Start of the Seventh Battle of the Isonzo

On 14 September 1916 the Italian 3rd Army of the Duke of Aosta, Emanuele Filiberto, went over to the attack on the Karst plateau. It was the beginning of the seventh battle on the Isonzo, less than a month after General Luigi Cadorna had ended the sixth battle with the capture of Gorizia. This time he did not attack on a broad front, but concentrated his forces on a sector of about 13 kilometres from the Vipava valley to the sea. The most important task fell to the army’s left wing: to break through along the ridge on the northern edge of the plateau to the hills of Fajti hrib and Trstelj, from where it could threaten both the Austrian defences at Gorizia and the road to Trieste.

The Italian superiority was enormous, especially in artillery. According to the Austrian official history, the Duke of Aosta had 150 battalions, 954 guns and 586 trench mortars, and behind him stood a further 36 battalions of the supreme command’s reserve. The southern wing of the Austro-Hungarian 5th Army of General Svetozar Boroević numbered 59 battalions and fewer than 300 guns. The defenders sat in shallow trenches hastily hewn in the rock, shielded by low stone walls and sandbags. For several days they had sensed that something was coming: from 10 September the Italian artillery fired ever more heavily, and on the afternoon of 13 September its fire reached far into the rear and forced the Austrian staffs to move their quarters.

The battle opened with a raid by three squadrons of Caproni bombers on Trieste, which did not cause much damage. At dawn on 14 September the Italian guns and mortars opened fire along the whole front from the Vipava to the sea. In many places the bombardment levelled trenches and wire, cut all the telephone lines, and smoke and dust so hid the battlefield that the Austrian commanders long did not know what was happening in the front line. Heavy fire also fell on the positions at Gorizia, at Plava and on the upper Isonzo, so that the defenders would not know where the main blow would come. According to the Austrian official history, after nine hours of shelling, in the afternoon, the Italian infantry went over to the assault. Cadorna wrote that his soldiers went into the attack in pouring rain.

Throughout the bombardment the Austrian artillery had husbanded its strength, and when the infantry moved off it opened massed fire. On the slopes above the Vipava the Italian attack collapsed under the fire of guns firing from the valley into the flank of the attackers. The Italians achieved most on the rock slab of Nad Logem: at about 3.30 p.m. three regiments of the 23rd Division attacked the Hungarian 61st Infantry Regiment there, of which little more than a battalion was left after the shelling, and occupied a forward stretch of the defences. The Austrian reserves, however, stopped them just beyond it. At Lokvica and Oppacchiasella most of the attacks broke against the barrage, while at Nova Vas and on hill 208 the Italians broke into the trenches, from which counter-attacks drove them out by evening. Cadorna wrote that his soldiers took Nova Vas and hill 208 in the first rush, but that artillery fire forced them to retreat. In the south, by the sea, the Italian 16th Division pushed the defenders out of their first trenches on hill 144 in the evening.

The first day brought the Italians only local gains, bought with heavy losses. Boroević did not yet touch his reserves, because he was not sure that the main blow would not come elsewhere, and sent only one Hungarian brigade into the fighting on the Karst. During the night a violent thunderstorm passed over the battlefield, and after it the bora sprang up. At dawn the next day the fighting flared up again. The attack lasted three more days, but brought the Italians no breakthrough.