time he had far more heavy guns at his disposal than in June.

The plan

Cadorna’s order of 15 July set the Duke of Aosta’s Third Army the task of capturing the two pillars of the Austro-Hungarian defence on the Karst: Monte San Michele in the north and the Sei Busi hill (Hill 118 on Austrian maps) above Redipuglia in the south. Only after them would it be the turn of the Gorizia bridgehead. San Michele and the village of San Martino del Carso were to be taken by XI Corps, the Sei Busi hill by VII Corps, while X Corps attacked between them. Behind the front Cadorna kept XIV Corps in reserve. General Pietro Frugoni’s Second Army was to pin down the enemy with attacks from Plava to the mouth of the Vipava, and its VI Corps was to advance methodically on the hills of the Gorizia bridgehead. According to Italian figures, the two armies numbered some 260 battalions and 840 guns. On 18 July the Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army of General Svetozar Boroević had 105 battalions, about 103,000 rifles and 431 guns. The plateau was defended by the VII Corps of Archduke Joseph August.

The first day

The bombardment began at four in the morning and grew in intensity throughout the morning. On the Karst the defenders had no real trenches, only walls of piled stones. The Italian shells smashed them and showered the soldiers with rock splinters, so losses in the front line were heavy, especially in the 20th Honvéd Infantry Division and the 61st Division. In June the Italians had shelled the Austrian positions for several days before sending in the infantry. This time it went in the same day: the Italian 14th Division at 11 a.m., XI Corps at 1 p.m. and the 20th Division at 2 p.m. The attacks soon broke down into a series of bloody hand-to-hand fights, often decided by the bayonet. By evening the Italians had pushed back only the sector of two Honvéd companies east of Sdraussina, by less than two hundred paces. A renewed attack at dusk changed nothing.

At Gorizia and Plava the Second Army confined itself that day to shelling and feint attacks, and in the mountains above Kobarid and Tolmin the Italian artillery fire was weak and was also damped by a violent storm. The Italian official history states that on 18 July the Third Army took 2,500 prisoners and itself lost a thousand men. The Austrians, however, noticed something else above all: the Italians were bringing up reserves, while Boroević had only the weak 93rd Division and one mountain brigade left in hand.

What came next

The next day the Italians attacked across the whole Karst and on the Gorizia bridgehead, and on the afternoon of 20 July they took the flattened summit of Monte San Michele. The Austrians recaptured it the following morning. The battle lasted until 3 August and was much bloodier than the first. Each side lost more than 40,000 men in it, and the front moved only a few hundred metres.