Start of the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo

On the fine Sunday morning of 6 August 1916 the Italian artillery opened fire along the whole front on the Isonzo, from Tolmino to the sea. So began the main attack of the Sixth Battle of the Isonzo. General Luigi Cadorna had concentrated against the bridgehead of Gorizia and Monte San Michele on the Karst plateau more guns and trench mortars than he had ever had in this war. By evening the Italian infantry stood on the summits for which it had been fighting in vain since June 1915.

Surprise

Since the end of July, when the fighting on the Asiago plateau had finally died down, Cadorna had been moving whole corps and hundreds of heavy guns by night from the Trentino to the lower Isonzo. The Austro-Hungarian Fifth Army of General Svetozar Boroević, weakened by sending troops against the Brusilov Offensive, did not expect a major attack before mid-August. On 4 August the Italian VII Corps made a diversionary attack at Monfalcone and was repulsed, but it distracted the defenders. Only on 5 August did prisoners reveal that a great attack was being prepared, and observers noticed many new batteries registering. Boroević then asked the high command for a few batteries of heavy artillery, but by then it was too late for help.

The Gorizia bridgehead on the west bank of the Isonzo was defended by the 58th Division of General Erwin Zeidler, who happened to be on leave. It had eighteen and a half battalions, half of them Landsturm, and according to the Austrian official history only 87 guns with a small supply of ammunition. Facing it stood the Italian VI Corps of General Luigi Capello: six divisions with about 500 guns and 400 trench mortars. The Italians also knew the details of the defences, because in July and on the night of 31 July–1 August several deserters had brought them information and plans of the positions on Podgora.

Monte Sabotino

According to the Austrian official history the bombardment began at 6.45 a.m., according to Italian sources at seven. Soon the hills from Monte Sabotino to the plain at Lucinico, and the town itself, vanished in clouds of smoke and dust, while long-range guns shelled headquarters, roads and reserve camps far behind the front. At about noon the fire rose to a hurricane on the sectors the Italians had chosen for the assault. The wire entanglements were driven into the ground, the machine-gun posts in the rock smashed and the entrances to the caverns in which the defenders sheltered buried.

At four in the afternoon the infantry of VI Corps went forward along the whole front of the bridgehead. Monte Sabotino, the mountain closing the bridgehead to the north, was attacked by three brigades of General Giuseppe Venturi’s 45th Division. One of the columns was led by Colonel Pietro Badoglio, the corps chief of staff, who had been preparing this attack for months. The mountain was defended by a single battalion of the Dalmatian 37th Rifle Regiment. The surprised defenders had no time to get out of their caverns and were overpowered in a short time. The Italians did not halt in the first line, as in earlier battles, but pressed on along the ridge towards San Valentino and San Mauro above the Isonzo. According to Venturi, his division took about 1,200 prisoners that day. The Italians did not get down to the Isonzo itself and the bridge at Salcano that day, but Monte Sabotino, from which the whole Gorizia basin could be seen, was in their hands.

Podgora and San Michele

On the southern flank the 11th and 12th Divisions stormed Podgora, which the Italians called Monte Calvario. The Dalmatian riflemen of the 23rd Regiment held the main ridge, but one of the brigades broke through along the valley between Podgora and the Peuma hills, and individual detachments reached the Isonzo and even crossed the bridges to the east bank. In the centre of the bridgehead, at Oslavia, the attack of the 24th Division collapsed.

That same afternoon, after several hours of the heaviest bombardment yet seen on the Karst, the Italian XI Corps attacked Monte San Michele. The Catanzaro and Brescia Brigades took all four summits within about an hour, and individual patrols got as far as the village of Cotici. Hungarian Honvéd battalions that evening and during the night retook the eastern summit and pushed the Italians off the northern slope, and the defenders held San Martino del Carso. The Austrians prepared a counter-attack with the whole of the corps reserves for dawn.

In the evening Boroević ordered that not a step be yielded and that the lost positions be retaken. The reserves of the 58th Division, however, could move only after dark, because the roads, bridges and town lay under incessant fire. The Austrian official history wrote that the division’s position was very serious, but not yet hopeless. The heavy fighting for the bridgehead and for San Michele was to go on for two more days.